TRPG General Chat

trogdor

00:02

@bobble well, what I mean mostly is, switching your "ordinary life" for another ordinary life with no magic or sci fi tech or whatever is still a new and interesting thing

it's still compelling in a game format

BESW

One of my goals with Walkies With Grim was to use a supernatural lens to bring the wonder of one's existing reality into focus.

The idea is that when the supernatural pretending stops, the wonder stays.

But Traveling Librarians goes a step further, and eschews the need for a extraordinary lens at all.

Axoren

Planning a campaign and I ended up with too many villains and main characters in Act 3.

There won't be enough sessions to meet each of these characters, or fight through all these villain sub-arcs.

MikeQ

What act is the game currently in?

Axoren

I'm doing pre-game prep just to have things available in each act so I can grab-back as appropriate.

I think my main problem is that it's a time-travel story, so I have to introduce new characters and the old characters again.

Because they're different this time.

I have an overall story that I haven't started running any part of, but I'm planning a 1-20.

MikeQ

Planning the story and sessions like that generally isn't advised, since players may deviate from the script or have unavailable schedules. Has that strategy worked for you with previous campaigns?

BESW

00:18

In my most successful massive-length campaigns where I was the sole GM, my pre-game prep was creating places and people with motives and plans. The first half-dozen levels were just wandering around seeing the world and meeting people--and then whatever the players latched onto and imbued meaning into, I focused on and amplified their motives and plans based on how the PCs had interacted with them; whatever the players didn't get attached to, I let fade into the background.

One easy way to give players that agency, was (in a traditional "adventurers looking for jobs" campaign) to make them members of an adventurer's guild so that every town had a guildhall with an "adventurers wanted" notice board. The players could pick what to do from the board.

Upper_Case

My players know by now that NPC organizations (especially antagonists) are always doing their own thing, whether they're on camera or not. If the players decide not to deal with the Evil Club in the current arc, the Evil Club will either be eliminated by another NPC faction (which gets some bad-dudes credibility for it), or the Evil Club accomplishes that phase of their plan and is more dangerous later

Axoren

@BESW @MikeQ What I'm essentially just doing is filling the world with key people of interest and conflicts that surround them so that I can talk about things in that won't happen for a while, but sort of seed the world. Players would meet an Act 4 villain in Act 1 and if their trajectories collide, they're not meeting a new face, but reassessing an old first impression.

Upper_Case

My NPC groups are organized into what is essentially a narrative tournament bracket, with by-rounds as necessary

Axoren

The problem, is I've noticed the basic conflicts I've got as my current seeds are too interconnected.

Too many chefs in the kitchen when all we're making is cereal.

BESW

@Axoren So, what I do with that is to wait until after Act 1, and then choose the Act 4 villains by drawing from the pool of characters the players have met.

Upper_Case

00:23

@BESW That's what I like about this approach-- the players choose which foes to tackle and when. It makes their choices seem much more consequential

BESW

Work forward, not backwards. TRPGs aren't novels or films, they aren't written ahead of time and edited to be tight and coherent. They're made in the act of play, without space for revision after something's hit the table, and that means "editing" and "planning" happens by building on what's already happened rather than building toward something that hasn't happened yet.

Foreshadowing in TRPGs doesn't happen in the planning stage, we create the illusion of foreshadowing by making something inconsequential become important.

MikeQ

Ok I've made this mistake before. Planning issues aside, you don't need to overpopulate (saturate?) the NPC cast to make the world seem big. If that makes sense. They become difficult to manage. Start small, then gradually add as needed.

BESW

@Axoren I've done that too, and what I learned is that the players are the best connective tissue.

Axoren

Well, I misspoke when I said it was just time-travel. I have it broken up into the following: Act 1: Present, Act 2: Alternate Present, Act 3: The Choice (players make some very heavy setting decisions, as well as character decisions), Act 4: The Finale (The Past)

BESW

Small things will balloon out of scale when exposed to PCs, and the PCs make two things connected simply by virtue of being the main characters while interacting with both things.

@Axoren hmm. Sounds kinda like Fate of Cthulhu stuff.

MikeQ

00:29

So instead of introducing a meaningless character in Act 1 so that they can be the Act 4 villain, there are better options. Maybe you introduce them later, and connect them to something that already exists. Maybe you wait until Act 4 and have an existing character become the villain.

