Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Right, I forgot about that. I guess I can use that to discourage particularly ridiculous crap, entertaining though it may be.

Really, my biggest gripe with Blades is how restricted it can be. It’s great for playing a very specific kind of game, where you have a very specific role - but I’m worried that campaigns will all end up being very similar since they’re all about “get influence and come out on top as criminals in this city”. Feels like something that when you’ve played it once, you’ve played it at least a few times..

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
The scope is pretty limited, but there’s a lot of variety between gang types. A bravos game is very different to shadows which is different to a Cult. Also there’s lots of games around, go for variety

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
I don't know how prescribed the setting is in blades but, from what's been posted in the thread, it sounds like a different setting would change the narrative nature of the jobs they do a lot. Maybe you're pirates lurking around an island chain or in a floating magic city where each district is on a different cloud and people travel between them on flying creatures.

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora
Please know that I don't mean this in a confrontational way and I am in no way trying to dunk on you but

Pollyanna posted:

[Blades is] great for playing a very specific kind of game

Good. We have enough games that try to do everything. Bring on more games where there is no question as to what you're supposed to be doing. Also it's kinda weird to think "is there enough variety in crime stories?" when fifty years later everyone is still tripping over themselves to re-invent games about sword guys going into a cave.

Serf
May 5, 2011


Ilor posted:

Similarly, the "Devil's Bargain" is a double-edged sword. It's a guaranteed complication that (if taken) will give you an extra die for your roll. This is devious and awesome, and asking "so what's my Devil's Bargain here?" is perhaps one of the most consistently hilarious bits in BitD - but at the same time, it brings game-play to a halt while the GM thinks up an appropriate complication. This pause is usually very brief, but combined with establishing position/effect (and the subsequent negotiation thereof if a player is fishing for better effect and/or more XP) it is noticeable.

remember that the book encourages the whole table to participate in devil's bargains. it doesn't bring things to a halt if you get everyone involved in the process.

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Lynx Winters posted:

Please know that I don't mean this in a confrontational way and I am in no way trying to dunk on you but


Good. We have enough games that try to do everything. Bring on more games where there is no question as to what you're supposed to be doing. Also it's kinda weird to think "is there enough variety in crime stories?" when fifty years later everyone is still tripping over themselves to re-invent games about sword guys going into a cave.

I mean you’re not wrong, and Blades is drat good at what it does. I’m just afraid that a group would never come back to it, or end up following a similar progression and narrative over and over.

Dungeon World sounds real good if I wanna improv and build out a world and story with a group, but it’s also real nice to have that taken care of already by the game.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Pollyanna posted:

I mean you’re not wrong, and Blades is drat good at what it does. I’m just afraid that a group would never come back to it, or end up following a similar progression and narrative over and over.

Dungeon World sounds real good if I wanna improv and build out a world and story with a group, but it’s also real nice to have that taken care of already by the game.

Running a campaign of something, having lots of fun, and then moving on to something else seems like a fine thing to me. You only get so much rpg time as a grown-up, there's too many cool sounding games to play in one lifetime even without coming back to any.

Ilor
Feb 2, 2008

That's a crit.

Serf posted:

remember that the book encourages the whole table to participate in devil's bargains. it doesn't bring things to a halt if you get everyone involved in the process.
It's not that the game itself comes to a halt, it's that the action - the narrative - comes to a halt. I'm not saying it's not fun, and we all definitely contribute to potential Devil's Bargains. But it is definitely a pause in the action that's a lot less noticeable in games that don't have as many player-facing mechanical decisions.

Serf
May 5, 2011


Ilor posted:

It's not that the game itself comes to a halt, it's that the action - the narrative - comes to a halt. I'm not saying it's not fun, and we all definitely contribute to potential Devil's Bargains. But it is definitely a pause in the action that's a lot less noticeable in games that don't have as many player-facing mechanical decisions.

that's just the nature of Blades as a game. you're gonna spend a good portion of your time discussing the fiction so that you can engage with the mechanics of position/effect alone. it gets faster the more you play and with familiarity, but even then it takes time to resolve actions and discuss consequences.

