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garthoneeye posted:Neat! I’ve wondered if there was a system that used something like that, but never bothered to actually look. Yeah we can argue about how well it worked but they did a 3 by 3 split of mental/physical/social vs. forceful/finesse/resistance. I've never fully come around to a full view on how successful it was cause it has some creakiness to it, but I gotta admit that it's a very cute and effective idea. I both love it conceptually and then sometimes it gets into the weeds and I curse it. It's the same thing like the classic White Wolf idea of take Thing and add Thing, make dice pool which is conceptually brilliant for flexibility, but sometimes has turned into just stupid poo poo. (Admitting fully that oWoD is way, way, way, way, way worse ; I'll criticize nWoD/CoD for some stuff, but it's the difference between saying "that's not a car it's a live fox, with rabies," and "sometimes when I turn on the left turn-signal at high-speeds it does weird things." No shade. I criticize things that I like more than I hate.)
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May 7, 2020 07:12
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yeah we can argue about how well it worked but they did a 3 by 3 split of mental/physical/social vs. forceful/finesse/resistance. Yeah, I mentioned it to a designer friend of mine and he also worked it into a 3x3 (adding spiritual, I believe) but he eventually went to a 3x2 dropping finesse.
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May 7, 2020 07:18
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Xiahou Dun posted:^^^^You just invented nWod's stats. The best pro-roll stuff tends to be countered by doing something like your mage/wod examples of "here are a couple things pre-spent, now build out the rest of the character" or stuff like reign/eclipse phase where you can randomize packages - so what you get is random but the overall powerlevel of your character isn't nearly as variable. For example, if you roll too lovely in d&d you either have a house rule to reroll, or you make some joke of a character that you attempt to get murdered off at some point, because as fun as it is to be the sidekick you get tired of being fairly useless. To handle d&d like other systems in a super hurried hack, you might take the standard array, and some variations with the same total cost based off the point buy, throw them into a table and roll on that. Roll on the skill list and pick whatever you land on as a "background" skill, something like that.
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May 7, 2020 07:32
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ZypherIM posted:The best pro-roll stuff tends to be countered by doing something like your mage/wod examples of "here are a couple things pre-spent, now build out the rest of the character" or stuff like reign/eclipse phase where you can randomize packages - so what you get is random but the overall powerlevel of your character isn't nearly as variable. Yeah sorry if I failed to be clear. I believe that rolling stats is dumber than a basket of hammers. I was rhetorically engaging with the idea to illustrate how it can only work in a totally different paradigm, if then. That's why I brought up Reign, specifically.
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May 7, 2020 07:45
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Tiggum posted:If I was in a game like this and only able to attend every other session (or two sessions out of three or whatever) I would just stop playing. It would feel like you were essentially saying "either show up every time or don't bother showing up at all". If you're rewarding people for showing up then you're punishing people who can't make it, and they're already being penalised by not getting to play. Piling additional penalties on top of that just exacerbates the problem - which is that someone who can't be there every time might feel like it's not worth being there at all. Ah, yes, I'm a terrible person. I expect players to show up at my tables. If they don't show up, we don't talk about it, they have deep beef over it without any other type of conversation, what does that tell me as someone spending the time to prepare and run a game? The only thing that I have going for running something is that there is some kind of consistency. Also, structuring this from your perspective is also completely fine. "It would feel like you were essentially saying..." If there is no conversation happening and a body shows up at the table half of the time or less, then we need to talk about how that person's schedule is working out, and what they'd like to do moving forward. Using the mechanics as a social cue to oust someone is, I feel, a bit unfair of a way of putting words in my mouth here. The reason why we allow this to take place in that group is because we are all okay with it, and we do have people who disappear for weeks at a time. People know and understand from a social perspective that there is a drawback - not punishment - if you're not there for the game, same as any other social experience that is in the moment. It's unavoidable short of cancelling the session for that week - which, we have done, multiple times, but not all the time. We game if we can. There is one player who hasn't shown up for awhile because they've been pretty busy. They're very apologetic, ashamed, and feel bad for not being able to attend all the time. It's not about the experience points for them. They just want to come play, but can't. To them, I said: "Hey, don't worry about it. The table will be there, and if you want come play, you'll always have a seat at the table." The best that I can do for that player is to make sure that whenever they are ready to come back, they are welcome and there's a game waiting for them. That might mean hand waving experience, a new character, or just dropping them into the story wherever they might be. We'll figure something out together. To illustrate hand-waving advancement, I also have another group where someone who is playing has to have a hard break or just miss half the session. Instead of saying "well, you might as well not be there", we talked about it and determined the middle ground would be to put in a break so they could go do that stuff, because we all want them to be there. We realized this after the fact, and then came together to discuss as a group what to do. They came in as a later player, and their schedule was respected. If they weren't able to maintain their schedule or things changed, we would make arrangements as needed. Since it's Lancer and we started them a level behind the other groups, they were still able to have fun and do what they needed to in those sessions. I gave them their accelerated level up after that major encounter, and they were super thrilled, and the rest of the group felt it was well earned, not a penalty. Lancer doesn't even have a mechanism to provide spot awards like experience. No player at that table found this to be unfair, or even particularly unfun. You (generically, not Tiggum specifically) can take what you want based on the way that each table I've talked about out of their context and say "ah, but if it was me..." but the key part that is missing is, it ain't you. If you were at my table, before we get to that point, we would have a conversation about your availability and what works for you. Just because it is working at that specific table doesn't mean that it will work for every table. It might stop working for that specific group, too. The solution? We'll talk it over. I run that game with the experience points for people that are fourteen plus hours on the other side of the world. Most of them are my coworkers who have demanding travel schedules (or used to) and sometimes can't show up for any number of reasons. For those folks, I talked to them, discussed what is comfy, and some of them were up front in saying "hey, I don't think I'll be able to play for this week, this month, two months, but would you be willing to still have me at your table?" They are asking if it's okay to be gone for such a long time before they even bring a character to the table at all. Experience doesn't matter to them, but being at the table does. Constructing an argument that a broad "someone" may not find worth in being at the table at all if they're not there getting the exact same rewards as other people because of all these other mechanical reasons...Is there no worth in demonstration, or discussion, or worth in sharing how a given group of people operate in a relaxed setting? Does a single mechanical advancement system signal that someone has no right to participate? To me, and to that group of people, it does not. For every table that I run, I make sure to have a session zero with them to discuss these kinds of things, and curate a game that is for that group. If there was indeed a new group that I would be running for, I would still do the same thing. Before getting to the foibles of mechanics and scheduling and what not, the conversation comes up first.
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May 7, 2020 09:30
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A couple things on what you've said alda: Session zero and campaign expectations. This is fine ground, and if someone has an inconsistent schedule the group can come to an agreement about how you're handling advancement and such. The big question that you skirted around is do you even bring up the option of non-piecemeal xp (ie milestones, or the party all progresses a level at the same time, etc)? Its great that you're working out how to handle the issue from the start, but clinging to stuff like individual xp is basically creating problems that you then are forced to solve. Just because a player is happy to be able to play at all doesn't mean that forcing them to be mechanically worse than the rest of the players is a fine thing. Your example of an accelerated level-up seems really weird, and I'm not sure how to phrase it well. Essentially you made them play part of the session as worse than everyone else, and then 'graciously' let them catch up part-way through. This may not even have been your intention, and the player just happy to chill with the rest of the group and play, but it doesn't make that not a sub-text going on. I could be wrong, but I believe that is the vibe that makes Tiggum say they'd just stop playing. The other thing is that this may not even be an area that the player feels they can bring up. They probably feel like they're pushing their luck just being an inconsistent player, and getting to play with everyone else is better than not being able to at all. It isn't that they wouldn't want to be on equal footing to the rest of the players, its that they're willing to take a penalty to play at all. This doesn't need to be the stance you take, and your groups would be healthier if you didn't.
