MarkB
Member

...r less entirely subjective. Mmmmm..... I give you all the points for "Paladin issues marinated[.]" It's like the worst steak ever. "Why does our kobold fillet taste so bad? It has to be the Paladin marinade!" Anyway, a quick point- OD&D- Paladin lost status by chaotic act; could not regain status. EVER, MAN! See Greyhawk supplement. 1e- If they perform a chaotic act, must confess and do penance. If evil act, cannot regain status. EVER. 2e- Same as 1e. Although it helpfully creates a rule because 1e had "knowingly commit" evil act, so 2e includes the whole, "You got charmed, yo, and now you have to atone!" So ... part of the problem, as it is with most things, is that weird translation from OD&D to 1e. "Chaotic" in OD&D meant, um, evil. Moorcockian. But by dragging out the whole different penalties in 1e/2e, it confused a lot of people, and (IME), most people just conflated the rules and made it, "If Evil, must atone." But contra what you are writing, and what MarkB is positing, these weren't the parts of the code that got people in trouble. There might have been some bad DMs out there, but as a general rule, the DM wasn't looking to strip you of your powers. Instead, and again IME, it was the rules about who the Paladin could party with ... um, who could be in the Paladin's party, that led to the whole "Jerky McJerkface telling the party what to do" reputation. That, and the fact that we all know Paladins suck and need to be excised from the game.

...o know it's a game, right? Not reality? Are you saying that it's wrong to say that, for example, Asmodeus is irrevocably evil? I think it is reasonable to say Asmodeus is currently incredibly evil. That's not to say there's not like, an epic quest line and a DC 9000 you could attempt in order to redeem him. That's also not to say that just because he is evil, doesn't mean he isn't sometimes on the right side of things. It's important to keep in mind that in Asmodeus' case (and by extension all Devils) they are by nature LAWFUL Evil and understand such concepts of honor, loyalty, comradeship, and the value of a well-written contract. While their ideas of these things may be twisted and their endgame may be their own advancement, devils may do good things because at some future point it will be to their gain. LE, unlike LG, does not have a problem with doing things outside of their alignment, provided it serves their interests in some manner. I also have to generally agree with MarkB on this, I've seen some of the posts by people who favor "A jolly good game of 'Kill the Orc'." and frankly it's a little disturbing. I think games set a dangerous precedent when they start running around saying X race is intrinsically evil. It's not terribly difficult to make a game that always sets up Orcs as the "bad guys" but at the same time never says "they're evil". It doesn't even need to be a "shades of grey" campaign to do this.

I came to that conclusion maybe ten pages ago. These peeps need this show to be the best, actual show be damned! Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app Who says it needs to be best? I like it. I am not seeing the issues that you are pointing to, or, rather, the issues that are being pointed to are very much not issues for me. IOW, MarkB hits it square on the head. Like I said earlier, I get that people don't like the show. And that's groovy. There's stuff I haven't liked too. Fair enough. The difference is, I'm not jumping through hoop after hoop in order to justify my feelings. I'm not misinterpreting tropes in order to "prove" how bad Disco is. I'm not playing silly buggers cherry picking games to "prove" that they don't care about canon. I'm not trying to prove anything. I like the show. That's the end of that conversation.

...yle mystery scenario, getting the GM to read you bits of his/her notes is the whole point of play: get the clue from here, find the tome there, find the cultists' ritual headquaters, etc. This is all about learning what is in the GM's notes. It's not (or need not be) the GM reading a story: the sequence may not correspond to any particular pre-planned sequence, and there may not be any particular structure of rising action, complication, climax, etc. You also continually use examples of bad GMing to make your point that option 1 is a bad thing.Well, I make do with the examples I have. I don't believe that you've posted any actual play examples. (If you have, and I've missed them, I apologise - can you point me back to them?) The example of the map came (I think) from Lanefan - at least, it has been established in lengthy back-and-forth with him. The example of the plot on the Duke came from Lanefan. The example of the attempt to find bribeable officials came from MarkB. Are you saying that these are all examples of bad GMing? So what does good GMing look like, in this context? What is a good use of secretly-established fictional positioning being used by a GM to establish that a player's action declaration fails, without regard to the action resolution mechanics? A good GM will not send his players on a wild goose chase through the mansion for a map macguffin.So what would the pre-authorship be used for? Even the fiction that I've "pre-authored" can be impacted (or changed entirely if the situation calls for it) at any time by the players' actions - they are the heroes after all.Can you give an example of what you mean? For instance - and I am going to give an example I am familiar with, as I don't have much to go on from your game - I have a PC in my 4e game whose goal is to reconstruct the Rod of Seven Parts. He got the first part at the start of 2nd level. The campaign is now 30th level and he and his friends are in a fight that will de...

