TRPG General Chat

trogdor

00:18

@nitsua60 oh you are talking about a very specific game. I thought you were simply musing on your personal lack of long form games in general

What is Nomic?

Ah nevermind it seems you linked that already

I will read up on that when I am not at work

Shalvenay

hey there @daze413

BESW

01:21

> HULK SMASH. Whenever you Forcefully create an advantage or overcome an obstacle, the outcome is always advanced one level up the scale (failure to tie, tie to success, success to success with style). However, it costs a fate point every time you use the Clever approach.

Shalvenay

oh hey there @JohnP, long time no see. how've things been?

BESW

05:34

> Lazy editing. Once per session you can perform a task in about an hour, no matter how long that task really ought to take.

trogdor

05:50

lol

@nitsua60 this is pretty interesting, though I don't know if it would be as fun for me to play as it was to read about

kviiri

I remember being a huge fan of Nomic in my mid-teens, but I almost never got to play it and it never was as fun as it sounded like (one of the major perils of gaming in general, I guess?). I actually didn't even remember the game anymore :P

I was all crazy about those "meta-games" where the rules were themselves objects in the game world.

BESW

06:09

Yeah, that was part of the appeal of D&D 3.5 in my early days.

trogdor

yeah I don't know that I would enjoy that too much

I am sure some people have actually had a lot of fun with that kind of thing though

BESW

@Magician Nice curses. I like the labyrinth.

Magician

Thanks!

I'll be using the same curse "framework" for the next especially nasty monster, and relying on some of the ideas from that curse. Intellect Devourer Delusion, doesn't that sound just right? :)

kviiri

@BESW This sounds hilarious!

BESW

@Magician Reminds me of The Red Mist.

Magician

06:14

Hmmm?

trogdor

@Magician he is talking about the Cuthulu Confidential one-two-one he did with me

oooor a story that that was based on

BESW

@Magician Free adventure download from Pelgrane, shorter than the ones in the book.

Magician

Ahhh. I've only read the first adventure in the book, not reading the rest in case I won't be the one running them.

BESW

Between Red Mist and Fathomless Sleep, I felt Red Mist was a better adventure.

Both of them suffered from a lack of imagination in terms of how the investigator would handle the climax, though.

trogdor

yeah I remember that for Red Mist

you mentioned that it wanted to railroad how I fixed the problem

in like,... an obscenely less creative way than how I wanted to do it

BESW

06:26

I covered for it better in The Fathomless Sleep, but neither adventure was much help.

Magician

In our playthrough of the Fathomless Sleep, the ending was... certainly appropriate.

BESW

In our playthrough of The Fathomless Sleep, the investigator never saw the Mythos element at all--only heard about it second-hand.

I think the primary problem was, the adventure was counting on the dice coming out poorly at least once out of three tests.

Magician

Ah. Which they did the first chance they got for us.

BESW

But Greener rolled well and had pushes for extra oomph.

That made the Mythos element fall completely flat because there was no opportunity for the investigator (or the player) to actually get the impact of the experience--and the impact of the experience was the crucial final clue to the mystery.

trogdor

yeah the point is, I think, that you souldn't completely rely on any bad rolls for one of your main story elements to show up

because every once in a while it just won't happen

Magician

06:30

So what you're saying the scenario failed to extend the main Gumshoe principle to non-investigative elements.

BESW

Yup.

kviiri

Gumshoe sounds intriguing

BESW

So, again I wonder how Fathomless Sleep is a good example to base my own adventures on.

[pokes Cthulhu Confidential with a stick] I demand answers!

Magician

Whereas in our game the final confrontation was swift and brutal, so we didn't encounter this issue.

kviiri

It doesn't have a very descriptive tag wiki though. Could someone tell me how the game actually runs, eg. some of the core features of its design?

Magician

06:32

Ahem. First Impressions: Cthulhu Confidential.

BESW

@kviiri For clues, you just have to have the right ability and roleplay using it in the scene. You'll get the clue.

For everything else, there's dice.

Magician

^that's the latest, 2-player variant of it. There are a whole bunch of different flavors out there.

kviiri

@BESW Eg. if I have the ability to take fingerprints, and there are fingerprints, I can describe dusting for prints and photographing what shows up?

@Magician Thanks!

BESW

There are also pools of points (usually one for each skill or ability you have, but not always depending on the version of the game you're playing) which you can spend to improve your rolls or get extra stuff on top of the basic clue.

@kviiri Right.

And then when you get somebody's fingerprints later, you have a scene where you compare them and you learn if they're a match automatically.

kviiri

06:47

Ok, I want to try it definitely at some point.

BESW

Gumshoe was originally written as an alternative to the BRP-based Call of Cthulhu, which used percentile dice for outcomes and had a problem with adventures just stopping because you didn't roll well enough to get a clue.

So the first Gumshoe game was Trail of Cthulhu, and it's still mostly used for horror gaming.

But there's also Bubblegumshoe, by the good folks at Evil Hat, which is about teen sleuths--Veronica Mars, Nancy Drew, etc.

And the version we were talking about above, Cthulhu Confidential, is the first game that uses the new Gumshoe One-2-One system specially designed for twosies.

I'm planning to hack it for non-horror gaming, but first I'm running a few of the Cthulhu Confidential adventures so I can better understand the system.

kviiri

I'd be interested in the more traditional whodunit, murder mysteries and so on.

BESW

...hmm.

I could totally hack together an Albert Campion or a Trent's Last Case or something like that.

kviiri

The Finnish public broadcasting company has been airing British police procedurals and detective stories like Vera, Scott and Bailey, New Tricks and Midsomer Murders right after sauna time for as long as I can remember. The genre has been growing on me :)

BESW

Margery Allingham will always be one of my very favorite authors ever.

kviiri

07:02

Amazing how they always seem to have CCTV data in Britain, no matter where the crime happens.

BESW

That's actually pretty accurate for modern Britain.

Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom

The use of electronic surveillance by the United Kingdom grew from the development of signal intelligence and pioneering code breaking during the Second World War. In the post-war period, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was formed and participated in programmes such as the Five Eyes collaboration of English-speaking nations. This focused on intercepting electronic communications, with substantial increases in surveillance capabilities over time. A series of media reports in 2013 revealed bulk collection and surveillance capabilities, including collection and sharing collaborations...

kviiri

A friend who is very critical of mass surveillance actually claims that the frequent CCTV usage in BBC crime shows is a form of pro-surveillance propaganda. I'm not sure if I agree completely.

BESW

Lesson of the day: don't cook brownies in muffin liners.

kviiri

07:30

Ow. What happened?

BESW

Nothing dire, just they're impossible to peel off cleanly and the brownie's texture isn't great.

I'm planning to make mini cupcake brownies for the Birth of Bahá'u'lláh this weekend, so I'm practicing because I've never done it before.

kviiri

ah, okay. Good luck!

Anaphory

07:45

@kviiri Same here, I have read and played quite a few metagames. I don't think I ever finished a game of Nomic, though.

BESW

10:02

I've got a bunch of pumpkin puree, so for dinner I'm taking leftover spaghetti and making a pumpkin sauce for it.

(garlic, onion, corn starch, olive oil, almond milk, red pepper flakes, salt, soy sauce, ginger salabat)

Anaphory

Salabat was some kind of tea, wasn't it?

BESW

Traditionally, yes, it's ginger tea.

I use the powder, so it's ginger powder with sugar and a little cayenne pepper.

(And depending on which kind the store had, also some lemon powder.)

trogdor

11:00

sounds pretty decent

BESW

11:47

> A lady never panics. When acting Carefully in dangerous situations, you don't have to take extra time.

Anne Aunyme

12:31

Is cupcake brownie a traditional Baiha'he faith thing? (sorry if i don't get the name right)

BESW

"Bahá'í," and no. It's a BESW thing.

The Bahá'í Faith actually encourages each community to figure out its own way to observe the Holy Days according to local customs and circumstances. There's very little ritual or tradition associated with particular events, and that's on purpose.

trogdor

@AnneAunyme yeah @BESW just likes to make things like that

I certainly won't complain XD

DForck42

13:17

mornin

Adam

Good morning

nitsua60

topo'the!

DForck42

@nitsua60 huh?

Adam

DForck42

@Adam ahh

DForck42

14:00

how's everyone?

Adam

Hanging in there. My players finished part 1 of Red Hand of Doom yesterday.

How are you?

DForck42

@Adam neat

@Adam good, sleepy

struggling to write a question coherently

GreySage

15:10

Sick+Tired=A very long day at work...

Adam

@GreySage My Father-in-law said the same thing after my wedding :p

GreySage

On the upside, tomorrow (tonight) I am getting my Gold Fanatic badge :)

Zachiel

@Adam Great

@trogdor I can't see why BESW wouldn't invite Ursula Vernon to chat. That'd be wonderful.

The Oracle

17:09

0

Q: Should we be tagging individual spells?

I came across a question today tagged with the (partial) name of the specific spell the question contemplates. Now I like a tiny-hut as much as the next sheep, and I do believe in emergent folksonomy. But is this a point where we, as a community, say "hmm... maybe not?" To be a little cleare...

Skathix

Hey guys

Quick question but I don't think it's worth a post

Zachiel

Hey

Skathix

Anyone know offhand what the rules are for small parties 1-2 people?

5e

Zachiel

I don't think there are "rules" for small parties. Are there?

I mean, I'd be surprised if special rules had been issued. Previous editions didn't have them, the game was for 5+ people and the DM had to make it work if he wanted something different. But if such an official thing exists, I'd like to know about it too. Why not a full-fledged question, then?

Skathix

I think the DMG has differing rules for XP and encounters for small parties

I'll go check now that I can

Adam

17:27

@Skathix There are some differences if you use the XP budget way of building encounters. Basically, there's a higher multiplier for enemies with smaller parties to make sure that you're throwing fewer monsters at them.

That is, it costs more xp from your budget to add monsters since there are fewer players

Skathix

So I'm planning on doing a podcast, we've got Midnight Syndicate backing us up (My wife and I) and I'm just trying to tell a good story while keeping her balanced with her various characters

There's definitely gonna be some house rules going down

I guess I'm looking for suggestions if you wizards and geniuses have them

Adam

(5E D&D) Challenge Rating and Encounter Creation

►

That video might be useful if you want what the book tells you to do.

Skathix

Thanks @Adam

Any thoughts on house rules for her character that would be interesting but not game-breaking?

(I know GM Henchmen, stuff like that)

For instance I

I'm thinking about giving her feats and stat increases

Joshua Aslan Smith

this needs to be closed, please review the question if you have the privileges to vote to close rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/108453/…

0

Q: How to make odd couple pairings viable?

FiveThirtyEight has a fun little article about the frequency of race/class combos. You can see which are the most popular (human fighters) and which are the least (aasimar ranger). This got me thinking about race/class affinity, so I weighted the data to see which races have the strongest class i...

dnd-5e races class

Adam

What level will she be? Is it just her playing?

Skathix

17:40

She's starting at level 2 Druid and then going rogue

Here's what I'm thinking and I don't think it's more game breaking than it is interesting

I'm going to give feats and stat increases at appropriate levels, as well as giving her the starting skills for rogue and druid, I'll give her the rogue tools through narration and having an in-story reason for her to get those proficiencies

And yea @Adam it's just her playing, we are going to try for a more serious D&D podcast, using it as a tool for collaborative storytelling instead of using it for improv comedy

Think something close to adventure time, it's positive but gets very real occasionally

Adam

The first thing I would do is give her a follower that can sure up her weaknesses. Combat for early level characters is dangerous enough, and only gets more dangerous with fewer people. The character isn't somebody who solves her problems for her, but is loyal, believable, and follows her even if it turns out later that she made an error.

The Jake to her Finn if you stack to the adventure time analogy.

Skathix

... I am going to have to fight making it a shapeshifting dog as she is a shape-shifting cat

(She's tabaxi)

So I suppose she needs a Finn in this case XD

I'm pretty hyped about sharing this with the world, I think it's gonna be great

Adam

17:56

Well, considering that I would probably make her companion a fighter, paladin, or barbarian, I guess it would be more like Finn than Jake

I would also probably try to find challenges that weren't just combat based. Since combat is going to be dangerous for a while, giving her some challenges that use brain power, could be both entertaining and a good way to get her through an area without a gauntlet of combat to wade through

The benefit of having a one on one game is that it can be a really intense roleplaying experience, so developing characters that she can talk to, befriend, and form deep relationships with is going to benefit you greatly.

doppelgreener

18:25

Great video. Highly relevant to D&D.

2

Adam

@doppelgreener Glorious. Absolutely Glorious

doppelgreener

@Adam Right!?

Adam

@doppelgreener I would recommend this one too

doppelgreener

@Adam [shakes fist in righteous indignation] ADAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMM

Adam

18:43

Zoidberg Woop Woop Woop!

►

Zachiel

@Adam I like that one!

kviiri

19:46

@doppelgreener Also relevant to Apocalypse World, where the Faceless has a move that lets them do exactly that :)

It's called Oh yeah!

Oh yeah! roll+hard to smash your way through scenery to get to or away from something. On a 10+, the scenery is moved or smashed and you get what you want. On a 7–9 you get what you want and smash or move the scenery, but you take 1-harm (ap), and are disoriented and under fire in follow-up actions, leave something behind, or take something with you. Think smashing through walls or pushing through burned out husks of cars. On a miss, your foot gets pinned under something mid-smash.

Rtas, I still don't remember how to format those properly... let's see now

nitsua60

20:21

@Skathix Some good recent conversation starts here:

Apr 11 at 20:04, by Yuuki

Oh, does anyone have some advice (or a link to a good article) on how to DM for a solo campaign?

doppelgreener

@kviiri Beautiful.

I love the name of that.

Apocalypse World has such a great sense of humour.

kviiri

Yeah!

I only know it through pop-culture osmosis, as Kool-Aid isn't really a thing here.

BESW

I vaguely remember seeing an ad on a friend's TV as a kid (I never had cable) and being confused by Property Damage Mascot.

kviiri

I wonder what is the fractal dimension of a mascot holding a smaller version of itself.

I also wonder if any Angband variant had Kool-Aid man as a unique monster. I'd be certain to put that in, and it wouldn't even be strange compared to some other uniques in eg. ZAngband.

MadMAxJr

20:38

N-dimensional Kool-Aid man. He breaks through dimensions you can't even perceive.

doppelgreener

> Property Damage Mascot. When you destroy stuff, people accept it as Just That Thing You Do, and they don't really want to press further about it. Weak to destroying important property nonchalantly since you never really picked up on the repercussions for doing so -- this includes your own stuff.

3

MadMAxJr

I need a task force of Kool Aid Men.

About twenty of them and we can take out the structural supports of major buildings or cave systems.

kviiri

@doppelgreener How does one do those quote-y messages in chat?

doppelgreener

@kviiri > like this, but just the first line if it's a multiline message

kviiri

@doppelgreener Ah, my earlier failure must've been the omission of the space bar after the meme arrow. Cheers!

doppelgreener

20:45

Also it was a direct reply to a message, which is the only thing that can precede a > like that, so e.g. :1872487247 > stuff works, but @kviiri > stuff doesn't.

@kviiri >test

yup

need a space after it, looks like.

MadMAxJr

N-Dimensional Kool-Aid man has shattered the anxiety barrier that holds you back. OH YEAH!

doppelgreener

> N-Dimensional Kool-Aid Man. When you smash stuff, you may make a Timey-Wimey overcome roll against a difficulty 3 to have done it yesterday or tomorrow instead of just now. On a failure, yesterday or tomorrow becomes just now.

MadMAxJr

Great, now you have me picturing the Weeping Angels as Kool-Aid Men.

doppelgreener

@MadMAxJr My visual is A Rickle In Time for about 20 seconds from this mark:

Overlapping possibilities in "A Rickle in Time"

►

(incidentally this seems to be a video which displays all the different possibilities over each other, which is awesome)

Also awesome is I just came across this work of art during that search:

(Source: Rick and Morty in dimension AoT-845 by Atomic-DNA)

kviiri

Also, yay, I got a player from my #1 DnD group to sign up to try Apocalypse World!

Progress is being made!

MadMAxJr

20:55

I'm getting hyped for Kingdom Death 1.5 shipping soon. @nitsua60

BESW

> Quantum Smash. If you are completely unobserved, you can automatically succeed at violently overcoming obstacles with Physique.

@UrsulaV @JossRuckus I named my forest gnome "Lappa Dockseed", after the burdock plant. She was helpful and tenaciously annoying.

Tweeted by shadowsong42 on October 15, 2017 at 6:24 AM in reply to UrsulaV

MadMAxJr

21:11

Quick, nobody look! boosh

BESW

Check out: Masters of Umdaar • A World of Adventure for Fate Core http://drivethrurpg.com/product/155458/Masters-of-Umdaar--A-World-of-Adventure-for-Fate-Core?affiliate_id=144937

Tweeted by Fate_SRD on October 16, 2017 at 2:00 PM

@doppelgreener I hear London turned sepia.

doppelgreener

@BESW It did! I've got no idea why, best operating theory is it's to do with the hurricane hitting Ireland. The light went dim and yellow; sepia's a good word for it. It was basically apocalypse-toned.

kviiri

It's weird how storms do that.

