TRPG General Chat - 2022-05-27

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12:31 AM

@Ben has it unset by now?

12:48 AM

Somewhat. Caffeine is wearing off

Hot RPG Questions

8

Q: How to best take notes as a player in an ongoing campaign?

I'm a player in years-long campaign. I'm also a GM in a (different) years-long campaign. I noticed that even though I tried to take extensive notes, I'd often miss important things (volume != quality I suppose), and I've noticed a similar thing happening for several of my players. Thus, I ask: wh...

system-agnostic

1:34 AM

Needles & Nilbogs: Dice stuffies!!

posted on May 27, 2022 by Bardic Wizard

I’M FREEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! … sorry. School got out today. Anyways, I’m just going to get that out of my system. Ahem. Who wants to see crocheted Platonic solids, aka dice? This has been my project since the school carnival, and basically it’s a lot of granny squares/pentagons/triangles that are either crocheted or sewn together and stuffed kind of loosely. I took no notes and wrote no…

AncientSwordRage

1:58 AM

> I think the dodecahedron/d12 is my favorite of all the ones I made, honestly

Team d12!

2:31 AM

@KorvinStarmast it's a rule that isn't in the book, so it's a house rule. No "tone" involved, it's a statement of fact. As written, Dispel Magic ends the effects of spells, not non-spell abilities. Changing it to affect all magical effects is reasonable, but it isn't what the book says, so it's a house rule.

1 hour later…

3:58 AM

The mainsite question "How do I make a non-permanent death more impactful?" highlights that in D&D death can be the only meaningful pressure. There are so many non-RPG stories about how inconvenient, distressing, and downright miserable that scenario could be, which a different RPG might be able to draw on more effectively.

For example, death might mean changing where you live and who you know. That would give the character a depth of experience coupled with a sense of loss, and make it very awkward to meet up with people from your past.

@BESW Personally I would feel that I had failed as a DM if risk of character death was the only meaningful pressure in my D&D games. Perhaps there is insufficient support for that narrative in the mechanics, but I don't see any reason I couldn't make it meaningful in a game I was running.

It's a common enough theme in rpg.se questions and various other places where people talk about such things, that I feel confident placing the responsibility on the system and not on the GMs who are left with pressure to perform but little to no guidance or support.

"The GM can fix it" still means it was broken.

4

I disagree. That a system chooses to leave the nuanced parts of the RP to the GM doesn't make it broken.

I'm not even sure what you're arguing against, it sounds like you think I said D&D can't have other pressures or something.

4:15 AM

It feels strange to right off a system as flawed because some DMs choose not to write engaging narratives. All your examples could easily be played out in D&D.

I didn't write off the system, nor did I say D&D can't do those things.

I said "can be" and "more effectively." Because in many of the systems I've been working with recently, it would be impossible for death to be the only meaningful pressure, while I see that happen semi-regularly in D&D because it doesn't push against the possibility.

Maybe "broken" was too strong a word (it's an idiom that I used without necessarily thinking through all the literal implications), but I do see --especially in 3e and 5e-- a big problem where the text sets up play expectations without providing support for GMs to make them happen.

I'm struggling to put into words exactly what my issue is. I don't disagree that other RPGs handle non-death stakes better than D&D. For some reason it feels like you were saying "other RPGs do this better therefore D&D is broken" which isn't what you actually said and I'm having trouble figuring out why I read it that way.

If I had to guess, your use of the word 'failed' implies that you saw it as a value judgement on yourself, rather than an observation about the system which is compassionate toward the GMs who try to use it.

Perhaps. Apologies for being argumentative, wasn't my intention.

And I'm sorry that I got brusque at what I perceived as blaming GMs for not compensating for a system's weaknesses.

4:29 AM

@BESW I guess it comes back to what your expectations are for the system to provide. Similar to "campaign expectations" different people are looking for different things from the system. I generally just want an unobtrusive system that provides (reasonably) balanced mechanics to resolve tension. (e.g. combat system) while not being so prescriptive as to be limited by the mechanics in roleplay.

There are a lot of systems which leave major parts of the table experience entirely in the hands of the players (inclusive of GM), but D&D 3e/5e have a tendency to blame the GM if they don't anticipate and correct for the system's actual inadequacies--leveraging "the GM is the final arbiter" as an excuse rather than as empowerment.

@AncientSwordRage it turned out really amazing, and then C threw it at my head and now it’s shaped a tiny bit oddly but I still really love it especially the way the colors turned out

I enjoy (and write!) games that carefully leave large, deliberate gaps in their text which the group is invited to fill in or leave empty however they like. D&D's gaps do not feel careful or deliberate, and the negative space they create is filled with expectations that require a level of skill (that the text doesn't teach) which is unreasonable for a franchise that presents itself as an ideal introduction to the hobby.

