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DoubleDonut posted:Can anyone recommend recommend actual play stuff for Blades in the Dark (or other Forged in the Dark stuff) and for a PbtA game (specifically Fellowship or MotW would be great, but anything is fine)? I'm gonna be running one of those fairly soon and I've never actually had the chance to play in them, so I'd like to see how they actually work in practice. I don't need a huge amount, just enough to get a decent feel for it. For BITD, Magpies is very popular and my whole gaming group likes it, and there's an actual play by the designers that a lot of people consider highly useful. Not sure about Fellowship or MOTW.
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May 19, 2022 13:09
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sebmojo posted:https://store.steampowered.com/app/319050/Chaos_Reborn/ Sadly it cratered precisely because of the randomness and dice rolls and the fact that unlike XCOM and such, it didn't fudge rolls at all.
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May 19, 2022 14:02
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There is a weird-rear end game called Metascape (which looks like it was designed by a marketing 'expert' because of all the 'buy this now' phone numbers on everything including the character sheets) that not only has canned numbers for the GM (Players do all the rolling) but also uses a d16 as one of the dice.
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May 19, 2022 14:39
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hyphz posted:On the psychology of rolling, it’s notable that in all versions of D&D except 4e, combat meant rolling to hit and magic meant rolling to save. It generally conveyed the idea that when you swing a sword, it might not achieve anything, but if you cast a fireball then a fireball is absolutely happening and the only question is whether or not it hurts the target. This doubled up with spell resistance in 3e which came across as much more annoying for casters than a simple bonus to save because it meant the caster DID have to roll, with the attendant feeling of their spell just being snuffed out on a low roll. I think some people in the D&D and proto-D&D sphere did it. Blackmoor possibly only involved Dave Arneson rolling? And in Tony Bath's Hyborian Campaign for the most part players just sent over their moves by post and Bath and occasionally his co-umpire would roll dice, make up board games with randomness, up to doing actual miniature battles to settle scores, although if the players were able to they'd sometimes do the miniature battles themselves as one or both sides (and then possibly the umpires would be the only ones rolling dice, too).
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May 19, 2022 14:51
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hyphz posted:On the psychology of rolling, it’s notable that in all versions of D&D except 4e, combat meant rolling to hit and magic meant rolling to save. It generally conveyed the idea that when you swing a sword, it might not achieve anything, but if you cast a fireball then a fireball is absolutely happening and the only question is whether or not it hurts the target. This doubled up with spell resistance in 3e which came across as much more annoying for casters than a simple bonus to save because it meant the caster DID have to roll, with the attendant feeling of their spell just being snuffed out on a low roll. Spell attack rolls are a thing.
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May 19, 2022 18:39
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I always conceptualized rolling a saving through as the character actively saving themself. Like, yeah, the fireball happened, but if I saved vs. it, that means I just managed to duck out of the way, or use my backpack as an improvised shield, or something. So it's still the one rolling doing the succeeding. Not sure if I ever recognized that as a systematic distinction, though. Like it would not have occurred to me, playing any old version of D&D (and I've played all but 5th), that the one doing the rolling is always the one "acting" necessarily. It's food for thought. I do remember as a GM, occasionally I'd secretly roll a character's skill roll because they shouldn't know they rolled at all on a failure, such as when an elf walks past a secret door and rolls a d6 to notice it. And to disguise that, I'd randomly roll dice behind the GM's screen all the time and pretend to make a note or nod sagely at each one.
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May 19, 2022 19:01
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Leperflesh posted:
~Taps Thread Title~
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May 19, 2022 19:08
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Leperflesh posted:
It's archaic, and I'm not really even sure it's good, but I will always, always have a soft spot for the neutral simulationist referee of a GM, talking to you over a screen, referencing secret notes, who will let you do anything but also won't stop the game world from killing you.
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May 19, 2022 19:20
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I was never that neutralist referee, because I was a big softie and couldn't bear to kill characters generally. I'd fudge dice rolls, ask "are you sure?" and then "Are you... SUUUURE???" if they were about to do something suicidal, and otherwise skew things to avoid TPKs etc. Otherwise, though, yeah that's a mode of play I have a lot of nostalgia for, even while I have fully embraced a more collaborative approach to constructing the game experience with the players. And also playing exclusively online so I don't need or have a GM's screen.
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May 19, 2022 19:33
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i prefer to think of GMing as being the heel in a wrestling match. and wrestling is, of course, real.
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May 19, 2022 19:35
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more seriously if the referee is going to be one of the people at the table playing the game anyways (and it'd kind of suck for the referee if they weren't) then there's no reason "team monster" and "rules adjudication" should be the same person. just pick whoever has the best memory or whose computer is the fastest at running PDF searches
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May 19, 2022 19:37
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i prefer to think of GMing as being the heel in a wrestling match. and wrestling is, of course, real. I don't agree with the sentiment in general but I do think that it's good to hit your players with a chair every once in a while.
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May 19, 2022 19:38
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Nightlife, the game I just F&Fed, is a percentile system. Sometimes there are bonuses or penalties, and they're added or subtracted after you roll the dice. This irks me for two reasons. First, it just makes sense to me to apply that before you roll. Second, if you applied the modifier first, a positive modifier would be a positive result and a negative modifier would be a negative result.Leperflesh posted:I always conceptualized rolling a saving through as the character actively saving themself. Like, yeah, the fireball happened, but if I saved vs. it, that means I just managed to duck out of the way, or use my backpack as an improvised shield, or something. So it's still the one rolling doing the succeeding.
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May 19, 2022 19:40
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Also more seriously: the "Dexter's Lab" style dungeon master is fun for a certain kind of OSR style game, that requires a lot of buy in from the players and a certain kind of distance and affability from the DM...but since I haven't actually been able to run or be in one in twenty years I could be completely full of poo poo! Though if I get asked to run a game in the future I'm going to see if the group is interested.
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May 19, 2022 19:42
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Leperflesh posted:I was never that neutralist referee, because I was a big softie and couldn't bear to kill characters generally. I'd fudge dice rolls, ask "are you sure?" and then "Are you... SUUUURE???" if they were about to do something suicidal, and otherwise skew things to avoid TPKs etc.
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May 19, 2022 20:07
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I remember Paranoia 2E made a big deal out of the four GM voices, which I hope I'm remembering correctly:
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May 19, 2022 20:20
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Leperflesh posted:I was never that neutralist referee, because I was a big softie and couldn't bear to kill characters generally. I'd fudge dice rolls, ask "are you sure?" and then "Are you... SUUUURE???" if they were about to do something suicidal, and otherwise skew things to avoid TPKs etc. By and large, dead PC's is always the least interesting thing that can happen, unless a character chooses to die as a dramatic sacrifice. All it actually does is that someone gets up and leaves the table because they've got better things to do than spend the next three hours and several sessions not playing the game while everyone else does.
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May 19, 2022 20:27
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PurpleXVI posted:By and large, dead PC's is always the least interesting thing that can happen, unless a character chooses to die as a dramatic sacrifice. All it actually does is that someone gets up and leaves the table because they've got better things to do than spend the next three hours and several sessions not playing the game while everyone else does. Or they can make a new character.
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May 19, 2022 20:30
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Or they can make a new character. That still leaves them out of the game until there's a point to introduce their character, and unless it's a mindless hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, you want to think up some sort of smooth transition into the party as well as a justification for them to stick with the party. Some sort of connection to the plot, story or characters. Not to mention that a lot of players put a lot of heart and effort into their characters and for them "just making a new character" isn't effortless. Which isn't even getting started on what an extensive nightmare chargen is in a lot of systems.
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May 19, 2022 21:07
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Start every campaign by introducing a divine or magical patron, then deliver replacement characters by lightning bolt or portal.
