TRPG General Chat

PhiNotPi

01:56

I'm gonna be running a "wilderness survival" campaign in D&D 5e later this week. It should be interesting.

The campaign is taking a decent amount if effort to put together, mainly to provide the necessary depth. And also to ensure balance.

Shalvenay

02:17

@PhiNotPi let me know how it goes :)

SmokeDetector

05:08

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +1 more: mumybear.com/radiantly-slim-diet/ by user45709 on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

The Oracle

05:23

0

Q: How does one build enough reputation to respond to threads?

When I asked a question in response to not being able to respond to a question thread, my thread was stopped by site moderators as follows: put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Purple Monkey, Miniman, KRyan, mxyzplk♦ 8 mins ago Many good questions generate some degree of opinion bas...

discussion

Trish

07:48

odd question: I know it is OT to ask for recommending a specific module or game. But would it be OT to tell abotu a group and then ask "In which order should I play Modules X Y Z" or "I want to play this kind of campaign. Does system X Cater to this?" Just curiosity.

kviiri

I would personally verge on "ok" over the latter at very least, at least if the campaign is quite well specified.

And more importantly, the desired experience

doppelgreener

08:19

@Trish The second is totally viable. For D&D the answer will be contentious (there's a crowd who believes D&D can do anything, and to suggest it can't cater to something is suggesting D&D can't do everything) but for other games there is almost always a straightforward correct answer of yes or no or sort of.

Trish

D&D can't be used to play The Dark Eye... simly for the reason that its magic system is incompatible on several hundred accounts. You don't play any D&D anymore once you chopped out all the violating spells

doppelgreener

Sure you are, just change anything in D&D, that's part of the rules — will be the idea.

kviiri

The joys of Rule Zero.

Well

I've been thinking about Rule Zero and some assorted problems, in particular the summarization that "the GM is always right".

I wonder if it discourages GMs from owning their mistakes and fixing them in case they happen (because by that rule they can't make mistakes).

Szega

08:54

@kviiri Well, "The GM has final say in in-game matters" is not as catchy

trogdor

@kviiri I would say telling someone they are literally always right is not the best idea

XD

kviiri

@trogdor Yeah but that seems to be a fairly common understanding, explicit or implicit, among gamers

trogdor

Yes well I will just say, we could try to change that

kviiri

Yea

trogdor

We is all of us, not just presumably 2 people

doppelgreener

08:58

In that it reframes them as not mistakes yeah; we get those situations where the DM ruled something, but it was incorrect, but now it's a house rule because the DM ruled it.

In other games there's a go-to of "oops we were wrong, let's fix it" because there's nothing telling them they were right to change that rule.

trogdor

@doppelgreener exactly where I come from with my rebuttal of it

We have games that say the opposite or at least something in opposition to that

And the ones among those that I have played were usually pretty great

doppelgreener

And there is stuff like how "the GM is always right" can be interpreted to mean "the GM can do no wrong". Either or both together can also lead to really unhealthy gameplay states between the players at the table. I still have bad feelings over some gameplay I've had where I didn't feel like I could challenge something the GM was saying that I didn't feel was fair or reasonable or right, in D&D and D&D-like games.

kviiri

I'm also thinking of cases like "oops, I totally destroyed party balance by giving the party too powerful items/allies/homebrew powers", but even discussing taking them away is off the table because that would mean the GM made a mistake which does not happen. Instead, the GM must fix the situation by buffing enemies or other hacks.

@doppelgreener One of my first GMs was of the school of "I'm neutral, I just tell what's happening and let the dice decide". It's since become a huge red flag for me

doppelgreener

I don't think it's possible for a GM to be neutral

There's lots of different perspectives, modes of play, styles, etc of GMing -- and there isn't one that's definably "neutral"

one person's "neutral" is another person's "that style where you stick to the rules too much" or etc

(also, inaction is not neutrality -- it's tacit endorsement of something)

kviiri

Yeah, that's what's bugging me. One can't really claim they're letting the dice decide when they are the one who keeps calling the rolls.

Had to look for a bit but this question is a good example: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/108693/…

user357094

09:14

@KorvinStarmast my apologies, typo on my part. Should be semper.

trogdor

@doppelgreener @kviiri yeah neutrality isn't exactly benign if you set the thing in motion before you "decid not to stop it because you are neutral"

dot_Sp0T

10:06

oooh, are we dropping GM experiences?

kviiri

Yea

From time to time :D

dot_Sp0T

10:23

I once was part of a Roll20 GURPS beginners campaign. The stated intent of it was to get people into the game and give them a chance to try out the system.

The GM was actually quite versed in the whole ruleset, and did great at explaining things when asked about them most of the time. But they also, for some reason, insisted on introducing a bunch of custom-made content, etc. and 400 point characters (which, for all intents, practically forces you to make a superhuman characters with 14+ level atrributes rather than going for skills..).

that took some twist there

I personally enjoy making the game all about the players. Though I've got the luck of players wanting to experience whatever I can cook up in that brain of mine

kviiri

10:34

I'm currently planning for a game that's going to be very much about the PCs, to the point where I scrapped even my A4 excuse plot because I want to leave the players space to work around in with their own Stories (this is 7th Sea where player-made stories are a part of the mechanic)

David Coffron

10:47

Woohoo got the dnd-5e badge

dot_Sp0T

11:04

@kviiri that sounds pretty good! I mostly try to scatter possible plothooks everywhere and have the players decide what they wanna pursue and whatnot, but it's hard :/

