TRPG General Chat

Javelin

12:01 AM

@BESW Oh dear, no not yet. I've been working 50-hour weeks.

BESW

Oh my.

doppelgreener

1:21 AM

@BESW The only other books of his I've read are his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy (those not being the name of the books). It seemed pretty cool and has some characters in it that left a positive impression on me. I'm pretty sure it was fairly slow-moving, but I had plenty of time for reading as a teenager.

I'm not sure if it suffered from the same problem, but I've only got other epic fantasy series to compare to which themselves have lots of characters and lots of things happening over a great span of time.

Shalvenay

3:08 AM

hey there @nitsua60

hiya

how're things going?

[wave]

Hoping to finish off some college recommendations before the night's out. You?

[triangle]

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 not a whole lot, was wondering when would be a good time for you, me, and perhaps @BESW as well to get together with the DM I mentioned a while back (Aurora) for a short game of some sort? (or if you and/or @BESW wanted a long-form 5e game to join for that matter)

nitsua60

3:14 AM

(That's an impregnable Particle Man joke there, not an impregnable waveform joke, btw)

BESW

I'm reading Pasifika dialogue on Moana. It seems like an appropriate way to commemorate Thanksgiving.

BESW

3:32 AM

@Shalvenay As with the VI thing, you guys figure out when you can meet and I'll see if I can match it. But only for a short-term thing.

nitsua60

@Shalvenay I don't even remember looking for a short game?

BESW

@nitsua60 It's new to me, I thought you guys had some conversation I missed.

nitsua60

3:48 AM

@Shalvenay To be clear: I'm not looking for a new group/game. I'm sorry if I made it seem otherwise; I don't recall doing so and didn't intend to.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah, just was something that was an idea

will save it for a more opportune time

nitsua60

no worries

Fibericon

4:18 AM

So I may have a problem player on my hands. It could just be that he doesn't want to play Exalted, even though he said he did, but character creation day went very quickly and easily for everyone else at the table.

Shalvenay

@Fibericon hrm...what sort of problem is he posing?

Fibericon

@Shalvenay First, he wanted to play a bum who found scraps of metal in the garbage and sold them to blacksmiths to get by. I told him that was fine for a character history, but he needed to explain what was special about him. Why would the unconquered sun reach down and bestow an exaltation onto him? Instead of pondering that, he accused the system of being too shallow to handle his amazing character concept.

When he finally managed to settle on something appropriate, as soon as another player described his character, he went on a rant about how they would never spend any time together for any reason, and this player had to change his character.

Shalvenay

it sounds like someone with something akin to My Guy Syndrome

Fibericon

Yeah, I suppose so. When I was a PC (D&D 5e), I saw him as mildly annoying in and out of character, but I didn't really think he was being that way on purpose and it wasn't -that- disruptive, so I let it slide.

PC #3 gave me a well thought out backstory, or so I thought. This guy has been doing tabletop less than a year, and he's gotten a lot better over time. I was telling my wife how proud I was of his progress, and she was surprised he came up with a backstory I would be proud of (we've all known each other since uni).

Then I described the story and she told me that was literally the plot of The Gladiator, and I was less proud.

BESW

Eh, I've had great original play using characters who were lifted entirely from existing material.

There's a lot of creativity in intersemiotic translation.

Fibericon

4:26 AM

Still, I'm just happy he came up with something. His first character was, "I guess, a guy who likes to build stuff?"

Shalvenay

@BESW -- yeah, we all stand on the shoulders of giants when it comes to storybuilding

@Fibericon -- a tinker could have potential, but he really didn't seem to understand where it could lie

personally, Exalted is a setting I'm rather unsure about myself. ..perhaps it'd help if you described it a bit to me?

Fibericon

The crib notes version is that the primordials created everything, then decided they would rather gamble all day than run the world. They created the gods to run the world, but kept messing up the world and the gods would have to fix it. The gods created the exalted to overthrow the primordials. The primordials cursed the solar exalted with madness.

The dragon bloods soon realized, "hey, these solars are torturing and murdering everyone because they're nuts", so they overthrew the solars. Then they started a propaganda machine to make all the mortals think other exalts besides dragon bloods were demons.

Enter the PCs - they start off as normal people, who exalt into some of the first solars creation has seen in a long time. Life sucks for them - they're hunted the second they turn into solars. Doesn't matter if they're good people or not.

This is why I explain to people that solars really need to stick together to survive. Survival isn't a compelling enough reason for PC #1 to stick with this party, because one of the characters would be about 15 years younger than his character.

Shalvenay

Personally, part of me wants to run a "you exalted a... what !?!??!?!" 'worlds collide' sort of scenario with this setting...

