TRPG General Chat - 2019-06-17 (page 1 of 4)

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12:00 AM

@GcL I have not!

hey there @Ben

@Shalvenay Hey :)

@Ben how're things going? mv completed with no errors?

@Shalvenay mv?

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: How can a warlock learn from a spellbook?

I'm playing a 6th-level Tiefling Warlock in D&D 5e. On a recent journey, I acquired a spell book that has something to do with a slithering trapper. How do I add this to my list of spells?

dnd-5e spells warlock equipment rituals

12:11 AM

@Ben the move :)

Oh right. About halfway there

Girlfriend Reviews E3 2019

cc @Miniman and anyone else interested in E3 stuff. This is a bit of a laugh for you :P

"SqEnix loses E3 for not having given us so much as a sticker. Good day and how dare you"

Haha

@Ben -- now a good time to get on Discord btw?

12:26 AM

I'll give it a shot...I have to do it online, cos I ran out of data on my phone lol

I'll ping you when I manage to get on :)

@Ben That sounds involved. Laptop disassembly has never been pleasant for me.

@Rubiksmoose It's very good. Very old school, but good.

Fortunately it was intuitive enough so that the hardest part was making sure none of the clips on the casing broke.

1:21 AM

My eyes have been opened

Hi all.

@Ben How did your housemates party work out?

Morning :)

Yeah good. I didn't end up doing much at all - he'd already done most of the prep. It was mainly just setting up the snacks table haha

In regards to the "GIF/JIF" debate, I'm inclined towards the hard g. However someone pointed out they use the soft g, because they are "done in a jiff"

i.e. a short space of time, like a few seconds

@Ben It's a g... it is an acronym for Graphics I don't understand why it is even a discussion.

The G is silent like in "tough". So gif is pronounced "if"

@linksassin Yes. that's my argument for it too

@MikeQ Ghoti

@MikeQ And technically, would that not be "Fiff"?

1:28 AM

No. Maybe. I dunno.

:P

1:40 AM

user image

Hahaha

Hot RPG Questions

8

Q: What does it cost to buy a tavern?

Suppose an adventurer retires and wants to buy a tavern. Is there an official gold piece figure in D&D 5e for how much it would cost to buy a tavern or similar property in a town or city? If not, are there any guidelines?

dnd-5e pricing downtime

Question... during downtime, would it be more beneficial for my PC to Perform with an Instrument or to attempt to sell jewels/jewelry, in order to save up to buy a gem for a spell?

Charisma-based

@Ben In 5e? Using the downtime UA rules?

Dunno if it's UA, but yeah

1:54 AM

@GcL I'll have to check out. Thanks :)

@Ben Have a look at this UA I'm not sure what selling jewelry would come under by preform uses the work rules.

2:14 AM

@linksassin Yeah this is looking very familiar

I might be doing another Lady Blackbird con table next month! @trogdor Can I borrow last year's poster?

Nice!

I'll need to practice now...

It's been a long time since I ran LB.

My Genasi likes to pamper herself. She works hard, performing, etc, considers herself to be a bit of a spectacle... She refuses to live in any situation less than "Modest". Haha

@BESW Ooooh cool!

Also; is it "Gen-A-see" or "Jen-a-SAI"?

2:29 AM

I pronounce it neither of the above (I think). There is no credible provenance for my pronunciation.

@Ben Semi-officially, "jen-AH-see."

that's ^^ what I say.

But since Chris Perkins says that AND says it's derive from "genie,"....

twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/905201263763013632

I've been using the former, with a hard G. The rest of the group have been using the latter, with the soft g

or, gen-EE, as he spells it =)

2:30 AM

Which in turn is derived from Djinni… no?

Now I'm going to say it "Djinn, ah say."

haha

@BESW Ooh... that's fancy.

Haha

Hrm. UK National Rail webpage is giving me a 504-Gateway Timeout. Wonder if that's a web error or a very terse rail status message?

@nitsua60 TLF Travel Alerts may be able to shed some light on the situation.

@Ben Compromise: zhenasi.

