@Zachiel @Patta Do cards stay with you when you move to a new scene?

@doppelgreener my Wednesday night group started up the hardcover for this season of adventurers league. Their patron asked them to go on a [save the world] quest, offering a number of items in reward. And, "the greatest treasure I have found during all my time in this world and others."

The clock's ticking. Nine months, give-or-take, until the reveal =)

@daze413 any chance you want to run that mass-undead combat simulation for the question you answered?

@BESW I think I would actually use this yeah

Well then, happy birthday.

thanks

that is a good birthday gift sir

I know it isn't expensive but boy is it incredibly neat

Yey!

(urrrrgh roll20's interface is awful.)

(yeah...sadly, maptool is awful just in different ways)

@nitsua60 You want to play all 4 PCs? sure :D

@BESW nice

@nitsua60 oh yes! let us know how it went :D I've yet to find a group for this experiment

hey there @daze413

@Shalvenay hiya! How're things?

Downsides of living in a hotel room: housekeeping just cleaned the container I was using to store bacon fat.

alright here, as for you?

hey there @Yuuki, and did you label it?

That's probably why they cleaned it.

they cleaned out the container labeled "bacon drippings"?!

Well, I didn't label it.

ah, that'd do it :P

Mostly because the container's the hotel's.

so yeah -- how is the drying-out process going over there?

No one's gonna ask why Yuuki's storing bacon fat in hotel rooms? No one? I'll leave it then

so yeah -- @daze413, mind if I poke you on Discord?

@Yuuki ah yeah there is the problem

or nvm actually

in my experience they do that all the time with things that came with the room XD

not that I have ever stored bacon fat in a hotel before XD

@daze413 because it is delicious ?

@trogdor by itself, not really XD

well I assume it is going to be used properly

hello there @FernandoVR

At home, sure, but in a hotel...?

I had not even thought of that,... but like I am sure there was a plan at least

@daze413 Well, my home is currently unlivable so I'm staying in the hotel for a reason.

....this there a way to have roll20 roll a die and add it to the previous roll?

not to the previous roll

I believe you can have roll20 give you the sum of two rolls, check their wiki for the full syntax

Gumshoe One-2-One has you roll your dice one at a time, until you run out of dice or hit the target number.

that's...probably something to mention on their forums as a feature request

@Yuuki Ah, sorry, I had assumed you were travelling or something similar. Poor bacon fat :(

@daze413 If you do decide to do it, I'd love to join.

wb @daze413

@Miniman Hm, it should be quick to setup and run, and also quick to end. Making the 8th-level PCs will take longer than the battle, I thinks

anyone else wanna do it? I'll make the battle mat

like right now?

i mean, idk? haha I'm just making the mat

done! Ping me when you wanna start

hrm...we'll see how well my point that "WotC doesn't hide elephants in mouseholes" goes over on the Stack

@Shalvenay apropos of?

ah, your new answer, will read

[...hours of frustration later...] Sod that for a game of toy soldiers. I'm just going to use a shared Google Photos album.

a game of toy soldiers?

@trogdor It's a British idiom for "I don't want to do this." There's no agreement on the origin, but the most plausible in my opinion is that it's using the slang "toy soldiers" meaning darts.

ah

So it's basically "Screw this, let's go to the pub and get drunk and play darts instead."

I thought you were going to be playing a pure tactical game with someone or something

Yeah, no. Just an idiom for "I want to stop doing this (and do something fun/frivolous instead)."

fair enough

I can't figure out how to get the cards to stay in order in the "choose" section, and neither the Choose nor the Hand display thumbnails are big enough to actually read the cards. So you have to look at the cards one at a time to find the one you want.

So, yeah.

Rollable Table tokens have similar problems--I can keep it in order there, at least, but re-sizing on the table becomes an issue and I still can't read the cards so I'd have to just count out as I go down the slider to find the one I want.

Which would be okay with 4 cards in a deck, but not with 18.

Add that Roll20 can't even do Gumshoe One-2-One dice rolling properly, and doesn't have any character sheet templates for it...

(The solution for the cards is to have all 30+ cards laid out face-up on the GM layer rather than in my hand or the deck. That... has logistical problems of its own.)

If everything else worked, I'd be willing to endure it.

I'm very disappointed because the Pelgrane folks talk a lot about how perfect Roll20 was for their in-house playtesting.

@BESW I never worked with car d decks for anything but Initiative in Savage Worlds, so I really could not tell you, sorry.

I appreciate the help; it looked very much like the right choice.

I may still try to power my way through just to say I didn't give up.