...buuuut, that could cause all sorts of bizarre sparks to fly

(smashing settings together in strange ways is part of the fun for me, but is also good for making straight-laced players' heads explode at times)

Fibericon

If he were to exalt as an abyssal, he could be any sort of person. Death lords put exaltations to dumb uses, like "that guy kind of looks like my cousin".

Shalvenay

4:43 AM

@Fibericon well, take someone who's idea of "tinkering" is..."lets see how we can fuse the oceans of a planet in an uncontrolled fashion"

Fibericon

The tinkerer was a past campaign with PC #3. PC #1 is the problem at the moment. I don't know how he was convinced to not be like this by the last GM, but he really seems to be going out of his way to cause trouble, and we haven't even started playing yet.

Shalvenay

@Fibericon ah. maybe talk to the last GM?

Fibericon

Dur. That's a thing I should have immediately thought of while typing that sentence.

BESW

5:21 AM

UrsulaV and Nash076 are tweeting each other. My worlds are colliding.

Fibericon

@BESW My fate players did not finish the campaign last game like I thought they would. Instead, they took "murder hobo" to new heights by killing some random rich guy. Their plan is to pose as him to get access to the BBEG's tower and hopefully face less armed resistance.

BESW

@Fibericon One of the early Fate games I ran was Aeon Wave for just one player.

He used chameleon technology to take the place of one of the assassins who attacked him in the first scene, and spent most of the scenario posing as that guy.

Once back in the HQ, he planted evidence of a break-in and got assigned to look for... himself... so he'd have an excuse to wander around the place.

It was glorious.

Fibericon

I'm not sure where I got the idea for personal wealth being directly tied to physical attributes, social status, and employment, but I'm starting to think I might just be channeling a Wu Tang Clan song.

BESW

His boss cut off one of his fingers as punishment for failing to stop himself from entering the building.

(Success at cost on a failed disguise check.)

Fibericon

Nice.

BESW

5:29 AM

One of the few twosies sessions with @trogdor that really seemed to work out well.

BESW

6:52 AM

Phoebe and Her Unicorn continue to play an RPG. I think they're doing well.

BESW

7:11 AM

In D&D 3.5 playing different classes can often feel like playing a different game. How much is that still the case in 5e?

Miniman

7:31 AM

Still a fair bit.

Fibericon

@BESW Yeah, that seems to be the case for me, too. Even different casters - prepared spells vs known spells classes (like wizards and clerics vs sorcerers and warlocks, respectively) feel very different to me.

BESW

11:33 AM

@WilliamMariager [wave]

William Mariager

Heya BESW

BESW

What's new?

William Mariager

A whole lot. Started by own business. So not much free time. My biweekly roleplaying sessions are pretty much the only time I'm off.

Super exciting though, so it's all good.

BESW

Very cool.

What brings you to chat in all your busyness?

William Mariager

Stumbled upon a question I could answer. Figured I'd give the chat a visit. Just doing some group work at my university, which means plenty of time to idle around. :P

Trish

11:45 AM

that sounds... like some author level players vould start to describe:

He *prepares for the job carefully* as he *polishs the gunbarrel* of his *valiant Barret light 50* before *oiling it with a specially refined weapon's oil* they got from *their gundealer Joe* who *lives in Arkham Road*, then he *puts a 100% copper block* onto his *BOSCH milling machine* to start to grind it down into a *smooth .50 caliber projectile* with a *tool he got from Wallmart*, before re-arming *brass casing he used since last year* that he previously *polished in a machine by winchester* and then adding *exactl…

@Fibericon REALLY?! Bull of the North was like... 70 when he exalted, and iirc the youngest ally he had exalted as a teen... And those are canon!

Fibericon

@Trish Yeah, I ended up talking to the last GM about it, and he said the player in question is a major pain.

BESW

The GM has final say on what granularity details give dice. The book advises generosity, but if a player is obviously taking advantage of the generosity in a way which doesn't make things more fun...

Fibericon

"I had to tell him no a lot. No to being evil, no to betraying the party, no to leaving the party to die in combat. [That Guy] just wants to wheel and deal and see what he can get away with. I try to channel that into NPCs, and require him to play nice with party members."

Trish

I am struck with... no idea, I am kinda speechless: my totally not serious answer to take an army of imps to put up a survellance network is the one accepted by the OP, while the much more serius ones by @nitsua60 and @Miniman were not....

BESW

(For that one, I'd start by saying "prepares for the job" is not a separate detail, but a summary. No die.)

Trish

11:50 AM

still 38.

BESW

And a lot of other bits I'd roll together. Your dead Uncle Jim is one die, not two.

Trish

still, way more than... 15 dice?

