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hyphz posted:Alright, I guess I do need to apologize here because I posted the social power thing while I was feeling very sad and ill on Thursday night. You can't really do a lot about it, and I've been round that spiral many times before, and I do know that all the things you're telling me come from people who don't actually know me.  quote:What disables it, though, if it's not an intrinsic fact? It's a problem in both RPGs and co-operative board games to be honest, although I tend to consider it a design error in co-operative board games.
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May 2, 2020 01:48
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Hyphz, do me a favor and google the symptoms of persistent depressive disorder (aka dysthymia), because you're starting to sound a lot like me before I got on meds. This is not me trying to attack or diagnose you. ETA: I am not asking any questions. I am not trying to ask after hyphz's mental health as that would be totes inappropes for a dead gay comedy forum's sub-subforum for pretending to be elves, I'm just saying, hyphz is starting to sound like me before I got on meds. drunkencarp fucked around with this message at 01:54 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 01:49
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Nessus posted:Well you can tack around it. If it's a case where one guy is loud and thus tends to be the hindmost of the herd, that person can take some pains to regularly proffer and pass around the spotlight. They deserve a share, of course; everyone involved does. You can also design the game with a thought towards reducing the hierarchal quotient - or at least being more mindful of it. It's more that I consider it a design error in games because they've failed to actually create the situation that requires co-operation, namely, that the task is substantially disadvantaged if done by an individual. This is especially the case in multiplayer board games where you get the feeling that someone just, say, took chess and said "well, you can play this multiplayer by giving everyone a piece". In RPGs it's more a matter of the fact that one or more characters, for whatever reason, has instead become a collection of utilities for the group - which often happens in class-based games.
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May 2, 2020 01:53
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Fiasco is ostensibly GM-less but it didn't feel GM-less the few times I've played it at cons. it becomes really GM-less if you have a group who groks the concept and the flow. The first time or two through, though, someone does have to facilitate. my old college group got real comfortable with it as we played and it got to the point where it would end up being a wrap-up activity after heavier stuff
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May 2, 2020 01:56
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hyphz posted:It's more that I consider it a design error in games because they've failed to actually create the situation that requires co-operation, namely, that the task is substantially disadvantaged if done by an individual. This is especially the case in multiplayer board games where you get the feeling that someone just, say, took chess and said "well, you can play this multiplayer by giving everyone a piece".
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May 2, 2020 01:56
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Nessus posted:This first part is interesting, how do you mean? What you describe here makes me think of how in stock D&D of various kinds, much past level 6 or so the party begins to become The Wizard And His Crew (feat. I.B. Bangin the Cleric on healz) Well, one of the worst games we found for this was Dungeon Saga. And we quickly found out why - it's because it was designed as a 2 player game and then they added the option to play individual characters. Which is understandable but it doesn't work because it's clearly designed to be played as a wargame with groups of pieces that all must move just right to complement each other; if there's just one player playing the monsters and a group playing the PCs, and literally any player deviates from the tactical plan, the PCs are doomed; at the same time, the tactical decisions for an individual character aren't very interesting. It wasn't actually designed to be multiplayer, and I wonder about that whenever I see that bug in a game. Gloomhaven gets awfully close to this as well, although it has a bit more leeway and tries to prevent it happening by adding hidden information. It's not so much Wizard And His Minions although that can happen. I do think there was a good Ron Edwards spoof of it in Elf where there's a send-up of an adventuring party which includes "There's one guy at the back in a black cloak who never says anything. As long as he exists, the party can go through any door."
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May 2, 2020 02:00
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Liquid Communism posted:This happens to me every time, and I've been running games since the 1990's. During the game, all is well because I'm in the moment handling all the moving parts of the system and improvising on the things that the players seem most interested in. Before and after suck. i feel this. actually being in the game, working with the players to determine what should happen next and rolling consequences into actions is just fantastic. i usually have about 45 minutes or so of semi-anxiety before a game where i do a lot of last-minute prep. some of that can be good work but a lot of it is just me thinking i need to do extra work that doesn't need to be done
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May 2, 2020 02:02
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Hyphz, I can't commit to a weekly game like Doctor What did, but I'd be happy to play a one-shot with you GMing, whatever system you want to run.
