Oh I forgot to tell yous a pointless story from last weekend
An old lady of about 60+some years of age and a somewhat unkempt look approached me in a small park near our house with a remote control at hand and asked me to help her fix her TV
I dropped my stuff back home and then came back for her, and then went to her place. Turns out she had the TV set to promotion mode, causing an overlay of technical features to loop on its screen in a small info bar
Her apartment showed signs of mild tendency to hoard, with lots of stuff lying around and all surfaces covered with papers and stuff. But one table was completely clean and upon it she had laid a shrine to John F. Kennedy.
Some pictures and a plaque inscribes with a lengthy prayer to his soul. It was a bit unexpected!
Although, given her age, she probably had a more personal eye on Kennedy than I ever did. ;)
I had a recent experience where I went down to the pub, and a couple of guys that I'd never spoken to before just walked up and asked me to help them with their phones.
A level 1 Fiend Pact warlock finds a scroll of fireball. The spell fireball is not on the base warlock spell list. If a spell is not on your list, you cannot even try to cast it from a scroll. That said, it is on the Fiend Pact's expanded spell list, which states:
The following spells are add...
Bluestockings has published the third and final part of her intense and important essay "The TTRPG Industry: The Sexist Price of Admission." Parts one, two, three. CW for individual and systemic harassment, abuse, etc.
...I'm tempted to make a reference to Dambanang Pangdiyosesis at Parokya ng Ina ng mga Walang Mag-Ampon, but that might be a bit too obscure for this crowd.
Answers can be flagged as "not an answer", the description for which says the following:
This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.
Often, if I raise this kind of flag, I fi...
Maybe for things that actually try to answer the question, but do so poorly --- but for commentary, I wish there was a clear way to actually delete content.
@Derpy Letting NAAs sit by, even downvoted, makes us seem like we're a forum. New users may be tricked into thinking the downvoting is because it's a disagreeable comment, not because of it being in the wrong place.
@kviiri Was a rhetoric question, sorry I was a tad unclear.
My point was that I have already fought that windmill multiple times in the past, pointing out that there isn't an agreement on what "Not an answer" mean and that the flag is useless in removing actual not and answers or "bad frame challenges"
so, the only suggestion I can give you is to fully disregard the "official" network position on the topic and just work out something that works for your site.
Been looking at some of the gameplay trailers for the Paranoia videogame. Based on the claim, the game won't be very long (they advertise about 14 hours?) but from what I see at least the writing seems good
> "Please chose three team members from the three available team members"
(and I think that the briefing room was also in a restricted area since the trust level dropped as soon as the player entered the room)
question in this quote "Advanced Intelligence (4 RP) Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: Members of this race receive a +2 racial bonus to Intelligence.
Special: This bonus can be taken multiple times, but each additional time it is taken, its cost increases by 1 RP. Its effects stack."
under special does the part where it says "it's cost increases by 1 rp" mean that each time it's taken you pay the original cost +1 more so the second time would cost 5 the third time would cost 6 ect for a total of 15 if you took it 3 times or does it just cost an additional point flat here the second time wou…
So, me being back at being confused about Paranoïa... Who told a story about a guy having a perk making danger trigger itself when nearing him and someone had a grenade in his pants or I-cant-remember-what?
Thing is, I don't know the tabletop, but Vicky has been kind enough to provide me links that are not banned by my work proxy (yay) (Again, apologies if my google fu is lacking on this chat, but I'm often reading it when I shouldn't :P )
The game is notorious for the fact that the gameplay encourage "unfair" GM behavior. Mind you, by Unfair I mean that the dystopian setting is based on the fact that you live under the rule of a (crazy) super computer, and have to perform mission in a society that is bureaucracy at its finest.
for that reason, it is not rare that you are given contradictory objectives or even impossible ones.
In the end, the game is rigged against you.
And one of your best hopes to survive is to find a way to put all the blame for the failure... on the other players
To give you an idea, I think that one of the introduction sets described a mission that required you to test some experimental explosives.
