TRPG General Chat

12:42 AM

"REROUTING POWER TO THE WARP CORE!" Let's talk about running Hull Breach as a mega-campaign. Update on HULL BREACH Vol. 1 Kickstarter campaign.

Spencer Campbell reiterated on twitter that "Other people talking about my games almost always sells more copies than me talking about them."

Uncover Your Story by Zuhayri Mohamed. A Solo TTRPG game based on the game Pyramid Solitaire.

POCGamer wrote a twitter thread about the place D&D holds in the hobby and common misconceptions about its similarities and differences compared to other TRPGs.

"A free adventure available: The Summer Blooms" by momatoes for ARC: Doom Tabletop RPG. A 4-hour adventure with characters, various locations and a strange, tiny dungeon. Also available on the ARC website. Screenshots in this twitter thread.

Pandatheist wrote on twitter about a "Dawning realization: almost every ttrpg core book I own has procedural rules and general guidance on how to be a good GM, but only ever spends chapters on procedural rules for players."

Dec 4 '21 at 12:34, by AncientSwordRage

resets the counter for 'days since 4e rightly praised' back to 0

BESW

1:48 AM

I kinda want to play a campaign of Pasión de las Pasiones (digital, physical) inspired by "Rato del Encanto" (spoilers for the film Encanto)

bobble

My literature class TA said he had watched that movie "somewhere around 85 times" and that he was "stuck in a time loop, hearing the opening music over and over" :D (He has a small child and works from home)

AncientSwordRage

@BESW yup

@bobble I really want to watch that film

Phoenices

2:17 AM

@BESW, I have a question. You believe that there are lots of game that give much more story than D&D without as much investment. Do some of these games give the twisty character-creation, optimization trickery? It's an aspect of the game that I do love, almost as much as min-maxing in-game - "I have very, very few resources left. How do I get out of this? Can I use Control Earth?"

BESW

It's not something I've got much experience with because D&D burned me out on that playstyle, but yes.

bobble

There has to be a distinction made between character creation that is interesting, offering real choice and possibility for optimization, and character creation that is just overly complex.

BESW

Aye. To get useful analysis of games we've gotta be able to build vocabulary more robust than what D&D provides, because so much of D&D's vocabulary is only describing distinctions within D&D so it can't effectively describe D&D itself.

I've heard good things about Savage Worlds as a D&D alternative for high-complexity tactical play but I don't know enough about it to say exactly how it accomplishes that.

One of the things that helped my own group move from D&D 4e into Fate was that our first Fate system, DFRPG, had extremely high complexity a-la-carte character development which rewarded a high level of mastering-confusing-texts proficiency.

So it felt familiar that way.

Atomic Robo was also relatively high on the "pick from lists and find synergies" scale, though it had a lot more emphasis on being able to make your own features using robust templates, and on narrative optimization during play--being creative about how you use and modify your immediate context to take advantage of your character's best competencies.

(DFRPG also rewarded improvisational story-driven optimization, but it brought a lot more Weird Crunchy Subsystem Stuff to the table)

I'd recommend checking if Gubat Banwa has the right kind of mechanics to scratch your "twisty optimization" itch.

Or maybe Tidebreaker, I haven't paid much attention to that but it says it's focused on tactical play.

The Quest RPG has a supplement called Questin' Crunch that might satisfy?

Phoenices

2:36 AM

Hmm. So, my biggest gripe against story-driven instead of mechanics-driven play is that it adds a weight to something that doesn't exist. That sounds sort of stupid given the context, but... I like something that works by mechanics and plays by story, if that makes sense. This pushes me away from things where the mechanics are story, because they're sort of... unreal? I don't think I've explained my position correctly here, but it gets some of the gist across.

BESW

It really depends on what you're looking for, what kind of games will work for you. Modern D&D tends to associate "twisty" creative problem-solving with working inside the mechanics to produce unexpected effects, while the SWORDDREAM type style is more about finding narrative solutions that engage mechanics as little as possible because those mechanics are punishing.

bobble

@Phoenices What purpose does the story serve for you, within an RPG context?

BESW

@Phoenices I'm confused by the syntax here, I think. When you say "it adds a weight to something" I think "it" is "story-driven play" but I don't know what the "something" is; same with the "they" in "they're sort of unreal."

Are you looking at mechanics as belonging to tactical interludes between unsupported RP scenes, like a fighting video game that swaps between play and cutscenes?

(Part of the issue here, I suspect, is that D&D is so hyperintensively focused on combat as the conduit for mechanical agency. So related question: in TRPGs without combat, in what part of play would you want to engage with mechanics?)

Phoenices

Ooh, yeah, looking at that syntax I can't decipher it either. It adds this weight to story that isn't real - a story should be something made out of imagination and mechanics combined. It shouldn't be the mechanics. It shouldn't shape the mechanics
As an example, I like the idea of a DM seeing a soul-trapping spell and thinking "I could have a lich who does that to a king, and then holds him to ransom! But then nobody cares, and they bolster defenses on the castle, so then the lich...." It's story powered by mechanics, inspired by it, but neither controls the other. That doesn't have to be …

BESW

2:53 AM

Hmm. That's interesting because I feel D&D is one of the most exclusively mechanics-driven systems I've ever played.

As soon as you say "fight," mechanics lead from one to another with very little space for anything except embellishing their descriptions. Fight means roll initiative, which triggers first round, which triggers a turn, which triggers action choice, which triggers action resolution, which triggers adding conditions or removing points, and when you run out of actions that triggers the next turn...
It's an inevitable cascade of mechanic-to-mechanic until a mechanic end condition is reached, or the table decides to stop the fight and go back to non-mechanical roleplay.

Phoenices

But isn't that... kind of how a real fight works? That's my first thought. What are you going to do, let down your guard? That's a quick death unless done right. Negotiate while fighting? Yeah, players can do that as much as in real fights.
I will concede that a fight should have more options than it does, but I kind of... can't really think of any when I try to imagine them. Run isn't as much of an option as it should be, yes, but other than that? Like, I see your point that a fight is super duper mechanics focused, but what else should it be?

BESW

Compare Fate, where conflict does have a similar (though more mutable) cascade, but the rest of play is a back-and-forth where the table can decide that a particular narrative beat should be represented by a mechanic, but the resolution of that mechanic spits out a narrative result so there's a back-and-forth between roleplay and mechanic, roleplay and mechanic.

