The Strategy Behind Disabled Stories: The What, Why, and How (but Mostly How) of Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction.

I thought this exact thing when I watched a bit of this game

@KorvinStarmast Why do you insist my play-style of preference is a problem at all?

@kviiri I think there's a massive disconnect in terms going on in this weird conversation.

@BESW I feel there's some serious gatekeeping going on.

....That too, though I hope it's a misunderstanding.

@KorvinStarmast I don't think it's fair to just blame the table or the GM for problems that arise from a game that gives the GM the absolute call on any matter.

At this point, though, I have evidence that the conversation is making the chat an uncomfortable place for people who aren't interested in partaking of it.

The GM's just exercising the powers the book says are theirs.

@BESW Yup.

@BESW That's all good and fair. I honestly would rather leave it at this.

I just got a bit worked up because I felt people were enforcing a norm in regards to the whole issue. "If you like rules you're not playing right" or so.

Alas, losing one's temper on the internet is easy.

Mmm. My emotional spoons are being spent IRL these days.

But yeah, let's drop this here. I don't think anyone's going to achieve anything meaningful by arguing it further.

@kviiri If there are trust issues between the players and the GM, that's a people issue. I've seen games break over that more than once: but most games don't. It's a function of the people at the table.

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I am not insisting that your play style is a problem; you (and BESW) seem to be insisting that is what I'm saying. RPG's like D&D dont exist in a vacuum. It's about the people at the table.

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@KorvinStarmast It's not as simple as a trust issue, to be honest.

I trust my GMs to mean well, because I know them. I trust them to try to make a fun game. But I don't trust them to be very good at it.

There are combinations of systems and people that I can play with harmoniously, and combinations I can't no matter how hard I try. It's not always all about rules and or all about personalities. It's often about how the whole thing mashes together and what the mixture produces.

And that's not something I blame on them, because overall DnD 5e has very little guidance apart from "here's some suggestions, do however you feel is the best" for the GM.

Also, even if I trusted my GM completely, there'd still be the problem of immersion.

@kviiri immersion is a different issue to trust. I found that the best way to do immersion is to remove the dice from the players' hands. You never know, and you try to do what you try to do. It's a break in the current paradigm, but we did some raids like that back in the old days. A completely different feel. Most players, however ...

... want to roll the bones. Just like in Vegas. ;)

@KorvinStarmast I have the opposite view. If I never see the dice, I feel like the GM is just telling a story and I have no agency.

Whereas if there's a rule that says that "your character can do X", where X is something that's consistent with the fiction my characrter's in, it guarantees me a degree of agency.

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@KorvinStarmast Let's break it down, then. You say that rules aren't need for roleplay, and that's true, obviously and demonstrably! But you then infer that wanting rules is the same as needing them, and say needing rules to roleplay is "a problem." I dunno how else to take it but that preferring a game to provide structure for my roleplaying is a problem.

Yeah, BESW puts it well.

This jump from a soft declaration ("I like rules for roleplaying") to a hard declaration ("I need rules or I can't roleplay") is a common misunderstanding I see in these conversations.

I also want to add that while I like crunchy or "gamist" rule-systems like that of 4e too, my personal favorites are narrative-oriented rule systems like Apocalypse World and Fate (disclaimer: I haven't tried Fate yet, but it looks very promising based on the rules and BESW's descriptions) that are quite far from the CRPG style you associated with rules earlier.

Also, can we please stop acting like pointing out a logical fallacy is a substitute for engaging in a conversation? Assume folks are trying to have a reasonable conversation and if they say something which seems weird or nonsensical to us that means there was a communications breakdown.

I'm not entirely caught up on this debate, but that got me thinking of systems like Great Ork Gods or Lasers & Feelings or Fate or Cthulhu Dark. I don't need the rules to roleplay -- I already know how to roleplay, everyone's already doing it as kids -- but those rules guide me to roleplay in particular ways conducive to the types of story the game's setup to tell.

mm yeah

Pointing out someone's use of a fallacy doesn't make the problem go away; instead it's a classic shut-down technique to make the speaker seem smarter than everyone else without having to engage with the actual subject being discussed. I don't think anyone here means to be doing that, but that's the effect it has unless the next part of the conversation is unraveling the cause of the misunderstanding.

as a kid I also role played, but not in the way I would want to with other people

mostly anyway

Fate helps guide me that my roleplaying should involve accepting (OOCly) terrible things happening to my character so that I can respond to them and help them lead complicated dramatic lives as flawed individuals. Great Ork Gods helps guide me that I should play fast and loose with barmy orcs. Lasers & Feelings guides me into playing caricatures of Star Trek stereotypes. Cthulhu Dark guides me to play a super-competent detective whose sanity is being frayed by the thing he's investigating.

