TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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My new job just wrecked my usual RPG schedule, but I'll hopefully be playing Some Fallout Thing and running the occasional Danger Patrol.

Also in the last thread I misread a request and accidentally offered to implement a Subset sum problem in javascript. This may have been a mistake.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 13:05

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 10:27

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:

While you're at it, could you make me a program that takes another program as input and tells me whether it terminates or not? Thanks a bunch xoxo.

I would, but first I have to finish the route mapping app I promised my postman.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 13:35

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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whydirt posted:

Is there any way to pronounce Cuthbert that doesn't make you sound like you have a lisp?

Be Irish. We have a complex relationship with "th" sounds.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 18:40

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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FMguru posted:

4.375 points

38.31% chance you get 2 points
40.32% chance you get 4 points
9.07% chance you get 6 points
8.06% chance you get 11 points
4.03% chance you get 13 points
0.20% chance you get 20 points

Where's your general solution :colbert:

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 19:47

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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fosborb posted:

Mind running through the math?

2 points = (20/32) * (19/31)
4 points = (10/32) * (20/31) + (20/32) * (10/31)
6 points = (10/32) * (9/31)
11 points = (20/32) * (2/31) + (2/32) * (20/31)
13 points = (10/32) * (2/31) + (2/32) * (10/31)
20 points = (2/32) * (1/31)

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 19:55

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Meinberg posted:

It doesn't seem that rough, I think I could put together the math in a notepad right now.

It's really easy to do intuitively, but:

Splicer posted:

Where's your general solution

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 20:04

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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It's a stretch goal.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 23:03

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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My Lovely Horse posted:

When my group played 3.5 the DM gave us a magic stone as a joke that if you hit someone with it they would heal 1 HP. The cleric kept that safe and after every battle would go around and bonk everyone on the head with it exactly as many times as they had HP missing. After one or two times I refused to have any further part in it both in and out of character. I DM 4E for these folks now; it's been 4-5 years and they still haven't adjusted.

That's not the 3.x way! You should have argued that since they were hitting each other with it it was an attack, resulting in, at best, a net gain of 0hp.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 11:58

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Lemon Curdistan posted:

FFG Star Wars is actually pretty bad. It suffers from wanting to try to do fail forward/fiction first while also being mechanics-heavy (which doesn't work), the core of its mechanical system is Dark Heresy (which completely clashes with the fail forward/fiction first thing it says it wants to try for, and also doesn't work for Star Wars), the custom dice don't add anything other than making it a pain to arbitrate results as a GM, and they're so swingy that you can expect starting PCs to gently caress up more than they succeed on "average" difficulty checks.

It's basically a tedious, poorly-thought-out Dark Heresy hack which doesn't fit the pulpy space adventures feel of the supposed source material.

Yo I typed this up earlier but forgot to hit send.

SWEotE isn't fail forward, it's multi-layered success, and I'm confused by the unbolded dice bits and your Dark Heresy comparison. However these are all fairly subjective (and I've not really played DH), so my main :psyduck:

is the bolded bit.

Assuming you're using a 3 die characteristic untrained against an average roll with no situational advantages and no light side points spent you're going to get at least a conditional success about 60% of the time. If you're using a level 1 trained skill with two characteristic dice under the same conditions it's 50%. If you're using a 3 die characteristic with level 1 skill (aka an unoptimised starting character's "good" skills) it's 65%. This goes up if you have situational modifiers, spend light side points etc, which you're supposed to do, and does not include "good" failures (no successes but one or more advantages) which are more likely the less worse you do otherwise, making your actual chances of doing something useful much higher than what I listed above.

So that thing you said just isn't really true.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 23:04

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Lemon Curdistan posted:

The game claims that the advantage/threat results let you have "positive failures" or "negative successes," i.e. tiered successes (which naturally lends itself to fail forward), and the game itself tells you it wants to be those things. Even if it had binary pass/fail, you would still want it to be fail forward because there's literally no reason ever to not have failing forward.

That's pretty different from your initial post, but more importantly, why do you say "claims"? You roll dice and get a success total for your base action, a number of advantage or disadvantages, and a number of triumphs or despairs. All of these have mechanical effects. So you can succeed at your stated goal (shoot a dude, fly good, doctor good) with disadvantages (get out of position, damage a ship system, strain your patient), or fail with advantages (set up an ally for a better shot, make your ship harder to hit, recover some strain). Or succeed with advantages or fail with disadvantages (though the dice setup makes the latter less likely) or any of the above with triumphs and failures mixed in. So it delivers exactly what it says it delivers: failures with positive effects and successes with negative effects.

