Alignment has a number of useful potential purposes in guiding play. 3.5 doesn't explicitly deal with any of them and actively undermines several.

^^True, but I actually don't like "alignment" in general

I prefer more flexible personal things

As do I, though there are a few versions of it I wouldn't mind using as the foundation for a campaign rather than window dressing.

4e made it completely ignorable; that was nice.

They also went back to the ladder rather than the grid. And ditching the Cosmic Wheel in favor of the Cosmic Layered Salad was helpful there too.

ignoring alignment was my preferred mode

(Points of Light is hands-down my favorite D&D setting ever.)

same

though I admittedly don't know many others well

also same. have i raved about the elemental chaos recently?

I love how the Prime world is tailor-made for the standard adventuring paradigm to make sense.

The Shadowfell and Feywild as biased mirrors of the Prime plane makes for some great themes and setpieces, and I love how you can just slip between 'em without any fanfare.

Yeah! :)

"You're among the small offshoot holdouts of a long-fallen empire. Not everyone's gotten their [stuff] together yet, and there's a lot of scary things out there, and nobody knows quite what."

Setting the "current" history just after a civilization shattered into tiny city-states, with enough time for them to separated by wilderness, sets the scene perfectly for typical adventuring stories.

...Though admittedly I set my own campaign in the distant past during a war between two world-spanning empires.

But that's because it wasn't a typical adventuring story.

@BESW Also with plenty of reason to say there's places that have been ruined and are now filled with evil but still structurally intact enough to occupy relatively safely, and then everything running the gamut from that to "totally ancient, barely recognisable shrine"

And of course their vision of the Far Realm was just catnip for me.

@BESW I can't recall if that move ever came up in our game?

@nitsua60 Pretty sure not.

Oh, I have something to share before I fall asleep!

Go for it

Today I went to a small RPG convention called Dragonmeet. At one of the panels, a friendly and prolific GM got to talking about Tales of the Loop. Namely, he was fascinated by its cost & recovery system.

Ooer.

Ooooooooo

Everybody seems entranced by TotL's setting, which I don't find particularly interesting, but cost and recovery mechanics are right up my alley.

In tales of the loop you can push for success on something by using up a resource. Doing so reduces the number of dice you roll in future checks, so whilst pushing for success there's an inevitable drive toward being in a position where you can't do much else right now. This was interesting to him, but his real fascination was with how recovery happened.

To recover, you go home and do anything but the mission for a while. You listen to music, or hang out in school with friends, or study, or something. He wasn't sure what it would mean, but in play he realised it meant all the characters get to just be kids again for a while. Like, you know, just like in Stranger Things for instance.

@doppelgreener Yeah--interludes of normalcy is an explicit goal in the design of Tales.

Sounds kinda like Bubblegumshoe or Shadowcraft.

He liked it because it paced the story. He realised by comparison that games are generally all out on the story's goal — go and go and keep going and never stop or take a break from the adventure or focus on anything else. They fuel nonstop progress. Taking a pause, pacing things out, felt like something he wanted to see more of.

IIRC there's something hard-coded in the construction/selection of scenes that pushes that. It's possible that scenes must alternate between those involved with The Mystery and those that have no bearing on it?

That's all. Also @BESW @trogdor I met the author of Cthulhu Dark and got to tell him how much we love what he made.

Yey!

Oh damn son

nice

Remember, in BGS you can only recover relationship dice by having a scene with them that's focused on reinforcing whatever makes your relationship tick.

@doppelgreener cool

Troggy was just reading the New Improved Hardcover Cthulhu Dark last night. Now he's read more of it than I have.

No--it's not that strictly prescribed. But they explicitly advise keeping both Mystery and Normal Life both moving.

@nitsua60 That sounds possible! And I like it — investigate crazy happenings, but alternate between that and still having a life as a kid.

@BESW I remember, yeah. :)

@BESW lol. yeah if you read none of it that would not be hard

XD

I've read the first, like, three pages?

