TRPG General Chat

12:38 AM

@Yuuki Yeah, that was a major inspiration for how I wrote up Director Parrish: all these things she can do just off screen so you never get a sense of whether she's just really good, or supernaturally good.

But of course the real magic of Mrs. Frederic is CCH Pounder and that is irreproducible.

nitsua60

@BESW I feel like Anna Deavere Smith comes as close as one can....

BESW

...huh, I'm not sure I've seen anything she's had more than a cameo in.

@Yuuki There's a ton of games where running out of resources activates new/alternate modes of play. I've got note toward a version of that myself.

nitsua60

1:01 AM

@BESW (et al) would it be fair to say that optimization is a non-concept in Fate?

BESW

@nitsua60 I think it'd depend heavily on what the person means by "optimization."

nitsua60

D&D-like optimization.

BESW

For example, choosing stunts that are accurate to the character but irrelephant to the story so you never get to use them, would probably fall under a "suboptimal" heading.

nitsua60

"A solitaire minigame around character design that plays on non-obvious mechanical interactions," maybe?

BESW

Yeah, that would be effectively a non-concept in, say, Fate Accelerated. But a lot of pre-Core games like DFRPG make it very much a thing you can do.

AncientSwordRage

1:07 AM

One of the goals I feel strongly about for the RPG system I'm making is that optimization should be strongly linked to fleshing out your character. Like... You can't do one without the other

BESW

Yeah, that's something the crunchier Fate variants do pretty well.

AncientSwordRage

Mmmmmmm crunch

BESW

Like, in Atomic Robo you choose three modes of competence, like ACTION, BANTER, and SCIENCE, and you rate them +1, +2, and +3. Each mode is a bundle of skills which are assigned a skill rank of the rating you gave their mode.

If a skill appears in multiple modes you've chosen, it gets the highest mode's rank and then +1 for each mode beyond that.

AncientSwordRage

Every time I learn about a fate or fate-derived game, I feel like I've subconsciously stolen from them

BESW

Which means you can choose modes with lots of overlap and have several +5 skills but not very many skills overall, or you can choose modes with little overlap and get a lot of skills at decent ratings but very few or none at the highest ratings.

AncientSwordRage

1:10 AM

Ok, not that close (but close enough)

BESW

(And you get a few floating points to customize your skills by pumping up a couple of them as you wish, so two ACTION +3 / BANTER +1 / SCIENCE +2 characters are still going to have a slightly different skill spread.)

AncientSwordRage

Feels like a good balance

nitsua60

Interesting.

BESW

It's pretty good! The thing that I feel pushes it into "great" territory is that each mode then becomes the prompt for one of your aspects.

An Atomic Robo PC has five aspects. One is their "high concept" which describes their broad character idea, and one is a wildcard that you can fill however you like. But the other three each have to be a description of how your particular character handles their competency modes.

AncientSwordRage

Aspects feel very close to mouse guards/burning wheels nature...

BESW

1:16 AM

So two different characters with ACTION modes might be very different because one of them is a Cowardly brawler while the other is an Honorable swordsmith.

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, a lot of games have some variation of "write a phrase that describes something which is true; you can tie it into mechanics when it's relephant."

Aspects are particularly versatile because the mechanic they tie into is super generic so you can make aspects as broad or specific as you need for that particular game's design, without worrying about disrupting the rest of the engine.

That's one of Fate's biggest strengths: you can fiddle with any particular bit and the rest will probably still work as expected.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW yeah, I've noticed there's a branch of games that do that

I wonder if you could create a taxonomy of games?

BESW

I'm not sure a taxonomy would be the best structure for classifying games.

Game categories tend to be more like Venn diagrams over word clouds.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW no it would be mostly terrible

Largely because the top level would be group into three categories... And after that everyone would be upset with each other :-(

BESW

...I'd really like to see some more awareness of how many Weird Experimental Games the 80s produced.

AncientSwordRage

1:32 AM

BESW

It's kinda like how we only remember certain kinds of films from early cinema because those are the ones which got Designated As Good.

Yuuki

Yep, nostalgic survivorship bias.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW survivorship bias?

BESW

AncientSwordRage

@Yuuki beat me to it

BESW

1:33 AM

@AncientSwordRage In part, yes, but survivorship bias tends to ignore the curation aspect of survivorship.

nitsua60

@BESW I'll take Tales from the Floating Vagabond for 200, BESW. (As long as you allow a grace-year in the publication date.)

BESW

@nitsua60 Sure, the 90s were kinda wild too.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW yes, there's another term, something mentioned in this numberphile video

BESW

There's a lot of discourse about how critical and academic canonization curates our cultural memory for novels and film, but that discussion doesn't really exist in TRPGs yet.

AncientSwordRage

The conceit is why does Hollywood only make bad film adaptations

@BESW yet

It turns out that there's plenty of good adaptations, but you probably don't remember the book, like jaws or the godfather (?)

I don't think that phenomenon exists in ttrpgs though

BESW

1:47 AM

I'm thinking more along the lines of how certain directors/authors/genres get remembered when other, arguably much better, ones get forgotten simply because the people in charge of deciding which get studied or republished chose one over the other.

Why You Shouldn't Watch The Birth of a Nation (and why you should) | Brows Held High

►

AncientSwordRage

@BESW interesting

BESW

When we think of the "Golden Age of Mystery Novels," who do we think of and why?

