Exalted weed pipe with an evocation that gives both you and everyone in the room a semi random minor intimacy based on what bullshit your collective dank conversation latched onto while high as a kite.
+3
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I'm trying really, really hard to shoehorn in a "...and it deals blunt damage" joke, but I just can't make it work. Sorry, y'all.
the world is ready for a team of weed-empowered superheroes named "blunt force"
Some thirty- or even forty- something guy who had too much time on his hands in high school is going to sue you if you try to go down that road, and it's going to be a lot like the Bart Skampson sketch from Portlandia.
I think it's mega shitty to take a certain game style and imply that liking it means you're a certain kind of nerd with a certain kind of masculinity who treats people in a certain way and I think that it's also super unhelpful to the conversation.
I don't think that liking crunchy games makes me any way superior to anyone (though I definitely think there are people who post in this thread who do, from the other way around) but I also am not remotely interesting in coding that preference as "masculine" or, even worse, "toxic masculinity" just because I like gear porn and complex mechanics over a system-lite equivalent.
I think that what's being said is not "Liking X means you're a certain type of problematic person", but rather "Certain types of problematic people flock to X".
Further, it's "Certain types of problematic people flock to X not because they prefer it to something else, but because they believe that they are supposed to like it, and/or that liking it makes them superior to people who don't like it".
And I'm saying that making this comment following an interesting insight into the different types of complexity in RPGs is not actually helpful to the discussion, and was worded in a pretty insulting way.
Helpfulness to the conversation is a distinct quality from your own personal comfort level with the subject. You already acknowledged a post ago that you've received clarification; this would be an excellent time to either engage with what was said, now that you know what that was, or move on.
If I'm honest, I'd rather not engage any further. I'm not okay with adding a masculine/feminine coding to different kinds of gaming as a facet of this topic and if that's something people want to be a thing in this discussion I'll tap out and leave it there.
I would like to point out that Vampire: The Masquerade, a more rules-light, narritive style game and very possibly the original reason that women interact with the gaming hobby on a large scale at all in 2018, had SCADS of toxic players of the sort described, and still does. They can be male or female. I don't feel that it is helpful to pigeonhole games to gender styles is helpful, but even if it were, it ain't accurate.
+1
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I would like to point out that Vampire: The Masquerade, a more rules-light, narritive style game and very possibly the original reason that women interact with the gaming hobby on a large scale at all in 2018, had SCADS of toxic players of the sort described, and still does. They can be male or female. I don't feel that it is helpful to pigeonhole games to gender styles is helpful, but even if it were, it ain't accurate.
Leaving aside the question of whether VtM is super rules light or narrative (my feeling is that in terms of rules it's a medium-crunch traditional game and players love to do stuff like buy better Generation or figure out the best way to dual-wield for maximum gibs or whatever) the fact that women can be gross doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that nerd spaces have been, and in some places still are, dominated by toxic men and toxic masculinity.
Like, you get that, right? This isn't a mysterious isolated thing that we heard about in a message from a bottle. This is forty-something years of women who play games (or read comics, or are stone-cold brave enough to go onto Xbox Live) being told that they're stupid and "fake," the things they like are insufficiently authentic, or for kids, or whatever.
And they're told those things in language and terms that get slapped on to other things: "for casuals," "girlfriend mode," etc.
This happens over and over and over and over and over again in multiple fields and the only common denominator is that it's dudes being dicks. Past a certain point an observer is just going to be like welp
I would like to point out that Vampire: The Masquerade, a more rules-light, narritive style game and very possibly the original reason that women interact with the gaming hobby on a large scale at all in 2018, had SCADS of toxic players of the sort described, and still does. They can be male or female. I don't feel that it is helpful to pigeonhole games to gender styles is helpful, but even if it were, it ain't accurate.
Leaving aside the question of whether VtM is super rules light or narrative (my feeling is that in terms of rules it's a medium-crunch traditional game and players love to do stuff like buy better Generation or figure out the best way to dual-wield for maximum gibs or whatever) the fact that women can be gross doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that nerd spaces have been, and in some places still are, dominated by toxic men and toxic masculinity.