Lemon Curdistan posted:

Most of the damage system comes from DH et al., complete with the d% random critical injury table. Dark Heresy is a d% game, so the critical injury chart actually uses the same dice as the rest of the game, unlike FFGSW where it's horribly tacked-on. The high lethality also comes from DH, where it makes a lot more sense than in Star Wars (do you remember that bit where Luke and Leia fight Storm Troopers, and they keep getting knocked out by a blaster shot and stimpacking each other back up every round?).

Not going to argue the crit table being tacked on, because it is. SWEotE is a cardless spin-off of WFRP3E, which used a deck system for a number of random selection options. Losing the decks required an alternative, and it looks like they went "gently caress it, d100". I think they could have done better. That said, calling the whole game a DH hack because of this (and apparently an influence in class options) is quite a stretch.

Lemon Curdistan posted:

Yep, I didn't do the maths. The numbers you provided still lead to the PCs failing on rolls more often than is desirable for something like Star Wars unless they've dumped 90% of their starting XP into raising their primary characteristic and are specifically rolling for a skill that uses it. It plummets even further if you put them out of their comfort zone at all.

Again, those are the odds for getting at least one success on an average check, with no modifiers.

It's trivial to get positive modifiers, from entirely player controlled options (spending a maneuver to aim gets a white die in combat, there's a pool of light side points to give you effective skill ranks) to gm fiat (I'm on a roof can I get a white die for the high ground (the answer is yes)).

Getting no successes does not mean nothing good happens. You might miss the guy you were aiming at but get a pile of advantages or a triumph, which you can cash in for a bunch of possible things, ranging from narrative bonuses to a bunch more white dice for someone else.

Someone with no weapons training and slightly above average agility has a better than 50/50 chance to shoot a guy who is actively punching him in the face, first try. If it's narratively appropriate it goes up a bunch, with a miss having a high chance of positioning the bad dude for an ally to deliver the old double-fist to the neck. Sounds appropriately pulpy to me. But thats an opinion thing really.

Lemon Curdistan posted:

On top of that, the amount of crunch in the rules just doesn't lend itself to just treating the action narratively enough to a) work for Star Wars' brand of pulpy action and b) work with the tiered success system unless you go out of your way to ignore the rules when adjudicating advantage on failures/threat on successes (this is not helped by their decision to not include suggested narrative effects for threat/advantage in the skill rules).

Everything from b) down is "4e fireballs can't light a fire" level rules ignorance*. I don't even know where to start. You either didn't read core parts of the rules or are badly missapplying them. Of course :ffg:

so if this is the case, probably not your fault.

Basically you were doing it wrong :colbert:

*e: can't think of a less loaded term. I mean it neutrally.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Mar 4, 2015

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 15:21

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Payndz posted:

Speaking of which, the game I'm (intermittently) working on at the moment has a guaranteed hit melee option called Blitz Attack, where you don't roll to see if you hit (you just do), but to see if your target hits you back in the process. I'm currently undecided whether the enemy will make a straightforward to-hit roll against the player's AC or if they have to make a DEX save or similar to dodge. The idea is to encourage the martial classes to tank, knowing that their better HP and armour than the other classes will probably let them survive it.

I really like this a lot. It's like 5e barbarian rage but good.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2015 17:03

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Len posted:

Has anyone experienced a player being an rear end in a top hat about the 4 hour rest time of elves? (D&D 3.5) We have a player who uses that four hour rest and then crams as much into the day as he can. He calls the DM and talks for hours having essentially a mini-session about what he does during the time the party isn't awake. The DM is getting tired of it and has been trying to come up with a way to essentially say "gently caress you. You have to sleep with the party." But hasn't come up with a way yet.

My googling tells me Pathfinder got rid of that? If that's the case we can probably just add that rule in. The guy is playing a Pathfinder class ("the game is so much better than 3.5 we should play that instead" type of player) so if that's the case he should be okay with losing that ability.

Any ideas?

"The elf is on watch."

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 17:51

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Dammit Who? posted:

quote:
The people of Volivat are called the Yennin, which means �Children of Ten Fathers� in their
language. The secrets their ancestors found in the city�s central citadel included a formula for
creating offspring with up to ten fathers, each contributing to the birth of a single child. They
create supermen in this fashion, with only the strongest, wisest, and most gifted men contributing
their seed to the next generation. The resulting cat�s-cradle of clan bonds is largely
incomprehensible to outsiders. Enhanced by the combined strength, wit, and Essence of eleven
parents, the greatest Yennin champions are a match for the sorcerer-princes of Ysyr and the
Dragon-Blooded warriors of Prasad.
Volivat�s thaumaturges have labored to increase the number of fathers participating in
conception, but the progeny have proven abnormal and unstable. Their most ambitious effort, the
so-called Hundred Fathers, were born as abominations and banished to subterranean dwellings.
There they breed in darkness, occasionally emerging to feed on human flesh and wreak wanton
violence against their jailers.

The original draft of Twins.

Like you wouldn't watch CHUD Danny DeVito.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 21:55

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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sentrygun posted:

Part of me wonders if I'd have liked 4e more as a DM so that I'd actually be interacting with the game at all times. Hm. That's kind of a weird thought, I usually prefer being a player by far.

~~The~~ A best thing about 4E is how much of a breeze it is to GM. And (if you want to) you can go full Adversarial DM mode in combat without feeling like a prick.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 21:57

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Tollymain posted:

sword-chucks would probably fit into exalted perfectly though

Say what you like about 8-bit theatre, but at one point fighter saves the party from dying in a fall by using his block everything power to block the ground. That's pure distilled dungeon world/danger patrol/epic tier 4E right there.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2015 11:31

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Quarex posted:

My information was all of the #2 variety, that each class basically had similar abilities (which I am sure is not actually true, and in any case would only be a big deal if you loved caster supremacy), and that there was only one "right" party composition to get through module content, making the role-playing equivalent of a video game FAQ necessary (and that information came entirely from a guy wandering around PAX East and overhearing different groups using the same plan of attack for the module final�).

So yeah once I learned a little more about 4th Edition I understood on some level why that comparison gets made, but also thought about how I am sure even in AD&D 1st Edition there would be "right" group compositions for any given module, it is just that communications technology was not sufficient for these ideas to be aggregated and settled on. Basically those weirdos hate 4th Edition for the same reason I stopped having a sense of wonder in MMORPGs by the mid-2000s, once literally everything in the game was already catalogued and ranked and all mystery was dead. Though I guess that would not explain why 5th Edition is any different.

By acknowledging that there is a "right" combination (Tank, Healer/Party Buffer, Single-target damage & debuffs, multi-target damage & debuffs), the designers of 4E were able to design around these restrictions, e.g. playing 3.x or earlier without a cleric is basically suicide, in 4E there's several flavours of healing classes and playing without one at all is possible if a couple of players splash into some "in case of emergency" healing abilities

5E is different because it pretends these limitations don't exist, which only has upsides.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2015 18:16

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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AlphaDog posted:

That's a little less serious than the tone I had in mind, but I can't see anything actually wrong with this idea either. If the goal was a silly tone, I'd want to do it so it was possible to be a double-vampire vampire-slayer.

I could have sworn that 4E let you play a vampire vampire vampire vampire, but for the life of me I cannot remember where the last vampire comes from. You can play a level 1 zombie zombie vampire vampire vampire werewolf though.

e: Hybrid or multiclass cleric for the vampire hunting if you like.

Also have you ever played Rogue Legacy (the computer game).

Splicer fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Mar 16, 2015

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 02:56

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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I think Payndz is trying to break out of the your turn/my turn system, not find a better method of determining who's turn it is.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 13:38

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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FactsAreUseless posted:

Now let me tell y'all about my excellent hamburger recipe. You just need a pint glass and 80 minutes of oven time.

Who eats the hat?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 13:16

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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I made a thread about storygames.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 14:01

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

Oh god. From the Kickstarter:

It is a heartbreaker.

I've never gone from :iamafag: to :gonk:

so fast in my life

Splicer fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Mar 17, 2015

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 22:16

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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The next time someone asks why D&D being a regressive shitpile of a game is a bad thing, this will be exhibit A. Bad RPGs (and the insular communities surrounding the industry leader) have literally ruined this guy's life.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 02:06

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Is there any chance he could take his infrastructure and redo it for a different game? A good one?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 02:29

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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e: too slow, a wild ettin appears.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 02:43

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Covok posted:

Got the link to the game? I wonder how an ironic FATAL game would play out especially considering our forum culture.

To my recollection they worked out that the easiest way to kill people was by exceeding their AC, so they rolled up a party of orcs due to their improved natural weapons.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 17:14

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Covok posted:

I really, really hope improved natural weapons refer to their claws, fists, or other such things.

No.

And AC doesn't stand for Armour Class.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 20:13

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Covok posted:

No...No...gently caress...No...God drat it...That's just hosed up, man.

You have come to a game called FATAL *whipcrack*

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 20:27

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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AmiYumi posted:

Was that the same game where someone figured out that spec'ing an Ogre for Intimidation, giving the demand "take off your helmet and let me gently caress your face", and then sticking Ogre dick up their ear was an unbeatable strategy? Or did two places on the internet decide to actually run FATAL for some god damned reason?

We have, mercifully, passed the limits of my knowledge of the PbP in question.

My "favourite" part of FATAL was how the cursed armour that turned you into a jewish caricature made your nose bigger and your dick smaller, but the one that turned you into a black caricature only made people think your dick got bigger.

So petty :allears:

Splicer fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Mar 23, 2015

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 22:35

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Cards Against Humanity never claimed to be "the most difficult, detailed, realistic and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available" or require you to roll a d1million.

FATAL is so funny because absolutely everything about it is awful. Everything. It is the platonic ideal of bad RPGs.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 01:03

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Len posted:

Cards does try hard to be edgy and noticed though. A refusal to sell in retail stores, raising the price on black Friday, literally selling a box of bullshit. The cards are the most lolrandom and every time I've played it the joke is "IT'S HILARIOUSLY OFFENSIVE."

Yes, but mechanically it's just mad libs with swearing. If you took out the edgey you'd just have a rather banal apples to apples clone. Take the edgy out of FATAL and you're still dealing with a game with about the same amount of ability scores as 3.x had skills.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 02:02

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:

I'm 50% stronger than anyone here except the yospos muscle guy, which I'm 5% weaker yet I still have the advantage due to the willingness to kill that borderline sociopathy and berserker training gives to you.

Plutonis posting his FATAL char sheet ITT.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 15:01

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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UnCO3 posted:

Gamma Patrol
How it works: each player creates a character and a threat (both randomly-rolled, then fleshed out by the players themselves) and the characters work together or alone to defeat the threats before they destroy the village the characters protect. Uses a bunch of different die types (d4-d10), but the mechanics are pretty simple: roll when you fight a threat, results above 3 are successes and help you defeat threats, below 3 causes trouble or create more problems, different die sizes represent different things like your character's abilities, advantages, danger etc.. The game has specific endings: the village is saved, the characters or village are killed, the villagers flee to elsewhere.

How it fits: not-that-serious tone might help new players get into it easier, generally-defined setting that still allows a lot of player input, clear goal (defend the village), simple rules, one-shot, quick character generation, co-operation mechanics, although you could have a GM it's not strictly necessary. Also free.

It's based on Pocket Danger Patrol, a free pocket version of the pulpy retrofuturistic game Danger Patrol, but PDP doesn't have a specific central goal like Gamma Patrol's 'protect the village'.

I am remembered! I keep meaning to start up another one. Last time I played in person one of the players ended up dating a fungus. I found a good actual play recap of gamma patrol a while back, but I can't find it any more. e: Found it!

goodness here is a link to the Gamma Patrol rules, it's not actually linked on the Danger Patrol main page for some reason. You'll also need to read the base Pocket Danger Patrol rules.

Geiger Counter looks really interesting.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Mar 25, 2015

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 01:07

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 10:27

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Cyphoderus posted:

Other heavy-hitters of Brazilian folklore include a headless horse who spits fire through its nose, the eighth son after seven daughters becoming a werewolf (like a Discworld wizard went wrong), "huge snake only it's on fire", that guy with beer bottles for feet which I never got the point of, pipe-smoking half-naked one-legged black child, and a sexy porpoise.

Sexy porpoise?

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 14:24

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day