Axoren

Act 4 breaches the topics of the true cosmology and creation of the setting, which is a good place to end on so that I can follow-up with another campaign in the same setting.

BESW

Hrm. It sounds kinda like you have a story to tell and the players are the vehicles for telling it.

That's not bad --I knew a group in college who really enjoyed it-- but it makes my experience and learning much less applicable.

Axoren

In a sense, yes. But it's a lot more flexible than it sounds.

These are just templates for the kinds of challenges they will be facing, in the same way that a module would function.

Like, there are hooks that will bring them across each Act, but within each act, there's any number of possible ways they could drive the adventure.

BESW

Each act begins with a node of divergent choices which re-converge at the next act's node?

Axoren

The Acts are also a means of partitioning the campaign to allow people a break and an opportunity to cleanly switch in new characters. There is an event that would happen that doesn't nullify all the choices made beforehand. Like, a meteor landing, or a natural disaster. They could have decided to go to the north and dismantle a dangerous circle of Mages or resolve political disputes in the south between the Kingdom and an Ex-Duke that is building his own opposing country...

But at the end of the day, that Meteor was always coming towards the planet, and it will have to be dealt with.

MikeQ

00:39

Ok, using the prewritten modules as an example, I see where you're going with this. You predefine the starting & ending conditions for each Act, but don't plan them session-by-session. Makes sense. Can involve a bit of railroading though. Still, there's a precedent.

BESW

The challenge I ran into with "the world keeps going, even the parts you ignore" is that it very often turns into "your choices are overwhelmingly small compared to the turning of the world" because the players feel like nothing they do is enough.

Axoren

The specific events I've chosen for transitions are:
Somehow, a trip to the Alternate. Somehow, a choice between worlds (where would you like to go? Are their loose ends in the Original you want to tie up? or are there pressing matters here you'd like to continue?). And then finally, regardless of which world they choose (or if they choose, or if they even fight for a way to go between at will), they learn the very nature of the story: how the player characters came to be who the players chose them to be, how the world came to be, and their role and the roles of various critical NPC charact…

MikeQ

For the NPC "seed" problem, try minimizing that set of "seeds" as much as possible. Like instead of introducing a cast of names to remember, you establish a small handful of factions or other world elements, and then focus on those most relevant to the ongoing act.

BESW

And that's, you know. fine if you're going for an existential dread kind of game, because giving the players more disasters than they can manage will always make them feel less competent and heroic.

MikeQ

If I understand correctly, the next disaster shouldn't escalate until the players have resolved the prior disaster, so it should produce a story where the players are making meaningful differences.

Axoren

00:45

@MikeQ I am definitely doing that for much of the Kingdom. I'm using things like Loyalists (two different variants on this, Loyalty to the Line and Loyalty to the Crown because they will be at odds), Federalists, and such.

@BESW I'm actually going for an uplifting surreal experience with it. I think I may have set the wrong impression here with using a Meteor as an example.

BESW

A meteor can be fine, it's this bit that gives me alarm bells:
"They could have decided to go to the north and dismantle a dangerous circle of Mages or resolve political disputes in the south between the Kingdom and an Ex-Duke that is building his own opposing country"

Axoren

There are a number of events that aren't necessarily happening unless the players trip the breakers to get involved with those things.

BESW

Because while on its face that's good agency-building, in the context of a complicated time-travel plot in a persistent world, that looks like a Hobson's choice.

Axoren

The Duke and his machinations only really get escalated and interesting if the players engage with it, otherwise it's a relatively annoying quagmire that doesn't evolve on any scale

I'm going to look that up, never heard the term.

BESW

Basically "looks like a choice but isn't."

Axoren

00:49

If at the end of the day, the players really divert from the Transition Points, it'll just be a different game.

BESW

Persistent "if you ignore a problem then it gets worse" worldbuilding gives the impression of being less "which bad thing do you stop from happening" and more "which bad thing do you let happen."

Axoren

In the same vein as if I started running Dragon Heist and everyone decided they weren't going to rob a villain, it would just be a game in Waterdeep.

Oh, no. This isn't a "the problem gets worse" situation. Each transition point is an template for an event that bridges the acts.

It's not like there's some timer that says "At 0:00, you get shot with time juice"

BESW

Gotcha.

