TRPG General Chat

LegendaryDude

00:03

On a scale of 3.5 to 5e, where does 13th Age fall in terms of rule complexity?

BESW

It's mostly 3.5-esque, but with narrative skills and a lot of positive learning from 4e.

(The primary dev from 3.5 and the primary dev from 4e got together and made 13th Age as a personal project, combining their learning from those editions with the freedom of working outside the D&D franchise and Hasbro's all-seeing gaze.)

So I'd say it's slightly simpler than 3.5, mostly due to philosophy changes which mean it can let go of what doesn't work while keeping the basic d20 System structure.

If I wanted to run a D&D-like system, or a d20 System campaign, ever again, I'd use 13th Age.

LegendaryDude

Interesting. I've been tempted to pick up the core book but my group has really dug into 5e and I'm afraid it'd be a long time before we had a chance to try a new system.

BESW

For example: skills. There aren't any.

Instead you get a small number of points to distribute between however many "backgrounds" you want to come up with.

LegendaryDude

I've read about that. And then you would say, like, "my background in urban gardening tells me that this isn't any ordinary topiary. " Or something. Right?

BESW

Backgrounds are broad but evocative descriptions of something about your character's backstory, and when you want to do something which isn't covered by a more specific mechanic, you explain why one of your backgrounds lets you make/modify the roll.

My paladin was a Frost Range Nomad (+5) and a Renowned Skin-Painter (+2) with a History of Skulduggery (+1).

You also have to come up with One Unique Thing that's true about your PC that's not true about anyone else in the world.

LegendaryDude

00:13

Ah, okay, so they translate into literal bonuses. I had thought they were more narrative tools.

BESW

They're both!

LegendaryDude

Right, of course. But I didn't realize they added actual dice roll bonuses similar to skills.

BESW

Yeah, one of the cool things about 13th Age is that it exploits the familiar d20 System structure to achieve a very different effect.

Here's my paladin, Fen Lorn the Free.

LegendaryDude

That's cool. I'll have to read more about 13th Age later, as dinner is calling me then we're off to see Rogue One!

BESW

And here's the Swordapus.

ttfn. Have fun.

LegendaryDude

00:16

Hehe, "high elf" "ranger"

nitsua60

I think this querent seriously underestimates the specific heat of water. (Never mind its latent heats.)

BESW

@nitsua60 A watched pond never freezes?

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@nitsua60 I will then try to add "remove SKILL/X botch/fail results from roll result, they don't count"

nitsua60

@Baskakov_Dmitriy It just seemed you were reading my answer to be counting a larger number of dice as skill rank increases, which isn't the case. There are plenty of good arguments to be made for a scheme that uses more dice with increasing skill, though. For instance, in "my" scheme there's nothing that can be achieved by the world's best bazzer that can't be achieved by someone completely untrained. You may not like that.

(I.e. while it's much more likely for a rank-10 bazzer to hit 36 on the die than a rank-0 novice, there's no die roll that can be hit by them that can't be hit by the novice. That may be completely undesirable behavior in your skill system.)

Baskakov_Dmitriy

To be honest, I probably fell to the sin of upvoting your answer without actually understanding it correctly. I reread it several times, and now I understand arounr 70-80%. :)

@nitsua60 Easily solved by requiring more than one success

nitsua60

00:27

@Baskakov_Dmitriy If there are spots you found particularly unclear please feel free to call them out!

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@nitsua60 I will reread it again tomorrow to check if it's a problem of unclear spots or my sleepy had. :)

nitsua60

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Not really. If a 36 is required, even ten times, it's still possible for a rank-0 to achieve it. If a 37 is required, neither a rank-0 nor a rank-one-billion can make it happen.

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Thanks!

trogdor

00:59

@BESW I have certainly never watched a pond freeze soooo

nitsua60

02:40

OMG Bob Ross is on Netflix.
I may not leave my couch for the next 60 hours.

trogdor

lol

BESW

@nitsua60 I'm trying to get my dad to watch Reading Rainbow on his Kindle.

