Not too bad. No new wacky player stories, I'm afraid.
Some of the players have given me their ideas for their characters, and so I'm going through my notes, looking for places where I can add hooks for their individual sidestories and motivations.
ah, there you are :) so, I'm looking at making a fractal-maze for a dungeon I'm working on, actually...been going over your answer, and tried generating a random "netlist" for the base fractal, but I'm not sure what constraints your approach places on the fractal or how to handle some things that popped out of my random generation approach
(I believe so strongly in the awesome utility of that concept, and admit freely that the answer, even though I spent weeks working and re-working, is not good in the sense of "communicates well and convincingly.")
what constitutes a "state" in the maze if you will? I understand keeping a stack of states, but I'm not 100% sure what an element on the stack looks like
@Miniman Jain? I'm not sure. But it's no fault of your own. It's one where the user in question had an uptick in comment-activity recently, but small enough that I still can't really tell if it's an intentional uptick on their part or observation-bias.
@Shalvenay I think of the stack as a list of "entry"s.
A left-field approach, inspired by the hard-funnest puzzle I've ever tackled:
run them through a fractal maze1.
Fractal Mazes
A fractal maze contains entire copies of itself as subsets of itself, as one might suspect. I'm not suggesting you actually design one in-game and by DM fiat manage the ...
)
@Shalvenay Yes. Then exiting a copy of the maze is a matter of crossing off the last entry in that list.
The length of the current list of entry-points gives you a "depth," if it matters.
@nitsua60 yeah -- for the exit criteria, I'm thinking of "you find the connection to Start, but past once you've reached a certain depth in the maze, it's really a Finish"
@Shalvenay Yeah--I feel like the end-condition's got to be a meta-construct, since it's practically intractable to even decide whether a solution exists, never mind find it!
@Shalvenay having run them on three occasions, my one edit would be this: instead of labeling the nodes 0-7 on the outer rim I'd probably label the connected nodes on the three inner copies with one-word descriptors: "pens, pits, treasury, hangar." The table can still be there to look up details, but it's sometimes hard (in my experience) to keep one's head in the narrative while tracking the fractal. Cutting out one abstract bit of nomenclature in favor of setting-names would treat me better.
@Shalvenay I'm just thinking of the cognitive load for the person running--you can still convey as little or as much as you like =)
I.e. make the inner monologue "okay, they went to the pens, which means their choices are now {hangar, treasury, balcony}" rather than "okay, they went to the pens which is A3 which means their choices are now {A0, B4, B7} which are {hangar, treasury, balcony}."
(And for anyone following along: I'm not actually looking up those entries: they likely disagree with the post.)
I like reading that ^^ as an if-then-else statement. Because those who aren't following along probably disagree with the post. =)
Grr... I just heard a member of Congress refer to a "Constitutional right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." I'd like to give them a pass for speaking extemporaneously, but I feel like that's one you've got to get right =\
... nobody over the age of 18 should be allowed in congress?
:P
There was a great line in Hitchhiker's Guide that went something like "Anybody capable of getting themselves elected President should by no means be allowed to have the job."
@Miniman We [US citizens] hold the truth to be self-evident that certain inalienable rights, among those the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are described in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Constitution.
I'm thinking that lighting the lamp manually causes it to light, but it goes out after X hours, where X is determined by some die roll that gives the party a chance of a longrest without harassment as the light keeps the monsters at bay
I'd never hold it against a mere mortal (that's a lie, I totally hold it against people when they conflate founding documents), but if (a) your job is defined by one of the two and (b) is to execute duties described in one of the two and (c) my taxes pay your salary as described in one of the two, let's make sure we know what's in which =)
@Miniman 5th amendment says "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." 14th extends that stricture to apply to states.
@trogdor No, but your point applied nicely to the Declaration of Independence - if you haven't declared yourself an independent country, there's no point having a constitution.
Grr... I just heard a member of Congress refer to a "Constitutional right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." I'd like to give them a pass for speaking extemporaneously, but I feel like that's one you've got to get right =\
I on the other hand, have not run for any kind of office, and my mistake was not knowing which exact article two guys on the internet were talking about based off of only having a few seconds of reading time/information
Remember, of course, the Declaration is a reactionary document. Historically the things that can be done to me by force are to harm/kill me, to restrict my movement (imprisonment or shoving me around), or take my stuff. TJ is flipping that-all on its head: we have rights to life, liberty, and property, and a government needs a stated reason to curtail any of those in his conception.