Fibericon

Also, my last solar was 8 years old. Everyone in the group except the one player who despises all my characters got along with the newcomer. I've played evil characters that worked with the party and kept all their fighting to issues of morality.

BESW

> For each scene, the Director will set a max number of dice per player per round, usually 4–10. (I default to 5 or 6.) This is called the dice pool Limit. Smaller limits encourage shorter, punchier rounds of narration and give players more chances to alter their dice rolling strategies. Higher limits allow for longer, more elaborate bouts, but fortunes can change drastically from one round to the next.

@WilliamMariager For the record, I'm talking about Wushu, a free game where your dice pool is determined by the number of details you give in your narration of the action.

Trish

@Fibericon I have a rule at my table: pc between 8 and 16 may exist, but I demand a good behavior (and no sexual stuff).

Fibericon

11:58 AM

@Trish Sex typically doesn't happen at our table. Not that type of group. Flirting is as far as it goes, but no one flirted with the kid.

Trish

@Fibericon flirting, yes... but we tested Apocalypse World yesterday... we very quickly agreed during Chargen "No PCs below 16".

Fibericon

Never tried it.

Trish

Well, and the Succubus-like-solar (in league with Mara yadayada) in my circle outright forced herself upon one or two NPCs.

Fibericon

Ohhhh yeah. Exalted has some... charms. Husband seducing demon dance is... a thing.

BESW

It sounds like a lot of these games could use the X-Card.

Fibericon

12:04 PM

A lot of that can be avoided with the same page tool, though.

Trish

Exalted has the built in Red Rule.

The GM may invoke it for NPCs or declare it FTB. I usually say "Ok, stick it to notepads, think your part about the NPC."

And... in ApocalypseWorld, the X-Card might... be halfway impossible? some character playbooks depend on you seducing the apocalypse around you. apocalypse-world.com

BESW

re: Exalted, the x-card is about everybody, not just the GM. It takes the pressure off the GM and makes everyone feel more in control.

re: Apocalypse World, the x-card is about specific things which are going too far. Presumably if you're playing AW, some form of seduction is expected. The card is for when it gets out of hand.

Trish

Red rule is for everybody:
>THE RED RULE
>In almost all aspects, Exalted doesn’t mechanically distinguish between Storyteller characters and those the players control. Here’s the exception:
>A player-controlled character can only be seduced or otherwise put in a sexual situation if the player is okay with it. Otherwise, any such attempt fails automatically.
>This is completely up to the player’s discretion, and they can waive this rule’s protection if they want their character to be seduced, if they think it would improve the story, or for whatever other reason. This is entirely up to the p…

Red Rule is pretty much X-Card...

BESW

12:21 PM

It's permission to x-card a very very specific subject.

Trish

1:23 PM

pouts tumbleweed...

Fibericon

/me launches off the tumbleweed with Graceful Crane Stance, spinning with my grand grimscythe and carefully etching the entire Voynich Manuscript into the abyssal's face.

Trish

ok... that is a... type 2 stunt. Roll for it.

Fibericon

So that's what, 36 dice? Exalted is silly.

Trish

You know... Stat+skill+stunt+excellency+stancebonus+charms... at very worst... 52

Fibericon

Let's see... I had stat+skill of 10, +2 accuracy on my weapon, +3 accuracy for my specialty, +10 excellency, +3 aim bonus with panoptic fusion discipline, so the most I could squeeze out was 31.

Trish

1:41 PM

That's like more dice any of my exalted ever had... well, unless you count my E3 crafter... she managed to roll like... 20 dice for the start with double 7-10, reroll on 6 and 10, 10 skill+stat+10 excellency+ rerolls:8+3+1...32 with something like 30 successes...

Fibericon

This was an essence 4 dawn, who was really only good for fighting and talking down to people. While standing on a chair, because of the whole "small child" thing.

Trish

well, mine is an essence 2 twilight craft supernal.

and she's not good for anything BUT crafting... 4 non-craft charms: sensory acuitiy prana, Frugal MErchant Method, Destiny-Manisfestion-Method, Whirling brush technique - to better spot faults, to better keep track of market fluctuations, to be impossible to be magiced out of buisiness and to write faster.

Fibericon

Gotta make those blueprints at top speed.

Reminds me of my vampire character. 5 dots in presence. Nothing else at all. The first time I tried to fire a gun, I had one die. Botched, dropped the gun, loudly proclaimed Hollywood was lying about how easy guns were to fire. His own retainer ghoul thinks he's the worst vampire she's ever seen.

Trish

yea, especially with architecture as one of the crafts... others are founding/metal casting, mechanics, carpentry (5); Alchemy, painting, masonry, geomancy (4); Gunsmith (2); Artifice, sculpting (1).

