Campaign Coins has restocked their Fate tokens and put up some new stuff, if anyone's interested.

@BESW 3 of the 5 small tokens are out. Also, I have it from the Campaign Coins guys themselves that the Gold tokens are going out of production.

(Probably because they look almost identical to the Bronze coins. I was forewarned I'd have trouble telling them apart, and the warning was accurate.)

They added these and restocked Bronze.

Those are pretty and all, but i don't understand why you wouldn't just buy 100 aquarium marbles for $5 and be done.

@ObliviousSage It's not something everyone will want, but it is wonderful to have clinky, very slightly hefty metal coins to move around. Using glass beads will do the job, but this is more satisfying.

I guess it's a similar reason to why we'd actually go out and buy fate dice when we can buy a d6 and use the standard hack to add + / - / 0 to it*, or why other players would buy their own special custom fancy beautiful looking polyhedral dice set when they could just use the group's own bag of mismatched dice.

I can actually understand getting fate dice. You can read actual fate dice a lot faster than you can convert regular d6s into pluses and minuses.

(* you can get a permanent marker and draw over the dots such as to give two sides a +, two sides a -, and two sides a great big square that you count as a 0)

And I've tried the permanent marker thing, and it still wears off. Dice surfaces just aren't meant for permanent marker.

I used grocery store poker chips for RPG tokens for a while. It was effective, but the metal coins add a certain je ne sais quoi to the proceedings that's very gratifying.

Fate points tokens, Hope/Despair coins, XP markers, Spite coins...

Poker chips make great markers I concur

@BESW How've the games of DRYH you've ran/played gone? (From your Hope/Despair coins answer) Mine have always devolved pretty quickly into surreal comedy.

I've only run two sessions, and one of them was a quick "Hey, let's just try this for a little while" without anyone involved really understanding it.

The other one, though--it went well. There was a lot of laughing, but it was definitely not a comedic session.

Comedy definitely comes into my games a lot when I DM

Horror always requires the players to buy into the concept and put in conscious effort to maintain the atmosphere; my players found things their PCs cared about deeply and spun the session around those stakes.

Also I threw out the pun-laden Mad City.

@BESW Ah, well that explains a lot then.

You can have funny moments in horror, no problem --in fact, if you don't provide an opportunity for the tension to ebb every now and then, your players will become overwhelmed and inured to it and stop responding appropriately.

But the stakes need to be high and the players need to be willing to take the stakes seriously. If that doesn't happen, you won't get horror.

@BESW That explains quite a bit; most people I play with aren't going to get invested in a horror mindset, myself included

DRYH was especially hard for me, because it straddles a few different categories of horror and subverts some of them in the interest of others.

For example:

DRYH rests on a foundation of Psychological Horror, which requires the players to invest in failure: the story is about characters descending into madness rather than the typical "triumph over impossible odds" narrative found in most RPGs.

But. DRYH is also firmly engaged in the Characters-as-Monsters narrative: your character has great power and agency, but corrupts whatever you expose to it.

DRYH is definitely aimed at a fairly narrow subset of gamers, I think; the thing that drew me to it was the setting and the insanity powers in DLYM

It walks that "powerful but doomed" line while also touching on themes of Madness & Dream, a narrative structure that doesn't really care about the outcome at all: power, weakness, success, failure, is all secondary to the ongoing experience of the maddening present.

I'm guessing it gets drifted quite a bit when played more often

DRYH PCs are (literally) insanely powerful, capable of re-writing reality according to their whim. But the ability to make good choices about how to use that power is compromised, leading to dramatic unexpected outcomes where their power runs rampant and out of the PC's control--but still firmly in the player's control.

The game is a power trip for the player, while being a desperate struggle for the PC.

That's quite a bit for every player at the table to remember

And, yeah, the Mad City is kinda hard to take seriously sometimes. I threw it out altogether.

It sounds awesome if you can get everyone on board, though

this is one of the few games I have an entire (mostly unused) dice set dedicated toward

Greener made a custom dice roller because his side of the game didn't have enough IRL dice of the right sorts.

(I had to use green instead of black, myself.)

I think I realized something about issues with GMing, though

@shatterspike1 It's not so much a set of rules that the players need to remember, as an attitude of leaning into the stakes: running toward the goal headlong without concern for your own wellbeing.

@BESW Ah, getting people to commit to that sounds better.

The trick, I've found, is talking to the group and making sure everyone's on the same page first.

