TRPG General Chat

BESW

1:28 AM

@Ash Assuming it's a D&D-like system, not endless stacking: there are weight limits.

user15026

Ah, I figured there had to be a catch and I couldn't just stack them forever like a really weird jenga game

BESW

Yup, D&D 5e playtest centaur.

CTWind

It's partially true, but requires the GM to be really lenient with the part of the general mount rules that say (more or less) 'the mount needs appropriate anatomy to serve you as a mount'. Generally, one would say a horse is not anatomically appropriate to be a mounted combatant on another horse. :-P

> "A willing creature that is at least one size larger than you and that has an appropriate anatomy can serve as a mount"

BESW

> Equine Build. [...] A Medium or smaller creature can ride on your equine back if you allow it.

CTWind

Right, that's the rule for the centaur that lets them serve as a mount to creatures the same size. My quote's the general PHB rules on what's acceptable as a mount, which the Centaur excerpt overrides the size portion of.

Mike Q

1:37 AM

31

Q: Does the UA Centaur stack actually work?

In the the recent Unearthed Arcana they released Centaurs as a playable race. These creatures have an ability that says Finally, a Medium or smaller creature can ride on your equine back if you allow it. In such a situation you continue to act independently, not as a controlled mount. Ce...

tl;dr It has been addressed by Crawford fiat

BESW

If you can't stack Lego centaurs, I don't think any centaurs can stack.

6

Mike Q

Ah of course, rule 0.5: It works in D&D if and only if it also works in LEGO

BESW

I think of it as a Universal Stackability Test.

if stackable(Lego)=0, then stackable(any)=0

Mike Q

2:01 AM

New VTC reason: Fails the Universal Stackability Test

The Oracle

2:59 AM

0

Q: Is this alignment question on or off-topic?

A user asked this question: Is a character's OFFICIAL alignment their ACTED or INTENDED alignment? After much fuss over someone answering the question before it was tagged with the correct game, the question was put on hold as primarily opinion based. mxyzplk then declined to re-open the question...

discussion on-topic

nitsua60

4:31 AM

@doppelgreener players in my Wednesday game faced off against BBEG and took him down tonight. Which means next session they'll go back to their patron for their reward. Any chance you can dig up the link to our conversation from, oh, 9 months ago? About the friendships they formed?

Nvm, found it. "Friendships," not "friendship" is the search term I needed.

BESW

6:18 AM

A local geek convention has asked me to be ready to step in and run an RPG table if any of their current tables drop out.

BESW

7:50 AM

Anybody got advice?

A Very Large Bear

8:33 AM

@BESW Microscope could be good. It's pretty rules light and can do drop in/drop out. Also not too serious.

Though I guess it might not fit some people's perception of what an RPG is

eimyr

@BESW Are you looking for advice on picking a game or on how to run one?

BESW

@eimyr Mostly how to run one. Strategies for groups of strangers, that kind of thing.

Though suggestions on RPGs wouldn't go amiss. They've got two D&D tables and want me to represent what else TTRPGs can be.

I was thinking Lady Blackbird.

eimyr

8:48 AM

If I were you (and I were 3 months ago in a very similar situation) I would run something GMless

BESW

Like...?

eimyr

The upside is that if you plan to participate in other games, running a GMless one puts much less stress and requires less effort, so yuo'll be fresher in other games

BESW

I don't think I can go too far out of the D&D-like box with something like PotFT or LCQ or APFMT.

eimyr

uh, huh, Lovecraftesque, Fiasco, Microscope...

(APFMT?)

if you're not playing in other games, which I don't know if it is the case, then no biggie, but I'd still veer towards no-prep games

BESW

I doubt I'll be playing much in other games.

The only other TTRPG tables are D&D, and the rest of the non-video gaming is, like, Pokemon and stuff.

(APFMT = A Penny For My Thoughts)

This is very last-minute; the con is the weekend after this one, and they need me to confirm times and games in about 18 hours (they called me about 8 hours ago to say "if we can't get all our tables..." and then an hour ago to say "You're up!").

Lady Blackbird is super easy for me to run, is one reason I was thinking of it.