Fibericon

I had a crafter once! Well, craft glamour. It was a weird character.

Trish

2:02 PM

well, crafters are hilarious: if you give them a season to prepare, they build you a city with walls unscaleable and defended by siege weapons that can obliberate every army but one equipped with first age weapons... but if you can'T give them time some break.

Fibericon

I seem to remember our "proper" crafter taking apart a city when the leaders refused to negotiate. He just walked around dismantling things and leaving a neat pile of materials.

Trish

Sounds like he had those charms I lack on the tree: there are pretty neat conservation and destruction charms... not as numerous as 'build aid' charms.

Fibericon

Besides trolling the city council with it, he actually managed to make good use of it. During the return of the Scarlet Empress, he took apart the massive artifact that I can't remember the name of. The dragon construct that would eat manses.

Trish

No idea, the only dragon construct I know is the 5-metal-shrike

Fibericon

Might have actually been something that GM made up. His campaign was good stuff, but then he got a little too enamored with himself and made an entire "epic" about his DMPC. Yeah. It wasn't good. The rest of the campaign, though!

nitsua60

2:40 PM

@Trish The orthogonality of the OP's acceptance and the community's votes are, IMO, a beautiful and essential thing. If anything, I think it tends to encourage a diversity of thinking and approaches, all to the common good. Congrats =)

VTC NAQ

Anaphory

3:00 PM

@Trish Reminds me of the Genius (WoD homebrew) we once played.

Geniusses are all like that.

They need some time and resources to build a Wonder. But if they have a Wonder that fits a task, the task is gone.

Trish

@nitsua60 true, but... I was just surprised. I didn't even mean to be any serious, or even close to an effective solution. It was just "hm, maybe I can solve it like Terry Pratchett... IMPS!"

(ok, and I believe, most problems with paladins spamming detect evil can be solved by tossing just enough a) imps bound to mundane tasks around and b) proving that the real monsters don't detect on detect evil but detect good.

Shalvenay

5:10 PM

hey htere @nitsua60

Trish

7:28 PM

/me pulls the head out of the stochastics washmachine... "Ok, now... I don't wanna fiddle with that math heavy propability mess again - especially since I pulled like 4.5 solutions out of my a**...

Shalvenay

hey there @Trish, how're things otherwise?

Trish

9PM, head in the math-gutter.

Shalvenay

ah.

pondering how much cognitive dissonance a half-orc paladin would generate

Trish

half orc paladin of whom?

Shalvenay

@Trish Lathander, for one (I actually have such a thing in NWN)

Trish

7:36 PM

Lathander? let me check... if you want to stick your head to math gutter, check out rpg.stackexchange.com/a/90826

Shalvenay

@Trish I'll let Nitsua60 or the likes deal with your maths problem xD

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay [accidentally read "Trishander" somehow]

Trish

Lathander, Morninglord, NG without allowing NN, so paladin-legal. Disappeared during Spellplague to be replaced by Amaunator (after that: LG). So, is the campaign before or after the 29th Tarsakh, the Year of Blue Fire, 1385 DR in the Era of Upheaval?

Shalvenay

@Trish :p we can assume before

Trish

so, he would be viable... now, reality check.

The wiki index has no mentioning of Paladins. The Portfolio is Athletics, birth, creativity, dawn, renewal, self-perfection, spring, vitality, youth, his Domains are Good, Nobility, Protection, Renewal, Strength, Sun.
Those domains do pretty much imply Paladins however, which also fits with parts of the portfolio (self-perfection, athletics).

I can't find indicators why there shouldn't be Lathander Paladins, so, next step: Ork Paladins of Lathander.

Now, I can't find a perfect reason why an ork should choose him, as he is a "human" god. Orcs in the 3e are listed as "usually CE", but usually means there are exceptions. However, there is an orc-pantheon that has 3 CE and 3 NE gods. This would make this ork pretty much an outcast among his kind.

SevenSidedDie

7:51 PM

@Trish Lathander has paladins, yes. The Order of the Aster is one official example.

Shalvenay

@Trish yeah, in the case of my char -- she was from an isolated mountain tribe that was on decent terms with their neighbors, but kept getting harassed by the Zhents

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay My first-ever D&D 3.0e game included a half-orc paladin. She managed to operate without cognitive dissonance. Or do you mean, causing it in others?

Trish

However, there is a very good fitting part that might be the reason why he (and maybe his kin) are outcasts: "[Lathander] favored those who dispelled the undead[...]" - If you just look for an amazing Backstory, then he might be the chosen champion of his tribe against an undead horde. To save their lives, they swore allegiance to Lathander and offered the future paladin as 'sacrifice' as a baby.