All games benefit from explicit communication about goals and styles, but horror games practically REQUIRE it.

@BESW That's the real issue here; getting people together for a session is like herding cats

("Horror" is such a uselessly broad term that it needs to be focused and honed for the group to understand what's going on.)

Or rather, getting them engaged and paying attention and on board

@shatterspike1 That's going to necessarily inform the kinds of games you can successfully play, then.

When I have a group that's like nailing Jell-O to a tree, I pick my systems and themes differently.

@BESW The group I can consistently do this with wouldn't be on board for these sorts of games. Fortunately for THAT group, a D&D homebrew works instead

Trying to run MLWM with my 4e group didn't work out well.

@BESW LOL

That makes a lot of sense.

My current group is wary of MLWM because they would engage with it, but they aren't sure they're comfortable with that.

MLWM is the sort of game where I hear the blurb and I think "that doesn't sound like a good time"

DRYH and a game like Mythenders at least has power fantasy going on, even if it's of the "Power with a Price" variety

It's very much a Forge game: the goal is to give the players (as distinct from characters) feels in spite of themselves.

@BESW Very true; but I'm guessing the way most MLWM games start is the GM says "hey I have this game we should try" and then 75% of the players genuinely are annoyed at it, mostly because they weren't the sort to have been on board with it if they knew what it was about initially.

Either because they were expecting something else or because the story mechanics clash with their personality, it creates frusturation instead of what the game is supposed to create.

Finding a group for it is hard, I guess is all I'm saying.

Eh, forget the above. I'm just rambling now

It's definitely a game designed for groups that all know what the game is going in, rather than the GM unilaterally deciding, learning the rules, and then teaching as he goes.

Yeah. I don't think I'm claiming that's a design flaw, just that I think it's fairly easy to introduce in the wrong way (and to the wrong people).

Absolutely.

A common--flaw? yes, I'll call it a flaw--of Forgeite games is that they rise from a very particular community with its own ideas about how RPGs get played... and assume their consumers are familiar with that philosophy.

I have experienced one session of successful horror, though, and that was when our DM put Death Frost Doom in our long running campaign.

While a game like Fate or Roll For Shoes works better if the group is operating within particular playstyle parameters, they still work reasonably well within other paradigms; Forge games wither and die outside their nurturing environment.

Yeah, the "Story Game" that gets played the most around here is Microscope

My first Forge game was DitV, played with a group of D&D 3.5 players who had never heard of the Forge.

And I think it's played so often because of the Palette

The GM gave us a random encounter while we were travelling from town to town.

Random Encounter? In DiTV?

I think that if you played the song "Mad world" during a game of dread

It'd be pretty terrifying

@shatterspike1 Yes.

We also had a middle-aged Dog almost entirely specialised in firearms, with a distinct "Clint Eastwood" air about him.

Then we got ambushed by bandits.

Sounds kind of funny

It was a great example of what the Forge originally set out to explore, actually: not all systems support all playstyles.

Eh, that's kind of true, but looser systems do support more playstyles

Or at the very least, they don't hamper tinkering and modifying said system to better support said playstlye

*playstyle

Mmm. To be more precise, the Forge's originating conceit was to deconstruct the idea that system doesn't matter, and to learn the ways in which system CAN matter: how rules change experience.

Ah, well that makes sense

I'd be a little confused at someone making a statement as extreme as "System doesn't matter at all"

System does matter, but it's rare for any two groups to run one system the same way, houserules are common, etc.

It was, ironically, apparently the White Wolf motto for a while.

Games like Burning Wheel did introduce some very important techniques though, that can be broadened to other systems

White Wolf said "System doesn't matter"?

Not explicitly. But their playstyle manifestos were representative of a common zeitgeist.

The underlying idea was that a "good GM" could run any sort of game using any sort of system.

The angry snob in me says "Of course system doesn't matter if you manipulate it so it always works out the way you want it to"

In large part this meant (and this WAS explicit in the WW texts) that a "good GM" would modify or abandon any part of a system that got in the way of the kind of game he wanted to run.

So system didn't matter because it was the GM who created the experience.

The Forge, instead, sought to find ways to create systems which worked with the GM and encouraged specific play experiences best when adhered to strictly.

(It's also said that one reason the zeitgeist bought into "system doesn't matter" at the time was that most visible systems during that period had largely interchangeable elements: attributes, skills, magic as an overlay, character quirks and morality mechanics, resource points, assuming long-form campaigns, etc.)

