TRPG General Chat

Hot RPG Questions

00:52

2

Q: Is there any leeway with choosing my starting items if I'm starting at a level higher than 1?

I'm preparing a Cleric for a Pathfinder 2nd Ed campaign and reached a bit of an impasse. Going by Table 10-10, my character should have one permanent 2nd level item, 2 permanent 1st level items and 25GP of other funds. The problem is that the 1st level items are either redundant (everburning torc...

Bardic Wizard

01:28

Hey, anyone with d&d5e experience around?

I need magic item advice

if you are a 20th level Druid, what are the best 3 magic items for you to have? Especially for tomb of horrors...

MikeQ

For tomb of horrors, you'll definitely want the wand that detects traps or hidden doors

nitsua60

@BardicWizard I mean, how spoiler-ey do you want this advice?

Bardic Wizard

01:47

@nitsua60 I’m GMing. My best friend is making a character and I said that you start with starting equipment, 2 extra weapons, enough gold to cast all spells with a gold cost once each +500 gp (which can be spent) and 3 magic items. He couldn’t find any good items and asked me to figure it out for him.

I don’t tend to play druids which is the problem

nitsua60

Okay, then. Something for flying/levitating is good, as the floor/walls/ceiling are all trying to kill you (at various points). As is gravity.

Other than that, detecting/seeing things is probably most useful. Being able to find/see hidden/invisible/ethereal/&c. things would simplify a lot of the Tomb, as I recall.

Buffing saves is nice. Is it the stone of good luck that does that?

MikeQ

Also the cloak & ring of protection. Each gives +1 to AC and saves.

Joel Harmon

02:14

@BardicWizard Did you put a rarity cap on this?

Bardic Wizard

No artifacts, at most one legendary

Joshua

I'm working on a new idea. Concrete's ancient right?

Joel Harmon

@Joshua Look up Roman construction techniques.

Also, there are many varieties, and you may or may not care about cement vs. concrete.

Joshua

I'm working on an idea involving having lava flows that ran over an older civilization, rather than typical dungeon construction techniques.

Joel Harmon

IIRC, Pompeii was more ash than lava, but it's worth a look.

Joshua

02:21

So when you explore it, some passages just don't exist anymore, and others are connected by lava tubes.

BESW

02:37

I wouldn't go with lava if you want realism; it's so hot that you won't actually get transitions between relatively intact manmade structures and lava tubes. But for pulp bombast, go for it, it sounds cool.

Joshua

I was thinking that stone might survive.

nitsua60

@Joshua have you ever looked at [how to host a dungeon](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/299497/How-to-Host-a-Dungeon-2nd-Edition)? It might not be quite what you're looking for, but it might give you some ideas in that

(wait for it)

.
.
.

vein.

BESW

If you want realism in a D&D-esque setting, may I suggest sedimented ashfall later inhabited by large burrowing creatures.

@Joshua Lava is literally molten stone. You'd need tungsten or titanium.

Or immune-to-fire-ium, which certainly exists in D&D but why would anyone build a whole city out of it?

Joshua

I'm in luck. Granite's melting point is higher than basalt's.

BESW

(Also people tend to forget that, since it's flowing rock, a lava flow is basically an avalanche. Its weight and momentum would destroy most things even if the heat didn't.)

Joshua

02:45

Ah yes that might be a problem.

BESW

Really, just bury the city in pyroclastic ash, let it harden into sedimentary rock, and then send some fantastical burrowers to make a warren in it.

The ash lets you justify preserving pretty much anything you like, and the burrowers let you justify tunneling in unexpected ways.

Joshua

hmmm not so bad

BESW

And if you want a Pompeii effect, this is literally that.

MikeQ

Does it need to be lava or could it be very hot soup

Joshua

It's really more like a handful of surviving rooms than a city.

MikeQ

02:49

Each room could have a different flavor of soup

BESW

Pyroclastic dumplings, eh.

Joshua

I've got this grand tale in mind where the city mages fought the onslaught of the mountain and lost.

BESW

Oh, well then. Your handful of surviving rooms were preserved by the remnants of the magical energies used to fight the lava flow.

Joshua

Maybe let the city get hit with the pyroclastic flow first, then the lava flow on top of it, more burying the destruction deeper than anything else.

BESW

[waves hands] maaaaggiiiiicc

Joshua

02:52

wall of force vs lava. I like.

MikeQ

If you want lava in a dungeon then you could have it work like Bowser's Castle

BESW

I'd recommend being very non-specific about the magic. D&D likes getting faux-scientific about its magics, but I find it's a lot more interesting if magic has leaks and unexpected side effects and lingering influences.

Maybe the preserved chambers are the area where a major ritual was performed in preparation for the defense, and the energies of the ritual lingered there.

Joshua

Actually that's what I'm depending on. Some of the chambers have active magic that's potentially hazardous to the PCs.

BESW

Well then. Anything strong enough to ward off a lava flow, stands a good chance of being hostile to human life after a couple decades/hundred years of rotting unsupervised.

Joshua

Well it's going to be a lot more confusing to the player after I'm done worldbuilding.

