TRPG General Chat

BESW

11:01

...It feels weird that I've played games which don't have RPG.SE tags.

eimyr

11:15

Coming from a very specific edition of a WoD game, it doesn't fell as weird.

BESW

@eimyr Also, I once felt like familiarity with multiple d20 System games was equivalent to familiarity with multiple very different engines.

[was young and foolish]

eimyr

Heh.

People do not ask "what was your first game?" because they think the answer will always be D&D

BESW

I've noticed this is less true in Europe.

(Largely, it seems, because Das Schwarze Auge has been translated into French, Italian, and Dutch since the mid 80s.)

eimyr

I'm not sure about that. Maybe in Western Europe.

Make notice of the fact that saying "in Europe X happens" is as misguided as saying "in Africa X happens"

BESW

Well, yes, but I am considering a fairly wide geographical range of anecdotes when I say it.

eimyr

11:23

you can't compare the situation in South Africa, Mali, Malawi and South Sudan without making a few simplifications.

Well, I can tell you that: in Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia access to RPGs in the 90s was dreadful, so edition-confusion and piracy did a great service to diversity.

BESW

That'd certainly help.

eimyr

people were playing D&D primarily, but Warhammer, WoD, Cyberpunk and local products were played comparably widely.

There were also some local favourites, which everyone heard about if not played it, such as Deadlands and Fading Suns

BESW

...I've been responsible for several folks' first RPG being Roll For Shoes.

eimyr

that's cool

BESW

And for one poor soul, Cathylulu Dark.

eimyr

11:32

recently a friend of mine said that his friend made a request to play D&D as a taster

you know, to get into RPGs

I cringed at how badly the GM (yet another person) fumbled that first experience.

Admittedly, I've only heard about what happened and not witnessed it, but there were some bad decisions there

BESW

I think many people consider "fumbled first game" a common shared experience of the community.

(Especially going by some of the Stack's answers to various "help me make my first game go well" questions.)

Trish

My local game group played DSA (the german D&D competitioner) a lot in the 90s, no stable group for that game since 2001. Occasionally Pathfinder. The only stable game played since foundation in 1989 is cWoD in various variants, since 2 years the games played are: Ars Magica, Shadowrun (briefly 4A, since 1.5 years 5), WoD (Atm Werewolf, before Vampire); since 2 months ago Exalted, last year came with W40K - black crusade, Warhammer Fantasy & Deathwatch all in irregular shedule, also...

eimyr

I have nothing against a newbie playing D&D as a first game, but I think there should be some intro along the lines of "there are tons of RPGs out there and even a few different kinds of D&D. Would you like to see what fun approachable games there are aside from D&D?" and then go on to recommend stuff like DW, Fate, D&D 5e, RfS etc.

Trish

...sometimes FATE and then some few other games (MAID if it is 1PM or such).

Shaamaan

Hi @BESW. How'd your BubbleGumshoe game go?

BESW

11:35

I've become very fond of RFS as a primer game.

Trish

We had not a single D&D4 or 5 group EVER, some 3 and 3.5 at times, and Pathfinder for cons.

BESW

@Shaamaan Well! I'm really digging the "what matters is what you choose to do about the crime" aesthetic.

Trish

My Exalted groups is a singe exalted 1e veteran, 3 almost total newbs to the RPG at all - and till now they love it... even if the 3e rulebook is monolithic.

BESW

(We're planning to blackmail the bike thief into using his bike as parts to repair the one he stole and crashed.)

trogdor

it was weird to get the clues so easily, but have to work hard deciding what to do with them

weird in a good way though

Shaamaan

11:38

@BESW Yup. :D

On a side note... since we (as in, my RL RPG group) are experimenting with systems, next up is Rogue Trader. The current DM posted some initial pre-gen character sheets for everyone to see, and the general response was "oh, cool... hmm, but this doesn't look as simple as Trail of Cthulhu".

I really have to thank you for the suggestion to play the Gumshoe based Trail of Cthulhu rather than the original Call... I somehow have a feeling the management of so many weird stats in Call would have killed the session, and that's not the kind of killing that should happen in these kinds of games.

BESW

My pleasure. I have developed a high allergy to complication without complexity.

eimyr

@Shaamaan Do you agree with this: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31619958#31619958 ?

Trish

I do believe, that the choice of games played in a group (we are a college hobbyist club) does stem from the culture around. Yes, you can fumble that first experience by MANY pitfalls, but there are games that are more more prone to these. Imho, D&D offshoots are pretty beginner friendly, if handled well, but even with a monolith like cWoD or Exalted that is badly arranged in the books, you can give fun if you break down the system to the cores or simply introduce rules over time.

Like we had our first real combat yesterday, 6 meetings into the game, and I only picked some extremely weak zombies - they wiped 'em but it was meant as a testfight for them: try out the difference between the attacks etc.