NautArch

11:17

@dot_Sp0T tbe problem I've noticed with scattered ploy hooks is that my players seem to just grab the first one.

kviiri

@dot_Sp0T Yea, I'm excited to try it! It's a bit daunting too, though

With each player having a Story of their own (although I've asked them not to finalize anything before Session 0) there's a lot to run, and that's not including the various other things the GM should throw in (Season/Episode stories and Villain schemes for Influece)

dot_Sp0T

11:34

Yeah the grabbing the first bit thing is suboptimal and a constant issue. But it's something that can conveniently be addressed in a meta discussion before or after a normal game-session I think - not that it does much

eimyr

kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/…

Check this out.

dot_Sp0T

The setting sounds fab, the diceless-ness sadly triggers me :(

doppelgreener

12:34

@eimyr do you have a pitch message i can pin? :)

KorvinStarmast

@ravery Familiar by having read through the adventure when I bought it, but as I've not run a group through it, not very familiar.

@kviiri Rule zero saves a lot of money. Don't have to buy more game systems. :)

@eimyr Looks tempting.

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast that's... kinda the opposite of the point there

(and, i mean, exactly what i was talking about, too)

doppelgreener

12:59

Lots and lots of these game systems are free or fairly affordable (Bubblegumshoe is one USD$25 book), and modifying D&D via Rule Zero has kind of become one of the encouraged perspectives of "you can use D&D for anything, if you just change it!" -- but it won't stand in for a well-built game of that genre, will still be a D&D offshoot, and isn't using D&D as produced anymore.

It's a problematic attitude that keeps the 800-pound gorilla in its position to the detriment of both the hobby and its players to buy into that.

OTOH, go ahead and play D&D and mod it to your heart's content.

goodguy5

about our phobia of "guessing" systems.

Does that come from experience or has it always just a preventative measure?

Was there ever a dark age where we were just guessing at systems and giving out wrong answers?

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener It was truer of the original game than the current edition, IMO. WoTC drove a stake into the ground with 3.0 on the high fantasy/swords and sorcery thing, and has done the same thing with 5e. Given that at that point in the industry there are a wide variety of games (not the case with the original game) with a wide variety of settings and genre flavors, WoTC's decision was probably not a bad one.

Trish

@goodguy5 it comes from different sources. WE have had a bunch of questions that asked "I play DND, What does X mean?" where X changed a lot over iterations. We had questions without a system that asked stuff like "what does the wealth stat mean?" and the first answer was picking just the wrong system...

KorvinStarmast

> @doppelgreener The original game was a hell of a lot more wide open (in part due to having far fewer rules and material) and the stuff that was added in early like Clone spell, mind flayers and the mini module that was "Temple of the Frog" was all SF / horror thrown into a swords and sorcery baseline. (Of course once games like traveler, gamma world, and metamorphisis alpha were published, D&D didn't have to try and wedge itself into that field ....)

trogdor

@goodguy5 we don't guess systems because often knowing the system informs answers, and it really shouldn't be considered too much work for a question poster to tag which system they mean should it?

goodguy5

13:04

well, no. of course. that's not what I mean.

Trish more accurately answered what I was asking.

trogdor

I get it if they didn't know to or forgot to

goodguy5

most policies are reactive, rather than proactive. I was asking about that for this

trogdor

But if asked it's not the most unreasonable thing to expect

@goodguy5 ah couldn't tell you there

No idea

goodguy5

And there are times where the system is 100% clear, but we won't answer it because of policy.

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener for my money, one thing that D&D does not do as well now as in the original game is the person to person mechanic; when charisma got introduced as a spell casting stat, and the d20 system did it's thing, the original "how the party/player interacts with NPC/Monster" scheme went awry. The original 2d6 scheme from Men and Magic was IMO far easier to implement and work with.

trogdor

13:08

@goodguy5 I think for that it's a matter of consistency

KorvinStarmast

Man, I wish our Tunnels and Trolls game hadn't blown up in our face back in '77. (Interpersonal dispute, college aged males, and the guy who was going to run it quite the gaming club .... sigh)

trogdor

If we let a few obvious ones slide we make it look less important to know that information

Just my guess there

goodguy5

yea, definitely.

In my experience, those attitudes are more likely to be responses to a time when it wasn't that way.

doppelgreener

@goodguy5 lots of guessing and assumptions, then having to do cleanup when we were wrong which was always a huge hassle:

12

Q: What do we do with answers made obsolete by a question change?

There's a current case of an infrequent problem: Why is Donjon offline? Dakeyras's answer was a response to a question that was once there. It was made in good faith, and is a helpful answer. The part of the question it was responding to no longer exists, and if the question were asked in this ...

support questions answers editing

kviiri

@goodguy5 Tangential but still related, we do get (relatively) many answers assuming DnD where system is either unspecified or something else.

Rubiksmoose

13:14

@goodguy5 I know of at least a couple cases that I personally experienced. IIRC, one was a case that look like a 100% sure 5e question. It didn't have any tag. Someone put the tag on. Later after answers were given it turned out that the person was actually using some strange hybrid of rules systems and not actually 5e despite using all 5e terminology.

goodguy5

well, with D&D taking up the ... majority? (definitely plurality) of the market share, that's bound to happen

@Rubiksmoose classic homebrewer shenannigans

Rubiksmoose

@goodguy5 Yeah it was kind of strange. The DM was combining rules from 2E 3E and 5E if I recall correctly. The question had to be closed because we had no way of knowing what the DM was doing and with such a major homebrew effort they had no chance of explaining it to us.

goodguy5

yea... when you're doing that much homebrew, what question could you be asking.

