TRPG General Chat

eimyr

14:00

E.g. I remember one of my past games where a connection between MH actions and story actions was the only thing keeping us from going all-out murderhobo.

BESW

"More story" without "less MH" means somehow deriving story from, or finding story within, MH.

@eimyr Indeed, that's the typical strategy suggested to GMs trying to reduce or avoid the playstyle.

eimyr

I was a player there and the choice between "do I get the XP" and "do I want to compromise my character concept" created a lot of tension.

BESW

So how do we let you have your cake and eat it too?

That's the question here.

One way is to make the murderhoboism the story. This is what "Kobolds Ate My Baby" and "Great Ork Gods" do.

eimyr

Unfortunately I do not know either of these.

BESW

But they simultaneously subvert and compromise the.... [scrolls up]

eimyr

14:02

Probably should refer to googl.e

BESW

The heroism element.

Kobolds Ate My Baby and Great Ork Gods are about being the bad guys.

They give you permission to embrace the ludonarrative AND the archetypical hero's story by making you the villain of the piece instead of the hero.

But that's a subversion of the murderhobo paradigm, not a culmination.

Instead, the key lies, I think, in the crafting of combat by the GM.

A good OTS video game tells the story in large part without dialogue or cutscene. It informs the player through direction interaction with the environment in the player's primary agency mode: wholesale slaughter.

The identity of the enemy, the things they shout, the items they drop, the weapons both you and they wield, the obstacles you face, and the nature of the environment, all shift and change throughout the game and can be manipulated as a story-telling tool.

Combined with a shift in story perspective to make it a story about, say, the PCs' meteoric rise to greatness in a mean, cruel world? You can craft a narrative where practical, focused advancement in harmony with an unemotional ludonarrative can actually produce complex --maybe even nuanced-- story.

eimyr

That sounds familiar.

Remember my Courtly Intrigue game attempt?

BESW

My 4e campaign, at its heart, was about the inevitable confrontation of PCs with an Elder Thing ripping its way into the world from beyond.

SPArchaeologist

@eimyr Someone called me?

No, wait, it said "unemotional"

eimyr

@SPArchaeologist HM?

BESW

14:16

Everything led to it: from level one they would periodically encounter increasingly powerful and influential enemies who were from, or influenced by, the Far Realm.

Very little was needed in exposition because the encounters themselves told the story of an increasingly unstable world.

eimyr

@BESW My Courtly Intrigue game, which is supposed to be exactly about PCs unscrupulous rise in a ruthless world of courtroom politics is dressed up exactly like that. My players do murderhoboery, but instead of fighting and looting they are scheming and plotting.

And instead of skipping town to go back on the road they murder or bribe the witnesses, which they are perfectly capable of.

The narrative progresses blindingly fast, because they operate on a living organism - a country and its governance. Their combatlike actions destabilise it, creating opportunities to develop the narrative.

BESW

So maybe.... haruum.

Heroism is generally framed as reactive rather than proactive.

Murderhoboism is very much a proactive paradigm.

eimyr

I guess that to be a murderhobo whose combat disrupts the world to a similar degree, the world would need to be ruled by combat to a similar degree.

BESW

This may be one reason it's so easy to get heroes and villains mixed up in it: usually villains are the proactive ones in this sort of story.

Heroes fight for the status quo.

eimyr

E.g. would players who are gladiators advance the story mainly by fighting? Absolutely!

BESW

14:22

I'm gonna stop thinking about this on purpose and let it percolate in my head overnight.

eimyr

And you've been talking about this because lisardggY is giving a talk of sorts?

BESW

Yes.

eimyr

How does one start giving talks about these sort of things anyway?

BESW

Presumably one is in contact with conventions in some capacity, to begin.

eimyr

Not that I intend to, I was just wondering.

There must be some sort of peer review, right?

Or can anyone propose a talk and be evaluated by either popular demand or some abstract?

BESW

14:28

Depends on the con.

Not having actually done such things myself, I'm not able to speak from a position of knowledge.

The closest I've come to this kind of thing is presenting at local/regional religious conferences.

