I like that you say "safe and happy." Also, though, RPG.SE by its nature has to assume that the "default" way to play is "with the greatest available consistency."
@noneuklid indeed, but fixed points vary from group to group and system to system. if you look at a game over time and it seems wildly inconsistent, you probably aren't perceiving the fixed points they do have because they're off somewhere else
@Adeptus Personally, I won't accept money to GM. I don't want another job, I don't want the shift in expectations that comes with it. One FLGS recently started charging a per-player fee and while I haven't pushed back too hard against the notion of the table "covering" the GM, I have pushed back hard against the GM getting any sort of compensation beyond that. (And, in fact, at my table it goes the other way--I cover myself and another player and I split a third player's charge for them.)
@Ben Which one: they're "compensated" for GMing or they can't afford to play and other players are picking it up for them? Or they're funding another player?
We've got plenty of questions where rulings and published rules aren't really relephant at all, or where the game text itself encourages mechanical inconsistency where social or narrative consistency can be better served otherwise.
@BESW yeah, which is what I was trying to convey with my comment about fixed points varying -- those rules and rulings are still consistent with each other provided the choice of fixed points used for the evaluation is correct
@BESW and yes, there are Qs and As where rulings and published rules aren't as relevant. sometimes the issue is a table dynamics problem that lives outside rulespace, and at other times the issue is an issue of simulation that also lives outside rulespace, if you will
@Shalvenay right; those are situations in which the discussion of consistency is irrelevant. they aren't consistent or not consistent -- they're outside rules-space.
but within the context of rules of any game, whether D&D or QUAGS, the SE format is for answerable questions. "the rules say this but i think this" isn't a good answer.
We aren't here on the Stack to read the rulebooks to people. We're here to help people learn how to synthesize the mechanics, the non-mechanical text, the social context, our personal experience, the learning of the broader community, to apply all that to a particular real-life problem someone's having and find a solution for it.
@Ben problem is that rules as playtested can never deal with all variables of players creativity! i'm all about "breaking" rules for for some ingame consistency!
@BESW No, actually, that's a much better answer than just "the rules say this," provided there's also good support for the opinion I want to up vote that statement, but this is chat.
@BESW Eh. I absolutely am here to read the rulebooks to people when it's needed. In fact, my only >25pnt answer is also my only one with zero opinion content.
Aye, the Stack accommodates rules-without-context questions, and those questions are easy and the answers are straightforward so they're rewarded. But it's not what the Stack is here for.
It absolutely is -- as you yourself have shown. We're adjudicating situations in which the rules are unclear... problems people are having... based on sourceable information and our own experiences.
I'd like to see Earthling's question about familiar and border ethereal traveling reopened. I did yet another edit, to get the language into simpler prose.
The "rules space" exists completely inside each group's particular social space. We agree upon a ruleset when we pick a game, and that ruleset remains intact only so long as we permit it to--as soon as our social space requires it, that rules space can and must yield.
i mean ludologically i'd go further and argue that a game only exists insofar as it's been instantiated, but that's probably more than what we're talking about here
what we're doing in SE is necessarily discussing a space we ourselves do not have immediate access to, which is exactly why the documentability of the answer is so key
There's value in treating a rules text as self-sufficient for the purposes of communication across groups, especially online, but it's no less a lie for being a convenient one we all agree to share.
And, well. If we forget that it's a convenient falsehood, we wind up with problems like that Lady Blackbird question where we had to delete a half-dozen answers which thought D&Disms were universal truths.
Or those times people get into edit wars tagging for a system the querent hasn't defined yet.
@noneuklid Sounds like you're talking only about RAW questions. Which are strictly concerned with what the book says, even if it doesn't make logical sense.
@KorvinStarmast yeah. the default model of roleplay is designed for table-scale experiences, and needs to be altered significantly to deal with things that are broader than our social mechanisms are set up to handle
RPG.SE has a lot of trouble with RAW questions specifically because, as experts in the experience of playing, it's very hard to stick to just the text. The text may be the only common shared point between two groups, but that rarely makes it sufficient for useful answers.
@adeptus RAW is the simplest and most universally accessible way to substantiate an answer. I could say, "X has worked for me," but it's highly specific to me (for many of the reasons that have been eloquently stated).
@noneuklid That's why we don't say "X has worked for me." We say "X has worked for me when I did this because it caused these effects and I like those effects."
Personal experience is highly specific, but also provides learning others can use if it's presented as the story of the experience: that way, others can learn what they need to know from our experience. The trouble comes when we think that we learned from our experience is the only possible lesson, so we just give the learning and not the experience.
@BESW Slightly on topic and slightly off topic, there is a role in training and learning in the Navy based on what we call "sea stories" and "there I was" experiences where the books/manuals/regs didn't quite cover the situation ... similar space for sharing experience.
@KorvinStarmast Aye. The community-building processes of the Ruhi Institute include reflection gatherings at every level, which provide a structured space for sharing experience, consolidating learning, and planning the next steps based on what's come before.
@KorvinStarmast yeah. you can't write a SOP for every conceivable thing, so you cover regular operations and the critical/worst-case + readily conceivable irregular ops, then give the crew the flexibility and systems knowledge to improvise if they're facing an odd combination of failures or something that's messing with multiple, disparate systems
RAW is the simplest and most universally accessible way to substantiate an answer. If you cite RAW -- and the question isn't specifically asking about a played situation in which RAW wasn't sufficient -- narrative guidance isn't necessary.
Not necessary, perhaps, but unless the question is asking only for RAW an answer will always be better if it can add some supported commentary about how the RAW works in practice.
so as far as RAW bumping into itself, my usual experience is that it's the play group not liking the RAW rather than the rules actually breaking down. a good example is the "problem" of high-level characters jumping off ledges because they know it can't kill them.
there are a lot of homebrew falling systems to address this "problem," which create other problems elsewhere in the system. but there isn't any particularly compelling narrative reason i've heard for why this is a problem that needs a fix.
@BESW neato, there was a young lady in my high school English class who was my first friend in the BaHai faith. Sorry, OT, but you triggered a memory of senior year English class, which was a really good experience.
@noneuklid so as far as RAW bumping into itself, my usual experience is that it's the play group not liking the RAW uh ... I spend a bit of time on this site and one other discussing just that as regards 5e... how the text often bumps into itself.
@BESW he is a strongly voiced speaker with a broad command of the English language, that is certain. it sometimes can get over the top for some readers when he writes opinions, but I found what I read of his writing to be understandable
The commentary I'm reading here on the role of RAW as a simple straightforward go-to without narrative guidance necessary holds reasonably well for the majority of D&D and classic gaming questions we get, less well for the games of this decade or last decade. In D&D unless it's a narrative issue, narrative is often impossible or irrelevant to suitably advise on.
@noneuklid it's really the split between games whose mechanics live in "how the world works" space, and games whose mechanics live in "how the story works" space
Apocrypha. Anyway... As games like Apocrypha come out, the identity of RPGs changes (once again), but also move away from the millenial trend of games as purely narrative devices.
In more recent gaming developments, advising on things like narrative appropriateness as if/when/how to use tools in the narrative is often pivotal to a good answer, and not mentioning it is a missing that compromises an answer.
Not always, though
@noneuklid fyi, doppel not dopple :) the LE version didn't ping me
So the last couple decades, we saw the shared micro-game trend rise. SE.RPG actually introduced me to "game poems," but I was familiar with similar socially-driven improvisational games from elsewhere. What distinguished these wasn't that they were minimalist rules-sets but that they were fairly widely disseminated minimalist rules-sets.
haha, sorry. wifi keyboard and sometimes i outpace it.
I think it's useful to remember that all of these things have relatively old roots. The first era of every half-popular franchise getting an RPG was... the 1980s, which also encouraged experimentation with psychological/narrative/story games.
no no, that was part of my point -- it isn't that this was happening, it's that the games spread beyond what in the 80s and 90s were fairly limited circles of a few dozen or maybe hundred people into the wider TTRPG audience.
@KorvinStarmast D&D-like games tend to use mechanics that push the gameplay forward based on internal, diegetic cause and effect. Narrative/story games tend also/instead to push the gameplay forward based on table-level causes which create in-game effects.
eg, in Pilgrims of the Flying Temple or Misspent Youth, scenes conclude because there's a countdown mechanic on the table, and that triggers the need to figure out how to end the scene.
In Pilgrims, you gather up stones that are white or black, between 0 and 3 each turn. When one player has at least seven stones, the scene's conclusion is triggered and you must figure out how the current moment of the scene can turn into an end of the scene.
In any case! I'll read more about KAP later on, and track down more about the Dr Who RPG's incarnations (all the incarnations I'm familiar with are very adventure-y). But is there substantial concern with the assertion that as a trend, the story-games-style significantly increased in distribution/popularity in the 'aughts?
I spent half a decade in a bubble of RPG players that thought Pathfinder was radically different from D&D 3.5. I still know people who are in that bubble.
absolutely. but moving on... so now, we're seeing games like Apocrypha and Kingdom Death, that aren't exactly RPG but aren't exactly tabletop game either, and are very dependent on mechanical rules-driven resolutions
or sorry, aren't exactly "board" game? need a better word.
