TRPG General Chat

BESW

12:00

I used it as a framework for my own campaign, which led up to "Well, you stopped the plot for someone to become a Franken-god, but the incompleted ritual cracked open the psychic barrier keeping out the hostile extradimensional star-beings whose very existence is the cause of creatures like mind flayers and beholders. You might want to stop the tentacle apocalypse."

NautArch

@doppelgreener If anything, the peer pressure was from me suggesting let's not do it.

Thomas Markov

What happens if you charm yourself?

NautArch

We've generally been playing together for years, but it still felt like they wanted to try it.

Alas, I think it actually trimmed down the group to a more manageable size.

and I've split the group anyway into a pure dungeon crawl game and a second game that's going to be Rime.

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Digger did it.

NautArch

@doppelgreener I also talked to folks one on one about it

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

12:03

@AncientSwordRage Paranoia and Souls-likes say hi. I have trouble imagining myself enjoying Paranoia, but I'm sure there are people with different tastes than mine or yours. (I do enjoy Souls-likes, but those are CRPGs and so are only remotely related to the TTRPG context.)

doppelgreener

Paranoia and Souls-likes both have an entirely different framework handling this, and it's still not fun to just keep dying and flounder about making no apparent progress.

BESW

@doppelgreener Is it time to link the Hbomb videos?

doppelgreener

@BESW which one?

NautArch

@doppelgreener There was some progress, but it wasn't enjoyable progress

doppelgreener

@NautArch right

BESW

12:06

Bloodborne Is Genius, And Here's Why

►

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener My parents watch a TV show they thought the other liked for years until one of them spoke up

BESW

(And the coda, "In Defense of Dark Souls II")

NautArch

It ended last night with them opening a door and being run over and killed by basically a stone steamroller.

doppelgreener

@AncientSwordRage amazing

@NautArch damn

NautArch

@doppelgreener all because they missed the perception check to see the secret door that would have gone around it

doppelgreener

12:08

so like, key to advancement through these kinds of evironments is a sense of accomplishment. it doesn't feel very accomplished to say "okay, well, we know about that trap now, and we disabled it. time to take one more step, die to the next trap, and learn about it and thereby negate it." you're basically just walking through a field of rakes doing the rake-in-the-face thing.

there's no actual accomplishment, there's just incremental discovery of more rakes to the face.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I must (finish) read it through at some point

BESW

It's an hour-and-a-half-long video essay about why Dark Souls games were so difficult to get into, and why playing Bloodborne made it possible for people to enjoy Dark Souls games who previously were unable to. And a LOT of it has to do with exactly the sort of thing this conversation is about: the difference between satisfying and unsatisfying failures.

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener it was pretty funny for them, so no harm done

on the other hand I liked the show, so I was a little sad we stopped watching it

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica paranoia can be amazing

doppelgreener

learning about your obstacles, gathering the tools and knowledge, formulating plans, and employing all of this via skill mastery brings about a sense of accomplishment in overcoming obstacles. you cannot do that if there is no learning, gathering, or formulation available—you have no agency in that scenario.

the field-of-rakes-in-the-face is more of an overcomplicated slideshow in which you're engaging in elaborate means of pressing "next" rather than something you have real agency in, but all of the slides involve a boot to the head.

NautArch

@doppelgreener YES! They really should rename it Tomb of Rake-In-the-Face

2

BESW

12:11

Paranoia's success is largely down to the sixpack conceit and its tone and structure providing emotional distance from the characters: failure is a momentary inconvenience and an opportunity for slapstick comedy, rather than needing to invest more real-life time and energy into designing a new character while mourning a character you'd become invested in.

trogdor

@doppelgreener yeah also I think I just have trouble bringing things like that up in general

BESW

The Tomb of Horrors takes place in a system where character creation is resource-intensive and character investment is encouraged.

doppelgreener

@BESW and satisfying and unsatisfying successes!

