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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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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@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
@satsuma @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil Yeah that's why I prefer @shimminbeg 's Tetrahedron Group.
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"Five Rounds Rapid" is how long a good fight in D&D should take. The instructions were all there in the episode.
@Printdevil With the family group there's a more than even chance there won't even be a fight as they've mostly been wandering the land befriending things, rescuing goblins, helping troubled spirits find their way to the light and such.
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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 have had this go well exactly once. a GURPSplayer created a vampire hunter PC.During a session he was discussing killing vampires. Another PC asked if they collapsed to dust or something. The player fumbled and looked to the GM who said “no, they just, y’know, scream and bleed and die.” The player looks around the table shocked and says “oh no. I’m a serial killer.”
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@RogerBW @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma have had this go well exactly once. a GURPSplayer created a vampire hunter PC.During a session he was discussing killing vampires. Another PC asked if they collapsed to dust or something. The player fumbled and looked to the GM who said “no, they just, y’know, scream and bleed and die.” The player looks around the table shocked and says “oh no. I’m a serial killer.”
@RogerBW @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma key thing though, the player brought up the question and chose to lean into the answer. The GM played the response straight-faced in a fairly low buy-in game. Players knew each other well/had high trust, players liked riffing off each other and the GM, modern day conspiracy setting with a broad tent, open character concepts from a baker to a banker to a vampire hunter, and undergrads just having fun.
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@RogerBW @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma have had this go well exactly once. a GURPSplayer created a vampire hunter PC.During a session he was discussing killing vampires. Another PC asked if they collapsed to dust or something. The player fumbled and looked to the GM who said “no, they just, y’know, scream and bleed and die.” The player looks around the table shocked and says “oh no. I’m a serial killer.”
@WolfeRJ @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma Having been brought up on the classics, I call this "gold dissolves in aqua regia". Yes, but so does everything else.
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@WolfeRJ @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil @satsuma Having been brought up on the classics, I call this "gold dissolves in aqua regia". Yes, but so does everything else.
Aqua Regia is useful in the production of dangerous orange smoke.
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@satsuma @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @Printdevil Yeah that's why I prefer @shimminbeg 's Tetrahedron Group.
I've a whole set of agencies over the years, but of the last 20 I've found I prefer increasingly the normalcy of civilian interactions with "things"
At a table in a big group who play lots of different games an agency involved is good for keeping things moving though.
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@Printdevil With the family group there's a more than even chance there won't even be a fight as they've mostly been wandering the land befriending things, rescuing goblins, helping troubled spirits find their way to the light and such.
Have you met my family? They're all deranged martial artists and loons.
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I've a whole set of agencies over the years, but of the last 20 I've found I prefer increasingly the normalcy of civilian interactions with "things"
At a table in a big group who play lots of different games an agency involved is good for keeping things moving though.
@Printdevil @satsuma @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @shimminbeg Yeah, but my point is that Tetra is, at least as far as I'm concerned as a player, very much a reaction to the whole "we have to do horrible things that the sheep will never understand" mindset—which is very much where a lot of DG games seem to start and end.
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Aqua Regia is useful in the production of dangerous orange smoke.
Thomas Norton's The Ordinal of Alchemy is a great book. Weirdly in prose, it's one of the last books about "how to do stuff with things" before Alchemy becomes a philosophical artform. The books of that time around the 1400-1500s are packed with brilliant stuff to accommodate for the lack of structured chemical theory. Norton has a whole scale of temperatures with stuff like "the point at which duck fat melts"
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Thomas Norton's The Ordinal of Alchemy is a great book. Weirdly in prose, it's one of the last books about "how to do stuff with things" before Alchemy becomes a philosophical artform. The books of that time around the 1400-1500s are packed with brilliant stuff to accommodate for the lack of structured chemical theory. Norton has a whole scale of temperatures with stuff like "the point at which duck fat melts"
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@Printdevil @satsuma @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @shimminbeg Yeah, but my point is that Tetra is, at least as far as I'm concerned as a player, very much a reaction to the whole "we have to do horrible things that the sheep will never understand" mindset—which is very much where a lot of DG games seem to start and end.
Is that an ACAB reflex do you think? Or just the central tendency of that sort of literature.
My Fallen Leaves game is about the players as sort of mediums/clairvoyants and the like who help people get over deaths in their families, and naturally plots happen. Always. Very spiritual, very low key. Lots of Stone Tape type stuff, but in the background the Gov have Project WhiteLight trying to remove all ghosts via machines.
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Low hanging fruit (probably L'Orange)
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Low hanging fruit (probably L'Orange)
@Printdevil @RogerBW @WolfeRJ @Taskerland @satsuma Dick à L'Orange was the name of my old RuneQuest character, funnily enough.
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Thomas Norton's The Ordinal of Alchemy is a great book. Weirdly in prose, it's one of the last books about "how to do stuff with things" before Alchemy becomes a philosophical artform. The books of that time around the 1400-1500s are packed with brilliant stuff to accommodate for the lack of structured chemical theory. Norton has a whole scale of temperatures with stuff like "the point at which duck fat melts"
Purple cabbage used as indicator paper is another good bit.
Markedly unlike any alchemist I've ever seen in a game.
"I produce my purple cabbage and check for acid"
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@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?
Moreau Vazh It seems to be about knowwing every problem is solvable with their favourite paper buttons, that they get to push those buttons to solve whatever problems come their way, even if it doesn’t make sense, and that they never gave to think about anything during the session, only during chargen, level up, and daily resets.
It’s about ensuring they can win the game, and avoid engaging with the world.
It’s about playing on SPG without having to read anything or assess their options in any way.
Oh, and it’s probably about their particular brand of autistic inflexibility being focused on rules and navigating, rather than manipulatung, systems. But mostly, I think it’s about the new brand of munchkinism and rules lawyering that petends it’s neither of those things.
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Is that an ACAB reflex do you think? Or just the central tendency of that sort of literature.
My Fallen Leaves game is about the players as sort of mediums/clairvoyants and the like who help people get over deaths in their families, and naturally plots happen. Always. Very spiritual, very low key. Lots of Stone Tape type stuff, but in the background the Gov have Project WhiteLight trying to remove all ghosts via machines.
@Printdevil @satsuma @BigJackBrass @Taskerland @shimminbeg I think it's a pleasing fantasy for some people to be able to kill without consequences, as long as they kill those their bosses designate as "bad people".
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I've a whole set of agencies over the years, but of the last 20 I've found I prefer increasingly the normalcy of civilian interactions with "things"
At a table in a big group who play lots of different games an agency involved is good for keeping things moving though.
@Printdevil @RogerBW @satsuma @BigJackBrass @Taskerland replied to wrong post soz.
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