...shing a story of an orc. If the person asserts (as I think Emerikol does) that "As a player I only want to add those embellishments that correspond to causal powers exercised by my PC in the gameworld, so I will embellish deaths caused by my PC, but not maps discovered by my PC" that's his/her prerogative. It's a type of aesthetic preference. (As well as Emerikol, Lanefan has advocated it strongly in this thread.) My claims about it are two. (1) It is not more "realistic", or less "Schroedinger-y" than embellishing other parts of the fiction. (2) It means that a reasonable amount of your play experience will involve the GM telling you stuff that s/he made up (either in advance in his/her notes, or stuff that s/he makes up as needed but that is to be treated the same by the game participants as if it were part of his/her pre-authored notes). The reason for (2) I take to be obvious given the extensive discussion of it in this thread, and the example provided by Lanefan, MarkB and others. And the more the game involves "exploration" - that is, the players declaring actions which have, as an outcome, their PCs learning about the gameworld (eg opening doors, finding bribeable officials, searching for maps, etc) rather than their PCs changing the gameworld (eg by killing orcs or befriending strangers) - then the more that (2) will obtain. Furthermore, given that a PC's success in changing the gameworld often depends (in the imaginary causal processes) upon unknown but relevant factors (eg the armour of the orc; the temperament of the stranger) then even changing the gameworld through action declarations can become hostage to a resolution process that does not permit the player to embellish other elements of the shared fiction. For instance, if we go from player action declaration through resolution mechanics through embellishment that reflects outcome, then it is possible to have combat systems like D&D (AC, roll to hit, determine outcome from that) and h...

...GM, that's not counterindicative at all of having trust issues about the GM being unfair.The last sentence is not something I intend to reply to. I'm not interested in analysing my own conjectured self-doubts in this thread. As I've said, a more prosaic explanation for my preferences is available - my pleasure in RPGing does not come from telling my friends stuff that I wrote in response to them making moves for their PCs that oblige me to engage in such tellings. As for the first bit, you are correct that I "seem to couch [my] arguments from a position where the DM is uses secret knowledge and fiat in ways that benefit the DM's ideas over the players". The reason it seems like that is because it is like that. (I didn't clarify that in my first reply because I assumed it was obvious.) And the reason I couch my arguments (I would prefer to say "analysis", but that's orthogonal) from that position is because that position is correct. Which is what I said was evident in the post from MarkB: inherent in the use of secret backstory as a factor in adjudication is that the GM's ideas are given priority in establishing the content of the shared fiction. I'll respond to the following bit too, though, if you like, though I think it's repetition: a GM may be fair or unfair in saying (on the basis not of action resolution, but of secretly established fictional content) that the map is not in the study where the players have declared that the PCs are searching the study for it. If every other bit of information points to the map being in the study, it's probably unfair. If the PCs have a potion of map detecing with a range that will encompass the whole house (kitchen as well as study) but are not using it, then what the GM is doing is probably fair. I don't care whether it's fair or not. The reason I don't like it is because I find it uninteresting. When I RPG, I don't want to engage in an activity in which my friends are spending most of their time trying to establish - by ...

