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2018 is gonna be a year of new systems for me. first up is blades in the dark, then probably fragged empire also gonna be running two campaigns at once for the first time
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Jan 1, 2018 15:44
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Blades in the Dark specifies that a 4-segment clock represents a complex obstacle, and is the average challenge that players will encounter.
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Jan 7, 2018 18:01
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simply going into a room will not cause a clock to tick. there has to be a roll associated with it, some clocks tick on successes, others tick when you fail.
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Jan 7, 2018 18:08
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hyphz posted:And how risky does that roll have to be? The players will instantly spot that the best strategy is to seek out the lowest risk rolls that still count, which is guaranteed to cause problems about what the threshold is. Does a roll to avoid a trap which chops off your legs count as much as a roll to understand an ancient language? If one of those types doesn't count, how many counting rolls does the GM have to provide compared to non-counting rolls? If they use a wooden pole to trigger the trap thus avoiding it without a roll, does that make it not count, so they should jump into the trap even though they all know it's a bad idea? the most common roll will be a risky roll with a standard effect, which translates to 2 ticks on the clock if you succeed. if players attempt to get controlled rolls then that should be hard to pull off or involve a reduction to limited effect, which is 1 tick, making it take longer to complete the task with reduced risks but also more chances to make your position worse. but even when bad things happen, the players have the choice of making a resistance roll and just nullifying it completely, costing them stress, which could cause them to take a trauma but it all follows from the fiction. for instance, a trap would probably be a result of a partial success or failed roll. it would deal harm, unless the player chose to resist it. so essentially you don't roll to avoid a trap, you either choose to let the trap hit you or resist and see what it costs you in stress, which means that it wouldn't count as a tick on a clock. now if the trap is a known quantity, then consequences for not rolling a 6 when dealing with it could be harm, which could be resisted, or maybe the trap makes sound that arouses suspicion from security, which you could also resist. and in the situation where the trap is something you know about and have to deal with, then yeah it would tick the clock if you were rolling to overcome it. sounds like it would be a standard effect to me, so 2 ticks. and rolls only count against the clock if they're actually going to do something. if you're sneaking in to steal a ledger and one person happens to notice something written on a scrap of paper in an ancient language and rolls to understand it, then that's not going to get you anything on the clock. failing it might have some sort of effect on a danger clock, but probably not
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Jan 7, 2018 20:59
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hyphz posted:But how do you make it hard, when if there’s nothing prewritten, the players all know they’re getting a controlled roll when you give them one? the players would have to have taken the time and the care to set it up so that it would be controlled. maybe through the use of a flashback action or using up some of their load on an item that would give them a better position. sometimes a flashback action will require an action roll, or it could cost you coin instead, depending on what you're doing. and then the game encourages you to trade position for effect. you increase your risks for increased reward but it all flows from the fiction. you're having a conversation about what is going on, and the GM has the final say on some things, but in the end you're all there to tell a fun story about daring scoundrels pulling off risky jobs and getting into trouble. everything is driven by wanting to have that sort of story.