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May 7, 2020 10:26
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aldantefax posted:There is one player who hasn't shown up for awhile because they've been pretty busy. They're very apologetic, ashamed, and feel bad for not being able to attend all the time. It's not about the experience points for them. They just want to come play, but can't. Now I don't mean this in an accusatory way so please do not bring out the stout timber and nails again. "Because I find the infrastructure and social expectations of D&D to be useful" is an entirely legitimate reason. e: To contrast to my favored system, if a player missed a couple of sessions they might well have harmed the party (because their character brings certain advantages to the group) but they will have at worst missed out on some opportunities to get skill checks. Indeed, if the party encountered some kind of Thing that left Jimbo and Jehosephat nuttier than a squirrel turd, the guy who missed a couple of sessions might well be a signal advantage.
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May 7, 2020 11:30
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Notahippie posted:Yeah, hyphz, I really feel like this is the real issue. How do you know that you didn't design something specifically to penalize the PCs? Because you literally are the person who did it, and you know what you did and why. If you pick something because of the internal logic of the story you developed, or because you thought it would be cool, or because you rolled a dice to see what happened, or for whatever reason, you specifically know why you made the choices you made. If you're uncomfortable with that because you worry your decisions are tainted by a secret desire to punish the PCs, it's you being too hard on yourself by a mile. As long as you're not actually deliberately loving with your table, be confident that you're not punishing them! It's not so much about that, it's about mechanical balance as well. I mean, the first time I encountered this problem was in a superhero game (M&M) so I'll use it as an example - this isn't the actual example that happened, mind you. Say a player makes up Fire Bloke who takes a weakness to ice. We'll assume this is a system in which he gets points for doing so and spends them on something else. We'll also assume that he does not take any rival/archenemy/nemesis type disadvantage, if the game supports them. It's a cheesy superhero game which means that there isn't much of a setting limit on what superpowers exist or how their presence make sense. And while the city museum can have an ice-themed exhibit, it can have a cat-themed one just as easily. I'm fully able to make up Icy Girl if I want to, but what are the properties mechanically for doing that? The design intent should be that whatever advantage that Fire Bloke bought for his points should be balanced out by the disadvantage of his vulnerability to her. But no rules design ever includes any statement on how frequently Icy Girl should appear nor how important conflict with her must be, so there's a fundamental bit missing. If the game has a nemesis/archenemy type disadvantage that it's even worse, since the player did not take one; if I give them one anyway, they ought to get those points, right? If it's a well-balanced game, he'll have more trouble against her than other villains but still have a fun story and/or fight; if it's a badly-balanced game he'll be totally helpless against her and utterly incinerate everyone else, essentially giving me no options for a fun encounter. And sadly, the only way to avoid that is to not give the player the option of tilting their character that far, which isn't popular because players buy thick books full of options more than they buy balanced systems. It's easy to say that if the character's tilted that far then I should discuss it OOC with the player, but that's not actually always a good option because OOC discussion isn't magic. It's perfectly possible that they'll just stonewall and I'm left either kicking them out of the group ("really? just because I want to be a good superhero?"), refusing to run the game at all (ditto), or conceding. And if I concede and then Icy Girl shows up in the game - well, it's going to look much more like passive aggressive pique than anything else. You can also argue that it should be treated as a spotlight sharing mechanic, but again, in that case the rules design is incomplete. While Captain Salty might easily be able to cover for Fire Bloke having trouble with Icy Girl, there's no actual rule that says that a player must make Captain Salty, or indeed that we can't end up with four Fire Blokes; nor any rule that I can't just make Ocean Boy who has no problem against either of them. Now, ok, this is a bit of an old argument and one of the reasons why advantage/disadvantage systems fell out of favour. The problem is that in practice, every system is an advantage/disadvantage system. If the player picked a Barbarian who has weak Will saves but strong Fortitude saves then I have the exact same problem with respect to enemies that focus on a particular save type. And nothing makes more sense than anything else when I'm making up the entire context in which sense is made. What does it actually mean for a class to have weak Will saves? How often should they be getting mind controlled for that to be a balanced adjustment to the class? Does it matter if there's a Cleric in the party as well or not? (ie, the effectiveness of spotlight sharing) (Edit: sorry to mobile users that for some reason the link above, which is just supposed to be a fun reference, shows up as a YouTube video that breaks the page up. I'm not sure why..) hyphz fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 17:22
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hyphz posted:
Sure, you're creating both the adversaries and the context they exist in, and in theory that means you have a bunch of undefined variables that all influence each other in ways that can cause you to throw up your hands. But in reality that's not how it works because games always start with some seed idea. If you're playing a new superheroes campaign, what's the hook? What excites you about it and makes you want to play that game? If it's a setting, then you have a setting to start thinking about and generating NPCs from. If it's a character, then you can start to develop a setting that fits the character. If it's a story, then you can develop whatever fits the theme the most - see what the MCU did with the basic idea of "play up the human/realistic elements of superheros." In the play example you gave, it seemed to me like you did just fine with improvising based on the elements above - you always had something to work with.
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May 7, 2020 18:02
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Nessus posted:If this is your policy, of what value is the experience point tracking? Especially in a situation where the experience points only matter as increments of levels (as opposed to being fungible upgrade points). I'll call a my bad if it seems like I was digging in and trying to shout down people questioning the choices I'm bringing to these tables. I just have a lot to write about on these topics because they are always on my mind these days running so many games. It is a bit unavoidable to go "ah, but in my game..." since the discussions are steering towards the specific and contextualized in those games (the Friday game with experience, the Monday Lancer game with the arbitrary quick advancement). The tl;dr is: yes, it's useful as a tool, but not one that need be applied universally. That said, a deeper discussion into experience points is warranted, so to the timber and nails we go as I navel-gaze space. First, let me start out by qualifying what I view experience points as from a design standpoint: experience points are a tool to provide immediate direct positive feedback to an individual or group in response to doing things. This can be anything that the award is for either in the meta-space or in the narrative. Because it is a tool (well-worn, at that) it does provide a familiar element to new players and guide their interactions in the game world. Not specifically to D&D, but the concept of experience gain in general is useful in this fashion for me. So, there's that. The value of experience comes in it being a reward that can be provided as a direct result of player action and agency either as a supplement or in absence of other rewards. It does give other players who play more the chance to advance faster for a little while, sure, but also is a positive reinforcement tool for people that want immediate and direct feedback without taking any resources away to encourage behavior. It's also come full circle from other game design notes since even though you can't "spend" it (in D&D; you can definitely spend it in Wulin as Destiny) the fact that you get it is still a good feeling. Maybe it is a placebo or stand-in for other meaningful fungible goods? Gold could rain from the sky in place of experience and that ends up being a direct resource for players like in Diablo 2. Seems a bit tacky, though, when I think about it. To Friday group, experience points (despite not having any actual benefit other than having it until they hit the level threshold) helps to reflect to the player that they are making progress in the game world. The majority of players are new to D&D but they aren't new to the concept of video games and the like, many of which include experience points for the same type of reason. It also is directly tied to the narrative, since they have dog tags that track these things in a semi tongue-in-cheek way of representing that mechanism in the game world. I haven't figured out what that actually is going to represent under the hood yet (giant