And the rules are right there on the character sheet, and the pre-mades are easy to understand, and the premise is pretty straightforward for a geek crowd.

(I don't know Microscope well enough to run it for strangers nine days from now.)

The Oracle

9:10 AM

1

Q: A highly upvoted and answered question has wrong game system tag. What should we do?

Here's the question How to stop players from making the game X-rated tagged dungeons-and-dragons. As far as I know, dungeons-and-dragons tag is supposed to be used for questions about Dungeons and Dragons editions comparison and history. If the OP would not edit the question, what should we do w...

discussion tags specific-question editing

2

Q: Are "leads on" answers considered helpful?

Related to the question: "Share monk AC bonus with animal companion mount? " The user clearly describes the problem, and the qualities that are looked for in answers, namely something that requires less character investment than an example solution (sohei monk archetype). One possible answer is...

discussion answers

trogdor

@BESW Lady Blackbird is a great idea in my book

BESW

@trogdor How long do our Lady Blackbird games usually take, do you remember?

trogdor

about an hour and a half to two hours?

BESW

That's what I was thinking, yeah.

eimyr

@BESW Lady Blackbird is a good idea, definitely. But you're not getting paid to do it, so I'd recommend you do something that's fun for you

If it's a chore then there's no point.

kviiri

9:31 AM

Yesterday's CoS was a rather fun but uneventful game

We hadn't seen each other in ages so we spend disproportionately long just catching up. Can't really reveal what held us up in-game without spoiling much, but eh, partially it boils down to DnD being DnD again :P

Anaphory

10:03 AM

@BESW Lady Blackbird is fun for conventions, shows some non-mainstream stuff without being extremely confusing for people who might expect something very D&D-like. At the con I was at two weekends ago (which, admittedly, was an Indie con, so expectations were pretty much not D&D) there were two games of Lady Blackbird being run.

kviiri

Well ok, I feel compelled to say this much: we're faced with a problem that has two obvious solutions: doing a simple fetch quest (about a day of travel to the nearest merchant) or pulling a dangerous heist. We picked the latter, because no one wants additional random encounters...

Anaphory

As far as strategies for groups of stranges go, hm. My mental image of you says you know better than I do, both managing strangers and managing expectations for a game. One thing our GM two weeks ago did was excuse herself directly after handing out characters, which gave us time to familiarize ourselves with the sheets and chatter to each other explaining bits on there.

That worked surprisingly well, so I considered stealing it for myself.

Other than that, give players plenty of time to take notes who the others are, both for an out-of-character name (which is nice to have for talking to each other later, if playing with each other was enjoyable) and in-character name and description and stuff; pack some spare sheets of paper, pencils and dice just in case.

@trogdor How far did you play in those games? Did you have awesome pacing, or is this just one or two encounters?

trogdor

it was the suggested starting scenario type thing

@Anaphory are you fammiliar at all with Lady Blackbird?

Anaphory

Yes, excuse my terminology.

trogdor

ah ok

so basically, we escaped the ship, that was what we did every session

still hasn't gotten boring either

I love it every time and, have also still played Naomi every time

Anaphory

10:19 AM

Ah, okay. That's what I'm used to in one-shots, plus maybe some other thing after it if there's more hours to fill. An amazing thing two weeks ago was that the GM managed to get us on an entire arc from escaping the ship through quite a few things happening on the outback planet all the way to an encounter with Uriah Flynt, but that was maybe 4 hours.

Just getting away from the Hand of Sorrow is excellent, getting away and then one more thing often felt very incomplete, so playing the “whole story” for once was a thing I liked a lot, but sticking with the escape (and possibly making that clear from the beginning) sounds like the best plan.

[I hadn't realized before how well the GM paced us then: The most amazing thing about the game there was that all of Lady Blackbird, Naomi, Cyrus and Kale had significant developments in their relationships to each other, and only like the last scene on Nightport felt a bit rushed and superficial.]

BESW

10:39 AM

Do you have any sense of what the GM did to accomplish that?

Like, using "let it ride" and larger-scope results to reduce dice rolls, or asking particular kinds of leading questions, or introducing complications that specifically pushed the story in certain ways...?