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Just pretend it’s a Telltale game with dialogue and action choices, problem solved v:v:v Commander Shepard has to think, Bluecoat scum.

The Lord of Hats
Aug 22, 2010

Hello, yes! Is being very good day for posting, no?
I'm glad we're on this topic, because it looks like I'm going to be running Blades in the Dark for my friends soon!

I haven't played the game before (none of us have), and I haven't really done much GMing in the past--the same group tried a D&D campaign (which I was DMing), but it fell apart due to scheduling, and that's more or less the extent of my experience. Just by looking it over briefly it looks to have infinitely less GM overhead which is definitely welcome. Is there anything specific to BitD I should be keeping in mind? (General advice also welcome).

If it helps, while we didn't have everyone yesterday when the system was chosen, the players that were there seemed to be interested in being a crew of Hawkers.

Ilor
Feb 2, 2008

That's a crit.

The Lord of Hats posted:

I haven't played the game before (none of us have), and I haven't really done much GMing in the past [SNIP] (General advice also welcome).
I'm going to give you the same advice I give everyone playing a PbtA game - the same advice I gave up-thread: buy Apocalypse World and read it very carefully. It is almost but not quite completely unlike D&D, and going into it with any D&D assumptions is going to hinder you.

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Need more goon sourcing of plot hooks if anyone feels like helping me out. The system is 13th Age, and I can fill in any details that people may need.

https://bubbl.us/NDcxNjMzMi85MDQ5OTQ4LzgwMDJiNjNiMDI0YTY3NDZiMjA2OGViYWFhMmRhMGJm-X?utm_source=shared-link&utm_medium=link&s=9049948

This is the world history as I've figured it out, I've broken the icons into 3 different factions including the custom factions the players found and wanted to use. Then after I did that, I created a general plot that should set up hooks for adventure, but I'm a little worried because I haven't really nailed down how to make everything mechanically, I just keep doing cool things and winging it. Plus writing my ideas down help me figure out what I want to do. you can just read the bold parts if you want the tl;dr

Session 1: The players sign up with one of the two factions to break into a Palace owned by an independent city state with a loose parliamentary based government system. In the course of the break in they: captured the Prime Minister as a hostage who killed herself, 12 different ambassadors stabbing 1 and poisoning the rest accidentally, then found that the Prime Minister is completely find but has a different accent entirely, but they seemed to be the only ones they notice. The Contract is simple, Enter through this portal, secure a safe way back, and make sure the area has a sustainable way to support life.

They eventually stab their way through the palace to the secret portal where they end up in the Nexus and I set up the crutch of the entire campaign. New Portals are opening up to New Worlds everywhere, the Nexus is a completely white void with insanely strict rules that are punishable by death. You get 2 warnings and then ZAP. They enrage a bunch of empire Soldiers when people start going through the portal they came through and tell them "Hey these assholes were a bunch of murderous dicks." 3 or 4 Soldiers died and the rest backed off. The Heroes when they stepped through the portal are branded on their shoulder. The Wisps give their company their own portal to the "New World" and a return portal to head quarters. The Heroes decide not to find out where the home portal leads too. They go through the New World Portal where they hear a scream.

Their New World portal opens up to essentially a canopy "cave" basically an area in the incredibly dense thick of forest that is so over grown that there is flat branch weaved ground and they can see path ways through the trees that reach on for miles.

Session 2: They decide to take a short rest and heal up after stepping through the away portal, after 2 or 3 minutes the screaming stops, and at the end of their rest, a Horse pulling an evil looking carriage comes through. The group splits up, half explore the new noise and find a Kobold Warren in the tree canopy, but all the Kobolds are dead, they can see a pool of blood in the center of the warren. Then the Dark Thing blasted past them and ran towards camp and the other group. Group 1 chases after the Dark Thing, while Group 2 gets started on building up camp. The only supplies they have are in the wagon, which has a series of knobs they find out that the wagon summons demons that they can negotiate to get work done. It has 3 levels of Sapience (Animal, Humanoid, Beyond,) 4 levels of elements (Water, Air, Life, Death) and 8 levels of power. The wagon also came with the supplies to get up a fire pit and a bunch of tents.