BESW

03:04

I've found that often a lot can be done with real-world inspirations, and maybe a single addition of a supernatural element that tweaks everything sideways.

Oct 11 '19 at 3:25, by BESW

I once had a continent with hundreds of miles of limestone on top of basalt (coral reef on a volcanic uprising, later lifted completely out of the water). Flat grasslands for hundreds of miles, with occasional sinkholes giving access to thousands of miles of damp, twisty, turny, caverns.

Oct 11 '19 at 3:25, by BESW

And then somebody went and opened a portal to the Abyss in the caves, and that heated up all the damp air and created eternal storms above every sinkhole.

Joshua

sheesh

MikeQ

Why bother fending off pyroclastic flows if you could magically transmute it into soup

Lava goes in, soup goes out, now you don't need to worry about lava-proofing your buildings, and everyone gets free soup

4

Joshua

I think MikeQ really wants a soupy village.

BESW

It's all very grounded in real-world geology; a limestone-on-basalt layering carves out caves as the groundwater runs along the transition barrier, and consistent damp heat rising into cooler drier air creates storm cells.

MikeQ

I'm just saying, if you're dealing with mages who can warp the fabric of reality at a whim, then maybe they wouldn't limit themselves to conventional architecture and geological assumptions, and would instead come up with absurd solutions

Joshua

03:09

On a completely unrelated note, ever abandoned a bag of holding on a demiplane?

BESW

Jul 10 at 13:28, by BESW

Once had a botched plane-shifting spell result in the party winding up 2/3 of the way between two planes, and then somebody tried to put something from one of those planes into their 2/3-shifted bag of holding, then shifted fully into a third plane before pulling the thing out of the bag.

Joshua

lol that ought to make a mess

Bardic Wizard

@BESW oh gods thats horrible

BESW

03:29

@BardicWizard Even better: it was a powerful legendary artifact.

Hot RPG Questions

03:45

5

Q: Does Klarg know the location of Cragmaw Castle?

I'm running the Lost Mines of Phandelver, and my party has managed to take Klarg captive rather than kill him - he's currently being held in a Phandalin jail cell and they plan to interrogate him in the morning. The thing is, it isn't clear to me from the module if Klarg himself knows the exact l...

dnd-5e published-adventures lost-mine-of-phandelver

Bardic Wizard

04:10

@BESW ......... I’m staying well away from anything connected to this. Not getting involved in another explosion incident

BESW

Oh it couldn't explode, it was too powerful to destroy in any way.

Bardic Wizard

And I do believe this could explode in the players’ faces

BESW

...but 1/3 of the item came out of the bag, and the other 2/3rds were lost in the space between spaces and we had to go get it back.

And then forging them back together was.... tricky....

We had to consecrate our monk as a divine hammer and use the back of the tarrasque as an anvil.

(The forge god wouldn't loan us his equipment.)

Bardic Wizard

04:30

@BESW Wait what

... how?

BESW

Well, it needed to be re-forged with Moradin's hammer, and Moradin wasn't in a lending mood.

But our monk was a dwarf devoted to Moradin, who'd had the god's hammer tattooed on his hand and arm, so a few sketchy consecration rituals later and...

Well, he wasn't Moradin's hammer, but he was a hammer of Moradin and we figured that might be close enough to count.

Bardic Wizard

Why the tarrasque though? Also how the tarrasque?

Also I’m laughing quite a lot at this whole story so far

BESW

Basically, we were level 30 (D&D 3.5) and the GM was throwing the most ridiculous impossible things he could think of at us and we were overcoming them handily.

Bardic Wizard

That’s a good reason then.

BESW

So we went and dug up the tarrasque and the barbarian wrestled it into a pin while the priest paralyzed the monk in a hammer pose and the shapeshifter turned into a giant to wield the monk-hammer, and we used the Abyss fire we'd traded from a Demon Prince to re-unite the sundered pieces of one of the Parts of the Rod of Seven Parts.

Bardic Wizard

04:46

That sentence is the single best thing I have seen all week and I saw my history teacher chew out someone for 10 whole minutes on Wednesday

BESW

...Actually my original explanation of the situation is over-simplified: the "botched" part of the planeshift spell wasn't that we were partway between planes, it's that we weren't exactly halfway between planes. The Part of the Rod of Seven Parts we were after, was in a dragon's lair that had been twisted halfway between planes so that the paranoid dragon would never have to fear people stealing its treasure.

But we didn't get the spellcraft check high enough, so we weren't exactly the same betweenness as the lair, and we had about a 75% chance of anything we interacted with being intangible. And then when we finally managed to grab the Part, somebody had the brilliant idea of putting the half-twisted epic artifact into a third-twisted portal to an untwisted dimension.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW Halfway between 2 planes sounds like a rather dangerous place to be. Perhaps not worse than halfway between 2 helicopters though...

Also is this one of those stories where it gets funnier/weirder the more you explain?

BESW

Heheh.

Part of it is that it was a rotating-GM game. I ran the sessions with the twisted-dimensional lair and introduced the idea of the sundered Part, and the next GM in line came up with what needed to be done to fix it.

