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Libertad! posted:
I've actually played that one. It's not too bad.
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Apr 20, 2020 07:44
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEOEBrdnQq4&t=104s What I imagine it will be like when Hyphz realizes how some other people play roleplaying games. Just kidding, saw it tonight and thought it was funnily relevant
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Apr 20, 2020 09:06
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PinheadSlim posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEOEBrdnQq4&t=104s This thread accidentally figuring out how Hyphz plays roleplaying games The Lighthouse spoilers warning
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Apr 20, 2020 10:07
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mllaneza posted:None of that is the game's problem. I like the PbtA agenda of "be a fan of the characters", but don't let it paralyze you with not wanting to risk making someone feel bad. If you do, have an actual conversation with that player, find out what actually made them feel bad, and get some feed back on how you could handle a similar situation with a similar outcome, without the negative outcome of 'someone feels bad' or you freeze up because you're afraid someone might feel bad. It's not that you can't draw a map for a comedy game, it's that it's much easier to do one without a map, because in a comedy game it's not going to happen that somebody complains that they should have gotten to attack the enemy when they went past their hiding place and that they wouldn't have hidden there if they had the correct visualisation. I don't really like "be a fan of the characters" very much, because being a fan is essentially a passive role. Rooting for characters to succeed is a great way to engage with an existing story, but you don't do it when the story is also rooting for them.
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Apr 20, 2020 15:34
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hyphz posted:It's not that you can't draw a map for a comedy game, it's that it's much easier to do one without a map, because in a comedy game it's not going to happen that somebody complains that they should have gotten to attack the enemy when they went past their hiding place and that they wouldn't have hidden there if they had the correct visualisation. Eh, I get it. People get weird about maps some times. But also, in my opinion being a fan of the characters is one of the key pieces of advice to take from PBTA games. It's not about passively watching your PCs do things. It's about recognizing that your PCs were made because your players wanted those PCs to do cool things and the GM should enable that, despite it being incredibly easy for them to shut down whatever the PCs are good at if they wanted. (Enable it within reason, of course, but that's why there's significantly more guidelines for GMs in these games than just wanting to see the PCs do cool things in a way that fits the game everyone agreed to play.)
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Apr 20, 2020 16:09
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"Be a fan of the characters" is right up there with "treat NPC's like stolen cars" in terms of good GMing advice and something that should pretty much applied to all gaming. There are probably exceptions for particular genres but you should really stop and think about it before you even consider not following that advice.
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Apr 20, 2020 16:18
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Eh, I get it. People get weird about maps some times. My worry about maps is that if you don't have one it's really easy for players to break everything simply by asking for details of what their characters see, which is a fundamental thing. It's easy enough to make up basics but I find it tends to fall down quickly on detail and contradictions. quote:But also, in my opinion being a fan of the characters is one of the key pieces of advice to take from PBTA games. It's not about passively watching your PCs do things. It's about recognizing that your PCs were made because your players wanted those PCs to do cool things and the GM should enable that, despite it being incredibly easy for them to shut down whatever the PCs are good at if they wanted. But passively watching is what a "fan" does. Obviously it's not what a GM does, but all that means is it's a broken metaphor. Players make characters to do cool things, but if they get to do those cool things all the time they say the game's boring because there's no challenge or surprises. Now of course I'm sure this isn't what the advise is saying, but so much GM advice describes only one side of a balance without suggesting what the balance should be, and "be a fan" is in that category. (So is "say yes", for the matter..)
