TRPG General Chat

Carcer

8:03 PM

I hadn't realised Fate/Zero wasn't written by Nasu, which shows how much attention I pay

Yuuki

@Carcer Of course it wasn't written by Nasu. More than half of the male historical figures actually stayed male.

Carcer

@Yuuki I also don't remember there being any seafood

fair point, I should've caught on

Mike Q

Speaking of things that are sometimes tolerable or entertaining, apparently my campaign isn't quite dead yet

Xirema

@MikeQ Oh?

GreySage

@MikeQ Wow, that was a great insult-transition.

Mike Q

8:18 PM

@GreySage danke

@Xirema I just have to rewrite things to be fun enough for the players and tolerable enough for me

e.g. My players seem to enjoy Pathfinder's combat, whereas I think it's really tedious to manage

Xirema

Well, good luck with that.

Mike Q

Structure-wise, the campaign's at a point where I'm not sure what direction to go in, or what should happen next, so I want the players to decide

Yuuki

@MikeQ I've found that with Pathfinder and D&D, combat's fun for the players and not nearly so much for the DM. It's something about the way the systems work, I think.

Not sure what it is.

Sir Cinnamon

@Yuuki Cant speak for other systems, but in dnd, cmbat for the DM is as creative as it is tactical. Because tactically you want to execute the wizard first, then the healer, tank last. Creatively, thats not what the monsters would do (usually) so you have to hold back

Mike Q

@Yuuki Honestly I just dislike having to juggle all the numbers and math

I wrote up a console program to quickly do NPC dice rolls, which has helped

Delioth

9:28 PM

One of the things I can say at least for Pathfinder is that you can play a little fast-and-loose with the numbers; if you're off by 1 or 2 it doesn't make much difference. Also, making monster/PC initiatives as a batch works way better - instead of red orc, green orc, wizard, purple orc, fighter, rogue, etc, it's Orcs, PCs; which is nice because it lets you just do a bunch and throw a handful of dice, which I think is quicker

Mike Q

@Delioth Yeah, grouping enemy initiatives helps, so does fudging NPC character creation

Also this chat is pretty much my only avenue for brainstorming

Delioth

Also help for NPCs is to always base them in a similar-CR creature. Reflavoring or slight retoolings of existing NPCs can abstract away a lot of the details (if you want to fight some little scaly dudes, 3x Kobolds and 1 Kobold but with a level of Fighter is a solid thing)

Or use tools that are built for that. I personally try to keep a small library of creatures around my party's size in PCGen so that I can make encounters on-the-fly

Mike Q

@Delioth My current approach is consult some custom tables of average enemy stats by CR, and then just giving them those stats

Delioth

I'm a fan of the PCGen thing because I can go ahead and just make some creatures at around the right CR and then Lego-style encounter build; and PCGen lets you use an existing bestiary creature a lot of the time (notably, I at one point had a dozen or so different Troglodytes to pick from)

Mike Q

I did that for a while

But then I realized how silly it was to spend several hours selecting the feats and abilities of an NPC who would likely exist for 1 round

Delioth

9:33 PM

See, I only did that for re-usable things

BESW

@Delioth Which feels so deeply wrong, because buffs and debuffs tend to be limited to +/- 1 or 2.

Delioth

Like, Shamans of a few flavors, varying powers of meatwad-types, a couple martial ranged options. Things that work nice and are nice and composable

Mike Q

Still, it's a lot of effort that goes into very little in-game implementation

Delioth

Most often Spellcasters are the NPC that gets a little attention, since it's easier to characterize them in-combat due to spell choice and describing a little casting activity.
Also, not spending any number of hours - only a couple minutes. These guys are NPCs, they have lives outside of combat. Feats for martials are always Power Attack>Weapon Focus, and maybe something like toughness. If I've spent 30 minutes on a throwaway, it's too long

Mike Q

i.e, it doesn't matter too much to the players how the enemy NPC gets +whatever to hit an 1dX+whatever damage per hit.