If you wanted to become exceedingly wealthy and only ended up rich, it's some small consolation that you can sleep on a bed of money (even if the rest of the room isn't carpeted in money)
Also, if you had a legal right to happiness everyone could sue the government. Giving people the right to pursue happiness is actually pretty clever, if you think about it.
@JoelHarmon probably not? I just mean to consider it in its context--the authors and editors of these documents were all well-versed in then-current and then-historical legal theories.
Would anyone have any experiences with using illusions in combat in dnd 5e they'd be willing to share? I know my options will be limited and varied based on what is going on in my new campaign but hearing some other ideas could help get me with different takes on how i can use illusions.
Things like subtly that could turn the tide of battle. Or really clever idea you have seen that worked or failed solely due to bad rolls. I got a few myself already but again, hearing other people's ideas and perspectives on it could help expand my own.
They're also a strange interface with the meta-contract: "I'll tell you about your environment, you make decisions, OH MY GOD I CAN"T BELIEVE YOU WALKED THERE IT WAS REALLY LAVA!!!"
If your group assumes people don't see stuff behind them, wouldn't they only see the arrow when it emerged from their chest? Or if your group assumes all-around vision, wouldn't they see the arrow appear out of nowhere?
@trogdor I've always thought the best use of D&D-style illusions was to make people know that you're messing with them so they doubt the reality of real things.
It's not what you don't know is an illusion, it's what you know is an illusion that isn't so.
Spent a weekend training a Generative Adversarial Network on 25k 19th century portraits; results seem good. These people have never existed:
Make a chat room: go to this page and click the "create a new room" button at the bottom.
Find a person's chat profile: go to this page and type in their name. Click on the name and there'll be an "invite this user to" button with a drop-down menu listing all the rooms you're currently in.
If the person's name isn't there, that means they've never visited any Stack Exchange chat room ever. You'll have to leave a comment on one of their mainsite posts with a link to the room.
(The chat profile also has "start a new room with" which makes a new room AND invites the person to it all in one swell foop.)
Ah, yes. I also had a variation where a gnome used prestidigitation on bottles of colored water so they'd ping as magical to basic investigation, then sold them as potions.
@eimyr I would be ok with honest hack and slash dungeon crawling. We actually had a really splendid combat-focused session recently and I enjoyed it a lot... but our GM thought it was bad and was like "sorry for having almost nothing but combat this time".
I don't really like the RPG trope where every game has to rename fundamentally same concepts :P
But I guess it's occasionally partially to distance themselves from DnD or some other established system, if the role is significantly different in some way.
Eg. I sorta get calling the GM "Master of Ceremonies" in Apocalypse World if it's intended to highlight that the GM's role is rather different from the more mainstream games.
not too serious. Employee issue is easier than the kid thing. Just have to learn how to help my 5.5 year old learn to control his emotions. Feel so sorry for him.
@kviiri so, we go into the last fight fully healed due to DM shenanigans. Imix breaks off a part of himself and summons 3 fire elementals on us. The sorc cast fly on himself and the fighter, who also cast enlarge on himself. fighter and sorc go up to Imix and start wrecking his face while my bard and the artificer are dealing with the elementals. my bard makes a gambit to get the artificer free so she can go pound on Imix.
my bard ends up being surrounded by the elementals, already just shy of bloodied. I decide that the bard had had enough and banish all three elementals, burning a level 6 spell slot in the process. it works and they're all gone for the time being (they were going to return, which I assumed they would). after this happens, imix teleports away, under magma, with the dm's intent that he's going to spam lair actions until the elementals come back.
we call bs on that because they have to SEE the lair in order to perform lair actions, and you can't see anything through solid rock. dm starts getting pissy cause if we could we would pull such cheese, and blah blah blah, and that imix was already at 2 hp. at this point I feel that my one awesome thing that I finally got to do with the bard was super cheapened just for the dm to drag out this final fight for no real reason other than he wanted to try and kill us one last time.
so I said I had enough, packed my stuff up and left
@NautArch yeah, and I was fine with getting the time to heal everyone. it was the lair action cheese that really cheapened it, and then getting upset when we said he couldn't do that per the rules
have you had issues before with the DM trying to kill you guys? Like, not the "these monsters are trying to kill you, I just have to play that realistically" kind of killing you, but the "I, the DM, personally want your characters dead" type of kill you
@Adam well last night was the finale, lol. I like the guy personally, and we'll stay friends as long as he doesn't do something stupid. however, I'm never going to play an rpg with him again
@DForck42 while i understand his frustration in that the epic finale wasn't as 'tough' as he thought it would be because of Banishment, that's something you have to deal with as a DM.