Shaamaan

@eimyr I... dunno. I feel I was too young to tell, being in my early teens during that period.

@eimyr In a way I feel I could agree because I don't think I've heard of D&Ds and the like until much, much later.

But, again, this may simply be because the subject never came up and (not knowing it exists) I've never gone looking for it.

Trish

@Shaamaan I can tell, that the club's library was a good thing to MY bandwidth of games. It's not piracy and those books are german or english, but it helped me to learn more games. I wouldn'd have ever played Ars Magica if I wouldn't have went there some years ago.

eimyr

11:47

@Shaamaan I was 14 in 2002 and by the time I was in high school I was RPGing regularly.

it was easier though, as I lived in a moderately large city

Shaamaan

Well, I don't know if this is relevant... I believe I first "acknowledged" the existence of P&P RPGs after watching / listening to jokes about the subject on the internet (think something along the lines of the old 8bit DND flash animation). But I didn't really have friends who I'd know would be into this thing, so I never pursued the subject.

Only later I found suitable friends to play with, and my interest in the subject was renewed when I watched the PAX D&D sessions on YouTube and laughed so hard my stomach hurt. ;P

As such, I'm a young P&P RPG fan (despite being in my 30s).

eimyr

I see.

Shaamaan

I sort of think that if I had learned of the subject earlier and had friends to play with... yeah, I'd have to make do with pirating some books.

eimyr

Do you come from a smaller town?

Shaamaan

No, I come from Poznań, which if memory serves, is the 5th (?) largest city in Poland.

eimyr

11:54

Well, you must have been unlucky with your social circle as I know people there who used to play actively in the 90's and 00's

Shaamaan

I don't know about the availability of books in stores at the time (manuals might have been available in specialist stores, but I wouldn't have known where to look for them at the time). I know I would have used piracy for the simple fact that I was way too young to have any sensible income, and those books are rarely cheap.

eimyr

I remember going to Empik just to see maybe 20 different titles with a hefty (for a teenager) pricetag on them, mixed editions, mixed games, incomplete selection, almost all were expansion books.

Shaamaan

Probably very right about the social circle. I've only found people interested in the subject in college.

BESW

The only people I knew in high school were interested in RPGs weren't folks I wanted to play with.

eimyr

In fact it was so problematic that I had 4 different expansions to Mage:the Ascension but not the core rulebook.

Shaamaan

11:57

And even then it was a few years into college before we sort of realized we're into the same thing (it's not like we were wearing tags with our interests for all to see).

eimyr

Oh, it was the opposite for me, college was the time when I couldn't find anyone interested.

Shaamaan

Hell, even now finding people to play with is sort of a problem. Even now, with 4 people (myself included) actually scheduling the damn thing is really difficult, between some of my friends having kids, work, moving to different towns, distance etc. :(

BESW

Yeah, that became a problem for me too.

eimyr

sure it is

it's always difficult

BESW

I wound up just saying "Hey, anybody who's available any Saturday night can come by (or in some cases Skype in) and we'll hang out." Most of the time the folks who show up want to do RPGs, but it's not officially an RPG gathering.

And we had to modify our expectations, systems, and stories to accommodate an erratic attendance.

Shaamaan

12:03

I think with my one-off Cthulhu session my friends started to see the benefits of one-shot campaigns. Particularly because most problems caused by erratic attendance are solved by the very fact that these are one-shots.

BESW

Yup.

For longer campaigns, we try to do "episodes" that are more like one-shots which string together to form a larger story.

Shaamaan

Than again, it does place a somewhat bigger burden on the DM as they should have pre-gen chars for everyone who might show up.

BESW

Or use systems with fast or no pre-gen.

Great Ork Gods, Cthulhu Dark, Roll For Shoes, Danger Patrol, Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, A Penny For My Thoughts...

I've got a few games I'm designing where chargen is the first act of the game.

doppelgreener

(Great Ork Gods characters can be generated fast because you'll also see your orc die a couple of times in the session. There's even a rule that if you take more than 5 minutes to great your Ork, you get an extra lumping of Hate from the gods. This is a fate to be avoided.)

BESW

In Penny, you literally don't know anything about your character when you start--and neither does your character, as everyone is playing an amnesiac.

Do:PotFT just wants you to say how your character gets in trouble and how she helps people. Cathylulu Dark simply asks for your name and profession.

Shaamaan

12:14

But those are all sort off... well... "silly" systems (or aimed towards comedy in some ways). I'm all for playing them, but it seems my group disagrees. I hope I'll get them to reconsider as they have the one-shots.

BESW

[raises eyebrow] Check out A Penny For My Thoughts.

Shaamaan

Well, not all, Cthulhu Dark sounds scary. ;P

BESW

Or look at 14 Days. Or Lovecraftesque.

Shaamaan

I will! Than again, it's not me that needs convincing for such games. ;)

BESW

See also Microscope, Dog Eat Dog, Don't Rest Your Head...