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Apr 20, 2020 17:28
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hyphz posted:But passively watching is what a "fan" does. Obviously it's not what a GM does, but all that means is it's a broken metaphor. As a PBTA principle, "be a fan of the characters" is meant to guide the choices that you make. It is not at all passive when you use it that way. Being a fan of the characters is not the same thing as rooting for them to succeed. We root for them to overcome adversity, to change and grow, to do cool things. We don't want to see IF they succeed at something, we want to see how they'll do it, how far they'll go to do it, how it will change them. Success by itself is boring. I don't give a poo poo if James Bond saves the world. Of course he will. I don't care if Bruce Willis will beat the bad guys. You know he will before you even start the movie. In the games I run, I am completely uninterested in whether or not my players' characters will successfully beat the evil wizard or stop the runaway train or capture the rogue starship captain. What interests me, as a fan of their characters, is to see how they'll do it when I put obstacles in their way, or when they have to make difficult choices in order to get there, or how accomplishing that goal changes them and the world around them, and how they react to that. Here's what Apocalypse World has to say about the principle: quote:The worst way there is to make a character’s life more interesting is to take away the things that made the character cool to begin with. The gunlugger’s guns, but also the gunlugger’s collection of ancient photographs—what makes the character match our expectations and also what makes the character rise above them. Don’t take those away.
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Apr 20, 2020 17:57
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I view it more as "Be interested in the player's characters, give the the players opportunities to do what they were designed to do, and also, look for something you're interested in with each character, and put situations involving that thing in front of the players." rather than mindlessly cheer lead them. When I play I try to find something I'm interested in with all the other characters; I did actually drop out of a forum game (as a player, not a GM) before it started once because the PCs were a disjointed mess, and I had no interest in any of them.
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Apr 20, 2020 18:01
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hyphz posted:My worry about maps is that if you don't have one it's really easy for players to break everything simply by asking for details of what their characters see, which is a fundamental thing. It's easy enough to make up basics but I find it tends to fall down quickly on detail and contradictions. Well, there's nothing wrong with just sketching out a basic map in that case. You just need to make sure you don't get so detailed with it that your players start to get weird about spacing. quote:But passively watching is what a "fan" does. Obviously it's not what a GM does, but all that means is it's a broken metaphor. Honestly, I think you just have a much more specific definition of fan than everyone else in this conversation. And yes, you can't just have PCs be as cool as possible at all times, because as you said that's boring as sin. Thus, part of GMing like you're a fan of these characters means giving them a challenge that still lets them be cool and interesting in the way they're supposed to. It's "Lurks made a cool swordmaster, so I'll put a master duelist in this for them to fight while the rest of the party tries to deal with the dragon, they'll kick each other's teeth in and Lurks might lose but we'll get some cool swordplay out of it" instead of "Lurks made a cool swordmaster, I'll take their sword away during the first part of this adventure and fill the second half with flying enemies so they can't use their OP sword abilities". (And sometimes being a fan of that character means taking away their sword because seeing what a swordmaster does without their sword makes for an interesting scene, but GMing is more of an art than a science.)
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Apr 20, 2020 18:03
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This is not a hypothetical situation. It happened this friday night. Our group finally got things sorted to play things online. Oh, look at the features of this tabletop program. The map, it has dynamic lighting and weather effect. And it was Pathfinder 2e, so it has a system behind it to define difficulty. And it was one of the worse sessions I had every played in. And I'm not deducting any points due to tech issues because that wouldn't be fair for the first time. The encounter math set it as an extreme encounter, which just turned into a slog because we couldn't do enough damage. And the monsters just stood and attacked because that's really all you can do with a system like pathfinder. Systems and maps will not save a bad encounter. I didn't feel good beating on some lizard dogs for 2+ hours, nor did I feel like my character's decisions were in any way meaningful. And this is where being a fan can be applied even in a game with big systems. I'm a barbarian. I have abilities to move around, hit multiple enemies and do lots of damage. But in this encounter, the AC was high enough that I was going to be missing consistently. And that sucked because it took away my entire toolkit. Contrast that with another encounter. It was not difficult at all. But it had be jumping around exploding multiple skeletons with a single swing. And I think the reason for the change between that encounter and the latest is the GM thinking "oh, this isn't challenging enough". It seems more like the GM wants us to get hurt, because that makes a combat 'good' in their eyes. Not being a fan of our characters and letting us do what our characters are built to do. And like many have said, if I want a heavy tactical challenge, I'll play Gloomhaven*. I'd also be careful about feeling the need to overdetail things in a map. Our GM is enthusiastic, but has a bad habit of draining out all the fantastic out of an area by over-describing things. I do not need to know street layouts of this town hidden within a volcano. * I'd even say the worst Gloomhaven scenarios is where the designer wasn't 'being a fan' and makes you play in a way that forces you to completely ignore how the game normally plays. jadarx fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Apr 20, 2020 |
