Added many new items to the pin; they may not show up in the star bar yet, though.
**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):** [BoH](https://bundleofholding.com "Buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!"); [Standing Rock](http://flamesrising.rpgnow.com/product/193183 "You can support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in its fight to protect its waters and sacred places by purchasing this massive RPG bundle."); [UScons](http://casualgamerevolution.com/blog/2016/01/2016-tabletop-gaming-conventions-a-comprehensive-list "List of …
> Ki Khanga is a new Sword and Soul (African-inspired epic and heroic fantasy) roleplaying game that uses regular playing cards to resolve conflicts and to achieve feats in a fun and dynamic way that keeps the action and drama moving.
<Bird|otherbox> Starsinger: got any commentary/feedback/questions re: last night's one-shot? any highlights? lowlights? things you think I could have done better, or did well? <Starsinger> I wasn't prepared for there to be an after game survey
Well, I've got a half-dozen campaigns or settings I'd like to return to at least once, about a dozen new systems I'd like to try, a half-dozen systems I want to spend more time in, and several home-brew variations on one particular system that I want to experiment with.
Some of those have overlap--like, I think the Ancient Egypt campaign is going to be in either the House of Bards variant of Fate, or something derived from Bubblegumshoe.
None of the other Gumshoe systems I've seen leverage their system to that effect. Fred Hicks talked about this way back when Evil Hat first started thinking about a Gumshoe product.
> At the end of the day, the system is posing questions like What price are you willing to pay in order to get the outcome you want? and What are the consequences of paying that price? But in its present form, it might not be posing those questions in a particularly interesting way.
Bubblegumshoe is their answer to that, by latching the mechanical question directly to the Sleuths' ability to function in their social world.
Yeah, the concept of relationships as a depletion resource is--well, not brand-new, other systems have toyed with similar ideas, but it's the first time the concept has been tied to Gumshoe mechanics.
@Anaphory After I've played around with BGS a bit more, I may hack the relationship mechanic for political thrillers.
The core notion is that each of your relationships has a number of points assigned, and an unusual skill associated. You can spend points to use the skill, or to leverage your relationship for some advantage like getting into a place easily or acquiring some information you wouldn't otherwise be able to get.
The only way to refresh your points on the relationship is to spend time reinforcing it in whatever way makes sense.
For Bubblegumshoe, that means your friend can get you into his dad's gym without a membership to investigate a suspect, but you have to go to the movies with him that weekend to get the points back.
Or your mother can help you with something related to her work, but you need to roleplay family game night later to get the points back.
In our one session so far, we wound up with Trogdor's character getting a one-point Like relationship with the culprit, which is going to be deliciously awkward (relationships are rated Like, Love, or Hate depending on how the person feels toward the Sleuth, regardless of the Sleuth's reciprocity or lack thereof).
Hate means that instead of you getting the points, the GM has them.
If you start play with a Hate, you have more points to put into Like and Love.
And if you spend your Cool deep into the negative during a major social conflict, you can recover the Cool instantly by turning the negative Cool into points for a new Hate.
(You can also spend points from Like and Love to recover Cool at the cost of further straining your relationships, but you also had to spend from Like or Love in the conflict before you could start spending Cool in the first place--you have to draw on your social support network to stand up to bullies.)
Relationships are also the core of the GM's plotting tools, and it has elements of Fate's "faces and places" dynamic too.
I recently ran Cloud Giant's Bargain in an AL setting. One of the players had a heavily optimized fighter with the Sharpshooter feat, and was dealing an average of 20 HP of damage with every successful attack. This meant that the sharpshooter was overshadowing the rest of the group.
It is around...
The result was a character who dealt exactly the same damage whether he hit or missed. He just rolled the d20s to see if he added a debuff to the attack.
I had to handhold for the guy playing the push fighter
and while I actually enjoyed reminding him what ridiculous things he could do, it didn't leave as much time open for also doing the exact same thing with my brother's character
in fact, I believe at some level(s) you get more at wills
or maybe that was a feat
unless,.... you might switch them out for newer higher level ones at some point, or at least get the option to? it's surprising how much I have forgotten about it
@doppelgreener A few of them do, but mostly the weirdos. And psionic stuff has no encounter powers to speak of, just at-wills you can pump up with points to encounter or daily level, and a handful of proper dailies.
it wasn't necesarily the most powerful single healing ever, but it was possibly the most times any class could heal, which in itself can be ridiculous in 4e
@Magician there's a number of things i like about 13th age and a number of things i'm not so sure about, and the fact you move upward through ability allocation and outgrow old abilities was something i disliked at first but don't mind now.