@BESW That's a fair criticism I guess. I suppose I've never really thought about how other systems do a better job of teaching new GMs.

Or don't present themselves as good introductions to the hobby.

I expect a system to meet its own expectations.

> Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories, a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers’ action.
(page one of the Basic Rules)

4:36 AM

I have always had the assumption that first time players shouldn't be DM until they have played or watched a few session. But looking at it that is probably a D&D-centric view based on my own introduction to the game.

D&D does not give structure to stories, it gives structure to individual actions, character power advancement, and certain kinds of (violent) scenes. And it offers a very minimal spread of possible consequences, mostly death. Everything else is left to the GM leading their own "game of make believe."

@linksassin If my friends had waited for an experienced DM before starting our first game, we would never have started.

My first TRPG was also my first time running a game of D&D 3e. Some of the people in my group had played in a couple of games from earlier systems or D&D-likes, but none of us had any experience running a game. The DMG was my only instruction text, and it failed me badly, leaving me thinking that problems with system/table incompatibility were my fault.

It didn't occur to me to even look for online resources until a year later, and what I found tended to be (in hindsight) no better for my path as a GM than the DMG had been: more advice about good and clever it was to treat my friends as opponents to be tricked and manipulated, depictions of gaslighting as 'good roleplay,' the idea that the best way to create tension was to take away anything they liked.

I can understand how that happened. I do struggle to imagine what better support for DMs would look like in a D&D system without (implied) limited the styles of play the base rules support.

Despite that, we had fun. Because we were friends and tried to put that ahead of the game's expectations, because we eventually learned how to talk freely and constructively about our expectations and concerns, because I'd had training in facilitating creative collaboration in other settings, and because I spent an astonishing amount of time doing homebrew and re-writes that I thought was a totally normally part of the game.

@linksassin Yes, well, I'd argue that's the other part of 5e's "failure to meet its own expectations" problem: it wants to be every game for everybody, supporting every style of play while still being a legacy product. It inherited that directly from 3e (I can dig up the receipts for that given a few minutes) because 4e's clear aim of being only ONE kind of game is why it got such a vocal backlash.

4:52 AM

@BESW Probably true. Impossible to meet expectations when it's up to the viewer what those expectations should be.

That's... backwards.

Wizards chose this.

Sorry, badly worded. What I meant was that by not defining the kind of game it is, it leaves it open to not meeting the expectations of players who were expecting something specific and they didn't say they weren't that.

5e's backpedaling from 4e's clear play goals; the return to 2e/3e legacy forms in structure, style, content, and presentation; the way it was marketed even during the playtesting; Wizards very deliberately chose to communicate that D&D 5e was going to be the One True Game To Unite All The Warring Factions.

The 5e DMG's advice on "immersive storytelling" contains literal copy-paste from the 3e5 DMG, which was notoriously bad and so far as I can tell 5e added more text without adding anything particularly useful in terms of guidance on how to (and I'm quoting both 3e and 5e here) "change rules to fit the player's roleplaying needs."

Compare a text like Fate which provides principles and structures for how to change rules (fractal mechanics) and why (fiction first and nonsensical results), with examples.

(What 5e does provide for things like "ignoring the dice"? The players have to convince the GM to ignore the dice. The phrase "how well the players make their case" is used. I'm on record for thinking that inspiration is a tool for training players to play however the GM prefers, so guess what I think of that.)

5:09 AM

Not going to argue that isn't what inspiration is for. I 100% agree that is what it is for. I guess the rules just don't frame that as a bad thing.

So it's not that the D&D text doesn't say what it is or isn't. It explicitly makes claims to support certain kinds of stories, and then immediately shoves the responsibility for making that happen off onto the GM.

@linksassin Oh, absolutely. The rules think it's great. I disagree strongly, especially in the wider context of the pressure and authority placed on the DM's mantle and how inspiration works as a tool in that larger arsenal.

In my current game I have offloaded awarding of inspiration to the players. End of each session they vote for "play of the day" and that player receives inspiration next session.

Compare Golden Sky Stories, where the only currency for advancement is handed out as a reward for good behavior... but (a) the text clearly describes minimal expectations of what that behavior includes so you can be confident of getting it without playing read-the-GM's-mind and (b) everyone can award it to everyone from an unlimited stockpile (the GM needs it to advance NPCs as well).

(And once you have the currency, spending it on your own character always also advances one other character of your choice.)

Goal is to try to promote the players to make exciting choices rather than safe ones. Which when using a variant of gritty realism rests for an exploration game is a reasonable choice to play it safe.

