TRPG General Chat - 2016-05-10 (page 1 of 2)

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12:30 AM

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1:23 AM

Low level strikers who have built lots of healing...I wonder what could possibly be causing combat to take a long time...

it doesn't even need that to take long

4E takes long by default, though strikers building heals doesn't help XD

@trogdor Yeah, I suspect "they killed things easily so I gave them higher level things" isn't helping a whole lot either.

yeah, I don't know what he was using the first time though

for all I know he threw all skirmishers at them with no brutes to hide behind

and or his PC's just super optomized for damage at first

if they have tons of healing as strikers,... I have to think they are not, in fact, actually the best at immediately shredding enemies that were built to take hits

though it has been a while since I played 4E, stuff could have changed in some really weird way that made it even less of a balanced game

I do know that when I was playing, a PC who was really trying could break their character in some very annoying ways

I have not seen a striker with a healing build before though, I don't know if that is new or if it is just that no one has bothered to do that before because everyone was generally breaking damage and CC

at least as strikers

I'm inclined to suspect it's simply a poor choice.

if they do actually have a lot of healing as strikers, they have to have given up some good damage items or feats or powers

it could be

1:36 AM

I mean, I have no doubt someone who really knew what they were doing could make an amazing healer out of a striker class. But I don't think that's what's happening here.

well, and even then

that person could make a much better healer out of a leader, or certain defenders like namely Paladin

I was playing a paladin as the "tank" and party healer for a while

I also did manage to build a very powerful Warlock who had insane self healing

and still did some decent damage and debuffs

he was high level though

I don't know how you would do that at low levels and still do good striker damage

Yeah, options tend to open up as you get higher level.

they do

@trogdor I was about to say this - I reckon they're likely strikers in name only.

yeah

I suspect this as well

1:49 AM

@Miniman Voting to close as dupe.

ah go figure

I am not surprised someone has asked something similar before

@BESW Hmmm...I think the specific details might make it not a dupe. I mean, the question he's asking is the same, but there's a lot of context an answer could focus on that isn't present in the other question. It's a weird situation.

This is why I'm glad I don't have a dupehammer badger.

"Dupehammer Badger" would be a good name for some kind of dwarven military hardware.

user image

Google Provides.

is it Warhammer perchance?

[digs deeper]

Kings of War.

user image

2:21 AM

I'm pretty sure there's a "mute" flaw in Unearthed Arcana that'd work perfectly for this guy, but I don't have UA.

@BESW UA is in the SRD, and there's no Mute flaw there. I don't know whether other books included more flaws, though.

...UA also contains guidelines for making your own flaws; does that fall into RAW?

@BESW Yeah, but it's the same process that also yields "anything the DM says is RAW", so it's not that useful from that perspective.

Loverly.

> The Teller. You automatically succeed at any overcome action involving sleight of hand which an ordinary human could possibly do (and can roll to attempt inhuman feats of legerdemain), but you are mute and can be compelled for that to cause problems.

...dear splintery toothpick: your job is to remove things between my teeth, not add things.

2:39 AM

nice,...

I think that Q needs a "Do you really mean RAW?" comment. (Where was that list of standard comments?)

yesterday, by BESW

BESW's Great Big Post o' Pre-Made Comments, v 2.0, in case anyone finds that useful.

That one?

Or this one?

...Yes

The [rules-as-written] tag is specifically used to indicate that you're only interested in strict literal readings of the rules. If you don't want that narrow of a focus, please edit out the tag. — BESW 49 secs ago

[is happy to have discovered the [edit] markdown for comments]

While going through old comments of mine to try and trim the fat, I ran across this phrase:

> Hide from undead has a range of touch.

2

@BESW That will do the trick

3:26 AM

hey @nitsua60

hiya--how's the evening going?

@BESW "Excuse me," said the cleric as he patted the zombie on the shoulder, "but you probably shouldn't notice me now. Would be awfully inappropriate."

@Magician I'm imagining more of the slapstick staple: Cleric taps zombie on right shoulder from behind as 'e saunters by on zombie's left....

2

@nitsua60 very frustrating, sadly sigh -- as to how your session-one went?

very well, thanks. I'm now through my least-enjoyable part of any campaign: the few days leading up to session 1.

3:34 AM

I like both of these options. The second one is totally how it'd work on alphas in Morts.

@nitsua60 good to hear. speaking of campaigns, how does your summer schedule look?

I.e. I really enjoy building a setting. I really enjoy playing along with players and seeing how they change the world by their actions (in small ways and large). But the time before they've done a thing, and I have no idea which of the 4\pi solid angle they're going to go... that's a little nerve-wracking.

@Shalvenay Summer schedule looks really doable--we finish classes the first weekend in June, then some-weeknight-evening could be good to run a mini-campaign. Either the continuing adventures of Jherala and Teovanth, or something completely different.

@nitsua60 cool

I've been spending a few years now trying to go all zen-like and not imagine outcomes, only starting states and potential branch points. I'm just barely feeling like I can do it now.

