TRPG General Chat

Helwar

00:00

but for example, my character is an ex-soldier, bitter towards the nobles that forced the wars, he's now a thief 'cause he's jobless otherwise, and has sworn to never take a life again.

depending on the phrasing, i can say: Ideal - I respect life above all else. or... Flaw - I won't take a life again.

both work :)

Mike Q

tbh I'm raising my eyebrow at the "never take a life" rule

It is D&D after all. A combat game. Where you kill things.

Helwar

@MikeQ there's non-lethal damage

i'm not worried about that

Mike Q

Ok, maybe the thief goes pure Batman and doesn't directly kill, but how will they reconcile with the combat strategies of other party members?

Helwar

and he's not gonna preach to the others a la legal-dumb to stop doing it themselves

@MikeQ goes batman... I haven't thought about batman... xD

As said, he'd prefer if others didn't kill, but he's not gonna be squeamish about that, specially if the group is defending themselves. He's been a soldier and he's killed before.

Mike Q

You may want to tweak their oath to be a bit more compatible with the inevitable combats. Like, they resent being in a war that was manipulated by nobles, so they swear never to kill for greed, or never to kill on someone else's behalf.

Helwar

00:08

I'm sure I will have to break that rule, but luckily i'm not a paladin :) And it's gonna be interesting character-wise to find when the breaking point is reached

Mike Q

Won't that be like, the first time they need to act in self-defense?

Helwar

as said, there's non lethal damage

Mike Q

Plus, to whom does "take a life" apply? Is he forbidden from killing gelatinous cubes, or giant spiders?

Helwar

"forbidden" is a big word

I was mostly thinking about "people" though he's gonna try not to have to kill anything, if possible. Just on principle. But again, as said, if he has to do it he'll do it. I don't plan to ruin the game :)

I know well enough those: "My character wouldn't do that!" that halt the narrative

Mike Q

I'm just trying to point out the difference between respecting life and not killing, in an alignment or character motive context

Helwar

00:17

@MikeQ I know and you are right. I see the difference, and it's a more sensible oath to make! I'm just saying... the character will have to find out that by himself :)

Mike Q

The basis for most "good-ish" alignments is a value of life. Example: If we don't kill this invading orc army, then everyone in town will die.

Compare that to say, Batman, who puts "no killing" above "value life". For example, he could save thousands of lives by simply killing the Joker.

Helwar

@MikeQ that's "numbers" though. Greater good and all that.

Mike Q

He would also be very annoying to have as a party member in a combat game that, again, is about killing things.

Helwar

@MikeQ well, superheroes tend to not kill xD They make a special mention of it if they kill (a la punisher)

Mike Q

Superheroes tend not to kill because they live in worlds where the laws of physics bend to what is most convenient

Like, no human should be able to survive being punched by Superman

Anyway, this is kinda off topic. The point I wanted to make is, don't give yourself a character concept that will limit you too much.

Helwar

00:21

@MikeQ I see what you say. I don't plan to interfere with other's actions, and again, I'll be as useful as everyone else, i'll just do non-lethal damage as much as I can until I'm forced to do otherwise. His oath extends to himself and no others.

@MikeQ Thanks for the advice :) I know it's pretty much boxed in a tiny space to move and will have to "break through", it's the idea though

Mike Q

I'm just doing the Simon Cowell strategy - Raise a lot of criticism now, so you can prepare for when it comes later

Helwar

@MikeQ tell that to batman. he heals from having his spine broken in half

Batgirl/Oracle can't do that though xD

Mike Q

Personally, I think the "jaded veteran field medic who became a thief" concept is very workable and can develop in fun ways

Helwar

@MikeQ I hope so. Thanks for raising criticism! It's well recieved :)

@MikeQ also, nice way to descrive the character in one line... I'll take note of that

Mike Q

They go to war and return home to a desolated country and no reward. No celebration for their hard work. So he becomes a thief, and takes back from the nobility that stole from him/the country/etc.

