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Leraika posted:50% that and 50% 'I'm good at reading my GM's mind'. On the latter, apparently the first run of Tomb of Horrors with Gygax's home group had zero deaths, because they knew exactly where he'd be putting traps and secret doors.
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May 30, 2020 00:57
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Night10194 posted:If a game's PC creation is randomized it needs to be doable in 5 minutes. It is a rule. ZypherIM posted:Nah, if a PC is intended to be replaceable at the drop of a hat you need to have the char creation proccess take like 5 minutes. "Roll to see what your good stat is" does not affect the magnitude of your ability to affect the narrative, just the nature, so absent other factors involved character creation is fine. "Roll to see how good your stats are" does affect the magnitude, thereby requiring disposable characters, thereby requiring quick builds.
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May 30, 2020 01:33
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Serf posted:so then you really have no criteria. if anything bad or negative happens at all, then the situation was hard and unfair Well, that's not really my criteria, it's a problem with heavy min-maxing. Essentially, any situation that doesn't play into the characters' strengths - and therefore that isn't easy - is likely to be one where one or more characters can't actually act or engage at all. Which is also no fun. So, yea, putting them in the alchemist's lab will be predictably unfun, as well as challenging. So why would I do it? quote:okay, and? you send them into the artificer's lab where they agreed, in-game and out of game, to go. their cute gimmick builds are slightly less effective here, and that's okay. there is no presumption of animosity present in this situation unless there are other factors (toxicity) involved that you keep stepping around It's not "slightly less effective", it's "can't do anything" or else "can't do anything but very boring back-and-forth basic attacks".
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May 30, 2020 02:41
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 02:46
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hyphz posted:Well, that's not really my criteria, it's a problem with heavy min-maxing. Essentially, any situation that doesn't play into the characters' strengths - and therefore that isn't easy - is likely to be one where one or more characters can't actually act or engage at all. Which is also no fun. So, yea, putting them in the alchemist's lab will be predictably unfun, as well as challenging. So why would I do it? upon further reflection, maybe i'm being unfair and the system isn't that lovely its just the players hyperspecializing to the point of uselessness in their niche. and that's their fault obviously, they should be less lovely hyphz posted:It's not "slightly less effective", it's "can't do anything" or else "can't do anything but very boring back-and-forth basic attacks".
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May 30, 2020 02:55
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I really think we're burying the lede here in that Hyphz's players don't seem to care about the fiction at all. That's not tenable!
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May 30, 2020 02:58
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Absurd Alhazred posted:See, after the first time I'd run into this problem, I'd learn to not min-max my characters, because I'm not in the business of bullying the DM being my only path to fun. If your character is materially less effective with an ability score below 5/5, why have ability granularity like that at all? At most, have something like "untrained," no dice/1 die; "some training," 3 dice; "competent at task," 5 dice. hyphz posted:Well, that's not really my criteria, it's a problem with heavy min-maxing. Essentially, any situation that doesn't play into the characters' strengths - and therefore that isn't easy - is likely to be one where one or more characters can't actually act or engage at all. Which is also no fun. So, yea, putting them in the alchemist's lab will be predictably unfun, as well as challenging. So why would I do it? * Have the golem encounter be one out of a few, so it's more like a change of pace from the usual * Have the golem be partially constructed or damaged or something, so you get the effect of "Oh poo poo, you gotta fight something you can't just waste!" while making it vulnerable to chip damage * Provide environmental factors which could be used to damage the thing * Have additional things that Mr. Swords could do if he finds he can't do much damage to the golem * Find a table that aren't bastards * Some combination of the above You speak in absolutes on these matters a lot. I would challenge you to either make it clear that these are your own thoughts/impressions, or to make sure that anything you're stating casually as an absolute is, at least, rooted in more than one specific and concrete incident, if only to challenge your own habits of thought.
