TRPG General Chat

12:00 AM

@Miniman I was sold on going to check it out by the director, and someone online describing the plot as "a girl and her ~~horse~~ car."

Which was absolutely accurate and totally great.

Miniman

@BESW Yeah, I'm not a Burton fan. Gaiman...hmmm. I've enjoyed what I've read, but I get the impression that all of what I've read is atypical for him.

BESW

For me, Gaiman quickly gets repetitive.

After I experienced a few things by him --books, comics, films, TV shows, whatever-- it started to feel like every new Gaiman thing I encountered was a re-shuffling of the same handful of elements and themes and aesthetics.

He's not bad, but in my experience he's got a lot less versatility and depth than pop culture credits him.

eg, for a supposed master of world myth, he's really hyperfocused on a handful of story beats and cultural lores.

nitsua60

4:21 AM

@BESW Running across Stardust in three different media was a bit annoying. If you've not heard it, though, his story "Liverpool Station" on The Moth pulls back the curtain nicely: themoth.org/storytellers/neil-gaiman

BESW

@nitsua60 [adds to list] Right now I'm binging Nikki Giovanni interviews.

nitsua60

Ran GOG as a pickup tonight. Five players, eleven orks by the time it was done. Sounds about right for their first exposure, no?

BESW

Were the deaths sudden, humiliating, and unnecessary?

nitsua60

Let's see... one died when he tried to sit on the bag of halflings he was lugging to kill them, and one of them held up a knife. So, self-impaled.
Another died trying to jump a pit Evil Kinevel-style on a tricycle, flopped off before hitting the ramp, and skidded into the pit headfirst.
Another...
Yeah, I think we hit those notes =)

BESW

Oh yes, the scraping-face-off-while-sliding-downslope is a traditional initiation to the game.

MikeQ

4:28 AM

How does one prepare for a GoG game?

BESW

Binge particularly violent Looney Tunes shorts?

You need a starting scenario, which is basically just a place the Orks are going and the intended target of their violence when they get there, and then you need a willingness to say "yes, and" and to look for opportunities to offer escalation.

My personal favorite was the Christmas game where the Orks were raiding Santa's workshop and the elves were shooting them with gift-wrap guns and the snowmen had flamethrowers and then Santa turned into Krampus and started stuffing Orks into his sack.

nitsua60

@Yuuki "Growing up with Ultimate Spider-Man...." Wow. You're making me feel old.

BESW

Dec 25 '15 at 5:15, by BESW

> THREATS
Reindeer pulling teams of elves on skis
Elves armed with automatic gift-wrapping guns
Tinsel-confetti "smoke" bombs
Christmas treants with sharpened/explosive ornaments
Abominable snowman
Coal elementals

HAZARDS
Thin ice
Pit trap with punji stakes
Land mine

SANTA
Breathes smoke and fire with his pipe
Can create duplicates of himself
Bag leads to a dimension of presents
When pressed, becomes Krampus

KRAMPUS
Chains & Whip
Basket leads to a dimension of coal and flame.

Yuuki

@nitsua60 For certain values of "growing up" but yeah, I was at the older end of the target audience.

BESW

That was pretty much the entirety of my prep for that game.

MikeQ

4:35 AM

Wow. Ok. I'm adding this to my to-do list of systems to try.

nitsua60

@BESW Hmm... actually, turns out that's not the one I was thinking of. Or, the website has a truncated version of the radio broadcast I heard. (Which, given the way Scientology goes after anyone else talking about them, might not be out of the realm of possibility.)

BESW

@MikeQ And it's free!

nitsua60

@MikeQ We could totally run an interstitial ToA session that's GOG re-skinned so's we can follow the Batiri for a session =)

MikeQ

@nitsua60 No! We need them as useless allies!

nitsua60

Okay, some Batiri.