Rubiksmoose

Like, I can't even conceive of how that game actually works. Much less describing how it works. I can only hope the DM made consistent choices with what rules to pick and did not decide to fly by the saeat of their pants. Because that would just be a mess.

kviiri

I met a GM last weekend who says their optimal game has the players not even knowing the rules, with a tone that suggested he was stating something that was extremely obvious

Rubiksmoose

13:34

@kviiri I mean... that seems like a pretty poor way to play honestly. I think it is fine, even fun sometimes, for the players not to know some of the rules (anything that doesn't affect their choices for example). But none of them? That seems unideal.

Like in my game of Masks I haven't explained in detail how DM moves work yet just that I am following a set of rules. But there is literally nothing they can do to mitigate or interact with those DM rules that they don't already know about (from the player rules) so there is nothing really gained from those players knowing them.

kviiri

I pondered a bit whether I should tell my players how Villain schemes work in 7th Sea, and opted to tell them the basic idea because I think it's quite important to know

(basically 7th Sea Villains have a limited pool of Influence they can use to inflict various nasty things at the players, but they need to succeed in Villainous schemes to gain more of it)

Sir Cinnamon

@kviiri I understand the... desire for players to be unencumbered by the rules, and able to roleplay to their hearts content but not knowing the rules only really works if the rules truly do not get in the way. 5e as an example, a character might assume that "my guy is in tune with nature (high nature skill) so i want to forage for food, hunt and start a campfire" oops sorry, thats survival and so you really biffed it, you are now freezing and starving

kviiri

Yeah

I'd say the longer I've played, the more I've seen rules as "you can do X and Y and the GM can't really tell you otherwise" more than "you can't do X and Y, but you can do everything else except if your GM says otherwise".

Rubiksmoose

@SirCinnamon Agreed. I think my Masks example only really works so well because the rules really do take a back seat in that game for the most part. Funnily enough, they actually requested not to be told them in detail which I quite liked. I think they enjoy not being experts in a system and having that feeling of being in a story without knowing the mechanical reasons for everything.

kviiri

And well, knowing the rules is an important part in having the required knowledge to make informed choices. That also requires knowing the conventions, though.

Sir Cinnamon

13:45

I don't know anything about Masks but its cool that they can even do that

without being frustrated by small nuances

Rubiksmoose

To better explain it a bit, in Masks (and PbtA games in general I believe) most of the stuff you do mechanically are described by Moves. Players have a set of moves that trigger when they do the thing the move describes. But the DM also has a separate set of Moves intended to advance plot, challenge the players, and keep the story exciting and good.

But when I the DM makes a move, all I tell the players is what happens narratively not the name of the move or what triggered it. One of the more common times the DM is allowed to make a move is when a PC fails a roll.

Rubiksmoose

14:13

howdy @NautArch

NautArch

@Rubiksmoose howdy howdy

eimyr

14:48

Kickstarter for Flotsam is now live! It is a roleplaying game about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society.

3

@doppelgreener ^^

NautArch

@eimyr is there a Jetsam?

Sir Cinnamon

Only on neopets

nitsua60

15:17

@MikeQ et al. thanks for the kind and welcoming comments yesterday--not sorry to see that user go!

NautArch

@nitsua60 wuhappen?

nitsua60

A new user asked a meta question mainsite, Mike commented "I'm voting to move this to meta since it's about how the site works," and the user commented back full of profanity and insults. They're gone now.

NautArch

@nitsua60 wowsers

nitsua60

@NautArch It's not unheard-of, unfortunately.

NautArch

@nitsua60 Humans, amirite?

nitsua60

15:22

But not too often. Maybe once a month or so someone happens on us, tries to start a discussion, runs into immediate friction when their "thread" isn't positively received, and we-all get called all sorts of names.

It's usually all said-and-done within about ten minutes. You-all are really good with flagging things. That, in and of itself, is enough to auto-handle some things, and one of the elected mods is almost always onsite to handle the remainder.

Mike Q

@NautArch User had a question that wasn't well-received and was quickly closed as POB. User followed up with an angry question about the "admins" and "threads" on this "forum", so I edited it and voted to move to meta. User turned rabid. They are gone now.

KorvinStarmast

@Rubiksmoose Read ExTSR's answer with the terms "shock treatment" ... I used something a lot like that with some kids the first time they played D&D. They didn't have to read any rules; make characters and play. It can be a lot of fun, particularly for beginners. The DM has to have decent rules mastery, and "err on the side of the players" is a key factor in making that a lot of fun.

As ExTSR said it "Make decisions quickly, and err in favor of the party"

@SirCinnamon random chances for success and failure are why we have dice. Been in the genre since before the first RPG was published. (IIRC, the dice combat resolution form table top games is carried over ...) I think that it is great that now RPGs are made that are diceless.

@nitsua60 Hmm, I think I tried to posts a comment under the question, but I guess "help pile" failure happened again.