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May 30, 2020 03:00
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 03:03
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So the problem is one of: "A group of hyperspecialised experts team up to fight evil" isn't what everyone said they decided to play, and now they've all making hyperspecialised experts, in which case the solution is either adjust the game you're going to run, or go back to the expectations talk. or "I put my group's team of hyperspecialised experts into a situation where one or more of them literally could not do a single thing", in which case the solution is to apologise for loving it up and then try not to do it again. or "My imaginary group will always piss and moan no matter what unless I'm constantly letting them win without trying" in which case the solution is to make up some nicer people to pretend to game with.
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May 30, 2020 03:05
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Leraika posted:50% that and 50% 'I'm good at reading my GM's mind'. The two are fundamentally the same skill. Knowing how far you can push someone without them pushing back is basically how well you read them.
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May 30, 2020 03:34
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:So the problem is one of: I'm betting on a combination of #3 and 'I'm terrified to not have my abusive players love and accept me every moment I'm GMing.'
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May 30, 2020 05:24
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 05:33
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I still think that a lot of this is hyphz rock bottom self esteem. no amount of good play or players is going to help until he can see that he has worth
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May 30, 2020 05:39
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Servetus posted:The two are fundamentally the same skill. Knowing how far you can push someone without them pushing back is basically how well you read them. One's passive and one's active.
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May 30, 2020 06:56
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Elfgames posted:I still think that a lot of this is hyphz rock bottom self esteem. no amount of good play or players is going to help until he can see that he has worth Fixing Hyphz is going to require he runs a game where the fiction matters for people who are trying to engage with the fiction, not score off the GM.
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May 30, 2020 08:33
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I strongly suspect this would make no difference, simply because the argument is "A GM running a game that relies even marginally on improvisation or doesn't have ironclad parameters for everything could be accused of being arbitrary by their players and subsequently risk being ostracised." No amount of good play experiences can correct for that, because any positive experience is immediately dismissed as an outlier or exception to the rule.
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May 30, 2020 08:41
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mllaneza posted:Fixing Hyphz is going to require he runs a game where the fiction matters for people who are trying to engage with the fiction, not score off the GM. Don't be lovely. Dude's doing really good. I'm obviously also baffled by his posts here, but he obviously can game fine. If he ever feels comfortable running a game, I'm sure people will line up for it. I'm totally agreeing that his group sounds toxic as gently caress, but anyone saying that he himself is broken I'mma fight you cause once you get him away from the toxic bullshit he's a really good player and a contribution to the group.
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May 30, 2020 08:45
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Xiahou Dun posted:Don't be lovely. Dude's doing really good. 1. increasingly fine-grained bullshit regarding his rear end in a top hat table hating everything other than soft-ball PF/5e that never even kind of challenges them 2. Your reports from exterior action (plus stuff involving other matters)
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May 30, 2020 08:55
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Splicer posted:If PC's are intended to be disposable then character creation needs to take 5 minutes. If the magnitude of your character's ability to affect the narrative is determined randomly then PC's need to be disposable.
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May 30, 2020 08:58
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Nessus posted:I suspect that you are getting hyphz behaving like a fully realized person with a wide range of reactions while this thread, whether by agency or because hyphz has gotten the ol' institutional mentality about it, gets the thin slice of hyphz which relentlessly worries about increasingly fine-grained bullshit regarding RPG hatred from his usual table. Basically, you're seeing a much fuller spread while what I know about hyphz is: I understand the confusion cause it's one I feel. I just don't want people to yell at him so hard he retreats cause I think he's making honest progress in our group, despite my worst efforts.