...maybe Nomic?

eimyr

12:20

Fate. Dungeon World.

these are games with implicit at-the-table chargen which can be handled quickly

Shaamaan

I tried Fate. It... didn't go so well.

doppelgreener

@BESW Lady Blackbird.

BESW

@doppelgreener Well, trying to avoid pre-gens of any sort for this list.

doppelgreener

@BESW well the GM doesn't have to pre-gen anything in LB

they're already built into the system

BESW

Pre-provided pre-gen creates hard limits on number of players, though.

doppelgreener

12:22

what's the player quantity we're working with here?

BESW

Irregular.

doppelgreener

it's an option for smaller nights then at least

Shaamaan

@BESW It's not a problem if you've never had more than 4 players. ;P

BESW

@Shaamaan That's important to know.

Shaamaan

Make 6 pre-gens and you're almost always ready to go.

BESW

12:24

So, Aeon Wave makes the list.

Technically Bubblegumshoe and DFRPG do too.

Shaamaan

Anyway, you sort of know how many people will attend, unless you're making it a public thing.

Sure, you CAN be surprised by a last-minute addition... but that's unlikely to be more than one person.

BESW

My attendance varies from 1 to 6 pretty easily, with the potential to go significantly higher.

Shaamaan

And if you want to give your players some choice, you'll always want a few more chars (which can, BTW, be reused between sessions if they havent been used before).

Damn, you're lucky! :D

Right... I'm off.

See you around!

BESW

ttfn

Trish

@BESW Dwarf Fortress RPG?! Must See! Must Have!

BESW

12:36

@Trish Dresden Files.

Trish

ah f**** Well, still need a DwarfFortress RPG then...

(well, I still got to find players to torture with GURPS Space 2nd

BESW

There are a number of Dwarf Fortress hacks of various systems.

Trish

ohhh? My Google-Fu must be lacking...

doppelgreener

VTC idea generation: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/86529/… Probably has an actual question behind it ("how do i do urban mystery adventures") but it's a big'n

Trish

but then again... I just need an excuse to torture players with all the physics I cram for october... Astrophysics and nuclear physics... The closest route: have them play GURPS Space!

hmmm, to me it seems like "I have a hard time putting clues out, what types of clues could I use?"

or "use for what"

BESW

12:59

Well, first off I'd say "Are you sure you want to use D&D for that? It's rather clumsy at both urban and mystery."

eimyr

13:20

@BESW At McRPG: "Would you like some D&D with that?"

BESW

"No thanks, I'm trying to cut down on combat."

nitsua60

@eimyr I sent Martin an e-mail about it perhaps two weeks ago, haven't heard anything back. I don't feel there's any obligation on his part to reply to me, but maybe it's worth making sure my message got through?

@BESW "I'm Not Going Back to Jail 2" would be a great name for an album. Too bad it's probably already taken =)

eimyr

"That's fine, would you like to go for extra *books?"

nitsua60

Okay, I'll give him headline of the day:

> U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won his 12th individual Olympic gold medal this week, tying a record set 2,168 years ago by Leonidas of Rhodes.

Trish

GREAT.... Now, I wrote an answer for the thing @doppelgreener told about, and it is locked...

eimyr

13:32

VTC means Vote To Close

BESW

Given that he mentioned it specifically to ask for more close votes, that's not surprising.

eimyr

not quite "Vladimir, Type Cuicker!"

BESW

Hopefully the querent will improve the question and it'll get re-opened and you can salvage your answer.

@eimyr Valiant Try, Citizen.

eimyr

I suck at backronyming

Trish

hm, maybe I make it something seperte... because... now I have a short essay about how to hand out clues

BESW

13:35

Could make a good blog post.

nitsua60

@Trish The other possibility, if the original never becomes workable, is to figure out if there's a stack-answerable question that your short essay does address and post as a Q&A self-answer.

That's a tricky needle to thread, though, so probably worth getting a second set of eyes on it for some outside feedback.

(And accepting that the answer might be "eh, I don't think this fits the Stack.")

eimyr

@BESW I have a "How not to encourage players to do sidequests" Botch post

RollingFeles

@Trish I agree with others. That would be great post or Q&A.

Trish

well, have a look:

Clues for adventure or mysteries come in various shapes.

First of all, there is **Rumor & Talk**. People in Taverns talk about stuff, people on the streets talk about stuff, people generally talk a lot and pass on rumors and ideas to each other, and then to the next. Rumor is great to try to lead players into some direction or to credit or discredit certain NPCs - people talk about the necromancer's stench, or the feud of the Greymanes and so on. It can be a good hook for adventure starts that can not be pinned to physical evidence. Sometimes these interactions end with people asking the P…

BESW

@eimyr I've practiced a lot.

eimyr

13:38

@nitsua60 Stack Jeopardy: when you've written a great answer and the question is closed.

nitsua60

@eimyr definitely both "Jeopardy" and "jeopardy" =)

Trish

"What is Stack Exchange?"