phoenix egg gets fed experience points to hatch?) but it is more directly embraced. You also can spend upgrade points that you get from milestones either, but it doesn't resolve the "immediate positive feedback" that I mentioned above. D&D becomes if you're awarding milestones every time someone does the funny voice etc. I seem to remember that 4e also had incremental milestone advancement, and that seemed like a reasonable middle ground for this. In terms of the way D&D was set up historically (and thus where experience points comes from) there was a clear want of these older design notes to have a lasting reward that could also be handed out in small, fast doses, and also represent the achievements that characters were doing in the game world, which is why discovering loot was tied to experience points in older editions of the game. Back on the other page while I was vomiting word soup someone mentioned that they weren't beholden to "need just one more kobold for the level up!". This group of newer players like the ability to know exactly how far away they are from that level that are in the middle of the game and their meta-knowledge of experience informs their narrative decisions in subtle and overt ways that I don't have to provide explicit direction for them to go and do something. As a DM, I want them to go out and explore the world and get into trouble. Main hexcrawl points. How does one award exploration, the willingness to go seek the unknown? Dangling the carrot of experience points helps to clue them in: "Ah, I bet if I can get to the top of this mountain, I can probably get something good out of it, because getting here was hard, and I learned more about the world along the way." I can provide rewards in other ways, but they know intrinsically that experience is waiting for them, so long as they get out there and do something. The "social expectations" side, in other words. One of the interviews held by Brennan on Dimension 20 was with his buddy/player who was also a DM that talked about taking his group to the Renaissance Faire in character, and awarded them experience based on how they interacted at the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnXSQiR8ayU I thought that was super neat to provide a reward for things you're doing outside of the game world that also reflected what my type of design philosophy is informed by. If people are engaged and having a good time and we're all in agreement that this is a quality activity to participate in, experience points we go. ZypherIM posted:Just because a player is happy to be able to play at all doesn't mean that forcing them to be mechanically worse than the rest of the players is a fine thing. Your example of an accelerated level-up seems really weird, and I'm not sure how to phrase it well. Essentially you made them play part of the session as worse than everyone else, and then 'graciously' let them catch up part-way through. This may not even have been your intention, and the player just happy to chill with the rest of the group and play, but it doesn't make that not a sub-text going on. I could be wrong, but I believe that is the vibe that makes Tiggum say they'd just stop playing. On the topic of spot advancement where a player was playing "from behind", Lancer, specifically, has a lot going on, to the point where in the text it is specifically suggesting to start players off at the actual starting line, because the rules build off on each other very fast. Knowing and understanding the core systems is important before advancement because advancement in that game does require some planning and foresight to what you want to do (respec is only limited). I clock this at being an intentional design decision for players that are brand new to the system. In the specific anecdote, this player has not played Lancer before, and the capabilities of a fresh character are more than enough benefit without too much overhead for learning while playing. After it looks appropriate, then I awarded the advancement. This was also discussed in advance and not an arbitrary sole decision. "Should we do it like this, or this, which would you prefer?" "Well it took us at least 6 or 7 sessions to get a handle on the rules, and this guy is coming in cold, so it would make sense if he started fresh so he can learn the rules before making an advanced character." "That sounds good to me. Guy, what do you think?" "I'm good with that." "Cool. Let's roll with this and then we'll bump you up to speed once you've had some time to get used to your mechanics. Everybody cool with this?" And so it went. ZypherIM posted:The other thing is that this may not even be an area that the player feels they can bring up. They probably feel like they're pushing their luck just being an inconsistent player, and getting to play with everyone else is better than not being able to at all. It isn't that they wouldn't want to be on equal footing to the rest of the players, its that they're willing to take a penalty to play at all. This doesn't need to be the stance you take, and your groups would be healthier if you didn't. I sat down and talked with the players in advance before implementing experience advancement rather than a milestone system. We did indeed talk about the different ways of progression in the game context. We talk about the pros and cons of each of the more popular ones, and we came to the understanding that piecemeal XP was fine, a little old school, but an interesting way to play. If anybody felt uncomfortable or was coming in with prior experiences that "no, I really would rather not do experience, I don't like the feeling of falling behind", even before getting to that second comma to explain the why, I would be looking for a different way of approaching that game. I have long since learned that I can't take any piece of mechanics in any game for granted, since players have a habit to fixate on very specific mechanical elements. Hours of arguments about horse dynamics in 3.5 and Pathfinder have seen to that. I would hope I'm not constructing this image in this thread of some kind of draconian monster that says the one specific way is my way, and the true way to play. You're absolutely correct in that this is not a stance that I "need" to take. I am voluntarily creating these problems for myself and the group because they are interesting problems to solve together from a mechanical and social standpoint. I'm getting hung up on why the experience construct is being viewed as a hard penalty for not being at the table to the point of calling it an unhealthy practice. Where is this perception coming from that if you don't show up and you don't get the same thing as everybody else, that somehow reflects a punitive action that people don't want to talk about? That feels to me like forgetting to say 'good morning' to someone in an elevator and extrapolating that to 'drat, guess I'm never going to go into this city again'. We're talking fairly minor divides here in experience for the current table, not massive inflations. Everybody still is hovering around level 1 or 2. If I'm understanding it right, the messaging from others is such: "experience is bad because it is exclusory and punitive to players who don't show up as often as the most frequent player, it is unhealthy for a group to implement experience". Taking into consideration the other threads of thought, I think this only comes up and is truly unhealthy if nobody actually talks about it in advance. I agree that experience is exclusory since otherwise there would be no delineation to levels. There was a situation once where I played in a game I had to travel a couple of hours to get to while I was going to school. This was with a large mixed group that did have experience gain. We show up but don't get to do anything for several hours because they're running a side session that results in large material gains, including experience, for the players that attended it. This was not communicated in advance, the power gulf was much wider than a few incidental bits of experience here and there including multiple levels and magic items, and it also punished the players who showed up on time by actively preventing them from being able to play. In this scenario, yeah, gently caress all that noise, I quit that group. Didn't even have a ride home, so me and another player just sat outside with an axe to drive into a stump for about three hours until one of the other players actually was able to drive us back. I doubt that equalizing experience and magic items would have prevented all the other stuff, though. There was a critical breakdown of communication. In a fictional scenario, let's say there is a player who can play every day with the DM, and someone who can only play every other day. Would the presence of experience mean that the half-time player falls behind? Certainly. Is this considered punishment for not being able to play every day? That depends on what that player internalizes and the way the DM is posturing it. "Well, if only you would show up more you wouldn't be in this situation!" Is certainly something I've heard people say in RPGs (not just D&D) and also in professional contexts. Growing up, I was the player that could only make half the time. I didn't feel like I was being punished for missing out on the experience or magic items or what not. But, that is just me and how I internalized the game. In a general context, the needs and decisions of the group and its overall health outweigh any perverse specific need to run any specific system or rule component, which includes experience usage or uneven advancement. Some people may find it uncomfortable and drift away from the table without saying anything. I view that as a breakdown of communication and trust that we could not talk about it respectfully in private to arrive at a compromise. The same could be said of any mechanical component, not just experience.