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May 30, 2020 09:06
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yeah hyphz is cool tbh
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May 30, 2020 09:25
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So I'm recently back in trad games after being away for a while, and running a 5th ed DnD game for some players who are mostly new to TTRPGs. A couple of them have played some wargames before and most otherwise are pretty familiar with video game RPGs. The first thing I wanted to teach the players is that TTRPG's don't work like most single player video game RPGs, your character is rarely as capable as a video game PC and occasionally will screw things up and the group as a whole should have complementary skills to cover for the fact no matter the build, your character is not going to be equally effective in every single possible situation that can occur. Given that we're running the game over the internet we're playing the rules fairly abstract without grids or maps this is obviously going to be tougher if you're using full grids and letting players play the game like it's a wargame/boardgame. I also made note of the fact that they should never treat their characters like pieces in a boardgame or wargame, we're running a narrative game and they need to engage with the setting by roleplaying. For the most part this works because everyone at the table had the expectations set by me ahead of time, as such the players aren't allowed to meta-game the scenario. In 5th it literally says if your players are trying to meta-game and talk about the DM's relative fairness/unfairness your job is to then ask them what their characters think. Because their characters don't possess the same meta-game awareness, your warrior should not be pissed because he made a build that's ineffective against golems, because those aren't choices your character should make 'in fiction' in any way. Given how often you've referenced your players playing min-maxed characters this leads me to the belief, like many have already pointed out, that your players have an extremely poor ability to wall off their metagame discussions and actually roleplay the characters they've made. They appear to not want to engage with the fiction on any level and are instead treating DnD like a tabletop wargame, where you are less bound by fiction and are more focused on combat, grid based movement, tactics and strategy. Now if this is the kind of game your players want to run, no wonder they're making your life miserable. DnD 5th is a poor game for pure tabletop wargaming rpglikes, in my experience and you would be better served playing an older version or a different game with crunchy rules with the idea you should focus on combat. This does not get your players off the hook for trying to metagame however. Min-Maxed players still need to be threatened, for if you're not honestly challenging players where they have equal chance of losing encounters as winning, the game might as well not exist. If challenging players is the complaint, your players just want you to play to their egos and reward them for meta-gaming the hell out of the games systems rather than honestly engaging in the fiction in good faith. Leperflesh made a really good post on how modules are written and they are almost never "run exactly as is" as it's impossible to account for every possible player type or group dynamic, and the idea that a GM/DM would blame the module for a bad game is sort of mind blowing. This 'General' character is probably exactly the guy to run tabletop wargames but he seems like he lacks the flexibility to actually manage a game outside of combat heavy scenarios. The group as a whole, whether that's due to their experiences playing games run by the 'General', seem to think it's their job as players and characters to outsmart and beat you as a DM, which is again, absolutely not engaging with the fiction in an honest way. This whole thread has been a fascinating read, and I'm hard pressed to find any reading of the various scenarios you've posited that don't end with, and your players are bad. Your basic defense seems to be, actually it's not the players who are bad it's me, my players are actually really good because this one time..etc. Which again, none of which are as good as you seem to think they are because almost all examples used, your players are talking about the metagame and not the narrative. Which is explicitly very much against the explicit text of the DnD 5th PHB. You keep trying to find answers to the problem you've perceived by incorrectly assigning the blame to yourself(or worse the adventure module) and are appealing to thread wisdom to tell you how to be a better DM. What most people here seem to be trying to tell you is that your DM skills are not the issue and you shouldn't be dealing with the level of meta game criticism your players are throwing at you. Hopefully some of this gets through, because if your players aren't as bad as your stories here seem to indicate then having a table talk where you set the expectations for running a narrative game that explicitly forbids meta-game discussion and nonsense, maybe you can all get back to having fun again. If that's not possible then you have to accept you could bend over backwards trying to accommodate these players and it will never be good enough because they aren't capable of trusting you or engaging with any game in good faith. Edit - Just wanna say thanks to the poster below me, you've made some great posts in this thread and I appreciate the effort you put in and you've given me some good things to think about, and the post below is no exception! AnarkiJ fucked around with this message at 11:10 on May 30, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 09:40