The Dark Thing runs straight into camp, barreling through the camp fire and burns down all the tents. They summon a kelpie to put out the fire and kill the Dark Thing for them costing them all their money. When they kill it they do an autopsy and it seems like a magic piece of cloth filled with enchanted ooze and a single black pearl. Before they leave to explore the warren together, they summon a 2nd Demon a Vampire named V, and also known as "The Impaler" they don't have cash, so how it works is, He gets 3rd pick of gear, behind the group and the Ebon Blade Company, 3 live meals a day, and his own bedroom. In exchange he'll guard their stuff. They also randomly summon a deer with eyes on it's antlers that won't stop crying and everything it cries on that's plant life goes through it's entire life cycle at once. It's weird, and no-one knows what it wants or does, but it's there. They also summon a black wisp that floats over the remains of The Dark Thing, and summoned a 2nd Black Wisp. They don't know what that wants or knows what it does either!

They go back to the warren and explore it, they find a bunch of magic gear, fight a mimic, and then get in fight with the giant tree next door. They find out that the tree is dead and hollow, and there is a living beating heart at the center. The kobolds turned on it during a food shortage and the tree murdered all the kobolds for food. It constantly makes references to farming, but there are no farms that the players can see (The kobolds farm ontop of the canopy where the sun reaches their crops.) Anyways, the game ended with them returning with a bunch of preserved meat from the Kobold warrens, and V set up a solar still and some lean toos while they were gone, and captured 3 kobolds. The heart can be moved, so they decide to take it with them, and when they do, it shrinks to the size of an acorn with 10 feet of nerve ending coming out of the bottom of it. The now completely hollow tree falls, and the group runs. The dead tree creates a ramp to the floor of the forest, increasing they're ability to explore. They can now explore what lives on the forest floor, or keep exploring the canopy, or exploring

That's where we left off, they wanted to do an expedition game into a new world, so I have a blank map that they will be filling in as they travel.

I also have 96 different demons they can summon, which may be excessive idk.

tl;dr= I am taking all ideas as of where to take this campaign, because I didn't expect my players to think the idea was so awesome, or get so involved, and I don't want to half-rear end it.

Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 22:44 on May 18, 2018

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal

The Lord of Hats posted:

I'm glad we're on this topic, because it looks like I'm going to be running Blades in the Dark for my friends soon!

I haven't played the game before (none of us have), and I haven't really done much GMing in the past--the same group tried a D&D campaign (which I was DMing), but it fell apart due to scheduling, and that's more or less the extent of my experience. Just by looking it over briefly it looks to have infinitely less GM overhead which is definitely welcome. Is there anything specific to BitD I should be keeping in mind? (General advice also welcome).

If it helps, while we didn't have everyone yesterday when the system was chosen, the players that were there seemed to be interested in being a crew of Hawkers.

Read the gm advice in the book and stick to how it does things as much as you can, it’s very tied to how the game works. Clocks are your friend: make as many as possible and be ruthless with them. Make sure to understand and explain Stress, resistance rolls, flashbacks and gear, since those are the less intuitive parts of playing that don’t come immediately from narrating your actions.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.
Crossposting/reposting from the Cat Piss Thread:

I'm fishing for ideas for a series of articles I'm writing for my blog. The blog is a home for a few different columns I've had in mind about nerd poo poo, and one of them is about taking semi-deep dives into different aspects of GMing, using anecdotes as a way to discuss them. I won't spam the thread with links unless asked, but I can provide them if people want examples. So far I've explored deliberately breaking rules, taking the "safeties off" for PC consequences, and letting players make use of corner-case parts of their builds. But are there any topics in or challenges to running games that people are curious about exploring in some depth?

lofi
Apr 2, 2018




Killing PCs is always a fun one to me - whether to purely go with the dice, or fudge rolls, or just gm fiat. Do you only kill PCs when it's dramatically appropriate, how to deal with players who take it badly, and so on. I think there's a lot of mileage in the topic.

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

Another thing about killing PCs - how quickly and easily can you get a new PC into the action?