Stupid question: landing at Heathrow, is 2.5 hrs to claim baggage and clear customs leaving enough time?

2:39 AM

6

Q: Connection time needed from USA to Heathrow to Shannon

On April 18, 2017, we are flying from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA on Delta Airlines flight DL 50 arriving Heathrow Airport at 1:20pm April 19, 2017, on one ticket. Then on a separate ticket, we fly Aer Lingus to Shannon Airport on flight EI 385, departing Heathrow at 2:45PM. Will we have enough ti...

lhr short-connections

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: Does the Legion of Sentinels illusion spell work on Oozes?

I recently had players fight a Brown Pudding in my game, then the Thief/Beguiler of the group casted a Illusion spell called Legion of Sentinels (PHB2 p. 116). A headbutting ensued with him about the Ooze's Mindless and Blind traits. An ooze possesses the following traits (unless otherwise no...

spells dnd-3.5e illusion

2:55 AM

"Anti-canon" is a thing people talk about as a design principle (for example) but I want to experiment with what it can look like as a principle of play.

3:10 AM

@BESW The de-canonization of external lore is a pretty easy approach. Any prior lore that the DM didn't author, should not be considered absolute truth within their own game universe.

Yes, but that's still more of a design principle: it's focused on what goes into the game before it hits the table.

I'm thinking more about how old Doctor Who stories handled continuity: throw it in if it helped the current story, ignore it if it would make the current story less interesting or fun.

That's not a bad method. Let players request to introduce lore into your game world; if the DM doesn't okay it, then the NPCs will consider it hearsay and rumor.

So if you mention a thing is true in your first adventure, but it'd ruin your party's cool idea for resolving the second adventure, then you just ignore it. And if the thing would be awesome for setting up your third adventure--oh look, there's the thing!

You don't even have to justify it being untrue for the second adventure but true in the third, you just do the thing.

My view is that nerdfolk players are generally accustomed to enough reboots and preboots and threeboots, such that I don't need to justify deviating from another author's continuity.

Mar 28 at 3:53, by MikeQ

I've learned that, when running games, it helps to establish what is and isn't the lore of your game's setting. Which is problematic when the players want to use familiar settings.

(Apparently I've ranted about this issue. A lot.)

Yes, but on the other hand a lot of people are becoming accustomed to continuity being given a LOT of value, and one's worth as a person who enjoys a thing is measured by one's familiarity with its fictional history.

The sort of approach to continuity I'm proposing makes the concept of a "reboot" meaningless because there's no established canon to wipe away.

There's just a collection of things which we can draw on or not as we like.

3:21 AM

Right, that seems fine. No need to write a universe's worth of geopolitical history just to set the premise of a short-form adventure.

I'm not entirely sure how memorizing the maps and timelines of a fictional setting contributes to self-worth though. And if that does happen I don't think it's for a DM to resolve.

Right. And I'm thinking about taking that attitude to the history of previous adventures in our own campaign.

@BESW I think that is going to be a difficult mindset to maintain. This will only appeal to a small subset of players I think.

@BESW Seems reasonable. Preface each new adventure by saying that the prior adventures are (at least) merely retellings of a story. They aren't absolute truth.

Potentially you can do it as a set of only superficially linked one-shots. But an ongoing campaign would be convoluted at best without some internal consistency.

It's not a lack of internal consistency. It's a lack of rigid continuity.

3:26 AM

Internal consistency doesn't need to be maintained across distinct adventures, because they don't have the same "internal" reality.

@BESW How do you draw the line between them? I think that would be a difficult concept to get across to the players.

Well, look at Doctor Who.

Especially the old series.

You've got the same core characters between stories, except when they switch out or change. Every story takes place in a different location with different guest stars and may use any of a variety of story structures.

The characters, and the broad themes of the show, are consistent. Continuity is drawn on when you revisit a place for a new adventure or meet an old NPC in a new place.

And you can always mention that you've got a skill or item or knowledge from a previous adventure which justifies something.

I can see how you can do it with a tv series or similar. An rpg will be more difficult I think. The players will look for continunity anyway I think, and not having it may lead to frustration (for certain types of players).