NautArch

@DavidCoffron Your bounty is coming up :) Does my answer solve your problem or can I improve it?

kviiri

If I guess correctly, it went south without a help pile

NautArch

crabapples, I forgot to turn off my kindle wifi and may have lost a loaned library book i haven't finished :(

KorvinStarmast

15:37

@kviiri you are correct; I might be remembering a different q on meta. Erik provided a very nice answer. To no avail, it seems. :(

Rubiksmoose

@nitsua60 Yeah I saw that happening and the admirable job that others had already done with approaching the user and explaining, but was pretty sure it was going nowhere from the get-go given the attitude and posturing of the user.

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast What Cinnamon is describing isn't a matter of randomness of the dice though, it's about rules and expectations not meeting eye to eye.

Although that particular instance could rather easily be hotfixed by the GM.

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri expectations = assumptions. Am I understanding you correctly?

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Maybe? I'm not sure what the difference is in this case.

KorvinStarmast

The assumption of failure in the stated example that I responded to, and the expectation that any narrative idea is Truth as the problem statement. Different game systems handle that differently, right?

Expectations brought to a table, rather than tabula rasa, can be like baggage that adds unneeded weight to the situation. (But they need not, of course)

kviiri

15:42

I'm not following at all what this has to do with the example

KorvinStarmast

> I offer you an example: if you bring D&D expectations to a game of Classic Traveller, you'll find some mismatch.

@kviiri Then read the example again. Posited is an expectation/assumption that a narrative statement is a Truth, and then the stated failure in the example at the end of the example. That is why I responded initially with the point on die rolls ...

... because failure would typically in the context offered be a die roll result.

It could have been a success, right?

kviiri

It could, but that's hardly the point. The player doesn't know the rules but knows their character is good at "Nature". They assume it's going to help them survive a night in the wilds (which is a reasonable assumption for a player to make), and try it despite actually having rather poor chances.

KorvinStarmast

I am referring to this example

kviiri

(and this is something their character would know, too)

KorvinStarmast

I don't understand the problem. When a die roll is used to determine outcomes, one can fail, or succeed.

kviiri

15:46

The problem is that the probabilities of those outcomes are at times counterintuitive.

KorvinStarmast

Given that in 5e the DCs are set by the GM, that's a bad example to illustrate your last point.

David Coffron

@NautArch It does. I'm leaving it open just in case and so more people may see your answer and possibly upvote it. I have no problem with the accepted answer but yours is thorough enough that I think it deserves more love

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri I would ask "why did the GM have them roll" and "why was the DC high, low, or in between?" before I went any further if the result is somehow a problem.

kviiri

A player who purposefully doesn't know the rules will lack the necessary information to make informed choices in a variety of situations.

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri Fine, then they learn as they play. How is that a problem? It's how I learned a great many games. Is it necessary for every player to be a control freak for a game to be played?

Rhetorical question. Answer is no.

I posted some thoughts on that yesterday, I'll get you a link.

kviiri

15:50

@KorvinStarmast The very starting point of the discussion was the proposition that ideally the player's wouldn't know the rules at all. As in, not even learn them. Ever.

Sir Cinnamon

I think theres a wide gulf between knowing the rules and control freak

NautArch

@DavidCoffron Coolio - I wasn't sure about the last comment someone left and whether or not I was missing something.

kviiri

@SirCinnamon This is also true

Sir Cinnamon

And yeah the conversation wasnt around "learning as you go" but around "totally opaque rule set and pure roleplay based choices"

David Coffron

@kviiri I know many Biologists who would struggle greatly if left alone in the woods. I'm glad the Survival skill was added to D&D (even if its not relevant to this convo) since Nature (as a knowledge skill) does not encompass the same skill set as one gains in learning to survive in the wild.

kviiri

15:52

@DavidCoffron Sure, sure. But again, we're talking about players who don't know anything about the rules outside their character. Possibly they wouldn't even know that Survival skill existed.

Sir Cinnamon

@kviiri Which leads to someone thinking their character should be good at something only to be turned down

Or worse, just failing and not knowing why

David Coffron

@kviiri that's why I separate my skills on custom character sheets so they are under the necessary attribute. Nature is an Intelligence check (by default) so if they see that they are more likely to understand that is more about knowledge than survival skills

Sir Cinnamon

The 5e situation would be that you describe a person and the DM guesses what their scores should be and keeps the sheet behind the screen for the whole game and never discuss the scores and rolls all the dice too

@DavidCoffron That's assuming they know the rules though

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri "not knowing the rules ever" isn't a point worth discussing, as I see it, since as you play you will learn some of them as you play, by doing, even if all rules are house rules. That's player experience, not character experience.

Here is the link to my thoughts, FWIW

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Well we were discussing it just fine x)

Sir Cinnamon

15:55

@KorvinStarmast You could actively avoid learning it though - which is what someone was advocating

kviiri

Yeah, one of my acquaintances in the local RPG scene.

It's like the paradigm where "players can only know what their characters know" except the players can't even know that much... a PC would know that their skills in "Nature" wouldn't include camping skills.

Sir Cinnamon

You COULD play a game where you dictate your actions and behind a screen the DM rolls and tells you how things progress (aka gygax style)

KorvinStarmast

@SirCinnamon OK, if that is a play style people wish to pursue, it could be a lot of fun in terms of how much one deals with the unknown. But that takes active rules avoidance, not the more natural "you learn as you go" that humans (players) do.

Rubiksmoose

Who isn't really here to defend or elaborate on their opinion. I think we can all agree that knowing no rules ever is just not good and maybe not even possible in 5e.

