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Rohan Kishibe posted:This is exactly it. If all your players are constantly talking about cutting robots in half with their katanas while screaming RULES OF NATURE, Peasant Dirtfarmer Sim 1989 might not be for them. Conversly, if your group tend to spend minutes talking about the economic trade situation between various Star Systems and the effect of civil uprisings on FTL crystal prices, maybe Lasers and Feelings isn't really the thing either. Dibs on a game called Lasers and Feelings.
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Jan 11, 2016 05:18
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This is also where the massive discrepancy between martials and magics originates, fwiw. Letting a monk kick-flip off a chandelier without setting himself on fire should absolutely fall under the same convention by which spellbooks aren't ruined whenever it rains.
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Jan 11, 2016 06:10
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ButtWolf posted:Dibs on a game called Lasers and Feelings. On another note, as some of you may be aware, I'm prepping for a Fallout campaign, and I keep wandering back to an idea, studying it, coming up with tidbits for it, and going "No, that's not funny/too on the nose/stupid," but it keeps rolling around and I've begun thinking there may be some merit to it. Super Mutant Donald Trump. Has the Toupee, listens to Enclave Radio, rants about making America great again. If/when the players confront him, he breaks down in tears and cries "TRUNK JUST HATE SELF!"
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Jan 11, 2016 06:22
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ButtWolf posted:Dibs on a game called Lasers and Feelings. You've been beaten to the punch for quite a while.
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Jan 11, 2016 06:22
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blerg ignore me
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Jan 11, 2016 06:36
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Dammit i thought it was a joke.
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Jan 11, 2016 14:33
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Rohan Kishibe posted:...Peasant Dirtfarmer Sim 1989...
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Jan 11, 2016 21:08
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Dareon posted:Unfortunately, you're a little slow on that. Do it
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Jan 11, 2016 21:41
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moths posted:This is also where the massive discrepancy between martials and magics originates, fwiw. Letting a monk kick-flip off a chandelier without setting himself on fire should absolutely fall under the same convention by which spellbooks aren't ruined whenever it rains. Part of the problem is that (for MOST systems) magic is inherently abstract, and thus both flexible, and with strongly worded effects to ground what the spell does. Magic by its very nature doesn't "make sense" and so you usually need the powers to be unambiguous in order to figure out how to fit them into the storytelling. Meanwhile, if your game has an even moderately simulationist combat system, then many of your martial 'moves' are going to be concrete by their very nature, and thus more strongly bound by rules and context. This means that there is much more of a tendency for people to apply rules and limitations to 'martial' actions because they exist, wheras magic actions are more unbounded because they tend to be exceptional and inherently rule breaking. If you're playing a game with a more abstract combat system, your 'martials' can have their abilities defined at the same narrative level as your 'magics'. Your fighter can use the same "feat of strength" to bash down a door as he does to swat three kobolds in a line, and your archer can use his precision aim to cut a rope from across the room with a broadhead without having to go through the rigamarole of giving it an AC and defining it as a combat action. The other thing is that "magic" and "martial" is an inherently flawed construction, because they're not comparable: one refers to a source of power that can be tapped in all contexts (social encounters, exploration, and combat) wheras the other implies that it should be inherently limited to fighting things. You can give your ranger some woodsy abilities, but your "fighting man" is a person who exists in the tavern as well as the battlefield, and his approach to life should give him characteristic traits in both contexts.
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Jan 13, 2016 20:15
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Lynx Winters posted:Don't Do This. Don't punish your players for wanting to do cool stuff, that is lovely as hell. OK, guys, relax. I seem to have miscommunicated some things. I don't punish my players for having fun. Far from it - we spend the vast majority of our sessions giggling like silly bitches (except when I'm explaining what horrific event has brought them together this week). My players love to stretch imagination to its limits sometimes. My example of backflipping onto the chandelier was from the first floor to the third floor. He was a monk and he had help, but come on. There's no similar heroic feat that my bard can perform, and I can't let one player just walk all over the mechanics while everyone else just watches. We all do things to keep things balanced, and we all bend the rules so our players can have fun. We're all smart enough not to hand a Wish spell to a level 1 player without a good reason, and we all know our parties well enough to tailor the experience to the people we play with. If we can't assume that everyone in this thread is trying their best to provide a great game for the people they play with, can we at least agree not to get lovely with each other?
