TRPG General Chat

You might want to check out Danger Patrol: Pocket Edition. It doesn't sum, but it uses multiple aspects of the roll. Specifically, it checks for four-or-higher, AND for max possible result per die, AND for natural ones.

AncientSwordRage

12:25 AM

"max possible result per die" do you have an example?

BESW

3d4 1d6 2d8

Dice Service

4

2

1

•

3

7

BESW

I rolled max on the first d4 and on the d6.

I got three results of four or higher.

And I got a single natural one.

That means I got three hits against the target, with two extra hits if my target was weak against my attack, and one danger if the target was strong against my attack.

In this game, d4s are the easiest dice to acquire, because they're also the most interesting and risky: hardest to get a normal hit from, but most likely to give danger or extra hits.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW exciting

I see where it's coming from, vaguely reminds me if the 10-again rule in WoD/CofD

Thanks for explaining

Scrollreader

12:55 AM

Hmm

Is someone available to answer an etiquette/site culture question?

9

Q: Is this homebrew variant of the Two Weapon Fighting feat balanced?

I (the DM) am considering the following feat, after a player asked about an alternative way to use Two Weapon Fighting. Knife Fighter You are especially skilled at the use of the Dagger, gaining the following benefits: You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a dagger. You can use two-...

Medix2

@Scrollreader Feel free to ask since I'm sure somebody will know the answer

Scrollreader

This is my question. The technically correct response is one which includes an additional language issue than the response that is most useful to me, which includes a frame challenge that was convincing

Does not

nitsua60

@Scrollreader What's on your mind?

Scrollreader

What is the correct/accepted answer for me to select on such a case?

nitsua60

Whichever helps you best. If you're not sure, totally acceptable to leave a comment under either/both explaining your situation.

MikeQ

12:58 AM

That's up to your judgment. You could select neither. Or you could select one, and grant a bounty to another if you think it's worthwhile.

nitsua60

(Or not.)

Medix2

@Scrollreader To me, which answer a asker chooses to accept is entirely their choice; it's a good way to say "this answer helped me best"

nitsua60

^^

Mark Wells

I'd lean toward choosing the one that's most useful. It's healthy for us to aim for useful rather than Technically Correct.

But it is entirely your choice, yes.

nitsua60

In cases like that I've sometimes accepted one answer and under the other pointed out the great things about it--so the long tail of readers is getting the querent's (my) positive view of both. But you don't need to do any of that. Feel free to just let it sit until you've had a chance to play it out a few times!

Scrollreader

1:01 AM

@MarkWells That was my inclination. But I've been away from SE for awhile, and the culture here is unique (but appreciated!)

Medix2

@nitsua60 I still gotta get used to the word "querent" since I have seen it nowhere but this site. I'll probably end up just using "asker" every time though

nitsua60

I like it because, sure, it's a bit uncommon... but we're so used to queries and querulousness that it just slots right in there =)

Scrollreader

Querent gets used at my job, but /only/ in regards to Union/management communication. It's odd, but it helps me sort my emails.

MikeQ

The term "querent" has been used a number of times both in chat and on the mainsite.

I don't know what that number is. But I can assure you, it is a number.

Scrollreader

Anyway, thank you all for your prompt and helpful response to my query. I'll probably let the question sit another day or two, to enable a possible bounty and to give me time to think on it.

Mark Wells

1:08 AM

So I played a one-shot of Tails of Equestria last weekend. Not exactly my thing, but the group had fun with it.

MikeQ

Do tell! What was the premise and how did the session go?

Mark Wells

@MikeQ Premise was that some pony wizard was going around turning other ponies into stone statues, and we had to break the spell, which required us to confront three Guardians and convince them to give us mcguffins by completing various trials.

(I don't know if this is a published adventure, or based on an episode of the show, or what. I just showed up and went with it.)

The session went fine but had that one-shot ending disease where the world gets very "soft" as the GM tries to wrap everything up.

(and this is a fairly soft world to begin with)

We also had one guy who couldn't roll well to save his life, but fortunately there are very few threats to anyone's life in Tails of Equestria.

Thomas Markov

1:25 AM

@MarkWells I wish I had that one shot ending disease. My one shot ending disease is saying we’ll briefly wrap up the one shot at a mini session Over and over again. My last one shot was really a four shot.