MikeQ

4:42 AM

I'm sure a standalone "Meanwhile, in New Ork City" one-shot would suffice

Alternatively, you could set it in an area of Chult you doubt we'd ever explore

I've had GMs do that in settings where they want to show the far side of the setting, without putting the regular PCs there

BESW

I've done that a few times, yeah.

Ran a Monster of the Week adventure as "Meanwhile, back on Earth" during our Fate's Weird Stuff campaign's space adventure.

MikeQ

It can also be used to set up later events that the PCs are unaware of, but the players get insight into it

BESW

@MikeQ Every five levels or so in my 4e campaign, we'd spend one level as a team of commandos working for the other side of the war, setting up plots that the main PCs would have to deal with later.

"Plant an evil cult in the enemy capital city."
"Heeeey this evil cult is really messing stuff up for us."

MikeQ

I had a similar idea in my big brainstorming drawing board

Sort of a halfhearted attempt to add depth to the antagonist faction, while filling in intrigue/backstory elements from a different perspective

user15026

5:00 AM

user15026

Is this actually possible?

MikeQ

@Ash Not by RAW (rules as written), but yes by RAW (rules as wackiness)

user15026

I'm confused

MikeQ

Welcome to the club

Joel Harmon

@nitsua60 11 orks for 5 players is just barely more than 1 death per player in the whole session. You can do better!

BESW

5:07 AM

@Ash Most editions have a "cannot move yourself unless specifically stated otherwise" clause for those sorts of spells.

user15026

@BESW I figured someone probably already thought of it

trogdor

@Ash yeah that's probably not intended to be possible but some groups/ DMs might allow it

Welcome to the stupid rules club

Joel Harmon

@Ash That actually seems like a decently grounded rules-based question for the main site.

trogdor

Lol

user15026

@JoelHarmon I have never asked a question here!

user15026

5:10 AM

I don't know how to formulate a good question, although I am super curious.

BESW

5

Q: Can I use Mage Hand to fly by Polymorphing myself and picking myself up with the hand?

Could I first cast Mage Hand, then Polymorph into a Tiny creature less than 10 pounds then use the Mage Hand to pick myself up and fly at 30 Ft per turn? Polymorph says: The new form can be any beast ... The target's game statistics, including mental ability scores, are replaced by the sta...

Joel Harmon

@Ash It seems I've asked five. Two were actual questions I had, the other three came up in other activity on the site that seemed to be worth questionifying.

user15026

@BESW Excellent!

trogdor

Nice

Seems like a definite no

Which I find fair honestly

Its not like there are no other ways to fly

BESW

3.5's mage hand was very specific that it could only target "One nonmagical, unattended object weighing up to 5 lb."

trogdor

5:21 AM

Yes but that doesn't mean 5e ,... Was as concise on the point

As much as the two systems seem really similar there are some pretty weird and random seeming differences

BESW

Yeah, I looked up the 5e text and it doesn't even have a target line.

trogdor

Not too surprising

MikeQ

5:33 AM

@BESW So what's repetitive about Gaiman's writing style?

BESW

5:53 AM

I don't have a monograph on it.

Just a sense of repetition in themes, visuals, motifs, aesthetics, characters...

It's been a long time since I saw anything Gaimany.

But when I saw the second Doctor Who story he wrote, I didn't know it was his until afterward but I'd spent the whole thing going "This feels like somebody was trying to be Neil Gaiman."

kviiri

6:28 AM

Hmh, I was hanging out with friends yesterday and we came up with a minicampaign concept I'd like to try out

Problem is, it'd be (at least relatively) a good fit for DnD and I'm not sure I want to go there again.

BESW

Hm?

There are a TON of D&D-esques for whatever dials you want to turn.

MikeQ

@kviiri What's the concept? Maybe another system will do.

kviiri

Yeah, I don't doubt that, but I'm kinda in the sweet spot where DnD feels like a good enough fit so I don't want to learn a new system for it, even if DnD comes with the baggage I don't really want...