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May 19, 2022 21:14
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PurpleXVI posted:That still leaves them out of the game until there's a point to introduce their character, and unless it's a mindless hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, you want to think up some sort of smooth transition into the party as well as a justification for them to stick with the party. Some sort of connection to the plot, story or characters. A lot of people start out in RPGs with hack-and-slash dungeon crawls, and it should look familiar to them especially if they're coming in from video games. Character death is a very simple and easily digestible thing to have at stake for conflict in a game. A lot of modern systems are really bad at character creation for their own purposes, yes, because they put the cart (a character with a meaningful history and narrative attached to it) before the horse (playing a game with other people in an imagined world where meaningful history and narrative can be created).
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May 19, 2022 21:17
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Absurd Alhazred posted:A lot of people start out in RPGs with hack-and-slash dungeon crawls, and it should look familiar to them especially if they're coming in from video games.
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May 19, 2022 21:23
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Splicer posted:People enjoy different things and different things are suitable for different games. "Bob is dead, roll up Cob" works great for some games and for others. Accept nuance and context into your life. PurpleXVI can go first. 
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May 19, 2022 21:25
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It's never a problem in Call of Cthulhu. Meet the McGirk brothers! They're from a very large family Buck, Chuck, 'Duck', Huck... eta: of course, you have the next one or two brothers already rolled up when playing one
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May 19, 2022 21:27
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In the context of the old-school red box D&D etc. that I was playing back when I would roll some elf's chance to detect a secret door behind the screen... yeah making a new character was not a huge deal, but we were emotional kids and having your character die was upsetting anyway, at least if you'd been playing them for a while. Literally my first ever game of D&D, I rolled up a Thief, rolled a 1 for hit points, my dad introduced the Keep, we walked in, and I fell in a pit trap and died. Fare the well, Vimp the Wimp, we hardly knew ye. We paused the game and I had another character rolled up 15m later, the longest part of character creation was perusing the equipment list and deciding what to buy. It was actually funny, but I was playing with my family and was about 11 or 12 and we were just learning the game. Later, when I'd play with various friends, there was an obvious and unspoken agreement that PCs just... didn't die. Somehow, the hidden DM dice rolls just fell that way. That was good, too. It was fine. It did not rob us of verisimilitude or something.
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May 19, 2022 21:32
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There is a subset of games where characters take significant mechanical effort to generate, but can be killed very quickly. Many of these games are character focused psychodramas where the PCs are expected to have bonds, familial attachments, backstories that explain how they came to be involved with the action of the story, etc. I'm talking about Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green and Unknown Armies here, but I'm sure there are other examples. Published modules for these games will sometimes include friendly NPCs who can sub in as backup characters if any of the player characters get killed.
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May 19, 2022 21:32
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There are games where PCs are vital to the story, and ones where they're not. If PCs aren't disposable but the system treats them like they are, the designers hosed up
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May 19, 2022 21:36
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Leperflesh posted:In the context of the old-school red box D&D etc. that I was playing back when I would roll some elf's chance to detect a secret door behind the screen... yeah making a new character was not a huge deal, but we were emotional kids and having your character die was upsetting anyway, at least if you'd been playing them for a while. That type of dice chicanery to take a system with character death as expected reasonable consequences and turning it into one without is almost as old as the hobby. It frustrates me that a wider discussion of how to encode other types of stakes into the game, while available in some zines at the time, and in place in some indie games today, isn't more widespread. But people are playing and having fun, and I guess it's an easier sell.
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May 19, 2022 21:37
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Toshimo posted:~Taps Thread Title~ The new thread title makes this post hilarious Jack B Nimble posted:Also more seriously: the "Dexter's Lab" style dungeon master is fun for a certain kind of OSR style game, that requires a lot of buy in from the players and a certain kind of distance and affability from the DM...but since I haven't actually been able to run or be in one in twenty years I could be completely full of poo poo! Though if I get asked to run a game in the future I'm going to see if the group is interested. A large part of the appeal of games like Dungeon Crawl Classics is emulating that sort of thing or at least the fun parts of it
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May 19, 2022 21:55
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To be fair to CoC 'how to deal with characters dying' is built into the very bones of the game and is genuinely important to its theme and tone. It's also why I don't run CoC even though I respect it. I can't deal with killing off players' PCs constantly, it stresses me out.