Mark Wells

For anyone who's played ToE: I'm curious why this game has its own system instead of just using, say, Fate.

MikeQ

What's one-shot ending disease? Do your normal one-shots not end?

Mark Wells

@ThomasMarkov I ran my first convention game a few months back (back when there were conventions :( ) and I was terrified that we wouldn't be able to end it in time.

Because it's not like we can just pick it up later, right?

gszavae

@Scrollreader Echoing what others already said; accepting, upvoting, downvoting, are all up to you. Personally, "the one that is most useful" is probably the one to accept!

Mark Wells

@MikeQ I don't think I've heard anyone else talk about it, but I've played in several one-shots where the narrative becomes very disjointed and handwavey at the end because we're not in the right in-game state to make the planned endgame happen, but the GM still wants a satisfying ending.

I could call it Neal Stephenson Disease but that might just confuse the issue further.

BESW

1:32 AM

I find that not having an endstate in mind helps a lot. Also, using games designed to signal endstates within an approximate time.

Medix2

@BESW Could you elaborate on the last bit "signal endstates within an approximate time" doesn't actually have meaning to me rn, er, like, I don't know what those words, in that specific order, mean

BESW

@Medix2 You know how in D&D, there's a mechanic that tells you when it's time to rest (you're running out of resources) and when to level up (you've got enough XP)? There are games which use mechanics to tell you when and/or how to wrap up the session or story, too.

Medix2

@BESW Oh oh oh, yes I know what you mean now

MikeQ

Well, assuming the players want the story to wrap up, why is that a disease?

From another point of view, it could be worse to prioritize the in-game state, playing out all the mechanics when time is short and players are tired.

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ The original premise of D&D is that the game did not necessarily have an end, nor a wrap up. Modules, on the other hand, do/did.

BESW

1:42 AM

A really straightforward example is Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Every turn a player takes adds between 0 and 3 tokens to that player's pool. Each turn a player might have an opportunity to use a word from the adventure list. When any player ends a turn with 8+ tokens, the story reaches the conclusion. And the conclusion is either "parades" or "pitchforks" depending on whether the group got to use all the words on the list before the conclusion was triggered.

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ Or, look at a board game like "Clue" and see where the logical end state is.

Borrowing and stealing good ideas from board games is not a bad idea

Mark Wells

@MikeQ Wrapping up is fine. The story should wrap up, it's a one-shot. The less-than-satisfying part is that we get to a point where none of our decisions matter because the GM is going to fiat everyone into place for the ending.

KorvinStarmast

@MarkWells How do you know that in advance?

MikeQ

Hmm. Fair point. What if the game gets handwavey, but the players ultimately decide how the story ends, rather than a prewritten ending?

Medix2

I don't think Mark Wells is saying this always happens or they know it'll happen before a one-shot starts; just that it is a thing that happens with one-shots when the allotted time-block is too small and the GM decides to start hand-waving and fiating and rushing to get to an ending they think will be satisfying

BESW

1:46 AM

In my experience, this is much less of a problem in games where the GM isn't "responsible" for the story.

Medix2

^ + a million

Mark Wells

@MikeQ Sure, that would be a way to approach it.

BESW

Whether it's because the game provides structure which pushes stories towards satisfying endings, or the responsibility for storytelling is shared with the players outside character agency, or some combination or alternative. There's a ton of creative approaches to TRPGs which don't put all that pressure on the GM alone.

If I know we're gonna play a single-session game, I'm gonna choose a game system that fits the time we have.

gszavae

There's always a raging debate between emergent vs planned narratives.

BESW

If we anticipate many leisurely sessions with the same group composition, I'll haul out a completely different set of systems to choose from.

MikeQ

1:52 AM

@Medix2 Ah, ok. I thought the argument was something like, the players felt robbed because the game fast-forwarded and didn't play out As Decreed by The Rules.

Medix2

@gszavae Not exactly a debate so much as preferences. I just hope that the story-designers and the players (who can absolutely be the same person/people) reach an agreement when playing together more than anything else

Like you can rattle off pros and cons of emergent vs pre-planned all you want but at the end of the day a table decides what it, as a collective, wants to do (note the "you" here is the general you not a specific one)

@ThomasMarkov Now I wanna know what a Warock does...

