@BESW That sounds really interesting!

You know what I hate? When a character is forced to go against his morals by the rest of the party / the game when I know they would actually just leave the party.

Second session Lawful Good vigilante fighter helps kidnap someone when I know he would actually be stopping it…

#TalkToTheDM/Players

Lol

In all seriousness though, That's part of the reason why I avoid any combination of "lawful" and "good", because I, as a player, would just get too drawn into the story and forget what my PC is supposed to be doing

Yeah but like, I tried and tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t listen… my only option would be to get them arrested, or sit there watching other people play for two hours, or have my pc do something against his nature..

@Ben I know what my PC should do and would do, but I don’t want to wreck the game for everyone else who just does whatever,.

@BESW it’s not so much alignment as character beliefs. No way my PC would help people kidnap, he’s not that kind of guy.

Brings up an interesting question: if I feel my PC does not fit the game, should I ride it out or switch characters?

Ah yeah, that's... the sort of thing it's best to head off with establishing the kind of game we're playing beforehand so everybody's playing a character who's on board with it, or wanting to play characters who are going to have moral conflicts because that's the kind of drama the group desires. But once you're in the middle of the game and the story's been established and everyone else isn't seeing a problem...

At that point I've seen a few useful tactics.

@BESW yeah that’s it exactly. I thought the game would be different than it is.

One is to go "wait, never, no way? Maybe there's a version of this where he can be reluctantly persuaded to go along with it." I find that it can be helpful to remember times when I've done things that seemed very out of character, because my friends were involved. Maybe I, too, didn't recognize what was going on until I was already in the thick of it. Or maybe I thought I could be a mitigating influence. Or I just succumbed to some kind of pressure.

Another is to make "no, I won't" a character moment, have the character walk away, and play another character for at least the duration of that specific storyline.

Then of course you can always take a page from Marvel comics and retroactively announce that your out-of-character actions were because you'd been replaced by a robot/shapeshifter/stan.

> The game is supposed to be fun for everyone

Ideally, as we know, there'd be a table-level discussion about expectations and how to handle this. But it sounds like you've tried and there's no much interest in helping you figure this out.

Which is the only reason I'd advocate for leaving the game altogether; not that there's this problem, but that they aren't interested in finding solutions.

Separate note, I was just looking at some of my old questions, and this one is closed as needing to be more focused.

I don't see why though...

@BESW less so than putting your foot in your mouth

Into The Dungeon Bundle by kumada1 and 25 others. a collection of dungeon-themed trpgs and trpg supplements, designed to present you with an assortment of dangerous, forgotten spaces.

Josh Fox started a twitter thread for people to share their indie TTRPG projects.

@Ben This part of the phrase "what negatives" is a little too open ended maybe?

@BESW whats going on with the feeds?

Whenever a new rss is added to the list, the next time the feed checks for updates it adds the five most recent posts from the new site.

I couldn't remember which format this site prefers for youtube feeds, so I added both and removed the one that didn't take.

@BESW Mmhmmm, I've not seen any of those feed's posts though

So as not to flood the chat, all feeds except rpg.se meta and HNQ are relegated to the drop-down ticker.

We could move them to posting in the main chat, if people want.

I think mainly I was just being nosy as to what was added/removed

Today, I added In The News, a youtube channel that does weekly (indie) TTRPG news videos.

@BESW nice

Alright team, we have 3 years to decide on the tag name for the next iteration of D&D.

In what world will it not be dnd-6e?

It looks like something like 5.5e might catch on with the community.

Theyve said it would be backward compatible with 5e content.

@ThomasMarkov ultimate-dragon-crisis-involving-dungeons-among-infinite-planes

@ThomasMarkov is there a good single news source on that?

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica so a Planescape campaign setting?

@AncientSwordRage it was announced on the stream for the D&D celebration event.

Ill find a link.

Here is the reddit thread I saw.

Alternatively, dnd-balboa.

@ThomasMarkov yeah I saw that, but I did't want to watch the whole thing (or ask a Q here) just to get info on it

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica what about dnd-a-cold-day-in-hell

Also a new monster manual coming in January.

