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Xiahou Dun posted:Every single part of this sounds like a bad idea to me. Conceptually and mechanically I just would never touch it in a million years. Why, if I can ask?
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Nov 17, 2020 04:04
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Josef bugman posted:So I am in a Warhammer 4e game. It is a lot of fun but I wanted to play a bit of a different character from my kickarse Dwarven Slayer. What follows is a C.I.A document because whilst I don't think any of the others would read the forum I don't know for sure. 1) This kind of thing is *VERY* difficult to actually pull off in a way that is satisfying to everyone in the table. If it goes awry (likely) there's bound to be high levels of grumpiness at the table. Please reconsider on those grounds. 2) idk enough about WHFRP but Chaos Magic is so thematically distinct that it kinda needs to involve a bunch of weird fiddly bullshit in comparison to regular magic.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:08
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Personally I'm hesitant to do any kind of character that's explicitly designed to betray the party from the start, especially since people typically treat PCs and NPCs with different degrees of scrutiny.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:09
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it's me, the guy who once had a character sell himself to the forces of evil for vast power at the cost of potentially turning on the party short story: it went poorly long story: i failed one will save out of a dozen or so sessions and almost managed to murder the min/maxed wizard (no loss, the player was a tool). many hard feelings were had. the next session came after a six month real life time gap and i was greeted at the table with "during the last six months you failed a will save and had to be put down" without getting to roll or being forewarned or anything. the wizard was a dick though, i was introduced to the part mid dungeon crawl. i was off doing my own thing in media res when i got attached by a giant spider. being a psion i blasted it with fire but i didn't know the other players were in range of the cone of fire. the wizard responded by draining all my intelligence
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Nov 17, 2020 04:18
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People take it extremely personal when you betray them. Even in a game, sometimes especially in a game.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:20
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Boba Pearl posted:People take it extremely personal when you betray them. Even in a game, sometimes especially in a game. I still won't game with my friends brother because of how he drained all my int mid dungeon so that checks out.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:21
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senrath posted:Personally I'm hesitant to do any kind of character that's explicitly designed to betray the party from the start, especially since people typically treat PCs and NPCs with different degrees of scrutiny. Yeah, unless this is specifically a game with a lot of buy in for party backstabbing from all the players up front, it feels a little like it's being set up as a violation of the usual party compact stuff. I'd also suggest if chaos magick is too fiddly have seperate sheets like a regular wizard for your stuff then the GM has a chaos magus or whatever based on that sheet. Like the best way to avoid hard feelings with a plot idea like that is probably you play the character straight as an ally. Then the GM lets you give the betrayal speech or whatever and explains what happened offscreen that undermined the group and takes control of rhe now NPC. So less a 'you schemed and hosed them over in ways that wouldn't have worked if it hadn't been a PC' and more 'the GM has filled in storyblanks with a freshly retired PC with the player's permission.'
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Nov 17, 2020 04:26
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This may sound a bit extreme, but people HATE it when you do this betray the party "I'm a secret bad guy and you never saw it coming" poo poo, and there's a few good reasons. 1. You always end up having to cheat to make it work, and despite you thinking you're pulling it off, you're generally not. 2. It tells the rest of the players "The DM and I don't trust you to act surprised." That second one can take some extra explanation. It's a roleplaying game. You have to trust your party to be willing to play roles. If you tell your party in advance "Oh hey, I'll be playing the role of secret betrayer" you're basically letting them in on a fun story arc. They can ham it up acting like they have no idea what's coming. If they don't do that, and instead just keep coming up with reasons to suspect your character, then people at the table never actually wanted to do a secret betrayer arc anyway. And if you don't tell them, when you do the big reveal all they're going to think is "That was a lot of work to lie to us when you could have instead made this fun for everyone the whole time."