6:07 AM

@linksassin Sense of loss drives that for my groups. Both usually place more importance on the narrative and development of the communities which they develop and become attached than the survival of the characters they play. Makes for some heroic story arcs that do involve taking on risk that an ambivalent group would not.

@linksassin yoink

@GcL Let me know how it goes. It's been working relatively well so far. Though my players often forget to use the inspiration.

Things that have earned POTD so far:
* Telling the couple in the inn that if they are going to keep the PC up at night they can at least invite her to join.
* Burning a monster to death while wearing a bathrobe
* Grappling a goblin off a flying vulture
* Pushing other player in the water (twice)
* Confessing secrets to strange priestess to earn the party their favour
* Fighting an actual gorilla for trying to steal the party's net.

6:34 AM

@linksassin I have a little statue. I might have that as the token. Also, there's now a smoke em' if you got em' attitude, so I'm thinking it might get used immediately. I'll let you know after Monday.

@linksassin That is highly entertaining.

4 hours later…

AncientSwordRage

10:50 AM

@BESW I think some of that is the culture that D&D has cultivated? That still system-specific but it's also the ecosystem around it

And reading more of the convo, yeah, the marketing for D&D Next (now 5e) pushed exactly those buttons

I was playing Baldur's gate long before I touched a TTRPG book, but the first one I read was Vampire the Masquerade, and it actually did give guidance on stories etc.

I don't recall it being amazing, but 15 year old me took it on board and I glossed over it missing in D&D as a whole.

2 hours later…

Hot RPG Questions

12:55 PM

5

Q: How do I make a non-permanent death more impactful?

One of my players is going to be playing the homebrew Felis race for the campaign I'm going to be running. In the race description, it states that they have nine lives, and they typically die once every fifteen years. This is part of my player's backstory, and I'd like to include that. The death ...

dnd-5e homebrew character-death adventure-writing

1:27 PM

Primal Quest - Witches Don't Die & The Demon From The Depths by Dragon Peak Publishing. Two pamphlet adventures for Primal Quest

@AncientSwordRage Absolutely there's a culture like that. But I came to it from a text-only introduction to the game completely cut off from pre-existing community.

And yes, I can't say "well it was the early 2000s and nobody knew better" because I've read Call of Cthulhu's crystal-clear expectation-setting text.

H*ck, I've read texts from 1985 that do a better job.

@Adeptus You are wrong. A ruling is what a DM is supposed to do. Making a ruling is not by default a house rule.

That SA thing Crawford offered, due to an apparent contradiction in the text, also represents a ruling. You will note that the spell was not the subject of an errata.

Also from Sage Advice. "But our game makes a distinction between two types of magic: the background magic that is part of the D&D multiverse’s physics and the physiology of many D&D creatures {and} the concentrated magical energy that is contained in a magic item or channeled to create a spell or other focused magical effect. In D&D, the first type of magic is part of nature. It is no more dispellable than the wind."

Again: all spells create magical effects, not all magical effects are spells.

Counterspell, on the other hand, explicitly identifies spells as its target.

1 hour later…

2:47 PM

0

Q: How should alt-text be considered for accessibility?

What rarity is the Shadowsong bow in AL play, after the Content Catalog v9? originally had images of an item's description and of an AL catalog ruling. As is a habit, I edited the post to replace images of these texts with their texts, thinking to improve accessibility. I then noticed that the or...

discussion accessibility

3 hours later…

5:49 PM

@KorvinStarmast Dispel magic also only states that it ends spells. While the caster could choose any magical effect as the target, dispel will only end spells on that target.

2 hours later…

Hot RPG Questions

8:19 PM

4

Q: Can monks use a Sun Blade as monk weapon?

Rules as written, can monks use a Sun Blade as a monk weapon? Sun Blade Weapon (longsword), rare (requires attunement) Properties: Versatile, Finesse

dnd-5e magic-items weapons monk proficiency

2 hours later…

10:04 PM

I just found out I made the state fair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have a table topper in the student showcase!!!!

@BardicWizard That sounds exciting. Fair food and table top games.

10:50 PM

@GcL fair food and crochet, actually!

I'd watch that. Not coordinated for it, but like the results as well.

What projects are you doing there?

ravelry.com/projects/BardicWizard/forget-me-not-table-topper

It didn’t do the image right, hang on

@BardicWizard Grats!

user image

@BESW thanks!

Ooh nice

An Anti-Sisyphus Of One's Own by Chris Bissette. anti-sisyphus

Aaron Lim's latest newsletter talks about playtesting

"Navathem's End OST in progress!" by Diwata ng Manila on Patreon

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May '2227

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