Delioth

9:38 PM

I always end up assuming half or so of an NPC's feats are spent on non-combat thigngs

Carcer

@MikeQ it matters an awful lot to some players

Mike Q

@Carcer Unless the players are looking over the NPC statblocks, I doubt it

BESW

...This is one reason I like Fate. I can give a one-shot NPC their story-driven "this is why they get the bonus" value in about three minutes.

Delioth

And it's pretty nice that PCGen will spit out a statblock, and a martial's first several combat feats are pretty standard: Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Toughness

Carcer

@MikeQ or the players are familiar enough with the system to start reverse engineering from the derived values they do find out, which I was wont to do in D&D

Delioth

9:40 PM

I'm more eager for Pathfinder 2e though, since monsters are explicitly not on the same fundamental base as PCs; you can't necessarily build an NPC by bashing together character building stuff

I don't think they've released monster creation for it though, which is a little sad

Mike Q

@Carcer I usually roll behind a GM screen so it doesn't come up like that

Carcer

@Delioth and all creature entities existing on basically the same system was one of the reasons I really liked 3.X

Delioth

Either way, I need to be heading out; good evening (etc) all

Carcer

it appeals to my nature

Delioth

@Carcer And it's a fundamental flaw for GM's - there's a lot of overhead and stats that PC's have that are great, but NPC's don't need

Carcer

9:42 PM

it just intrinsically annoys me when the rules are different for PCs and NPCs

Mike Q

@Carcer In PF(v1) there's several thousand ways to construct a bonus

Delioth

Since PC's will be around for weeks->Years, NPCs will be around for minutes

Mike Q

Like, why does Swordguy Minion D have a +8 to hit and does 1d6+4 damage? Is it from feats? Class features? Ability score mods?
And 99% of the time, it does not matter, as long as those numbers are reasonable for the assumed CR.

BESW

@Delioth I felt so liberated by 4e in that regard; I'd seen other systems like Dogs in the Vineyard which were even less concerned with mechanical parity between PCs and NPCs but it had baffled me before I saw 4e's implementation.

Now aggressive player-facing systems are some of my favorites, especially for one-shots like Cthulhu Dark and Honey Heist.

Carcer

@MikeQ I personally enjoyed working that kind of stuff out, but I was originally just kind of making a joke about rules lawyering players of the "but HOW did they DO that?!" variety

Mike Q

9:45 PM

@Carcer That is what we scientists call "pedantry"

Yuuki

@MikeQ Being extremely particular about your neckwear?

Mike Q

@Yuuki No, that's pendantry, good try though

Carcer

@MikeQ are you deliberately setting me up for that one

Yuuki

40 secs ago, by Mike Q

@Carcer That is what we scientists call "pendantry"

Carcer

you're falling for it Yuuki

Mike Q

9:46 PM

@Yuuki This comment is now fake news.

Carcer

abort abort

Yuuki

#alwayswaittwominutes

Mike Q

Anyway

@Carcer While I can understand that annoyance in general, I can assure you that it's much worse when I had fully detailed NPC stat sheets with a bunch of notes of where all the misc bonuses came from

Carcer

@MikeQ part of the enjoyment I derive from the game is that mechanical character building aspect so it didn't really get to me when I was DMing

Mike Q

Like, to make "generic fencing minion" I would spend hours figuring out the combination of race, ability scores, feats, and fighter/swash/rogue levels, just so the total bonuses would add up to something reasonable

And spending a bunch of time to justify why a one-time NPC has a +7 to hit instead of a +6 is just not worth the effort, long-term.

BESW

9:50 PM

I loved the character design element, but it also was a major part of my burnout.

Carcer

I feel like part of the problem there is deciding that the NPC needs a +7 to hit and then working backwards to justify it

I just made creatures and NPCs

their stats were what they were.

Mike Q

@Carcer Right, so now I decide the NPC's CR, find that it needs a +7 to hit, and I'm done. Any reverse-engineered error can be handwaved as a circumstance bonus.

