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Incidentally, my suggestions are based on my personal experience of and thoughts about literally running a table for eight middleschoolers with wildly different levels of experience... and social skills, including outright NT kiddos who all self selected to play the game instead a suite of other free afterschool activities. This was a few years back, had to stop for my own education, but if you search back I posted about it then. I had to write a common core curriculum and show metrics indicating improvement in key educational areas for dnd, and a cluster I focused on was Social Skills, group work, and problem solving. The poo poo I suggested is/was intended to build confidence and specifically protect against the original problem cited of personalities obviating the need for charisma/social scores. These are kids who, at the younger range, developmentally lack many prosocial psychological features. It's rear end that you need A Good DM yadda yadda yadda, but it's not fundamentally insensitive or insulting to describe the best practices of one come on. CaPensiPraxis fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 20, 2019 |
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Mar 20, 2019 22:52
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TotalHell posted:Any tips for cutting down LMoP to scale for three PCs? I assume I should cut a Goblin here and there from various encounters, but anything beyond that? It's fine as-is. You can always insert a henchman-type NPC that will come along - Sildar being a bit tougher would do the job, or some local that is grateful that Sildar got rescued (or is glad to see the Redbrands defeated). You can definitely run the game with only 3, the party just needs to be more cautious.
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Mar 20, 2019 23:41
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The last 5 pages of this thread are why I require all my DMs to have 20 hours of combined training in improv acting, meeting facilitation, and mentorship of people with anxiety. If you cant do that bare minimum you really don't belong in the business of running elfgames.
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Mar 21, 2019 00:07
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Being a classroom teacher is the best possible preparation for DMing.
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Mar 21, 2019 00:57
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Razorwired posted:The last 5 pages of this thread are why I require all my DMs to have 20 hours of combined training in improv acting, meeting facilitation, and mentorship of people with anxiety. Or like, don't raise your hackles and dig heels in when someone points out best practices to aspire to (and provides direct suggestions to that end). Yeah! That one!
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Mar 21, 2019 01:23
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Obviously the best practices are whatever you like 
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Mar 21, 2019 01:34
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CaPensiPraxis posted:Or like, don't raise your hackles and dig heels in when someone points out best practices to aspire too (and provides direct suggestions). Yeah! That one! Nobody did that. When you said CaPensiPraxis posted:It's rear end that you need A Good DM yadda yadda yadda, but it's not fundamentally insensitive or insulting to describe the best practices of one come on. You're right (and it's a really neat way of putting it too), but that wasn't an argument people made, that was a strawman constructed by people disagreeing with something that others said and you also seem to agree with: CaPensiPraxis posted:It's really fine, and it's totally fine to sometimes handwave it, and sometimes stick to it, and sometimes guide players through it more or less just like any other system in the game. Social skills are just like any other system in the game. They don't need any special attention to function. You could handwave it, detail it, walk people through it, stick to just the rules, and it'll be OK. -- But anyway, I'd really like to hear more about your experiences as a teacher playing D&D with students, I regularly do RPGs with a bunch of ("vulnerable young adults" is what the paperwork says, I dunno what they'd be referred to where you are - school dropouts, abused and neglected kids, substance abuse survivors etc, kinda 14-21 age bracket, I just volunteer, I'm not a qualified teacher or anything) and I'd love to get a different perspective on guiding younger people through roleplay they're not 100% comfortable with without pushing them into disengagement. We obviously use X cards etc already, but this is a different thing. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Mar 21, 2019 |
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Mar 21, 2019 01:39
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CaPensiPraxis posted:Or like, don't raise your hackles and dig heels in when someone points out best practices to aspire to (and provides direct suggestions to that end). Yeah! That one! Unless you want to present your table as a research sample you are defining your table's preferences, not best practices. That's the point. "I blow past the guards." "Okay roll to Intimidate. DC 12 or they'll stop you." "Persuasion okay?" "Sure but make it DC 15." Is how Ive seen social checks work in DnD, Nobilis, pbta, forged in the dark, and a half dozen other systems. You actually don't need to invest in the vices and beliefs of Guards 7 and 8 because the game's probably not about those 2 NPCs. And if you play different, cool! But this conversation is being driven by a poster who says that its a minimum requirement to stop the game and make PCs talk about leveraging the guards alcoholism or its no roll, no chance. We're not talking about identity development workshops and algebra prep. We're talking about a game where a huge slice of the player base is getting drunk and rolling dice in a basement. Razorwired fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Mar 21, 2019 |
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Mar 21, 2019 02:53
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I got fed up with slogging through chapter 3 of SKT, and decided to skip ahead to chapter 4 just so I had an idea of where the hell the book was going. Turns out the connection point between chapters 3 and 4 isn't even mentioned until the last page or so of chapter 3. It really bothers me that nobody involved in this book had the foresight to say "Hey, maybe we should put the goal or bridging point of this chapter up front so the DM knows what's going to happen" at the front of this god drat chapter that is roughly 25% of the book by itself. This chapter should have been a loving appendix.
