TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

00:10

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

@Axoren It's the worst-organized site for a consumer product that I've ever seen. I don't know if you've noticed, but the internal nomenclature for pages and .pdfs changes all the time, links are never good... we even recently batted about the idea of mapping wizards.org to a cruel labyrinth

@Shalvenay hiya

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 how're things going?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay sick kid seems to have turned the corner =)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 good. not sure if we'll be able to do anything this evening to wrap up the CT dungeon or not

Zachiel

I would really like to hear @Axoren's thoughts on what BESW just said. Having the chance to look at someone being introduced to a whole new category of games is a pleasure that doesn't happen that often anymore, these days. U_U

nitsua60

00:15

@Shalvenay Yeah, I'm still hoping to catch up on the week's work before tomorrow hits.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 although, all this talk of DW makes me a) wonder what Jherala would look like as a DW char and b) wonder if we can play some DW for our next one-on-one whenever that is ;)

nitsua60

I would like to hear BESW say nothing, cause I'm looking at the starboard and want to preserve this one, shining moment for my own vanity =)

Axoren

@Zachiel I'm a bit busy with other things, but I definitely plan on reading BESW's responses eventually. They have really good insight from a varied RP experience I lack. I've been mainly in the same systems most of the time.

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Certainly! Although I might be interested in trying any of the other Powered by... flavors, as I'm running two DW games IRL currently.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 what other settings does the PbtA family cover?

nitsua60

00:18

Although Jherala certainly fits more in the Dungeon than in the Apocalypse....

@Shalvenay No idea--that's why I'd like to try them =)

Zachiel

@Axoren Oh, I don't mean now. But, since I'm going to be absent for a while, would you mind tagging me with the @ when you do? Thanks

Axoren

@Zachiel Deal.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 no doubt

Zachiel

Good. And now, as BESW taught me: ttfn!

nitsua60

I love that this poster answered the titular question "can you..." rather than inferring--as did so many of his competitors--the question "can one...?"

Zachiel

00:22

@Shalvenay Cthulhu (tremulus), Warehouse 13 (Monster of the Week), Buffy with more seduction and teenage drama (Monsterhearts), AW and DW, Berserk (Groim World), Hollow earth (Inverse World) and many, many others.

Shalvenay

@Zachiel nods

nitsua60

@Zachiel Is there a good clearinghouse for those? Or will searching around for PbtA simply do?

Zachiel

No idea.

@nitsua60 screenshotted. And now, bedtime for realz.

nitsua60

@Zachiel nighty-night. Thanks for that top-o-the-head list--I've copied it down.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 I suppose we can try making up a DW charsheet for her sometime? (how long do you think that'd take, even?)

nitsua60

00:26

2 minutes. 3, perhaps, since we're technology-mediated.

There are about four decisions to make at character creation time.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 xD those being?

nitsua60

[gimme a minute--extracting myself from tangle of child-limbs]

@Shalvenay wanna hit the NAB for five minutes of chargen?

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 lets roll

eimyr

00:56

@Baskakov_Dmitriy chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/11?m=26870670#26870670

nitsua60

01:28

@eimyr I'm not sure how to feel that "All through HS I could never get friends to give RP a try..." got starred =\

BESW

I suspect there's some empathy going on there.

nitsua60

"Suspect Empathy" would be a good name for a band.

BESW

@Axoren I should have also mentioned Lady Blackbird, where advancement is tied directly to embracing (or defying) your character's traits and drives.

BESW

02:18

> ...all this Pokemon Go going on around me is making me feel like the world is full of invisible monsters existing on a plane of existence that I cannot see, which in turn makes me feel like I’m living in H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond.” (Jeffrey Channing Wells)

trogdor

Pokemon Go just doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as just playing one of the many Pokemon games out there

I like the franchise, but this way of playing it,.... I (almost) can't understand why so many people like it

it's too public for me, I guess

BESW

One of the strengths of the franchise is that it caters to a lot of different mediums: video games, card games, TV shows, movies, comics, and now ARG. No one fan has to consume all those forms, but there's probably at least one form which appeals to each fan.

trogdor

yeah

Axoren

@BESW @Zachiel I do like the idea behind those RP-focused mechanics. It removes the inherent competition with the world in terms of having to be "at a certain level" to succeed at something. These mechanisms give the player an avenue for competing with the world in what they think "isn't right" or "should be done".

Like the hero opposing an evil mastermind's plan rather than the hero trying his hardest not to drop the soap while cleaning their familiar.

BESW

@Axoren For example, in Gumshoe you always get the minimum clues you need to solve the mystery. It's what you do with the clues and the solution that makes the story exciting: do you trust the authorities to administer justice? Do you blackmail the culprit? Do you find them sympathetic and help them escape justice?

Axoren

02:31

With a lot of fine-grain control, players are expected to are doomed to optimize out of survival. I can sacrifice my ability to speak so that I'm capable of being relevant in combat. Otherwise, my decisions won't affect the game's direction.

