@BESW Had my first game of LLKoM last night. The cards really do make everything so much smoother! We had 3 games in 20 minutes, including set up and pack up
And the "target the player with the most cards" works well in terms of player balance. We had one game where 2 of us had 4 cards, the other one had 3. He ended up winning lol
@Shalvenay Well, this Sunday isn't going to work. There's going to be a memorial service for my grandmother. She passed some time ago but it took some time to come up in rotation.
@BESW A couple of the rules about manoeuvring the extra d6 against targets with more cards than you are something I still need to get used to, but I'd have to say that bringing focus to the roleplay of it... I did play without the Collateral Damage part, and we skimmed over the naming and creature descriptions, which made it a bit "you roll, then I roll, now you roll"
A5, folds in half. That's plenty of space, can blow the text up a little bit, and allows for a little more elaboration with the "description" part?
Also - I printed out the "playmats" on actual card - works well. But one of the cards had a sticky note attached to it, which I didn't realise. So now I need to glues that down because it has half of the "body" place card printed over the top hahaha
I really want to suggest to this querent that they look into systems designed for one-on-one play, like Cthulhu Confidential.
There's a LOT of problems with transferring a multiplayer system to singleplayer play, because there are buffers and mitigations that get lost in the process. Games like Cthulhu Confidential think about the differences and create systems to avoid those pitfalls.
For example, one of the things that question talks about is how if you die, the game ends, because there's no group continuity for a new PC to join.
In CC when your Investigator takes a lethal effect, like being shot, they get a card that says they're dying, and will die at the end of the current adventure unless they manage to get the lethal effect mitigated before then--which is often difficult even if you're not on a tight time schedule to solve the mystery and save other lives.
And CC is derived from Gumshoe, so it's got that "don't roll dice if the result would kill the story, just say that the thing happens which needs to happen" philosophy.
From what I can see the player is upset by the low rolls. If anything, I reckon just replace the dice. It won't really have an effect on the overall statistics , but a new dice can allow for a new perspective
Works for me. "This one is rolling bad tonight - I'm going to use this one instead"
Or switch to a game like Fate where there's more emphasis on character competence over big random swings of the dice.
Sounds to me like the player is envisioning their character as an awesome video hero who succeeds most of the time, while D&Dlikes tend to think a 50/50 hit/miss ratio is desirable.
There are games which match that expectation better.
I once had an NPC artificer who grafted warforged items onto his living body. It didn't always work out well, but it was great for surprising the PCs with unexpected abilities and immunities.
I specifically designed him for a group where some PCs were really min/maxed and others were... not.
So he'd graft items that broke whatever extremely powerful combos they'd hit him with during the previous confrontation, without making him too generally powerful that the other PCs couldn't hit him.
A good example is, there was a grapple-monster who keyed off touch attacks and could kill most things near the party's level with a single full-round attack, and a monk who was... a monk in 3.5, and not even optimized as a monk.
If I boosted the NPCs' touch AC to reduce the grappler's effectiveness, their regular AC would skyrocket and the monk would never land a hit.
So I grafted a freedom of movement item onto the NPC.
(By using warforged grafts instead of, like, just a ring of freedom of movement, I could add powerful effects without dropping out-of-level-range loot)
But I get the point though. Make future encounters challenging by nudging the players to change strategies, rather than just making the all-around numbers bigger
In another game, the party achieved a great victory over the villain's squad of henchmen and acquired a ring that let the henchmen communicate with the villain. They offered the villain a perfect opportunity by having a PC put on the ring... and so the villain read his mind and learned all their plans.
@Shalvenay: My friend is going to try to get some video of his DM's reaction to the neutronium bomb. I wonder if I can talk him into posting it to youtube.
(If there's not official material, then it's unanswerable but still Stackable, or a good answer would show there's no material and then offer experience-based alternatives.)
