TG Chat Thread 2018: Please welcome our new mod, Count Strahd von Zarovich

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat Thread 2018: Please welcome our new mod, Count Strahd von Zarovich

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DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Mr.Misfit posted:

I actually researched this a while back and apparently a lot of the dungeon stuff came from the fact that they wanted to expand Castle Black...hawk? Greyhawk? Greyblack? Something Something...., because it was a development from...
BLACKMOOR! Castle Blackmoor! That�s what it was, wasn�t it? Anyway, according to "Playing the World" and Designers and Dungeons (70s) the idea of dungeons actually came about because they had already pacified and mostly divided the surrounding lands of Castle Blackmoor, and to quote Arneson

Greyhawk was Gary's setting. Blackmoor was Dave's.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 03:40

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:29

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

I'm looking at maybe running Drama System coming up. Does anyone have any recommendations to make the procedural resolution less insane?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2018 05:39

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Depends on what you find insane about it, I suppose. It's a bit obtuse but extremely lightweight in play.

I�m mostly concerned with the obtuseness. I understand the need for it being lightweight.

What�s the rationale behind using cards?

Maybe I just need to reread it a couple of times.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2018 16:21

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

thelazyblank posted:

Every conversation can have manipulation in it. You agree, when you sit down to play this game, to try and minimize it for the goal of a good collaborative story.

thelazyblank has agreed to sit down to play this game. *steeples fingers* The fool has already fallen into my trap.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2018 21:22

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Tekopo posted:

I think a misunderstanding is how many people treat RPGs as a game (and when I reference a game here I mean in the strictest possible way) which is what hyphz is doing, and how many people are treating RPGs as stories. I don't mean to bring this up in a "lol storygames aren't really games what idiots you are for playing them" btw and I really don't want the whole stupid "what is/isn't an RPG" argument to pop up.

Basically the roots of D&D as a wargame mean that an interpretation of the game is one in which you could explicitly win and lose. The win condition in this case is that you get out of whatever dungeon with whatever loot you have, and that your entire party doesn't die. Stuff like Tomb of Horrors exemplify this. This way of playing RPGs lies extremely within the "game" side of the spectrum, where characters are interchangeable, are lost easily and replaced easily. Within this example, the win/loss conditions of your character are tied with the win/loss conditions of you, yourself, as the player.

On the other end of the spectrum, are "non-games" like PbtA where there isn't a loss/win condition. In PbtA, a player does not have an explicit win/loss condition, although his character still has a win/loss condition. Depending on the player, he might be more interested in making sure that his character achieves his win condition, but this isn't a primary reason why the player plays a PtbA, with more importance given to how the story unfolds and what kind of issues that his character is presented with. This can lead to games where the players of your characters are doing everything wrong, not succeeding at anything they aspire to, and still making an interesting story of how their downfall unfurled, and still provide enjoyment to players. So, since the aim is to create an interesting story, players and GM alike will collaborate in order to make the story interesting, even if this is a negative outcome for the characters involved. It's this disconnect between players/characters (which isn't present when defining RPGs as a game) that makes this possible.

You might have noticed, however, that the current state of mainstream RPGs (D&D and PF) doesn't fit either description. They aren't treated as a game, because characters aren't expendable and the game isn't just about getting through a dungeon alive, but the characters still have personal arcs that they go through that ideally don't just end up with them being dead in a dungeon because they couldn't face X+1 number of goblins.

So what you get is a strange gelling of game and non-game elements that doesn't really work in conjunction with each other. It's difficult to reconcile the fact that in the current version of D&D, character and player win/loss conditions coincide, yet there is still a drive to create a story: although this does halfheartedly work in social situations, it dramatically falls down during combat scenarios, where due to mechanical constraints, the game more or less forces you to kill characters as a loss condition. 4e actually pulled back the curtain on this facet of RPGs, which I do find hilarious.

What some storygames attempt to do is create combat scenarios in games that don't explicitly have a loss condition, and I guess this is confusing to people that have been used to playing stuff like D&D, because before the only situation in which this occurred was social situations (you fail a social encounter and you get captured, a fight starts, you run away, people hate you etc etc etc). I think this is where the disconnect is: storygames treat every single situation experienced by the players like a D&D social encounter.

In my opinion, this is at the core of what is dysfunctional about D&D as a game. People are trying to use it to create stories that it is fundamentally incapable of supporting.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2018 17:47

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

thefakenews posted:

Please show me in the rules where D&D stops me doing this as a GM. Hell, show me in the rules where any traditional RPG stops me doing this.

As you can see on the map of the dungeon in this module there aren�t an infinite number of doors.

Except for in the hallway of infinite doors.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2018 23:52

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

I want to play Hyphz�s nightmare game. A theoretical game where the fiction doesn�t follow. Some sort of surrealist masterpiece, where I try to attack the goblin and flowers sprout up everywhere, and the goblin wasn�t even actually there.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2018 19:02

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

And if you really feel the urge for trigonometry space combat there are still modern editions of Traveller.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2018 20:09

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Ettin posted:

Meterchlorians, microscopic life forms that like it when lasers are finite

This is also how the guns in Saturday morning cartoons work.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2018 20:36

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

I�m currently reading �The Timeless Way of Building� in hopes that I will glean some sort of design knowledge from it.

I�m not that hopeful though because the author spent the first 50 pages describing the Japanese concept of �Wa� as �the quality which cannot be named�.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2018 19:09

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Moriatti posted:

So what's evwryone's policies on takebacks in games?

My general goto is Mage Knight's "allow unless new information is revealed".

In RPGs, Yes "if the intent or the stakes were misstated". Which is 100% of the time someone asks for a takeback in my experience.

In board games with no/little hidden information, Yes "unless it conflicts with another player's completed action"

# ¿ Jan 14, 2018 19:00

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

gradenko_2000 posted:

And speaking of games that are D&D, I'd also like to plug my latest blog entry, talking about how to inject a little variety into monster encounters.

How would you extend this to a version of the game that has global fixed save limits, i.e. before 3e?

# ¿ Jan 21, 2018 17:52

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

D&D needs team jump.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2018 23:14

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Serf posted:

i'll take a lovely setting if it has a good system

I also like Mario + Rabbids.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2018 19:07

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Kai Tave posted:

Yeah there we go, I knew it was someone else Mearls was replying to instead of Tarnowski though I'm not at all surprised he had to weigh in too (lol at calling Maximum Mike a "douchebag with delusions of grandeur"). While I suppose you could squint your eyes and claim that Mearls' casual dismissiveness of the these panelists isn't really "gatekeeping" since he isn't actively attempting to keep them away from the convention, merely denigrating them and their accomplishments in a very passive-aggressive sort of fashion along with a bunch of grognard shitheads, I'm gonna say it's close enough for the judges.

2016 was the year Wizards stopped going to GenCon, so they were probably all desperately pretending that GenCon wasn�t important.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2018 22:23

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/955558545872662528

and here I am thinking "why the hell is your game so hard to understand that people need to be mentored to get it?"

I think it�s reasonable to mentor someone to be a better GM.

I don�t think it�s reasonable to mentor someone to understand a rule set. Something is messed up there.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2018 20:06

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Mr.Misfit posted:

I had a fascinating discussion today about role-playing and dnd that I wanted to recap here because it was inspired by a number of interesting points.
Basic point #1: Podcasts and twitch/YouTube replays of actual gaming combined with shows like Stranger Things etc. inspire people to seek out role-playing because "that looks cool"
Basic point #2: Role-playing can be divided in a wide variety of style, rules and genres, but mostly focuses on fantastical journey/narrative-games or mathematically heavy mechanical play
Basic point #3: DnD, as coming from war gaming origin, might not even simulate role-play at all, but rather is an amalgamated/varied war gaming experience that accidentally also allows for role-playing parts of it.
Basic point #4: The most successful genre of movies/books/narratives of any kind aren�t fantasy/sci-fi/whatever you think. It�s romance & general human drama.
Basic point #5: At any moment there are more successful real life narrative games/shows without any fantastic imagery on screen/available as books/comics than any role-playing game offers.

Based on those three points the discussion actually went around quite a bit, but it focused on a very interesting thought. With the rise of podcast and video replays, we see an ever greater number of people joining the ranks of role-players, as well as an extension of actual genres. However, how do we discern such tastes if we only ever offer the fantastical? The success of trash TV about making moonshine in Mississippi and talent shows, casting in general, cooking shows, soccer and related sports etc, there�s also been a rise of simulators and games for their particular ilk. For heaven�s sake, Cooking Mama is an enormous franchise with hundreds of millions of dollars worth. But I�ve yet to see a role-playing game try to snatch up the growing group of farmers yearning for a Seed Farmer RPG, or a Soccer Team RPG (imagine something like this where the final boss battle of an evening is the actual game. Instead of combat feats, you have ball manoeuvres etc. You can do this for just about every sport really) or something similar. Are we just caught up in our bottle of escapist fantasy or is this just a sector or genre that�s yet to grow out of the numerous indies currently flooding the pdf and general rpg market?

Re: point 4, Television and books are inherently oriented towards an abnegation aesthetic because it�s a passive aesthetic. RPGs are a participatory medium and lend themselves to more active aesthetics like discovery and tactical challenge. It�s much more relevant to draw examples from a similarly active medium like video games. (Which you also did.)