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Jan 14, 2016 10:06
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Sneaking posted:My example of backflipping onto the chandelier was from the first floor to the third floor. He was a monk and he had help, but come on. There's no similar heroic feat that my bard can perform, and I can't let one player just walk all over the mechanics while everyone else just watches. If a monk is jumping 3 stories onto a chandelier, why isn't there a similar heroic feat that a bard can perform?
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Jan 14, 2016 12:11
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The Bard smoothtalks the rug into forming a fabric escalator for him to ride up to the chandelier.
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Jan 14, 2016 14:56
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Rohan Kishibe posted:The Bard smoothtalks the rug into forming a fabric escalator for him to ride up to the chandelier. I... would allow this.
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Jan 14, 2016 16:56
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Rohan Kishibe posted:The Bard smoothtalks the rug into forming a fabric escalator for him to ride up to the chandelier. This is now how bards will work in any of my future fantasy RPG settings: bardic magic just involves smooth-talking the world into doing what you want.
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Jan 14, 2016 17:21
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im gonna gently caress... ...the moon
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Jan 14, 2016 17:27
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Harrow posted:This is now how bards will work in any of my future fantasy RPG settings: bardic magic just involves smooth-talking the world into doing what you want. A friend of a friend made a 13th Age character for a one-shot of mine without have ever played before or since, and she came up with one of my favorite uniques for her ninja: "I had a one-night stand with the Priestess before she was the Priestess. It's awkward."
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Jan 14, 2016 17:54
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Ok. I really need advice on this point because it's been a sticking point in GMing for ages. How do you deal with the "min" side of a minmax properly? There's plenty about dealing with the max side, but the min side seems much more problematic to me. For example, let us have a player called Pest, who has maximised one ability (let's say shooting) at the cost of minimising another (let's say climbing). He has done this to the extent that pretty much any time his PC is asked to climb, he is going to fail. So, now, how does the GM deal with this in play? Have no climbing checks or allow climbing checks to be bypassed at no cost. Wahay! Pest gets a super-high skill for free. Then he complains he's bored for lack of challenge. Have climbing checks that are a necessary part of the adventure. Adventure either comes to a crashing halt or Pest is left tapping on his phone while everyone else plays. Nobody has fun. Have climbing checks that when missed result in missing out on gains or extra resource cost. Because Pest's failure is so predictable, this is just as if those gains/losses weren't in the adventure, and the players feel the GM is screwing them over ("you don't have a wizard? well, you see the +10 sword of the gods behind a barrier that only magic can break. Muhahaha!") Have the players have to come up with alternate routes to get around climbing checks. This is OK but for one thing - it turns the game into The Pest Show. Now, this is OK for maybe a session or two, but if Pest has minned a whole bunch of skills it's going to happen over and over again. Also, it requires some careful pacing, since the story isn't very enjoyable if "getting Pest over that wall" turned out to be a bigger challenge than defeating the evil overlord. Don't plan the adventure in that much detail. I know people thing that references to "adventure" above imply a railroad - but here's the thing. If I don't plan, it still comes down to one of those 4 things at the instant the players are actually facing it, and I have to decide which way to fudge/improv. Now, I know some systems do try to work around this (Strike! just has no ability to "min" anything, although it does count on the GM being a bottomless creative fount of Twists, which is a bit much) but at the same time I know GMs do deal with this stuff so there must be some error I'm making somewhere. Where am I wrong?
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Jan 17, 2016 18:53
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Couldn't you just set up situations where Pest doesn't need to climb but other party members might? Should we assume you've tried talking to Pest IRL?
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Jan 17, 2016 18:58
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For my money, failure has to be interesting. If there's no interesting consequence, there's no chance of failure. Say there's a rock wall. Can the party try climbing the rock wall over and over for as long as they want and do they have the time to consider different approaches? Don't even roll. They get up somehow eventually. In fact that's barely worth mentioning except to establish the fact that we're in Rock Wall County. But say there's a rock wall and the princess' kidnappers are gaining fast on the other side... now they have to decide whether to get Pest up right now somehow (risking injury or loss of time), or take the long way around (risking an encounter with wandering ogres or a colder trail), or say it's not worth it and try an altogether different approach (risking the king's ire). In combat consequences tend to be more self-evident. You can't climb? Then you can't take the handy shortcut that would allow you to lay an ambush for the kidnappers who have taken the long way round. (But maybe someone else can and throw down a rope that's easier to climb... at the risk of your enemies discovering them. Or your friends climb up, lay an ambush, and you keep following the kidnappers' path; if you get spotted you're up poo poo creek, but if you play your cards right you can attack from behind once the ambush gets going.)