Anaphory

For the relationships, I think that was significantly owed to the group, which was composed of Indie gamers happy to push for various things. Leading questions and escalations (sometimes combined, “Can you tell me what goes wrong? Make it hurt!”) were definitely in her toolbox.

BESW

How long does it usually take you to get out of the Hand of Sorrow?

Anaphory

Uff, four weeks ago it took me the entire evening of starting at 8 ending around half eleven, with the caveat that our Lady Blackbird was a very contrarian player/character and therefore a lot of complications came up.

Normally, I guess it's more on the upper end of 2 hours, so that I'm always tempted to add a Sky Squid, some bounty hunters or something else to fill the remaining time.

(Which, looking at it now, I feel is a bad idea, because it increases the feeling of incompleteness.)

BESW

These are lessons learned from reflecting on experience.

Without the experience AND the reflection, we don't learn 'em.

Anaphory

Pacing is hard. I have some reflecting notes in an RPG diary I kept last year (short notes on tops and flops and things that transfer to other games), I should probably start jotting down notes on real-time/pacing in there, because that's the thing I find hard, and where I hardly ever know how long things actually took when reflecting on it later.

@BESW I think there was more “let it ride” than large-scope dice rolls. Many of the dice rolls were resolving separate obstacles, as opposed to only individual actions or entire scenes.

BESW

10:54 AM

Cool, that's helpful.

Gonna have to think about leading questions.

...sigh. This is a rinkydink con. No budget for supplies.

It's "bring your own dice and print your own character sheets, you're lucky we provide the table."

trogdor

:/

not a great way to treat the people who are showing up to your venue

kviiri

11:16 AM

At times I feel I should just quit the Curse of Strahd campaign

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri What makes you feel that way?

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear Because the campaign design (or at least how our GM runs it) feels like a caricature of all things I hate in DnD, except unironically

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri Well that's certainly not ideal.

kviiri

On a more positive side, I think we are doing good. It's the campaign content that manages to get worse and worse with every passing session

Anaphory

@BESW That's what I'm used to, but then I don't get hasty desperate calls from Con organizers whether I can please run games for them, instead I run or play games at cons because a broad selection of games is in my interest.

kviiri

11:20 AM

Or well, we sans me who can't stop whining about the campaign content when everyone else is mostly okay with it. Or doesn't understand what the problem is.

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri I haven't played CoS, so what in the content isn't enjoyable?

BESW

@Anaphory I seem to be the only GM on the island known to run "non-traditional" games.

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear A ton of uninteresting named NPCs who one has to memorize in case they become important, an endless stream of plot hooks ruining the pacing and worst of all a ton of gotchas.

Anaphory

@BESW Yes, I assumed that was part of the problem.

BESW

(Where, so far as I can tell, "traditional" means "D&D and Pathfinder and maybe somebody used to run WoD.")

kviiri

11:24 AM

@AVeryLargeBear A particular problem is what seems to be an epidemic of "Princess in another Castle". We started a quest in session 3. I thought we'd be done with it in each of sessions five to ten, only to have the goalposts move.

Anaphory

Actually, I think I do have the chance of getting character sheets printed. I have never tried, I know my printer works and the con orga is busy doing other stuff, but I think I have seen them print sheets for other people. (That is, in two of the places where I had cons; the one two weeks ago which was very small and informal and run in a bord games cafe and therefore has no office access.)

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri That is super frustrating. At least give me a sequel quest :P

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear Usually it's a sequel quest, except the sequel begins before the first establishment ends with proper closure

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri Dang. That is bad.

kviiri

It's like you're Harry Potter and the penultimate trial to reach the Philosopher's Stone is solving the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets.

A Very Large Bear

11:26 AM

@kviiri lol

BESW

@kviiri Harry Potter and the Plot Outline of Robert Jordan.

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear So the particular situation I'm probably overanalyzing now is, we're in a situation where a possibly dangerous but so far friendly NPC has promised us a reward for retrieving a very mundane item from the nearest town. As an alternative, the others in the party decided we could try stealing the reward from the NPC in an elaborate heist.

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri And the problem is that there is no obvious reason for needing the MacGuffin or is it something else?

