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If the players get to the "final" room and do the thing they were supposed to do, and nothing in the fiction nor the rolls suggests that there was anything to stop them ... let them have the win? Like, there's always more content where that came from (your skull).
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Jan 8, 2018 14:55
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hyphz posted:Well, if I’m getting in people’s nerves to the extent that they’re keeping count then I’ll shut up about it! i think i found something more your speed i mean if you're looking for premades, then most indie rpgs are gonna let you down in that regard (unless we're talking Shadow of the Demon Lord, which has like 100 adventures) because mostly that stuff is beyond their reach to make. and in the case of things like BitD, Fellowship and Strike, premade adventures are gonna be little more than an adventure seed and some scaffolding because the game is supposed to develop and unfold in play, with elements being added in (and sometimes removed) because of the conversation between the players and the GM. but if you want premades for BitD, luckily blades hackers got you covered
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Jan 8, 2018 15:06
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Holy poo poo is this seriously what I fuckin' think it is
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Jan 8, 2018 15:09
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gradenko_2000 posted:Holy poo poo is this seriously what I fuckin' think it is having played it for like 4 hours, yes, it absolutely is
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Jan 8, 2018 15:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:Holy poo poo is this seriously what I fuckin' think it is I'm honestly surprised it took so much to someone make a d20 tactical game
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Jan 8, 2018 15:13
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But of course there isn't a 4E tactical videogame because Hasbro/WOTC is full of loving retarded shitheads who need to be chopped to death with machetes!!!
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Jan 8, 2018 15:14
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Premade Adventures are generally not great on their own. A friend tried to run a Star Trek Adventures premade adventure that didn't seem to understand the system or setting particularly well. Namely you could've replaced "planet" with "farmland" and "Romulans" with "Goblins" and the thing mostly would've fit in D&D. But they can be mined. Using the above example, perhaps instead of having the Romulans attack on sight, have them make claim to the land for ____ reasons so that the PCs have to defraud them. I say this mostly because combat is so deadly that having a "boss" character makes no sense, even less so when he waltzes into the middle of the room to monologue.
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Jan 8, 2018 15:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:Holy poo poo is this seriously what I fuckin' think it is 
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Jan 8, 2018 16:04
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Plutonis posted:I'm honestly surprised it took so much to someone make a d20 tactical game There was that one roguelike that tried, but good god a solo-character d20 game might as well not bother.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:08
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Depends on what you find insane about it, I suppose. It's a bit obtuse but extremely lightweight in play. I’m mostly concerned with the obtuseness. I understand the need for it being lightweight. What’s the rationale behind using cards? Maybe I just need to reread it a couple of times.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:21
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Serf posted:i think i found something more your speed The problem with “it’s beyond their reach to make” is that if the author doesn’t make them the GM has to. So they are saying they expect an unpaid amateur member of the public to do what they, a paid and published and possibly professional author, claim they cannot. And the game-as-conversation metaphor seems to work only as long as it’s the “we all know you’re going to win guys, just make it make sense” model. As long as there’s the possibility of that conversation ending with “and then you fail and roll badly and die or take trauma and it takes everything you’ve got to heal up” then it stops being a conversation and becomes an argument or persuasion. And that makes social manipulation fair game because that’s what you do in an argument.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:54
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Paid, published, and professional is way overestimating the industry standard. This is, and will be for the foreseeable future, a hobbyist activity.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:03
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my friend pointed out the art used from godbound and i can't loving unsee it
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Jan 8, 2018 17:05