In my current Stars without number game I'm far more likely to break their stuff than kill the PCs because they're often a long way from home in a ship that's too small for them to have replacement crew.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
I would rather compromise my setting to have available replacements than compromise my encounters to not kill a player when that absolutely would happen, personally.

Paramemetic
Sep 29, 2003

Area 51. You heard of it, right?





Fallen Rib
Personally I telegraph enough to make clear that certain situations are the sorts that are pretty likely to kill players. The players aren't "there" the way their characters "are" so I make pretty clear to let them know things they should know. "The hulking golem looks pretty tough, it wouldn't be an easy fight" or "the monster looks terrifying - it can definitely kill you." Then if they commit to a fight that's on them. Death should be a consequence of player decisions and so I give them the tools to make that decision then let the dice fall as they may. On my session Tuesday I let the players know a guy was several levels higher than them. One of them notched an arrow. We rolled initiative. Nobody got higher than a ten but the NPC went second. He let fly a lightning bolt, the player who notched the arrow went down and rolled a one on the fort save (3.5), died the next turn.

Sure I could've fudged it to save a character but at that point what's the point of my rolling anything at all?

Basically I let players make decisions based on what they know about the world and I try not to make things they don't know about the world things that will kill them outright. If something new they are encountering isn't familiar or obviously fatal, I'll do some kind of NPC exposition (unless it's something they should be investigating etc.). Basically let players balance risk vs reward and if you get to the point where they're never doing anything because they're afraid consider changing up games because that story is over (and maybe consider mellowing out with whatever drat AD&D no save kill poo poo lmao).

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost
My philosophy of GMing is that something shouldn't be an in-game possibility unless it would be cool. So it's my responsibility as a GM not to put players in a situation where they might die unless it would be a satisfying death. Dying to stop your enemy from achieving their goals is narratively satisfying and cool, dying to a random wolf because it rolled a bunch of crits in a row isn't.

So I guess the follow-on to that is that systems where a few unlucky dice rolls can kill off a player are bad; systems where a player has lots of intermediate stages between A-OK and dead, and lots of ability to cut their losses and get out before they become dead, are good.

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
Basically Tenra Bansho Zero is the best RPG.

NinjaDebugger
Apr 22, 2008


Leraika posted:

Basically Tenra Bansho Zero is the best RPG.

God yes. I cannot count the number of times I have considered overwriting L5R's health/death rules with TBZ's. I should just bite down and do it. Not that my players engage in a lot of combat.

lofi
Apr 2, 2018




For the slower kids in class, how does TBZ handle death?

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

lofi posted:

For the slower kids in class, how does TBZ handle death?

Short version: Death is only a possibility if the player decides the fight is important enough to risk putting their life on the line.

Long version: TBZ does a sort of hybrid vitality/wound box system where you can divvy up the damage you take between them as you choose. When you hit 0 vitality, you're out of the fight - you're knocked out, exhausted, whatever. As you check wound boxes, which represent actual lasting damage, you get stronger (in true anime fashion) - a check in heavy wounds, for example, gives you +1 dice, while a check in critical wounds gives you +2 but makes you lose vitality every round as you bleed out.

The dead box can be checked off at any point. When you do, and your character hits 0 vitality, they die.

What do you get in exchange? A significant +3 boost to all your die rolls for the entire combat, with no downside (save the chance that your character will actually, literally die).

Once you check off that box, though, it's going to be a long time before you recover - is that an acceptable risk? Is this fight one that your character's literally willing to risk it all to win?


e: also tbz's rules are cool and good because they're aren't a loving death spiral where getting hit once means you're probably dead, hi l5r

Leraika fucked around with this message at 00:25 on May 21, 2018

lofi
Apr 2, 2018




That's really cool! I like that it has a 'cooldown' or I could see it turning into pop the death box or lose every fight.

NinjaDebugger
Apr 22, 2008


It's actually even better. When you pop the death box, you nosell the entire attack that triggered it. No matter what it is. They explicitly suggest that you combine this with a cross-counter (you accept a crit to deal a crit) to absolutely gently caress somebody up.