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May 19, 2022 22:17
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Me sowing: Stop rolling dice. Me reaping: it’s good to hit your players with a chair
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May 19, 2022 22:18
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PurpleXVI posted:I think for me the big thing was that Thac0 and AC in 2nd ed felt bounded, and then you hit 3.x and everything just inflates into ridiculousness and numbers kinda lose their meaning. You'll never be "good at hitting stuff" or "good at not being hit" or "good at not being incinerated by fireballs" or "able to pick locks like a champ," because the DC's and bonuses just keep escalating into the stratosphere. At the same time, I don't think there's anything preventing stats from scaling out of control in a naturally "bounded" system, either. I think some AD&D2e boss monsters had ACs as low as -14. Percentile systems can have skills surpassing 100% and bonuses/penalties that aren't regulated. This ties back into a conversation in the F&F thread from a while back. I think the underlying problem is that a lot of designers don't have a clear idea of what a given stat rating or a given difficulty rating actually means. theironjef posted:No but seriously I absolutely agree about preferring flat math to endlessly identical bonuses on either side of a boring stalemate dice war. It just doesn't actually have anything to do with THAC0 or BAB. The choice to let bonuses spiral forever probably had more to do with trying to appeal to video game players who were tuned to love seeing big numbers (though that's entirely conjecture on my part). gradenko_2000 posted:this is my favorite way of doing old-school attack rolls
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May 19, 2022 22:38
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dm advice: players will roll dice more often if you give them human sized giant stuffed dice they have to pick up with both hands to roll
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May 19, 2022 23:29
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How about a pro-wrestling-based resolution system? Queue up like three hours of prerecorded matches and have them playing as the session goes on. Whenever you need to see how things turn out, check the wrestling: if the face gets in a good hit, things go your way; if the heel does, things go against you.
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May 19, 2022 23:36
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Halloween Jack posted:That's probably true, but I think a lot of it is also just what people focus on. Everybody has ideas for more combat rules with more modifiers for combat, while there's nothing similar for the Use Rope skill. 3e had some stats spiraling out of control, whereas some skills were afterthoughts where you'd never have to worry about a DC higher than 20 or so. I'm sure you'd agree that if the writers can't think of interesting things to do with a PC stat, at various levels of difficulty, it shouldn't be in the game. I was specifically just talking about how THAC0 and BAB are the same thing and didn't actually have anything to do with 2e's relatively flat math compared to 3x's. 3e in general was a clusterfuck and there's heaps of documented evidence that no one ever really figured out what to do with DCs in that engine beyond artificially inflate them to match the inflated numbers on the player side. poo poo like "Truenamers get worse as they gain levels because the DC to use their stuff outstrips their DC gains" and it continued into 4e with stuff like Bear Lore. I do tend to prefer flat math, my current favorite game doesn't even have a leveling system, or any stats that aren't specifically relevant to the character you're playing.
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May 19, 2022 23:38
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potatocubed posted:How about a pro-wrestling-based resolution system? Queue up like three hours of prerecorded matches and have them playing as the session goes on. Whenever you need to see how things turn out, check the wrestling: if the face gets in a good hit, things go your way; if the heel does, things go against you. all dice rolls are replaced by betting on the outcome of ai vs ai mugen matches. critical success for perfect, critical fail for getting perfected. dm can make a hard move if the engine crashes
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May 19, 2022 23:39
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Besides using Saltybet as resolution, you could also use https://goblin.bet!
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May 20, 2022 18:30
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I started out playing Dragon Quest and Call of Cthulhu so I'm partial to rolling percentiles. Reminds me of playing DQ where one guy managed to roll lucky and gain a few levels, and every session half the party died while he cleaned up. What a brutal combat system they had. And magic, love having spells blow up in my face constantly.
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May 20, 2022 22:29
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PerniciousKnid posted:I started out playing Dragon Quest and Call of Cthulhu so I'm partial to rolling percentiles. DQ's experience system and trying to buy ranks in Celestial Magic (Star Mage)...
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May 21, 2022 00:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:PurpleXVI can go first. I don't know if you two have a history but this jab seems unnecessary
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