Helwar

00:30

@MikeQ Just had a Final Fantasy Tactics dejabu

finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Corpse_Brigade

goodguy5

00:48

I hate se chat rooms that are ghost towns

Helwar

@goodguy5 wich ones are ? :)

BESW

yesterday, by Zachiel

The writing chat is so empty

goodguy5

Atm. Life hacks junk drawer

I'm trying to ask how to cut those soda plastic ring things with the fewest snips... But I don't know what to call them

Mike Q

Six pack rings

Six pack rings or six pack yokes are a set of connected plastic rings that are used in multi-packs of beverage, particularly six packs of beverage cans. == History == The six pack rings in most common use today are the descendants of an original design by ITW Hi-Cone, which first introduced them in St. Louis, Missouri in the summer of 1960. Within 10 years, plastic rings had completely replaced the paper and metal based holders then common in the market. Today several other manufacturers continue to produce six pack rings. Though interest in multi-packs has continued to grow, other variations,...

Helwar

@BESW I visit the writing SE every day since you pointed out it's existance (I usually just lurked this one and Worldbuilding), but I have not yet tried to go to their chat room

goodguy5

00:50

Thanks, bro

Helwar

Huh.... fold it over itself by the long side, then two times in the other direction (so you have every ring overlapping), cut once. Done.

(I do it always )

goodguy5

Is there a link you have for that?

Helwar

huh, no... personal experience isn't linkable yet...

sorry

goodguy5

Because I've tried numerous iterations that sound just like that, and nada

@Helwar how do you get the tiny middle bits?

Helwar

Cut diagonally when you have every ring overlapping

but it depends... not all are the same, sometimes i have to cut them individually because there is no way (or I have found no way) to cut it in one go

goodguy5

00:58

I think I understand. Will try next one.

BESW

Another reason to keep comments restricted to improving posts: scifi.se people won't stop arguing with each other in the comments on my answers.

Helwar

@BESW >_<

huh... why does D&D5e specify that a bag of ball bearings has a 1000 of them? I mean, 1 bag is 1 use, isn't it?

Shalvenay

@Helwar because the idea is to dump a lot of bearing balls on the ground all at once to create a slip-and-slide ;)

Helwar

01:13

yeah I know that but.... It could say just: a bag of ball bearings, dump them somewhere to make it a slippery slope. The actual number of them is irrelevant

actually it made me think that maybe it has "uses" like... you throw 100 every time, or something, but nope

Mike Q

Players can get creative with them by using them for other things. When I started 5e, I would help scout by casting Light on a ball bearing and then throwing it into the darkness ahead.

Helwar

That's good. Still, the fact that they mark the actual number of them... It's not "a bunch", or "hundreds", it's exactly 1000 ball bearings. xD I dunno I find it funny

like, do I have to mark down one if I throw it at a well to know how deep it is? Is it relevant? When does it start getting relevant? When 10 are missing? 100? It's stupid and will never be an issue, but it's all I could think of :)

Mike Q

That's a good point - How many bearings does the bag need to contain in order to be effective

BESW

Welcome to D&D-not-4e, where mechanics and narrative have fisticuffs in the margins of the text.

Helwar

how is 4e free of that? haha

BESW

01:24

Because 4e has almost completely divorced mechanics and narrative.

Peter Cooper Jr.

Maybe it lists 1000 so that one can estimate how much time it'd take to pick them back all up after use?

BESW

35

A: How to encourage a player's creativity without breaking the game?

This is a system transition issue, not a creativity issue. 4e is a very different system and that's okay, but it's not for everyone. There's a gap between the player and the system and your job as GM is to help facilitate bridging that gap. Your goal in this should not be to make the player conf...

Helwar

@PeterCooperJr. I pictured my character picking and counting them all up... Considering adding that to flaws :P

Shalvenay

@Helwar LOL

@Helwar -- btw: I was wondering if there was anything else you wished to bring up from when we talked in the NAB previously?

BESW

Flaw: Secretly a vampire.