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Jan 7, 2018 21:58
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hyphz posted:That’s where I tend to trip up though. How can anything “flow from the fiction” if it’s not written yet? If the existing fiction says there’s a trap on that door, fine, it’s risky to open it. But you can’t “follow the fiction” to know when it is time to make up a trapped door. things flow from the fiction because the GM and the players work together to establish the fictional situation together before you start getting into the details. you see some light fictional indicators in the faction descriptions for Blades. when you're trying to beat out the Fog Hounds for a smuggling job, that is going to be a lot easier than avoiding Church of Esctasy cultists after your cargo because the Fog Hounds are tier 1 while the Church is tier 4.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:31
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hyphz posted:Not so much that as "if the players do get their characters maimed in the heist, and they think the DM was being actively and assholishly antagonistic to them, how can they be proven wrong?" you are absolutely describing a breakdown between the gm and the players. don't play with/be a lovely gm and understand that the game is there for every person to enjoy. blades has this to say about these concepts quote:Be a fan of the PCs. Present the world honestly—things really are stacked against them—but don’t make yourself the enemy of the PCs. They have enemies enough. Be interested in the characters and excited about their victories. and quote:Earn the trust of the group by being a supportive and fair advocate of the integrity of the fiction. It’s your job to portray a fictional world with integrity, not one that’s contrived and “set up” for particular outcomes. When you advocate for something, the players know that you do so on behalf of this integrity, not to get your way or to arrange situations to your liking.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:50
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hyphz posted:And that's hitting the nail on the head - I can't see how you can possibly do that unless it's decided in advance. If it's not in advance, then at the moment you make the fiction up, you just have too much information to not set up for a particular outcome. If the players are worn out and out of spells and you spawn a dragon, you know what the outcome's going to be, and so like it or not you've set up for it. If you don't spawn the dragon, the players know they can walk around worn out and there will never be one. it literally says "don't be the enemy of the pcs". that is a nice way of saying "don't be a loving rear end in a top hat"
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Jan 7, 2018 23:55
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Splicer posted:I think his argument is that if you've already put the dragon there, the PCs will be careful because they might run into a dragon, and if they're not careful they'll feel like it's their own fault. If you haven't already put the dragon there, choosing to put the dragon there makes you an rear end in a top hat, but not putting the dragon there means there's no reason for the PCs to be careful. this is the part that gets me. the principles of the game indicate that you should have things follow from the fiction. if the players aren't being careful with their heist (still assuming blades here) then that will invite consequences that are fictionally appropriate. this is even codified in the action roll. not being careful could get you into a desperate position, which, on a 1-5, could bring about a serious complication. this is where a dragon (or more than likely a cadre of guards) would be appropriate. and like all complications, they can be resisted. e: there is also no rule saying you can't have a map with all the various threats set up beforehand. you can totally do that, but the game also allows you to improv an entire heist. the players aren't required to plan anything and neither is the gm
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Jan 8, 2018 00:22
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Jimbozig posted:You guys are focusing on "well DUH don't have a dragon where it doesn't make sense." But what about when having a dragon absolutely makes perfect sense but will also absolutely cause the PCs to lose the mission? Do you put it in and make them lose? Or do you take it out even though you would have put it in if they had more resources left and even though it makes sense to have it? sounds like this falls under the purview of "portray the world honestly". if it makes sense for it to be there, then it makes sense. but the players ought to have ways to either know that the dragon is there beforehand or to deal with it in such a way that they're not assured to fail (as that wouldn't follow with "be a fan of the players")
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Jan 8, 2018 00:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's in running the monsters, for sure -- which is to say, just a different kind of decision. this is fellowship
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Jan 8, 2018 02:43
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Also, in Blades, when you take a trauma, you're out of the heist. You don't die or anything, but you can no longer continue contributing to the operation. If the whole team traumas out of the heist, then you effectively lose and don't get anything (aside from stuff like XP from desperate action rolls or pursuing your drives). I've seen it happen in an AP before, and it ended with the PCs captured and being forced to run another heist immediately to bust out, so you can lose, and there are consequences for using up your resources/getting lovely rolls.