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May 7, 2020 19:28
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aldantefax posted:I'm getting hung up on why the experience construct is being viewed as a hard penalty for not being at the table to the point of calling it an unhealthy practice. Where is this perception coming from that if you don't show up and you don't get the same thing as everybody else, that somehow reflects a punitive action that people don't want to talk about? That feels to me like forgetting to say 'good morning' to someone in an elevator and extrapolating that to 'drat, guess I'm never going to go into this city again'. We're talking fairly minor divides here in experience for the current table, not massive inflations. Everybody still is hovering around level 1 or 2. The way I see it, the reason XP differences are seen as bad are because D&D itself handles it poorly in two key ways. (D&D being bad is a recurring theme for me in this thread, but it's both flawed and everpresent so I'm going to keep mentioning it.) 1) Having a large level difference in modern D&D is not punishing in an interesting way. In Dungeon World, if you drop a level one character in a party of level five characters, the level one character is going to have a much more limited set of capabilities. That's interesting and can lead to some fun party dynamics. If you do the same thing in D&D the level one character has limited capabilities compared to the rest of the party... and also they have a 20% worse chance of doing anything, because base attack bonuses and saves and skills and etcetera all go up each level. Being much worse at doing anything worthwhile is just not a good way to handle level differences, but it's what D&D does. 2) D&D makes it feel like every game should be a level 1-20 epic. That means when you say you're okay with XP gaps forming people picture level one characters being dropped into a level 15 campaign, when in actuality it probably never goes further than a level 2 character in a level 3 party before you switch to something new anyway. Also, I'm just going to put my own complaint about tracking individual XP while I'm here: honestly, tracking my own XP just feels needlessly fiddly when you're in a game like D&D with constantly growing XP requirements. Is it hard? No, it's literally basic addition. But after every encounter I need to add that extra 500 XP from beating those goblins, and every person in the group needs to keep track of their own number, and all for that great feeling when half the party gets to level up after beating the dragon but the rest came up slightly short because they had some scheduling conflicts and now it feels a bit weird. I just don't get anything out of personal XP I wouldn't get from watching the Party XP Total slowly fill anyway.
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May 7, 2020 20:19
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So to check here, Ald, do you mean that you assign XP rewards on the spot for various thiings? Like it's the equivalent of tossing someone a FATE point or whatever? I can see value to this, XP just seems like the worst way to do it -- not because of the idea but because in D&D it's going to be some fiddly value, you're going to end up making the party's power levels shift around, etc. -- what if they forgot to write it down (less of an issue with online games if you're using text) -- possibly Hyphzisms "why don't I save being bold and adventurous for when I need to make a level or for when I'm older and will get more out of it" -- This one ain't on you, it's on D&D. As for the party disparity thing, I know that levels were a lot less locksteppish in 2E. This may have been more of a fruitful accident than anything, though.
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May 7, 2020 20:30
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hyphz posted:It's not so much about that, it's about mechanical balance as well. I mean, the first time I encountered this problem was in a superhero game (M&M) so I'll use it as an example - this isn't the actual example that happened, mind you. if someone makes a superhero with a weakness to something, there is an expectation that it will show up from time to time. hyphz posted:I'm fully able to make up Icy Girl if I want to, but what are the properties mechanically for doing that? The design intent should be that whatever advantage that Fire Bloke bought for his points should be balanced out by the disadvantage of his vulnerability to her. But no rules design ever includes any statement on how frequently Icy Girl should appear nor how important conflict with her must be, so there's a fundamental bit missing. If the game has a nemesis/archenemy type disadvantage that it's even worse, since the player did not take one; if I give them one anyway, they ought to get those points, right? If it's a well-balanced game, he'll have more trouble against her than other villains but still have a fun story and/or fight; if it's a badly-balanced game he'll be totally helpless against her and utterly incinerate everyone else, essentially giving me no options for a fun encounter. And sadly, the only way to avoid that is to not give the player the option of tilting their character that far, which isn't popular because players buy thick books full of options more than they buy balanced systems. 1) why are you assuming icy girl would be fire bloke's nemesis? that terminology has more meaning attached to it than "this person is more effective than others against me." its not necessarily someone who exploits the hero's weakness by default. poo poo, one of wolverine's biggest enemies is sabertooth, and they essentially have the same powers. they're not nemeses because sabertooth can shut down wolverine's healing or whatever. its because wolverine fights against his bestial instincts but sabertooth accepts them. nothing you've suggested so far indicates that icy girl should be anything to fire bloke other than a particularly challenging foe 2) if we then accept that icy girl starts out with no particular connection to fire bloke, that suggests that her appearances should be infrequent. she's not meant to be a focus of that character's development. unless of course they want that to happen, as can organically occur, at which point i'm pretty sure they can spend xp to buy the nemesis trait 3) you've got a real boom/bust mentality with regards to the effectiveness of fire bloke, but from what i've seen m&m is a mess of a game so you have a valid concern given who your players are hyphz posted:It's easy to say that if the character's tilted that far then I should discuss it OOC with the player, but that's not actually always a good option because OOC discussion isn't magic. It's perfectly possible that they'll just stonewall and I'm left either kicking them out of the group ("really? just because I want to be a good superhero?"), refusing to run the game at all (ditto), or conceding. And if I concede and then Icy Girl shows up in the game - well, it's going to look much more like passive aggressive pique than anything else. ooc discussion isn't magic, but reasonable people can come to an understanding. i know your players are not reasonable people, but nothing we can say will be able to help with that. of the options you've presented that result from your players being unreasonable people, not running the game is the best option. as we keep saying, no gaming is better than bad gaming. sever. leave these people in the dust and find new people. get online, get with the people who have been offering to play with you in this very thread. no set of rules or recommendations can compensate for the fact that you play with a bad group hyphz posted:You can also argue that it should be treated as a spotlight sharing mechanic, but again, in that case the rules design is incomplete. While Captain Salty might easily be able to cover for Fire Bloke having trouble with Icy Girl, there's no actual rule that says that a player must make Captain Salty, or indeed that we can't end up with four Fire Blokes; nor any rule that I can't just make Ocean Boy who has no problem against either of them. if everyone in the group ends up making fire bloke that's on them, you really can't fault the system for a lack of creativity or discussion. and if ocean boy is a tough challenge for fire bloke and captain salty that sounds like a good time for, i dunno, wind lad and lady lightning to show up and lend a hand. hyphz posted:Now, ok, this is a bit of an old argument and one of the reasons why advantage/disadvantage systems fell out of favour. The problem is that in practice, every system is an advantage/disadvantage system. If the player picked a Barbarian who has weak Will saves but strong Fortitude saves then I have the exact same problem with respect to enemies that focus on a particular save type. And nothing makes more sense than anything else when I'm making up the entire context in which sense is made. What does it actually mean for a class to have weak Will saves? How often should they be getting mind controlled for that to be a balanced adjustment to the class? Does it matter if there's a Cleric in the party as well or not? (ie, the effectiveness of spotlight sharing) when you've drilled down as deep as will saves you lose the ability to easily distinguish between challenges imo. if a player creates a barbarian with a low will save and they wind up failing a will save and getting mind-controlled that's a risk they knew they'd have going in. it comes with the territory. the issue here is that you're worried that your players will, i dunno, rebel if their characters' weaknesses are exploited x amount of times or something. this sounds like a diseased mindset that they have adopted from having one or several adversarial gms. if you can't get them to realize that you're not trying to punish them and they continue to put you into this frankly lovely and impossible position then you need to walk away
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May 7, 2020 20:41
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aldantefax posted:On the topic of spot advancement where a player was playing "from behind", Lancer, specifically, has a lot going on, to the point where in the text it is specifically suggesting to start players off at the actual starting line, because the rules build off on each other very fast. Knowing and understanding the core systems is important before advancement because advancement in that game does require some planning and foresight to what you want to do (respec is only limited). I clock this at being an intentional design decision for players that are brand new to the system. In the specific anecdote, this player has not played Lancer before, and the capabilities of a fresh character are more than enough benefit without too much overhead for learning while playing. After it looks appropriate, then I awarded the advancement. My group has had a similar experience, adding two people to Exalted and one to Lancer and both times we talked about it and all the new players went with starting fresh as chargen but then an increased advancement rate to catch them up so they don't get overwhelmed picking from several hundred combinations of items to make a higher level character with no experience of the system or mechanics. Generally I'm loathe for asymmetric xp and advancement, but it depends on the system and it wasn't very long till they were all caught up and everyone seemed happy with it.