AncientSwordRage

There was a golden age?

Are we talking poirot, Agatha Christie etc?

BESW

Golden Age of Detective Fiction

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s. The Golden Age proper is in practice usually taken to refer to a type of fiction which was predominant in the 1920s and 1930s but had been written since at least 1911 and is still being written—though much less—today. In his history of the detective story, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, the author Julian Symons heads two chapters devoted to the Golden Age as "the Twenties" and "the Thirties". Symons notes that Philip Van...

Exactly, Agatha Christie is usually the only name that comes to mind if you're not an avid reader of that genre.

But in my personal opinion she's one of the least remarkable of the lot.

AncientSwordRage

People typically don't want remarkable, they want comfortable and familiar

If you're into three genre, you probably don't

BESW

1:56 AM

Margery Allingham wrote amazing detective novels, but committed the error of showing such authorly skill and social insight that critics called her "practically not a mystery writer at all."

AncientSwordRage

That seems asinine

Likewise Lovecraft had plenty of contemporaries who deserve more acknowledgement

BESW

Oh, absolutely. But mystery writing was "low" art at the time, and a woman aspiring to make it Mean Things was going to get criticized for it.

AncientSwordRage

Bleh

BESW

....on the other hand, you could get away with saying a lot of very Meaningful Things in such genres so long as you didn't get too flashy about it, because the critics wouldn't look too closely and only saw what they expected to see.

AncientSwordRage

Is that what happened to Mary Shelley?

I don't know how Frankenstein was received initially

BESW

2:01 AM

Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven bears such a close resemblance to a much more popular author's poem that he wrote a whole essay about how he Did Not Plagiarize Her, Honest because everybody noticed the similarity. Which poem do we remember today?

@AncientSwordRage It was published anonymously until a play version by Richard Peake became famous, then the reprints had her name. The novel itself didn't get popular until a later edition that she edited to make less radical.

> The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment

But at the same time, many women were writing very very successful novels under their own names--men writing romantic novels often took female pen names, in fact.

Which do we remember? The women who were writing romantic books for women readers, or the woman who wrote a novel that "forgot the gentleness of her sex"? And why?

(Hint: which are on school reading lists? Who writes those lists?)

In the world of TRPGs, I'd be fascinated to see studies about why awareness of The Forge so outpaces any awareness of other collective or study group of the time.

Creative works don't stick in our collective consciousness because of their quality, they stick because of their context and presentation, which are never neutral even when they're not deliberately chosen.

A film like "Birth of a Nation" isn't actually particularly groundbreaking. We remember it because people decided we should.

AncientSwordRage

Tolkien was not the first person to do grand fantasy, but he ~~did it best~~ gets remembered for it

BESW

This is one reason I share all the weird links I put into the chat. They're mostly things that don't get attention from the modern channels of TRPG canonization.

4

@AncientSwordRage [vehemently disagrees]

trogdor

I don't think he did

AncientSwordRage

@BESW ok, not best, let me edit that

trogdor

I could barely read anything he wrote other than The Hobbit

AncientSwordRage

2:15 AM

I was loosely remembering Hello Future Me's video essay on him

BESW

There we go. And it's useful to wonder why he gets remembered for it, rather than Lloyd Alexander or WEB DuBois or Susan Cooper or...

AncientSwordRage

HFM's argument is that because Tolkien made a deep world there was a lot to cling onto as a fan. Rather than just being a story, it was a world you could engage with outside of the books

YMMV

BESW

A friend recently started putting together a list of diverse speculative fiction to read, and I pointed out that a lot of the most influential Black speculative fiction isn't written down, it's recorded in song. George Clinton, Sun Ra, Janelle Monae, Drexcyia...

AncientSwordRage

Fascinating

BESW

I'd be really interested in a dive into why Parliament Funkadelic has deeper penetration into white culture than Octavia Butler does.

AncientSwordRage

2:22 AM

I should be heading to bed, otherwise I'd be up all night chatting/learning

@BESW odd that I know butler's name not funkadelic

BESW

I've definitely mentioned her more than I've mentioned George Clinton.

"Mnemonic with the Team" an interview with the Mnemonic team by Brie Beau Sheldon.

Nevyn wrote a twitter thread about "why I used cards in GUN&SLINGER instead of dice."

Dee Pennyway wrote a twitter thread about "stuff that Mnemonic does that DISRUPTS the tabletop industry."

2

AncientSwordRage

@BESW yes, I also think HFM mentioned fledgling in his on writing series

BESW

Locally Sourced Summer Bundle A bundle hosted by Michael Klamerus. This bundle created by the indie games collective Locally Sourced contains 7 great micro indie tabletop and video games being created in the state of Michigan for the low price of $7.

@AncientSwordRage I suppose by "penetration" I mean less name recognition and more influence. Like how people know "life finds a way" or "clever girl" even if they don't know it's from Jurassic Park.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW the term is cultural osmosis

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_osmosis and tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PopculturalOsmosis

Adeptus

2:55 AM

@nitsua60 That game was kind of fun. A bit broken though - I think we houseruled that your hit points were doubled, so you couldn't be one-shotted by tripping over...

nitsua60

I feel like mine had Phil Foglio art, not whatever the WP page had?

trogdor

lol

MikeQ

3:49 AM

Hello fellow ficuses and assorted houseplants

trogdor

4:10 AM

lol

yes hello? is this the dragonfruit club?

