TRPG General Chat

A. B.

12:31 AM

Funny, I was just thinking about a question like that!

Ben

@A.B. Related, possible dupe

:P

A. B.

:-D

Specifically, you know parties are often asking each other "who's going to be the healer". Well, similarly there's sometimes "who's going to be the face".

Ben

@A.B. In which situation?

A. B.

Like with "who's going to be the healer".

Likewise "we need a face character in our party".

linksassin

@A.B. Yeah, its a CRPG mindset. I have it at my table, the guy playing the wizard is convince the group has to have a traditional face role and gets frustrated anytime the bard doesn't step up and do the talking.

MikeQ

12:39 AM

But why must it be the bard's responsibility? Did the bard's player agree to that playstyle?

linksassin

Exactly, they didn't. They party also have an oracle and previously had a paladin that were better suited to it.

Ben

@A.B. @GcL brought up a suggestion that it's not based on skill or talent, but more based on experience

linksassin

But the wizard tries to force the bard (his irl gf) to do it because she has the highest bonus.

Ben

I had a character once that didn't have overly great Charisma, he (or specifically I) was just really good at delivering inspiring speeches. Otherwise he was just really friendly

MikeQ

That's the problem I was mentioning earlier. Players giving each other grief based on their own preconceptions of what the other's character should be.

linksassin

12:42 AM

Part of it is on me because I had discouraged the wizard from taking diplomacy ranks. But that was due to him becoming sort of a one man army and taking over so we asked him to stop taking the roles from the others.

His still got a computer game mindset. The person with the highest bonus should do the thing.

A. B.

Well, it does make sense.

"A sailor should never learn to swim"!

MikeQ

At that point I'd break character and tell them to stop trying to strongarm other players like that. If they want someone to talk so bad, they should do it themselves.

Besides, as far as social stuff goes, a high Cha bonus is only really necessary if there's a particularly difficult check. It shouldn't pigeonhole one player as "the face", especially if they don't want to be.

linksassin

@MikeQ Yes. we have to do that occasionally.

A. B.

You may be on to something about it being from CRPGs. In those everything would come down to your Charisma stat, whoever you were talking to, so it would make sense for somebody to be a specialist face character. I'm not sure it even makes any sense in a more realistic way. Yes, some people are good with people, but also some people will be more impressed with one kind of person than another.

All that kind of thing.

MikeQ

In a CRPG, there's one player, and the objective is to win. You can boss around the digital characters as much as you want. In a tabletop RPG, there are actual humans involved.

A. B.

12:46 AM

Well, not if it's an MMORPG.

linksassin

I've also told them that I don't use fixed DCs. The DC changes based on how difficult I think it would be for the character that is attempting it. So the fact they have statistical differences shouldn't matter as much but he struggles to get past that.

Ben

If you don't allow for the fact that it's a controlled by the players, not the characters, that would really slow things down. For example I have a good tactical mind for things, or have really great ideas on ways to tackle certain situations, but my character is "clueless" and not overly smart.

A. B.

As for "the objective is to win", if the objective isn't at least somewhat to win in a TTRPG you may as well just lie down on your back and kick your feet in the air.

Ben

So if I was restricted by what my character could do, then that would severely impact on the game.

A. B.

As far as I can see, anyway.

MikeQ

12:47 AM

@A.B. The objective is usually to have fun. If laying on backs and kicking feet is part of having fun, so be it.

linksassin

@A.B. But what does "winning" mean? Most of my games rarely have a clear win condition. Is winning surviving? Killing all the enemy? Getting the macguffin or telling a great story?

A. B.

Well, I don't really see how to have fun in a game where it doesn't matter in the slightest what I do.

Fortunately they don't usually mean it.

Ben

"What are you doing?"
"Practicing the 'dead spider'."
"Why?"
"Because I want to."
"...carry on"

linksassin

@A.B. It does matter what you do. Your choices determine where the story goes. But there isn't a best outcome. There is just the outcome you make of it.

MikeQ

I know many players who have the "win or else" mindset. And often that means putting the needs of the fiction ahead of the needs of the players, which often results in someone else not having fun. So I'd advise against that mindset.

A. B.

12:49 AM

And if it doesn't matter in the slightest where the story goes...

MikeQ

So if the players' toolbox is full of class-based combat mechanics, and the objective is to have fun, they can still have a game where choices matter, without discarding the real needs of the players.

