@Helwar I might have found an actual quote: blog.goo.ne.jp/kats-takami/e/ae79b91275020923f420e5a72a7d0e82

> 「死の前に生。弱さの前に強さ。行き先の前に旅」

oh wow

you're still looking into this? thanks!

this is super in kanji though haha

gonna try to get it in romaji

Shi no mae ni nama. Yowa-sa no mae ni tsuyo-sa. Ikisaki no mae ni tabi (according to google)

Shi no mae ni nama. Yowa-sa no mae ni tsuyo-sa. Ikisaki no mae ni tabi

lol

I'm updating my answer with the info.

greato!

thanks

how the heck did you even find this?

A bit of Googling. And actually it lead me back to a the Reddit link you screenshotted:

reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/73aava/…

Also found it by searching for what I thought part of the translation would be.

thank you <3

I dunno what chocolate is saying in the comments though :)

@Helwar They said (I think) that my original way to write "before" was humorously incorrect. They then suggested an alternative.

(which I edited into the answer)

essentially that I should use "bi" instead of "be" which makes much more sense since that is much closer to the English pronounciation anyways.

("bee" vs "bay")

we spanish people have it a little easer to make those transliterations

as we read vowels exactly the same as japanese people do

(not much else in common though :^)

lol that definitely helps

@Helwar I was gonna point out that it's pronounced "sei" when used to mean "life", but someone already did it there :)

@V2Blast And I should have known that too!

it... escapes me really

Death before raw lol

hahahahha

my take at converting that translation to digicode

Not bad!

oh wait i used the bad translation xD

used nama instead of sei

now

haha

I've noticed Google Translate's romaji transcriptions often use the wrong reading even when the audio pronunciation is right

that's why I never trusted google translate :)

@jgn By the rules you shouldn't declare you're making any check (except when a feature explicitly says so) but only what you are doing, so passive checks aren't rrally distinct in that regard. But yes, they are the same thing in 5e.

dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/…

> A passive check is a special kind of ability check that doesn't involve any die rolls. Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly, such as searching for secret doors over and over again, or can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster.

A check without making rolls, can represent repeatedly performing a task, equals your modifiers + 10. Sounds like exactly what take 10 was?

@kviiri [blink] Is 5e trying to pull an AW?

@BESW Weeell, highly technically so

It doesn't sound like they have the infrastructure to back it up.

And no, it doesn't really. The GM comes up what, if any, you should roll after you tell what to do.

It's a common misconception in 5e that "passive" in passive checks refers to the character being passive, actually it's passive in the sense that nothing is rolled.

yeah, the word "passive" is very misleading, as the description sounds much more like a combination of 3.5's taking 10 for doing something once, but carefully, without any pressure; and 3.5's taking 20 for doing something without any pressure that you can repeat without penalty until you get it right.

The take 10 works, I guess, but it has always seemed a tad hacky to me.

I think it's trying to band-aid-fix the goblin dice problem, but... yeah, I'm not super impressed?

And unintuitive: when not even trying, the "guaranteed" result of 10 seems too good, and when actually trying without time constraints or pressure, way too low.

@kviiri In past editions you can choose to take 10 or take 20. In 5e you cannot choose to take a passive check. It's not the same thing at all.

Generally players don't even know they are making a passive check.

@jgn Maybe? But the rules are there still.

I agree there's no mechanism to declare you're taking ten, but you can always argue to your GM that a check you're making should be passive.

@kviiri You can always argue with your DM about anything, but by the rules there is no mechanism for a player to ever take a passive check.

Taking a 10 was used when the other option was a d20 roll. Passive checks are typically meant for situations where no roll (or choice) is prompted.

@jgn You shouldn't be "taking" active checks either. You tell what your character does, the GM tells which check to take.

@MikeQ in 5e, a passive check IS a check without a roll, not just "typically".

@kviiri Not true at all, that's a common misconception. There are tons of situations where you roll a check.

@kviiri Sort of? There's a nuanced difference, but in practice that difference isn't really important

@MikeQ What difference do you mean?

You cannot say "I'm not going to roll this one, I'll make a passive check instead", and apart from a few exceptions there isn't any provision for DMs to offer or allow passive checks in the same way as taking 10.

@jgn In which situation would you take 10, but a GM shouldn't offer a passive check?

It's a semantics difference. The numbers are usually the same, with exceptions like Alert that only add to the passive value.

@MikeQ Yeah but what semantics difference? I agree that the earlier edition "take 10" was an active choice taken by the player while a passive check is something the GM can choose to use, but is there something more you mean?

@kviiri Any situation which is not "done repeatedly" nor "the GM secretly determining the result". One example would be taking time to stealth quietly instead of taking a random result.

@jgn Hm, I see. Incidentally one of those classically hard situations to represent with a d20, anyway

tbh I think the Passive check rules are a half-hearted attempt to mush the take 10 in

@kviiri In older editions you can take 10/20 depending on the situation. There is no way for a player to choose to make a passive check, what's more the rules for passive checks don't even cover this situation.

