TRPG General Chat

daze413

12:31 AM

whoa they blinded a monkey for that?

trogdor

a lot of places do some pretty bad things to some animals to get scientific/medical data

daze413

@godskook I have an answer lined up for that, if it gets reopened. I've divided XP for OotA per PC only, and haven't run into any issues

considering, also, that in the beginning, some of these NPCs will be effectively carrying the PCs weight until about 3rd or 4th level when the PCs start to outshine them

Shalvenay

12:49 AM

@trogdor yeah -- you just can't get the data otherwise.

trogdor

yeah,.. unless you did it to humans instead, which is worse

but neither of them is great

I can at least to some degree empathize with those who protest animal testing

but I also don't know how else we would find certain cures or information about these kinds of things otherwise

Shalvenay

2:48 AM

hey there @daze413

daze413

3:08 AM

@Shalvenay ohai! what's up?

Shalvenay

@daze413 not a whole lot, as for you?

daze413

@Shalvenay got a game coming up tonight, so that's nice. Gonna run 2 recurring players and 1 returning player through the Darkest Dungeon. It is likely to be a boss fight

we'll see how treating the party as 50% larger affects the difficulty of an encounter, if it really does deliver the hard-but-still-beatable result

Magician

...posted an answer to the tremulus question. Got downvoted within the first 3 minutes. Oh-kay then.

I know single downvotes are random noise, but that was abrupt

Miniman

Presumably someone took exception to your criticism of tremulus?

Magician

I seem to be ruffling feathers lately

Miniman

3:18 AM

It only takes a light breeze to ruffle feathers, so it's bound to happen.

godskook

3:29 AM

Anybody familiar with a 3.5 or PF class call "Master Sage"?

Miniman

@godskook Nope, and Google doesn't seem to be either.

Even searching dndwiki (shudder) comes up blank.

daze413

@Miniman let me wash you!

there, there, it's all over...

Shalvenay

hey there @KorvinStarmast

Magician

In other news, I couldn't sleep last night so I came up with a house rule for Fate that fixes an issue only I seem to have with it. Namely, the checklist of aspects, invocations and boosts.

In most large fights, the same thing happens: players want to land big hits, so they look around for each and every invocation and boost they can use. The Room's On Fire. The opponent is Banged Up. I'm the Goddamned Batman. What else?.. Oh, A Criminal Killed My Parents, and the opponent is a criminal. At that point, it's not heroic or dramatic. It's checking off items from a list.

The solution I've seen is referencing the invoked aspects in your narration... But that hardly works when there's 5 of them. There's no focus. So that's what I want to add.

In this variant, the first boost or invocation, free or otherwise, becomes the focus of the narration and gets +1. So it either becomes a +3 or a reroll +1, before any stunts get involved. Any further invocations or boosts get a -1 instead, becoming a +1 or a reroll -1.

How does this work out? Using one invocation is even more rewarded than before, so you'd want to pretty much always do that. At two invocations you're at the same +4 you would have had without the change. Going beyond that is not very efficient, though.

There's a reduced incentive to look for every invocation you can find. Similarly, the narration of the action is actually cohesive. But if you really wanted to blow through your fate points and stacked up free invocations, you can still do that and get some benefit.

The one concern I have is players being unable to take out the opponent with one massive blow as before. More individual attacks working through their stress boxes may be required. At the same time, you'd do more damage with the one invoke, so maybe that's not an issue. Still, perhaps reducing the total stress boxes some opponents get is prudent.