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Jan 8, 2018 12:22
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hyphz posted:Well, if I’m getting in people’s nerves to the extent that they’re keeping count then I’ll shut up about it! i think i found something more your speed i mean if you're looking for premades, then most indie rpgs are gonna let you down in that regard (unless we're talking Shadow of the Demon Lord, which has like 100 adventures) because mostly that stuff is beyond their reach to make. and in the case of things like BitD, Fellowship and Strike, premade adventures are gonna be little more than an adventure seed and some scaffolding because the game is supposed to develop and unfold in play, with elements being added in (and sometimes removed) because of the conversation between the players and the GM. but if you want premades for BitD, luckily blades hackers got you covered
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Jan 8, 2018 15:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:Holy poo poo is this seriously what I fuckin' think it is having played it for like 4 hours, yes, it absolutely is
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Jan 8, 2018 15:12
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hyphz posted:The problem with “it’s beyond their reach to make” is that if the author doesn’t make them the GM has to. So they are saying they expect an unpaid amateur member of the public to do what they, a paid and published and possibly professional author, claim they cannot.  what in the absolute gently caress are you even talking about. maybe i'm just unusual in that i rarely use premade material and prefer to make my own stuff? i dunno, but the first part of this post is just insane. also at no point did i cite any of these authors "claiming" poo poo. i'm just inferring from my own experience writing my own material as for the second part, at no point is victory assured in this conversation. everything follows from the fiction as you establish it in the conversation. the rules are there to facilitate and adjudicate when you come to important decision points in the conversation, and they have plenty of ways to "punish" the players if that's what makes sense there. as for social manipulation, first of all i'm sorry you've apparently had a lifetime of lovely gaming groups that have done this to you, and secondly the idea of "portray the world honestly" applies to both sides here. everyone is supposed to go in and work together to tell a story with established stakes and expectations, and play to find out what happens
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Jan 8, 2018 17:05
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Jimbozig posted:My comments were about how they are used in actual play. My impression is that in actual play, in old school D&D, there was a very real chance that your character bites it on any given adventure and that there was also a very real chance that the party would not get the main loot from the dungeon on their first try, having to retreat to town to rest and try again later (or rarely TPK). My impression is also that in BitD none of those things are true. The fact that in the whole thread not one person has had a BitD heist end with the players having to retreat without the loot due to lack of resources, and only one person posting has ever even seen an AP of it lends credence to my views. If I'm factually wrong, then I am happy to admit that, and the easy way to make that happen is to post examples. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know so I can change my mind and be right instead! the fact remains that players clearly can all trauma out of a heist, or just lose enough of their opportunities that they are forced to fall back and try again or abandon the score altogether. each character in blades is on a clock, but not in the traditional sense of how the game works. each time you take stress, you start moving towards your next trauma. you get four of those and you're done, no takebacks. you can indulge your vice to relieve stress, but the challenges you face in each mission will push you, slowly wearing you down (or not so slowly, depending on how badly you roll/push harder). the personal goal for each character is to stash away as much coin as possible to set their character up for a good retirement, or you could ignore that depending on what you want to accomplish. the structure is light, and just there as a general guideline. sure, you could have a GM that just sends you up against fools and mooks and hands you everything on a silver platter. you could also have a DM who fills dungeons with nothing but crippled old kobolds guarding +5 vorpal swords. but in both scenarios, you wouldn't be portraying the world honestly. fool_of_sound posted:I’ve definitely had players like that before. sounds like a good time to have a conversation as adults about their behavior and expectations for how the game is going to go. if that fails, then show them the door
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Jan 8, 2018 17:29
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i've never had a PC die in a 4e game, so therefore PC death never happens in 4e and is impossible
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Jan 8, 2018 17:35
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hyphz posted:Well, how often do you normally have a conversation which will at the end have a "positive or negative outcome", that you're invested in? It's when you're trying to persuade someone to do something, or sell something to them, or give you a job, or go on a date, and so on.. and all of those interactions are characterized by social behaviors which don't apply to regular conversations with no such stakes. the thing is that this is a conversation that has agreed-upon guidelines. you're here to tell a collaborative story, not fight over who gets to "win". you've agreed that you're going to collaborate, and that one person has more power than the others, but the game has rules that allow you to curb their authority. and that's among tons of other rules that help to guide the flow of the conversation.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:48