@Joshua that's happened to me too, I think it's specifically when someone directly replies to something you said (I think that's what Shalv is also saying)
@ColinGross Not as part of my primary duties. I am an engineer. Though I do develop tools sometimes which I code myself (matlab, visual basic, and macros mainly)
You want to synthesize what the original transcript of the Canterbury Tales was? That's neat... i'll just yoink that and figure out the sequence of the common ancestor to some genes.
Also, I would say 'fundamental' or 'abstract' rather than 'broad' - these are not the same, and also that's a common characteristic of system-agnostic and design-philosophy questions.
System-agnostic questions tend to look beyond the specific implementation, and try to examine deeper, abstracter principles. But people aren't all good at abstraction.
> This is not an area of expertise for me so I'm leaving it alone (not voting on it or anything)
I may be seeing things, but I do get the impression that many similar questions get closed by people who are not experts on abstractions and fundamentals.
@vicky_molokh I'm not sure I'd say that people aren't good at abstraction, but I would say that most system-agnostic questions require a lot more experience and expertise than system-specific ones (even though the answers to them tend to just be "here is what I learned from playing D&D")
@vicky_molokh Well I'm not even sure what an expert in abstractions and fundamentals would even look like, but I can tell you that recognizing when a question needs to be closed or not is a skill and art in and of itself.
@ColinGross hah!
Often the issue is that people try to make something an agnostic question when the system is actually important.
That is the most common problem I have seen with SA questions
@vicky_molokh In their heyday, that wasn't really the case. A more accurate description would be "We're playing a really typical DnD game but hey since we can get an answer that works for ANY system why not :)"
That still occurs from time to time but not really as... egregiously as I recall. Although memories tend to exaggerate things
man.... There was an answer I commented on a while (less than 2 weeks) ago that had some flaws and I wanted to give the answerer a chance to revise it, but I can't recall it well enough.....
> Often the issue is that people try to make something an agnostic question when the system is actually important.
Perhaps. Personally I've seen the opposite, with GNSist arguments that no, even pure roleplaying questions must be only examined in a rollplaying context.
The choice to do that wasn't really driven by some greater understanding, but rather the lack of understanding that other systems aren't just reskinned DnD.
@vicky_molokh A positioning emphasizing system for combat would be more like a table top game rather than an RPG, no? Like warhammer 40k where hits are distributed to different locations and positioning and distance heavily weighs on accuracy and damage.
@vicky_molokh The two are intertwined. Many, and I'd argue most, systems have their rules engineered to serve as a foundation for a certain kind of narrative. The "rollplaying", to use the cliché, is an integral instrument of roleplaying in those systems.
@kviiri That assumes that the party makes roleplaying subordinate to the system, instead of, say, looking for what makes sense in the internal logic of the world and then applying the system to mechanise that.
> Although I'm not sure if it's as positional as Vicky'd like
I don't know. I tried AD&D2e and D20 Modern (which is the 3-3½e era). I largely gave up on D&D very soon for reasons unrelated to the positioning question.
@kviiri I thought there were a lot of conditions that could apply, but not many dealing with the relative location and facing of combatants. Also, don't attacks of OP and the 5' step serve as pressures to limit movement in combat?
@vicky_molokh Side note: if you hover over a chat message and click the arrow to the far right, you reply to that message. You can also hover and click the dropdown arrow to the left and click "reply to this message". That way you don't have to quote everything back :)
@vicky_molokh Either way, the system is instrumental in understanding how role-playing is set up and the expectations and mechanics surrounding it (if any)
@ColinGross Oh where do I start. I don't like level systems, I don't like class systems, I didn't like the skill implementation in 2e, I don't like 'Vancian' magic . . .
@ColinGross Many, many class powers. Eg. Rangers have a bonus when they're the closest (or tied) combatant on their side against the target. Warlords have powers that grant actions to allies, or eg. allow every ally adjacent to a certain enemy to attack them
Defender classes have powers gimping nearby enemies, AoE powers are more plentiful than in other editions
@vicky_molokh Just a thought on your question-this site attracts a lot of players, but not as many designers. Your question looks to me like an interesting design question, but I think the number of people who can provide an answer is pretty small so you may want to be patient with getting an answer. It may take a few days before someone with the right credentials happens upon it, and wants to answer.
