TRPG General Chat

12:19 AM

Something odd I noticed: recently I joined writing.se to ask a question, and weirdly, the question got 1k views in less then a day, with only 5 votes. On rpg.se it seems like stuff gets a lot of votes but not a lot of views, relatively

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: How to handle falling down stairs?

It is well-established in fiction -- as in real life -- that falling down a flight of stairs is dangerous. A significant tumble can seriously injure or kill a person. "Pushed down a flight of stairs" is by now a hackneyed modus operandi in crime dramas. Recognizing that D&D is not a physics simul...

BESW

More drive-by users on sites like writing.se because more people are asking Google writing questions than are asking rpg questions.

Shalvenay

@BESW yeah, I think that's a consistent dynamic from what I've observed on DIY.SE

loads of drive-by users, lots of LQ questions, and a real tough underlying problem in that canonicalization of duplicates doesn't quite work the way one'd like with home-improvement problems, because of how no two houses are built quite the same

BESW

Kaiju Pirate Psychpomp Karaoke. For this Unplaytested game, Alex, Lara, and special guest Sasha Reneau tackle the golden age of piracy, but also there are giant kaiju, and also the pirates aren't stealing stuff they're dealing with undead kaiju, and also the primary means of solving problems is via sea-shanty montage. It, uh, it went places.

BESW

12:54 AM

"Our Shores designers want their Kickstarter to be the first wave of Southeast Asian RPGs going mainstream" by Chase Carter for Dicebreaker. Together, they hope to overcome national restrictions and find a deserving audience. Refers to Our Shores: An RPGSEA Compilation.

2

It's so awesome of Sandy Pug Games to serve as a go-between to provide access to Kickstarter for creators in countries that can't access it directly.

TheDragonOfFlame

1:29 AM

I’m making a dungeon designed by elemental monks to guard their greatest treasure... I’m using the elementals puzzle from TCE and I have a semi plan to have one room for each element after that, like a air room that’s like floating rocks over a pit with gusts of wind that they have to jump from, some sort of crushing rock trap, something underwater, and some sort of fire obstacle course

I’m trying to figure out how to run the air parkour as interesting and not just a bunch of athletics checks

BESW

@TheDragonOfFlame in 4e I used Stalker0's Alternate Core Skill Challenge System to great effect. The numbers would have to be massaged, obviously, but the principles were great. It's like a much crunchier and complex version of Fate's challenge framework.

TheDragonOfFlame

1:50 AM

@BESW thanks! I’ve had skill challenges recommended to me...

BESW

Would you like a quick example of how it might look, in part?

Hot RPG Questions

2:02 AM

5

Q: Does fire shield damage trigger if cloud rune is used

If a wizard cast fire shield and is later hit by a melee attack, then a fighter uses cloud rune to switch targets. Would the fire shield still do damage? Fire Shield Whenever a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee attack, the shield erupts with flame. The attacker takes 2d8 fire ...

dnd-5e spells class-feature targeting rune-knight

BESW

2:16 AM

> AIRWALKING: skill challenge
You stand on a narrow platform halfway up one side of a deep chasm, buffeted by strong erratic winds. You can see an exit on the other side of the chasm, but the only way across is to leap across a series of stones which float, twisting and turning, in the currents of air.

GOAL: Get five medium-difficulty successes before three medium-difficulty failures. (A check that cannot grant a success, also cannot count as a failure.) At least one success must be a hard-difficulty Athletics or Acrobatics check.

Just a quick sketch of one way such a challenge might work out, using Stalker0-inspired concepts.

(You didn't indicate what failing the challenge would mean, so I made it "success at cost.")

The idea is that while at least one person has to be going flippity-hoppity across the rocks, everybody can participate--even people with no skill high enough to offer successes, can go for low-difficulty rolls that boost everyone else.

And then the "per day resource" expenditure helps the skill challenge take the same mechanical pacing role in an adventuring day as an encounter.