BESW

@eimyr I'll take "Causes of midnight screaming" for 300, Alex.

nitsua60

I'm just going to run the column on "stayed up too late again"

RollingFeles

@Trish awesome!

nitsua60

13:39

Alex: "someone's wrong on the internet for 800? It's a daily double!"

RollingFeles

I copied it in my little doc named "Tips & Tricks" : )

Trish

Now, I only need a good Question that is answered by it.

RollingFeles

Thank you for sharing experience and thoughts!

eimyr

"A stack specifically designed to channel overflowing drama." - "What is Meta?"

nitsua60

@Trish Before I've even looked at the full text, what question do you think it answers?

Trish

13:40

I took quite much of that advice from "[making comics][1]."... It is mostly about "How to give out clues subtle without placing huge quest markers onto them" [1]:amazon.com/Making-Comics-Storytelling-Secrets-Graphic/dp/…

BESW

I've been enjoying Bubblegum's "be sure you mark the most important clues with big red flags" approach, myself.

eimyr

@Trish HAve you ever heard of the Three Clue Rule?

Trish

actually no.

eimyr

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/…

Trish

or you mean "if players still ignore it after 3 tries, drop the thread?"

eimyr

13:43

Take a look. It's one of the articles that influenced me as a GM the most.

nitsua60

It's a good article, and a good site.

eimyr

no it's "players are not Sherlock Holmes, drop at least three obvious clues at whatever they are trying to figure out."

BESW

Mmm. Although RPGs share many superficial similarities to printed storytelling, the fundamental re-readabilty quality is missing.

Anaphory

@eimyr How closely do you have to meet the mad ramblings or complaints of the asker, though!

BESW

Players can't flip back a chapter or take their time studying a static panel; it's a constantly forward-pushing medium that tends to reward immersion more than detached analysis.

eimyr

13:47

It's more like watching a movie at a cinema.

Trish

Sure @BESW, but playing with weather and making background 'noise' (eg: making sure the world looks lived in) did have a good impact on players feeling at home in the world and actually taking notice of changes and oddities on the tables I played on.

BESW

And a lot depends on the kind of story you're telling.

Trish

That too.

certain weather gives the people certain ideas about the scene and causes, it can lead to players persuing certain pathes rather than others. Sunny day in California? Go to the beach. Sunny day in the sahara? Curse you GM, we need water!

BESW

A Gumshoe mystery is going to treat the dispersion of clues in a fundamentally different way than a Lovecraftesque mystery, which is again totally different from a Cthulhu Dark mystery.

Trish

which again is different from doing some CSI thing with FATE or GURPS rules

BESW

13:51

In Gumshoe, what matters is what you do with the clues, not finding them.

In Lovecraftesque, the clues reveal the mystery organically to everyone because nobody knows what the solution will actually be until it's played out.

In Cthulhu Dark the clues are tools for building dread, not for solving the mystery.

eimyr

@BESW Keep in mind that LVC does not have any intended obscurity in it's "mystery" as you can't obscure something that's being made on the spot

Trish

and in CSI plots they are just dots that need to be connected in the right way.

Or variables in a 'formula'

the tricky part there is that the whole game is about finding them and then sorting them to make a picture.

BESW

This is one reason I'd recommend against using D&D as a mystery engine: it doesn't provide any guidance or support for any given kind of mystery, and actively gets in the way of some kinds.

It's easier to wind up bashing your head into a wall that way.

Especially for someone new to mystery-GMing, a supportive engine can be really helpful.

Trish

it is not the worst workhorse for mystery though, that would be (imho) Deathwatch.

BESW

Well, again, totally depends on what kind of mystery story is being told.

Trish

13:56

but yes, an engine befitting the problem uses best.

BESW

D&D's rock-paper-ogre approach to magic utility makes for pretty awful procedurals.

Trish

ohhh yes. Spells that screw up the whole thing... "I use my precognition spell to look for us catching the murderer."

eimyr

@Trish casts Commune to solve the plot

BESW

By contrast, DFRPG's attitude toward magic is, roughly, that it lets you do things a mortal could do anyway, but faster/more effectively/without training and at a price.

nitsua60

The most important thing to keep handy is a blank scratch pad: jot down calls you make on-the-fly, questions that come up and you bulldoze past because it's not worth stopping the game for ten minutes, ideas that pop up when the players say or do unexpected things.
I usually end up sending a mid-week e-mail to my group after taking some time to review that. Sometimes all it says is "that thing you did was great--I'd never have thought of that!" Other times, though, it's "hey, I totally got that one wrong; check p.199. It stands, but next time expect it to follow the rule."

Trish

14:01

Well, best spell a lvl 3 fighter ever did on our table: "I cast 'Pizza's on me tonight' for gaining 300 XP" - we laughted.