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Apr 20, 2020 18:31
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 I've just published The Paperflesh Advent, an incursion* for Trophy Dark** about mad alchemists, mellified men, and an unearthly flower meadow called the Bleeding Kaleidoscope! It's inspired by old ghost stories, A Field in England, and the apocryphal medicine itself: mellified man, voluntary human sacrifices steeped in honey for a hundred years to mummify and form a sweet medication capable of healing broken bones and more. The scenario takes you into the forest, through the meadow, and under the earth... and that's just the first half. The back end has what I'd like to think is a logically apocalyptic twist. You can grab it on itch or DTRPG, whichever's your poison. *scenario **for those that don't know, Trophy Dark is a rules-light game of dark fantasy and psychological horror about doomed treasure-hunting expeditions into a vast, sinister, and ancient forest, and the motivations and conflicts that bubble to the surface in the wilderness. It recently got big during ZineQuest 2, with a whole bunch of 'Rooted in Trophy' hacks springing up Here's the launch tweet if anyone has a moment to RT: https://twitter.com/SpeaktheSky/status/1252286254219177987 
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Apr 20, 2020 18:46
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Has anybody bought and reviewed the rpg Black Void? https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/285707/Black-Void-Core-Book I checked the Fatal and Friends website and couldn't find it there. I was curious about goon opinions.
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Apr 20, 2020 19:04
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hyphz posted:But passively watching is what a "fan" does. Obviously it's not what a GM does, but all that means is it's a broken metaphor. I'm not sure what fandom you're in, but every fandom I know of, including sports, engages actively in creative endeavour based on their fandom (That's what Fantasy Football is. It's NFL fanfic.)
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Apr 20, 2020 19:05
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And only a few steps removed from NFL D&D but with dice rolls replaced by the actual players stats recorded in what I want to describe as vicarious larping
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Apr 20, 2020 19:12
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You can only roll player stats during the Draft though.
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Apr 20, 2020 19:17
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Helical Nightmares posted:You can only roll player stats during the Draft though. really the players themselves are the stats and the team is the actual character so trades or formation changes can function as stat boosts ect
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Apr 20, 2020 19:19
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Coolness Averted posted:Double posting because that was long enough, but I have a question about how you folks like to handle perception and knowledge related rolls. Also, any of the GM moves are on the table. "Oh, you're using discern realities to try to find the secret door and rolled a 5? OK, you find the door, no problem. But it's a rotating section of wall and now you're on the other side of it (separate them). And man, the trio of goblins on the other sure are surprised (reveal an unwelcome truth), but they get over it fast and draw weapons (put someone in a spot). What do you do?" hyphz posted:I don't really like "be a fan of the characters" very much, because being a fan is essentially a passive role. So no, your weirdly narrow and specific hang-ups about terminology aside, it's not a busted metaphor. From a GM perspective, it's about making sure the PCs are showcased, and it's about viewing them as your favorite team. Not the NPCs, not the setting, not the rules, not any of the other bullshit that you bring to the table. The characters.
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Apr 20, 2020 19:25
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Ilor posted:jfc, have you ever watched sports? No, being a fan is not a "passive" role. It's about getting out there and hooting and hollering and yelling and trash-talking the opposing fans because YOUR team is the best loving team out there. It's about cheering them on and wanting them to win. It's about being overjoyed when they make that terrific comeback and being crushed when they lose by a hair. It's about screaming at the ref for making a bad call. It's about being totally all about someone on your team hoisting the goddamn trophy over their head. It's about being a sports fan? Not a fiction fan? Ok, fine. But then how would the sport work if a "fan" could decide who won every game?
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Apr 20, 2020 19:37
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Whelp. We've reached peak hyphz.