Since it was a gather-the-pieces campaign at ridiculously epic levels, it was very easy for every adventure to be "and then we go to a brand new completely bonkers corner of the multiverse," so continuity wasn't much of an issue. Or coherency, really.

I took us to a pocket dimension where a shard of the Devil had been appeased with his own tiny universe to rule as he pleased, and he'd made it into a twisted version of New York City where the fire hydrants ate the pigeons and the taxicabs hunted in packs like wolves. We stole a calculator from his desk and gave it to the dragon to help keep track of its hoard.

(In exchange for the Part of the Rod.)

If this sounds familiar to anyone, yes, I ripped it directly from So You Want To Be A Wizard.

I lifted most of my D&D campaigns, the trick is just finding books your friends haven't also read.

Set up the world, then let your friends go crashing through 'em and see how the story turns out.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW I think the only really rotating GM game I’ve ever been in was back in middle school where the idea was “if you come to gamers league you can play and everyone takes turns leading meetings” which ended up in 3 sessions involving the Elvish Flirting Law Incident, one rip-off of Tomb of Horrors (done in Risus because of the general lack of time otherwise), and 15 weeks of playing card games

BESW

Heh.

Bardic Wizard

04:59

@BESW I rip about half my plots from Star Trek and make up less than 10% of the other half

BESW

It helped that we had a kind of "lead GM" who set up the campaign premise and then each other GM was expected to play an adventure within that premise.

@BardicWizard My best horror campaigns are old Doctor Who stories with the Doctor missing so nobody can explain what's going on.

2

I've also enjoyed running horror games where the setup is "A Scooby Doo episode but the monster is real and it's not a cartoon," and see what happens.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW My best borrowed plots (in terms of stories to tell) were from this school group though. The Elvish Flirting Law Incident was a direct result of me making the elven city a fantasy version of Titipu from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado.

BESW

Heh.

I did run into some problems, like the time I didn't understand D&D was a terrible framework for mashing together the Phantom Tollbooth and the Magic Flute.

Bardic Wizard

They were *supposed* to investigate the strange law passed by the elf king, King Pooh-Bah.
Instead, J, K, and L (their initials really were in alphabetical order) mocked it, tried to define the law (funniest part of that session: “Elves must pay a fine for flirting with other elves. Elves get punched for flirting with non-elves. Non-elves get executed for flirting with elves. Flirting law enforcement consists of specifically perverts, racists, and professional boxers” “no that’s really not how it works”) and ended up getting “conclusive evidence” that at least one elf was flirting.

@BESW I have to hear what happened with that. I love the magic flute!

BESW

Not a lot to tell. I made a valley where one side was in eternal light, ruled by the King of Reason, and the other side of eternally dark, ruled by the Queen of Rhyme. Prince Reason and Princess Rhyme were in love and met at the boundary, and the PCs were outsiders who were going to help the Prince and Princess try to get their parents' blessing for marriage.

It was far too thematic and social a story for D&D, and the PCs weren't the interesting people in the story.

Bardic Wizard

05:12

Ah. I can see that as a good novel but maybe not so much a campaign

BESW

Very much so.

It even could've been a good campaign, in a system more like, oh, maybe Pasión de las Pasiones.

But D&D was fighting that story every step of the way and the game just fell apart.

Bardic Wizard

I’ve done a tiny bit of stuff that shouldn’t work in d&d but did, and way more that could have worked in d&d but didn’t. Case in point: the Third Neverron Incident and the Fourteenth [player’s name]-Related Explosion incident

... actually, that’d be the Eighteenth [player’s name]-Related Explosion incident. The 14th one was that one also called the Half-Dragon Incident which is a different story

@BESW d&d is not meant to tell stories involving lots of social stuff

I’m just realizing that I implied there were at least 18 [player]-related explosion incidents and I would like to clarify that 1, there were only nineteen I can name, 2, most were not actually their direct fault (just their plans), 3, this is over 3 years, and 4, except for the ninth incident, the sixteenth incident, and the seventeenth incident, all of them were in a rpg.

The ninth incident was in 6th grade science class and the sixteenth and seventeenth incidents were in 7th grade science class.

BESW

05:33

I'm not exactly in a position to judge. My first campaign featured player deaths due to exploding coffee and exploding islands.

(To be fair, the coffee wouldn't have exploded if the rogue hadn't mixed it with gunpowder.)

Bardic Wizard

@BESW ... why?

BESW

I was never really clear on that, myself.

lisardggY

@BardicWizard My take is that D&D, the system, is not meant to tell these kind of stories. But D&D the game (that loosely defined entity comprised of the system and what actually happens at the table) can run that just fine.

BESW

Sep 17 '14 at 5:24, by BESW

He also liked coffee, and so his belt was lined with alternating pouches of gunpowder and coffee grounds; only he knew which was which. And then there was the big pouch, labelled FOR EMERGENCIES, which contained an equal mix of both substances.

@lisardggY I feel like that quickly edges into "if you can fix it, then it wasn't broken" territory.

lisardggY

Working on my Oberoni fallacy blog post, I've come to the realization that there's a corresponding fallacy to the "My favorite system can do anything" fallacy, and that's the "if the system doesn't do X, you should always switch to a system that does" fallacy

Firstly, because no system does everything, so if you want both, say, good social mechanics and D&D style tactical combat, you're going to have to compromise.

Bardic Wizard

05:39

@BESW ... I put sacred coffee beans into the temple of the goddess of coffee (and ice, cold, and war, but guess which the players liked best) in a campaign, and I still can’t come up with why you would mix gunpowder and coffee

lisardggY

Secondly, because switching systems has a cost. Money first, of course, for rulebooks, but also time, and effort, and identity, and community in some cases.

BESW

I mean, I've done that. Using multiple systems in a single campaign, or even a single session. There are even games like For the Honor which are explicitly composed of discrete minigames for each kind of situation.

Staying in a single system that wasn't doing what I wanted to do, had a greater cost for me.

lisardggY

Which is why I've grown wary of instant "switch to system X to solve your problems" solutions, though still not as much as "use my favorite system Y to solve your unrelated problem"

@BESW That's a pretty big investment and cognitive load for more casual players.

BESW

[shrug] Learning Fate and Don't Rest Your Head and Monster Of The Week was still less cost and less text than the three core books for any of the last three editions of D&D.

Most of my players never had to read anything, it was all learning at the table during play.

In part because they're dramatic narrative systems driven by phrasal units.

lisardggY

@BESW fair enough, I don't say "never switch systems", just that "if your current system doesn't do X well switch to a system that does" as a kneejerk reaction also exists, and it often ignores those other aspects of system choice.

BESW

05:45

Yeah. For sure, we often forced Fate into shapes it's not ideally suited to because it's what we had and knew.

But Fate's more designed to be squishy and moldable, while D&D's version of "adapt this to your needs" tends to be "ignore this and free-form it."

Which is a legit way to deal with it, but "going free-form" is, itself, switching to an alternate system that has the cost of uncertainty because it's got no rules to refer to for common ground.

lisardggY

It has costs, sure, but different ones. For some people (my current party, for instance) "common ground" doesn't matter at all. It's not how they play. Switching to freeform for them is a relief, not uncertainty.

BESW

Jan 13 '14 at 11:06, by BESW

The "right" way to play an RPG is in a way that makes people safe and happy. Any other criterion is secondary at best.

3

trogdor

08:28

yeh yeh yeh

AncientSwordRage

08:52

@BESW This an the scooby doo idea are literal genius

BESW

@AncientSwordRage So many Doctor Who stories are terrifying if nobody can explain what's going on or how to stop it. You just gotta avoid the ones where it's the Doctor's fault either because the monster is after them specifically or their meddling is making things worse.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I think free-form, especially if you're used to rules-straightjackets where everything is just so, is much more off putting than actually difficult to do. It's the buy in thats hard

that being said the only group I've ever played with for more than a one shot mostly wanted to memorise the rules books before playing

BESW

Replace "The Doctor and their companions arrive" with "the ~~hapless victims~~ PCs arrive" and you're golden.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW or where the payoff is to do with the Doctor

> Before it died, the Minotaur expressed pity for "an ancient creature drenched in the blood of the innocent", because "for such a creature, death would be a gift." While the Doctor thought the Minotaur meant itself, the Minotaur suggested that it meant the Doctor himself.

DW is sometimes far too on the nose

BESW

Exactly.

I've had great luck specifically with the Horror of Fang Rock.

AncientSwordRage

09:08

@BESW oh old who

BESW

Oh yeah, Old Who tends to be a much better source to mine for this kind of adaptation, and it's less likely people have seen the story already.

AncientSwordRage

True, I'm just no where near as well versed with it

BESW

I also had a good time with an adventure based on.... oh, the first story with the yetis, the one that's still not fully recovered.

"The Abominable Snowmen," that's it.

AncientSwordRage

09:23

@BESW I just read the wiki article, that's a wild story

BESW

It's great! And perfectly set up for translation into a Cthulhu Dark style scenario progression.

> LAYER ONE
folktales of the Beast of Fang Rock (Rueben)
cold, unnatural fog
Vince talks of a fireball falling into the sea (he never gets the colour the same twice, and doesn’t notice even when it’s called to his attention)
Ben’s electrocuted body
lingering static electricity

LAYER TWO
green light moving in/on the water
silver tube (closed ends; light) on generator
feathery silver antenna in lamp gallery
hundreds of dead fish washing ashore
body vanishes (Ben’s)

LAYER THREE
Rueben suspects investigators as spies (“Frogs, Nazis, Ruskes, does it matter?”)

Cthulhu Dark scenarios are layered by encounters: Layers are lists of things the party might encounter. Each progressive layer gets closer to the core threat, and more solidly confirming of the threat's existence. Once the party has encountered two things at one player, you add the next layer to the list of things they can encounter.

The PCs make saves vs ~~Sanity~~ Fear every time they encounter something that could freak them out. At first those saves are hard to make, but they get easier to pass the more of them you've already failed. After you first hit 5, you can start obstructing the truth (like destroying evidence) to drop your Fear score.... but if you hit 6 then you lose control of your character.

So it's paced really nicely, jumping at little things and roleplaying freakouts a lot, then slowly settling down for a lot of rolls that could be very bad but probably won't be, before hitting the endgame where you're actively trying to STOP learning about what's going on.

AncientSwordRage

nice

BESW

09:40

I think it'd also work really well for Jaws-type stories, because they're effectively the same structure.

Oh, and the 'skill' system lets you attempt (and almost always succeed!) at anything, even if it's not normally humanly possible, especially provided you're willing to risk Fear to do it. Anything... except directly attack a monster. That automatically kills your character, no save.

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage It's really a question of the mindset the players come in with. Many if not most of the people I've played with over the years had no problems expressly trusting the GM to react appropriately. Their buy-in wasn't "I know the system, and thus I can handle whatever happens in the game", but "I know the GM wants us all to have fun, so I'll come in playing my character and it'll all work out". Different mindsets - as I said, most people I've played with weren't "success"-oriented players.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY almost all plays I've played with were success orientated

at leas that is/was my overriding memory when I used to RPG

lisardggY

I think fiero and ludus are very common motivations for crunchier/system-focused players, whereas I've played mostly with people focused on kairosis or closure, and for some kenosis (to use the manyfold motivation parlance)

Most were on the paidia side of the paidia/ludus spectrum.

AncientSwordRage

that's an interesting breakdown of ways to enjoy gaming

lisardggY

I've found it very instructive over the years, especially because the approach doesn't try to classify types of gamers, like earlier classifications (e.g. "wargamer/powergamer/strategist/deep roleplayer") but motivations, which aren't mutually exclusive, don't encourage factioning/vs-mentality, and are fluid and ad-hoc.

BESW

09:54

I wish its terminology was a bit more approachable.

lisardggY

Yeah, it's a messy mishmash of Greek, Latin, English, some German and Yiddish.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW yes, I dislike some of the unintuitive descriptors

I would hazard a guess that I'm an expression/ludus type player shrug

but I see myself in some others too

lisardggY

I mostly know what I'm not in that list. I'm vehemently not an agon sort of player, and also not a big fan of kinesis (props, dice and physicality) or naches (I had issues with that one until I talked to some people who really appreciated it)

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY where does a player who wants to have the biggest/best character and prove that in the game sit?

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage I don't think it fits into any there. There were a couple more we thought could complement it over the years, like the "pokemon" (gotta catch'em all) - for the completionist who enjoys finding everything, catching everyone, and similarly interacting with the game world.

AncientSwordRage

10:03

@lisardggY When I larped, we had players who regularly joined "Team Poke It With a Stick" who wanted to interact with absolutely everything in the setting/game

@lisardggY I feels like it's a little AGON and a little LUDUS

lisardggY

Yup. When you think of it not as a "this player is an X" but as "this player enjoys X", it can help you and guide you when you plan your game, saying "ok, I won't drop this hint here unless I want the PCs to follow it, because it will drive him mad knowing there's something left behind"

@AncientSwordRage Could be - there's overlap - but it could be something else, a motivation to feel better about yourself, via the game. It can manifest ugly or pretty, but the motivation is there.

I don't have a handy pseudo-Latin term for it. :)

Maybe "affirmation".

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY In MTG the developers came up with similar* Psychographics (* because they weren't motivations, but did include them) called Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny and Spike

T* basically just want to play the biggest 'splashiest' creatures, J* want to express themselves with deck building and Spike just want to win

they seems to fit a few of those motivations you identified

@lisardggY seems fitting

lisardggY

yeah, they're not unique to RPGs - I know that some of them are used extensively in video game design (fiero, especially), and some can be traced back to mid-20th century academic texts about the nature of play. Roger Callois, a mid-century French sociologist, coined the terms "agon", "alea", "ludus" and "paidia" in the contexts we use here.

AncientSwordRage

that explains why you've reused them

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY IIRC some of the older classifications were not meant to be divisive either, but ended up being used as such by people anyway. Anything that can be weaponised will be.

lisardggY

10:12

Not me, no - all these aren't my work.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Maybe they weren't meant to be, but any classification of "player types" is much easier to abuse for false dichotomies than a classification of "player motivations".

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY The Threefold Model is about goals in RPGs, and yet it gets actually used to describe game and/or player types rather than goals within them.

Using player goals as a way to name player types in line with those goals is just one step.

Anyway I remember this list, and it's cool.

More nuanced.

lisardggY

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I think the "player types" classification predates the threefold model.

The Powergamer/Strategist/Roleplayer/Storyteller has been around since the 80's. I had some links in a blog post but by blog is down and I don't have the energy to check why. :(

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Yeah, the fact that there are a lot of them actually helps, in the sense that it's hard to make the step to call someone "a kinesis type of player" or a "schadenfreude kind of player" - they're more fine-grained, so it's obvious it's not an either-or situation.

BESW

The D&D 3.5 DMG strongly reinforced the idea of player types, and their being antagonistically exclusive.

lisardggY

Well.

BESW

Indeed.

lisardggY

10:22

To be fair, some of these motivations can be conflicting some time - there's another one that was added a bit after the core list that is often added alongside with them called asabiyyah, taken from an Arabic term describing "a concept of social solidarity with an emphasis on unity, group consciousness and sense of shared purpose, and social cohesion".

This can directly conflict with agon in many cases - the PvP motivation - but in a team-vs-team scenario can synergize with it.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

They certainly can conflict. IME pro-Alea- and anti-Alea-leaning on their own already create tension.

Err, Alea. Gambliness.

I've also seen 'props' (though not really Kinesis because it was an online campaign) be met with both preference and annoyance in the same group. A soundtrack channel can be seen as mood-improving or distracting. So can use of NPC avatars for messages that represent NPC speech.

I've also seen people state (in one case in those literal words) that '[Kenosis] is icky, I would rather avoid it', which was rather surprising coming from a member of a roleplaying community.

lisardggY

Yeah, I think some people have very different core concepts of what "playing a role" means, to them.

BESW

Bleed is often counterindicated in myself and my friends.

lisardggY

10:37

Oh, here we go. Glenn Blacow, Aspects of Adventure Gaming, 1980: darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/models/blacow.html

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY that hits some notes

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage Yeah. The first time I read it I went "huh, that doesn't seem like a particularly prominent motiv... ohhhh, yes, I see it now".

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY "We're all in this together, how can I best support the group"

seems like it fits with the Naches motivation

lisardggY

The "naches" (from Yiddish naches, meaning "contentment", and with a very prominent usage of "the contentment you get by watching your children or successors do well") is a bit different. I had a hard time with it until I talked to a friend who, among his other RPG endeavors (podcast, writing games and about games), really, really really enjoys running introductory games to outsiders to help them get into the hobby.

He derives great satisfaction from watching people he brought into the hobby start regular groups with their friends. Or when our regular (mostly rules-averse) group manage to understand and enjoy some game mechanics.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY by fits with, I mean complements, not necessarily overlaps or coincides

lisardggY

10:43

@AncientSwordRage Yeah.

BESW

AncientSwordRage

@BESW If I were a cartoon villain I would be defeated by being goaded into a nacho eating competition, where the hero's had given me an enchanted Plate of Refilling Nachos

lisardggY

"The party" is a very potent entity. There aren't enough games that give it clear mechanical focus. (Genesys/WHFRP do, I think). There is explicit and implicit trust between PCs by virtue of them being PCs together.

That's why unexpected PvP behavior is so harmful to a group dynamic.

BESW

@lisardggY When I wrote Goblin Court, I made "helping another PC achieve their personal goal" one of the ways to get a bonus die on an action.

Atomic Robo and InSpectres give the group's collective identity its own set of character-like stats

lisardggY

Fate's Fractal concept lends itself well to that.

BESW

10:47

With InSpectres you don't really level up your characters; you advance your business's resources.

Space Goblins uses your ship as a measure of your collective risk/success dynamic.

lisardggY

Ars Magica also has a community at its core - the covenant. The general expectation is that the stories will be anchored around the magi's keep/tower/whatever, with the players playing their main characters as well as secondary and minor characters that live there.

BESW

A lot of Belonging Outside Belonging games put community at the core of their ethos, but I haven't read them closely enough to say off the top of my head how that's expressed mechanically.

lisardggY

Specifically in Ars Magica, the covenant is a shared community, but the individuals tend to be self-absorbed pricks intent on their own research, but hey, wizards, right?

BESW

A major theme of Sundown is building a welcoming "found family" community out of the people who are rejected by the dominant society unless they lie about their identities.

Golden Sky Stories lets you spend tokens on relationships with PCs and NPCs alike, but PC relationships are mutually reinforcing in ways that reward forging deeper bonds with your fellow PCs.

lisardggY

Our Masks game was cut short before we really got around to grokking the mechanics, but they seemed to also be focused consciously on inter-PC relationships.

BESW

11:01

Wanderhome gives every player moves which grant another player tokens if the other player agrees to be part of the move. It also blurs the line between PC and NPC in some interesting ways because of its GMless No Dice No Masters system.

BESW

11:20

@lisardggY I'd be curious to get your impression of my group interaction dynamic in Traveling Librarians. It's not mechanized yet, though.

lisardggY

I'd be happy to take a look, though I can only get to it later today.

BESW

No rush, it's not like I'm gonna be doing anything with Traveling Librarians for a while. It needs a lot of historical research before I start mechanizing it.

lisardggY

If one is looking for it, one can see the Baháʼí influences all over your work. :)

BESW

Oh yeah, Traveling Librarians is probably the most directly influenced by Baha'i-inspired community action praxis.

It's practically a trainer course.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY you've just sold me and lost me on Ars Magica

lisardggY

11:34

@AncientSwordRage Hey, they don't have to be pricks. It's not in the system. :)

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY if there's even the slightest option, I wouldn't put it past people to play up the stereotype

Thats' very cynical of me

AncientSwordRage

12:00

The only conclusion I can come to is that I've not played enough games or games for long enough to really find my 'kinds of fun'

NautArch

@AncientSwordRage dnd warlocks say what?

AncientSwordRage

@NautArch Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, naturally

I dunno if my warlock characters fit the stereotype though?

BESW

I think the most "evil" warlock I've ever designed was a coward who pledged himself to the malevolent stars because he hoped that serving them would make his death quick and painless. My most "prickish" warlock was an arrogant astronomer who refused to believe that her powers came from a pact at all, but rather that they were the emanation of her perfect understanding of the universe.

AncientSwordRage

they fit the stereotype of "I have made a terrible deal without realising"

BESW

My favorite warlock was Troggy's paladin-warlock who entered into an arrangement with a fey queen in order to escape the tyrannical empire he was born into, so he could fight it from the outside.

AncientSwordRage

12:11

one is a dwarf who stole a book without realising it cause them to become a warlock, and the other is a librarian-knight 'rescues' a black stone that his society has shielded/hidden from those who would use it for evil

@BESW thats cool

BESW

And by all rights my mountain-man paladin could have been represented with warlock mechanics just as easily, the flavor of "I have pledged myself to the ambiguous service of a powerful woman whose name I don't even know, and she's given me supernatural power to fulfill my pledge" isn't exactly picky about whether the lady is a saint, a goddess, a demon, an ancient dragon, a manifest star....

I rather enjoyed exploring the way paladin and warlock are primarily distinguished by the values we assign their patrons.

NautArch

@AncientSwordRage yours may not...but many many do

@BESW The 5e paladin seems very much in tune with this.

BESW

...and then there was the Reluctant Curator, who found himself chosen to be the living card catalogue for an extradimensional library that wanted him to return it to the world.

@NautArch 4e took both paladins and warlocks in that direction from opposite ends.

NautArch

@BESW Being masters of your own destiny, but also very much beholden to that destiny is a neat method if people use it.

lisardggY

@BESW It's interesting that I haven't thought of that before - that paladins and warlocks are simply the martial/arcane flavors of a similar character concept.

Probably because I still haven't shaken off my 2e sense of paladinhood.

BESW

12:25

How so?

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@lisardggY Those two seem to be perpendicular axes. There's martial vs. casty, and there's divine vs. arcane/secular. Did that change in AD&D over the course of editions? I barely know 5e (which is to say, I have vague awareness of what rogues are like but that's about it).

AncientSwordRage

@BESW warlock pacts always feel like there is more inherent tension than in a paladins oaths, so I've never associated the two, but I see the connection

BESW

I highly recommend some of Ursula Vernon's paladin novels.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW takes notes

KorvinStarmast

@lisardggY thank you, I like sci fi.

NautArch

12:37

@KorvinStarmast it's a great book. I also really really recommend the series BESW suggested: Murderbot!

BESW

Specifically anything in her Clocktaur universe. The Clocktaur War duology was written largely out of a fit of spite about how 'traditional' fantasy paladin depictions mishandle the very notion of faith: one of its main characters is a fallen paladin. Paladin's Grace continues the exploration in new and interesting ways by spending time with the paladin whose god has died.

@NautArch Oh gosh Murderbot is amazing.

...dangit now I'm gonna have to re-read A Memory Called Empire again.

This will be the third time in less than two years.

KorvinStarmast

@BardicWizard If he plays a Druid Circle of the Moon, I'm not seeing a need for any devices at all, so grab three books and boost three stats to improve saves. :p

KorvinStarmast

13:05

@BESW Hercolano

@BESW Vance's magic in the Dying Earth stories had some of that; in one story, if you pronounced it wrongly, the spell had strange effects that were not what the caster intended

Bardic Wizard

@KorvinStarmast circle of dreams, actually. He wanted the healing pool

KorvinStarmast

@MikeQ Or a never ending series of geodesic domes.

@BardicWizard OK, then the ring and cloak of protection would be two items for sure, and any legendary that boosts investigation checks if there is one.

AncientSwordRage

13:33

@KorvinStarmast levio-sahhhh

@NautArch what is the stereotype?

NautArch

@AncientSwordRage Usually a lot on the emo side. Dark and brooding.

just like how rogues always have to 'steal' everything.

AncientSwordRage

either*

wow, never seen that

NautArch

you are mucho lucky

AncientSwordRage

I haven't played much actual D&D if I'm honest

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: Does Chill Touch Prevent Druid's Wild Shape from Recovering Hit Points?

Does the Chill Touch cantrip's secondary effect prevent a Druid from regaining hit points via Wild Shape? Chill Touch reads: ... On a hit, the target takes 1d8 necrotic damage, and it can't regain hit points until the start of your next turn. Wild Shape: ... When you transform, you assume the ...

dnd-5e wild-shape cantrips

AncientSwordRage

13:39

I DMed a 3.5 game for about 5 sessions, and we just had some level 1 melee characters

Then the only other time was 4E where I was the warlock

KorvinStarmast

14:01

@AncientSwordRage he got the pervulsion wrong, again! (The accidental teleport made me chuckle)

@NautArch My celestial warlock isn't brooding, nor evil, but she's a little wrong in the head due to a traumatic experience in the rolled up Sailor background: pirates killed off all of her shipmates and left her for dead ...

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Neither is my hexblade.

But we're also a bit more involved in our characters :)

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Isn't a hexblade by definition an edge lord? (Swords have a sharp edge ....)

2

@NautArch yeah ... there is that ...

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast hey-o!

although mine is pore of a point-lord (yklwa)

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch aha, you are such a non conformist (and I love that as a hexblade weapon, nicely done) You guys doing ToA or a different adventure?

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Avernus. Yuan-ti hexblade.

KorvinStarmast

14:10

@NautArch Interesting, how far have you gotten?

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast not too far. We're level 5 and are in eltruel.

AncientSwordRage

it's hard to avoid 'all my loved ones/colleagues/society are dead' background sometimes

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage My bard got expelled from college and exiled from the city for starting a politically motivated riot.

My rich dad was not happy.

AncientSwordRage

thats a splendid background

I made a bard who was being forced into clergy before making peace with their dad over it. Made a nice change

Bardic Wizard

@AncientSwordRage my sorcerer is kinda subverting that; her parents died peacefully a few years ago, but her mentor.... alive. Also captured by the police, so we broke him out of jail.

Her mentor is based after John Wellington Wells from The Sorcerer, and they built a relationship on mutual deceit.

AncientSwordRage

14:25

@BardicWizard that also seems like a good background

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch I am hoping to, someday, find a group that is running that adventure - I'd love to play in it - but right now my gaming time is with a few other groups.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast We haven't gotten that deep yet, but apparently Joe M. literally wrote his character into it and it's pretty obvious and heavy-handed.

KorvinStarmast

@AncientSwordRage Her family sent her off to apprentice to a pilot/navigator on an uncle's merchant ship after she caused a scandal at her debutante ball. So her family is alive, but they are hoping she'll remain an adventurer until the scandal has had time to subside. So far, it's been five years ...

... and yes, if you sense a slight Gilbert and Sullivan vibe there, it was part of the inspiration. No, she's not from a place called Penzance. 😎

AncientSwordRage

@KorvinStarmast another great background

KorvinStarmast

... but poor Ruth didn't make it into the story. She's for certain a hard luck story ...

Bardic Wizard

14:40

The reveal was awesome. when the artificer got to him first and rescued him he said “Fiametta has been worried about you”. JWW said “I don’t know any Fiametta”. Of course, I show up, in a disguise, and use the code phrase. JWW called her “Gianetta” and the party was a little confused (IC, OOC this was not a surprise).
And then when we were in our hideout, I told JWW “everything you thought I was was a lie. My name is not Gianetta” and he responded “I gathered. You either only showed up for 4 hours at a time or looked like a messier version of yourself”.

AncientSwordRage

@KorvinStarmast I have no idea about gilbert and sulivan

Bardic Wizard

@KorvinStarmast I’m entirely too obsessed with G&S so I love this (Fiametta’s identities are 5/7 gondoliers characters, 1/7 sorcerer characters, and 1/7 based on Mabel from Pirates

@KorvinStarmast I’m entirely too obsessed with G&S so I love this (Fiametta’s identities are 5/7 gondoliers characters, 1/7 sorcerer characters, and 1/7 based on Mabel from Pirates)

@AncientSwordRage listen to some they are very musically good if a bit repetitive

RevenantBacon

@BardicWizard They aren't the only ones who are a bit repetitive :P

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard my sole exposure to them is from the simpsons

Bardic Wizard

@RevenantBacon oops I didn’t notice it duplicated that message. That’s weird

RevenantBacon

14:49

XD

Bardic Wizard

@AncientSwordRage what’s the simpsons (don’t laugh at me for not knowing stuff I grew up on Star Trek and books)

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard long running american cartoon with a lot of pop-culture references

Bardic Wizard

@AncientSwordRage so how did they reference G&S?

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard One of the main characters is kidnapped on a boat and stalls for time by getting his kidnapper to sing the entirety of Pirates of Penzance

Bardic Wizard

@AncientSwordRage that’s cool

AncientSwordRage

14:58

@BardicWizard I liked it

lisardggY

15:30

@NautArch Read the first Murderbot novella. It was great fun.

NautArch

15:51

@lisardggY they're all really good

kviiri

@AncientSwordRage fun anecdote, when I was rather little I thought they were anthropomorphic potato chips

@BardicWizard It's also widely considered to be one of the best episodes of the entire series (which has gone over thirty seasons!)

AncientSwordRage

@kviiri I can see that

kviiri

I used to be a huge Simpsons fan, but I stopped watching somewhere between seasons ten and twenty, and I've all but forgotten my favorite episodes too

also related to G&S...

Mar 16 at 20:19, by kviiri

@KorvinStarmast Related to the Pandemic chat room: in one of my campaign notes I had the bad guys control three massive airships: the Mikado, Pinafore and Penzance. (the last one had actually been felled and presumed lost --- reclaiming and repairing it would've been a major goal of the game)

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