@nitsua60 And if you're still interested, I'm still available for those Talks.

@BESW Works on my five-year old, so it should totally work on a being who draws its sustenance from sucking the lifeforce from those around it. [starts] Oh, sorry, was that out loud?

@BESW I think that's part of my trouble: the start, when the ball of player action has yet to roll off its mountaintop perch of infinite possibility, just holds too much potential.

@Shalvenay you interested in running anything?

3:40 AM

@nitsua60 At that point, I've started distracting myself with making PCs or designing unrelated one-shots.

...and now I've added writing new games to that, apparently...

@Shalvenay (I'm not casting about for an out, but don't want to be "hogging" the screen if you're itching to try something.)

@BESW Probably should have spent some time making up spare PCs: first encounter of the campaign the four-PC party ran across an 18-person hunting party and decided to attack.

@nitsua60 You're going to Chicago in June, right?

If not for some very cold dice it could have been a TPK 30 minuntes into the campaign. (Which should serve as a lesson to you young whippersnappers: the world does not owe you level-appropriate encounters!)

First week in July, but yeah. (Maybe tail end of June? Wedding is on 7/3.)

@nitsua60 not sure actually

Nitsua, what game system is this?

3:48 AM

@doppelgreener 5e

(I suppose that in some systems the world does explicitly owe you level-appropriate encounters. I"m just not terribly interested in them.)

Yeah, D&D (4e being the usual outlier, but only to a lesser degree) is pretty laid-back about the ability to wander into terrifyingly fatal encounters through no fault of one's own.

Ok. I do a heavy improv style that I similarly found kinda nerve wracking in D&D 4e and 3.5e (probably would be just the same in 5e), my move to Fate Core was motivated by a desire to have that be easier. And it's so enabling on that front I've stuck with it.

So uh. It's not just you.

@doppelgreener (not totally sure I'm following: what's not just me? Yelling at kids to get their minis off my lawn?)

He's talking about prep-to-table anxiety.

ahh...

3:54 AM

@nitsua60 <- oh, I'll be more clear. This experience in this message is not just you.

"My players could do anything from here!" is really concerning, because I'm in a game where mental preparation for those eventualities is nontrivial.

It's just that one moment, though. I'll go the better part of a year before it pops up again, probably. I'm happy with lots-of-prep/no-planning/lots-of-improv. It's just when there's soooo much potential awaiting you at that first session, no amount of prep seems sufficient. (Whereas there'll be plenty of weeks when no prep seems a sufficient amount.)

This is one reason I'm taking to starting campaigns in the middle of an immediate situation.

"You're looking for the Sunswords of Su'ul, and you hear Manc the Merc knows something. You've just walked into the seedy bar where Manc is two sheets to the wind and leaning on a pretty woman."

Cold opens are fun.

Those seem to go the best. Agree ahead of time what the situation is going to be, and go at it.

We did that, with some help from the "It's Not My Fault" link @KyleS. threw out here a few days ago. We wound up with "fire on three sides," "swore an oath while drunk," and "the poison is already in your system." It worked nicely.

night, all

ttfn

2 hours later…

6:09 AM

VTC as incredibly vague, hopefully before answers start flooding in (and they will).

@Miniman close dooted

6:28 AM

...trying to write GMing advice for Sunless Fate, quickly turning into a treatise on mystery games in Fate. Um. That's a bit beyond the scope.

Maybe I can just cheat and say "go read this book". Perhaps Unwritten deals with the topic?

18

Q: How to do mystery based storytelling in Fate?

One of the answers in What better not to use Fate Core for? was that story lines where information is withheld from the players were less suitable for Fate. However, people commented they had been able to make Fate work with such mystery tales. One of the comments explicitly stated the situation...

gm-techniques fate investigation

12

Q: How can I have mystery in a Fate plot?

I am going to run a session for a plot. This is going to be an introduction to RPGs, and what I'm trying to do is to add an element of mystery to the plot to keep the players hooked. The plot goes like this: people who have never met before fill in a form to apply to an organization. When they g...

character-creation campaign-development fate-core investigation

Cheers! Useful, though not quite what I'm pondering. Which is to be expected.

There should be resources in the answers that might also be helpful; for example, a sense of whether Unwritten does what you want.

I just glanced through Unwritten, and it doesn't touch on what I'm trying to figure out right now. Namely, the fundamental difference between a game where only the GM knows the purposefully mysterious lore, and a game where everyone is familiar with it.

Unwritten deals with the topic but within the context of its own raft of changes to Fate Core.

6:42 AM

Hmm. Unwritten has a mechanic for supporting that, but you're right, it doesn't talk much about the implications.

I think you may have to go blog-diving.

Or blog-writing!

I'm sure I've seen some prominent Fate bloggers talk about this subject.

But I don't have the time to go digging myself yet.

I can talk of my personal experiences, but I suspect at least some of them could be considered doing Fate wrong.

@Magician third version: nobody knows and everyone's making it up as they go.