I had weird imaginary friends mostly, is the short version

I don't need rules to do that stuff, but the rules sure help me stay consistent by showing me the directions to go in. They also enforce same-page-ness such that we can tell something is wrong when we aren't following those guidelines. The guidelines give me a funnel of creativity (so the constraint fuels imagination, per the standard creativity rule) and helps us know how to run the games run well and move forward.

@doppelgreener yeah, my point is that I kinda feel like I need those rules to actually give me a guideline about what I should and should not be doing with Role Playing in an RPG

because I can do it just fine without them, but it would be pretty unstructured

@doppelgreener I particularly like the same page aspect. That's among the good design choices I think 4e took: every character's focus is firmly planted on combat, so theoretically one shouldn't wind up with a party where one character wants to just talk away all encounters while the rest are anxious to get to the skull-bashing already.

Yeah. We play Bubblegumshoe because we noticed that we LIKE having high-stakes social connections with NPCs but we usually default to a more physical problem-solving mode anyway. BGS helps remind us of what we want to do by giving a structure that guides us toward the mode we're less used to but want more experience with.

Theoretically - that actually happened to us in practice. Our GM wasn't very good at telling us this before we started playing.

@trogdor right, they're super helpful for that. it's really helpful to know that in Cthulhu Dark we're not playing detectives who are unphased or untouched by what's going on, or detectives who are also expert swordsmen who are expected to whip out a sabre and actually defeat whatever evil's going on, and we're not wizards expected to bring the big bad down with a fireball. We're people way in over our own heads, we can't stop the problem with force, and we're not getting out unscathed.

yeah

good example

Well, except that one time Troggy played a magician in Cthulhu Dark.

That was ridiculous.

@trogdor I agree with this. We discuss this issue pretty often with out party, because everyone wants more non-combat content. We just disagree with the implementation. I'm the "let's make house-rules for non-combat situations, or at least open stakes and open rolls" guy, while some of the others firmly argue it's the GM's domain to decide the course of these out-of-combat encounters and we just need the GM to be better at that.

@BESW BGS is also one of the first games we've played that consistently made external characters matter powerfully, and that happened because of the way the rules guided us to relate to them.

But the problem is that simply telling the GM to be better isn't going to make non-combat life more rewarding.

@BESW well that happened because I didn't understand the rules surrounding that at the time

and it also is a good example of my argument

@doppelgreener Yeah! I haven't had that kind of play since... gosh, maybe my last college game, which was very much a matter of group transcending system in a way I've never seen before or since.

if I don't have a structure telling me the thing I am doing is wrong for the story we are in,.... that can be a problem

I still think a CD magician should be able to work. I'm just not sure how to handle it yet.

It's definitely an edge case the rules can't handle on their own.

@BESW What's a CD magician?

CD is cthulhu-dark.

Ah!

In CD you get up to three dice when rolling to do something: one if it's humanly possible, one if it's in your profession, and one if you're risking your sanity to do it.

Roll 'em and take the highest to determine your success.

If your sanity die is highest, you roll it again to see if you freak out.

@BESW it could yeah, but I was doing too much with it for sure

So normally, somebody casting a spell in CD is only rolling their sanity die, because Mythos magic isn't something a human can reasonably be expected to do.

But if you're an honest-to-Dagon magician, suddenly you're rolling two dice instead of one. That means you're more successful, but more importantly it means you're not rolling a Sanity check every single time you cast a spell.

And there's not really any rules for magic because it's not a thing that's expected to be wielded by PCs.

So the narrative strength of magic is purely up to the group.

Normally, since you're risking your Sanity every time you cast a spell, it's okay to make magic quite game-changing.