They also push having group vs. partial group vs. individual scenes. (In any non-full-group scene players whose characters aren't implicated help out by playing NPCs. Yanno, ignore the contradiction in terms.)

@BESW mm ok well I still have read a little more than you then

it's not like I read the whole book

but I read the first few pages and then moved over to other parts a little

certainly more than 3

@nitsua60 that's lovely.

Whether or not it makes for a good game, it certainly works to get the feel of "the '80s that never was."

@doppelgreener This is something InSpectres wants but doesn't mechanize.

@BESW this helps tell me some of the importance of mechanising important story beats

Soo, context here

This is me talking about why my character just did with the DM

(this is a good thing, btw)

(not that she knows this yet)

@Alphaeus thank you for clarifying this!! :P

Yeah, it needed clarification

The girl is screaming bloody murder

but she's safe now at least

To check to see if said girl was a lycan, here's a quote from the lovable dwarf in the party:

"Now wer gun see if yer a werebeastie. If this dun do more than feel cool to the touch, then yer clean. 'owever, if it burns ye. 'm gun snap yer neck like a bundle of straw."

@Alphaeus crazy thing is, I have a character that'd fail on. (they're sensitive to all precious metals though, not just silver, so that's how one'd tell -- silver and gold would burn them equally, whereas lycans are sensitive to silver specifically AIUI)

ah, that would be a pain

Guess Rudolph would "snap yer neck like a bundle of straw"

fast story

:P

@Alphaeus it's work-around-able more or less -- the coins in the land are struck from some sort of crystal material, and jewelry can be made from other things. re: the dwarf though...he'd probably get his rump kicked into next week if he tried that

well, considering I don't know your character, probably

He's got ridiculous str, though

@Alphaeus -- so, what all systems do you play, btw?

Primarily DnD and Pathfinder, trying to catch onto Fate and Cthulhu.

@Alphaeus ah

At lot of my background is actually with custom games of various sorts

Growing up my dad liked to create (he was an original DnD person), and got me into the spirit of that

we, in turn, played with other people of the same mindset.

oh, I see. I've dabbled in a few, but D&D is my mainstay, albeit with lots of homebrewed stuff as well, usually more on the settings side than the houserule side though

I've also done quite a bit of freeform stuff online, too much if you ask me :P

I'd like to give GURPS a whirl sometime, but haven't gotten a good opportunity though

Haha, yeah, I had my freeform online phase

There's this one site/system that's 100% original by the name of Mizahar

also want to give Dungeon World a try again, and would be OK with another shot at Fate but I'm not much for the strong enforcement of story-structures it provides

Did that for awhile, and was really awesome...then 3 of the main founders left and the game went straight downhill

(Mizahar, not Dungeon World)

Yeah...I haven't read much about Fate personally, just heard some interesting/good things

I've poked at it. the system has some very nice elements, and is rather flexible as well

I do like flexible systems

I mean, that's the main reason I've stuck with DnD 3.5e/Pathfinder so much

Many people hate the system for being ridiculously vague and having equally ridiculous piles of materials

I see it as opportunity to customize

yeah, Fate only has a few building blocks, but they are highly general and flexible

vs the "zillion fine-featured moving pieces that often don't fit together quite right" approach of 3.5/PF

Yeah, I have never run a pre-formatted campaign in DnD

Funny, because I own materials for about 50 of them :P

My current campaign's been running for a few months now, and I'm happy with it

The players are sifting through layers of mental conflict with the plot, which is where I want them. About 70% befuddled most of the time :D

@Alphaeus hahaha

I haven't ever run premade stuff either, although I've played in some of it

Sometimes it's OK

There are ones better crafted than others

yeah

I'm in a pre-crafted Pathfinder campaign right now

It's going good so far

Way of the Wicked

unfortunately, the homebrew campaign stuff I'm working on atm is kinda stalled

trying to figure out how to expose players to one of the subplots without drowning them in paper

Hhahahaa

Yeah, I feel ya

I like to use meta chars when I can

Like, this campaign has behind it a meta character known as The Gatekeeper.