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Mar 21, 2019 03:02
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Razorwired posted:Unless you want to present your table as a research sample you are defining your table's preferences, not best practices. That's the point. in the example you gave the player actually gives information as to how they are intimidating the guards (blowing past them) also i think 'it doesn't matter because the guards don't matter' is a separate argument about making the players play through poo poo that doesn't matter, which a dm shouldn't do probably. maybe a better example to steer clear of that rabbit hole would be 'persuade the dragon to let their hostage go' or something.
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Mar 21, 2019 03:47
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Farg posted:in the example you gave the player actually gives information as to how they are intimidating the guards (blowing past them) What about "I blow past them" means that it's got enough information for you to proceed while "I persuade them to let me pass" does not? "I blow past them." Farg goes "Roll persuade" and everything's fine. "I persuade them to let me by." Farg starts wringing their hands about not having enough information to proceed, it's just soooo confusing, they can't understand what the player wants to do. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 21, 2019 |
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Mar 21, 2019 04:04
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oh my god. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 21, 2019 04:26
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Player: Looks in rulebook, puts finger next to persuasion skill, says "I do this and get him to let me pass". Rulebook: Persuasion. When you attempt to influence someone or a group of people with tact, social graces, or good nature, the DM might ask you to make a Charisma (Persuasion) check. Typically, you use persuasion when acting in good faith, to foster friendships, make cordial requests, or exhibit proper etiquette. Examples of persuading others include convincing a chamberlain to let your party see the king, negotiating peace between warring tribes, or inspiring a crowd of townsfolk. Farg:  I don't know what you want to do
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Mar 21, 2019 04:35
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For the love of all the FR gods, please stop...
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Mar 21, 2019 04:39
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Player: Looks in rulebook, puts finger next to persuasion skill, says "I do this and get him to let me pass". hey, first of all your being kind of weird and aggro about this it's important to me that a player provides more context for the method they go about persuading or intimidating or lying or whatever to the guards or the dragon or the chamberlain because the way they go about doing these things informs the narrative and the potential consequences of their actions. if a player is extremely anxious and does not want to or cannot think of a general idea (not roleplay it, just provide it), then I would suggest some options for them to choose from. if this was a constant with this player they probably wouldn't be having a good time in general. for the purpose of this example it is assumed that whatever they are rolling to do is important and/or interesting to what is happening in the game, and not meaningless fluff
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Mar 21, 2019 04:43
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inthesto posted:I got fed up with slogging through chapter 3 of SKT, and decided to skip ahead to chapter 4 just so I had an idea of where the hell the book was going. Turns out the connection point between chapters 3 and 4 isn't even mentioned until the last page or so of chapter 3. Yep! I bungled the transition a really - I thought we were dragging but to them it felt abrupt, I think Harshnag should be involved earlier than the book suggests. I had talked about him but meeting him and hearing his plan to go off into the mountains was out of nowhere. Just tons and tons of words about places the characters won't ever go. It's odd. The powerscore blog guy did a, like, routing through chapter 3 that I loosely started with. I fleshed out some of the suggested encounters along a path I reasonably thought they'd take, and they worked out pretty well. Much of chapter 3 took place in the ten towns, because my players couldn't imagine going to a place called the 10 towns and not visiting all 10 towns. I ended up writing a lot of little adventures around there. The goblin huckers went over great. The sheriff of bryn shander ended up giving them snowflake badges that they still try and flash now at level 9. EDIT: PS: Sorry for whatever part I had in this 
Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Mar 21, 2019 |
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Mar 21, 2019 04:48
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Farg posted:hey, first of all your being kind of weird and aggro about this Unlike you, the totally reasonable person who's dug in so hard against "it's ok to just roll sometimes, the skills literally tell you what they do" that you're now pretending that "I blow past" is enough information for you to go on while "with tact, social graces, and good nature, I make a cordial request and exhibit proper etiquette, to convince them to..." is not.