A. B.

I mean, I expect you're going to say "you should do whatever makes the most interesting story". But I don't usually have any idea what would be particularly more interesting than anything else. I mean, it's not interesting to me, because I did it so it's not news. Is it interesting to anyone else? I haven't the slightest idea.

linksassin

For example:
My current situation is that an old friend of the party (a blacksmith named Daelin) has asked them for help. Daelin's girlfriend Tamriel has been kidnapped by her father, who happens to be a local lord named Byron. Byron has set up an arranged marriage with an upstart nobles son.
The upstart noble has lots of money and has bought up all the mercenaries in the area so offending him is dangerous. Byron doesn't want the marriage but can't see another way to avoid war.
Daelin wants the party to rescue Tamriel and help them run away.

MikeQ

I'm pretty sure you can save Tamriel by defeating Jagar Tharn, or maybe finding the last dragonborn

linksassin

@MikeQ Have I stolen a name from something without realising? Damn.

A. B.

12:55 AM

Hey, if Elder Scrolls think it's a good name, it probably is. :-)

Well, either of them are things.

MikeQ

@A.B. If the group wants a game about winning and optimizing stats, then that's perfectly valid. Prioritizing the "win" is only problematic if players do so at the expense of each other.

linksassin

Of course it's from ES. Then again so it my wizard's hometown of High Hrothgar. But hey, names are names.

A. B.

King Hrothgar's from Beowulf, I think, so biter bit.

I don't know, I suppose I spend a lot of time - in free-form IRC channels, not even in proper games with rules - in the position of standing about trying to do something interesting.

linksassin

Anyway the point is, in a situation like that. There isn't really "win" condition. Whatever the players do is bound to change the situation in interesting ways. In the first encounter they have offended the upstart nobles men, but haven't killed anyone.

A. B.

Well, either of those are things to try and do. That's OK.

MikeQ

12:59 AM

Loss and setbacks are always possible. If the players can't accept loss, and start faulting each other because of a fictional setback or suboptimal action, then there's a social problem at the table.

A. B.

The usual rule with free-form channels seems to be "don't come in and start something drastic, in case someone else wants to do something and you're getting in the way". But then nobody can do anything much and all stand around making conversation at each other. It's stupid.

MikeQ

You've mentioned that issue before. It's not really what linksassin and I are talking about though.

linksassin

TBH for me the most interesting part of rpgs isn't winning. Its what the characters are willing to do to get there. What will they sacrifice? What is the cost?

A. B.

You have to have an objective to begin with to do that, though.

Hm, we were talking about face characters, how did we get from there to here?

linksassin

@A.B. I don't have experience with open free-form channels but it sounds like you could work with other players to come to a combined goal. But that they don't want one player to take control of the narrative.

@A.B. Welcome to rpg.se chat... where the conversation doesn't matter and logic doesn't make sense.

MikeQ

1:06 AM

@A.B. There was an example of one player demanding that another player adapt their playstyle to fit their own expectations. And I connected that to a broader behavior of win-or-else player attitudes, and how that can be disruptive to group fun.

A. B.

Oh yeah, that the one with the highest stat shouldn't have to do the talking if they hate it.

@linksassin :-D

MikeQ

So I was arguing in favor of suboptimal play and abandoning conventional class-role expectations, and I think you may have confused that with abandoning story goals entirely, which is not what I was saying

A. B.

Yeah, in this case it's not about "winning should take second place to Telling A Good Story Whatever That Means", it's about "winning should take second place to not annoying the heck out of other players".

Xirema

At the risk of resurrecting a dead horse for the sole purpose of flogging it, I've accrued further evidence that houseruling the vision rules in 5th Edition D&D is the correct decision.

MikeQ

I cast commune with dead horse. What have you found?

Xirema

1:10 AM

linksassin

For me its:
1) Player Enjoyment
2) Interesting Narrative and moral choices
3) Fun mechanics and combat
.....
100) Winning. Whatever that means.

Xirema

(This was after I'd already made a snap decision during the session and explained that it would take like ten minutes to explain and we were already running late in the combat encounter. 😛)

MikeQ

There's definitely a funny question about that. Two blind creatures attacking each other. Or two invisible creatures.

linksassin

@Xirema Seems like a fair houserule to me.

A. B.

And another difference between computer games and TTRPGs is that you can lose in a way that's funny. So if the character with the worst Cha stat ends up doing the talking and rolling a critical failure, and their player or the DM can think of a way to get something funny, or an epic plot twist, out of the character's epic conversation fail, then that's OK. Sometimes characters doing things badly is more fun than them doing them well.