@kviiri Okay. That still falls into the run up to something and hit it category of @vicky_molokh's question. Not a lot of positioning beyond either be next to the enemy or shoot at them.
Tapping into game design secrets is a little like tapping into proprietary info for design on patented products. Some people prefer not to share what they know.
@vicky_molokh The reason I dislike the "subordination" and "rollplay vs roleplay" lingo is, my usual process is that I either pick a genre first and look for a system that facilitates that genre, or find a cool system for a certain genre and decide to run a game in that genre to use it. The rules support the desired roleplaying experience, whichever comes first
I have an ambivalent view on the lingo. I'm usually the one who is accused of viewing things through the prism of a system all the time, and it's very odd for me to be on the defensive in this discussion, fighting for my right to view a topic or ask a question from a logic- and/or roleplaying-primary position.
But it's a relatively easily understood shorthand so I tend to fall back to using it in quick-paced discussions.
Vicky, years ago I played a board game that was about dog fighting in WW I. Positioning in that game mattered a lot in terms of trying to get a kill. A lot of the Board games Avalon hill produced in the 60's and 70's rewarded maneuver/flanking, positioning your units, to exploit terrain and to make the combat resolution roll come out more favorably.
My gaming experience is shaped primarily by two systems, classic WoD and GURPS, and currently trying to take in some FATE experience (been studying it in theory for a while, started playing recently). And a thing that seems to be true of all three is that veteran GMs tend to not be bound by what the system says, but rather adjust the system to whatever is appropriate, such as by flipping optional rule switches, deciding when to use or not use a given mechanic etc. Maybe that's an unthinkable attitude in other gaming circles. @kviiri
@vicky_molokh What you just described is how I played D&D for the first five years it existed. Each DM turned on and off various optional rules in the books, and (as they came out) stuff published in Strat Review and Dragon. Heck, we had guys importing Gamma World and Metamorphisis Alpha stuff into D&D, and boot hill stuff also.
@vicky_molokh I think it matters which systems you come from. If you play some ostensibly generic system like GURPS (or as DnD is often played, by virtue of being "the only RPG system" for many people) it's understandable that one finds themselves fighting an uphill struggle trying to reconcile mechanics with the story
@KorvinStarmast I recently purchased a turn table to play records again. I hadn't mucked about with speaker wire in a long time and forgot that it pushes enough voltage to give you a bit of a shock.
@vicky_molokh One of my DM's pulled in a bunch of Chivalry and Sorcery stuff into his D&D game. He's the same guy who ran our C&S campaign before it finally went dormant.
Also to be clear: I'm fine with Forge/Forge-influenced people/views existing, but I'm not comfortable when they enforce their worldview as the only acceptable one and shut down other perspectives.
@vicky_molokh Is it a secret club?! I have always wanted to be in one of those. Or is it a double top secret one where I don't even get to know I'm a member.... because that doesn't seem nearly as fun. However, as long as I get a decoder pin I'll drink my Ovaltine to be in on it.
@vicky_molokh I do hate unpacking. What are you going to do with all the abstractions and boxes when you're done!?!
@vicky_molokh I am pretty sure that Boot Hill is no longer in my possession; we played a little of that and I recall modifiers for cover being useful - we replayed the gunfight at the OK Corral with that system - but I didn't play it enough to say how that system would relate to your question.
@vicky_molokh If a system has mechanics for flanking, or measuring lines, or otherwise comparing the relative positions of things, would that be relevant to your question?
@vicky_molokh Fwiw, I apologize if anything I've said has come across as forcing things down people's throats, but as moderators here sometimes we have to do that in order to keep order and quality around here. And of course, disagreement is welcome and common. But the mechanisms of this site often force us into conflict about how to deal with these things.