Like, you get that, right? This isn't a mysterious isolated thing that we heard about in a message from a bottle. This is forty-something years of women who play games (or read comics, or are stone-cold brave enough to go onto Xbox Live) being told that they're stupid and "fake," the things they like are insufficiently authentic, or for kids, or whatever.
And they're told those things in language and terms that get slapped on to other things: "for casuals," "girlfriend mode," etc.
This happens over and over and over and over and over again in multiple fields and the only common denominator is that it's dudes being dicks. Past a certain point an observer is just going to be like welp
Yeah. I'm agreeing with you. This was me saying that gendering game styles is pointless, since toxic behavior can happen in fucking Candyland.
And yeah, it is almost always dudes. So the pertinent topic is the toxic dudes, not whether they play Pathfinder or Vampire or Monster Hearts.
I have been playing a lot of Starfinder in public settings lately, and I gotta say that, purely anecdotally, despite being around all the Pathfinder grognards, there is way more inclusivity than ever before; women, transpeople, multi-ethnic folks, good players and bad, roleplayers and crunchkins...I have heard some rules arguments, but nothing more serious.
Okay, one guy playing a tweaked, eccentric space gnome was badmouthing skittermanders for being "the new kender," with the implication that their players were undesirable, but that was a fairly minor incident. Ah, fantasy racism.
Again, anecdotal. And online interactions are notoriously different from in-person dealings. My point is, maybe concentrate on the actual behavior rather than expected behavior.
I'm sure there will be plenty of bitter acrimony, but I've lived through 8+ iterations of D&D, and it was like that for every single one. People don't like it when things they are comfortable with change (and also they are staring down the barrel of multiple $60 new edition core books).
Also, for what it's worth, I'm a firm believer that the mechanics are nothing to do with why D&D and Pathfinder hold such sway in RPG land.
It's because they consistently release content (especially Paizo) and make it pretty damn easy to use. Like if I was inclined to run a Pathfinder game I can just go pay for a roll20 module containing a whole adventure for my group to play through. It's kinda like how the answer to 'which console is better?' has shit all to do with the consoles but what games are on it.
Also, for what it's worth, I'm a firm believer that the mechanics are nothing to do with why D&D and Pathfinder hold such sway in RPG land.
It's because they consistently release content (especially Paizo) and make it pretty damn easy to use. Like if I was inclined to run a Pathfinder game I can just go pay for a roll20 module containing a whole adventure for my group to play through. It's kinda like how the answer to 'which console is better?' has shit all to do with the consoles but what games are on it.
Paizo is incredible. They crank out more content than D&D ever did. The Pathfinder Society generates two adventures a month (with Starfinder Society now making it three) on top of monthly or bimonthly Adventure Paths. Plus whatever periodicals they still make.
Guess all that experience running Dungeon magazine paid off. The stock of Pathfinder stuff at every local Half Price Books in the metro is greater than their D&D crap of all editions put together.
I've heard GMs say that they could run Pathfinder for the rest of their lives and never replay an adventure, just on their currently published content.
It will be no wonder that a portion of that audience is resistant to change; the fraction that is loud about it won't let us forget.
Hey guys didn't mean to blow up like that, sorry about any hurt feelings
Just a notably shit day at work making me more aggressive than usual, no excuse for taking it out on anyone though. Apologies.
Everybody has days like that. I sympathize.
+8
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Speaking of shit days, I was really looking forward to the release of the new Command Division supplement for Star Trek Adventures. It's got a lot of new rules that I was really interested in, particularly guidance for doing Admiralty-based games and letting characters use their accumulated Reputation to buy medals and commendations.
Buttttttttt it turns out that the PDFs aren't actually on sale. They're just passing them out to people who preorder the dead tree books. Which are not coming out until July. And the PDF-only option will not be available until then either.
That news really took the wind out of my sails. I can't use paper books; I can't read printed text. Aside from being disappointing, it also just seems dumb from a business perspective. I understand that for something as risky as printing and shipping a book (which is hellaciously expensive, especially from the UK) they want to get orders locked in early, and getting the PDF ahead of time is a nice incentive, but when they did that for the core book it was a delay of like...a week. Three or four months seems way past the realm where you'd have convinced any wavering buyers to commit to a paper purchase, and in the meantime those PDFs are still out in the ether.