They're streaming four or five whole seasons from the golden years.

Dan B

04:04

I liked Euch's question, rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/91821/…, but I'm pretty sure it's going to get closed, so I thought I'd post a partial answer here

if a character's sister has been kidnapped by a cultist long ago, and she's been in Strahd's realm ever since, she almost has to be evil now

(or dead, I guess, but that's boring)

Euch

heyoooo

it's the guy whose question is going to get closed :P

Dan B

so, I'd replace an evil NPC with her

welcome!

I actually almost never post here, but I liked your question, so... :)

Euch

rightfully so, i'm sure, and that's okay

Dan B

unfortunately I've only played five or six episodes of Curse of Strahd, so I don't know all the evil NPCs

Euch

fair enough

that's still 4 or 5 more than me :P

Dan B

04:07

ideally it would be someone like the werewolf trapper woman, who's almost certainly irredeemably evil but maybe possibly could be redeemed with heroic effort

Euch

i read the book, though, and i like that idea

Dan B

but the werewolf trapper woman plot happens too early

Euch

yeah there's something there for sure

well, what do you think about making it all an "illusion"

mostly, i'm going to try and stay very true to the "Strahd conquers people"

and what better way than for him to pull a bunch of strings

Dan B

I think your player would have more fun if he got to actually track down his sister

Euch

and convince this character to betray his party in a promise of Strahd locating his sister for him

only to have it evaporate in the end

Dan B

04:08

-- I mean, if they get to the end and Strahd is like "haha! I've converted your sister to a vampire and now she's a miniboss!" that could be a thing

Euch

that's a fair point, too

right now i'm approaching it from a Strahd's leverage point of view

Dan B

as to your question 2, from what I remember Strahd doesn't know much about the PCs initially, but he has a lot of magical resources he can use to learn things

Euch

if the party dies, it will be because Strahd got a wedge in there and forced them to self-implode

okay, so just wait like, 4 sessions and then it's fair game in that his spies reported things to him

Dan B

totally

anyway have fun with it :)

Euch

i will

and thanks for the input

BESW

04:16

Be careful, when designing clever villains who subvert PCs' choices, not to make the players' choices unimportant.

Shalvenay

@BESW yeah, that's actually a problem I have in spades

Euch

great advice, but yes i've actually been pretty good about that over the last few years

Strahd will have a plan, but it's fine if that plan fails

BESW

The easiest and most reliable way to do it, I've found, is to recruit the players as co-conspirators in designing their PCs' obstacles.

Euch

my first whole "campaign" was awful... i basically wrote a book and read it to them while they rolled some dice

BESW

But a lot of "traditional" playstyles don't really accommodate that kind of collaboration.

@Euch Yup, been there, failed that.

Shalvenay

04:20

@BESW yeah, and that sort of thing can rub the occasional player the wrong way, even

Euch

at this point i've got a good group of true roleplayers... especially this particular guy

they're good about playing their character

BESW

One of my early abortive campaigns was an allegory on the nature of story as a form of lie, using imagery and structure from The Magic Flute and The Phantom Tollbooth.

Shalvenay

there is also the potential for a player intimately familiar with their own character to design obstacles that simply require too much familiarity with the character for the other players to work with

trogdor

@Euch I have more or less tried to do that too

it generally ended with accidental killing of the party, or in the PC's running roughshod over it XD

Euch

@trogdor it's the worst... i'm frustrated that they won't do the things i needed them to do... they're frustrated that some NPCs are basically bossing them around all game

nobody has fun...

trogdor

04:24

yeah, it isn't the best way to build a campaign

Euch

but, frankly, everyone has to run their first campaign... it's just growing pains

Shalvenay

what should you do when the obstacles you come up with for your characters aren't the kinds of obstacles that other players can work with to begin with?

BESW

I'm so much happier in systems which are already shaped like the kind of game experience we want to have.

@Shalvenay Work with the group.