Yes, the fighter's player called using his phone a spell... it was a convention thing.

Matt

@nitsua60 Good tip, cheers

nitsua60

@Matt (Sorry to ping you back in--I know you were leaving. I'm just catching up on the last few hours.) Peace.

Matt

14:18

@nitsua60 No worries, I hang around in the A&M chat pretty much all day so it wasn't like you dragged me from far

It seems quite nice and friendly here though, I might pop in every so often

nitsua60

We try to keep it that way =)

yesterday, by nitsua60

It's the lighting. The right lamps make a world of difference.
And the rug. It really ties the room together.

BESW

@Matt I'd also suggest, as a more specific action building on earlier general advice, to spend some time after each session talking about what worked and people would like to see again, what didn't work and how to change it, and what new things you'd all like to see happen next time.

nitsua60

this ^^

BESW

@Matt You're welcome to lurk/chat here as you like. We often go far off topic, but if anyone ever wants to get back to RPGs, the off-topic stuff gets kicked to the Not A Bar.

Matt

Sounds like a plan, I can do that - some of the other people in the group said they wanted to try DM'ing too so it'll all tie together

nitsua60

14:22

The first few times it'll largely be "oh, you're doing great! Nothing I want to change." But as people get used to it they'll start to make mental notes during the session and honestly say "eh... I wasn't crazy about this" or "that was cool and it's never happened before--let's make sure it happens again."

Matt

And cheers ^_^

BESW

And it's been a personal observation that groups which spend time interacting between sessions on non-RPG topics tend to be happier and more coherent during play.

nitsua60

Lots of times it's not even things that necessarily accrue to the GM to have to do--just intra-party stuff.

Matt

I'm friends with all the people in the group already so we should be able to talk about things fairly easily

I'll make sure I ask everyone to critique me as best they can

BESW

@eimyr Another Typo Goblin name for ya.

doppelgreener

14:26

@BESW I'm still trying to articulate what I like so much about the fact we could solve mysteries using Instagram like Dan said, and I think this is close or exactly it: we were working within the rules, we used the rules, and we came out on top. In our Amaterasu game, we could just create whole new rules. There's something missing from doing things that way.

(This fun whatever it is is also present in Cassandra's gameplay but not in Quercus Stellata's)

BESW

I'll have thoughts on that, when I'm able to have new thoughts at all again.

In that vein, though, I'm re-thinking how the Sleuths might be able to use magic in 1HS.

I want it to be less "oh, yeah, this is a resource I can draw on using this mechanic" and more capricious.

Less roll-a-skill, more relationship spends and GM fiat.

eimyr

@BESW I don't collect them anymore.

BESW

@eimyr Nevertheless.

Okay, bed now. ttfn

nitsua60

Nighty-night.

Trish

@BESW If you want it to be GM fiat why not make it a bit like a well with different fish in it: you never know what will bite. Bit good night!

Matt

14:36

Night

Trish

nowm what to do with my text.... uhm... save it for later?

nitsua60

@Trish Wait a day or so to see if the original question gets edited into shape. If not, keep mulling in the back of your head what question your essay does answer, and whether that's a stack-question.

(Star the original question so you'll easily see if it gets edited.)

doppelgreener

there's one time, maybe two, i've effectively had the question pulled out from beneath me, so i've gone and posted it as a self-answered question

gives me some allowance to edit the question into an even more convenient shape to answer to, make sure it's stack-worthy, and edit the answer to respond to that super convenient question in the best way.

nitsua60

14:53

Yeah, posting a question because you've got an answer you like is... tricky. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but it gets really easy for there to be deficiencies in the question that sit in your blind spot(s). And responding to any criticism that comes along can be polluted by one's sense of but if I make that change then the answer's not as good, as opposed to the question being an expression of an actual problem you have.

(Again, not saying there's anything wrong with it inherently; those are just some of the reasons I recommend caution when proceeding from answer -> question.)

doppelgreener

aha, here we go. this question, which has a now-deleted answer that i reposted here because it got closed as a duplicate. also, this other question.

nitsua60

These are the only examples where I've posted answer-motivated-questions (1, 2, 3) and I think they're all pretty uncontroversial.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 [sees complex mathematics] [falls ill while staying up too many nights studying them] [dies] [many downvotes are given per doppelgreener's will]

nitsua60

(On that axis, at least. 2 and 3 exist because I'm gingerly exploring the "list-question" issue experimentally)

@doppelgreener Executor at Greener's will-reading "I, being of sound mind and body--at least until recently--to hereby negatively bequeath my rep to all users, in proportion to their use of MathJax..."

@doppelgreener You're braver than I, trying to help people find their way around Wizards' labyrinth.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 which one? because i love the planes of D&D 4e.

most especially the elemental chaos.

nitsua60

15:03

I mean wizards.org =\

doppelgreener

oh! yes.

i've got a question right now asking for help navigating the very same and it appears to be a continuous trap for people not understanding what i'm asking about

nitsua60

Ooh, that gives me a good idea for this question; write a crawler to map wizards.org, and use that as your maze template! Full of wrong turns and dead-ends! Yet you know that what you need is somewhere in there!