I dunno. SALT LEVELS CRITICAL.
+3
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
That sucks. Except maybe to get concrete stores carrying them, why would they do that? Isn’t something like DrivethruRPG or selling it from their website cheaper?
On the topic of system mastery in RPGs, and specifically offering interesting tactical decisions that reward that system mastery, what are the good ways of doing so? I mean there are the basics of recognizing things like 'use fire spells against the thing that's weak to fire' or 'focusing our attacks on one enemy at a time to bring it down quickly lessons the overall damage we take as a group.' But generally once you get past those the only other common system mastery opportunities I see are via character optimization. Allowing players to use their abilities in ways that provide synergy is certainly one route, and focuses on the group aspects of play that I think tabletop does better than digital games. And I think the only other way I've seen is via grid-based combat (D&D 4E for example).
In comparison, pattern recognition, situational awareness, and general hand/eye coordination are all ways to reward system mastery in video games in addition to the above. I'm not advocating adding those things to tabletop games mind, just that there's got to be more ways to add those meaty choices to groups who want that kind of play. I think smart resource allocation is one way that I don't see very often (Exalted's essance system comes to mind). Any others?
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
0
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Repost from SE++ for maximum coverage!
Rev A of my Adventurer's Kit.
Some changes for the next rev. About 2" shorter back to front and about 2" wider as I want to be able to fit a chessex dice container to hold a mini into the foam, a little deeper as well, maybe about 1/2". Also do the velvet over the foam outside of the box and then drop in the finished bit. Also some slightly harder foam.
Also re-design the character sheet insert so it's a bit bigger, maybe 4x6 instead of 3x5.
On the topic of system mastery in RPGs, and specifically offering interesting tactical decisions that reward that system mastery, what are the good ways of doing so? I mean there are the basics of recognizing things like 'use fire spells against the thing that's weak to fire' or 'focusing our attacks on one enemy at a time to bring it down quickly lessons the overall damage we take as a group.' But generally once you get past those the only other common system mastery opportunities I see are via character optimization. Allowing players to use their abilities in ways that provide synergy is certainly one route, and focuses on the group aspects of play that I think tabletop does better than digital games. And I think the only other way I've seen is via grid-based combat (D&D 4E for example).
In comparison, pattern recognition, situational awareness, and general hand/eye coordination are all ways to reward system mastery in video games in addition to the above. I'm not advocating adding those things to tabletop games mind, just that there's got to be more ways to add those meaty choices to groups who want that kind of play. I think smart resource allocation is one way that I don't see very often (Exalted's essance system comes to mind). Any others?
The classic OSR method is to create opportunities for and then reward creative problem solving. The obvious example is putting pitfall traps in a dungeon, so they start bringing 10' poles and tapping the ground in front of them. After a few easily-disarmed traps you stop putting pitfall traps in the dungeon. A more elaborate example would be small, narrow dungeons full of mindless undead. A traditional D&D party with hirelings can easily create a nearly invulnerable phalanx just with spears and heavy wooden barriers, and after a few combats where you roll out the zombies trying to physically drive themselves through the spears you can just handwave the rest of the dungeon (until they get to the wight, of course). The idea of trolls regenerating every wound until you set them on fire is similar.
The overarching philosophy is that rather than rewarding good ideas with a small bonus or requiring feats or other character design investments to make them work, which is the cornerstone of combat-puzzle games, you can create encounters that are terrifying until "solved" and trivial once solved.
That said, that's not really "system mastery" so much as it is... subject mastery.