BESW

@doppelgreener VERY much yes.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW that can be enhanced or reduced by the GM and players

kviiri

12:13

@AncientSwordRage DYK that the phenomenon even has a name? It's called the Abilene paradox

(I mean, in general, when a group of people agrees to a course of action none of them would've wanted the group to take)

BESW

@doppelgreener The core example of Hbomb's thesis is the shield: Dark Souls games kill you and give you a shield. You learn to use the shield to die more slowly than your opponent, rather than learning to go on the offensive. Bloodborne doesn't give you a shield, and you learn the "fun" way to fight. Then you go back to Dark Souls and instead of success being a long, grinding chore, you know that there's a different way.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage My impression of Souls-likes (Blade of Darkness, Surge 1, DS3, Sekiro, Fallen Order, and Remnant) is that the obstacles look completely opaque for a series of tries ('how do I even begin learning to deal with the Prince?!'), and then they gradually don't as you learn to see the patterns. Paranoia seems to be often described as a place where you seeing patterns is already a breach of the rules. I don't know Tomb of Horrors and their amount of pattern-learning or lack thereof involved.

doppelgreener

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica there's different tombs of horrorses, and it seems like some are OK and some just have no telegraphing and are bad

AncientSwordRage

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica The fun from paranoia is removed from pattern matching, or at least it's distanced from success. Dying in a humour/surprising way is part of the fun

BESW

Hobby lore has it that the original ToH was made for a very specific set of players and assumed shared prior learning which the module thus didn't need to teach.

NautArch

12:17

@BESW And wasn't also just a dungeon to kill his players?

because they thought they were hot poop?

BESW

@NautArch That depends on whose account you give more credibility.

NautArch

@BESW heh, fair enough!

kviiri

The version of the origin story I've heard emphasized that the players often felt invincible because their characters were so great, so the designer made a dungeon that was based on player skill rather than character level. Not sure how true that is.

Of course, "skill" here means a rather specific thing.

NautArch

Once we got started, i realized it's basically Zork.

BESW

It's definitely a specific flavor of difficult that needs to be communicated clearly beforehand or there's gonna be unnecessary confusion and frustration.

NautArch

12:27

And it was communicated. But there is a difference between hearing it and experiencing it.

@ThomasMarkov Great question on being scared of yourself!

I now how I"d rule, but I don't think i can support it.

Thomas Markov

I had my warlock run about wildly till he made his save. He never thought to drop concentration.

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov I'd probably have made them speed zero and terrified.

Thomas Markov

That was the other option I briefly considered. I spent all of three seconds thinking about it though. The situation was both tense and hilarious, and I didnt want to break that by mucking about with the phb.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Not sure if that comment on the dragon lore is an answer...it kinda feels like it.

@ThomasMarkov Yours was solid. The image of them running in circles is awesome.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@NautArch Naïve follow-up question from a non-D&D-er: wouldn't the caster become scared of the cat?

NautArch

12:39

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I think it's that its caster->cat and then cat makes it target the caster so it ends up caster->caster

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@NautArch Would the same principle hold for, say, life-stealing spells that transfer HP from target to caster?

NautArch

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica i believe so

RevenantBacon

13:18

Fun fact: on this day about 800 years ago, Snorri Sturluson was assassinated

For those unaware, he is the author of the Prose Edda which is where we draw most of our current knowledge of Norse mythology

Upper_Case

Is much known about why he was assassinated?

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch No, it is not. It is why he needs to confine his question to "Mother may I" editions, which are the WoTC editions.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, I get the latter. Still think it's part of an answer as you answer it's availability in the earlier editions. But either way, the question's real answer is "do what you want and tell your story"

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch His "previous editions" is too broad, and I am telling him that to get him to narrow the scope of the question. Flag the comment if you would rather see it gone. For a 5e question, if the DM is asking permission to do something, they have obviously not bothered to read the DMG. And that is what I see going on; so he needs to ask from one of the "mother may I" editions if he feels that he needs permission from a book / game lore to do what he has in mind.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast We do have lore questions all the time, easier to just give the standard answer of storytelling powers of the DM.

