TRPG General Chat

Bardic Wizard

12:18 AM

@MikeQ ahoy ahoy ahoy ahoy ahoy ahoy ahoy

AncientSwordRage

12:29 AM

@BardicWizard arrrr what can we do yer for, ye salty sea dawwwwg

Bardic Wizard

1:04 AM

@AncientSwordRage yarrr, I am a Pirate Monarch, and it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate Monarch.... just saying hi

Also anyone got game recommendations for a one shot roughly focusing on pirates, in the spirit of the day?

KorvinStarmast

1:34 AM

@Shalvenay note for you in the back room.

AncientSwordRage

1:48 AM

@BardicWizard Risus or Roll for shoes would be my go to for a one shot

BESW

@BardicWizard BEAUTIFUL SPACE PIRATES IN: "The Galaxy's Most Dangerous Funeral!" by Grant Howitt. It's a rough-and-tumble game about being handsome, dashing and vicious; of star-skimmers and laser-flintlocks; of falling madly in love with a crystal horse and having it die in your arms.

@BardicWizard Sails Full of Stars, a Fate World of Adventure by Don Bisdorf. In the year 1850, three empires struggle for control of the solar system. Wherever patrols are weak, pirates menace the shipping lanes. Sailors whisper rumors of dragons swimming through the black void. Fools and madmen push the boundaries of alchemy, heedless of the consequences.

Joel Harmon

@ThomasMarkov I think you've mentioned tiny humans before. Are you familiar with the book Not Quite Narwhal?

BESW

But also:

Jan 5 '18 at 21:37, by BESW

Seriously though. Are we talking about Pirates of Caribbean, Muppet Treasure Island, Captain Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, The Pirates of Penzance, Peter Pan, One Piece, Captain Harlock...?

Thomas Markov

@JoelHarmon I am not, but it looks like a great book.

BESW

@BardicWizard Lady Blackbird has piratical opportunities; her forbidden lover is the Pirate King, after all.

Joel Harmon

1:59 AM

@ThomasMarkov I'm also a big fan of Harold and the Purple Crayon for your budding DMs.

All I have to do is glance at my wife for each pun and she rolls her eyes.

Thomas Markov

My daughter loves the Stanley hamster books.

Joel Harmon

Mine cycles through various books. She was really into If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for a while. Rosie Revere, Engineer was on the list for a while.

Thomas Markov

2:15 AM

@JoelHarmon my wife was just talking about If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Apparently there’s also. Moose a muffin and pig a pancake.

Joel Harmon

I think we have Pig as well; pretty much the same premise.

nitsua60

@JoelHarmon I have a half-dozen copies of it on my shelf, because I keep it on hand to be my go-to gift for children getting borned. The more copies of that can be roaming the minds of children, the happier I am.

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 That's right at the top of my list, along with some more self-serving books like Nelly Gnu and Daddy Too" and the *My Dad Is Amazing / My Mom is Magical pair.

Bardic Wizard

@AncientSwordRage I love Risus. Unfortunately, nobody can stop laughing when we play it

@BESW thanks

Joel Harmon

2:31 AM

@BardicWizard Are you familiar with Seventh Sea?

It's a bit hard to find, and it's on the "multiple books" side of the scale.

Bardic Wizard

@JoelHarmon no...

These pirates

Joel Harmon

@BardicWizard It's set in totally not fake Europe, circa 1668 (iirc). Each nation has its own magic system, along with political style and fighting style.

Not-Spain has the inquisition, which fights against their fire mages. Not-France is ok with their mages (who rip bloody holes in the universe for teleportation). Not-Germany is full of monsters, from which they harvest special metal. Etc. etc.

BESW

3:09 AM

I don't get the impression Seventh Sea is really good for one-shots.

(Especially with groups that have never played it before.)

Joel Harmon

I've done it, but there is definitely a learning curve. I'd hesitate to do that for a group's first RPG, certainly.

BESW

Bardic's looking for a quick "Hey let's play because it's Talk Like A Pirate Day" system.

Joel Harmon

I think it would depend on the group. Worth a mention, at least.