@linksassin Well, "player enjoyment" is kinda not an objective, it's the reason there are any other objectives.

linksassin

1:19 AM

@A.B. I mean in terms of priorities are the table. The objective is to choose the objective that are the most fun for the players.

nitsua60

@Xirema I'm at the point where I assume any houserule to 5e vision/light is an improvement, sight unseen.

Xirema

@nitsua60 Yeah......

MikeQ

Player enjoyment is an objective for the players, who are real. Winning battles, finding loot, seducing goblins, etc are objectives for the characters, who are fictional.

A. B.

I had a reason for saying that but I'm not sure I can remember it right now.

> I cast commune with dead horse. What have you found?

...thank you very much by the way XD

Two invisible creatures attacking each other would be funny.

linksassin

@A.B. Not for the audience. I imagine it would actually be quite boring. clang clang oof urgg slash gurgle body appears on the ground.

A. B.

1:39 AM

That's true. It would be funny, if only you could see it...

I think the question I was really thinking of was "how play face character", in much the same way as "what can a bard be".

"Refuse" is the only answer we've discussed so far, which is a valid one.

MikeQ

Let any player step up. There doesn't need to be one designated "face" character.

Talking is generally part of the game, and one way the characters interact with the world. Kind of silly if that's limited to one character.

Glazius

@MikeQ That's a distinction without a difference. You're there to enjoy yourselves, but you're there to enjoy yourselves by playing a game, and it's usually a core principle of a game that everyone playing the game is trying to win.

You can have fun playing a game even if you don't win it, but that's usually linked to the question of the proper amount of effort to put into winning the game - in short, the concept of "the good sport".

Glazius

2:02 AM

D&D for example is a game where the DM "being a good sport" involves always threatening to win but rarely actually winning, even though their ability to affect the game is much larger than any of the other players'.

2

Most tactical combat board games that adopt a similar "one vs. many" player distribution to D&D either make "the DM" an autonomous process that none of the players control, or make the game itself more of an even contest between the two sides, such that everyone can play to their best and either side has a chance of winning.

nitsua60

3:07 AM

@MikeQ Except there's, like, three layers to it. Because the person who picked the "face-class" might have done so because they want to be doing a lot of the talking, and people who selected away from it may have done so to not have that expectation. Or the face-mechanics are tied to the other mechanic in ways that are playing really badly with what people want to play.

That's part of why I ask players for the skill proficiencies they've chosen, out of an assumption that it might indicate things they'd like to engage with. The player of a fighter who maxes CHA and grabs performance and deception is saying something.

(Problem is, they might be saying they want to do those things, and they might be saying they want insurance in case they're ever subjected to those things. And I haven't gotten good yet about remembering to suss that bit out.)

A. B.

4:33 AM

The case that first came to mind was when I got talked into being the "face character", in a campaign I'd joined half-way through, and it was exactly on the "we haven't got a healer" basis.

Wondering what you can do with a face character, on the same principle as "what can a bard be". One might suspect that somebody who needs to ask for ideas about that shouldn't be playing a face character, though.

AncientSwordRage

7:32 AM

Morning

Adeptus

Evening

AncientSwordRage

gutenTAG

Adeptus

7:50 AM

@Glazius I get what you're saying, but it comes across as encouraging an adversarial DMing style. When you can TPK on a whim, the DM "wins" by facilitating the players to reach the end of the story, with enough challenges along the way to make it non trivial.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

8:22 AM

@A.B. Everyone has to start somewhere. Everyone who played a dedicated face character at some point played it for the first time. And there's not always an opportunity to jump into the role gradually. 'What can I do?' seems like a reasonable question to ask for the first time, and shouldn't be grounds for refusing to try. (Refusing to try because one simple doesn't want to is another matter.)

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12:05 PM

This could make quite a nice RPG puzzle

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KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 original or Mongoose?

BESW

12:47 PM

IPR's Game Room - Visigoths vs. Mallgoths

►

Scavenge, Inc. by Chris Bissette is a one-page micro dungeon-crawling TTRPG. Play as a group of treasure seekers deep beneath the earth, crawling through ancient crumbling ruins and putting tentacle-faced monsters to the sword and torch as they hunt for scraps of gold and forgotten treasures.

Robert Bohl Games going out of business sale. Everything on the site is half off. (Misspent Youth and Sell Out With Me)

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast MGT2.