BESW

(And in Bubblegumshoe your relationships with NPCs grant unique mechanical features to your character, but taking advantage of them depletes a limited resource which can be restored by doing relationship maintenance.)

Axoren

Gumshoe sounds like a fun way to do CoC.

BESW

@Axoren That's Trail of Cthulhu.

Axoren

I'm glad someone agreed.

BESW

It's probably the best-known iteration of Gumshoe.

Axoren

02:33

So, I had to away earlier because I had a guest arrive rather unannounced. But we ended up cracking open the D&D 5e Beginning Box Set

And there was barely anything in it at all

BESW

You might also like Cthulhu Dark, where the Investigator's mechanics are simply their profession and their sanity. You almost always succeed on any action you take, but you roll to see how well you succeed and you can risk sanity to do better.

Axoren

A set of dice, a non-Player's Handbook, a vague excuse for a starting campaign, no minis, and some pregen sheets with no explanations as to why the characters had what they had.

BESW

The game's tension comes from the fact that the horrors you face are so strange and alien that "always succeeding" is just barely enough to give you a chance at stopping them before you die or go insane.

(And combat is right out: if you try to attack a monster, you die automatically. Luckily you're very good at running away.)

Axoren

The pathfinder beginner box has SO much more than that, I was disappointed in WotC when we opened it today.

@BESW Is that a similar mechanic to Don't Rest Your Head?

Where you're fighting yourself every time you do something, rather than an enemy?

BESW

@Axoren Not really, no.

Axoren

02:37

I meant in terms of risking sanity

BESW

Ah... kinda, ish.

When you roll for an action, you roll 1d6 if it's humanly possible, 1d6 if it's related to your profession, and 1d6 if you're willing to risk your sanity.

Take the highest die and it'll tell you how well you succeeded.

Axoren

Ooh, that's a good distribution.

BESW

If the highest die is your sanity die, re-roll against your current Insanity score to see if you manage to "hold it together" or not.

You can re-roll once, but the re-roll must contain your sanity die (add it if it wasn't in the first roll).

Axoren

So, if you get 3 dice, you're risking at a 33% chance that you have to roll a Hold It Together Check

So, how does holding it together work?

BESW

Your Insanity starts at 1. When you roll to hold it together, you roll 1d6.

Axoren

02:40

And you just have to beat it?

BESW

If the result is greater than your Insanity, increase your Insanity by 1 and role-play how you temporarily freak out.

If your Insanity hits 6, you instead role-play how your character becomes a permanently mad NPC.

After the first time your Insanity hits 5, you can reduce it by one each time you sabotage the investigation.

(Burning books, stopping rituals, anything that suppresses Mythos knowledge lets you reduce your Insanity by 1.)

Axoren

@BESW PvP elements built into the system? I don't know how I like that

BESW

It's not explicitly PvP; it's Investigator-vs-Mythos in ways that often make it harder to reach a happy end state.

I'm paraphrasing; you should read the rules yourself. They're just a one-page pamphlet, plus another pamphlet for the GM's story prep guidelines and a third for options rules.

There should be a link in the tag wiki: cthulhu-dark

And it's a one-shot system, not suitable for long campaigns, which drastically changes the kinds of things that are "okay" for the game to do or encourage.

A session tends to start with rapid early-game escalation that then flattens out at a relatively high level of stress and confusion for a while before exploding into a dramatic conclusion.

I like to use old Doctor Who stories for inspiration on the plots; if you take the Doctor out of a Doctor Who story so there's no one to explain what's going on, it quickly becomes Lovecraftian.

BESW

03:17

So, next weekend I may have as many as four new players joining us--potentially maxing the group out at 10 people. Some of the new folks have never played an RPG before, others are grognards who think 3.0 is newfangled nonsense.

I'm thinking Danger Patrol: Pocket Edition.

trogdor

03:35

that is gonna be hectic

if that many people show up

BESW

03:49

The games I think of as good for larger groups are Roll For Shoes, Great Ork Gods, Lady Blackbird, Cthulhu Dark, Lasers & Feelings (& iterations), and Danger Patrol PE.

Some of those (GOG, LB) have a pretty hard 7- or 8-player cap.

RFS and L&F are, in my experience, a bit unstructured for folks who are used to D&D-like systems to jump into easily.

Danger Patrol has the added bonus of inviting each player to participate on each other player's turn, which increases engagement.

(With more than 5 players in a turn-based game, disengagement while waiting for your turn becomes a real problem.)

DPPE has a soft 8-player cap, but it's easily overcome.

trogdor

yeah LB would be great

but if more than the number of pre-made characters shows up it can't work as well

BESW

04:08

It also has a lot more potential for lag and/or spotlight problems.

With people I've never gamed with before I'd like to minimise that.

trogdor

that is fair

Great Ork Gods doesn't like more than 7-8 players?

oooh

the gods

only so many of those

BESW

Seven gods.

trogdor

yeah

that isn't incredibly supportive of 8 people

BESW

And if somebody has an ork but not a god, it's kinda messed up.

trogdor

yeah, exactly

BESW