Shalvenay

@SevenSidedDie in others, for sure -- I can make it work for myself

@Trish that's actually rather interesting

SevenSidedDie

@Shalvenay Causing others to question (or double-down) on their assumptions and stereotypes about half-orcs is half the roleplaying potential of such a character.

Shalvenay

7:54 PM

@SevenSidedDie xD yes

Trish

@Shalvenay it would explain why he is estranged from his other orc brethen, he could have grown up in the human (church) culture (as the odd child out). If his tribe stayed true to the 'new way' or did make it at all is a good hook for the GM.

Or maybe lathander himself slew the orcs together with the undead, as they wanted to sacrifice the baby to a god of birth }:D

You still got to consult your GM, but which GM would say no to plothooks that cut deep?

Shalvenay

@Trish xD

Trish

did I win the "think out of the box" badge?!

Shalvenay

8:13 PM

@Trish hehe, not quite :)

Trish

8:23 PM

What would be your most hilarious characters you ever had? My top two are kind of in MSHRPG/something inspired of it with homebrew rules.
We built "mutants only" for one of them, so I rolled up... Molding and telekinesis, but rolled bad on the power level... so I chose to cut down both applications to notch up the effective 'strength'/affected mass at least a bit (to 50 lbs or something). Not to heavy metal (which would be Magneto) or water (iceman). No, I did cut it to "clothing materials", which as of GM decree included car tires (rubber as in shoe soles!), but not unstable molecules and …

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie i agree! characters that challenge fundamental stereotypes are kinda fun.

in a way i think a half-troll i played was like that.

he was a big, hulking dude, eight feet and very muscular. he was a DJ for a local club on his island.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener Nice.

doppelgreener

also, he was a geek for comics and figurines, probably played warhammer, and his name was Harold.

Trish

DJ? comics? D20 modern?

Golokopitenko

he means a Dancing Juggler

doppelgreener

8:27 PM

@Trish this was the playtest for dresden files for fate accelerated.

Golokopitenko

it's a bard sub-archetype

Trish

ohhh,

doppelgreener

Harold lived on a modern-day tropical island in the caribbean. His island was a popular holiday destination for gang members, but they tended to leave the crime in the mainland.

Golokopitenko

that's where his mad juggler skills came into play

SevenSidedDie

We have two in our group who really really want to play a game of Dresden Files RPG, but we've concluded that it wouldn't work without everyone reading at least the first book or three. And that hasn't happened yet, so no DFRPG for us…

Trish

8:31 PM

@SevenSidedDie the comics are pretty much close to the books, and the first case of the TV-series might give some good insight too (as that is not /tooo/ far from the books.

well, they started to really fear the cloth molder when it casually mentioned nothing would physically stop it from having the rubber creep up and encase the face of the guy too... Then they realized that something akin to a force choke could be done by shifting around fabric in the neck of clothing...

doppelgreener

Also in this game, half-troll doesn't mean you look like a troll yet. Harold was a troll changeling, in the traditional sense that he was swapped out for a human boy as a child, and mostly grew up looking just like one (except for being huge). At some critical point he uncovered his heritage and kickstarted a transformation all changelings face: he'd ultimately have to choose whether to allow himself to become completely fey (troll in this case), or reject it and become completely human.

Trish

Lethal Joke Powers can be pretty funny.

doppelgreener

If he became wholly fey he'd lose his humanity; if he became wholly human he'd lose his fey nature.

When that transformation started is when he became half-troll, and he became bigger, bulkier, and began to develop some tusk-like teeth. Now he's looking slightly trollish.

Still the mortal world has no idea the fey world exists, unlike shadowrun.

SevenSidedDie

@Trish The TV series gets really bad reviews though. And getting the whole group to read the comics is pretty much = getting them to all read the books. We all like books and comics, but we have so many options, getting a whole group to try a particular book/comic series to play a game they might or might not be interested in is a harder sell than “let's play Dungeon world”.

Trish

Reading the comics takes less time... about 4 hours for all instead of a day or two per book.

@SevenSidedDie and... that might actually be a good question: how to cut down the background of an RPG based upon books for those players that don't bother with reading those?

SevenSidedDie

8:42 PM

@Trish Our group size is 7 and tends toward medieval fantasy. It's a pretty hard sell.

Golokopitenko

@tris

fff

@Trish exposition by showing

Trish

@SevenSidedDie then... did you try Camelot?

SevenSidedDie

@Trish We've actually attempted to distill it down to a handout, and it was something like 20 pages long. That's when we concluded that it was really only something for when we have a group who are all passionate about specifically playing DFRPG. Until then, we're already passionate about existing games.

