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To this day I'm still encountering people who enter existential freakouts the second you mention that NPCs shouldn't run on the same rules as PCs.
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Feb 2, 2019 11:28
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Roadie posted:To this day I'm still encountering people who enter existential freakouts the second you mention that NPCs shouldn't run on the same rules as PCs. Ran a DnD game once where the PCs skeletons climbed out of their bodies and started to attack them. They had all the same skills but were undead hivemind minions. It owned.
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Feb 2, 2019 12:55
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Capfalcon posted:It's sort of hilarious that he can trip over the pretty basic observation that Actual Play groups don't really sound like any table anyone who has played a tabletop RPG (and one that, to my knowledge, most Actual Play groups are very up front about "making good radio" and "having a fun gaming session" being two very different experiences), and the takeaway is somehow "And thus Actual Play podcasts are bad for the hobby." What’s bad is their tendency to imply or even actively suggest that the reason why gaming sessions aren’t like AP podcasts isn’t that they’re going for a different thing, but because the podcasters are superior. Also, maybe don’t call them actual play if they’re not actual play? If listeners aren’t affected by the fact that it isn’t how real games go, changing the name to Simulated Play wouldn’t change anything, right?
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Feb 2, 2019 15:59
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hyphz posted:What’s bad is their tendency to imply or even actively suggest that the reason why gaming sessions aren’t like AP podcasts isn’t that they’re going for a different thing, but because the podcasters are superior. who is saying podcasters are superior?
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Feb 2, 2019 16:05
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Serf posted:who is saying podcasters are superior? I know it's an issue for people that get into RPGs via podcasts like TAZ and Critical Role, only to experience, you know, how roleplaying games actually run instead of the polished and professional products that the most successful actual plays are. Someone brought up the "Matt Mercer effect" earlier in the thread and I think it sucks both for players expecting that kind of experience right off the bat and game masters being told their creative efforts aren't up to the standards of professionals.
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Feb 2, 2019 16:12
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Halloween Jack posted:I knew he had done that "System Does Matter" rant on Vampire, but didn't put the pieces together. Thing is, I think the two are related--he's also written about how D&D was originally a very wide-open and varied thing from group to group, based on people's personal experiences and what materials they had access to, but unfortunately when the playstyle became more standardized, it was a pretty lovely adversarial and punitive one. And Vampire and its coattail-riders mostly continued that. I want to take the GM advice from Apocalypse World, particularly "Be a fan of the players' characters", and throw it back in time.
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Feb 2, 2019 16:19
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Serf posted:who is saying podcasters are superior? I see lots of posts online complimenting the people running the sessions on superlative GMing skills, for instance. (Best GM ever! Wish my GM was that good!) When in fact the way they run would be terrible for actual gaming, at least for my style of play, because it would be way too railroady. (And certainly for Hyphz' style, based on what we've heard about that group.) Those posts don't bother me at all, but I guess I can see where someone might be bothered if it was something closer to their sense of identity. I have weird poo poo I'm sensitive about, too - I think we all do.
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Feb 2, 2019 16:19
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Mercer also did it himself above, with that post I previously quoted. “If you want an experience like us, you’d better be able to bring it like Sam” as opposed to “if you want an experience like us you’d better target that experience as opposed to playing the game normally.”
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Feb 2, 2019 16:27
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I don't think it's an effective way to get people into the game by telling them that the thing that makes them want to get into the game isn't really replicable in the game. I'm also pretty sure Mercer has said in the past that it's not reasonable to expect things to run as smoothly or w/e for a new group.
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Feb 2, 2019 16:42
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Sampatrick posted:I don't think it's an effective way to get people into the game by telling them that the thing that makes them want to get into the game isn't really replicable in the game. Whereas not telling them the truth is more effective? quote:I'm also pretty sure Mercer has said in the past that it's not reasonable to expect things to run as smoothly or w/e for a new group. Exactly. He didn’t say “it won’t run like that in any group that isn’t trying to make good radio.”
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Feb 2, 2019 16:57
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Keeping things moving along seems to be the main priority in most Actual Plays I've listened to, with players treating it more like an improv session to facilitate this. It makes for better listening, but is minimizes the concept of "the table" as a decision-making entity. Decisions are mostly made by the GM, or the person being asked, not explored communally. Likewise, it seems to leave a lot less room for second-guessing, with players rarely having the option of struggling with where they want to take their characters; they are comitted to off the cuff remarks or decisions. That's not to say that's all bad, I sort of like it for PBTA games, but the thought of playing Call of Cthulhu like that with my group seems impossible.