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hyphz posted:The problem with “it’s beyond their reach to make” is that if the author doesn’t make them the GM has to. So they are saying they expect an unpaid amateur member of the public to do what they, a paid and published and possibly professional author, claim they cannot.  what in the absolute gently caress are you even talking about. maybe i'm just unusual in that i rarely use premade material and prefer to make my own stuff? i dunno, but the first part of this post is just insane. also at no point did i cite any of these authors "claiming" poo poo. i'm just inferring from my own experience writing my own material as for the second part, at no point is victory assured in this conversation. everything follows from the fiction as you establish it in the conversation. the rules are there to facilitate and adjudicate when you come to important decision points in the conversation, and they have plenty of ways to "punish" the players if that's what makes sense there. as for social manipulation, first of all i'm sorry you've apparently had a lifetime of lovely gaming groups that have done this to you, and secondly the idea of "portray the world honestly" applies to both sides here. everyone is supposed to go in and work together to tell a story with established stakes and expectations, and play to find out what happens
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Jan 8, 2018 17:05
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hyphz posted:The problem with “it’s beyond their reach to make” is that if the author doesn’t make them the GM has to. So they are saying they expect an unpaid amateur member of the public to do what they, a paid and published and possibly professional author, claim they cannot. An indie game not having a published adventure is more caused by financial limitations than anything else.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:15
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Covok posted:Jimbozig, both of those games have resource mechanic. I don't want to come off as rude, but you made a game that claimed to be inspired by powered by the Apocalypse. It wasn't its main inspiration, but it was one according to your ludography. This just seems off. I think you misread my post, perhaps? Because what you and Gradenko posted seems to be essentially agreeing with what I posted when I said: "In fact, there are rules about what happens when they run out." My comments were about how they are used in actual play. My impression is that in actual play, in old school D&D, there was a very real chance that your character bites it on any given adventure and that there was also a very real chance that the party would not get the main loot from the dungeon on their first try, having to retreat to town to rest and try again later (or rarely TPK). My impression is also that in BitD none of those things are true. The fact that in the whole thread not one person has had a BitD heist end with the players having to retreat without the loot due to lack of resources, and only one person posting has ever even seen an AP of it lends credence to my views. If I'm factually wrong, then I am happy to admit that, and the easy way to make that happen is to post examples. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know so I can change my mind and be right instead! My post was about the other ways these resources contribute to the fiction beyond the threat of them running out. If you want to design a game, then you need to look at these factors. The way the resource trackers inform the fiction are very important, and I was thinking about that when I designed Strike! My game is based on 4e D&D, but takes away a lot of the resource pools that exist in every edition of D&D and replaces them with a different system to serve different goals, informed by how Apocalypse World's resources work in practice and how Burning Wheel's resources work in practice (which is itself different still). And I feel like there is some unwarranted defensiveness because maybe it feels like I'm attacking BitD's resource systems? But it's just the opposite. I far and away prefer BitD's way of doing things to old school D&D's and I designed Strike! much more in line with this way of doing things. It's not exactly the same - there are differences in how the resources are implemented, obviously, but it is much more in the vein of a *World game than any edition of D&D. xiw posted:The dirty secret of RPG tactical combat that all the mechanics are designed to misdirect away from is that 99% of the time the PCs win. One more addendum: pretend I said "ignoring Dungeon World" in my previous post. A few people mentioned DW and I will absolutely admit I wasn't thinking about it at all when I posted and it doesn't follow the same pattern in the same way based on the actual play I've seen and read about.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:18
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hyphz posted:And the game-as-conversation metaphor seems to work only as long as it’s the “we all know you’re going to win guys, just make it make sense” model. As long as there’s the possibility of that conversation ending with “and then you fail and roll badly and die or take trauma and it takes everything you’ve got to heal up” then it stops being a conversation and becomes an argument or persuasion. And that makes social manipulation fair game because that’s what you do in an argument. It's just a little bit that you think a conversation about a game that includes a less than optimal outcome must by it's nature devolve into a battle of wills and social skullduggery.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:21
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Mr. Maltose posted:It's just a little bit I’ve definitely had players like that before.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:23
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I will fully admit to walking between raindrops if this is a problem a lot of people have, but at the same time you probably shouldn't be playing games with a shared social contract with people who try and weaponize that contract at all?
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Jan 8, 2018 17:26
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Jimbozig posted:My comments were about how they are used in actual play. My impression is that in actual play, in old school D&D, there was a very real chance that your character bites it on any given adventure and that there was also a very real chance that the party would not get the main loot from the dungeon on their first try, having to retreat to town to rest and try again later (or rarely TPK). My impression is also that in BitD none of those things are true. The fact that in the whole thread not one person has had a BitD heist end with the players having to retreat without the loot due to lack of resources, and only one person posting has ever even seen an AP of it lends credence to my views. If I'm factually wrong, then I am happy to admit that, and the easy way to make that happen is to post examples. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know so I can change my mind and be right instead! the fact remains that players clearly can all trauma out of a heist, or just lose enough of their opportunities that they are forced to fall back and try again or abandon the score altogether. each character in blades is on a clock, but not in the traditional sense of how the game works. each time you take stress, you start moving towards your next trauma. you get four of those and you're done, no takebacks. you can indulge your vice to relieve stress, but the challenges you face in each mission will push you, slowly wearing you down (or not so slowly, depending on how badly you roll/push harder). the personal goal for each character is to stash away as much coin as possible to set their character up for a good retirement, or you could ignore that depending on what you want to accomplish. the structure is light, and just there as a general guideline. sure, you could have a GM that just sends you up against fools and mooks and hands you everything on a silver platter. you could also have a DM who fills dungeons with nothing but crippled old kobolds guarding +5 vorpal swords. but in both scenarios, you wouldn't be portraying the world honestly. fool_of_sound posted:I’ve definitely had players like that before. sounds like a good time to have a conversation as adults about their behavior and expectations for how the game is going to go. if that fails, then show them the door
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Jan 8, 2018 17:29
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Jimbozig posted:in old school D&D, there was a very real chance that your character bites it on any given adventure and that there was also a very real chance that the party would not get the main loot from the dungeon on their first try, having to retreat to town to rest and try again later (or rarely TPK). My impression is also that in BitD none of those things are true. I think it bears noting that an old-school D&D character has 3.5 HP on average, and will take 3.5 damage on average from any given hit against them. Blades in the Dark shouldn't be held up as the problem one here for having a depletion rate on resources that's actually been thought about for more than five seconds.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:34
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Serf posted:sounds like a good time to have a conversation as adults about their behavior and expectations for how the game is going to go. if that fails, then show them the door Pretty much
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Jan 8, 2018 17:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:An indie game not having a published adventure is more caused by financial limitations than anything else. This. Making a full sized adventure for Strike! would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money in art and maps, and almost certainly would not make back the investment on its own. I might hope that it's existence would boost the main game's sales, but that would only be a hope and not one founded in any evidence I've seen. I'd almost certainly be better served financially by publishing an expansion, a new edition, or a new game, all for similar effort and expense. I dide make a small adventure with a tiny budget, meaning no new art and no maps, and sell it for a budget price. And that works fine - it's not a full-featured adventure and doesn't claim to be. The biggest complaint about it is the lack of maps, which is totally fair and a good criticism. I could draw some maps myself, but anyone who has played in one of my Roll20 games where I drew my own maps can tell you that they will look like they were drawn by an 8 year old. Literally, I draw like an 8 year old. In a few years, my oldest daughter will supercede my drawing talents. If anyone has a tool in which I can easily make gridmaps (that I can sell - so the tool needs to give me rights to publish its art assets in the maps I make) that don't look like garbage, I'd like to know. For the small adventure my budget was practically zero, but for one of my upcoming projects I will actually have a budget for it - provided it can make very good looking gridmaps in a settings such as office buildings and UFOs, not just fantasy and forests.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:34
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i've never had a PC die in a 4e game, so therefore PC death never happens in 4e and is impossible
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Jan 8, 2018 17:35
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fool_of_sound posted:I’ve definitely had players like that before. Don't loving snitch
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Jan 8, 2018 17:35
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Jimbozig posted:This. Making a full sized adventure for Strike! would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money in art and maps, and almost certainly would not make back the investment on its own. I might hope that it's existence would boost the main game's sales, but that would only be a hope and not one founded in any evidence I've seen. I'd almost certainly be better served financially by publishing an expansion, a new edition, or a new game, all for similar effort and expense. I'll make one entirely from scratch if you ship me the Nintendo Switch
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Jan 8, 2018 17:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think it bears noting that an old-school D&D character has 3.5 HP on average, and will take 3.5 damage on average from any given hit against them. Yes! Exactly! We agree completely, I think. At least on this.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:36
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hyphz posted:I mean I ran FFG Star Wars for a while and that has a premade with a scene where the PCs are exploring a giant wrecked spaceship underwater to recover something, and there’s a sea leviathan poking around at it. And it sounds cool but there’s no map and the leviathan has no stats or actions other than “if the PCs actually try to fight this thing they lose”. And so hey let’s have them find a few empty rooms so it feels big and let’s do the dramatic escalation thing where they see a shadow and then it goes by in a window and then there’s a bang and then after they’ve explored an area it creates a breach in the hull but obviously it will never actually matter and I’m just sitting feeling like a bad stage magician because I can see all the wires.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:42
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Splicer posted:What's the adventure called? I wanted to post that but I haven't got the books with me here Jimbozig posted:If anyone has a tool in which I can easily make gridmaps (that I can sell - so the tool needs to give me rights to publish its art assets in the maps I make) that don't look like garbage, I'd like to know. Me too. Scarily I find the level editor for DROD is actually better at making grid maps than plenty of RPG focussed tools because of the automatic rigging it performs. Mr. Maltose posted:It's just a little bit psyduck that you think a conversation about a game that includes a less than optimal outcome must by it's nature devolve into a battle of wills and social skullduggery. Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:40
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hyphz posted:Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:44
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hyphz posted:Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes. All the loving time since I play pbta games
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Jan 8, 2018 18:45
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hyphz posted:Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes. the thing is that this is a conversation that has agreed-upon guidelines. you're here to tell a collaborative story, not fight over who gets to "win". you've agreed that you're going to collaborate, and that one person has more power than the others, but the game has rules that allow you to curb their authority. and that's among tons of other rules that help to guide the flow of the conversation.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:48
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hyphz posted:Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes. Have you tried the [Language of Fists]
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Jan 8, 2018 18:51
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I think part of the disconnect here is that in D&D style games bad things happening to your character are a fail state and to be avoided.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:54
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Splicer posted:I think part of the disconnect here is that in D&D style games bad things happening to your character are a fail state and to be avoided. https://twitter.com/donleykogn/status/949240573294133248
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Jan 8, 2018 18:56
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Jimbozig posted:If anyone has a tool in which I can easily make gridmaps (that I can sell - so the tool needs to give me rights to publish its art assets in the maps I make) that don't look like garbage, I'd like to know. Campaign Cartographer (with the Dungeon add-on) lets you make gridded maps that you can include with commercial products. The interface is maddeningly obtuse, and there are some baffling design decisions at play there, but the end product is pretty good.
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Jan 8, 2018 19:11
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hyphz posted:Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes. Except you're not doing that. You're playing a game where a character is trying to do that poo poo. If you're playing the character, you should be invested in having interesting things happen to your character. A character who always wins is rarely anything but loving boring. Are your players literally incapable of portraying characters except by some insane person's idea of what method acting is? Mr. Maltose fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 19:20
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hyphz posted:Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes.
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Jan 8, 2018 19:25
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Serf posted:the thing is that this is a conversation that has agreed-upon guidelines. you're here to tell a collaborative story, not fight over who gets to "win". you've agreed that you're going to collaborate, and that one person has more power than the others, but the game has rules that allow you to curb their authority. and that's among tons of other rules that help to guide the flow of the conversation. Right, but the dynamic is more complicated than that. 1. The players would like their PCs to walk out carrying an armload of magic artefacts. If they aren't interested in that, what's the point in playing? 2. The players would rather than their PCs corpses did not end up lying in the second level covered in runes of shame and goblin dung. But they want the possibility of that happening, because if that possibility does not exist, how is there any tension in the story or any need to think about actions beyond the bare minimum of making sense? 3. The GM would probably also quite like the PCs to succeed. But if he/she acts on that desire, they always will and 2 will be violated. 4. The GM would probably not particularly like the PCs to end up failing. But they can't act like that, because if they do, there will always be a way for the GM to bail the PCs out at the last minute, and once the players work out that the GM is doing this, 2 will be violated. (In PbtA this is the contradiction between "maintain integrity", "make moves", and "be a fan of the PCs".) So it's not quite collaborative, or it's "collaborative but one of the people involved has to pretend they're not collaborating". Splicer posted:Seriously, take a break from your current campaign and run some danger patrol one shots. I'll answer any questions you have and give you some tips! I could only find a beta version that seems to be 7-8 years old and a "pocket edition". I read the pocket edition since it wasn't described as alpha/beta, so maybe I missed a lot of stuff. But as far as I can see it's just a dice game, the actual actions you take never matter. You're encouraged to use certain stats against enemies that are weak to them but since there is no limit on what any stat can do there is no reason to ever not do so.
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Jan 8, 2018 19:30
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hyphz posted:Right, but the dynamic is more complicated than that. who does this? who wants this? this is pure d&d as played by 6th graders thinking. the point of the game is not to have some sort of mony haul adventure where you grab all the cool poo poo and then you're done. you put interesting characters in dangerous situations and then see what happens to them hyphz posted:2. The players would rather than their PCs corpses did not end up lying in the second level covered in runes of shame and goblin dung. But they want the possibility of that happening, because if that possibility does not exist, how is there any tension in the story or any need to think about actions beyond the bare minimum of making sense? you're assuming that a lot of things that appear to be ripped straight from d&d are universally true. not all players want to win and succeed all the time. the reason that games like pbta and bitd are designed with so few clear "win" outcomes is that interesting things happen when the character fail or don't act perfectly. you're looking at this from a binary pass/fail perspective that just doesn't hold up in modern games. hyphz posted:3. The GM would probably also quite like the PCs to succeed. But if he/she acts on that desire, they always will and 2 will be violated. you're confusing "be a fan of the pcs" with "give them everything forever and never challenge them". fans want to see their favorite characters overcome challenges, not be rewarded at every turn. being a fan requires putting characters through the wringer. hyphz posted:4. The GM would probably not particularly like the PCs to end up failing. But they can't act like that, because if they do, there will always be a way for the GM to bail the PCs out at the last minute, and once the players work out that the GM is doing this, 2 will be violated. (In PbtA this is the contradiction between "maintain integrity", "make moves", and "be a fan of the PCs".) the pcs should always be at risk of failing. and the rules reflect this. there are tons of outcomes that are "failure" and "mixed success". the thing is that "death" is often the least interesting outcome for a roll. pbta and bitd encourage you to come up with something more interesting than that. this can be seen as "bailing out" the pcs, but that's not the intention. you want the characters to keep going (until it just wouldn't be interesting for them to do so), so you challenge them with other outcomes. maybe you get rescued, but now you owe your savior a huge debt. maybe you die but some greater power brings you back but wrong. it requires creativity hyphz posted:So it's not quite collaborative, or it's "collaborative but one of the people involved has to pretend they're not collaborating". no, it's not. you're collaborating at all times. i've been running games for like 10 years and i've always run them as collaborative efforts and each time it's been a blast. maybe try broadening your horizons a bit.
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Jan 8, 2018 19:43
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