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Nov 17, 2020 04:30
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Leperflesh posted:I'm describing what I'd expect to see from any megathread that is about one particular game. Not even just in TG. If someone strolled into the Civilization 6 thread in Games to talk some poo poo about Civ6, all on their lonesome, they'd get a lot of responses disagreeing with them and that would not be fun for them. Especially if they wanted to insist that actually Civ IV was the pinnacle of Civ games and anyone who plays Civ6 is having fun wrong. Even if they had cogent and clear arguments rooted in facts about those games. It might be more productive given that I don't think there's a decades-long tradition of edition warring about Civ, but even then, people gonna play what they want to play, you know? I see you've read the Civ 6 thread before.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:37
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Has anyone noticed if the supply/stock of tabletop boardgames and/or in-print tabletop RPGs has been affected by the pandemic? I know that videogame hardware availability has been choked from so many people being at home and buying equipment because they want something to play (and or work with) at home, and I was wondering if that's translated to our space as well.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:40
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Josef bugman posted:Why, if I can ask? As people said above, betrayal at the table is only fun if you're like playing Resistance or something and everyone knows the score. The stupid notes under the table and pull asides thing stopped being fun (if it ever was) years ago. If you're going to do that plot-line, it should be with everyone buying into it as author-stance and agreeing it's cool. Then at least everyone's on-board and building to Geoff the Wide's heel turn. And then mechanically of course Chaos magic sucks that's the point. It's supposed to be a scrub's game for idiots. That's why NPC's who are supposed to be clowned on get it rather than PC's.
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Nov 17, 2020 04:44
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theironjef posted:This may sound a bit extreme, but people HATE it when you do this betray the party "I'm a secret bad guy and you never saw it coming" poo poo, and there's a few good reasons. Yeah this is another good way of handling it. Hell do both. Let everyone know. If the GM wants to be cheeky they can throw in some revelation like a divination that someone will betray the group. But yeah no secret stuff at the table bogging it down and a reveal from you "here's what I did to gently caress you over," just you and the GM discussed stuff ahead of time and you volunteered your current PC's retirement as a villain.
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Nov 17, 2020 05:23
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I had a GM who had a guest player play a traitor. We found this random guy and I was like "hey we are going to go into this dungeon and kill some monsters, wanna come with?" Then the final combat was extremely tense and close and after finishing off the last monsters, the guest player finished off the rest of us (who were already down and making death saves). I was upset. It wasn't earned - there had been no hints or foreshadowing. But moreover, what was I going to do at the beginning of the session? "Oh, I don't know if I can trust this guy. We'd better chain him up in the hold of our ship while we go about our business. Sorry pal, I know you came to play with us but our characters have no reason to put their lives in the hands of a stranger." If they had told us beforehand, we could have enjoyed the dramatic irony and played into it or planned some fun reversal or reveal or something.
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Nov 17, 2020 06:38
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Yeah, taking advantage of PC glow like that is a dick move.
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Nov 17, 2020 06:40
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Jimbozig posted:I had a GM who had a guest player play a traitor. What's the point of that? The next session starts with everyone captured? Or assuming it's a system where this has to be lethal & death isn't permanent you play as the b team for a side adventure to bring your main characters back? I'm trying to understand how that was supposed to work in the GM's head? You were supposed to be betrayed but not that hosed over? In which case shouldn't the GM have paused and said "Yeah, no" to "Now I kill the other players." They were just done being GM and needed someone else to flip the table for them?
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Nov 17, 2020 06:54
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I had a similar experience in a gaming situation where a guest player came in, immediately hosed up something we had been planning the previous session, took great pains to soothe everyone and say that he was just super duper glad to be here and generally make those vaguely-mendacious shows of aggressive friendliness... THEN he did the same drat thing again not two hours later. Four out of six of the regular players wrote to the GM basically saying "Yo don't invite that dude back please."
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Nov 17, 2020 07:53
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My first DM had the bad guy poison my PC and blackmail him into spying on the party with regular doses of just-barely-keep-him-alive antidotes. Naturally he had a reason to shoot down every clever plan I came up with. Didn't go over well, I'm lucky these guys still play with me (though not that DM). His clever plot twist was that the antidote had been the real poison all along and if I'd just dared to go cold turkey on it I'd have been fine after a few days of discomfort. Thanks bud.