@vicky_molokh Hmmm... I find this Ron Edwards person uncompelling. Non-peer reviewed. No minimal example code to paste and run. No statistics nor even nice looking figures. The Big Model mentioned does not have a bang. Would really have liked to see at least a shebang at the start of it.
@vicky_molokh I don't think that's a carry over Forge-ism, though I have seen it referred to with the Forge context. I think that is a Stackism about keeping questions within scope. (and what "in scope" means seems to vary by user). I am on board with your frustration with how often some questions with a broader applicability get closed or bumped around.
I view a game as an inextricable combination of setting/expectations/rules/role-play/etc. Each part feeds into the other parts and changes them. Most of the time, you can't dissect one part and look at it outside the context of the rest of the parts. It just so happens that "system" is the name that all those parts together are generally called. When really it is but one part of a mechanism.
@Rubiksmoose Wait... we cant' dissect one part? What am I going to do with all this formaldehyde then?! I installed a floor drain in my basement already!
@Rubiksmoose As I said, it's not about the 'coming across', but about the Foregeite view on systems becoming a de facto criterion of answer shutdowns. I mentally half-joked to myself that if this goes on, I'll be forced to resort to asking Freeform questions, as that's the closest choice of system that would get answers close to system-agnostic ones.
@vicky_molokh Well it is a criterion here. Not every question needs a system, but questions that are deemed to need a system need to have one specified or are put on hold.
Such a hack is a symptom of things not working well in the stack though. It's like a person asking an Informatics question, and getting bombarded by insistences to name a programming language.
> but questions that are deemed to need a system need to have one specified or are put on hold.
Thing is, people who follow the Edwarsian views on the role of the system seem more prone to seeing questions as requiring a system than those who don't follow it.
@vicky_molokh which is why we have voting mechanisms and meta in place to allow people who disagree to voice that. I'm not entirely sure what all the naming conventions are about but please refrain from assuming or lumping my views in with any particular group.
@Rubiksmoose It's almost like language is capable of encompassing very abstract ideas, but packaging it into labels tends to overgeneralize and oversimplify, which creates friction when people try to discuss the same terms but have different interpretations of what those terms mean
@KorvinStarmast Indeed. I must say that I have very little context for Forge stuff, but we have to do things around here for practical reasons that have very little to do with our personal philosophies on game design.
@goodguy5 We hit a forge with holy fire and this Edward guy showed up. Everyone was throwing shade, instead of kung fu fighting. In the end, we're not allowed to cut updissect systems for ..... errr... science?
@MikeQ In the context of my back and forth with Vicky, it is the "what game system are you asking about, closed until you clarify" that was in play. So I called that a Stackism.
As someone who's mentioned GNS theory here a few times, and doesn't entirely hate it, I'd like to know whether it's an unkosher topic for chat. Is there a verdict?
@MikeQ If you want my opinion, and really who wouldn't?, bring it up and see what happens. Worst case, we all learn that we're still angry about GNS theory.
@MarkWells From the 5 minutes I've read about it, I don't see anything objectionable in the GNS theory itself. It seems most of the conflict was the aggressive push from its evangelizers and the insulting nomenclature for non-GNS systems.
A nuance I didn't see (but I could have missed it) is that a player doesn't necessarily stay in 1 mode forever. Personally I am a Gamist person, but I have used Narrativist on occasion, and Simulationist when GMing.
So the Forge people used GNS to classify the goals of different games. Like, if you're trying to provide a skill-testing challenge for the players, they'd call that Gamist. This was...not too insane an idea.
Then they went and ruined it with One-True-Wayism and the insistence that games should be designed entirely around a single goal.
@MarkWells Which does make a certain kind of sense, and harkens back to what some people are always talking about how D&D (for example) doesn't handle non-gamist things very well.
/me stares. That one had system stuff right in there. I'm talking about questions that don't have it (and they usually don't have it because they don't need it, because they're trying to get answers from a different PoV than the systems).