Mmm. I'm totally okay with the way we've been ignoring "gain stuff" milestones in most of our Fate games too, and sticking with "change stuff" milestones.
(Also it helps with the "it's okay to not show up much" vibe.)
@BESW @Magician A thought: You may wish to rather produce Botch Blog on Tumblr. Multi-user access and neat drafting methods don't exist there (use a shared Google Drive folder for collaboration?). However, there is a thriving community there: people can share and like your stories to spread awareness, contact you to submit stories for posting (optionally anonymous) or reblogging by your account, you could optionally reblog other peoples' learning posts even if they weren't submitted to you.
Framing Botch Blog as a service to the public to aid learning, it makes sense to position it within a large active community such as tumblr, which has mechanisms to spread awareness far and wide and which gives users an easy way to contribute material. (They just have to contact you using internally-available means, or just post it and let you rebog it.)
(maybe WordPress has such a community, but AFAIK it's focused on each blog just doing its own thing, rather than interaction such as Tumblr encourages.)
I have a game puzzle/concept I want to use in an adventure. Is it better to build a story line and try to fit it in, or use the concept and build around it?
Both options sound fine really, and compatible. It's one of those situations where either/both work. What you're describing is a little relevant to the top-down or bottom-up spectrum: the big picture here is the "top", the overarching adventure, and you can design down from there and meet the puzzle halfway. Or you can start at the puzzle and work upwards to develop a situation coherent with it.
You could have a storyline with a dungeon-sized space in it, and fill the space with the puzzle dungeon.
Alternately the first option's more focused on story, the second with mechanics and gameplay.
What kind of puzzle do you have in mind? That might suggest a superior approach.
I'm trying to use something like that last room where they use the stones. But I'd like to use crystals that are on a pillar. After invoking a command, the crystals are illuminated, casting a light into a large fifth crystal that reveals either a map/opens a door. Each smaller crystal needs to be found, but they can be illuminated in the room to show where the others are
That sounds like the kind of thing that could be worth a Fetch The McGuffins small story all on its own
BESW is currently running a Masters of Umdaar story based around five swords (which we've chosen to base around the Magic: the Gathering pentagram and its colors), and each sword is capable of showing where two of the other swords are -- if you know its name. (The Blue sword can only show the location of the Red or Green swords, etc.) We're trying to gather them faster than a villain can gather them, because together they form an ancient superweapon, and we'd rather that not happen.
(Masters of Umdaar is a laser fantasy game that recreates cheesy 80's cartoon stories like Thundercats and He-Man.)
So it could justifiably be a story with the artifacts threaded through. Alternately, it's not all that unreasonable to have a dungeon with five key rooms that contain the stones hidden away, with challenges between the main chaimber and those stones.
so as to make the acquisition of artifacts themselves exciting for motivations the game provides. if this is an adventure/combat game, a thing that helps their adventuring or combat ability would be exciting in its own right to have, for reasons beyond "well we have a quest that says we gotta have this thing".
@CBredlow sort of. only, the rod of seven parts can only be had by one person, and each part just makes that one person's one thing more awesome. in the Masters of Umdaar story, by contrast, the five swords -- we had 2 or 3 before the final confrontation, can't remember -- let 2-3 different group members have a new, useful effect to carry around. (Two of the swords' effects were wholly unrelated to it even being a sword specifically.)
Okay, mechanics question: why is Knock considered Transmutation, and why are Arcane Tricksters prevented from learning it? In a lore sense, I understand the school limitations, but that spell sounds like perfect sense for them to learn
this is a point you'd need to say what game and edition you're playing. Is this D&D 3.5e? Pathfinder? Something else? (I don't know if other editions have an arcane trickster, but I'm at least clear this is probably D&D.)
@CBredlow I would guess it is Transmutation because you are changing something about the lock (I can't think of another school that would fit better off hand). And I don't have my book with me but I thought ATs could choose spells outside of their specified schools occasionally (every 6 or so levels).
But even if they could learn it I don't see why they would take it since the can accomplish the same thing with Thieves Tools without expending one of their scarce spell slots and alerting everyone within 300 feet
Ever wanted to LARP? Live, or can get to, San Francisco? Some of my friends are putting together the Event Horizon LARP! This thing is going to be so cool, I swear. Just launched, fifteen minutes ago!
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user61230
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user61230
(I'm not personally affiliated, but man oh man, do the people running this know what they're doing.)
I binged through Luke Cage recently and whenever I see "how does a ranger take shades as his favoured enemy?" question, all I can think of is taking Shades as a favoured enemy.