He's the one responsible for putting the characters into their current situation, as well as giving them their quest (not an option, really)

He's not really involved, but he interacts twice at the beginning and a couple other times so far

helps keep them on track

it's less getting the players introduced and more an issue of zoom/level of detail

most players aren't nearly as keen on how courts function as I am

Oooooohhhhhhh

That kind of thing

Yeah, that can be tough

So, in relation to that, I'm in a campaign that a very seasoned DM has run for 10 years now

99.9999% homebrew

Ridiculously lore heavy by this point, since I joined about 9 years into this

yeah, most folks could do Ace Attorney or DanganRompa level courtroom drama, but having to deal with statutory interpretation problems is a whole another level

relephant quote (courtesy of Justice Alito, in the oral arguments for the Cyan v. Beaver Co. case before SCOTUS)

> Our late colleague [Antonin Scalia] wrote a book called Reading Law, which provides guidance about how you read statutes. And I looked through that to see what we are supposed to do when Congress writes gibberish. And that’s what we have here. You said it’s obtuse. That’s flattering. And we have very smart lawyers here who have come up with creative interpretations, but this is gibberish. It’s … just gibberish.

(from here btw)

lol, yeah, that's not something most players want to deal with

@Alphaeus You had one job, Congress. ONE JOB!

Dammit, you can't overload them like that

Also, I'm far too familiar with this. I work for the government and live an hour from DC

@Shalvenay what impact does the sub-plot have on the character's world?

question of "What is that thing" popped up

Thank you, Google Image Search

'~'

Jolly

Not fun, no. But absolutely necessary for the RPG community to face.

Yes, unfortunately

I mean, I think of RPG communities as consisting of about 3 cultures:

RPG.SE is, happily, usually pretty good about going "Hey, not cool" when we see it here, and enforcing that mechanically where folks don't take the hint.

All of these are fine, but this automatically places vulnerable groups and volatile groups together

Just from the nature of the venue

I'd probably avoid the "normal" judgement, but for sure RPGs bring together a lot of different kinds of personalities in a space that has the illusion of structure but is actually usually fraught with inherent and unstable power dynamics which are easily exploited.

well, I mean no offense, of course, but use the term normal in a sense as "not involving situations that would be psychologically/emotionally/physically negative"

Not in a "oh lel you're not normal" sense

objectively, in other words

One of the reasons I first started gaming was that by taking on the role of the GM (purely a game role that shouldn't have anything to do with the structure of our social group) it invested me with the social authority to shape our social interactions around the table as well.

Oh, totally. To be quite honest, I've had more than enough times where the difference between a resolved conflict and a totally out of hand situation was solved by me or someone else intervening as "DM"....

I mostly used my power for good (the motive was to create a space where we could hang out without some of my friends' friends changing the tone toward the bacchanalian), but it still wasn't a great place to be operating from and I'm glad I eventually found less authoritative ways to achieve the same goal.

"bacchanalian" lol...

but yes, I do agree

I mean, I know there are people in my regular groups that have benefited a good deal from being able to socialize and express themselves in a "moderated" environment

And I failed at least once in using that self-appointed power responsibly to confront sexual harassment in the group. I'm very ashamed of that.

I can understand that. I've never had to deal with that in my group, per se, but I have in other situations, and the tension is usually difficult to handle properly

I've now found ways to provide a structured, supportive environment without needing a central authority figure, by looking beyond a game for strategies to keep a group of friends constructive and cooperative.

A vast number of the questions on RPG.SE boil down to someone needing to be reminded "Remember that you're playing a game with friends, and the friends are more important than the game. Never use the game as a justification for being a jerk to your friends."

Yeah...there are those who view RPGs as "just the games" which is fair enough, but the reason I enjoy them is that they are fun games, ofc, but they are also tools that can lay the foundation/build a framework for much more

Right.

I believe one question's answer stated it well when they said "I've seen experienced players get aggressive and downright nasty, then stand up to get snacks and be laughing and friendly with one another"

Especially, trying to fix social-group problems with in-game solutions. See that a lot, it never ends well. The power dynamic skews fast.