@BESW No worries. I'll poke around the internet a bit on my own.

@doppelgreener That is, indeed, a possibility.

6:44 AM

Oh, Achtung! Cthulhu (or its devs' blogs) might have something.

In our Fate games, when someone makes an overcome or CA roll to learn or discover something, BESW has taken to saying something along the lines of "what do you find out? I've got something in mind for this, would you rather say what's going on yourself or have me say what I've got?". It's pretty nice and gives us the freedom to make stuff up. Unwritten just divides this mechanically between two actions, one made for "the GM tells me" and the other for "I tell the GM".

I intend to pick up the same habit.

Well, sorta.

You're talking about individual overcome and create advantage actions, with the usual Fate wibblyness about who narrates their outcomes; Unwritten invents a new action entirely for "the GM tells me," Investigation.

And for "I tell the GM," it borrows the brainstorm scene structure from ARRPG, constructed from a series of create advantage actions.

And Investigation is specifically a meta-level question-asking action.

It's kinda bizarre.

7:12 AM

@doppelgreener yeah I intend to borrow this technique myself

1 hour later…

8:28 AM

@BESW @doppelgreener Would you be so kind and provide an answer to rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/79876/… ?

@eimyr I was brewing over my experience in Fate Core vs Atomic Robo earlier... I'll see what I can answer with.

8:55 AM

...huh.

Reading the guidelines for designing 3.5 flaws, and apparently min/maxing is assumed to be a default player stance:

@BESW hm?

> [...P]layers always choose flaws that have the least impact on their characters, while taking feats that have the most.

The line both assumes min/maxing as a universal playstyle, and implies (which the next bullet point outright claims) that balance is a significant design consideration.

...The third bullet point thinks two non-caster feats are worth more than a spellcasting class level, though.

But then the last bullet says that combat-focused players aren't expected to participate in social scenes.

Is there a bullet point saying this is true IFF there is not plot and just a stream of randomized encounters?

This sort of thing is a fascinating insight into the devs' thought processes.

@BESW well they're not wrong. I get nothing in a D&D game out of flaws that screw me over, except screwed over. I had a bad time in Pathfinder when my GM told me "You pick one trait, I pick for you another trait and a flaw." So I was forced to have a flaw, and I couldn't choose? All the flaws looked awful. I was disappointed and annoyed until they pointed me to two flaws which were very much benign and added something interesting about my character. Those were interesting.

(And, importantly, they were benign.)

9:06 AM

@doppelgreener That's... mostly... been my experience as well. But it's interesting to see devs come out and say it, when I could find a dozen different places on RPG.SE that swear up and down (and I believe them) that they have fun with D&D 3.5 by deliberately making mechanically poor choices which crippled their characters' utility but supported their narrative concepts.

Oh, DnD family and picking from a list.

Presence of non-interesting choices bugs me beyond reason.

I like picking from lists, when it doesn't turn into a rigged game show.

I know of the "system mastery" excuse, but I can't believe DnD designers had nothing better to do with their lives than obfuscating interesting choices with boring ones and calling it deliberate design consideration.

@eimyr Well, and that's part of why I stopped to look at that line I quoted above.

Oh, I like picking from lists a lot and I'd play 3.5 and PF with that in mind, I just like the lists to be full of cool choices, not a couple cool choices in a soup of mediocrity.

9:10 AM

It explicitly says not to design options on a significantly diverse power scale.

I wonder if they applied that to their own designs [lies blatantly]

To be fair, it's not like there was only one dev working on all the content.

Even if they were all trying to create evenly distributed options, synchronicity was lacking.

And as the edition cycle progressed, gaps were filled (see Tome of Battle).

I feel like early 3.5 and late 3.5 were spiritually closer to their prior and subsequent editions, respectively, than to each other.

Which makes sense, and is quite fascinating to see, but also produces some frustration in playing the thing.

I do like Tome of Battle more than other melee-focused expansions (Sword and Fist comes to mind) but some late ones also fell prey to prodding the average power level to get people to buy&play them (I'm looking at you, Dragon Magic)

0

Q: It's [time] to remove a tag, but are there some good replacements we can make first?

It turns out we have a time tag. This is a bit of a problem. As KRyan put it in a comment: time seems a bit overloaded to me, since it can refer to both in-game time (how to measure it, how to track it, how long things take, etc. etc.) as well as out-of-game time (limited play time, speeding ...

discussion tags

Dragon Magic felt... disjointed... to me. Like it hadn't all been written of a piece.

Like someone said, "Hey, we've got these dragony design bits that didn't make it into other books, let's make a book out of that."

Blind Guardian - Time What Is Time

9:23 AM

user image

2 hours later…

11:39 AM

My brethren, long have I dallied

I just went to sleep yesterday

@DoomedMind It sounds a lot like Shadowrun, but with the "overestimate" feature. It sounds interesting, how will you explain that in-lore?

12:10 PM

@Golokopitenko In-Lore, its kinda like "you're confident you're going to finish this succesfully. But while you seem to be very successful, you somehow missed something critical"

this doesn't necessarily means you fail completely. And the effect of this may not be obvious instantly

other than overestimate, there is no concept of "critical failures" or "critical successes"

This question gives me a sad.

@DoomedMind I quite like the idea - like Oh Hell, where it's about your skill at predicting exactly how successful you'll be. Where I think it falls down is that unlike Oh Hell, the player can't influence the outcome of their prediction, they have to guess, roll the dice, and hope for the best.

@BESW "What I didn't expect was to be suddenly expelled without warning, though with hindsight it was an obvious consequence of features in the narrative" - wait, what?

@DoomedMind You might also find Cthulhu Dark's mechanic interesting: outright failure is almost unheard of (it's only even possible if someone else at the table calls for it), so you roll for degrees of success. You can go from "barely succeed," with collateral consequences; to "do brilliantly," with collateral awesome.

@Miniman So far as I can tell, guy ran a game designed to involve and affect players as well as characters, without getting the group's input first. The players found themselves in something like a cross between gaslighting and alternate reality gaming, without giving consent.

He's still not really clear on how that's bad, so he's imagining that they might be buying into it and returning the favour.

@BESW I'm ignoring the whole confusing morass and focusing one point I find particularly confusing - it's a question about "I don't understand why I was kicked out", but then he says being kicked out was an obvious consequence, so...huh?

No, no.

If he was actually kicked out, he doesn't understand why.

But if getting kicked out is doubling down on playing the game, then he can see how that's reasonable.

12:23 PM

the hell?

Or I could be totally wrong.

I can't really. Why wouldn't you tell somebody what's wrong?

I mean, kicking one out, okay, but without giving reasons?!

how would you know what to change?

Because some/all of the people involved are [choose one]:
petty
socially undeveloped
treating socialisation like a zero-sum competition
other

People get weird when their social groups don't behave the way they expect.

I know somebody who considered trying to take my job because of a minor mishandled social encounter.

wait, what?

Details are classified. It was a thing.

My point being, the asker took liberties with the social contract without asking, and the organiser seems to be on a power trip in response.

@LegendaryDude [wave]

@DoomedMind In a situation like this, there's no interest in helping the person improve. Only in taking advantage of an opportunity to exert control over the social setting at their expense.

For me the whole thing boils down to "This is why I ask how the session went at the end of every night."

12:30 PM

Yeah, thats obvious I guess

Detachment and hindsight make it easy to diagnose. Being in the middle of makes clarity a LOT harder.

12:56 PM

true

1:20 PM

@PeterDavidCarter [wave]

Peter David Carter

heya :)

[waves back]

I hope you can join another group! You've got 50k+ more people than I've got on my island, with a more active gaming community than we have, and I know of at least a half-dozen active RPGs here. So I imagine it's just a matter of locating the other groups in your area.

@PeterDavidCarter [wave]

And there's always online options; the technology for that is rapidly making it a viable alternative.

Peter David Carter

1:46 PM

Yeah, I'll have a look. It's a shame as I was just at the point where things were starting to integrate well, but it's good to have outside perspectives.

Asking how the session went definitely sounds like a good idea.

Reading between the lines is unreliable at best, but it sounds kinda like you had a very ambitious idea about the intensity of the campaign which you didn't run by the rest of the group before implementing.

If I did that with my group, they'd rightly mutiny because our game time is a casual gathering to relax with friends. Making things Serious and Real without checking first wouldn't be cool.

...my group would still do its best to convey why they were unhappy, but that's because we're friends first and gamers second, and we've put a lot of work into having an environment that encourages open dialogue.

Peter David Carter

The gaming environments were always happy, though. Which is what made things odd. Though when I did the revolving DM thing I did end up webchatting with my fiancee for most of the session.

Well, the bit about "consistent GMs" tells me it's not just your gameplay choices, there's something else going on in the group.

What it is, I can't possibly say.

Peter David Carter

Yeah. The 'consistency' in DMs was the part which caught me attention too. It wasn't my intention to mess anyone about but it seems perhaps that was the feeling the organiser ended up left with regardless.

All sounds very much like there's more social conflict than game conflict underlying the situtation.

Peter David Carter

1:59 PM

Yeah, pretty much definitely. But as a DM it was my responsibility to address the underlying problems more subtly than I did.

I'm not very fond of the idea that a GM has to be the social wrangler too, but it is a common practice.

Peter David Carter

I always see it as a porous line between seeking to keep everyone in the group happy and engaged and trying to make sure the adventure is addressing any underlying social issues, but I don't think everyone needs to see it that way.

GMs do benefit from being able to take the pulse of the room so they can adjust the game accordingly.

@PeterDavidCarter Given how your proposed character was a parallel of your own, as well as meta elements of the game you ran, whatever they may have been, do you think it's possible the others in your group tried to discuss whatever was concerning them before, and you confused it with roleplay? I'll be honest, the number of blurred lines between fiction, roleplaying and real life in your question had raised red flags for me.

Ours is an engrossing hobby. People can get lost in it.

Peter David Carter

I wonder if they perhaps did try to discuss it, though I would suggest that, as a pre-existing friend group I was relatively new to, they may have discussed it more between group sessions than within them.

2:03 PM

Gaming is a social event like any other gathering, and everyone needs to take some responsibility for the atmosphere.

As @Magician says, it's easy to get so focused on the game that we forget the people we're playing with are more important than the fiction.

6

Socialising outside of game time can help a lot.

It provides an opportunity to talk about the game without feeling like you're losing precious play time, and helps the group cohese.

I generally try to fit in a bit of time before and after our game for it, and we maintain a group chat room, and we go to movies and plays and things occasionally.

Peter David Carter

Do you usually plan the activities before and after to fit in with the sessions themselves?

In a thematic sense, I think I mean.

Nah. That'd be tantamount to saying that the reason we're socialising is to game, rather than that we game as part of our socialising. And that's a priority I wouldn't want to imply.

What happens instead is that by socialising in a broad range of ways, our games become richer.

Peter David Carter

And here's me thinking all adventures pretty much start in a tavern ;)

By sharing interests and hobbies outside of the game, we learn what's going to make our friends happier in the game, and concepts which delight all of us get added to the sessions.

EG, once I learnt that all my friends like horror stories to some extent, we started playing cthulhu-dark sessions every once in a while.

Peter David Carter

Have you dealt much with the subject of love triangles and jealousies at all in games? Any suggestions how to deal with these... I didn't really want to represent them too much as often drawing attention to an issue directly can inflame tensions, but I feel in the past all male groups have been largely free from these, where as the more mixed groups I've been in of late can get sort of competitive in the wrong way, which I'm not great at defusing.

2:11 PM

Do you mean between players, or as part of the game story?

Peter David Carter

Between people involved in the campaigns. But I feel I am always consciously or subconsciously influenced by the unspoken relationships of everyone participating in the campaign when writing plot.

I've run many games with mixed-gender groups, and groups in which players were in relationships with each other or weren't. Real-life relationships don't get mimicked in game, so I can't speak to that.

I've only ever had two major issues with real-life romantic stuff in a group.

In the rounds I participate in, I tend to believe that, apart from gaming together, relationships dont make it into the game.

One was when one person had trouble understanding another person wasn't interested, and one of them had to leave the group because it was awkward. That can happen in any group, it's not RPG-specific.

Peter David Carter

I find it can be worse if both parties are very clearly interested. Sometimes.

2:16 PM

The other was when a couple had heard a lot of this kind of garbage and was paranoid that playing a game together would ruin it for everyone.

Peter David Carter

Very interesting link reads intently

Actually I've had two couples like that. One couple very carefully made characters with minimal interaction, and it was rather stilted.

I can see problems arising from relationships between players, as for example, my girlfriend is in the same group as I am. Like if we were about to part.

The other couple just took a long time for me to convince them to even TRY playing together, and it works because our group is very non-competitive.

In-game romance in my campaigns has been circumspect, never a major part of the story, and rarely/never PC-to-PC.

Maybe someday we'll play Hot Guys Making Out, but that's its own thing. We're wary of games like Monsterhearts and Katanas & Trenchcoats that have "sex moves," and if we played ANY of those games it'd require some candid discussion beforehand.

...on the other hand, my PC Jessie Farman will flirt with anything that can give consent, and everyone's okay with that.

We've been including more romance in our games lately (which has little to do with the topic at hand, but still). In a recent horror game, two of the PCs were married, with one of them cheating with an NPC as a major plot point. In the game I'm currently running, an NPC is engaged in a slow-burn sizzling flirting with a PC, much to every other players' delight.

2:21 PM

@PeterDavidCarter Reading your third paragraph and thinking about it a bit more, I've gotta say: I've never played in a group which would have had any interest in this character or the sort of thing you're trying to do with it. I'm not saying we'd kick someone out for it, but I can understand why a group might.

@Miniman yes, but I would expect them to tell you why, at least.

@Miniman It does seem very much like the kind of character that might be interesting in a novel where he's the protagonist, but doesn't work well in an RPG with a number of equally protagonistic team members.

@DoomedMind So would I! I'm just offering it up as a possible reason for what happened. I certainly don't condone throwing people out of groups, especially without warning.

I'd expect no less :)

I'd throw someone out on their ear for real-world meanyfacedness, no problem. But game issues can usually be worked out if everyone's willing to talk rationally, at worst to the point where it's clear the underlying problem is an incompatible set of play goals.

2:27 PM

@BESW Do you have any good links on this topic? I went looking, and I found some vaguely related stuff, but nothing that really seems relevant.

Peter David Carter

How would you define play goals? Do you have any suggestions for how to work out multiple play-goals in advance? I tend to write sections situationally, but perhaps I am losing the big picture in failing to understand all the future implications of play choices.

@Miniman I feel like I've talked about it before, but it's 1230am and I can't find 'em.

@PeterDavidCarter to this message in particular - between your comments about things getting "too real", I'm not sure if "trying to make sure the adventure is addressing any underlying social issues" means the adventure is just being sensitive to them, or if you're trying to address and resolve them in game. Like being cautious of the fact two people have had an upset, vs trying to get them to move past it in the game. Could you clarify?

@PeterDavidCarter Play goals are rather meta-ish. Its about what you as a player want to do and feel while playing

@BESW maybe once or twice in passing?

2:29 PM

11

Q: How to get to know my players' expectations?

I am soon starting a new game with a bunch of new people that I have never played with - and some of them I barely spoken to. I am going to be the GM and will introduce them into the setting that they do not know. I talked to them and they impressed upon me that they would like a more roleplay-o...

system-agnostic new-players gm-preparation system-introduction

its about how you play

17

Q: How can I find out the best style of play for the people in my group? (Asking isn't working.)

Lately, I've realized that most of the players in my D&D 5e custom story group that I am the DM of are not as engaged as they could be in the game. When I ask them how each really wants to play the game (LARPing, the usage of maps, NPC interaction, etc.), and what rules we should use (by the boo...

There are a number of other questions on the site that deal with related issues, too.

Peter David Carter

"It can be difficult to deal with this, especially when you as GM may want a more RPG-heavy story while your "leader" player just wants to power game his way through every encounter (of course the same thing happens no matter what the difference is -- this just happens to be an example from my own experience). Other players will tend to follow the player leader in those cases, and you might find yourself running a different game than the one you thought you were running."

Yup.

One of the things I've tried to learn as a GM is how to facilitate a variety of game types and work with the group to figure out which is a good fit for them.

Peter David Carter

I wanted to raise this section as I think it highlights the different between my penultimate D&D group and my last one. In my penultimate group conflict was always co-operative, and the GM was always attempting to create a positive sort of conflict. It was US vs The World, which was lovely for everyone.

This also seemed to be true in the new group, until just recently where it seems to have turned directly competitive in a different way. Probably, as you guys seem to be suggesting, because the meta-gaming moved too far too quickly, though in some ways I felt this was inevitable, as even in other social settings the group was already highly meta in the way they talk about fantasy and gaming.

2:39 PM

Changing groups can give us culture shock, especially if we don't anticipate the shifts we encounter.

@PeterDavidCarter I like to re-read 8 kinds of fun every once in a while to remind myself where my blind spots might be. (Usual caveat: Angry's excellent advice is often punctuated by vulgar and profane blabbing.)

@PeterDavidCarter You talk about metagaming a lot, but it's not clear to me and others what you actually mean by that.

:29560855 Thanks.

Yeeeah... "metagaming" gets used to mean a LOT of different things.

Peter David Carter

I suppose I mean making it increasingly clear and less and less tangential, the manner by which art imitates life, and the particularities of that within the group.

@PeterDavidCarter Are you saying that your game increasingly resembled your life? Or...the group's life?

2:45 PM

That sounds more like an artist's statement than an explanation.

Peter David Carter

The group's life, I would say. Or rather, I began to start to understand the motivations of my players and their personal philosophies through the choices they made in character. Though it might be noted that some characters were a lot more forthright than others about their choices, which led to different levels of intuited knowledge.

....erm.

You were treating PCs as windows into the players' own personalities?

Peter David Carter

There was some very real tension in the group when one member wanted to kill a bugbear and the others didn't want him to.

@BESW If I did this, I'm not sure I'd ever leave my house again.

Peter David Carter

I then followed the group's preoccupation and made the bugbear a focal point for most of the rest of the adventure. They seemed very concerned with whether the bugbear was evil or not, whether he'd really converted to Pelor, and if he could be trusted.

2:52 PM

If it caused "very real tension" in the group, what made you think that prolonging that was a good idea?

Not sure where you get that "personal philosophies" correspond to character choices

Peter David Carter

I wanted to bring the conflict to a resolution which displayed all of the character's points of view as valid in different ways, and challenged each to understand those of the others.

@DoomedMind It's a variant on a common and popular lit-crit fallacy, whereby we take "write what you know" to its ridiculous extreme and assume people can't create (or identify with) fictional characters unlike themselves.

@BESW ah, I see

@PeterDavidCarter So, it sounds like your play goal was to create interesting philosophical outcomes.

Peter David Carter

2:56 PM

Yeah, pretty much.

Next time, try running a game of Dogs in the Vineyard.

Peter David Carter

I've not heard of it...

@PeterDavidCarter Was this a goal for the rest of the group?

Sometimes a bugbear is just a bugbear.

2

And isn't actually really worth focusing on all that much.

At least then everyone will know what kind of game you're playing.

2:56 PM

...yeah, interesting philosophical outcomes isn't something D&D concerns itself with.

I'll leave you to it :) laters

Bye!

Peter David Carter

bye!