I'm struggling to explain it well, but it's something like... Taking a 10 was used in situations that otherwise assumed someone would roll. Whereas mechanics that use passive values assume no roll.

@kviiri I don't think so. I think they deliberately removed player choice from taking 10 and moved it to the realm of the DM. This is probably for balance reasons as much as convenience. Again with hiding, it makes stealth a lot more consistent.

It didn't make sense in the past for a master assassin to suffer from a bad roll and be beaten by a dopey guard. Especially with some classes hiding as a core mechanic, having an opposed roll is horrible

Yes, agreed

There's also some class feature I can't recall that does something where your lower bound for certain rolls is pegged at 10

Oh, and taking a 10 was something you could do against a constant DC. I don't think passive check values are typically used against constant DCs.

@kviiri This is one reason my group was so happy to move to a 4dF spread.

@MikeQ In the case of hiding, no. But passive perception and investigation are used against DCs to notice things usually.

I think the passive check section even uses the example of noticing hidden doors with (presumably) passive investigation checks. I should hope that is a static DC.

Passive perception for noticing hidden things is the classic case for sure

I think DnD would benefit a lot of having some sort of fate pointy extra points for the players to invest in certain success at critical tasks

I love dice (when used properly) but they are not that good at making good stories in all situations.

Or, a better curve on the dice so that success is more probable.

Either way, it's trying to hack the goblin dice problem.

But at the point I'm playing War of Ashes, so I'll just play War of Ashes.

@kviiri Sure, I mean there are tons of mechanics that can boost success. Obviously you can do things that increase your odds, plus there is help, inspiration, etc. Generally I think it's better to have plays try and figure out a way to improve odds than say "just use a special point and make it work" :/

@BESW What is a goblin dice problem? by curve do you mean distribution? d&d has minimal distribution modifiers, the system prefers flat bonuses.

@kviiri Previous editions (and similar games) do that, sometimes as variant rules

TL;DR Some things shouldn't be decided by random chance

@MikeQ Seems like a DM problem more than a system problem? If it shouldn't be decided by random chance, don't roll

Yup, that. Goblin dice are when you've got a mechanic that produces extremely unpredictable results each time its used, but evens out over a period of uses. It's called goblin dice because it's good for hitting goblins: it doesn't really matter if any specific roll hits or misses, it's the accumulation of rolls over the course of the fight that matters, and your bonus to the roll becomes visible.

But, a mechanic that's so swingy any single roll could potentially make a small or large modifier to the roll completely insignificant... is not so a great mechanic to use for outcomes that hinge on a single roll.

Fate addresses this by replacing a single large die with a handful of small dice to produce a small bell curve that peaks at 0, so even small modifiers matter in all except the most rare and extreme moments.

@BESW I'm not sure what kind of situation you are talking about. Even a goblin usually takes more than 1 dice roll to kill.

Exactly.

@jgn Sort of. It depends. These systems often set a precedent by saying that success or failure is determined by some test or check

Right...

It's goblin dice because hitting goblins is a good use case.

But single-use rolls, like most skill checks... less so.

So what is a bad use case?

Example: Would you use a single die roll to determine whether the campaign suddenly ends or shifts direction?

Saves and checks are often poor uses of a 1d20+mod mechanic, in systems that frequently rely on save-or-suck to produce "tension."

4e tried to avoid this by minimizing single-roll save-or-suck outcomes in combat, and leveraging skill challenges to reproduce the cumulative effect of good-use-case goblin dice outside combat (and yes, skill challenges were mathematically broken as implemented, but the concept was solid).

@BESW Only if you consider making a save/check to be a big event right? In a normal encounter you will make dozens and dozens of rolls.

(And I really liked skill challenges for their ability to draw out narrative time so we could linger on important moments, too. I like that Fate uses similar concepts.)

@jgn That would be what I just said, yes.

It's not about whether we make that kind of roll a lot. It's about the impact of each single roll. In D&D, I can roll to hide a lot in a single session, but any single failure is going to dramatically alter the session; I can roll to attack a lot in a single session, but any single failure is not going to dramatically alter the session.

In Fate I can rely more on my skill modifiers because the dice will almost never render them irrelevant--my character is competent when I'm rolling dice, with no need to invent subsystems to avoid or ignore dice-imposed incompetence. And in Fate, the number of dice we roll to determine an outcome is scaled directly with the importance of that outcome.

@BESW Uh, I'm not sure about that. That's up to your DM. Failing a single hide roll /may/ be dramatic, but only if your DM decides it is.

Dealing with failure is kinda the whole point of dice rolls.

@jgn Everything is ultimately up to the GM, but a system may be conductive to a certain type of gameplay, for better or for worse

I'm not really sure about the difference. dnd obviously has skill modifiers too :/

Well, that's got nothing to do with what you asked me to explain, which I'm now done explaining.