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 beautiful. articles with more links to pages that 404 and 503 and so on are of course more dangerous. articles with 402 links in them have super bad traps.

Anaphory

@nitsua60 And generate room descriptions and corridor descriptions from the content!

nitsua60

409 can trigger a wandering monster?

This could actually be kinda fun...

401 is just a locked door.

Anaphory

15:08

Problem is, 401 is a locked door to nowhere!

nitsua60

422 summons Cthulhu

doppelgreener

418 will be a teapot

Anaphory

@nitsua60 If I was available this weekend…

nitsua60

507 and your bag of holding ruptures?

doppelgreener

just a serruptitious tea set somewhere in the room

Anaphory

15:10

@doppelgreener In my mind, pages=rooms and links=corridors, so it would be a corridor leading nowhere, with a teapot at the dead end.

nitsua60

@doppelgreener yes, in classic "it's a duck. Just an ordinary, cute duck." [aside] "he'd never just put a duck in here... [to GM] ATTACK!" fashion

doppelgreener

just a completely harmless teapot

Matt

508 should feature some kind of rollercoaster

Anaphory

Mine is maybe not the most interesting mental model, also does not make enough use of the unidirectionality of links…

doppelgreener

@Anaphory in my mind, pages = rooms. links = what the room features. if the link leads to another functioning page, that means the room features a corridor to elsewhere. if it doesn't, the room features other weird stuff.

Trish

15:13

424... A door that only opens when you got a <insert class here> present, which is not part of the group makeup?

nitsua60

@Anaphory unidirectionality is easy: in true wizards.org form, rooms simply crumble behind you

Trish

426... A corridor leading to the next edition of D&D?

nitsua60

Jul 28 at 3:26, by Adeptus

@Miniman But D&D 105e isn't real D&D... The last real D&D was 102.7e

Anaphory

The 300s are also nice.

nitsua60

429 is... well, we all know that player. There's one at every table. (Well-intentioned, but do they know there's anyone else playing?)

Anaphory

15:16

304 only comes in when you visit that room the second time, and it looks precisely like when you entered it the first time.

nitsua60

305 strikes me like "switch GM for 10 min"

Trish

@Anaphory even though the player did set it on fire and killed all the monsters.

nitsua60

@Trish exactly

308 strikes me a orange cones lining off the junction, with a "DETOUR" hand-painted sign pointing right.

530 is a nice environmental cue

Trish

309.... the tunnel obviously was walled off and changed. Breaking down the wall just eveals another wall. And another.

nitsua60

@Trish the moment you get through a wall a dungeon-maintenance crew shows up with bricks and mortar =)

doppelgreener

15:20

> soldier: "deja vu..."
druid: "hmm?"
soldier: "no, it's nothing, nevermind."
druid: [serious] "what was it?"
soldier: "we came into this room, and then we came into it again, and it's back like it was..."
druid: [suddenly alarmed] "that means they've changed something. they're onto us. let's move it!"

nitsua60

208: "Wait, how many doors did you say were on the right?" "I already told you."

204: "You open the door and see nothing beyond." "An empty room?" "No, nothing. Absolute nothingness" "I step in." "Okay, everyone, out of character: Dave's character no longer exists. Please do not address nor listen to Dave. Dave, you can go now, it's been nice playing with you."

100: "the hallway goes on even longer." "How long is it?" "Longer."

Trish

My mom just asked why I was laughting maniacly. I explained. She said: make that generator, sell it to them.

nitsua60

101: "You enter the room and... anyone have their Dark Heresy books with them? We're switching."

Aug 7 at 21:00, by SevenSidedDie

@nitsua60 lolfigsl!

Trish

206: You enter the room. However, there is just the floor, no ceiling, no walls. There is nothing instead. Also,m the door you came through only exists to just below the doorknob, but still it is closing behind you.

nitsua60

@Trish Just don't sell it to WotC, or they'll just post it in a ~~room~~ article behind a 309.

Trish

15:27

there is no 309!

522: you enter the room.... oh, sorry, we got to cut here.

nitsua60

@Trish nice ending =)

Trish

206 could also in result in "mage, you got only floor starting to build. Fighter, I hope you have climb ranks, because there is no floor, just wall. Rogue, how long can you cling to the ceiling again? And Cleric, at least you got air to breath, but you should learn to fly REAL quick... because you are falling. The others... uhm... where were the rules for holding breath again?"

nitsua60

509: the hallway narrows

Trish

499: From nowhere a city guard appears and pushes you back to the room you come from, asking if you really want to go there.

alternatively: asks you to show the seal of somebody.

nitsua60

450: "Your character's mobile rings."
"I... don't have a mobile in-game?"
"It's ringing. Caller ID shows it's your character's mother."
"What!?"
"Pick it up. do you have any idea what happens to your alignment if you ignore a call from your mom?"
"Okay... *I pick up the phone. 'Hi Mom'*"
[in mom-voice] "What are you doing in that moldy hole? Do you know what the neighbors would say if they knew you were crawling around in tunnels with a dwarf? And a *halfling!* A HALFLING! Why can't you just settle down with a nice elvish girl like your brother?" [dad, heard faintly in background] "What's t…

And with that, I've got to go. Have a nice day, everyone.