Axoren

On some level, the world is going to be waiting for the party, and they aren't the only ones that can solve the problems of the world.

Villains that aren't dealt with by the party, might be brought up as "Oh, Joe the Barbarian and his Beer Carriers thwarted a Lich to the East, there's safer travel in that direction now and it's beautiful this time of year."

Whereas the party could have been the ones getting the glory.

I'm not going to take the fun stuff off the table if I see that they want more Dungeon Crawls? I keep the Vaults, Tombs, and Prisons on the table.

If I see they want more intrigue? I leave pull out some mysteries I've planned out for one-shots and associate them with the characters.

But I definitely have some prepped setting specific stuff.

AncientSwordRage

Not strictly RPG related, but I found this interesting

7 Underrated Books by Asian Authors

BESW

01:01

Ooh, if we're doing that...

"Adult Fantasy Books Written by AAPI Authors" from Copper Dog Books.

Paperblots wrote a twitter thread "on some (of my highly anticipated) 2021 ya/mg releases by asian authors."

Adeptus

01:17

@BESW AAPI?

BESW

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

Adeptus

Gotcha, thanks

BESW

It's a somewhat controversial bucket term that centers continental American categorization over the identities of the people it's describing, but it's been used a lot recently, especially in the context of recent pandemic-inflamed hate crimes because the perpetrators don't distinguish between all those communities.

Transplanar RPG tweeted a thread of the panels for their upcoming event "ROLL FOR SOLIDARITY: Uplifting Asian and Black Creatives in #TTRPG for #StopAAPIHate and #BlackLivesMatter!", an ALL-POC charity stream from 4pm-8:30pm CST on May 19 + May 20 on twitch.tv/transplanarrpg

goldenlassogirl asks on twitter "Should game designers be writing their games with bad faith players in mind?" The quote retweets have a lot of great discussion.

bobble

01:44

@AncientSwordRage I've never read the others but can vouch for Want.

On the other hand, I like nearly every book I read so take my recommendations with a grain of salt.

AncientSwordRage

Discussion point for game designers: if a system forces you to use basic powers to unlock your more exciting/customised powers (on a per conflict basis) does that build anticipation or make action use feel like a slog.

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage What do you mean by "use basic powers to unlock"? Prerequisites?

"You must know Fire Bolt to learn Fire Blast"?

Or "You must use Fire Bolt 10 times to learn Fire Blast"?

If the latter, the problem comes down to imposing an incentivizing metagame where they may be using their powers in inappropriate situations just to bolster their necessary casts of Fire Bolt.

Morrowind, one of my favorite RPGs of all time, had this problem.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren (this analogy only works if you break how D&D actions work) more like you must have cast firebolt this turn to cast fire ball later in the same turn

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage Then you're talking about Builder-Consumer type combat. One of our guys is working on that kind of combat.

This was a feature of Guild Wars 1 Assassin

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren I've come across those turns in programming separately, but never together like that?

Axoren

01:56

They had a Main Attack -> Off-Hand -> Dual Attack cycle, and each attack move put themselves somewhere in this cycle.

BESW

@AncientSwordRage I was always a little disappointed that 4e's power system diverged so dramatically from its late-3.5-era prototypes, the classes in the Tome of Battle and Tome of Magic.

Axoren

In the Secret World, various classes built up points with their Builder skills and their stronger Consumer skills ate X points from their point total.

BESW

They had a lot of very cool (but early-days clunky) variations on what you're talking about, where a class's powers were gated behind usage of other powers.

Axoren

And many classes in FFXIV have a Meter which works the same way

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren (un?)coincidentally I'm looking for a alternative term for Limit Break

BESW

01:59

4e designers have said clearly that Tome of Battle was their first experiments with what would become the 4e power system, but it was a lot more strategically complicated.

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage Unleash.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren that's interesting

Axoren

I'm trying to find the term used in The Secret World because I believe it was the more industry-used term.

"[Skill] builds N X resources."
"[Skill] consumes M Y resources."
Where N and M are counts, and X and Y are types of resources.

> Boiling Blood
> Builds 1 resource for each equipped weapon.
> A single target attack that deals 111* magical damage.
> Requires a Blood Focus.

In The Secret World, you had two simultaneous kits, and they were intended to synergize with each other depending on which two you had.