MikeQ

As comfortable as D&D may be, it's not a universal tool. There may be a better option depending on what kind of game you want to create.

BESW

If the sunk costs of learning a new system are the concern, some systems really don't come with those.

kviiri

6:34 AM

@MikeQ The campaign starts with the PCs lying battered, bruised and dying after fighting the Forces of Evil as a part of the Armies of Light. Their leader, a powerful mage, makes a Hail Mary by sending the heroes three days back in time to change the grim future, Majora's Mask style.

@BESW I would agree if it weren't for my group. Getting them to play something that's not DnD never goes well :(

BESW

kviiri

S&S might work but I'd want to reskin it to something that doesn't push people to be whimsical :)

Not a major hurdle though

MikeQ

The campaign premise alone doesn't seem tied in to any specific system

BESW

Yeah. I can see that opening being used for a Psi*Run hack.

MikeQ

The premise has magic, war, some time-travel science fiction, and puts the PCs in a position to be proactive; could a Masters of Umdaar hack fit?

BESW

6:41 AM

Potentially, but it'd be an aggressive hack because the motives are different.

kviiri

@MikeQ Yeah, I kinda forgot to mention but I'd like to play that as a fairly straightforward "solve quests to prevent apocalypse"

BESW

I'd look for a Fate World that's got something more like soldiers-on-a-mission for the chassis, and then throw Masters of Umdaar flavor at it.

kviiri

The conversation where it originated from was more about stories to motivate adventuring in a fairly DnD-ish game so I may be in a box with that

BESW

Well, Masters of Umdaar straight-up says "Here's your adventuring goals; tell me why those are your goals."

kviiri

I should definitely look up MoU but I'm a bit apprehensive running Fate for my current group.

MikeQ

6:44 AM

D&D may be the appropriate system for... well, something (combat-centric dungeoneering, perhaps) but it doesn't have monopoly over the "swords and sorcery" genre

kviiri

I like combat-centric dungeoneering though, as a genre among others. I just dislike it as a norm

MikeQ

if you want D&D without the baggage of D&D, then Dungeon World could work

BESW

Or 13th Age.

kviiri

13th Age is something I'd like to try

BESW

Fate of Agaptus is one of the crunchiest combat-focused versions of Fate around.

The Three Rocketeers has a lot of combat but it's not dungeony.

(I still want to run the Three Rocketeers hack for TMNT.)

kviiri

6:52 AM

I'm starting to feel I should get new players instead

I feel my current group is just not motivated to explore as much as I am

BESW

That's... not always the worst option. I know a lot of folx who have different groups for different game experiences.

kviiri

And my attempts at bringing them new systems have left me a tad sour.

MikeQ

@kviiri Yes, I had that discussion with my players during our last session

Miniman

@kviiri Time leap or time travel?

kviiri

@Miniman ...what's the difference?

Miniman

7:00 AM

@kviiri Are they redoing those 3 days, MM-style, or are their original selves doing what they originally did while the ones who went back are doing other stuff?

kviiri

I kinda imagined they'd wake up in the past, as they were then, but with vivid memories of losing the battle, as if from a particularly bad nightmare. Without any doubt about whether it was real or not

And they'd have to change the future lest it refuse to change.

Miniman

Ah, cool. The other kind tends to be wacky, and it sounds like that's not the goal.

@kviiri I instantly assumed this was related to you picking up Chrono Trigger recently XD

Side note: "But the future refused to change" is my desktop wallpaper.

MikeQ

@kviiri If they fail, would they be sent back again and again (as long as they don't disrupt the time loop)?

Miniman

Another side note: I really love Steins;Gate and recommend it to all and sundry. Both the VN and the anime.

BESW

@MikeQ I've never seen a good way to run that in an RPG.

MikeQ

7:07 AM

@BESW It probably wouldn't work in a level-up based system, if everything "resets" when the looping occurs.