I think the particular niche I'm talking about is making tactical decisions, and please excuse me while I narrowly define synonyms to support an argument. I consider things that you cannot change on a moment to moment basis like character builds, party composition, or potentially equipment loadouts (prepared spell lists anyone?) to be strategic choices. Tactical choices I believe are those that the player makes moment to moment fully understanding (or at least being offered all the information) of the problem at hand and likely consequences of their actions. In 5E D&D for example the wizard makes a strategic choice when preparing spells they think are appropriate for the challenges of the day based off of their build (I took a feat that makes my fireball extra spicy) or expected problem sets (there are trolls around, so I've got acid flavored spells available). It's definitely a form of system mastery, but it doesn't offer a tactical choice because you've already made that decision before you knew what the problems actually were. The tactical decisions in this case could be which spell to use (Fireball v Melf's acid arrow) which you can base on tactical considerations like the positioning of friends and allies or some strategic considerations like how many encounters total do I expect this day, and what is the right amount of resources to spend in this encounter. When you are making these decisions off of a few different factors, I think that makes the game more interesting, vice making it off of only one factor which makes it barely a choice. Consider if Fireball is the most damaging spell I can cast, and there are no drawbacks to using it (friendly-fire turned off), and resource allocation isn't an issue (the 1 encounter/day problem) then the only factor in my decision matrix is "do I have a third level spell slot available?" It essentially becomes a non-choice because there's really no decision making going on. On the other hand I can offer some interesting tactical choices to my fighter even if the only action choice they have is to 'attack' if we add in the considerations of things like which enemy do you engage first (the wizard is casting spells, but that deathknight is going to fuck up the party...) or party members to protect (the rogue is surrounded, but if you leave the wizard's side he's potentially more vulnerable).
The point I'm trying to make is that I see that line "offering interesting tactical choices" in RPG systems all the time, but I don't often see how those are actually expressed. In my D&D 5E games I spend a good chunk of time thinking about encounter balance so that I can offer up these sorts of tactical choices to my party, and while it's certainly possible to achieve these goals I don't necessarily think that the rules as written for 5E lend themselves to offering tactical choices. It definitely shifts that burden to the DM. So are there systems out there that do offer up good choices?
Anyone know of a source I can check out for a good hacking encounter in GeneSys? I'm not a new GM but not much experience in a shadowrun-type hacking (decking) encounters. I'd like to read up on how our hacker can have a fun encounter while the other group is protecting him.
Anyone know of a source I can check out for a good hacking encounter in GeneSys? I'm not a new GM but not much experience in a shadowrun-type hacking (decking) encounters. I'd like to read up on how our hacker can have a fun encounter while the other group is protecting him.
The Special Modifications sourcebook for Star Wars has slicing (hacking) rules. I don't know if I'd get the book just for that, but knowing where some are may be a starting point for you.
The classic would be having them meet an anonymous enemy hacker while working. So while their friends are covering them, and they are trying to do their business, they have someone trolling them via IM-message.
I have the Genesys book but haven't had a chance to play or run anything yet. But for clarification, isn't "Strain" damage there for an encounter like this?
Yeah, the "sell a book" business model still feels like it's got a very experimental relationship with PDFs, which is super strange for as long as they've been, you know, a thing in the world. I respect where your interests lie, but as far as book/PDF gimmicks go, I like the Bits and Mortar angle that Fred Hicks has started up, in his continued nefarious schemes to con people into patronizing his business through "community outreach" and "good customer service" and "quality product design" and "actually giving people the things they've paid for". Buy a book in your friendly local game store, get the PDF!
So hey, game rules! There certainly is a divide between your Worlds Apocalypse and your Dungeoned Dragons, and it's best explained as how they both pursue some goal, like
The point I'm trying to make is that I see that line "offering interesting tactical choices" in RPG systems all the time, but I don't often see how those are actually expressed. In my D&D 5E games I spend a good chunk of time thinking about encounter balance so that I can offer up these sorts of tactical choices to my party, and while it's certainly possible to achieve these goals I don't necessarily think that the rules as written for 5E lend themselves to offering tactical choices. It definitely shifts that burden to the DM. So are there systems out there that do offer up good choices?
Oh, how convenient!
Okay, so Dungeons and Dragons is a task-based resolution system, where you're operating in some larger framework, like everybody taking turns in a combat round, and on your turn you get the chance to perform certain system-defined tasks. Like "move your speed" and "cast a spell" and "make a melee attack". You can succeed or fail at these tasks, and usually failure doesn't carry an immediate consequence; rather, it has the assumed consequence that you've lost your chance to act for now and the framework will grind on, making things worse before you get to go again.
The tasks themselves are described in neutral terms and can be thought of independently outside the framework they're placed in. It's the interaction of tasks within the framework that's expected to create the opportunity for tactical decision-making, based on player understanding of the available tasks and their effects.