E: Another question I ask myself when considering ttrpg design is �does this benefit from roleplaying and/or not having an explicit goal?�, and if not it should probably be a board game instead.

DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jan 25, 2018

# ¿ Jan 25, 2018 17:55

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Andrast posted:

I'd play a Dr. Phil tabletop game

Dr.Phil�s Power Kill

# ¿ Jan 25, 2018 19:30

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

hyphz posted:

There�s Soap, and Pantheon?

And Prime Time Adventures And Dramasystem.
_{and Dynasty}

# ¿ Jan 25, 2018 19:33

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

potatocubed posted:

Fall of Magic is a storytelling game that works perfectly with three people.

Is there a printable version of fall of magic, or do you need to buy the cloth version?

# ¿ Feb 5, 2018 00:37

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

potatocubed posted:

Yeah, Roll20 has it for about $10. That's how I played it.

Oh, yeah, you could use fog to obscure it.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2018 18:16

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Lurdiak posted:

Gonna crosspost this because it owns.

The plane of living light, now ruled with an iron hand by the nefarious Thomas Kincade.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 17:20

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Recently I proposed the following theory for RPG design:
There are two valid approaches to flavor�s relationship with mechanics.
�Flavor should be variable independent of mechanics�, which is primarily valuable for a generically usable system.
And �Flavor should drive mechanics�, which is primarily useful for strongly themed games.

Do you think this theory makes sense? If not, how would you revise or modify it?

# ¿ Feb 8, 2018 20:04

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

e: Or put another way, flavor should be an inspiration for mechanics, which still have to stand on their own quality-wise. Flavor determining mechanics is how you get terrible simulationist bullshit.

I tried to word my theory to exclude 'Flavor determining mechanics'.

e: Although I think your statement suggests that I worded some things poorly in a way that implies a causal relationship between flavor and mechanics that I didn't intend.

Ferrinus posted:

Even supposedly generic or flavor-independent mechanics actually have powerful setting and story implications, they're just often bare-bones or uninteresting ones like "in this world, people get into lots of fights."

This is true. For instance, in Fate Core, we might assume that Burglary is a thing that characters could be expected to do since that is a skill on the default list. We could also say that skill level is much more deterministic of success in a Fate Core setting that in a d20 setting because of their respective resolution mechanics.

I think that generic games are just as legitimate an approach as more powerfully themed games even though I prefer themed games because generic games place more onus on the GM and the players to produce their own setting and story content.

DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Feb 9, 2018

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 03:12

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

PoultryGeist posted:

Has a game designer ever laid out good ways to make random encounter tables? Working on an exploration campaign, and it would be neat to have some help avoiding pitfalls I've seen in other adventures.

Oh, I'm very interested in this. What sort of pitfalls have you seen?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 06:12

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

PoultryGeist posted:

I�ll check them out, I�ll admit I�ve heard *about* Traveller but I�ve never looked deep into it.

Well most of my experience with encounter tables has been in D&Dish games, and I�ve just noticed a fair amount of �nothing-nothing-nothing-Elder Dragon� or just encounters that grind you down faster than you�re able to accomplish things/reap rewards. That said�

I read through this and its likely that some of my �pitfalls� are actually more differences in design philosophy. Its still useful to read through, the distribution/bracket talk is definitely what I was worried about flubbing.

Encounter tables start from the very D&Dish conceit that 'this game is realistically simulating this completely fictional setting'. This can cause the type of problem you are seeing, which I call "Assume 183 bandits" after OD&D.
One solution is to pre-roll hexes and then distribute the forces by designing a scenario, but then a big part of the reason for the table (i.e. "I can make an encounter on demand") is ruined?

I would agree that the better response is building a better encounter table.

(Please take this with a grain of salt since my players don't like this sort of game that much I rarely run it.)
Mine would look like this:
One encounter per day
Roll 1d10
1. Friendly Encounter (Dr. Goblor's snake oil bazaar)
2. 'Home Team' Faction (Goblins)
3. 'Home Team' Faction (Goblins)
4. 'Away Team' Faction (Kobolds)
5. Conflict (Goblins vs Kobolds)
6. Travelers (Adventurer group of gnolls, or a questing knight with entourage)
7. Non-hostile Terrain Flavor Encounter (Herd of Wildebeests)
8. Terrain Appropriate Monster Pack (Dholes)
9. Terrain Appropriate Monster (Chimera, alligator head instead of snake)
10. Apex Predator or Migrating Monster (Red Dragon, doesn't notice party, leaves tracking hints to lair)

And then for each of the 10 roll specifics on the subtable,
Subtable roll 1d6
1. transporting a large chest, 8 goblins, 4 carrying chest, two scouting/pathing, two guarding
2. hunting boars, 4 goblins, half with bows, 2 pet hyenas
3. preparing insect husbandry ritual, 1 goblin shaman, 4 fire beetles
4. guard patrol, 6 goblins, half with slings, half with spears and shields, chainmail
5. repairing stonework, 4 goblins with hammers and chisels, no armor
6. hunting pack of displacer beasts, 4 'adventurer' goblins, including 1 level 2 Fighter

Between sessions update used subtable entries.

