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Do this.Joe Slowboat posted:Hyphz, maybe try this:
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Apr 22, 2020 06:55
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hyphz posted:I don't really mean to be that way, it just gets a bit tedious if I have to keep writing "I can't see that.." before everything, and I don't mind if people say I'm wrong. That said, "it doesn't happen for me" isn't particularly helpful on its own since it doesn't tell me why. I'll put a fine point on it. It happens for you because your players are assholes.
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Apr 24, 2020 00:44
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Leperflesh posted:And for the last one, hand-to-hand permits attacking into an adjacent zone, while area allows the grenade to hit everyone in that zone. Or maybe as a thrown weapon, "hand to hand" is strictly an error in the stats for a grenade? Because it sounds like that. Again I don't know that system though. You throw the grenade, it goes off, and everyone within hand to hand range of where it exploded takes damage.
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Apr 24, 2020 20:33
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Warthur posted:Potentially, yes. Especially if we're talking Spire or Blades. Pacific Time checking in on this action.
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Apr 26, 2020 02:35
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Xiahou Dun posted:I love the very bones out of Blades, but the initial setting up stuff works so much better in person so I might vaguely steer away from it, but that's super not critical and we can work it out. Session Zero might work on voice comms. And, scary thought, maybe run Spire like Blades ?
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Apr 26, 2020 02:56
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hyphz posted:I have seen this in my RP group, the local war games group, multiple Discords and other chat rooms; I think it’s just how people are. So yea, it’s very kind to offer to run a game but afterwards I’ll still just be in that place again. You can be in other Discords and/or chat rooms with people who don't suck.
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Apr 26, 2020 04:06
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hyphz posted:and there is no way for the PCs to get ahead by making good choices. Sure there is. You're the GM ! Does it sound like a good idea ? Let them do it. Just make sure their characters actually DO stuff. If the priest starts enchanting a barrel full of holy water... sounds iffy to me, but you can let them try. Gathering materials for a ceremony to be performed on an upcoming holy day ? Plausible. Disenenchanting phylacteries ? Reasonable. Consulting the local expert on lich-dom and the process of becoming one ? Pretty smart move. Now the GM has to come up with something, but feel free to take a break instead of half-assing something on the spot. The GM can ALWAYS take a break to think.Only assholes would object. Your players will object, that's a them problem not a you problem. Also, you can pick up one of the ideas the players were batting about and say they should do that. Your players have trained you into thinking that there's only one correct solution, and anything not leading to that isn't a good choice. That's wrong. There's usually more than one way to do anything. Some might be more time consuming, some might cost resources, some might simply be hard, or lead to an unsatisfying but technically successful outcome. edit. Wait, this was in Dungeon World ? The Wizard casts Ritual, poof do... oh right, it's going to take a visit to three secret libraries for recipes and the dark side of the moon for materials. Instant campaign. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 07:37
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PinheadSlim posted:Hi, it's me, the guy who has never played a narrative game before. All of my experience is in boring D20 systems and stuff like Twilight 2000. My big PbtA tip is: you can do a lot of stuff without rolling dice. Dice only happen if you trigger a move. While you're just having the conversation of what your character does between missions, the GM will say "ok" a lot. The focus on the Conversation and the Fiction are the big PbtA conceits, every game does them but PbtA games lean into them.
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Apr 28, 2020 08:44
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hyphz posted:... That's exactly what I don't feel is the case. If I just make up based on what the players do, then is it "more time consuming".. than what? How can I say what the tradeoffs involved are if I don't know what the other routes would have been, and how can I work out what all the other routes would have been (assuming their number to be huge) without having simulation detail on everything invoved? Again, doubly hard in the case of something like this where I don't have common sense to fall back on. Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement. Make your best estimate, give yourself permission to be wrong, and learn from any actual mistakes. You'll get better at reacting to what the players will do. By now you know your players pretty well, throw out on option that should appeal to each of them and let them decide what to do. If they demand every possible option to choose from, say that's it, nothing else will work; or at least you can't think of anything else, then ask them for their ideas. Because you're the loving GM. If they want the options ranked by effort or chance of success, ask them how their characters plan to evaluate those. If they complain, tell them their characters wouldn't know, outcomes are going to depend on execution. How long it takes is... however many sessions dealing with the task at hand will be fun for you, possibly averaged with how long you think the players will stay engaged with it.
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Apr 28, 2020 23:41
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:"Holy poo poo!" goes the player. "That Doctor Jones?" "Well, now it is."
