|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 22, 2020 |
#
?
May 4, 2020 23:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 10:11 |
|
|
and all that's not even getting into terrain; D&D typically assumes the terrain is either Good or Bad when different levels of incline or varying amounts of foliage would affect your speed in completely different ways in real life you would not know exactly how fast you're going to run slightly up hill through leaves and maybe a little mud, in the middle of a combat scenario where the enemies could be in any number of places and will be moving and acting in real time as you are making that run edit: and the amount you can benchpress isn't the same as the amount you can benchpress after hauling a sword and shield around, kicking in doors and poo poo
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2020 23:29
|
|
|
Notahippie posted:Somebody on one of LTATWPiat's grog lets play threads once said "Every system designed to be a 'realistic' game at some point departs from simulating reality and starts to simulate the designer's idea of reality" and I really liked that claim. The point at which that happens is page 1, paragraph 1.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2020 23:30
|
|
|
Generally unless you're Laplace's demon or something you don't even need a terribly complex model. Beyond a certain point - a point which is closer than you'd think - more detail only serves to confound. In fact I have an example of this from my college years that I like to tell. Part of the "capstone" course for my math degree was a group project. My group was trying to model hit/strikeout rates for baseball pitches with various mathematical models. And we found that while you could throw hundreds of pages of data to predict any given pitcher/batter matchup, you didn't actually need to. Instead you could generate an answer that was good enough by throwing hit/strikeout rates for batter and pitcher into a simple formula. We're talking about one line of data rather than hundreds of pages. TRPGs won't have a one-to-one relationship with this but the principle is the same. From an external perspective most of this data is going to be foggy and that's okay. If you're trying to lift something on short notice you don't need its exact mass or shape; all you need to care about is whether it's Easy to Lift/Tricky/Out of the Question.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2020 23:45
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Sure, but for most RPGs "you might as well be playing a board game" is a negative comparison. The idea is that you can do anything, but this kind of hurts that a fair bit. You do realize this is directly counter to your argument that precise constraints are necessary? An RPG that leaves somewhat vague exactly how much money you have, and exactly how much the can of beans costs, increases what you can do! Instead of counting your pennies and discovering that you're five copper pieces short of that longsword you need, your system says that you're in the right wealth tier such that one longsword bought in a month is just barely possible for you, or perhaps you just roll. Similarly: instead of me, an rear end in a top hat GM who prefers precision over gamified convenience, has created a room that is 37.48' by 18.92', with a ceiling that is nominally 10.8' high but has crown moulding around the edges that create a radiused quarter circle of dropping height to an actual eight of 10/2' high at the corners; and you, a wizard, are casting a fireball that the rules say is 35' in diameter, but that's hardly realistic either is it? What, every wizard on earth's fireballs scale by their power level not smoothly, but in 5' diameter increments? Anyway my flying bad guy avoids your fireball by using the extra 2.48' at the back of the room, but you can't draw that on your map because you're using one square = 5' and just your pencil line is thicker than the .48' bit, so in a couple hours when you're mapping the adjacent room and I tell you that, once you've used your 10' pole (marked like a yardstick with finely graduated lines down to the hundredth of an inch) to meticulously measure out that room, you can't quite tell if maybe the wall is a reasonable 3'5" thick, or if it's really more like 5' thick and there could be a really narrow secret passageway between the two rooms??? because Jeff, who is drawing the map, has accumulated enough errors through pencil-thickness and imprecise placement of his ruler that it could easily be one or the other or somewhere in between. Later, you try to lift the portcullis, and we spend 30 minutes measuring the sizes of the bars, rivets, crossbars, density of typical medieval iron alloys, and then try to account for the loss of mass from 283 years of rusting in a variably damp environment, because if we add all the lifting characters' known and carefully noted down on their sheet STR (deadlift) values, they're within 50lbs of what I initially said the portcullis' weight is and so we'd better find the actual exact weight to be sure! No. You're just wrong here hyphz. The precision you think you're getting on a D&D-style grid/map and D&D-style specific capabilities in standardized units is a lie. It's still just an abstraction: the cost of a longsword is not really 10gp or whatever, it's just a % of the characters' expected wealth (if the system was designed well) or a random number someone made up that sounded good, more likely. The size of the rooms on a D&D map are just conveniently snapped to a grid that makes it possible for the players to map the place out as they go, without bogging down to much, but what they're really imagining is somewhat divorced from those actually completely arbitrary numbers (have to be, because real human beings cannot "imagine" an exactly-35' deep room, we just don't have that precise visual acuity). The constraints placed by the grid and by the printed costs etc. are all artificial, and they're all constraints that actually limit possibilities. The idea is that you can do anything in an RPG, and that idea is best supported with abstractions rather than artificial constraints. Your players are far more likely to search the room for secrets, and it's far easier for you to decide on the spot that they find one (but rolls: Complication! it's TRAPPED), if you aren't already constrained by a map they've drawn with artificially precise numbers that prove there's no room for a secret room behind that wall! You can't decide based on someone's improvisation or cool idea to insert a secret room any more, because you've been arrested by the artificial precision of your GM's map, which also took you an absurd amount of time to prepare in advance. Your players are far more likely to have a fun roleplaying time in the bazaar if there's just a few rolls to decide what's available and they can afford, instead of spending a ton of time at the table pouring through equipment lists and tallying up (stupid, unrealistically fixed) prices, and then also spending a ton of time throughout every adventure they take, carefully noting down their balance sheet whenever they find a few bucks, plus rolling for how much they made at their job this week, and then asking you how much their taxes are this year, and shouldn't they be paying rent, and given half the city burnt down last year should rent be higher now, and oh, the book says that meals at an inn cost $15 but obviously they're cooking in their room so that should be lower but how much does it cost to buy potatoes in bulk? All games use a combination of constraints and abstractions. The 10' cube for assembling dungeons is actually an artificial constraint (of a realistic world that wouldn't be on that grid, to support mapping). The H&K .45ACP pistol in the equipment table that costs exactly $450 is an artificial constraint (of a realistic world in which the price of a gun changes depending on where and when it's sold and who is buying and what the local sales tax rate is and countless other factors). The fireball's 30' radius is an artificial constraint (of a realistic magic system in which how much fire a given wizard can generate doesn't snap to a grid either.) Free yourself from these constraints, they're all artificial. RPGs give you more freedom when they remove constraints that get in the way of the imaginary realism of the scene, the smooth flow of the encounter, the heroic capabilities of the heroes. When your players demand to know exactly how far away the bad guy is, it's because they're still imprisoned by familiarity with a system of artificially precise constraints. The graph paper is a tyranny. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 23:58 on May 4, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 4, 2020 23:52
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 00:09
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I'm amazed you've apparently run some version of D&D for these people for years without them going "AHA! I'M LEAVING, HYPHZ - AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!" because there's a shitload of gaps regarding frequent activities that just plain don't come up. Not even in Pathfinder, I bet! The dramatic reveal may be that hyphz is a paid DM and said crazy players are putting his kids through college.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 00:19