10 points if you get the reference

With updates to playable races.

@ThomasMarkov in the MM...?

If it's backwards compatible, then history tells us it's not a new edition.

@AncientSwordRage I don't, sorry.

comicbook.com/gaming/news/…

@BESW well, did people say 5e would be compatible with every other edition?

@BESW yup

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Tremors 6

something doesn't sit right with me, if there're going to be playable races, that are in a book with a title that references monsters

@AncientSwordRage I think their intent is to standardize many of the non-PHB "monstrous" races.

@AncientSwordRage 3e had a book entirely dedicated to turning monster manual creatures into playable characters and it was called, I kid you not, Savage Species.

@ThomasMarkov yeah but a significant amount of people have a lot of experience of being treated as monstrous IRL (at least from what I've gleaned, I'm not one of them as of today)

@BESW I owned that book once upon a time

I statted up a half-dragon troll paladin once

It was one of my favorite books as a GM, just 'cause of all the delicious ways I could make characters that surprised my friends.

my logic, when I was probably pre-teen or just after, being that half-dragon (or some other template I forgot) gave enough of an int bonus that they would be smart enough not to have to conform to the alignment in their stat block

@AncientSwordRage If a gothic-punk genre can successfully make a whole game out of it, surely a kitchen-sink can make a supplement doing something similar?

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica being successful, and being inclusive aren't necessarily the same thing

@AncientSwordRage unles the whole point of the game is that you play monsters, yes, that's bad.

@Trish yeah if the buy in is that 100% of players are 'monsters' then thats cool

That can be cool. Having some (but not all) of the players have monster PCs can also be cool (e.g. Monster Hunters, Dresden Files, the occasional mixed party in WoD, surely many a BESM game, Fallout PnP).

@AncientSwordRage My players are absolutely monsters.

@NautArch I resemble that remark.

@ThomasMarkov Yes, yes you do :P

@ThomasMarkov you're more of a broom than a monster

When I was figuring out what monster to use for last session, I nearly picked one that had dispel magic (and as a legendary action.)

I just couldn't make that monster fit as easily.

@NautArch what's wrong with that?

@KorvinStarmast They set up a tiny hut to keep themselves safe during the fight. At the expense of watching the monster destroy the main mast and take a big chunk of the main deck out.

@AncientSwordRage I mean, think about an RPG where you play Monsters fighting against the oppression of humans. Or Monsters trying to blend in with humans to try to avoid getting driven to extinction. The whole monster thing then is a selling point. But putting all non-basic racial options into a monster manual?! DISRESPECT!

@Trish My points above are definitely influenced by having watched this video by Legal Kimchi

It's kinda funny to think about how much people got upset at blockquotes no longer being yellow, but now my brain has been trained to notice the vertical bar instead

If anybody finds a post that has an image very near the start (or at the start) of the post, I'd appreciate a ping and link to it. Ah, found one actually

@NautArch Good edit on that AD&D 1e psionic question, but it's based on an utterly invalid premise. Methinks the asker is back-assuming a 3.x restriction on psionics that is not infact present in that game feature. checking my 2e stuff to confirm ...

@KorvinStarmast which we can clear up, since it now is a stackable question.

They may be thinking about AD&D 2e, which had the psionicist class.

That might be the case, perhaps even though they specified adnd - they thought that would refer to adnd2e.

@Akixkisu Given that I have the source material, there is no question about the mistake being made in tagging. With the correct tag, this is a very good question on "how do I resolve this apparent contradiction?" (Which means that @KRyan's points in the comments are valid, but he apparently doesn't see the tagging/edition problem).

@KorvinStarmast I think he is wrong in that the question also had other problems that NautArch's edit resolved.

Either way I think I will retract my reopen vote until they specify 2e or 1e.

@Akixkisu The too many questions issue is a gray area. A lot of times there are imbedded subordinate issues within a question that if properly framed can fit. If not properly framed, it leads to a difficulty in focus. I like the edit since it makes the question (and possible answer) simpler and clearer for people who know nothing about the system. 😛

@Akixkisu Well, in 1e I can answer very simply. There is no such restriction. But that may not help the asker at all. 😁

@KorvinStarmast what made me close it - is not the too many questions issue.

it is this phrase:

My first impression was "designer intent" and that's another reason I liked Naut's edit.