@Phoenices All sorts of things! Have you seen The Princess Bride?

Or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

Phoenices

No, I have not seen either.

BESW

They're great examples of how fights can be conversations, arguments, or even flirtations, but you can find other examples all over the place.

A fight can be a single roll or a point spend. It can be pure roleplay, a contest, a mutual admiration...

Here's a conversation where I was asked to interpret the battle between Luke and Vader on Cloud City as if it were a Fate conflict:

Fate-ifying Star Wars: Luke vs Vader in Cloud City

Dec 7 '17 at 22:28, 14 hours 8 minutes total – 32 messages, 2 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked May 27 '18 at 23:10 by BESW

Notice that "kill the opponent" is not the goal of either person.

It's very VERY rare that "kill the other guy" is the true goal in a fight; sometimes "kill the other guy" seems to be the best way to achieve the true goal, but it's an artifact of D&D-like systems that "kill the other guy" is the default goal.

In Lady Blackbird actions are entirely undefined; you describe what you're doing and roll dice to do it. This means a fight can be a single dice roll to defeat an armada... or an entire session of evaluating the opponent, maneuvering for advantage, bantering, negotiating, thrust, parry, flee, reposition, take hostages, stop for tea and flirting, try to poison each others' tea, play poker for each others' soul...

bobble

@BESW of course, definition of "best" varies based on how you're judging it. Morally, killing is probably not the "best" option, even if it is "best" looking at the conflict in a purely utilitarian fashion.

BESW

3:07 AM

Feb 25 '15 at 0:01, by BESW

The second-best debuff is death. The best debuff is "He's on our side now."

Phoenices

The third-best debuff is "He's on nobody's side now, but believes that someone else has wronged him." The fourth-best debuff is "He's dead, and it was "clearly" not us." The fifth-best debuff is "a loved one is dead, and it was "clearly" not us." Wait, that overlaps with three.

bobble

There's also the possibility that "kill the other guy" is just... not an option on the table, because of the character(s) in question, the authority figures in the world around them, etc.

BESW

The mechanics define the scope of the battle. In D&D combat is mortal because the mechanics make it the most obvious default, and being dramatic or flirtatious or honorable is not supported by mechanics.

Phoenices

Insofar as you're trying to simulate a mildly realistic fight (and I'm willing to discuss that idea), it really should be a mechanics-driven battle where there's a real cost to a suboptimal choice, but with the option to negotiate or argue during it.
I'll concede that D&D should have more options for "yeah, we kinda don't want to murder each other?" The best it has in 5e, other than sleep spells, is "and when you do lethal damage, you can just knock your opponent out."
As someone who hasn't seen any of Star Wars for 5ish years, wasn't Luke's goal to kill Vader? If it was a variant on showin…

BESW

Why should it be mechanics-driven? Why not "what's the most interesting outcome"-driven?

(No, Vader's goal was to turn Luke to the Dark Side so they could rule the galaxy together as father and son. That's why he put Solo in the Carbonite; to test if it would kill a person, if that was the only way Vader could capture Luke alive.)

What choice do you see taken from the players, and why does that bother you more than D&D restricting choices by hard-gating options that seem narratively reasonable behind prerequisites, levels, and classes?

After all, Fate says that if you fail a dice roll, you can just choose to succeed anyway by taking a cost. D&D doesn't let you do that. That's player choice.

Phoenices

3:16 AM

@BESW I'm asking what Luke's goal was. I thought it was to kill Vader even from the start, though "variant on showing off" and "trying to intimidate him into releasing his friends" would make sense.

BESW

Or right, sorry, misread that. Luke's goal in that fight is to get his friends to safety. Given the choice between "kill Vader but your friends are endangered" and "save your friends but Vader escapes" he'll choose the latter every time, and he entered this particular fight by telling his friends that he was going to hold off Vader so they'd have time to get to the ship.

In Fate, fight goals are about immediate context. They can be influenced by long-term plans like "avenge my father" but the fight's goal is for that fight alone. Another fight might have a totally different goal.

It sounds like you're thinking of mechanics as physics approximations: roll the dice to represent all the uncontrollable influences on an action, add modifiers to represent the controllable influences, and see whether your character's ability to control the situation is sufficient to achieve their goal.

I think of mechanics as decision-makers: if the table doesn't want to choose what happens (whether because we can't think of something, or we can't choose between options, or we just feel like this thing should be decided by the mechanics instead of us), we roll the dice to have the decision made for us.

AncientSwordRage

@Phoenices I feel like I understand the angle your coming at

Phoenices

That sounds pretty accurate. If someone told me that Canada's new rocket functioned by narrative and not physics, and worked, I'd think "Glargh, this is something that shouldn't exist, whether or not it can." I... like using physics to make a rocket, and then having a news story based on the reasonably boring video of the people at ground control handling the rocket and being happy when it succeeds.

BESW

Rolling damage on a fireball is saying "I don't want to decide if this spell kills the target or not, I'd like to be surprised."

AncientSwordRage

I feel like D&D is like Lego bricks (large, often murder shaped, bricks, but bricks nonetheless)

You can look at bricks and go "yeah I can make something from this", but (I personally find this) it can be harder to look at another system with no bricks or different bricks and imagine what it can build

bobble

3:24 AM

@Phoenices reasonably boring sounds like my cuppa tea, at least for my "real life" :)

AncientSwordRage

If it's just a blank piece paper, that quite daunting

BESW

If I'm playing a game where my character's info influences how many dice I roll, or what modifiers I add to them, then I'm playing a game where I want to be surprised but I want to have limited control over the frequency of the kinds of surprises I get.

If I'm playing D&D, then I'm playing a game where I want to be most often surprised by combat, and in that combat I can choose the kinds of small surprises I want to add up to a big surprise which might be influenced by the limited control my build choices give over those small surprises.

Phoenices

ASR - yeah, that's about what I'm thinking. IRL I like those rocket videos, and the videos explaining how the rocket works, and I like making things with Lego bricks more than clay. Part of it is that it's fair and equal, on some levels (and there are some levels on which it is not). But I can still make something out of Legos, uglier and blockier though it may be! And there are things I can do, even on a large scale, with Legos that are more beautiful than with clay because of the blockiness.