So, yeah. There's a lot of potential in any contemporary social group for abuse and harassment, and sadly RPGs can easily add an extra layer of justification for toxic behavior.

Once you turn the game into the social environment itself, the whole purpose of being a tool goes out the window and you're back to square one

Certainly. Also I think a big problem is miscommunication as well

It's one reason I really like games like Fate, which talk about that stuff and make "consult with everyone about what's going on" an inherent part of the game philosophy.

Like, Fate straight-up rips the teeth out of Rule Zero.

"that stuff" referring to ???

Also, I like that rule. I generally run things that way anyway, but being a rule is a good statement to make

Group dynamics, communication, assuming everybody's a friend at the table to have fun, making sure we're all on the same page, creating an environment where folks are comfortable to speak up if they don't like how things are going.

Right...that's critical.

I consider myself part of about 3 distinct groups that RPG irl. The people of these blend back and forth, but there are "cores" that have different ground rules.

The communication element is really critical whenever we get someone new, because they can't know how our dynamics already work

That O-so-important standard of "believe the victim" can't just start with sexual assault. We've gotta listen and believe people when they say they're uncomfortable, or unhappy, even if it seems frivolous--because they probably wouldn't speak up if it were frivolous to them.

Someone that plays with my more "standard/PG-13" group for several times, then goes with some of us to the "risqué" group that's sharing a few beers would be way out of place if someone didn't make sure they knew ahead of time how things were going to be run.

Being friendly and inviting them is nice, but not the best decision if you aren't going to make sure they're comfortable with the situation

By establishing that I'll happily retire a PC if he's too bloodthirsty for someone in my group to play alongside comfortably, I also establish and model believing them about other issues which may be more crucial to their real-life safety and survival.

Because with many people like you said, they WON'T speak up when they're uncomfortable

That's actually a huge part of any management of a group environment

And this is where RPGs can be awesome: games like Fate, and Bubblegumshoe, and Microscope, include parts of the game itself which let us practice listening to each other on low-risk subjects.

If people feel like they can be heard, they are more likely to speak up

Amen

RPGs are almost like "virtual training sessions" of sorts

Some years ago I started getting involved in community development training programs, and the facilitator training puts a lot of emphasis on creating environments which encourage and support the desired outcomes.

I came to consider RPGs a microcosm community in which I could practice cultivating positive environments.

I've brought a LOT of the facilitator training to the table and it's helped change the way we work both as friends and as a gaming group, becoming more collaborative and cooperative and breaking down, for example, the artificial barriers between GM and player.

Our games attract and retain more diverse players--across lines of race, gender, sexuality, age, etc--than they used to, and I have to give a lot of the credit for that to how my friends have created a welcoming, trusting social environment and extended those principles into the act of gaming itself.

(Well, to the extent that we retain any players; it's a very loose, wide group because everybody's lives are busy and complex. I just throw open my doors every Saturday and see who comes in and we play --or watch Netflix-- accordingly.)

I do agree. I was raised playing RPGs, but when I was taking my business and psychology courses in university I had to chuckle at the fact that many of the techniques I was being taught to use at work and with individuals were actually what my Dad had taught me in his infamous "Now, this is how you..." speeches about DMing.

But yes...

the potential for RPGs to function as a unifying factor -- just like any other collaborative social environment -- is quite real, and something valuable

RPGs are a powerful tool, but need to be used consciously and knowledgeably or they'll turn sour on ya fast--like any other powerful tool.

I've got a few friends who are considering using RPGs like Dog Eat Dog to create conversational spaces about the local colonial and identity issues facing our region.

If you don't mind, what region is that? I believe you mentioned Pacifica before...

I'm from Guam.

Ah, kk. Native or armed forces kid?

Neither.

Ah, cool. I mean, I cannot truly relate to that kind of thought process personally, obviously (can DC be considered an exotic island? We have this really weird species running around the streets loose, ya know...), but on an objective sense I can grasp what you are doing

Well, enjoy

I'm off

ttfn

we all shed skin though

snakes and such creatures just do it all in one go

Does your fantasy world have leech houses?