...layer agency in a GM setting-driven game, as it was completely orthogonal from the GM's setting. (Eg we had fragments of a prophecy, and we spent a lot of time debating them, imagining how we could read various PCs into various roles outlined in the prophecy, etc. I assume that the GM had some conception, in his mind, of what the prophecy meant and how the events of play related to it, but they were absolutely irrelevant to what we players were talking about. We could have done our stuff just as easily if the GM had simply handed us three random prophecies downloaded from a Google search.) Clearly, you don't trust that players have any form of agency in any game that has substantive GM backstory and adjudication. You're denying that they do all over the place here and in your response to Lanefan. And you don't really seem to trust us when we say that player do have agency in the games we're running in which we do make use of substantial backstory and adjudication. Your response to MarkB here is fairly dripping with it. "you think it is" makes it very clear that you don't believe him or think it's true. It's like you're calling him out but acknowledge he's not technically lying because he seems to believe it's true.We're doing analysis here. Trying to dig down into the processes of play is not "calling someone out". I don't think MarkB is lying. I do think that the suggestion that I don't trust GMs is (i) false, and (ii) irrelevant - as if the only reason someone would play DungeonWorld rather than 2nd ed AD&D is because they don't trust GMs! But anyway, on to the issue of agency: Here is one of my assertions - if the GM is entitled, at any point in the process of resolution to (i) secretly author backstory, or (ii) secrety rewrite backstory, and (iii) to use that secret backstory as if it was part of the fictional positioning so as to (iv) automatically declare an action declaration unsuccessful ("No, the map's not in the study") - then I assert that every acti...

In many ways, they do the same thing, it’s just the puzzle is a little different, less constrictive, and possibly more complex. Instead of a relatively simple puzzle of doping out the best way to maximize treasure within a single dungeon, they might be working on visiting all of the adventuring sites in the region, foiling the impending invasion of the orcsish legion, stopping the predation of a wicked dragon, or just visiting interesting places.The last of these doesn't sound like a puzzle at all. As for the others, as I posted not far upthread (in response to Sadras and MarkB), I'm curious about how the puzzle-solving works, when there are so many (imaginary) elements in play which can introduce parameters to the puzzle to which the players have no access (in practical terms). I don’t see those as unsolvable, but then I don’t really buy into describing RPG gaming, even limited to dungeon crawls, as puzzles to solve. Unless the puzzle is figuring out how to have fun pretending to be a halfling Paladin or half-orc summoner.Right. As the OP said, I think puzzle-solving play is not so common in contemporary RPGing. Given that it's not, then, what is worldbuilding for?

...e notes on any of it. Having it pre-designed even if just in broad strokes makes the describing so much easier. Particularly at the start of the campaign when the players in theory know much less about the game world than their PCs do (canon lawyers for pre-fab settings notwithstanding) the DM has a lot of describing to do and as a side effect of that description is going to drop the PCs into a particular setting be it a steamy jungle, a city based on ancient Athens, a snowy Viking camp, or a pleasant sunny farm village. You'd probably call this railroading, but how else can it work? Of course, that's just the start; if the PCs in the Viking camp immediately decide to go someplace warmer then the DM has to react to that. (one hopes she has a broad-strokes regional or continental map showing areas beyond a short radius around the camp!) Are you able to say more about how you see the GM's work on the setting in advance of play feeding through to give the players that sense? MarkB might see it differently, but for my part it's much easier to figure out a character's motivations, beliefs, goals, etc. when there's a culture (or cultures) and common history to fit into. If, say, the setting history shows that our starting town was devastated by a war ten years ago and since rebuilt, that's going to influence my character and what she thinks; and probably influence other characters as well. But if the starting history shows no such war it's not our place as players to just add it in. We have no right to, as world design is not in our purview. And if there's no pre-designed history then what's the point? What happened before our PCs became PCs? What major events shaped their lives? (it should be obvious but I'd better mention: the DM sets the event but the player chooses what influence it had on her character, if any). Lanefan

MarkB I thought Force Awakens: Incredible Cross Sections was canon due to being written and published after Disney acquired Star Wars?

MarkB Maybe. But if so, that's a retcon of the Falcon's history. It was originally a freight pusher for orbit; that's why it had the cockpit to the side instead of the YT-standard central cockpit.

Yeah, I gotta go with MarkB on this one. What's the point of trying to draw boxes around whether something is a "game" or not. Like any genre discussion, it's ultimately a deep, deep dive down a dark rabbit hole. And, I would also point out that I don't think anyone has advocated completely taking death off the table either. Just making it a bit more rare.