But if you've got a piece of tech in one story, which would make another story boring, you just conveniently forget about it.

@linksassin Or a TTRPG would be easier, because it's a story framework that needs enough flexibility to account for player actions.

3:31 AM

@BESW (Playing devil's advocate here) "But two sessions ago my magic boots of jumping let me leap over a building, why can't I cross this chasm with them?" - that sort of continuity would annoy some players.

[shrug] Then I'm not designing this for them, am I?

This is more about avoiding "I can't join this campaign because it's been going on too long and there's too much continuity for me to catch up on."

@BESW :) Certain types of players I guess.

Every franchise tends to build up so much lore that its story potential gets hindered.

@linksassin Get those players accustomed to episodic story structure. The magic boots of jumping may behave differently in different stories.

@BESW That's a good goal. Avoiding "no you can't do that because of cannon we decided a long time ago" would be nice.

3:35 AM

The thing is, every franchise also does exactly what I'm talking about, by just conveniently forgetting things which impede the new stories.

They do it all the time without official reboots, and when people "catch" it, we call it a "plot hole."

I'm proposing an attitude where we see it as a feature rather than a bug.

It's not a new attitude. What needs proposing is a method for communicating it to your player audience, and possibly enforcing it.

@MikeQ That's my concern as well. How are you going to keep everyone in sync on it?

(And it also avoids that tedious thing, the episode or novel which only exists to retroactively justify a course correction because it's been labelled a plot hole.)

user image

2

@Ben Proper lol. Well played sir.

3:39 AM

Okay, proposal baseline: Tell players that your stories prioritize fun rather than adhering to an established continuity. If they don't like that, and can't adapt, then they won't like your stories.

This is a crude baseline. Now suggest a better approach.

user image

@linksassin Hehe ty

First: it'd work best for certain kinds of stories.

The sorts where lots of stuff happens but character growth is slow or flat or at least largely internal.

Second: it's a good fit for a table with lots of irregular attendance patterns, this helps both explain why it's useful and passively enforce the attitude.

Hmm.

It'd probably work well to implement a reflective mechanic, where every adventure concludes with turning the external experience into something internal about your character that they can take with them.

...okay brain stop, that's a lovely idea but I don't need to build an entire new system for episodic anti-canonical play.

Sundown's infamy cap would be a great way to force character cycling.

user15026

@BESW This feels very Vernon.

@Ash Yup, it's Digger.

user15026

3:52 AM

I wasn't sure because of the font

It's the skin lizards, they talk funny.

user15026

4:19 AM

@BESW Oh yes, that's right.

4:46 AM

@linksassin that UA is the original form of what was eventually published in Xanathar's.

@Ben "jen-AH-see". See the pronunciation guide on D&D Beyond (speaker icon next to race name towards the top): dndbeyond.com/races/genasi

@V2Blast Oh it was officially published? I don't have a physical copy of XGtE and forget what is or isn't in it.

Nice :D

@linksassin yes, it has downtime stuffs

XGTE p. 123, or here on DDB: dndbeyond.com/sources/xgte/downtime-revisited

@BESW this webcomic? diggercomic.com (Digger by Ursula Vernon, apparently)

Yes.

Sep 15 '15 at 8:11, by BESW

Seriously though, anyone who hasn't given Digger a shot really should.

5:01 AM

I reread it just last week! It holds up very well to rereading.

Which is unusual for webcomics that aren't planned pretty completely from the start.

@BESW Do you have a handy link to an old message by you talking about how you always have a handy link to old messages?

(I know, I know, you probably just use the search to find them. but still :P )

Mar 25 '14 at 13:07, by BESW

[bow and a flourish] I'm pretty handy with the Googles.

...close enough :P

Jul 12 '14 at 21:08, by BESW

(On the search page, you'll find more search phrase formats if you click "Advanced Search Tips" to the right of the Search button.)

Jan 14 '13 at 14:03, by BESW

I read quite a bit, and I'm decent at the Googles too.

Feb 6 at 1:12, by BESW

I don't know much about 5e, but I can do the Googles.