"What should I call them?"

The focus on the "I."

I don't really think that "What should I call them" and "Is there an official name for them" are particularly different. At the very least, I wouldn't bat my eye at an edit changing the former to the latter

@Akixkisu By the way, a great big thank you (and our other helpers in chat), and a free beer, for your assistance on the shadow mantle question. I presented it to our group and they are all happy with it, waiting on the DM's final tweaks. 👍😊

@Medix2 it depends on the context, in a vacuum I would probably feel the same way.

@KorvinStarmast Glad that it wortked out well :)

@Akixkisu In a vacuum, I'd feel a need to escape so that I could get a breath ... 😂

@KorvinStarmast that is why one should close the vacuum ;)

@Akixkisu That's entirely fair. I know I lack any of the background knowledge about adnd 1/2 to know whether to vote on that question; so I've stayed away mostly

I also think that KRyan is correct in that most of it is something we can answer (even the part that sounds like a rant), but we disagree about how much we should leave up for assumption before clarification.

@KorvinStarmast That bit I didn't realize! I haven't voted to reopen because OP hasn't responded. I'd prefer to wait for them to say yes before voting myself.

undelete this well written dupe.

created a tag and tag wiki for this question, alien-rpg

So it's been weighing on my mind recently: I'm finding less to do on the site. I've raised a bunch of times that the site's not supporting non-D&D games, as have others. We've been told that isn't a problem. Those of us who shared stats were told they're not significant / there's just statistical anomaly / the early years aren't reliable / etc. "Status quo is just fine," according to people whom status quo suits just fine.

But like, I can't put into words the existential issue I feel this represents the site. The site drifting towards 100% D&D content is, I think, incredibly detrimental to the health of the site even for the D&D players.

Is there a subreddit for the game(s) you like? I spend more time on reddit for non-D&D games.

@doppelgreener I would love to ask more non-d&d questions, but I've literally not got anything to ask

@GcL I don't want to interact with Reddit, and that's not related to the health of this site.

Not wanting to deal with Reddit seems like a reasonable position. Isn't SE a for profit business?

@GcL the only benefit from Reddit I can think of is finding a Q&A there and (with attribution) paying them as a self answer here, and even that feels quite sketchy

@GcL there's a community here as well, and the healthier it is, the more influence we can have over the site, surely?

@AncientSwordRage It's one of my AM5 resources and discord.

@AncientSwordRage I don't agree with that supposition.

It's an open chat. A general chat, even.

@GcL (Sorry for stepping into this, I've got feelings on three matter as well, hope that's ok too barge in)

Even so, I would want to shout anybody out

You've got a barge?! Why didn't you list that in our assets?!

I fat fingered and deleted one of my comments

@GcL our assets?!

@AncientSwordRage A giant, a swordsman, a cart, or holocaust cloak can make a big difference in the upcoming encounters!

Some issues on my mind: less cross-pollenation of ideas (even D&D players can see the radically different ways non-D&D games get run, learn from them, and maybe even get interested in playing them themselves), and site protocols being formed entirely on D&D 5e could make the site more hostile to non-D&D games.

@AncientSwordRage You're in the General Chat, then you're on the team. We're probably going to have more weddings to crash and wars to head off. You can't just be not mentioning barges thinking they won't be useful.

@doppelgreener Do the people that participate in the other online forums for your games avoid SE?

When designer reasons questions were getting drawn off topic, I got pushback on the idea that other games might need to be moderated differently. I play a game where designer reasons are readily available on almost every topic because the actual designers have maintained the game for its entire lifespan and have written about almost every single "why we did it this way" angle imaginable.

@doppelgreener That sounds interesting. What game is that and is the dev commentary readily available?

@GcL Fate. The designers have blogs. We'd cite them fairly regularly around the time Fate Core came out.

@doppelgreener Never thought to look up the blogs of the authors. Thanks.

Where to the Fate gamers mostly congregate online? Discord?

