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Pocky In My Pocket posted:Do your GMs not have a plot for their games? speaking for myself as a gm, i generally build the setting (if needed), come up with some major factions/npcs, work with the players to make their characters, integrate their hooks into the world, set up a starting scenario and then once we start playing i'll see what they're interested in and include more of that. i've never written out a plot beforehand. when prepping i'll consult my session notes and see what needs to be followed up on or what would logically follow from what has already happened, but most of the time i'm just making up bullshit mid-session and integrating it as we go i've watched a good bit of critical role and if matt mercer is to be believed, he preps a ton of poo poo beforehand, which is why he has all those binders of notes. dude makes whole cities when the players head for them, which is something i do too, but in like 1/5 the detail that he does. again, this is all if you believe him or not, and it does seem like it would be a massive timesink for a guy who has a career to worry about, but some people can just sit down and poo poo out worldbuilding notes like nobody's business so i dunno
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Dec 3, 2020 01:29
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Serf posted:speaking for myself as a gm, i generally build the setting (if needed), come up with some major factions/npcs, work with the players to make their characters, integrate their hooks into the world, set up a starting scenario and then once we start playing i'll see what they're interested in and include more of that. i've never written out a plot beforehand. Putting together some plot hooks, a general overview of the immediate world around the players, and then following players along and tossing a few roadblocks in front of them is still "plotting" in my mind, but as you said it's substantially lighter than some people go in for. You maybe have a few set-piece ideals you can assemble near the characters, then if they ignore that hook, break it down and move it somewhere else that fits when the time is right, or you're thinking about what some NPC is doing in the background that might cause a problem for the PCs soon, so you're still planning ahead and thinking about what to do next. hyphz posted:And people who are having their session broadcast - whether they actually are big or believe there's a chance they'll make it big - have much more reason to present that front than private groups. What point were you driving at beyond "It's a shame a professional production smooths over the rough edges of normal people trying to play tabletop RPGs?" Are you worried too many people will try D&D once and never again because it's not like Matt Mercer's game? Because, sure, a lot of people are might be put off by that, but given D&D is apparently more successful than it's ever been and everyone's being inspired to try their own little fun game streams or private groups with friends, it doesn't seem to be overwhelming experience for most interested people.
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Dec 3, 2020 02:19
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Serf posted:speaking for myself as a gm, i generally build the setting (if needed), come up with some major factions/npcs, work with the players to make their characters, integrate their hooks into the world, set up a starting scenario and then once we start playing i'll see what they're interested in and include more of that. i've never written out a plot beforehand. when prepping i'll consult my session notes and see what needs to be followed up on or what would logically follow from what has already happened, but most of the time i'm just making up bullshit mid-session and integrating it as we go The thing is he doesn't really gen up major cities or towns on the fly. He does gen up NPC's and other small things. He adjusts to what the players want to do and what they are interested in and where their characters and stories are going, but he's essentially working in an entire world that he's already created, that he uses as his outline. He's not so much doing world creation while playing, and more the players play in a sandbox he created and he makes the world react to them, their story and their actions
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Dec 3, 2020 02:20
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Dexo posted:The thing is he doesn't really gen up major cities or towns on the fly. He does gen up NPC's and other small things. It's Lost, only with a good writer
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Dec 3, 2020 02:23
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Nuns with Guns posted:Putting together some plot hooks, a general overview of the immediate world around the players, and then following players along and tossing a few roadblocks in front of them is still "plotting" in my mind, but as you said it's substantially lighter than some people go in for. You maybe have a few set-piece ideals you can assemble near the characters, then if they ignore that hook, break it down and move it somewhere else that fits when the time is right, or you're thinking about what some NPC is doing in the background that might cause a problem for the PCs soon, so you're still planning ahead and thinking about what to do next. nah, to me "plotting" is writing down "this happens, then the players will do this, and then this happens" sorta stuff where you get railroaded or it breaks down when things don't go like you planned. its a bad way to play games. i dunno if cr does that, it wouldn't surprise me, but i think its also just as likely that they don't really plan all that much in advance either Dexo posted:The thing is he doesn't really gen up major cities or towns on the fly. He does gen up NPC's and other small things. do you have a source on this? because i can remember multiple times when he's pulled out one of several notebooks/binders to look up something. at one point he said "i didn't know where you guys wanted to go so i made the whole city". all that indicates a pretty high level of prep to me (not the same thing as plotting, but its a significant time investment in making sure you have answers to questions during the session)
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Dec 3, 2020 02:25
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Serf posted:nah, to me "plotting" is writing down "this happens, then the players will do this, and then this happens" sorta stuff where you get railroaded or it breaks down when things don't go like you planned. its a bad way to play games. i dunno if cr does that, it wouldn't surprise me, but i think its also just as likely that they don't really plan all that much in advance either I misunderstood, Yeah, he does have to prep the specifics of the cities his players go to and set up encounters, pull on hooks the characters have and make specific NPC's but also he has literally a source book pre-written about his world to give him a high level overview of what each city and location in his world is like, so if he does need to bullshit he is bullshitting from within the scope of something he's already written and thought about.