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Apr 30, 2020 03:00
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neonchameleon posted:YMMV. Some of the most fun I've had DMing has involved dumb loving plans going down, generally in flames. "How high is the roof" is the time to put the popcorn on. The thing about the "cats and lasers" metaphor that we've all been overlooking is this: the cat will chase the laser until the battery dies or your arm falls off. Because they're having fun, not in the catching but in the chasing. As for dumb plans, I was running my PbtA Traveller hack; the PCs had taken out the sniper that bagged their boss and were assaulting the building the bad guys were operating from. Once they figured out where they were, they dug up some welding gear, went to the room above the security center with the bad guys in it, and decided to cut a hole in the floor so they can drop in on the bad guys. I have a move called Grand Entrance that's basically do something to fix everyone's attention, roll +cool, and on a good result get a free action while everyone is backfooted by your audacity. I figured this was a great chance to kill some PCs 45 minutes into the first session, but whatever, fan of them or not, they aren't my characters. Then the player narrating this, who happened to have +2 Cool, goes and rolls a natural 12 as 3 heavily armed PCs drop through the ceiling onto the very surprised bad guys. If it's stupid and it works it wasn't stupid.
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May 5, 2020 04:17
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Notahippie posted:If you're uncomfortable with that because you worry your decisions are tainted by a secret desire to punish the PCs, it's you being too hard on yourself by a mile. As long as you're not actually deliberately loving with your table, be confident that you're not punishing them! I'm going to both agree with this sentiment and suggest that Hyphz' players deserve to be punished.
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May 6, 2020 17:56
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Serf posted:if someone makes a superhero with a weakness to something, there is an expectation that it will show up from time to time. Champions actually had defined chances for your various disadvantages to come into play. In RAW, a GM should be rolling 3d6 vs various target numbers, 1-3 times for each character, before every session. You take 'Hunted by the KGB' for 10 points on a 100 point character ? On an 11- on 3d6 every session they show up at least indirectly. Leperflesh posted:One of my takeaways from Fax's frankly excellent breakdown of his games (longass posts but worth reading, guys) Fax is a pro-tier player. He is in fact the SOB in my Traveller game that rolled a natural 12 on Grand Entrance and one-shotted the current remaining opposition. Long live The Duke !
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May 8, 2020 03:09
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Zorak of Michigan posted:That was true for some of them but not for others. The 1.5x and 2x damage from something disadvantages were broken down into common, uncommon, and very uncommon. I played... 2e I'm gonna say. I liked that they were consistent. They used common, uncommon, very uncommon for the tiers of disadvantages; common was 14-, etc.
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May 8, 2020 04:18
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Xiahou Dun posted:Slightly off topic, but I have now run a game for hyphz and some other people and it was pretty good. I was working and I demand a recap.
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May 9, 2020 06:33
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Xiahou Dun posted:Also I'm drinking wine and re-watching John Wick, and while I hate the idea of narrowly ascribing RPG things to fiction, god drat I never appreciated how it's like a documentary on how the harm move in AW works. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a documentary on partial successes, particularly the fight on the truck. I did an archaeologist playbook for my Traveller hack and was able to fill out their moves list just from watching Indy and Marion flail their way through what would have been one hell of a gaming session.
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May 12, 2020 17:51
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Dungeoneering can have a lot to it, I think. You can assume everyone's together in some kind of logical marching order, or you could go initiative order if people want to be crunchier, usually because they're working independently or the dungeon is either small or full of frequent tactical combat encounters. I recently wrapped up a dungeon encounter in a small, elaborate dungeon where we spent three sessions in an extended combat/exploration/running the gently caress away before the whole thing collapsed, I had a good time and I think the players did, too. I'm gonna chime in and remind people that Goblinville is an excellent, modern take on dungeoneering complete with marching order and resource tracking.
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May 18, 2020 02:43
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Doc Hawkins posted:brink back alignment languages imo Alignment stopped being cool or useful when alignment languages were dropped.
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May 20, 2020 05:30
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah I read the first novel (or collection of?) Fafhrd stories, and the grim fatalism of them turned me off, even though I generally enjoyed the writing style. It wasn't quite to the level of torture porn that so many later fantasy (and SF) writers seemed to revel in, but; those two dudes are just fated to always have a bad time, survive it, and just be glad to not be dead in the end. "What should we do with all this gold" doesn't seem like it'd come up very often? Amusingly, Glen Cook's Fafhrd/Conan expy, Bragi Ragnar, starts the second book of the original trilogy having settled down on a frontier land grant and has to deal with grain futures and harvest schedules as well as wolves and bandits. He's doing okay at it. hyphz posted:Again I have to reiterate that I am not making these complaints, and nobody had any problem with what happened in the session - it was fun! But any player could have, and that's what makes me very nervous of running for crunchier groups or even strangers - that any situation like that could end up with me on the spot with no defense. Time to learn to trust your gaming group - XD's, not the broken assholes you usually play with. Time to take the plunge and GM for people who don't suck. Maybe not now, but soon !