Apocalypse World, on the other hand, is a story-based resolution system, where there is no formal framework. There's a conversation about what's going on in the world, and when the conversation drifts over into the territory of one of the established resolution zones, called "moves", the move will have its own rules for what to do next and how that continues to shape the story. The "attack roll" in Apocalypse World looks a little more like:
To seize something by force, exchange harm, but first, roll 2d6+hard. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 2. On a miss, choose 1:
You inflict terrible harm (+1).
You suffer little harm (-1).
You take definite control of the thing.
You impress, dismay, or frighten your enemy.
But you can see we've already made several assumptions here. You're up against an enemy, there's something you want to control, you are both capable of harming your enemy and suffering harm in return. If these things haven't been established in the story, this move and its results aren't going to make sense, and maybe what you're doing is better covered by a different move. But if all these things have already been established, look at the decisions you get to make, directly! Are you willing to take more damage to get definite control of the thing you want? Is it worth giving up doing damage to deal a more psychological blow?
Most of the working parts of Dungeons and Dragons are laid out in the open - it's clear to everybody what an attack roll is and what happens as a result of it, and you're free to peruse the player manual in search of whatever combination of effects will give you the best attack rolls and the most damage. But the larger effects of that are left to the framework to organize properly.
Apocalypse World starts out by explicitly declaring the larger effects you'll be asked to pursue and manipulate. But getting to the conditions that let you do that is something that comes out in the conversation at the table. You can't think about the rules as detached from play quite as easily, which is why the original book (especially its revised edition) and some of its better successors stuff themselves to the gills with worked examples in actual play.
@Glazius I've seen some people discuss that moves in PbtA games are supposed to provide conflict resolution (like attacking a mans), but some PbtA games either miss this point or get carried away, and use moves for task resolution (like progressively hacking deeper and deeper into the Gibson). I think I saw this first in online discussions about "Sprawl", which kind of uses moves for both, and the more seasoned PbtAers were saying that this muddies the water and makes a weaker game. What are your thoughts on this?
Heck, now that I think about it, "Fellowship" (which is the first PbtA game I read) has a bunch of moves that don't even involve rolls, like "Command Lore", which is literally "When someone asks you about you or your people, tell them. When you ask someone about them or their people, they will tell you." It seems like in this game, the moves are sometimes not even conflict or task resolutions, but rather Roleplaying Prompts ("Hey bud, you should tell the other players about your pointy-ears, now.") and Statements of Intent ("This is a game that explicitly wants you to tell us about your character"). I feel like the Statement of Intent portion is actually pretty important (I remember the lengthy discussions we've had in this thread about how you can tell what the game is interested in based on which subjects are given explicit rules, and how much space and how many rules are devoted to those subjects), but I wonder if it negatively impacts the PbtA experience (I myself have never actually played a PbtA game).
I think the particular niche I'm talking about is making tactical decisions, and please excuse me while I narrowly define synonyms to support an argument. I consider things that you cannot change on a moment to moment basis like character builds, party composition, or potentially equipment loadouts (prepared spell lists anyone?) to be strategic choices. Tactical choices I believe are those that the player makes moment to moment fully understanding (or at least being offered all the information) of the problem at hand and likely consequences of their actions. In 5E D&D for example the wizard makes a strategic choice when preparing spells they think are appropriate for the challenges of the day based off of their build (I took a feat that makes my fireball extra spicy) or expected problem sets (there are trolls around, so I've got acid flavored spells available). It's definitely a form of system mastery, but it doesn't offer a tactical choice because you've already made that decision before you knew what the problems actually were. The tactical decisions in this case could be which spell to use (Fireball v Melf's acid arrow) which you can base on tactical considerations like the positioning of friends and allies or some strategic considerations like how many encounters total do I expect this day, and what is the right amount of resources to spend in this encounter. When you are making these decisions off of a few different factors, I think that makes the game more interesting, vice making it off of only one factor which makes it barely a choice. Consider if Fireball is the most damaging spell I can cast, and there are no drawbacks to using it (friendly-fire turned off), and resource allocation isn't an issue (the 1 encounter/day problem) then the only factor in my decision matrix is "do I have a third level spell slot available?" It essentially becomes a non-choice because there's really no decision making going on. On the other hand I can offer some interesting tactical choices to my fighter even if the only action choice they have is to 'attack' if we add in the considerations of things like which enemy do you engage first (the wizard is casting spells, but that deathknight is going to fuck up the party...) or party members to protect (the rogue is surrounded, but if you leave the wizard's side he's potentially more vulnerable).
