TRPG General Chat

trogdor

12:00 AM

XP XP XP XP

nitsua60

@trogdor Trogdor's headcanon: Larry Bird and Dennis Rodman are the same man...!?

Glazius

I mean, if you want to go to One Seven Design, or Rowan Rook and Deckard, or the 200-word RPG contest, and print off a bunch of one-pagers? Sure. But if neither the niece in question nor anyone in her social circle is of the GMly persuasion, none of them are going to do a lot of good.

trogdor

@nitsua60 that's,... Not what i mean?

Glazius

Significantly more people are willing to play a board/card game, usually because it winds up more restrictive.

trogdor

I mean you still need to name enough people who were role-playing to prove that as least as many people were as we're not

nitsua60

12:03 AM

@Shalvenay I have a dear friend whose husband died unexpectedly; her daughter is the student leader of the school's RPG club. So I wrote up a game (maybe?) called "Struggling Together." A pile of chits that get passed back and forth in letters' envelopes when particular emotional notes are hit provide a win condition: making it through the game's 9 rounds without losing.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 that's...deep.

trogdor

@Glazius once again you hit my point better than I could manage, my assumption is the neice and her friends don't want an RPG because it's honestly more work than a board game is

nitsua60

Like I said: definitely un-fun. Probably a co-op game, what with the rules and the possibility of losing. The roleplay--if that's what it is--is yourselves at different times after the shared difficult event.

trogdor

Under that assumption a card game works just as well

nitsua60

@trogdor That's a sizeable fraction of the NBA players that I know anything about--does that count?

trogdor

12:05 AM

@nitsua60 lol

nitsua60

"Pistol" Pete Maravich probably didn't actually have a gun on the court, so that must have been an act.

David "the Admiral" Robinson wasn't... oh, never mind.

trogdor

The NBA now counts as role-playing, you win @nitsua60

This time gadget

nitsua60

@trogdor I win! (NBA fans all lose, but I win! Yay!)

trogdor

Lol

We'll have to break it to them gently

Only one man, or sheep, is allowed to watch the NBA anymore

nitsua60

So there's the question to the room: does it "count" as roleplaying if the character is yourself? What parts of what you think of as roleplaying is that consonant with, what parts of it does it challenge?

trogdor

12:09 AM

Unless everyone else acknowledges that it's an RPG now

@nitsua60 so, to in order to answer that I have another question

If you can role play as yourself does that mean we just always are?

nitsua60

(For a less laden example than my game, consider a Fate session that a friend of mine runs at cons where your character is you, the scenario is something shocking (alien invasion, ninja infiltration) happening in the con-hall, your possessions in-game are what you have at the table.)

@trogdor Uh, yes. Since about puberty, when self-awareness set in =)

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trogdor

Lol

Well let me be the first to say, it was nice playing this game but I choose to switch to the one where I fly around and breathe fire now

I just didn't know that was an option all this time :P

nitsua60

@trogdor Just gotta believe, man.

trogdor

It's hard to believe stuff with all the racket out there in that imaginary office

With those RPG co-workers and,... One of them is watching a football game?

Nevermind this reality is still sufficiently weird enough

Maybe next week

@nitsua60 also I'll have you know I was self aware before puberty, I just wasn't quite as self conscious yet :P

Ben

12:51 AM

Question - if I award +1 Atk/Dmg, -1 AC, should I award that again for each new level of my corruption system, on top of the other features? Or is that too much work

nitsua60

@Ben up to a max of +3 atk/dmg, -3 AC, if I recall the system right?

Ben

@nitsua60 Yeah

nitsua60

What do you mean too much work? To keep track of it? I'm not clear on how often corruption levels will change, do they only ratchet up or do they recede sometimes...?

Ben

This also works with +Perception/-initiative and +1 hitpoint/-persuasion (depending on corruption type)

@nitsua60 They go up and down, how much, I'm not sure.