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Dec 3, 2020 02:34
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Nuns with Guns posted:Putting together some plot hooks, a general overview of the immediate world around the players, and then following players along and tossing a few roadblocks in front of them is still "plotting" in my mind, but as you said it's substantially lighter than some people go in for. You maybe have a few set-piece ideals you can assemble near the characters, then if they ignore that hook, break it down and move it somewhere else that fits when the time is right, or you're thinking about what some NPC is doing in the background that might cause a problem for the PCs soon, so you're still planning ahead and thinking about what to do next. At this point I guess it's a semantic argument, but I agree with serf that this doesn't hit my definition of "plotting". That'd be some serious X then Y then Z stuff, while this sounds more like what I do which is stare off into space for a bit and come up with some cool set-pieces that I might slot in if they fit. Or I won't and I'll just wing it. Or take half of an idea and twist it into or new shape or smash two ideas together or any other combo. I'm not setting a narrative in advance, I'm coming up with some cool poo poo to possibly fall back on or (maybe) because I know my players will think it rules.
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Dec 3, 2020 02:38
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:Do your GMs not have a plot for their games? I know the discussion has gone on for a while and had other stuff going on in between, so I'm sure it's hard to follow, so I'm probably not saying what you think I'm saying. But... yes, and also no, depending on the game. Depending on the creative agenda of the group. If you're under the impression that it's necessary for the GM to come up with a plot, then I've got some game recs for you. There are games that don't work unless the GM brings the plot because the game is incapable of providing it, and there are games that have mechanics to drive the plot and the GM is explicitly not supposed to, and there are games that work well in either mode.
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Dec 3, 2020 02:41
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Serf posted:nah, to me "plotting" is writing down "this happens, then the players will do this, and then this happens" sorta stuff where you get railroaded or it breaks down when things don't go like you planned. its a bad way to play games. i dunno if cr does that, it wouldn't surprise me, but i think its also just as likely that they don't really plan all that much in advance either Xiahou Dun posted:At this point I guess it's a semantic argument, but I agree with serf that this doesn't hit my definition of "plotting". That'd be some serious X then Y then Z stuff, while this sounds more like what I do which is stare off into space for a bit and come up with some cool set-pieces that I might slot in if they fit. Or I won't and I'll just wing it. Or take half of an idea and twist it into or new shape or smash two ideas together or any other combo. I'm not setting a narrative in advance, I'm coming up with some cool poo poo to possibly fall back on or (maybe) because I know my players will think it rules. This is getting intensely semantical, yeah. Like, I'm not seeing a reason to believe a plot has to be rigidly defined ahead of time. A plot is a narrative. It's the trajectory of a story. It can be messy or convoluted, or maybe you've got some good improvisers or obsessive pre-planners who can make it look tidy. I do understand the anxiety around thinking too hard about planning everything out in advance. It's certainly the most common newbie GM trap, and we've got decades of sourcebooks from people who at best perceive tabletop RPGs as play-pretend dark rides that the players should politely sit through and hold applause for when the sign lights up. Still, everyone would agree games have ongoing narrative plots, and most tabletop games designate one person as the referee who funnels the antagonistic forces down to the player characters in some way.
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Dec 3, 2020 02:53
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Tsilkani posted:He's trying to say that they're having too much fun to be just enjoying the game and they're just playing it up for work, as best I can tell, which is an absolute nonsense take. I will absolutely get a second wind when it's game night and be more energetic than I probably was at work that day, because I give less of a gently caress about work than I do about RPGs. Just imagine what it's like to play a game with Pundit. Are you imagining a gaming table full of people who are genuinely happy to be there and excited about the game? I'm not.
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Dec 3, 2020 10:29
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Nuns with Guns posted:What point were you driving at beyond "It's a shame a professional production smooths over the rough edges of normal people trying to play tabletop RPGs?" Are you worried too many people will try D&D once and never again because it's not like Matt Mercer's game? Because, sure, a lot of people are might be put off by that, but given D&D is apparently more successful than it's ever been and everyone's being inspired to try their own little fun game streams or private groups with friends, it doesn't seem to be overwhelming experience for most interested people. The only point was that it's not the same as regular folks playing at a table, and it's not just a more skilled version of that. Beyond that, I've just been misled before, but that's just me.
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Dec 3, 2020 13:07
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hyphz posted:The only point was that it's not the same as regular folks playing at a table, and it's not just a more skilled version of that. Beyond that, I've just been misled before, but that's just me. It is just a more skilled version of that, though? They're doing the exact same thing everyone else does when they play. Mercer has a lot of stuff prepped, but anyone who's been running the same campaign for this long would too. Seriously, where's your proof that this is somehow different than folks playing at a table? Cough it up.
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Dec 3, 2020 16:03
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Tsilkani posted:Seriously, where's your proof that this is somehow different than folks playing at a table? Cough it up. The assertion is that knowing a session is being recorded or broadcast, and especially that the possibility or likelihood of extrinsic reward exists, inevitably changes the activity. Of course, no reference to CR or any podcast can prove this, because we cannot observe any unrecorded game. However, if you were to see a group playing in your local FLGS and to offer them a hundred dollars to do better voices, I don’t think anyone would doubt that you would be affecting the game. And that is what podcast viewers are implicitly doing.
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Dec 3, 2020 16:19
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Weren't they doing "better voices" or whatever from the get-go though? Like this feels like a really weird obsession. Yes they have "better voices" or better improv or whatever you want to point at as your ~proof~ because having those abilities is part of their day job. Cripes.
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Dec 3, 2020 17:01
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Tsilkani posted:It is just a more skilled version of that, though? They're doing the exact same thing everyone else does when they play. Mercer has a lot of stuff prepped, but anyone who's been running the same campaign for this long would too. Are we saying they are doing the exact same thing as players at any table or the same thing as players in any AP? Because doing AP is totally different. You're intentionally avoiding unwarranted die rolls, you have to modify the table joking to play to the audience, and you have to think about beats, setups, and endpoints constantly, especially thinking about aiming at a big thing happening at a set time when you're going to turn the mics off. I mean, I'll cop to not watching CR, so I don't know what their story beats and act structures are like. I don't really like streaming anything, and I also listen to very few APs, because I prefer discussion stuff. But I've done several APs. It's totally different, you approach it way more like a performance, even if you don't have a script.
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Dec 3, 2020 17:04
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Kyrosiris posted:Weren't they doing "better voices" or whatever from the get-go though? Like this feels like a really weird obsession. "Do better voices" was only an example. The point is that offering an extrinsic reward, such as money, for the players doing anything will affect the game. theironjef posted:Because doing AP is totally different. You're intentionally avoiding unwarranted die rolls, you have to modify the table joking to play to the audience, and you have to think about beats, setups, and endpoints constantly, especially thinking about aiming at a big thing happening at a set time when you're going to turn the mics off. This.
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Dec 3, 2020 17:14
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So, the latest L5R book finally made it to DriveThruRPG in PDF form. The six month delay is annoying to me, because the print runs for L5R are small. Even if I wanted a hard copy (which I don't), I'd have to go to a reseller to get one. The claim is that it reduces piracy, but I'm not familar with other companies having large delays like that. I'm not even really sure how you would you go about determining if it's actually effective, to be honest.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:15
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With how many games I've seen hit other sites immediately on request using scanned pages if a PDF doesn't exist for sale, I'd be surprised if it worked at all.
SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 3, 2020 18:18
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Yeah, it probably has marginal if any meaningful impact at all, and only because the industry is so tiny. It's one of those "common sense" ideas that won't die despite how many billions the music giants make off of $10 subscription fees now.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:39
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Capfalcon posted:So, the latest L5R book finally made it to DriveThruRPG in PDF form. The six month delay is annoying to me, because the print runs for L5R are small. Even if I wanted a hard copy (which I don't), I'd have to go to a reseller to get one. They're making it harder to do but it's honestly not stopping piracy. The same goes for WotC, who has no actual PDF releases for their 5E books.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:47
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Capfalcon posted:So, the latest L5R book finally made it to DriveThruRPG in PDF form. The six month delay is annoying to me, because the print runs for L5R are small. Even if I wanted a hard copy (which I don't), I'd have to go to a reseller to get one. The pirated pdf version has been available for a while already, so I'm gonna have to go with 'no, it doesn't reduce anything'.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:51
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The FFG Star Wars was the same way. I don't think I ever picked up one of the physical books in my life.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:52
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hyphz posted:The only point was that it's not the same as regular folks playing at a table, and it's not just a more skilled version of that. Beyond that, I've just been misled before, but that's just me. I don't know if you should be used as a judge of what real play looks like.