Ben

3:13 AM

Hey all

Hot RPG Questions

11

Q: What has Mordenkainen done to maintain the balance?

I understand that Mordenkainen has become a wizard who strives to 'maintain the balance'. My understanding of which involves ensuring that neither good, evil, law or chaos become too strong (though my interest lies in his specific view on balance, so if I am wrong in the above then please correct...

dungeons-and-dragons lore

Joel Harmon

3:54 AM

Hey @Ben

Ben

Howsit going

Joel Harmon

Really busy around here. Yourself?

Hot RPG Questions

4:09 AM

3

Q: Milestone leveling for a party of players who drop in and out?

Historically I have generally used XP for tracking character progress in my party. But my latest new campaign I intend to move to a milestone approach. However the one thing I don’t fully understand is the best way to manage milestones for parties where players drop in and out of sessions. Up fro...

dnd-5e character-levels experience-points

Ben

4:50 AM

@JoelHarmon I know that feeling. Dealing with work, and life, and it's getting hard to find the free time these days lol

Joel Harmon

I'm even currently on leave and it's still hard to find time for everything I'd like to do.

Some retired folks once told me "now that I'm retired, I don't know how I ever had time for work", and that's resonating recently.

Ben

5:17 AM

Yup. I've recently started building my own business and I feel I don't have time (or energy) to even do the dishes

Joel Harmon

Good luck with that. And I do mean both the business and the dishes.

Ben

Haha cheers :D

Hot RPG Questions

6:40 AM

4

Q: Could the souls of Warforged be Quori?

I'm trying to develop a 5th edition D&D campaign set in Eberron. I know that the cause of the day of Mourning is open to interpretation, but I would like to relate the cause to the Dreaming Dark. I would like to ask for some ideas about Magitech for transporting Quori to Eberron from Dal Qour, an...

dnd-5e eberron warforged

Vorac

7:37 AM

just in case anyone has missed this resource: s3.amazonaws.com/gw_rssimagefull/103648138-6.jpg

BESW

7:57 AM

@Vorac Source?

SmokeDetector

10:05 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Shortened url in body (44): What's your favorite dice？ by InfiniD on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

BESW

12:44 PM

Hey, anybody know if there's a resource (book, blog, anything) about the history of hacking/drifting/derivation in TRPGs? Like the schools of games we see emerging around a system like the d20 SRD, Apocalypse Engine, Fate Core, Blades in the Dark, etc.

3

AncientSwordRage

1:15 PM

Can anyone recommend some good solarpunk stories? (I feel like there were some recommended before, but trying to cast a wider net)

Dec 21 '20 at 2:49, by BESW

And I recommend Okorafor's Binti and Zarah the Windseeker books as excellent examples of Africanfuturism in a solarpunk-like vein.

BESW

Deliberately fitting into the category or retroactively declared to be?

'cause there's, like, Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation and then there's The Parable of the Sower.

RevenantBacon

What is solarpunk?

Thomas Markov

@RevenantBacon Cyberpunk with trees.

RevenantBacon

Apparently, Dune is considered solarpunk

According to Wikipedia anyways

BESW

Some people even say Dune is solarpunk, and um. I'm not gonna back that one up.

It's not a very well-defined category, because it's very recently defined without any particularly effective originating document.

I'd like to see a variant category that doesn't lean on the -punk suffix, which has become the genre version of -gate for scandals.

That's one reason I've been interested in real-world concepts like resolviendo.

But I will point out that a lot of the more productive engagement with the category comes from places like Brazil (eg Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável) that are at the forefront of the real-world implementation of the attitudes that a lot of people talking about "solarpunk" treat as speculative.

Thomas Markov

1:34 PM

@BESW Have you seen the Netflix show 3%?

BESW

I'm not very interested in lottery dystopias.

Thomas Markov

Ive seen the first two seasons and enjoyed it very much. The english dub was absolutely atrocious though. The acting and dialogue were so good that with English subtitles it didnt even feel like a different language.