Zachiel

16:56

@Trish This actually happened to me with a tavern door.

It was a "draw a pregen character from a pool" kind of game, but the DM didn't actually write the character sheets and me and him had to direct others into compiling them on the run.
A large part of the evening was spent writing level 10 D&D 3.5e character sheets, but we refused to write the spell list for the two full casters. We drew the characters from a hat and the adventure started. We enter the town, ask a guard for a tavern and as soon as we step in... "sorry guys, I didn't realize it was this late."

Earlier that evening, at around 8 PM: "don't worry and print four empty sheets. Zachiel is proficient at this, we'll get the sheets done in under 30 minutes between the two of us."

The tavern door was at 5 to midnight. The start of the adventure was at 15 to midnight. We never continued that game.

Trish

17:11

@Zachiel sounds like our first exalted round "we'll start in a bit, after all we skip the most tedious part of choosing charms by making mortals" - we started at 8.... we managed to wet our feet at 1AM..."

or... how was that with the weekend trip, where they made characters, the GM went to bed at 5 AM or such and answered to the question "how many X?" with "1500... wait, we didn't even play!"

hmmm, somehow someone decided that a comment that made clear "viking is NOT a term for people but for an action/kind of trip, the correct term is norse" would be obsolete...

Anaphory

17:33

@nitsua60 Bonus points: Write the generator to generate rooms with html-description and get that onto wizards.com, and then try to find the link-path from a page to the page's room to the page's room (as a page)'s room.

BESW

20:48

I am an old woman yelling at clouds but dammit, those clouds are creepy and watching me while I sleep. https://twitter.com/sigridellis/status/763817018487439360

Tweeted by UrsulaV on August 11, 2016 at 7:19 PM

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Zachiel

21:12

Heya @BESW

BESW

[wave]

Zachiel

With my being home for a few weeks, is there any chance we can resume our conversation about 4e encounters / rebalance / what needs to be done to make things interesting (possibly with the smallest effort)?

I seem to recall that we wanted to talk about this, but our sleep schedule and my job schedule didn't quite match

BESW

Could do, but I'm not really sure I have any experience in the directions you're looking to go.

Zachiel

I'm going to probably have to tweak all of my future encounters anyway, since the gaming group is probably going up to 6 people plus me.

The bad part is that I still have no idea of the party composition after the upgrade, so I feel like I can't really plan. I guess the two-chain fighter and the shadow/fire wizard are keeping their characters.

BESW

Ah, yeah, it's hard to plan without knowing the party.

In adjusting for group size, I found it was easiest to plan for the smallest possible group, then have a Standard or Minion enemy that I could add depending on how many more people showed up.

Zachiel

21:29

As you know, I already have encounters ready for a party of 5 - yet I never had to adjust the numbers when scaling down to 4. I ran regular encounters for a party of 4 and they kept steamrolling some and getting minor damage in some other, with the unusual "everybody piles on the defender and they have +1d6 damage if they attack the same target as the elite" where he almost died.

nitsua60

Someone just threw a link to Area51: Cartography on the RPGSE Community Promotion Ads 2016 meta. I know plenty of chatizens really love mapmaking, so check out either.

@Trish @Baskakov_Dmitriy @Tritium21 @Anaphory @BESW ^^, re conversation of 2 days ago

Trish

ohhh!

Zachiel

21:56

So for this encounter I have:
- A terraced terrain, with the encounter starting when characters reach the lower portion
- A camouflaged hag, who poses as a crone and asks people to come nearer for her to hear (with malice, as the characters perceived)
- another hag, still in their hut
- Some cages with large skeletons that explode in a burst of shattered bones when they die. The cages can be dropped over the characters - or over the skeletons, and the hags also try to drop one on a dying skeleton in order to trigger the burst while multiple enemies are in the area.

I feel like something with pull or slide powers might be useful for moving the characters right under the cages.

One of the hags also has an aura 3 that deals damage to anyone moving (even with forced movement) around her.

And all they do is immobilize.

Weird.

BESW

Hmm.

What's the goal of the fight?

Just "kill the other guys"?

Zachiel

There is also a magic portal whose functioning they need (according to the adventure) to understand while they fight, but I see no reason to do so. Just killing the enemies that guard the portal, then do the skill challenge seems the best thing to do.

