@KorvinStarmast It was one of the three or four things I came across in quick succession, and thought a broad reminder might be useful. I don't express any judgment on your opinion, just encourage you to express it Nicely =)
had a real "d'oh!" moment earlier today. Flagged a post. Stack-wide mod-response: "what, exactly, are you intending with this flag?" "Uh, actually I just forgot for a moment that I'm a mod now."
my issue with Fate is that I don't really get the way it's supposed to enforce narrative cycles, but that's due to me being rather...aloof to the normative modes of storytelling
@Shalvenay I feel Fate is more difficult to get right than the *World games but I can't really articulate why. I think it has got something to do with the Fate point mechanic only reinforcing narrative when everyone understands how iti s supposed to do that, but I'm not certain yet.
What I love about Dungeon World is that I finally can just say "yes" to all the reasonable-but-not-covered-by-mechanics actions my players attempt. Also, the look on their faces when they ask "What do I know about X?" and I turn the question back on them and let them describe what they know about X is priceless
@ACuriousMind yeah -- my problem with describing what I know about X is that for quite a few values of X, it...doesn't tie well to the narrative-at-hand
On the other hand, I get fatigued running DW for longer than a dozen-session or so single story-arc. If I'm ever going to do a real "campaign," I've got to rejigger something about how I do it.
@Shalvenay Well, the art is to "roll with it" - DW taxes the improvisational skills of both the DM and the players a lot more, but in exchange it make smuch of the prep that is necessary for other games obsolete
@Papayaman1000 I love prep that gets used. I usually prep many things the players never stumble across, and DW's "fronts" framework does a good job of restricting me to things that will actually get used, I feel
the other half of it is that I probably would have trouble running DW because it makes assumptions about dungeons that don't quite jive with how I design mine
@Papayaman1000 Validated such flags do. But when a mod casts such a flag, it is automatically considered validated, the post will be deleted, the automatic filters fed, and the rep penalty applied. It takes about 6 ordinary user flag to reach validation without mod intervention, I think.
@Papayaman1000 you have to be screwing up pretty bad to draw a spam or rude/abusive flag to begin with, and validation requires several flag "votes" as well. NAA/VLQ don't carry a rep penalty I believe (many new users draw a few of those as they adjust to the Stack environs), and misc flags obv. don't either (I've had to flag a few of my own posts to suggest migrations and such)
@ACuriousMind I also run mostly open-world, so my players usually just scour the landscape until they get bored. When they do, I recycle anything that would jive with the new setting, and nuke anything that won't. As such, most of my stuff gets used. Meh.
@ACuriousMind Okay. So you can't just have one stalker who blasts your score to oblivion.
I believe the only times I've been flagged may have been a couple of flags-to-close here on RPG.SE and maybe one or two each on WB and DIY, and a few self misc flags for migrations off WB
is there a way to ask the Stack which of your posts drew a flag?
@Shalvenay Most of mine are to-close, either because the question hit two Stacks' grey areas, because there wasn't really a good stack to ask it in (but not a subjective question), or b/c it attracted too many bad answers. I like to think my questions are okay...
@Papayaman1000 The problem there is it has anything at all to do with King of Tokyo, which is an objectively stupid game. Unrelatedly, I can't roll in that game to save my life.
@Papayaman1000 I usually run "open-world" but with some sort of overarching plot. My players never just run around and search for amusement, they have some sort of motivation. It just...may become weird, depending on what happens in game.
@Shalvenay things are going well; had a good international tabletop day on Saturday. There were maybe 15 of us, and I think my wife said we played 18 distinct games, some of them multiple times.
@ACuriousMind Same here. Yeah, there's a main storyline, but if they feel like jumping across dimensions to find 15 JoJo references in a session, I am perfectly okay with that. And they get cool stuff for doing that, too, so why not?
@JoelHarmon nice. con went OK :) did get to run my dungeon once while there (although the party at the con did get the dubious honor of being the first folks to set off the dungeon's fire alarm ;)
@ACuriousMind Eerie? I've got no problem with the idea of my car making better driving decisions than me, so I've certainly got no problem with the idea of Smokey being better at spam-flagging than me. (And more honest about when it's not sure of something.)