AncientSwordRage

So what sparked this idea was Tabatkins talking about how in d&d you can nova early in a combat and obliterate the BBEG without feeling like you really fought them

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage To avoid this, we considered Builder-Consumer to be the wrong approach for that and instead considered a staggered cooldown system.

AncientSwordRage

02:05

@Axoren go on?

BESW

@AncientSwordRage There's always the Fate attitude of spending early turns to build up bonuses

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage If you're not careful, every turn is Firebolt -> Fireball

AncientSwordRage

@BESW those book sounds familiar btw

Axoren

As for the cooldown system, you simply make it so that on each turn, more of the player's kit opens up, with the coolest stuff coming out later.

Two options being added to the pool each turn seems to work really well in practical testing.

Yet, we still have some work with Builder-Consumer, but it's a delicate balance.

BESW

I don't remember the Tome of Battle classes very well, but one of them was something like "you have five powers but you start combat with only two available to use; using a power replaces it with a power that was previously unavailable."

AncientSwordRage

02:07

@Axoren Sounds really interesting

BESW

So you can't just throw down all your powers at once, you have to use what you've got on deck in order to get to the next ones.

Axoren

You need to make gaining points a trade-off instead of a freebie. They must be giving up an opportunity to earn the points needed to cast something like Fireball.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW interesting

BESW

There's a 13th Age expansion class that uses its main-turn action to meditate and gain points which it can spend on out-of-turn reactions triggered by other characters' actions.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren my initial thought was that low rolls on the basic powers is what fuels the non-basic powers

Axoren

02:09

Biggest thing that goes into builder-consumer is that consumer scaling cannot be as powerful as high-level spells in 5e. Fireball shouldn't be able to hit an infinite amount of things if you can fit them in a 20-radius ball. That scales so well, the best strategy is to unlock Fireball and put everyone in a ball.

BESW

if you don't use up all your points by the time your next turn comes around, you blow them on a weak-but-better-than-nothing direct damage power.

@AncientSwordRage ...have you considered Roll For Shoes as a model for a power-up system?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW that feels extremely my sort of thing, even outside of this discussion

@BESW having played it is probably a distant inspiration that I should approach again

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage Sort of like an entropy-correcting mechanic? For something like this, I would look to how Evasion procs work in Path of Exile. It's a system that by design gives you the average number of Evasions more often than not. As to whether or not gating the right to cast Fireball or stuff like it behind this mechanic is another matter.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren I'll have to think about that

I really want to proc how in some media the hero is losing until suddenly they aren't anymore

Axoren

Then you want narrative surprise, which is what you'll get out of an entropy-correcting system.

BESW

02:13

RFS is definitely a good model for a simple entropy-correcting mechanic.

Axoren

It stops being "I need one more low roll to cast Fireball." and starts being "If I get a REALLY bad roll, I might need a Deus Ex Machina at this point."

Adeptus

@AncientSwordRage Isn't that something that Fate tries to do? You gain Fate points by letting the GM throw more obstacles at you, then spend points to overcome obstacles later?

Axoren

@BESW RFS?

AncientSwordRage

Thanks all, this has been a really interesting discussion, going to have to bow out now to get some sleep, bit will check back in the morning

@Axoren roll for shoes

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage I'll have to check that one out

BESW

02:16

The original blog post with the rules for Roll To See If I Have Shoes On is down, but it's archived and also you can find the rules in the roll-for-shoes tag wiki.

BESW

03:15

Brandon Leon-Gambetta wrote a twitter thread about "my favorite GM Principle in Pasión de las Pasiones."

creator day bundle! by riley rethal and 7 others. creator day bundle!: 8 items for $30.00 with content from Chloe Montgomery, gamesfromthewildwood, Geostatonary, Jay Dragon @ Possum Creek Games, riley rethal, Riverhouse Games, Tomas Herbertson

Tempered Legacy on Technical Grimoire. Tempered Legacy is a magic item supplement for fantasy RPGs. The powers of these items are locked behind the regrets of previous owners.

Heirs of Glass and Silver by Zoey Whiting. A couple rituals about reflections and their many sides.

Nevyn Holmes shared on twitter photos of the new GUN&SLINGER physical prints.

