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I have created a group of monsters in one of my earlier campaigns. Not only had I succumbed to the “orphaned children that the group saved are actually the real evil” trope but I had them ghoul-out and attack them in the middle of the night. Things had never been the same after that. They had been burned forever, once bitten twice shy. No innocent or helpful NPC was ever save from almost stalkerish investigations and interrogations after that. Later I found that keeping a table full of random in-universe appropriate names and random quirks worked wonders in endearing players to the most random of mooks. Everyone is suspicious of Bob the Bandit but no one wants to murder Erec Three-Fingers that talks with a stutter because no way is that a throwaway enemy. [Shameless Snipe]: I recently picked up the Symbaroum bundle on a whim because I was on the market for a darkish fantasy setting anyway and the artwork really struck a cord in me. I have only had a cursory glance at the Quick Start rules so far but I really like the Shadow/Corruption mechanics. Anything to keep in mind if I plan on running Symbaroum?
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Dec 9, 2020 16:30
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| # ? Jun 12, 2024 05:56 |
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Once I had my group in a three-way combat with human bandits and goblins and at the end there was one mook from each side left, stood back to back and anxiously eyeing the party until they just said "oh for gently caress sake, get outta here before we reconsider." I was absolutely have these two going to become friends and recurring NPCs, showing up as comic relief not-really-antagonists in whatever trouble the party got itself next. I kept picturing them as downtrodden underdog recruits in some villain's army, prisoners in the evil Drow queen's dungeon, popping up in a treasure chest after they hid from the dragon and it fell shut. Just, never got around to it, and kept thinking the party were just going to kill them on sight if they came off remotely as hostile, or perhaps even worse for me, leverage that they let them go for a disproportionate advantage.
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Dec 9, 2020 16:49
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hyphz posted:The counterpoint is that if the protagonists of a movie are acting in certain ways "so that there can be a movie", then the movie's badly written.
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Dec 9, 2020 23:38
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It sounds a little like we're edging on reinventing 'verisimilitude.' We're grognards now and arguing about verisimilitude. Time is a flat circle
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Dec 9, 2020 23:44
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My Lovely Horse posted:Once I had my group in a three-way combat with human bandits and goblins and at the end there was one mook from each side left, stood back to back and anxiously eyeing the party until they just said "oh for gently caress sake, get outta here before we reconsider." I'm picturing these two as a Fantasy version of Team Rocket and there's nothing you can do to stop me
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Dec 9, 2020 23:48
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Coolness Averted posted:We're grognards now I hate to break it to you but y’all have always been grognards
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Dec 9, 2020 23:59
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Coolness Averted posted:It sounds a little like we're edging on reinventing 'verisimilitude.' We're grognards now and arguing about verisimilitude. Is that really so hard for us all to agree on?
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Dec 10, 2020 00:33
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The bad guys never surrender, so we exterminate them to the last man. Because we always exterminate them to the last man, the bad guys never surrender. The bad guys never surrender, so we exterminate them to the last man...
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Dec 10, 2020 00:42
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https://youtu.be/S06nIz4scvI
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Dec 10, 2020 01:12
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drrockso20 posted:I'm picturing these two as a Fantasy version of Team Rocket and there's nothing you can do to stop me Thank god I wasn't the only one.
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Dec 10, 2020 02:48
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I've been thinking similar thoughts about an online game I'm about to get started about students at a school for necromancy (think Harry Potter crossed with Gideon the 9th), playing a wizard sport (narratively taking the role of Quidditch, but mechanically playing more like a tactical combat). And there is always this issue of "when the stakes get high, why do they still go to class and play wizard sports?". In a book, the author can just come up with a reason. Or they can just elide over it and have the characters go to class without giving a reason. But in an RPG, if the GM says "no, your characters don't sneak out! They have a big match to play in!" that comes across badly. The only answer that I've come up with for this is the same one that applies to the "players keep killing everything" problem - talk about it out of character and get buy-in. Get the players to agree to ground rules beforehand and then when they say "hmm, I think my character would skip this game," you come back with "okay, but we agreed we want to play the matches, so you need to come up with a reason why your character doesn't do that. And we can all help with suggestions if you're stuck."
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Dec 10, 2020 03:29
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Jimbozig posted:I've been thinking similar thoughts about an online game I'm about to get started about students at a school for necromancy (think Harry Potter crossed with Gideon the 9th), playing a wizard sport (narratively taking the role of Quidditch, but mechanically playing more like a tactical combat). And there is always this issue of "when the stakes get high, why do they still go to class and play wizard sports?". when the stakes get high, you still need to live your life afterwards. I've been doing Big poo poo all of December but I'm still fighting to finish out my classes and my grad school applications because Big poo poo doesn't move my life forward in and of itself and I want my life to keep moving forward.
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Dec 10, 2020 03:32
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Arivia posted:when the stakes get high, you still need to live your life afterwards. I've been doing Big poo poo all of December but I'm still fighting to finish out my classes and my grad school applications because Big poo poo doesn't move my life forward in and of itself and I want my life to keep moving forward. Yeah, absolutely. But if you don't have player buy-in, explaining why their idea is a bad idea isn't the way to avoid friction. The way to avoid friction is to get that player buy-in. Like, ooc we all want to play the tactical combat sports stuff and if one character skips it and that player has to sit out, that would suck. So we all buy in that the players won't have their characters skip matches and the GM won't force them to miss matches because of detentions or whatever. And then what you said is a very good reason players can use to justify why their character would go play sports instead of taking more time to investigate the big dangerous mystery plot.
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Dec 10, 2020 03:47
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Jimbozig posted:I've been thinking similar thoughts about an online game I'm about to get started about students at a school for necromancy (think Harry Potter crossed with Gideon the 9th), playing a wizard sport (narratively taking the role of Quidditch, but mechanically playing more like a tactical combat). And there is always this issue of "when the stakes get high, why do they still go to class and play wizard sports?". The game is actually an ancient and powerful ritual that's the source of the characters' powers or the only thing that keeps the castle standing or some slumbering demon-god appeased or something.
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Dec 10, 2020 05:07
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Their wizard scholarships are tied to spellball
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Dec 10, 2020 05:20
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You can use the same base motivations as most kids have: Make some kids they really hate be stars on the other team. If they skip out, have them drag them for it. There being some conflict and consequences on a spectrum outside of "but thou must", I think it adds pressure and stakes for say, the big dangerous mystery plot.
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Dec 10, 2020 06:36
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You could add some sort of ongoing mechanical benefit for doing a wizard school stuff. Like maybe you get a bonus to teamwork it you went to spellball practice, or your metagame currency refreshes faster when you go to classes?
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Dec 10, 2020 14:07
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it depends a bit on whether you want them to skip rarely or skip never. if you want it to be an actual weighted choice where sometimes the players will talk and decide to avoid The Big Game but face in-universe penalties for it then yeah something like getting bullied by their rivals works. but if you want it to never happen then the in-universe penalty needs to be so severe that it's just a total non-option (being expelled/losing a scholarship being a good example)
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Dec 10, 2020 14:15
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I mean, what are they gonna do instead? Sit in the stands?
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Dec 10, 2020 15:11
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:I mean, what are they gonna do instead? Sit in the stands? Presumably prepping for or doing the world-saving stuff.
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Dec 10, 2020 15:23
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Countblanc posted:it depends a bit on whether you want them to skip rarely or skip never. if you want it to be an actual weighted choice where sometimes the players will talk and decide to avoid The Big Game but face in-universe penalties for it then yeah something like getting bullied by their rivals works. but if you want it to never happen then the in-universe penalty needs to be so severe that it's just a total non-option (being expelled/losing a scholarship being a good example) That last one will still not get "never." If you want "never," it's just much, much more efficient and effective to tell the players OOC "look, this is the campaign I am planning to run." It's like in kill puppies for satan - if you're not going to be 1) evil and 2) pathetic, then just play a different game. Trying to discourage players with active penalties is mostly a losing proposition anyway. If the game responds to your actions, it becomes part of play, even when that response is your character getting owned.
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Dec 10, 2020 15:27
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thetoughestbean posted:I hate to break it to you but y’all have always been grognards Speaking of Grognards, I just remembered that whole Mustard Grog thing grognards.txt unearthed a few years ago and got weirdly nostalgic. Whatever happened to those threads anyways? I kinda drift in and out of lurking.
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Dec 10, 2020 16:45
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There are so many rancid people in the hobby that grognards.txt quickly went from "Hey guys, get a load of this old dude who wrote thousands of words about how dwarf infravision works" to "Hey guys, get a load of this racist, misogynist, homophobic lunatic." We eventually reached a point where it was a Horrible People in Gaming thread, with up-to-the-minute tracking of what awful people like Zak and Tarnowski are up to. There's already room for calling out bad actors in the RPG industry in the Industry thread, so Ettin decided that there was no good reason for a C-SPAM version of that to keep existing.
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Dec 10, 2020 17:01
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Tulip posted:That last one will still not get "never." If you want "never," it's just much, much more efficient and effective to tell the players OOC "look, this is the campaign I am planning to run." It's like in kill puppies for satan - if you're not going to be 1) evil and 2) pathetic, then just play a different game. Sure, I had assumed this was in addition to any OOC discussion - the players wouldn't want to play a tactical combat system if they didn't want cool setpiece fights after all
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Dec 10, 2020 17:22
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Halloween Jack posted:There are so many rancid people in the hobby that grognards.txt quickly went from "Hey guys, get a load of this old dude who wrote thousands of words about how dwarf infravision works" to "Hey guys, get a load of this racist, misogynist, homophobic lunatic." We eventually reached a point where it was a Horrible People in Gaming thread, with up-to-the-minute tracking of what awful people like Zak and Tarnowski are up to. There's already room for calling out bad actors in the RPG industry in the Industry thread, so Ettin decided that there was no good reason for a C-SPAM version of that to keep existing. Sadly it was right around the same time the Cat Piss thread switched from "This is for stories about awful insane game nights" to "This is for any story at all about any game night especially if you want to post in serial format about your own table" so now it is a boring place. We killed all the sleaze at once and I miss it.
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Dec 10, 2020 17:24
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Halloween Jack posted:There are so many rancid people in the hobby that grognards.txt quickly went from "Hey guys, get a load of this old dude who wrote thousands of words about how dwarf infravision works" to "Hey guys, get a load of this racist, misogynist, homophobic lunatic." We eventually reached a point where it was a Horrible People in Gaming thread, with up-to-the-minute tracking of what awful people like Zak and Tarnowski are up to. There's already room for calling out bad actors in the RPG industry in the Industry thread, so Ettin decided that there was no good reason for a C-SPAM version of that to keep existing.
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Dec 10, 2020 17:35
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I also recall there being an era when it was running out of steam where it was just quoting other goons with 'bad opinions about elfgame' which generally wasn't actual poo poo worth reading and more someone quoting their posting enemy when they said they enjoyed pathfinder society
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Dec 10, 2020 18:11
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I agree, the classic grogmines got tapped out. It was tempting to just, for example, quote people from one's own arguments in other forums, which is importing drama and never a good idea.
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Dec 10, 2020 18:19
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There's been an ongoing conversation among the mods about helldump-style threads across the forums. TG's version was always mostly about offsite people, but it still attracted attention and occasionally people might show up because they'd been invoked (most notably zak, but also I think that zweihander guy?). So far there's been no clear directive that it's disallowed, and I don't think there is going to be; but it's raised awareness among mods that it can be a source of drama and hard feelings. The TG as an Industry thread skirts that line anyway, but I like that it's specifically focused on the industry - that is, Industry Relevant Figures are fair game for discussion, but Joe Random GM's Bad Takes on some other forums really aren't. Again, discussion of piss wizard GM isn't off limits across TG, and probably if someone made a post about it here in the chat thread I wouldn't object, but I think it's good that we don't have a thread dedicated to it. Megathreads create communities, and communities whose main focus is on making GBS threads on other people have a tendency to engage in one-upmanship, enthusiastic seeking of new targets, and fights over where exactly in the grey area you draw the line for who is eligible for scorn and who isn't. None of that stuff is healthy or good for posters or the forum. If TG demanded something like grogs.txt back, I'd listen. But I'm disinclined so I'd need some convincing arguments for it.
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Dec 10, 2020 18:55
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I would rather not have it brought back.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:00
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We tried it for an April Fool's a while back and yeah it just wasn't as fun anymore.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:07
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I think its worked pretty well that most of it ends up in the Industry where it's related to the industry per se, and elsewhere it can go here because there's not really enough material to keep a whole thread going and trying to do so just creates obsessive behavior from actively pursuing hot takes
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Dec 10, 2020 19:10
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Just rename Trad Games chat grognards.txt (because we are the grognards now)
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Dec 10, 2020 19:20
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Isn't grognards.txt one of the reasons the forums have a "look, don't touch" rule? Something about the thread organizing raids on other forums, back in the primordial mists of time.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:25
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It had the exact same problems all mock threads end up having; they run out of content and then obsessive people go too far trying to dig up more.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:27
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mellonbread posted:Isn't grognards.txt one of the reasons the forums have a "look, don't touch" rule? Something about the thread organizing raids on other forums, back in the primordial mists of time.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:28
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As someone who loved and followed the old grognards.txt thread, it should not be brought back ; it was often hilarious but its time is over. Glad it got goldmined though, so the Consensual Rape Knights are not lost to time. (They should be lost to time.)
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Dec 10, 2020 19:35
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Leraika posted:edit: like, the big reason why people (at least in the groups I've seen) kill people instead of letting them go is because they don't want them coming back to haunt or punish them. Having someone come back to haunt or punish them is just gonna tell them they're not killing enough people because the information is still getting out. Haunt reminds me, in fantasy games give the players a ghost or two of their more egregious victims causing trouble. Berkshire Hunts posted:You could add some sort of ongoing mechanical benefit for doing a wizard school stuff. Like maybe you get a bonus to teamwork it you went to spellball practice, or your metagame currency refreshes faster when you go to classes? Americana has the PCs as high school students investigating the murder of one of their friends while juggling school, a job, activities, and team sports. A lot of the game is about how the players use their only real resource: time. There are consequences for missing a practice or skipping a shift at work and these constraints help drive play. It's also a cool goon-made game with some amazing art.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:36
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mllaneza posted:Haunt reminds me, in fantasy games give the players a ghost or two of their more egregious victims causing trouble. It's the reason behind Blades in the Dark having people who get killed and not incinerated by Spirit Wardens rise as ghosts. Either the authorities know people are getting killed and have the bodies (until they go in the electroplasmic furnace), the ghosts get to gently caress things up, or the players are a specific type of crew with a specific hard-earned advance that lets them bypass the concern after they've had to deal with it all game. Can't leave the city so you deal with it one way or another. YMMV if that actually works.
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Dec 10, 2020 19:54
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| # ? Jun 12, 2024 05:56 |
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Hello, is anybody interested in doing a design jam of some kind? I recently got back from staring at dice while in a cabin alone for a week and I'm brimming with ideas, but thought it might be fun to see if people might be into such a thing.
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Dec 10, 2020 23:05
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