Sir Cinnamon

@KorvinStarmast Right but no one here is advocating against learning as you go, thats not the discussion

kviiri

15:58

I'm advocating against a limited form of it. I think a player who wants to use their non-Survival skill to do something Survival-related should be informed of this before they learn it the hard way :)

KorvinStarmast

@SirCinnamon Yes, I was using a bit of hyperbole to make a point, perhaps clumsily. (in re informed choices) Then again, if informed choices are to be made by someone willfully avoiding the rules, I wonder at what's going on. Seems contradictory.

Rubiksmoose

@SirCinnamon Leveling choices would be very difficult to narrate that way but it is an interesting thought.

Sir Cinnamon

@KorvinStarmast It is contradictory, thats my stance

Rubiksmoose

Being a spellcaster would be very difficult I think if you were ignorant of the rules.

@DavidCoffron This is what I do as well. Sorted by attribute is so much better for me than alphabetic. There is even an official sheet variant that has it that way.

kviiri

I don't think I'd be happy in a game where I didn't know the rules, personally. In Curse of Strahd I realized I hate even being in a game where I don't know the basic conventions of the campaign

KorvinStarmast

16:01

@SirCinnamon Yeah, I guess we agree on that.

@kviiri do you mean "basic conventions of 5e" or "basic conventions of Ravenloft demiplane" in that case?

(Raven loft has always been a little weird, IMO ...)

David Coffron

@SirCinnamon I feel like most people know that just being intelligent (big number of intelligence) doesn't necessarily translate to survival skills

Rubiksmoose

@DavidCoffron I think so too especially if framed that way. book smarts vs street smarts.

David Coffron

@Rubiksmoose I used to do that. Now I use variant ability scores with skills more often so it doesnt make that much of a difference.

(As a DM)

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Basic conventions of the particular campaign. There's one particular instance that almost made me quit. Without spoiling much, it's a situation where there's ostensibly a critical situation that needs to be attended to very fast, but which actually isn't time-sensitive at all (and, where we learned the hard way, not taking the time to explore is likely to be lethal)

David Coffron

Ofc my player's can sort however they want but it won't help them that much since I ignore the default ability at least 1/5 the time

KorvinStarmast

16:04

@kviiri OK. Just to be empathetic, our first few sessions in Tomb of Annihilation, which is a bit sandboxy, threw one or two of our players for a loop since "level appropriate encounter" isn't the default. There are random encounters that are deadly, and some just to be avoided to survive.

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Hehe, our GM told us that CoS would have those too although the only one that seemed too hard for us was a "cutscene encounter" which ended with the bad guys leaving

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Combined with my own personal viewpoint of not wanting to be a murderhobo, but running up against the problem of don't kill, don't get XP.

kviiri

We're ten sessions in and I'm considering quitting the campaign

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Hey, it's my fault we didn't hunt down that dinosaur. If I'd have gone along with your initiative, I think we could have gotten Shal to go along with it.

Rubiksmoose

@DavidCoffron Ah yeah that would make it kind of pointless either way.

KorvinStarmast

16:07

@kviiri I am making a sad face now. I hope the next session is more enjoyable. Are the other players having a good time? (heh, "having a good time" and "Ravenloft" in the same thought. 8^D )

Rubiksmoose

@NautArch Have you considered buying property, settling down, and becoming a murderhomeowner though?

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Yeah :D well, the reason I'm not having fun is largely because the campaign just keeps... it's hard to describe but I vented most of it in a spoiler chat room, I can link you to it

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast I'd like to be able to not have to worry about murderhoboing, but (and not @nitsua60's fault), it seems like AL play kinda requires it?

KorvinStarmast

@Rubiksmoose That would make you the deadly sorcerer in his tower that another band of adventurers comes to loot. 8^D

NautArch

@Rubiksmoose bugbears don't settle down :)

KorvinStarmast

16:08

@NautArch As I have read on GiTP boards, in re AL experiences, yeah.

Rubiksmoose

@KorvinStarmast And the cycle continues!

nitsua60

@NautArch AL gives almost no latitude for XP other than kills =(

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch With limited time and finite XP per adventure, seems to be the default.

nitsua60

It's why I'm leaving AL IRL after this summer.

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/79798

NautArch

16:09

@nitsua60 such a bummer! Does our ToA have to be AL? :D

can i fit in another acronym?

nitsua60

They do have some "story award" XP at times, but it's usually effectively nothing. (Like, it's in the middle of "the max for this adventure is 150 and the min is 125.")

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast One other player has a rather different taste than I do, and I think the other two are just happy to have something to play (one of them has expressed preference for more open gameplay though)

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri Ah, that explains quite a bit. Thanks for the link to that conversation. :)

kviiri

I guess the thing with CoS (or the way it is being ran in our table) is that it'd be quite appropriate for something like Elder Scrolls (the computer game series) where having a ton of quest hooks isn't bad - the game tracks them for you, and you don't have to come to a consensus between four people each time a new quest hook drops

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Let's discuss "do we have to do AL" in the back room, as we do have after a few more sessions a "how is it going" conversation, I think?

@kviiri Yeah, or like WoW quest log.

kviiri

16:13

@KorvinStarmast Yup :)

KorvinStarmast

I think I just stumbled over my favorite version of OP: I just got the Marauder's set the other day in Diablo III, completed, and all of a sudden my demon hunter, with the quiver that allows two more sentries, is clearing rifts like a vacuum cleaner on dust bunnies. Uh, wown. (OP for RPG stuff ...)

kviiri

I used to play a lot of old ToME (back when it was still an Angband hack)

My favorite start was to play a spellcaster, go south of Bree to a swamp with hydras, and kite two-headed hydras (who have normal movement speed and thus can be outrun) until they die

That gives enough experience to start killing three-headers too and easily more than the starting dungeon would provide.