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Zeerust posted:old school stuff D&D in its heyday was quite popular but it was originally made to extend a wargame from one context to another with more in depth rules for individual folks, so the story goes. In fact, Charisma had to do with how many followers you could hire to do things like hold your torches or go check traps for you if you had the coin for it (hence the 'hirelings' concept). This was later extended to the lordship rules for when you get into stronghold mode which was kind of out of the normal dungeoneering wheel now by determining how many followers and what kinds of lieutenants you could attract for the purposes of doing some wars or otherwise. Most of D&D is deceptively simple mostly because people didn't know any better or didn't have simpler rules. That said, there was this very old concept of a referee making not just some rolls but all rolls including character stats behind the screen. When it democratized the rolls quickly thereafter for people to roll as they please, a lot of these types of things had a "roll once" clause for the skill descriptors. I think the concept of skill checks was almost entirely the province of Rogues and Dwarf/Elf/Halfling up until you started getting into AD&D and the rules started getting real wacky. The idea of "closed" and "open" skill rolls is something that I do at my table often enough that even new players have a pretty good idea of thinking about the skills more than thinking about the roll. I tend to warrant skill rolls if it's something that would make the game fun to know what the outcome is (high or low), and then dilute the signal to noise ratio, particularly on knowledge rolls. Players love rolling for poo poo, so sometimes I just let it ride and then they get a bad roll and I tell them actual truth on the matter they're asking after, but then they don't believe me and we all have a laugh about it. Information in general is the topic of skill rolls, and unless there is some kind of extreme pressure, rolls aren't needed unless they'd give some kind of interesting color to a scene. DalaranJ posted:So, to be clear the question is: "When is referee obfuscation of roll results appropriate and in what manner (in a dungeon crawl)?" I will see if I can answer this more clearly in a bit. My usual table chatter goes like this (particularly during investigations), regardless if a group is in or out of a dungeon crawl. I also like to refer to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons for some excellent application of skills to do things (some are very specific to GURPS but there's some gold in those pages). Me: "You're at the building and you've gotten past the cops, and you can see these things. A path leads to the back as well. Here are some other details." Player 1: "Can I inspect the ground for tracks?" Me: "You can see that there's a long furrow in the tall grass on the side path. Are you trained in a skill regarding tracking?" Player 1: "No, but I do want to see if there are any other tracks around here." Me (improvising): "You're not an expert here, so you could probably only see the obvious things but not know about things like age of the tracks other than in general terms. It couldn't have been more than a week, maybe, that this track was made. There is some other grass that has been flattened as well." P1: "Like, by footprints?" Me: "Maybe." P2: "About how large are these footprints? I'm trained in the Nature skill, maybe this was done by some kind of larger animal? Are there large animals in the city, like bears getting into garbage cans?" Me: "I think you might be on to something. If you'd like, give me a skill roll, and I'll tell you some more things about the situation." (a 'good' roll was made) Me: "You're pretty confident that it wasn't a bear or other large kind of animal, but the tracks do suggest that someone was doing something else recently. Perhaps gardening? There are some pretty drat nice flowers around here. Award winning, in fact. You're quite impressed by the garden around you. The grass, also, looks like it was cut pretty recently, but someone has been neglecting the lawn a bit. Maybe a week or two, just eyeballing it with your expertise." Player 3: "Well, if there was someone doing some gardening, they probably have a tool shed, right? Can I see farther down the path?" Me: "Indeed, there's a shed and a wheelbarrow hanging from a fence..." Everybody else: "Ohhhh. Haha. :facepalm: Let's go check that out. We can check this garden later." In this case, skill rolls provided more information and filled in the blanks that a player created in the fiction by thinking laterally about existing shared information. This allowed for some rather mundane observations, but the players had a good time about it, and they reminded each other that they don't necessarily need to have the perfect skill for the job to get information. They also realized that they can't just roll and try to find out what happens after rolling - they need to come up with a good reason to leverage their skills, or think through it via the fiction. They also took a gentle prod as good fun since they were all zeroing in on these