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May 7, 2020 20:46
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One of my takeaways from Fax's frankly excellent breakdown of his games (longass posts but worth reading, guys) is that it might be a good idea for most any game system to have some kind of small boon you can toss to players frequently, as frequently as they do individual cool stuff; that boon needs to be meaningful (while college football players are apparently still childish enough to value stickers on their helmets, perhaps us sophisticated mature gamers want something slightly more in-game meaningful than a literal gold star to stick to our character sheets), but not result in jealousy, not break the game if they wind up doled out in an uneven way, perhaps reward individuals in a different way than rewarding the group, and perhaps be flexible enough to adapt to a wide variety of individual and group play styles. That's quite the requirement list. XPs fit the bill in some ways but not others. As Fax pointed out, raining cash money down from heaven for a character succeeding on a skill check or a player doing a good roleplay is probably significantly worse. What do other systems do? I know about stuff like Fate points (not from the FATE system mind you, I'm thinking like warhammer fantasy roleplay): you have a maximum number, you spend them to do things like reroll a failed roll (which means you hoard them and usually only spend them to avoid dying, in games like WHFRP where character death is a highly possible and perhaps too frequent thing), and you might get tossed one for hitting a major milestone. But perhaps that system isn't granular enough: I last played WHFRP 2nd edition I think, maybe 1st, and IIRC you'd get like maybe two or three fate points max. So you can't exactly hand them out like candy. There's games that use dice pools, individually or (often) shared by the party; getting an extra die or token tossed into your pool is pretty good. But also maybe not memorable or lasting beyond a scene or session; the permanence of XPs makes them maybe more meaningful than a short-term boost that you'd get from adding to your pool. There's also the issue that now your bennies are conflated with the other mechanics of the system that add or remove from those pools: do you really want to toss in a token for Leigh's cool roleplaying, and then yank that token right back out because they just failed a check or die roll and that's what the game mechanics say to do? What else is out there?
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May 7, 2020 21:24
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I have known a con group who pass out poker chips that you can save up and turn in for goodies at their little theme room swag desk, so a hardcore player who RPs well could basically get a free plush Cthulhu or Chaosium book and even a single time player can get a gimmick pen or something with the group branding on it. In a long term campaign I could award an unrelated skill check but the skill check system already encourages people to dabble around.
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May 7, 2020 21:38
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I do struggle with making experience more interesting. I do award it as a spot bonus or incentive but also do the math to tally it up and award people after the session. They then track it using one of the very underutilized features of Roll20, which is the message board. This solves the issue neatly of experience tracking. As a reward structure, I also agree with experience awards being a bit dry and carrying the other baggage around it as noted. However, I haven't actually found a better, visceral way of awarding players frequently unless I was giving them some kind of physical product to represent coinage or the like. I think there was a critical assumption missed in my ramblings and I should clarify that in the current setup for Friday group using experience, everybody starts out at level 1, and thus far a couple of character have made it to level 2, but nobody is at level 15, 20, what have you. I haven't been in this situation but I've heard about it, and the "old school" way of handling it (anecdotally from the Alexandrian and the like) is the elders of the group would "show the ropes" to the person stepping in fresh and make sure they are well cared for, much like someone from an MMO guild that's a seasoned raider will help "power level" their junior guildmates. I think this concept of "catching up" is useful but highly rare in tabletop roleplaying games. However, it would be pretty wild to put someone into D&D in a high level campaign if they did not have any kind of meaningful game knowledge, since D&D does depend on some level of system mastery. Try telling me that it's a good idea to drop someone cold into a D&D 4e game at 15th level when they're brand new to the system. Anyway, I never thought D&D's amount of paperwork was particularly heinous and I actually had fun creating notebook after notebook and learning ClarisWorks and Microsoft Word on my old rinky dink Mac growing up so I could print out a THAC0 chart. It instilled in me a love of putting pencil to paper and becoming a paperwork pusher. It also provided me some very valid advice in [reading the manual] to actually be able to play. I think really I might be running experience and milestones for D&D in mixed mode. That is, experience gains on the spot and that might cause some people to level a tiny amount faster, but they stay in the same power band; but when they hit a new power band, bring everybody up to that level. That makes the most sense to me for that specific game. I think D&D being bad at things is a given in our social circles because we have a very strong passion and desire to explore more games and we've seen some stuff. I mentioned Legends of the Wulin and god drat if that isn't some of the finest systems that I'll never get to run from how it handles advancement and buy-in to the game world. It neatly handles the question of meta-knowledge and player motivation because it outright tells you "Do you wanna know about this thing? gently caress you, pay me 2 Destiny and then you're good to go, now you know about kung fu. You wanna learn about a secret technique from the Shaolin? Well, drat, you better start working on that in character and save up your Destiny. Maybe go find a monk to teach you the good stuff." I will have to dig out my PDFs to explain this in greater detail because this is a sorely underrated system. It's not the greatest system of our day and age, but here I am thinkin' about this cool game. I did try to make this system work for D&D players by giving them "Story Points" to invest in (Final Fantasy RPG 3rd edition also did this, shoutouts) so they could influence the game world and express interest in plot points. I feel like if it were the right group that actually had more reliable access to computers, that would have worked way better. Also, in the case of people doing experience hoarding, I am mindful of telling them "You only get experience by doing heroic things. Staying at home is safe, and you can probably retire without any problems working for the local blacksmith. Is this how your character's story ends?" But also, if they would rather play conservatively until it was time to go real hard to the paint to get that level, I think I would totally support that way of playing as long as that was actually fun for them and me. I actually had a Gloomhaven-esque retirement mechanic in an older game that was completely theater of the mind. When in the big town, you could march your character right up a set of stairs to some unknowable place beyond, and get a reward for doing so. I had planned to provide a special handout to the first person that did this since I was expecting the group to run for longer, but ultimately scheduling just threw all that into the toilet. Finding a way to grant a meaningful micro reward to players is something that D&D plants the idea of - they even suggest using Inspiration as a way of doing that - but in my experiences, almost everybody forgets about inspiration, and it is a lot less impactful to have it when you have a Bard in the party. I might consider reworking that so that they can spend Inspiration fo do something like automatically succeed on any roll, but that's a dangerous cue to hoard it. I've never thought of D&D in practice as being a level 1 to 20 epic, but it has been an ideal we've all tried to strive for in my gaming groups and history. I watch a bunch of anime, and people think of Record of Lodoss War when they think of D&D. However, in practice, you get Slayers. Compare and contrast these two opening reels tonally and see which one identifies more with what your image of D&D is like versus how it actually is: lodoss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coEd6Lx_-cY D&D is like, uh, Harley-Davidson. It's a well-recognized brand name that everybody knows and people buy into its image and associated brand identity. It also has a habit of putting people's head space into "this is the one true way of doing this", because it's good at marketing. That doesn't mean there aren't better companies out there making cooler motorcycles. It's just what people know, and for a lot of folks, that's cool with them. Really, I just come back around and think "drat, Wulin really had a solid way of handling experience. Make it on the player's terms, give it to them as a resource they can spend to directly impact the story, and give them exactly what they're looking for and a little bit of extra spice." 5e's systems of awards is pretty meh overall with choosing arbitrary hand waving versus bean counting when it comes to advancement. If I just ripped out a system and put in one I like better, I think that probably would be fine, but then I'd need to probably do some more actual work, and the hours are slim on what I can homebrew before it starts dipping into what other little time I have. I propose this: a D&D advancement system that awards Cool Stuff as direct advancement, and an award system that promotes player agency, creativity, and narrative buy in. Mechanical advancement is flattened to only the power tiers, such that there are only 4 or 5 power levels but they are as wide as they come. Start somewhere in the middle of heroics, fireball-tier. Junior characters can start truly at the beginning with nothing. That's basically how Legends of the Wulin does it. For other alternate reward systems chat... Spend and award narrative control with loaded prompts. You need to be really flexible with this on an improv side of things but is really effective. You can write prompts on cards and award them to players, and they can play them at any time. "He's my brother!" when you encounter the Big Bad for the first time. "They can't kill me, because I have important information!" Get out of death free card. "I know the key code to get into the Danger Vault. (extra prompt: how??)" These are PBTA Playbook-esque things to do and are fairly easy to put into the game. You can make players write stuff down, give it to you, and you can shuffle and deal em out whenever you'd give an award. Award things that break the rules. This is dangerous but can be quite fun. Let's say that you use D&D 5e Inspiration, and you want to add that they can spend inspiration to automatically succeed on any roll of any difficulty. Or maybe you spend Inspiration to get an extra combat round. Something like that. You can see where this is going, but is cool for the moment and will have players hunting for opportunity to get more. Award physical things that players like. Give them physical rewards that they can redeem later in game or out of game like that Cthulhu plushie. Add some extra rules to tie the out of game physical reward to the in game material. Guaranteed that they will always bring their magic item to the game if it's a Cthulhu plushie, even if they're a Paladin. Award mechanical resources that lead to advancement. I like the idea of if using experience to transform it into interesting things (Destiny as the recurring example). However, having "party" experience to level the field (heh) as a supplement helps to cement over or power level any new character concept. This was way more common in older editions of D&D because you could spend experience as a resource to create magic items or cast spells or be resurrected. Not so much these days.