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May 2, 2020 02:05
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 02:45
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Dungeon Saga's adventures - in particular, after you get past the "learn the game" intro adventures and try the first real one - are just badly designed. My group tried that one four times and bounced off it and we've never played again, even though I dropped a lot of money on it. My brother has some ideas for how to fix it that we'll probably try eventually. Basically there's a party of dudes and a hard time limit and unlike most dungeon-crawly type games, your goal is not to kill every skeleton, but much moreso to try to get past every skeleton as fast as you loving can, and even then if you roll badly to open a door three times in a row you've probably lost. With such a hard time limit, any player can screw the whole adventure by just not moving optimally or by choosing to engage an enemy that could have been bypassed, once. So not only is the game wide open for the expert to lean in and tell everyone what to do, there's a powerful incentive to listen to them and do what they say; not being blamed for losing the adventure because you didn't do what they said! There are cooperative game designs that help to reduce the "one guy who has the game figured out tells the other players how to play optimally" factor. For example, in the Lord of the Rings LCG game, players can discuss strategy etc. but they're not allowed to announce the cards in their hand, and that means that players have to make their own decisions about what to play. My brother and I have been playing that for years; he has a mild case of the "I think we should do X and will get argumentative if you don't agree" disease, he doesn't actually start a fight but he (believes he has) a highly rational mind and tends to identify specific reasons for doing X and if you disagree, he'll entertain your idea but expect a detailed and solid explanation for it that meets his standard. But it's really not a problem because A) we've played so much that his "we should definitely do X" plans have gone awry often enough that he's helpfully lost a touch of that confidence; but more importantly, at some point I can just shrug and play my cards the way I think we should go anyway, and the game is flexible enough that that can work. To distill that down to the design decision: in a co-op game it's helpful to give each player secret info that they're not allowed to disclose but must act on, in order to compartmentalize some part of the game to be exclusively theirs. It's not that different from the admonition in an RPG to make sure each player gets their "moment in the spotlight." A really obnoxious player can still deconstruct your play for you after-the-fact, so there's no absolute proof against bad players here, but at least it means even just someone who is just exuberantly engaging in the game at a different energy level than the rest of the team, can't accidentally dominate someone who is more inclined to just go along with whatever they're told to do.
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May 2, 2020 04:41
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Absurd Alhazred posted:That's not exactly what I'm going for, I don't think. It's not like I'm expecting people to do drama school emoting or professional voice acting, it's more engaging with the things I put to their characters, and I try to pull from whatever people's characters come from. As part of prep for each session I try to go over all the characters and think of what they've done, what's relevant to them, if someone hasn't had a chance to shine I'll see about focusing on them more. It's also not really rewarding in the sense that anyone gets more loot than the other, or XP. Cool, it didn't sound like it was a problem. I mentioned it since it happens sometimes when trying to resolve stuff without touching the dice.
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May 2, 2020 05:31
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Since a few pages back we were on the topic of cool ideas to crib from games I just threw in tug-of-war clocks for the 'boss battle' set piece I'm running tomorrow in a game. The party is encountering a swamp elemental bound to a murky pond with an anchor artifact that generates chains that drag people down. The fight started last session with their cleric getting grabbed. So I've got a tug of war 4 section clock for each PC. Step 1 is chained, step 2 is dragged towards the pond, step 3 is in the water, step 4 is drowning. Just as a fun little visual thing to ramp up pressure during the encounter, so they can see how close they are to losing, I've got all the clocks drawn with their names and have a hidden skull token for each step that I'm revealing as they advance. I'm also running them as separate so I can fudge things in their favor and spread the risk around if they bumble, or focus on one or two if they go ham on just killing the creature and roll amazingly well, since technically they could burn the monster down after 1 turn each if they roll well, but if they don't it could also be a grinder where they just all drown.
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May 2, 2020 07:27
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hyphz posted:Well, I think it is a bit exaggerated, and that anyone who might technically be offering to play a FATAL conversion of Blood In The Chocolate probably isn't doing it because they actually want to play (although I would never do that and I think if I did my intestine would throttle my own brain as with the Vogon Poets). It's a fairly common thing that's attempted when trying to help people with social phobia but it's advised against in practical terms. Please do not do bad faith reads of yourself! People have offered to play games with you, on this very page even. You are probably correct when you say that they don't mean literally any system, but where are you coming up with the idea that you'll gently caress up picking a game and pick one that you don't want to play? That's what this sentence reads as to me, you saying "people are saying they'll play any game with me, but I don't think they would play a Famously Awful Thing that I don't even want to play and would never suggest" Please stop coming up with reasons for why fun and good things are 100% impossible. You said in your fourth post in the thread that you wanted to play Strike and your group just blanked you. Do you still want to try Strike? If you do, have you suggested to the people in this thread that have offered that you would like to try Strike and got that organized? That would be much better than sitting here going "aha, but what if I pick FATAL? Then no one would want to play with me."
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May 2, 2020 13:18
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spectralent posted:I'm not gonna massive post but yeah I have anxiety about an hour before every game and then I need to chat with people 1-1 after to check they had a good time because I'm always scared people are bowing to social pressure to say it was good. Have to say that when GMs start wanting me to do 1-to-1s is when I bow out of your game; I've left jobs over that poo poo (excessive 1-to-1s)
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May 2, 2020 16:28
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Meinberg posted:Ah, so you’re cool with the racism, got it Oh. What's that? You want to roll dice and pretend to be an elf? Probably because you love racism so much, pervert.
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May 2, 2020 17:19
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Leperflesh posted:Dungeon Saga's adventures - in particular, after you get past the "learn the game" intro adventures and try the first real one - are just badly designed. My group tried that one four times and bounced off it and we've never played again, even though I dropped a lot of money on it. My brother has some ideas for how to fix it that we'll probably try eventually. Basically there's a party of dudes and a hard time limit and unlike most dungeon-crawly type games, your goal is not to kill every skeleton, but much moreso to try to get past every skeleton as fast as you loving can, and even then if you roll badly to open a door three times in a row you've probably lost. With such a hard time limit, any player can screw the whole adventure by just not moving optimally or by choosing to engage an enemy that could have been bypassed, once. So not only is the game wide open for the expert to lean in and tell everyone what to do, there's a powerful incentive to listen to them and do what they say; not being blamed for losing the adventure because you didn't do what they said! I've played several co-op board games that get around that with varying degrees of success by giving players secret goals and such. Sometimes there is an optional 'traitor' element if you like that sort of tension, for example dead of winter lets you opt into having a chance of a traitor (not a 100% thing). In general though, having each player have an additional goal/motivation means that whats 'best' for one player isn't exactly true for another player, though they're both still trying to get an overall win. If someone has a tendency to keep trying to play for others bring it up on the side/1-on-1, it can be easy to not realize that you're doing stuff like that in the moment. General roleplaying games introducing various concrete goal mechanics for players is a similar idea and pretty good, because now each player has something additional they're working for, more hooks and tidbits for the dm to play off of, and overall just makes sessions a bit more interesting. Just like how a lot of PBTA stuff is sort of a codified 'good practices' system an experienced DM would probably be doing something similar in a system like d&d, but making it a mechanical bit does lead less experienced DMs to a useful tool, and helps guide players who aren't used to thinking that way to having a good skeleton to discover their character with.
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May 2, 2020 17:37
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 17:50
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Angrymog posted:Have to say that when GMs start wanting me to do 1-to-1s is when I bow out of your game; I've left jobs over that poo poo (excessive 1-to-1s) I usually call this "talking to my friends later" but okay.
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May 2, 2020 18:08
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It's more that constantly asking for reassurance can be emotionally draining on other folks. I know because, well, constantly looking for reassurance and being told "please stop doing that".
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May 2, 2020 19:11
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You don't need to come in swinging for my friends here I promise you I'm cool enough with people I've known for like a decade enough they'd be comfortable telling me to knock stuff off.
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May 2, 2020 19:31
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spectralent posted:I usually call this "talking to my friends later" but okay. You said you ask for feedback on your game in 1-to1s after the session. If it's after every session it's a bit much.