Now, that doesn't mean "why is X this way" questions are inherently 100% workable for Fate Core, but they're a whole lot more workable because the situation is completely different. We know our designers, they know what they wrote, they write about why they wrote it and lay out their thoughts at length, and, well, our relationship with the authors is diametrically opposite to that of D&D players. (The vitriol in this chat around the idea of quoting Crawford or Mearls is alien for Fate.)

@GcL Previously, Google Plus. I'm not sure where they congregate now.

This just means that the Fate community's approach to moderating "why" questions would be entirely different to the D&D community's approach for moderating the same. It may decide they're also unworkable (it likely won't), but that should be a decision made by Fate players based on data from Fate Q&A.

Do you want more Fate gamers to congregate here?

Yes, I would like to see more Fate-related activity on this site.

I've recently started running Fate again, so I may even wind up producing some of it.

@doppelgreener I know that there were blogs by onyx path a while back for instance.... Also we have game developers here who can just answer for us

@doppelgreener We could find where they hang out and invite them to hang out here.

@doppelgreener if I was in a fate game I would likely have questions to ask

@GcL I'm sure that could be doable in some way, though not quite so simply maybe

@doppelgreener I imagine some googling and typing. I would expect the investment in the effort would mostly be time.

@GcL For some reason I read that as Groping and Typing. Highly inappropriate.

There we go, one genuine question about an indie game I want to play.

woot!

listen i haven't said that word in several years that's how excite i am seeing a puppy day question

@NautArch I dunno... maybe you got one of those specialist keyboards where that's one of it's kinks.

😉

I does feel like years since march, so it still counts.

@doppelgreener ... I have plans for more questions now you've set my brain going

@AncientSwordRage okay maybe plus one lol

@AncientSwordRage :D

so... dnd 5.5e hype?

@doppelgreener at some point i'd like to run another fate game, it's been years since i've ran dresden files

@DForck42 DND 3.5.5

I imagine it's just going to be a consolidated errata ruleset to account for the past 7 or so years of feature creep and responding to public criticisms.

i actually stole copious amounts from the city building portion of the dresden files rpg for my current campaign

@ThomasMarkov lol

@MikeQ so probably not that big a change for us dnd beyond users since they tend to keep up with errata

Then again, 2014 would be about a decade since 5e was originally released. So maybe it's a new edition. But thanks to the interwebs and collective online homebrew, the D&D 5e behemoth has effectively mutated into its own system already. And the UA playtest material hasn't deviated that much from the core mechanics.

@MikeQ Some Ua has deviated significantly, but those deviations havent made it into the official publications.

@MikeQ part of what i love about 5e is that, yes there are a ton of books, but nothing beyond the phb really feels absolutely necessary to get in order to play and have a lot of fun. in 3.5 i felt like i had to pirate all of the books in order to build a character good enough to not die in the first session

4e was so complicated out of the box that i didn't buy any of the expansion books, i just bought their character builder

@DForck42 Xanathar's Guide is a great supplement though, both for players and DMs.

If they really just wanted to consolidate erratas and rebalanced rules, beyond what they did with Tasha's, it wouldn't take them until 2024. So maybe this announcement just means "don't expect any new content for the next 3 years".

Maybe they'll go the Pathfinder route and release one last book with all their bad and untested ideas, to milk the fanbase before officially retiring the system.

what i personally, really want, is a guide on creating "monsters" and how to balance them with a particular party in mind. if there's a good guide out there i haven't personally seen it

personally

There are guides, on the internet, for free. Nuggets of wisdom in forums and blogs. Anecdotes from folks who tried homebrew stuff, or were dissatisfied with the officially provided material. Homebrew balancing is often subjective, and a single official book won't work for everyone. Besides, they already did that back with the Dungeon Masters Guide.

@DForck42 i took that and mashed it with two other comparable systems for my current fate game

described here, but it needs some work. it produced a fairly realistic world that had no clear good or bad guys. in hindsight though i got out what i put in: two out of the three systems i smashed together were designed to produce exactly that result. but masters of umdaar needs a story with clearer villains, so if i use this again i need to adjust it to ensure at least one villain happens.