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hyphz posted:Right, but the dynamic is more complicated than that. who does this? who wants this? this is pure d&d as played by 6th graders thinking. the point of the game is not to have some sort of mony haul adventure where you grab all the cool poo poo and then you're done. you put interesting characters in dangerous situations and then see what happens to them hyphz posted:2. The players would rather than their PCs corpses did not end up lying in the second level covered in runes of shame and goblin dung. But they want the possibility of that happening, because if that possibility does not exist, how is there any tension in the story or any need to think about actions beyond the bare minimum of making sense? you're assuming that a lot of things that appear to be ripped straight from d&d are universally true. not all players want to win and succeed all the time. the reason that games like pbta and bitd are designed with so few clear "win" outcomes is that interesting things happen when the character fail or don't act perfectly. you're looking at this from a binary pass/fail perspective that just doesn't hold up in modern games. hyphz posted:3. The GM would probably also quite like the PCs to succeed. But if he/she acts on that desire, they always will and 2 will be violated. you're confusing "be a fan of the pcs" with "give them everything forever and never challenge them". fans want to see their favorite characters overcome challenges, not be rewarded at every turn. being a fan requires putting characters through the wringer. hyphz posted:4. The GM would probably not particularly like the PCs to end up failing. But they can't act like that, because if they do, there will always be a way for the GM to bail the PCs out at the last minute, and once the players work out that the GM is doing this, 2 will be violated. (In PbtA this is the contradiction between "maintain integrity", "make moves", and "be a fan of the PCs".) the pcs should always be at risk of failing. and the rules reflect this. there are tons of outcomes that are "failure" and "mixed success". the thing is that "death" is often the least interesting outcome for a roll. pbta and bitd encourage you to come up with something more interesting than that. this can be seen as "bailing out" the pcs, but that's not the intention. you want the characters to keep going (until it just wouldn't be interesting for them to do so), so you challenge them with other outcomes. maybe you get rescued, but now you owe your savior a huge debt. maybe you die but some greater power brings you back but wrong. it requires creativity hyphz posted:So it's not quite collaborative, or it's "collaborative but one of the people involved has to pretend they're not collaborating". no, it's not. you're collaborating at all times. i've been running games for like 10 years and i've always run them as collaborative efforts and each time it's been a blast. maybe try broadening your horizons a bit.
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Jan 8, 2018 19:43
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hyphz posted:Ok, fair enough, but the players have to act like that. Otherwise why not walk into their heist carrying a banner and banging a big bass drum? because sometimes the objective of a score is not to steal things. there are several gang types that aren't interested in stealing stuff. the bravos are all about fighting, and being loud and public is one thing they are good at. hawkers want to sell drugs, and smugglers want to move contraband. not all your missions are going to be about making coin either. the gm is told that coin is something that should be an objective, but there are other things that can come alongside that coin too. find the pcs' hooks and motivations and play to those. give them things that aren't material goods that they want and give them a way to chase them. hyphz posted:Overcome! Not fail to! I'm not talking about when the GM decides there's some goblins there for the PCs to fight. I'm talking about after the dice are rolled and rolled low and the PCs are disarmed on the floor with goblin spears at their throats. Do they get run through? A fan wouldn't want that. But if the GM acts on that basis - and nothing can ever prevent them from doing so - then the PCs will know from the beginning they're in no real danger. Even if they do end up on the floor with spears at their throats, they'll always overcome. And if they'll always overcome, there's not really any challenges, we're just pretending there are. the PCs are in real danger, because as fans who are also responsible for portraying the world honestly, sometimes the players are going to be put in situations where those consequences can be fatal. there's even a harm level 4, "fatal" for when that happens. and as usual, a pc can resist that if they think it isn't the most interesting outcome, but sometimes it is. if that happens, oh well, you played the character's story to an end. now you can make another character and explore them. the thing that you're missing here is that we're all trying to tell a cool story. in cool stories, sometimes characters die. people are aware of that possibility, and they can play into it if they want. if they don't, they won't, and that's fine too. it doesn't mean the challenges and consequences aren't there, it just means this is the tone you want your game to take. there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to understand that it can be played in either direction. hyphz posted:If those turkeys never come home to roost, how do they mean anything? Great, we owe them a debt, we go on an adventure for them, but if we hadn't then of course we would be going on an adventure anyway because it's what we do. do you not understand how context works? if you're paying back someone who saved your life, that recontextualizes the events that are happening in the fiction. and they can have mechanical backing too! maybe your patron demands a cut of the coin. maybe they have lots of enemies and you take more heat, meaning worse entanglements. maybe they demand you go up against a far more powerful faction to accomplish some goal they need done. you can do anything with this setup, as boring or as interesting as you like