BESW

@Medix2 This, 200%. The most important thing about a game is that it reflects the needs and goals of the group playing it.

...I really should get back to that calibration tool project.

Big Stuffed Cat wrote a twitter thread about how "rules do two things, often not at the same time: elide and make ritual."

Scrollreader

2:12 AM

Yeah. I have a years long game I run in The One Ring and it's /really interesting/ (to me) the ways in which it is different from my D&D games with largely the same players

And I'm not always sure how much of that is the mechanics informing stuff (which they totally do), or the setting and tone.

gszavae

@Medix2 Agreed, but there is a debate none the less! Probably because when someone plays X style of game which has a problem, the easiest fix is to play Y style of game which doesn't have that problem instead. Or at least, that's what proponents of style Y claim.

Scrollreader

Because, inspiration/ripoff from LotR or not, playing a game I. Middle Earth turns an awful lot of D&D assumptions on their ear.

BESW

@Scrollreader Both, absolutely. They feed each other, even. It's almost impossible for mechanics to fail to influence tone and theme, and the narrative elements always influence how we interact with the mechanics.

Mark Wells

@Scrollreader Of course the mechanics express setting and tone, too, or at least they can. My favorite example of this is Unknown Armies using sanity/stress meters as the core character stats.

Scrollreader

Right. Shadow and Hope are pivotal to how ToR works. And attributes are basically a ... Tertiary factor in how skills work.

BESW

2:17 AM

The more I delve into indie games like BoB and Mnemonic, the more I find the divide between "fluff" and "crunch" to be illusory.

Scrollreader

I'd be fascinated to talk to the people who run the D&D Adventures in Middle Earth games, which run some of the exact same modules with a 5e base (from the same company/authors), but since Cubicle 7 shut down their forums, I'm not sure where to find them anymore

BESW

(And as both a player and a designer I find that incredibly freeing.)

Scrollreader

As I get older, I have less and less patience for a 'universal system'. Sure, you can run anything in GURPS or D20, but I'd rather have a system that encouraged the setting, and vice-versa.

BESW

@Scrollreader Hard same!

Mark Wells

@Scrollreader Right. You have to choose to emphasize something.

Scrollreader

2:20 AM

As a consequence of how it works, ToR is only really good for Middle Earth (and maybe Star Wars). But it's amazing at what it does

BESW

Personally I find that systems tend to be more about pacing, themes, and values, than about particular settings.

Keeping to the Middle-Earth topic, Realm Guard is a great example.

Mark Wells

But Middle Earth and Star Wars are both theme-laden settings :)

Scrollreader

Right, but like. Tolkien (and also Star Wars) have settings where the Dark Side /cheats/. And is objectively evil and NOT FOR PLAYERS.

@MarkWells Just so

BESW

Sure. But Realm Guard and Faith Corps are both solid choices for Middle-Earth games yet nothing like each other in terms of the themes they explore.

Realm Guard is about the internal struggle to find bravery in the face of danger in order to serve others. Faith Corps is about the struggle to find internal balance and explores temptation in the face of risk--but doesn't really have much to say about service or bravery.

Realm Guard would not make a good Star Wars game system; Faith Corps is also excellent for Star Wars.

Scrollreader

So, to get slightly specific. A thing I love about ToR. Is how abilities work. Body/Heart/Wits. They directly add to your passive stats, particularly in combat. Parry (AC), Damage, Endurance (HP). But when you roll your skills, they only matter when you are Spending Hope, which is an AP-like mechanic. It doesn't matter how big and buff you are, unless you are investing hope. And while Hope is semi-renewable, you only find out how much you're getting back at the end of the session.

BESW

2:27 AM

And neither systems were designed for either franchise; Realm Guard is a Mouse Guard drift, and Faith Corps is a Fate/Cortex hack made for demon-hunting.

Scrollreader

So your active involvement with the world, the things you are trying to do (as opposed to how you are) are tied up in that risk.

MikeQ

@BESW If the players try to approach the game in terms of settings and lore first, with themes and pacing as an afterthought, is that wrong? Or at least, have you found such approaches more likely to cause disengagement or other problems down the line?

Scrollreader

@BESW Yeah, I get that. But I'm a sucker for systems that encourage players to emulate the world. Or world's that incorporate the setting.