BESW

Bardic Wizard

@MikeQ are you sure you’re a plant? (I can’t come up with a good Alice Through The Looking Glass joke but I know there is one)

trogdor

@BESW lol

Bardic Wizard

@BESW ooh I used to love that book, if that’s the one about the teeny tiny mouse, the great big hungry bear, and the juicy red strawberry. (Not sure I’m remembering that right)

BESW

It is not, but @trogdor knows exactly the book you mean.

trogdor

4:16 AM

@BardicWizard no that isn't that book, at all XD

but I know which book you mean

BESW

(It's banner art from the Storium Weird Fruit scenario by Ursula Vernon.)

Bardic Wizard

Dang it, I was very far off.

trogdor

yeah not the same thing at all XD

Bardic Wizard

Now I see that

trogdor

well ok like, surprisingly similar but not the same thing

BESW

4:20 AM

See also The Feral Strawberry of Appomattox.

trogdor

lol

Bardic Wizard

@BESW Aaah I never want to eat strawberries again aaaaaah

MikeQ

@BardicWizard Can anyone really be sure they aren't a plant

Yuuki

4:52 AM

@trogdor I remember that book.

user15026

5:32 AM

@trogdor I feel like I should read this

trogdor

5:52 AM

@Yuuki nice

@Ash it's worth a read, and it's short so

XD

BESW

7:41 AM

Anybody got experience using Scrivener to make epubs?

Adeptus

8:19 AM

Using Scrivener, a little. To make epubs, no.

trogdor

9:03 AM

epubs?

oh electronic pulication eh

mk then XD

TIL I Guess

BESW

.epub is a particular ebook file type, like .mobi or .azw, etc.

epub is the most universally useable

I'm gonna release Walkies With Grim as an epub and then re-release my other works as epub, too. It's a lot more accessible.

trogdor

9:24 AM

ah ok

that's cool

The Oracle

10:14 AM

0

Q: Guidelines for migration from Science Fiction & Fantasy

I'm putting together an effort on Science Fiction & Fantasy to give users guidance for when they should migrate1 a question from SFF to a different site on the network. Role-Playing Games doesn't have too much overlap with SFF, however, we sometimes do get questions about various worlds from role...

AncientSwordRage

10:50 AM

@TheOracle oh look it's The Lethal Carrot

lisardggY

11:43 AM

Good morningish.

kviiri

hello

BESW

@lisardggY yawp!

Long time no see!

lisardggY

12:05 PM

Indeed, indeed.

The "10 years RPGSE" post on meta reminded me.

How've you all been in the... what, 4-5 years I've been gone?

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: Can I use the Illusionist's Bracers and the Twinned Spell metamagic to cast a twinned Booming Blade as both an action and a bonus action?

The description of the illusionist's bracers (GGR, page 178) says: While wearing the bracers, whenever you cast a cantrip, you can use a bonus action on the same turn to cast that cantrip a second time. The sorcerer's Twinned Spell metamagic option (PHB, page 102) says: When you cast a spell t...

dnd-5e spells magic-items actions metamagic

BESW

Four years last month!

I've started writing games!

You can find them on my itch.io page.

lisardggY

Oh, fantastic. I'll check'em out.

BESW

I'm currently working on a submission for the Folklore Jam. It's gonna be a walking game about mindfulness and appreciation of our neighbourhoods, in the guise of helping a ghost dog find a new home.

lisardggY

Rescure shelter, living your best life and community building, yes those do seem to be your games. :)

BESW

12:14 PM

@lisardggY [grin] If anything I've probably become ever so much moreso.

lisardggY

Very nice. I haven't been particularly RPG active - I have my regular bi-weekly game (was Dresden Files-ish for a few years, then Masks, briefly, now D&D5-ish), but nothing much apart from that.

BESW

Yeah, my game nights sorta dribbled down to a very erratic smattering, and then Pandemic Happened. I've got a weekly "cozy stuff" online gathering that sometimes does RPGs but also does things like binge all of She-Ra or watch a couple hours of JMR.

But there's so many new games I so want to try! Balikbayan, Pasiónes de las Pasiones, Wanderhome...

lisardggY

Heard good reviews of Pasiónes de las Pasiones from someone I know more or less matches my taste in games.

We're playing a really, really stripped down D&D5 - we're four players and a GM, and I'm the only player even remotely interested in the mechanics.

BESW

Heheh.

You might like some of the 6e stuff, then.

lisardggY

6e?

BESW

12:25 PM

May 12 at 10:00, by BESW

@trogdor 6.4E is a module by John Erwin for the 6e Game Jam. The jam is for marginalized creators to use Jared Sinclair's PbtA system 6e (which is kind of a speculative next-gen D&D-like) as a jumping-off point to explore how they'd like a D&D-like game to be. 6.4E, in particular, is an addon for using 4e-like powers in 6e.

There's some really cutting-edge stuff in there. BOLT in particular looks exciting, Ajey Pandey has been doing regular twitter threads about the theory and practice of designing a game that's aimed at hackers and designers rather than for people who will want to play it as-is.

Ajey's also working with drifting Belonging Outside Belonging mechanics into more conflict-oriented spaces, which is massive.

RevenantBacon

@BESW One of my roommates does the same thing. His group just binged A:TLA, and are getting started on A:TLOK next, since Netflix has so helpfully added them to its programming

BESW

(BOB is kind of like if PbtA were boiled down to diceless "the thing just happens" moves and then tied to a Fate-like token economy where weak moves grant tokens, and strong moves spend tokens. It mostly focuses on the experience marginalized and diasporic identities where physical conflict is not a solution to problems.)

So what's been new with you, @lisardggY?

lisardggY

12:54 PM

Oh, you know. Since 2016? Had another kid, started a new job. Stuff. :)

BESW

Grats!

A lot of my last several years have been dominated by taking care of my dad as his condition worsened, and I've only just had a few months so far of adapting to... not that.

lisardggY

Oh, I'm... sorry, I assume.

kviiri

@lisardggY Heh x) I think a regular bi-weekly game would be a pinnacle for RPG activity for me. Anyway, welcome back!

BESW

Thank you. It was as good as it could have been, under the circumstances.

Studying/designing TRPGs and engaging with Pacific/South-East-Asian TRPG indie developer communities have been very good for me the last couple years. This chat room gave me the impetus to grow out past it into more regionally relephant spaces.

Now a lot of what I do here is bringing links to games, conversations, creative voices, that the main site never sees.

doppelgreener

1:22 PM

@BESW i am a bag fan of how many people are actually putting in work to claim the term "6e"

There is even an RPG named 6e

I think a world where an edition number is not synonymous with a singular game, and cannot be used that way, would be a better world for our hobby

Rubiksmoose

@lisardggY oh hey another Masks player!

doppelgreener

Slightly less easy on third party publishers, but WotC already capitalises off their labor, so things being harder on them will mean WotC having to rethink its approach if it wants to continue doing so.

lisardggY

(Am in a work meeting, so answers are sporadic)

@Rubiksmoose The Masks game didn't last too long, I'm afraid. Most of the players didn't really connect to the PbtA-style game, and prefer more GM-guided plots.

Rubiksmoose

No worries, my replies are sporadic even on the best of days :)

lisardggY

@doppelgreener It's a bit confusing with E6 D&D, though.

Rubiksmoose

1:27 PM

@lisardggY Ah that's a shame because it seems like the rules light ethos would suit them nicely.

Not that Masks/PbtA is the only game/system that tends towards rules-light by any means obviously

lisardggY

I think it would have, but some are so rules-averse that they wouldn't even sit and get into the mindset of what the rules are trying to achieve.

Before that we played a game that was a trimmed-down Fate Accelerated, but even that was a bit much for some of them. They prefer a straightforward free-form game.

Took a while to get into invoking/compelling aspects.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW and we thank you a lot for doing that!!

lisardggY

It was my first PbtA game so I was excited about getting into the mindset, and the "powers don't represent what you can do but how you do it" approach. But I'm a lot more mechanically inclined (and mechanically curious) than the other players.

Rubiksmoose

@lisardggY Ah well that makes sense. At least y'all have settled into something that you like and that works for you. :)

doppelgreener

@lisardggY also true

Rubiksmoose

1:32 PM

@lisardggY TBH I think I only have a tenuous grasp on them myself after reading the core book. I still look forward to playing it some day though...

lisardggY

Yeah, it's explicitly a game geared towards spending time together (the group consists of me and my wife, another couple, and another player who's a close friend of us all so she doesn't feel like a fifth wheel)

So the choice of game and system are there to serve the social group.

Rubiksmoose

@lisardggY As it should be!

lisardggY

I've played with groups who were more mechanically curious, where one of the group's explicit motivations was to play with new mechanics. This is very far from the current group's motives (except for me and the GM).

But the GM is fantastic, and he's very good at making the game serve the player's motives and preferences.

kviiri

1:53 PM

I mostly gave up TRPGs about a year ago when I realized I'd probably never enjoy it with my main group

BESW

[sad]

May I suggest some lovely solo games?

kviiri

In exchange I started looking more and more into board gaming which was a nice call though

lisardggY

That's a shame. Because you're a social group that works well together socially, but don't have similar tastes in games?

@kviiri Yeah, we started a long-running game of Pandemic Legacy. In January. Guess how that worked out for us?

kviiri

@BESW Not that you may not, but I'm currently a bit overstocked on a variety of activities x) some are quite RPG-ey in nature, too, just without all the social mess-ups

BESW

Fair enough.

lisardggY

1:57 PM

We switched to playing online via Tabletop Simulator in April when the quarantines dropped, and last week we finally finished the whole thing, 8 months, 18 sessions and one global pandemic later.

kviiri

@lisardggY Yeah. Basically... well. I'm having a hard time putting it to words. I just overall got the feeling they're very very happy with the "DnD only" status quo and anything else was not tried at all, or tried only with the sort of grudging non-enthusiasm that dooms things to fail

And ok, I could be fine if it was my kind of DnD, but it was most of the time abysmally slow-paced and... well, just frustrating.

RevenantBacon

@lisardggY Trimmed down Fate was too much rules? Wow, I'm like the total opposite of these guys, I like so much crunch you could eat it for breakfast.

BESW

It takes all kinds! I used to be super into high-tactics maths systems, and these days I feel overwhelmed if my character sheet takes up one side of a page.

kviiri

I love super high tactics, absolutely. I just think they're a poor fit for many other things I love x)

Carcer

I derive joy from math and system mastery

(guess which game I grew up playing lol)

BESW

2:08 PM

"The Expanse: Ariadne’s Spindle" by Sophie Lagacé is a Fate adaptation of the character creation process in The Expanse Roleplaying Game.

Five days left: Mercy's Angels - A Bundle to Fund Action Medics! Hosted by Mercedes Acosta. Street medics are trained volunteers at protests who engage in preventative and active healthcare. A new street medic collective is being started by Mercedes Acosta in Tennessee where it is sorely needed, and we are raising funds to dress out our angels with appropriate gear and stock their kits.

RevenantBacon

@BESW I suppose we do change tastes as we get older

kviiri

@Carcer Funnily, two of my favorite games in my adolescence (although video games) were NetHack and Civilization IV, one intentionally and one (probably) unintentionally heavy on system mastery optimization. They inspired a... reaction in me, in a way x)

BESW

GUN&SLINGER by Nevyn Holmes has almost funded its SRD stretch goal!

I'm half baffled at why Mnemonic is still 3.5k away from its minimum target, its funds ought to be blasting through the roof like Wanderhome did.

kviiri

(by system-mastery optimization, I mean some fuzzy subset of game mechanics that interact in an unusual and not-easily-foreseeable manner such that even extremely strategical players would not be able to take advantage of them without prior experience)

Civilization as a series tends to have those, uh. Things. Eg. when playing against the AI in Civ V, you just never try to complete the Great Library before the AI does at higher difficulties. Just don't. The AI love it, it will get it first.

It's not a property emerging from the actual in-game values, but how the AI does its decisions

Glazius

@BESW Time and chance happeneth to them all.

BESW

2:17 PM

@kviiri Have you and Miniman ever gotten together to talk about Wiz8?

kviiri

@BESW nope, but I reckon we should x)

brb, shower time

BESW

@Glazius I mean. I say "half" baffled because everybody who's been paying attention knows why,

lisardggY

@RevenantBacon I enjoy mechanics but I don't enjoy mastery of mechanics.

I like playing around with the rules and seeing what they can do for me, but I don't enjoy optimization, and I would hate games where an unoptimized character would be a liability.

My first D&D 3.x game was a game I joined after it had been running for years. The DM said "build a 20th level character to join the game". Excellent. So I created an utterly mechanicaly useless Monk7/Thief13.

Because it fit the story.

RevenantBacon

Oh, I'm SO one of those guys who likes to figure out how everything works in a system, the more rules to figure out, the better

lisardggY

So I realize that I'm so mechanically useless because, as a 7th level monk using unarmed weapons, I am literally incapable of damaging any opponent we met.

RevenantBacon

2:24 PM

I agree with hating characters be a liability, but only if they were purposely designed that way i.e. a player just refuses to give their character a ranged weapon "because I don't want to". Like, you're deliberately making your character weaker

lisardggY

So the DM quietly supplied me with some custom magic items that pushed my attack capabilities up to "barely capable", which was good enough for me.

RevenantBacon

@lisardggY Did you not get Sneak Attack from Thief?

lisardggY

@RevenantBacon I did, but a Monk7's unarmed attacks aren't magical weapons, and at that power level, everything was immune to non-magical weapons.

RevenantBacon

@lisardggY Ooohhhhhhhh, that makes sense

lisardggY

I didn't want to be optimized, I just wanted to be not embarassingly useless. So I talked to the DM, and we fixed it without sacrificing my backstory.

The fun part was later in the campaign when my character's psyche was magically split between three alternate paths he could have chosen, and I would randomly switch between Monk7/Thief13, Monk7/Swashbuckler13 and a pure Monk20.

Confused the hell out of the rest of the party until they figured what was going on.

We were at a dramatic juncture at the narrative and suspected a traitor in our midst, so the paladin cast some sort of *Discern Lies*/mind-reading spell on all of us "Are you loyal to the group and its goals", and we all wrote our answers on notes to signify that only he could tell if we were lying. My answer was "Yes/Yes/No" (all true), and I remember him looking at the note, looking at me, looking at the note again and shaking his head.

Great character. A lot of fun. Terribly optimized.

BESW

2:31 PM

[yawn] It's well past my bedtime. ttfn, y'all.

Good to see you again, @lisardggY.

kviiri

2:42 PM

@lisardggY Ah, the origin story of all my "ridiculously optimized" characters so far x)

(truth be told, the one my party "complained" the most about was a pretty standard kensei monk without... me really trying to do anything extra)

MikeQ

@RevenantBacon That can be frustrating. Although in other cases, the character can end up unintentionally underpowered and still be a liability (in-game) / problem (out-of-game)

RevenantBacon

@MikeQ right, but if it's unintentional, at least I can then suggest "Hey, if you swap [this spell] for [that one], or retrain [this feature] to [similar but stronger feature], you'll be more effective" because they wanted their character to be useful, but just didn't know how to go about it.

GcL

It also depends on the context of the group. When you've got a brace of min/maxers who enjoy pushing to find edge cases and that lot, players who don't can feel their perfectly fine normally developed characters are lackluster.

RevenantBacon

Like in Pathfinder, there are a lot of "trap" feats/abilities, or, ones that sound good, but mechanically either don't work as advertised, or are dead-ends. For example: Lunge allows you to (as a free action) increase your melee reach by 5' until your next turn in exchange for a -2 AC

GcL

I'm trying to think of classes that when advanced with bog standard choices ends up being not particularly useful in combat. Ranger comes to mind? but they're still okay in combat

@RevenantBacon 3.5 had a lot of that dead-end advancement kind of thing. Also, if you didn't set a character up for a prestige class around L7 and everyone else did, it can feel that you got left in the dust.

MikeQ

2:56 PM

It can also depend on the types of challenges in the campaign. Like if the player built their character to specialize in X, but the campaign demands Y.

RevenantBacon

Monkey Lunge(which is supposed to be an upgrade) allows you to use Lunge as a standard action and also not take the -2AC. meaning you can forgo all attacks on your turn to increase your reach by 5' until your next turn.

MikeQ

There can also be tension with new players or those who want more of a casual RP experience, and don't want to be bossed around or told how to optimize their characters

GcL

@MikeQ I change the story to a mix of good fits and mismatches to character skills. To see how the players choose to overcome challenges not in their wheelhouse... but favor putting in more options that are in their wheelhouse.

MikeQ

@GcL Sure, but that may not be an option with prewritten adventures and GMs who don't like improvising content.

GcL

E.g. the current party is about a 50/50 mix of combat optimization and non-combat skills. So the options for getting to the goals are about that split.

@MikeQ I think that gets labeled "Rogue-like" these days in video games. Poorly fit characters will die.... and potentially get their party killed as well.

Not a big fan of that when it's not labeled up front.

MikeQ

3:01 PM

Oh absolutely. And that's the problem, since usually this issue is due to mismatched expectations etc, and the differences in expectations may not be visible until later.

RevenantBacon

@MikeQ That's always a risk though. At least if they specialize in something, when that thing comes up they'll breeze through it, and most campaigns will have a bit of everything once in a while.

MikeQ

Personally I feel it's the designer's fault, for offering trap options and then balancing content to punish players who choose said options.

RevenantBacon

@MikeQ Oh for sure. One of my biggest peeves with Paizo was their refusal to print combat feats for 1e that were more powerful (on their own) than what was printed in the core book, because "we don't want any book to become a must-have". O f course, this doesn't count unintentional feat combos from multiple books released years apart

Like 1e had almost 0 support for building around the Intimidate skill, and players were generally punished for even using it. Meanwhile, Diplomacy got extensive support, lower DCs' and rewarded players for using it

But if you combine an two classes, an archetype, a specific race, and 4 feats all from different books, you can actually use Intimidate in combat for something useful! (AKA intimidate target to make them flat-footed for a couple rounds and roll Sneak Attack)

Or, instead, take a single level of Wizard and summon your own flock of eagles to flank with for the sneak attack bonus

MikeQ

Oh yeah. 3.X/PF1 was really bad about that. Was definitely an issue when half the players were veterans/optimizers, and the other half were newbies who didn't read the rules because they didn't enjoy system mastery or managing complicated sheets.

AncientSwordRage

3:22 PM

Since You've Been Gone is a collection of 3 All Dice Tables that generate life events for an NPC while the players are away on their adventure.(Reddit link)

GcL

3:33 PM

@AncientSwordRage Have the tables been useful at your table?

AncientSwordRage

@GcL I haven't roleplayed in years

Reddit seems to like it

GcL

Are the tables any good?

Reddit seems to like garbage as often as gold, so it's hard to gauge by that mass.

RevenantBacon

@MikeQ That's a medium sized oof right there. On the other hand, I enjoy teaching new people how to use the system

And also what feats to avoid (brew potion is one that comes to mind right away)

@AncientSwordRage Oh, I wanna remember this one, that sounds hella useful.

AncientSwordRage

@RevenantBacon I hate that systems have "things to avoid", what if I want to play a master brewer?

Mark Wells

@RevenantBacon The fact that you 'need' to be taught to avoid certain feats is a major defect in the system, IMO. "Oh, hey, there's a feat that lets me make potions, that sounds like a neat concept." admiralackbar.gif

Why the hell is someone else at the table telling me not to play this character?

AncientSwordRage

3:46 PM

> The result would look something like this. The bold text is the lead in text while the rest is generated events.

Shortly after you left, they had an in depth conversation with their best friend about what they truly wanted out of life. This turn of events allowed them to hone their craft: enchanting weapons and armor with love and embroidery. Using their craft, they turned their efforts toward finding a partner who shared their goals so they could encourage each other to master their crafts. Which led to them meeting a religious sect that believes the highest form of worship is being an …

Example ^

RevenantBacon

@AncientSwordRage Then I can tell them "Play an Alchemist, all your 'spells' are potions by default!"

AncientSwordRage

@RevenantBacon oh in 5e, sure

@MarkWells exactly

Mark Wells

@RevenantBacon "No, play this other character instead."

Do we really want the new player experience to be that you sit down to create your character and half of the group starts telling you how you're doing it wrong?

RevenantBacon

@MarkWells Well, not exactly. More like "I want to be a master brewer" "OK, well Alchemists are, in fact, master brewers, so look at what hhey can do"

"I recommend avoiding 'Brew Potion' because its useful for about 3 levels before the cost of making the potions eclipses the value of those potions"

I don't immediately go to "nope, this character is bad because it's not optimal, and you should do it my way"

AncientSwordRage

4:17 PM

@MarkWells I've been there

lisardggY

@BESW you too, @BESW

AncientSwordRage

"why did you take the goggles of language comprehension?"

Then I took spider climb to avoid monsters and traps, and the dungeon had a gelatinous cube ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lisardggY

@GcL That's the reason I preferred PF1 over D&D3.5 - uh have tons of customization options, but 3e's tended to kick in only around lv7-10, while PF's kick in at character creation

@MarkWells to be fair, though, that's both the system's fault, but also (in my play style) the table's fault for not finding a way to accommodate a character concept that the system handles poorly. The system os only part of the game.

One approach is to reskin one of the existing, effective mechanical choices to fit the concept. Another is simply to have a game that isn't geared towards efficiency, so that you can be unoptimized and still get things done.

I think my least optimized character was a CON-based warforged paladin in 4e. 4e does not have any mechanical support for characters with CON as their primary ability score, or at least didn't at the time.

Mark Wells

4:36 PM

@lisardggY The fact that reskinning it is considered an acceptable solution shows that this is a defect of the system, I think. If the character options can be trivially reworked to suit any character concept, then what purpose do they serve? They're not mechanically supporting the concept.

4

AncientSwordRage

@MarkWells I'm on board with this logic. I thought about it for a while, but didn't know how to articulate it.

Mark Wells

(Maybe instead of like 50 classes, most of which are considered "unplayable" and will get you laughed at, they'd be better served by writing five classes and using the rest of the book to tell you how to tailor them to your concept.)

@lisardggY And yes, the table needs to take responsibility for what they do with the system.

lisardggY

@MarkWells That was part of my beef with 4e, and to a lesser extent with 3e and onwards, that the goal of having a streamlined system can conflict with the goal of having distinct mechanical flavor.

Mark Wells

(@lisardggY Also, hello! I don't think we've met.)

lisardggY

@MarkWells Hey there. :) I was a regular in the room until 2016 or so, then faded away because, well, life.

@MarkWells I'm not against reskinning, again because I feel that a) the system should cater to the character concept that the player wants, while b) you can't have a system that can do everything meaningfully, so it's fine to reskin to fine tune a character to a concept. But if you find yourself reskinning really basic things, it feels like there's a hole in the system.

That said, my current 5e is mechnicaly a wizard, but fluffily a wood elf archer, with various magical arrows. I pick spells that fit the theme but handwave much of the actual spellcasting away - instead of memorizing from a spellbook, I construct my arrowheads from my fletching kit, though it's still magical, not alchemical or "technological", just "weird elven arrow magic".

Mark Wells

5:12 PM

@lisardggY I'd be kind of interested in a system that generalized wizard to "guy who does magic using tools", with a process to choose the kind of tools and which spells you'll have access to that way. This is how Savage Worlds does it, more or less.

(though I've not been thrilled with Savage Worlds in general)

lisardggY

@MarkWells If I'm playing a game that isn't very crunchy - or where the crunch isn't in the areas of "what can your character effectively do in-game" - I don't mind a generic "you're a wizard, fluff it any way you want". But if a more crunchy game (D&D style), I really prefer a wizard to have noticeably different mechanics than a cleric or a warlock.

RevenantBacon

@AncientSwordRage There's a difference between making a permanent choice that will have usefulness for a long time, but only in particular situations, and making a permanent choice that's useful in many situations but only for a limited time.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY this is ok until someone asks you to prepare a certain spell that doesn't work flavourfully

lisardggY

No-one will ask me because I'm the only player around the table who knows what spells even exist :)

And we're a table that will never require any specific feat, skill or spell for the game.

Mark Wells

@lisardggY That makes sense if a wizard is actually conceptually distinct from a cleric or warlock, and the mechanics are built to support that. But looking at, say, the D&D 5e versions, the mechanics seem to be different just to offer you a choice of mechanics.

MikeQ

5:20 PM

@AncientSwordRage It's magic, so it has magic effects. When does that not work flavorfully?

lisardggY

@MikeQ I'll probably have a hard time justifying spells like Animate Dead or Telepathic Bond to my woodland archer flavor :)

Mark Wells

@MikeQ It doesn't work if you like magic to have distinct flavors.

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY I have never played with groups what would allow this

lisardggY

@MarkWells Since D&D is a crunchy game, I would expect that if a class exists, it exists to offer mechanical choices.

Mark Wells

@lisardggY And since the classes exist to offer mechanical choices, D&D is a crunchy game :)

lisardggY

5:24 PM

@MarkWells Sure, but that's why I didn't like 4e's crunch, because it was too streamlined. The difference between an Arcane or a Martial striker class felt very flimsy - they all have the same At-Will/Encounter/Daily power sets.

MikeQ

@lisardggY Really? When you described the character I imagined something like Green Arrow, who effectively has a supply of trick arrows for various utility purposes.

lisardggY

@MikeQ I can easily justify Feather Fall or Fear or even Dimension Door, but Phantom Steed? Detect Thoughts? Find Familiar? Not so much.

Mark Wells

@lisardggY Any of the self-targeting spells seem like a bad fit. (Sort of the converse of making a wizard who brews potions, where we expect most of the spells to be self-targeting because you drink the potion.)

lisardggY

@MarkWells Exactly. And I'm fine with limiting my spell choices for the sake of character concept. And my table is more than accomodating.

Carcer

@lisardggY modify memory: extremely precise arrows

lisardggY

5:32 PM

@Carcer Levitate - a constant stream of arrows pushing me up.

MikeQ

Levitate can just be a vertical grappling hook arrow

lisardggY

@MikeQ Assuming there's something to grapple.

Carcer

@lisardggY no, it's bad spiderman videogame rules

MikeQ

Dunno. It can't be a magic grappling hook that affixes itself in space?

lisardggY

Finger of Death - I literally shot you so hard you died, right there. Not pierced to death. No blood loss. Just SHOT SO GODDAMN HARD you died.

Carcer

5:33 PM

the rope goes off camera and you assume it's anchored to something

lisardggY

@MikeQ That could work, I suppose.

MikeQ

Summoning spells would be like pokeballs. Launch the arrow, critter comes out. Although I agree that the sneakier spells (like Detect Thoughts) could be hard to explain.

Carcer

find familiar is fine so long as the familiar is a snake

lisardggY

@MikeQ I sneakily shot an arrow into your cerebral cortex connected back to me via fine wire.

Carcer

arrows turning into snakes is fine and traditional fantasy

Mark Wells

5:35 PM

@MikeQ Again we're getting into magic having distinct flavors, though.

Besides, the magical grappling hook suspended in space is rope trick.

lisardggY

@MarkWells rope trick is crunch. levitate with a rope suspended off-camera is fluff. :)

Yuuki

Protection from Arrows - I shoot arrows that talk other arrows into going somewhere else.

MikeQ

Interceptor arrows

lisardggY

Although that might be my Fate fondness showing. D&D isn't geared towards out-of-character narrative justifications.

Yuuki

Protection from Law - I shoot so many arrows that everyone gets so distracted that they can't even.

lisardggY

5:38 PM

@Yuuki Yeah, I'm not immune to arrows, it's just that they like me too much.

Carcer

@lisardggY are you sure you haven't been slowly dosing yourself with arrows of increasing size to build up an immunity

lisardggY

@Carcer When you gaze into the arrow, the arrow gazes also into you.

Carcer

@lisardggY that's mind blank

lisardggY

@Carcer Be the arrow you want to see in the world?

MikeQ

Tasha's Hideous Laughter is a persistent tickle arrow

AncientSwordRage

5:44 PM

@lisardggY I'm slightly jealous of your very accommodating group

MikeQ

@lisardggY The real treasure is the arrows you shot along the way

lisardggY

@AncientSwordRage This group specifically is not accomodating as much as actively rules/optimization averse. But previous groups were more mechanically oriented, but still oriented.

Probably part of the reason I've kept on playing with them all these years.

@MikeQ doffs cap and nods and that's that.

And now, it's time to head out. It's been fun to be back. I'll try to keep it up. :)

AncientSwordRage

@lisardggY they are the opposite of the people I've played with in the past then! :-D

RevenantBacon

6:02 PM

@Carcer fires snake from bow like an arrow

Mark Wells

@AncientSwordRage I'm sorry. That sounds exhausting.

RevenantBacon

There's a guy I used to play with who... I guess was optimization averse? For some reason, he really likes Pathfinder, but he disliked it having so much crunch and would always add more and more houserules to it, to be more like Fate (his other favorite system) whenever he ran a game, until he gave up and decided to switch over to Fate mid campaign. This has happened 3 times at least

Well, I guess really, he would remove more and more rules from it to be more like Fate.

I actually dropped from any games he runs because of this. Characters just don't translate over properly between the two. Anyways, he also feels like Fate is not crunchy enough and has a tendency to add houserules to it to make it more like Pathfinder. As far as I am aware though, he hasn't ever actually switched from Fate to Pathfinder mid-campaign though.

AncientSwordRage

6:20 PM

@MarkWells it would have been had it lasted longer than 1/2 sessions

Yuuki

Time flies like an arrow. Incidentally, this is how haste works.

Carcer

time stop: shoot a clock

Mark Wells

@Carcer Zeno's paradox

Yuuki

Wish - threaten reality with an arrow through the metaphorical face unless it reshapes itself to match your will.

MikeQ

Blink - Shoot your friend at a weird angle so that they clip in and out of the level geometry

Yuuki

6:25 PM

Shield - shoot arrows at the last three letters of magic missile.

Mark Wells

@RevenantBacon I'm optimization-averse, and I remember wanting to like Pathfinder because it has one of the cooler fantasy-kitchen-sink settings.

RevenantBacon

Well, at least you can use the setting without having to use the mechanics.

RevenantBacon

7:25 PM

Fireball - just a regular arrow with a grenade strapped to it

Yuuki

Acid Arrow - just a regular arrow with an acid arrow strapped to it

> "why don't you just dip the one arrow in acid?"
> "... shut up."

2

Bardic Wizard

Animate Objects - the arrow attaches to the object and makes it move

Thomas Markov

@BardicWizard Im partial to "heat seeking arrows with stuff tied to them"

RevenantBacon

@BardicWizard Nope, it has some sort of curse on it that attracts all of the Fireball Arrows

@BardicWizard I'm picturing the arrow just trailing a hook/laso that catches on the object as the arrow flies by

Ray of Frost - the arrow's just been in the ice box for a while

Zone of Truth - don't lie to me, or I'll stab you with this arrow

Thomas Markov

7:41 PM

I like how wax eagle has nearly 100k rep on rpg.se, has been a member for almost 10 years, and yet his profile insist he's new to ttrpgs.

RevenantBacon

maybe his definition of fast is different than ours?

Rubiksmoose

That is quite amusing indeed :)

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