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Jan 8, 2018 20:12
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don't mind me, i'm just posting some more info from the blades bookquote:You’ve telegraphed the threat, so go ahead and follow through when it hits. Players have several tools at their disposal to deal with adversity. If they can react in time, they can make an action roll. If they’re hit with trouble, they can resist it. You don’t have to pull your punches! and these are examples of following through on your threats quote:She shoots you, the ball shatters your cheek and the room spins and goes dark and you go sprawling to the floor. Take level 3 harm.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:26
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hyphz posted:Right. Now wind back to context. Are these things which would happen in the normal way if this was just a conversation? If not, is it surprising that the RPG conversation isn't a normal conversation and ends up having manipulation in it? please explain your bullshit and define "manipulation" for the class
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Jan 8, 2018 20:47
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can anyone consult the episode of star trek where picard deals with this particular kind of alien and give us some pointers?hyphz posted:More like "I can't imagine my friends thinking that a story that ends with their characters getting shot is fun." (Thinking they might be shot is fine, though.) i recommend watching the wire and thinking over the fate of omar and why, despite complete deflating all dramatic tension it remains a perfect send-off for the most beloved character in the series that isn't named bunk
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Jan 8, 2018 21:02
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actually omar from the wire is the perfect example of a blades in the dark character dying because of the gm following through on a threat omar has picked a fight with marlo stanfield, the most powerful drug lord in baltimore, and has gotten himself injured in a previous daring escape from an ambush (resisted a fatal harm consequence and downgraded to level 2 harm). he's been going around hitting marlo's operation and stealing from him (earned a ton of heat). and now there's a bounty on his head that everyone knows about (a danger clock ticking down with each crazy action he takes). and then, while buying cigarettes in plain daylight, the GM ticks the last segment of the clock and declares that a kid is shooting omar in the head for the bounty. omar's theoretical player could resist this, but chooses not to. its thematically interesting for omar to die without getting revenge, as it speaks to his character's entire deal of being too obsessed with the game to get out cleanly, and denial of catharsis is a big part of the tone of the game so far. so omar is dead, killed by a random child, with his last work undone, and the player is satisfied with that because the game is winding down and there are plenty of other characters for him to pick up and play until the end.
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Jan 8, 2018 21:14
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hyphz posted:What do I mean by manipulation? “I’ve taken a bunch of Harm and the GM is spawning encounters as long as we’re interested. Quick! Everybody get bored!” if the gm goes along with this, then they've stopped portraying the world honestly. you may also want to look over the player section for reasons why pcs who do this aren't playing the game correctly quote:You’re scoundrels at the bottom of the pile, daring to challenge the powers-that-be. quote:You are a co-author of the game. If you want shortcomings and flaws to be part and if you find your players falling into the mode of thinking that you're stuck in, then you stop the game and have an actual conversation about how the game is meant to go
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Jan 8, 2018 22:02
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hyphz posted:"Honestly" means based on the truth, but if there is no map there is no truth. blades in the dark recommends movies like "heat" and "thief" that will help you out with this. don't forget, this is fiction, where you portray a cinematic world with heroes who are competent and exceptional. things are possible for them that aren't for regular people. hyphz posted:If I could genuinely think that I'd burn my books, but I don't for two reasons: 1) popularity is meaningless, as both those systems are absolute dogshit 2) people have been replying to you about this thought process, which is detailed in those respective books, since the moment you started posting you loving smoothbrain
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Jan 8, 2018 22:20
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hyphz posted:Pretty much any sane person if you have a game with rules based on fun that thus creates a stupid feedback loop. Look at the choices: you have failed to consider the idea that Dave dying could be interesting/fun for the player (probably not tho) and that the game literally gives you the tools to avoid dying if that's what you want (stress for resistances/trauma for dropping out of the conflict when you've had too much)
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Jan 8, 2018 22:23
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hyphz posted:They have been quoting the principles in the book, but as far as I am aware nobody has said what they actually did. the book is telling you what to do. it is giving you all the advice you need, and you are shoving your fingers into your ears right up to the knuckles to accommodate the cavernous space between the sides of your skull, and screaming I CAN'T HEAR YOU but once i get through a few sessions of Scum and Villainy, i'll be sure to report back to you how i followed the book's advice.