BESW

@MikeQ It's been my experience that understanding the kind of story you want to tell (character-driven, tragic, cooperative, etc) is much more important to choosing a system that will push the campaign in the right direction.

Scrollreader

Like, what does it mean that all Elves are X? In many/most D&D settings, particularly because of the legacy mechanics of D&D, that doesn't really happen.

Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Eberron were, when they were fresh, settings that had rules that enforced or encouraged setting tropes.

BESW

2:32 AM

For example: One of my big problems with the Dresden Files RPGs (as opposed to my problems with the Dresden Files franchise which I'll set aside for the moment) is that it uses the Fate engine. This works pretty well if you stick with street-level Dresden Files; you're very competent but things almost never go totally your way, that's very much the way Dresden Files stories work at the street level.

But when you look at the franchise setting as a whole, the Fate system becomes tragically inappropriate: the setting is balanced on a knife's-edge between two different apocalypses, and any disruption to the balance of power between factions can tip those scales. Many later novels are all about the author inventing increasingly improbable justifications for why Dresden's actions don't cause apocalypses multiple times each novel.

Adeptus

@Scrollreader I haven't run the system, but I bought the AIME PDFs and have read through them. The system is altered enough from D&D that I think it will provide a non-D&D-feeling play experience. Whether it's close to what TOR gives, I have no idea.

BESW

But Fate? Fate's designed to make PCs whose actions change the world. It wants us to change the status quo.

A Fate character running into a delicately balanced situation tends to be like tossing a bowling ball into a game of chess. Which is not how the Dresden setting works.

Scrollreader

@BESW Yeah. Dresden Files RPG is surface level attractive, but I feel like ultimately unsatisfactory. And you expressed it better than I would have.

BESW

Now, Fate's really good for, say, a Primeval game. 'cause that franchise is all about "oops, we accidentally the timeline."

Scrollreader

@Adeptus Yeah, I've given them a read. But I wasn't really conversant enough with 5e at the time to really have a good understanding of the AME changes.

Some things (relatively flat advancement, limited magic items) are similar to 5e, for sure.

BESW

2:38 AM

My longest-running Fate campaign had the party fail to prevent a worldwide catastrophe, and it was awesome because we'd built the world so that it was Fate-friendly: catastrophes are opportunities, not endings. We weren't able to stop all silicon-based technology on the planet from bursting into flames... and the world was saved by magic and mad science emerging to take up the slack.

So our failure meant the game changed from "Weird Stuff is hiding everywhere" to "Weird Stuff is in charge now" and that was really cool.

Scrollreader

@BESW Yeah. That's not really appropriate for the Dresden Verse, at least not without going way, way off script.

BESW

Or, another example: the official Stargate SG-1 RPG used d20 Modern.

So it's got hundreds of pages of detailed tables and exception-based rules about all sorts of weapons, gear, salaries, what kind of house you have, how nice your car is, what specialized tools you pick each time you go on an away mission... It's got nothing about camaraderie, moral excellence, developing friendships and allegiances.

Scrollreader

A system that would be good at SG-1 should probably also be good at Buffy. Or Star Trek.

(that system is not Star Wars)

... that system is not D20

BESW

SG-1 is a show about making friends, being the best the world has to offer, building connections and reciprocal relationships across the galaxy in order to defeat petty, self-centered tyrants. It's not a show about what kind of gun you've got.

I had some success running SG-1 using Fate Accelerated, because it's not even a skill-based show: it's a methods-based show.

Another example: one of the best things the current Doctor Who RPG (formerly Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, not to be confused with the 1985 Doctor Who Role Playing Game) brings to the table is its initiative system.

DWAITAS initiative is prioritised by what you're doing: Talkers, Runners, Doers, Fighters.

May 15 '17 at 20:43, by BESW

> a) Talkers – any people who are just going to speak? Now’s their time to talk.
b) Runners – people who are just moving? Here’s when they go!
c) Doers – non-combat actions. Need to fix something, or do something, now’s the time to act!
d) Fighters – combat actions go last.

That's absolutely perfect for capturing the Doctor Who aesthetic, themes, and pacing. I've ported it to other games too, because it's a relatively common way of approaching problem-solving in a lot of media.