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Jan 17, 2016 19:16
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why the hell is the shooting ability contrasted against climbing anyway? but yeah don't call for climbing checks unless failure to climb creates an interesting outcome, also maybe failure at the check means climbs really slowly or has to use extra gear instead of magnetically repelled by climbing surfaces.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:26
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Thirding Make Failure Interesting. The adventure shouldn't come to a crashing halt because Pest can't climb. It should present a bad choice or a bad consequence because Pest can't climb - and note that failing a climb test doesn't have to mean 'bad climb fail', it could mean he climbs slowly, tires himself out with $mechanical effect of system, probably HP loss, it could mean the party has to spend resources or time to get him there, it could mean that they have to go round via the ogre infested forest instead of over the mountain, etc etc etc.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:37
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Yes to Make Failure Interesting, but make sure it is actually a failure. If the character gets extra points for picking a disadvantage, that disadvantage should actually come into play and hinder the character, otherwise it's just free points.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:46
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thespaceinvader posted:Thirding Make Failure Interesting. The adventure shouldn't come to a crashing halt because Pest can't climb. It should present a bad choice or a bad consequence because Pest can't climb - and note that failing a climb test doesn't have to mean 'bad climb fail', it could mean he climbs slowly, tires himself out with $mechanical effect of system, probably HP loss, it could mean the party has to spend resources or time to get him there, it could mean that they have to go round via the ogre infested forest instead of over the mountain, etc etc etc. Sure, but then how do I avoid The Pest Show problem where the other players are frustrated because too much of the game sessions is being taken up with working around the fact that Pest can't climb? Never mind the fact that if the alternative route involves combat, Pest will be rubbing his hands together gleefully, looking at his maxed shooting skill. Doubly so if it's a game where kills = XP.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:46
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hyphz posted:Sure, but then how do I avoid The Pest Show problem where the other players are frustrated because too much of the game sessions is being taken up with working around the fact that Pest can't climb? Incorporate non-combat skills heavily, including on the alternate route, so he realizes that he unbalanced his character. Or just tell him up front that he's going to gently caress up the balance of the game and make him redo it, because min-maxing is dumb.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:27
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hyphz posted:Sure, but then how do I avoid The Pest Show problem where the other players are frustrated because too much of the game sessions is being taken up with working around the fact that Pest can't climb? Or you could put the party in situations where "shooting" is not the most obvious (or best) solution, and actually, you know, give experience for something other than killing stuff. Or better yet, play a different game, one where min-maxing isn't a thing.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:31
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Fyi, the "min" in min-max refers to minimizing weaknesses, not tanking skills. I wasn't sure if you were aware of this from the context of your post. Assuming you are aware of this, the Pest Problem is usually far worse. It typically revolves around a skill you would never use normally (such as Deep Sea Diving) such so that you are forced to make a big deal out of it when, had the player not deliberately cherry-picked an obscure skill you could have just ignored it. There's nothing wrong with making a big deal out of a character's weaknesses from time to time so long as you spread it around evenly. If a player takes a disadvantage of some kind (whether specific or general) I take it as communication that they want that disadvantage as part of the story. If the player instead intends it as a stealthy way to make their weakness a non-weakness than we've got an oog problem.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:11
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Mendrian posted:Fyi, the "min" in min-max refers to minimizing weaknesses, not tanking skills. I wasn't sure if you were aware of this from the context of your post. Not really. It usually refers to the idea that you there are trade-offs in building and dumping one thing gets you more in another. But climbing and shooting don't usually use the same resources. What system is this? And realistically, if it's this much of a problem, it's a player problem, so talk to the player, don't try to solve an out of game issue with an in-game solution.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:00