That's part of what I need to figure out.

nitsua60

What's the word I'm looking for? It's not "reluctant" but lives near there in my brain. I'm trying to describe that I haven't turned to someone for help when I really should have months ago.

"delinquent" but without the penalty-notions...

Ben

1:01 AM

Relinquent?

:P

Glazius

Remiss.

nitsua60

^^

ty

@Ben +3 and -3 are big modifiers to things that don't get too many of those bonuses. That's not to say they're bad, but I'd feel like if I hit level 3 I'd better have a clear--if not easy--way to bump back down a level if I focused on that. I might not want to, depending on the choices in front of me, but it should be obvious how to. (As a game-matter; passing no judgment on how well that fits with the lore you're trying to match.)

Ben

That's true. The idea is that the corruption is meant to be somewhat enticing... Like, a player is giving the benefit and the deficit, and has that "Do I want to keep it?" reaction that they mull over for a while.

They might go looking for better equipment, to negates the downsides. That's something I only just thought of haha. But is that such a bad thing?

nitsua60

@Ben (disclosure: I know nothing about the game you're imitating) how does one gain corruption? Is it an interaction with the environment? Through one's actions? Is it the intent of an action, or its effect, or consuming something?

Ben

@nitsua60 All of the above

This is in a mega-dungeon setting

nitsua60

1:09 AM

@Ben No, though it's a predictable pattern that emerges with "I want to give this super-powered thing, so I'll just pair it with this painful detriment to keep it from getting out of hand." Players find ways to negate the malus and now they're just walking around with the bonus.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, just something you should expect.

Ben

@nitsua60 Yeah.

@nitsua60 The idea is that with this system, the players become more powerful, at a price. For those that don't want to pay the price, it can be removed, or managed. For those that don't care, well, there's a whole other reword for them coming at the end of the tunnel.

Miniman

@Ben I feel the need to point out that there's something very weird about becoming better at noticing stuff while simultaneously becoming worse at reacting to stuff.

Ben

@Miniman Yeah, it's.. kinda "flavour" focussed? The idea is that the player is starting to notice things that don't technically exist.

Shalvenay

@Miniman it's called not being able to make sense of what you're seeing :P

Ben

So, like they'll see shadows moving, the eyes in the paintings watching them, etc.

Glazius

1:19 AM

Ah, wacked-out wizard eyes. Sometimes you can see the magics underlying reality! Other times, it's just crazy crazy crazy in your face all the time.

Ben

Mechanically though, perception and initiative aren't tied together, so it works haha

@nitsua60 I think I'll have to test it out, and see how it all works

The other choice I was going to make is that come a certain point, when the player gets too corrupt, they either make a save vs losing their character, or just straight up lose it (provided this whole set up is properly announced). "You've become so corrupt you've turned into a creature of hell"

nitsua60

@Ben uhh... save or suck much? I'd handle that the way I do death saves: I tell the player they're on their own to privately, without any of us knowing how, determine their character's life or death.

(They can roll saves, they can just decide by player fiat they're alive or dead. They just can't tell anyone what they did or how they did it.)

Miniman

Also, +hp/-persuasion isn't really a tradeoff - for everyone except the face, it's crazy desirable and free, and for the face, it just sucks.

nitsua60

heh heh. "sucking face"

Ben

@Miniman Yeah I wasn't really sold on that either haha

@nitsua60 So no death saves? What if a plyer constantly decides they lived?

@Miniman That one is along the lines of the player developing into an empty husk. Zombie-style

Miniman

1:35 AM

Hmmm...maybe -Wis saving throws?

Joshua

I had an idea for a particularly nasty trap: glyph of dispel magic in a grotto

Ben

@Miniman I currently have a adv/disadv to saving throws as the next tier

Ben

2:02 AM

A duck walks into a bar, sits on a stool, and asks the barman. "Do you have any bread?"
The barman replies "no."
The duck repeats himself "Do you have any bread?"
The barman scowls "I said no, we don't"
The duck continues "Do you have any bread?"
The barman slams his hands down on the bar "No! And if you ask again I'll nail your bill to the bar!"
The duck pauses. "Do you have any nails?"
"No, why?" The barman scowls
"Do you have any bread?"

nitsua60

2:17 AM

@Ben Then they live. I mean, they're still out of combat while they're down. But the character lives.

I mean, at a certain point we're all adults and finding a few hours at a regular time to get together is hard enough. I'm not going to take someone's character sheet from them and rip it up. If they roll failed saves, rip up their sheet, and hand it to me, that's fine.

Ben

I'm all for that, but I feel like that's probably a house rule situation. For example if you run this system, you can run it that way too.

nitsua60

@Ben Sure--sounds reasonable. For me something that takes away another person's toy should be very carefully considered. (Whether that's character death for character-becomes-NPC-event.) And I've come down on the side of "you know what, I'm just not going to be the one to make that call." But everyone'll come to their own place here, and that's good.

Ben

Every situation is different :) Personally, I feel like I'm in the middle somewhere. I have one PC that was in a 50/50 TPK situation that was never resolved. I ruled that he's alive, even if the rest of the party say otherwise. It was never resolved so there's no hard proof. In other situations I've handed in my character sheet, reluctantly, maybe, but that's the luck of the dice, sometimes.

BESW

2:35 AM

I think it's important that games give the choice of risking death to the players.

Joshua

I don't like save or die much anyway. I set up deadly traps, but if you got trapped by them it's your own fault. I don't set up deadly traps that have consequences on failing a spot DC or can't be detected by careful players.

BESW

For some games that's "I choose to play Great Ork Gods and I know that means I'm probably gonna go through a sixpack of characters every session."

For other games it's "I'm playing Fate and at the beginning of the campaign we talked about how character death is possible but we don't want it to be anticlimactic." And for still others it's "I'm playing Do and that means my character can't ever die."

The real gut-punch that needs to be avoided is when a player didn't choose to risk death but gets it thrown at them anyway.

Shalvenay

@BESW "you're walking through town and a chimney randomly falls on your head"

BESW

Dogs in the Vineyard is a weird case because its mechanics explicitly ask everyone to choose "Am I willing to risk the death of someone in this scene in order to get control of what's going on?"

Joshua

Huh?

BESW

2:39 AM

In Dogs, every conflict is about escalating risks in order to stay in the scene and have a chance of making it turn out your way.

If you start by shouting at each other and you run out of dice, you can throw a punch in order to add your punching-related dice and stay in the scene.

But you've also just escalated the kind of fallout that will come at the end of the scene: people who've taken "damage" in a shouty scene will get their feelings and reputations hurt. People who've taken "damage" in a punchy scene will get loose teeth and concussions.

If you pull a gun, somebody's liable to die but you can't control who that is. It might be you.

So pulling a gun is saying that you're willing to risk everybody's life rather than back down on whatever's at stake in the scene.

It's the major core emotional/mechanical beat in the whole game.

Joshua

I'd be surprised if 3 to 1 numbers doesn't win over the mechanic.

BESW

Not sure what you mean.

Ben

@BESW The premise should be announced, if the premise exists.

nitsua60

@BESW This.

BESW

@Ben Yup. That's part of where Fate's advice is so important: they explicitly advocate making the stakes of any conflict clear before the conflict begins, so everybody knows what they're playing for.

@nitsua60 That's why Dogs works, really: it's supposed to be adversarial and so having a mechanic where players can risk each other's characters is crucial to getting everyone arguing in-game, because Dogs is a Forge game that wants to blur the lines between character feelings and player feelings.

It's... a bit abusive, if you don't go in understanding the Forge objectives.

nitsua60

2:48 AM

I'm writing pitches for 2019 RL TTRPG season right now, and one of them mentions sudden and quick lethality as a feature of its system. Get it out there early, man.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 Great Ork Gods, or?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Traveler. But for (mostly) D&D players the possibility of being hampered in effectiveness after one hit, down in two, and irreparably-dead in three... I figure it's worth mentioning.