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear The NPC is a bit of a macabre creep, but I don't see any reason in or out of character to assume any risk beyond some wolves or forest spookies in going to the town, getting the item and returning. But there'd be padding encounters on the way there, possibly Yet Another Quest in the town to get the item, and padding encounters on the way back. No one wants that.

Rubiksmoose

At least padding encounters are better than sharp pointy ones :)

kviiri

11:35 AM

But instead of like, not having any, we (excluding my conflicted mind trying to figure what to want here) decided to have this nonsensical heist which is only a workaround to the problem that random encounters during travel aren't fun.

user357094

@kviiri Ahhhh. So all the players are not so fond of the random encounters, but they are still happening?

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear Yea, or... well, that's what I'm reading from their reaction to my desire to go to the town. They automatically assume that a trip back there has to be boring padding and the heist is instead neat and clean

I haven't read the book but sure, I assume it'll indeed be boring padding. But it's a problem we could get rid of instead of just working around it with the heist plan!

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri Well, that does seem like a reasonable conclusion. If they are not my guy players, then why else would they go in for potentially angering a friendly NPC.

It seems like a good time to have a talk with the players and the GM, or just the players to see if you are all on the same page.

kviiri

They're not My guyers to any big degree. Which is good because we'd probably have a fight in our hands otherwise... but in this game it seems we have to go against character a lot to not have a bad time, which annoys me.

@AVeryLargeBear I do it after every session, but I'm having a really hard time getting myself across to them

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri Like they don't agree with you that the padding is boring, or that you have a hard time telling them that it is boring?

kviiri

11:46 AM

They're all DnD people with rather limited experience outside the traditional games. We're at a different wavelength, I suppose

Shalvenay

uhm, why does there appear to be two Very Large Bears in this channel? :P

A Very Large Bear

@Shalvenay That's my twin brother :P

Shalvenay

(no seriously, @AVeryLargeBear -- your avatar shows up twice in the user-list widget on the right)

@AVeryLargeBear heheheh

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear I guess the issue might be that they don't agree that boring parts don't belong in the game

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri It could be that. or it could be that random encounters usually mean combat, and they like combat

idk, but maybe talk more about why you don't like the padding

kviiri

11:49 AM

@AVeryLargeBear Actually... I'm the most combat-eager player in the group :P (I only signed up for one more game of DnD because I wanted to see if premade adventures have better balanced encounters than our party usually throws)

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri Well that rules out that idea :P

But seriously, talking about the why, rather than the what might help get to the root of the issue with the other players

kviiri

Combats have been generally fun, I like my character's combat abilities and the encounter balancing has indeed improved from our group's usual homebrew scenarios where they're usually balanced for 5 min working days.

@AVeryLargeBear I'd agree, but... well, I think I've exhausted all my whine tokens again.

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri You are obviously a better judge than me in this scenario, but I generally find that when I supply reasoning, people are more willing to listen/are more empathetic to the problem.

kviiri

@AVeryLargeBear Yea, I would probably give the same advice in your shoes

But these people have a hard time understanding what I'm saying, or are less cynical about the campaign's misgivings or simply feel different about them (eg. I value a good narrative more, and they value realism)

So getting the point across requires a lot of repetition and after a while I don't think they see anything but whine whine whine whine anymore. I don't blame them for it, really.

A Very Large Bear

@kviiri That's fair. And at a certain point, it may be that you have to come to terms with the fact that the party's interests are not all aligned, and either cope with it or go your own ways, sad as it is.

There's also the potential for some common ground too. Like you could say that you only do random encounters on long travel or something

kviiri

12:13 PM

I think I'm leaving DnD for good after this campaign, but I've got a partially overlapping group signed up for 7th Sea and Apocalypse World in the future

I hope we can find a better harmony in a different system

(it's worked for me before!)

Sir Cinnamon

1:39 PM

:45378731 Uhhh what is going on with that

nitsua60

@Sdjz user destroyed; thank you for the flag.

Sdjz

@SirCinnamon I linked a spam alert but then realized the link itself contained inappropriate language and since I could no longer see the post I assumed it was gone anyway

Sir Cinnamon

@Sdjz Ah, upon refreshing this page, I no longer see it

Transcript for