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May 22, 2020 22:31
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The Gunlugger who decides to shoot it out against a large group of heavily armed, very angry people can't complain if one or more PCs or friendly NPCs eat a bullet. That's just the GM inflicting Harm as established; it's a legit GM move. Maybe they should have let someone else have the spotlight that scene. Maybe they should have tried talking or handing over the Maguffin and tried to recover it later - which they can't do if everyone is bleeding or dead. Players are allowed to make mistakes. GMs are allowed to provide consequences, and RAW PbtA are almost required to. The "Look through crosshairs" principle can start a short trip to someone making a new character. Players who can't handle hearing "well what did you think would happen ?" need to grow up a bit. The GM also has tools to head this situation off. Asking "are you sure ? there's a lot of people with guns" is a universal signal across game systems and genre's that bad things are going to happen if they persist. In PbtA this is a chance to 'Tell them the possible consequences and ask' or 'Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost'. "Sure, you can headshot the Humungus, but you're going to immediately roll the Harm move against a very large number, and if you're still on your feet you'll be exposed and surrounded. Want to go for it ?" As a fan of the PCs there's room to maneuver even when they try to pull off something stupid. But sometimes it means giving them a chance to go out in a blaze of glory. The Gunlugger just doming the Humungus means a lieutenant will step up. The Gunlugger taking cover in a tent that happens to be the gang's armory or fuel dump can do enough damage on their way out that the status quo might change.
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May 23, 2020 19:18
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hyphz posted:[That said as I write this I just got an e-mail saying that Spire just published a series of one-shots specifically to be easy for new GMs to run, which I'll be looking at right after I finish this.] I just grabbed this, it's a nice group of short adventures, 11 in total. It's got a lot of art but, sadly, no maps. A list of generic NPCs with stats is provided and each scenario has a list of suggested classes.
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May 25, 2020 19:24
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I'm very interested in how to resolve high-stakes, dramatic situations. for my Traveller hack I decided to tackle the "tense standoff situation". Consider if you will the case of two groups, say the PCs and an NPC gang, everyone's armed, guns are drawn, some are pointed. One of the PCs has a bead on the enemy boss. They pull the trigger. How do you resolve that. I wrote a basic move called Grand Entrance that triggers when a player does something to absolutely steal the spotlight. Roll GE +cool and get anywhere from a fictional beat in which to act, some consequence, or well, pretty much "deal harm as established" is what happens next. It came up once in playtest and worked out, it turned what was arguably a really stupid idea (Hi Fax !) into a masterstroke. The move might be too powerful, but I'm trying to encourage +cool characters.
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May 26, 2020 07:15
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Xiahou Dun posted:My first question (and literally just a question) is what you're trying to do differently from Go Aggro, cause that's going to shape what the answer should be like a lot. This is my Go Aggro and I'm trying to give the players narrative control over the whole situation, not just on the one focus of the move. I'm still fishing for the best possible results on 7-9, and 10+ but I definitely want this as a way for once player to re-shape the entire scene by doing someone super cool.
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May 26, 2020 08:09
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hyphz posted:That's quite reasonable. But it's not what the book says. The book says, "if you can say yes to a question, do". And the GM can always say yes. If saying "yes" would end the game in two minutes, then don't say it. You've also missed something in your PbtA reading: the GM should be asking "how do you do that" until the players come up with a concrete piece of fiction and start actually doing things. Can we win the game right now ? Sure, how do you propose doing that ? We poison the water supply ! Sure, how do you propose doing that ? We get some drugs and dump them in ! That's a lot of water for three levels of the city and tens of thousands of people. How are you going to get them ? etc. etc. etc. until they start asking things like "well who sells drugs ? Where do they get them ?"