It's kinda hard to get into the details because the discussions (especially the Forge essays) are steeped in self- and inter-referential jargon.

Forge games do tend to perform as advertised, at least.

I consider D&D 4e to be an inheritor of the Forge ethos, in that it chose one particular motivation/experience and focused on doing that really well at the expense of other experience goals.

Their strength is also kind of their weakness

A lack of focus actually seems to give broader appeal often

Although, I'm currently in a 4e game with treasure as experience and no magic mart beyond Common items

Mmm, and that's the other place where the "system doesn't matter" idea can come into play: the idea that one system can support any kind of play.

The d20 System is sort of the poster child for that attitude.

It was an idea I struggled with for awhile; I have friends who will say "I just houserule 3.5" for any style of game they run and I was always confused as to why they didn't run System X which was intended for that style of game

Only recently am I realizing that's the strength of 3.5/d20

And now it seems obvious

Comfort and proficiency with a familiar system can overcome many of its flaws when stretching it to accommodate playstyles outside its aegis.

But after spending so many years doing exactly that kind of hackwork with 3.5, I eventually realised that its versatility only really works within a fairly narrow field: the more fun we were having in the d20 System, the less we were actually using its rules.

I think my solution was ultimately to start with a system that had far fewer rules and add additional rules as they came up

Or, that's what it is currently, at least.

3.5 actively requires hacking away the bits that don't fit

But not nearly to the same extent as 4e or Forge games or what have you

For me, it's less the quantity of rules and more the focus of them.

The d20 System is leaky in all the wrong places for me.

The focus on the character building minigame? The spellcaster vs. non-spellcaster dichotomy? Which is it?

Those are problematic, yeah.

But more than that, there's a lot of focus on immediate combat tactics and almost nothing about long-term consequences or motivations. HP and social interactions are extremely abstracted while fiddly bits like which sword is more effective are lovingly detailed.

Ah

There isn't anything in the d20 System mechanics for narrative arc beyond an inevitable increase in PC power.

Yeah, that's an issue, especially when coupled with there being not much guidance on non-linear game styles for GMs

Its mechanics are about scene-to-scene action resolution, and outside of combat even those mechanics are abstracted enough to be ignored.

I first really started understanding this when I tried using the official Stargate SG-1 rules.

It's bad enough when the first time I conceptualized of the idea of a Hexcrawl was reading Ben Robbins "The West Marches"

Given that I grew up with d20 based systems

The d20 System is a combat and resource management game; that's not what SG-1 stories look like.

Are SG-1 stories more in the vein of having an explicit narrative mechanic, or do they have that emergence thing going on more associated with older styles of play and older editions of D&D?

Or is it something else entirely?

SG-1 stories are about personalities and motives. Combat is common, but it's almost never the way you win a conflict. You solve problems in SG-1 by making hard choices, figuring out tough problems, forging alliances, and so forth.

SG_1 tension runs on narrative drama, and a system where a random critical hit can kill a character is fundamentally unsuited to the franchise.

Ah, so what are the stakes for the most you can lose in a given session? Ship damage? Killed NPC crewmen?

Lost resources?

Oh, you can die.

But you don't die randomly.

I would argue there are very few well designed games where you can die through no fault of your own

Well... well-designed AND well ran.

(ran? run?)

If "It's your fault you joined a fight in a game about fighting" counts.

The official SG-1 RPG uses wounds/vitality instead of HP.

Wounds/Vitality means you can take fatal injury on almost any attack.

Ah, so is there some sort of narrative "get out of jail free" deal on PC harm, or is it really more of a game of "choose your battles carefully, and if you choose wrong, you're likely to die"?

It's the latter.

What's the role of combat in SG-1, then, if it's not to put people at risk or resolve a conflict?

This "choose your battles carefully" thing is a common theme in d20 System games, including D&D.

Ah. That's sound pretty awesome.

*That

@shatterspike1 It would be... if that were what SG-1 was about.

@Magician There's a big difference between "battles don't put people at risk" and "a stray bullet can kill your PC without any fanfare."

@BESW I dunno, I think a game that says "Pick your battles carefully" more often than not emphasizes other problem-solving methods than fighting, because fighting is so deadly.

@shatterspike1 I'd love that.

The SG-1 RPG has the same "goblin dice" problems with non-combat resolution that most d20 System games have, though.