TL;DR: We did it, so... yes.
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I'm the kind of person who's always teetering on the verge of making an alt to make a spammy meme, but with just enough respect [and fear] for SE that I'd never do it
And then there's really unsettling things like this study about fooling pattern-recognition networks into recogizing patterns where no human would see any.
The only thing I prefer the paper versions for are the old rule books of my father - it gives a sense of history to me pulling those out (though I haven't played by them in years)
@nitsua60 Evil Hat has that figured out; you can buy the PDF alone, but if you buy their dead tree books they give you the PDF for free. If you buy their dead trees from a third party, Evil Hat will still confirm the purchase and send you a PDF if you ask.
it is He Whose Name Shall Not Be Uttered Here For Fear of Incurring Wrath, but it starts with an "S", has 4 letters, ends with a "9", and is someone on the Community Management and Development teams here at SE
@Shalvenay all good thanks :) - although (this sounds like a copout) I'm actually jus heading to sleep and pings r coming in on my phone and I can't resist :D
everything is a drag at the moment. I'm looking forward to the highlights - free comic book day this saturday; DMing D&D next saturday; playing D&D following saturday
because there are some that'd call a LN Gnoll Monk/Priestess of St. Cuthbert "absurd" and likewise for a LG Bronze Dragonborn Fey Knight Paladin/Feylock (although the latter hasn't reached the point of multiclassing, yet...)
although I actually have a good answer that I didn't run, but instead DMed for
@ATaco Well, I recently found charsheets hanging around from the first time I played Temple of Elemental Evil; as with anything one produces as a teen, it was pretty horrifying to look back at. (There was a lot of energy invested in the constellation of NWPs on some of those characters.)
@Papayaman1000 I built one in 2e, that I never got to play. Had maxed Open Lock at 2nd level, maxed Find/Remove Trap at 3rd. Using options from Complete Book of Thieves (Locksmith NWP, and I think a "kit").
@Yuuki Fiend (devil) or Great Old One (Tyranthraxus in particular) if you want the patron-warlock tension to be strong -- Undying would be a good fit if you want a more...tightly fitted set of pieces for the char I reckon. (the classical Good-aligned patron+warlock pair is a feylock, but that's a poor fit for Oath of the Crown I reckon)
if you wish to work out custom patronage, an elemental patron could also be cool
but that's not something that's been outright published for 5e -- you'd have to fill in the blanks from 3.5e and 4e stuff IIRC
riffing on the ancient wizard theme -- you could make it the lich-like form of the last wizard exiled from the old kingdom xD or was it always a low-magic place?
Just got a Navy recruiting letter. "There are people who think and there are people who act. There are a rare few who do both. Achieving more by age 30 than most people do in a lifetime." Sorry to say, but... the ship's kinda sailed on that one! (cc: @KorvinStarmast)
@Shalvenay Sure. He's the illegitimate son of the royal family, so they keep him around Just In Case. He's trained by an older generation's bastard to be an Assassin. He can and does kill people, but more often he just solves problems.
My favorite example: an uppity warrior starts forming a band that may cause trouble. Solution? Poison the food to give her mouth sores. The kind of mouth sores that superstitious warriors think happen to commanders who lie to their troops. Problem solved.
some of it is more back door diplomacy and observation type activities
@Shalvenay I think he does use some basic engineering for sabotage, but mostly it's the diplomacy and counter-spying kind of thing
@Adeptus I read the first book of the current trilogy, but found it very slow going, to the point where I still haven't managed to crack the spine of the second book.
@Adeptus The Liveships was a very different style to Assassin's/Fool's; Rain Wild exaggerates those differences, so if you liked Liveships you'll probably like Rain Wilds.