@Trish What's Camelot?

Golokopitenko

@SevenSidedDie it's the castle of King Arthur

SevenSidedDie

@Golokopitenko It's only a model.

Golokopitenko

8:47 PM

it is also a silly place! ha!

SevenSidedDie

(Hah. Years later I notice another layer to that joke. That's Terry Gilliam delivering that line, who is also the model-maker.)

Golokopitenko

wow that's amazing!

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie I have not read a single book of DFRPG. But @BESW has explained a lot of the important stuff for me. We went on that common understanding. If new things were revealed to me, ok, cool.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie Only about half of our players were familiar with Dresden Files when we ran the DFAE playtest. I was able to summarise the salient points, but in part because we were playing with very low-powered characters in an isolated location.

My problem with DFRPG is that the setting is really rigid at mid-to-high power levels in ways which aren't very compatible with Fate.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener @BESW I suspect we'd have tried by now with a smaller group. We seem to have hit an inflection point for group size that makes it sufficiently hard to convey setting information needed for chargen that it doesn't really work anymore.

My solution has been to play in collaborative or improv settings, or to start them out as in-setting naïve about their own world if it's an established setting the players don't know. Fate doesn't like that though.

BESW

8:53 PM

Partway through the series it's revealed that the spoiler depends on the careful balance of spoiler, which is very easy for Fate characters to mess with in ways that the author of a series of novels can prevent.

Trish

@SevenSidedDie eh, I mean Pendragon.... the King Arthur thing

BESW

Which is a shame, because Fate works really well with DF's themes at the day-to-day personal level.

Trish

/me still reads that as DwarfFortress...

SevenSidedDie

@Trish One day I would love to play/run a game of Pendragon. The generational play would be awesome. I think the setting would still be sufficiently unfamiliar with a portion of our group that would make an attempt fall over though.

Trish

the tune of Arthurian legends is hard to catch though...

SevenSidedDie

8:57 PM

@Trish Only if you're already steeped in Western-English culture. We have enough of a percentage of our play group that isn't that it doesn't work. We even had that cause problems in Dungeon World, i.e.:

26

Q: How to GM for a player who knows none of the tropes Dungeon World relies on?

I have a very occasional player who gives me a disproportional amount of difficulty as a Dungeon World GM. DW is normally really easy to teach to new players because it has almost everything a player needs on their character sheet—but it pulls off that trick by heavily leaning on knowledge of pop...

doppelgreener

@Trish dwarf fortress includes some themes i think would be pretty funny & fun to have in a tabletop rpg. though it couldn't possibly be translated directly.

SevenSidedDie

I'm actually prepping for my next run of DW such that it draws more from Final Fantasy and other JRPGs so that I can better include two of our group's feelings for what “fantasy should be like”.

Trish

I am german, I know the King arthur well enough to know that most of my collegues wouldn't hit the tune of them.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener Paranoia

doppelgreener

@BESW I wouldn't mind playing a game someday that involved the functioning portions of the lore without the nonfunctional ones.

@SevenSidedDie haha, good call

BESW

9:00 PM

@SevenSidedDie Some sort of Paranoia/Great Ork Gods/Microscope hybrid abomination.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW That sounds about right!

BESW

@SevenSidedDie We've been doing that a lot, but also using Worlds of Adventure for Fate.

doppelgreener

by "translated directly" i mean mainly that dwarf fortress focuses in such small detail on tons of things at once which can be safely handled by a computer but should never be thrust on a group of people with dice at the same level of detail.

Trish

Paranoia is awesome, if you don't play it more often than 3 times. Or are really dedicated troubleshooters and don't put any value in friendships.

3

doppelgreener

the feeling of the game could be captured, but the exact mechanics of the video game should be left in the video game space where they work

BESW

9:05 PM

@doppelgreener I think we could do that... hm... in Fate Accelerated with some Atomic Robo-like extras... with a very strong GM hand on the tiller saying "yes, we can do that" and "no, that declaration won't fit."

doppelgreener

@BESW I would be comfortable with that.

BESW

Consider SG-13 a test run for that concept.

doppelgreener

@BESW Ok! I would actually prefer a strong hand on the tiller in that game, because there's a strong vision to maintain.

Trish

So... ceterum censo carthaginem delendam esse?

BESW

@Trish I know what you said, but I have no idea what it's responding to.

Trish

9:08 PM

Cato said that whenever he ended a speech and a discussion was closed.

BESW

And since there are at least three discussions interweaving here, I repeat myself.

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie I think "naive to their world" can work with "not completely naive". Proactive and competent people don't need to be experts, but they need to be able to figure things out and understand things going on. It's okay to thrust someone out into the unexplored wilderness of unknown monsters as long as they are able to learn about and understand those monsters and that wilderness.