BESW

4e helped significantly because its NPC design explicitly asks me what role the character has in the story.

Fate does the same thing: the more significant/lasting a character's role is expected to be, the more mechanical detail accrues to it.

PCs are the most important characters, so they have the most mechanical complexity.

Carcer

@MikeQ No, I mean... I figure "this NPC would be a sixth level fighter", and then I make a sixth level fighter. I'm not specifically trying to target any numbers when I build it

BESW

One-round redshirts tend to just get an aspect/skill combo like "Cannon Fodder +2."

Mike Q

9:54 PM

@Carcer But would they be a 6th level fighter? What if they're a fighter 2/ swashbuckler 2 / rogue 1 / slayer 1

Or perhaps, a swashbuckler 1 / fighter 3 / ranger 2, or a fighter 5 /brawler 1, etc etc

Carcer

@MikeQ because six levels of fighter is the representation of their skills? If the NPC had a background for which different stuff made sense I would make that instead

I know there's a lot of options, but I'm not trying to find a path through the options which has a specific end result

Mike Q

BESW's point about character importance is relevant to my approach here

Carcer

okay

Mike Q

If I expect an NPC to show up, make an attack roll, and get KO'd on the next round, then I doubt anyone will ever ask "Hey what was that guy's level and class"

Carcer

that's a different problem though

Mike Q

9:58 PM

It's like how minons or extras in an action movie generally don't have names or expressed motivations

GreySage

@MikeQ Where was he born? What school did he go to? What was his listed income in last years tax returns? The people need to know!

Carcer

I do understand

I can appreciate that having simpler NPCs makes gamesmastering a lot easier

just that I, personally, vastly prefer it when everything is the universe is mechanically consistent

Mike Q

Understandable, but mechanical consistency doesn't translate to... er, implementation? consistency in a game like Pathfinder

Like, I could build a 6th level fighter 2 ways, one of which hits really hard, the other never hits

Carcer

execution consistency?

Mike Q

Yes, that's probably closer to what I mean

An optimized 11th level wizard, and a poorly built wizard 5 / barbarian 6, are both CR 10 by definition

BESW

10:02 PM

Consistency and sameness aren't the same.

Carcer

CR in 3.X has never been a particularly good measure of anything though

I only ever used it as a very rough gauge of power level

BESW

4e is extremely consistent in how it deals with character mechanics; that's not the same as using the same mechanics for all characters.

Mike Q

My point is, if all that really matters are the numbers and effects the players interact with, then a blackbox approach should be valid, in general

BESW

@MikeQ See: Dungeon World.

Carcer

@MikeQ it's definitely a valid approach and I'm not trying to argue that anyone is doing it wrong

my problems with the mechanics of RPGs are my own

Mike Q

10:07 PM

@Carcer I should also mention that my objective isn't to destroy the PCs. If I was that sort of antagonistic DM, then yes, handwaving enemy stats would be understandably unfair.

BESW

@MikeQ Yeah, things are dramatically different when the rules are being treated as a neutral arbiter in a conflict between participants at the table.

Mike Q

Anyway, my current concerns are less about how to DM the combats, and more about how to DM the story. Things have been admittedly kinda railroady until recently, and I'm trying to find a way to give the players the steering wheel, while having enough content ready for them.

BESW

(Of course, that's usually a polite fiction; the rules aren't neutral either.)

Jack Stout

Hey all!

BESW

@MikeQ That's where questions about "what role does this NPC play" helped me a lot, really, by breaking down the distinction between combat mode and story mode.

@JackStout [wave]

Mike Q

10:15 PM

@BESW I've tried to look back to figure out, plotwise, what would naturally happen next, and I keep drawing blanks

Jack Stout

I wanted to post a question about whether multiplication and division are used enough in games to warrant implementation in a die roller. Further, I'm not sure how division of odd numbers is handled in any game that might use it. (Floor and ceiling functions are my presumption but may not reflect actual game rules.) It seems too open a question to post.

Mike Q

@JackStout Warrant by whom? And for what systems?