@kviiri I'm just not really seeing how the system makes failing a hide roll dramatically alters a session

@jgn Well, there are a few instances where it quite literally is in the system. Take critical fail on death saving throw for instance. But it's not just a point on "the system doesn't make you do that" but also a point on "the system doesn't help you to do better".

@kviiri Sure, but by the time you even take a death save, you have rolled dozens of dice that session right?

Is it really fair to focus on the crit fail and say "wow a single bad roll did all this"?

Sometimes it is, but you're right it's not always just that one bad roll.

I guess apart from tunnel vision on one roll, I don't really see how changing the distribution really changes anything. 5% is 5% whether it's a linear distribution, normal, poisson, etc. Roll 1d20, roll 1000d20. If it's 5%, then it's 5%

At some point 1 die has to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, right?

In theory, the players and DM are making choices and decisions in between those rolls (and not just sitting there rolling dice nonstop). Can't do that with a single roll.

Yes, in theory the Gambler's ruin will get any adventurer in a finite amount of time

But yeah, MikeQ has the point right IMO.

@MikeQ But even if someone plays dnd with "roll a d20 and if you get >10 you kill the boss, if you get <10 you die" and even if they did that isn't the rules :/

@MikeQ Even a normal attack has a half dozen opportunities for people to act. So even with a 1 hit KO attack, there is opportunity.

@jgn Like I said. It's not about the rules making GMs do bad calls. It's about the rules not helping GMs make good calls.

If it was about the former, I'd be praising a blank piece of paper as the greatest TTRPG system of all time.

@kviiri Sure, but even with death saving crit failures, you still have to fail at least 1 more time, plus you have to get to 0hp, plus you have to at minimum 2 turns of your party acting to do something. If you think about it, even death save crit failures don't happen instantly.

@jgn It's actually quite common, especially in noncombat situations. Make a Charisma check to see if the important NPC takes the PC's side in an important matter. Make an Intelligence check to determine if the magic macguffin saves the world or destroys it. Etc.

@jgn You're focusing on a very particular instance now.

@MikeQ Uhhh. I mean I'm not going to say your playstyle is bad, but don't those examples seem extreme to your DM?

@kviiri I was just addressing your example...

@jgn You already addressed that once before and didn't address the main point it was subsidiary to.

@MikeQ I would like to think that if the fate of the world comes down to an int check, there were situations and circumstances that lead to that, right?

@kviiri Oh? what's that point?

> It's not about the rules making GMs do bad calls. It's about the rules not helping GMs make good calls.

@kviiri I think a bad DM can be plenty bad in any system. That's the downside of giving DMs any power at all. But like I said there are dozens of opportunities for things to go a different way. Obviously the crit fail death save was a poor example, but the rules definitely don't encourage MikeQ's examples.

@jgn A bad GM can be plenty bad in any system, but there are systems that put in a lot of effort to help GMs not be bad.

@kviiri And doesn't 5e do that with requiring many rolls for a death and giving a lot of time (at minimum) for the party to act?

@jgn The death saves were a very particular example of a case where the system requires one to roll a certain way. It doesn't apply to the system in general.

Can you stop latching onto it already because it doesn't address the point?

@kviiri It was your example mate.

Do you have another example besides "my dm said the world explodes if I fail an int check" (which I think is a little facetious)?

@jgn Yes, it was an example of a particular situation where the goblin dice does apply on a system-level, in some extent. But the main point never was that the system consistently MAKES one use it.

It was a simplification, yes. I could list some more specific examples, but the point is that these do exist

@kviiri Maybe I'm misunderstanding the goblin dice. I thought it was about 1 roll determining something important. Not 1 roll, in a chain of dozens, having any effect at all?

@jgn It is one roll determining something important, yes

And similarly, if the DM doesn't want something game-breaking to happen, but decides to roll for it anyway, because the system or written adventure or conventional advice says to roll for such situations

@MikeQ I couldn't think of any, I would love to hear one :3

@kviiri I don't really see how death saves are a good example of that since, at the minimum, you have to fail 2 death saves to die. Doesn't that kinda make it a poor example even if you ignore everything else (which I don't think you should)?

@jgn I already conceded that point several times, can you drop it already.

I think you've misunderstood mainly that we're not trying to argue that there's some set of rules in DnD 5e that tells GMs to rest the entire world on a single d20 roll.

There are some rules that come close, but they're relatively rare or niche and they're besides the point. (The Deck of Many things springs to mind)

Also the Goblin Dice problem isn't limited to D&D

Yeah, that also.

There's always the Rule Zero thing. A game experience rests, in many traditional RPGs, heavily on the GM's shoulders, and yeah, that means a bad GM can make bad calls and ruin the game. Or conversely they can pick a bad system and houserule it into glory and then it's suddenly a good system. But I think it's somewhat meaningless to judge systems based on what a hypothetical "good GM" or a "bad GM" gets you.

I mean, the same Good GM would be one of those types who'd run an entertaining campaign using the blank A4 piece of paper as their rule system, but I still wouldn't draw conclusions about the paper being a good system regardless of that.

(Besides, I don't have a Good GM around me so I don't really care if one would make my game good --- it's all hypothetical!)

So I prefer evaluating the games by the advice they give to the GM, expecting it to be followed. If a total newbie could read the book and get good advice and be a good GM and not rest the entire session on whether a single stealth roll succeeds, it's good.

@kviiri I just disagree that it's close. Like I said maybe death saves are a bad example, but what looks like "1 roll" is a dozen and 2 whole turns.

Conversely, if a book gives the newbie bad advice, no advice, or lots and lots of advice with the direction to "pick among these what you want!" then I pin the blame on bad GM'ing on the book.

@kviiri I'm not sure I agree with that either. D&D is pretty rules heavy as far as rpgs go. Sure a bad DM can throw out the rules, but can we say that is the fault of the system?

Do you have any examples of this problem from 5e?

What kinds of examples do you want? Like actual gameplay?

@jgn If the outcome is determined by a sequence of events that include player choices, then that's a bit different

@kviiri Sure, something like "the system says to do X which is too much to put on one roll", or an example from a game you played/saw/could imagine.

I only bring up the death save because it's the only example we have on the table.

From what I've seen and heard, these usually pop up in rolls regarding the direction of the story/plot. For combat situations, there are some save-or-suck spells that, if used against PCs, can instantly boot the player from participating.

Clearly deathsaves provide an appropriate amount of granularity, and "world explodes on a failed int" is too much. Where's the line.

@MikeQ Oh? Could you elaborate?

@MikeQ I'm not really sure if a single round of combat or even a single encounter is big enough for me to care about, but I can appreciate that if your group is slow and big then sitting out for 20 minutes sucks haha

@jgn I'm not going to provide the former because that's not the point. For the latter, we've had situations where a session was derailed when a failed athletics check forced a character downstream when trying to cross a river, a session where an important NPC refused to co-operate with us because we botched a persuasion check, and conversely (in Savage Worlds) a session where we killed a boss monster way ahead-of-time thanks to a lucky crit in what was supposed to be a "gloating scene".

(maybe that's more of a perspective question than a system question? if you love combat and you can't participate because of a bad roll then to you of course it's a goblin roll)

None of these are things that should've happened, by the rules. But neither were they situations that should NOT have happened, by the rules and advice given to the GMs in question.

Well okay, the bad guy gloating at us was technically by the game's combat rules.

@kviiri And in your opinion the system encouraged the dm to derail the entire game with a single athletics check / using a single persuasion check to determine the entire demeanor of the npc / having a boss with only 2 hits worth of hp?

@kviiri It wouldn't take too much reading to find examples where a published adventure specified similar rolls with similar consequences.

@Miniman IIRC Curse of Strahd has at least one death trap without any roll at all. We were lucky to have a NPC walking ahead of us :-)

@jgn You're putting words in to my mouth directly contradicting my previous statements.

@kviiri Oh?

Several PF adventure paths had bottlenecks where the PCs all failed their knowledge/perception checks, so we couldn't figure out where to go, or missed some clue that is required for some later event

@jgn The point is not that these systems actively enforce or encourage these decisions. The point is they are not doing enough to discourage them.

@jgn In a way, the system does encourage that, by providing a certain toolkit to the DM. As does common DMing advice - Prompt rolls to get the players involved, to make the situation feel scarier, etc

@MikeQ Seems like a poorly designed adventures, I agree that isn't good

It comes down to good GM calls and bad GM calls, but the system is still crucial. No human makes consistently good calls (and even if one did I would be lucky to have them as my GM). There are lots and lots of systems out there that offer the GMs and players guidance on what decision moments should be like, what should be involved, what kinds of stakes are appropriate.

@kviiri Ok... I'm not sure about that. The DM clearly liked the idea of someone being washed downstream. I don't really know how that came about or why, but I'm not sure what the system could have done to tell the DM not to do it. Again, they clearly thought it was a good idea. How could the system tell them not to do that?

That makes the issue much more bearable. I don't need a GM who just has a knack for the trade. I need a GM who can read and understand instructions, and apply them with at least basic consistency.

@jgn What's the challenge you see with that?

@kviiri The challenge? Well, I don't really see why/how its bad apart from that you didn't enjoy it. Moreover, if the DM thinks its good, I'm not sure how the system could stop them.

@kviiri Oh. Maybe we just have different playstyles then. I prefer something with a lot of roleplay, so having a good DM is important because its about the story. But if you want something more mechanical, like a video game, then I can understand why you want a GM that just reads instructions.

@jgn "if the DM thinks its good, I'm not sure how the system could stop them" is again besides the point. The point is that the system can help the GM figure out in advance what is good and what is bad.

I can see why this caused the issue playing premades. If the premade has a problem, the GM won' think to fix it.

I mean, surely no GM does something in their game thinking "oh this isn't good but I'll do it anyway"?

@kviiri How so?

@jgn I think the dichotomy is false. I've had my best roleplaying and story moments in games like Apocalypse World that are considerably less GM-driven than DnD and the like is.

@kviiri That definitely happens, often when the DM is less experienced (with the sytem or in general) and trusts the material they are given

@kviiri I should hope not. Which leads me to wonder why the DM thinks it is good, and why you think it is bad. Were they think "this will be a cool side adventure!" and you were thinking "I just want to kill the boss alread"? Clearly there is a mismatch in expectations.

@jgn It's not the flushed downstream part in itself. It's that presumably there was a fork in the path, and that fork had to be taken because of a die roll.

@kviiri Great, I mean you can roleplay Uno if you want right? I think that the problem is that you are thinking of D&D as "GM driven" when it isn't supposed to be. Maybe you have had some unfortunate experiences.

@kviiri That seems like more of a mindset to me. Obviously I don't know the whole story. But once you rescue the party member you can continue. It doesn't seem like you were forced down a fork in the road by a dice roll. Heck, maybe you didn't even think "lets jump in the river and float downstream" was a choice!

@jgn What do you mean by "DnD isn't supposed to be GM driven"?

@kviiri In early versions (1, 2) you can think of d&d as "players vs dm", but modern d&d is a collaborative effort between the players and dm. The dm doesn't drive the story, the players do.

I haven't played as many different systems as BESW for instance but DnD certainly revolves far more around the GM than any other system I've played, Savage Worlds excepted.

@jgn That... doesn't match any of my experiences with DnD at all.

@kviiri Sure, but the issue is thinking that the DM drives the game, when the DM just builds the world and the players are the ones that drive

@kviiri I suspected as much from your examples :3 Sorry you had negative experiences with the system!

Bad players and DMs can easily ruin games, its kind of the downside of having a more freeform experience

@jgn The Dungeon Master's guide literally starts with "The Dungeon Master (DM) is the creative force behind a D&D game."

@kviiri Yes, they don't drive the story

Does anyone else see a spam question showing up in the chat RSS feed?

yes

@jgn I think you're honestly describing something you've built very much yourself, instead of something that's an inherent virtue of the system

Don't let a cowboy DM suck the fun out of it for you

The game is supposed to be players and DM working together, not against each other, and certainly not the players being passive!

Morning all

Sigh... okay. I don't think I'll ever get my point across to you.

But what if being a vampire cowboy is what I seek in a tabletop rpg DM?

@PierreCathé Bonjour

@MikeQ join a southern goth fb group? idk mate, good luck

@kviiri Well, I hope you understand mine at least. D&D is about coming together, not being taken for a ride.

D&D is "about" different things to different people. Neither of you are wrong.

@jgn I don't think that's contradictory to what I tried to argue. But I do recommend looking into non-DnD systems for maybe a bit of perspective on why DnD might strike me as GM-driven.

@MikeQ If you take that opinion then you may aswell play snooker and call it D&D :P People get different things out of D&D, but the system is what we all play with.

Oh D&D is definitely GM-driven

I pre-plan most of the things in the world, the players just choose how and when to interact with them

Yep. That's definitely a common approach to structuring the gameplay.

"the story" is built from that interaction between them and me, but the game world is how I say it is

@PierreCathé That's a little different than railroading the party though. Having the story "driven" by the DM is totally different to having the world being created by the DM IMO.

@PierreCathé Yeah, it is the interaction that builds the story, you don't dictate it to them.

I don't dictate it directly, but the rails are there behind the scenes, the players just get to choose between several short rail tracks

It's a lot different than other games, that really have the players collaborating to building a story

I had a really hard awakening to DnD 5e after a while of playing mostly PBTA games. Even stuff like ability checks started feeling somewhat wrong to me because one doesn't get to know the stakes or the target number.

@PierreCathé Ah, well, railroaded campaigns are a bit different, that's true. I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with saying that having specific plot points and beats you want to hit is "gm driven", but I can understand that argument.

@kviiri Re: that specifically, I almost always tell target numbers

You can't tell by the situation? Like "wow that guy has armor, probably a high ac then"

@jgn Yes that's what I mean, when the game happens, I have a pretty good idea of what will happen, and when the players make choices, I plan the next session accordingly

And in that next session, I mostly know what will happen

That's a highly specific example that only applies to AC, in combat, against monsters with obvious armor, so that'd be no. (And in attacks, stakes are usually known since a player knows what damage their weapon does)

@PierreCathé Sure, I think that's fine. I mean it depends on the degree to which you railroad, but that's a farcry from taking away all player autonomy

@kviiri Right. So say someone says "I want to see if I know the name of the mayor of this small town from 200 years ago", we both know that's a tricky one, right?

DCs and mechanics map to the game world, so when your DM tells you something if you listen usually you get a clue to the check DC. Otherwise, there are mechanics that let you gain more info, like asking how high the wall is and if there are handholds or whatever.

@jgn Not necessarily, and I don't know what "pretty tricky" means.

We might have wildly different ideas about that with my GM.

@kviiri You don't know what pretty tricky means?

@jgn No, I don't. I mean, I work in the IT, I hear phrases like that every day, and they might mean anything from "takes half an hour" to "impossible".

But more importantly to DnD I don't know what number it means.

@kviiri So if you were roleplaying and you needed to know the name of the mayor of a small town from 200 years ago, you would have literally no idea what the DC would be?

You would think "anywhere between 0 and infinity I guess"?

Yeah, pretty much.

Ok...

@jgn Honestly I wouldn't ask for a check here, the PCs can go find town archives

@kviiri Are you just arguing for the sake of arguing?

@jgn No?

@PierreCathé Well if one has relevant history or something they can give it a shot. The archive is a good bet though

Also whenever a player is wondering how hard a task is, there's this little thing called "Asking the GM"

@kviiri How about if your PC saw a big wall. Would you be able to guess how hard it would be to climb?

@PierreCathé Sure, but there are better options than "give them metagame info", thats not really the intention of the game IMO. (although note I usually play roleplay and less gamey styles)

@jgn No, and how could I, honestly. It's up to the GM to decide and the GM is a fickle human being like myself.

@kviiri Ok, put your bad DM aside for a minute ok? I know you got burned in d&d but put it aside.

In real life would you be able to estimate the difficulty to climb a wall?

@jgn I don't think they're a bad GM

@jgn The player is looking to know how hard a task is for his character, they need that info to make an informed decision, why don't you want to give it to them ?

You can give it both as flavor text and as a number if you want

@kviiri The DM could be several weasels in a trenchcoat. Look carefully next time!

@kviiri You don't think they are a bad GM despite you have absolutely no idea how hard it would be to do even a simple thing?

@PierreCathé I do, but i want to give it to them ingame, not just pass them a number.

"the wall stretches far above your head and is smooth stone"

To me that is a fair indicator of a very high DC.

@jgn Not to me, to me it's an indicator of an impossible task without tools

@jgn Yep. I think it's only human that snap decisions on how hard things should be come off. Walls are even among simpler of the cases, here. I think the closest they come to badness is that they could tell me how hard it is in terms of DC, and they choose not to.

And they could choose to tell me the stakes, but they choose not to. (Although in the case of climbing a wall, it's reasonably easy to forecast two particularly likely outcomes of going up and going down)

@jgn You could just say that and then add : "(DC : 20)"

And they'd have all the info they need to make a decision

But okay, practical real life example from one of my games: a PC wanted to sneak into a not-particularly-well-guarded warehouse, her player rolled something like 24 for their Dex(stealth) check. She didn't get in and was escorted out.

@PierreCathé I would consider that meta game info, I wouldn't pass numbers like that to someone.

@jgn it is metagame info, and it is useful info

metagame isn't a dirty word

@kviiri With that much passive perception, I wouldn't consider it not well guarded.

@PierreCathé I didn't say it was, I just said I wouldn't do it

@jgn Okay so some hidden variable makes it right?

@kviiri So what's the point here? The PC didn't scout enough? The DM mislead the players? The player wanted some info that they wouldn't realistically have? You have given me a scenario, but what is the cause?

@jgn And that's fine, as long as you're fine with the player having incomplete information in their decision-making process. That's not how I want to run my game but you do you.

@kviiri Things are only hidden until they are revealed

@jgn Or until the GM makes them up on the fly.

@PierreCathé Players can investigate the wall, give it a try, go read a book, they have the tools to increase the resolution of their information. That is part of the game for me.

@jgn The point is: the GM decides the number you need to roll, without telling you that. The GM decides what happens if you fail. The GM decides what happens if you succeed. So bottom line: The GM decides. That's why I consider DnD GM-driven.

@kviiri So this scenario is an example of a good DM in your mind?

@jgn No, it's a situation that made me wish I was playing a PBTA game where this wouldn't have happened.

@kviiri without telling you that that's not necessary

@kviiri The number you need to roll is determined by the world via the DM. The consequences are determined by the world via the DM & the rules. Similarly with success. The DM is the referee, but to say that no one knows anything and no one can predict anything is absurd.

@PierreCathé Indeed, I pointed that out too before.

@kviiri So is your problem you played with some bad DMs then?

I decide what happens all the time, but I tell may players beforehand

@kviiri Sorry I'll admit I haven't read the whole transcript ;)

@PierreCathé Personally I hate that. Yes, not telling the players requires trust between dm and players, but I think it's more realistic and I prefer the RP value.

@jgn I guess that comes down to how we define bad, but I think you're missing a critical point here: I've also played systems that ACTIVELY help people not to be bad GMs.

There's a lot of flexibility here and some of these are a matter of style. The DM may ask the player what they think they should roll, or what the consequences might be. It depends on the group.

@PierreCathé Say you come up to a wall, you tell the players "the DC is 15, if you make it over then you can do X, if you fail by 1 then you fall down, if you fail by 5 you sprain your ankle, etc"?

@jgn You got it wrong, my players trust me because since I tell them the odds they know I'm not screwing with their decision-making process, they trust me because I'm transparent

@jgn I'd much rather do that, yeah.

@PierreCathé That's the opposite of trust, but if it works for you then that's great. So long as you and your players are having fun, I don't see any problems.

@jgn Not, I tell them the DC, and if they want to know the rest they can ask and I'll tell them

@jgn Trust and protocols aren't opposites, they complement each other.

@PierreCathé You and I are playing very different games then :) Glad it's working for you though!

But in a sense, I don't trust my GMs. They're only humans, humans make mistakes, especially when trying to manage a complicated creative task.

@kviiri Only insofar that you have to trust that the GM isn't actively deceiving you "ah yes, its a dc5, yes yes...." its a dc 50

That's why I want to play systems that support the GM in making good creative calls.

@jgn Haha yeah that's pretty obvious from this discussion ! D&D isn't a game, D&D + GM is a game

@jgn Well, in that case the deception would be obvious :>

@kviiri Well, bad DMs can do that to you. I'm sorry you were scarred. I'm glad you found some games that work for you

@PierreCathé Big disagree mate, D&D is definitely a game.

D&D is a combat engine. The game is built on top of it. That's why all these experiences vary so much between different players.

@jgn You keep bringing "bad GMs" to this, but really I'm more about perfectly normal GMs. I can't magically find myself a GM that runs a game without problems like this, and if a game requires me to perform such a feat, I definitely will consider it a minus.

@kviiri Heh that's why I'd rather GM than play ;)

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:52640499 Perhaps that's a little ironic? Since it originally had no combat engine.

:52640502 Well it's the same as finding good players right? You just have to talk to people and get to know them. I'm fairly certain the DMs I'm playing with now are not going to throw me down a river and derail the campaign. but there's no guarantee I guess.

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I'd say in systems like DnD finding a good GM is much harder than finding a good player, but yeah, in a sense?

I mean, the GM often has a lot of bookkeeping and preparation work to handle in addition to making those snap judgments on things.

And roleplaying a universe while everyone else gets away with a single character :-)

One trick is that you don't actually have to roleplay a whole universe ;)

But anyway, being a GM is hard, making rulings is hard, making snap judgments on how hungover that guard the PCs are trying to persuade is hard, etc. Doing all that consistently right is hard. And I don't think a GM needs to be "bad" to make bad calls with them, considering how difficult task we're talking about.

Please note, the same behaviour expectations apply here as well as in main chat. That includes please not implying that peoples' GMs are causing psychological harm by failure to play the way we think they should.

And if anybody gets tired of the conversation, they are free to get off the train at any time without judgement. My name is Haines.

Ah, yet another precious example of memes-before-internet.

@kviiri Sure. Video games do just fine with minimal human input (apart from thousands of hours of being created)

@jgn I mean, making a video game that works consistently fine is also a pretty daunting task for all but the simplest games.

Even Master of Orion has its flaws. (gasp!)

I forbid quoting me on that, though.

@kviiri Too late, it's on the internet, it's never going away

I'll claim the cat did it

You will be hard pressed to find a game without human influence

I... don't follow why I should be finding one?

@vicky_molokh Take something like The Handmaid's Tale and The Lord of the Rings. The former is about a dystopic near-future where the US government has been supplanted by an oppressive Christian-fundamentalist fertility cult. The latter is about a fantasy world that is about to fall prey to the invasions of an evil demigod. Had I to choose my pain, as in which universe to live in, I'd pick the former.

The Lord of the Rings depicts lots of stuff typical to heroic fantasy: mass warfare, violence on civilians, gruesome and brutal monsters and death. It's all stuff I wouldn't want to experience first hand. The Handmaid's Tale, depressing as it may be, is a relatively "tame" universe whose evils are largely exaggerations of things that we already have --- and yet, I felt considerably more uneasy reading the Handmaid than I did with LotR.

I think the unease stems from it being all a bit too uncanny in concepts not too far removed from my own experiences and life. I can see nasty stuff that reminds me of the Handmaid's Tale in the news quite often. That makes it feel closer

If I lived in a state of war, who knows, maybe I'd feel as uneasy reading the combat scenes of Tolkien.

Similarly, but to a lesser extent, Han Solo in ESB feels like a caricature of sad behaviors I see in real life, while the Iliad's unhappy stuff I can just roll my eyes at and say "wow, those ancient Greek heroes were real jerks weren't they"

I guess that too would be different if someone sacked my hometown with a trap horse...

@kviiri But you're living on Modern Terra in Finland, a country which has been bullied by superstates with WMDs and doesn't have its own to be able to fight back should another confrontation happens. That seems pretty close to the original Star Wars film.

@vicky_molokh I don't remember (personally) the Cold War so I haven't really had the nuke scare ingrained in me

@kviiri But you still live in a have-not state in a world where the haves are holding the world hostage, including your state (which has nothing to use to threaten back and cause a standoff).

@vicky_molokh it's considered polite that we don't think about the nukes really

@vicky_molokh I guess? But it's not something I think about every day. Or every week, or even every month.

I'm more scared of myself or a friend getting run over by a careless driver (which is also statistically more likely, although that doesn't necessarily correlate with the perception of the severity of the issue)

@kviiri I guess it's the disregard for the potential severity that's one of the more puzzling parts in this.

@vicky_molokh I spend enough of my worry coins worrying about climate change.

Nukes is something I can't realistically do anything about, with my current resources. I just don't see the point in thinking about them, because if I would, I wouldn't have much of a life to live anymore.

@kviiri I guess we're diving into some deeper dissections of how the coins are distributed and why falling in love with a Han-like person is a greater concern than either getting hit by a car or the other risks touched upon. But I'm not sure this is a productive dive, and whether you find it an interesting topic.

@vicky_molokh To be honest, I find it rather annoying that my honest attempt to explain why I react differently to sexual harassment in Star Wars than to ancient Greeks having an alien sense of justice in the Iliad was highjacked by "but what about the nukes?"

@kviiri I apologise. I just see it as one of the huge parallels with a risk the real world lives with every day.

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@vicky_molokh It's ok, I'm just a bit sensitive to the whole... what's the word. Relative privation?

@kviiri Ah. Conversely, to me it looked hard to understand why, out of the list of bad stuff of assorted degree of badness happening in SW, Han's personality flaws were picked as the thing to be the dealbreaker. (I may be influenced by the fact that OT Han seems tame compared to at least one similarly fire-tongued and maverickish ex . . .)

Because it's not about the magnitude of the bad stuff, really.

I've been in the student societies, and while the Finnish student scene is mostly quite tame (especially in the natural sciences where people are aware they are easy to come off as sexist engineer types) compared to many foreign ones, I used to see people who behave like Han, more or less, very frequently. There are people who think acting that way towards women is still cool, and that's definitely a part that bugs me.

Whereas the destroying whole planets thing is, despicable as it may be in-universe, at least something no one seriously wants to do. (and the few who do don't have the power to do it)

That said, if Star Wars did have a major plotline where the Rebels capture the Death Star and started blowing up Imperial strongholds, and it was presented in the film as an overall positive thing, I would probably be very apprehensive about that too.

Yeah, Star Wars presents blowing up planets as generally a thing the audience shouldn't consider admirable, while Han's actions are presented positively. There's a lot of space between "depicting an action to deplore it" and "depicting an action to glorify it" and Han's sliminess is far toward the latter end of the scale.

The way a thing is presented matters as much as whether it's presented at all.

"Behave like this, and you too will be a cool guy and get the girl."

"Sure she might call you a dirtbag now, but keep pursing her and you'll definitely eventually win her over. Try kissing her without her consent!"

@kviiri I feel anything I say will just get us deeper into the rabbit holes of fiction-related stuff, such as generalisations of personality types, agency of the audience, and other matters adjacent to philosophy and who adheres to which philosophical 'axioms' (in fields such as ethics, free will et al.). On one hand that's an interesting topic, but on the other I feel like each time I take steps in that direction, it gets hard to keep it a discussion / prevent from turning into something else

@kviiri In one of the first cuts of A New Hope, the Death Star battle was just the rebels flying out to wherever the Death Star was and blowing it up. It got re-cut as the Death Star was attacking the Yavin Base and the rebels were defending themselves.

hello

/me waves.

how is everyone

A day of moderate work activity interspersed with some discussions here and elsewhere.

sounds pretty nice

so I'm working on getting RoT converted to my campaign setting

@Gwideon RoT?

Rise of Tiamat

@doppelgreener THis is quite possibly why they're trying to rewrite Han's history. Greedo is an 'easy' fix, the way he talks to Leia? Notsomuch.

But then again, hollywood has always had a problem with the 'bad boy' stereotype.

sorry having to do this here so I don't spoil people.

docs.google.com/document/d/…

it's my conversion notes for the organizations in Rise of Tiamat

sorry

@Gwideon Several folks have mentioned this several times and I really must restate how important it is for you to stop with the "sorry's". It's very damaging for your own sense of well being. Trying to avoid that language is something that could very much have a real impact on your own mental health.

okay

We all bring up random thoughts, statements, and conversations. It's totally fine!

Alright