So what if the PCs get a minute to rest and prep? Make the return of the BBEG after the minute more epic (more elementals, big spell, other minions, etc). Don't make it seem like the PC did something wrong.
@NautArch Sounds to me like the issue wasn't that the PCs did anything wrong. It was that the DM had an idea for this cool move, "the BBEG teleporting away and using his powers to hold off the PCs til banishment wore off" but the players questioned the ruling, and instead of taking it well, the DM acted like a child
@Adam Yeah - and he didn't have to do the lair actions and make the players feel diminished. There were a lot of other options on the table that he ignored and instead chose to go childish.
I wouldn't be surprised if the issue wasn't banishment, but rather that the players called him out on the lair actions and a whole bunch of everyone's frustrations that nobody actively talked about exploded in one instance, killing the game
I don't know about anyone else but the idea of a BBEG needing to run away and hide to summon his minions back doesn't sound like a cool and powerful BBEG to me.
@NautArch you miss the point a bit. I'm not saying that using the lair actions was childish. I'm saying that the way he reacted to the players questioning him on the call was childish and that is the crux of the issue
@Yuuki To me, it's the mark of a good DM when they portray mastermind-esque, boss level characters that know when they've lost a fight and either try to compensate for it, or retreat to fight another day, rather than pushing through with their "unlimited power"
I think the GM picking the best moves for their monsters all the time, even if cheesy, is a valid playstyle. Then the expectation should be that the players plan for it, of course, and getting mad if the players come up with clever tricks of their own would be rather hypocritical.
@Yuuki Often times, the last gasp is not a crowning moment of awesome. Nearly defeated and taking a minute to recover and regain some strength is the smart move. Then come back and do something cool.
Not conventionally cool, but I think there are plenty of ways that a tactical retreat can lead to more dramatic, better, and more resounding encounters than the classic "I have unlimited power, you will never beat me! -> No, wait, how am I losing? Die you fools! -> Crap I guess I was wrong and am dead now!" dynamic
In heroic fantasy fiction, it's a cool ending to a battle that the villain retreats, wounded seriously and giving up their prized lair. But that needs to be GM fiat'd to work.
In the way the villain's non-total defeat would be satisfying even tomorrow, after the villain has had the time to take a long rest to fully recharge their power.
@kviiri considering that several of them have powers that regenerate on a short/lost rest specifically, yes. For an example, check out the manticore. Its tail spikes specifically regenerate when the creature finishes a long rest
Hm, I recalled most of the monster abilities being "X uses per day" but it appears to be defined as long rests too, yup.
Aaargh I'm losing my mind! There's a notoriously, err, confusing intersection right next to my office and every single day at least one driver accidentally blocks it. And now I've been listening for non-stop honking for over a minute because apparently someone is really mad at this.
@NautArch well and this was advertised as the LAST session of the campaign, so it felt more like he was just dragging the fight out to make it last longer, rather than Imix being super smart and cunning and stuff
however, I am planning the beginning of the campaign with a small tournament, to get a feel of how things will go in fight. I will use characters the same as in the Lost Mine of Phandelver, and see if she faints or not
My idea is to level her up to level 3 and then proceed normally with the campaign
@Sosi On this note, my best advice is to say exactly that to her. That, then opens up the conversation about what to do? Resurrect? Create new characters? Hit "rewind" and try again? Use companions? Over-level?
@Sosi Sounds good. Starting with a "tournament" or so can be a good way to teach the game mechanics before moving on to actual adventuring with its own nuances.
although using quotes doesn't make it sound like an apology
@Sosi that's a nice low-key way to introduce mechanics. It doesn't have to be to the death, either. Just assume everyone is going for knockouts, with the only risk being damage that's twice their max.
Although it doesn't have to be a single instance of damage that great - as long as the damage takes you to 0 hit points and the "remaining" damage exceeds one's max hp.
@Sosi There's a rule for knocking out creatures though, that basically states that an attack that reduces a creature to 0 hp can always be declared non-lethal and it knocks enemies out instead of killing them. By specific-trumps-general, I'd say it overrides even instant death from massive damage. You could simply rule everyone is doing non-lethal damage in this tournament.