I really like Roll20, never found something better for the games I play, but sadly it is tailored more to games like DnD and other big games (naturally, I totally get why they do that) and all games with less traditional mechanics are hard to handle :(

Even for D&D, I can see the interface bugs being ridiculously frustrating.

You can't drag new items into certain kinds of folders unless you've right-clicked to add at least one new item that way first.

There could probably be a way to do the stuff you want (both rolling and the cards) with the API, but I have not really worked with it yet and it would probably boil down to a ton of chat commands, which is not better in my opinion :D

@BESW You can, but it is not easy to do, yes.

In some cases you can only drag files from your computer to upload them, in other cases you can only click to add a file--despite both cases offering both options.

The "hand" pop-open interface is partially hidden by the top left toolbar interface.

And don't forget the WYSIWYG editor for the handouts. It is extremely frustrating to style text correctly in that. I quickly learned to accept that I will have additional new lines or different distances between lines on the regular. There is much that needs to be improved about it, for sure.

Sadly it looks like most of the development time these days is going into the advanced features (Dynamic Lighting + Fog of War interactions in the last update for example) and into DnD Stuff (which is fine, WotC partnership and all that. It was to be expected.)

I'm just sad that the things new GMs tend to encounter first (folders, handouts, stuff like that) are the most frustrating things. I'd love to know how many people did not stick around due to that.

@Patta [raises hand] This is the third or fourth time I've tried in the last... four years?

The furthest I've gotten was a single session of 13th Age run by someone else.

@nitsua60 I can't wait :)

@nitsua60 I just realised a way this could go terribly wrong: the adventure is terrible, enemies are made, people die, the adventuring party that turns up to claim the reward is traumatised and only barely holding together. Half the members weren't in it at the beginning.

Then again, the player says it's terrible, the GM says it's a plot thread

@doppelgreener Why not both?

@BESW It's totally both. 😀

@BESW It probably depends a lot on the games you try it with. I had great success with Roll20, but the list of games is relatively small and all are pretty "standard" in terms of Mechanics.

I remember trying with 13th Age, two versions of Fate, and now Gumshoe One-2-One.

Let me see if I can list them, off the top of my head: Dungeon Slayers, The Dark Eye (4.1), Pathfinder, Edge of the Empire (Which really only works with access to the API for the dice pools), Splittermond, Savage Worlds, Vampire the Masquerade

Those all worked fine. But maybe I am a bit biased, as I started playing on Roll20 long before I had my first session "in person".

Hmm. As I said, I don't know Gumshoe (it is still on my "to read" list somewhere, though, from your recommendation a long while ago), and I don't know 13th Age much, but I've seen Fate (Accelerated) work pretty good on RollPlay: Nebula Jazz... But as I said, it might just be a "mentality" thing, too.

I know there's a lot of work that's gone into making supportive material for roll20 Fate.

Yea, definitely. Maybe now that official Gumshoe Support exists, people will start with more support for that, too.

For my current game on Roll20 (The Dark Eye), there is at least a really, really good character sheet, which helps a ton.

Unfortunately I doubt Gumshoe One-2-One will get much community support even in a Gumshoe-friendly environment.

It's a rebuild from the ground up and while it's very similar in broad strokes it needs a very different infrastructure.

Then you might be out of luck, yeah :(

Still, if Pelgrane itself is involved there's hope.

But definitionally, a game designed for just one GM and one player will have a smaller base of users than a game designed for one GM and three to five players.

There are a ton of people on the Roll20 forums that are crazy good with making character sheets and API stuff, and know pretty much all the tricks and such. Maybe if you are lucky, people will do it for the challenge alone, but that would probably require people to actually push the game on the Roll20 forums

The character sheet would be super simple, if the dice rolling is available to back it up.

Half your stats are just "make check marks on this list of abilities" and the other half are "how many dice, between 0 and 3, do you roll for each of these skills?"

Yea, and that dice rolling could probably be done via the API, if you use some tricks :D (Store the result of the dice rolls in the characters sheet or somewhere else and work with that etc.)

OK, yeah, that is super simple. Just the dice rolling would be a problem then.

The thing with the API is that you need to pay to use it, even if you want to use scripts from other people. Having to pay to play a specific game will probably not push the player base on Roll20....

(the player base of that game, I mean)

Yeah, it'd have to be a durn easy and amazing experience.

I don't have data for the Fantasy Flight Star Wars games, but those suffer from the same problem, as far as I know

Last time I played one of it on Roll20, I needed the API script for the dice... Luckily, I had a subscription at that time :D

Oh, I forgot, I played Dogs in the Vineyard on Roll20, too. And it worked surprisingly well, but only with an extensive API script, too.

OK, I just checked, you still need the API for the FFG Star Wars Games.

Kind of puzzling that the Roll20 team would not make stuff like that free for all players, but well, I know nothing about their internal processes and things like that, so.... They might have reasons for it.

Dogs in the Vineyard... wow, that must be intense scripting.

Well, the script basically lets you set up areas for each player, and when a player rolls dice, poker chips (or tokens with other graphics that you can set yourself) with the given value are created in that area. The rest is (was, at least, it's been a year or two since I used it) up to the players

@Patta Out of curiosity: 4.1 or 5?

By the way, I'm looking for an idea for a campaign I have to scribble down until tomorrow morning. It takes place in The Dark Eye, but that doesn't really matter as I only need an idea for the campaign. I can sketch the rest of my campaign around that, but I'm desperate for a starting point...

@Narusan 4.1 - I don't really like 5, from the little bit of play I had and have seen with it.

@Patta @eimyr might be interested in that if he runs DITV again; when we played he manually set up those boxes and we dragged dice from chat into them.

@doppelgreener I just tried to get that to work again, but I failed. Maybe the script is discontinued :(

@Patta Oh nooo. ;_;

wiki.roll20.net/Script:Dice_in_the_Vineyard

For me, the site does not load :(

Ah, nevermind, it worked now :D

was just about to say something

Still, it is quite old. It's from 2015.

But who knows, maybe it still works. I'll try it again :D

OK, the script seems to work, but the default images for the poker chips are no longer available

@eimyr if you are interested in that script, you would probably only need to use custom images. Which should not be that hard. If you need them, I can search for the ones I used, but they where pretty much medieval coins, which I used for an alternative setting idea.

hey there @doppelgreener

@Shalvenay Hi!

how're things going?

going okay. having a relaxing saturday. you?

OK here. trying to figure something out though if you wouldn't mind helping me...

basically, it seems that when some (most?) folks want to steer their RP away from the dungeon-crawl motif towards a more town-centric style, they are looking for something centered around interpersonal relationships and power politics, if you will

whereas, I tend to steer away from dungeon-crawling to a more systems- and institutions-oriented view, where the bedrock of government is law and due process, not political maneuvering

and I'm trying to figure out how to even communicate/explain the latter to potential players who autoomatically leap to the former when they are trying to communicate they don't want the dungeon-crawl motif to feature in what they're playing

if you could put a finger on what the character would do in your law and order setting. Fetch the authorities? Testify? Mount a case?

@nitsua60 a lot of it is in the courts yes -- testimony, building and pursuing a case, that sort of thing

@Shalvenay you don't understand people that well so you prefer dealing with well-established understandable systems

@doppelgreener you're probably on point there, yes

that's how to explain your position or perspective at least, if that's what you're asking about

I think he is asking more about how to handle doing something in the game with that stance

if I am not mistaken

maybe how to communicate his way of thinking on the subject to the players?

@trogdor yeah

so like, how to show them, really get them to understand how this system of laws and government works on the scale that it effects individuals directly?

or take an actual broader view of it?

@trogdor take a broader view, and recognize that trying to play in the power-politics style is something the world can and will push back on (trying to bend the judge's ear too much gets you sanctioned in court, for a simple example)

ok,.. so are the players still playing individual people?

because I think that is honestly the biggest stumbling block to this idea

not necessarily in an insurmountable way, but taking individual people and making them interact with the larger scope of how the government/laws/politics work is daunting to say the least

@trogdor yeah, it's probably the kind of feeling a newly-minted attorney gets when having to go up against the Feds for their very first case

very apt comparison

my question is,.. are you sure your players are willing to buy into this idea?

(i'm not personally following the thread of the question)

@trogdor I'm indeed not

@doppelgreener ok, so as I understand it at least, he wants to make a game involving the PC's interacting with the system of laws themselves, through the people enforcing those laws of course I assume, and try to get,... whatever they are gunning for done that way

doesn't tend to happen with exclusion of the people element, especially not if it's D&D-based

I assume that means working with and around politicians, and or law enforcement, and or lawyers, and or judges, for the most part

but that the laws themselves and the overall structure of the society, I assume again, is not taking some kind of backseat

that it would be an ever present element

@trogdor right -- having to work through due process and the rule of law, instead of working around it all the time as adventurers are normally wont to do

though, systems of laws don't really exist in any concrete sense to be interacted with -- we interact with people who are attempting to follow those systems of laws. and often do a poor job or have their own interests. judges are somewhat unique with the high standard they're held to.

You could take your players to Mechanus, tbh.

@doppelgreener I assume he is either gunning for hyper realism on that front or trying to subvert that idea

but a player like me is going to want that human element to be a human element, not simply a manifestation of a system of law.

@doppelgreener I agree, I am just trying to see if I can accurately translate what Shalv wants to do

@trogdor sounds like neither: it's avoidance of the human element because that part's hard to compute, and preference for the more reliable and rigid systems and for people to be only representatives of that system.

@Shalvenay obviously any time I get something wrong about what your idea is, don't hesitate to correct me

@trogdor there is an element of high realism that comes into play (favoring realistic motion practice over courtroom drama tropes, for instance)

@doppelgreener that was sort of part of what I was saying, maybe not removing the people in the system itself from existence, but making them actually more in-tune with the laws and so forth

mmm perhaps both my answers were partially correct then and should have borrowed from each other?

@trogdor yeah, exactly -- the folks in the system are earnest participants, basically

mk

it's telling that the overwhelming majority of political and court drama in real life and in actual fiction occurs because that just doesn't happen

game of thrones wouldn't even be a narrative to tell if everyone was an earnest participant

@doppelgreener what in particular doesn't happen?

ah ok that part

yeah that part

again, I agree with you, but that seems to be what @Shalvenay is shooting for, making more people actually earnest participants and trying to make that in itself interesting

yeah -- the fact someone isn't an earnest participant is intended to be a calling card of villainy if you will

I actually think that could work well as long as the individual people are still as interesting as the PC's would come to expect from a typical RP experience

the key is pulling that off

@trogdor yeah, I think so

so, @Shalvenay, i think a good way to package up and communicate this would be to tell them you want to play a game about law & order & politics where the players are trying to resolve certain problems within the system, by working with and through the system rather than around it, where the players and almost all NPCs are earnest participants doing their best to follow that system, and there may be some people who aren't, and they're probably the villains.

I think that might require them having interests outside of the system of laws themselves though, at the very least

even if you want to limit those interests from clashing too directly with said system of laws

@doppelgreener ah

@trogdor yeah, definitely

other than that yeah, as @doppelgreener says, disclosing that ahead of time is a good idea

*You run into the trial court judge from the case you were in off in the corner of the tavern. He looks to be...picking a padlock open?!"

if they aren't interested when you explain to them what the game you want to run is going to be like, then I would assume downhill is the only direction it could travel

@Shalvenay that would definitely be hilarious

yeah...

especially for someone who you would assume would not be reduced to that

@trogdor lulz. LG Rogues are a thing, yo. and lockpicking is actually something folks take up as a hobby, for that matter

(I've been seriously considering getting a couple of picks, a tension wrench, and a few Master #3s and giving it a go myownself)

@trogdor yep, i agree. convey this stuff ahead of time so that people understand your expectations for the story and so they understand whether it's for them now rather than later, and because this is a relatively unusual set of constraints, so it's best they understand what they're getting into or everyone will be confused.

it usually, when I remember to have one, the very first golden rule I strive to have

"make sure the communication coming from me clearly shows the other people at the table what I want from the experience, and what I want them to get from it"

if I manage that right and they are still in, that is awesome, if other I averted a future sinking ship from ever leaving the harbor (even if I still wanted it to sail but not sink as it did so)

IE, if I want both things, not sinking but also sailing, its better for the ship not to sail and not to sink than to sail and then sink anyway and ruin all those people's days

that can be really tricky to articulate, first because you have to figure out what your own expectations, desires, and operating assumptions are -- and then you also have to figure out which ones need to be explained, which ones don't, and how you can explain the ones that need explaining so people will get what you mean instead of something else.

"we're going to track down vampires" works differently if you've read Twilight vs if you've watched the Blade movies

lol

@BESW No idea. That game only had a single map.

hey there @Zachiel

Heya

I'm heading out tonight, see ya later (if still awake)

cya

LANCER, the mech RPG just started going public and has a live playtest available here. Apparently the K6BD author has been working on it for a while with some other fine folk: "If you’re into military sci-fi, Titanfall, Destiny, comic books, the Halo series, BattleTech, or all forms of Giant Robot media, you might love the hell out of it."

(I haven't played it or examined it in depth myself and don't have any particular plans to; I just read the K6BD comic.)

hey there @nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

how're things going?

I'm reading some Angry and in his diatribe about fluff vs crunch, he seems to completely forget that story and world are at tension as well as game and story

@Shalvenay okay. Chilly, rainy day here. Should be grading more.

ah