I very much like the idea of fantasy worlds having equivalents of the real world Medieval/Renaissance doctors and wizards in them. So while the big towns might have that big guy whose magic is known to work, the poor folk get mostly charlatans and "mundane magic".

But those wizards and doctors are also important researchers in non-adventurer fields like astrology, alchemy and mathematics.

I'd love to run a campaign in Bujold's Five Gods setting, partly because its approach to magic is more like what you describe than, say, D&D's.

One of my "non-magic wizard" NPCs had a long list of achievements including "weighing the salts, sulfur and mercury", "knowledge of a thousand celestial objects", "measuring the cosmos unmeasured" and "discovery of the numerological square roots of two and three".

In the Five Gods, there are two kinds of magic: people who have learned to make room for the divine in their hearts and become channels for the will of one of the gods are called saints; they can perform miracles, but only as executors of the god's active will. And people who have taken on chaos demons can manipulate entropy provided the end result is always more chaotic than the beginning state--and they must ride their demon carefully or risk being ridden themselves.

Demon-riders have more control and versatility... until they suddenly don't and need to be taken down by a saint. Saints are usually very specialized and often unreliable because the gods' plans aren't ours.

And both saints and sorcerers are very rare, because it takes an unusual person to sustain either kind of bond.

But, particularly in the case of saints, their work often advances the more mundane sciences and arts.

...well, and there's deep animal magic.

Certain people remember an ancient art of casting a dying animal's soul into another animal of the same kind. Repeat for enough generations and you get a deep animal, wise and mature and insightful beyond anything a normal animal could accomplish.

And if you cast a deep animal's soul into a human... well, you get something superficially like a sorcerer, but instead of manipulating physical energy a shaman manipulates spiritual energy.

Sounds a bit voodoo-inspired

Bujold wrote the deep animals to deliberately remind us of "primitive religion" stereotypes.

Though within the cultures of the setting, its role in the world is more akin to Celtic mysticism.

The making of deep animals was practiced by the original inhabitants of the area, and then persecuted as heresy by the invaders who are now the primary citizens of the new nation because they didn't understand how the natives reconciled it with their gods.

I think I just made my first Pathfinder answer.

Grats?

I guess :P

@BESW ooh sounds interesting

she was the one who wrote the sci fi books you gave me

@Erics if it goes one way, they'll basically have done a huge favor for every druid circle, witch coven, and temple in the land. if it goes the other way -- well, basically, many of those entities are at risk of collapsing or going underground/clandestine due to bad tax law

@BESW We've all been there. With few models in most of our upbringings of how to appropriately/productively deal with those situations, I feel like we're all just winging it. (In a scenario where "eh, maybe it'll just go away on its own if I ignore it" has generally been a defensible position to take.) I have a broken stair in one of my communities I'm trying to deal with now.

@BESW -- re: "believe the victim" -- that's an adage whose goals and usages are necessarily limited. It's great when you're operating from a theraputic perspective and in a theraputic/empathetic mode. It's lousy when adjudicatory action is called for, though -- it throws sand in the gears of the thought processes needed to adjudicate things rationally.

hey there @Zachiel

you're right, hey there

My laptop is dead and I'm on dad's PC

And (as it is usual) I have absolutely no idea of what I should buy next

I have spent the whole day trying to figure it and asking technical savvy friends

@Zachiel I have the exact opposite problem. I know what I want (adhesive lined heat shrink good for 150degC), I just can't find the stuff to save my life :/

@Zachiel I take it that means it's not a good time for us to pick up our dungeon run btw?

The result is "Get an Asus. Lenovo is fine. Laptops are overpriced unless you find them at a discount, better wait after Xmas".

@Shalvenay I'm not sure this PC can run roll20 at an acceptable speed. Anyway, I have plans incoming in around 1h

Asus is generally pretty good, but if you're in an area with dirty power you need to sanitize the line more than usual because Asus tends to cut corners on connectors in order to afford better components.