BESW

TRPG mechanics aren't physics approximators. They're story approximators. D&D has chosen to tell stories about fantastical combat to the death in which wounds and exhaustion don't affect our ability to fight, weapons never break, and some people can easily ignore attacks which would instantly kill others.

D&D isn't even trying to be internally consistent with its mechanics (or RPG.SE would look VERY different), and there's nothing wrong with this! It's because D&D's mechanics are modelling moments in the stories it's designed to tell.

Phoenices

Yeah, they're really not. I'm not claiming they're like physics, but that they are the story form of physics. Not polite, does exactly what you tell it to instead of what you want it to, never convenient, doesn't have the parts you want, but also still physics.

BESW

3:35 AM

Part of those stories are the kinds of play it creates at the table and at home; character creation is a kind of play, GM negotiation is a kind of play.

So you want games where once a decision is triggered it resolves independently.

Phoenices

Combat is sort of a slog of mechanics, and I have this vague feeling that it could be more but not enough vision of how that could be. You've given me more of an image of what that could be, BESW. On the other hand, I like that slog of mechanics.

BESW

I get the impression you're using "physics" as shorthand for a design principle. Something like, that mechanical decision-making is triggered by narrative; the triggers are non-negotiable; the resolutions are tied to pre-determined collections of non-negotiable outcomes; and the outcomes are expressed as mechanics which the table may choose to translate into narrative.

For example:

(1) mechanical decision-making is triggered by narrative. If I say "I swing my sword at the champion," that triggers an attack roll.
(2) the triggers are non-negotiable. I can't choose to say for myself how the swing resolves, the decision must be made by the "attack roll" decision-maker.
(3) the resolutions are tied to pre-determined collections of non-negotiable outcomes. Once I've triggered the attack roll I can't influence it in any way. My previous choices and the circumstances at the table say what the modifiers and target difficulty are. And the result of the roll is taken from a lis…

Phoenices

Yes! I don't like the feeling of "moldable, not set in stone" mechanics, or more meta-level mechanics. I have this set of ingrained assumptions about what should be so, and I don't think they're completely wrong or completely right (though as I grow I learn that more and more of them are completely false, but made out of the body parts of a couple other truths that I also assume).
That concept of non-negotiability feels Right to me. I don't think that idea is fully right (who am I to declare wrongbadfun?). I think there's also a core of truth there, and I'm trying to figure out what it is a…

BESW

You can see how this is a setup that's got a LOT of design choices which could be changed a little or a lot. Roll For Shoes and Fate, for instance, both insist that mechanical outcomes be translated into narrative which is checked for further mechanical triggers, because that's how those systems create momentum. Other games (We Forest Three comes to mind immediately) provide pre-written narrative translations for outcomes, or outcomes are already narrative and have no mechanical effect.

One of Fate's core conceits is that the group can always choose not to trigger a decision-maker if they'd rather decide themselves; another is that the outcome is not "specific thing happens" but "pick from this list of things." Like a bad dice roll gives access to the list which says "fail OR spend resources to succeed OR take a lasting penalty to succeed."

When you're playing outside of combat, do you treat skill rolls as non-negotiably triggered decision makers, or do you use them as it seems appropriate instead of every time they could be used?

Here's another way to talk about dice and "physics:" In D&D the dice are in conversation with the characters; in games like Fate the dice are in conversation with the players.

Phoenices

4:08 AM

I think we know about where we each stand, now. Thank you for picking up on what I was thinking! I understand it better than I used to, and understand your position much, much better.
I think there should be no meta-level, no power to alter what happens except through the character; the mask of character should be over the player, and the player should choose to follow the path of story, if that's the goal; if the goal is comedy hack-and-slash, the players should move the masks to fit that. An action should do what it does.

BESW

To be clear on my side: I think that some systems do try to use "mechanics as physics model" as a design principle, and I think D&D has places where it falls into that as a n unconscious default without really understanding the consequences. I spent the first years of my time in D&D treating it like a physics engine and myself in the GM role as an interface or interpreter rather than a decision-maker or arbiter. It didn't work well for me.

Not always "awesome," but "interesting." Boring outcomes waste the time my friends have set aside to play games together.

Clarification: I think that "meta-level" is not optional. Every game is about players at the table interacting with each other and the rules. Characters, actions, story, emerge from that interaction.

What you're describing is limiting the players' interactions with the rules by scoping their ability to trigger mechanics in a particular way; that way is "what the table associates with the character that player is choosing for" (where the GM is a player whose scope is "whatever falls outside the scope of the other players).

This is, itself, a meta-level choice.

The choice to limit one's own agency is a form of agency, but it's best expressed in the context of safety nets; just like I'd be concerned about bondage play or stage fighting if there wasn't a safe word or eye contact between each lunge, I'd be concerned about a TRPG where players gave up their ability to contribute to what happens to their characters unless the table had appropriate tools such as the X/O cards or Script Change to signal when the choice needs to change.

Phoenices

Sorry, you've brought up some excellent points and completely new facets of the discussion, but I really should get some work done. I figured around a one-hour conversation, and while I don't regret my decision... I really do need to go.

BESW

Hahah excellent, see you later.

Phoenices

See ya!

BESW

5:12 AM

@Phoenices To bring this back around to the original question: the more you can separate out the specific parts of what D&D does, and how your table's own protocols modify D&D, the easier it is to identify which of those parts you value for your playstyle. And that in turn makes it easier to tell if a given other system will gracefully support your playstyle values (with or without modification).

Hot RPG Questions

5:36 AM

3

Q: D&D 3.5 equivalent of PF 1.0 Persistent Spell Metamagic

Does Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 have any equivalent (or at least alternative way to get the same feature) of Metamagic Feat "Persistent Spell" from Pathfinder 1.0? DISCLAIMER: Contrary to common naming between the two, Persistent Spell in D&D 3.5 (24 hour spell duration) is entirely different thing t...

BESW

And for myself as much as for anyone else: while in the above conversation I focused on dice rolls and proactive actions, every system mechanic is a set of decisions that the table decides to let the text handle by choosing what text they'll use to play. And most tables also take some of those decisions back, even if they don't notice they're doing so.