Bardic Wizard

3:44 AM

@BESW pretty much, yeah. Just a “not wanting to GM anything fancy this week” idea

Joel Harmon

In that case, Seventh Sea is likely just too heavy for this. Still worth looking into, though.

AncientSwordRage

@JoelHarmon friends at uni played that I think, they had a blast

Hot RPG Questions

4:01 AM

3

Q: Are your default racial traits suppressed when choosing the Doppelganger Character Secret?

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden contains a Character Secrets section, one of which is "Doppelganger" : I’m a shapechanger. I have none of the traits of the race I’m imitating, but I retain my class features, background, and alignment. I have darkvision out to a range of 60 feet. I can use ...

BESW

@HotRPGQuestions I'm sorry, "Character Secrets"?

That's like ripping the head off the robot and yeeting it to the moon.

Hot RPG Questions

4:25 AM

1

Q: Best supporting class for a 3.5 low level campaign?

I'm adapting the FrozenSick campaign from the Explorer's Guide to Wildermount to version 3.5. It's going to be the first campaign I play as a DM. The party consists of only 2 players, a warlock and a dragon shaman; the warlock's player is pretty experienced while the other one is totally new to t...

dnd-3.5e class

MikeQ

Obviously, it's because so many D&D tables have communication problems among players. The solution is to have less communication!

3

Bardic Wizard

Although what sounds like it could be fun, if you have a good group, is (note that currently RotFM costs too much and I can’t get it, so I haven’t read it) to have everyone OOC know about everyone’s secret and IC have it all be a secret.

So you end up with, say, a doppelganger PC that the PCs don’t know is a doppleganger, but the players do. Then, one PC notices a slight change in the doppleganger...

BESW

@BardicWizard Yeah, I've done almost exactly that! But here's Chris Perkins (of course, [sigh]) clarifying that such a thing did not cross their minds:

> I think the most interesting part [of Rime of the Frostmaiden] is the character secrets... characters can play it one of two ways. They can keep their secret close to their chest and not reveal it to the other players, fostering and breeding paranoia, or they can reveal it anytime they want to, and then wrestle with the consequences of it. That’s left entirely up to the players.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW boy I love me some paranoia at the table

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Oh yeah. Mistrust is the secret spice that makes a game truly fun.

Bardic Wizard

4:37 AM

I really hope that was all sarcasm (I assume it is...)

The most secrets I’ve let players keep is the fact that their character had a cursed sword (and only the curse was a secret)

Character secrets are fun. Player secrets are not

BESW

There are games and tables where player-antagonistic secrets are good and safe. D&D doesn't have ~~a good~~ any track record on doing the work to make sure their tables are safe in that kind of way.

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard @BESW is fluent in sarcasm, so I will assume yes

BESW

"That's left entirely up to the players," when said regarding one of the game's most historically famous toxicity nodes, is Not A Good Look.

4

Because so far as I can tell, all they're doing here is setting up to legitimize that greentext about the guy whose roleplaying made everyone miserable for a year of gaming, and then he revealed a character secret that made his character's actions "make sense," so everyone had to applaud his "good roleplaying" and retroactively be not miserable.

Hmm. I wonder how I'd develop toward a similar goal but put the head on the robot.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW people won’t not be miserable. They’ll just resent it and seethe, while the problem player stays a problem.

BESW

Exactly.

I'd probably start off by being really careful about how I write the secrets, and also set up support for table-level trust that isn't going to be challenged by the secrets.

I also feel like D&D isn't the best backdrop for stories about intraparty mistrust? It's designed around mutually supportive combat roles to make the core mechanics click together satisfyingly.

3

AncientSwordRage

4:50 AM

@BESW give points for collaboration on secrets

BESW

If I really felt compelled to do this in D&D, I'd probably make the secrets somehow (insert hand-wave here) revise the way combat works so that intraparty strife is more satisfying.

Bardic Wizard

And at the minimum, the players have to know all the characters’ secrets

BESW

It's D&D, adding a new subsystem to accomplish something that an independent system could achieve more easily is its joie de vivre.

@BardicWizard As a thought experiment, I'd be interested in figuring out a way to have player-level secrets in a safe, responsible way.