BESW

GOG, Paranoia, most editions of D&D at level 1...

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah yes

BESW

Most d20 System games that use wounds/vitality have accidentally incorporated an extremely anticlimactic instant-kill mechanism.

nitsua60

2:51 AM

But the proposal is a string of one-shots springing from the same corporate patron, so the intent is that lethality is a business cost; players will each have a stable of PCs to grab from when staffing a mission so while losing one may hurt, hopefully it's not too painful.

(Run-on sentence much!?)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 yeah, it's taking the Great Ork Gods approach to lethality and applying it to Traveller

with a large dollop of pregen

nitsua60

@Shalvenay I dunno... I think of it as taking the Traveller approach to lethality and applying it to Traveller =)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 heheh :)

Glazius

@BESW Well, technically, even if you're just throwing punches there's a chance to kill somebody. d6 fallout is enough to make a body save or go critical, d8 fallout is enough to go critical and need medical attention, but it is only d10 fallout that can kill you outright.

You also aren't going to get killed so easily if you're the only person who pulls a gun - fallout is by blow, not by conflict arena. Punches don't suddenly get deadlier because somebody pulled a gun.

trogdor

Yeah but if you pull a gun everyone else is going to do so too

You best hope pulling a gun ends things in your favor, and fast

Joshua

2:57 AM

That's what I figured. Don't get into fights without superior ratios and it won't be deadly.

Ben

@trogdor Unless you're in a situation where everyone else has whips chains, baseball bats, that sort of thing. You can go the whole "So, no one has one of these?"

Lol

trogdor

@Ben well in Dogs everyone has a gun

Pretty much

If they don't then they have an equivalent

Ben

[Roll to convince everyone else they have no ammo]

Glazius

Not even every Dog has a gun!

They will be extremely insistent that you take one, but they won't force you.

And, I mean, little Patience isn't packing underneath her schooldress.

trogdor

But if you pulled a gun you have one

And you escalated things

I'm just saying there are definitely consequences in that system for actions like pulling a gun

nitsua60

3:02 AM

Anyone in here played both CT and MGT2? I'm comfortable running CT, have picked up and flipped through MGT2, and would be interested in arguments for/against either of them.
- For CT: cheap/small pdfs on DTRPG lower barrier to entry for players who may be considering their first foray into the Travellerverse.
- For MGT2: it's probably at least marginally better in design than its forty-years-older brother.
- For MGT2 (possibly a subset of the last): lingering debility rather than death during chargen.

Glazius

Yes. There are also consequences for keeping on fighting when someone else has pulled a gun, regardless of what you do in response.

Ben

3:26 AM

Any one want to add a link to the official site for this answer? cc @V2Blast

nitsua60

My favorite line from Classic Traveller: in chargen-->attributes, "It is possible for a player to generate a character with seemingly unsatisfactory values; nevertheless each player should use the character as it is created…. Should a player truly consider the character so poor as to be beyond help, the low survival rate of the Scout Service may make it the best career choice.”

BESW

The point of Dogs is that yes, if you work together you're basically unstoppable... but the GM's role is to present situations where the Dogs have trouble agreeing on a course of action.

It's about moral crisis amongst people with moral responsibility for a community over which they have absolute authority... but no authority over the others who share that responsibility.

Most game scenarios go: "The characters have a goal, and must overcome obstacles to achieve it." In Dogs the goal is working together to solve a problem and the obstacles are each character's individual priorities, loyalties, and hangups that get in the way of agreeing on what solution they should work together on.

V2Blast

3:46 AM

@Ben I mean, there's a roll20 link there, but the capitalization for "special" and "spells" is off. I'll edit the link

Ben

@V2Blast Cool :) if you feel it can use the PHB page number as well, it's 197

@nitsua60 Heh.

done

Teamwork!