Ask for help designing obstacles and offer to help them work on engaging with them.

Shalvenay

@BESW that's the thing -- basically, I have reached a point in some cases where nobody in the group is willing to go to the lengths required to come up with a suitably challenging obstacle, or help me with it either

BESW

Then that's not a group I'd stick with.

Shalvenay

04:27

basically, I can easily make characters for which the minimum required obstacle complexity is high enough to faze oh...maybe 90+% of RP groups out there

BESW

If they've given up on you, I see no particular reason to keep trying to make them change their mind.

We've had this discussion before: you need to bend, and you need to find a group that will also bend.

Euch

is this a problem of having epic level characters?

or just a group that has played so much game nothing is new/fun now?

Shalvenay

@Euch not necessarily epic level

BESW

Shalv's problems are beyond mechanical, and very complex. Further discussion of them should go to the Not A Bar.

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

I'm not a place to unwind after work, but I play one on TV.

1

Shalvenay

ty

Baskakov_Dmitriy

13:05

@nitsua60 I think, I understood it now. Well, yeah, has the problem you described.

Zachiel

@DanB Welcome to the chat, then!

Baskakov_Dmitriy

46

Q: What dice mechanic gives a bell curve distribution that narrows and increases mean as skill increases?

I'm looking for a dice mechanic that produces a bell curve at all skill levels. I also want it to increase accuracy and precision as a character's skill increases — this basically means better average and smaller standard deviation. The simpler the system is, the better, of course. Skill + 2d6 ...

nitsua60

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Well, some might call it a problem, some might call it a feature. Without knowing much about what OP wanted out of their skill system, I think there's no way to judge whether the finer points are positives or negatives. (Just whether it's got increasing mean and decreasing variability.)

Baskakov_Dmitriy

Tried to adopt VtM for that.

anydice.com/program/a1e6

All I got from (2*SKILL d10, drop SKILL lowest) is almost no chance to botch.

Mean increases witht he amount of dice thrown

And deviation also increases, albeit way slower than in normal VtM

But still.

Here it is! Roll Skill*3, keep Skill. anydice.com/program/a1e9

Deviation decreases, mean increases.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

13:31

Damn, not for all difficulties. anydice.com/program/a1eb

doppelgreener

@SevenSidedDie i'd say both of those things are the problem with them

Baskakov_Dmitriy

13:50

@doppelgreener I actually think of those two problems as of one single problem.

They break voting as there is no definitive answer.

I think, I am going to stick with something like that. anydice.com/program/a1ee Roll SKILL*2 D10, drop SKILL lowest. Mean increases always, SD decreases with more skill for difficulties 1-5, then (for harder tasks) it starts to increase.

Maybe I should announce more dice numbers as botches, such as not just "1", but also "2"

doppelgreener

@Baskakov_Dmitriy i think that's pretty reasonable to assert, yeah

two sides of the same coin kinda thing

@Baskakov_Dmitriy the various "vs" outputs are a little challenging to comprehend; i can't graph them and reasonably understand the curve of each "rank" (for lack of a better word)

@Miniman Are you there? I'd like to quiz a D&D 5e axepert briefly.

Miniman

@doppelgreener I'd consider myself more of a swordpert, but sure!

doppelgreener

Is there such thing as a "Dueling" option beside the likes of TWF and GWF?

Miniman

14:06

@doppelgreener Ish - there's a Dueling Fighting Style, which gives a static +2 damage (much better than the GWF Style), and you get to use a shield for +2 Ac.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@doppelgreener Are you familiar with oWoD system?

doppelgreener

@Miniman this previously confusing question got revised, and seems in its current form to be asking to be edited into "What are the pros & cons of choosing" --- and then we break to consider the two possible interpretations of finishing this question, which are either "TWF over either GWF or Dueling?" (a comparison of one to the other two) or "TWF vs GWF vs Dueling?" (a comparison of all three)

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Only via osmosis reading about it in Q&A here. I've never even knowingly handled a World of Darkness book.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Ugh - I was all ready to goldhammer it if it got reopened, but chucking dueling in there makes it difficult.