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Jan 8, 2018 22:32
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Zurui posted:TG Chat Thread: if there is no map there is no truth if the gm has not immaculately rendered every single piece of food in the refrigerator, then my character will starve to death obviously. and wait, how will i know when to piss if they don't tell me my bladder is full? or am i supposed to be constantly checking for bladder fullness and pissing, and if i don't my bladder will explode?
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Jan 8, 2018 22:42
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hyphz posted:In the example of play which the same author wrote as how their game ought to be played: literally none of this is true tho they meet one ghost who they have to pay a significant cost to overcome in two of the examples, and have exceptional luck with in the critical example they do not leave unbothered, they leave with harm taken and stress marked, heat and plenty of enmity from the dimmer sisters
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Jan 8, 2018 23:58
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the dimmer sisters are a tier 2 faction, which the players are on par with. they are not "legendary" opposition
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Jan 8, 2018 23:59
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hyphz posted:Ok, but if the heroes can upend all of the established principles in the fiction, how can you “follow it” while running for them? the players are not upending poo poo. they are acting within the established parameters of the fiction, using the tools the game gives them. you are supposed to go hard against them, knowing that they have the toolkit to deal with your stuff. if you're looking for hard-and-fast rules on how much you should put in front of the players, you're not going to find them. the game doesn't need them because you are following the fiction as it has been established by the group in the example, the gm leads the players to their objective because they score a critical on the roll. that seems good enough to get them where they're going pretty quick. and moreover, it has a section at the end asking you how you would do things differently. it is asking you to do some work and think about how you would handle other situations using the tools the game has established for you
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Jan 9, 2018 00:21
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hyphz posted:What fiction was he following when he made up the music room, the ghost, the presence of a piano, the subvertability of the ghost.. literally anything in that scene? the fiction that dictates those things as possible stuff that could be found in a ghost-warded house of witches. its not hard to do if you're capable of even the slightest iota of creative thought
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Jan 9, 2018 01:08
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hyphz posted:Possible that those things would exist, sure. Plausible that a ghost bound by experts could be subverted by a bunch of random footpads? Much trickier to argue. Plausible that they would then find the valuable thing they were looking for, in the huge mansion, in 2 minutes flat? Ummm. the players are not random footpads. this is one of the basic assumptions of the game. the pcs are competent and exceptional operators, capable of things that most people aren't. they have the skills necessary to attain their goals, and stress allows them to stave off bad poo poo until they can make it to the end. in the example from the book, one of the characters is a whisper, and is used to dealing with ghosts. they also take a devil's bargain. even with that, examples are given for how things could have gone wrong. their exceptional level of success is tied to the critical example that we then follow. and in the end they don't walk away unscathed. one has taken level 3 harm, the other two have taken not-insignificant stress and used up items from their load as well. it is a good example of the characters making a quick raid on their rival faction and pulling off a pretty simple score because of it
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Jan 9, 2018 02:47
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hyphz posted:I didn’t make that clear. It was an rear end in a top hat character in the story, but Ab3 wrote that story, so he was really saying that to himself. And I’m sure he had felt that at some point because doing anything creative can turn out like that. I meant that I shared the feeling he apparently had about himself, not that I took the story as a life lesson. if you've ever consumed any form of fictional media, you should have an instinctive grasp of what sort of price comes with earning goals. to use another example from the wire mcnulty (and later freamon) conspire to keep their department paid and afloat amid their failure to arrest marlo stanfield. to do this, mcnulty invents a serial killer by tampering with crime scene evidence, faking phone calls and lying to his coworkers. this helps them run a side operation that closes in on marlo and eventually brings in the evidence to take him down, but when he admits his deception to greggs she loses all respect for him and eventually reveals his plan to lieutenant daniels. as a result, both mcnulty and freamon are forced into retirement because they are told that they will be shuffled into dead-end jobs and they choose to quit the force instead. essentially, mcnulty gets what he wants: keeps his department running and brings in marlo, but the cost of this action is that he loses his job, which is what defines him as a person. at the end, his victory is personally fulfilling, but now it means he has to find a way to carry on in life without his job. this is basically how all good fiction works. you want the characters to succeed, but those successes come at a cost. in blades, those costs are most easily represented as traumas
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Jan 9, 2018 16:29
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hyphz posted:I don't mind that. What I mind is the implication that when the players meet a goblin, they have their PCs throw down their swords and fight it hand to hand with one hand tied behind their back because "we want the game to be a challenge so we'll make it one, and anyway if we failed it might be interesting". that's... not how this works at all. if the players meet a goblin, the goblin is a challenge (though it could be more or less of a challenge depending on their relative level of fictional strength). the players have a whole set of tools at their disposal to deal with the goblin, and if they fail/partially succeed, then yes that creates interesting complications. hyphz posted:It's the same as the Shadowrun guy that ended up with me saying "when you spent hours making your character shoot everyone, why complain that it worked?" Pretty much everyone I've asked for help on this from has said that was a wrong and ridiculous thing to say, but it just seems to be exactly what the rules of shared narrative games are encouraging. Hey, player, you want there to be a challenge and it could be interesting if you fail, so why not just lower those stats a few points? the mistake you made with the shadowrun player is that you weren't putting challenges in front of them that didn't play to their strengths. what they were asking for was variety, and you didn't provide that for them. you never challenged their weak spots or put them into positions where they would have to do something they were suboptimal at. you took away the wrong lesson hyphz posted:And I've met very few players who would find this fun. All the players I want to know want to at least feel that the challenge is being imposed on them, ideally by the environment of the game world rather than by the GM, but the latter could work as a push. If the player has to take action to create their own challenge, it bleeds through into the fiction and they feel that any challenge their PC did face was just the result of self-handicapping, and gives a very unsatisfying feel. I mean, maybe fans of these games don't think that way, but in that case I reserve the right to feel sad that there isn't a cool Dishonored meets The Dark Project game that will work for players without that mindset. you are still not understanding the game here. the gm is explicitly told to impose challenge on the players. you are told to not pull your punches because they have the tools to deal with the obstacles you put in front of them. you put those obstacles there because, as a fan, you want to see them overcome or deal with the setbacks/failures if they don't. you portray the world honestly by making those challenges consistent with the fiction of the world that you have established with the players. you're sad over something that isn't real. the game may not be what you want, but it does exactly what you ask of it
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Jan 9, 2018 17:15
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hyphz posted:I did consider that. But the problem was that he was so heavily min-maxed for "shooting the other guy and not getting shot" that anything that didn't play into that strength was a certain failure before dice ever hit the table. if that's true, then that could in some ways be considered a failure of the system. but moreover, it doesn't mean you shouldn't have done it. the player literally told you they wanted other challenges and your response was "why did you make your character so good at the thing i keep making you do?" they wanted them to excel at something and get that used occasionally. not 24/7
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Jan 9, 2018 20:42
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hyphz posted:I absolutely agree about that, in fact I wondered if a "penal combat" system should be added to these games to prevent that. i just wanna highlight this bit because it drives me bonkers. i have pointed out multiple times how, in blades in the dark, characters are expected to to their best to succeed. this is done before the roll, when you ask for devil's bargains, push yourself, get help from another pc or benefit from a set up action. you're always trying to roll that 6, but the deck is stacked against you. so then the game gives you resistance rolls, armor, etc to deal with failures/partial successes. and only after that are you even remotely facing down failure. the game does what you want it to do, but this fact continues to elude you