Helwar

01:27

@BESW Yeah, but "in combat", rules got way to much in the way of the narrative... Like: a golem is clearly animated by a jewel in it's helmet, rogue climbs to the chandellier and lowers itself to the golems helmet. Tries to attack the jewel. The rules say: wich power do you use? None of the rogues powers is: attack the special jewel that's clearly a weak point... :S

@Shalvenay NAB? that other room? (i forgot what that acronym means)

BESW

@Helwar That's... not a problem... the rogue can use an MBA if nothing else seems appropriate.

Part of the beauty of 4e is that there are defaults to fall back on.

Helwar

@BESW puej... Vampires... I'd prefer to be a maggot >_<

@BESW MBA? played in spanish, what those letters stand for?

BESW

Melee Basic Attack.

Helwar

Oh, I understand

BESW

Alternately, the GM rules that it's not an attack, but a skill check, and asks the rogue to roll Thievery to pry the gem out of its socket.

In that situation I'd probably rule that the rogue needs combat advantage to try the skill check, or I might even expand the whole conflict into a party skill challenge.

KorvinStarmast

01:31

@Rubiksmoose The downside of that wish is that it would make you old, and being old hurts. Every time you get out of bed.

BESW

Since at that point the combat assumption (that the way to remove someone from the scene is through hit point depletion) is being challenged, and 4e offers skill challenges as the complex non-hit-point-depletion resolution mechanic.

Shalvenay

@Helwar yeah, not-a-bar

@Helwar that other room

BESW

So the fighter's using Athletics to distract the golem with hit-and-run, the wizard's using Arcana to lower the golem's magical defenses, the cleric is using History to advise the party on tactics based on old legends, and the thief is up on the golem's head with a prybar rolling Thievery.

Helwar

@Shalvenay then no, I have not played with my paladin again... And it's a very sporadic thing, the planets have to align and a Rooster has to sign at midnight a perfect c- scale while the moon is waxing and waning at the same time, for me to play that campaign xD

BESW

They need five successes before three failures, and one of the successes has to be Thievery at a higher difficulty.

Helwar

01:35

@BESW Sounds fun! haha. I try to come with those original solutions, I'm not always successful

KorvinStarmast

@Yuuki False statement. My calculator was doing Trig Functions. IIRC, SR56 by TI 1976.

BESW

This sort of skill challenge scenario is part of how 4e helped prepare me to embrace Fate.

KorvinStarmast

@Yuuki A different way of dealing with engineering problems than slide rules ...

Yuuki

Eh, I still looked up trig tables in high school because math classes had weird ideas about how to use tools.

Helwar

@BESW One reason I don't do that usually is that my players tend to fail all skill challenges. They roll reaaaaaaaaally bad when it comes to it haha

Shalvenay

01:38

@Helwar ah, I was more asking if you had some comments/questions re: my gnoll, or my paladin for that matter

BESW

@Helwar To be fair, the default skill challenge structure in 4e isn't just bad, it's outright wrong.

I used Stalker0's modification variant.

(Literally, if you do what the DMG says you should do to make a skill challenge harder, it gets easier, and vice versa.)

Helwar

I don't remember 4e rules all that well, but I get the point

BESW

Skill challenges are a great idea but needed at least two more playtest cycles and somebody to point out that they're kinda boring and some extra complexity would actually HELP mitigate some of the sharp corners on the math.

Fate does it much better.

Helwar

@BESW I know Fate exists, and that it has a campaign scenario for Dresden Files (wich I'm curious about), and that's all I know about Fate :P

KorvinStarmast

@Helwar No, it is not. Our wizard used them 10 at a time for animate objects for lethal effects. No. No. No. A claymore mine on steroids.

Helwar

01:46

@KorvinStarmast go on, spew the details! :)

KorvinStarmast

Cast the spell, tiny object, for the next ten rounds 10 of them do lile 1d4 + 8 damage (look up the spell) It shreds giants.

They don't all hit but it doens't matter.

Helwar

haha

KorvinStarmast

Sorry, +8 to hit, 1d4 +4 damage.

I think I answered a question here with that detail here ... let me get you a link

@Helwar me discussing the 5e claymore mine

Helwar

@KorvinStarmast I've seen a question about a claymore made with fireballs and a glass jar

KorvinStarmast

That one. That's where the ansewr is

Helwar

01:51

haha

it's very Magneto-ish

(at least in my mind)

KorvinStarmast

@Helwar SInce I have set off a Claymore mine on a firing range in Quantico, I have a very vivid mental picture of what he was trying to achieve, which 5e can't do, but we can try to approximate it.

The first time I saw our wizard do that, I was in awe. By round 5 it dawned on me how important it was for our party that my fighter protect him, so that he'd keep his concentration going ....

If I were smarter, I'd have figured it out in round 2

Helwar

@KorvinStarmast haha, that happens to all of us :)

KorvinStarmast

:) learning is good. Aha moments are kinda cool ....

Helwar

hum, I don't know how the Soldier background feature and me being a thief will gel together... haha

like... they can arrest me, but I can try to pull rank on them? O_o

Mike Q

@Helwar I think in Sword Coast there is a town guard background that gets some sort of authority

KorvinStarmast

02:01

@Helwar Drive a wagon. The Getwaway car!

Mike Q

there's also the limitation of "they defer to you if they are lower rank."

Helwar

It's still a weird mix, isn't it?

KorvinStarmast

Land Vehicle: and underappreciated skill until you are in a chase scene .....

Just sayin' ...

Helwar

Soldier has a gaming set instead of Land Vehicle... haha

KorvinStarmast

Read the whole book, amigo

Tool Proficiencies: One type of gaming set, vehicles (land)

That means both, not either or

Helwar

02:04

huh... I was checking it in dndbeyond

Mike Q

The soldier also gets a set of dice

KorvinStarmast

Basic Rules, page 42. Proficiencies .. is plurao

Plural. yeah, also gets dice to lose money with .. how do I know that?

:p

Mike Q

In all games I run, the game itself exists inside of the game world

KorvinStarmast

(Stinking Arcane Trixter with expertise in gaming set ......

Mike Q

You walk into the right tavern in Faerun, you find some elf nerds playing a mysterious game with tomes, polyhedral dice, and scrolls with strange numeric runes, and they argue over rulings

KorvinStarmast

02:05

And it's called "Accountants and Actuaries"

Helwar

@KorvinStarmast I usually say Taxes and Ledgers :P

KorvinStarmast

The other one is called "Dipsticks and Driveshafts" and it's about winning high speed races on an oval track ....

In game, it's called D&D

And then the recursive vortex wipes out the city ....

Again and again ....

Mike Q

I've even made it into a non-combat challenge: a challenge not just of numeric skill bonuses, but the players' unbounded storytelling ability...

@KorvinStarmast However I try to keep it at 1 level of nesting, otherwise the recursion would get too confusing.

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ Yeah, it's like living in Oklahoma, just different ...

afk, best wishes to you all......

Helwar

02:26

hummm

it's almost 4:30 am

spent too much time drawing >_<

i'm gonna go to sleep

see you chat!

Mike Q

@Helwar adios amigo

HellSaint

04:21

"It's also good to note that our DM ruled that Long Rests don't heal our HP to full. We need to use hit die to restore HP on both a Short Rest and a Long Rest, and Long Rests restore hit dice by half our character level." - Jesus Christ what is this ruling lol

Shalvenay

@HellSaint lulwut? is the DM trying to reimplement 1e in 5e? :P

HellSaint

04:44

The DM is trying to kill the party, it seems. The player mentioned he throws only Deadly encounters as well.

By the way he stated it (and the fact that players left), I'm not sure if they agreed on that or the DM said "this is how I do it, like it or leave"

Shalvenay

@HellSaint yeah :/ at the latter

HellSaint

I really don't see a point in that ruling though. There should be better ways to make the game more challenging, if that's the goal. But welp, if they did agree on that and are having fun, I hope they keep it going :)

David Coffron

I've played with that rule (well, a similar one) in the past and it just tends to lead to running away from a lot more fights. Not necessarily fun

HellSaint

Running away from a lot more fights and spending a week living peacefully so you can actually heal and get all your HDs back...

David Coffron

If the goal of the ruling is realism they should re-imagine Hit Points to be fighting stay (like the book says) where rest will realistically help just as much. Then use the variant injury rules (which do require greater rest or spell usage to recover from) for major injuries

They're in the DMG, can't remember where

6

Q: What does HP represent?

What is HP? Of course we are all familiar with it just being a numerical value that counts down when you take "damage." But, how much of your HP is fighting spirit or the will of a character to stay active, and how much of your HP is actual "meat points"? Am I supposed to believe that these figh...

13

Q: Does 5e have any kind of permanent injury rules?

In my last game, an unfortunate circumstance befell my character: I was engaged with two ghosts, however, the "master" of the ghosts (who had been appearing and disappearing at random) had just reappeared in the middle of the room. He had taken a bit of a beating already, so I decided I would do...

dnd-5e injury

It's DMG pg. 272

HellSaint

04:55

Yeah I'm familiar with that. I've homebrew'd a creature using these rules (he had a feature that was giving permanent injuries, even though they were not a thing in my game overall). It was fun :v

David Coffron

I just wish DMs would read all the books and understand the design intent before making weird arbitrary houserules. If you disagree with the design, sure, change it, but most of the time there is a good reason for the way the rules work

HellSaint

Yeah, recently I've been noticing that most of house ruled bizarre rules are actually a consequence of not knowing the actual rule.

The question about rolling investigation to find loot as a good example.

David Coffron

To be honest I'm glad people are thinking about how to make the rules better (it's a good mindset, bcecause there are some problems with 5e), but knowing the game is also important

HellSaint

There's a huuuuuuuuuuuuge gap between trying to make a better rule and making a rule because you don't know the actual one.

I know the rules for encumbrance, eating and temperature, I just choose to ignore them as they suck imo.

Not knowing them and just randomly stating that "carrying that much is too much, you can't do it because I said so" is a different thing, which usually leads to creating more problems

David Coffron

@HellSaint Agreed on encumbrance. I haven't played a setting where food was hard to get access to yet, so idk on that one. Temp rules are definitely mediocre.

Tbh I wish they used the exhaustion mechanic better. It is a good system for addressing the types of problems like encumbrance, but it is barely used at all

HellSaint

05:10

@DavidCoffron Exactly. If you play a campaign where food is hard to get, then the ruling becomes something. Usually you don't, and having to keep track of how many days of food you have, keep going to the marketplace to get more food and all of this gets boring really, really fast. (unless it's actually a relevant part of the plot/story, so it should have its mechanical significance. But then again, that's a very specific campaign)

It's already boring as hell to keep track of ARROWS. And that's something I actually do in early levels.

David Coffron

Yeah D&D shouldn't be an accounting lesson.

Ledger keeping is not fun (most of the time)

> although now I kind of want to make a survival style campaign and am wondering how to make the rules less boring. I'd probably homebrew some interesting hunting rules similar to the skill challenges in 4e

HellSaint

I've played some campaigns in deserts and glacial settings which were pretty much survival

We had some fun, but mostly we felt that there should be a system more appropriate haha

BESW

06:25

there are too many good RPG systems

Tweeted by NowWeAreAllTom on May 18, 2018 at 8:01 PM

kviiri

07:45

Welp, I have a new top answer by votes

Finally one that I think actually deserves it

nitsua60

12:11

@HellSaint Consider that it may not be about challenge, but about time's passage. The structure of "the adventuring day" as given in the DMG and baked into monster stats/hp/hit dice/rests means that a party needs to either be involved in six encounters per long rest or have fewer encounters with deadly foes or just be blasting through everything.

Six encounters every day may not be problematic from a challenge standpoint, but from a narrative standpoint?

BESW

Yeah, that was always a bit weird for my 4e campaign.

Sometimes I'd pump up the difficulty of encounters so they'd still have to deal with resource management (surges, dailies, etc) without padding out adventures with uninteresting/storyless combat.

And sometimes I'd have to get creative about ways to grant effects of a long rest without actually granting it narratively, because the story demanded that they slog through more than they could actually handle.

At one point I gave them a rejuvenating fountain they could drink from, but it was only accessible during a combat scene. Standard action to drink: effect is dazed (save ends), but when you successfully save you get the effect of a long rest.

trogdor

12:45

yeah as much as I gush about 4e, DMing it is a pain

one I didn't fully understand until the second time around

Shalvenay

13:26

hey there @ACuriousMind and @KorvinStarmast

ACuriousMind

Heya

Shalvenay

how're things going?

KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay good morning, how are thee?

That was odd, the original msg didn't go through. Hmm???

Shalvenay

alright here, as for you?

KorvinStarmast

14:55

@Shalvenay Hmm, I wandered off doing various clean up of junk mail and got a call from my sister ... where does the time go?

SPavel

15:11

@larplover69 "you studied sorcery for five years? you must be very high-level" no I said my thesis was on the changing social interpretation of Melf's Acid Arrow: self-defence or chemical warfare

Tweeted by iwasleeg on May 19, 2018 at 6:13 AM in reply to larplover69

David Coffron

15:59

@SPavel we know siege weapons are a thing and magic items like wands are a thing. Why did no one combine them and make acid arrow ballistas?

doppelgreener

@DavidCoffron usually if you have a ballista, that's doing more than enough damage on its own :P

David Coffron

16:49

@doppelgreener If i magically ward my walls against seige weapons (think blade wars but for structures) then a seige weapon that can concentrate magic for higher level spells would be useful. It just feels like D&D doesn't support high magic world's even though it is the most well known (typically) high fantasy tbtrpg. For my high magic game i just started running I've had to homebrew tons of things for the world to make sense. I'm always like "why wouldn't they do this"

For example, one of the archmages in the capital spent some time making simulacra of a few powerful sorcerers (can use flexible magic to make new spell slots) and shield guardians that serve as the "guards" for the city

Blade ward*

David Coffron

17:06

5e people. Are there even any effects that work with this question. WoTC could have at least chosen an affliction that is explainable with established rules or in a module somewhere. If it were blue skin we would have Wild Magic Surge (making "Blue Imsa" a wild magic sorcerer unbeknownst to her, which would be interesting easter egg for people that pay attention). I just can't find anything that makes skin green.

nitsua60

@DavidCoffron magic? (Not trying to be dismissive. I, personally, don't have nearly the problem with "the PHB does not list all magic that's possible in the world" that some others do.)

David Coffron

@nitsua60 oh I know it can be explained away, but if I designed the modules I would make some reference to how (or make it in a rulebook somewhere) in case the players want to solve the mystery

nitsua60

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

David Coffron

In my current game ive already homebrewed three spells for my players bc they wanted certain options that weren't available.

(From previous editions or for flavor reasons)

nitsua60

I'll even occasionally use different systems' magic in places =)

(Generally augmenting, not supplanting.)

David Coffron

17:15

Tbh sometimes I import savage worlds' large scale combat rules in 5e, bc 5e doesn't handle it nearly as well

Shalvenay

@DavidCoffron 5e did make some design decisions that weigh against high-power/high-magic games, yes. I view it as a tradeoff to get a system that fares better when working at more modest power and magic levels, with fewer sharp edges and breakage points.

doppelgreener

17:41

@DavidCoffron you won't find me ever disagreeing that D&D editions generally fail to support the very gameplay they advertise themselves as providing

(D&D 4e and maybe OD&D being the exceptions)

Shalvenay

hey there @Helwar, how're things going?

also, hey there @PremierBromanov

David Coffron

18:00

@doppelgreener they do a few things well but sometimes it feels like they don't play their own game

doppelgreener

part of it is they are also under a heavy burden of history they're expected to uphold

players generally expect new editions to feature approximately most of the same things previous editions did, which limits their ability to correct problems present in past editions

D&D 4e tried to do that and you can see how players received that particular attempt.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener yeah, which was part of the problem with 4e

David Coffron

18:28

@doppelgreener personally, i think people have rose colored lenses looking at past editions. I've played every edition (after they were "outdated" for pre-3e) and the more recent editions have improved each time in my opinion.