If you want to update the table, just tell your players what you are changing at the end of the session.
Obviously, adjust the table up or down or add entries depending on what percentage of Humanoid vs Animal vs Monster encounters you desire.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 19:37

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

PoultryGeist posted:

This is super-useful, laying it out like that (and like in Arivia�s link) is pretty much what I was hoping to find. I�m definitely going to have set pieces and defined things for most of the game, but I�d also like to have a handy little table for minor stuff so that I don�t have to wing every encounter while bushwhacking. Thanks!

Sure, glad I could help.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2018 19:12

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

�Yes, but� or �success with a cost� is a useful narrative result for almost any game genre. I mean there are even a bunch where �you succeed but deplete your resources in the process is important.

Halloween Jack posted:

I've been taking notes for a hack of AW, but I'm not so sure I need to hack it, really. I'm basically doing Escape from New York and I just want to eliminate the psychic maelstrom and like heavy weapons and body armor that weren't in early 80s exploitation films. At some point I realized Baker probably watched most of the films I'm basing the game on.

I�m pretty sure this is the reason the two human armor levels are: �You sure are lucky.� and �You�re wearing most of a car.�

# ¿ Feb 21, 2018 17:05

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Drone posted:

Welp.

Any suggestions for a good reskin of something else to adapt to Dune?

Edit: oh. Apparently there's a (very well?) fleshed out supplement for running Dune within Burning Wheel. That looks really cool.

Burning Sands is one of the first supplements ever for Burning Wheel, so I had a hard time grasping it, but it does look really cool.

e: Another option I have considered is to hack something from the board game?

# ¿ Feb 22, 2018 16:12

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Drone posted:

Burning Jihad is the one I was thinking of.

Yeah, I think that�s the one I meant.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2018 16:47

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Can someone tell me why FATE moved from having weighted aspects as attributes to an explicit attribute/skill system supported by aspects as a part of the FATE point engine? I assume there might be some blog posts about it?

# ¿ Feb 22, 2018 17:20

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Splicer posted:

IMO Warhammer consists entirely of
- Orks
- Squigs
- Targets

Oh, I just realized that my new campaign setting is just slam sector but less interesting because D&D.
Whatever, my irrational love for kobolds continues unabated.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 20:52

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

They sell the idea of the RPG as a social experience and a brand that signifies distinction and superior taste.

Is this true? I always assumed that (us) storygamers were considered the snobs of RPGs.
I�m dangerously close to making a beer metaphor here.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 17:00

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Have you every tried to get a self identified Pathfinder player to play any other system?

Eww, why would I do that?

Point taken.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 19:56

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Countblanc posted:

is there any cited reason for it being so slow? i never actually followed it because the core system wasn't interesting to me but I recall hearing that they took a phenomenally long time to release even a single book after the initial 3.

The stated reason was that they intend 5e to be evergreen, so there�s no need to keep adding things. But their core product is living Forgotten Realms so they have to keep adding things.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 21:21

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Drone posted:

I mean, the strategy is debatably working. WOTC is clearly putting minimal effort and resources into D&D and it's selling like hotcakes apparently (thanks to clever digital marketing more than anything), so I don't see Wizards changing that formula at all.

If you consider the target audience, their strategy seems to be perfect. That doesn�t stop me hating them for it.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 16:11

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Lurdiak posted:

This is it.

The worst map I've ever seen.

You're supposed to cut it out and wrap it around your head to view it.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2018 03:52

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Subjunctive posted:

Awesome, thanks. Time to turn back the clock to roll-straight-down-the-line chargen!

Traveller is the first game to feature lifepaths. (I think?)

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 00:20

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

this reasoning would also imply that boarding actions would be borderline suicidal and therefore presumably rare though

The level of technology in Traveller would generally make it impossible to ship to ship dock for a boarding action. (That is, there's no mention of a way to match your inertia with that of another ship) I don't recall this ever being addressed in a version of Traveller I've read.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2018 01:50

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:29

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

slap me and kiss me posted:

This dude knows what's up.

Actually it's pronounced, "Bulldogs!" :v:

# ¿ Mar 29, 2018 05:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat Thread 2018: Please welcome our new mod, Count Strahd von Zarovich

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