KorvinStarmast

Learn while doing. :) Like the Butcher in Diablo I. 8^0

kviiri

I should maybe try out new ToME too at some point

doppelgreener

16:37

@eimyr thanks! \o/

NautArch

17:00

@kviiri What's ToME?

KorvinStarmast

17:35

IIRC, it's a dungeon crawl Tales of Middle Earth that was something like net hack ... and like Angaband ... a rogue-like game.

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast beautiful

I recently was playing a monk, and got bracers that made my exploding fist splash damage apply exploding fist to whoever got hit by it

So if you don't die in the explosion you are now about to explode

I got to watch it chain off a few times, it was marvelous

user15026

@doppelgreener This sounds awesome.

KorvinStarmast

Diablo III? Yeah, monks can end up with some fun effects. Just make sure your video card can handle it. 8^0

> before I got a better vid card, we had to play D III with reduced video options.

@doppelgreener speaking of video cards, my son tells me that NVidia is dumping chips/cards since they seem to have hit peak saturation in the market. I need to do some digging, but he and I are thinking of trying to find a bargain video card upgrade for his rig ...

doppelgreener

Really!?

Interesting

The 1060 is one of the hot go-to cards

KorvinStarmast

I need to find some more detail on what he mentioned to me a few days ago. Will be back ....

@doppelgreener What he might be aiming at is "last year's bleeding edge" rather than this year's, as the discounts he is hearing about just got larger. More looking ...

NautArch

17:50

@doppelgreener is that the one the miners like to buy up and use?

@KorvinStarmast I usually buy a few year's agos bleeding edge :) Whatever is at about $150

Rubiksmoose

I'm still very happy with my 980TI that I bought when I built my computer.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Yeah, that's a good way to get a value proposition.

Rubiksmoose

Which is good because it was significantly more than $150 lol

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast I've been pretty happy with that methodology and my gaming. But it probably helps that I wait until those AAA titles are $15 or less on Steam. The top cards when those games came out are now at around that price, which works for me :)

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Yeah, I don't have to be "in first" on a game. (Uh, except for any starcraft of diablo release ... ) And I usually run in lower vid settings until the next year's card discounts arrive.

> Steam has some nice values now and again.

NautArch

17:56

My biggest issue right now is I want the Fallout4 DLC, but i'd be spending more on those than I did FO4.

and that just seems silly

Rubiksmoose

Ah yeah I remember that you like F4 now. We've talked about this before.

I want to play Nier: Automata

NautArch

I did decide to start NG+ for Witcher 3 in the meantime

KorvinStarmast

Hmm, is Fallout FPS?

Rubiksmoose

@NautArch Such a great game.

Mike Q

@KorvinStarmast Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4 are FPS, yes

KorvinStarmast

18:00

I never fell in love with the FPS format. Had some bad experiences early on and decided I don't need the headaches. (Literal)

Mike Q

@KorvinStarmast Well I should caveat, it's structured like an open-world RPG (NPCs, towns, sidequests, character stats, etc.)

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ Hmm, sounds a little like WoW, which I have uninstalled again. :(

Mike Q

@KorvinStarmast More like Elder Scrolls, considering that they're published by the same company and the game engines share source code

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ Ah, so I get to take an arrow in the knee. :) Or a grenade?

Mike Q

They have a clever-ish system such that it normally plays like a shmup FPS where you aim in real time, or you can freeze time and select your targets based on the probability of hitting them

NautArch

18:07

@Rubiksmoose 've got the aerondight sword, but It's such a PITA to level up and I'm thinking it's not worth it

Maximillian

This sword is for monsters and this one is for men.

The themes of The Witcher are neat.

NautArch

@Maximillian although apparently, there is a hack where you if you unequip your steel sword, you can use your silver sword for fighting men.

PhiNotPi

Yesterday I mentioned that I am going to be running a wilderness survival game in D&D 5e for some friends. Right now I'm trying to work on an improved homebrew hunger mechanic. RAW a character only needs to eat a full day's worth of food once every (4 + cons mod) days to avoid suffering any levels of exhaustion. I'm looking for some method with a smoother tradeoff between frequency/amount of eating and levels of exhaustion.

NautArch

@PhiNotPi Where are you getting that raw mechanic?

doppelgreener

@NautArch i wouldn't know

@KorvinStarmast oh huh okay

PhiNotPi

18:22

30

Q: Does a character with 10 Constitution only need to eat every 4 days?

According to the food rules, A character can go without food for a number of days equal to 3 + his or her Constitution modifier (minimum 1). At the end of each day beyond that limit, a character automatically suffers one level of exhaustion. A normal day of eating resets the count of ...

dnd-5e

Sir Cinnamon

PHB p.185?

NautArch

@doppelgreener quick google search has the 1060 come up as one of the popular crypto mining builds. Those miners have driven up the prices for us gamers.

@PhiNotPi WOW. I never knew that.

doppelgreener

shoot

The 1080 is a year (or two?) old, and one of the 1080's is the current bleeding edge video card, but the 1060 is also very good

Maximillian

I've got a 1070. The problem is I need to upgrade my i7 4770k. That means a new board, new chip, and DDR5 ram... Which is absurdly priced right now.