5:11 AM

lol

this question on ELL... hmm.

9

Q: Is there a polite way to ask about one's ethnicity?

Suppose I'm talking to a person who is an American citizen but obviously has some "Asian roots" (either they immigrated to the US at early age or their parents were immigrants). Is there a polite way to ask about their ethnicity (if that's the right word)? If I just ask "Where are you from?", the...

questions politeness

on a totally unrelated note:

@V2Blast I think the problem with that is that the answer depends on the answer to the question. Sometimes it's fine. But when it's not it's really not.

I mean... it's an IPS question, not an ELL question.

@linksassin The querent and about half the answerers/commenters seem to be ignorant of the context this is asked in 90% of the time: person A (a non-POC, generally) asks "where are you from?". person B (a POC, generally) says a place they identify with (let's say New Jersey), as most people do. person A responds, "But where are you really from?"

@BESW yeah, a few of the comments point that out too

but a diamond mod replied:

@gnasher729 - I don't necessarily agree. Although many people are answering this question from the perspective of whether or not a question like this can even be a polite one, there are still ways that any question might be worded that could make it polite or rude. If the answers focus more on the wording than on the situation, this question could have a home here. — J.R. ♦ 9 hours ago

(spoiler alert: none of the answers focus on the wording, because the wording's not the issue)

> ELL is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if you have a question which covers:
Word choice, usage, and meaning
Grammar
Dialect differences
Spelling and punctuation
Pronunciation and accents
Other practical problems you encounter or face while learning English
https://ell.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

@V2Blast That would never be polite. One answer does take that view but it is on -1.

5:22 AM

> Interpersonal Skills are behaviours that are used to interact with other people, to achieve certain goals.
Questions about the following subjects are on topic for this site:
using or understanding interpersonal interactions to resolve specific problems or prevent problems from occurring with a specific goal in mind. This includes interactions with family, friends, work/school associates, acquaintances or strangers (or anyone else).
the written and unwritten - but well-established and expected - rules or conventions of behavior in a specific setting (also called etiquette).

33

Q: How to tactfully ask if someone is from the same ethno-religious group as I am?

I am an ethnic and religious member of a certain ethno-religious group. (You can probably guess which one, but I thought the question might be broad enough to apply to other ethnic/religious groups too). It's also not just specific to either religion or ethnicity - since someone I might ask could...

united-kingdom work-environment religion

^Closest thing I could find on IPS.

The whole question is based on the idea that there's a formula for the thing. Which might make it an ELL matter.

But even IPS is gonna struggle because, well. It's super super localized to the point that a really good answer is probably only going to be from a neighbour.

@V2Blast What was the unrelated note?

@linksassin haha, thanks for the reminder

Related: I found out one of my new colleagues is Romanian when we accidentally re-enacted a legend concerning Dracula on our Senate Square

5:31 AM

would you guys say these two questions are duplicates?

11

Q: Does a Paladin's Steed use the Ranger's animal companion mechanics?

Does a Paladin's steed, when not using it as a mount, attack and perform other tasks through your command, like a Ranger's animal companion? I'm under the impression that a Paladin's steed works like an animal companion since it says in the Player's Handbook under the Find Steed spell that you "...

dnd-5e spells paladin animal-companions

20

Q: How does a mount from Find Steed act when unmounted?

I have read so many things already that I'm more confused than before. So decided to ask this by myself. My paladin just got his Find Steed spell, and after some tweaking and talking, he decided to get a Worg and I was okay with it. This last session was his first time using it and I have few do...

dnd-5e spells combat mount

@kviiri Oh dear... Did they take it well?

@linksassin Sure, he seemed somewhat pleased by the fact that people know Dracula from something else than vampire stories

@kviiri ...now there's the opening line for an urban fantasy novel.

@V2Blast Yes. Not based on their titles but the content definitely seems to be duplicates. I would keep the more generic and higher voted one.

@kviiri That's nice, then!

5:36 AM

We had a company Summer party and we had gotten little bottles of sparkly wine as drinks for an orienteering challenge. I forgot my bottle on the square for a moment when we were visiting the Cathedral, and when I came back, it was still there. Some tourists took photos of it though.

Legend has it Vlad the Impaler, similarly, left a golden goblet on a square, unattended, to prove no one dares steal in his lands.

[braces self] I've heard a lot of these legends, and they usually end with someone on the end of a stick.

@kviiri What a cool story. Who brought up the legend?

@BESW naa, this one just ends there, because no one dared take it

@linksassin I did: "this reminds me of a legend about Vlad the Impaler" He: "The goblet thing?"

Then I learned he's from Romania :)

@kviiri Is this a well known legend? What were the chances of someone else knowing of it? That's so cool.

I've probably run across it, but it wouldn't have stuck out enough for that incident to remind me.

I'm more familiar with the "why won't you take off your hats?" story, and the "invite all my rivals to a feast" story.

And how he spent a lot of his childhood in Constantinople as part of a treaty negotiation.

user15026

5:43 AM

I don't know any of these stories.

@Ash You're not the only one. But I now feel inspired to learn them.

He was a very fascinating figure... also an extremely bloody one.

@linksassin I think it's a reasonably well-known one assuming one knows Vlad the Impaler as something else than "inspired Dracula" or "the NetHack boss you kill with a tin opener", but that's a pretty bold assumption too.

The underground cellular is acting up, I keeo disconnecting :/

@Ash He's one of those "I'm the only one allowed to abuse my subjects, so I'm going to be EVEN WORSE to anyone who might even possibly threaten this land" kings.

user15026

Ah, okay, that tells me a lot.

5:52 AM

Cruel and unusual punishments weren't exactly unusual during his reign. But he does have a sort of mixed legacy as a national hero too, for defending the Principality of Wallachia against enemies of considerable power

Yeah. He spent a lot of time growing up in Constantinople because it was traditional for rival rulers to exchange kids as peace hostages.

...then he spent much of the rest of his life using his knowledge of their culture and practices to fend off their armies.

@BESW So not the best practice on reflection.

I mean, it worked while he was there.

@BESW I suppose it worked well as long as there were reciprocal heirs to exchange. And the rulers cared enough about their children.

One of the theories was that if you treated your rival's kid well enough, they'd be your ally in the next generation.

6:06 AM

@BESW I wonder if anyone ever did an analysis of how successful that strategy was over history

That'd be pretty cool to know.

There was a similar practice in the Edo shogunate.

But it was just one-way.

no yeah

the Shogun took whole families to live in the capitol to keep the Diamyo in line

he wasn't giving them a single 3rd cousin in exchange

I mean, considering there were several wars, especially during one particularly famous time in history known especially for all the internal warfare, it was a pretty smart if cruel precaution

they had to pack up and move every half year, to go between home and there

to be basically kept as hostages

The exact details of the Wallachian/Ottoman relationship are a little unclear; Vlad al II-lea definitely wasn't willing to have his sons live in Eğrigöz, and at one point was convinced both of them had been killed because he'd sided with Hungary.

6:26 AM

NewbieDM does a detailed flip-through on Twitter of the upcoming Acquisitions Incorporated book for D&D 5e.

6:44 AM

@V2Blast Looks pretty good actually.

@linksassin Yeah, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I am a bit interested now, even having never watched Acq Inc (outside of a bit of the Descent C-Team stream, and the main stage session DMed by Kate Welch)

Seems like there might be some useful material to draw on even for a different style of game

@V2Blast I'm in the same boat. I've never seen it but the content in this book looks really good for the episodic casual game I am in. We already have an "Adventurer's League" who hand out all the rewards and such.

7:06 AM

@BESW oh shoot I didn't see this yeah

I have to figure out where it is

Thanks!

You've got at least two weeks to find it, and I might not be doing the thing at all, I'm waiting for an email with details.

7:18 AM

too bad I found it

I could hide it and wait a week to see if I can't force myself to forget where it is :P

or we could be boring and I give it to you next time we see each other

user image

lol

anyway, it was right in my room, where I probably left it

I was looking everywhere else and starting to think someone had moved it

@V2Blast looks like I'm going to buy another book for about 60-70 pages of content.

3 hours later…

10:08 AM

quick warning. Seems the network is experiencing some very bad issues with ads. Obviously whoever choose the ads providers they are using didn't really do much scrutiny.

5

there are multiple reports of ads for "scams" (like the usual "click here to discover how to work from home and gain 100000$/hour") or online casinos

Thanks for the tip!

may want to use a browser that has at least some basic ads block for a while.

IF you whitelisted Stack, it may be worth removing the whitelist for a few days until they manage to solve the problem. I know this sound bad, but based on my tests there seem to be some bad ads that attempts redirects to "you are user 10000 and won an IPAD" scam sites

Yep - full page redirecs.

10:26 AM

Related discussion on the main meta site for the interested:

26

Q: Ads on SE sites are flashy and resource-intensive

SE had very high standards for ads on Stack Overflow, ads were curated, generally static images and well-behaved. I found the stance SE took on acceptable ads admirable, and they certainly left some money on the table by keeping the standards this high. There are now ads on other sites in the n...

discussion advertising performance

10:52 AM

waves

[wave] Hi!

I'm not sure whether this was the channel nitsua60 recommended I come to for help with my query. X

XD

It totally is! Welcome.

Thanks!

My group is absolutely loving Curse of Strahd so far.

For reference for others, John Clifford's question is Curse of Strahd - too steamrollery to force Death House when the PCs are in Vallaki? [on hold]

10:55 AM

I figured it'd probably get put on hold for being opinion-based. I totally forgot stack had chat rooms.

(I won't be able to help much, everything I know about 5e I learned from observing conversations in this chat.)

Personally, I think Death House was not a very good part of CoS and I'd not "shoehorn" it in without explicit player buy-in

I think the Stack Overlords would say that forgetting chat exists is a feature, not a bug. [grin]

Well my question is more a general "Do you think it would be lame to have part of the adventure be a shared dream that takes place in a part of the adventure they didn't find"?

kriiri: noted, do you have any alternative suggestions to level them up beyond "oh hey I screwed up so you're level 4 now"?

Back when I was running D&D 4e, I totally abandoned XP as an advancement mechanic and just leveled 'em up when I was ready for them to.

10:58 AM

I'm using milestones, I just forgot to...y'know...milestone.

If you need a narrative justification, the goddess of ~~second chances~~ heroic deeds grants them a boon?

@JohnClifford Hmm, Vallaki has a bunch of mysteriws that don't require that much combat iirc, maybe you could award them some levelry for advancing those?

As for shared dreams... it can be risky, but I've had mostly good experiences with the concept.

Well I already had Strahd help them out of an encounter with Vistani bandits that floored the cleric in one crossbow bolt because he wasn't ready for them to die yet.

@kviiri Interesting! I actually thought it was a poor part the of the campaign as well but after ending the whole campaign my players actually told me that the Death House was their favorite thing.

11:01 AM

The main reason I was going to go the dream route is because Death House seemed like a good vehicle to get them to the level I think they should be at for where they are, but it would be a pain to get them to go all the way back to Barovia just for that.

Though CoS has already cemented itself as my favourite adventure of all the ones I've run for the group just because it's given birth to the funniest out-of-context line we've ever had: "If you want to expose your genitals to a vampire who's on fire, be my guest!"

On one memorable occasion we had a waking-dream-was-it-all-real adventure that used Don't Rest Your Head (a horror game about insomniacs who gain reality-bending powers but are stalked by nightmares) for the session instead of our campaign's primary system.

@BESW The way I was going to play it was having them all share a dream of being transported back to Barovia by the mists, meeting the kids, doing Death House, then waking up and realising it was all a dream...but they retain their level ups, items and wounds, and if they ever go back to Barovia, someone will make an offhand comment about seeing what was happening at the house, so it's a kind of "Huh, so that was actually happening..." sort of thing. I think they'll like that.

Cool.

Our dream sequence was... weird enough that it's difficult to describe.

I kind of hope they go to Old Bonegrinder at some point to meet Morgantha again, because when they bumped into her in Barovia they intimidated her into handing back the kid she took and didn't realise just how much she could have wrecked them if she'd wanted to.

Not gonna lie, I expected my wife to try a dream pastry because her character is a dippy stoner elf.

The party was flying from the Earth to an Atlantean generation ship in a spaceship powered by a nuclear goldfish and piloted by the preserved brain of Charles Babbage. They hit a patch of Weird Space which made dreams real, and the crew had to use their reality-altering powers to wake Babbage up before his steampunk dreams destroyed the ship.

11:09 AM

That sounds glorious.

It was great. The players chose reality-bending powers for each of their characters which reflected some anxiety each character was struggling with at the time, and things got super dramatic.

Oh man, I just read a thing for handling dream pastry addiction and I really want my wife to eat one now so I can do this

That's one of the great things about open-ended phrasal narrative systems, you can jump from system to system more easily and can choose to focus on just the bits of the characters which are really interesting at the moment without losing the rest of them.

Is it like a Christina Rossetti sort of thing?

The addition, I mean.

reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/91bv3n/…

Now I just need to figure out a way to convince the PCs to trust Morgantha and buy pies after they already saw her stuffing a kid in her sack as payment...

Oh man, there's some non-consensual attempts at creating bleed in those mechanics. Tread carefully. What safety tools does your group use?

11:23 AM

Safety tools?

Safety tools are techniques, practices, and mechanics that help the people at the table have fun by avoiding or mitigating harm to real people, like activating phobias or making people feel unsafe. This is a good resource for safety tools.

If I were playing in a game that involved involuntary cannibalism, loss of character agency, and being expected to roleplay addiction, I'd nope out of there so fast if I hadn't been told ahead of time.

Ohh. None of my players have any issues that would be exacerbated by the content in the adventure (or that addition). That is a very good point I will keep closely in mind though.

Though bear in mind that this is a group where two of them, while playing the Lone Wolf RPG and coming across a poor deer with its leg caught in a trap, immediately said WE BUTCHER IT FOR MEAT rather than trying to help it.

You know your group better than I do. I've found that I shouldn't assume I know enough about my players to make those sorts of judgements for them, and that one kind of experience being okay doesn't always translate to a related experience being okay too.

Fair point.

I'm mostly flagging the bit where the adventure seems to want to trick the players into making uninformed decisions with terrible consequences not just for their characters but for themselves if they have problems with commonly taboo subjects like cannibalism.

11:30 AM

There is one person I'll check in with, but the other two are my wife and my best friend so I can say with absolute confidence that nothing will faze them.

That, and this line: "Don't tell the player that they have to take out the pie and eat it now. Just describe it happening so that the PC feels powerless in the act, much like a real addict might."

Yeah, there are some parts in there that might bear changes if that's going to be a triggering experience. Thank you for pointing that out.

Anything which involves trying to make the player feel the way their character feels, sets off caution bells for me, triggers or not.

Fair. I also try to avoid anything that steamrolls their actions or takes their agency away, generally.

That's called "bleed," when player and character intermingle like that, and it requires decompression/aftercare:

Decompression & Why Your LARP Needs It (Dungeon Discourse Ep. 05)

(There's notes on aftercare in the resource folder I linked above, too.)

11:34 AM

Without going into too much detail my wife and I are in a BDSM dynamic so I'm not a stranger to aftercare. :)

Glad to hear it.

And thanks for hearing me out. These are subjects that a lot of game manuals don't tackle at all but I find they're really important for healthy sustainable gaming.

It's something I don't often think about in the context of running RPGs so I really appreciate the perspective of someone who does incorporate those kinds of considerations, and I'll definitely be paying closer attention to the effects my adventures might have on my players going forward.

Regardless of how I do handle the dream pastries themselves, do you have any idea or suggestions as to how I might entice the party to buy/consume them having already seen that Morgantha isn't exactly a nice lady?

In my experience the biggest thing isn't finding the exact right tool or even anticipating all the problems, but just having a table where everybody knows everyone else values their safety and happiness: it opens space for important conversations without fear or resentment.

I don't know the adventure's context at all, but... have a middleman who distributes them.

I could have one of the other hags meet them and tell them that Morgantha is kind of shunned by the family because of her methods, and try to convince them that she's just a nice old lady who wants to sell delicious pies.

I think you're gonna need somebody else to help you on that one.

11:41 AM

Fair. :)

I'm gonna nope out on the cannibalism now, see you around!

Later!

11:58 AM

it is weird... Want to set of BESW spider sense? Mention you are going to revoke player agency and try to "play the player"... not-so-oddly the folks here realize the problems such things may cause...

Now again... what was that people applauded the most in FF7? The innovative, never seen before plot twist that became history?... Different expectations indeed they had.

May explain why the plot of the "best Final Fantasy of all times" is actually one of the ones I liked less.

12:14 PM

@Derpy You didn't like FF6?

@Derpy What did you not like about FFXIV?

@Miniman had I been talking about FF6, I wouldn't have used the quotes. The quotes were there exactly because I was talking about the "so called best FF" :P

@Derpy Can't argue with you there!

I mean fairness where fairness is due 7 pretty much revolutionised console RPGs.

Jokes aside, I had always had my good share of problem with FF7 "plot twist" - I guess I should thank BESW for indirectly helping me to focus my ideas.

12:24 PM

It's not my favourite in the series though.

That said, they put a "playing the player" thing in the last kind of game I wanted to have one in

Had it been a survival horror game for example...

I mean if you want a stellar example of that, there's an RPG Maker series called Legion Saga which is heavily derivative of Suikoden. And in LS2 there's a character called Fuba who will straight-up commit suicide at one point in the game if you haven't recruited X number of other characters.

Which made it unintentionally hilarious for me when I looked up the specifics and realised I'd missed the requirement by one.

(I'd recruited 36 people and needed 37)

Clifford!

Sorry, good morning, all.

@GcL bad. bad gcl

Maybe I should try to clarify. I basically play Jrpg for the F.E.V. effect - basically it means that what I enjoy the most is the shōnen nature of those games. FF7 didn't even really match that style from the start, but the reveals almost negates that.

Afternoon goodguy5.

12:41 PM

I just really like Clifford...

@JohnClifford 37? In a row?!

@goodguy5 PBS had a puppy Clifford show and it was the best thing on earth.

awwwwww

@Yuuki They're dotted all over the place, you just need to have recruited 37 of the available characters at the point where the cutscene happens.

if you have 37, he lives and comes with you. If you have 36 or fewer, he jumps off a cliff.

I almost stopped playing at that point. XD Though the mental image in my head was this sad kobold going OH IF I ONLY HAD ONE MORE FRIEND while surrounded by 36 people trying to cheer him up.

Hmm... I suppose this might be considered "content warning", but basically it's a movie reference.

@Yuuki Back in my day, we had Clifford books and maybe if you were lucky the library's VHS wasn't checked out.

12:45 PM

My baby is in a high percentile for height and weight (thank you, thank you, I am very proud).

And I often joke "I'm getting worried about a Clifford situation".

I didn't realise where the conversation went to Clifford the Big Red Dog and then realised that duhhhhh it's my avatar.

My nickname IRL is Red Dog because of my last name so it seemed fitting.

ah, the classic last name of "Crimsonhound"

Clifford's Puppy Days

Clifford's Puppy Days is an American animated children's television series that originally aired on both PBS and PBS Kids from September 15, 2003 to February 23, 2006. A prequel to the original Clifford the Big Red Dog, it features the adventures of Clifford during his puppy days before he became a big red dog and before moving to Birdwell Island. The series was cancelled in February 2006 following low ratings, with very few PBS stations re-running it afterwards. Since then, occasional reruns continue to air. In the United Kingdom, the series aired on CBeebies from 2004 to early 2011 and like the...

user15026

@Yuuki it was amazing.

12:58 PM

(I checked, and it wasn't just my usual living in a place that was ten years behind in its media, I was in high school when the first Clifford TV show aired and I was in college when Puppy Days started.)

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