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Can you set up situations where doing the thing the character is weakest at would be advantageous but not necessary? Generally, the idea would be to make it less likely that that character can do the smart/easy/safe thing, and more likely that that character will have to do a dumb/hard/dangerous thing instead. Specifically for climbing, I can think of a few: You can't get into the best position to shoot. You can't get into a position to take the shot in time (or maybe "...this round"). You can't get to a hiding place in time. You can't get into good (or any) cover, making you easier to hit. You can't quickly and/or easily move around in this area. You can't overcome this obstacle without expending more resources than you'd like to. You can't get to an ambush spot, you'll have to either convince everyone else to go with a frontal assault, or volunteer to be the bait. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 23:10
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thespaceinvader posted:Not really. It usually refers to the idea that you there are trade-offs in building and dumping one thing gets you more in another. Any system with generic skill checks and skill points. I encountered it in FFG Star Wars, but Fate Core, etc, have it too. quote:And realistically, if it's this much of a problem, it's a player problem, so talk to the player, don't try to solve an out of game issue with an in-game solution. Tricky to argue that it's a player problem when the system specifically gives the player that choice, though.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:11
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The system always gives dick players the choice to be dicks if they want to exercise it. Part of being a good player, especially in a social, non-competitive game like an RPG, is about knowing when not to use every avenue at your disposal to dominate the game and make it all about you. I could play a rebreather in 4e, and win all the fights basically single-handed. But I choose not to, because my friends want to participate as well. Your player chose to dominate the fights and whine when the min- of his minmax bites him, so talk to him about that - either ask him to tone down the whinge when his lack of climbing ability comes into play, or tone down the minmaxing. Whatever you do, don't try to punish him in-game for it. Make the failure interesting, sure, and definitely don't make it stop the game dead. But don't hurt the character because the player is annoying you. It's passive-aggressive, not to mention ineffective. I don't know why this is so binary though. It shouldn't always be a choice between climbing and shooting, which it's coming across as. Put in some talking, some lockpicking, some wrestling, some magic rituals or whatever. Give everyone their chance to shine and to fail interestingly.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:17
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BA Baracus in the A Team doesn't fly.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:50
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sebmojo posted:BA Baracus in the A Team doesn't fly. The A Team is a story, not an RPG. Characters in stories can act at the convenience of the writers, characters in RPGs serve the social requirements of a group. Also, BA Baracus flew all the time, just not voluntarily IIRC.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:13
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thespaceinvader posted:Not really. It usually refers to the idea that you there are trade-offs in building and dumping one thing gets you more in another. The first time I encountered the term min-maxing was in the AD&D DMG, or maybe it was a Dragon article. It specifically defined min-max as "minimizing weaknesses/maximizing strengths". I will however offer the caveat that I don't get to own or define gaming terms that have been around for decades and will simply say that was what I understood the definition to be. I think this sort of min/maxing behavior is worse in the sense that it takes advantage of false equivalence in the system. In D&D this means sacrificing Charisma for other stats because it is so rarely used, or because diplomacy doesn't really 'matter' in a game about slaying monsters. My best example of the most egregious behavior though comes from Vampire:the Masquerade. You can take Flaws in that system for more build points. Some of the Flaws can actually be compared to other advantages in the sense that they have discrete system impacts for things like blindness or deafness or what have you. One Flaw - Enemy - provides the storyteller with an NPC that has it in for your character. Except it's not really a flaw. Anyone who has played Masquerade before will tell you that sooner rather than later some NPC will become your enemy anyway; so having one on your sheet at char-gen is kind of a non-issue. Further, all it really does is provide the ST with an excuse to occasionally have something bad-ish happen to your character, which is really more exciting anyway. It's win-win for the PC and puts all of the onus on the ST to make it matter. So Enemy has false-equivalence with other similarly rated Flaws, something a rampant min-maxer will try to take advantage of. Which, as already stated, is a player issue, which is all I was trying to boil down to anyway.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:25
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If someone is making a character that's really going to be annoying to deal with just talk to them. "You've got a really unbalanced character that sucks in a lot of important ways and is super good in other things that probably aren't going to come up as much as you think" and give them some suggestions on how to re-balance things.
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Jan 18, 2016 01:36
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The thing about min-maxing is that it's tied to the system: if the game you're playing is D&D 3rd Edition, there is no "failsafe" or "minimum guarantee of competency" meter for your skills, because if you invest zero skill points into Diplomacy and you dumped your CHA, then you're going to be rolling d20-2 from now until the imaginary heat death of that make-believe universe. This is different from "add half your level to all your rolls" or "add your level to all your rolls" or "you have a series of broad phrases that describe when you can add a skill bonus to your rolls" because it means no matter how much you don't care about a given skill, there's a lowest minimum possible chance you can try it with. It goes hand-in-hand with the GM assigning target numbers for skill checks because a minimum level of competency means that most target numbers will fall in a range where the best character can do it, and the worst character still has a chance, however small, to do it too. Besides picking a good system (or implementing houserules to a bad system), vetting characters and coming to a group consensus on tone and playing style so that this doesn't happen in the first place, I tend to fall back on "well, you really did not take the skill, so you're not going to be able to pass most skill checks involving it", combining it with the general guideline of "a character is still going to be able to climb a ladder if he's left completely alone and is not under any sort of stress" and "a failed check does not mean the character is doing a Three Stooges impression, it just doesn't go the way they wanted it to" and finally "characters shouldn't need to roll for the absolute minimum things they need to advance the plot in the first place". EDIT: yeah if you didn't vet the characters beforehand, but you can come to a group consensus about min-maxing after the fact, just give the guy a free rebuild.
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Jan 18, 2016 01:45
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thespaceinvader posted:Also, BA Baracus flew all the time, just not voluntarily IIRC. I think that's the point. Getting BA on the plane/chopper becomes part of the challenge.
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Jan 18, 2016 03:58
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so, I wanna put in a logic puzzle for my players based on the Jail House Rock fight in Stone Ocean only, replace the words "stand user" with "wizard". Basically, their memories are lost and they can only learn 3 facts and if they learn a fourth, the first thing learned slips out. I was thinking about having them have to do some kind of complicated lever sequence to shut off some magic bullshit or like a water trap, or a situation where they strategically push out the idea that the wizard is their friend in order to kick his rear end. Just for some context, this wizard is a magical experimenter squating inside a hellcastle on a ley line with his humanimal centaur creations. Any ideas? Is this a thing that doesn't work as well in elf games? What other fights from jojo should I rip off?
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Jan 18, 2016 09:23
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Character/player knowledge divides are provably going to stop it working.
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Jan 18, 2016 12:52
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Yeah, unless you have really good players, someone's going to be working off knowledge they "don't" have. If you do want to give it a shot, write down the facts characters can know on index cards and hand them out when they learn the appropriate ones, asking for the appropriate one back. This gives some facts importance over others, so you won't have extraneous facts cluttering up your puzzle unless you want them to. If you also enforce an instance limit on these facts (say you have four cards that say "the wizard is your friend" and only one that says "The key to the treasure room is in the wizard's sock drawer"), you add an extra wrinkle where some characters can have information the rest of the party absolutely cannot. I like the idea, but it will be very hard to pull off appropriately.
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Jan 18, 2016 13:42
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thespaceinvader posted:I don't know why this is so binary though. It shouldn't always be a choice between climbing and shooting, which it's coming across as. Put in some talking, some lockpicking, some wrestling, some magic rituals or whatever. Give everyone their chance to shine and to fail interestingly. Sure. I was thinking about it some more and the real issue is the nature of the dropped skill. Some skills are obvious tradeoffs - take Intimidation instead of Stealth because you want to barge in instead of being a ninja, or take Dodge instead of Resilience because you want to be nippy and quick but fragile. Some are spotlight matters: dumping something like Hacking, Lockpicking, Diplomacy, etc is just saying you'll give another player a chance to shine when those things come up. But stuff like Climbing, Athletics, etc are much more problematic because they tend to refer things that'll affect the whole group as a group. What's a player saying when they take low Swimming - that they want to drown if they end up in water and have to be rescued by the other PCs, essentially spotlighting their own failure? Doesn't seem right. Plenty of movies gloss over this: the smart guy either hangs around in the library or lab for the whole story, or mysteriously gets much better at these than they should be (eg, Pixels' video game nerds suddenly good at stunt driving and parkour; Neo, who apparently spends all his time coding and chatting online, holding his own sparring against Morpheus before he knew how to use the Matrix) because it's no fun to have to watch the other characters work out how to haul his wheezing rear end to the adventure. So is it a player issue to trade off these skills? Or is it a system issue to use the same points for these as everything else?
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Jan 18, 2016 17:44
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