Meeting time...

David Coffron

@PhiNotPi In actual wilderness survival, you may only get one meal every few days. People in the real world survive off of less.

Sir Cinnamon

18:31

@DavidCoffron And the "normal day of eating" describes a 3 square meal situation

so basically you need to average 0.75 meals a day

that seems... about reasonable? considering the penalty of exhaustion?

goodguy5

I feel like using constitution as a metric for starvation is weird.

I can't think of a better way to do it, but still

Sir Cinnamon

But I see the drive for having some sort of penalty for living that lean. The adventurers aren't exactly living a sedentary minimal calorie life. You cant maintain 16 STR on 0.75 meals a day

David Coffron

@goodguy5 I mean a fit person would be better able to use the food they get as the body is more efficient so it makes a little bit of sense

Sir Cinnamon

and from a rules standpoint there is no reason NOT to eat that little which seems a little metagamey and annoying

NautArch

@SirCinnamon yeah, my tables (which haven't noticed that rule) suffer exhaustion if no food/water for a day.

Sir Cinnamon

18:35

@NautArch 1 meal a day average certainly seems closer to correct than 0.75

goodguy5

Well, from a well-fed station, people can generally survive 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food.

Sir Cinnamon

@goodguy5 But how long to get back to "well fed" after 3 weeks without food?

NautArch

@SirCinnamon and it kinda 'feels right' to require expenditure of 1 ration and 1 water/day. Even though I know you need more water than that, but then it feels very micromanagey.

Sir Cinnamon

not 3 square meals

goodguy5

no idea.

Sir Cinnamon

18:38

What about: each day without 1 meal builds you 1 food debt. every time your food debt exceeds 4+CON, increase exhaustion. Eating 3 meals in 1 day reduces food debt by 1

NautArch

@SirCinnamon does meal=ration?

David Coffron

Ration is 1 days worth of food

Sir Cinnamon

@NautArch I think rations are a full days food, so thats 3 meals?

NautArch

@SirCinnamon just gets tricky to split rations apart into meals and the management thereof

David Coffron

@SirCinnamon I would say if you haven't eaten food that day when you sleep you don't get exhaustion back works better than keeping track of food (from a mechanical perspective)

Sir Cinnamon

18:40

@NautArch True. I guess it matters how lean rations are. Are they a full days healthy a mount or a full days minimal amount?

@DavidCoffron Do you ever build exhaustion that way?

David Coffron

Riak of malnourishment (im equating roughly loss of peak physicality) occurs at BMI under 18.5

Sir Cinnamon

or do you mean in addition to the 4 days without food rule

David Coffron

@SirCinnamon if you don't eat enough yes

KorvinStarmast

@SirCinnamon when I was trying to make weight on the crew team in college, that looks about right.

Sir Cinnamon

@DavidCoffron So full rule being: days after 4+CONMOD days without food adds 1 exhaustion , sleeping without having eaten does not restore exhaustion

KorvinStarmast

18:42

@SirCinnamon amen on the metagaming and annoying element to that food question ...

David Coffron

To maintain BMI of ~18.5 you only need daily calories of 1400 (with high activity as most adventurers will have)

@SirCinnamon that's what i would do

Sir Cinnamon

@DavidCoffron I kind of like that

Mike Q

@SirCinnamon If halflings are effectively hobbits, then a full days food could be 6 meals

David Coffron

@SirCinnamon but isn't base rules 3+con?

Sir Cinnamon

@DavidCoffron Oh youre right - " 3 + his or her Constitution modifier (minimum 1)"

I didnt realize it applied a minimum - although if that was negative that could be... problematic

KorvinStarmast

18:45

@SirCinnamon For a RL calibration point, I didn't start getting light headed until three days into survival school where caloric intake approached zero each day ... it was a winter course ... and we were evading capture as well ...

Sir Cinnamon

@KorvinStarmast I think the base rules cover the length of time before not eating has an effect - 4 days seems reasonable

My concern is that after 1 day of eating you cant just do that again

Not without penalty that is

NautArch

@PhiNotPi What events are you planning that you think might trigger exhaustion? That may be a better way of thinking about this. When/how often do you expect them to not have enough food/water to require this mechanic?

KorvinStarmast

@SirCinnamon yeah, I was just adding that point it for "versimilitude's" sake. I was in pretty good shape at the time, but was not a triathelete, so I'd put my Con at the time as 13 or 14, no more.

Mike Q

@KorvinStarmast You were also presumably a human with a few levels in fighter

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch I think he's helping to draft WoTC's next published adventure, ToF, which follows ToH and ToA. Tomb of Famine released next year with the Dark Sun setting, eh? 8^D (Yes, I made that up)

@MikeQ True, and I had the fly skill but I needed to activate a magic item to do it. :)

Mike Q

18:57

#FifthTierProblems

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Apparatus of Whirlybird?

Mike Q

@NautArch From the lore I've heard, he had a flying construct mount

PhiNotPi

Hi people I'm back... reading through your thoughts on food.

@DavidCoffron "Finishing a Long Rest reduces a creature’s exhaustion level by 1, provided that the creature has also ingested some food and drink." (just copy-pasted from Roll20) there's already the mechanic where food and water is required to regain exhaustion.

David Coffron

19:13

@PhiNotPi yeah I thought there was

But I would require a full days worth not "some food and drink"

Mike Q

@PhiNotPi GM question: What is the point of this mechanic? How does it add to the game that you want to run?