Scrollreader

While I had some issues with Modiphus Star Trek, I did like their Threat System. Photon Torpedoes and Phaser Rifles are /really/ good. But using them, or issuing them to an away team gives the GM lots of Threat to use for bad guys. It's basically a signal to the GM that things are going to get Serious. And they tend to get used rarely and for punctuation or when the GM has already done a bunch of bad stuff to spend his Threat down to almost zero beforehand

@BESW That's brilliant. And encourages behavior that is genre/setting appropriate

BESW

2:47 AM

It really is!

And interestingly, Fate is more appropriate to some eras of Doctor Who than others.

Scrollreader

Yeah, I can see that. But that's what I find really elegant in game design. A system that encouraged min maxers to play to the setting tropes and themes. Particularly if it's not as blatant as 'the GM gives you X' for staying in genre.

BESW

eg, Moffat's era doesn't work with Fate very well because Moffat loved building elaborate cantilevered plots that were supposed to all click together like a Rube Goldberg machine (whether he succeeded or not, I leave as an exercise for the viewer). But Douglas Adams' era had the Doctor careening around making dramatic chaos everywhere while investing in character-driven drama.

Adeptus

Oh BTW, there's a Star Trek Adventures RPG Humble Bundle right now.

Scrollreader

Like, Inspiration in 5e is a kinda clunky encouragement mechanic. It can work. But it's not elegant. But Hero Points in Mutants and Masterminds have a much more organic flow.

BESW

Speaking of Star Trek, are you familiar with Lasers & Feelings?

It uses a very simple, elegant mechanic to put the focus on the Kirk/Spock/Bones trifecta of problem-solving attitudes.

Scrollreader

2:52 AM

Because the GM generates them as part of the villain behavior (because power stunts are endemic to the setting, and to fill a role similar to legengary resistance) "It's too early for Dr. Badguy to roll a 1 on his save"

BESW

I used Lasers & Feelings as the root for my Goblin Court game.

Scrollreader

@BESW I am. But honestly, while we're making progress, my normal playerbase is pretty traditional. Baby steps.

MikeQ

@Scrollreader Definitely. I really liked the synergy between hero points and complications, it could really facilitate much more complex play, i.e. narrative over optimization. Unfortunately the rest of the system was just so cumbersome.

Scrollreader

Mutants and Masterminds was hugely helpful in that sense. Hero Points to stunt and edit the scene gave them a rules basis for player ownership and setting input

BESW

@MikeQ Someday I'm going to put together a mashup game that takes my favorite bits from a dozen different systems and leaves behind all the messy nonsense they inevitably also have.

Scrollreader

2:55 AM

@MikeQ Unfortunately, if you want anything crunchier than Aspects, Superhero games tend to be very cumbersome

MikeQ

@BESW I'd say Fate's invoke mechanic is somewhat comparable to it, maybe

BESW

@MikeQ There's so many cool variations on that concept!

Scrollreader

And ToR has been a massive success in encouraging Same Page (in other games), and in deliberate pacing.

Because the Tolkien setting is so specific, and because the game encourages a seasonal/long-term play cycle, similar to Pendragon's Great Campaign

BESW

Like, Golden Sky Stories has players give each other currency for being helpful or cute. Lady Blackbird grants currency for pursuing dramatic character motivations. InSpectres grants currency for saying "yes" to things other players suggest for your character!

I'm still wrapping my head about BoB currency but I know I like it.

Scrollreader

@BESW Yeah. I'm very fond of interactive currencies. Even though as a GM, I obviously don't need them, they can really help encourage players behavior. And also normalize bending or breaking rules for story benefit. "It's ok the GM had the bad guy automatically capture us because we get currency for being awesome later' is a good trust builder for later doing it without trinkets.

At least, in my experience. But my players are very traditional. So it's small steps toward a shared narrative.

And to entirely honest, there are times I just enjoy D&D. Not every game needs co-creators. (But they're much more likely now to say 'Hey, it'd be awesome if there was a chandelier here, is there?' than before we started using systems that mechanically empower that.

BESW

3:05 AM

I love currency as a GM, it helps me with pacing and focus.

Scrollreader

It's also helpful for reading new players. Even action points, back in 3.5 were great for that. With my usual players, I've been playing with them for years. But currencies will show you what players care about.

Even more than character creation.