The point I'm trying to make is that I see that line "offering interesting tactical choices" in RPG systems all the time, but I don't often see how those are actually expressed. In my D&D 5E games I spend a good chunk of time thinking about encounter balance so that I can offer up these sorts of tactical choices to my party, and while it's certainly possible to achieve these goals I don't necessarily think that the rules as written for 5E lend themselves to offering tactical choices. It definitely shifts that burden to the DM. So are there systems out there that do offer up good choices?
Exalted 3rd edition is genuinely tactical in the manner of a CCG or a fighting game, but also has the complexity of such, which can be a total pain. But it genuinely is tactical, you resource and deploy your capabilities to deal with the varied capabilities of the enemies you fight.
For a tactical game, Genesys could be good, as @MagicPrime said to me on a Discord channel. You can so Careers as Archtypes: Assult, Technician, Medic, Sniper, Demolition, Covert, ect. Adding Grid combat to it wouldn't be hard. Cover adds difficulty. Aiming for a body part increases the Challenge. Smoke is a setback die, ect.
I mean, aiming for a body part increasing the challenge rating or obscuring smoke adding a setback die are ALREADY things in the system...
So playing in a hotboxed room affects the dice you can use?
Both IRL and in-game, yes. "Dude... the dice are SO BIG. Use the other dice MAN."
+3
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
In all seriousness, boost and setback die are great for representing basically any beneficial or detrimental factor of the environment, your character's situation, etc. Are you high? Setback to shooting and activities involving coordination, boost to understanding what the machine elves are commanding you to do. If you're playing in real life and using minis or a grid or whatever, you can even physically set the dice on the spot where their effect takes hold ("this parking lot is brightly lit *sets down blue die* so everyone gets a Boost when acting within it or targeting someone within it").
I think Genesys' narrative dice work well enough that trying to make a more "tactical" grid-style combat is counter-intuitive for it, which is describing actions in fast, broad strokes where statistical complications aren't math modifiers to checks, but contained within the dice themselves.
Posts
the world is ready for a team of weed-empowered superheroes named "blunt force"
Some thirty- or even forty- something guy who had too much time on his hands in high school is going to sue you if you try to go down that road, and it's going to be a lot like the Bart Skampson sketch from Portlandia.
If I'm honest, I'd rather not engage any further. I'm not okay with adding a masculine/feminine coding to different kinds of gaming as a facet of this topic and if that's something people want to be a thing in this discussion I'll tap out and leave it there.
Leaving aside the question of whether VtM is super rules light or narrative (my feeling is that in terms of rules it's a medium-crunch traditional game and players love to do stuff like buy better Generation or figure out the best way to dual-wield for maximum gibs or whatever) the fact that women can be gross doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that nerd spaces have been, and in some places still are, dominated by toxic men and toxic masculinity.
Like, you get that, right? This isn't a mysterious isolated thing that we heard about in a message from a bottle. This is forty-something years of women who play games (or read comics, or are stone-cold brave enough to go onto Xbox Live) being told that they're stupid and "fake," the things they like are insufficiently authentic, or for kids, or whatever.
And they're told those things in language and terms that get slapped on to other things: "for casuals," "girlfriend mode," etc.
This happens over and over and over and over and over again in multiple fields and the only common denominator is that it's dudes being dicks. Past a certain point an observer is just going to be like welp
Yeah. I'm agreeing with you. This was me saying that gendering game styles is pointless, since toxic behavior can happen in fucking Candyland.
And yeah, it is almost always dudes. So the pertinent topic is the toxic dudes, not whether they play Pathfinder or Vampire or Monster Hearts.
I have been playing a lot of Starfinder in public settings lately, and I gotta say that, purely anecdotally, despite being around all the Pathfinder grognards, there is way more inclusivity than ever before; women, transpeople, multi-ethnic folks, good players and bad, roleplayers and crunchkins...I have heard some rules arguments, but nothing more serious.