I'm not very well-versed in Lovecraft lore, but isn't spellcasting usually meant to be a big event? Seal some ancient evil away for a century, or bring a terrible curse over a family that disrespected you, or something?

Or are they using stuns and similar minor combat magic like it was Hogwarts all over again?

As I recall, Troggy was using it for stuff like tracking monsters and putting up protective wards on houses.

Ok, so it's more commonplace than I thought.

Mythos use of magic is... irregular.

And in the RPG context it's twisted a lot from the source material.

I mostly know my Lovecraft from pop-culture osmosis, Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror.

I've come to understand that Lovecraft had some rather, err, abrasive views from a modern liberal viewpoint.

@kviiri I was not basing my magic use too heavily on actual Mythos magic use, just to be clear

@BESW @trogdor Speaking of which, d'you think we should add some kind of "relationships matter" mechanic to our SG-13 characters further down the line as we develop those relationships? Say, stunts or bonus skills connected to George Hammond or the Tok'ra (if/when we meet them) or the Asgard, and potentially "oh, right, yeah, goa'uld stuff again" savviness stunts, if/when they become appropriate.

Mmmmaybe.

I'm inclined to keep it as freeform as possible, so we'll use whatever mechanics you think we need to remind ourselves of things we wouldn't incorporate naturally.

@kviiri Right, these aren't things the GM can automatically fix. They're not necessarily issues the GM can fully understand the shape of, or understand how to respond accordingly. We've got a lot of questions about basic issues happening in D&D where the GM has had major trouble resolving some major character direction differences.

@BESW Ok! :)

@doppelgreener That doesn't mean we won't slap down aspects in a scene or whatever, just that we want to limit the enduring, always-already-written-down stuff to what we really need.

@BESW Yeah, I agree.

@doppelgreener Yeah. And when I'm the GM myself, it just feels like the most natural way to agree upon some structure that I base my decision-making on with my party - a rule.

(Hence stuff like Jaffa having Symbiote +4 as a skill. We know what the symbiote lets a Jaffa do, so we can bundle all that into "he's +4 good at the stuff we know he can do because he has a symbiote.")

I already asked BESW for input about this earlier in the chat, but I have this thing where I have a Night Hag chasing my party. I want it to be sort of a background obstacle to keep the party moving and on their toes, and eventually deal with it and defeat it on their own time.

@kviiri Ooh, so I just read Psi*Run the other day.

@BESW Have a dude who knows sleight of hand! Equally unhelpful. :D

@BESW Nothing seems to be moving toward resolution, and I am quite frankly not interested in a discussion where willful misunderstanding is in the RoE. At this point, we disagree and I'm not going to waste the energy to try and further expand on an incredibly simple point. Better to be playing, not arguing.

I recall you telling me about that game where @trogdor played a warlock though. :)

@doppelgreener the 4e one?

@KorvinStarmast It's not willful. Dunno how better to communicate that this is honestly how I read your statements.

@KorvinStarmast Are you really suggesting the people here are deliberately pretending to misunderstand you in poor faith? (Like, these people even?)

@trogdor The Cthulhu Dark one, where you sorta broke the game. :D

For a few sessions, I tried to run it "free-form". Tell the players that the Night Hag attacks some nights, and that on other nights, it doesn't. But it didn't evoke the reaction I wanted, because my players were treating it more as a random event than a threat they should take precautions against. And at the same time, I didn't want to give them the idea that the precautions would be fool-proof, either. So I made it an open rule.

(gosh, that warlock reference really was wildly out of context)

@BESW What's that?

@doppelgreener oooooh yeah, not technically a warlock but wtv

But I'm equally sick of trying to have a conversation where every time I'm confused by something and use the basic communication technique of re-stating in my own words what I think is being said, I get accusations of devious insincerity, so whatever.

So the party has a Night Hag tracker that keeps track of how aware the Hag is of the party's position and how keen they are with their pursuit. With time, the tracker grows. Cause stir and gossip about heroes in town, the tracker grows.

And conversely, travelling can shake her, lowering the tracker.

@kviiri Okay, so. Psi*Run is a short-form game (one or two sessions) about powered people running from their captors.

@BESW Ooh, sounds neat. We had a session or two like that in AW once and it was one of the best RPG experiences I've had ever!

Each time the Runners move to a new place (defined as "if the Chasers go to your previous place they won't be able to get you"), the GM writes the new location on an index card and puts it on the table.

So as you play, you get this line of index cards (which branches if the party splits up) representing your physical trail.

The Runners have tokens (or one token if they're all together) showing where they are, and the Chasers have a token (or tokens if they're following more than one group down different paths) showing where they are.

Every time the party sleeps, I roll against the tracker, and on hit, the hag strikes and the tracker goes to zero (hags are known for taking their time!). If she's thwarted by magical protections, the tracker maxes. This rule gives my players a codified version of what their character knows about the Night Hag, and this far it's been working excellently.

Each time the Runners do something that requires dice, they have to make a "Chase" check as part of it, with a chance of the Chasers moving forward.

Are old cards ever revisited?

Yes, forward as in to the next card.

Old cards can be revisited if the Runners return to a place they've already been.

What happens if the Chasers catch the Runners?

Then the "Chase" mechanic is swapped out for a "Capture" mechanic.

And if you're captured, it becomes a "Disappear" mechanic.

If your Runner disappears, you become a co-GM.

That sounds like a good game based on this short introduction. A simple carrying concept, and mechanics that support it.

There's no way to beat the Runners directly; the session ends when one of the Runners (who are all amnesiac) answers all four-to-six questions she's been trying to get resolved.

And best of all, a concept that's usually not that well implemented in RPGs. Chase systems are always a pickle to design.

Once one Runner gets her questions answered, everyone gets a scene to explain what's up with them now and, maybe, why they've stopped running.

The dice mechanics are, you roll a pool of dice based on what you're risking. You're always risking "Do I achieve my immediate goal?" "Do I remember something from my past?" and "Do the chasers gain on the runners." (that last one changes to capture and disappear later)

Depending on circumstances you may also be risking "Do my psi powers cause trouble?" and "Is anyone hurt?"

@BESW FYI, @KorvinStarmast, this has showed up in many of my recent conversations with you as well -- the conversations we've had make a whole lot more sense to me now if I look at them from a lens that you thought I understood you perfectly the whole time, and any attempt on my part to find out what you were trying to say, or any confusion on my part, was nefarious and feigned and insincere.

You roll your dice and assign each of them to a risk. The higher the number, the better the outcome for that particular risk.

It left me in each conversation needing to piece together what you said carefully to find something I think I has been what you've meant (and it's a process that's involved a lot of effort) because you've been regularly unwilling to come forward and straightforwardly explain what you're saying or what's going on in response to requests to do so, or you've thrown your hands up and decided there's nothing more to say when I've tried.

@BESW That sounds like an interesting approach. "Immediate goal" being what the roll is actually about?

Yeah.

Also, the resolution of each Risk includes something I wish more games would talk about: "First say."

Figuring out the narrative after you've decided on how to assign your dice to your risks is a group activity.

But depending on your dice choices, you, or the other players, or the GM, get "first say" in the discussion and so get to guide the conversation about what's going to happen.

For example, if you put a 6 on "Do I remember something from my past?" your Runner has a memory that answers one of her questions, and you get first say on it.

If you put a 4 or 5, the other players have first say.

And on a 1, 2, or 3, you have no memory triggered and the GM has first say about the confusion, frustration, or lack of connection you feel.

Yeah, I found the sheets. Interesting outcomes left and right.

Troggy and I were reading it because of this Terminator hack.

I haven't played it yet (original or Terminator), but would like to.

I feel like it'd be easily hackable for interim scenes in larger campaigns in other systems, too.

Just replace the context for the questions as countdown mechanic.

Maybe it's gathering evidence to prove your innocence.

In this one Apocalypse World campaign I was referring to, we actually had hacked the system flavor to suit the Shadowrun universe. Our group of runners had another group of runners on our tail to get rid of us. It was superior fun.

Basically at every corner we had some badness on our way. Their rigger's drones were always on our back, in particular.

And it just went on and on tensely until I found my character pointing his gun at said rigger. Such satisfaction!

...I have this thing about jumping systems as needed.

I wonder if there's a published Shadowrun for PbtA. Pretty much certainly yes.

In our Atomic Robo hacked campaign we also had sessions in Monster of the Week, Don't Rest Your Head, and Masters of Umdaar.

Before it went on hiatus I was planning a Cthulhu Dark session.

I would love to do something like that. My usual co-players are a bit more conservative though :)

They should read RPG.se as much as I do, but at least they have me to produce a feed of useful links to there ;)

Heh.

And I guess if one's main touchstone on gaming is DnD and Deadlands, the suggestion "hey, let's learn new systems to try every other session!" might sound nonsensical.

Yeah, we started more with small systems, or variations on systems we already knew.

And, well. After D&D most systems seem like a relatively small investment of time and energy to learn, and we lean toward ones with less than a hundred pages even so.

...and usually just one person masters it, and teaches the others through play.

Does your group have, uh, a "dedicated" new systems person? Or does everyone bring in new games to play?

I'm the primary, but Greener and Troggy bring 'em in too.

In the past we've had other players who brought in things like Dogs in the Vineyard and All Flesh Must Be Eaten, long before I became The Guy With All the Games and was still dedicated to D&D 3.5.

BESW winds up GMing at least half our sessions, but the idea is us fellow group members would run things from time to time as well.

The ideal would be BESW runs things less than half the time so he gets to play characters as well, I think :)

I do like GMing too.

Oh good!

Lately I've had to put a lot of my spoons into other things, that's all.

Sure. :) I just recall us having conversations to the effect of it being a good thing if we can GM more so you can play around as a character.

Aye. I do want more experience as a player too.

If I had to choose only one or the other I'd prefer to GM, but it's not a violent preference.

I like playing more, but tend to veer towards GMing because I have a lot of experience compared to the rest of the group, and usually know the rules better because I like reading them.

@BESW I really can't find where Korvin inferred that "wanting rules is the same as needing them".

@doppelgreener I have to decide how much effort I want to put into guessing what general assumptions are behind what is being written. Take that sentence, and read again my point on the generational problem. It is quite possible that we do not share as many common cultural assumptions as we might have presumed by simply sharing a common language.

@godskook I think the flow is from this message by kviiri ("i like rules that do this") --> this incredulous response by Korvin --> this one by BESW ("please don't respond incredulously") --> Korvin saying "we never needed mechanics to roleplay"

(which is different to wanting them for roleplaying purposes)

I think that the next time either you or SSD play the "unpack" game with me you'll get the silence for a while.

@KorvinStarmast In my recent discussions with you, you've posted something alarming and then backed out pretty much immediately out of explaining anything, or lead on with cryptic messages that assume I understand things much more than I do.

@KorvinStarmast Mate, if someone's telling you they don't understand what you're saying, it's more likely they don't than they're trying to play a game with you.

"alarming" is to me an overreaction to the meta response I provided. I understand hyperbole, but I try to use it less these days.

When you use a phrase like saying we're on a "road to hell" and toss out the notion of discrimination, that's pretty alarming.

@KorvinStarmast Assuming people are playing games with you when they're trying to understand you has been causing you and others some serious problems, and will continue to do so. I suggest you take a firm look at what's going on for yourself there because it's not sustainable.

I am amazed that you are not familiar with the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." That is an idiomatic phrase, not a literal description of damnation at RPG.SE. For a non English speaker I could see a misunderstanding due to literal scan. For a native speaker, no. You are again making with an over reaction.

At some point if you keep doing that you'll just see people giving up on communicating with you, because you're not communicating effectively yourself and assuming bad faith in them when they try to participate and understand.

@KorvinStarmast I am very familiar with it. I am alarmed by its idiomatic meaning in combination with the other things you'd written.

@doppelgreener That might save any of us some time and some bad width, so perhaps there's a silver lining to that cloud.

OK, why alarmed? The topic is toxic. You have seen and participated in the history.

@KorvinStarmast .... no, there really isn't a silver lining there.

We'll see. Back to other things, until the next time, be well.

Ok, bye

I'm just jumping in because I'm a glutton for punishment. I've tried to follow the thread, but don't really understand the crux of the problem.

but maybe i'll just step quietly back out...

@NautArch lol

@NautArch Sorry about that.

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@doppelgreener no worries - just trying to lighten things up :)

@NautArch I appreciate it! To contribute to that I'll show off this fun thing I found the other day: Magic has a card called Brothers Yamazaki. They're legendary creatures and you can usually have only one legendary with the same name, but the Brothers Yamazaki is a legendary you can have two of, as long as it's only two.

The other day I found out that Brothers Yamazaki was produced with two different art prints in the same set -- functionally exactly the same card in every way, just different art. So there are actually two different brothers. :)

doy ou need two different ones to activate it, or can it be the same card picture?

@NautArch you can have the same card picture for both. you can have two of the left one, or two of the right one. but it's kind of a treat for the players who find both. :)

and maybe if i have both of the left and you have both of the right, we'd swap one each and then we'd each have the two brothers yamazaki.

that's pretty cool.

magic is something i've been interested in, but just don't want to spend the $$

that's fair enough and it's not cheap.

we had some new players join our 5e table and they're MtG guys. Crazy how much money they've said has been spent.

the primary entry gateway is a format that rotates a bunch of cards out of the game and a bunch of new ones in simultaneously every few months, which changes things up majorly and creatures pressure and incentive to buy new cards.

right now i play in a format that doesn't have rotation and is more about relaxed fun than competition & winning.

(the former is Standard, the second is Commander)

yeah, it seem like you have to keep buying to stay competitive.

@NautArch right! and it takes a certain level of game mastery to understand how to reel that in and not be too competitive such that you don't have to keep buying. my game group went through that -- i unwittingly assembled a tournament-level deck (possibly one of my group had actually seen a similar tournament-level deck and had nudged me toward that), while another member of the group bought a handful of really powerful cards.

the others couldn't compete with these two decks and we were 50/50 against each other. that kinda spoiled it for the two of them who were less interested in the game, but at the time we didn't recognise the shape of the problem.

one thing i don't like is it seems that you MUST buy cards/more cards/better cards to remain competitive. It's not about your strategy, but about if you've invested enough.

yeah.

@NautArch That's a gateway problem. If you spend "enough", it goes away. Problem is, "enough" is usually more than $60/year.

well, spending "enough" also self-perpetuates the problem -- since everyone's spending "enough" we need to keep spending "enough" :(

It takes some conscious recognition and development of a social contract to reel it in.

My friends switched to Commander because it was counter-competitive, multiplayer, put everyone at a roughly equal chance (because it has some checks and balances built in when decks were skewed in power), and didn't require us to keep buying anything.

For the uninitiated, Cable is an X-Man with telekinetic powers, the son of Cyclops. He was infected by a technovirus as a young child, which slowly replaced his organic body with cyborg parts. Cable was sent 2000 years in the future to be cured and help destroy the god-like mutant Apocalypse. He later returned to contemporary Earth where there were many dramatic shenanigans and the technovirus began to assert itself again.

He's associated with Deadpool because of a comic series wherein they accidentally get linked by his teleporter so that any time Cable teleports, Deadpool gets teleported to the same location.

It's one of the most serious, coherent Deadpool series and tries to deal with him as a person more than as a running gag. It's one of those "two unlikely enemies are forced together and find they can help each other overcome their personal demons" things.

lol

@BESW oh, I didn't realize Cyclops was his dad

Yeah, his birth name is Nathan Christopher Charles Summers.

....And his future name is Nathan Dayspring Askani'son.

His mom is Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean Grey.

a clone XD

Yeeeah. Cable has massive daddy issues.

So, you know, it's the X-Men.

yeah, sure, yep

to be fair, my X-Men experience is largely due to the awful movies sooo,.......

well, maybe not all of them were awful

and I didn't even see all of them

but you get it anyway

As soon as Jean came back from the dead, Scott bugged off on his wife and kid, they got attacked by an Apocalypse cult, Nathan had to go to the future, etc. So he blames his dad for growing up with a bunch of weirdos in an apocalyptic wasteland.

lol

so I guess the movies were right about one thing

Jean makes Cyclops act like a total mess

Cyclops is pretty much always a total mess.

The X-Men always work best as powered soap opera.

fair enough then

I think they need to stop giving the film franchise to people who try to make it an action adventure superhero franchise, and find somebody with telenovela experience.

lol