I have players that spend them like water, doing whatever seems cool at the time. I have players who save them to avoid disaster, because they favor competency (even if it's more expensive) than flash. I have players who build combat machines (and that's fine) but who spend their currencies on making sure they earn the respect of NPCs that matter to them.

BESW

One of the best things Fate did for us, I think, was give permission to fail forward.

MikeQ

Hmm, I dunno if I'd compare GSS's point-giving mechanic to M&M's complications and hero points. I found that M&M's mechanic is much clearer at informing the GM and players about what they're expected to do in game.

Scrollreader

M&M is a less fluid system. It does have d20 roots.

But even if it's Exalted1E stunts, or 3.5 Action Points, or ToR's hope. Even if all it does is add to, or allow a roll.

They're great signals. This random dude was going to die. Doomed. The party only met him when he was full of arrows. The Queen's dying bodyguard didn't even have a name. "Can I spend a hope to be able to try to roll Heal?" - Oh. Interesting. The PCs care about this guy. Now he's a major NPC who is married to one PC and friends with the rest. They were more upset when someone tried to kill him, than when someone poisoned a feast to try to kill the Elf King.

I mean, they're Tolkien heroes. They totally saved everyone at the feast. But when Jamal got stabbed defending the prince from Assassination, favors got called in, and the PCs flirted with taking some temporary Shadow to make sure it got resolved. And without that 'Hey! This is important to me' signal, I probably would have just said 'you can make him comfortable, but he's already dying' because that was The Plan.

Rubiksmoose

3:22 AM

@BESW That's amazing!

Hot RPG Questions

3:48 AM

7

Q: How do "monsters" attack if the PCs don't engage in combat first?

I'm not a total newbie to DW, and have played 'solo' DW with my partner for at least two years. We both have a number of level 3 characters who we run through GM-less scenarios we generate from various GM emulators and in the spirit of DW explore the world and find out what is happening. A few da...

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Hot RPG Questions

5:32 AM

5

Q: Can 'mold earth' create climbable steps in a stone surface?

The cantrip Mold earth allows "shapes, colors, or both to appear on the dirt or stone, spelling out words, creating images, or shaping patterns" Could those shapes be a series of ledges and/or indentations to make a ladder for climbing out of a pit or up a stone wall? The degree to which those ...

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7

Q: Harvesting Poison from a familiar

Crafting and Harvesting Poison (p258 of the DMG) Says that a creature must be dead or incapacitated before you can make a DC 20 nature or Poison kit check to get a single dose of poison. However, It seems to me that this system is for collecting the venom of random encountered creatures. If I ha...

dnd-5e familiars poison

Bardic Wizard

What kind of things do people enjoy happening as complications in sci-fi adventures? I’m working on an adventure for my rpg system, Ensign of the Week, and ran into a nice large writers block. The basic scenario so far is “a cultural festival for the Whelin (space whales, basically) onboard gets interrupted by something major”, but I don’t know what could interrupt it yet. Ideas?

V2Blast

@Adeptus just reposting your link with a bit more detail about the duration of the bundle and what's included:

Humble RPG Book Bundle: Star Trek Adventures RPG by Modiphius is available for the next 3 weeks. Paying a total of $1 or more gets you the Starter Set and TOS/TNG Characters PDFs; $8+ gets you that plus the Core Book, GM Screen, and several adventure books; and paying $15 or more additionally gets you most of the supplemental sourcebooks, more adventures, the DS9/Voyager Characters PDFs, and some tilesets as well.

3

Adeptus

5:57 AM

Cool. I just mentioned it in passing because someone mentioned the game. I hadn't looked at it in detail yet.

Bardic Wizard

I’m heading to bed when my phone shuts off at the hour, so if you have ideas (or feedback) ping me and I’ll see it in the morning. Thanks

Sos

7:29 AM

@KorvinStarmast thanks a lot. I had thought of that too, but if sessions are so far apart from each other, it will take 3 years to complete even a small campaign :

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

8:46 AM

One of the most exciting, scary and cool complications I can recall in science fiction gaming was when my character got infected by a trojan that quietly leaked results of the onboard random number generation to a certain NPC, who used that to demonstrate 'precognition'. For a whole session that got my character kept wondering if this was real precognition or a security failure somewhere, and I kept wondering if the GM stepped away from the initial pitch of this being sci-fi, not fantasy. Finally figuring out that my PC got infected by a receiving station during beaming to some conference/f…

BESW

@BardicWizard Generally I look for twists that tie into the PCs' interests, goals, or competency modes. Something that asks a question it'll be fun to watch those particular characters try to answer. I'm guessing you're going for an original/TNG/Voyager Star Trek sort of thing, and that's very much a "question of the week" kind of show. Each episode uses scifi unrealism to create an allegory that explores a real-life question.