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Nov 17, 2020 08:08
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That is the most catpiss thing I've heard in a while, lmao.
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Nov 17, 2020 08:09
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Maybe its cause I'm dirty narrativist storytelling scum, but keeping secrets in the group is dumb as poo poo IMO. Plenty of ways to do surprises that don't involve violating trust. The players aren't the PCs. If you wanna have a PC betray the group, cool, might make for a dramatic story, but the players, all of them, should probably on board first. Then again, if I was GMing, I wouldn't even kill or horribly maim or otherwise traumatize a PC if they player wasn't 100% cool with it, and only if it makes for a good story. No "Oh the random mook goblin kills you because you failed two rolls in a row and I rolled high."
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Nov 17, 2020 08:53
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Just bust out Paranoia XP for a session or three to get the lighthearted backstabbing vibe out of everyone's systems and then go back to your party-based game where a foundation of the social play agreement is a basic level of trust that your fellow players and by extension their characters are here for a cooperative game experience.
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Nov 17, 2020 09:17
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I did actually have the dynamic of "players at the table have secrets from each other" work in one game: all the players were united in rebellion against the Empire, but many of them had their own ideas about what they wanted to replace it with. It helped that this dynamic was very clear from the start, that the players in question all knew and trusted one another OC, and that they had a common and very present and visible enemy to unite against. I still probably wouldn't do it again because there were so many ways it could have gone wrong, but I'm glad I did.
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Nov 17, 2020 09:41
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Boba Pearl posted:That is the most catpiss thing I've heard in a while, lmao.
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Nov 17, 2020 09:46
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My Lovely Horse posted:And I completely dropped the ball on it by not feeding the bad guy false information, too. Although he'd probably just been like "zone of truth lol". With stuff like that I'm also pretty sure the GM would've hosed you over if you guessed their intended solution early or stumbled onto it by refusing to betray. Either they'd fudge the poison plot, so you die/suffer/whatever or just having nothing in their backpocket and being pouty. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Nov 17, 2020 |
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Nov 17, 2020 10:05
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Boba Pearl posted:People take it extremely personal when you betray them. Even in a game, sometimes especially in a game. Really? I mean the betrayal is going to be telegraphed and I am just eventually going to have my previous character come back and merc the hell out of the one I would be playing, I just thought it might be nice to play as someone a little different. Xiahou Dun posted:As people said above, betrayal at the table is only fun if you're like playing Resistance or something and everyone knows the score. The stupid notes under the table and pull asides thing stopped being fun (if it ever was) years ago. If you're going to do that plot-line, it should be with everyone buying into it as author-stance and agreeing it's cool. Then at least everyone's on-board and building to Geoff the Wide's heel turn. I always liked doing asides when I was a GM/ player. I liked having something to figure out so I just never considered that people might react so badly to it. No I'm sorry, you can't have a loving evil wizard without having more power and mad cackling. I hate the idea that you aren't allowed to play as something because "Oh why would you do that" when it's given as a drat option. You can't go "you are having badwrongfun if you choose to play as an evil chaos wizard" because playing an evil chaos wizard sounds hilarious. I don't mind it melting me into a puddle of goo, I do mind it being strictly more poo poo than the other choice. Also I wouldn't be doing things like "I am going to be sub-optimal in combat in order that you all die". Who would do that? edit: I realised my criticism of the game saying "no" to chaos options sounded like I was very cross at you Xiahou Dun. I did not intend that and I do apologise. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Nov 17, 2020 |
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Nov 17, 2020 11:06
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So you know your group better than we do, but in my experience attempts at telegraphing that fall short of explicitly stating something are almost never clear enough. Or are actively ignored, because "they're a PC, they wouldn't betray us so we must be misinterpreting things".