Thoughts?..

trogdor

3:57 AM

it at least seems like something worth testing out

our group tends to have more of a problem with not compelling ourselves as often as we could though

Magician

That's a whole 'nother issue, and one with which mechanical tweaks can hardly help

trogdor

I don't usually see anyone going for more than 1 or 2 aspects to invoke on something

but that is just us

Magician

It's typically free invocations and boosts, I found

trogdor

for any group that has the issue that you apparently do, this seems like a worthwhile fix to try

Magician

Yeah, if you're not regularly seeing 3+ invocations on a single roll, there's no need for this house rule.

trogdor

3:59 AM

@Magician we don't have those floating around long enough for people to invoke a lot of them at once

they typically get used the turn they are made or the one after

my only concern is it possibly over-incentivizing single aspect invokes

Magician

That could be a problem, but maybe also good? Bringing drama or situational context into the action is what Fate's about, and this way you really want to do so.

trogdor

it doesn't really punish 2 invokes, but it does create a sort of stingy fate point economy where you might get greedy and want to spend exactly one fate point every turn

Magician

That's certainly true. Would need to actually try it out to see if that's a problem.

trogdor

I do think it would depend on the group

that seems like it will always be the biggest factor

I do think it is a good thing if your group wants to spend multiple fate points on some turns

but I can see how it would be an issue if they typically want to be constantly spending 5 of them at a time

Magician

May relax it to let fate point invokes be unchanged. Those are very limited as it is.

trogdor

4:07 AM

to be fair though, that takes actually spending a fate point you can only get back by getting compelled, or taking a turn to create an invokable aspect with free compels

Magician

Oh, forgot an important thing. The high concept aspect cannot be the focus of the roll.

trogdor

@Magician is this a major issue for you?

people over using high concept aspects I mean

Magician

Focusing on it is not novel or creative. Yes, you are the Goddamned Batman, that's nice.

trogdor

our group probably does use the High Concept aspect a tad more than we probably should

but I don't think it is a huge issue for us

Magician

It's not an issue on its own for me, no. But with the emphasis on single invokes I want to avoid the overuse of the generic go-to high concept aspect.

trogdor

4:10 AM

fair enough

though to me that suggests that the problem might be more that some of the aspects, maybe even the high concept one some of the time, might not fit the criteria they should to be aspects?

Magician

What do you mean?

trogdor

my group has discussed trying harder to make aspects that are broadly usable and more creative

we sometimes rush into making as many aspects for our characters at once as we can at the start of character creation

and we have found it often works better when we limit ourselves to just a couple aspects and let the rest emerge through play

I don't know for a fact that this is an issue for other groups, but I can imagine it might be

if an aspect is a "really good aspect" it should be broadly useable to be invoked, and easily compelled as well, and it shouldn't say a similar thing about a character as another aspect does

overlap is fine but not too much overlap

if you have "I am the Goddang Batman" and "Vigilante Crime Fighter"

those might not need to both be on the same character

just as an example

Magician

Agreed. Coming up with good aspects is hard. But so is coming up with good aspects on the spot during play.

trogdor

also obviously the first one is kinda a better aspect than the second one, but I was just trying to illustrate a specific point

@Magician this is fair too, but I have found that when we rush through the first few minutes of making a character and just put down all the aspects, it is indeed worse than when we realize through play a thing about a character that could fit well as an aspect

Magician

Fair enough. We'll try the on-the-go character generation next time we play Fate. Which may be a while...

trogdor

4:18 AM

also, realizing an aspect through play is best when applied with patience

it's awesome if you want to do something on the first session that you think adding an aspect to invoke for would be good, but if you still have 1 or 2 aspects to fill out you could wait a few sessions to see what your character acts like in a few different scenarios to pick out an aspect for them

I know I personally have a particular problem creating aspects for characters

I tend to try to just cram all the aspect slots with stuff and then realize a little too far in that I made the character a little flat

that isn't always how it has worked out, I think Dr Light was a huge hit, but a lot of the other fate characters I have made might have been a little one dimensional

@Magician it may be a while for us too

Magician

What are you playing nowadays?