Can sword-wielding protectors teleport? Is magic divided into schools and spells? Is "befriend" mechanically distinct from "seduce," or breaking down a door distinct from running a marathon? Is death tragic? Is morality an objectively knowable truth? Does life have inherent dignity? These are all decisions the D&D text makes for us when we choose to play it. Each edition may have slightly different answers. Other games may make wildly different choices, or no choice at all.

I've seen plenty of reviews and Actual Plays of my game Goblin Court where they're baffled and confused by the fact that my text doesn't make a choice the D&D text makes. In some cases they figure out that I probably meant for them to make that choice, and when they do it invigorates the play to know that I trust them with that choice.

Because that's the flip side of this whole thing: when we choose a game to play, we're choosing the decisions we don't want to make for ourselves.

AncientSwordRage

8:54 AM

May 7 '21 at 6:53, by BESW

Kazumi Chin wrote a twitter thread about Verbs/Aesthetics/Procedures as the designer equivalent of the Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist pyramid for players.

@Phoenices go read that tweet, and the discussion around it

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: What are the height (and weight) size ranges for each size category of creature?

Changelings have the ability to change their height and weight, but not so much they change a size category: [...] You can also adjust your height and weight, but not so much that your size changes. [...] While they start out as a Medium creature, there is scope for them to be affected by somet...

dnd-5e creature-size changeling size-scaling

AncientSwordRage

10:30 AM

@HotRPGQuestions not big enough, almost big enough, just right, too big

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Squishable, squashable, grabbable, stabbable, trippable, fleeable, panic attack.

2

BESW

10:46 AM

Pocket, purse, duffle, suitcase, steamer trunk, family van, moving van, semi truck?

AncientSwordRage

11:20 AM

@BESW I want to play the game this size chart works for, but I'm not sure what it would be - definitely about raising a monster and then letting go of it at the end....

Maybe raising the monsters collects negative energy from around the world and it gets sequestered that way

@BESW also this game, but it's about transporting monsters

BESW

12:39 PM

@AncientSwordRage Sometimes you have to write the game you want to play.

Thomas Markov

1:19 PM

Do we have a tag about building stuff in game?

Someone_Evil

crafting?

Thomas Markov

For this question

@Someone_Evil By stuff I meant castles and buildings

city-design and realm-management are the best I can come up with.

Someone_Evil

I think the answer is no, then. Whether it is useful as part of crafting I'm not sure

We have a (small) handful of questions on it, though a number focus on pricing and thus have that tag

AncientSwordRage

@BESW ooof, yeah I can feel that

@ThomasMarkov unless that's supported by rules, wouldn't that belong on Worldbuilding?

Thomas Markov

@AncientSwordRage It's a question about using the rules in an adnd2e supplement

AncientSwordRage

1:26 PM

@ThomasMarkov ahh ok

then just use that edition tag...?

illustro

@BESW I think the biggest problem with D&D is that it rewards fighting so much more than the other pillars it wants to be played in the game. Nominally D&D has three pillars, Combat, Exploration & Social Interaction, but the default way it gives you to mechanically level up is via combat, and if you want to use the alternative milestone version, it doesn't give the DM any real guidance on how that should work.

BESW

That's definitely part of it.

Thomas Markov

@illustro Published adventures give explicit guidance for using milestone leveling.

BESW

But I wouldn't necessarily call it a "problem" that D&D has such a mechanics-to-mechanics engine for combat. Not all on its own, anyway.

illustro

When I was DMing Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, which is a much more socially driven adventure than the other published ones, I used the specific milestone guidance in that to come up with a system for rewarding both exploration and social encounters with XP, and explicitly told my players how it would work. I balanced the XP given for these against how the adventure expected it would work.

BESW

1:36 PM

Mechanics-to-mechanics engines have a really powerful benefit: they take the pressure off from improvisation and creativity. You can always add your own contributions between engine strokes, but games like Fate stop at every stroke and refuse to continue until somebody at the table primes the engine again with a bit of narrative creativity.

illustro

I also playtested it again in Dungeon of the Mad Mage (which favours exploration much more heavily), and it worked quite well against the broad brush milestone levelling that adventure gives

BESW

There's grace and sanctuary in knowing that the story can continue if you're feeling creatively dry that night.

illustro

@ThomasMarkov Yes, some of them absolutely do, but for a DM who wants to create their own world (and hasn't bought the adventures, or may have bought the "wrong" ones) there is little guidance on how they should do it

BESW

And while D&D's focus on combat is definitely outsized compared to its other so-called "pillars," progression incentive is only a part of the reason for that.

Another part is exactly what I just described: combat is the most creatively gracious part of the system because in that particular system combat uniquely makes space for players who want to make character-driven choices, and players who want to make tactical choices, and players who just want to be doing things with their friends but aren't comfortable with tactics or roleplay.

Another part is that D&D measures importance in distinct mechanical units, and combat is given the lion's share of those units.

Think about the typical D&D journey: a handful of rolls represent hours of walking or riding, foraging, camping. But if we have a random encounter along the way then we may roll 10x times that to represent a minute or less of story time.

We all know instinctively, even if we don't think about consciously, that stories spend more time with the audience when things are more important. Bullet time can slow down an important split second so we have minutes to appreciate it, and montages can skip us past hours or days of boring repetitive travel or workout routines in seconds.

By assigning so much more of our table time to combat than the other "pillars," D&D is sending a clear message what it thinks is interesting and important.

D&D could make combat completely separated from advancement rewards and it'd still be telling us that fighting is the most important thing we can do in that system.

(This is reinforced further by the sheer volume of the text: for every creature, every class, every list of feats or spells, the vast majority of our reading is about how it works in combat. That ratio, again, signals significance.)

Or just take a look at the cover of the PHB. What does the art tell you the game is about?

Again, I'm not sure this in itself is a problem, except inasmuch as 5e has internal inconsistency between its stated use goals and every aspect of its design. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a game about fighting; 4e managed it very well.

illustro

1:53 PM

@BESW And absolutely, that is something that favours D&D mechanics driven combat approach, it's easy to ccrunch the numbers and progress, but it has disadvantages in that it incentivises particular styles of play (eg murder hobo PCs)

BESW

Why is encouraging certain styles of play bad? No game can accommodate everyone all the time and I respect the ones which know that and try to deliver a few experiences really well.