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May 26, 2020 23:27
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hyphz posted:But if there is no map, and it's just made up on the fly, then whatever answer the GM gives suddenly becomes a declaration of how things are going to be made up. Giving the answer "I don't know, can you?" seems to be no longer an option because, since the GM is making things up on the fly, they can't not know how the player will do. They can put the Spider Mastermind around the first corner or they can make things up forever until the PC dies. Chances are, they ought to strike a balance between the two, but we don't know what that balance is; and moreover, after each successful encounter, the GM still has to make the decision "Spider Mastermind now?" which is strictly binary. The GM makes up the balance. It's a judgement call. Sometimes you'll get it wrong. Over time, you'll usually get it "right", which is just whatever works at your table that session. Here, an example from my last round as GM back in, oh god it has been a while. I was using a Traveller Double Adventure, Across the Bright Face, in which the players find themselves on the wrong side of the planet from their ship and in the midst of a planet wide revolution. That they're on the wrong side of. The good news is that it's a small planet, and there are vehicles available that can make the trip. The twist is, this planet is like Mercury so they have their choice of routes: melt or freeze. A Double Adventure was half of a 32-page booklet; this one including a planetary map with encounter tables. Your classic hex crawl. I was testing my PbtA Traveller hack, so it was going to be like that. I'd never GM'd for this group before, but had played with them. So how long, at the table, playing the game does it take to get back to their ship ? How much stuff do they have to go through to get there ? We could skim through each encounter with a quick fight or maybe a puzzle if there's an environmental hazard, and get through in 3-4 hours. But that's not very satisfying, we're crossing a whole world here (even if it is a small one). I decided I'd aim for 2-4 sessions and try and get them on their way and ideally to a cliffhanger in the first session, try and evoke the alien, hostile environment in the second and introduce some conflict or obstacle as the big ending for that session, and then maybe do that again before the big finish in the third or fourth session. As it happened we got through in three sessions and a total in the 8-ish hours of play. It could have gone longer, but they were getting poo poo done. Along the way I spun out some of their decisions into plot points completely made up on the spot, invented NPCs, and staged encounters that weren't on the hex crawl tables. There could have been a bit more meat on the bones of each session, but the amount of improv a PbtA GM has to do was an unexpected strain. tl;dr Make your best guess as to how much play time you want it to take to achieve the player's goals, then be flexible with how it actually plays out. This is the GM's job in any system. It is a skill that requires both practical experience in a positive environment (which your play group does not provide) and theoretical study (which is happening here). Try GMing a PbtA game on the Discord with players who don't suck.
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May 27, 2020 14:39
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hyphz posted:The value is set in the book, so Stop generalizing from your group. They are outliers and assholes.
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May 28, 2020 17:26
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Elfgames posted:I still think that a lot of this is hyphz rock bottom self esteem. no amount of good play or players is going to help until he can see that he has worth Fixing Hyphz is going to require he runs a game where the fiction matters for people who are trying to engage with the fiction, not score off the GM.
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May 30, 2020 08:33
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm totally agreeing that his group sounds toxic as gently caress, but anyone saying that he himself is broken I'mma fight you cause once you get him away from the toxic bullshit he's a really good player and a contribution to the group. Oh I agree, I'm just saying that once he runs a game for people who aren't broken, he'll internalize that he wasn't ever the broken one. I'll keep an eye on the Discord, I'd love to make my schedule work for that session ! Run a game Hyphz ! Splicer posted:He did. It went well. His conclusion was that it only went well because it was a literal magical tea party and nothing of the experience crosses over to more serious games with more serious potential character consequences. You're right in that people keep trying to explain how games work to Hyphz but the real problem isn't his understanding of the games it's his understanding of how friend groups behave toward each other. Oh dang. Well, we'll just keep a safe space open.
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May 30, 2020 18:07
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hyphz posted:I once joked that there should be an RPG where all the stats are inverted - Weakness, Clumsiness, Frailty, etc - and you choose your weaknesses instead of your strengths - on the grounds that they will tend to contribute more to the focus of play time than strengths will, since strengths just resolve problems quickly. But again there would be a massive resonance failure because players want to play "a big strong kick-rear end warrior", not "a guy who's helpless in front of a wizard". Goon game designer Erika Chappell did one of these in her The Way Home, a PbtA based on Over the Garden Wall. Your stats are Cowardice, Distrust, Ignorance, Indulgence and Anger. You array is -2, -1, 0, +1, and +3. quote:Your highest action stat is your Flaw, the specific shortcoming that got This is a roll-low game. A hit is a 6-, 7-9 is a partial failure, and a 10+ is a disaster. quote:Withdraw There's a lot of clever game design in a 28 page pdf with a cover and character sheet.
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Jun 1, 2020 20:46
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Xiahou Dun posted:No poo poo it's not gonna out of the box be a good simulator of Sense and Sensibilty*, just like a shovel isn't a good tool for chopping firewood. Good news ! https://ufopress.co.uk/our-games/what-ho-world/
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Jun 2, 2020 15:02
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Leperflesh posted:I strongly disagree with this reasoning and this, to me, frankly shocking conclusion. Same. And this also works in a PbtA game if Trinity's player spends a Hold from an appropriate move. Hold is a great mechanic for genre emulation, and it cuts out a lot of mechanical work where the players have to interact with the dice and the rules instead of with what's happening in the fiction. Same result, just more abstract and less chance of the dice taking away a cool scene. And if I were playing Trinity ? In either system I'd be super stoked that I made something cool happen.
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Jun 21, 2020 21:27
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