Where "experimental" means "the grenade will blow in your face 99% of the times"
but that is not the point. The point is that you were required to detonate the grenades and document their power.... and return the grenades to R&D after the tests.
"Well, you see, I was handling the stock and only charged to hand the 'nades to the tester for them to throw. But they refused to give it back after, I'm almost convinced they hid it to play a prank on the Computer"
So amateur blame shifting then? Sounds like a lot of fun :P
@Nyakouai I think another staple of Paranoia is that your character always has more than one agenda --- you're by default troubleshooters, but also invested in some activity that's grounds for immediate termination if discovered.
being a communist (or member of other proscribed secret societies) is grounds for immediate execution as is being a mutant
all player characters are, by default, members of a secret society and have a mutant power
it might not be a very good one but hey
the joke is also that Alpha Complex is absolutely a communist dictatorship in practice and nobody actually knows what a communist is but they know that communism is bad, so
one of the primary objectives of the communist secret society is trying to figure out what communism means, IIRC
@Carcer Oh yeah, mutants. I remember when I first heard about Paranoia, it was explained to me as follows:
> You are troubleshooters (i.e. you shoot trouble) in a futuristic bunker run by a Computer that is Very much Your Friend. Secret societies are banned and punishable by death. Everyone belongs to a secret society. Being a mutant is punishable by death. Everyone is a mutant.
@kviiri "here, since you are new to the game, you can use this notebook to take notices. Fell free to use any of the pencils I left there " points to a green pencil
Well, it's not that you're not supposed to know the rules. It's that your character can be punished if you give the GM reason to think you know the rules.
I was in a one-shot once where a chap quite egregiously exploited the instruction to generate character statistics by rolling a d20 and writing the numbers down where we wanted on the sheets, in that we weren't actually told the numbers had to go into the appropriate boxes on the sheet. Or even onto our own sheets. He managed to get three or four poor rolls written onto other player's sheets before the whole table got wise and started defending their sheets by pencil stabbing
I'm not super fond of Paranoia, it's a satire of toxic gaming-group customs that usually winds up just glorifying and reinforcing those practices rather than critiquing them.
It's got some good concepts, like the six-pack of characters which reduces investment costs so players can be more okay with losing characters.
Yeah, totally the opposite of what BESW just said: I think pencil and back stabbing (preferably both) should happen in a group as often as possible! (Especially when I get to do it)
certainly not everyone's cup of tea. IMHO it's fine in small doses as a comedy game for people who are already gamers and understand why it's meant to be funny but it's definitely not the game you'd choose to introduce anyone to the hobby
@Carcer yep, it is for already consolidated groups of friends that just want to have a good laugh. Not exactly the kind of game you want to use to introduce anyone to tabletop games
A healthy game of Paranoia requires a very strong level of trust between friends at the table, because the system itself is designed to create mistrust at the table.
@BESW One thing to consider is that Paranoia has changed a lot over the editions so it might be good to establish a baseline of what edition we are basing experiences off of.
The newer one definitely has a lot of guidance for the DM on how not to run a toxic game and how to keep it fun for everyone while keeping the "spirit" of the game. Whether or not that changes the heart of the game or is lip service is definitely some food for thought.
@BESW I'm curious here, where do you see the connection between GM/GMPC behavior and toxic behavior? That's certainly not something that I've thought of before. Or is that more of a separate critique that you aren't trying to link?
the point is that the game is created so that the characters relationship are intended to be toxic. But that assumes that the players will recognize that the gameplay is supposed to be that way so they will accept that they are still friends and just playing a weird game.
@Rubiksmoose There's a relatively common problem at gaming tables which is the GM's version of "my guy" syndrome, wherein the GM does things which make the players (not their characters) unhappy and justifies it as the evil of a character they control in the fiction as if that somehow made it not the GM's choice.
The Friend Computer construct is that, codified in rules.
And yeah, Derpy's got the broad gist of it: it's not satire or critique to just reify a problem in your work so people experience it, that's just perpetuating the problem.