DinV: definitely will look into

Actually, I suggest you check out The Princes' Kingdom.

It's basically the Dogs rule system, but with a somewhat less problematic conceit.

But before all that: These are systems to use for the exploring philosophical play goals. If those goals aren't something your group share, forcing them on the group is not going to work out.

3:11 PM

Indeed.

I've played in groups where the GM tried to force his idea of the game on an unwilling audience, and I've been that GM.

It never ends well.

Peter David Carter

You feel from the description I've given that players wanted something else?

@PeterDavidCarter None of the information I've got from your question or in chat has indicated anything in particular to me about what the players wanted.

And my default assumptions based on experience lean towards "having a good time" as priority #1.

Peter David Carter

They mostly seemed to want to talk about the Bugbear a lot.

The fact that you haven't really mentioned how the players felt about your themes, or what you did to try and find out how they felt, isn't a good sign.

@PeterDavidCarter That...doesn't mean all that much. In a recent session a group I was in spent about half an hour talking about flower arranging. I don't know, because I didn't ask, but I don't believe anyone of us had any real interest in flower arranging. We were just roleplaying and having fun with it.

3:21 PM

Phrases like "I was always aware when writing that not everyone wants their personal issues directly featured in a narrative, but even well-judged campaign can evoke resistance" are red flags that your prioritised your game concept over your player's happiness and comfort in the name of Art.

Peter David Carter

One was a pacifist bard, she was interested in the bugbear's immortal soul and in being super pacifist. Another was interested in being mighty and righteous...

It's entirely possible, even likely, that the players didn't know what they wanted, either. If they got together to play D&D, which typically consists of kicking down doors and slaughtering monsters, and were suddenly confronted with a moral dilemma, it could bring about all sorts of confusion.

If I haven't seen that half-a-hundred times... and it seems somewhat more common with D&D than other systems, though. Every system has it's pre-loaded/pre-conceived setting tropes, and smash/slaughter/loot is one of D&D's.

Unfortunately, being the Original Game and lashed to Tradition, D&D often feels obligated to act like it accommodates more playstyles than it's actually designed to handle.

If you're there to fight monsters and have a good time, and instead are suddenly forced to contemplate whether your character is a good person for fighting monsters, cognitive dissonance may follow. Of course they're a good person, a hero even, you've conceived them as such. Your expectations, based on the game as you perceived it, clash with the game as presented. And suddenly the critique of your character's morality feels like critique of your own morality, and it spirals out of control.

Peter David Carter

3:27 PM

I think the penultimate one, the more successful one, was more a co-operative hunting-party setup. Perhaps, yes, the setup is probably a little wrong for moral dilema style since in a sense one is battling against the rules, which are more adventure/combat oriented.

@T.J.L. Hi!

@PeterDavidCarter This is a thing, but it's still a less important thing than the question of whether your players are actually interested in what you refer to as "moral dilemma style". If they're not, it doesn't matter whether the system it.

The argument gets heated and overtakes the session, as your characters aren't made with compromise in mind. Seen it happen a few times, sadly.

Peter David Carter

And yes, I can see the downward spiral that might result from asking players to confront their own fallibility as Good people and/or actors. It was likely my error to assume I could successfully represent ideas I was still battling with in a useful way until I had made complete peace with them myself.

@PeterDavidCarter As others have said multiple times already, it's not about how well you've executed the dilemma. It's about whether or not the players wanted to face such dilemmas in the first place.

3:31 PM

@PeterDavidCarter I don't think that was your error at all. Exploring concepts with your players shouldn't need you to have a complete understanding of your players or the concepts. Just their support.

@Magician Yeah, this.

Well, I think that requiring "complete peace" is going a bit far. Part of role-playing can be exploration of ideas or thought processes other than the normal ones you're accustomed to. Of course, you need the game groups buy-in on exploring that kind of mindscape.

Dog Eat Dog is a game which rose out of the designer's struggles to understand something about himself, and captures that struggle quite brilliantly.

The people I run for expect moral ambiguity and questionable situations... of course, that may be because I'm most well known in my local gaming circle as the Shadowrun guy... even when I'm doing settings like Macross. :)

But it's a game that would be totally inappropriate to inflict on anyone who didn't know what they were getting into.

Peter David Carter

I was careful to put a disclaimer up that the campaign was likely to contain murder, existential and spiritual crisis, and rabbits on the meetup page before beginning...

Not sure if people took it seriously tho...

3:42 PM

@PeterDavidCarter I do the same in my group, which apparently seems to be not too distant from where you are based.

Peter David Carter

Oh; where abouts?

I know various people will rip their clothes to shreds about trigger warnings and PC language but if I can make someone's decision whether to join the game or not easier, why shouldn't I do it?

Chesterfield.

It's an RPG club not just a lone group which might be "full", so we're always happy to see new faces.