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.
The dead box is actually very easy to heal on its own. It has the same difficulty to remove as a light wound would, but it can't be healed during combat. However, heavy and critical wounds are significantly more challenging to recover from. You have to roll a heal check and compare it to the highest level of the present wounds on a character. The light and dead boxes have a level of 1, the heavy has 2, and the critical has 3. Most players will have probably checked a few heavy and critical boxes before resorting to the dead box. Then when a successful heal check is rolled, the player will likely have to choose between removing the wounds that make the healing checks more challenging, or the dead box and prevent future permadeath risks. The game suggests having a near-death experience like that would probably alter the character's outlook on life and change one of their Fates, but that's not a hard rule.


e- Keep in mind that TBZ isn't meant to be a long chain of fights either. It's meant to be treated as a kabuki play with 4-5 acts and 2-5 scenes in each act. Like any play, the scenes might jump around in time or space, and won't necessarily behave as one continuous campaign. The spotlight is also supposed to move around the table, with some PCs in the scene while others act as the audience or NPCs. You'll likely have a few fights, but I'd be surprised if they were both back-to-back and also contain all the same characters. The audience players are supposed to reward the PCs in the scene for playing to their Fates, and for maintaining an exciting and dramatic atmosphere.

Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 03:52 on May 21, 2018

fr0id
Jul 27, 2016

Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!
I ran my first ever Roll20 game tonight, using the Fragged Empire system. I ran a pre-written adventure in which there is a combat near the start of the adventure with a pretty heavily armored and stationary turret. The combat wound up taking about 2 hours due to a combination of inexperience with the system, with Roll20, the characters not being equipped to fight an armored target, and the target being a pretty tough first encounter. I let the encounter mostly ride out until someone broke into the vehicle the turret was mounted on and turned the whole thing off. Most of the players seemed okay with the encounter, although I felt bad that it took so long.

One of my players was very frustrated by the whole thing and said it felt like an on-rails video game. He had his very large character climb up on the vehicle to try disabling the turret. He asked to try finding a way to stop the turret, maybe by disabling the part of it that rotates the turret, and I had him roll for it and told him he could either brute force smash the turret as an attack, or would have to spend a turn trying to pry off some of its armor plating. The player said he wasn't happy with either of those, but his turn was over. On his next turn, the player said he wanted to use the grapple action on the turret. The player performed the action and I went with rules as written for performing it. The player asked if he could rip the turret off of the vehicle and I told him that wouldn't be possible because it was a military vehicle and in my head figured the other players wouldn't really be happy about the encounter if he just ended it that way. I also felt like the player hadn't really established being a super strength person (he took the "massive" trait and I let him use that to be able to easily climb on top of the vehicle. I told the player he could try doing enough damage to the turret with melee attacks until it died/would be ripped out, but the player didn't like this. The encounter eventually ended with another player breaking into the vehicle as I said.

So, I asked the player about the session and he said that I was wrong to tell him no about ripping the turret off and that the other options I gave him were boring and put the game on rails. I feel like I gave him a "no, but" with a couple valid tactics that would have him playing by the same rules as the other players (who were all looking around the environment for ways to take out the turret or making regular attacks). I also felt like I'd established in the fiction that this thing was heavily armored. I told the player I want to emphasize tactical combat and he said he'd probably bow out of the game.

Was I in the wrong on how I handled things, or was it just a case of player/game incompatibility?

CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal
Anyone know of a good resource for fantasy character portraits with a consistent art style?

lofi
Apr 2, 2018




fr0id posted:

Was I in the wrong on how I handled things, or was it just a case of player/game incompatibility?

They sound like an rear end in a top hat, I'd let them leave and be glad for it.

deedee megadoodoo
Sep 28, 2000
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one to Flavortown, and that has made all the difference.


fr0id posted:

Was I in the wrong on how I handled things, or was it just a case of player/game incompatibility?

You established an encounter where the parameters were “defeat it using something other than brute force” and the player kept trying to use brute force then got salty about it when it didn’t work.

You did fine.