They must also be able to externally declare things about the world based on what they aleady know, meaning the world you have needs to be adaptable to their ability to do that. However, declaring a story detail tends to require justification by relating them to existing aspects, which means, stuff the players already know.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener Yeah. It only works in particular arrangements. The last time we did that, they were members of the same clan in a backwoods corner of their world, who had just passed initiation into adulthood. It shrank the amount of stuff the players needed to know initially, and let the players learn about the wider world at the same speed as the PCs.

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie How'd that work out?

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener It worked great. There was great group cohesion and home/clan concerns around family and politics ended up being personal drivers for many characters. I got to reveal bits of the wider world at a plot-speed pace instead of as info-dumps.

BESW

9:17 PM

@SevenSidedDie In our DFAE playtest, we played folks who knew just enough about the magical world to know to freak out when a Warden showed up (half of us were hiding out on our tiny island because we were suspected of breaking Laws of Magic, and the rest were just barely learning magic existed at all).

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie Oh, that's fantastic.

BESW

@doppelgreener I did this kind of thing a few times back in D&D, with settings I'd made myself.

I'm trying to put together thanksgiving for 20 people, been cooking for days. So of course the yaks got in and spectacularly knocked over a

Tweeted by foxfeather on November 24, 2016 at 6:04 PM

Bee hive, so angry bees and yaks everywhere. The emus were curious about the fire pit and set themselves on fire. Don't worry, they are ok

Tweeted by foxfeather on November 24, 2016 at 6:05 PM

SevenSidedDie

@BESW I think it would also work with DFRPG, but maybe only as a “prequel” mini-campaign to bring everyone up to speed. Limiting everyone to human and (mostly) not-magical would be a shame with this group. It might be an effective way to generate/test interest in learning more about the setting though…

doppelgreener

@BESW O_O

SevenSidedDie

trying to decide if amusing fictional account, or actual real-life failure of fencing

doppelgreener

9:23 PM

... what is this place? An Asian emu farm with a beekeeper?

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

BESW

Real-life Minnesota farmer.

"On a mission to turn 98 acres of farm into native prairie & raise sustainable grass-based livestock."

@SevenSidedDie We had... [digs up notes]

A psychometric marriage counselor who heard the voices of objects she touched; her mind magic bartender friend who used his magic to quiet the voices, and was thus wanted by the Wardens for using mind magic on a human; an immortal samurai investigator and an immortal ninja chemist, both tasked by their master to keep the first two two safe.

All four were hiding on a tiny Hawaiian island which was home to a half-troll DJ who didn't know he wasn't human, and a zen gangster enforcer with pyromantic abilities who'd been framed for magical murder.

Basically a handful of hedge mages who'd been told only that there are Laws and magic police who'll kill you if you break them, a clueless changeling, and a couple of bodyguards who've been out of circulation for a few hundred years.

Shalvenay

anyone have a listing of the favored weapons for the Faerunian deities at hand?

doppelgreener

@BESW Better yet, the samurai and the ninja were rivals. :D

Weren't they resurrected somehow? Did we ever learn why someone had a special enough interest to send two supernatural guards out to defend these people?

BESW

We never learned why.

doppelgreener

9:37 PM

gotcha

BESW

But yeah, they were Japanese-flavoured versions of the einherjar: great warriors lifted to immortal service of Odin after their glorious death in battle.

doppelgreener

Oh that's right! I remembered some kind of afterlife stuff; so it was Odin who claimed them a long time ago and, now, mysteriously sent them out as guards.

BESW

Yeah, so he had some stake in those two characters surviving, but we never learned what.

doppelgreener

my money's on Odin having a special interest in those two just being able to see the truth of matters

nobody thinks about what an object can see and would have seen; and mages have so steadfastly kept the mind mage population at near-nonexistent that nobody's got good defences against it.

BESW

Yeah, I think he probably would've had some idea about using them to tip an imbalance in his favour using those talents.

doppelgreener

9:42 PM

i seem to recall something about how the psychometic counsellor just had objects talk to her too much, because they got so excited about having someone to talk to.

BESW

Yeah. She couldn't turn it off, hence the bartender using his magic to help her, you know, sleep.

(It's hard to sleep when your pajamas are yammering at you.)

Trish

@BESW isn't there a tremendous lack of Zombie Pirates in that plot?!

doppelgreener

@Trish being in the caribbean and all there was certainly room for them

BESW

@doppelgreener [cough]

@Trish Necromancy is Serious Business in DF, and would dominate any plot it appeared in.

doppelgreener

but imagine DFAE 2: Zombie Boogaloo

Trish

9:45 PM

So what? they could try to fix it to pull the head of the bartender out of the sling for mindmagic!

doppelgreener

@Trish the head mages aren't that compassionate.