"Birthday dice bag - free pattern" by BardicWizard (yes, that BardicWizard).

Ben

@AncientSwordRage skill burst?

BESW

03:32

Devlog: "GUBAT BANWA 0.8 -「We Are Lightning」" by makapatag. The newest of Gubat Banwa's #TTRPG update brings with it huge overhauls, game design realignments, and a more confident stride into the territory of stylish tactical combat.

Adeptus

04:21

BESW

05:35

Logan of Ink and Stories made a twitter thread "of #ItchCreatorDay bundles I've found (so far)! Please add any I've missed & feel free to self-promo!"

Hot RPG Questions

11:18

4

Q: How can a DM make this wish go wrong?

If a player were to wish with this wording: "I wish for my wishes to be fulfilled exactly as I mean them to be, never taxing on me and never causing me to lose anything" Does this cover the following points: DM interpreting the wish not as the player meant Suffering fatigue or damage as a result...

Akixkisu

@HotRPGQuestions that still looks like a dupe.

A. B.

:-)

And yes, it does rather.

Akixkisu

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/96939/… that one looks interesting.

Should have improved that edit, but read it in one swoop, I didn't even notice that the body lacks the question of the header.

NautArch

11:38

→ 44 messages moved to Here There Be Dragons

Please continue the tagging discussion in there, thanks!

kviiri

@HotRPGQuestions Vaguely reminds me of this: xkcd.com/246

A non-TRPG question, does anyone have experience with the Jagged Earth expansion to the popular co-op board game Spirit Island?

I have the Branch and Claw expansion and I like it to a degree though I find some of its design choices a bit questionable

The Oracle

12:10

0

I recently reviewed a suggested edit and this is what I saw: As you can see, spells appears twice, once as though it were removed, and once as though it were added. Is this a bug? What does this mean?

support bug tags suggested-edits

Thomas Markov

12:24

I know nothing of fate, so I don't know if three fate system tags is correct or not on this question.

It certainly seems irregular because of my d&d centric experience, so I wanted to ask.

Someone_Evil

@TheOracle I actually thought that was due to a synonym thing. Good thing I looked up the MSE Q :)

@ThomasMarkov I think Fate questions look like that, reasonably often. IIRC some of the versions are very interchangeable, to some frustration for the cases that aren't

RevanantBacon

Looks weird to me too. Unless I'm remembering something wrong, Fate-Core is Fate. I think those two tags should be synonyms. Fate-accelerated is a supplement.

Oh, no I am remembering wrong

Someone_Evil

2

Q: What is the difference between the [fate] and [fate-core] tags?

There are three "fate" tags at the moment: fate, fate-core and fate-accelerated. FAE emphasis makes sense, but distinguishing Fate Core from "just Fate" seems redundant: If fate is supposed to be a "generic" Fate tag, then fate-core or fate-accelerated questions should always include it. There...

discussion tags fate

RevanantBacon

-core is in fact, mildly different from non-core

@Someone_Evil Yeah, that

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil Makes sense, thanks @doppelgreener

RevanantBacon

12:32

Although in that case, I would say that any post that includes the -core or -accelerated tags doesn't need the Fate tag, just like a D&D-5e post wouldn't need the Dungeons and Dragons tag

Thomas Markov

@RevanantBacon Eh, from Doppel's description, it seems like a substantively different issue

But you still might be right in some cases

Someone_Evil

Transferability is higher as far as I understand, and we don't need different families of systems to adhere to the same logic

BESW

Our baseline for tag intervention is "causing a problem," which I don't see this doing.

Someone_Evil

Actually I think D&D might be more the outlier, but it's case where we don't need the cross tag on them, and it'd just be a tax

BESW

And yeah, while on that particular question I think a Core/Accelerated focus is probably appropriate and the generic tag isn't strictly needed, Fate's a wibbly blurry enough set of systems that I've got no problem with it being there and certainly we shouldn't be looking to make a standard policy about it.

Such decisions definitely shouldn't be made based on inferences from how D&D editions interact with each other because that's almost entirely unlike how Fate's iterations work.

