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I usually take the opposite approach, my favorite character to play so far has been the teen witch TikTok star (divination wizard) in our modern D&D game who's secretly being tutored by her future self in her dreams and is plotting world domination. Sometimes if you lock in the character's tone at the start and everything flows naturally from there, you can really explore a lot of different angles. I've definitely been in games before where I tried to wing my character's motivations/let them grow organically and I felt like I was floundering when it came time for RP.
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Nov 16, 2021 17:01
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I think the important thing is leaving the character room to grow and change in response to the events of the campaign. Leaving some background elements vague can help with this, but the key is to avoid defining their arc too much in advance.
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Nov 16, 2021 19:48
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Mr.Misfit posted:Quick question to the chat: I recently gm'ed the second long-form session (basically the 2nd weekend me and my friends meet where we play from friday to sunday) and my group basically came down hard on my "the world moves on" -style of GMing, where I offer them side commissions if they take missions on a planet, which fall down by the wayside sometimes because they feel like another hook I'm presenting them with seems "more important" or "main-plotty" and they feel bad for not being able to take the opportunity. First off, I think it's slightly unreasonable of your players to reject missions on the basis that they don't seem important to them and then get pissy when you actually take that feedback onboard, unless you gave them some reason to think that nobody else would take the mission in the meantime. (Though I am not keen on running tabletop RPGs like they are CRPGs, the more CRPG-like the presentation of the side jobs were, the more I sympathise with your players for expecting them to work that way.) Secondly, has these missions' completion actually caused a problem for your players? Are they lacking stuff to do as a result of those options not being taken? If so I can see why they are annoyed, if not I'd just level with them and say "Look, you decided to prioritise mission 1. The cost of that was that you missed the opportunity to take mission 2. The benefit was that you have mission 1 all to yourself and you didn't have the risk of someone else stepping in. If you're interested in something to do with the mission and still want to follow up, then that's down to you to make the IC effort to check in on what happened and see if there's more opportunities there - there might be - but choosing priorities and not being able to have your cake and eat it all the time is part of the game from my perspective." Thirdly, have those missions resolved in a smooth, off-camera way which doesn't throw up any new opportunities? I'd revise that. Either randomise the outcome or, if a particular outcome would be exciting, say that happened. Maybe the party which took the mission hosed up badly and there's now a followup mission which is basically "Go here, do the original mission, and also rescue the previous team/fix this problem they caused". Maybe the mission has had unintended consequences which has created an opportunity for the players. ("Hey, the report says that the Interdictor was seen fleeing the asteroid after that strike team collapsed it. Now's our chance to track those bastards down!") Maybe one of the characters who did the mission found something of interest to the PCs and comes to them with it.
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Nov 16, 2021 23:31
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fool of sound posted:Yeah its one of those cliche answers that is at least a yellow flag for me. Unless a game gives the players great narrative control, or the game is deliberately designed to be sandboxy like Ars Magica or similar, a DM describing their style as sandboxy is pretty suspect. my dm style is sort of like mikhail tal meets gordon ramsay but only his uk shows. anyone who talks about a dm style as an abstract instead of within a context of a specific campaign is spitting worthless knowledge
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Nov 16, 2021 23:45
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pog boyfriend posted:my dm style is sort of like mikhail tal meets gordon ramsay but only his uk shows. anyone who talks about a dm style as an abstract instead of within a context of a specific campaign is spitting worthless knowledge
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Nov 17, 2021 00:24
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My GM style is half  half 
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Nov 17, 2021 00:33
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So I've been thumbing through some old collections of fantasy art that included some images of cards from the early sets of MtG and it made me realize something: Why were so many RPG products in the mid-90s to early 2000s so big on those faux-stone, textured backgrounds? Now, I'm going to preface this by saying my functional experience with MtG is incredibly limited, so if any of these cards aren't actually from the time period I'm discussing please let me know. I do have lots of functional experience with graphic design, and most of the images I've seen from early Magic absolutely love them their faux-stone textures and bevels and embosses:     Now, this wouldn't really stick out to me too much, since this is a singular product line being worked on by the same team of people, so of course there's going to be a unity in the product's design sensibilities. What gives me pause is that it made me realize I had seen similar design sensibilities elsewhere in the tabletop industry around the same time...       ...And before I knew it I realized that this particular design style was really common in RPGs and fantasy-related media in the 90s and I don't really understand why? Obviously there's a degree of personal taste that comes into it, and I'm very much looking back on a previous era through the eyes of modern design sensibilities, but this entire look just does not look good to my sensibilities as a graphic designer and I can't really understand why so many RPGs followed this model: Was it just company's trying to ape MtG and WoD's looks in hopes of replicating their success? Technological limitations of the era? A magic spell secretly slipped into copies of the first few Wheel of Time books that made their readers bad at graphic design?
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Nov 17, 2021 01:58
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KingKalamari posted:] ICE's products also had the faux marble cover background. All of which is far more stately and attractive to me (disclaimer: I grew up on MERP and WoD) than the rear end ugly trend of faux 3D clasps and metal filigree that D&D3 popularized. (If nothing else, D&D5 has some really good art direction, especially for its covers.) But, ultimately, it's just a trend that happened. Seems pretty explicable to me. Speaking of tons of different books, we're finally getting a house and I've been packing:  Nine small bankers boxes containing most of one book shelf. Mage 1e is going to take up more than one box by itself, and my collection isn't even complete.
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Nov 17, 2021 02:17
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The original WotC ‘faux 3d clasp’ covers for 3e D&D looked miles better than the knockoffs because Henry Higginbotham did them as real life 3d sculptures and then photographed them. All that faux filigree and stuff makes a lot more sense when you know that.
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Nov 17, 2021 03:42
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They were cool when I was 12 and before I had to actually use them as a reference document.
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Nov 17, 2021 03:47
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I think White Wolf was so influential that imitating them in really superficial aspects wasn't even seen as a bad thing. It was considered keeping up with the times.
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Nov 17, 2021 03:54
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Halloween Jack posted:I think White Wolf was so influential that imitating them in really superficial aspects wasn't even seen as a bad thing. It was considered keeping up with the times. Yeah, and remember wraith 1e did that whole picture of a tome before d&d 3e did. Plus it was a soft cover with spooky glow in the dark glitter glue
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Nov 17, 2021 03:57
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That kind of faux-marble pattern showed up in a lot of early-90s tech products, like CD-ROM menus, early websites, and custom desktop environments.
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Nov 17, 2021 03:58
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It was certainly popular in dungeoncrawl video games.
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Nov 17, 2021 04:20
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Also big in early 1990s tech design: metal patterns that looked diamond steel plate or brushed aluminum
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Nov 17, 2021 04:22
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Arivia posted:The original WotC ‘faux 3d clasp’ covers for 3e D&D looked miles better than the knockoffs because Henry Higginbotham did them as real life 3d sculptures and then photographed them. All that faux filigree and stuff makes a lot more sense when you know that. Yeah, I found the design and illustrations could be really hit or miss for 3e and 3.5e, but I did like the direction they went with the covers of the core rulebooks and it's cool to know that cover was a photograph of an actual mocked-up tome. Unfortunately the idea wasn't executed quite as well on later supplements like the numbered Monster Manuals or the Epic Level Handbook. It's actually funny because I find the same "The covers of the supplements have uglier designs" is also true for White Wolf products of the era: While the cover of the original V:tM rulebook is not necessarily to my taste I at least think it's a fairly good execution of what it's going for. Meanwhile the splatbook covers for Vampire all have that faux-marble border around the cover art that just ends up making the design look so much worse than if they just printed the cover illustration at full bleed... FMguru posted:That kind of faux-marble pattern showed up in a lot of early-90s tech products, like CD-ROM menus, early websites, and custom desktop environments. FMguru posted:Also big in early 1990s tech design: metal patterns that looked diamond steel plate or brushed aluminum Oh man, you're right. It feels like that faux-material aesthetic was pretty much everywhere in nerd spaces at the time. I really wonder what the factors were that made it such a big trend? I at least know it was common in early websites because it was really easy to create that sort of texture by tiling a low-res GIF, which made them a low bandwidth option to add some visual interest into a webpage back in the days of dial-up, but the fact that it was also a common aesthetic in nerd-focused print media at around or even before the same time raises a bit of a chicken or the egg question.
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Nov 17, 2021 05:38
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Heliotrope posted:Are there any good 2 player RPGs? Could be 1 gm, 1 player; Two players; or switching the role of gm between players. Someone I've played with has interest in that and so do I, but I'm not sure what games are out there. I can only think of Breaking the Ice, which is a game about your PCs dating each other which might be a bit strange for our first choice. I've got a smallish 2-player game that I'm just about to roll out on Kickstarter to fund some extra art for the game (trying desperately to carve enough time out of my schedule to make the KS page and video right now... fall semester is always too drat busy!) It's called Ariadne and Bob and the elevator pitch is that Ariadne is a hypercompetent know-it-all and Bob is her long-suffering sidekick and they go on adventures. It's got a few different playsets that you can choose depending on the setting you want, like sci-fi, fantasy, high society, horror, history and fiction. You could call it GMless, but I think it's more accurate to say that the traditional GM role has been divided between the two players in a fun way. The game itself is finished and ready to go, and if you'd like to give it a try, just let me know and I can hook you up with a pdf.
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Nov 17, 2021 05:51
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A suggestion/trick for side quests: have another party of adventurers or two around who'll pick on opportunities the PCs let slip.
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Nov 17, 2021 11:28
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Regarding the Marble/Faux Diamond plate, I remember easily available generative software to create stuff like that fairly easily. Also I think as printing matured from the 80's to the 90's having more ornate multicolour layouts was a sign of quality.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:04
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Yeah, back in the 90s the ease and novelty of that sort of graphic design overwhelmed taste for a while.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:21
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Nessus posted:My DM style is Desty Nova from Alita, with slightly fewer brain injuries. Same, except more. I'm running on a Gameboy right now!
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Nov 17, 2021 17:55
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I work in legal publishing and if you replaced the images with a black frame (maybe with a gold border) and the text with something appropriately law-related, these would be virtually indistinguishable from some of my company's '90s-era publications. Heck, I think we still publish stuff that looks like that, just not anything I work on.
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Nov 17, 2021 18:38
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MOMMY
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Nov 17, 2021 18:42
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:I work in legal publishing and if you replaced the images with a black frame (maybe with a gold border) and the text with something appropriately law-related, these would be virtually indistinguishable from some of my company's '90s-era publications. Heck, I think we still publish stuff that looks like that, just not anything I work on.
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Nov 17, 2021 18:46
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Halloween Jack posted:I used to work in a law library and a great deal of my job was throwing away old reference books that have been made obsolete by Westlaw and LexisNexis. Tons of that stuff. Literal tons. Missed opportunity to turn those into secret compartment weed/dice boxes. When I was in law school, I used to take the free outdated books home, turn them into secret compartment boxes, and sell them to nerds and smokers. Paid for my nerd and weed habits and then some.
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Nov 17, 2021 18:58
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I never thought of that. I did save some boards that were very nice examples of paper marbling--it's nuts that they used to lavish such care on stuff like minutes from the New Jersey state legislature.
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Nov 17, 2021 19:02
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I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that those backgrounds were available for free in multiple desktop publishing software packages, like Pagemaker and Quark.
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Nov 17, 2021 19:20
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I'm betting that it was also a bit of a novelty at the time. Being able to create a print quality image like that on a desktop computer with a few clicks in Photoshop or whatever as opposed to actually having to draw or paint something probably seemed like god damned future wizardry in 1989 or whenever the trend started.
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Nov 17, 2021 19:48
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I'm also going to defend White Wolf on the background thing for their books. It served a purpose in the 1st edition and early 2nd edition era: you could easily at a glance tell which splatbooks were for their games, and specifically which one. vampire= green marble mage= purple fabric wraith= chains werewolf= brown poo poo changeling= coming next year!
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Nov 17, 2021 19:53
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Anybody pick up the SCP RPG? The first impressions I've heard are not good, but I'm wondering if anyone has a second opinion.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:35
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Based on that review I am 100% confident that it is not a good game. Eight basic stats Nine derived stats, including bonuses for hand-to-hand and ranged damage Body type as a subclass? It has the virtue of being novel. Some ideas haven't been tried because they're obviously bad Lengthy character generation in a game where PCs are expected to die easily and oftenI have a very, very low opinion of games written by fandoms. This doesn't change it.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:49
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I know FASA didn't do full picture covers because the books would often get marred from people leafing through them. They did stone for fantasy and circuitry for things like Shadowrun.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:59
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KingKalamari posted:
Vampire in specific wanted to look like the cover of Ministry's With Sympathy: 
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Nov 17, 2021 21:00
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It's hilarious how much Al Jourgensen hates his excellent album
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Nov 17, 2021 21:04
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Halloween Jack posted:It's hilarious how much Al Jourgensen hates his excellent album
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Nov 17, 2021 22:08
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Absurd Alhazred posted:My GM style is half My GM style is half wishful thinking and half accepting the inevitable Actually I think that's my everything style
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Nov 17, 2021 22:11
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Absurd Alhazred posted:My GM style is half
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Nov 18, 2021 00:58
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Splicer posted:Please stop publishing my campaign notes 
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Nov 18, 2021 01:00
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My GMing style is like my love life : deeply depressing and constantly worrying to my mother.
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Nov 18, 2021 01:31
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My GMing style is like my Christmas shopping: I put it off to the last second, I grab something generic off the shelf and write a quick note about how it's relevant to the people I'm playing with, and it's not very good but my players tell me they love it because it's the thought that counts.
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Nov 18, 2021 01:55
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