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Nov 17, 2020 11:18
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Josef bugman posted:I mean the betrayal is going to be telegraphed and I am just eventually going to have my previous character come back and merc the hell out of the one I would be playing, I just thought it might be nice to play as someone a little different. They don't even get to kill the traitor themselves? Whoof!
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Nov 17, 2020 11:22
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Yeah, no offense, but "I'm going to bring in a new PC to betray the party and then bring back my old PC to kill him!" would definitely make me wonder why I was at the table at all, were I another player. Do the other PCs have anything to do here besides get betrayed/rescued?
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Nov 17, 2020 11:26
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Antivehicular posted:Yeah, no offense, but "I'm going to bring in a new PC to betray the party and then bring back my old PC to kill him!" would definitely make me wonder why I was at the table at all, were I another player. Do the other PCs have anything to do here besides get betrayed/rescued? No as in in the fight, not like casually just offing them. Former character is just going to be there. Though y'all are raising good points tbh. Antivehicular posted:Yeah, no offense, but "I'm going to bring in a new PC to betray the party and then bring back my old PC to kill him!" would definitely make me wonder why I was at the table at all, were I another player. Do the other PCs have anything to do here besides get betrayed/rescued? I mean, yeah? The plan is for prior character to go wandering for a bit during down time (she's a slayer so it's more likely that during the downtime after rescuing a city she goes off to try and get killed) and then during the inbetween bit the group and new character meet up and make the way to the next city. Then -adventures- for X amount of sessions until there is some sort of grand reveal and a big old fight, Yngrid becomes my character again and magister becomes an NPC. I don't disagree with the points any of you are raising, just trying to give more of an overview. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Nov 17, 2020 |
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Nov 17, 2020 11:28
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For a couple weeks I've been running a co-op bundle with another designer and there's ~24 hours left. It's called the Sea Changes Bundle and it's a set of 3 map-games (plus 1 extension) about the near and far fates of humanity and the slow changes that get us there:
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Nov 17, 2020 11:47
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My Lovely Horse posted:And I completely dropped the ball on it by not feeding the bad guy false information, too. Although he'd probably just been like "zone of truth lol".
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Nov 17, 2020 11:54
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I was the traitor in my most recent BitD game. In session zero, I said "what if I was a rat?" and everyone went "gently caress yeah", so we went into it knowing that but little else. Turns out I was working for the antagonists, two other PCs knew that but were using me to feed back bad info and because I had useful skills, and one other PC was naive about the whole thing. Awesome game, fun roleplaying, and the big unplanned-at-the-start twist: My guy took "soft" as a trauma and didn't end up doing the betrayal before he died, which gave the two characters who were using him and justifying it with "it's ok, he's a baddie" a chance to do some "wait... are we the baddies?" stuff.Nessus posted:Is a zone of truth the same as a zone of comprehensive, complete, and accurate reporting? I feel that the second should be, like, at least one level higher than the first. Maybe even two. From memory, ZoT is "you can't knowingly lie". So you could do whatever not-outright-lying deception, you could refuse to answer, or you could flip the whole thing on its head by stating theories about the questioner to see if the spell lets you. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Nov 17, 2020 |
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Nov 17, 2020 11:55
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fool of sound posted:As much as I enjoy Root we've taken to forbidding the Vagabond and just playing with the "bot" rules for it, because despite the protestations of the Root aficionados the Vagabond is a failure of design; it either gets teamed up on and rammed into the ground as frequently as possible, or wins. So basically like every other faction? At least in our games Birds and Cats regularly get teamed up on and wrecked lest they achieve a run away victory. Although I can definitely see your point. I think it helped in our group that none of the regulars is actually interested in playing it so that the 'Bond is usually delegated to the person that plays Root for the first time. It keeps them engaged and competitive without having to overwhelm them with faction rules. Countblanc posted:Spirit Island and King's Dilemma both have great TTS mods Tulip posted:May as well also like the good port of Feast For Odin potatocubed posted:I don't know what 'the usual suspects' are, but: the Wingspan TTS mod is fantastic, and for my money knocks the actual video game adaptation into a cocked hat. Also if you can find the right mods, BattleCON and Exceed both have really good ones. Awesome, I'll check them out.