BESW

Twitter says it's Brexit nostalgia for an imaginary past.

doppelgreener

@BESW Haaaaa. Nice.

GreySage

21:19

@doppelgreener Apocalypse-toned very nicely describes the weather in Vancouver as well.

doppelgreener

@GreySage ooer. shop up.

kviiri

When I was in the army, I was returning to the garrison about half an hour before "the worst storm of the year" was to hit. Everything was very beautifully pink or orange. When the storm actually hit, it was as if night had fallen.

BESW

We got a lot of typhoons in the 90s. I remember a very large, slow storm hitting at night, staying over the island all day, and leaving at night again. It was like we missed a day entirely.

kviiri

Tropical storms are probably way more hardcore than what we get here.

BESW

We don't get the same pre-storm colors, though, I think because we're too small for the storm to kick up that much dust.

Our pre-storm colors are more toward the green end of the spectrum.

kviiri

21:23

My Apocalypse World game will have "whipping winds" on the snowy plains, carrying some sort of supercooled air that can freeze flesh on touch. (what physics? I can always blame it on the psychic maelstrom)

BESW

Or Roland Emmerich.

kviiri

That, too!

BESW

We once had a storm that hardly rained at all--but the winds had picked up moisture from the ocean, and drove sea salt into the plants.

kviiri

Ow, that sounds unhealthy for them.

BESW

A few days after the storm passed, everything green fell off.

trogdor

21:24

the coconut trees probably didn't care

some of those live right next to the water

in sand

BESW

Lots of plants straight-up died.

trogdor

yeah I imagine many did

BESW

Yeah, but even coconut trees aren't used to having salt driven directly into their chlorophyll receptors.

trogdor

fair enough

BESW

Still, the coconut trees did better in that storm than in... Paka, I think it was? There was one storm where the eye went straight over the island when the winds were very strong.

So the winds switched direction 180 degrees midway through the event.

The coconut tree tops got twisted straight off.

trogdor

21:27

I think that one is the one that killed the first car my mom had on the island

BESW

(They'd been blown hard one way, then the other, and the stress ripped them apart, like folding a piece of plastic or metal back and forth until it snaps.)

trogdor

or the first one I remember

BESW

Paka was definitely memorable. We were without electricity for three months after that.

My dad blew out the radiator trying to run a laptop off the car battery.

trogdor

sounds like your dad yeah

I can't even remember which storm my father went out into the storm to save the generator

he could have easily died from doing that

BESW

Yeah, my dad insisted on bracing open the back door so I could watch our carport get blown away.

doppelgreener

21:32

@BESW In Brisbane the clouds turn a perceptible green before a hailstorm. I say "perceptible green" in Dr Evil style finger quotes because everyone except me can notice it; I have no idea what it is they're seeing.

trogdor

@doppelgreener do you have some form/degree of color blindness?

doppelgreener

@trogdor as far as i can tell my color perception is fine & normal

trogdor

hmm

I ask partly because green is a common one

being unable to see some green (and red) is probably the most common kind?

doppelgreener

i used to teach accessibility classes that covered color blindness. i'd have images filtered through three different types of color blindness plus the image to ordinary vision, and then told people if two of them looked the same they were color blind. then they'd get worried -- because two kinds of color blindness look almost identical -- so i'd clarify i meant the same as the ordinary image.

.... it took me longer than it should've to remember to say that straight up instead of letting them worry for a moment.

BESW

@trogdor He accidentally filled out the rare 42-X form for storm blindness.

trogdor

21:35

lol

@doppelgreener I would probably make the same mistake honestly

doppelgreener

@BESW "WALKING THROUGH THIS RAIN WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA" "it's raining?"

BESW

"This Singing in the Rain film makes no sense at all."

@kviiri Our storms often seem worse on paper, but we're more prepared for them so they do less damage.

Our building codes are designed for storms, we know which areas are going to flood or get mini-tornadoes and the people who live there voluntarily evacuate, that sort of thing.

kviiri

21:50

@BESW Hm, makes sense. Three months without electricity sounds rather extreme, though.

BESW

Yeah, that was notable. Infrastructure caught fire and a lot of the older wooden telephone poles were destroyed.

Guam's electric infrastructure had been subpar for a long time before then.

We'd been doing what's called "load shedding," where the plants couldn't generate enough power for the whole island at once so they'd roll planned outages across the island.