BESW

@MikeQ Oh, it's got deeper narrative problems: repeating loop stories are almost always based on memorizing the loop, and it's just unreasonable to expect a live improv group to maintain the necessary fidelity over multiple iterations.

kviiri

@MikeQ Hmm, I thought about that at first but I don't really think Groundhig Days are that good for TTRPGs

For basically what BESW says

Hmm

Here's an idea... I've been thinking of a good lightweight fantasy scenario to run first time tabletop players at my office, using a lightweight engine based on 4e

This might be it

MikeQ

Ok, forget the consistent loop. Could the time-reversal magic work if they failed, letting them effectively reset the story?

kviiri

It could be a justification if they want to play it again

MikeQ

Ok, fair enough. I'm just spitballing ideas.

Overall, even if it's a one-time thing and not a repeating loop, it's an efficient method for establishing the premise and some urgency.

kviiri

7:20 AM

Yeah

The idea was born out of "cool DnD-like story motivators" more like "cool scenarios in general" :P

I guess I'll just combine this with my earlier idea to run a cut-down version of DnD 4e as a hack and slash adventure. My main gripe with DnD is having to play it, while I can skip the worst parts when running it :)

BESW

One campaign I was rather proud of opened with the party being forced by the villain to disarm all the traps on a powerful artifact (the defenses were impenetrable by Evil creatures so he couldn't do it himself), and the rest of the campaign was figuring out why he wanted the artifact and trying to stop him from taking over the world with it... but really just getting revenge for being used like that was the primary motive.

It was structured around being unable to track down the villain, but slowly tracking down his lieutenants and encountering other bits and pieces of his plan along the way.

kviiri

I was thinking of three days, three quests, but failing on one would allow the party to still dramatically salvage the situation on the day of the battle itself.

BESW

One thing I've found is important is, be prepared for failure. And that can be hardest in mini-campaigns because we want satisfying endings but we can't just keep playing until we get one like in a long-form campaign where a failure is just a dramatic setback.

So maybe you could, since it's a mini-campaign, have the time loop be the ending if they fail to save the day at the last minute.

Narrate the reset and then wrap the game.

kviiri

7:35 AM

@BESW Yeah, that's a good idea

@Miniman It might :D not consciously, but it might have had an impact here

I think yesterday's LotR discussion also played its part, as I imagined the battle the heroes lose to be rather similar to the one where Isildur fells Sauron... a powerful dark demigod mauling its way through all opposition.

@Miniman What is definitely caused by Chrono Trigger is me spending about an hour on the piano yesterday, trying to play various tunes by the ear :)

BESW

I'm also fond of the Knights of Invasion premise/urgency gimmick: aliens land in the middle of a medieval tournament and want to take over, and the PCs are the knights who rally together to fight back.

kviiri

@BESW X-Comedieval

BESW

It's a great one-shot premise!

And there are tables for randomly generating aliens.

Miniman

8:58 AM

@kviiri Nice!

Derpy

9:12 AM

@doppelgreener The fact that you r eyes can't go beyond the Veil and you can't see the endless battle we fight everyday to protect your world isn't a valid reason to be so ungrateful, mortal. :P

BESW

9:28 AM

@Derpy That sounds like mod talk.

Derpy

@BESW Like Tim once said

"Be grateful you can't see all the offensive post we had to delete over the years"

Derpy

10:11 AM

BTW, ~~there is a potential victim~~ there is an user needing help in the Tavern chat room. If anyone can think of a good name for a female horse, she is trying to choose one.

bonus point if the name also include some sort of "good luck" attribute since as far as I can understand the poor filly hasn't been really lucky so far.