Of course, d20 mucks it up with awarding XP for doodz murderd (sic) and nothing else

Non-combat problem-solving takes a tiny handful of highly abstracted and very swingy dice rolls.

It's short, brutal, and boring.

@BESW Ah, that's also true. I forgot about that

For a franchise that spends entire episodes trying to fix something, they chose an RPG engine that would fix it with a single die roll.

Weird; do they have sample adventures that show how that's supposed to work without railroading or overlong prep?

Or does it just not work in general?

From what I've seen, it just doesn't work. I think they went with d20 because of the OGL and brand recognition.

That's a real shame

There seems to be a fairly deep-running failure to understand how the mechanics interact with the gameplay experience. Flipping through a dozen pages to choose exactly what kind of explosives you're bringing on the mission isn't really riveting.

It's running on the "more mechanics about stuff, less mechanics about people" principle.

But SG-1 is at heart a people-first franchise.

Huh, I wish there was some kinda "So you've decided to run/write a game" introductory lesson for RPGs where we just linked over to The Alexandrian or something.

Heheh.

That would have saved me... 10 years of trouble.

Agreed.

I've been thinking for a few years now about what system to use for my SG-1 campaign; Fate seems appropriate, but I'd have to ignore a lot of the "play to discover" element from Fate to make it work with the campaign.

I may never actually GET to run the campaign, but I'd like to someday.

I'm not sure about many systems that are good at modeling interaction with people? The only one I can really think of is the doctor who one based on the 10th doctor with its resolution system where people who choose violence act last, and I've never read that system.

Most systems tend to be "I wing it" sorts of things. Maybe a system where the relevant PCs were played by half the group, and the NPC's were played by the other half and decided how they would react? (assuming the entire group was acting in good faith, of course)

Would also work better with systems or adventures that encouraged splitting up

Scooby Doo the roleplaying game?

There's Cortex Plus Drama....

@shatterspike1 While "people who choose violence act last" is a perfect modeling of interaction in Doctor Who, I'm not sure it models reality in any sense.

Bah, reality.

@BESW Have you tried it?

@Magician I have not.

@Miniman Yes, that'd be a necessary tradeoff for that sort of narrative focused game. Not necessarily my preferred playstyle, but it seems workable enough.

Personally I like the Marvellous/ARRPG initiative system.

Critical!

Carry on.

I've recently re-discovered Cortex Hacker's Guide on my hard drive, and remembered I backed it on kickstarter, a while ago. So I should probably read it one day...

It looks a lot fiddlier than I'm inclined toward these days, though @trogdor and Ben might appreciate it.

I've become a fan of Vegas Style Initiative myself, after having it used on me enough

@shatterspike1 ?

@trogdor The Cortex Plus Drama engine.

DM rolls d6. One player rolls d6. Whichever side rolls higher goes first. Repeat each round.

Warning: May cause screaming at table

@shatterspike1 Each round or each turn?

@BESW Every round, so all the PCs go then all the opposition goes, or vice versa. Then it's rerolled at the beginning of the next round.

Ah.

Then the players argue agree amongst themselves about the order within their group?

Really though, wouldn't work for the kind of "talk it out" system you'd want, I think.

For SG-1... I dunno, there's a lot of conflict.

@BESW Yes, it's hilarious to watch. "I charge!" "No wait I'm firing my bow first" that sort of stuff

It's just not a franchise where physical combat is the way to resolve your big session-driving problems.

Often, it'll be everyone rolling attacks and I point at the players and say "What did you roll?" Also often, it'll be one half the party running, one quarter fighting, and the remainder doing some other weird thing

One thing I really liked about DRYH was the scene-choice mechanic and how it interacted with the game's expectation that most of the time PCs wouldn't share scenes.

@BESW Hmm. Can you remind me what that mechanic is? Been a while since I read it.

@Magician We go around the table and at the end of each scene, the next person over chooses whose scene we see next.

It's kinda like Marvellous initiative, but for scenes, and in table order rather than going by whoever had a turn last.

(And without the "have to pick someone who hasn't gone recently" bit.)

Hah. Didn't remember this at all. I think in my games the PCs tended to stick together.

@BESW I do think it best if the group makes sure everyone has had a decent amount of time, but our group seemed to handle that pretty well

Yeah, it's up to the group to make sure that happens.

Though each player gets their own turn to choose themselves if they want, and one of the standard tasks of the GM in most games is spotlight management; DRYH gives the GM an actual mechanic for it once each round.