Jack Stout

@MikeQ The roller is intended for general use across multiple games. By warrant I mean are there enough players in need of division to justify the time spent writing code to make it work.

It seems like DnD 4E used damage division, which was floored, but I may be thinking of something else.

BESW

@JackStout Some of the major game systems have things like "half damage" and "2x criticals."

I think BRP has a thing where if you're using a skill in a way that's just barely justified, you treat it as half its normal rank.

Jack Stout

@BESW It seems likely that none of these systems are dealing with non-integers, so would it be enough to make explicit divide-floor and divide-ceiling functions?

I'm trying to avoid users having to guess what the arithmetic engine is doing with their input.

Mike Q

10:23 PM

@JackStout That's one way to do it. Alternatively, if you're making some sort of app, you could have a Settings menu where the user can specify whether to round up or down by default

Jack Stout

@MikeQ That's a good idea.

I guess that leads to the question of whether modulo is used. I'm guessing, No.

BESW

Fate of Agaptus has a thing where you need to track if one side has a score that's 4 times more than the other side's score.

Jack Stout

@BESW So, that's a conditional with an arithmetic expression. That's probably out of scope for this version, but I can make a note of that for later.

Mike Q

It may help to define your intended audience and then address their needs. Pick a set of game systems that you're familiar with, make your app capable of representing those dice mechanics. There are a lot of systems out there and I don't know if it's feasible to make a universal tool for all of them.

BESW

And then there's Cthulhutech, which has dice expressions fit to drive men mad (appropriately enough).

Shalvenay

10:28 PM

@BESW just how bad is it? :o

Jack Stout

@MikeQ For me that's DnD 5E and Fate, but all the people I usually talk to are travelling. I'm trying to get ahead before they return.

BESW

@Shalvenay One step in the resolution of an action is to choose whether your dice pool will use the highest single roll, OR the sum of the highest set of multiples, OR the sum of the largest straight.

Jack Stout

I've been asked to include One Roll Engine, as well

@BESW Oof!

Thanks peeps! You always super helpful.

BESW

Glad we can help! Let us know how it goes, please.

(I have never encountered anyone who actually plays Cthulhutech outside of "I am going to review this game if it kills me.")

user15026

@BESW That soudns like so much work

GreySage

10:47 PM

30003 questions! We're at palindrome levels!

BESW

trogdor

hehehe

here just in time for the good stuff it seems

BESW

@Ash And if you fail, it's boring.

user15026

@GreySage niiiiiiiice

user15026

@BESW :(

BESW

10:55 PM

Cthulhutech is one of those ridiculously overengineered games that disappeared up its own ruleset and never noticed that it stopped being fun to play.

It's got a few brilliant concepts that are then smothered with exception clauses and fiddly bits which add nothing.

trogdor

oh eww what?

Mike Q

I choked on my drink at "up its own ruleset"

nitsua60

@BESW What sizes do these pools tend to be? 'Cause while I'm not sure I'd like to play that, it's a hella-interesting math problem.

user15026

@MikeQ same :)

BESW

Let's see.... base + dice... your base looks like it's usually between 5 and 7, and your dice are between 1 and 5.

So the pool is usually between 5 and 12 before extra bonuses.

And your target numbers are between 8 and 32.

The dice are d10s.

Also? Cthulhutech makes things harder by using unnecessary vocabulary.

"Base + dice" means "attribute rank + skill level."

And when they talk about attributes and skills, they use those terms. But when it's a dice roll suddenly those are base and dice.

nitsua60

11:12 PM

Grr....

Sava

Hi.

BESW

[wave]

user15026

@BESW whyyyyy, it's like they're going for maximum confusificiation

BESW

I know, right.

