TRPG General Chat

2:56 AM

@Rubiksmoose An amusing turnabout on this is if Combat really is on the same scale as Social, then try this. Add in skills for Mundane Offense, Mundane Defense, Magical Offense, and Magical Defense. Then consolidate or remove things like hit points, weapon damage die and traits, damage types, attacks per round, attack bonuses, terrain and other situational modifiers, and offensive and defensive spells. Just let the players describe it and the DM wing it.

kviiri

5:24 AM

@JoelHarmon I often use those numbers as an example to GMs who keep roll DCs hidden from their players because "knowing exact numbers encourages metagaming". For some reason knowing an array of weapon stats and combat engine workings doesn't seem to hurt them...

V2Blast

7:25 AM

watched Spider-Man: Far from Home earlier tonight

solid movie :)

trogdor

I liked it but my parents had no idea what was going on

it's a little heavy on the "you watched the other Marvel Movies right?" stuff

kviiri

7:46 AM

When you folks follow a frequently but incrementally updating media, eg. a webcomic with a developing plot, do you prefer to read each page/strip as it is posted or let it accumulate and then "binge"?

I kinda prefer the latter for comics, since my natural mode of enjoying comics is reading an album at a time as I did with Lucky Luke, Tintin etc.

Pierre Cathé

Morning all

kviiri

I guess it also comes a bit down to the difference of whether a single update takes 30 seconds or 30 minutes to read.

@PierreCathé Morning!

BESW

@kviiri It depends a lot on how the media flows.

trogdor

@kviiri I do a little of both

to be honest I do prefer to wait and binge it but sometimes I just almost compulsively check them

Pierre Cathé

Re: webcomics, I have about 6 or 7 that I follow, so that every day I have a bite-sized update I can enjoy during breakfast

BESW

7:53 AM

I can read Schlock Mercenary and Skin Horse daily, but Drive and LeveL need to be binged.

kviiri

@PierreCathé Same for me except it's more like three, total, but previously I've mostly followed ones without much of an overarching plot. Now I'm through with the SSSS archive and I'm considering whether to read it chapter-by-chapter in the future or just follow my usual webcomic routine :)

BESW

Digger was also hard to me to do day-by-day.

kviiri

And then there's comics like Lackadaisy that update so rarely I occasionally wind up binging the whole archive between individual updates...

Totally worth it though.

Derpy

morning

kviiri

@Derpy Morning to you too!

BESW

7:58 AM

@kviiri Ha, yes, leveL is kinda like that.

kviiri

And then there's comics I've read but couldn't really imagine following on a day-to-day basis. Eg. Goblins! is far too accurate in its DnD homage in that its fight scenes can drag on and on and on and on...

(I heard somewhere the author actually plays it as a DnD-like TTRPG and resolves plot events by rolling --- but I never bothered to check for first hand commentary if she actually does that. It would explain some things though!)

@BESW I should maybe collect some more webcomics to follow, many of the ones you've mentioned sound interesting

I've recently stopped following some I found I hadn't actually enjoyed in ages... sometimes it's hard to let go of routines but I've been happy with my decision

BESW

@kviiri A Girl and Her Fed, Atomic Robo and Real Science Adventures, Darths & Droids, Paradigm Shift (extremely irregular), PhD Unknown (probably dead), Up to Four Players...

BESW

8:19 AM

oh, and Dungeons and Doggos, of course!

V2Blast

8:35 AM

@trogdor tbh it's only really dependent on Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Homecoming. It references others but that's just a passing thing.

@kviiri I usually just forget about a thing and maybe come back months/years later when I remember it exists

trogdor

@V2Blast yeah but my point is some people haven't even seen those

V2Blast

haven't followed webcomics closely in ages

trogdor

and it's literally assuming you know,... what happened in those movies

Miniman

@trogdor Do you need to have seen Into the Spider-Verse?

trogdor

no XD

BESW

8:37 AM

Yes. Everyone needs to have seen Into the Spider-Verse.

But not because of some other movie.

Pierre Cathé

@V2Blast Man I was so hyped when I saw Mysterio in the trailer, went to see it on Saturday, and I was not disappointed

trogdor

@BESW true

@BESW also true

kviiri

8:54 AM

The Regiment seems like a really interesting twist on the PbtA formula: it pits the players into the shoes of normal soldiers of a military regiment. I've always wondered how to represent being bound by strict authority works in RPGs, especially in more narrative-driven ones like PbtA games tend to be.

BESW

Doesn't Night Witches do that too?

kviiri

A regiment is not much in modern warfare. It's about a thousand people; for comparison, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers. And the players are way down in the pecking order: the regiment is led by a colonel, the company the PCs are in by a Captain, and below that is the platoon led by a Lieutenant who might be a PC. So there'll be plenty of "follow these orders"...

@BESW I've never played it, I'm not sure. However, fighter pilot fiction usually has more of that, err, "benevolent renegade" attitude than ground forces

So I'm kinda faced by this conundrum where the PCs are acting mainly on the scale of their platoon/squad/fire-team (around 40/13/4 people respectively) but at that level they have barely any agency of their own because not following higher-level tactics of the regiment makes that scale of units really ineffective in wartime situations.

BESW

Make it about internal/social/emotional agency.

How do they support and encourage each other? How do they deal with following orders they don't agree with? What minor disobedience do they use to retain their sense that they aren't just cogs in a machine?

kviiri

9:09 AM

Hm, that's a good start. Should be noted there's plenty of not-directly-combat stuff in the game as well, although obviously detailed from military life's perspective

BESW

Are you familiar with "The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army"? (content warning: language, sexual situations, violence)

kviiri

I have heard of it, but never actually seen the list. /me looks

Number 26 reminds me, there is something of a policy in our army --- probably dating back to the days of ostensible neutrality during the Cold War --- that no names or identities of real countries or nationalities are to be used in exercises. Instead we have "The Yellow" and "The Blue" for hostiles and friendlies, respectively, and NCOs were quite quick to correct anyone who hinted that the enemies are Russians.

...but at the same time, there was a fairly popular joke/saying --- "The enemy doesn't always come from the East. Sometimes they go around and come from the West"

BESW

Skippy was apparently an enlisted man in the US Army's psychological operations department, drawing propaganda posters in postwar Bosnia.

kviiri

Post-war Bosnia probably was a rather sorrowful place to be in :(

BESW

There's a reason I thought of Skippy's List when the subject turned to how soldiers cope with being fungible cogs in a violent machine.

trogdor

9:23 AM

ugh

kviiri

Another idea I had, of a somewhat different direction, is to give the players some "author mode" decisions well beyond the scope of their PCs. Maybe one per session; something large enough to shape the outcome of the conflict they're currently mired in.

trogdor

yeah I mean,... I can hardly understand how anyone volunteers for armed service

and I sure as heck don't understand how anyone ever put up with being drafted and then putting up with all the new rules they had to learn against their will while waiting to basically be sent to die in a war

kviiri

@trogdor I've come to understand it's a bit of a "fast track" to decently paid employment if you don't have better plans in the US. Here, it's mandatory (for men, and for certain values of "mandatory").

trogdor

@kviiri I also hate mandatory

kviiri

@trogdor I coped by getting into computer science and crying once a day.

At least* once a day.

@trogdor I wish everyone did, maybe we'd have less wars that way.

trogdor

9:27 AM

@kviiri I mean,... everyone does when it's applied to them

but not quite everyone seems to care when it's other people

BESW

@kviiri Yeah, on Guam for several generations it was pretty much the only way the Indigenous people could get access to higher education.

@kviiri There's a lot of good scope for author mode games!

trogdor

yeeaaahh

there is also that

kviiri

Perspectives have changed a bit on conscription here: not too long ago if one was a conscientious objector or took the non-armed civilian service option they'd be seen as a hippie, wimp or troublemaker. I went to the army in 2010 and my parents, too, reminded me that I should stick with them to the end because "switching to non-armed looks bad on your CV"

but I don't think most people care really.

BESW

> I entered as a 25M (Multi-Media Illustrator). After a few years I transferred to 37F (Psychological Operations Specialist). I switched mainly on account of the fact that when home on leave, “I do Psychological Warfare” has a better chance of impressing women than “I defend our country by drawing decorative illustrations”. And it got too annoying explaining to people why on earth the Army saw a need for me to be an Airborne Illustrator. (To this day, I’m not exactly sure why.)

(From the "about" part of the Skippy's List website)

kviiri

@BESW I'm really inspired by the Kaiserreich mod to Hearts of Iron IV (as well as the related game Darkest Hour) which presents an alternative history where Germany won the Great War. It's not the setting itself, but they put a lot of attention into describing the cause-and-effect of possible future conflicts and there's a vast variety of options for things to develop.

I think allowing players access to some of that cause-and-effect stuff would allow them to shape the story in an interesting direction for them

BESW

9:37 AM

I kiiinda want to recommend that you read Cozy Town, for an example of top-down authorship play that still values individuals.

kviiri

I did read it over the weekend

It seems interesting but I honestly don't have the correct company for it, nor predict myself having the correct mood for the weeks to come

(otoh chances are I'm not playing anything except my piano before my mood improves, so the "correct mood" point is moot in relation to other games)

BESW

Yeah, I'm suggesting it now as an example of mechanical structures rather than the tone.

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Rubiksmoose

12:23 PM

Morning everyone!

Pierre Cathé

12:36 PM

Good mornfternoon

Monster Hunter

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