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Mar 21, 2019 04:51
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Yep! I bungled the transition a really - I thought we were dragging but to them it felt abrupt, I think Harshnag should be involved earlier than the book suggests. I had talked about him but meeting him and hearing his plan to go off into the mountains was out of nowhere. Yeah that's an odd trend with the WoTC campaigns: They give DMs loads of information that they frequently will never have any opportunity to deliver to the players - who also would never be interested. I understand wanting to give depth to the NPCs, but frequently it seems like the important elements get skimped while the writer spends five paragraphs talking about character histories that have no relation to the plot and no clear way to even be communicated. Hoard of the Dragon Queen was filled with that sort of thing. I liked how Dragon Heist had the enchiridion to give to the players, so at least a lot of that stuff was consolidated and spoiler-free.
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Mar 21, 2019 05:02
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Unlike you, the totally reasonable person who's dug in so hard against "it's ok to just roll sometimes, the skills literally tell you what they do" that you're now pretending that "I blow past" is enough information for you to go on while "with tact, social graces, and good nature, I make a cordial request and exhibit proper etiquette, to convince them to..." is not. because "i blow past them" answers the question of "how are you intimidating them?". they are intimidating the guards by not even giving a poo poo about them, alright thats plenty to go off. if a player said "i try to persuade them by making a very coridal request", that would be enough too. if a player said "i try to persuade them by appealing to their good nature", that's a bit bare but it's still better than "i persuade the guard". it is very little i am asking for from the player, just the vaguest third person idea of what form their roll takes in the narrative.
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Mar 21, 2019 05:06
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Kaal posted:Yeah that's an odd trend with the WoTC campaigns: They give DMs loads of information that they frequently will never have any opportunity to deliver to the players - who also would never be interested. I understand wanting to give depth to the NPCs, but frequently it seems like the important elements get skimped while the writer spends five paragraphs talking about character histories that have no relation to the plot and no clear way to even be communicated. Hoard of the Dragon Queen was filled with that sort of thing. I liked how Dragon Heist had the enchiridion to give to the players, so at least a lot of that stuff was consolidated and spoiler-free. Another bizarre thing I've noticed is that some completely optional fights have an incredible amount of detail on enemy tactics (thinking about the drow who steal the fire elemental), while there are mandatory encounters in chapter 2 that say "here's a list of monsters, figure out the rest yourself, fucko". And there's definitely a bunch of interesting hooks in this book, but they all feel like they should be their own campaigns, or at least major sidequests. Did the writers of this book serious expect a level 5 party to be able to tackle a fight against three frost giants?
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Mar 21, 2019 05:28
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Farg posted:because "i blow past them" answers the question of "how are you intimidating them?". they are intimidating the guards by not even giving a poo poo about them, alright thats plenty to go off. Saying they use the skill is not enough, saying "like it says it works in the book" is not enough, pointing to the skill description is not enough, but reading out the skill description is fine?
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Mar 21, 2019 06:29
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Saying they use the skill is not enough, saying "like it says it works in the book" is not enough, pointing to the skill description is not enough, but reading out the skill description is fine? Just let them play pretend fantasy mans the way they want, jesus christ.
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Mar 21, 2019 06:43
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Kung Food posted:Just let them play pretend fantasy mans the way they want, jesus christ. Sorry, who's doing what now? Farg hasn't been saying that he should be allowed to play how he wants, he's been very specific that people who don't play the way he wants shouldn't be playing the game. I'm arguing against that. Splicer posted:I feel there's a middle ground between "I roll to convince the guard" and fifteen minutes of in-character bon mots. Farg posted:yeah like a minute or two of in character bon mots Besesoth posted:And if you can't come up with that, you shouldn't be playing the game, right? Farg posted:yes precisely, nailed it Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Mar 21, 2019 |
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Mar 21, 2019 06:52
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Sorry, who's doing what now? I could be entirely off base on this, but I 100% read what Farg said there as a joke and had not even considered that it might not be until your post.
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Mar 21, 2019 09:41
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Defeatist Elitist posted:I could be entirely off base on this, but I 100% read what Farg said there as a joke and had not even considered that it might not be until your post. Yeah, I originally thought so too, and every page he falls back on "no no obviously play how you like", but that's not meaningful in the face of the BUT that's never more than a few posts away. Here are some of them: Farg posted:hey man I'll tell them what the guard does all day but if someone can't or won't even come up with something as basic as "I try to persuade the guard that his shift is over early and I'm here to relieve him" or "there's a fight over there they need your help" then why did they show up to play a ttrpg "I can't understand why people who don't want to do it my way would even show up." Farg posted:i guess my thing is someone so inept or socially addled that they can't even think of a real basic way someone might conceivably go about persuading someone, even in the most abstract manner, is weird. unless it's like a disability or something then yeah ok "People who don't want to do it my way must have a disability." Farg posted:If someone was extremely uncomfortable doing even that I'd be happy to assist them or just handwave past it but I also can't imagine someone who can't handle that but can handle the other decision making points in a game "I can't even imagine someone wanting to do it any way other than my way." Farg posted:yeah to be honest I've never encountered someone who played anything like that, it seems more of an excercise in managing a theoretical player than anything "People who don't want to play my way problably don't even exist, you just made them up for your internet argument." Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Mar 21, 2019 |
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Mar 21, 2019 10:40
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Sorry, who's doing what now? Oh my loving god, nobody cares. You can play how you want, and if you tried to play that way in games Farg runs (and games I run) and you just pointed at persuasion, he'd tell you to GTFO and not come back to the next session, and he'd be within his right to do so. If you've found a DM who lets you do that and you wanna play that way, great, but you are not right either. There is not a "right" way to play D&D. More importantly, nobody gives a poo poo about reading another 5 pages of this spergy bullshit. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 21, 2019 11:18
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trying to make games more inclusive as "spergy bullshit" that people don't care about is pretty lovely again, the very definition of Persuasion, as a skill, already includes the means and the methods by which to perform it, absent of any further elaboration, given a target and an intent
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Mar 21, 2019 11:40
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Omnicrom posted:If the players describe how the Slavering Abomination dies it returns to life with 25% max HP. e: also it's lycanthropic Splicer fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Mar 21, 2019 |
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Mar 21, 2019 11:48
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:EDIT: PS: Sorry for whatever part I had in this  How is this still ongoing several days later? I mean, obviously it's not really the same discussion since the original seems pretty well resolved with "everything said is in-character or a description is a nice addition but it's not required for Literally Everything (but if that works for you and yours then great!)" and has just devolved into a shouting match.
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Mar 21, 2019 11:50
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I persuade the thread to stop going over this argument *rolls 17* looks like it worked
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Mar 21, 2019 12:28
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evol262 posted:Oh my loving god, nobody cares. actually there's a difference between bad and good things
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Mar 21, 2019 13:22
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Elfgames posted:actually there's a difference between bad and good things https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?s=21
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Mar 21, 2019 13:31
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good job you got the reference, thank you
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Mar 21, 2019 13:34
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Sorry, who's doing what now? dude play how you like at your table I've said this many times, stop being weird
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Mar 21, 2019 13:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:trying to make games more inclusive as "spergy bullshit" that people don't care about is pretty lovely Beating a dead horse into mush on an internet forum where 10+ other people are subjected to it because person A doesn't like how person B plays a game which has a non-prescriptive ruleset is the spergy bullshit, not trying to make games more inclusive.
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Mar 21, 2019 13:59
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Sorry for prompting a line of discussion that caused a weird shitlord to completely own the thread for 8 pages and 3 entire days, with no sign of stopping.
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Mar 21, 2019 14:16
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evol262 posted:Beating a dead horse into mush on an internet forum where 10+ other people are subjected to it because person A doesn't like how person B plays a game which has a non-prescriptive ruleset is the spergy bullshit, not trying to make games more inclusive. it's rules! how can it be non-prescriptive?! if you don't have to follow them, they're not rules!
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Mar 21, 2019 14:26
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Hey! All of you shut the gently caress up for a minute. We aren't getting anywhere with this as, right or wrong, neither side is budging. This has gone on for several pages and the thread is now a lovely cesspool and nobody is happy. So, here's the deal. Take that poo poo to the "How do I DM?" thread or the "Terrible Table Stories" thread or somewhere else you can poo poo up, but there is nothing more to be done here. But, this is the end of that poo poo here. I'm not a mod, but I will just start reporting every post that tried to drag this poo poo on until Ettin probated me or probated you because we are well past the point where adults would have agreed to disagree and the thread can't hardly have substantive discussion elsewise.
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Mar 21, 2019 14:33
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I feel like paladins ought to get their power up upgrade before level eleven
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Mar 21, 2019 14:39
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Toshimo posted:Hey! All of you shut the gently caress up for a minute. now would you count this as a persuasion or intimidating check
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Mar 21, 2019 14:39
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