I read a post today about someone wanting to play an OSR game and then cooling on it quite rapidly because the GM presented them with a river to cross and they couldn't work out how to do it.
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@Printdevil @shimminbeg @Taskerland @satsuma I've seen a CoC adventure in which it turns out each PC is a personality facet of a a single mad person, which again is a good conceit but you can't really do it twice.
I know that scenario and the whole way through it sort of relies on "it just working" I've never been convinced it would actually be much fun as a scenario because of the extent the GM has to manipulate things.
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By the Bok?
@Printdevil When in doubt, change characters to orange smoke?
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@Printdevil When in doubt, change characters to orange smoke?
"Five Rounds Rapid" is how long a good fight in D&D should take. The instructions were all there in the episode.
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The idea that you can be in the hobby long-enough to be involved in playtesting scenarios for a magazine and have an entire group of characters drown themselves in a river because there's no 'pass river' skill is really worrying.
Those people probably have 150k followers on YouTube.
@Taskerland a basic lack of in real life experience problem solving. And Crpg’s evolving button thinking to a necessity. (The computer isn’t programmed to allow raft building, so people forget the basics of real world building alterations like raft building is a solution.
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I think again you can only do things like occasionally. I remember a point in the mid 80s when every scenario seemed to be "the players awake captured by" or "there is a single door and you can't remember how you got there" and general amnesiac things.
@Printdevil @Taskerland @satsuma @RogerBW oh yes, I just mean in the sense of having a simple realistic interaction to deal with ("I unlock the door with the key, I open the door") as a starting point for interacting with the fictional world. And one it's hard to get a TPK out of. It could easily be your own room in the tavern with a perfectly clear memory.
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@BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma I like the idea of a CoC investigator party gradually realising that they _are_ the violent murderers, killing people and burning down houses based on the most superficial evidence, and so on… but (a) it's not much fun to _play_ and (b) it's kind of been done.
@RogerBW @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma
A lot of the best rpg ideas are not very fun to play and, instead, better off as books/comics.
(I had a coworker run the 'you should have everyone die in a standard D&D campaign and then tell them they take off their VR headsets and go cyberpunk'... no... no, it sounds AWESOME, but that's how you get people walking off in disgust.
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@RogerBW @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma
A lot of the best rpg ideas are not very fun to play and, instead, better off as books/comics.
(I had a coworker run the 'you should have everyone die in a standard D&D campaign and then tell them they take off their VR headsets and go cyberpunk'... no... no, it sounds AWESOME, but that's how you get people walking off in disgust.
The bearded dragonsfoot reference person did that to us in a game and we walked off in disgust.
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@Printdevil @Taskerland @satsuma @RogerBW oh yes, I just mean in the sense of having a simple realistic interaction to deal with ("I unlock the door with the key, I open the door") as a starting point for interacting with the fictional world. And one it's hard to get a TPK out of. It could easily be your own room in the tavern with a perfectly clear memory.
Again, not a base session zero thing to be doing. "Does everyone remember how play without clicking on things? Or having 17D6.. ok..good.. so how would you open a door?"
"No Derek, put your socks back on"
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The bearded dragonsfoot reference person did that to us in a game and we walked off in disgust.
@Printdevil @DarkestKale @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @satsuma Oh yeah, never liked that bait and switch. Particularly since in asking people to play the game I'm essentially promising that the stuff in the game "matters", it's real to these characters even if it's not real to us. If you then say "no it's not", there's an inevitable implication of "har har silly you for taking it seriously". Which is basically the same feeling I get from Ocean's Twelve, in which (spoiler) the resolution is "we did the actual crime a month ago, everything you have just watched was fake even to us"..
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@Printdevil @DarkestKale @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @satsuma Oh yeah, never liked that bait and switch. Particularly since in asking people to play the game I'm essentially promising that the stuff in the game "matters", it's real to these characters even if it's not real to us. If you then say "no it's not", there's an inevitable implication of "har har silly you for taking it seriously". Which is basically the same feeling I get from Ocean's Twelve, in which (spoiler) the resolution is "we did the actual crime a month ago, everything you have just watched was fake even to us"..
That worked once in one of the Tales of the Unexpected were the safe cracker had already stolen the thing, because he knew he couldn't crack the safe. It is now used. Do something about gargoyles.
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The bearded dragonsfoot reference person did that to us in a game and we walked off in disgust.