@BESW I'm in a few D&D groups on Facebook. Some of the questions are "How do I do X in D&D?" Which some people try to answer as-is, and others say "You do know there's games designed to do that?"
A friend of mine came up with a pretty expansive definition of RPG.
"A roleplaying game is a conversation where a shared set of fictional facts are created and changed, which is done without the intention of using any of the byproducts for something else."
@BESW Anyway, I'm gonna assume the answer is no. Which is fine. But if you were to sit down with a box of it and a group of friends, do you think you could play some arbitrary game?
@RafaelSantos Again, Faith Corps? It's part of that cadre of games that don't treat magic/powers as an overlay on a base system, but just make it one of the things you can choose from within the base system.
How straightjacketing is it really, though? In the OT, basically everybody has it to one degree or another. ("I've got a bad feeing about this...") In the new trilogy, it's mostly used to dramatize the conflicts that are already there. The only time it's really straightjacketing is the prequels, where the story is specifically about the corruption of power (though poorly told.)
In the new trilogy, it's ties to the past that bind you, but also anchor you to what matters.
Do we ever hear the words "force-sensitive" in the original trilogy? I thought it was a WEG addition to draw a line between characters with game defined force abilities and those without.
> Horse-sensitive. You can use Will instead of the usual skill when locating nearby horses, finding signs of past horse-related activity, examining horses closely, and interacting with horses.
You just get "The Force d8" or "Jedi d6" and if you try to use it in a silly or contradictory way the group gets to talk about whether that's something we want to have in our version of the Star Wars universe.
Yeah. The Force should have some limits, but it shouldn't have a definition beyond the binding force between beings. The more you define its origins, the less it means as a spiritual story element.
> It binds the prairie together. If you are on horseback, you may spend a fate point to reach your destination in a day and a night of travel no matter how far. If there is a particularly difficult obstacle in your way, the GM may also require you to sing a campfire song to the rest of the group.
@Ben it is a great sorcerer for pirate/naval games, it has a class feature that allow it to control winds!
you can find it on either Xanathar's Guide to Everything or Sword Coast Adventurers (for some weird reason along with the Swashbuckler it is on both books)
@noneuklid That's the one I think of when I think of a grey boundary around the edges of RPG. I haven't quite figured out where I stand on it. I believe I think it's an RPG, and I enjoy the process I go through of examining that belief to try and use that to educate me on what I think an RPG is.
It's a worldbuilding game in which you take on the role of gods but there's no hooks for actual roleplay, it's just competitive worldbuilding mechanics.
Question for Discord users - I'm looking through a list of music bots, but I can't seem to find the answer to my question: Do they play music form a preset selection of music, or can I play my music?
alright here, still need to pick up another player unless you'd rather go it alone for our next session. also: is there anything from last session you'd like to see less or more of?
or anything you'd like to see for next session that I wasn't able to get into last session?
To be super-conscientious, one might argue you should self-delete until you see whether the game/system makes your answer a good one vs. completely off-point.
(It's 95% likely you're spot-on and the game's a D&D-like, but this is how we keep the garden neat!)
I do not find this to be helpful at all, and it is the direct result of Bad Policy having bad side effects.
Here is the commment chain.
I've edited out "frame challenge" because policy is not to signal
that since it is too jargony. – Rubiksmoose 5 hours ago
@Rubiksmoose - Good to...
@Rubiksmoose Or when you're too busy to pay proper attention, so you see it unfolding, but it's going too fast for you to follow properly or contribute
Ahhh... @Miniman (and anyone else) your answer seems to be the answer for this question (my answer leads to the same conclusion as yours). So does that make it a dupe?
We had another session of a published campaign yesterday. We almost drowned in a river because of a series of bad rolls, the GM seemed a bit frustrated and kept trying to save us by giving us more rolls to try climbing out. (we had a rather solid plan for a safer passage but that would've required us having slightly more rope)
We had an encounter with some suspicious locals and a word-against-word situation with them and a mysterious forest person claiming each other agents of evil. Who can we trust in this wicked world?!
Finally an encounter which seemed deadly but we actually did quite good and survived with minor injuries only.
@BESW @trogdor @JuneShores @Miniman Barring some new unforeseen event, I'll be joining you all this Saturday for geek night -- and I'm looking forward to playing with you, June & Miniman, if you'll be there too. :)
But, also, there is a lesson there for the group and/or GM -- don't roll the dice unless you're okay with all possible results it can give you. The GM there didn't want you in the river nor did they want you drowning. You're fantasy heroes and it's almost certainly not interesting to ask you for a roll to see if you'll fail and drown and die.