@trogdor Remind me and I'll loan you some of the books next time.

(Have you been reading A Wrinkle in Time?)

@BESW ok that is cool with me

@BESW yep just started it a couple days ago

I have three of her Five Gods books. Each is pretty much independent, but have a few spoilers if you read them out of order because they take place in the same world and some characters overlap.

it's so small I can almost garuntee I will be done with it by Saturday

@BESW that's interesting.

All these premade PCs mount a 5400 RPM HDD...

@BESW I only wish I had read this as a kid, I think I would have liked it even more then

@trogdor I think so!

I like it a lot, but I feel like it would have resonated more earlier in my life

@Zachiel I'm fairly happy with my current Sager but it's a bit of a beast (desktop replacement class)

@Shalvenay I need to buy my laptop at a local shop - I have some vouchers to spend before the new year comes - so my choice is pretty limited.

@Shalvenay I need to buy a fairly low-power desktop for home use by kids. Am planning to do it for Christmas. Any tips on where to find a good deal?

@nitsua60 buy or build, and is running Windows a requirement?

Either: I'm comfortable building. Windows yes, though I don't need a copy of it.

I'm a bit disappointed this chat isn''t called something like "The Tavern"

@ATaco That particular name would run risks of being confused with the "Tavern on the Meta", meta.SE's chatroom

@ATaco or "You find yourself in a tavern..."

@nitsua60 probably a Mini-ITX something-or-the-other. I'm still loyal to Newegg for computer parts although I don't need them much any longer

(if Windows was not a requirement, I'd vote for something Pi-flavored instead as those ARM SBCs are going to beat anything Intel-powered on power consumption)

@ATaco we have the "Not a Bar" :P

What's the most interesting artifact, Be it magical or technological or what have you, have you had as a character?

Just don't get a pie-flavored computer, the kids might just eat it ;)

So far mine is a ring that summons animated shrubs. I've not had many interesting artifacts.

hey there btw @ACuriousMind and @nitsua60

@ATaco artifact as in D&D super-magical unique item, or do magic items count?

Any magic items, artifact in the generic term.

@Shalvenay heyhey

@ACuriousMind how're things going?

I could also talk about my super-duper-rare black-bordered Library of Leng

@Shalvenay Quite well, watching the snow fall with a nice cup of hot choloate at my side :)

(Some idiot painted the borders black, then my ex best friend sold me that at an extra because of the rarity...)

@ACuriousMind OK here. trying to figure out how to properly strain-relieve a transition splice in a test lead

I don't know what that means but I trust you know what you're doing ;)

I'm fond of Betty Davis's Stratocaster.

...and the Experimental Time Gun.

I never got to use Sweetheart's FOIA request form, but that would've been a lot of fun.

"Experimental Time Gun" sounds interesting.

@BESW tell me about this one :D

the Experimental Time Gun was fantastic

The Experimental Time Gun was one of Major Jessie Farman's signature items, along with her Rocket Boots.

After already having one artifact to summon things, I then came across a store selling a Bag of Tricks. Sadly, I was Shy of the 500 gp required to purchase it.

@Shalvenay Captain's Fancy Valentine Sweetheart had, as a reserve stunt to be picked up if it ever became useful, the ability to use FOIA requests to justify using Contacts during a brainstorm.

@BESW hahaha :D

Also I once created but never played a character with a Kokopelli tattoo.

Gosh, I wanna play a game with Jessie in it again. And go back to our setting and meet folks like Daryl:

I wanna play Sweetheart again too.

Sweetheart and Stellata had a lot of dramatic potential together.

Yeah!! :)

They sure did

@doppelgreener does this mean you would want to play Stellata again?

...now I kinda just want to do a session where Sweetheart forces Stellata and Doctor Light to go to counseling.

I only ask because last time we talked about our characters in that game was both saying we wanted a break from them

Stellata and Dr Light I mean

@BESW this would be hilarious

we still need to really hash out exactly what our setting should be that will have us all on the same page though

@trogdor Totally

ok

I just wasn't sure