@Yuuki Not at all, no. But there's a kingdom with no magic, because the founder of the kingdom used magic to keep himself alive forever and didn't want anything else interfering. I was just thinking that someone similar would make a cool Undying patron.
rpg.stackexchange.com/q/99345/23064 I'm struggling to understand how this could be opinion-based? Won't people who don't use long hallways just not answer? Is there something I'm missing? And those who do will have a right answer (the most complete reason)
Before the edit, it was inviting unsupported speculation.
There was no way to gauge whether one person's speculation was "better" than another's, which is a cardinal Stack Exchange sin: there needs to be some kind of differentiation in voting beyond popularity or who can make the biggest list.
Something came to mind earlier: what if I have voracious leaner, and I cause a monster to lose their body which they rolled both super fast and gargantuan for? Do I gain both features or choose one?
@doppelgreener So, two changes should address that.
First, attacking:
> if you get higher, the defender loses a feature associated with that body part (your choice if there's more than one). If you tie, the defender picks which head or body feature to lose. (You can't lose special features to attacks.)
So you don't lose all body features at once, you just lose one at a time.
> voracious learner (when you cause a defender to lose a feature, you can add the target's lost feature to your own; you can do this only once per time you have rolled this feature)
I've adjusted each tables' "get a new feature" ability to follow a similar formula.
Voracious learner lets you get a new feature of your enemy's choosing after a successful attack; regenerating lets you get a random new feature from a table of the enemy's choosing after a failed defense; transforming lets you get a random new feature from a table of your choosing by sacrificing a turn.
Each of them effectively gives you an extra "hit point," but with different triggers and levels of control.
Because you're destined to be the king of monsters if you're that much more powerful than the other ones. (but also probably everyone else is going to target you together as a common enemy.)
@BESW Fair enough. I'm running my first session as a DM either this weekend or next, and I'd like a few canon fodder enemies at one point to make my players feel powerful before trying to murder them all.
@DrRDizzle I'm only conversationally-familiar with 4e, so let me stick to 5e: you can use moderate numbers of low-level creatures to threaten high-level parties. The action economy and a decent GM ensure that. (I.e. the average party of five can probably only direct targeted attacks less than a dozen ways a turn, excluding AoE. If the low level creatures are numerous in the dozens, don't cluster together to provide AoE opportunities, and focus fire, they can seriously threaten PCs.)
But there isn't a formal system/hierarchy like I understand 4e has.
In a recent campaign our L10-12 party managed to annoy an animated chess set. I don't think any of the pieces were above CR3, but the 32 of them managed to give us some of our worst trouble of the campaign. I'd say that encounter was more touch-and-go than the BBEG, frankly.
@nitsua60 My players are only level 1, so I'll have to be careful. The plan was for them to run afoul of a group of bandits - might have to rethink how many bandits they meet.
@DrRDizzle in the Monster Manual, Appendix B (page 342), there is a handy list of NPCs. Basically humanoid monsters. The entry for Bandit lists it at a challenge rating of 1/8; Bandit Captain is 2; Commoners are 0; Cultists 1/8, etc.
Combine those with the DMG reference I gave earlier (giving particular note to the Difficulty table), and you should be able to get what you want.
@DrRDizzle The other thing to remember is that much encounter design leaves out the most important point: objectives. Your bandits likely subsist off of waylaying commonfolk whom they can easily intimidate into giving up a "road maintenance fee" of some sort. "You see, we're really just here for your safety."
They're likely not looking to fight to the death. So the moment a party of L1 fights back and wounds one, what's their morale like?
In my world they just scatter like leaves before a stiff wind. And if their objective (take someone's money) was thwarted by the PCs objective (keep a hod of my stuff) then the PCs have "won" the encounter.
@nitsua60 Thankfully, that's something I was already aware of. These bandits run a false horse and carriage operation in order to kill and loot travellers, but they're also cowards who will run as soon as they realise the PCs are able and willing to fight back.
@Ben Downvote those that strike you as adding nothing and just creating noise, consider leaving a comment along the lines of "I don't see how this adds anything useful, so I've downvoted."
TL;DR: We did it, so... yes.
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