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Apr 20, 2020 19:46
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I was waiting for this.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:01
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hyphz posted:It's about being a sports fan? Not a fiction fan? fiction fans also write...fan fiction
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Apr 20, 2020 20:02
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hyphz posted:It's about being a sports fan? Not a fiction fan? Fiction fans are like that too. When you're a fan, you wanna see your characters do their thing! You want the heroes to succeed, yeah, but you also wanna see them suffer hardships and overcome them! You wanna see your villians sneer and strut and commit sins and get punished and shake their fists and wail to the heavens how it's unfair! People cheer and make fanart and elaborate fan theories and all sorts of stuff. The worst thing the fans can do when a character does something isn't boos. It's nothing. No-selling player actions is terrible. It kills enthusiasm, it says 'you do not matter'.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:10
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If we're going to be pedantic, be like a pro-wrestling fan. You cheer the faces. You boo the heels. Because that's what they want. And it doesn't matter that almost everything is predetermined. Heck, you probably already know whose going to win. Having your fav always win gets boring. Good rivalries have wrestlers losing, screwjobs and beat-downs. And when those downs lead to the big win. :chefkiss:
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Apr 20, 2020 20:39
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Still laughing at the idea that a GM being an improv collaborator and coordinator, rather than an adversary, is such a foreign concept.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:43
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jadarx posted:If we're going to be pedantic, be like a pro-wrestling fan. You cheer the faces. You boo the heels. Because that's what they want. Wrasslin' is the art that RPGs most resemble. The plotlines are dumb and get dropped, the premise is flimsy, and then there's a sic armbar or something and everyone goes yooooooooooooooooo.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:49
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Kai Tave posted:I don't think hyphz needs to be banned from the chat thread, but I do think that everybody should just put hyphz on ignore if this exact same derail is going to happen every other week in the exact same way, just because you can have the same dumb argument over and over doesn't mean you have to.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:50
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This argument was boring 20 years ago on RPG.net when people kept trying to explain Adventure's "dramatic editing" mechanic to this one person who literally could not understand it. It has not gotten any more interesting in the intervening decades.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:53
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Xarbala posted:Still laughing at the idea that a GM being an improv collaborator and coordinator, rather than an adversary, is such a foreign concept. An adversary who lives in a constant state of terror, no less.
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Apr 20, 2020 21:05
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Xarbala posted:Still laughing at the idea that a GM being an improv collaborator and coordinator, rather than an adversary, is such a foreign concept. It's not a foreign concept. I don't know if this is why people go in circles. I do get that the GM is supposed to be collaborating with the players. The difficulty is in resolving that in the case of a setting that should actively not appear to be cooperating with the players, and with players who do not want to oppose themselves.
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Apr 20, 2020 21:53
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Getting into a situation where you, as a player, goes: "Well, I think my character would do this, but it's a dumb thing to do strategically, so I won't do it" is not just bad RP, it's the death of RP. You aren't playing a role at that stage, you are playing a game with level advancements.
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Apr 20, 2020 21:57
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hyphz posted:It's not a foreign concept. I don't know if this is why people go in circles. I do get that the GM is supposed to be collaborating with the players. The difficulty is in resolving that in the case of a setting that should actively not appear to be cooperating with the players, and with players who do not want to oppose themselves.
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Apr 20, 2020 21:59
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Day 5,453. The forum continues to argue with hyphz. They've continued to circle the drain, so to speak; each argument, each point, deflects off hyphz's seemingly impenetrable shield of incomprehension towards basic roleplaying basics, yet the rest of the forum is drawn to it like moths to the flame. The rest of the site is gone, save this single thread, left up for reasons we've long since forgotten. Perhaps it was considered important, a final tribute to the ultimate folly of man. Ad revenue is gone, a victim of the Google-Amazon-Reddit wars. Lowtax has put out a third loan on his house to keep the lights on. All hope is lost.
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Apr 20, 2020 22:07
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I like hyphz and am sympathetic to his point of view. My favorite roleplaying games are those whose mechanics are chiefly or entirely devoted to "in-character" task resolution and whose story structures arise from a combination of shared expectations, explicit GM advice, and emergent consequences of executing on the above mechanics as players just have their characters act as it would make the most sense for them to act.