Peter David Carter

I would certainly be willing to give it a shot

refugeesfromreality.weebly.com

Peter David Carter

ooopppp, webcam fiancee calling

3:46 PM

The website is quite outdated, but we use this to communicate: trello.com/b/EsfELeWg/refugees-from-reality

Peter David Carter

can't keep her waiting or she'll probably cast a hex on me

;)

@PeterDavidCarter poke me if you have any questiosn

Peter David Carter

laterz guys :)

ttfn

Peter David Carter

will do

3:48 PM

@PeterDavidCarter If you showed up this Friday, on a chance, you'd see Yours Truly running Great Ork Gods one-shot.

Great Ork Gods is a game that explicitly says to avoid moral dilemmas.

It is.

But it also sets boundaries quite clearly.

Do orks have "morality" beyond "I can smash this" or "this can smash me"? :)

> Avoid Heavy Themes
Great Ork Gods is supposed to be fun, in a cartoon violence kind of way. Pillage and Burn is fun; Rape and Pillage is not. Avoid the consequences of the players’ actions — don’t have mourning children and wives and crap like that.

It might not be a completely accurate quote, but I remember a bit saying "Kill and pillage is fun, rape and kill is not"

3:52 PM

@T.J.L. Orks have... Oog. Which is a measure of how much other Orks respect/fear/envy/want to kill you.

Which is pretty much like WAAAGH!!! too

The Ork Gods don't like Orks enough to offer moral guidelines.

Orks also understand hate, which is a thing Ork Gods feel towards Orks.

Spite is also recognised.

Your godward stats are just how much each god hates you.

Oh, and "Orkiness" as a measure of how orky a thing is.

3:54 PM

For a game that claims morality is off-topic, there's some Oedipean shit going on there. :)

GOG is a game where you're expected to lose multiple Orks each session.

(If you take too long making your new Ork, he gets extra Hate.)

(penalised? Moar hate! Moar hate = moar death = moar new orks. The game just trains you to create orks quickly)

6 hours later…

9:41 PM

Hey, folks, this is your semi-yearly reminder that The room sidebar is intended to be a collaboratively created mini-timeline of interesting room events for people who don't have time to read the entire chat transcript for that particular room. Stars aren't "like" buttons, and if you star several things from a short period of chat it pushes the other cool stuff off too fast.

**Cool RPG stuff:** [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[5e Book of the Righteous](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1780208966/book-of-the-righteous-for-fifth-edition "'The Book of the Righteous' as a beautiful, full color hardback for 5e");
[Dresden Files graphic novel giveaway](http://www.evilhat.com/home/dresden-files-graphic-novel-giveaway/ "spread the word about Evil Hat and Dresden Files to earn tickets to the raffle");

Hmm.

Try to star only one or two representative lines from a conversation, please.

4

Bah, markdown.

10:25 PM

@heathenJesus [wave]

WrongOnTheInternet

Any Supers (as in Supers only, not genreless) games without a defined power (or effect) list?

Like, totally without a powers list, or is it okay if there are examples?

WrongOnTheInternet

Examples are fine, but a game where it's like "These are some of the things you can make"

Venture City (lots of examples, and guidelines for making your own).

Hmm. I can't find Spandex online anymore.

Spandex: A Simple Superhero Game

WrongOnTheInternet

Hmmm...

I'm gonna need to read through the FATE rulebook cover to cover just pull out the interesting design bits

I'd probably leave behind any explicit narrative control mechanics, or change them to make sense inside the game world.

10:45 PM

Like Fate point declarations and compels? Those are pretty universal and generic - they don't need changing to fit inside a world on account of having no attachment to a particular kind of world.

WrongOnTheInternet

Compels make sense in most situations though, right? Like, your character has an explicit fear of bees sort of thing, and will run away from bees. That needs no explanation. I'm thinking more about the Fate Point kind of thing (Hero Points in M&M, Action Points in 4E, etc.) where I'd like it to represent a specific inside the gameworld thing.

@WrongOnTheInternet I think you may be misunderstanding what fate points are.

WrongOnTheInternet

@BESW I might very well be. Like I said, I need to read the book.

It's a metagame currency, but it can only be spent to gain a positive effect if you can point to an in-game narrative element which could justify that effect.

And compels are how you gain fate points during play: by accepting extra drama or complication.

Spending a fate point doesn't give you an extra action; it gives +2, a re-roll, or lets you declare a story detail.

WrongOnTheInternet

@BESW See, the describe a story detail thing is what I'm more concerned about. M&M Hero Points have something similar (edit a scene). I'm coming from a perspective where I want a game that's more Sim, so it has an in-game explanation of metagame effects like this. So, something like spending a Fate Point or Hero Point or whatever would be some actual ability the characters have.

I like some mechanics in this more narrative-control focused game, but I want to strip these things of their original context and put them in a more sim-heavy game.

10:57 PM

Story details don't change established facts.

They fill in gaps the group hasn't defined yet.

Two weeks ago @doppelgreener spent a fate point to have the villain monologue his evil plan for us.

We were being held prisoner by William Shatner, and it made sense that he'd come in to gloat and reveal his schemes.

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