GreySage

@BESW Guessing it's a lot better now?

trogdor

we still have random outages now too

not even load shedding I think

(though the load shedding has happened very recently as well)

last year two generators blew up

BESW

It's better now, yeah.

trogdor

better is the right word

fixed is not XD

BESW

21:57

The telephone poles are mostly metal rather than wood, we don't have as many places where a badly-placed snake can shut off the entire island's power...

(We also have fewer snakes overall.)

But yes, we no longer check the paper once a week to find out when our electricity will be on.

trogdor

@Zachiel mmm I would be confused if he didn't just say "I invited Ursula Vernon to the chat"

XD

@BESW it might not happen over where you live, but we have had a lot of 15 minute outages since I got back from India

BESW

We got a number of those earlier this year, but now it's just blips.

trogdor

mmm

it happened just two days ago

and a few times before that too

BESW

There'll be a blink in the lights and my Internet will drop while the modem reboots, but my UPS doesn't even beep most of the time.

trogdor

I am not sure I have ever experienced this many small power outages in such a short time without load shedding being implemented

@BESW I mean full, if relatively short, outages though

not just the blinkouts

BESW

22:02

I'm kinda tempted to invest in a few more UPSes for various parts of the house. But going around and turning them off when the power goes out fully is a massive pain.

trogdor

that is an annoying thing about having those things

my dad has just one on his computer (and I don't need one because laptop) but the dang thing is LOUD

and he keeps it as far back under the desk his monitor and printer are on as he can get it, for some reason

BESW

...actually, I think we've got an extra one now. Hmm.

I got one for my dad's electric reclining chair, so he wouldn't be stuck in it if the power went out while he was reclining. But he's reached the point where that's just not feasible anymore, so I disabled the reclining part of the chair.

GreySage

@BESW My mom had a power-reclining chair that would automatically put itself upright if it lost power.

BESW

Nice.

GreySage

She used to say that she would wake up to the chair moving on it's own and a bunch of stuff falling whenever we had an outage

BESW

22:10

We'd been having trouble just finding a recliner that didn't also jiggle back and forth whenever you touched it.

doppelgreener

@trogdor my parents have one that's fine noise-wise... except for that high-pitched ringing some electronics make that some people can pick up, including me. (apparently i traded the superpower to detect storms for the superpower to pick up the high-pitched noise electronics make at the edge of my hearing, and I have some serious questions for whoever wrote my character sheet.)

trogdor

@doppelgreener I refer only to the noise it makes when the power goes out,.... which has been often lately

not long power outages, maybe exactly one that could have been an hour and the rest only as much as 15 minutes

but still, I hate that noise they make

kviiri

22:27

Anyway, it's getting late. I'm meeting a prospective employer tomorrow and can't look like I've stayed up the whole night. See ya!

trogdor

night

BESW

22:42

If you're a Dresden Files fan, DF Accelerated and the two original core books are now on sale @DriveThruRPG http://www.drivethrurpg.com/sale.php?&word_variants=0&filters=0_0_0_0_0_45295&manufacturers_id=2152&affiliate_id=24139

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on October 16, 2017 at 5:14 PM

Campaign hook, anybody?

Theft of railway models with great sentimental value. Any info please let the MRC know. Please retweet and look out for these models.

Tweeted by ModelRailClub on October 16, 2017 at 1:30 PM

doppelgreener

23:16

Hey @BESW, what was that rule that suggested we could've just given Mercia an arbitrary consequence for her getting dragged through the sand, 'cause fiction says it'd make sense?

BESW

The Golden Rule of Fate.

> Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it.

> This might seem like common sense, but it is called out because the order is important. In other words, don’t look at the rules as a straitjacket or a hard limit on an action. Instead, use them as a variety of potential tools to model whatever you’re trying to do. Your intent, whatever it is, always takes precedence over the mechanics.

And the Silver Rule of Fate.

> Never let the rules get in the way of what makes narrative sense.

The specific example there is, if the narrative describes something that seems like a consequence, make it a consequence.

doppelgreener

@BESW Thank you; that helped me round out the last paragraph of this answer.

Miniman

@doppelgreener I'd appreciate eyes on this question, if you've got a moment.

(I figured of all the ways it's problematic, the dupeyness is probably the least controversial.)

doppelgreener

23:37

@Miniman I've closed it and left a couple of feedback comments, and will now head to sleep. I'm gonna tag in @nitsua60 especially since this will probably morph into a D&D 5e question. If there's extra stuff I missed go ahead and point it out in comments too.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Thanks!

doppelgreener

Thanks for poking me about it!

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