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Apr 20, 2020 22:19
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If Prester Jane had to be quarantined to her own thread in D&D because her posts would inevitably derail threads with the sociopolitical equivalent of outsider art, I see no reason why TG can’t maintain a “this is the place where we discuss theory with hyphz” thread. Given that hyphzchat now accounts for something like a quarter of all chat-thread posts, it would probably be the single most active thread on the forum.
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Apr 20, 2020 22:31
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I mean, it's not like other conversation is being stopped by Hyphz posting. It's also uncool to compare Hyphz to Prester Jane, but we've also called him Tarnowski and Trollman so I guess being gormless but unhostile is the equivalent of being a literal fascist hiding in South America now.
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Apr 20, 2020 22:34
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Ilor posted:A good failure case for these moves is "I'm going to tell you something that is 100% true - and you're really not going to like it." Oddly enough responding to discern realities or spout lore failures with reveal an unwelcome truth was never something I'd thought of. "No you do find the monster's weakness, but it's a terrible cost," or "Yes you are able to detect the hallway is trapped, the problem is it's booby trapped enough that it's practically suicide to move forward... also there are a bunch of traps you didn't trigger behind you too." are great, it's just getting players to buy in that this isn't traditional d&d and failing a lore or perception check doesn't mean they don't see or know something, it just means there are consequences. Mr. Maltose posted:I mean, it's not like other conversation is being stopped by Hyphz posting. It's also uncool to compare Hyphz to Prester Jane, but we've also called him Tarnowski and Trollman so I guess being gormless but unhostile is the equivalent of being a literal fascist hiding in South America now. Yeah the problems with "we must exile poster I don't like" is A. It's not universal, B. hyphz has frankly added a bunch more in the week or so of keeping this thread active than the folks whining about it. Like if y'all had been posting interesting game reviews or videos you made that got drowned out I'd be more sympathetic, but the folks who don't like 'em have just been drive-by threatshitting in the meantime, and C. This is the chat thread, like if this was actively derailing the Spire thread I'd think it'd be a much more valid critique. He's chatting about RPGS, we're chatting with him. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Apr 20, 2020 |
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Apr 20, 2020 22:50
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hyphz posted:Ok, fine. But then how would the sport work if a "fan" could decide who won every game? But again, you are spectacularly missing the point, to the level of being obtuse. I can't even tell if it's intentional or not at this point, but if it isn't you have so staggeringly misread the simple phrase "be a fan of the characters" that I feel like we might need to go back to first principles and ask the most basic question: What is it that you and/or your players are looking to get from your RPG experience? Sure, broadly speaking the goal is "to have fun," but what - specifically - do you find enjoyable about RPGs?
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Apr 20, 2020 22:59
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hyphz posted:It's not a foreign concept. I don't know if this is why people go in circles. I do get that the GM is supposed to be collaborating with the players. The difficulty is in resolving that in the case of a setting that should actively not appear to be cooperating with the players, and with players who do not want to oppose themselves. Hey yeah I'm here to audition to play Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, but I'm curious why the audition sheet says I have to personally hate Christmas? Also it says I have to be actually personally mean to the guy playing my nephew even when we aren't acting, is that accurate?
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Apr 20, 2020 23:00
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FMguru posted:Yep. Most fictional wizards only know a couple of spells, or they're advisor-types who pointedly refuse to cast them and disappear for long stretches of the narrative, because an actual D&D wizard in full D&D wizard form would just take over whatever narrative is being told, like what happened when the first piece of actual D&D fiction was written (the one wizard character, left to his own devices, powered himself from casting Feather Fall to murdering all of the Gods and ruling over a burnt-out shell of a world over the course of a few books). Reminds me of a light novel I read once, where the protagonist was reincarnated into another world as a "D&D with the serial numbers filed off" style wizard (complete with having to roll dice inside his mind when he casts spells), while everyone else in the world used a pretty low-powered MP-based magic system. It's amazing the problems you can solve (and cause) as the only guy around who can cast Time Stop and Meteor Swarm.
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Apr 20, 2020 23:23
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