Also, outside of the tournament you can ransom people. I normally play my bad guys as: If they don't have much experience with the PCs, they will capture them first, steal their equipment and treasure, and then ransom them back to their patron. Then after that if they keep being a pain, they will kill the party on future encounters. Of course by then, hopefully, the player will be strong enough to win the rematch
One thing to note is technically to deal non-lethal damage it needs to be a melee attack, so if she is a bow ranger she might have some issues there. But you could also say that for the tournament you need to use special 'non-lethal' arrows
@Sosi It was pretty common in actual Medieval times to ransom important prisoners of war. Just have some NPC be sufficiently interested in your PCs to do it :)
@Sosi I mean, he doesn't just say "off you go". If any of the party survives the battle, and is knocked out, they will ransom them back to the nearest town in addition to stealing their stuff. So the town ends up paying some copious amount of cash and supplies to the bag guys.
I mean, yeah the PCs are a thorn in the bad guy's operation. But if the bad guys win the fight, they can get more money and power by selling off the survivors and taking their stuff, rather than killing them outright.
> "Hmm... this guy keeps breaking out of the cell every time we capture him. Eh, I'll just put him back, what are the chances he escapes again?" - Ganondorf, probably.
@Sosi Not free. As long as they're kept alive, they can be ransomed and the villain would benefit from the payment. Also, as an option to make the villain seem evil to the players, maybe he does villain stuff (e.g. interrogating them, lie to the PCs, steal/break their stuff, harm an NPC prisoner to show off his power, etc.) before letting them go.
Or make the villains force the PCs to do their bidding. It's another classic.
Looks like we're not going to get our first segment of our DnD campaign finished before one of the players goes on "parental" leave. Expected date of birth is in five days!
@GreySage This player is a the first among our circles to become a father (hopefully), so we sort of went with "no one knows what the first months will be like, so let's not assume anything."
("hopefully" because another friend is also having a baby and we have bets riding on whose baby is born first. I can practically taste that 15 euros 18 cents!)
@DForck42 Our group was six when we started. The only hard part was getting all six to show up at the same time. (We'd run each others' characters when one person could not make it ...)
@KorvinStarmast I'm planning on having 6 and plan on having it super casual
so if someone's late, we'll start without them
or if someone's missing we'll play without them
as long as 2 pc's are there, we'll play
if there's only 2 we might do it anime filler episode style where it has no bearing on what's going on
@NautArch another example of the same dm pulling the rug out from under me last night, and probably played into the events later on. we walked into the room and the henchman of the big bad guy said something along the lines of "the ritual is done, you're out of time." I wanted my bard to retort with "You're out of time" and cast vicious mockery.
well, apparently this guy said this across 140ft (not shouting), and the dm didn't let me do my spell
We had a policy of tolerating one player's absence, but it wasn't unambiguous enough. When someone (unwisely, in my opinion) made a Doodle for an entire month, we ran into the problem of whether we should play with one player missing soon or with full party a week later...
@DForck42 It's how we schedule all our games, but I think everyone's using it wrong most of the time. The basic idea is simple: someone starts a poll with a list of dates, they get a link to share, and everyone who gets the link marks each date as available or not. Then you see which date is the best for which people.
And yeah, we had agreed we'd play with one member missing if we'd have to, but "have to" is harder to define in practice.
Just played a wonderfully chaotic and hilarious Roll for Shoes session with RPG newbies. Best first session ever, it had everything: Lizard people, sentient tractors, murderous dogs, zombie bouncers (all played by players) and everyone died in the end. Huge success.
@DForck42 It has its flaws, many of them between the chair and the keyboard. For one, people create these jumbo-polls that go a month or more in the future, and then act surprised when people's guesstimates on their availability turn out wrong....
@kviiri What I recommend is to write sideplots based on each PC's story and motives. That way, you can make something that feels substantial to the players who attend, and the absent players don't really miss out.
@DForck42 I've been thinking of canning #2 after the next session (even discussed it here) mostly because I'm not very much into DnD 5e and GMing is becoming a rather burdensome task for me. So far we've settled on playing some other system for a while before continuing #2.
@MikeQ Roll for Shoes is a microsystem whose rules fit on a small card. I just told the players to make up anything they want to be, and wasn't disappointed, then I let all of them awake in prison on a space station and just watched the mayhem unfold. They ended up getting out of their cell, and almost escaping, until someone with the skill "Red Buttons 2" pressed the self-destruction button...
My plan is to run a few games of the best Apocalypse World ever played so they never want to go back to DnD again, but I'm also considering taking Fate out for a spin with them.
A left-field approach, inspired by the hard-funnest puzzle I've ever tackled:
run them through a fractal maze1.
Fractal Mazes
A fractal maze contains entire copies of itself as subsets of itself, as one might suspect. I'm not suggesting you actually design one in-game and by DM fiat manage the ...