Okay, one guy playing a tweaked, eccentric space gnome was badmouthing skittermanders for being "the new kender," with the implication that their players were undesirable, but that was a fairly minor incident. Ah, fantasy racism.
Again, anecdotal. And online interactions are notoriously different from in-person dealings. My point is, maybe concentrate on the actual behavior rather than expected behavior.
I'm sure there will be plenty of bitter acrimony, but I've lived through 8+ iterations of D&D, and it was like that for every single one. People don't like it when things they are comfortable with change (and also they are staring down the barrel of multiple $60 new edition core books).
Never give me the opportunity to drop something Kevin Smith in.
It's because they consistently release content (especially Paizo) and make it pretty damn easy to use. Like if I was inclined to run a Pathfinder game I can just go pay for a roll20 module containing a whole adventure for my group to play through. It's kinda like how the answer to 'which console is better?' has shit all to do with the consoles but what games are on it.
Paizo is incredible. They crank out more content than D&D ever did. The Pathfinder Society generates two adventures a month (with Starfinder Society now making it three) on top of monthly or bimonthly Adventure Paths. Plus whatever periodicals they still make.
Guess all that experience running Dungeon magazine paid off. The stock of Pathfinder stuff at every local Half Price Books in the metro is greater than their D&D crap of all editions put together.
I've heard GMs say that they could run Pathfinder for the rest of their lives and never replay an adventure, just on their currently published content.
It will be no wonder that a portion of that audience is resistant to change; the fraction that is loud about it won't let us forget.
Just a notably shit day at work making me more aggressive than usual, no excuse for taking it out on anyone though. Apologies.
Everybody has days like that. I sympathize.
Buttttttttt it turns out that the PDFs aren't actually on sale. They're just passing them out to people who preorder the dead tree books. Which are not coming out until July. And the PDF-only option will not be available until then either.
That news really took the wind out of my sails. I can't use paper books; I can't read printed text. Aside from being disappointing, it also just seems dumb from a business perspective. I understand that for something as risky as printing and shipping a book (which is hellaciously expensive, especially from the UK) they want to get orders locked in early, and getting the PDF ahead of time is a nice incentive, but when they did that for the core book it was a delay of like...a week. Three or four months seems way past the realm where you'd have convinced any wavering buyers to commit to a paper purchase, and in the meantime those PDFs are still out in the ether.
I dunno. SALT LEVELS CRITICAL.
In comparison, pattern recognition, situational awareness, and general hand/eye coordination are all ways to reward system mastery in video games in addition to the above. I'm not advocating adding those things to tabletop games mind, just that there's got to be more ways to add those meaty choices to groups who want that kind of play. I think smart resource allocation is one way that I don't see very often (Exalted's essance system comes to mind). Any others?
Rev A of my Adventurer's Kit.
Some changes for the next rev. About 2" shorter back to front and about 2" wider as I want to be able to fit a chessex dice container to hold a mini into the foam, a little deeper as well, maybe about 1/2". Also do the velvet over the foam outside of the box and then drop in the finished bit. Also some slightly harder foam.
Also re-design the character sheet insert so it's a bit bigger, maybe 4x6 instead of 3x5.
All in all going to try it out for a bit.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
The classic OSR method is to create opportunities for and then reward creative problem solving. The obvious example is putting pitfall traps in a dungeon, so they start bringing 10' poles and tapping the ground in front of them. After a few easily-disarmed traps you stop putting pitfall traps in the dungeon. A more elaborate example would be small, narrow dungeons full of mindless undead. A traditional D&D party with hirelings can easily create a nearly invulnerable phalanx just with spears and heavy wooden barriers, and after a few combats where you roll out the zombies trying to physically drive themselves through the spears you can just handwave the rest of the dungeon (until they get to the wight, of course). The idea of trolls regenerating every wound until you set them on fire is similar.
The overarching philosophy is that rather than rewarding good ideas with a small bonus or requiring feats or other character design investments to make them work, which is the cornerstone of combat-puzzle games, you can create encounters that are terrifying until "solved" and trivial once solved.