The setting premise is kinda cool, though--in the future, human society has merged technology and magic and begun exploring the stars.... but the nature of magic means the stars are exploring them back home too.

trogdor

@BESW wat?

user15026

11:27 PM

@BESW I am curious about this

user15026

but not enough to want to touch those strange complicated rules

trogdor

lol

BESW

CthulhuTech

CthulhuTech is a science-fiction and horror roleplaying game created by Wildfire LLC and published by Sandstorm that combines elements of the Cthulhu Mythos with anime-style mecha, horror, magic and futuristic action. The setting is Earth in the year 2085 during a worldwide conflict known as the Aeon War, (from the Necronomicon quote: "And with strange aeons even death may die") wherein the planet has been invaded twice: once by a black-skinned manufactured alien race known as the Nazzadi who are derived from humans and who join forces with them, and then a second time by the Mi-Go, an advanced...

nitsua60

@Sava Oh hi--welcome =)

Sava

Thanks @nitsua60

nitsua60

11:30 PM

@BESW I feel like one of the setting premises of this room is "BESW tells us about some system we've never tried and has a bunch of horrible things, but extracts the one usable nugget from it that we all can learn from."

7

Sava

The noise made by the notification scared me, I thought something had broken...

nitsua60

@Sava Don't worry--you'll get used to it soon. And if you want you can turn it off.

Sava

Like a guitar cord breaking... There should be a warning...

Yeah, I just did. Got a game on my second screen, I was like 'wait, this is not a normal sound for the game...'

nitsua60

@Sava One time in college I woke in a split second and jumped off a top bunk before I realized what had woken me: the sound of splintering wood. Between that year's roommate and me there were five string instruments out on stands/hangers... =(

Sava

Yikes, I can understand the adrenaline spiking up.

nitsua60

11:34 PM

In other news, it appears the school's RPG club has started calling it "vegan club." (For years there's been a tradition of referring to the club duplicitously: "movie night," "LAN party," "math extra help," &c.)

I overheard one GM calling a missing player tonight: "are you coming to Vegan Club? Mr. [redacted] brought pizza!"

BESW

I've had some very nice vegan pizza.

Sava

I find Vegan Club less believable than the previous names. :p

nitsua60

@BESW I doubt these ones would fit the bill =)

BESW

@nitsua60 Prooobably not.

nitsua60

But I find it satisfies a strange conservation law in my life: contrast this club's false description with my spouse eating no meat/dairy/other animal products but claiming they're not a vegan.

Sava

11:38 PM

'Movie night' depicts almost perfectly what one of my players must think my games are, except we play in the afternoons.

nitsua60

How so?

trogdor

@BESW is that all vegetable and without cheese on it?

BESW

@trogdor Yup.

Sava

He doesn't do anything except eating the snacks and disrupt the sessions with unrelated OOC chats

trogdor

I think Ive had one ever of those

it was,... ok?

BESW

11:40 PM

Really good no-cheese pizzas tend to not use the US customary red sauce. Pesto is my preference.

Sava

Pesto pizza... drools

trogdor

I think it had pesto in it

nitsua60

@Sava That sounds a little like 70% of this club =)

Sava

@nitsua60 Well, I wouldn't mind if he was just sitting there being silent, but his constant disruptions are really getting annoying to me and many players. Especially since he will talk no matter what, interrupting players and GM alike.

Mike Q

But have you ever had vegan, gluten-free, zero-fat, zero-carb pizza? a.k.a. water

Sava

11:43 PM

I've talked about it to him, if he doesn't changes his behavior soon, there will be one less security officer on the ship.

@MikeQ So... the pizza was filled with... nothing?

Mike Q

@Sava It was filled with hydrogen and about half as much oxygen

nitsua60

@Sava Mind if I ask how they feel sessions are going? Good fun? Boring? Thought everything was fine? Only "playing" to be with their friends?

@MikeQ (by count or by mass?)

Sava

@MikeQ Not very tasty nor nourishing I'd say.

@nitsua60 They're happy: they get out of home to spend time with friends!

Mike Q

@nitsua60 by credit score

nitsua60

@doppelspooker I would probably lay it at the feet of Zeb Cook, just off the top of my head. (I.e. the strict/comprehensive approach to 2e more than the "play your game" approach of 1e. (Before UA, that is.))

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