But... D&D probably wouldn't be the easiest framework in which to build that experience.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I would default to open secrets

D&D atmosphere would make actual secrets actually competitive, which would be bad

BESW

The contrarian in me wants to figure out what kind of secrets would avoid sparking that kind of competition, and the rest of me is yelling at it to stop.

Bardic Wizard

5:07 AM

@BESW the one time I did that (in d&d unfortunately) it went meh. One character had “history“ with something, and the player told me that that wasn’t a thing they wanted to come up IC or OOC, so I said “okay, but it’s gonna come up if you do something to get yourself recognized”. It did, the player was only about 90% honest in the resulting discussion (on average between the 80% IC honesty and the full honesty OOC) and then it didn’t really come up again.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I get that

Hot RPG Questions

6:54 AM

7

Q: Are there phoenixes in D&D 5E?

I am looking for a phoenix in the Monster Manual, and I can't seem to find anything. So I ask myself "Are there phoenixes in D&D 5E?" I can't find them, and I want to see if I can use one in my adventure, but, like I said, I can't find a phoenix anywhere. I am mostly asking this question just to ...

dnd-5e monsters

trogdor

7:56 AM

@BESW I wouldn't even say probably for that

XD

I think all secrets in D&D are at least a little weighted to being antagonistic or competitive even if they are not supposed to be

I could just be a little biased against D&D to be fair, but I feel like the most likely outcomes of secrets in D&D are betraying the party or having the party misunderstand and think you were going to betray them

Which would be acceptable if there were other likely options

Hot RPG Questions

11:27 AM

1

Q: What can a dragon use to increase their armour class?

It is hard to survive as dragon - and yet they do. Despite being known for their nasty claws+bite, fear radiance and breath weapon - thus becoming a high priority target for nearly any ranged attack - they survive past eight centuries. How is this done? Any long-lasting dragon would fathom bounde...

dnd-5e

BESW

@HotRPGQuestions Bribery.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW when does that not work?

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Other dragons.

AncientSwordRage

The best in game bribery I've ever done has always been at larps, and with food

@BESW I guess it's less reliable then...

BESW

Oh yes, dragons bring the best snacks.

AncientSwordRage

11:35 AM

@BESW I've never larped as a dragon though

Too hard to phys-rep

BESW

They've had thousands of years to perfect their brownie recipes.

AncientSwordRage

I would love some dragon brownies

I've definitely made spicy Brownies and they tasted good (once I got the amount right)

BESW

I've mentioned my brownies, right?

in The Frying Pan, Oct 16 '17 at 20:18, by BESW

Last time, I made brownies with chocolate chips, chopped candied ginger, and ginger salabat. And another batch with chocolate chips, cayenne pepper, and chili powder.

AncientSwordRage

Sep 9 '19 at 0:51, by BESW

Sometimes I make pumpkin coffee gingerbread brownies by replacing the oil/egg/water with one third each of pumpkin, coffee, and molasses, and adding spices like mustard, ginger, and cloves.

AncientSwordRage

12:06 PM

Both sound tasty

Is the pumpkin one actual cooked pumpkin of is it something else?

BESW

I use pumpkin puree (not pie filling, that has spices and sweeteners already in it) from a can, but:

Sep 9 '19 at 0:47, by BESW

@BlackSpike You can use any fruit puree in place of the oil and egg, but if it's wetter (like pumpkin puree) you leave out the water too, and consider using a larger pan so it spreads thinner.

AncientSwordRage

That's good advice. I've followed recipes that say to use banana which has worked well for me, but I didn't realise it had also accounted for water content

BESW

For example,

AncientSwordRage

Also, I once experimented with rice flour for banana bread, which I remember going poorly

BESW

Jun 8 '19 at 23:52, by BESW

It's avocado season, so we're experimenting with using mashed avocado as a replacement for shortening and egg in baking. Mechanically it's working very well! Taste-wise, I think it doesn't work in things that are supposed to be only mildly sweet. Non-sweet things like bread work okay, and really sweet things like brownies work well.

Yeah, with the puree replacement, if you're familiar with how the texture of the mix should be normally, you just adjust the liquid ratios to get it close to that.