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Feb 2, 2019 17:10
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The problem I always have with APs is that they're almost always as much bad jokes as they are RPG content. I can get better jokes anywhere, I want to hear people playing a damned game.
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Feb 2, 2019 17:28
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Biomute posted:Keeping things moving along seems to be the main priority in most Actual Plays I've listened to, with players treating it more like an improv session to facilitate this. It makes for better listening, but is minimizes the concept of "the table" as a decision-making entity. Decisions are mostly made by the GM, or the person being asked, not explored communally. Likewise, it seems to leave a lot less room for second-guessing, with players rarely having the option of struggling with where they want to take their characters; they are comitted to off the cuff remarks or decisions. There's differences at the GM and the player level, but the most important difference is in editing. APs truncate the long silences, remove the extraneous not-funny crap that people get into at the table, and do second and third takes on things, all the time.
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Feb 2, 2019 17:28
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Biomute posted:Keeping things moving along seems to be the main priority in most Actual Plays I've listened to, with players treating it more like an improv session to facilitate this. It makes for better listening, but is minimizes the concept of "the table" as a decision-making entity. Decisions are mostly made by the GM, or the person being asked, not explored communally. Likewise, it seems to leave a lot less room for second-guessing, with players rarely having the option of struggling with where they want to take their characters; they are comitted to off the cuff remarks or decisions. That's a good point. There's very little cruft. Aside from talking about sponsors or please subscribe/rate on iTunes/whatever which is normal, you don't get the extended Monty Python riffs. And if that is your table that's fine, go with God, but it all seems to circle around back to what should be common sense but isn't rule "talk to your players." Another benefit to these APs is every player actually does want to be there. You don't have the guy who's only there to mostly just hang out with friends, or in some cases just use it as an excuse to get out of the house with people he knows and the GM is looking mostly for warm bodies.
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Feb 2, 2019 17:29
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Pope Guilty posted:The problem I always have with APs is that they're almost always as much bad jokes as they are RPG content. I can get better jokes anywhere, I want to hear people playing a damned game. That was my reaction to Adventure Zone, where I felt like if I was invested in MBMBAM, I might be amused. But to me it just felt like guys trying to rib each other constantly and the actual game just felt like fodder for those interactions than anything they were that interested in.
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Feb 2, 2019 18:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:That was my reaction to Adventure Zone, where I felt like if I was invested in MBMBAM, I might be amused. But to me it just felt like guys trying to rib each other constantly and the actual game just felt like fodder for those interactions than anything they were that interested in. That was the last AP I tried and yeah it was exactly like that.
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Feb 2, 2019 18:14
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RPPR is good for actual actual plays of stuff where you have one player just start talking about how d20 is bad while playing 3.5 or just waffling over a course of action for five minutes before they realize a flaw in the plan. It's kind of rough in old places due to language and humor because it's been running for A While but they've done a good job of changing with the times and to be honest I now actually understand how Gumshoe's gameplay flows now as a result of seeing it in motion. It really does do a good job of letting you see how these things work or fail to and when the GM will just let stuff slide for the sake of running a smoother game.
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Feb 2, 2019 18:23
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Biomute posted:Keeping things moving along seems to be the main priority in most Actual Plays I've listened to, with players treating it more like an improv session to facilitate this. It makes for better listening, but is minimizes the concept of "the table" as a decision-making entity. Decisions are mostly made by the GM, or the person being asked, not explored communally. Likewise, it seems to leave a lot less room for second-guessing, with players rarely having the option of struggling with where they want to take their characters; they are comitted to off the cuff remarks or decisions. I feel like Friends at the Table has the kind of relevant discussions; it absolutely (after Ali takes over) trunucates the bullshit and pausing, but we have conversations like "So if your character is Evil, how does that manifest? Because she might not be Evil if she's not actually self interested, which is fine, but that's not how it's going at present" on air, which are relevant conversations. Also, to be honest, "keeping things moving" feels like general good advice for games even if you're not trying to do a radio play. You don't literally need the "whenever anything stops, ninjas attack" rule, but there's a reason PBTA games tend to have a rule along the lines of "when people look at you for what happens next, make a move", and it's easily one of the most transferrable principles of PBTA games.
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Feb 2, 2019 18:39
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spectralent posted:Also, to be honest, "keeping things moving" feels like general good advice for games even if you're not trying to do a radio play. You don't literally need the "whenever anything stops, ninjas attack" rule, but there's a reason PBTA games tend to have a rule along the lines of "when people look at you for what happens next, make a move", and it's easily one of the most transferrable principles of PBTA games. Certainly I've never seen anything kill more PBP games than a lack of hustle on somebody's part. It's why if I ever try again, and I probably will, I'll probably want some kind of posting commitment.
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Feb 2, 2019 18:45
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Definitely the best R20 game I ran was one where, when a scene just turned into in-character chatting or people started chatting in OOC, I cut the current scene and started a new one. That's kind of a dirty secret, because to a lot of people, "Cut any scene that's just banter" sounds terrible and like their characters would never get to roleplay, but there's definitely two kinds of banter; one where the PCs could be talking about the weather, and one where, secretly, the PCs are expressing principles, values, goals, and other important stuff, and it's just coming out in the form of improvised dialogue. The last one is totally good, and looks like small talk, but you need to be watching that carefully for when we're not hearing anything interesting being introduced or affirmed about a character, and have someone get hit by a car or move to a new scene or whatever when that happens. In general, I find people don't actually mind things getting cut too early all that much, which is the risk you run, because if they still want to do something there'll be a follow up scene later, whereas a scene that devolved into half an hour of waffling about potions or whatever is just time nobody's going to get back.
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Feb 2, 2019 18:52
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Jimbozig posted:I see lots of posts online complimenting the people running the sessions on superlative GMing skills, for instance. (Best GM ever! Wish my GM was that good!) When in fact the way they run would be terrible for actual gaming, at least for my style of play, because it would be way too railroady. (And certainly for Hyphz' style, based on what we've heard about that group.) sure, but i see those posts for written actual play reports and poo poo too. i see people sing the praises of GMs who do mustard smuggling antics that would bore me to tears. people praising griffin mcelroy and austin walker and their players aren't exactly new to me
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Feb 2, 2019 20:23
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Serf posted:sure, but i see those posts for written actual play reports and poo poo too. i see people sing the praises of GMs who do mustard smuggling antics that would bore me to tears. people praising griffin mcelroy and austin walker and their players aren't exactly new to me ...mustard smuggling?
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Feb 2, 2019 20:26
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It’s an old grogs.txt thing. But Austin Walker is actually a good GM.
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Feb 2, 2019 20:28
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spectralent posted:...mustard smuggling? Basically a GM wanted his game to be 'realistic' and so adventure hooks weren't just hanging out in taverns or on bulletin boards for PCs to find. He used the example of the PCs setting up a mustard smuggling racket as what he expected them to do instead of go to caves and kill monsters.
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Feb 2, 2019 21:09
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spectralent posted:Definitely the best R20 game I ran was one where, when a scene just turned into in-character chatting or people started chatting in OOC, I cut the current scene and started a new one. That's the way with my favorite current AP, a game of East Texas University on Saving Throw Show, does it more or less. While there is banter when there's a lull the GM jumps on it and moves the scene along. He never cuts anybody off per se, more that he's really good at sensing when it's running out of steam. Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Feb 3, 2019 |
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Feb 2, 2019 22:24
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Kwyndig posted:Basically a GM wanted his game to be 'realistic' and so adventure hooks weren't just hanging out in taverns or on bulletin boards for PCs to find. He used the example of the PCs setting up a mustard smuggling racket as what he expected them to do instead of go to caves and kill monsters. Said GM is the Tao of D&D blogger. He's very much into what Ron Edwards would dub a "Simulationist." He made a high resolution hex grid map of Europe which he used in his D&D games, which were oddly enough a "Ye Middle Ages but with Vancian magic and monsters."
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Feb 3, 2019 02:24
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Smolensk is really something. In grognards.txt we used to joke about people who are sticklers for what they think is historical realism, "but with dragons and elves and spells," and then he came along, a parody come to life. His contribution to the hobby is an exhaustive list of trade tables, because Dungeons & Dragons doesn't feel immersive unless you can calculate the price of cinnamon in Novgorod in the 14th century.Pope Guilty posted:I want to take the GM advice from Apocalypse World, particularly "Be a fan of the players' characters", and throw it back in time.
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Feb 3, 2019 06:27
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theironjef posted:There's differences at the GM and the player level, but the most important difference is in editing. APs truncate the long silences, remove the extraneous not-funny crap that people get into at the table, and do second and third takes on things, all the time. As the person who edits my group's AP podcast, I agree with this. Except I leave in all my extraneous not-funny crap, because that's my reward for doing all the editing!
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Feb 3, 2019 09:50
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Halloween Jack posted:"Treat NPCs like stolen cars" is also vital. Could you elaborate on this statement, as I am not quite catching the meaning.
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Feb 3, 2019 10:01
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SkySteak posted:Could you elaborate on this statement, as I am not quite catching the meaning. Do fun things with them and don’t worry about their long-term health and security, basically. Nine out of ten times an intricately-plotted big evil plan is going to fail at the first hurdle when it hits the players, so it’s best to go with NPCs who are going to do things in the here and now and it’s fine if they die of adventurer to the face.
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Feb 3, 2019 10:06
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Flavivirus posted:Do fun things with them and don’t worry about their long-term health and security, basically. Nine out of ten times an intricately-plotted big evil plan is going to fail at the first hurdle when it hits the players, so it’s best to go with NPCs who are going to do things in the here and now and it’s fine if they die of adventurer to the face. Which secondarily means that NPCs should be cool and full of motivation that spurs them into possibly-fatal action. Also note this applies to friendly NPCs too. They're like fireworks, they look prettiest when they burn.
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Feb 3, 2019 10:20
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That's one of the rules that's worth some adjusting; AW itself acknowledges this rule isn't universal in the fact there's an advanced move to make an NPC "safe", which both means they're in the PC's corner and also that you don't have carte blanche permission to gently caress with them like everyone else. In AW, one of the places your characters start weak and have to buy advances is their basic securities, and in the look through sights/stolen cars rule, one of their securities is a literal lack of security for their allies and companions, but there is something that lets you buy that off later. Other games might just give you secure allies off the books, who you probably shouldn't treat like stolen cars. It's also worth noting that this rule operates in the context of expecting honesty and transparency from your GM, making moves that follow, and announcing future badness; it's probably a super bad idea to just kill off someone's rival, even if it makes sense, without giving them a chance to intervene in any way. There are ways of deemphasising the specialness of your NPCs that are almost as deprotagonising as them being unstoppable GMPCs with half-hour prewritten intro speeches. There's also the factor of feeling like NPCs just exist to punish PCs. You especially don't want to kill off or otherwise horribly maim friends and family that the PCs themselves came up with for cheap drama; I'd say going too soft on them is probably better than too hard unless it's the end of the game, purely because you don't want your players to reflexively distance themselves from anyone named on the expectation they're going to get murdered horribly for pathos. I'm sure there are plenty of people who go "Well yeah, obviously, but this advice is-", but if this is GM advice hour I'm starting from ground up. I think "Cut when you see waffling, if it was important it's now an unresolved beat for later" is always a good principle, whereas there are times you want to drive your stolen car very slowly, which isn't the obvious read of the advice when paraphrased.
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Feb 3, 2019 10:46
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If your AP podcast doesn't sound like an episode of system mastery, you hosed up tbh
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Feb 3, 2019 16:47
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Biomute posted:That's not to say that's all bad, I sort of like it for PBTA games, but the thought of playing Call of Cthulhu like that with my group seems impossible. Call of Cthulhu's a really good example of that; if I ran a session and the players took it up more or less entirely with an IC debate on what's going on, what their pet theories are, and whether they should push ahead and confront someone or tail them and hope they slip up or whatever, and all the players were clearly getting into that and nobody was finding it tiresome, then I'd call that a good session - sure, I didn't contribute very much as referee, but I did do the really, really important tasks, which are "read the mood of the room" and "let the players have their fun". It wouldn't work in all games, but CoC is great for having the odd session where the players metaphorically or literally adjust the clues on their red-string crazyboard, particularly if you're doing it in the "investigative sandbox" style that John Tynes talks about. (It's less good for the style GUMSHOE/Trail of Cthulhu encourages, but I'd say investigation has different roles in those game styles - in GUMSHOE is a narrative pacing and spotlight distribution mechanism, in more "investigative sandbox"-y games investigation is the hard skill which participants want to feel like they are exercising in the game, like how grid combat tactics is the hard skill that you exercise in a 4E D&D combat.) Warthur fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Feb 3, 2019 |
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Feb 3, 2019 17:15
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Warthur posted:Pacing for radio/YouTube and pacing for the tabletop are definitely two different things, and some tabletop games definitely benefit from having the odd slow bit where not much gets accomplished IC but a lot gets discussed. Call of Cthulhu's a really good example of that; if I ran a session and the players took it up more or less entirely with an IC debate on what's going on, what their pet theories are, and whether they should push ahead and confront someone or tail them and hope they slip up or whatever, and all the players were clearly getting into that and nobody was finding it tiresome, then I'd call that a good session - sure, I didn't contribute very much as referee, but I did do the really, really important tasks, which are "read the mood of the room" and "let the players have their fun". It wouldn't work in all games, but CoC is great for having the odd session where the players metaphorically or literally adjust the clues on their red-string crazyboard, particularly if you're doing it in the "investigative sandbox" style that John Tynes talks about. (It's less good for the style GUMSHOE/Trail of Cthulhu encourages, but I'd say investigation has different roles in those game styles - in GUMSHOE is a narrative pacing and spotlight distribution mechanism, in more "investigative sandbox"-y games investigation is the hard skill which participants want to feel like they are exercising in the game, like how grid combat tactics is the hard skill that you exercise in a 4E D&D combat.) Right, but that's not waffling; that's them having an objective-based discussion, or possibly them meandering in a way that's expressive because they're giving views on a situation. As soon as they reach a deadlock (that's not going anywhere; someone storming out is definitely going somewhere), cut. Again, "cut all the dull stuff" doesn't mean a nonstop cavalcade of nijnas, it means that all scenes should be about things and contain a thing that's happening and when they stop, cut.
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Feb 3, 2019 17:25
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Flavivirus posted:Do fun things with them and don’t worry about their long-term health and security, basically. Nine out of ten times an intricately-plotted big evil plan is going to fail at the first hurdle when it hits the players, so it’s best to go with NPCs who are going to do things in the here and now and it’s fine if they die of adventurer to the face. The stolen cars bit also means that they're liable to get you in trouble and draw the wrong sort of attention to you in certain situations.
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Feb 3, 2019 18:03
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I think there is some value in making a distinction between actual play and edited, partially scripted improv that works from a game as its base. Actual play is people actually playing a game. Like, if I turn on the Raptors game, I get to see people actually playing basketball. If the Harlem Globetrotters recorded a game where parts of it were scripted, the tricks and gameplay were all real but sometimes had multiple takes to get it right, and it was edited to heighten the excitement, that would be a different product. It'd be a good product and one I would watch, but I wouldn't call it "actual basketball." Actual basketball would be the Raptors losing to LeBron again. There are actual play podcasts. They just aren't that popular. This other product is more popular. I often like it better than actual play, though not always. Which is part of the reason I would like another name for it. Simulated play? And yeah obviously there is something of a spectrum. What if this podcast doesn't run multiple takes, but does edit heavily? What if this one doesn't cut much but does pre-plan and script some scenes? It's never going to be a clear binary distinction, unless the binary distinction you want to make is between a 100% pure raw uncut product and anything less than 100% pure.
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Feb 3, 2019 18:40
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Jimbozig posted:And yeah obviously there is something of a spectrum. What if this podcast doesn't run multiple takes, but does edit heavily? What if this one doesn't cut much but does pre-plan and script some scenes? It's never going to be a clear binary distinction, unless the binary distinction you want to make is between a 100% pure raw uncut product and anything less than 100% pure. An example of the in-between that comes to mind for me is something that wasn't scripted, but once it happens they go back and re-film it so it lands cleaner. Seen that one in panel show jokes.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:57
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So the biggie: do they edit out and redo story breaking rolls?
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Feb 3, 2019 21:45
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hyphz posted:So the biggie: do they edit out and redo story breaking rolls? But hey, many/most home games work like that too, so it's hardly a "biggie."
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Feb 3, 2019 22:55
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