BESW

@Derpy Suette, pronounced soo-EY-tey. Chamoru word literally meaning "lucky."

trogdor

wow

that sounds perfect XD

BESW

Although that's a slightly old-fashioned spelling, I think it'd be more likely to go Suete these days.

kviiri

That's a really good name

trogdor

yeah it sounds in english like sweety, but has an altogether different meaning

if it were me I would take that one

Joel Harmon

12:23 PM

@MikeQ I'm reminded of the film The Day After Tomorrow, where the main character goes back to the start of the day if and only if he dies that day.

nitsua60

1:11 PM

@JoelHarmon Yeah, in my defense we were only playing about an hour. But you're right--I should try harder.

GM principle: fill their lives with ~~adventure~~ death.

kviiri

@nitsua60 Watership Down the RPG

nitsua60

1:44 PM

Fill their burrows with danger.

kviiri

My SO really loves dogs and when we watched Watership Down I mentioned her that the same people also made a "doggy film". Plague Dogs.

We wound up watching that heartwarming work as well. She had no problem it, I guess it is so audaciously grim it doesn't really pack the same punch as more nuanced sad films do.

Colin Gross

3:10 PM

@JoelHarmon "Live. Die. Repeat" with Tom Cruise?

@JoelHarmon Day After Tomorrow as about a climate disaster.

Yuuki

3:48 PM

@JoelHarmon That's "Edge of Tomorrow". Which was the initial US release title.

Colin Gross

@Yuuki Whoa. I didn't realize that was the name of the movie.

Yuuki

@ColinGross "Live. Die. Repeat." was the tagline, IIRC.

Colin Gross

@Yuuki That's all I recall seeing on the cover.

Yuuki

But "Edge of Tomorrow" was so vague and corny, I think most people just remember "Live. Die. Repeat".

Incidentally, the Japanese novel the movie was based on is titled "All You Need Is Kill".

@ColinGross Also, the movie is titled "Live. Die. Repeat." for the home release.

Colin Gross

@Yuuki Gotcha. That explains it.

Yuuki

3:57 PM

Incidentally, the plot and climax are different in the light novel.

Colin Gross

@Yuuki I hate it when they change things for the book /S

Yuuki

In the light novel, the female deuteragonist, Rita, has not lost her looping ability. And at the climax, they defeat the central alien thing only to reset again.

Colin Gross

@Yuuki Wah wahhhh. Although, after you defeat the boss, doing it a few hundred

Yuuki

They theorize that they've both become part of the alien looping network and one of them must die so the looping stops. And so they duel to the death as a sort of coin flip to see who gets to survive.

Colin Gross

4:21 PM

@Yuuki But both of them don't have to die?

Yuuki

@ColinGross Apparently not.

Colin Gross

@Yuuki Seems peculiar, but c'est la vie. It was the first story involving time travel that I've liked in a long time.

Yuuki

Depending on how you define it, Arrival has been my favorite.

MikeQ

4:37 PM

I dunno about having a favorite, but Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is in my top 5 time travel movies

Colin Gross

@Yuuki Those were like the aliens from Slaughterhouse Five that perceived time differently than we did.

Tralfamadore

The Tralfamadorians are a fictional alien race mentioned in several novels by Kurt Vonnegut. Tralfamadore is their home planet. Details on the inhabitants of the planet vary from novel to novel: In Slaughterhouse-Five, Tralfamadore is the home to beings who exist in all times simultaneously, and are thus privy to knowledge of future events, including the destruction of the universe at the hands of a Tralfamadorian test pilot. They kidnap Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the novel, and place him in a zoo on Tralfamadore with Montana Wildhack, a Hollywood starlet. In The Sirens of Titan, Tralfamadore...

doppelgreener

how players see the DM: scheming master, plot weaver, lore maker, brilliant actor, secret keeper how DM's really are: https://t.co/w9UgeoIzMG

Tweeted by Joric_art on January 21, 2019 at 2:30 PM

Colin Gross

4:58 PM

@doppelgreener I feel like the box of track segments is the best part of that analogy.

KorvinStarmast

5:28 PM

@nitsua60 that sounds like fun.