Like, pumpkin is really wet so it replaces the water in the brownie recipe; avocado is not very wet, so I had to add the water.

AncientSwordRage

12:16 PM

@BESW I would have thought avocado would work in non-sweet things as it's not very sweet itself...?

BESW

I suggest experimentation!

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I'll have to now

It'll be a good way to use up some of the cinnamon powder I was gifted

nitsua60

12:36 PM

@KorvinStarmast Problem with that is: my uncle and mother were long-time players in the Connecticut Gilbert & Sullivan Society. Having seen, oh, thirty or forty various performances, I really can't stomach any more =\

KorvinStarmast

12:52 PM

@nitsua60 Right, Princess Buttercup is my next suggestion...

@AncientSwordRage The first pirate ever was Noah, in his Aaarrrrrk ...

Someone_Evil

3:21 PM

Hmm... so votes during the last few months seem to have changed the conclusion on the '5e as system statement' meta

31

Q: Is '5e' a clear enough statement of game system by a question asker?

As a community we have a long established policy of not guessing game systems. In cases where the game system is unclear we require question askers to clarify, before answering their questions. This is a policy that I support, and is more generally well supported among longer-term site users. Ho...

discussion policy game-systems

Or, changed which answer has the highest score. Conclusion would be changed once this changes our praxis on the matter I guess

nitsua60

4:35 PM

@Someone_Evil Not that there's a strong understanding of what constitutes consensus on meta, or what level of consensus/penetration suffices to overturn established practice....

4

(feature-request establish meta.meta.rpg, so we can decide on meta's decision heuristics)

(moderation-request permaban nitsua from making meta feature requests)

NautArch

@Someone_Evil Or the amount of D&D 5e users continues to grow and influence the assumptions/votes.

doppelgreener

4:56 PM

@NautArch Many of the people who have already voted both for and against are already D&D 5e players.

In fact given our site demographics it would probably not be inaccurate to say that more than half the votes we've had at any given point have been from people who exclusively or primarily play D&D 5e.

NautArch

I'm not advocating for either position, I see both points. But it does seem historically that the folks who play 5e generally think it's D&D, but those who don't are concerned about dnd-centrism don't want it.

Honestly, I'm on the side of your answer, i think. But I get linksassin's point.

doppelgreener

I mean, I'm concerned about D&D centrism, and I wrote that answer

I want us to resist temptation to profile votes on either answer as "well they just think X", especially since it's one step from there to writing off one of those groups with "well X is invalid so all the support for one of these answers doesn't count"

NautArch

5:15 PM

That's fair.

but that also isn't what I'd said.

well,it kinda was :)

but I didn't mean it like that! I swear!

doppelgreener

I'll believe you

Just something for us to be careful about

Bardic Wizard

9:16 PM

I nearly got my d&d character killed just now. Paranoia + faking bravado = near death by breaking character in a life and death scenario

Does anyone have advice on acting “brave, but also arrogantly overconfident” without acting stupid?

(Long story short: we broke into another prison. The artificer and my sorcerer were inside the room, the guard told him to come out or die, I cast disguise self and try to act like him but the gm said that this isn’t a deception check it’s how I role play it out, and I acted in a way that was inconsistent with the character so now we’re in an armed standoff)

AncientSwordRage

9:42 PM

@BardicWizard Sir Didimus, Labyrinth

@BardicWizard that suits subs line a deception check to me, but... 🤷🏻‍♂️

Bardic Wizard

10:15 PM

@AncientSwordRage we like to RP as much as possible and the deception/other social skill rolls are mostly about the subtle unconscious cues.

Also, the GM: “we need to reclassify the genre of this game, from ‘talking about stuff and occasionally stabbing people’ to ‘prison crawl’. This is your third incident involving breaking into or out of a prison.”

Joshua

10:52 PM

I do not expect to find the Tsurugi of Infinite Sharpness in a shop.

BESW

11:43 PM

@BardicWizard Most iterations of the Doctor would fit that description.

But, something I learned the hard way is that there are certain kinds of character which don't work very well when failure and success are determined randomly.

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