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't know that I agree with that. Constraints and graph paper and a grid and more specific room and dungeon placement can make for certain types of interesting challenges, albeit more focused on the players than the characters. Grids and a specific configuration of rooms can make for interesting tactical challenges. Being able to do a few measurements and figure out that there's a suspiciously broad space between two rooms can be a more engaging way of finding out that there's a secret room for a group who likes dealing with such environmental puzzles. None of that depends on pretending that you have ultra-realistic measurements of things that you couldn't practically realistically measure and aren't interesting anyway. Now personally I have almost never walked through a building and even thought about exactly how big the rooms were, except for like a couple of tours of old houses on a trip. Libertad! posted:The dramatic reveal may be that hyphz is a paid DM and said crazy players are putting his kids through college.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 00:21
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 00:31
|
|
|
Lunatic Sledge posted:different levels of incline [] would affect your speed in completely different ways that's why we call it de facto speed. But first, we need to talk about parallel universes.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 00:55
|
|
|
incidentally, players asking for really bizarre and specific measurements was always a red flag in my group that a dumb loving plan was about to go down, to the extent that it became a running gag (asking "how high is the roof" in particular was the ill omen preceding the worst ideas)
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 00:56
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:Here's the thing: if you aren't able to give those measurements at a drop of a hat then you're giving the players a pretty big signal that it doesn't matter. You can also explicitly say: "that doesn't really matter". Now, if you did say it didn't matter and then later went "haha! I said it didn't matter, but in fact, if you'd insisted, you would have found that secret room!", that's lovely behavior for a DM. You need, coming in, to decide what this is about. Like, sometimes I'll steal a whole dungeon from a module, and then my players get fragments of an actual map of the place, and they're welcome to assess things based on placement. Sometimes I'm pulling it out of my rear end, and then there's vaguely rooms and corridors and me adding some vague environmental storytelling and if they catch on to something or roll well they find things.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 01:00
|
|
|
Lunatic Sledge posted:incidentally, players asking for really bizarre and specific measurements was always a red flag in my group that a dumb loving plan was about to go down, to the extent that it became a running gag (asking "how high is the roof" in particular was the ill omen preceding the worst ideas) the answer is always "high enough"
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 01:32
|
|
|
Lunatic Sledge posted:incidentally, players asking for really bizarre and specific measurements was always a red flag in my group that a dumb loving plan was about to go down, to the extent that it became a running gag (asking "how high is the roof" in particular was the ill omen preceding the worst ideas) YMMV. Some of the most fun I've had DMing has involved dumb loving plans going down, generally in flames. "How high is the roof" is the time to put the popcorn on.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 01:51
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:YMMV. Some of the most fun I've had DMing has involved dumb loving plans going down, generally in flames. "How high is the roof" is the time to put the popcorn on. oh, yeah, I love dumb loving plans "how high is the roof" is just like, the theme song that kicks in when poo poo's about to spiral out of control
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 02:03
|
|
|
im still laughing to myself really hard at the idea of someone asking another person "how much can i bench" like gently caress i dunno dude, how much can you bench
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 02:27
|
|
|
Lunatic Sledge posted:oh, yeah, I love dumb loving plans Long as you aim for the bushes.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 02:46
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't know that I agree with that. Constraints and graph paper and a grid and more specific room and dungeon placement can make for certain types of interesting challenges, albeit more focused on the players than the characters. Grids and a specific configuration of rooms can make for interesting tactical challenges. Being able to do a few measurements and figure out that there's a suspiciously broad space between two rooms can be a more engaging way of finding out that there's a secret room for a group who likes dealing with such environmental puzzles. None of that depends on pretending that you have ultra-realistic measurements of things that you couldn't practically realistically measure and aren't interesting anyway. That "find secret rooms with careful mapping" thing is an interesting puzzle; but it's not "realistic", it's just a puzzle that is masquerading as an Adventure Thing. In reality, or in a simulated reality, without very accurate equipment and a lot of undisturbed time, quasi-medieval adventurers couldn't possibly draw a map that accurately of some interior dungeon space. Hell, with a tape measure and all the time I need, I can't map my own goddamn house to more accurate than maybe half a foot or so. Because it's really hard to check squareness, work around the architectural details like door frames and trim, and of course in the real world actual houses aren't perfectly square. So I'm not saying you can't have fun with a mapping minigame embedded in your dungeon adventuring game. I am saying it's an artificial constraint, and pretty much the only benefit provided by that level of accuracy is A) discovering secret passages and B) meshing with other artificial constraints of the same game system, such as weapon and spell ranges and character movement figures that are all also artificially constrained in the same way. A) also has weird and sometimes bad follow-on effects. If the GM makes the next two adventures not happen to have any secret passages that are fit in between areas the players map, then the players will spend far too much time trying to make their map maximally accurate anyway, wasting a lot of table time that they didn't need to. That's what I mean by the tyranny of the graph paper. Once you've made "find things by accurate mapping" a part of the game, you can't just take it away, unless you're willing to tell the players before each delve "in this dungeon there's no secret rooms" or "in this dungeon there's definitely more than zero secret rooms" so they'll know whether to bother with super-accuracy. And you can still get in trouble, if the mapper makes a single error and you're not constantly auditing their map. poo poo, because of that specific problem, back when I was running AD&D, I reached a point where I was drawing the players' map for them, because otherwise they'd be constantly "finding" secret passages that weren't there, and/or drawing a room that somehow overlapped adjacent rooms/passages and then asking for help fixing the issue. One day in the mid 1990s I finally realized the map was asinine, told the players if they wanted a map one character would have to keep both hands free to do the drawing and another would have to be right next to them with the light source, and if they didn't want to do that (they emphatically did not) then they'd get no map but they also wouldn't need one, because we all talked about it and they and I understood the intention here was not to punish them, just get rid of a tedious chore with an extremely low payoff rate. The rules for finding secret doors always gave them lovely chances on one roll anyway, so they'd wind up spending hours scouring empty hallways that just happened to not have anything next to them in the tunnel system, just in case, or (in 3rd edition) to "take 20" on search checks. I take it back. The "find secret rooms with careful mapping" thing isn't an interesting puzzle, either. It's a lousy trick played on the players to make them waste their time playing a dumb minigame with worse payout than a vegas slot machine. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 03:15 on May 5, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 03:12
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 03:25
|
|
|
Oh sure. Don't get me wrong. I used grid maps throughout my D&D 4th Edition days, it's a tactical combat game and you pretty much couldn't play without one. But even with the radically improved prep time tools that 4th edition gave me, it still required quite a fair bit of work to put together good tactically-interesting maps. It could be fun, but it also meant the game experience had little or no improvisation on my part beyond flavor description. And there were still plenty of times when some overlooked power of a character was either useless, or unexpectedly trivialized the encounter, because I didn't consider it when drawing the map. Neither of those cases are disastrous in 4th edition D&D, but they definitely arise from the tyranny the map imposed; I was constrained from improvising or adjusting the encounter midway through, at least as far as the exposed map (one can often add some latecomers to make an encounter harder, or fudge a roll to make it easier; but that's because those factors aren't constrained by the game the way the definitive reality of the map does). The reality of the situation is that my players would have been highly forgiving if I'd just declared mid-encounter "OK I didn't realize this obstacle was going to make the enemies so hard, that wasn't my intention. Let's say this ten-foot bit isn't there and never was, or something," because of course I play with normal people who want the game to be successful. But in that case, I'm making a successful attack against the map tyrant, and very definitely violating hyphz' inviolable pact with his players that he can never make judgement calls outside the rules or he's just playing cats with lasers now and that can't be tolerated. And it's also violating the principle hyphz has put forward, that the characters in their world "would be able to tell" what their reality is, and changing that reality mid-stride is nonsensical, or whatever.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 03:45
|
|
|
Thank you.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 03:54
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 04:02
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:One thing I tend to play with a lot with pre-created maps (usually something I stole from a module, although I did create one elaborate two-level map that we all had a lot of fun with) is the fact that yet-unexplored parts of the map don't have to exist. Meaning I feel completely free to either use what's written down, or revise it, or move it somewhere else, or invent something else out of whole cloth. I do it on the macro level, too; with time, the regional map gets more fleshed out as it makes more and more sense to put details in, but I can come up with elaborate things that some NPCs or factions are up to - as long as the players haven't encountered the direct consequences of it yet, I can change all of it on the fly, I can make up new things, I can remix, anything. hell yes, escape the map tyranny my friend this is anti-hyphz play you're describing, of course
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 04:03
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:YMMV. Some of the most fun I've had DMing has involved dumb loving plans going down, generally in flames. "How high is the roof" is the time to put the popcorn on. The thing about the "cats and lasers" metaphor that we've all been overlooking is this: the cat will chase the laser until the battery dies or your arm falls off. Because they're having fun, not in the catching but in the chasing. As for dumb plans, I was running my PbtA Traveller hack; the PCs had taken out the sniper that bagged their boss and were assaulting the building the bad guys were operating from. Once they figured out where they were, they dug up some welding gear, went to the room above the security center with the bad guys in it, and decided to cut a hole in the floor so they can drop in on the bad guys. I have a move called Grand Entrance that's basically do something to fix everyone's attention, roll +cool, and on a good result get a free action while everyone is backfooted by your audacity. I figured this was a great chance to kill some PCs 45 minutes into the first session, but whatever, fan of them or not, they aren't my characters. Then the player narrating this, who happened to have +2 Cool, goes and rolls a natural 12 as 3 heavily armed PCs drop through the ceiling onto the very surprised bad guys. If it's stupid and it works it wasn't stupid.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 04:17
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 04:27
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 05:21
|
|
|
I've played games in the past where money and price lists were important, and, well, fun - It's a big part of Cyberpunk 2020, since getting better gear and cyberware is basically your advancement system, and Ryuutama is JRPG Oregon Trail, so making a list of how much stuff you can afford and physically carry is a big factor in play. However, these are games that are structured around that granularity, and not in a way that's necessarily 'realistic.' Like what was said about map making, it's not so much a way of simulating physical reality as creating tension or a solvable puzzle. CP2020 characters should be struggling to pay the rent and survive the next job, and having resource brackets or rolls would detract from the feeling you get when you look at your bank balance and know that if you don't get a job this month you'll be choosing between rent or food, or the euphoria of netting a few thousand eurodollars and knowing you'll be able to buy that cyber-eye you've had your heart set on. Depending on the type of Ryuutama game you're playing, your gameplay loop includes trading, and that means buying goods in one town and selling them in another - once again, having discrete, granular currency matters, because you can point to the grandfather clock you bought in the last village and go 'That's worth 400 gold, so by God I better get a return on this.' The events you can experience threaten your goods and supplies, creating a sense of tension separate from the life-or-death situations. If you're playing a game focused on character-driven drama and set pieces, questions like 'how many [currency] do I have' or 'how much does this torch cost' don't contribute meaningfully to the experience. They're pointless window dressings that soak up time and distract from what the players should actually be focusing on. I think to an extent one just has to accept that 'some players will throw a fit if this isn't quantified' isn't actually an argument for anything except those players being unpleasant people with an agenda that is harmful to collaborative experiences. It doesn't mean they should automatically be catered to.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 07:32
|
|
|
How would Ryuutama work to run Ultraviolet Grasslands?
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 13:40
|
|
|
So as Nessus suggested I'll give a summarised play experience and note it with the doubts I have about doing it other ways, rather than arguing in circles. Note: potential spoilers here for the 5th episode of the Age of Ashes adventure path for PF2e. The structure of the second section of the adventure is that the PCs are in the city of Katapesh, where a slaver organization, the Scarlet Triad, is headquartered. Trading slaves is not illegal in Katapesh, but taking slaves within the city is. Unfortunately, the organization is considered part of the city's guild structure and an attack on it, physical or otherwise, will turn the whole city against them. One of the guilds - the one whose member sent the PCs here - has already raised a council motion to rescind this protection from the Triad, and the PCs job is to visit each of the other guilds in the town and either persuade them (via abstracted social moves or otherwise) to vote against the Triad, or to do a side quest for them. There is a time limit in the number of days before the council convenes. I'm not sure how this could happen in an improvised game. I could probably see this, just about, working as a homebrewed adventure, but if I was improvising it I'd have to come up with a whole list of guilds on the fly. Persuasion without background. The other side is that I knew the PCs would probably use the abstracted mechanics or do the sidequests rather than trying to RP persuasion, but that's OK - the module doesn't really give them any other choice because it has so little detail on what the guilds might want or how the PCs might gain leverage over them in such a short time. And if I'm improvising it, then it's a bit tricky because it doesn't really make sense for that leverage to be readily available to newcomers to the town, but if it isn't then I have to make up on the fly a whole ton of other structures that are related to whatever that leverage is. Currently there are two big threads active. First of all, the PCs broke in to a Scarlet Triad slave auction to free the slaves. As I mentioned previously, the module assumes they do this as a heist/stealth mission, but instead the PCs arrived early while the slaves were being moved and butchered everyone in the Bheshamtal Estate where the auction was due to be held, then intercepted the slave transfer. Secondly, one of their allied guildmasters had been poisoned. The PCs had cured the guildmaster with Neutralize Poison and a high roll, but then went to the Guild Of Poison Makers to ask about the poison and a potential antidote. The module deliberately plays with this by making the head of the Guild Of Poison Makers a genuinely affable and trustworthy individual, and I leaned into this a bit; he undertook to research the poison for them. So, I prepared two things. First of all, I expected the PCs would be going back to the Guild of Poison Makers. Per the module, the next step is that the head of that guild is also poisoned, and clues that he gives them can enable the PCs to track down the poisoner. Secondly, I figured there had to be some consequences for the slaughter at the estate, so I intended to have the PCs arrested. I was cautious about this in two ways. First of all, the PCs were confronted by corrupt guards acting illegally early in the adventure, and there was the risk that they would think this had happened again, and attack the actual police and screw everything up. So I figured they'd have to be very procedural and decent. The PCs used Hats of Disguise while in the estate, so now I needed to work out what evidence they would have had. Fortunately, the Triad are fully capable of casting Speak With Dead, and the dead would report that - regardless of who did it - they were attacked with a pair of picks. Since literally the first thing the PCs did when they got into the city was to enter the gladiatorial games and fight a spectacle match against a monster using two picks, they'd be suspicious. Plus there's that one of the PCs is literally named "tupix". (I didn't know if I should actually act on this, because that player always chooses goofy character names and it's just part of the fun for them, so I figured it'd be a bit mean to make the IC choice work against him.) Secondly, in other games - Shadowrun for example - I've learned that the players are very reluctant to act against the actual police in most settings. There was the risk that they would actually simply surrender and potentially allow the adventure to end around them, complete with requisite bad feelings from the players. So, I drafted a plan for what would happen. The PCs would be held in custody. The poisoner in disguise would visit them, claiming to be a member of the anti-slaver Bellflower Network, and possibly try to pass them poisoned snacks. If not healed, the guildmaster of the Poison Makers would die. But they would now have a sample of the poison which they could use, at some point, to form an antidote (this seems pretty daft to me but the module lets them do it in a single roll once they have a sample). Eventually the time would run out, the council of guilds would meet, the work the PCs had done so far would result in the Triad losing their protection in their absence, and at that point the module kicks in the next chapter by having the Triad kidnap one of the Pactmasters (the super-secret cloaked lords of the city) which basically results in the other Pactmasters letting the PCs do whatever the hell they want to the Triad. So I figured this could also include retroactively pardoning them for the Estate, and so we get back to the next section. So. Off we go. First of all, the PCs want to go through the stuff they looted from the Estate, which includes a ledger with suspicious transactions in it. One of the backgrounds you can choose in PF2e is Barrister, and one of the PCs took this and has been putting skill advances into Legal Lore every time he gets one, so he is now "Legendary" in it. He asks if he can go to the Barristers' Guild and get notarised copies of the dodgy transactions to send to the affected guilds. I figure this seems reasonable, and he asks how much it will be. I have no idea, and after combing through the services entries in the PB and finding nothing, I adlib 10 gp. He points out that seems cheap for a lawyer, but fortunately another player reminds him that 10gp is a fortune for most folks and it's a mundane service. Prices. In a game with abstracted prices, I wouldn't have had to work that out, it's true. But it would also likely have been an amount so low that the PCs wouldn't have had to roll with their current wealth, thus creating the impression in rulesfeel that it was free. Plus, as in most dungeon crawling games, the PCs don't have income, just a lump sum, which makes that kind of wealth rule seem silly - like once you've got a million dollars, even if you have no income, everything below $100 is just free and doesn't cut into your million. Next the PCs head off to the Guild Of Poison Makers where the guildmaster drops his module-based clues: that he believes he was poisoned via salt put on the rim of his drink, that his assistants sighted an unknown woman in the lab the previous day but didn't think to investigate her and they're not sure why. The PCs offer to cast Neutralize Poison on him, but I already had the idea that he would refuse as he's in the best possible place to have an antidote made, all the Guilds' staff are working on one, and he isn't in immediate danger so he can serve as a test subject (I also got to use the line "You sell one man a poison for 10gp, and then a few days later, you sell another man the antidote for whatever you like" which I came up with in the shower a few days before). They express surprise that he's so devoted so I have the assistant who's treating them take them aside and say that yea, he's a bit obsessed with this, but he'll summon them back if he turns badly. Then a PC asks where he got his salt from. Now, this was a tricky one. In the module, the PCs are supposed to find two clues about the appearance of this unknown woman and then make an abstracted Gather Information check to find where she's been seen, which is in a salt warehouse. But asking where he got the salt from was a good idea. In a city the size of Katapesh it would be unlikely he would be getting the salt directly from a supplier - unless it was a specialist kind of salt, which the module does mention that the warehouse deals with, so that gives me an out. So the assistant admits that he weirdly insists on high-grade salt from this particular place, and although she thinks it's just the regular stuff with a fancy label, the Guild humors him. The module doesn't give a name for the salt warehouse, but fortunately at that point one of the players makes a joke about being "salty" in Overwatch, and I take advantage of the mood to name it Blizzard Salts. I'm not sure I could have come up with any of that on the fly. The idea of the poison being in salt is important as it isolates the type, but I might not have thought of that on the spot - I might have just said his drink was poisoned, which would have sent the PCs all over the place looking for anything that might be in a drink, and give no clear location for the poisoner to be. If the mood hadn't changed and nobody had made that joke, I would have had trouble coming up with the name of the warehouse directly. Plus, I screwed up anyway. If the poison was already in the salt sold to the guildmaster, there would be no reason for the poisoner to have been seen in the lab. I got away with it. So, the PCs head directly to the salt warehouse - I hadn't thought they'd go to it before being arrested, but hey. The poisoner is in the salt warehouse. Now, let me tell you about this poisoner. PF2e is a game with level modifiers, a la 4e. You add your level, plus additional bonuses, to almost all rolls. This is an adventure for level 15+ PCs, so the poisoner is a level 17 shapeshifting demihuman monster. Anyone who knows d20 knows what level 17 means. If you said level 9 spells, ding ding, you win. The poisoner has been statted up as a social butterfly type, with Illusory Disguise at will, and capable of throwing out level 9 heightened Charm and Suggestion with a save DC of 40. This is obviously meant to challenge the PCs, but the issue is that like 90% of the regular folks in the town would have no possible chance of making a save against that. So she could potentially have turned the whole town against them 30 citizens at a time. I'm so glad the module did that and not me. If I had been improvising, or had statted up the poisoner myself, I would be personally to blame for making them so ridiculously hard, which could be doubly problematic if the PCs ended up losing, which they kind of did, as we'll see. I'm not sure if I should have described the journey. Nothing interesting really needed to happen on the trip through the city, it's true. On the other hand, walking through a city is almost never uninteresting as an activity. This is why I like maps. So, one of the PCs wants to try to cast clairvoyance through the warehouse wall. If I didn't need a map, I do now. This seems a bit much, so I say that the clairvoyance spell is blocked. The poisoner can cast nondetection, so this is in-theme, even though per the text nondetection only lasts 10 minutes and she didn't know they were coming. Still, I did read on this thread that "it's ok to make up obstacles" so it stands. The jamming itself is suspicious, so the PCs enter the warehouse, and the poisoner shifts to a regular human guise and meets them, asking what they're interested in. They start to try and make excuses to search the warehouse, and the poisoner casts Charm on them. Unbelievably, all of the PCs blow their DC 40 save! So they all suddenly feel that this lady isn't suspicious at all and leave. There's some back-and-forth about how they proceed. The heightened Charm spell lasts a day, and the text says that affected people don't necessarily know they were charmed unless they were asked to do something harmful to themselves, which they weren't. One player argues that they would, however, remember that they went to the warehouse to try and find a sample of poisoned salt and that they left without one and don't know why, and since this is what's described for the people in the guilds the poisoner visited, this makes sense. I'm bloody glad that save was in the module, not on me. See, if it was me statting up the poisoner and picking the DC, then I have my GM save cheat sheet with all the PCs Will bonuses in front of me. That means that basically I am picking the probability of the PCs saving; I might as well be setting a flat number on the dice. I was taken aback by the PCs failing the save, but if I'd picked the numbers I could hardly claim to be. I don't even know how that would work in many other game systems. So, what's this in say PbtA? She casts a charm spell, and it's an Overcome/Defy Danger/Act Under Fire roll? That could work, but it does have the problem that the PCs - because they missed the save even though their bonuses are high - realized that this lady was a big deal. They wouldn't have done that, if it was just a 50% chance of failure and the same chance as any other danger. Or is the whole thing a Search/Read The Sitch type move and the charming the consequence of rolling a failure? That seems OK, but does mean that the PCs don't know that this lady is a magic user because they know that the spell was just flavor text for the failed roll. How about Spire? She casts a charm spell, the PCs make a roll to resist, and they take a bunch of Mind stress, but unless one or more of them rolls Fallout nothing happens as actually being charmed is in line with at least Moderate on the example fallout effects. So, the PCs return to their lodgings where they are arrested. Fortunately, they do go quietly after the evidence is explained to them, and I emphasise that they are being properly looked after in custody. The Legal-eagle PC wants to know if he can post bail. Hmm. Bail for multiple murder is a stretch. On the other hand, he is Legendary at law, and the Barristers' guild don't like the Triad, and because he had the document notarised, they know it was the Triad they likely attacked. All right, but it will be ridiculously high. 10,000gp. "Done," says the PC. I don't think that just "high wealth level" would have conveyed that. Plus, of course, the point of bail is that you get it back if you turn up to trial. Most abstracted wealth systems don't have a way to represent that. So, the PCs are now free again. They get the message that the Poison Makers guildmaster is sickening rapidly, and so they go and Neutralize Poison him to prevent him dying, and then try to contact a few more guilds before the council - apparently leaving the poisoner be. I'm going to stop here, this was most of the session but not all of it, but it has enough examples of bits where I pull up on the thought of improvisation that it works as an example.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 16:18
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 16:22
|
|
|
hyphz posted:So as Nessus suggested I'll give a summarised play experience and note it with the doubts I have about doing it other ways, rather than arguing in circles. I see a couple of distinct issues here: 1. You're occasionally uncomfortable with your skill at improvising. This isn't a right/wrong way to play issue, it's whether you feel like you can come up with names etc on the fly. 2. You feel that generating things like the stats for opponents makes you responsible for the player experience - if things are too hard or too easy then it's a bad experience. 3. You identify places where you feel like you screwed up. 4. There's a specificity/abstraction debate about specific prices etc. Re points 1 and 3, they have a lot more to do with your judgment of yourself than the judgment of the group. You described a game session to me that sounds like it was fun for your players, and I hope fun for you. You have to focus on that as the bottom line. You can always find things to beat yourself up about - in the game and in real life - and if you go in looking for those then I guarantee you'll find them regardless of whether you're improvising or not. Working on those issues is honestly not about changing your behavior, it's changing your attitudes about your behavior. Be nice to yourself! Re point 2, that's an interesting one. It's just as true for the authors of the scenario as it is for you if you were improving, though, and the description you gave sounds to me like the authors of the scenario came up with a pretty challenging boss that rolled well and you still came up with a story that was fun and satisfying for the players. Let's say you designed that boss yourself - would you see that encounter as a failure in a way you don't now? If so, see my points above. Re: point 4, to me the detailed/abstraction economy debate is a red herring because some people like one and some people like the other and you shouldn't worry about what's the "right" way to play. You should pick a style that supports the experience you and your players want.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 17:44
|
|
|
Notahippie posted:Re point 2, that's an interesting one. It's just as true for the authors of the scenario as it is for you if you were improving, though, and the description you gave sounds to me like the authors of the scenario came up with a pretty challenging boss that rolled well and you still came up with a story that was fun and satisfying for the players. Let's say you designed that boss yourself - would you see that encounter as a failure in a way you don't now? If so, see my points above. Well, no, I don't feel it is. The authors of the scenario don't have their group's stats right in front of them, and are instead going to be designing based on where characters of the appropriate level "ought" to be in the general view of the game system, which means that if the PCs are better or worse they rightly meet the consequences of that. But once I know all the stats I can't easily do that myself - even if I look up the level guidelines and design to that, I'm still stuck either looking at or choosing to be reckless with regard to the knowledge that my PCs are way behind on will saves (for example), and either way I'm knowingly making things worse for them.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 18:02
|
|
|
This is an interesting and useful example. Thanks for taking the time to post it. There's a lot to unpack here, and I imagine other posts are already being composed in response, so I'll skip to this part: hyphz posted:I don't even know how that would work in many other game systems. So, what's this in say PbtA? She casts a charm spell, and it's an Overcome/Defy Danger/Act Under Fire roll? That could work, but it does have the problem that the PCs - because they missed the save even though their bonuses are high - realized that this lady was a big deal. They wouldn't have done that, if it was just a 50% chance of failure and the same chance as any other danger. Or is the whole thing a Search/Read The Sitch type move and the charming the consequence of rolling a failure? Now you could come up with a "custom move" for her, maybe something like: preternaturally charming: attempts to read this person are made with +Hot rather than +Sharp. On a miss, treat it as a flipped manipulate roll. So when she tells you, "These aren't the salts you're looking for," you can either take her word for it and move along (and get +1 XP!), or you can pierce her charming veil and be like, "Wait a minute..." but the MC will un-highlight one of your stats. And of course, "What do you do?" Or maybe: master puppeteer: when interacting with this character, roll+Sharp. On a hit, you see through their bullshit and can act as normal. On 7-9 the MC holds one, on a miss the MC holds three. At any point the MC can spend hold 1-for-1 to: * take -1 forward * inflict 1 Harm (ap) This is exactly a mirror of the Brainer's in-brain puppet strings move. That's how I might handle this in a PbtA context. Ilor fucked around with this message at 18:15 on May 5, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 18:11
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Well, no, I don't feel it is. The authors of the scenario don't have their group's stats right in front of them, and are instead going to be designing based on where characters of the appropriate level "ought" to be in the general view of the game system, which means that if the PCs are better or worse they rightly meet the consequences of that. But once I know all the stats I can't easily do that myself - even if I look up the level guidelines and design to that, I'm still stuck either looking at or choosing to be reckless with regard to the knowledge that my PCs are way behind on will saves (for example), and either way I'm knowingly making things worse for them. My point was that the worst-case scenario isn't that bad, though. Through accident or design the scenario authors you used gave your team a really hardcore villain who succeeded in charming the poo poo out of your group, and the result was a fun and interesting story beat. Let's say you intentionally did the same thing out of malice or whatever - wouldn't the result be the same?
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 18:35
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:How do you feel about the Barter mechanic in AW? Honestly, I've only played one session of AW and it didn't get used, but looking at the rulebook I like the way it works. It makes sense for AW, where you're dealing with a post-apocalyptic barter economy where value is relative and social advantages and bonds can be as important as physical goods. It also suits the broad-strokes approach to procedure and drama AW's system encourages, where you're not supposed to be bogged down with the minutiae. The move has the good sense to point out that you don't make this move if you're looking for something readily available or common. It's for finding something that's difficult or risky to acquire, with all the potential complications that entails. I definitely agree with regards to older editions of D&D. Your carrying capacity was important for the reasons you've said, because it was a game very directly focused around looting expeditions, and the amount you could carry was important not just to survival, but advancement. Current editions of D&D and it's direct competition have tried to move more towards heroic fantasy, but kept the granular encumbrance and monetary systems from its' gritty cave-diving wargame past. I don't think either of these systems suit the 'intended' experience of modern D&D. hyphz posted:Prices. In a game with abstracted prices, I wouldn't have had to work that out, it's true. But it would also likely have been an amount so low that the PCs wouldn't have had to roll with their current wealth, thus creating the impression in rulesfeel that it was free. Plus, as in most dungeon crawling games, the PCs don't have income, just a lump sum, which makes that kind of wealth rule seem silly - like once you've got a million dollars, even if you have no income, everything below $100 is just free and doesn't cut into your million. I really don't understand this. You've pointed out yourself that the price you gave was completely arbitrary, because the value of a service or good in a fantasy economy is always going to be completely arbitrary. You have a Level 17 party for whom a 10 GP fee is effectively free of charge. How is eyeballing a cost that is equivalent to free of charge superior to having players just have an effective Resources stat that would let the GM just go 'yeah, this is going to be a minor clerical fee, that's within well within the means of some of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world.'
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 19:32
|
|
|
hyphz posted:The structure of the second section of the adventure is that the PCs are in the city of Katapesh, where a slaver organization, the Scarlet Triad, is headquartered. Trading slaves is not illegal in Katapesh, but taking slaves within the city is. Unfortunately, the organization is considered part of the city's guild structure and an attack on it, physical or otherwise, will turn the whole city against them. One of the guilds - the one whose member sent the PCs here - has already raised a council motion to rescind this protection from the Triad, and the PCs job is to visit each of the other guilds in the town and either persuade them (via abstracted social moves or otherwise) to vote against the Triad, or to do a side quest for them. There is a time limit in the number of days before the council convenes. the trouble here is that you're trying to think of how an improvised game would somehow be as deep and complex as a pre-written adventure module (also few games are 100% improvised. i usually take some time before a session to think of some characters, locations and setpieces that might show up and jot them down. jason cordova's 7-3-1 technique is a more structured version of this that i've adopted and recommend looking into). and the thing is that a session that is largely conducted from an improvisational standpoint is not going to be that detailed. the tradeoff for memorizing or referencing extensive adventure module information is speed and reactivity at the table. one thing i dislike about pre-written adventure modules is how they can hinge on stuff happening that can become divorced from the game. its a bit like pixelhunting in a videogame; it wants a specific outcome but your players might get on a different track entirely and you end up wasting time. one strength of improvisational play is that i can just piggyback off of their speculation. in this situation in particular, if i was going with this "politicking among the guilds to cast out a troublesome ally" setup i would do just a few guilds, like 2-4 and give them very broad identities unless i'd done some time between sessions thinking about them. again, its always so easy to look to the table and go "what guilds have you heard about in this city?" and then use their answers hyphz posted:Persuasion without background. The other side is that I knew the PCs would probably use the abstracted mechanics or do the sidequests rather than trying to RP persuasion, but that's OK - the module doesn't really give them any other choice because it has so little detail on what the guilds might want or how the PCs might gain leverage over them in such a short time. And if I'm improvising it, then it's a bit tricky because it doesn't really make sense for that leverage to be readily available to newcomers to the town, but if it isn't then I have to make up on the fly a whole ton of other structures that are related to whatever that leverage is. why? the player characters are special, they aren't just "newcomers to the town." if i'm reading this right they were 15th level, which puts them at the top level of beings in the world, which makes it even more likely that when they show up they start moving and shaking without a lot of preamble. now i know what you're thinking, and i'm not saying they should have an easy time of getting these guilds on their side. but the opportunity to do so should be clear, and that's true at any level. the pcs shouldn't stumble around for hours looking for an in. provide them with the in and make it challenging to achieve, because the fun of the game is in exploiting an opportunity, not searching for the opportunity hyphz posted:Secondly, in other games - Shadowrun for example - I've learned that the players are very reluctant to act against the actual police in most settings. There was the risk that they would actually simply surrender and potentially allow the adventure to end around them, complete with requisite bad feelings from the players. i don't really have any advice here, but i just wanted to note that this has never, ever been the case for a group in any game i have ever run. any time i have ever sicced the authorities on a group of player characters they have either chosen to escape or gone loud immediately. the level of opposition has never mattered, the pcs have never once submitted to the guards, army, cops etc. and its really weird to hear that yours do because there were times when i would have dearly loved to introduce a new antagonist or plot element by having the characters arrested and then launching into a daring escape, but those dreams always end in imaginary blood. hyphz posted:So. Off we go. First of all, the PCs want to go through the stuff they looted from the Estate, which includes a ledger with suspicious transactions in it. One of the backgrounds you can choose in PF2e is Barrister, and one of the PCs took this and has been putting skill advances into Legal Lore every time he gets one, so he is now "Legendary" in it. He asks if he can go to the Barristers' Guild and get notarised copies of the dodgy transactions to send to the affected guilds. I figure this seems reasonable, and he asks how much it will be. I have no idea, and after combing through the services entries in the PB and finding nothing, I adlib 10 gp. He points out that seems cheap for a lawyer, but fortunately another player reminds him that 10gp is a fortune for most folks and it's a mundane service. i'm glad that this player accepted the 10gp cost because the fact that you even had to make it up is wild. the price seems so low that it might as well be inconsequential and handwaved. not to mention that time spent out of game referencing charts and deciding on a price is time not spent killing imaginary slavers and casting pretend spells hyphz posted:I'm not sure I could have come up with any of that on the fly. The idea of the poison being in salt is important as it isolates the type, but I might not have thought of that on the spot - I might have just said his drink was poisoned, which would have sent the PCs all over the place looking for anything that might be in a drink, and give no clear location for the poisoner to be. If the mood hadn't changed and nobody had made that joke, I would have had trouble coming up with the name of the warehouse directly. i don't think you have to come up with these details on the fly. if you tell the players that the guildmaster was poisoned and they want to investigate who did it, you can give them a few examples. common stuff would be food, drink, maybe a medicine he takes or a salve applied through a handshake. simple stuff, you just throw it out there and let them speculate. listen to their speculation and either a) go with the one that sounds more interesting or b) just have it be the very first thing they pursue. if it seems convenient that the first thing they go after is the right one, that's fiction baby. this ain't a dashiell hammett story, its an elfgame. the interesting thing, again, is not the discovery of the clue but the follow-up and the confrontation with the culprit hyphz posted:Plus, I screwed up anyway. If the poison was already in the salt sold to the guildmaster, there would be no reason for the poisoner to have been seen in the lab. I got away with it. side note: i do like that the fact that one of your players didn't notice this detail and presumably didn't call you out on it has you acting like you're db cooper hyphz posted:So, the PCs head directly to the salt warehouse - I hadn't thought they'd go to it before being arrested, but hey. The poisoner is in the salt warehouse. Now, let me tell you about this poisoner. PF2e is a game with level modifiers, a la 4e. You add your level, plus additional bonuses, to almost all rolls. This is an adventure for level 15+ PCs, so the poisoner is a level 17 shapeshifting demihuman monster. Anyone who knows d20 knows what level 17 means. If you said level 9 spells, ding ding, you win. The poisoner has been statted up as a social butterfly type, with Illusory Disguise at will, and capable of throwing out level 9 heightened Charm and Suggestion with a save DC of 40. This is obviously meant to challenge the PCs, but the issue is that like 90% of the regular folks in the town would have no possible chance of making a save against that. So she could potentially have turned the whole town against them 30 citizens at a time. so it seems like the thing here, which is a common thread with you, is that you're terrified of taking responsibility for an action as the gm because you don't want to be "to blame" for something being too easy/hard. you want to shift that "blame" onto a module and say, iirc, "this module kinda sucks" to save yourself. this seems like a natural consequence of spending so long gaming with a toxic group. the idea that there is a "blame" here for something that is outside the expected bounds of difficulty in an rpg is so strange to me. if something turns out to be too hard, there's no reason why you can't, in the moment or after the session, say "i'm sorry y'all i overtuned this thing a bit. give me a few minutes and i'll adjust it and we can continue. disregard what happened earlier." is there a reason why this would be unacceptable in your group? hyphz posted:I'm not sure if I should have described the journey. Nothing interesting really needed to happen on the trip through the city, it's true. On the other hand, walking through a city is almost never uninteresting as an activity. This is why I like maps. make/buy a city random encounter table. i own several and have made a few of my own. they're tons of fun hyphz posted:So, one of the PCs wants to try to cast clairvoyance through the warehouse wall. no you don't. and if you feel strongly that you do, draw a box, put the player characters outside of it, and go from there. if you want to do more than that, call for a 5 minute break to draw a box with some doors and some more boxes inside of it. put in a few npc workers (no stats needed) and your villain. boom, good to go. hyphz posted:This seems a bit much, so I say that the clairvoyance spell is blocked. The poisoner can cast nondetection, so this is in-theme, even though per the text nondetection only lasts 10 minutes and she didn't know they were coming. Still, I did read on this thread that "it's ok to make up obstacles" so it stands. the thread was right. its more interesting and adds to the mystery and it signals to the player characters that this is the spot, time to drill down and get specific. hyphz posted:The jamming itself is suspicious, so the PCs enter the warehouse, and the poisoner shifts to a regular human guise and meets them, asking what they're interested in. They start to try and make excuses to search the warehouse, and the poisoner casts Charm on them. Unbelievably, all of the PCs blow their DC 40 save! So they all suddenly feel that this lady isn't suspicious at all and leave. There's some back-and-forth about how they proceed. The heightened Charm spell lasts a day, and the text says that affected people don't necessarily know they were charmed unless they were asked to do something harmful to themselves, which they weren't. One player argues that they would, however, remember that they went to the warehouse to try and find a sample of poisoned salt and that they left without one and don't know why, and since this is what's described for the people in the guilds the poisoner visited, this makes sense. nothing that happened here sounds all that bad to me. the characters came up against a powerful foe and "lost" in the sense that they lost their opportunity to deal with them. they know that something weird happened and can return to search for evidence, but they've lost their moment to get at the antagonist. this all sounds very good to me hyphz posted:I'm bloody glad that save was in the module, not on me. See, if it was me statting up the poisoner and picking the DC, then I have my GM save cheat sheet with all the PCs Will bonuses in front of me. That means that basically I am picking the probability of the PCs saving; I might as well be setting a flat number on the dice. I was taken aback by the PCs failing the save, but if I'd picked the numbers I could hardly claim to be. again there is the desire to disclaim responsibility. what would be the consequences if you had come up with the number? you interpret the module as a shield between yourself and player "bad feelings" which may be accurate to your toxic group but does not hold for any group i've played with hyphz posted:I don't even know how that would work in many other game systems. So, what's this in say PbtA? She casts a charm spell, and it's an Overcome/Defy Danger/Act Under Fire roll? That could work, but it does have the problem that the PCs - because they missed the save even though their bonuses are high - realized that this lady was a big deal. They wouldn't have done that, if it was just a 50% chance of failure and the same chance as any other danger. Or is the whole thing a Search/Read The Sitch type move and the charming the consequence of rolling a failure? That seems OK, but does mean that the PCs don't know that this lady is a magic user because they know that the spell was just flavor text for the failed roll. How about Spire? She casts a charm spell, the PCs make a roll to resist, and they take a bunch of Mind stress, but unless one or more of them rolls Fallout nothing happens as actually being charmed is in line with at least Moderate on the example fallout effects. pbta: no roll. i did this in my monster of the week game with a rich family of inbred psychics. the player doesn't roll, you just offer them a choice, take the mind control and do the thing that is asked of them and get 1 XP, or reject it. increase the xp in accordance with the stakes of the demand. players will do a lot of that xp spire: resist+occult, on a failure they do it, on a success they don't. stress is assigned per the rules, and if no fallout triggers who cares? that just loads them up with more stress for a bigger future fallout. another interesting option might be to, on a failure, offer them the choice between doing it and suffering no stress or not doing it and taking stress hyphz posted:I don't think that just "high wealth level" would have conveyed that. Plus, of course, the point of bail is that you get it back if you turn up to trial. Most abstracted wealth systems don't have a way to represent that. sure it does. take a hit to your abstract wealth until you show up to the trial. the hit becomes permanent otherwise until you acquire enough loot to compensate
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 19:45
|
|
|
I think other folks have covered things really well, but I'll just add that based on my read of the game, nothing particularly went wrong and hyphz shouldn't feel bad about one single thing that happened. I've run a couple or three "investigate the mystery" type adventures in D&D, and in every case, the players A) missed some leads I put in front of them, B) ran into problems that they never fully understood or resolved, and C) didn't care. For the future, I'd say that encounter with the charm lady in the warehouse sets you up for a lot of fun for the PCs when they next encounter her. They're confused about what happened, that gives you a tremendous RP opportunity to let them get some resolution one or two sessions later, and that time between sessions gives you the chance to prepare some kind of explanation without having to improvise it. For example: now she has a magic item that blocks the clairvoyance. Perfectly reasonable for a powerful mage with her set of abilities to acquire or make, and keep on her person. You can also invent an explanation for the person in the lab: either an innocent red herring when investigated, or, someone had to make sure the special salt was used on the guildmaster's glass and not some other salt, and also make sure nobody else got poisoned, and also maybe get rid of the evidence. OR POSSIBLY the idea is to divert attention to the salt factory, who are entirely innocent, when actually the poisoner in the lab was guilty. Or maybe something went wrong with the salt poisoning plot, and so the person in the lab had to intervene? Anyway think it through and you don't have to put a ton of effort, just have some kind of idea of what to say if the PCs suddenly remember that lead and ask about it/investigate it. For the money stuff: yeah, the 10gp is just a trivial admin cost, and games that abstract that would not make you roll, you just pay a trivial amount. You said "that might as well be free then, it feels like it's free" but that's not how it works: instead, it feels like something on your character sheet (your Wealth stat or whatever) mattered. It's no different than when a character with the skill: Profession (blacksmith) gets to automatically repair someone's armor "for free" - it feels good that your investment in those skill points got you something in return! The large fee for bail thing: first, don't feel as though just because bail exists in the real world, you have to have it in this setting, in this city, if you don't want to. But it's fine to decide it does, and that it's very expensive, and to have that large fee be difficult for even very rich people, because here's the second thing: there is a difference between your personal/party wealth (as a measure of net economic power), and "how much cash can you come up with on the spot in difficult circumstances"? I'm sure in Pathfinder your characters have carefully tracked where their money is and what form it's in, but another system might abstract these two things differently; it could be the case that functional millionaires can't post $10k bail, because they don't have $10k in cash and as prisoners they can't trivially access their full wealth, at least not immediately. In some games, that "wealth" thing isn't just cash money stored in bank vaults and real estate, though: it's also a societal perception of richness that makes it easier or harder for a person to gain credit. Someone perceived as a wealthy person can get their bail money paid just by stating that they're good for it, and "everyone knows" that's true; or by calling on a favor from other wealthy persons, because in general wealthy people often extend credit to one another, out of class solidarity, or for a (fat) "nominal fee", etc. Does Pathfinder 2.0 even contemplate the existence of credit? Because I assure you, again looking back at "realism", that credit systems are as old if not older than the existence of money. Here is a case where the nonspecificity of a "roll against your Wealth stat" is less of a constraint and more realistic than "how many GPs are in your bag of holding right now?". "Realistically," wealth is about influence and power and that includes access to credit. Access to credit and perception of wealth can vary geographically, too: in Conan 2d20, your economic status in your home province is higher than your status as a foreigner in foreign provinces, typically, and that is to represent that as a foreigner, you've got less access to credit. You can even get "success with consequence" type systems, where OK, you successfully drew on your Wealth (HIGH) stat to make a large bail; but, the consequence is that you had to draw on credit, and you now owe a favor to Lord Mountebank III, who fronted the cash for you, and expects not only full repayment but also some kind of customary consideration... and that's not necessarily just some extra money for interest. Isn't that more interesting and flavorful than "hmm yes you had $85k in gold and gems in your bag, so deduct $10k and make a note you'll get it back if you appear at trial." Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:03 on May 5, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 21:01
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Well, no, I don't feel it is. The authors of the scenario don't have their group's stats right in front of them, and are instead going to be designing based on where characters of the appropriate level "ought" to be in the general view of the game system, which means that if the PCs are better or worse they rightly meet the consequences of that. But once I know all the stats I can't easily do that myself - even if I look up the level guidelines and design to that, I'm still stuck either looking at or choosing to be reckless with regard to the knowledge that my PCs are way behind on will saves (for example), and either way I'm knowingly making things worse for them. The others have covered your main session post well, but I wanted to chip in on this. The authors of the scenario don't have the group's stats, but they *do* have knowledge of what the players stats should roughly be. As long as the DM hasn't been giving too much or too little wealth, you can pretty safely extrapolate what the players saves are expected to be at a given level. So they can check to make sure they haven't built up an almost unbeatable check. On the other hand, when you're building an enemy, you've got rules to follow. You go "the party is level 15, so to be an actual challenge I need to make this caster 17". Then you build a level 17 caster, and you go "ok they're going for a power-behind-the-throne vibe, so manipulation/subtle stuff is how they're achieving this". Give 'em the elite stat array (or whatever it is in pf2), progress them logically, equip them fittingly, figure out what spells they'd have. Then you can also go "they're a level 17 caster entrenched in this city, they're going to have a pulse on things". So if the PCs aren't being subtle about doing things in town, or who they're working for, it is entirely reasonable for said enemy to have an idea of the party and prepare somewhat for them. A consequence for just murdering their way through that heist should be all the enemy opposition aware of them and ready for them to attack without warning. Especially at high level, D&D really breaks down from any sort of 'reasonable' state, and its all crazy bullshit. The party has the levels and resources to deal with all sorts of crazy bullshit, and at that level they should be expecting to do so. If you read fantasy novel stuff ever, just remember that Drizzt was statted out for D&D 3E as a level 16 character. When you're building stuff you shouldn't be constantly trying to counter the party, you should be building stuff that makes sense. If the party has some sort of hyperspecialized character you can take that into account (find ways for him to shine, but also times where his weaknesses hurt), but as long as they're not always running into enemies designed to specifally counter them it'll be fine. If the party has a huge weakness and are pissing off powerful enemies those weaknesses should be exploited: first in a soft sense to highlight the vulnerability to the players, and later harder.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2020 22:57
|
|
|
By level 15 when they walk into town everyone should know who they are and what they're about. Guilds should be sending spies and recruiters. Common folk should be practicing their pitches in why the PCs should deign to solve their ghoul problem. Merchants should be hurriedly doubling the prices on all their premium items. Any enemies or potential enemies in the town should be making preparations.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2020 01:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 10:11 |
|
|
hyphz posted:So. Off we go. First of all, the PCs want to go through the stuff they looted from the Estate, which includes a ledger with suspicious transactions in it. One of the backgrounds you can choose in PF2e is Barrister, and one of the PCs took this and has been putting skill advances into Legal Lore every time he gets one, so he is now "Legendary" in it. He asks if he can go to the Barristers' Guild and get notarised copies of the dodgy transactions to send to the affected guilds. I figure this seems reasonable, and he asks how much it will be. I have no idea, and after combing through the services entries in the PB and finding nothing, I adlib 10 gp. He points out that seems cheap for a lawyer, but fortunately another player reminds him that 10gp is a fortune for most folks and it's a mundane service. it might seem this way but your players already explained it away, it felt cheap because 10 gold is nothing to them then another player reminded him that it's because he's rich. subtracting the 10 gold didn't meaningfully impact his purchasing power. if your players get a million dollars and stop gaining income then you start dropping their wealth for cost of living expenses(the conceit of most games is that you will continue to do game poo poo)
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2020 05:34
|
|