@Magician We started the game with Troggy's PC in another time and place, and by the end of the game everyone was together but we still used the scene-choice to kinda pick who'd be pushed or focused on for a little while.

I think DramaSystem had something similar. You chose what scene would be next, and players could use the meta currency to not be in it, to which you could respond by offering them more meta currency. Kind of like compels before a scene starts. If I remember correctly, that is.

Interesting.

@BESW Reading this post & the next two is amusing if you don't look at where the linkback points to :)

...yes. Yes, they are.

@trogdor Personally I like that it means we can apply extra time somewhere if we want to. Players can always request more time on themselves. It means the spotlight is where the spotlight is worth being when it's worth being there. We got to apply the spotlight on Doctor Light several times in a row when it seemed most interesting.

yes

I am not complaining

We did make sure we each got a decent amount of time, but some characters had more time than others (I think!) and I am completely happy with that 'cause that's what we needefd.

I did say our group handled it pretty well

I know you're not, it's fine :D

we might have gone a little heavy on Myca and Dr Light, but as long as no one feels they didn't have enough it isn't an issue

that is my suspicion as well, and it was a good result.

those two were of particular importance in that session, and it was worth shining the spotlight on them more

I felt Baker got the short end of the stick, spotlight-wise.

yeah same

I gave him a turn at least twice I think

maybe only once, either way, I did that partly because I felt he was getting short time

I'm making some plans to get his leadership position more spotlight in the next sessions.

@BESW Dan's open to the plans we discussed.

Shiny.

He's happy to take on a sort of leader role & adapt his character to it.

I'm working on N1O-specific extras for each PC, and I'm designing Baker's to help set him up that way.

@BESW Dan also suggested the idea of rebuilding his character as an Umdaar PC. I suggested he come to you about that. On one hand, you're intending on inflicting characters with ARRPG mechanics on a world of Umdaar mechanics, which suggests he should/could keep an ARRPG Tom Baker. On the other hand, Tom Baker built already as an Umdaar PC would represent how absolutely and entirely he is adapted to such a world from the moment he sets foot on it.

(I aired both thoughts to him.)

Hrm... Umdaar PCs are vastly underpowered compared to ARRPG PCs.

I'm fiddling with the numbers on the NPCs and monsters, but I've got a lot more wiggle room with them than a PC has.

Conceptually I like the idea, but mechanically I don't think it's a good idea to try that experiment before we've seen how ARRPG and Umdaar collide.

(An ARRPG stunt is on average almost twice as powerful as an Umdaar stunt, for starters, in addition to ARRPG PCs having twice as many.)

yeah

I recall that Umdaar tends to provide +2's only once per scene

ARRPG's fundamental stunt formula is:

> +2 to [action] with [skill] when [situation occurs] (ARRPG 73)

Compare to Umdaar's stunt formula:

> Once per scene, you can gain +2 to [specific approach and action] when you face [a common circumstance] (MoU 22)

It's even more obvious if we compare ratings.

ARRPG costs armor:1 or weapon:2 at "one half a stunt."

Umdaar costs both armor:1 and weapon:1 at "full stunt with approach limitation," or weapon:2 at "full stunt with approach limitation and once per scene limit."

these things make it obvious why I would choose ARRPG over Umdaar

Should not be too hard to beef up Umdaar stunts though to match?

In theory, yes.

In practice, to get it right enough for an Umdaar PC to work effectively alongside a group of ARRPG PCs on the very first try? eeeeh.

Yea true

ARRPG available anywhere?

@Tashio evilhat.com/home/atomic-robo

$35.. ouch

hmm Adam Jury, same Adam of Dumpshock fame?

ah nm that's for the actual book, 15 for pdf... hmm will have to see, joys of living in a country with a really crappy exchange rate to the dollar

The comic, at least, is free online.

For what it's worth, as someone whose group uses Fate as its primary go-to system for everything, ARRPG helped me a lot with theory, practice, and homebrew for all my Fate games.

ah ARRPG is core though not accelerated right?

Yup.

Though some of its ideas--like replacing Refresh costs--I'm using in all my Fate games now.

I need to pick up ARRPG sometime. Not in much hurry, though. No opportunity to use it anytime soon.

Hi

hey

Yawp.

Good morning

@Aaron Good {{$scope.localizedDayPeriod}}

This made me giggle like an idiot