@BESW once wanted to give a player's ninja character a Moment of Awesome to kick down a door, and it was extremely easy to do, so he called for the roll expecting there was no chance of failure... and the player's roll failed and he chose not to spend resources to make it succeed. So the ninja just sort of failed and bounced off the door instead of kicking it open, which BESW said he didn't feel great about afterwards.
For us that was a compelling learning moment of not rolling when failure will be boring.
@doppelgreener Yeah, I try to live by this philosophy myself, but I've already spent most of my "whine about DnDisms" tokens elsewhere... :<
I understand the importance of constructive feedback but I also understand that any feedback I give is not likely to be seen as constructive at this time.
The basic math is this: A difficulty of [the rating of the skill being rolled] will succeed almost 40% of the time (and succeed or tie about 60% of the time). Increasing the difficulty rapidly increases the chances of failure: a difficulty 2 higher than the skill being rolled means the chances of...
Interestingly, our GM has previously expressed interest in introducing a lot of auto-successes to the game. In the vein of "you're a rogue, so your awesomeness includes not being stumped by picking ordinary locks. That's routine for you."
But I guess this premade campaign module is, at the same time, rocking him off balance.
A few games resolve this situation by dealing with it explicitly in the rules, and building the check system to accomodate how it handles this situation. The most notable one is Burning Wheel and its Let It Ride rule:
The result of one test stands for the duration of the situation.
When in ...
([is reading Ki Khanga]) I used to skip over the "what is a roleplaying game?" section when reading the text for a new game. Now I read it very carefully and critically, because it's a very good measure of the authors' perspective and mindset which can really help with understanding the rest of the text.
Because I use brackets for third-person narrative description, and parentheses for setting apart text delivered as an aside. In this case I wanted to deliver third-person narrative as an aside.
But going back to your point, I can understand that. While I personally have not had (as) much experience in the world of RPGs, I can understand that to one person, the definition of perception they have of a game, or system, would be very different to another
Call of Cthulhu has one of the best descriptions I've ever seen laying out exactly what it expects of players and GM, why, what role they play, and what game experience effect their roles are expected to produce.
Ki Khanga's section is very broad but also very specific--it's almost 2000 words comparing and contrasting TTRPGs with "let's pretend" play and street improv, deconstructing the pacing of TV shows and applying it to RPG sessions, suggesting that good GMs (griots) should be offered home-made sweet potato pie, talking about the purpose of randomizing mechanics and when to use them...
Unfortunately the book is not laid out well for an RPG reference text.
I've seen worse, but I'd have to dig out examples like the SG-1 RPG.
Well, I've been playing 5e, and a few other systems over the past few years, but I have never really ventured beyond the standard texts. Xanathar's is the first "supplement" that I have officially purchased for any system.
What are your guys' thoughts on the 5e release schedule, vs 3.5? We're now about three and a half years in, and have had only two player splats (Adventurer's Guide and Xanathar's Guide) and one monster book (Volo's Guide).
But 10 adventures
In the same time span (July 2003 to end of 2007), 3.5 had published its entire run (4th Edition was released in June 2008)
I haven't really been paying attention, but I sort of like content coming in slow. When I started 4e there was already a ton of books out. It was a bit overwhelming :)
I like it this way. I'm a fan of more adventures and fewer 1st party books. I'm a big fan of homebrew-as-needed.
Hey, GM. I like Monk a lot, but this doesn't really fit what I'm looking for. what can we do? Hey GM, I had this silly idea..... hear me out. I want to make a luchador. can you help me achieve that?
rather than a book with 50 options for each class.
Unfortunately, it doesn't scale, but there is an obscure 3.0 adventure module with Intense Luchador Training, but it has 17 feats as a prerequisite and you have to be a muckdweller with no eyes
Of course, you could just play a cleric, in which case you get the entire luchador's blessing line of spells for free that basically do all the same stuff as the feats but better
I do not find this to be helpful at all, and it is the direct result of Bad Policy having bad side effects.
Here is the commment chain.
I've edited out "frame challenge" because policy is not to signal
that since it is too jargony. – Rubiksmoose 5 hours ago
@Rubiksmoose - Good to...
A few games resolve this situation by dealing with it explicitly in the rules, and building the check system to accomodate how it handles this situation. The most notable one is Burning Wheel and its Let It Ride rule:
The result of one test stands for the duration of the situation.
When in ...