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May 8, 2020 02:26
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For d&d? I hand a roleplay rock to anyone who's being chill and fun and awesome, and they can hand it back to me and say something like "yeah this is about me now" or "it's real important that I get this right". They are palm sized stones so nobody forgets them. I collect them again at the end of each session. You will note that this system is easily gamed by players who are chill and fun and awesome. Furthermore, they might even exploit it by being extremely chill and fun and awesome. The dicks.
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May 8, 2020 02:50
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:For d&d? How do you make this immediacy and weightiness more apparent in online contexts? I'm also a fan of giving physical awards, and a roleplay rock is good.
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May 8, 2020 03:08
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Serf posted:if someone makes a superhero with a weakness to something, there is an expectation that it will show up from time to time. Champions actually had defined chances for your various disadvantages to come into play. In RAW, a GM should be rolling 3d6 vs various target numbers, 1-3 times for each character, before every session. You take 'Hunted by the KGB' for 10 points on a 100 point character ? On an 11- on 3d6 every session they show up at least indirectly. Leperflesh posted:One of my takeaways from Fax's frankly excellent breakdown of his games (longass posts but worth reading, guys) Fax is a pro-tier player. He is in fact the SOB in my Traveller game that rolled a natural 12 on Grand Entrance and one-shotted the current remaining opposition. Long live The Duke !
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May 8, 2020 03:09
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mllaneza posted:Fax is a pro-tier player. He is in fact the SOB in my Traveller game that rolled a natural 12 on Grand Entrance and one-shotted the current remaining opposition. Long live The Duke ! Aw, shucks. Now THAT was a fun character.
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May 8, 2020 03:17
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 8, 2020 03:32
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aldantefax posted:How do you make this immediacy and weightiness more apparent in online contexts? I'm also a fan of giving physical awards, and a roleplay rock is good. There's a service that will mail someone a potato with a picture pasted on it. It's not as immediate...but it definitely would be memorable
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May 8, 2020 03:39
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mllaneza posted:Champions actually had defined chances for your various disadvantages to come into play. In RAW, a GM should be rolling 3d6 vs various target numbers, 1-3 times for each character, before every session. You take 'Hunted by the KGB' for 10 points on a 100 point character ? On an 11- on 3d6 every session they show up at least indirectly. That was true for some of them but not for others. The 1.5x and 2x damage from something disadvantages were broken down into common, uncommon, and very uncommon.
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May 8, 2020 03:40
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Zorak of Michigan posted:That was true for some of them but not for others. The 1.5x and 2x damage from something disadvantages were broken down into common, uncommon, and very uncommon. I played... 2e I'm gonna say. I liked that they were consistent. They used common, uncommon, very uncommon for the tiers of disadvantages; common was 14-, etc.
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May 8, 2020 04:18
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GURPS also does the same thing since each disadvantage had varying degrees of badness. They certainly make you work for those extra points! I'm trying to think why it's so difficult to find a regular group of people for games that aren't D&D, and I think it all comes down to scheduling being the top limiter, and unfamiliarity the second barrier. I think if there was an existing gaming group that was open after the end of another game to try out some more esoteric stuff, that is sort of the 'best time' to get people into those types of games. Doing a 3 to 5 session trial run seems like a good way to get your feet wet with most rules systems. I also feel like trying to find a brand new group that is calibrated to the game they want to play but not each other has been somewhat iffy in terms of results. It might also be difficult for me because I'm a terrible PBP player. I am constantly forgetting or procrastinating on posting, plus there's some anxiety of making sure my post is 'good enough' to some asinine self-standard that I end up shooting myself in the foot with the exception of Mechfishing. I'm not actually sure how I can make this more palatable for myself either, since I think part of what I crave is immediacy of play at a table rather than an extended contemplation of a single scene that might take a week or more per scene.
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May 8, 2020 05:46
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Aldantefax, a lot of what your wrote is really interesting and well-thought out, but a lot of it is riddled with crazy nonsense premises. Like in one post you said it'd be weird if you didn't reward the people who show up more. What?! Why??? Are they doing you a favor? Are your games a chore? In what other context does that make sense? I'm hosting a dinner party. I make a special dessert that is only for Meg and Jon because they came to my last one. Everyone else gets to watch them eat it. Why not make enough for everyone? Why it would be weird if I didn't reward Meg and Jon for coming. I'm joining a baseball league. Larry steps up to the plate and takes his third strike. He doesn't sit down. "What's happening?" I ask. The reply comes: "Oh, this is his 7th season with us, so he gets 5 strikes instead of 3. It'd be weird if the only reward he got was the pleasure of playing in a fun league with his friends." I'm playing Goldeneye with my buddies and they all choose Oddjob but they make me pick Jaws because I missed last week. They insist it's not a punishment. The host says "Obviously I have to reward the people who come more regularly. Should their only reward be playing together? That would be weird!" My point is that no, the reward of playing games with your friends is, in fact, the pleasure of playing games with your friends, and there is nothing weird at all about that. The opposite thing (the thing you are doing) is what is weird. And you have other good reasons for doing it, which you explained, and I'm not saying you should stop doing it. But I am saying that you need to re-examine your assumptions and internalized ideas about how to play and figure out what actually is best, because some of your arguments are obviously just motivated reasoning aiming to justify what you are already doing.
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May 8, 2020 05:53
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Yeah, you do run into the extrinsic/intrinsic reward situations. That said not every game has to fit every purpose. The GM awarding Awesome Stunt Points and hitting chords on an electric guitar would be completely great for some games but you would not need it for all of them. Like I have a hard time seeing how you could make effective use of some kind of stunt points in regular Call of Cthulhu. (It would probably suit Pulp Cthulhu very well, and indeed having some kind of fate-point system was IIRC most of what distinguished Pulp Cthulhu from Regular Flavor.)