Shalvenay

18:38

@DavidCoffron yeah, 5e is my "go to" edition for most things, really

about the only thing it isn't great at is high-power/high-magic, for which I find putting up with the breakage that occurs in 3.x to be a better approach

David Coffron

@Shalvenay agreed. While it doesnt do anything particularly well (like 4e was great for tactical combats and 2e great for dungeon crawls), it is very open ended and simple enough for anyone to pick up yet complex enough to offer many options

(Imo a good break from 3.5s 100 expansion books

Mike Q

@DavidCoffron I think the simplicity and approachability are the things that 5e does particularly well

David Coffron

I played 3.5e twice but I have no idea how to tackle all the options

It's overwhelming even to a veteran tog player like myself

(As in two full 12-18 month campaigns)

BESW

21:34

pros of having many months between d&d sessions: i can retcon stuff because no one remembers what we did last time cons of having many months between d&d sessions: i do not remember what we did last time

Tweeted by corruptedgem on May 19, 2018 at 1:52 PM

David Coffron

21:50

@BESW making session recaps is awesome. My players love it bc we can read back on a cohesive story months later and it helps players catch up if they miss a session (or if we have a major break). Plus, it helps me keep plot holes out of my stories so players don't yell at me about them (with permission I record the voice of my sessions and just play it back at 2x speed later that week jotting down important events and then adding flare when I do the write up)

BESW

I have a soft spot for RPG systems that produce a session recap as an artifact of gameplay.

It's one of my personal design goals, actually.

I want to marry the tone of GSS with the collaborative artifact-creative of DPotFT.

Mike Q

22:06

DPotFT?

BESW

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.

Not to be confused with Do: Fate of the Flying Temple, which uses the same setting but a completely different system.

David Coffron

I wish I knew all these obscure systems... Almost everyone I play with/know is either D&D or Pathfinder

BESW

Probably 85% of the RPGs I know about, I heard of at RPG.SE.

In Do, the setting is tiny planets floating in a world of breathable air. PCs are teenage orphans who were raised by the monks of the Flying Temple.

When people in this world have problems, they write letters to the monks asking for help.

Answering those letters is part of the teenagers' coming-of-age experience, ultimately giving them insight into themselves to make the decision to either become a monk of the Flying Temple or to settle down somewhere in the outside world.

So each session starts with picking a letter (there's a whole book of pre-made letters, and you can write your own) for the group to go answer and try to solve the writer's problem.

And on each turn you semi-randomly determine whether your pilgrim will help someone, or get in trouble, or both.

If you help someone, you write a sentence describing what happens.

If you get in trouble, everyone else at the table collaborates to decide what happens and writes a sentence describing that.

Zachiel

@DavidCoffron 14-years player here, still didn't grok it. Or maybe I don't want to. Or maybe I just put too much trust in the guy who told me "5 years from now you'll be wishing you played a barbarian, trust me".

BESW

So at the end of the session you have an actual piece of paper describing everything that happened in the session.

David Coffron

22:19

@Zachiel I personally also dislike barbarians in almost every system I've played.

I've played one barbarian in 5e, but it was a reflavoured barbarian so that Rage was actually "Focus" so it RP'd more like a monk/samurai.

Zachiel

@DavidCoffron thematically or mechanically?

David Coffron

Thematically, mechanics are fine (in most systems)

SPavel

Someone almost made me the PC in a roguelike, but when they asked my permission, I told them "Don't @ me."

Tweeted by DungeonFacts on May 19, 2018 at 10:14 PM

BESW

there are too many good RPG systems

Tweeted by NowWeAreAllTom on May 18, 2018 at 8:01 PM

Zachiel

@BESW Indeed. Why isn't D&D one of those. (Please notice the ironic full stop.)

David Coffron

22:22

@BESW And too few players aware of them (IME) sadly

Zachiel

BTW, is there anyone here who plays Hearthstone on EU and is ok with mutual help for securing daily quests?

I mean, the developers made it so it's perfectly legal, but I guess it still sounds like cheating to some.

David Coffron

23:01

@Zachiel what do you mean mutual help (I used to play Hearthstone but have no idea what you mean)

Do you mean for the "watch a friend win a game" quest?

(oh, they added that feature after I stopped playing...)

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