I played (half) a game of Dialect yesterday, it was nice but as always I need to work on the techniques to streamline scene framing and resolution and conversation in general to be able to play a game like that in 3 hours instead of having to interrupt it after 3.5 because the restaurant closes.
@BESW Sweet! I always love that this chat has so much linguistics and epistemology in it, two very nice topics I am interested in in additon to RPGs. (And general sciency geekdom, too. Makes me really happy to come back every time.)
@BESW In some games (Fiasco, Masters of Umdaar, and Lady Blackbird come to mind), I know these days what they want to do, so I can push for that both in framing scenes and in closing them after it has been achieved. I haven't managed to generalize that to games in general.
I know at the con last weekend I used Script Change to explicitly frame scenes and timeskip in ways that I would otherwise have just sort of... nudged in where I could with GM fiat.
Dialect has a good finishing point in the rules, and that worked fine, but framing scenes with a focus on the new word (and thus able to push towards that scene end) was not obvious.
@BESW Hm, Script Change sounds like it might help me for games that are not explicitly working with scenes, but for the ones that do, my initial thought is that it would more hinder than help with their specific framing goals. But then I haven't tried the technique yet, I'll try to at the next opportunity.
And now I'm also thinking about how a GM might use the Pilgrims of the Flying Temple approach to pacing and scene-setting in other games.
Also: Microscope's got a super aggressive technique for scene framing. You only start a scene when there's a question you want to answer, and you stop the scene as soon as the question's been answered.
I was thinking (and I may not be firm in the rules, so you may have been thinking something different) that one turn and one drawing of stones is an event after which things change, so it's a mini-scene. And that leads to one sentence in the journal, so if it's more than one sentence, it might make sense to resolve it more slowly.
I know I can use a dead goblin as an improvised weapon (and I'm just using the goblin as example of such) and that if I use it in melee I use my Strength for the attack.
I also know that when throwing a melee weapon with the thrown property it uses Strength for the ranged attack, however goblin...
KAPOK HEARTS v0.2, small but significant changes from v0.1 Feedback welcomed.
I wrote it yesterday and am polishing it up.
5 hours later…
user15026
3:42 PM
@BESW This mostly reminded me I never saw a Toy Story movie after the second one, and I've not seen more of the LEGO movie other than maybe the first...ten minutes?
@MikeQ Seems so! I somehow thought it would be Q4 fare.
Apparently has had an excellent reception too. I honestly think the franchise is blessed (or cursed) by some powerful entity that wants to see it succeed time after time again.
user15026
6:42 PM
I liked the first one well enough, and I think I liked the second one but I don't recall it as well
I think the first and third ones are excellent and the second one is like, excellent minus? I think it has some really good themes that might work for me better on rewatch though
I've been kinda worried about Pixar otherwise, though. I have this strong impression of them having a really consistent, superior quality to their stories "back then", but nowadays it feels they're more like "hit and miss"
@Shalvenay hot, humid, quiet day, watching the British Open and being amazed at the round Lowry shot today. watching someone excel when under pressure never fails to impress me.
My players are currently in a naval battle. The wizard used Disintegrate on the enemy warship's hull and now water is getting inside the ship.
I remember reading something about that in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book, but when I tried looking for the rule I just couldn't find it again.
Are the...
@Ash I think Inside Out, Wall-E and Coco are at least well worth a watch! By what I've heard Coco even gets the Day of the Dead cultural aspects fairly accurately portrayed
Up! is reportedly great too, but I've never really REALLY seen it so I can't say for sure :)
@KorvinStarmast yeah, it seems a bit underspecified to me. (compartmentation and reserve buoyancy are a big deal in determining how well ships handle damage, from what I've read)
user15026
@kviiri I've seen those three and liked them, I've not managed to see Up yet for some reason
@KorvinStarmast speaking of the Navy, one of the things I never got to ask when touring the Missouri was "how the heck do you use a casualty power cable without becoming a casualty yourownself?" because it seems like said cable has two male ends on it, and all the casualty power cable receptacles on the boat are female"
@Shalvenay If you want to hear a weird story, try this out. This is something I found out about back in the 90's. It is a half hour history lesson I'd suggest to anyone.
@KorvinStarmast Well I was in the army and they taught us there's no such thing as an accident that just happens, there's always some poor fool behind that and one doesn't want to be said fool.
(later it turned out that there totally are accidents that just happen --- when a CO makes a mistake and causes one, the universe rewrites itself to make it an accident that just happened to happen without any human error)
@kviiri I have had to investigate a number of aircraft accidents (some on the ground, some in the air) yeah, there's usually a causal chain. (See also Reasons, and "The holes in the swiss cheese lining up"
@kviiri Uh, don't get me started. censors further comment
Excuse me while I cringe more. Why can people be so unreasonable?
We meet on thursdays. We are also mostly free on tuesdays. Sometimes we switch from thursdays to tuesdays for a month or two because of conflicting scheduling and Ok, somebody would rather not because of football games.
But when someone says "I'm not free this thursday, can we please meet tuesday?" what need is there to go all "IF WE SAID THURSDAY IT'S THURSDAY, STOP CHANGING IT" when a "I can't on Tuesday" would be enough?
Hi @Shalvenay! You always manage to catch me when I pop in for a few seconds haha
I've started to learn that joining an ambitious tech startup as its fourth member, as a fresh college graduate, is for certain personality types not the best life decision
I hear ya. I have no interest in leaving my home, but I'm also not sure I'd be able to find the kind of work I love --because of the kinds of people I work with-- anywhere else.
The free GauntletRPG Play Aids folder now has 167 free play aids for playing many different RPGs online, including fillable character sheets, translations, and session trackers.
I know I can use a dead goblin as an improvised weapon (and I'm just using the goblin as example of such) and that if I use it in melee I use my Strength for the attack.
I also know that when throwing a melee weapon with the thrown property it uses Strength for the ranged attack, however goblin...
Is possible to target 2 allies with the Warding Bond spell using the Sorcerer's Twinned Spell metamagic option?
My players are currently in a naval battle. The wizard used Disintegrate on the enemy warship's hull and now water is getting inside the ship.
I remember reading something about that in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book, but when I tried looking for the rule I just couldn't find it again.
Are the...