Often the interest comes from a question that each of two or three characters have different answers for (in OST this is usually Spock, Kirk, and Bones responding with logic, courage, and empathy, respectively: all are good baselines for making decisions, but none is always best).

BESW

9:25 AM

Or there's always just the space adventure table in Lasers & Feelings.

Hot RPG Questions

9:46 AM

9

Q: Can I have a magic bow as my pact weapon without getting the Improved Pact Weapon Eldritch Invocation?

The Warlock's Pact of the Blade feature specifies that you can only create melee weapons, but you can also turn a magic weapon into your pact weapon (without specifying that it's only melee weapons). Can I have a magic bow as my pact weapon without getting the Improved Pact Weapon Eldritch Invoca...

dnd-5e class-feature weapons warlock eldritch-invocations

trogdor

@BESW BoB

?

BESW

Belonging Outside Belonging.

trogdor

ah ok

doppelgreener

10:39 AM

Thought I had last night while falling asleep: we have a policy on our site that, according to itself, cannot be questioned, including that its unquestionable-ness cannot be questioned. Two things came up for me about this.
1. When the idea a policy cannot be questioned gains any traction, a feedback loop begins. Naturally, opponents cannot question or oppose the policy. However, proponents can freely make increasingly extreme statements with increasing superlatives about just how beyond question that policy is. People cannot question them doing this, because to do so would appear to questi…

7

trogdor

10:59 AM

which policy is this?

Someone_Evil

"Don't guess the system" (from context elsewhere), though the above thought does not appear to be limited to it

doppelgreener

That one, yes.

trogdor

ah ok

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

11:39 AM

@Someone_Evil I was imagining that 'unquestionable' policies would be those with a Policy Lock.

doppelgreener

well that would just say we can't edit the posts themselves for the purposes of preventing anyone causing a mess; that wouldn't mean we couldn't later bring up revising it or dismantling it.

even the staff members of SO, Inc can revise policies they put a policy lock on, and we can ask them to revise them. policy lock is just an editing tool, not a "never ever forever able to change" tool.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Hmm. Perhaps. I thought the lock was meant to accompany policies which came with a 'making questions/answers that question this policy is off-topic for this meta and will be deleted/&c.'.

And we seem to be getting a lot of metas questioning the Don't Guess Systems policy.

doppelgreener

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica The policy lock can only be applied by Stack Exchange staff and is basically in response to people repeatedly editing staff posts, sometimes vandalising them, or sometimes with good intentions changing the wording in a way that substantially changes their effect. :P

See the reasoning here.

Joel Harmon

@Scrollreader Curious. As a DM, I would often rough out a room, and ask players to draw in a feature or two; it barely registers as co-creating for me. This was only partly to buy time while I reorganized my notes to react to whatever shenanigans the party was up to at the time.

@Scrollreader The mouseover text on the Accept Answer button reads "Accept this answer if it solved your problem or was the most helpful in finding your solution"

KorvinStarmast

12:29 PM

@Sos yes, it can. So long as each session is enjoyable, that's what matters (or so I have found)

@doppelgreener what you have just described is a characteristic of many dysfunctional bureaucracies. golf clap

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast oh. well, thank you XD

it occurred to me that, as an addendum to #1, as the needle shifts, anything that shifts it toward a more extreme affirmative is legitimised by the policy itself, while any attempt to shift it the other way is seen as inherently illegitimate detraction invalidated by the policy itself based on where the needle is at

(which is kind of the same thing put kind of differently)

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener as I have discussed with Rubik on a number of occasions, I find the stack model (or at least this little corner) to work better with "guidelines" rather than "This Is Policy" for most issues, but that might be my generally nautical/piratical nature coming out.

when a rule takes on a life of its own, I have learned that this is usually a warning flag (and I learned that in a different field of endeavour)

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