(And I've recently come to the opinion that "murder hobo" is an ironic style to criticize in a franchise whose core story premise is "get rewarded for committing war crimes.")

illustro

@BESW I agree with pretty much everything you are saying, however this is where D&D gets itself unstuck. It's stated goals (for 5e, which is the version I'm most familiar with) is that an adventure should try to be semi-equal parts of each pillar, but then doesn't tell you how to reward the other pillars. Thus it incentivises both sides of the table to focus on combat (because it's easy and there are rules for rewarding combat)

@BESW It's not that it encourages specific styles of play, but that the specific styles of play it encourages go against it's stated goals for what it "wants" to encourage in games played with the system

That may just be that the designers have been too ambitious with their stated goals, and should have narrowed their focus to say "this game is about fighting with some roleplay thrown in"

BESW

@illustro Speaking as both a designer and a GM, I don't have any patience with a text that tells me to do something but doesn't give me guidance on how to do it. 5e in particular is rife with "we didn't bother to do the work but we'll blame the GM for not fixing it."

(And yes, that is distinct from trusting the table to make decisions and take responsibility, and all I can say is that people who think 5e is doing the latter more than the former need to read more game texts that actually support the table making its own choices.)

@illustro That's fair. But there's plenty of examples of mechanics-driven combat systems which don't result in the D&D franchise's war crime problem.

I wouldn't put the blame on the presence of a strong mechanics-to-mechanics combat engine.

illustro

@BESW Yes, there is a huge irony in that, but I think (and this is pure speculation) that the pushback from "murder-hobo"-ism is born out of frustration from people who want to play the game and do things other than killing everything that moves, but the game doesn't tell them how to do that, but at the same time they like the narrative simplicity that can come from having a chunky mechanics driven combat when the need arises ...

(that can take up a large amount of play time at the table and thus reduce the DM burden for a couple of sessions)

BESW

To use James Mendez Hodes' "giant robot" imagery, I would say that D&D consistently fails to put any kind of head on its robot at all, and frequently fails to give the robot a body or legs either.

illustro

2:05 PM

@BESW Yes, I get frustrated by this a lot when I'm running 5e...but that's why I came up with (what I think) is a consistent system for rewarding the other pillars.

BESW

Alluring combat is not inherently a "murder hobo" creator. It has to combine with how the game presents risk and reward, the kind of stakes that are at play in and out of combat, the kind of worldbuilding it offers, and the very nature of the combat itself.

illustro

I'm just spitballing here, but would you be interested in seeing what I've put together on rewarding the other pillars mechanically and critiquing it? (not right now obviously)

BESW

Through a combination of factors, D&D makes war crimes the easiest and most effective way to solve problems, and a solution which comes with so little risk that concepts like "being held responsible for war crimes" are so subversive that GMs are often considered cruel and petty when they try to include it in a campaign.

That's not a "combat is easy" problem, that's a bone-deep problem with the core premise of the franchise.

illustro

@BESW Yes, certainly, the franchise certainly has a problem with it's history and lore foundations, which is exacerbated by the combat-reward driven mechanics, with a heavy emphasis on killing enemies being the means to reward.

BESW

@illustro Is it D&D-specific? If so, not really. I've played about three sessions of D&D in the last nine years (they weren't 5e) and no intention of ever going back.

This room is pretty much the only place I pay any attention to D&D at all, outside of the inevitable influence of Wizards of the Coast warping the space-time of the entire industry and making the indie creators I follow and socialize with miserable.

H*ck, the last time I ran D&D I threw out the entire XP system in favor of something like a modified Fate milestone.

Character advancement was too slow for the story, it led to adding all kinds of padding that dragged the story down while we waited to hit the next level goals, or artificially inflating XP. So I just ripped it out and said "you level up now" when it was time to do so for the story.

illustro

2:17 PM

@BESW It's D&D specific in that its XP reward mechanisms are tied to some of the mechanics in D&D itself (like level appropriate XP ranges for the other two pillars being somewhat linked to the CR based XP rewards for monsters, and skill-check DCs providing the meat to link those bones), but not so much so (I think) that it couldn't be used outside of D&D with some adjustments for the specific system

BESW

If I did it again now, I'd also rip out all the vertical numerical advancement. Stick with level 1 numbers and just add features as you go.

So your system still uses "collect XP and every time you hit a target number you get a wad of new mechanics and number boosts to add to your pile" advancement?

This is the last XP system I used:

illustro

I'd need to check my notes, but I think when I ran it, the players levelled up every 3-4 sessions (which was about consistent with what I expected when I read through the milestone levelling for Dragon Heist with it's significantly less emphasis on combat focus

BESW

Well, I guess Roll For Shoes calls its advancement currency XP too.

illustro

@BESW Yes, I didn't change the levelling system D&D uses, I just made a system within it that rewards XP in a consistent manner for doing things other than fighting

BESW

I guess I did too. "Level up every three sessions."

KorvinStarmast

2:50 PM

I am having a Cheech and Chong image going through my head of a familiar using acid thanks to this question being asked. It doesn't help that last night's session was kind of whacky (two of the players were by their own admission indulging in a bit of medicinal herb as we played (voice chat discord, VTT)

doppelgreener

3:30 PM

@illustro coincidentally 3-4 sessions is enough time to conclude minor plot arcs, if you're consciously using those, which means levelling up can coincide with minor character and plot development

AncientSwordRage

@BESW That sounds like how I've seen SciBorg use the milestone system

but in my case I have a nagging feeling we're leveling up too quickly

@KorvinStarmast I resisted the temptation to as if it was a microdose of acid in the vial or not

illustro

@doppelgreener Yep! Which I took as a validation of the method I'd come up with for the other two pillars. I may actually pose it as a homebrew review question here to get some more input on it's construction from the other experts we have on the network. (There is a related, "repeated attempts translates to time by DC" system that I will probably want to get some input on too come to think of it.)

AncientSwordRage

I think if I could I'd err on the side of skill advancement not level advancement

illustro

@BESW I missed this, but that's certainly fair, I think the blame probably lies in the lack of a strong mechanics-to-mechanics set of systems for non-combat play in D&D, and it's the absence of those systems that focuses players on a particular style of play. Sort of similar to how removing all of the asymmetric civilisation design in AoE2 would turn it into a much more boring game

@AncientSwordRage Would that not just introduce a parallel leveling system for skills? (so you have to deal with two sets of levels as opposed to one)

KorvinStarmast

3:45 PM

@AncientSwordRage ... @Phoenices... and also remember that GNS didn't stand up as a theory, though it was worth a try at the time.

@illustro I'd love to see your entire scheme. I borrow shamelessly when I see a good idea.

AncientSwordRage

@illustro I forget how Mouse Guard worked, but everything was skill based. So your fighting didn't improve unless you improve your fighting skills

illustro

4:07 PM

@KorvinStarmast I'll look to do a homebrew review question on it so! Probably sometime in the next few weeks (work allowing)

@AncientSwordRage Ok, yeah that makes sense!

KorvinStarmast

4:32 PM

@illustro Thank you, looking forward to it. 😊

Phoenices

6:00 PM

@BESW This is a good point that I liked. D&D is certainly far too focused on combat, even for current ideas of what D&D is and how it presents itself. But also, I do like the descriptive, roll-when-you-have-to style of travel; I think it might be either diminished or enhanced by a subsystem that makes it have just as many rolls, or even half as many (I know that's not exactly what you were thinking of - I'd guess you were thinking of 1/5 as many rolls in combat and twice as many in travel).

doppelgreener

7:02 PM

@Phoenices I wouldn't read into that a statement of specifically advocating more rolls to travel, just an observation of how the system concentrates its actions.

Travel in and of itself is not all that interesting. The thing is, D&D's primary means of making travel interesting is still to put fights in there.

Phoenices

Yeah, I know, though I didn't reflect that in my words. The rolls are not the cause of the game, they're the symptom of it.

doppelgreener

You're going someplace you can beat bad guys up and take their stuff, and on the way, you get to beat bad guys up and take their stuff.

Thomas Markov

@doppelgreener If I recall correctly, the overwhelming majority of random encounters on the provided tables are going to be fights.

Phoenices

But part of the idea there was that there is no system for travel being fun travel. I try to plan about equal rates of fights, people who the party meet on the road, and things (sometimes blue mushrooms or fallen huts, sometimes far-off sights). But that isn't a key part of D&D's system, though it is encouraged verbally if not mechanically.

doppelgreener

Most systems just ....... don't have this problem, because they didn't create it to begin with, or have more nuanced and varied ways to handle things. One of the things I liked best switching to Fate was the fact that physical combat has no more mechanical focus than anything else, and in fact zoomed-in prolonged fights are comparatively de-emphasized in play.

While Fate is no longer my go-to system, the systems I do use still share that quality.

For example, Cortex has no issues whatsoever with a scene that involves both beating people up and solving puzzles and trying to find information, and these can all happen at equal pace with equal importance with equal mechanics, because they're just not all that different.

There's no particular reason physical fighting has to have any particular focus, or even a single unique mechanic to its name.

Phoenices

7:09 PM

Yeah! OTOH, I think that there's a little less opportunity to use fun powers in non-combat situations, because combat is a clear thing powers can be built around. Most DMs will have combat in their games of Game __, but not all will have herb-identification, and so game designers won't make herb-identification powers very well thought out, and players won't pick them because it probably won't come up.

doppelgreener

I feel like there's a lot more opportunity to create fun powers for non-combat situations, tbqh.

3

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Phoenices There are enough precedents of systems with fun powers in non-combat situations (e.g. Exalted, Eclipse Phase, GURPS, uh, probably Demon), ranging from the crafting through social to bureaucratic. But IME GMs seem wary of those.

doppelgreener

Combat is about "beat the guy up and don't be beat up", which significantly narrows the scope of what a power can be.

Non-combat powers can be ... anything at all?

Again, if the game isn't built around combat, "herb identification isn't a relevant skill sorry" doesn't really come up, because first, the game defines what it is about and we design skills for that, and second, the game totally has room to make it important.

Botany is a special skill I could and would use in Bubblegumshoe, and a science skill I could and would use in Atomic Robo, and a skill I could define in Cthulhu Dark, and a keyword I could define for my character Lady Blackbird.

Phoenices

Because the space of things-that-are-not-combat is so varied, it's hard to make things that fill those roles, and extra-hard to do in social situations without taking away the player's agency (or even the DM's agency!). It's pretty easy to make a power that does more damage if __, or applies this status effect unless __.
To make cool non-combat powers, you either need a 3.5 approach (ALL THE FEATS! ALL THE PRESTIGE CLASSES! ALL THE BOOOOOKS!) , or you need to partly restrict what the game can be. There are alternatives that are more free-form - 5e said "Here's the mechanics, but if somethin…

doppelgreener

Most of this is true for D&D powers

In this context, I'm talking about what TRPGs are capable of generally

In which D&D has plumbed a very narrow slice of a very big pie and is only giving lip service to the idea it can even sort of do some of the rest of the pie

Phoenices

7:16 PM

That's a fair point, though. It's not too difficult to make a system of "here are the broad skills, like botany. But also, if you want a more focused thing like memory, take the feat Keen Mind." I'm saying it's hard to make interesting botany powers because there are too many different things to make interesting powers for.

doppelgreener

"There's lots of things we can make powers about" doesn't mean we have less opportunity to make interesting powers

Phoenices

Right, but it means that if we make 10 powers for thing 1, 9 powers for thing 2, 8 powers for thing 3, and so on, we've made 55 powers for 10 subjects, and people will say "Oh look, there's not much support for botany because it only gets 2 powers!" and other people will say "Wow, there's no support for teleporting two feet to get through doors and walls! I guess I can't do that!"

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

What we do have less opportunity for is powers with the degree of time-sensitive synergies as combat capabilities. Not no synergy, of course - there can be plenty of noncombat synergy. But not as much 'do Y two turns after the teammate does X' highly-sensitive combos, because noncombat stuff tends to be less structured. (And again, when it does get very structured, such as FATE's Social Conflicts or Exalted's social interaction rules, IME GMs start to avoid it.)

doppelgreener

@Phoenices I think this is making several assumptions that create problems that ... don't exist until we make those assumptions?