doppelgreener

@Miniman yeah, we've got a 1v1 question, but this builds on that to establish a 1v2 question (where one of the 2 doesn't even have a comparison of its own yet) or a 1v1v1 question. The author seems to be keen on the 1v2, but the parenthetical I just wrote about it makes me suspect a 1v1v1 may be better for everyone.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@doppelgreener Long story short, there are two variables: the amount of dice you throw (Dicepool), a sum of skills involved in the roll, and Difficulty, representing how hard a task is. You roll Dicepool*D10 and count how many dice results are Difficulty or higher (that's the amount of Successes). You count how many are "1", and deduce that number from amount of Successes. If there are no Successes left, you fail the task, or sometimes Botch (if no successes rolled and at least one "1" is present".

So would be kinda hard to graph it fully

Miniman

14:14

@doppelgreener Honestly, even the 1v1 is kinda on the broad side.

doppelgreener

@Miniman the existing TWF vs GWF 1v1?

aha, Oblivious Sage just did an edit.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Well, it works because the question and the answer both ignore all considerations beyond the fighting style itself.

But if you did the same thing allowing for other factors, it becomes a whole other thing.

And then expanding it even further...

doppelgreener

@Miniman hmmmm. yeah, if someone asked me "what's the advantages and disadvantages of [different types of 4e warlocks]" i'd say "well, have you looked at their features? because those are the advantages. and not having the other features are their disavantages. what would you like to know about them exactly?". i could, however, illustrate that Feylocks tend to do one area of thing, and Starlocks tend to do another area of thing, etc.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Yeah, assuming you're making the analogy I think you're making, I'm inclined to agree that the edit didn't really make things better.

doppelgreener

that summary of what the different warlocks do might help as a starting point, but it's not so much their advantages/disadvantages as "why would i choose each of these"

doppelgreener

16:13

Post-apoc campaign idea that could be pretty epic despite being fairly mundane: Most of the satellite networks are still there, there's even antennas that could reach them, but access to them has been lost. A team sets out to find the access codes to reach the satellite communications network across their country and enable people to start using it again.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener depends on what type of sats we're talking about

most of it would probably be REing the telemetry/telecommand setup

doppelgreener

[handwave] Not so important as just having satellites that were once important and would be very useful to have in the post-apoc world as it rebuilds itself, but which can't be accessed and need people to go find out how to access them. (They may have a small or large portion of the puzzle complete.)

so whichever type, it'd be that type, and if necessary, fictional.

Shalvenay

16:30

(btw: satellites generally beacon their telemetry, instead of sending it on request only)

Baskakov_Dmitriy

16:49

Just read a badge description. One needs to vote on 600 questions to get it and 25% of votes has to be on questions.

Do I get it right that I am incouraged to avoid upvoting too many answers?

user15026

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Yeah, it's basically encouraging you to spread your votes across both questions and answers :)

doppelgreener

not so much "too many answers" but more "don't totally stop voting on questions, please also vote on those too"

user15026

@doppelgreener Yeah, exactly. Questions need love too!

Shalvenay

19:36

hey there @Trish

Trish

huh!?

Shalvenay

@Trish how're things going?

Baskakov_Dmitriy

20:00

@Ash Voting for 4 answers per question on average will make gaining the badge impossible

user15026

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Unless you stop voting on answers at some point.

Shalvenay

@Baskakov_Dmitriy I have to push for it, but it's definitely not impossible

the hardest thing on Stacks is to develop a good habit for downvoting bad questions

and developing that I'm sure helps tremendously with that badge

Baskakov_Dmitriy

I think, it might make the problem of late answers having almost no chance even stronger.

You read a question, upvote it. You upvote top-3 answers. There is a descent question in the very bottom which you would upvote, but you don't want to break the stats.