That said, that's not really "system mastery" so much as it is... subject mastery.
The point I'm trying to make is that I see that line "offering interesting tactical choices" in RPG systems all the time, but I don't often see how those are actually expressed. In my D&D 5E games I spend a good chunk of time thinking about encounter balance so that I can offer up these sorts of tactical choices to my party, and while it's certainly possible to achieve these goals I don't necessarily think that the rules as written for 5E lend themselves to offering tactical choices. It definitely shifts that burden to the DM. So are there systems out there that do offer up good choices?
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
The Special Modifications sourcebook for Star Wars has slicing (hacking) rules. I don't know if I'd get the book just for that, but knowing where some are may be a starting point for you.
I have the Genesys book but haven't had a chance to play or run anything yet. But for clarification, isn't "Strain" damage there for an encounter like this?
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
So hey, game rules! There certainly is a divide between your Worlds Apocalypse and your Dungeoned Dragons, and it's best explained as how they both pursue some goal, like
Oh, how convenient!
Okay, so Dungeons and Dragons is a task-based resolution system, where you're operating in some larger framework, like everybody taking turns in a combat round, and on your turn you get the chance to perform certain system-defined tasks. Like "move your speed" and "cast a spell" and "make a melee attack". You can succeed or fail at these tasks, and usually failure doesn't carry an immediate consequence; rather, it has the assumed consequence that you've lost your chance to act for now and the framework will grind on, making things worse before you get to go again.
The tasks themselves are described in neutral terms and can be thought of independently outside the framework they're placed in. It's the interaction of tasks within the framework that's expected to create the opportunity for tactical decision-making, based on player understanding of the available tasks and their effects.
Apocalypse World, on the other hand, is a story-based resolution system, where there is no formal framework. There's a conversation about what's going on in the world, and when the conversation drifts over into the territory of one of the established resolution zones, called "moves", the move will have its own rules for what to do next and how that continues to shape the story. The "attack roll" in Apocalypse World looks a little more like:
But you can see we've already made several assumptions here. You're up against an enemy, there's something you want to control, you are both capable of harming your enemy and suffering harm in return. If these things haven't been established in the story, this move and its results aren't going to make sense, and maybe what you're doing is better covered by a different move. But if all these things have already been established, look at the decisions you get to make, directly! Are you willing to take more damage to get definite control of the thing you want? Is it worth giving up doing damage to deal a more psychological blow?
Most of the working parts of Dungeons and Dragons are laid out in the open - it's clear to everybody what an attack roll is and what happens as a result of it, and you're free to peruse the player manual in search of whatever combination of effects will give you the best attack rolls and the most damage. But the larger effects of that are left to the framework to organize properly.
Apocalypse World starts out by explicitly declaring the larger effects you'll be asked to pursue and manipulate. But getting to the conditions that let you do that is something that comes out in the conversation at the table. You can't think about the rules as detached from play quite as easily, which is why the original book (especially its revised edition) and some of its better successors stuff themselves to the gills with worked examples in actual play.
Heck, now that I think about it, "Fellowship" (which is the first PbtA game I read) has a bunch of moves that don't even involve rolls, like "Command Lore", which is literally "When someone asks you about you or your people, tell them. When you ask someone about them or their people, they will tell you." It seems like in this game, the moves are sometimes not even conflict or task resolutions, but rather Roleplaying Prompts ("Hey bud, you should tell the other players about your pointy-ears, now.") and Statements of Intent ("This is a game that explicitly wants you to tell us about your character"). I feel like the Statement of Intent portion is actually pretty important (I remember the lengthy discussions we've had in this thread about how you can tell what the game is interested in based on which subjects are given explicit rules, and how much space and how many rules are devoted to those subjects), but I wonder if it negatively impacts the PbtA experience (I myself have never actually played a PbtA game).
Exalted 3rd edition is genuinely tactical in the manner of a CCG or a fighting game, but also has the complexity of such, which can be a total pain. But it genuinely is tactical, you resource and deploy your capabilities to deal with the varied capabilities of the enemies you fight.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Well, see. Half my work already cut out for me. Just have to make Careers and steal the line of sight rules from something.
So playing in a hotboxed room affects the dice you can use?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Please use rope