Like, just don't make an RPG this way?

i.e. these problems stem from still approaching TRPG design with a D&D chassis

and D&D's approaches to how powers work, and how not having a power works, and how content works, and how characters work

so of course you get all the problems the D&D chassis comes with

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Also, botany is not a broad skill. It's so narrow that even GURPS (whose skill list is big) turned it into an optional specialisation in 4e.

For an example of a system whose corebook comes with interesting (though not balanced nor necessarily well-designed) noncombat powers for each and every Skill, there's Exalted 2e.

It's definitely a flawed example, but it shows how to create reasonably broad noncombat power concepts that can apply to a broad set of competences, without as much restriction about what kind of activities the game needs to be about.

(It still does tend to skew towards combat getting more details/charms/granularity, but still.)

doppelgreener

7:27 PM

that sounds like a great way for a combat-oriented system to share that focus

Phoenices

This is true! As I learn more about things in general, I see how much my assumptions shape my actions and beliefs, and it's kind of infuriating how much and how little I can escape them by understanding them. I've found that I can get into long arguments with BESW here, and by the end I understand a lot about his position and more about mine as well. I think it definitely helps me.
I kind of like a lot of parts of the D&D mindset, though, and I'm trying to figure out how a real 3-pillar game can be built around that chassis. One of the biggest problems may be class. You really have to pick …

doppelgreener

D&D 4e did a lot to address that. As you level up, you always pick up utility powers, which are partially useful in combat but are always useful outside of it too.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

What is being referred to as the chassis here?

Phoenices

I... realize I don't know how to define that.

doppelgreener

Also, most things not concerned with combat become rituals instead. You can acquire rituals and they don't cost character build currency, they're just items.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

7:32 PM

Because I don't think the d20-based core with six Ability Scores and some list of Skills is inherently to blame.

doppelgreener

Rituals cover things like summoning steeds, creating extraplanar spaces, teleporting, enchanting or disenchanting items, repair, etc.

Anything that's just useful is a ritual.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

It's not inherently impossible to have a class-using system that supports multiple pillars.

Phoenices

Thanks for hitting the heart of the matter! I realize that I can't see the heart of my own argument, which is kind of a problem with it. I don't know what I mean by that. I think part of it stems from my discussion with BESW yesterday, that I like systems that feel like they have non-negotiable outcomes and set-in-stone mechanics that can be wielded and clicked together.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Phoenices You like emergent outcomes more than curated or fiated ones, right?

doppelgreener

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I haven't said otherwise, personally; I'd agree. I am also not using nor offering a specific definition of what makes up the D&D chassis; instead I am using that term is a less specific and more sweeping sense to mean "design that assumes the game works the approximate way D&D works".

I do not mean to point to specific bits and say "this is the chassis" so much as it is a collection of thoughts about what actually makes up a TRPG and how a TRPG functions.

As a non-D&D player I trust you've spotted when people have approached TRPG topics that way, with an assumption that things generally just work the way they work in D&D like that's a truism for the TRPG space generally.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

7:37 PM

Ah, so it has nothing to do with the core of the mechanical engine, and more with the way editions were built around it.

doppelgreener

I am using it in a very holistic sense, so it's all of those things.

Thomas Markov

@doppelgreener This was something of a system shock when I first played Scum and Villainy. "Thomas, you approach the space station, what do you do." "You're not going to tell me anything about the space station?" "No, that's basically up to you."

doppelgreener

@ThomasMarkov Right! There you go. D&D teaches you that things work this way, that situations, characters, the system, the way you're given materials, the way the conversation at the table happens all work specific ways. And then along comes ... any other game that wasn't specifically designed to emulate D&D, and it just doesn't do those things.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@ThomasMarkov Oh, that is a whole other axis of distinction.

doppelgreener

It's like playing nothing but Monopoly, then picking out Checkers and asking "so wait, where's the money and properties?"

Thomas Markov

7:43 PM

@doppelgreener You never played checkers for money? :P

doppelgreener

i confess i haven't

Phoenices

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Yeah! Other outcomes feel... I'm not sure. Fake? Unfair? Part of me says that it's not completely wrong. I can accept that other people could definitely like it, and fine for them to do it, but it doesn't feel fun to me.

@ThomasMarkov You've never played it for property :P

doppelgreener

And sometimes you see people designing a new game for something and it's clear they've only played D&D, because they're bringing in all kinds of wildly inappropriate tools for the thing they're making... because those things exist in D&D and they can't conceive of a game not working like D&D. They're building that game on the D&D chassis and it shows. They haven't played not-D&D so they don't realise how outlandish and incompatible it is to build this game about this thing with these features.

I can't offer specific examples, but I do know I've seen it time and time again.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Phoenices Perhaps you also prefer roleplaying over storygames, and associative over dissociative mechanics?

(At least I'm recognising reactions that seem to correlate with such preferences.)

@doppelgreener I have a few in mind based on some of the discussions over the years on TTRPGSE, but they're probably too simple and blatant for this discussion.

Phoenices

I haven't seen the concept of associative/dissociative mechanics before. Could you explain it?

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

7:50 PM

@Phoenices In a nutshell, an associative mechanic would be something where every choice you as a player make is linked tightly to a choice the character makes, usually with player knowledge representing (in an adapted form) some form of character knowledge. Dissociative would be a player making a choice and causing an outcome that is strictly outside the agency of the character.

@Phoenices Example from GURPS: choosing to make an All-Out Attack is something a player can declare, which represents the character deciding to fight more recklessly (not trying to defend itself); choosing to use Luck to re-roll dice is a strictly player action, and the character normally has no clue that a dice roll happened at all, nor that the dice were bad and so a higher power decided to spend a meta resource to try again.

doppelgreener

So conceding a fight in Fate would be dissociative — you as a player decide to give up, but the actual narrative is totally separate and could be e.g. "and then Aragorn gets his glove caught on the Warg's saddle and is swept off the cliff, into the river"

Right?

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Phoenices For a longer read, there are whole articles of amateur musings. thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/…

Phoenices

I like this concept! I think you were spot on with that. I should almost certainly go make lunch now, but it was excellent fun talking!

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@doppelgreener Yeah. It's a player taking direct control of the events, moving the PC's involvement/agency aside.

doppelgreener

Nice

That's an interesting division.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

7:53 PM

Not realising there is this distinction and it's meant to be this way seems to be a huge hurdle for some players in understanding such systems.

It's something I had some difficulties with until I read some explanations and examples contrasting the two, and I'd seen people who had really big difficulties with such mechanics. Such as one forumite who insisted that Luck has to be supernatural due to being in the player's control, even though from an in-setting perspective no supernatural event occurred when someone got lucky.

Thomas Markov

@doppelgreener My favorite variation here is "D&D, but we use different dice sizes for everything"

GcL

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I suspect dissociative mechanics are also usually hacky shortcuts. One can build an associate model that functionally limits the number of times a player can reliably push a character to do an extraordinary thing. However, making those models well seems harder and a quick "can do thing X times" seems like a quick and easy hack that makes it obvious what's going on.

At the cost of player satisfaction sometimes.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@GcL I'm not sure about usually. For starters, X/day abilities in AD&D-like games are not necessarily dissociative (at a minimum, their recovery seems often associated with strictly in-setting events or timing).

GcL

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica As the article pointed out, not all X times things are dissociative.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

In otherwise mostly-associative games (of which my main familiarities are Storyteller/WoD and GURPS), they seem to be meant to represent luck.

And luck is a messy subject and I can probably go on about how it's somewhat misrepresented/misnamed in some RPGs, but that's probably too tangential.

But for AD&D games, the one that struck me as very dissociative was 4e's healing surge.

The one that gets used or not used by the player of the healing-receiver in reaction to some character doing the healing.

That felt very different from something a character can proactively do N/day times.

(Side note: I only played a few sessions of 2e, and started trying out 5e a year or so ago; haven't played other editions; my experience with AD&D is minimal compared to my main systems. So the above comment is strictly a reaction to skimming the rulebook.)

doppelgreener

8:36 PM

@GcL I would hesitate to so rapidly paint them with that brush.

There's different stances you can use in gameplay. The most easily recogniseable are actor stance and director stance.

In actor stance you see the world through the lens of the character, using their knowledge, desires, etc to inform the decisions you make, achieving goals the character wants.

In director stance you see the world through the lens of a comparatively omniscient agent, using all the knowledge you have available at the table to decide what goals you personally want to achieve, which may be at odds with character goals entirely.

Dissociative mechanics effectively come from director stance, while associative mechanics sort-of (but don't necessarily) come from actor stance.

GcL

@doppelgreener It's taken decades to come to the conclusion.

doppelgreener

Director stance is entirely valid and there's plenty of TRPGs that thrive on it. It's perfectly fine to make moves that empower it further.

GcL

@doppelgreener Which stances are used in authoring game rules?

doppelgreener

Stance theory doesn't apply to authoring, it applies to gameplay.

Note that even D&D has described stance theory; they get an entire section in at least one of the DMGs I owned.

(said section was at least a two-page spread. I don't remember how long it was.)

@GcL Okay. In that case, I just think it's incorrect and unreasonable to paint an entire dimension of mechanical design as "hacky".

Especially this one, where plenty of games use it just fine.

GcL

That might be a difference in the enjoyment of hacks and shortcuts. I have come to enjoy them over the years. It seems likely to me that your opinion of them is different.

doppelgreener

8:46 PM

"hacky shortcut" sounds kind of a bad thing?

GcL

@doppelgreener The prevalence of a thing does not make it not a hack.

doppelgreener

can it not be an "elegant solution"?

especially when it's not a shortcut but instead just a plain good way to do a thing?

GcL

@doppelgreener A great deal of the technology that is facilitating this conversation is built on and with hacks... and hacks around hacks. It's wonderful or terrible depending on your perspective.

doppelgreener

Then why call it a hacky shortcut?

GcL

@doppelgreener Because that's what it feels like to me.

doppelgreener

8:48 PM

But everything is hacks and hacks around hacks, so what sets hacks apart from "just a regular mechanic"?

Like, words mean things.

You're generalising these as hacky shortcuts, which means the things that aren't these are generally not that. Which seems to be indicating these are generally lesser, or less valid, areas of design compared to other options.

GcL

Could craft a wonderfully functional and completely associative model with care and a great deal of thought to get the same effect... or "thing can be done X times". I'd probably go with the latter. Sure, player gets a single one handed catch per game. Fine.

doppelgreener

I'm alleging that's kind of a wild generalisation to make about ... players simply making choices that are separate from character choices.

GcL

@doppelgreener Words mean different things to different people. You don't have to have my appreciation of hacks and bullshit that evolved from a loathing of them

@doppelgreener I was generalizing about authors.

doppelgreener

You said "I suspect dissociative mechanics are also usually hacky shortcuts."

D&D involves tons of dissociated mechanics. I've played games that primarily thrive off of them.

GcL

@doppelgreener Yes. Authors write those mechanics.

@doppelgreener So have I. I like the games.

doppelgreener

8:52 PM

Alright, I'm going to step away from this conversation.

KorvinStarmast

9:05 PM

@doppelgreener that may be how the short attention span D&D generation has evolved, but the original game included exploration as a far more interesting pillar (and even suggested using a different game's board as the basis for it) since sometimes your exploration took you to somewhere that you fled from so that your party would not get beat up. Or a mine. Or, at long last, you found an old ruin where you could dungeon delve ... the intrusion of CRPG/Video game norms into the game

... as part of the fiction that informs the genre is a part of the recursion that results in the effect that you described.

Not to mention that you could get taxed if you encountered a strong hold and the lord of that stronghold came out to investigate who was trespassing on his lands ...

The fading of this aspect of the exploration pillar is a disappointment (Alexandrian has some interesting articles on game structure and hex crawls etc that covers some of this)

Hot RPG Questions

9:58 PM

4

Q: Can a familiar use a vial of acid?

Can a familiar use a vial of acid or similar items? I'm wondering if they're able to since I am making a warlock with proficiency in Alchemist’s Supplies.

dnd-5e equipment familiars

Feeds

11:25 PM

Needles & Nilbogs: Try again later

posted on January 20, 2022 by Bardic Wizard

I’m having a day and haven’t gotten enough real stuff done to justify writing much of anything. I started but life happened. Sorry. Have yarn pictures instead. Probably recent. Hopefully new. I kinda don’t care now. Pouches Double sided cavandoli experiment Murderbot and art as Christmas cookies The other side of the cavandoli thing

Fate-ifying Star Wars: Luke vs Vader in Cloud City

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