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Nov 17, 2020 12:01
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fool of sound posted:As much as I enjoy Root we've taken to forbidding the Vagabond and just playing with the "bot" rules for it, because despite the protestations of the Root aficionados the Vagabond is a failure of design; it either gets teamed up on and rammed into the ground as frequently as possible, or wins. Honestly, you can say "You need to ram them into the ground as frequently as possible or they win" about every faction in Root. That's the point of it.
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Nov 17, 2020 12:12
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:From memory, ZoT is "you can't knowingly lie". So you could do whatever not-outright-lying deception, you could refuse to answer, or you could flip the whole thing on its head by stating theories about the questioner to see if the spell lets you.
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Nov 17, 2020 12:21
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Josef bugman posted:No I'm sorry, you can't have a loving evil wizard without having more power and mad cackling. I hate the idea that you aren't allowed to play as something because "Oh why would you do that, it's for idiot babies" when it's given as a drat option. You can't go "you are having badwrongfun if you choose to play as an evil chaos wizard" because playing an evil chaos wizard sounds hilarious. I don't mind it melting me into a puddle of goo, I do mind it being strictly more poo poo than the other choice. It's not given an as option. Chaos Magic in 4e WFRP is explicitly a GM-facing tool to, quote, "provide flavour to your Chaos Cultists". None of the player-facing careers actually get access to the Chaos Magic talent, either. If you're still set on playing an evil chaos wizard, probably the best way to do it is to play a regular wizard (with the Lore of Heavens if you want to shoot lightning) and just, you know, be evil. Maybe convince your GM to let you take the Chaos Magic talent, but that's mostly going to be for flavour because, again, it was clearly never intended as a full-fledged option for PCs.
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Nov 17, 2020 12:41
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Ineffable posted:It's not given an as option. Chaos Magic in 4e WFRP is explicitly a GM-facing tool to, quote, "provide flavour to your Chaos Cultists". None of the player-facing careers actually get access to the Chaos Magic talent, either. But it is in some of the supplement books I thought? They had a full Tzeentchean magus career thing that I was looking at? Was that solely meant for NPC's?
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Nov 17, 2020 12:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:Has anyone noticed if the supply/stock of tabletop boardgames and/or in-print tabletop RPGs has been affected by the pandemic? I know that videogame hardware availability has been choked from so many people being at home and buying equipment because they want something to play (and or work with) at home, and I was wondering if that's translated to our space as well. In the UK, people aren’t currently allowed to do “non essential” shopping, so most speciality stores are closed. But in practice, you can buy “non essential” items as part of another shopping visit. So mainstream supermarkets are now selling board games, which sounds cool, but they’re basically taking advantage of lockdown to displace FLGSs.
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Nov 17, 2020 13:12
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Nessus posted:If it just means you can't knowingly say something false, that's got a lot of flex room. An alarming amount of people don't read the text for that spell and just assume it turns everyone in the area into Jim Carrey from Liar Liar
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Nov 17, 2020 13:20
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Josef bugman posted:But it is in some of the supplement books I thought? They had a full Tzeentchean magus career thing that I was looking at? Was that solely meant for NPC's? Actually, yeah, you're correct. Apologies, I wasn't aware they'd released additional careers (and in what looks to be a campaign supplement of all things).
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Nov 17, 2020 15:53
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Ineffable posted:Actually, yeah, you're correct. Apologies, I wasn't aware they'd released additional careers (and in what looks to be a campaign supplement of all things). Oh phew! I thought I'd really misinterpreted something, don't worry about it! I had a word with the DM and he's done similar things before with the group and they've enjoyed it, and I won't be actively working against folks, as much as just "reporting back". Might make my character more of the party "face" instead of interacting with the dark magic stuff.
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Nov 17, 2020 15:59
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