"thanks for fixing the zombie problem. also you're still sentenced to death. bye."

Trish

Psssst! they don't know that it wouldn't help!

doppelgreener

oh yeah

fair point

BESW

Nah, they kinda do. Wardens are deliberately presented to hedge mages as avatars of implacable retribution.

doppelgreener

Warden: "i'll consider lightening your sentence if you fix the zombie problem."
Mind mage: "we fixed the zombie problem."
Warden: "i considered it and declined."

BESW

9:48 PM

The Laws of Magic are the only thing hedge mages get explained to them, and it's a "scared straight" policy.

doppelgreener

ahh.

makes sense

Trish

best they only find it is a rumor of zombie pirates planted by someone to lure the immortal ninja out into the open while a half-dead-hald-not-dead ronin (he sold his soul to some demon for that to be claimed the moment 'the last samurai dies') could challenge the samurai into a life-and-death-combat, but behind the curtain the warden just wants the whole menagerie (save the troll) dead, cause they are annoying?

BESW

I'm.... not sure what you're trying to accomplish by telling us how our two-year-old campaign could have been better if we'd totally changed how the setting works.

doppelgreener

he'd want the fire mage and mind mage dead because one probably killed someone and the other is a mind mage, and the head mages just prefer playing things safe and don't worry about "evidence" and "justice", they care about the rules and maintaining them and eliminating those who do not comply.

Trish

you never said it was 2 years ago... I thought it was like more recently.

BESW

9:53 PM

It was a playtest in the past tense. It's clearly a thing which which already happened.

In a pre-established setting you're unfamiliar with.

doppelgreener

(that i am also a little unfamiliar with :'D)

BESW

Maybe I'm just crabby this morning, but it's kind of off-putting to have someone insist we did our campaign wrong because we didn't include some random setting-inappropriate element. I mention it because this isn't the first time.

doppelgreener

I didn't know the big deal undead represented in DFAE, but that kind of setting having to deal with supernatural pirate zombies would've been pretty fun. guess that'll be reserved for pseudo-not-realy-DFAE-but-the-workable-bits-maybe.

BESW

@doppelgreener Any kind of necromancy at all is liable to run afoul of the Laws. If you can interact with the dead in any way, the Wardens are watching you closely and about all you're allowed to do is talk to them.

doppelgreener

Oof, that must be rough.

BESW

9:59 PM

So yeah, a re-working of DFAE would probably involve throwing out the Laws in favour of something a little more flexible.

@doppelgreener Yeah, especially since hedge-mage-level necromancy tends to be involuntary. Ghosts just wander up and say "hi."

You only need practice to do the really flashy stuff.

doppelgreener

@BESW Like the rules of Fullmetal Alchemist can be (but I'm not suggesting literally using those): there's some basic laws underpinning what alchemy even lets you do, and then there's a limited set of Taboos which revolve around messing with human life.

BESW

The necromancy loophole is that messing with nonhuman creatures is technically okay. But they don't really have spirits, so it's limited to making tiger zombies and the like.

What I would keep is that zombies in DF require music to stay animated. Specifically a strong beat to replace their heartbeat.

Self-aware corporeal undead (other than vampires) are very rare, but a wizard with a boombox can lead an army of zombies.

doppelgreener

Nice.

I like that a lot.

BESW

(Assuming the boombox doesn't short out, because you know. Magic and tech in DF don't play nice.)

[offers fate point]

doppelgreener

hahaha!

Shalvenay

10:06 PM

yeah, Harry Dresden probably would have the worst time of it learning how to fly an airplane -- he could, considering a J-3 Cub is about as mechanically complex as his VW bug...but he'd learn its best glide speed awful fast!

BESW

That's where Fate does work really well as a DF system: there are so many things which can go wrong for Harry and his friends, and they always go wrong at the worst possible time.

The DFverse has an overblown sense of dramatic timing.

SevenSidedDie

Sorry I dropped out of the conversation, life is eating me and I should go deal with its implacable hungers.

@BESW But this sounds fantastic. And it gives me some ideas about how to remix and downmix DFRPG's setting stuff to maybe make it work for our group in the naïve-PC method…

(Life's Implacable Hunger might be a good band name.)

2

*waves*

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie ttfn!

BESW

11:04 PM

The Pack and Yohance Kickstarter just needs a little push to clear their goal.

doppelgreener

@BESW i can't tell -- is there a backing tier that gives me all the comics aimed for here, printed?

it's OK if it comes with extras

BESW