BESW

Kickstarter: Garden of the Giants by EthanMakesGames. A tabletop roleplaying game about mice in a magical garden. Garden of the Giants was made to tell tales similar to those you would find in classical Children's Literature, stories of magical places and learning who you want to, while set against some villain or great catastrophe.

NautArch

3:02 PM

@GcL Another guy in my group set FoundryVTT up on his home server and so far it looks really nice! Trying to figure out how to match the grid of the map I imported (from Dndbeyond) to the grid Foundry. Problem is that the map grid is smaller than the 50 pixels.

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Himitsu_no_Yami

3:52 PM

@HotRPGQuestions cool, I got a hot question

NautArch

@Himitsu_no_Yami With regard to that, it's always up to the querent as to how long they want to wait before accepting, but you accepted pretty quickly. It's fine, but often that can reduce further answers.

Himitsu_no_Yami

Yeah, I accepted quickly cus it was a good answer that was easy enough to follow and I figured I'd work with that. Seemed like the kind of answer I was looking for anyway

I don't normally accept quickly

NautArch

@Himitsu_no_Yami That chosen answer also does put a lot of tracking on you to do.

WHich is fine if you're okay with that, but I actually think Dale's answer is better

but that's just me :)

In Dead in Thay, time is also important, but most of the time is in initiative which helps resolve time passing.

But overall, the biggest thing to have to remember is what Dale had said. THe more you rest, the faster the doomsday clock moves. So choosing to rest more for 'reasons', can result in a fail state of the primary mission.

Himitsu_no_Yami

This is also assuming the party manages to make it out of the jungles before doomsday lol

Rubiksmoose

Grrrr Thomas stealing my thunder on that DnDbeyond question XD

Himitsu_no_Yami

4:07 PM

lol, I set up my own character, mimicking as much as possible myself but I was beaten to it too

Rubiksmoose

I mean I put it up in a comment and it was hardly a novel idea. But I was hoping if OP confirmed that I could put it as the answer lol

Guess Thomas took the risk of being wrong and will reap the potential rewards lol

Himitsu_no_Yami

lol

Rubiksmoose

It would be really nice if DnDB had a breakdown of how your HP was calculated that was accessible from the shared version...

Himitsu_no_Yami

I don't suppose any of you are good with Roll20 macros and/or API are you?

NautArch

nope, but so far the FoundryVTT user interface is MUCH nicer.

Rubiksmoose

4:09 PM

I most definitely am not. But I know there are people around here on the site that are quite good at it.

NautArch

just sayin'

Himitsu_no_Yami

I have a hunch I asked my question about it at an inconvenient time and it won't get attention

I've determined I'm spoiled by markdown and when sites don't support it I get annoyed... *glares at Roll20 forums*

Yuuki

@Himitsu_no_Yami yeah....

So I think my current group may have imploded. Someone dropped out on short notice and they seemed to be a key part of the campaign narrative.

The table's on hiatus until the DM can figure something out.

NautArch

@Yuuki dropped out permanently?

Yuuki

@NautArch Possibly? They didn't say.

NautArch

4:16 PM

that's...weird

Yuuki

Everybody kinda blew up on Discord.

NautArch

after they departed or before?

Yuuki

Well, we've been doing it online since the pandemic started so more like as they departed.

I joined this campaign a few months after they all started so my character has been more of a tagalong. I offered to drop my character and pick up the character that was left but the DM hasn't gotten back to me.

NautArch

What system?

Yuuki

5e but this seems like more of a table politics/communication issue than mechanics issue.

NautArch

4:26 PM

Sounds like it. Ghosting is kinda strange.

Especially if it's not expected. My pandemic game has a clear policy that you can come and go as you wish. I just check in on gamedays to get an idea of who will be showing up.

Yuuki

I'm not sure ghosting is the right word for it because the person leaving and the DM are roommates.

And they're both in someone else's campaign.

NautArch

curiouser and curiouser

Yuuki

I'm wondering whether my offer to take up their more plot-relevant character was a good idea.

I'm willing and interested, but not sure on the part of anyone else.

NautArch

The DM should be able to move plot elements appropriately.

Yuuki

They're a first-time DM though.

NautArch

4:31 PM

Ah, that's trickier.

Homebrew campaign or module?

Yuuki

Homebrew.

NautArch

Well, that least gives them more control over the story.

BUt if they built it around this character, that is trickier.

But a good lesson not to rely on a single character to drive a story, too

MikeQ

If it's homebrew, can't they just... start changing the story?

kviiri

@NautArch was going to say the exact same thing myself x)

doppelgreener

@Yuuki could it be worthwhile to talk with the DM about the idea of them also playing to find out what happens?

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Yuuki

4:48 PM

@doppelgreener I'm not sure if it's a good idea for a first-time DM who already has a big workload on writing and running the campaign to also pick up the load of playing it.

doppelgreener

@Yuuki no, no, that's not what i mean

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@Yuuki this answer, option 2

a plot dying because one character becomes unavailable occurs because they have the whole story, beginning middle and end, planned out such that it must unfold a certain way.

(if it didn't have to unfold a certain way, why on earth would one particular character becoming unavailable grind things to a halt?)

MikeQ

Considering they're a new DM, maybe they don't realize that anything that hasn't happened yet in-game does not need to happen

doppelgreener

^ that too

Yuuki

I think you're conflating a character being important to the plot with the DM writing out the entire story.

doppelgreener

I'm not conflating things: if the DM hasn't worked out a specific plot, then there's nothing for the character to be important to.

The character leaving is a dealbreaker only if the plot is written out.

Or some large section of it, anyway.

"Play to find out what happens" is a principle from Powered by the Apocalypse: things don't exist until they happen on-screen, and the things the GM is thinkig of are just possibilities at this point. The player characters can take things any direction at all—including one of them disappearing. The GM is playing to find out what happens in the story just as much as anyone else.

Yuuki

4:54 PM

As far as I know, my understanding of the plot relevance of the character in question is that one of their relatives is working for the BBEG. If you're saying that you can't ever have a player character be related to a BBEG or even one of the BBEG's minions because that means you wrote the entire plot out, I don't know what to say.

doppelgreener

Playing to find out what happens is an approach that means your story is adaptable to sudden changes.

@Yuuki I'm not saying that

MikeQ

In this case, they may be assuming that the player character must be present to act out whatever drama they have regarding the BBEG

doppelgreener

^ That's what I'm thinking, yes

Yuuki

I think the problem is that the current plot hook involves this relative and we haven't exactly finished dealing with the hook and the player has left the table.

doppelgreener

This sounds like a situation where the DM has a plan involving this character that seems very important to them, and they don't know how to proceed without it.

@Yuuki Well, there you go. That's it then.

The relative still exists. The other characters still exist. I'm not sure what makes this a dealbreaker.

It's usually a dealbreaker because the DM has some specific plan they can't imagine not carrying out, that involves one exact character.

That is what I'm going on about.

I might well be incorrect in suspecting that.

But playing to find out what happens means putting expectations and plans aside, and just letting the players handle the situation in front of them, and seeing what unfolds from it, and responding to that.

Yuuki

4:59 PM

I think a part of it is no small amount of emotional/time investment on the part of the DM, which is understandable for a first-time DM to be honest. One thing that came up during the whole blowup on Discord is that some players feel that other players might not be as invested in this campaign (the player that left admitted at multiple times during sessions to be doing something else during play).

So when one player decides to just up and leave without voicing concerns beforehand, I suppose it could feel something like a betrayal of commitment.

doppelgreener

yeah, that's fair

MikeQ

> "If you're not with me... then you're my enemy!"

People have lives.

Yuuki

@MikeQ I think the equivalent is someone playing Candy Crush at the table and then leaving.

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doppelgreener

i don't know if the player is in this group, but it's pretty common to experiences like ADHD to be doing other things at the same time. doing that helps maintain focus, rather than coming at the expense of it.

(very often on calls with my parents i'm doing something else too. one of them will sometimes realise i am, then stop talking and expect me to finish before we resume our conversation, as though it means i'm not paying attention to them. one day i'm going to have to talk to them about how i'm always doing something else, and if they expect me to not, i'm not going to be able to pay attention to them at all.)

similarly if someone expects me to be paying 100% constant attention to the campaign and nothing else, that's a fast way to disappointment, because i will be unable to keep paying attention and i will zone out

i will just look like i'm paying attention

MikeQ

5:20 PM

Yeah, that's an important lesson for new DMs. Player commitment does not mean 100% attendance or 100% attention during the game.

user15026

@doppelgreener I have had to teach a number of people in my life that as well. Especially if it's something where I have to wait to participate.

user15026

(My Ruhi study group is now very used to "Ash will colour while we discuss things", for example - we had long conversations about why I do that, and I have shown them I do pay better attention when I can colour or stim while we talk.)

nitsua60

@doppelgreener I was just rummaging for an answer I wrote about that phenomenon ("give your ADD player other things/responsibilities to partially-occupy attention") when I realized that those three letters are also an English word that I use a lot =\

Yuuki

Both of these instances don't involve either of you saying "I don't want to do this anymore" though.

MikeQ

True... Is one player leaving indicative of some other table issue? Do the other players not want to continue?

Yuuki

5:32 PM

From what I gathered of the ensuing discussion, it was almost entirely out of the blue.

Rubiksmoose

5:50 PM

@doppelgreener It also means as a DM I get t o be very lazy about prep glances guiltily at my Masks villain that I still need to figure out their deal after 6 sessions

kviiri

I like prep in moderation, but not nearly as much as I like playing to find out what happens

@doppelgreener I've also had the experience that the game might just... well, be excruciatingly boring. But I guess there is a sort of soft taboo in saying that "I'm not having fun"

Because RPGs are fun! And you know those tired pizza adages.

MikeQ

Many wise words have been spoken by a tired pizza

4

kviiri

Eg. in one of our DL:RL sessions, our Sheriff who had a d4 in Spirit was shot badly and had a -3 wound penalty, and we were fighting a special foe that forbade spending Fate chips. In order to even get a proper turn, since he was Shaken, he had to succeed on max(d4, d6) - 3 versus 4 check. Or actually, make that versus 8, since the Shaken rule patch hadn't been made yet.

max(d4, d6) - 3 is never at least four, of course, so one of those dice had to explode (in DL:RL, like Savage Worlds usually works, a maximum number rolled on a die permits an additive re-roll applied to the same die, and can recurse arbitrarily much)

but suffice to say, the odds of success were slight.

MikeQ

Ah yes the classic game of wait "30 minutes, roll a die, see if I get to do anything, repeat". When players are asked to sit and wait, it's entirely reasonable for them to focus on other things in the meantime.

kviiri

And success in this case was rewarded with getting to take a turn, and if they did, they would be prone to getting Shaken again, and would have a hard time getting anything done before that because of the -3 wound penalty.

Yuuki

6:04 PM

@Rubiksmoose They're fighting to reveal the violence inherent in the system!

kviiri

Whenever someone in the group tries to argue system doesn't matter, I point them towards our experience with DL:RL and raise my eyebrows inquisitively.

Rubiksmoose

@kviiri Honestly I've had an extreme amount of fun just coming to the table with only vague ideas of what's going to happen. My players make fun of me all the time because I complain about feeling unprepared every session but everyone ends up having lots of fun regardless.

My worst sessions have been the ones where I sat down and actually planned stuff lol

@Yuuki XD

kviiri

@MikeQ Aye, and I'm honestly a bit mad in retrospect we guilted him about it. We were playing a game that punishes players with poorly built characters with this severe loss of agency, while pretending to be a table that prefers fun mistakes over optimization

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 if it helps, ADD and ADHD have been combined into just ADHD recently, so whenever you find that answer again you can edit it to use ADHD instead

@Ash hooray!!

@kviiri good call :P

Rubiksmoose

@kviiri DL:RL? Danger Logger: Real Living

doppelgreener

6:12 PM

@Rubiksmoose Deadlands Reloaded

kviiri

Yeah, ^

Rubiksmoose

OK but I want to play Danger Logger now...

MikeQ

Is that a game where you play as lumberjacks on a reality TV show?

NautArch

@doppelgreener is it related to savage worlds?

doppelgreener

yep

savage worlds expansion

i have just exhausted 50% of my knowledge of deadlands reloaded

NautArch

6:14 PM

figured :) with the use of shaken, dice types, and Spirit.

Rubiksmoose

@NautArch Someone make this please XD

@kviiri But yes, joking aside, I completely agree.

kviiri

DL:RL is basically Deadlands, a classic RPG about Wild West with witchcraft, wary Washoa warriors wielding weird weapons, etc, except it's in Savage Worlds. I'm not sure how bad the original system was but DL:RL is my unfavorite of all that I've played, and by distaste for it stems mostly from Savage Worlds -derived rules

doppelgreener

(the other 50% is i think it involves cards and also there's this major problem with the shaken condition obliterating agency that lead to the mechanic receiving errata at some point)

kviiri

You're rapidly accumulating interest on that remaining 50% I see

:>

doppelgreener

i remembered an additional 50%

kviiri

6:18 PM

(explaining joke for the future anthropologist browsing here: doppel repeatedly edited the post to expand on the information presented)

doppelgreener

:D

kviiri

Okay well. I have ONE potential thread to pull on the original Deadlands also being a hard system to enjoy. I'm aware tastes vary, but still...

Y'see, my character in DL:RL was made a Texas Ranger. Much like in real life, they're an elite law enforcement branch serving the state of Texas (and the rest of the Confederacy, since the Deadlands version of the Civil War has become a cold war). In addition to their mundane-ish law enforcement duties, they're a sort of quasi-secret police force as well as anti-weirdness monster hunting agency

specifically pertaining to the latter part, my GM gave me a splatbook for the Rangers from the original Deadlands to read for lore. Which I did, and it was... well. Pretty much what I expected in that regard. I recall there being a pattern that they introduced a supernatural threat and invariably followed it with "but we also recruit some of these because not all of them are bad!"

GcL

@NautArch Yeah. Having to match up grids manually is a problem of every VTT system I've seen so far. FoundryVTT has a decent api and supports svg images, so I'm programmatically getting around that problem.

NautArch

@GcL hmm, those solutions are a bit over my pay grade. I may try and edit the image, but that feels hokey, too. But overall, that's a MUCH nicer UI in FoundryVTT.

kviiri

But the actual career path laid out was... well. Kinda what one'd expect from an actual army unit. You enlist as a private, if you succeed at a test (that requires some rolls iirc?) and then you are duty-bound into doing what soldiers of that rank do: follow orders, and those orders are more likely to be latrine duty than exciting adventuring.

Medix2

6:25 PM

Huh, though Stack stopped updates to the mobile version of the site... Guess not

kviiri

One collects merit points and something, and occasionally rolls for promotions.

So okay the moral of the story is, if one plays a Texas Ranger by the splatbook they'd best hope everyone else is also a Texas Ranger because otherwise one gets to dig toilet pits while the rest of them are enjoying their sweet civilian freedom.

GcL

@NautArch A trick I used to use when drawing the images myself, was to leave the grid off the end image and position a square in the corner to serve as the reference for defining the grid in the VTT. Basically, if you can get the grid to line up on that one square, it aligns with the image.

I really didn't like the issue where the grid lines were drawn on the image and the VTT grid lines were a pixel or two off.

NautArch

@GcL At this point, i'm mostly grabbing images from dndbeyond.

I think my only solution is to increase the 'size' of the original image.

Since I can't make the VTT grid smaller

ANd holy crap, it also was a resource hog in my browser.

GcL

@NautArch That sounds like a reasonable solution. You'll get a bit grainier backgrounds, but they might be acceptable.

@NautArch The image? or Foundry?

NautArch

@GcL yeah, i'll pop it into photoshop to see if I can get closer.

@GcL Foundry

GcL

6:29 PM

I found that Foundry is pretty resource intensive to run on the server side as well.

NautArch

I think my friend has a similar-specced server to mine. I3, 8gb of ram.

GcL

I have some ideas about how to sort that out, but fixing other people's software issues is a bit further down on my priority list. I accommodate it by just throwing more hardware at the problem because that's cheap and easy.

kviiri

DL:RL wasn't completely exempt from that either, it has "Edges" that range from special skills or abilities like being unusually tough to special status, like being a soldier. There's different edges for being a soldier, an NCO and an officer, each with their own benefits and drawbacks, but one is common between all – you're expected to partake in soldierly duties, not just go wherever you please.

...but no guidance whatsoever on how to make this work when the group includes a single soldier.

Mark Wells

7:03 PM

@kviiri I remember some of this from the one Savage Worlds campaign I played in, where there are Edges like "Noble" that imply major constraints on the story, but they're not on a separate list or anything, so it's implied you can just freely take them without discussion.

Like, at least mark them with a chili pepper or something

Himitsu_no_Yami

Are any of you guys good with Roll20 macros? Trying to accomplish something but dunno how to do it on my own. And dunno who's actually good with them? (asking again cus there's different people than the last time I asked)

MikeQ

7:31 PM

Is this related to your mainsite question about character pronoun macros

Himitsu_no_Yami

yep

just wasn't even getting seen so I thought I'd ask around

MikeQ

The question has only been up for 20 hours

As for roll20 macro design, AFAIK you can't have one parameter correspond to two values, like noun and possesssive

You could have two attributes in the character info, such as "pronoun" and "possessive", and then use @{pronoun} and @{possessive} in macros that use character info as input

Himitsu_no_Yami

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm going for. I'm basically trying to have one choice issue 4 commands to set the attributes

Mark Wells

@MikeQ Roll20 uses @{} for string interpolation? That's just nasty.

MikeQ

It might be @{selected|pronoun} instead, depending on the macro's scope

Himitsu_no_Yami

7:43 PM

basically I'm trying to combine my macros into one I can have a choice issue a macro such as choosing male issuing macro Pronouns_M and that macro runs the 4 commands

but I'm trying to put the contents of Pronouns_M into the choice directly instead

@MikeQ that would be correct yes. @{selected|PossessiveA}

MikeQ

What do the 4 sub-macros do?

Himitsu_no_Yami

the second code block in my question is the female sub-macro. It runs the four commands to set the four types of pronouns

MikeQ

I think you can set multiple attributes via !setattr, instead of evaluating !setattr multiple times

Himitsu_no_Yami

I tried that before but couldn't figure out how to make it work

MikeQ

Does this thread help? I have not personally used this feature so I dunno if this is useful.

Himitsu_no_Yami

7:51 PM

OK so it's telling me to do the same thing I tried but didn't work... Let me try this again...

That's it... I quit...

it worked now that I've had time to complain

Go ahead and post the answer and get the rep if you want I can't even right now

MikeQ

You could self-answer.

Himitsu_no_Yami

or you could get the rep for actually helping me with this

MikeQ

But you're the one who tested it and knows that it works. All I did was show someone else's forum thread.

Himitsu_no_Yami

and point me to something I had already tried and couldn't make work before

MikeQ

Anyway, rep is kind of pointless past 10k, once you can see the deleted spam posts about vampires and love spells

Himitsu_no_Yami

8:00 PM

Eh fair enough

I'll get there one day

5.6k rn

and "one day" I'll have a gold tag badge too (which I want for no reason other than to feel extra special)

GcL

@MikeQ I thought that was the punishment for investing so much time in this endeavor.

Eventually if you do enough good deeds you get punished by being elected moderator.

MikeQ

Dec 5 '19 at 7:48, by MikeQ

Unless you're interested in SE site moderation, the only milestone here that matters is the 10k privilege of seeing deleted content, because then you can read all the funny spam posts

nitsua60

Sep 22 '16 at 21:23, by nitsua60

Whoa. First dupehammer.
Think I'm gonna feel it tomorrow. I probably should've stretched.

Himitsu_no_Yami

8:19 PM

Well, found the next problem... Both Roll20 and the API script need | for different things and that breaks things... Naturally...

Looks like instead of a macro this will have to be an ability

FINALLY got this working. More of a PITA than I expected but that's Roll20 macros for you

Actually, should I even self-answer that? Technically I still didn't do what the title asks, which is "issue multiple commands from a single query choice"

GcL

@Himitsu_no_Yami Yes ~~Roll20~~ macros are frequently a pain to get working.

Himitsu_no_Yami

9:45 PM

@Himitsu_no_Yami still wondering about this

GcL

@Himitsu_no_Yami Does the syntax include a command separator e.g. ";"

MikeQ

Sometimes the best solution doesn't directly answer the question in the title

Himitsu_no_Yami

@GcL not sure what you're asking there

GcL

Do commands have to be on their own line, or can you separate them with a ; or something?

Himitsu_no_Yami

AFAIK their own line

BESW

10:26 PM

Quinn Murphy wrote a twitter thread about "the color theory of action fantasy" and using color symbolism as a worldbuilding tool.

JustASummerJob wrote a twitter thread of "ACTUAL advice on smooching and romance in TTRPGs."

Kickstarter (15 Aug): Mnemonic: A Weaver’s Almanac by Dee Pennyway is a core rulebook and setting guide for the fantasy world of Mnemonic. Dee has a twitter thread about the project, too.

kviiri

10:39 PM

@BESW Good stuff!

Himitsu_no_Yami

Roll20 handled me setting 4 attributes to each of this many tokens at once WAY better than I thought it would

BESW

11:46 PM

the DEATH of NUMISMUS by Speak the Sky is a Wretched & Alone solo journalling role-playing game about the slow dying and sudden death of Numismus, God of Coin, whose Cthonian Vault is a ripe target for gold-seeking dungeoneering adventurers, and whose (mainly ill-gotten) facets of divinity are falling prey to rival gods.

Himitsu_no_Yami

11:59 PM

quick question, how do I add a strikethrough in an answer? I'm used to Discord's ~~text~~ but that didn't seem to work.

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