@nitsua60 That's almost as good as deadEarth.

> If you create a character that you don't like, you may simply throw it away and create a new one; however, you may not create more than three characters. If you throw away your first two characters, you must keep the third. Remember that part of role-playing (perhaps the best part) is dealing with less-than favorable situations.

(Unstated is the fact that characters can die during the chargen process.)

nitsua60

3:57 AM

I just failed a survival roll for my Army Captain's third term of service. He had such promise. All I needed to avoid was snake eyes and he'd have lived....

BESW

I'm looking for film recommendations with a plotline about someone who's being somehow pressured into sharing the beliefs of the people around him, and/or penalized for failing to do so. Preferably not a "based on real events" thing; the more fantastical the better.

nitsua60

67A363, you weren't very bright, or likeable, but you sure could take a hit. Execpt from those snake eyes.

@BESW Does Pleasantville fit the bill?

BESW

Hmm, maybe.

Glazius

@BESW In fact, all three characters are likely to die during the chargen process!

BESW

@Glazius I'm somewhat disappointed that I've made three or four three-packs of characters and none started the game dead.

nitsua60

4:00 AM

@BESW Witness?

BESW

@nitsua60 Context: I want to make a double-feature with Polar Express, pairing it with a movie to watch first which helps re-frame Polar Express as a horror film. I'm thinking maybe a "belief" angle would be good.

But other angles to come at it from would be welcome.

nitsua60

Ahh. so Footloose isn't helpful....

(tautology alert ^^ )

Glazius

@nitsua60 Well, if you assume musical numbers are an elder god imposing its worldview on humanity.

BESW

Bonus points if it's a holiday film or stars Tom Hanks.

@Glazius I think that's Xanadu.

Glazius

@BESW ...*Christmas with the Kranks*?

It's not horror but it's definitely extremely "there is one correct Christmas".

BESW

4:04 AM

I haven't seen it, but doesn't that one conclude that the "only one kind of Christmas" perspective is incorrect?

Ideally I'm looking for a film that --deliberately or not-- enforces a One True Belief narrative.

(Assuming that's the horror angle to go for.)

Or maybe flip it, and find a film that's about someone holding onto a belief... hrm.

Glazius

@BESW It pays lip service to the idea after spending the entire movie clowning on two people for introducing heathen and heretical Christmas activities.

nitsua60

@Glazius I do now!

=D

Glazius

Well, you have to be predisposed to the idea that their miseries are the result of a vengeful higher power, such as a scriptwriter.

BESW

@nitsua60 This is also the conceit for one of the better episodes of Buffy.

The Oracle

0

Q: How to show the most recent community consensus in meta?

This meta: What to do when an edit guesses the system being used rather than waiting for the querent to clarify? is an old post that has received faq tag. However, there is an attempt to revisit the policy: Revisiting our "never guess the game system" policy which is newer. The answer is still ...

discussion

Glazius

4:12 AM

I mean, if you wanted a recent horror film which kind of leans into the idea of "shared delusions", you could try Hereditary. How much connective material is in this double feature?

trogdor

He isn't looking for a horror movie though

He's looking for a Holliday movie that tries to reinforce an idea that only one way of celebrating is right

BESW

It could be a horror film. But the point is that it's a film which re-frames Polar Express to be more horrific.

trogdor

Fair enough

V2Blast

5:05 AM

@BESW Now I have to listen to the soundtrack again... :)

BESW

@V2Blast They got... the mustard... OOOOUUUUUT!

Ben

I've recently been hooked on The Night Begins to Shine, thanks to Teen Titans Go

Caldrun

6:39 AM

Thanks for the recommendations everyone.

@Zachiel I pitched Sorcery at one of my groups. They were only interested if each of their characters could banish their personal demon and become redeemed. Is it possible to play it that way? Thanks in advance.

Caldrun

12:02 PM

@Zachiel Sorry, I should have said that they eventually want to banish their demon and be redeemed.