ACuriousMind

6:18 PM

@doppelgreener Only problem with that picture is that my improptu tracks never go that straight :P

At one table, I've cornered myself into a giant conspiracy web that I need to figure out before the players force me to...

doppelgreener

6:42 PM

More accurately some of the tracks should be inexplicably found on the ceiling and walls

ACuriousMind

I'm sure there's a good explanation in context

Zachiel

@ColinGross Mine. That happens to be linked in my profile, where the information previously was.

Glazius

6:59 PM

@kviiri Yes, it's a PbtA called "The Warren", what did you want to know?

Anaphory

@Glazius I had forgotten about that! I should put it on my to-be-played list.

kviiri

@Glazius /me puts on "to play" list

I've seriously stopped wondering about whether there's a PbtA for that, because there is.

Xirema

7:17 PM

Is TAZ's playthrough of a PbtA game typical of how those kinds of games usually are run? I feel like I'd be overwhelmed by the "floatiness" of the rules in a system like that.

Anaphory

@Xirema I don't know what TAZ is, but what do you mean by ‘floatiness’?

Xirema

7:29 PM

@Anaphory The Adventure Zone, a TTRPG podcast, whose current season is playing a PbtA hack called "Monster of the Week", and I'm referring to how open-ended the moment-to-moment gameplay can be on that show, and wondering if that's consistent for typical groups who play that game.

kviiri

7:40 PM

@Xirema It is relatively open, and depends a lot on having a GM who can share the spotlight among their players (as well as players who aren't too keen to hog it for themselves)

And yeah, it makes some things hard --- like the normal DnD "bash it until it dies" style combat

Colin Gross

@kviiri "flourish it until falls over"

kviiri

In other news, I started working on some DnD 4e simplified char sheets

Fixed some moves on them in "here's three: Pick two!" fashion

I think I'll have Fighter, Ranger, Cleric and Wizard as the party trying to save the world in three days

Colin Gross

8:05 PM

@kviiri And they get to pick two of the days?

BESW

8:18 PM

Bunnies & Burrows

Bunnies & Burrows (B&B) is a role-playing game (RPG) inspired by the novel Watership Down. Published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1976, the game centered on intelligent rabbits. It introduced several innovations to role-playing game design, being the first game to allow players to have non-humanoid roles, and the first to have detailed martial arts and skill systems. Fantasy Games Unlimited published a second edition of the game in 1982, and the game was modified and republished by Steve Jackson Games as an official GURPS supplement in 1992. As rabbits, player characters are faced with dangers...

There's also usually a GURPS for that.

BESW

8:42 PM

@Anaphory And now I'm going to call PbtA "Floaty McFloatface."

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer (94): Do class spells take up spell slots? by Amanda Travis on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

Glazius

9:41 PM

@Xirema Eh, it's both more and less open. The Keeper's doing some fairly heavy prep, but he's also giving people free RP space to talk about how they grabbed their new moves in a way that's playing much more to the audience than the table, I think.

Anaphory

10:17 PM

@kviiri We had a first-time PbtA GM running Dungeon World yesterday who managed spotlight really well, in particular in a larger group (5 players) with at least one spotlight hogger.

I was pleasantly surprised.

BESW

@Anaphory What techniques did they use?

Anaphory

A good mental map of who he hadn't heard recently, explicitly stopping people from going on and on, hand gestures to get attention and quiet people down. It was heavy-handed, but fulfilled the purpose.

@BESW Fair enough. It's not like people can remember what PbtA stands for, Floaty McFloatface will at least stick in people's mind.

user15026

@Anaphory Honestly all I can think of when I read PbtA is makes raspberry sound

7

user15026

(Like my brain is trying to make it a word and when I mentally pronounce it it just sounds like a raspberry sound)

Anaphory

[pʙʙa]. Sounds good.

Xirema

10:32 PM

phphphlblbhlph

BESW