I will say the newer version goes out of its way to encourage the GM to be very aware of players and to tow the line between playful unfairness and harassment and gives advice on how to recognise and correct mistakes if made.
@BESW On the other hand this is very fair as well.
Compare Great Ork Gods, where the characters' antagonists are gods who are trying to kill the PCs at every turn--but the gods are also controlled by the players, not the GM.
@Carcer The newest version, frustratingly, is just called Paranoia. Most people trying to distinguish it from previous version call it Paranoia MGP (Mongoose Publishing makes it)
I think it is much simpler, it doesn't intend to be satire, or to be more clear, it is just a joke on dystopian settings and bureaucracy. It doesn't go any deeper... there is no attempt at doing any form of analysis, there is no food for though to be found... nothing. Just the premise that the setting is built in a way that basically allows for killing anyone at anytime for any (made up) reason
@Derpy Well I will say that the killing anyone at any time thing was a thing that Paranioa XP codified as one of the optional playstyles. The newer versions have largely ditched encouraging players to wantanly kill each other at every turn.
@Derpy I agree it's probably not intentional, but the structure of the system reflects toxic gamer habits too much for our interaction with the game to ignore that just because the designers weren't doing it on purpose.
I don't have a lot of interest in author intent when trying to figure out how to interact with an existing game text--it's the text that's sitting on my table and influencing my game night.
Also I do want to be clear: I'm probably coming across as trying to defend it, but that's not really my intent. Just trying to maybe provide some info about the game as the newest version presents it (I am currently running it). All these points are good and food for thought.
And having run it, I'm honestly not in love with it either.
But I haven't yet put my finger on why. I don't think my players love it either. But it seems to be fun enough to get people back to the table at least for the moment.
I'm not sure what I think of the Friend Computer... I mean, I've never played Paranoia and I'm not sure if it's a good fit for me, but I think I'd appreciate an honestly adversarial GM over what I usually get, a GM who is constantly quite unclear of their agenda.
Eg. I have a GM in my current campaign who is mostly silent on what kind of game he wants to run, but does advocate a "make mistakes if your character would" mentality --- and then punishes us for those mistakes by depriving us of agency.
I do agree that a GM with a clear vision effectively communicated makes play a lot more enjoyable--or lets you go find something you'll enjoy without having to endure it until you figure that out on your own.
Maybe I was unclear. What I meant is that I am not trying to find any justification to the gameplay the wrote. I meant that I strongly doubt that they were attempting any form of satire or toxic game groups or provide any learning opportunity. To me it is just a weird game that tries to generate fun out of paradoxical situations, crazy rules and the such. As I said, it is not for everyone and as it stands, it probably is a giant robot that either lacks a good "head" or has none to begin with.
@BESW Now, I may be completely missing your point here, and please correct and inform me if I am, but if the whole table agrees that a wild adversarial GM is fun and acceptable and everyone enjoys the experience is there something wrong with that? Or are you more saying that this game setup has a huge potential to go wrong and devolve into things that are not fun?
(the latter of which is almost certainly true of course)
@Rubiksmoose The latter. Friend Computer reflects, empowers, and enables a toxic form of adversarial GMing in which the GM avoids responsibility for their choices at the table by... effectively blaming their imaginary friend, or "the needs of the story."
Adversarial GMing, like any other kind, requires consent and responsibility. Framing the GM's adversarial choices as an NPC's choices offers a dodge around consent and responsibility.
(This is also a reason why "realism" as a priority tends to set off alarm bells in my brain.)
@Derpy Yes, thank you for reminding me of it. The Giant Robot of Offense is a very good concept to interject here.
@BESW Gotcha. Completely agree with you here. And I think the game itself recognises that. And the current version even recognises mistakes in the past. But I think that maybe the fact that the only remedy is guidance that says "don't do that" and not any mechanical or other restrictions might be a core of what you are objecting to.
> People are really good at wanting to create a safe space for play, and really bad at doing the actual work to make that happen. (Dylan Grinder, here)
Paranoia's got core elements of its conceit which make it even easier than usual to fail at having a safe and happy game, so --like horror games and romance games-- I hold the text to an even higher than usual expectation of support for making it turn out well.
Also, I think games which play around with trust and truth need aftercare.
And I'd be shocked if any version of Paranoia even hints at that.
There are aftercare tools (the ones I'm aware of were especially designed for immersive LARPS) for re-calibrating one's sense of the difference between the player and character, by having you discuss the game in terms of how the player and the character experienced the same events differently.
Most games of Paranoia probably don't need re-calibration at the same level of intensity that people who've been LARPing for a week do, but it's a concept to keep in mind.
My point is that the second you see the GM choice to kill the player because they dared to touch a green pencil that you left on purpose on the table as adversarial , then the game is already going in the wrong direction. If your players see a "all the players already died twice even before the initial mission briefing" as not fun or even as "the gm is playing against us" then the game is going in the wrong direction.
The only way to safely play Paranoia is that every players sees the mess that the game degenerates into as a fun experience.
That is also probably the reason I can be fine with it even if normally I am pretty strict on "destructive" behavior - that game is basically what my life as a dev looks like.
I get the comparison. Here, we're all slaves of the SVN, but nobody has clearance for anything whatsoever, and has to ask to its n+1, who also has no clearance (or no knowledge on the topic)
@Rubiksmoose Jumping back in to say: periodic check-ins are absolutely key. Consent is ongoing and can be revoked at any time if the mess goes from joyful to unpleasant.
I think that's where I get the most icky vibes from Paranoia--it's got a lot of potential for "But you agreed to the game so you can't complain partway through."
@Rubiksmoose To simply put: I can accept it because to me it is a parody of my work experience. Contradicting requirements, impossible to meet milestones and so on.... Others can and will have different experiences.
It can generate problems depending on who plays it. And because of the structure it is potentially more dangerous than other "competition with fighting" games like Munkin
If anything, because there is a player that has more power than the others - the GM.
and that can easily degenerate in a we against us scenario.
And it is also very easy for a Paranoia GM to go "rocks fall. You die"
It requires a lot of attention to be played "right"
I feel like you guys are saying the same thing yet wording it slightly differently so that it looks like you're arguing from the face of it even though everyone's in agreement.
Here's the question I want to post, but I'm concerned it may still get flagged as opinion-based. Is it?
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I'm building a brand new tabletop RPG and want to do away with some of the standards you find in an RPG, one of which being that only the "mage" class can use "mage" abilities. I'd like a...
I'm having trouble with scales when creating a kingdom map.
Quoting the Dungeon Master's Guide regarding province scale maps (p. 14):
For the most detailed areas of your world, use a province scale where each hex represents 1 mile. A full-page map at this scale represents an area that can be...
Actually joking about Zero Punctuation, a game "review" webseries created by a dude who goes by Yahtzee. "Review" is in quotation marks because it's really more comedy/entertainment than true game reviews.
@Derpy Yup I'm in full agreement with you. It's not for everyone or even most people. And even with the right people it must be done with care and thoughtfulness. And even then still has the potential to go wrong. Still in the right circumstances it can be fun I think.
@Nyakouai You take turns rolling 5d6, with usually two rerolls per roll (allowing you to re-roll any of the dice you want) and then you mark the result you receive in one of the score categories. Each category can only be used once. The categories are stuff like Ones (total of all 1's you rolled), Twos, Threes, Fours, Fives, Sixes. Then there's Two-of-a-kind (sum of two same numbers), Three-of-a-kind (sum of three same numbers) etc, low and high straight (numbers 1-5 and 2-6 respectively) etc.
If you can't or don't want to assign a score, you can mark it in any category as a zero, consuming the category.
So overall it's a game of 1) rolling well and 2) assigning the results smartly to get the most out of each category.
@vicky_molokh That's actually a quite apt comparison. One might equate the categories with betting --- choosing between two categories is akin to betting "I will get a better result for this category later"
Hi all, I'm new here and trying to build a TTRPG from scratch. I have a lot of the main structures in place, but could use some input with some of the finer details. Am I in the right place?
@DWShore Yep, I was going to respond in the meta but here is good too. If you want to build from scratch, then look a variety of systems. Think about why certain mechanics are implemented in certain ways. What works? What doesn't work? It's too limiting to try working backward from one existing system (e.g. it's just like such-and-such-game, except I changed X, Y and Z). Much better to work from the ground up.
So here's the basics/skeleton/cliffnotes of what I'm working on now: Players have 6 stats (Strength, Dexterity, Perception, Intelligence, Charisma, Conviction) and at character creation they range from 0-10, but can go up from there by spending XP. You also have an alignment to Light (Lux) or Darkness (Umbra) on a scale of 1-10, where under 4 in either direction is considered "Neutral" for mechanical purposes. Access to spells is primarily based on this alignment and your character level.
@DWShore howdy! It may be too late to ask, but what are the design goals of your system. Understanding what you want it to do and how you want it to work can be very helpful.
Players then pick a Calling. This is where my question comes in. I want to give a good mechanical reason for people to choose a calling without saying "Only Rogues get access to these spells". The game-play is meant to be more about role-playing and being as creative as possible, and less about the outcome of the dice.
@DWShore For starters, what sort of stories and gameplay/roleplay experiences isthis system supposed to do? Is this meant as a "It's like D&D but" system?
if you don't want the purpose of a calling to be "only Xs can do these specific things" then the next obvious step down is just that "Xs are better at these specific things"
but of course no idea what the mechanical implementation of that would be without knowing the basic mechanics of gameplay
on the prescriptive/freeform axis, is a calling something that yo are choosing from a predefined list of options, or something that you can come up with and get to use as and when you can argue it's appropriate?
@MikeQ I'm not sure if this answers your question, but the world is a pre-industrial, fantasy world where anything in complete darkness (the Umbra) looses its form and definition. Light (Lux) solidifies things, so people can use a combination of the two to create anything they can imagine.
so we're asking questions perhaps that you haven't consciously thought about and you're designing within some premade assumptions about how the game will work
Yeah. Try taking a few steps back. Think big picture, what kind of game you want it to be. Tactical and wargamey? Freeform? Who are the player characters? What sort of objectives will they have?
@DWShore Think much higher level. WHat are the main aspects of the system? Is this combat focused, roleplay focused, or a combination (and if so, about what percentage for each?) How do you want the players to interact with the world? What are they doing when 'playing' the RPG?
The rules and mechanics are there as guidelines, but I want to encourage both the GM and the players to think outside the box and help shape their world.
I think you have assumptions about how this is meant to work already but as it's not a deliberate decision you've made that might be difficult to elaborate. Coming up with a example of what gameplay looks like and how you are imagining people would be playing and discussing will probably be a good start for figuring out what kind of game this is meant to be, if that's something you've got enough material together to do already.
@Carcer I think that's exactly my problem. I guess I don't even realize what assumptions I've made. A lot of my design so far has been based off the experiences I've had with my own game groups. (Which I'm realizing may be rather limited)
Let's take D&D as an example because most everyone here is familiar with it. The players play as brave warrior-types. They go around and fight stuff in turn-based combat. They succeed via tactics and system mastery. Character progression is measured by XP, which increases the character's numeric stats and other abilities.
Note that none of those game aspects are universal to TTRPGs.
@DWShore It may be helpful to put together a list of your experiences. What you liked, what you didn't, what you want to see, what you don't want, etc.
Okay, I'm seeing a little more now. As players play, they gain XP and possibly loot. I encourage the GM to reward excellent role-playing. And at the end of each session, players get a point to give to someone else as a reward for good playing.
I call this end-of-session point the "Point of Benefaction" (and idea I'm blatantly steeling from my old GM... and he loves that it's spreading)
@DWShore yeah, it's easy to do if you've not got exposure to a broad range of stuff already. But to be clear, I don't mean to imply that the premises you've currently got are wrong, per se - make the game that you want to play, and your interests are what they are - but being able to explain those at a higher level at least will help others to understand what the game's meant to be like.
Again, I've never done this - but it seems like developing mechanics without an overall plan may become problematic. Sort of like you can build a house without a blueprint, but it'll be a much better house if you make a blueprint first.
Initial mechanics. (How leveling works, what stats do, how to build a character, what combat looks like, how spells work, how alignment works and changes)
if you've got a bunch of stuff you can paste already written down, maybe put that in a googledoc or something and link it, that's possibly easier than trying to edit down highlights for a chatroom
Yeah, I have a tendency to start with the fun, nitty-gritty stuff before putting together the big-picture stuff that should ultimately guide my decisions.
@Carcer Good call. I'll have to do that when I'm at home. (At work and they've blocked access to Google drive/services on the network level)
Well, you've all given me a lot of big questions to ponder. I hope to come back later and pick your brains some more! (Hopefully next time I can have the rules somewhere more readily accessible for feedback) Thanks!
@NautArch Before the blueprint, they'd need to decide that it's supposed to be a house, which means deciding what it's for and how it's supposed to work
It could be useful against things with high AC and low HP and Constitution
Otherwise, if their to-hit bonus is low enough that they'd need the +10, then their damage bonus is probably also low. With the -5 damage they're looking at maybe 1-3 damage per hit.
It's not 100% comparable to GWM because damage rolls aren't using d20s.
In a sense I don't really mind the idea of "less misses, less damage on average hit". I just think inclusion of it as an option is not really as much interesting as it is "hey, do some math to figure out which of these two weapons to use".
@kviiri I certainly respect that, but with the existence of GWM/Sharpshooter already prompting an in-the-moment "should I use this effect or not" decision inflection point in combat, I feel like the genie is already out of the bottle in that regard.
@Xirema At first I was on the "Heck no" train, but a near-guaranteed hit for most likely just negating my modifier on damage is still pretty good. I"d probably take it.
@MikeQ oh, that's interesting. Might be good for a build where (if proficient), it's a nice to have other option with a better hit chance. A bard might not have much Strength, but given the lack of offensive cantrips, that's a nice option.
So just to give a general picture: based on my stats, a +10/-5 Rapier in the hands of a level 20 rogue deals about 38% more damage against an AC25 creature than they would instead be dealing with a +3 Rapier (in my homebrew, both would have roughly equivalent rarities). That drops to a 5% improvement if the target has an AC of 20, and for any lower AC, the +3 Rapier wins out.
I definitely don't think I can allow this kind of inverse modifier math on heavy weapons, since that would just turn any weapon into a defacto +5 weapon.
@NautArch I could compare to +4, but +4 weapons don't really exist in 5e. They're just a theoretical possibility for "quality of a legendary quality weapon" as described in the DMG.
A level 1 Fiend Pact warlock finds a scroll of fireball. The spell fireball is not on the base warlock spell list. If a spell is not on your list, you cannot even try to cast it from a scroll. That said, it is on the Fiend Pact's expanded spell list, which states:
The following spells are add...
I’ve often heard the term ‘heartbreaker’ used to describe a game. Where did this term originate and how was it used?
Answers can be flagged as "not an answer", the description for which says the following:
This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.
Often, if I raise this kind of flag, I fi...
Here's the question I want to post, but I'm concerned it may still get flagged as opinion-based. Is it?
-->
I'm building a brand new tabletop RPG and want to do away with some of the standards you find in an RPG, one of which being that only the "mage" class can use "mage" abilities. I'd like a...
I'm having trouble with scales when creating a kingdom map.
Quoting the Dungeon Master's Guide regarding province scale maps (p. 14):
For the most detailed areas of your world, use a province scale where each hex represents 1 mile. A full-page map at this scale represents an area that can be...