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May 2, 2020 19:38
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EthanSteele posted:Please do not do bad faith reads of yourself! People have offered to play games with you, on this very page even. You are probably correct when you say that they don't mean literally any system, but where are you coming up with the idea that you'll gently caress up picking a game and pick one that you don't want to play? That's what this sentence reads as to me, you saying "people are saying they'll play any game with me, but I don't think they would play a Famously Awful Thing that I don't even want to play and would never suggest" It's more just that nobody really says "I will play anything for as long as you like." But hey, if people do want to play stuff I suggest joining Xiahou's discord at https://discord.gg/YHUdgkS which has ended up becoming a general kind of "hey let's play indie games people aren't sure about in lockdown" server, which is probably the best possible outcome and the thought makes me happy whether I play them or not. 
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May 2, 2020 19:44
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I've become so confident in my ability to GM all my games are now terrible.
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May 2, 2020 19:54
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spectralent posted:You don't need to come in swinging for my friends here I promise you I'm cool enough with people I've known for like a decade enough they'd be comfortable telling me to knock stuff off. Oh I was just meaning as a "for instance" not in your particular case! Sorry!
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May 2, 2020 20:17
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hyphz posted:It's more just that nobody really says "I will play anything for as long as you like." It is completely fair if you do not wish to accept these invitations, for any reason or none! But I think that it would be polite to do it in a way that does not back-handedly suggest that the offers were false.
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May 2, 2020 21:55
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Josef bugman posted:Oh I was just meaning as a "for instance" not in your particular case! Sorry! It's alright, I read the hostility in someone else's post into yours which wasn't really cool either. Sorry!
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May 2, 2020 22:02
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Nessus posted:Hypothetically speaking, if someone did say "I will play anything, for as long as you like," and assuming you are not speaking of things like "mortality" or "the probability that many of us will at some point need to return to jobs etc." -- what would the next reason not to play be? And the one after that? With respect, can we please quarantine this hyphz discussion to another thread?
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May 2, 2020 22:13
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Sodomy Hussein posted:With respect, can we please quarantine this hyphz discussion to another thread? This thread was made for the Hphyz chat that kept popping up in the TG Chat thread.
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May 2, 2020 22:16
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Sodomy Hussein posted:With respect, can we please quarantine this hyphz discussion to another thread? This is the quarantine thread.
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May 2, 2020 22:36
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Sodomy Hussein posted:With respect, can we please quarantine this hyphz discussion to another thread? 
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May 2, 2020 22:46
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Sodomy Hussein posted:With respect, can we please quarantine this hyphz discussion to another thread? 
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May 2, 2020 22:46
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 Philosophy of roleplaying games is a lot more interesting than an E/N thread by any other name, just saying
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May 2, 2020 22:52
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 22:54
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Sodomy Hussein posted:With respect, can we please quarantine this hyphz discussion to another thread?
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May 2, 2020 22:58
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Traditional Games > The Philosophy of Roleplaying Games- THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR
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May 2, 2020 23:22
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Fair enough on not being e/n. We just need a hot philosophical topic I guess. Um.. Is GNS redeemable? (Separate from “damage”)
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May 3, 2020 05:43
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By the way my stupid experimental discord has somehow exploded and we're playing Early Modern German AW with themes from Miyazaki movies and I'm totally stoked. Dudes in amazing hats but also we're talking about nature, hells yeah.
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May 3, 2020 05:59
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 06:11
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I just don't think GNS is interesting anymore. It was a pathway to important conversations about ways of playing RPGs, but there's not really any value in pulling it up now.
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May 3, 2020 06:19
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admanb posted:I just don't think GNS is interesting anymore. It was a pathway to important conversations about ways of playing RPGs, but there's not really any value in pulling it up now. I don't know, I think it still has value the way 'Timmy, Jimmy, and Spike' does with magic, you just gotta admit and realize most players are actually a blend of all 3 goals/funseekers and not fall into traps where you decide one is inferior and dumb, but also realize how different playstyles can lead to issues. Like going back to the game I'm running now, I think there's a player who storygamey stuff isn't really for. He's getting into a feedback loop of not interacting with the fiction much and only really being interested in tactical combat which Dungeon World really doesn't offer. I think what might be moving towards the final straws for him: he finally leveled up and was unenthused that leveling isn't the big deal it would be in say d&d.
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May 3, 2020 06:45
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