The question is one common to many many versions of Fate, though specific solutions may (or may not) vary somewhat depending on the nuances of a given game.

doppelgreener

13:41

@ThomasMarkov o7 happy to have helped

@Someone_Evil SSD says yes:

The “do it whatever way suits us at the time” is the default, yeah. For those who weren't here for it, the only reason D&D gets special treatment is that its tags started to cause problems and needed stronger guidance. — SevenSidedDie Apr 5 '17 at 17:38

@BESW 100%. Heck, I'm recalling that time I asked why only gurps-4e was the only GURPS edition with an edition-specific tag, and why we didn't do that for all the editions, and people responded saying yeah they're just not all that different, just 4e introduced some unique features we'll ask about specifically sometime. Different games, different environments, different tagging needs or lack thereof.

NautArch

I'm pretty sure I'm going to cancel one of my virtual games.

BESW

Yeah. PbtA, Gumshoe, BRP, all follow different iteration modes.

Specifically, all of these are describing system families, while dungeons-and-dragons is describing a franchise family.

It's like... I dunno, comparing asking about Half-Life mods to asking about Sonic games.

doppelgreener

The rules we apply to D&D tagging were there to solve a D&D tagging problem, not a site tagging problem, and that's specific to D&D. It would be a mistake to handle the special rules we applied there as the default.

BESW

yesterday, by BESW

I think an implicit question in a lot of these debates is "is rpg.se a D&D site that happens to sometimes cover other systems also?"

doppelgreener

The default is "whatever works and doesn't cause problems". It just so happens for D&D, that model works and addressed noticed problems. For other games, different models work. If Fate followed the same rules we applied to D&D tagging, that would cause problems.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

13:50

I'm actually ambivalent about 4e being the only one with the unique tag (at least now). But I haven't really been exposed to 1e and 2e, and anyone discussing non-4e seems to be discussing 3e, so shrug.

doppelgreener

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica here's the meta Q where i asked about that, in case you're interested: rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3396/1204

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Sorry, I'm just not feeling about the 3e/4e matter strongly enough to seriously engage in tag disputes on meta.

doppelgreener

That wasn't me suggesting you go post there, that was just me linking it in case you were interested in it at all. Reading, engaging, that wasn't the important part.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Well, skimming over the answer: I don't entirely agree that the two editions are fully interchangeable once you look closer. Trait prices (and some other calculations) changed significantly. Psionics changed radically. Autofire and shotguns confuse old-timers (even though the 4e mechanics are faster to resolve in play). But it's not a hill I want to die on.

Cat of doom2

14:45

hello

@doppelgreener how are you??

@AncientSwordRage @MikeQ can either of you help me?

doppelgreener

o/

Cat of doom2

?

doppelgreener

hi!

Someone_Evil

What do you need help with? That's a key starting point for whether one can help

Cat of doom2

@Someone_Evil well i have a request and a question.

can i have messages removed from my chat room for being off-topic? @Someone_Evil

Someone_Evil

14:57

@Catofdoom2 You should be able to move messages an an RO, but Imma look at it now

Cat of doom2

@Someone_Evil i'm fine to have that conversation with @KorvinStarmast but it's off-topic and I don't need it in that room

hello @Medix2

how are you @Medix2 ?

@Someone_Evil how do i move messages?

Someone_Evil

Are you using the mobile or desktop interface?

Cat of doom2

desk

Someone_Evil

It should be under the room option beneath the description in the right hand bar

Medix2

Hi, I'm doing well. Heading to work for a long shift now

Someone_Evil

15:11

I can do it for you, I was kinda thinking to help you to a less generic room name at the same time, but you'd like to Imma hold off. And I wanted to read the context before moving it

Cat of doom2

16:10

hello @Glazius

Thomas Markov

This seems like a good dupe closure to me, thoughts?

Cat of doom2

idk

Thomas Markov

@Someone_Evil check my flag ASAP

Cat of doom2

@ThomasMarkov whats wrong?

Someone_Evil

@Catofdoom2 Nothing to worry about :)

Thomas Markov

16:29

Any thoughts on my dupe closure mentioned above?

Cat of doom2

can you send @MikeQ my way when you see him?

Thomas Markov

The notification you just sent him will send him your way.

Upper_Case

I have an informal dungeon design questions for DMs that have developed their own: how many rooms do they have, on average, and how many sessions do your players typically spend completing them?

Thomas Markov

@Upper_Case In my experience there is no correlation between dungeon size and time to explore.

I say that a bit tongue in cheek because there is some correlation, at least on the extreme ends of the spectrum.

But Ive run a dungeon I made with 5 interesting rooms and 3 combat enounters (two basic mob encounters and a boss fight) with two different groups, and one group finished it in 3 hours or so, and another took two four hour sessions.

Upper_Case

@ThomasMarkov Yeah, that question may have been poorly formed. But dungeon size is still something I'm interested in. Is that 5 room/3 encounter setup typical for you?

Thomas Markov

16:45

Yeah, in my experience, 6 rooms is the upper end of what I would call a medium size dungeon.

But that may be because of how I run the game.

Another DM might could run a 20 room dungeon in the time I run a 5.

NautArch

@Catofdoom2 Please stop repinging people in the chat. One ping will do it, but if this is for coming to your chat room, please do not ping here for that.

Cat of doom2

@NautArch I only pinged him once.

Upper_Case

That sounds pretty reasonable, and not too far off from my usual dungeon sizes. I tend to go bigger when I really want to emphasize exploration, and as a D&D player I've only encountered officially published dungeons which have at least happened to be larger in most instances

MikeQ

@Catofdoom2 What do you need help with?

NautArch

@Catofdoom2 That was the second ping:chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/57998826#57998826

Cat of doom2

16:48

hello mike

Thomas Markov

@NautArch How many sessions were we in Xardorok's fortress?

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov I want to say 3-4.

Cat of doom2

@MikeQ i already did the thing i needed you for myself. @Someone_Evil was very helpful

Thomas Markov

So we just did a dungeon run by Naut, and it has 9 or 10 of what I would call rooms that we engaged with (we skipped a section entirely), and it took us 3 or 4 sessions, dont remember which.

Upper_Case

One of my games has transitioned to being measured in real-calendar time, so I want to make sure it wraps up by year's end, and content that is too savagely abbreviated is better dropped (or at least seriously revised), so I'm trying to get some more precision into my intuition

Someone_Evil

16:50

Related to the dungeon discussion: 5-room dungeon

Upper_Case

@Someone_Evil Thanks! I don't think I've seen this article before

Thomas Markov

I've never read that article and that's basically the exact formula I used.

Cat of doom2

KorvinStarmast got off-topic in the chat and that chat is strictly for talking about the campaign so I moved his messages

NautArch

I know that a 3-4 hour session can generally contain 1-2 combat encounters and 1-2 non-combat encounters. If it's a bigger battle, it might be 1 combat encounter taking up the entire session (and maybe more.)

Thomas Markov

@NautArch We also dont usually make it to 4 hours

NautArch

16:55

@ThomasMarkov that, too. I kinda miss 6 hour sessions.

Upper_Case

Six hour TTRPG sessions would have been a dream when I was in junior high. These days, though... well, they can be worth it, but I doubt the scheduling will ever work outo

NautArch

@Upper_Case Had a group where we'd do a Sunday. Start at 2 or 3PM and go to 9pm.

Was like `1/month.

Upper_Case

That's an interesting split. Did you like the longer sessions that infrequently, compared with something like four hours 2-4 times per month?

NautArch

We'd aim for 2month, but I'm very much currently enjoying my 1/week 3 hour sessions.

Currently with two groups, but I'm going to end one of them (not @ThomasMarkov)

I've got something hyperlocal (same street!) that I'm starting up.

Upper_Case

They do stack up. One of my games has a player in another time zone who just got a new job, so we have to shift to two hour sessions. But we can up them from 3 per month to 4, so with some minor pacing adjustments I think it will still be good

@NautArch Awesome! I feel like that's so rare

NautArch

17:00

Turn out I live on Nerd St.

:D

Thomas Markov

@NautArch buys house on Naut's street

jk ive got a closet full of stuff that is super illegal where you live.

Upper_Case

@ThomasMarkov !!!!!

With no more details, I can only assume it's a big pile of fake passports and arson supplies

NautArch

@ThomasMarkov Same here.

Thomas Markov

@Upper_Case No passports, and you cannot prove constructive intent on the arson supplies.

Upper_Case

@ThomasMarkov Not with the supplies alone, but I've seen some episodes of Forensic Files... besides, the absurd answers are more fun than the more-likely-to-be-true ones. "Closet" can be informative

(It's clearly fashion crimes)

GcL