Is the goal to slow down wilderness exploring, so that they don't rush? Is it to encourage exploration via foraging? Do you want to discourage wandering through the wilderness, and nudge the PCs toward settled areas?

Maximillian

Darksun. I am suddenly reminded of the one PC game that was in Darksun...

PhiNotPi

This campaign is literally "an airship crashes on a deserted island." Where the party has to gather food/water/supplies, build a camp, fight off wild animals, and eventually defeat whatever evil thing crashed their ship. D&D isn't really designed, as far as I'm aware, for that sort of adventure... I'm having to do a lot of prep to make sure the campaign will have enough depth/complexity to it.

Mike Q

Be careful when implementing a complex new game mechanic for complexity's sake

If you were a player dealing with that mechanic, would you feel that it makes the game more fun? Or is it an unnecessary complication?

Additionally, if and when the party gets spells that lets them ignore this game mechanic, will the game be less interesting?

Maximillian

19:31

Our party, when put in a survival situation, assessed all of their food items in a pool, we turned it into 'We have X days of supplies' and put that on a nearby marker board. As new food/water was acquired, we just padded out the number.

David Coffron

19:47

@PhiNotPi are you open to suggestions for other systems (I know some good survival ones that aren't hard to learn)

PhiNotPi

The goal of changing the food mechanic is that... although it's fine that a party could go 3 or however many days before they need to eat, I want to increase the amount of food intake that's considered indefinitely sustainable, so that food gathering is a daily concern. Also, and probably more fundamentally, I want food to be better conserved: eating a full ration one day and none the next has completely different effects, currently, compared to eating half rations on two consecutive days.

KorvinStarmast

Apologies for spreading bad rumors. Greg Tito says Spelljammer not confirmed.

@NautArch Aparatus of Igor. Lots of different levers to pull, and blinkenlights, but it did not go underwater well ...

@PhiNotPi Do your players like that kind of challenge? have you talked to them about it?

PhiNotPi

20:04

@KorvinStarmast Yeah I've talked to them about it. I haven't gotten a final headcount yet but they all know that it's about surviving on a deserted island.

BESW

20:38

@NautArch My solution, at least a few times, was to have a "notice board" of plot hooks at the local adventuring guildhouse, so all the plot hooks were shotgunned at the players all at once.

kviiri

@NautArch Korvin already gave you the basic idea, but it's this roguelike game from way back, loosely based on Tolkien's works and mechanically expanding on Angband (another roguelike, also a popular base game for dozens and dozens of variants)

Like Angband, the goal is to level grind your character (who starts off barely strong enough to survive kobolds and worms) strong enough to beat Sauron and Morgoth. The game's sense of power curve is absurd. ToME expands upon Angband by having much more variety in classes and races, a religion system, a skill system and an overworld with quests.

This is all old ToME though. About a ten years ago they retooled it significantly. I think it's no longer set in Middle Earth or based on Angband, at least as directly.

David Coffron

-1

Q: Can you cast 2 spells at the same time?

This question is prompted by both Sage Advice and this similar Pathfinder question. Let's use the scenario from Sage Advice: Can you cast a reaction spell on your turn? You sure can! Here’s a common way for it to happen: Cornelius the wizard is casting fireball on his turn, and his...

dnd-5e spells reactions

KorvinStarmast

Question for Flotsam: as I understand this is a Powered By Apocalypse game. or do I have that wrong? Has it got its own engine? I note that it is GMless.

kviiri

I never got into new ToME. Old ToME was... well, like Angband, more of a phase than an actually enjoyable game I'd say!

David Coffron

Can this be reopened yet or do you all have more confusion?

doppelgreener

20:48

@KorvinStarmast And diceless! By the sound of their description here -- Black Armada being a company co-owned by Josh Fox, the designer -- it's got its own system.

BESW

Same folks who did Lovecraftesque, so it's probably going to be elegant, subversive, and highly structured.

doppelgreener

Yeah, the designers have some pedigree for that.

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener Thanks. It being gmless means I have a better chance at getting some of our friends to be interested in playing since everyone gets to play. However, it may also turn off some of our social group ... as I am not sure what "subversive" means. Heh. Kickstarter backed, since I have a HS reunion in Vegas in October. :) that crew of nuts will likely be interested ...

kviiri

@NautArch And compared to NetHack, ADOM or Dungeon Crawl, Angband and its variants have one really peculiar feature: levels are regenerated when re-entered. That means an unbounded number of monsters to kill, items to find and such. (You can probably guess why *bands have a reputation for grindyness)

BESW

I think of Black Armada as making the sort of game the Forge was trying to make.

kviiri

20:53

The hydra trick I mentioned earlier leverages this fact: if there's a dangerous situation in the swamp, just leave it and re-enter, until you get a convenient 2-headed hydra you can kite to death

doppelgreener

Lovecraftesque is also GMless, so this isn't their first GMless game.

KorvinStarmast

@BESW That isn't necessarily a good thing, grin but I have already committed.

doppelgreener

I'm happy to see someone exploring that space more than once.

BESW

@KorvinStarmast In the sense that the Forge had a vision, and an implementation, and they were often not a match.

KorvinStarmast

@BESW I am guessing that you mean that Black Armada matches, where Forge fell short? (I liked Josh's write up for his experiences with project management, which is probably what tipped it for me)

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