Tritium21

grrrr

eimyr

@Tritium21 <pets>

BESW

Tritium21

I fricking hate when I go through the effort, answer a question.... then someone else copies my answer pads it with shit that DOES NOT make it any better, and they get the damn checkmark

BESW

The checkmark is a fickle thing.

SPArchaeologist

14:40

@eimyr nothing sorry, I was thinking there was a specific joke/reference there, clearly that was not the case.

eimyr

@SPArchaeologist Might have been, but I don't know where to look :)

SPArchaeologist

@eimyr I was thinking you where making a reference.

but again, I don't think you was, sorry for the interrupt

BESW

2

eimyr

@BESW Please recommend a book (article) from which I might become more familiar with the entertainment theory and stuff like "ludonarrative"

BESW

That's gonna be hard. A lot of this stuff isn't collected in layman-accessible print yet. It's an active field and a lot of its writeup is online.

You can start with the references and further reading links here:

Ludonarrative

Ludonarrative, a compound of ludology and narrative, refers to the intersection in a video game of ludic elements — or gameplay — and narrative elements. It is commonly used in the term Ludonarrative dissonance. == Ludonarrative dissonanceEdit == Ludonarrative dissonance refers to conflicts between a video game's narrative and its gameplay. The term was coined by Clint Hocking, a former creative director at LucasArts (then at Ubisoft), on his blog in October, 2007. Hocking coined the term in response to the game Bioshock, which according to him promotes the theme of self-interest through ...

But now, I sleep.

SPArchaeologist

14:49

@eimyr No way.. why should you chose the hard mode? Lazy way all the way! BESW is know for having the "A teacher who likes to explain" aspect. Compel him

(also know as : you made me look up this Fate Core thing, now you pay the consequences ^_^)

lisardggY

So I'm back, and now busy structuring the last couple of hours of chat into a set of talking points for me, and further editing them, into slides.

Fun.

eimyr

@SPArchaeologist I assume it was BESW who made you look it up. As he does.

SPArchaeologist

@eimyr yep, but he didn't plan that now I don't need to look up anymore because I can just ~~abus~~ compel his aspect.

eimyr

@SPArchaeologist what aspect would you have then?

SPArchaeologist

this is a good question that I was already planning to answer.

For now, something like "Ponydo"

eimyr

15:03

Ponydo? Like Play-Doh but made from ponies?

SPArchaeologist

@eimyr Nope, "do" is a play on the "way of <noun>" suffix in many Japanese "schools/arts"

So, it was intended as "Way of the Pony"

eimyr

I see.

Do you share that with @Pixie?

I'm not even asking about @trogdor

SPArchaeologist

Probably, the more the better. I heard that we get both pack and trample for herds above 5 ponies.

Digi

16:33

hello

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Are there any premade adventures you can recommend for 5e?

I have a bunch of friends interested in playing but they have no game master. So I told them I could help, but I don't have to time to plan out anything big myself.

Digi

16:56

@William'MindWorX'Mariager A lot of the things i see only like aren't free. What you can do is use a anime story line or video game story line and tweek it around dnd.

@William'MindWorX'Mariager Allow your players to understand the situation and see if the can help you along the way too.

BESW

17:37

→ 16 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

18:02

I went with Lost Mine of Phandelver for Fantasy Grounds. :) 1-4 should do the trick for an introduction.

Digi

18:51

is there a big difference in DnD-5e and Pathfinder? I know Pathfinder is derived from 3.5 but I'm curious how big of a difference is the two.

Tashio

Huge

D&D 5th ed is more like AD&D 2nd edition than 3.5/PF

with the good elements of 4th ed brought in

BESW

21:41

Playtesters requested for a variety of short-form games created for the Furious Game Jam.

BESW

23:04

**RPG stuff:** [WIZARDS FORUMS GO DARK 20 OCT](http://community.wizards.com/forum/community-business/threads/4255901 "so grab anything you want to preserve before it's gone!"); [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Transhumanity's Fate v2](http://ryanmacklin.com/2015/09/transhumanitys-fate-playtest-v2/ "new playtest for Eclipse Phase in Fate");
[looking for furious test drivers](http://ryanmacklin.com/2015/09/looking-for-furious-test-drivers/ "playtest Fast & Furious mods of existing systems").

trogdor

23:28

@eimyr how dare you make such assumptions

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