tracks. --- There's another more explicit scenario of hiding in a dangerous spot in another game. Manipulation of information causes some fun player tension for someone who is a veteran of mechanics, but is fairly new to the concept of following the narrative and roleplaying: Me: "Normally this is something that I would roll behind a screen, but I think if you'd like, you can roll your stealth. You're a master of the shadows, right? Surely you have excellent hiding tactics." Player 4: "Yeah! My bonus is so drat high. I love having a high bonus. I made my entire character concept around this. Assassin's Creed, baby!" (a natural 1 was rolled) Me (giving the same answer I would have given if a natural 20 was rolled): "So, you feel reasonably hidden..." P4: "But I rolled really bad? Natural 1!" Me (delaying payoff of said roll): "Yes, and you're a master of the shadows. There's no way you'd get caught snooping around this theater, right? That's why you volunteered to go ahead of the party. They'd never be able to get past the guards now that the entire city's on alert thanks to that stunt the Bard pulled. Assassinate the king? Not on the Royal Guard's Watch..." P4 (suspicious that something is up): "Uh...Right! Yes. Master of the shadows. I'm going to carefully go up to the theater." Me (using the natural 1 to ratchet tension using a nonbinary failure state): "You're moving along and duck into an alleyway and find yourself next to a guard with their back turned to you. Close call! He calls out to a squad of other guardsmen near a door to get their attention about the changing watch. Sounds like he's got another hour or two. He's gonna be here awhile." (other players, having keyed in to what I'm doing, are having a bit of a laugh in the background while watching the drama) P4: "Oh man, I knew that this was a bad idea. Anything else around me?" Me (throwing the player a bone): "The guard in front of you doesn't seem to have noticed you, but you could probably climb up the wall?" P4 (very indecisive): "Hmm..." Me (+1 tension, golden opportunity chance!): "You hear that there are some guards in heavy armor coming around the corner. They're talking about the assassination plot. What's your move?" P4: "Yikes! I'm gonna go up the wall!" Me (bargain): "Thaaat's gonna probably need a roll...You have Athletics?" P4: "Does Acrobatics work? I'm trained in it! Wait, what is this wall made out of wood? That should be pretty easy to climb, right? I have +8 in it. EIGHT!" Me: "That's a pretty big plus, yep. Well, I didn't think about the wall, but now that you bring it up, yes, it's made out of wood. You don't even need to roll since you're so good at climbing. A master of climbing!" P4: "Uhhhh...Yes. I'll Assassin's Creed up the wall." Me (+1 tension): "You get up the wall to an open window as one of the guards looks up..." P4: "I dive through the window!!" Me: "Are you sure?" P4: "Yes - no way I'm going to be caught here!" Me: "Give me that Acrobatics roll we talked about..." This was a bit reworked in the example but the actual rolls were the same. The player did have a good time, but also didn't realize until afterwards that they were, in fact, roleplaying. They were more fixated on the single die roll from earlier than the fiction, but in this case, their open roll in the mechanics informed their narrative play. --- In both examples the rolls could have been done "closed", and I could have narrated based on the 'true' outcome of the rolls, or I could have provided some other fun bits for the players to roll around with. Because they don't have perfect information and have to think with their character sheets, part of the fun is "information bargaining". In other words, this ends up being the delicious spicy salt on the margarita glass rim. hyphz posted:It seems very hard to get that in other games, and appeal can change without it. The appeal of fighting or sneaking your way out of a mansion of angry gangsters is kind of reduced if those guarantees aren't there. These are all pretty broad-based assumptions but I get the sense that there's a specific need to have a large amount of mechanical realism to make the game tick. Interpreting a situation in one way or another but not disclosing this in conversation outside of the game or mis-calibrating expectations is a common pitfall of groups that don't talk to each other. For a player who goes off and explores, I offer the example above where a player splits from the party to do a stealth mission. There are many roads to get back to table harmony there. However, another example for your specific context of how this may play out: Player 1: "I'd like to split from the party and go exploring a bit." Me: "Hmm. Well, I'm happy to let you do that, but let's take a step outside of the game first. This might take a little while to sort out what happens when you split off from the group, and your character might end up injured or possibly dead. Is everybody cool with that?" or: Player 1: "I'd like to split from the party and go exploring a bit." Me (aside): "What do you hope to accomplish by going out to explore alone?" Player 1: "I'm actually just kind of bored waiting around for stuff to happen and I want to find some monsters to kill." Me: "That's reasonable. Would you like to do that now in the middle of the night? You're in unfamiliar and dangerous territory, but with great risks come great rewards." Player 1: "Yeah, I'm good with all that. Let's get to fighting! I just want some action." Me (to other players): "Y'all notice