@Printdevil I am trying to parse 'bearded dragonsfoot', but am struggling dear Charnock
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That worked once in one of the Tales of the Unexpected were the safe cracker had already stolen the thing, because he knew he couldn't crack the safe. It is now used. Do something about gargoyles.
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@Printdevil I am trying to parse 'bearded dragonsfoot', but am struggling dear Charnock
It's a euphemism for a colleague from Junkshop and my historical gaming, who is a guru of AD&D at Dragonsfoot to the point of it being a pathology. He affects a goatee.
Hence "Bearded Dragonsfoot"
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It's a euphemism for a colleague from Junkshop and my historical gaming, who is a guru of AD&D at Dragonsfoot to the point of it being a pathology. He affects a goatee.
Hence "Bearded Dragonsfoot"
@Printdevil @devilsjunkshop Thank you for taking the time to elaborate, I really appreciate it
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@BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma I like the idea of a CoC investigator party gradually realising that they _are_ the violent murderers, killing people and burning down houses based on the most superficial evidence, and so on… but (a) it's not much fun to _play_ and (b) it's kind of been done.
@RogerBW @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil that’s pretty much the pitch of Delta Green where the agents realise that they are committing atrocities in the name of a government cover up, and going mad because of it
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@Printdevil @devilsjunkshop Thank you for taking the time to elaborate, I really appreciate it
It preserves some degree of dignity and decorum saying things like Bearded Dragonsfoot, rather than naming names.
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It preserves some degree of dignity and decorum saying things like Bearded Dragonsfoot, rather than naming names.
Although sometimes decorum is sacrificed on the altar of "shitraker with a yacht"
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@Printdevil Yes. It's moving from board-games and MMORPGs into TTRPGs and expecting there to be a button on your character sheet that you can press.
Charnock Yes. It’s moving from board-games and MMORPGs into TTRPGs and expecting there to be a button on your character sheet that you can press.
Moreau Vazh I like games with feats, and skills lists, and numbers that present a framework for differentiating a character’s skills and learning from the players’. I kind of hate paper buttons, though, and it’s exactly because of players seeing them as signals that it’s a board game experience.
I prefer a high trust environment with a… a physics engine, as it were. A consistent and internally consistent set of tools and progression systems. The vast majority of people who talk about such games essentially demand low trust environments where they are entitled to not just have a say in how their choices are adjudicated, but also in what everyone else’s choices can be.
I once had someone reply to one of my YouTube comments on this saying that they believed that all tables should run strictly RAW, because then they didn’t have to vet the GM before dropping into the game, and it’s like… No wonder I can’t stand talking to these people.
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Charnock Yes. It’s moving from board-games and MMORPGs into TTRPGs and expecting there to be a button on your character sheet that you can press.
Moreau Vazh I like games with feats, and skills lists, and numbers that present a framework for differentiating a character’s skills and learning from the players’. I kind of hate paper buttons, though, and it’s exactly because of players seeing them as signals that it’s a board game experience.
I prefer a high trust environment with a… a physics engine, as it were. A consistent and internally consistent set of tools and progression systems. The vast majority of people who talk about such games essentially demand low trust environments where they are entitled to not just have a say in how their choices are adjudicated, but also in what everyone else’s choices can be.
I once had someone reply to one of my YouTube comments on this saying that they believed that all tables should run strictly RAW, because then they didn’t have to vet the GM before dropping into the game, and it’s like… No wonder I can’t stand talking to these people.
Vetting the GM is the sort of thing I find really strange as a concept.
High Trust with a physics engine is probably how I play, but with modelled mini games relevant to the environment of the game - like there might be a structured farming bit, or a structured scavenging bit, just depending on the game. They're usually slightly crunchier than the RP itself, but are generally something the players want to keep track of/game out but don't want to play out.
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Vetting the GM is the sort of thing I find really strange as a concept.
High Trust with a physics engine is probably how I play, but with modelled mini games relevant to the environment of the game - like there might be a structured farming bit, or a structured scavenging bit, just depending on the game. They're usually slightly crunchier than the RP itself, but are generally something the players want to keep track of/game out but don't want to play out.
@kichae The broader hobby seems weirdly paranoid about such matters.
Vetting GMs and insisting upon upon running games as written? What is that even guarding against? Is it that unbearable to have someone tell you that your fireball won't go around corners?
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