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Dec 3, 2020 19:18
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mellonbread posted:The FFG Star Wars was the same way. I don't think I ever picked up one of the physical books in my life. In the case of FFG Star Wars I believe the issue there is that FFG literally couldn't offer pdfs due to some weirdness regarding the Star Wars licensing rights and what counts as a "digital game." I highly doubt that FFG deliberately opted not to sell pdfs of those games entirely.
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Dec 3, 2020 20:07
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:They're making it harder to do but it's honestly not stopping piracy. The same goes for WotC, who has no actual PDF releases for their 5E books. People were sharing pre-print "blueprint" copies of 4E books
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Dec 3, 2020 20:15
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One of my GMs loves to physically embody a character when he's voicing them, he'll pace around the room and change his posture and he has said multiple times that if we were doing it in real life or with cameras instead of just over voice on discord, he wouldn't do that because he finds it embarrassing to do in front of people, and that's just a change he's conscious of. My group definitely plays differently when recording, when we've playtested stuff and done recordings for the authors we played differently to when we weren't and were just going to write things down, though we didn't notice at the time. That's not to say it's a bad thing that you would act differently when broadcasting than in private, but it is a thing that happens (and often without you being consciously aware). Even just going "no swearing when we broadcast" is going to change how you act in more ways than you just not swearing during play. It affects people differently, some people are completely unaffected by knowing they're being observed and some people really act up when in the spotlight, as it were. There's a thing about increased compliance to the behaviour being observed when under a scientific survey/study, like nurses washing their hands more often when being watched for how many times they scrub per day for example, but that's a little outside the scope of "being more On when playing dicegames for an audience versus playing in private"
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Dec 3, 2020 20:20
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Yesterday there was an interesting reveal for Cortex, that fans will be able to sell supplements using the IPs that fandom is licensing. They've currently got Masters of the Universe and Dragon Prince licensed. So you'll be able to sell your fan He-Man adventure, which is cool, I think. Is this a first? I don't keep up on the self-pub side of things much. I know you can sell stuff set in the D&D settings through DMs Guild, but WotC owns those IPs. Do any of the other "use our system, give us a cut" storefronts let you use licensed works?
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Dec 3, 2020 20:20
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Kai Tave posted:In the case of FFG Star Wars I believe the issue there is that FFG literally couldn't offer pdfs due to some weirdness regarding the Star Wars licensing rights and what counts as a "digital game." I highly doubt that FFG deliberately opted not to sell pdfs of those games entirely. This is correct. For whatever bizarre reason, LucasArts (and now Disney holding the leash) counts .pfds as video games.
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Dec 3, 2020 20:21
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CitizenKeen posted:Yesterday there was an interesting reveal for Cortex, that fans will be able to sell supplements using the IPs that fandom is licensing. They've currently got Masters of the Universe and Dragon Prince licensed. So you'll be able to sell your fan He-Man adventure, which is cool, I think. Technically all the WoD/CoD and Exalted stuff is sort of in that position, but for those and any similar deals the particulars of being just a tabletop property first and foremost makes a world of difference.
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Dec 3, 2020 20:50
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BattleMaster posted:I don't know if you should be used as a judge of what real play looks like. I'm more or less on Hyphz' side here. I do a lot of table play without reported incident, and I do a lot of AP. They're similar but not the exact same skillset. A lot of people I play with on a regular basis would not make good AP players, but they're great to play with at a non-recorded table. This isn't to say that CR people are either not good roleplayers or not roleplaying at all or whatever the tossed around accusation might have been at the beginning of the discussion. It's just to say they are immensely skilled at a specific sort of RP as well.
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Dec 3, 2020 21:31
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BattleMaster posted:I don't know if you should be used as a judge of what real play looks like. Lay off the dude. He's good people and a great addition to an RPG group ; this kind of poo poo is just set up to shut him down and makes it worse. Don't be lovely.
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Dec 3, 2020 21:57
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Sodomy Hussein posted:People were sharing pre-print "blueprint" copies of 4E books D&D 4E was the Sega Dreamcast equivalent when it came to piracy because it was incredibly easy to not only get the PDF's but also to get their first iteration of the character builder to update and work without a subscription. That happened with Warhammer 40K books years ago. I remember a codex PDF that leaked and it was the printer's copy with all the margin markups.
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Dec 3, 2020 22:18
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Playing with a few friends for the enjoyment of the group who are playing and performing to an audience for the enjoyment of the audience are distinct things. The technical skills might be the same, but as soon as you're performing, and especially once you add for money, the goal and dynamic of what you're doing necessarily changes. It's weird to argue about this as if it's a brand new thing that's unique to RPGs.
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Dec 3, 2020 22:44
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Come to think of it, not only did everyone I knew use pirated FFG Star Wars PDFs, we also used that character creation program which you could load with "data files" that were just rules text stripped out of the pirated PDFs. So it not only acted as a character builder, but a quasi SRD. And it was great! It made the game much easier to play than if you used the actual physical books. I can't imagine trying to sift through a stack of tomes to find all the piles of gear and tables of special powers, then laboriously copy them down onto a piece of paper by hand.
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Dec 3, 2020 23:03
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Liquid Communism posted:I would not at all be surprised if Disney eventually ends up owning WOTC in their quest to mine everything for IP. Strahd and the Tarrasque become Disney princesses
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Dec 3, 2020 23:13
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Playing with a few friends for the enjoyment of the group who are playing and performing to an audience for the enjoyment of the audience are distinct things. Since I'm definitely someone who was arguing against hyphz I just want to clarify that I absolutely agree that playing a game for with an audience is fundamentally different than without. What I disagree with is most of the behaviors that were asserted as properties of "professional" play: practicing voices, discussing metaplot as a group, high-energy play.
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Dec 4, 2020 00:39
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admanb posted:Since I'm definitely someone who was arguing against hyphz I just want to clarify that I absolutely agree that playing a game for with an audience is fundamentally different than without. Yeah nearly every game I've been in with regular groups and one-shot randos has had people hamming it up with voices, in- and out-of-character jokes, getting loud and rowdy, high levels of improv, body language, etc.. Now, not a single one of the games I've been in would have been worth recording and showing to other people because we're amateurs instead of trained professional actors. Even if we were trying to do it on purpose we wouldn't be anywhere near the same level of quality, but a lot of the elements ascribed to APs are there in some (varying levels of rudimentary) fashion. It's not every table's style, but I count it as a failure if things don't get wild.
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Dec 4, 2020 00:47
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admanb posted:What I disagree with is most of the behaviors that were asserted as properties of "professional" play: practicing voices, discussing metaplot as a group, high-energy play. For sure.
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Dec 4, 2020 01:15
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hyphz posted:The only point was that it's not the same as regular folks playing at a table, and it's not just a more skilled version of that. Beyond that, I've just been misled before, but that's just me. It doesn't seem like anyone here disagrees with "Playing an RPG privately with friends is different than playing with professional voice actors as part of a streamed live show" as a concept. But, as admanb points out, the things you keep referring to aren't the things that are the exclusive domain of Critical Role or other actual play shows. Jef has listed off some better examples of ways your behavior or objectives can be modified when you're focusing on entertaining an audience. I'm just not getting why we need to keep worrying the point every few times CR comes up. Sure, CR might set up some expectations that are dampened the minute a fan thinks a bit hard or tries a game with randos, but all evidence points to that not being an issue for the majority of people who decide to try the game for themselves. Maybe it's possible to wander into a CR fan discussion where people assert that this is the platonic ideal of roleplaying games to a troublesome degree, but Matt Mercer himself has a lot of side videos and blog posts about practical GMing advice his fans are just as likely to find if they're planning to follow in his footsteps. Saying CR is to tabletop RPGs like porn is to sex is wildly overstating the issue. The multilayered ways the porn industry is problematic aren't on any comparable scale here.
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Dec 4, 2020 04:14
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Nuns with Guns posted:It doesn't seem like anyone here disagrees with "Playing an RPG privately with friends is different than playing with professional voice actors as part of a streamed live show" as a concept. But, as admanb points out, the things you keep referring to aren't the things that are the exclusive domain of Critical Role or other actual play shows. Jef has listed off some better examples of ways your behavior or objectives can be modified when you're focusing on entertaining an audience. I'm just not getting why we need to keep worrying the point every few times CR comes up. Eh, it's not like porn is the godwin of performance descriptions. Yes, it's got a lot of problems, but no one is talking about those. What it has in common with AP is that it has the appearance of being a fun thing that lots of people do themselves, a process that might not be as fun as the end result actually makes it look, and an end goal of generating a product for other people (that can convey false impressions that it's either easy or the norm), that's enough to pull from it without having to discuss or be concerned with the million ways it's a terrible profession.
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Dec 4, 2020 06:34
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