And if they -fail- to open the portal, they need to wait a day before retrying. Which means that if they fail they get a full rest, if they succeed, they don't.

[facepalms]

BESW

If it were me, I'd take out some of the mechanical complexity of the fight and replace it with the hags performing a dire ritual on the portal, which needs to be interrupted before they... summon a really powerful boss, or call down a rain of fire and frogs on the country, or whatever.

(Mechanically, an opposed skill challenge forcing both hags and PCs to choose whether they put their actions to the challenge or the combat each round.)

Zachiel

The portal I described is just a passageway to an area the PCs need to go, for they need to destroy a magical location that lies there. These here are the gate guards.

And they already know that, for I ended the previous session by describing the area.

BESW

22:19

Eh, it's still a portal. Sufficiently clever hags can hack it to do something awful.

Zachiel

I'll provide some visual clues that include a trail of hasty steps switching form from those of a large creature to those of the crone coming from the direction of the portal, and the material necessary for the ritual badly hidden behind a bush. And a "Fools! The portal won't take long to activate! Keep them busy!" shout to start the combat.

BESW

Hee.

nitsua60

@BESW i.e. Surgadores? =)

BESW

Even if the players curbstomp everyone to stop the ritual in the first round, the threat of the beastchange and the idea of a countdown clock make the fight more interesting and memorable.

@nitsua60 Shhh.

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

22:35

@Shalvenay hiya

@BESW Sooth. I think I need to add "TIME" to my GM-reminder-card that says "TERRAIN, COVER, OBJECTIVES, VISIBILITY"

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 we're still on for tongiht, right?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay As long as the kids go down easy =)

Zachiel

@nitsua60 Do it

BESW

@nitsua60 I think my internal GM card also says ANGST.

Zachiel

@BESW Do explain

BESW

22:40

@Zachiel I think conflicts are more interesting/engaging if there's a personal concern at stake.

Zachiel

@BESW Oh, ok, character angst.

BESW

The emotional landscape is at least as important as the physical one.

Zachiel

I think that's the hardest thing to incorporate when running premades, but at least I got the players to learn hating some recurring villains.

BESW

If the evil warlord is taunting you about your self-doubts, or your personal goals are conflicting with the mission, or you're not sure you can trust your buddy anymore...

Yeah, it's much harder with premades.

Like, I made a recurring villain as a direct foil to a PC who tried to make friends with everyone they met and would only join combat when it was clear trying for friendship was putting his existing friends at risk.

So the villain was a lonely warlock who "made" friends with mind control and necromancy.

Zachiel

Ah, no, I tend to have the goals of the PCs coincide with the things they need to do. I don't want the party to split or to have intra-fights. But when I can, I introduce elements that tie to the characters' background. That enemy? He's the same guy that made you lose your face in town two adventures ago. That other one? It's the one that was trapped in the artifact and helped you all escape the planar prison, so that she could be free as well.

BESW

22:55

Word of the day: ad-hocracy. Leadership characterised by reactionary decisions; governance by the seat of one's pants.

BESW

23:08

BTW, @nitsua60, I left something for you in the NAB.

trogdor

23:29

lol, someone asked a Stranger Things question here

how silly

BESW

@trogdor [leaves a comment pointing toward movies.se]

trogdor

does that count for movies and series?

BESW

trogdor

ah ok

I actually have watched Stranger Things, and I liked it for the most part, but asking a question about it here is clearly silly XD

BESW

It'd be okay if it were a question about the D&D Demogorgon in connexion to the show.

But this is just "What inspired the appearance of the Demogorgon in the show?" connected to RPGs only by the assumption that the character design would've been taken from a different RPG monster than the name it was given in the show (and from what I can tell, there's no real reason to think the monster has any connexion to Demogorgon except that the kids called it that in absence of a real name).

trogdor

23:43

@BESW yeah, that show has no clue what D&D is

or at least is not exercising any actual knowledge of it

BESW

[flags to see if a mod wants to migrate it]

nitsua60

VtC pick'em: too broad, opinion-based, or unclear. Maybe we can get a quick pool together to see which reason wins =)

@BESW Got it--haven't read yet, but it's in the queue for after the kids are down.

@BESW In other words, "nitsua's parenting style =)"

BESW

@nitsua60 Already. Nice comment.

nitsua60

Wow, that's the fastest 4 close votes I've ever seen.

trogdor

lol

BESW

23:53

Well, 1-rep user asking a question that can be read entirely in the Question queue extract.

It's closebait if I ever saw any.

There's no special expertise or knowledge needed to tell it's closeworthy, no careful reading required.

It's simply a Thing Which Should Not Be.

nitsua60

Alright, I've used [tour], [chat], and [edit] in my comments on it so far; any I'm missing?

@BESW It took me a while to notice the song's title--I thought you were just sucker-punching Metallica for a moment.

trogdor

lol

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