Soup Inspector
Jun 5, 2013

Railing Kill posted:

Crossposting/reposting from the Cat Piss Thread:

I'm fishing for ideas for a series of articles I'm writing for my blog. The blog is a home for a few different columns I've had in mind about nerd poo poo, and one of them is about taking semi-deep dives into different aspects of GMing, using anecdotes as a way to discuss them. I won't spam the thread with links unless asked, but I can provide them if people want examples. So far I've explored deliberately breaking rules, taking the "safeties off" for PC consequences, and letting players make use of corner-case parts of their builds. But are there any topics in or challenges to running games that people are curious about exploring in some depth?

I'd love to see your blog - I'm always hungry for ways to improve.

Since everyone else started discussing how they handle PC killing, I figure I might as well do the same. Albeit I have way less experience than everyone else here. I tend to tailor it to my audience. But regardless of whether they want a highly lethal game or not I always try to give people at least one clear opportunity to avert deadly situations (for example, asking if they really want to do something instantly deadly). Perhaps that's a bit too lenient of me but I don't want to take a cheap shot (or be accused of doing so, for that matter). My other rule is that if I gently caress up the balance of an encounter entirely and everyone just gets skullfucked on the word "go" then I pause it and ask the group if they want to accept it "as is" or if they'd like to take a little break while I reset the encounter and tweak things so that they're more reasonable. There's a difference between "lethal" and "bullshit" after all.

Or in short I basically do what Paramemetic does. :v:

I'm a bit late but hopefully the goon asking about the catering thing can use this stuff in a later session: perhaps some random lackey in the kitchen fucks up the preparation of one of the meals and so they have to find a substitute and fast. And in a similar vein, maybe a night or two before the party they find out they don't have [#EXPENSIVEINGREDIENT] and have to go on a brief foray to find it before time's up. Perhaps if the GM doesn't want to make it a combat encounter or whatever it could be more of a case of prevailing against the elements or convincing a merchant who'd otherwise bilk the party (or their employers!) out of a lot of cash to settle for a more reasonable price.

And I'll nth what the others are saying fr0id, you're in the clear.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.
It sounds like the biggest issue was just a thematic mismatch: the player thought "massive" meant "I am the Incredible Hulk and can do all the things he does," and you thought it meant, "you're unusually large and strong but still basically just a post apocalyptic warrior guy." Saying it felt like a video game on rails is a bit pejorative, but if the guy recognized the game he wants isn't the one you're running, then it shouldn't do any long term harm.

In the future, don't be afraid to call mulligans when everybody is new to a system. If the party didn't bring a rocket launcher to a tank fight, and it's turning into a long ugly slog, just tell everybody "do we want to go back and change up the starting inventory or respec our characters a bit? Your characters probably would have remembered to bring a heavy weapon or two." Even if you're trying to run an unforgiving tactical combat system, allowing a few take-backs when everyone is still learning lets them play with the system a bit and come up to speed faster.

Moriatti
Apr 21, 2014

CubeTheory posted:

Anyone know of a good resource for fantasy character portraits with a consistent art style?

What's your ratio of dudes to elves/orcs? If it's mostly dudes probably Fire Emblem 6 and up.

Razorwired
Dec 7, 2008

It's about to start!

CubeTheory posted:

Anyone know of a good resource for fantasy character portraits with a consistent art style?

If your players don't play TCGs pick your favorite Magic: The Gathering Artist and mine their archive of card illustrations.

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

CubeTheory posted:

Anyone know of a good resource for fantasy character portraits with a consistent art style?

There’s a pack of portraits linked from the OP of the Deadfire thread in Games with like 500 in a mostly consistent style.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Space Gopher posted:

It sounds like the biggest issue was just a thematic mismatch...

In the future, don't be afraid to call mulligans when everybody is new to a system.
It's also totally reasonable to stop and have the conversation explicitly about thematic expectations in the moment, especially early on.

I've mentioned it in other contexts before, that defaulting to let the player do the cool thing is a good baseline but that has to be tempered with respecting the cool things other players are doing too. One of the major issues people have with D&D is that the wizard gets a lot of narrative agency (they can do a lot of things and there's little mechanical friction to them doing any of them) while the fighter gets basically none (they can do one or two things and there's immense mechanical friction in doing even those).