that your buddy is gearing up to head out into the night - checking weapons for a fight etc." Players 2 through 5: "What? Where are you going? We can't split the party!" Me (opportunity during the party discussion to escalate to a fight): "You hear a horn off in the distance as you get into the thick of the discussion. Orc battle horn, maybe. Can't be farther than 100 yards away. They're close by." Player 1: "Now we're talking! I'm going to check it out!" Player 2: "I can't let you go by yourself, we have no idea what kind of numbers we're up against!" Me: "Five orcs come into view..." Player 1: "I'm going in!" Me: "...and roll initiative." At this point you could revisit the original topic and then have a narrative reason to split the party up (orcs nearby, one of the players runs off, and then what?) and play to find out what happens. --- I'm actually grappling with some similar problems in my groups right now, where the decision making process in Friday group is difficult as well as the head count makes organizing in Thursday group tough due to high player count. Saturday still has the players calibrating against each other and not having a good vehicle to improv. Thursday's problems are pretty straightforward since the majority of the group is new and putting a handout in front of them (the classic Party Roster) helps to align them mechanically. For the Friday group, their indecision is getting to the point where it requires some critical examination of how the rest of the game should go. Late-joining players as well as people who miss a lot of sessions but need narrative continuity seem to be a recurring theme. I've asked the players in this game to figure out through the narrative how they want to organize their adventuring company so they can figure out who's actually going to call the shots. I've also given them a "Roles Sheet" to help (again, new players) the ability to organize and think more about how to delegate who's doing what in the group. For anybody missing, the idea will be to have them spirited away so their characters are back at the guild hall or whatnot while the rest of the party is up to no good. Saturday's group I'm going to introduce FATE Chips in lieu of a roleplay rock since I want a more concrete resource for players to spend and tie it to milestone advancement. This would encourage the players to take more direct narrative control or use it for mechanical bonuses to serve both needs, as well as give them a clear progress marker at how well they're doing - if they're engaging with the game and spending their tokens, they level up faster as a group. I'll also pilot this with the new Sunday game as well. I should qualify that some flexibility is required in order to get a given group to work in a different framework. Placing the blame squarely on the inability of a piece of text to provide sufficient guidance just doesn't cut the mustard for me personally in this day and age, but that's because I like to tinker. For me, part of the fun of RPGs is that there really isn't something that's impossible. There's always something old or new to key off of or to synthesize to get the answers I'm looking for, or to give me inspiration to make my own answers. The bits and bobs that don't fit quite right but give me ideas on interpretations instead of staying in one specific lane of "you must do things this way and interpret this way" is mostly a tired one for me. For every thing that I've seen in this thread, it makes me curious since it's a new thing to think about and consider a solution for. Why spend energy being in the negative mindset, when instead there is more fulfillment and wonder in looking at something from a different angle? That said, I actually don't think that this is resolvable with a wave of a wand for anybody else. I happen to find thinking through these things fun, even if I miss the forest for the trees and thus earn the ire of the thread hell-bent on crushing negatives. To hyphz specifically, I like to think of Matt Colville, who summarizes living a creative life quite well. Your note about "I'm not a writer, I'm not being paid to write these books I'm running games from" reminds me of this mindset, and I think this video may be up your alley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m71vVPBwAok --- Revisiting the other topic of "crunchy and narratively deep systems" out there, I guess I'm defining "crunchy" as what most people would consider: lots of mechanical build options to solve interesting solutions, and "narrative" as creating the framework for the story that the mechanics can interact with. This desire comes from running Lancer, since I'm not sure there's actually a way to reconcile its non-mech engine with its mech engine. World of Darkness has kind of a weird thing going on with all of its lenses since the power jump from one dot to three dots is nominal, but three to four or five is a deeply big deal. Exalted also has the same underlying feeling. I guess I'm thinking of something like a point-buy system like GURPS, but it goes too hard to the paint on crunch. Not as hard as 3.5e or Pathfinder 1e, but still pretty hard. Maybe I just need to go play Path of Exile or old Monster Hunter games (freedom unite what up) in order to satisfy this crunch, or maybe this desire to seek a game like this and a game in its space has to do with finding some kind of specific itch to scratch, like playing Birthright or passing a single game concept through multiple systems or something silly like that.
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May 30, 2020 10:34
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mllaneza posted:Fixing Hyphz is going to require he runs a game where the fiction matters for people who are trying to engage with the fiction, not score off the GM. It's like someone with a functional family talking to someone raised by a narcissist or raised by a couple who should have gotten divorced decades ago but were too Christian or any number of other dysfunctional family groups. The first says "I should stop by my parents this weekend, it's been a while." They mean that they love their parents and want to check in on them and also spend an evening catching up and generally having a pleasant night in with the folks. But what the latter hears is "If I dont slap on a false smile and subject myself to some banal conversation thinly layered over an evening of non-stop emotional abuse then I will exceed the arbitrary 'you dont love me anymore' time interval and then there will be Consequences." This is what's going on with Hyphz. He's interpreting everything being said through the lens of a completely skewed understanding of normal friend group interactions where "social capital" is required to spend an evening rolling d6s instead of d20s and assuming a different group of people will be the same but even worse because he's the "new guy". The difficulty isn't linguistic, it's cultural. Posters are talking to a guy who juggles live grenades recreationally and wondering why he's terrified by the concept of boules.
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May 30, 2020 11:52
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 13:35
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Absurd Alhazred posted:There's always the Traveler system where you randomly roll for potentially years of past career for your character, including the possibility of it dying and you having to start over before even starting to actively play! Traveler 2e doesn't let you die in character creation anymore, but that is always a fun story. Also traveler's character creation is really interesting and worth checking out even if you never plan to play it.
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May 30, 2020 15:22
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 15:45
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"Character died during creation" was weird in traveller and it sounds weird when you say it like that, but I love the idea of a session zero where you find out that half the group died while the plot was getting started and the PCs are the people that made it this far.
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May 30, 2020 15:56
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 16:00
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Alternatively, just play a character who is currently dead. Or has a convoluted bullshit reason they came back to life. Jesus time baby.
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May 30, 2020 16:05
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Systems that have bonds with NPCs are ripe fodder for backup PCs. Big examples off-hand are cthulu based games ("my close friend hasn't called me, last letter said to contact you guys if he didn't call me"), or red markets (your dependent steps up to the plate, and hey the crew is down a person and needs extra hands). Session zero being run as a one-shot where that is the igniting incident (surviving players can take their character into the campaign proper or their guy can be an npc) is also often pretty strong. In general having the system give you at least a bit of a skeleton to built your character on can really help with roleplaying I've found. Even in those you still flesh out your character through play a ton, and what you find out is often not what you started at, but that is how anything goes. Then you look at any of the D&D games and there is absolutely no guidance on your character outside of race/class, and its impressive at how little you feel you know them compared to any system that helps you out a tad. edit: one shot as a campaign starter is also good for systems players aren't as familiar with, as it lets them give the system and their characters a bit of a low-stakes shakedown run while finding out about the world.
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May 30, 2020 16:06
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 16:15
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Joe Slowboat posted:I really think we're burying the lede here in that Hyphz's players don't seem to care about the fiction at all. That's not tenable! I feel like it's at least notionally possible to have a player who's more interested in how the systems work, in the dice and the numbers and the mechanics intersecting with one another, than in whatever plot stuff is actually going on. I must confess that it's hard for me to imagine, though...
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May 30, 2020 16:59
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't really see the problem with meta-game discussions. We have that a lot at our "table" (virtually these days). Comments like "what were those creatures we encountered" and "I don't think that magic item's in the DMG" and "how much of this was in the module" and "I think this is how the rules say X works" come up a lot. But there's also an understanding that, despite the fact that I have the least experience in D&D 5E or DMing, I am still the DM they've chosen to allow to run the game, and ultimately the point is to have the characters deal with the challenges they're presented with in the world I'm the final arbiter on. I don't have a problem with meta-game discussion, it just doesn't need to happen during a session, this is different if you're running an open game for new players so that people have a chance to learn and ask questions. The point is to minimize it because it wastes game time and I can point you to the passage in 5th ed, where it does tell the DM to discourage metagame discussions at the table. This is specific to 5th and doesn't necessarily apply to ALL games. We can discuss it as much as people want to after a session, but that metagame discussion shouldn't be what informs character decisions, the characters should be roleplayed in setting in a way that works with the fiction. Meta-discussion is a useful tool, particularly if I make a wrong call, I expect players who are paying attention to correct it, much the same way I would correct a player if they made a mistake, but most things that don't relate to a specific rule interpretation can wait until after the session is finished so we're not wasting valuable game time. My players are completely on board with this and understand it, it's not that meta discussions are bad or banned from the table, it should just be focused on whats necessary to keep the game running smoothly and everyone having fun.
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May 30, 2020 17:09
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paradoxGentleman posted:I feel like it's at least notionally possible to have a player who's more interested in how the systems work, in the dice and the numbers and the mechanics intersecting with one another, than in whatever plot stuff is actually going on. I must confess that it's hard for me to imagine, though... I think that having someone who cares more about the mechanics than the fiction is entirely viable, but they need to care about and respect the fiction enough to engage in good faith. Someone really into the wizard math in Ars Magicka, who’s even willing to crunch the numbers for other players to make sure everyone gets their best spells, could be a fine addition to a table... but not if they start insisting that other players and the GM need to change the fiction of the world to feed perfectly into the numbers game. They might suggest courses of action or request specific opportunities from the GM to set up cool number effects, but they need to still engage in good faith.
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May 30, 2020 17:22
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I think it depends on your players. If they're good at separating meta game knowledge from in game actions, having that discussion in session isn't a big deal a lot of the time. Sometimes it can retract from the feel of the game, or sometimes your players aren't good at separating meta from character, and in those times being stricter about it leads to more enjoyable play.
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May 30, 2020 17:22
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ZypherIM posted:I think it depends on your players. If they're good at separating meta game knowledge from in game actions, having that discussion in session isn't a big deal a lot of the time. Sometimes it can retract from the feel of the game, or sometimes your players aren't good at separating meta from character, and in those times being stricter about it leads to more enjoyable play. Yeah I agree with this statement, it really depends on the players, I tend to lean hard on discouraging it unless I'm sure the players can maintain the difference between what they know as players and what their characters know. It's tough to avoid meta game discussions altogether, and especially with new players, who often have a hard time starting out with separating what they know from what their characters know, and inevitably ask a lot of questions, there's definitely leeway for those discussions to happen until those players are more familiar with the game.
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May 30, 2020 17:42
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm totally agreeing that his group sounds toxic as gently caress, but anyone saying that he himself is broken I'mma fight you cause once you get him away from the toxic bullshit he's a really good player and a contribution to the group. Oh I agree, I'm just saying that once he runs a game for people who aren't broken, he'll internalize that he wasn't ever the broken one. I'll keep an eye on the Discord, I'd love to make my schedule work for that session ! Run a game Hyphz ! Splicer posted:He did. It went well. His conclusion was that it only went well because it was a literal magical tea party and nothing of the experience crosses over to more serious games with more serious potential character consequences. You're right in that people keep trying to explain how games work to Hyphz but the real problem isn't his understanding of the games it's his understanding of how friend groups behave toward each other. Oh dang. Well, we'll just keep a safe space open.
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May 30, 2020 18:07
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 18:26
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Zeerust posted:I strongly suspect this would make no difference, simply because the argument is "A GM running a game that relies even marginally on improvisation or doesn't have ironclad parameters for everything could be accused of being arbitrary by their players and subsequently risk being ostracised." No amount of good play experiences can correct for that, because any positive experience is immediately dismissed as an outlier or exception to the rule. Well, sorry, it's not just straight "Risk been ostracised" entirely; it's "risk having the game break down" as people decide it's not fun and they don't want to play. That may then have social results down the line. And I do sometimes think the Warrior had a bit of a point about character generation. What's the point in questing and adjusting your character to get them to AC 45 (or equivalent) if it just means that all the bad guys will mysteriously get +35 bonuses to hit? I'm surprised that someone mentioned the infinite draconians thing in a negative context, because how is "the encounter continues until a minimum amount of harm has been done to the PCs to create tension" any different from infinite draconians?
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May 30, 2020 21:43
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