Shalvenay

20:23

@Baskakov_Dmitriy decent answer you mean? and it's a one-time badge, not something you lose

you can't unearn badges on the Stack except for by way of extraordinary system intervention

Baskakov_Dmitriy

20:37

@Shalvenay I mean, while earning it

It isn't very popular here, as I see

BTW, have read some Q&A about social things

They are all so... same.

"I have a social problem with my GM/player!" -- "Talk to them. If they don't listen, backpedal and agree or don't play together"

Shalvenay

@Baskakov_Dmitriy one thing that helps is not piling on so much on top voted answers -- saving your answer votes for down the page xD

@Baskakov_Dmitriy quite. there are very few cases where social problems are more complex than that, and they mostly (I suspect) have to do with the relative rarity of certain RPing styles.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

Is this thing on FAQ?

Shalvenay

@Baskakov_Dmitriy not as such :P

doppelgreener

@Baskakov_Dmitriy you're catastrophizing the badge. at some point, you'll have over or nearly 600 votes, you'll notice you have a few dozen or maybe a hundred question votes max to cast to pass the threshold (which I'm assuming because if you've been hardly voting on questions at all, Stack Exchange has a little nag dialog to remind you to vote on questions too), and then you'll get a gold badge.

we've probably got 8,000+ questions you haven't voted on either way, which you get your pick of to vote on to get your badge.

@Baskakov_Dmitriy The difference is in the situation-specific advice around the situation and managing the actions they need to take. "Talk to them and/or leave" is not, itself, a useful answer to any of those questions.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener yeah

and it's not like other Stacks are utterly devoid of similar phenomena

see thermostat-c-wire over on DIY

Baskakov_Dmitriy

20:56

@doppelgreener Should we place some reminder like "try to talk to them in the first place, and don't forget to tell us how did it go, or why didn't you try it yet"?

@doppelgreener As you say so.

doppelgreener

@Baskakov_Dmitriy If it's appropriate we usually do that in comments. Sometimes they need us to tell them how to talk about it, if talking about it is even the appropriate solution.

Sometimes we get very serious cases of verbal abuse or entirely unhinged or unhealthy individuals. Talking with the group is not necessarily the first step or any step at all.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@doppelgreener From my own experience, if it's not the appropriate solution, the only other way to do it is to leave the group.

doppelgreener

Sometimes, not always. For example, one GM confessed they were the problem GM, and while "talk to them" was in there among the options, the answer conveys loads more than that:

55

Q: As a GM, how can I stop killing my games?

Probably the worst issue I have as a Game Master is that I think of a game, I write a campaign plot for it -- End, Beginning and Middle, get hyped, hype my players, and after 2 months I get bored with it and want the story to end so I can start running a newer game or campaign I've thought up in ...

system-agnostic plot problem-gm

85

A: As a GM, how can I stop killing my games?

So, how do I get out of the vicious circle? Stop doing the thing that's causing it. You diagnosed this yourself: It's probably the worst issue I have as a Game Master, I think of a Game, I write a campaign plot for it, End, Beggining and Middle, get Hyped, Hype my players, and after 2 mo...

(^ the accepted one)

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener or you get groups that lack the vocabulary and understanding needed for such a meta level discussion

doppelgreener

So while it's safe to generalise "it usually comes down to talk to them about it or leave", that's not the only two options and that's hardly the extent of the advice. It'd be like if a baseball coach only said "hit the ball better." "I've tried that, I've got this specific thing I can't manage." "Well, have you tried hitting the ball better?" "Yeah, I have, can you show me how to do it?" "Have you considered quitting baseball, if you can't hit the ball better?"

@Shalvenay Yeah, sometimes the advice will be pointing out what the problem even is -- the asker knew one was there but had no idea what it was exactly, or was guessing wrong -- and giving them tools and vocabulary to resolve the problem with the group.