That can crop up in more narrative games too - if two players are working under different assumptions of the narrative control and thematic power level, then one of them is going to feel like their cool thing is getting invalidated and their narrative agency curtailed unfairly. In this case the mismatch is driven by narrative friction - someone is assuming the wrong amount, either by too much or too little, and is tailoring their actions around that assumption, and thus either falling behind the others or routinely getting unexpected pushback from the GM. If one player is an outlier in those areas (in either direction), then there needs to be a reset to make sure everyone is on the same page.

At heart, this goes back to how "be a fan of the characters" should apply between PCs as well.

As a note, one of the most important things a GM has to do is make sure they aren't applying different amounts of friction to different PCs. And even if the difference has been established ahead of time, for most players a gap that's too large will rapidly become un-fun even if they knew about it ahead of time. That doesn't mean it has to be equal at all times, but across the game should even out.

lofi posted:

Killing PCs is always a fun one to me - whether to purely go with the dice, or fudge rolls, or just gm fiat. Do you only kill PCs when it's dramatically appropriate, how to deal with players who take it badly, and so on. I think there's a lot of mileage in the topic.
Personally, I think there are several right ways to go about it. Given what I usually advise, it may sound out of character but I do enjoy the occasional Meatgrinder Dungeon Crawl game, where the dice will do what they do and every action is perilous, and incurs harsh consequences. But it's key that this expectation is clearly established ahead of time and we're using an appropriate system for it.

If it takes me two hours to build a character, and/or it wouldn't make sense to routinely introduce a new character in the next scene, and/or I can't just change the name at the top of my sheet and keep going after the first version gets killed, then high lethality is not an appropriate approach, even if the expectation is presented ahead of time.

Conversely, even in a game where it is easy to jump back in, the GM should stick to the expectation they've established. And if they've failed to establish an expectation, then they a) should have that conversation and b) until then, default to not killing off PCs without checking with the player first.

NinjaDebugger posted:

God yes. I cannot count the number of times I have considered overwriting L5R's health/death rules with TBZ's. I should just bite down and do it. Not that my players engage in a lot of combat.
Yes pls.

Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 16:57 on May 21, 2018

Razorwired
Dec 7, 2008

It's about to start!
"You, the players, are all fans of each others characters" is pretty solid advice. For instance. I'm currently in a Blades in the Dark Campaign. When it came to Vices I chose Luxury and wrote down that Hodge is a criminal for the most base reason. He wants a lot of money because Severos sucks and at least in the Underworld you can buy your way to relative comfort. Our Hunter, played by B, chose Obligation and stated that because his Rival was basically Sean Bean in James Bond that Cricket the Hunter was an honest Smuggler who refused to weasel out of a deal or betray an ally. Hodge the Spider(Me), then decided my Rival was someone who wasn't a physical threat but already had a ton of dirt on me.

Fast forward a few months of play and Hodge and Cricket barely like each other. Hodge has adopted the mantra of "Never betray anyone you can't afford to." Meaning he's sold out everyone from rival gangs to friendly gangs to our gang. Meanwhile Cricket's answer to everything is to go into the Deathlands and hole up in the ruins of a warehouse we've warded. Above the table Razor and B are having a fabulous time, laughing between the IC arguments. In the narrative these two are constantly throwing wrenches into each others plans, getting each other in and out of pinches, and basically doing the kind of poo poo that happens in a heist movie.

Inter-party conflict is cool and good for games. Just makes sure it's Matthau and Lemmon at the table and not "Frodo has left the Fellowship. Um, I guess you can play Fortnite in the living room until we're done, Gary."

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Inter-party conflict is cool and good, as long as there is no matching inter-player conflict.

I’m trying to get people together for a one-shot, and one of the house rules will be “no bullshit” - no racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. of any kind. If you joke, remember to punch up, not down. The question I’m running into is how fantasy races that hate each other work in this case. Elves and dwarves being lovely racists to each other in-fiction sounds like it’d fall under the “no bullshit” rule, but I’ll admit it’s possible that interesting fiction and developments can arise out of the usual fantasy racism poo poo. However, I worry that adding a “fantasy racism is ok if it makes sense in fiction” clause opens a loophole. How do other people handle this?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
I feel like groups can come into conflict with each other without being racist.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply