@Joshua In character knowledge of the six stat system. Wisdom, charisma and such not being abstract game rules, but real in-universe phenomena which some people are keenly aware of.
@doppelgreener -- yeah, while characters may not have numbers to slap on them, it'd be absurd to say that they aren't qualitatively aware of those traits
@Shalvenay well, they are aware of strength, and quickness, and climbing ability, and so on, but are they aware they come down to one score called dexterity and another called strength? (okay, they're probably aware of strength, but dexterity?)
I think this sentiment is applicable to ability scores as well:
> I find it difficult to imagine that in a world where spells effect creatures in recognizable, quantifiable ways that are directly based on HD, and the same world is filled with towers of wizards dedicated to fully understanding the universe in general and magic in particular, that nobody sat down for some empirical testing to figure out what HD are. (source)
If you can find the right magical academy and give the right wizard the right gift, he'll have his apprentices run you through a battery of extremely uncomfortable tests. If you survive, he'll tell you what your ability scores are.
So to me, it's not a matter of whether anyone in a D&D-like system knows about the mechanics of his world; it's a matter of how widespread the knowledge is and how many people really understand it well enough for it to be useful to them.
I suspect it'd be sorta like quantum physics: most people with some education know it exists, but a much smaller number really understand it and even fewer ever find the knowledge practical.
@doppelgreener Insurance in that system should also be much easier, because you can just run the numbers, because many of them aren't some one in a million thing, but derived from 5% steps.
@BESW under the general modus operandi of insurance, not every participant will need a diamond - just the ones that go wrong. so they take enough money from each participant that they can afford the diamonds they do need.
if 1 in 10 people die, and everyone else is insured, then every participant pays 10% of the fee involved in resurrecting one person for insurance. plus a little extra for shoring up against freak sprees of too many people dying, and for profit, etc.
I have heard of groups (playing baby dragons, in 3.5 under a GM who's quite the min-maxer himself) running a country and the numbers associated with it, and doing seriously weird stuff with it.
An accountant poring over the wizards' records: "Have any of you noticed how all of this stuff is almost perfectly aligned to 5% increments..?"
Several wizards' eyes light up, and they glance around at each other excitedly. "Another case of 5% increments! This supports Gilgabash's metaphysical twenty-sided polyhedron theory!"
Another thumps the base of his staff on the ground and scowls. "Not this poppycock again! There isn't a metaphysical dice! That is absurd!"
"Well, it doesn't ACTUALLY exist, but it's just a convenient metaphor for all these 5% increments! It's just like in that Mort…
"The gods do not play dice with the universe!" "Don't be ridiculous, nobody would claim that. If you got enough of them for a decent game together in the same room, they'd kill each other."
The D&D "economics" conundrum is a great example of how systems are designed to facilitate certain kinds of gameplay. Money in D&D represents adventuring agency, rather than economic agency. Playing Lawyers & Ledgers in that system just isn't gonna hold together.
@Adeptus Roaming death insurance. Just leave a phylactery with us, pay for its safekeeping in regular installments, and should you die on your adventures, our clerical team will resurrect you in the warmth and safety of bountiful Nerath's mountainside health spa resort!
"You're trapped in the library, and the gelatinous cube, which is 3 tons of acidic jelly, had decided, you, the delicious heat source, is where it should be going. Books and bookshelves be damned/devoured. About 300 lbs of books are now falling on you along with the bookshelf. Roll to save."
When I was running D&D games, I would sprinkle in emotional realism more than physical realism.
Like the NPC guarding a giant rock that floated up and down to cover and uncover a doorway? Totally stood around waving his hands at the rock like he was making it move.
"It's chasing us? Ok, I grab my caltrops, cast Heat Metal and throw them into it's mouth." "Ok, I guess we'll just count that as critical damage every round that spell kicks off. Geez."
One of my favourite D&D moments was when my players, upon discovering that the travelling merchant they were buying from got lonely on the long journeys from town to town, bought him a dog.
Naturally, I had him become a recurring character who showed up in the middle of nowhere just when they were lamenting how they had all this cash but no place to spend it on [object that would solve their current dilemma].
He never had exactly what they wanted, but he always had a handful of nearly-as-good alternatives. "No flying carpets, but a couple broomsticks, a pair of seven-league boots, and a flying mortar and pestle."
At the end of the campaign they arranged for him to broker an economic agreement between two major trading nations, in order to break the power base of the villain.
practical question for you folks -- small, easy to conceal blowguns are a common fictional trope, but it seems that RL blowguns are oh, 5-6' pieces that are almost impossible to conceal...what's the smallest you can make a practical blowgun IRL?
The greater the length, the greater the speed and accuracy (until the tube's volume exceeds about 1/10 your lung capacity, at which point you need to stop).
@JoshuaAslanSmith Giantitp has a 5e section. If WotC's has managed to be a more wretched hive of villainous, subhuman stupidity than that, I think there's a bigger problem at hand.
@JoshuaAslanSmith At this point, I think the only reason official forums for any game exist is exactly TO be a hive of scum and villainy, just so that the unofficial forums stay relatively clean.
Aye. That's also the reason I was unimpressed with a recent series of articles on the "economy" of D&D that everyone's been linking (maybe not here). Yes, adventurers bringing thousands of GP from a dungeon would do strange things to a village. But trying to extrapolate D&D world economy from D&D treasure rules is about as useful as trying to extrapolate D&D world aerodynamics from flight rules.
Hmm. If I ever run a D&D-like campaign again (unlikely), I might have a plot wherein some NPC is trying to establish a more logical but not D&D-trope-compliant ethos in the society and re-shape the environment based on the influence of wizard magic et al.
And the PCs are tasked, by all the various powers who have vested interest in the status quo, to bring this fool down before he ruins everything.
(IE, the D&D world is illogical because gods and demons and other high-powered beings WANT it that way, and actively work to keep the apparently inevitable ramifications of its system from taking hold.)
My family's favorite game is Bezzerwizzer, a very simple game where you ask trivia questions and go around a board with a straight track.
We consistently pick playing it over the other board games we have, including Settlers of Catan and Monopoly. Sometimes it's the simple stuff that works best.
I haven't played Monopoly in decades. Cluedo (aka Clue) gets a regular workout though. I'm tempted to buy the D&D or Harry Potter versions (yes, they exist)
Mmm. Gameplay issues aside, I think the downfall of the Exploding Kittens concept will be overreaching into the ridiculous so that it loses any normality against which to contrast its extremes.
One surreal experience can be sanity-shattering; living in a surreal world just makes it hard to find your car keys.
It seems to be related to munchkin in that regard: gags would get old eventually, and the actual game is mediocre. Of course, we don't know that about kittens yet.
Of course, Munchkin has a silly amount of expansions, which seem to still be coming out regularly.
I'd be curious to see if the later boxes of Munchkin are better, somehow, but not enough to actually pay for them.
Well, InDesign still has a bug that needs me to restart the computer regularly, and I have to get used to the new suite because of the upgrade.
In summary: I spent $300 to upgrade my system, which I've been meaning to do for some time, but it didn't solve the problem which made me finally decide to upgrade.
Is there some free ARRPG stuff around? I want to have a look at it, but I'm still hesitant to spend the 15$ on the pdf. (Will probably do it later anyway…)
Each Mode is simply a selection of skills. You pick three modes which broadly define your character's competencies and rate them +1, +2, and +3.
That then defines how all your specific skill ranks fall out, with a few extra points to upgrade specific skills for customising the character further.
And instead of a Trouble aspect and three other aspects, you have one aspect that relates to each of your three modes, and your fifth aspect is a wild card.
The default modes are Action, Banter, Intrigue, and Science, but you can also create custom ("weird") modes if your characters needs them--like the Jenkins mode.
@BESW That sounds like it might work for my Greek game, where I have the problems that Aspects, Professions and Stunts might need to be a bit more clear-cut.
Jenkins has Will in his highest-rated (Jenkins) mode. That gives him a rank in Will equal to that mode's rank (+3).
But he also has Will in one of his other, lower-ranked modes (Survival). This "reinforces" the skill, giving it an extra +1.
He's got Athletics in all three Modes, so it starts at +3 and gets reinforced twice to +5.
(The numbers on the sheet are different because he also has extra skill points he's spent to further increase some of them.)
(This makes it a little confusing to reverse engineer.)
You can't ever reinforce a skill (through multiple modes OR through skill point expenditure) more than +2 above the rank of the highest-ranked mode it's in.
Hmm. So underlying it I still need a skill list, which was a problem I had earlier, and then my players decided they wanted mostly-free-form occupations instead, so I did not think about it any further…
Things I want to do: - fate looms, and I have actually been doing bits of it! - a mode calculator. will be part of above. no idea how to do it in google sheets, so i'll do it in what i know best: web app! - an index of all of atomic robo's stunts. for personal use, and in fate looms if i can have permission (even if it's conditional, i.e. please give us X royalties or something)
fate looms is an online play environment for fate games i was actively developing several months ago, and have resumed active development of recently (whilst puzzling over everything and realising i need to do the interface totally differently)
As “an index of all of atomic robo's stunts. for personal use, and from fate looms if i can have permission (even if it's conditional, i.e. please give us X royalties or something)”
Hmm. @doppelgreener, help me with balancing this stunt?
> Point Blank Range: +2 when using a gun to attack with Combat and your opponent is in your zone.
It's for an ACORC character, so he'll mostly be shooting at things you don't want anywhere NEAR your zone if you've got the option to shoot at them far away.
@johnp not any user specifically but some users behavior sometimes, for example Im definitely not in Mxy's fanclub and he rubs me and many users the wrong way quite often but he is also very efficient when hes going through and doing diamond mod work, and he really does have the best of intentions in his actions towards the site/community
So, if someone answers a question of mine, and I upvote the answer at first, but I later find out that the part of the answer that I upvoted it for is incorrect, do I have any way of removing the upvote without the answerer editing the post?
Three possibilities come to mind:
Summon a Dire Badger with a Summon Nature's Ally II (or higher) spell (+ casting Charm Animal may be helpful). A 2nd level Druid can cast both spells - at higher levels more badgers may be summoned for longer periods of time. Dire Badgers can burrow through 10 ...
Three possibilities come to mind:
Summon a Dire Badger with a Summon Nature's Ally II (or higher) spell (+ casting Charm Animal may be helpful). A 2nd level Druid can cast both spells - at higher levels more badgers may be summoned for longer periods of time. Dire Badgers can burrow through 10 ...