Shalvenay

21:05

@doppelgreener likewise, you can boil all of thermostat-c-wire on DIY down to "find the other end of the transformer, attach a spare wire; if you don't have a spare wire, you'll have to pull either trick a or trick b to retask an existing wire." But, the answers aren't that simple, because everyone's HVAC system is different.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

21:17

@doppelgreener Have read it. Interesting. Very interesting. But it's 1) A very unusual situation (a person who considers himself to be a problem comes and asks how to stop being one rather than someone complains about someone else) 2) Not really a social interaction question.

I am not proposing just redirecting everyone to the FAQ and closing questions, no. I am just for reminding people that they may talk.

doppelgreener

We do that though.

It sounds like you want a feature built into the system; there isn't one though and it's probably not appropriate to ask that people talk to their group in every problem-X or social scenario. So, we can do it manually when it is appropriate and they haven't yet.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

What about a small pop-up like "Don't forget to inform us if you tried to talk to them before writing the question!" if you tag it social?

doppelgreener

21:32

that might help. there's probably some other tags that would benefit from reminders specific to the topic or question type.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

21:45

What about making a list and then proposing a Meta feature request?

Text could be "We see that you just tagged your question as [problem tag]! [Info about what the asker should do]", and there should me two buttons: "Wait, gonna fix something!" and "Everything good, let's post".

Should only work for users with reputation below around 2k

ANother good tool could be disallowing posting questions for specific tags

doppelgreener

22:09

@Baskakov_Dmitriy like not allowing questions for game-recommendations since they're no longer accepted?

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@doppelgreener Exactly!

@doppelgreener Or for tags that were purged, like someone created onyx-path not so long ago, for no apparent reason

doppelgreener

22:27

@Baskakov_Dmitriy tags get deleted after about a day if they're not on any questions at all

SevenSidedDie

22:47

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Keep in mind that anything that requires custom coding from SE staff developers has a snowball's chance at Ayers Rock in summer. Possibly not even that good a chance.

There is an existing “we see you added a problematic tag” popup feature, but even that requires a small bit of dev time and only gets added to a specific tag when there's a very strong argument for a large benefit.

Ah, found it. They're called tag warnings.

So we can ask for a specific tag to get a tag warning, but we have to make a good case for it and they're not added very often, and usually to only to very few (one or two) tags on a site that have exceptional need.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

23:05

@SevenSidedDie Well, do you thing such a suggestion can get this chance?

@SevenSidedDie Is it that hard to add a tag to the list?

10

Q: Tag specific question requirements

On Graphic Design we currently have some handy tag-specific alerts when asking questions with certain tags. These are for certain problem questions that are only a good fit for the site if they follow certain requirements. The alerts list these guidelines and specific requirements. These a...

feature-request tags questions user-experience tag-warnings

SevenSidedDie

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Just asking for a tag warning? No, it's not hard to add. But tag warnings with messages that are only conveniences for us rather than solving a significant problem we have won't likely be accepted, because too many unimportant tag warnings on SE encourages users to ignore them.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@SevenSidedDie We could do it for alignment, rules-as-written, game-recommendation, system-agnostic

doppelgreener

I see a clear universal use case for rules as written and game rec, but not the other two

SevenSidedDie

Any request would have to a) demonstrate the problem to be solved, b) show that a tag warning would significantly solve or ameliorate the problem, and c) have the community agree on a + b.

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Yes, like @doppelgreener I see a case for game-rec and rules-as-written. But for those two we would have a hard time showing that a tag warning would be the solution, rather than improved wikis or something else like blacklisting a tag.

For game-rec especially, it would likely be rejected. Tag warnings are for tags that are OK to use, but need some extra guidance when using. [game-rec] doesn't qualify because it should never be used anymore and only exists to label historical questions.

There might be a case for [system-agnostic] or [alignment], but I don't see it immediately. A meta might come to a different conclusion than just me, of course.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

23:23

I suggest to up vote this proposal then. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/286032/… That's the best thing we can get -- mods will be able to add warnings if this is implemented.

Upvote and hope for the best.

I would be especially good if some advanced filters could be created -- like "We just noticed that you tagged your question with system-agnostic along with the system tag. Check if it's really necessary."

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

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