@Medix2 Im not getting all of yourr comment

Medix2

Are you saying Eldritch Maul is just useless?

Thomas Markov

No, where did you get that?

Medix2

That using it doesn't actually change anything because your reach still isn't big enough to actually perform the attacks?

Thomas Markov

1:42 PM

No, "It says you can make your attack from 15 feet away."

It lets you make an attack from 15 feet away.

It does not increase youre Reach, the game term.

Medix2

Even if your reach is less than 15 feet though, right?

Thomas Markov

Yeah, that seems pretty unambiguous to me

BESW

Eldritch Maul

Medix2

I typoed Eldritch Mail earlier and tbh, I want it

I think you should be explicit about that

Thomas Markov

It doesn't add to your character statistic called "Reach". It lets you make an attack on a target up to 15 feet away.

Medix2

1:44 PM

Because you say it doesn't increase your reach, which sounds like you're saying it doesn't let you make attacks from farther away than normal

Thomas Markov

If your reach is 30 feet, you can still only use eldritch maul at 15 feet.

Medix2

So it'd help to explain that reach is a game-term that the feature does not modify

Thomas Markov

Ill add some details

Medix2

Though the sentence "It doesn't increase your reach, it merely increases the maximum distance away enemies can be" is... Certainly something, yay game terms /s

BESW

Heck, I did it in my games. Sometimes I use bold or caps to be ABSOLUTELY clear about what is and isn't a mechanical term.

It's not rocket surgery.

Medix2

1:50 PM

Big agree there

I think they just worded a feature poorly tbh

BESW

Looks like part of an established pattern of using vernacular language for technical content, to me.

4e, for example, defined range in a way that let it be modified by specific contexts without implying that they modified range outside their scope.

So it didn't have to scramble for ways to explain that later on.

kviiri

Between 4e and 5e vocabulary, one of the most baffling changes they did was to rename "Standard action" into "Action"

NautArch

@Medix2 Worded a source poorly. :P

kviiri

So now we have countless pages of confusion on what counts as an action. Is a bonus action an action? Is a reaction an action?

Medix2

@kviiri And then still use "action" like it refers to all three and... I could go on

BESW

1:55 PM

@kviiri But it's simpler because fewer words. /s

Medix2

@NautArch WotC worded something, I expect nothing less

BESW

Not to say that 4e is always completely clear. There's some absolutely wild edge cases, but you have to dig to find them, like if you're using a feat to cast a spell with an off-hand implement

The most egregious terminology confusion in 4e was when they changed their terms for cover/concealment mid-edition.

Oh, and "power" is a category of class feature that lets you perform a unique action, and it's also the name of bonus type (for determining stacking; bonuses of the same type don't stack) and power bonuses aren't always the kind of bonus granted by a power.

Medix2

@BESW I remember having to explain that one XD

doppelgreener

@kviiri strongly suspect this was done to distance their action economy from 4e's, to distance 5e from 4e

they made it very clear through notable omissions that they didn't want people to think 5e had anything to do with 4e, and were marketing 5e exclusively to the people who were still rooted in AD&D 1/2e and D&D 3.5e

Medix2

2:12 PM

@doppelgreener Yes, they really did... *sigh*... I definitely think "Natural Language" was one of 5e's worst decisions considering their audience, well... Considering the audience I've become used to at least

doppelgreener

it's a terrible way to design a game, but we already had several editions of evidence for that, and 5e is evidence that D&D is weighed down under the worst parts of its own history

BESW

Natural language would've been fine if they'd followed through with the implications of it.

But they tried to stick with the culture of reading game text as authoritative technical copy, and that just didn't mesh.

doppelgreener

ok, yeah, lots of games handle natural language fine actually

Medix2

@BESW Leave it to BESW to find better words than my "considering their audience"

doppelgreener

it's a terrible way to design this game that wants to do all the things it does

NautArch

2:15 PM

It does very much feel like D&D says they're rookie friendly, but really it takes a long time to really understand the system well enough to make changes. But on the flipside, it's also more balanced then we give it credit for. Many changes aren't a big deal.