KorvinStarmast

13:26

And thankfully, a couple of people familiar with one of those editions have already offered up answers. :)

NautArch

hehe

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch The question was closed, now it's open, so I'll remove the comment.

@NautArch I removed all of my comments except the one with related questions. Any answer I give will probably smack too much of "you are doing it wrong" to be well received, and I think Thomas and K are doing a nice job of getting Richard what he is looking for.

Teamwork for the Win!

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, i do hope they come into chat.

for further discussinon on that and their more general question about components.

KorvinStarmast

13:43

@Axoren 2 or 1 (The 'double fry' picture might be a bit of misdirection)

@Ben Bingo, that solves a lot of needless wrangling

KorvinStarmast

13:55

@Axoren One of the best time travel short stories ever uses "I'm My Own Grandpa" as a musical background theme.

@doppelgreener I laughed out loud at your rakes to the face analogy. Nice!

@kviiri I think that's right, there was a post on dragonsfoot forums that more or less said that

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica That's how I would rule it ...

RevenantBacon

@Upper_Case Yes, short version: he was knighted by the King of Norway and was trying to consolidate enough power in Iceland to be able to basically give it to Norway. He was elected as Lawspeaker to the Icelandic parliament twice, and was probably the most powerful man in Iceland for a good 8 years.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Sorry to see the unhappiness with ToH in your group, but it's from a different phase of the game's development. (And it's meta as hell - the whole thing is a bit of an inside joke or a gotcha: the tomb is a trap intended to get the demi lich access to some fresh souls of powerful heroes; but there's no "three clue rule" or aspect of discovering that from the player side of the fence)

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, I understood that and explained to them - but i'm not sure the players really understood it.

KorvinStarmast

There's a post somewhere (Maybe by Rob Kuntz) about how he had dealt with it using Robilar and a few of his minions ...)

@NautArch Heck I was raised in that era of the game and I didn't understand it until years later, in terms of the purpose of the tomb ...

NautArch

14:13

We're moving on to Dungeon of the Mad Mage

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Hope it works out better, what level are they?

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast going to reroll for 5. Or can take a character from ToH they liked and rebuild for 5.

Upper_Case

@RevenantBacon Cool! I mean, as a historical fact, not necessarily cool as an event or situation that someone lived in (and not quite through). One of my campaigns I'm running has a need for a lot of political intrigue represented by individuals, copying that episode might be very helpful

KorvinStarmast

Scott Kurtz made a ref to killer dungeons like ToH in his Table Titans comic strip, something called "The Mines of Madness" ... I think the way he did it worked.

@NautArch sounds like fun, that should give you many weeks of play.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast yeah, i'm just starting to read up on it now. WHile also prepping for Rime for another group.

KorvinStarmast

14:17

@NautArch A buddy of mine down loaded the Star Trek RPG into roll20 last year. We were hoping he'd run it. Then his job changed. He can barely make a third of our D&D games. So no Star Trek RPG for us. 😢

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast I still want to try out Star Wars 5e. But the Icewind Dale theme is just too interesting for me right now.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch When I was in Utah last year I bought the map for that ... I wonder if I'll ever use it. You playin In Meat Space or On Line?

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast online. No meat space for awhile.

KorvinStarmast

Yeah, quite the arrgh factor there ...

Our problem is getting to be time zones again. Our player from Tennessee has moved to Florida to retire, and our player in Oakland changed working hours ... so the first one can make half of the session (early half) and the Oakland guy can make the last half ... but it works out.

BESW

@NautArch Faith Corps still looks like the best Star Wars system I've ever seen.

NautArch

14:23

@KorvinStarmast yeah, everytime I try and a get a multi-zone group together it fails.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch ours is still together since late 2014, but who can show up comes and goes, and our original DM in Spokane can't make it anymore. The two kids they adopted are now in first grade ... and none of the rest of us can to Sunday evenings consistently. We switched to Thursdays and he just can't do that.

arrgh

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Timezones, the Scheduling BBEG's right-hand minion.

4

Thomas Markov

@NautArch I think your "shouldn't be upvoting" comment is a little pushy. It makes something of a duty claim that I don't think holds water. I'm not sure how I would feel about being told how I should use my upvotes.

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov Well, it's not untrue.

We shouldn't be upvoting unsupported answers.

and just saying "it's unsupported" seems to not do it. And the flag for adding support is up to Mods. So, this is the content of the flag, but by a user.

And I've been told not to flag for that in the past. So, it's up to the users to say it.

KorvinStarmast

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Yep, the deputy BBEG

AncientSwordRage

14:36

@KorvinStarmast MBEG

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov Had a player roll their secret for Rime and got the doppel. Had them reroll.

Thomas Markov

I hand picked my charater's secrets.

I just chose secrets that synergized well with their backstories.

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov We like random...and rolling dice.

and since backstories are pretty loose in my campaigns, it works.

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov That's the kind of technique I'd prefer ... getting back stories and backgrounds to fit is already tricky enough.

Thomas Markov

My thief rogue wanted to be a wilderness dwelling drifter, so I gave him the raised by yetis secret. My light cleric needed a reason to be leaving Waterdeep so I gave him the runaway author secret and he really loved the idea.

NautArch

14:48

My players generally just have the hard stats. They don't tend to go deep into backstory.

and develop their charaters during the campaign

so, a nudge works for them :)

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Our elf wizard (in a party with my warlock) wrote a nice back story on why he left the family and is out adventuring. But he's full on murderhobo. In the game I DM, he runs a monk who got thrown out of the monastery for having a bad attitude. 👍 He likes to beat things up, but sometimes he just knocks them out rather than killing them.

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast The random rolls worked, too! I've got a local tabaxi who has a connection with Owl Bears and a travelling folk hero who was brought here by mind flayers.

KorvinStarmast

@NautArch Did they not find his brain tasty enough? Is his name Elan?

NautArch

hehehe

RevenantBacon

15:04

@Upper_Case Check out his entry on Wikipedia, it actually has a lot of information about him. Apparently, his last words went something along the lines of "Don't stab me". Also, the word "assassinated" is used, because it's technically correct, but it was more of a raid, there was something along the lines of 70 armed men that assaulted his home.

Upper_Case

@RevenantBacon He seems like a pretty good model. My players are entering a politics-heavy phase, and I doubt I can come up with enough interesting personages just from my imagination

Thanks!

Bardic Wizard

15:52

Good morning/whatever time of day it is!

Upper_Case

@BardicWizard Welcome back. How were classes?

NautArch

@BardicWizard o/

KorvinStarmast

0/

Bardic Wizard

16:14

@Upper_Case decent; we’re doing a virtual lab in chem about reactions and so there’s explosions (not really, unfortunately)

SmokeDetector

17:29

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer (33): How is childbirth handled? by Phoenix on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

Bardic Wizard

@SmokeDetector ugh, that answer gave me a headache trying to parse it

NautArch

17:45

@BardicWizard personal cringe on adding childbirth to D&D and to dandwiki

Thomas Markov

Good cleanup team.

GcL

18:30

@ThomasMarkov I feel like I've watched enough Call the Midwife to know we're going to need hot clean towels, a sniff upper lip, and a willingness to clean up a lot more mess.

Thomas Markov

18:47

@GcL My wife was very into that show.

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard <itag>!

\\oo/

Bardic Wizard

19:12

@AncientSwordRage I’ve never seen that abbreviation before, what’s it stand for?

AncientSwordRage

@BardicWizard insert timezone agnostic greeting

GcL

So, like, "hello" ??

AncientSwordRage

Really, it should be a self closing tag, or have a closing tag, I e. <itag /> or <itag></itag>

@GcL maybe it was originally appropriate, not agnostic?

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast hehehehehe. glad to hear it's resonating

Bardic Wizard

@AncientSwordRage ah

I have a very small, situational, list of acronyms I am familiar with, and I suppose the same goes for everyone (my most commonly used are HW for homework, SoC for start of class, bca for because, and INAftAWSID for “I need accomodations for this assignment, what should I do”)

MikeQ

19:48

@Rubiksmoose Could you migrate this conversation (messages #55627522-55627932) over to this chat room? Taylor created it to elaborate on their chat question.

Carcer

<itag /> is a local homebrew

Rubiksmoose

→ 37 messages moved to DM Block help

@MikeQ done!

MikeQ

Thank you your moose-ness

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: What are the rules around retrying failed scry attempts?

The rules for Scry state that. On a successful save, the target isn't affected, and you can't use this spell against it again for 24 hours. However this seems a bit ambiguous. Can that player not use the spell or the party? Does the source of the scry matter? For instance, a party who have a...

Rubiksmoose

No problem :)

Bardic Wizard

19:58

@HotRPGQuestions .... why do you want to know?

I mean, there are legitimate reasons, and then there’s my first thought upon reading that title (which was “hey, those players are stalking someone”)

Upper_Case

@BardicWizard I feel like scrying is always illegitimate, since I haven't come across anything like a scrying warrant in D&D

MikeQ

Does GDPR cover scrying? What about location spells?

Bardic Wizard

And who’s the regulatory body for it? The wizard groups are biased

Also, what identity protection is there for the target?

Scrying has so many issues, legally and morally

Upper_Case

And the countermeasures get so annoying... though I might have fun with my players sometime and write a group of similar looking people who've taken the same name and committed to living in identically appointed homes

MikeQ

It could be interesting to have a setting with a regulatory body of mages, who has considered the implication of random ~~murderhobos~~ adventurers casting high-level magic everywhere

Bardic Wizard

20:11

I will clearly need to make and run that setting the next time my players do stupid magical shenanigans

Unrelated: what’s a tag wiki? And why does the gambling tag not have one? (The homepage has a bunch of edits by @Someone_Evil adding that tag and I’m curious)

Someone_Evil

@BardicWizard It's a description and/or helpful resource we have for a given tag. That tag doesn't have one yet because none has made one

Upper_Case

@MikeQ I'm curious, though it may not be a good RPG.SE question, about how many mages have been both powerful enough to be on such a body and interested in regulating others without becoming a tyrant that adventurers set their sights on defeating

GcL

@MikeQ I had a town guild hire the party to hunt down, and essentially fine, a group of poorly behaving adventurers. Murder and property damage incurred considerable reparations.

Thomas Markov

20:32

Questions like this trouble me. I'm not sure how I feel about them.

Upper_Case

@ThomasMarkov What's the ambivalence?

doppelgreener

If you're interested in knowing how to do this, I suggest just asking about what you want to accomplish, whether it's possible, and how it can be done. As-is this seems like kind of an XY problem: you want to know X, so instead of asking us about X, you think the solution is Y, and you're asking us about Y. The XY problem is a situation where you should probably just ask us about X instead. — doppelgreener 18 secs ago

Thomas Markov

I sort of explained in my comment, a link only answer is the correct answer, but those are generally not what we're looking for.

Upper_Case

Right, but then it would seem like you feel strictly negatively about such a question. What nudges you towards thinking positively about them, that you're not sure how you feel about them?

Hot RPG Questions

12

Q: What happens if you become frightened of yourself?

You might be wondering how this could happen apart from a contrived scenario of casting a spell like cause fear on yourself (which is technically allowed). Turns out, it can happen by interacting with the local wildlife of Icewind Dale. The Crag Cat has this ability: Spell Turning. The cat has a...

dnd-5e spells conditions

Bardic Wizard

21:14

@HotRPGQuestions sigh what the h*ck, icewind dale?

Someone_Evil

@BardicWizard pretty sure there are other monsters which can do that too

Or actually, the Crag Cat is reprinted from Storm King's Thunder

Bardic Wizard

Okay, would “what the h*ck, FR?” be better?

Mark Wells

Completely unsupported by the multiple blockquotes of rules text that make an answer look respectable around here, but I'd handle that by considering the monster to be the caster of the turned spell.

It doesn't make you miss and hit yourself, so much as catch your spell and throw it back at you.

Now if you're asking why there's a cat that has this ability, I've got nothing.

Bardic Wizard

@MarkWells again, what the h*ck icewind dale

Upper_Case

21:30

@BardicWizard That's not an Icewind Dale thing, everyday Earth cats can do that too

Bardic Wizard

@Upper_Case fine. What the h*ck, cats?

Upper_Case

That, I cannot answer

BESW

Bardic Wizard

@BESW that’s adorable

also cats are at least half fiends from the lower planes, prove me wrong

Cute, but EEE-VIL

BESW

3

MikeQ

21:46

Cats are cute but mischievous, so I'd lean toward classifying them as fey.

Hamsters are cute but evil. Just raw wanton hatred and pointy teeth, packed into a tiny fuzzy ball.

NautArch

I still like it
Because cats

NautArch

22:00

@ThomasMarkov darn you and your frame challenge to an answer :P

Thomas Markov

@NautArch haha I think the sentiment you expressed in that comment is exactly what OP needs from an answer.

Bardic Wizard

@NautArch you made me giggle. Loud enough that my mom said “that doesn’t sound like homework!!!!! Do your homework!!!!!!!”

Thomas Markov

@BardicWizard Some of my best teachers incorporated humor into their assignments. Every other page of my C++ final in college was a transcript of a Mitch Hedburg stand-up bit.

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov Yeah, i wasn't sure about making it an answer, but it's what needed to be there. Thanks for the nudge.

@BardicWizard hahahaha

@BardicWizard now get back to your homework

Bardic Wizard

22:16

@ThomasMarkov I don’t recognize the comedian, but I think that’s awesome. My bio teacher last year liked to introduce our units with humorous stories; my favorite was the unit on population dynamics that included a talk about the lap alligator she always wanted.

@NautArch awww, this is more fun

But I suppose I need to be asleep at a reasonable time tonight, so off I go

Thomas Markov

@BardicWizard Mitch Hedburg is probably before your time.

You should check him out.

Bardic Wizard

@ThomasMarkov everything’s before my time

Thomas Markov

@BardicWizard Tomorrow?

Bardic Wizard

@ThomasMarkov that’s different

Also i tried writing a tag wiki for the gambling tag

Hot RPG Questions

22:51

5

Q: Can a druid of spores revive a zombie as a reaction if the humanoid died last turn?

There is a class feature for spores druids called Fungal infestation, and in the rules it is stated: If a beast or humanoid that is Small or Medium dies within 10 feet of you, you can use your reaction to animate it, causing it to stand up immediately with 1 hit point. The creature uses the zomb...

dnd-5e class-feature combat druid reactions

nitsua60

23:10

@ThomasMarkov I got to see him live once on tour with Dave Attell and... Keb Mo, maybe? Thousand-person theater, 995 of whom were Attell-types, and most of Mitch's jokes were met with complete silence except for a half dozen isolated patrons ( o/ ) cracking up. I can't help but think that Mitch must've been completely happy with that outcome.

Lewis Black performed that night, too!

@BardicWizard I feel like this--once you've finished your homework!--is the mandatory...

(wait for it)

*entre* to Mitch's canon:

Mitch Hedberg - Club Sandwich

►

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