trogdor

nothing steady

mostly King of All Monsters or whatever the exact name was

the one @BESW made

Magician

That... seemed like a fun one-off

trogdor

we have not been playing it as a steady game, it's just that the last few times we met up and played anything, it was that

it doesn't have a campaign or anything, we just played several separate sessions of it

though technically one of them "remembered" the one before it

in so far as two of the monsters from the last game had basically statues in their honor

which were of course pretty promptly destroyed

the only fate we have played in a while is a Fate StarGate game

with just @BESW as the GM and @doppelgreener and myself as players

and we have only played two sessions of it

and the last one must have been at least a month or a month and a half ago

our last almost semi steady fate game was the Amaterasu one

which we all agreed needs to be rebooted in some way or other to work

SmokeDetector

7:27 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching product name in body, pattern-matching website in body, repeated URL at end of long post: The truth is almost all men have a few interest by tansyjoy on rpg.SE

daze413

8:40 AM

Have you tried turning it off an- I mean, have you talked to your GM about this?

kviiri

I wonder if I'm imagining it, but I feel "talk to your GM/players/deity-of-preference" has become a lot less common answer to questions where it could be applicable.

Which is nice, IMO, because even though it's usually sound advice it's thrown about so casually it's becoming meaningless.

Magician

While prevalent and not question-specific, it is the first step in resolving many if not most issues at the table. No sense in diagnosing finer details if a simple conversation can solve it.

daze413

8:55 AM

@kviiri I've seen it a couple of times this past week I mean, it's not really that bad, but usually if you want really quality answers, you need to talk to your GM first, and then ask. Here's to hoping more people will talk to their GMs!

trogdor

yeah talking things out is a good thing to do in a lot of cases

daze413

I sure did learn to talk things out before asking. Now, if only I had a GM to talk to....

trogdor

and if the issue isn't solved solely by that, bringing things here after amassing the info you can hopefully get from doing so isn't a bad idea either

but I have mostly seen "talk to them about it" when the poster of the question didn't specify that they had

daze413

@trogdor I would be so bold to say, that it is the best idea :)

trogdor

@daze413 seeing as you said it first, just with different words, I would expect as much xD

daze413

9:02 AM

We also do get the occasional "yes, I talked to the GM, and now I'm even more confused"

but they resolve themselves

trogdor

well that can certainly happen yeah

but not talking to them is a horrible losing kind of game

nwp

To be fair hearing strangers give advice gives a lot better perspective on who is doing it wrong and what can be done about it. Especially identifying when you fall into a stereotype like "Mad Scientist" or "Strategist" helps a lot in identifying and solving problems that regular talks between GM and players just cannot do.

trogdor

if talking about a difference in understanding about something doesn't help, there might not be much that can

I mean, I am not saying no one should ask for help on the site

just that a regular conversation with people helps you understand them better, and then you can give more understanding to the people trying to help you here

nwp

There is some weird psychological effect where you just don't believe someone no matter the arguments and a third person saying it makes it believable.

Anne Aunyme

yeah, as long as it's only one person why would (s)he be more right than you?

after all if you have a strong opinion on the topic you must have experimented things related to that, probably more than this random dude, but more than two of them? maybe not.

nwp

9:20 AM

I always found that effect to not be explainable by rational thought. There are super convincing arguments that you just don't buy and then some random dude says "Yeah" and you fold. Makes no sense to me, but I experienced doing it.

doppelgreener

@trogdor especially when those people aren't necessarily your friend, and don't have a stake in ensuring you stay happy. those people will call you out on stuff pretty well.

like that one time someone complained to us that their GM was a jerk, and I answered with, actually, they're the one being a jerk.

trogdor

@doppelgreener do you mean in context of people on the site giving advice to question askers?

doppelgreener

@trogdor yup

trogdor

mk

I was 90-10 sure it was that

doppelgreener

-19

Q: DM is making rules without reason, how can I stop this

My DM is a beginner, she does not know the basics very well. I am playing a game where I am inside a camp with creatures that can give you almost any food that you want (We're doing this game off of a campaign). My character like to eat human but they won't serve that to me, it's against they're ...

house-rules

trogdor

9:26 AM

the 10 was maybe some abusive friendship scenario or something XD

doppelgreener

oh right yeah hopefully not ;_;

trogdor

I have had about one friend ever who I probably should have realized at the time was not treating me the way he should have

good news is though, he didn't do anything that scarred me for life, and I got a free life lesson out of it XD

nwp

@doppelgreener You phrased "you are the one being a jerk" really well.

trogdor

he did legit scare me a couple times, but life is a little scary sometimes

doppelgreener

@nwp teachable moments! \o/

trogdor

9:36 AM

lol

nwp

@nwp Maybe that is nature's way of diversifying human behavior in order to not have everyone die on the first good-sounding fatal idea.

kviiri

@daze413 This summarizes my opinion on talking quite well.

I am in a party where we take turns being the GM, and as a consequence we spend quite a lot of time talking about various issues in our game. It is definitely helpful, but it's more like a starting point for finding solutions than a solution in itself.

kviiri

10:37 AM

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/101913/… Yet Another Video Game Question (ps. what's a trainer?)

Anyone know a 5e equivalent for The Shop? d20srd.org/d20/magic/shop.html

ACuriousMind

11:13 AM

@kviiri A "trainer" is usually a cheating program that enables you to give your character items, abilities or whatever else that wouldn't be normally available at that point (or at all).

doppelgreener

Have I ever told you how glad I am that these pictures exist? https://t.co/JlLXfWMG5Z

Tweeted by grahamslexa on June 19, 2017 at 4:49 AM

Onward, mighty steed!

kviiri

11:34 AM

@ACuriousMind Is that short for "so-I-don't-have-to-train"-er?

trogdor

@doppelgreener oooh jeez the comments under the pictures though

Anne Aunyme

My guess is that's like something that trains your character for you

trogdor

and I was wondering if it was photo-shopped or something, seems it is worse than that

doppelgreener

@trogdor oh nooooooooooooo T_T

trogdor

@doppelgreener sorry to ruin that X(

doppelgreener

11:41 AM

@trogdor it's worth learning about!

trogdor

it is

ACuriousMind

@kviiri Heh. I think @AnneAunyme's etymology is more likely, though

kviiri

11:54 AM

Even at the risk of sounding like a total gaming elitist, I never figured out why people would play games that are so boring they'd rather let a software accessory play it for them.

BESW

Simply put, time sinks.

More complexly, many games have a variety of different minigames and some people really like some of them while detesting others.

nwp

@kviiri They want to skip the boring parts and get to the interesting parts. They want to cast wish, draw from the deck of many things, have a keep and kill a dragon. Starting at level 1 you need to play for a while to get there and the "time spent per enjoyment had"-factor is unacceptably low.

kviiri

@nwp I wouldn't trust a game designed so badly to have an entertaining late game either, I guess.

Maybe it's different with games with attractive multiplayer scenes for powerlevelers.

nwp

Once could also say they are IRL homebrewing in order to not let the rules get in the way of fun. It's just that the GM they need to convince happens to be a computer.

kviiri

12:10 PM

Sure

But usually, whether for video games or tabletops, if one needs to homebrew to get a good game it's a warning sign! ;)

BESW

Sure. But it's increasingly prevalent for games to be designed with time sinks to pad their play time.

doppelgreener

games that think more gameplay mechanics equals more fun

►

and then also as well

BESW

(One thing I admire about REIS is that, as much as I dislike some of its minigames, they don't try to fool me into thinking I'm getting more play for my money with time sinks. The minigames are actually feeding the game's design goals.)

nwp

I suppose a perfectly designed game would not need homebrewing, but the rules are made for typical players and if you are particularly impatient none of the games quite fit you.

kviiri

@doppelgreener Oh boy. This reminds me of Assassin's Creed: Revelations! (aka the game in the series with the least plot-relevant revelations)

doppelgreener

12:15 PM

@kviiri it reminds me of Jak II, which I could not complete because they had a section with a completely different game mechanic to the rest of the game (a rail shooter) and I couldn't beat it.

kviiri

Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain is a first-class stealth action game, but they had to slap a forced base-building game on that too. And it's even forced-online. :(

nwp

Maybe some day a market place will emerge where you can do deals like "You play the RTS part in my FPS game and I play the FPS part in your RTS game".

3

kviiri

Heh :D

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