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Jan 9, 2018 21:03
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hyphz posted:I can sort of see the desire to do that for fiction in an agreed romantic style. But it seems here what I’m being told is that the PCs have to spend resources trying to pick the lock and at the same time be cool with knowing that the GM could just spawn another locked door between them and their goal, 10 more, 100 more, because hey it’s not that bad if they don’t manage to pick one. That just seems a sideways argument. there's nothing stopping the gm of a d&d game from putting a million locked doors between the players and their goal either. but bitd actually has rules that say, "you shouldn't do this" quote:If they get into position, make the roll, and have their effect, they get what they also, this is sort of an unspoken rule of gming called "don't be a loving rear end in a top hat" hyphz posted:And none of the rules mentioned deny that. The GM is a fan of the players and wants to see them overcoming obstacles, well hey there’s loads of obstacles to overcome in the form of doors. If he keeps throwing doors at them until they fail and get caught, well, that’s ok because he wants to see how cool it is when they break out of jail. And the GM could play off the PCs expectations in a normal environment, but this is not a normal environment, it’s explicitly meant to be bizarre, it’s a scary haunted house run by witches, who’s to say they can’t make a reality pocket of infinite locked doors if they want? Sounds like an excellent way to trap thieves. does anything in the established fiction of blades in the dark's duskwall lead you to believe that such a trap would be possible? if so, what is it? but hey, gently caress all that, that actually sounds like a really cool obstacle for the whisper to contend with getting the party out of! you could totally use "infinite hallway of locked doors" in a game, but going by the principle of "don't hold back on what they earn" it isn't the weird bad thing you say it is, but actually pretty neat
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Jan 9, 2018 22:28
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hyphz posted:But what “have they earned?” If they have earned access through that one door, that says nothing about not being another one. If they have earned success, then every heist is one roll. If they have earned some percentage of success, then what percentage? When we’re judging effect, what measure is it by? Can it have great effect at opening the door but limited effect at getting to the loot at once? it all depends on their fictional positioning. if they overcome a locked door, then that should be rewarded with passage through. this can be as broad or as limited as you like, but generally speaking if you keep making them roll to unlock doors that's not fun or interesting for anyone involved. maybe as part of their fictional positioning you tell the pc that you can make their action desperate by allowing them to take a long time, but the resulting great effect lets them bypass all the normal doors from now on with no need to roll. now neither party has to worry about rolling for the apparently infinite doors you want to put between the players and their goal just because you can. if you broadened the scope of the score, then that makes things even easier. standard effect is 2 ticks on a 4-segment clock that i would label "getting through the mansion" with an associated danger clock called "alert" that gets ticked as a complication for failures/partial successes. maybe sneaking past the guards is another challenge, or dispelling magical wards, or charting their way through the weird shifting hallways. it doesn't matter, once the challenges are overcome, then they're done with that clock, and they've probably either got the attention of the occupants or they have burned some resources (this is barring extraordinary luck of course). but that one clock isn't the only obstacle. if you're here to steal some sort of magical doodad, then that will probably have its own security clock, probably even a 6-segment clock for that which they have to get through, still ticking down that danger clock. and really what's cool about blades is that this is all optional. it is a scaffolding you can use to plan these things out or you can just wing it and follow the fiction wherever it takes you. i just finished back-to-back campaigns of strike that lasted me 2 years and i basically planned nothing and made it all up on the fly. it was super-easy actually, you just have to let go of being so rigid and defined
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Jan 9, 2018 22:57
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