BESW

The "problem" with 4e was that it actually took that "game text is technical copy" culture seriously and made a system which followed through on the premise. And people pitched a fit.

Medix2

In conclusion: You can't please everyone

NautArch

@BESW Very few people actually want what they ask for.

BESW

@Medix2 Which is why the original D&D Next pitch was brilliant in a mad-scientist-they-laughed-at-me-but-I'll-show-them kind of way which was unfortunately doomed to fail.

May 6 '19 at 8:06, by BESW

Then 5e came along like "unite the factions! The new edition will be a universal connector for all previous editions! Pathfinder apostates will return to the fold! players and GMs can all individually choose which variants to use! ALL WILL LOVE D&D NEXT AND DESPAIR."

The original pitch sounded like a very small, tight, simple core engine with no frills at all, and each significant portion of each previous edition would be re-tooled as an independent plugin that could be attached to the core Next engine.

Medix2

Insert GURPS

BESW

2:22 PM

THAC0 alongside 4e psionics and 3.5 grapple rules, all in the same campaign!

Medix2

Now I want to know if there's a "Build your system" kind of TTRPG

doppelgreener

@Medix2 yes, it is called google docs

Medix2

@doppelgreener You know what I meant :P

doppelgreener

i'm serious

Medix2

Yeah it's still a valid answer

I just more meant a pick-and-choose pre-built plug-in style thing

BESW

2:25 PM

Fate works pretty well that way.

Medix2

But yeah, "do it yourself" works

But Alas, work has asked me to come in early...

BESW

I've run Atomic Robo and Masters of Umdaar characters side-by-side in the same campaign with no problem.

doppelgreener

every TTRPG starts out with certain assumptions about what it wants to represent and how. GURPS wants to represent approximately realistic universal accuracy (but then also has magic and scifi etc so whatevs). Fate wants to represent drama. GUMSHOE wants to tell hardboiled detective stories in which the detectives will almost certainly eventually solve the mystery, the question is how. Monsterhearts wants to represent the difficulties of growing up with teenage awkwardness and angst.

BESW

Also, PbtA games basically do that with every playbook.

doppelgreener

You can modify these games around their core, but a game that is ready to just replace its core with absolutely anything else is just ... not really a specific game? That's just picking up and playing a different game?

BESW

2:27 PM

@doppelgreener The plug-and-play version of D&D Next would've been unified around the core expectations of the D&D franchise, so I think it's comparable.

doppelgreener

Out of games that are very much a build-your-own-experience modularised thing, yeah, Fate stands out as the best I've played with. Cortex also comes very close, not surprisingly created by the same people.

Thomas Markov

@Medix2 We are tied for bronze badges.

Medix2

Cosmic coincidence? You'll assuredly pass me

Thomas Markov

NathanS has not been seen since October 13th.

RevenantBacon

@BESW Well, FATE is basically the most bare-bones RPG out there, so yeah, I guess it is sort of a build-your-own

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

2:42 PM

I would think that the recent editions of FATE aren't exactly bare-bones. Contrast Risus and . . . maybe some variants of FUDGE?

The Oracle

0

Q: why does StackExchange return only posts for dnd5e when explicitly Googling for dnd3.5e?

I have now come across this so often it has become intensely frustrating: why does StackExchange return only posts for dnd5e when explicitly Googling for dnd3.5e? the community for dnd3.5e is still quite large, offering them only dnd5e content seems needlessly pushing for the newer version. is th...

support search

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

There're different types of toolkitty RPGs though. Both GURPS and FATE (at least the latest editions) are toolkits, but assume very different approaches to the kitting process.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW it is the least punk of the punks I've seen