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May 8, 2020 06:27
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Ahh, I see now. Maybe I should reframe this so that it is more consistent with the rest of the word soup I wrote in this thread. I'm not exactly out to write a thesis defense here, and probably a good half of what I wrote previously makes nonsense on the re-read other than brain dumping a stream of consciousness with a minimal amount of copying and pasting. I believe the act of running and participating in a shared narrative to be something that requires effort that should have validation beyond enabling the activity when it comes to these types of games. To promote this I want to provide positive reinforcement to those who want to come to the table as an instructional tool, keeping in mind I am hosting a table of new players. Previously, yeah, I thought my games were indeed a chore or burdensome. We could be doing anything else other than this specific activity as a group or separately. I am deeply grateful that people bother to show up at all, and to those people, I want to provide some kind of token of appreciation. Words and the enjoyment of company are, in my experiences, have less weight than material rewards. To these players, I want to provide to them a specific, clear mechanical message that reinforces good habits at the table and allows them to shift their mindset more onto the game world and thinking more about how to engage with the game, precisely because they don't have a prior frame of reference. I don't want people to feel like they are showing up to play these games because of a social expectation to me directly, but to the table and the game as a group activity. To include more people to this is to also make sure we're on the same page with what is we're meeting up to do. I've also had good friends flat out tell me: "I didn't come here to hang out with you and have a good time today. I came here to play D&D." To put it another way, if there is no accountability, nobody will actually take the game seriously enough to show up. I've had people that were good friends just wordlessly bail without so much as a hint they were going to show up to the game for weeks on end and go "oh, I figured I would just fade quietly into the night". One person silently drops, then it's downhill from there (or, it used to be). People check out. I check out. There's no more impact in the activity at that point. I stop taking it seriously to deliver a good experience, and everybody else starts nodding off or swiping their phone. I can put on funny hats and do the voice and run a blistering session from time to time, but I don't consider those to be rewards. That's just the natural course of the activity. I provide mechanical awards to players for attendance because after dozens of tables where this does not happen, over the years, I wanted to try an experiment and dig into my own experiences at the table. This is what I remember from growing up as part of the reason I sought out those tables and kept trying to come week after week hungry for more of the experience of the game, moreso than whoever I was playing with at the moment. The act of giving SOMETHING to a player increases their buy-in to the game, and it does keep them coming back with the slow drip. I realize that it's more weird to frame it like this because it sounds like I am a sociopath that runs friendless games like some kind of close-minded shame-robot incapable of introspection and reflection, but my take on it is this: while each table runs different social contracts and expectations, in this specific setup I am making a deliberate choice to provide these awards to positively reinforce behaviors to new players so that they understand how to influence the game world and agency when they're at the table. For people who cannot come to the table regularly, there is an alternate way of playing and advancement that can be leveraged so they can share in the same kind of journey. They are still accounted for when they come to play without worrying too much about this entire esoteric screed. Thus far it has not been tested at scale, but the results are generally promising for those tables. I have previously run a group for a year and a half that was purely on milestone advancement, which used to be my only group when I got the bug and wanted to see what 5e was all about. However, this group had no major sense of their progression and were also new players. They showed up, had a good time, but ultimately had nothing afterwards that made them excited to be able to come to the table and play. They just leveled whenever it was appropriate in the narrative, and they went along from place to place, and rather than exhibiting agency, they remained passive. I tried all kinds of things with this group in a vain attempt to get them to give me something, anything like exerting their agency on the game world, but instead they were just waiting more or less for the next encounter to be run in mostly a vacuum. Giving people inspiration, lore points akin to Wulin's Destiny system, nothing had any impact for them despite a desire to continue playing. We don't talk to each other save for when the next game is or whatever the next meetup is to talk about the game, but we consider each other friends. D&D friends, that is. The one thing I did not try with that group was providing an easy to understand and direct method to spur motivation and buy-in to the game world or attendance through experience points. That was the first game I had run in D&D 5th edition, and following the online dogma of 'milestones are way better than experience!', I gave it a try and ended up with that output. So, now I'm trying something different. Is it really that weird to want to give people something more than just my face made for radio?
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May 8, 2020 07:23
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aldantefax posted:.... I don't think anybody is going to e-judge you particularly hard for GMing games and having a good time at them, unless you're running Varg Vikernes's game system maybe. However you also do run into the issue of, there's a lot of other things out there to run and to play, but in terms of "ease of finding a session of the actual game" it probably looks something like D&D 5E = Pathfinder of some kind >>>>>stuff with clear tie ins maybe? >>> PBTA? > everything else unless you're willing to GM, of course.  It's also the philosophy of RPGs thread so I think you will see arguments advanced for the sake of a conversation. I would like to ask you something here for clarity. So you're saying that you had a lot of dead fish tables who were passive, until, specifically, you started giving spot XP awards? That lit people up? Were they the same groups or drawn from the same general wells?
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May 8, 2020 07:54
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aldantefax posted:How do you make this immediacy and weightiness more apparent in online contexts? I'm also a fan of giving physical awards, and a roleplay rock is good. I started doing it in 4th ed because people would forget their action points. So drawing on my hackmaster ott/comedy gm style, I got a bunch of big old smooth stones and wrote "action point" on them and handed them out. I dunno about mirroring it online, it's not something I've thought about. I'm not running anything other than pbta games for the forseeable future and you could not pay me to try to run any D&D more recent than becmi basic online or preferably at all. Great big flashing gif? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 08:22 on May 8, 2020 |
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May 8, 2020 08:18
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Leperflesh posted:One of my takeaways from Fax's frankly excellent breakdown of his games (longass posts but worth reading, guys) is that it might be a good idea for most any game system to have some kind of small boon you can toss to players frequently, as frequently as they do individual cool stuff; that boon needs to be meaningful (while college football players are apparently still childish enough to value stickers on their helmets, perhaps us sophisticated mature gamers want something slightly more in-game meaningful than a literal gold star to stick to our character sheets), but not result in jealousy, not break the game if they wind up doled out in an uneven way, perhaps reward individuals in a different way than rewarding the group, and perhaps be flexible enough to adapt to a wide variety of individual and group play styles.
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May 8, 2020 11:33
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Serf posted:if someone makes a superhero with a weakness to something, there is an expectation that it will show up from time to time. Sure. But how often is 4 points worth? How often is 6 points worth? How often is "a class selection" worth? How often is a 2000gp magic item worth? That's the trick. quote:ooc discussion isn't magic, but reasonable people can come to an understanding. i know your players are not reasonable people, but nothing we can say will be able to help with that. of the options you've presented that result from your players being unreasonable people, not running the game is the best option. as we keep saying, no gaming is better than bad gaming. sever. leave these people in the dust and find new people. get online, get with the people who have been offering to play with you in this very thread. no set of rules or recommendations can compensate for the fact that you play with a bad group I see your point, but at the same time, there's wrong assumptions made. Saying "talk with your players and get them to stop making minmaxed characters" is assuming that the result is that they stop making minmaxed characters, in other words, the result is entirely my way. It doesn't allow for a halfway compromise on the issue. quote:if everyone in the group ends up making fire bloke that's on them, you really can't fault the system for a lack of creativity or discussion. and if ocean boy is a tough challenge for fire bloke and captain salty that sounds like a good time for, i dunno, wind lad and lady lightning to show up and lend a hand. Who said it's a lack of creativiiy or discussion? Perhaps they all just want to play Fire Blokes because they enjoy it? Why should the system punish them for that? quote:when you've drilled down as deep as will saves you lose the ability to easily distinguish between challenges imo. if a player creates a barbarian with a low will save and they wind up failing a will save and getting mind-controlled that's a risk they knew they'd have going in. it comes with the territory. the issue here is that you're worried that your players will, i dunno, rebel if their characters' weaknesses are exploited x amount of times or something. this sounds like a diseased mindset that they have adopted from having one or several adversarial gms. if you can't get them to realize that you're not trying to punish them and they continue to put you into this frankly lovely and impossible position then you need to walk away That's a whole difference from statting up an opponent specifically with mind control powers as a theme, and that's the action I'm more concerned about. I don't think it's about adversarial GMs, though, it's about not finding it interesting to have an encounter that's obviously been precalculated against them. What actually happened in the M&M game, for example, was that The Warrior made a gun with "ineffective against plants and animals". After he destroyed the sample adventure I mentioned it on the M&M forums and the reply was "then just send in beastmaster and plantman". I didn't run the game again but I did talk about this with the Warrior and his response was "then what's the point in making characters at all?" And I figured he had a point there. Character and villain generation in M&M is a long process, if ultimately the result is that whatever character he designs I then have to make up villains so that his ability rolls come down to roughly 50:50 to-hit dice rolls then why not toss all the numbers out, flip a coin and be done with it? Ironically it was because of this that the only SH game I've really paid attention to is Masks because of its different approach, although I don't know about some of the more recent ones.
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May 8, 2020 16:15
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How are you so frightened of your players not loving you that you refuse to so much as briefly inconvenience them? I don't think GMing is really for you, if you're going to build your entire sense of self-worth on your players having fun constantly. Sometimes heroes get inconvenienced! Sometimes heroes have to struggle! Sometimes, by god, they can lose!
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May 8, 2020 16:50
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hyphz posted:Sure. But how often is 4 points worth? How often is 6 points worth? How often is "a class selection" worth? How often is a 2000gp magic item worth? That's the trick. what is the trick? there's no trick. its difficult to pin down what exactly you're saying here because 4 sentences in you've started to diverge off into other questions. but what i'm assuming you're asking is "how often should something challenging be put in front of the players?" to which the answer is "as often as it would be interesting." but remembering your story about the players deciding to spend days of in-game labor time digging through rubble rather than explore, i'm thinking that they're not interested in being challenged, which is why there is no satisfactory answer to your question hyphz posted:I see your point, but at the same time, there's wrong assumptions made. Saying "talk with your players and get them to stop making minmaxed characters" is assuming that the result is that they stop making minmaxed characters, in other words, the result is entirely my way. It doesn't allow for a halfway compromise on the issue. imo you could use a win hyphz, because it seems like you do nothing but take ls from your lovely group hyphz posted:Who said it's a lack of creativiiy or discussion? Perhaps they all just want to play Fire Blokes because they enjoy it? Why should the system punish them for that? i said it. the idea of a whole group of people deciding that they want to play the same character is bizarre or in itself just some form of passive-aggressive behavior and i cannot see it happening hyphz posted:That's a whole difference from statting up an opponent specifically with mind control powers as a theme explain this phrasing. "that's a whole difference" means what exactly? how is what "difference" from what? hyphz posted:I don't think it's about adversarial GMs, though, it's about not finding it interesting to have an encounter that's obviously been precalculated against them. every encounter is "precalculated" if you're not just straight up improvising everything hyphz posted:What actually happened in the M&M game, for example, was that The Warrior made a gun with "ineffective against plants and animals". After he destroyed the sample adventure I mentioned it on the M&M forums and the reply was "then just send in beastmaster and plantman". see, if you wanted to be as toxic as the warrior, you would have noted that people are animals too. you didn't do that, which is why there's hope for you and i can't figure out why you put up with these folks hyphz posted:I didn't run the game again but I did talk about this with the Warrior and his response was "then what's the point in making characters at all?" And I figured he had a point there. Character and villain generation in M&M is a long process, if ultimately the result is that whatever character he designs I then have to make up villains so that his ability rolls come down to roughly 50:50 to-hit dice rolls then why not toss all the numbers out, flip a coin and be done with it? i mean, the warrior does have a point here in that m&m is badly-written trash, but it seems like with his mindset he could do this with any game
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May 8, 2020 16:54
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hyphz posted:Sure. But how often is 4 points worth? How often is 6 points worth? How often is "a class selection" worth? How often is a 2000gp magic item worth? That's the trick. Well, it varies from system to system and character to character. I know "play it by ear" isn't the most helpful advice, but the specific circumstances are what determines how much is appropriate. That's why the GM advice thread has nearly 500 pages. quote:That's a whole difference from statting up an opponent specifically with mind control powers as a theme, and that's the action I'm more concerned about. I don't think it's about adversarial GMs, though, it's about not finding it interesting to have an encounter that's obviously been precalculated against them. Honestly, optimization for the sake of optimization is a real problem for systems like Mutants & Masterminds or HERO System. People just look at that kind of system and start thinking "well, if I lose a hand I can be 20% better at shooting my pistol, and it shouldn't be that bad" without thinking about whether or not playing a one-armed gunslinger is actually what they want. It's one of the main reasons drawbacks that give you bonus points have fallen out of favor. In this situation, all you can really do is talk to your players about which drawbacks they took because they sounded cool vs which ones they took to make their numbers appropriately big and reach a consensus about how you all should be handling drawbacks. If that sounds fiddly and like it would take a lot of sheet-revising, well, there's a reason people are making more superhero games that don't work like that these days. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 16:58 on May 8, 2020 |
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May 8, 2020 16:56
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Tsilkani posted:How are you so frightened of your players not loving you that you refuse to so much as briefly inconvenience them? Yeah also what kind of players just want to win all the time? In the SA Flying Circus game thread I went up against a way better enemy pilot in a way better plane and offered myself as bait so a friendly pilot even had a chance of hitting them. My pilot was directly hit and we barely managed to scratch him, but it was so tense and awesome it was amazingly fun, especially for a PbP game. Another two pilots managed to engage and shoot down two bombers on their own very successfully and I don't feel like I got a lesser experience or anything, it was unpredictable and rewarding. Punkinhead fucked around with this message at 17:11 on May 8, 2020 |
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May 8, 2020 16:59
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aldantefax posted:I've also had good friends flat out tell me: "I didn't come here to hang out with you and have a good time today. I came here to play D&D." Oof. One of my fellow players in my weekly D&D game is like this and I will never understand this mentality. Those two things should be the same thing.
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May 8, 2020 17:02
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 8, 2020 17:17
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 22:48 |
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hyphz posted:Sure. But how often is 4 points worth? How often is 6 points worth? How often is "a class selection" worth? How often is a 2000gp magic item worth? That's the trick. Forget about this being a flaw that the player picked for points. If one of your players creates a hero who can fly, how often should you have enemies that can't fly and are unable to reach him? If there's never a situation where flight is an advantage you are penalizing the player for spending points on this power. This player will have spent 10 points on flight and never be able to get any advantage because of it, while another player will have spent 10 points on cool laser guns that they can use in every single combat encounter. There isn't a rule for how often a certain thing should come up in a game because there is no expectation of everything being fair and balanced with every interaction with every player being the same. The expectation is that the GM will know enough about the characters to not completely screw someone over 9 sessions in a row. The trick is that if you let your player talk you into letting him take flaws with the expectations that they will never come up, and you specifically agree with that player, even once every 20 sessions will feel like too often.
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May 8, 2020 18:46
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