I usually forget that one even can roll for hit points on leveling up. I doubt it's something the designers give much thought to as well. Agree with MarkB, incentivizing rolling for hp would be counterproductive — average hp should be the preferred option. Easier to keep track of, doesn't lead to pointless power differential between characters, takes nothing away from the RP. If rolling for hp, on average, gave you better results, we'd have players groaning and complaining when I said, "and we'll all just take average hp on level up." With the average being statistically better, nobody even notices that rolling for it is gone after a level or two. (If they ever noticed at all.) Roll dice for PC actions. Live with the consequences. But why randomize the squishiness of a character?

...the questions I'm trying to determine. How high up do you have to climb a building for there to be noticeable change in gravity. I think it would affect how high-rise type buildings were constructed, since the shearing forces (might be using the wrong term) between regular G and lower-G would require stronger building materials. Plus it might suggest activities happening at the upper levels of high-rise buildings would be substantially different...for example moving construction activities to the lower-G zones for increased efficiency. RangerWickett Really helpful on how to visualize entering at the zero-G "fixed" axis and seeing the entire station spin around you. I suspected some kind of shuttle or elevator would be necessary, but hadn't conceived of exactly why... I plugged a 500 m radius in and got a Tangential Velocity (or "rim speed") of 156 mph, which would be "splat your dead" for anyone moving or falling from the zero-G axis to the ground...in scientific terms :) MarkB That's another one of my questions. I mean, nothing we throw on Earth actually travels straight, technically. But in the rotational artificial G environment I'm wondering if it would be more obvious...or would it basically be a case of "throwing a baseball while in a moving car"? In other words, if everything/everyone is rotating at the same rate in relation to each other, there doesn't appear to be any change from Earth-standard gravity (assuming 1 g centripetal acceleration). But what happens if I punt a football down a field or fire a railgun at the elevator/shuttle tube along the central axis when the station is rotating at 1.3 rpms and the rim is spinning at 156 mph?

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MarkB beat me to it. Surprised it took to the second page. If you don't want them encountering/recognizing a troll...just use something else...Hill Giants seem to be the popular choice, but you could just go Ogres, Bugbears, heck make is a gaggle of Kobolds!...and let it regenerate and rend.

R2 and 3PO are both still in it. They haven't been replaced. That's good to know. MarkB - On the Death Star, they're low in the trench, but not as ridiculously low over the lake. Yeah, you can fly real-life jets ridiculously low, but the over-the-topness bothers me.

My wife says Danny shot her to save the Doctor getting his hands dirty. I'll have to rewatch. Like MarkB I assumed it was the Cyberman assumed to be the Brigadier keeping the Doctor's hands clean. But the FX did look more like a teleport. They could have just reused the SFX (those are pricey) or deliberately used that one to allow room to bring back the Master. But, while neat, the Brigadier semi-returning felt deux ex machnica. (Heh. A deus ex machina cyberman. Heh.) It was kinda foreshadowed and it makes total sense but it's so abrupt. Still, any excuse to namedrop Lethbridge-Stewart is fine by me. I liked the mutual lying at the end. Such a different way for companions departing. Despite being extra long it felt like there were some bits missing. I felt there was a scene missing between the graveyard and Clara's room where the Doctor explains that someone could come back. Likely cut for time/pacing but awkward from a story purpose. But I liked Danny sacrificing his life to return the boy he killed. That was such a nice bit of his overall character arc. Perhaps that's a...

Thanks for the replies, all! I like where this is going, a "jury-rigging" or "MacGyver" ability. MarkB, that's an excellent start, though it'll need to be streamlined and modified to be more 5E-like. (For starters, I'd probably drop the skill check and just require a certain length of time.) I'll try and take a stab at it myself later this weekend (not happening right now), but if anyone else wants to develop this further... As a sidenote, in this situation, I could see Use Magic Device sticking around as a feat. Mainly because feats are supposed to represent an unusual or exceptional talent (as opposed to UMD being something any Thief can do).

Its a Cleric/Tiefling spell, not a Wizard spell, although if the wizard is a Tiefling, Multiclass Cleric, or has a feat that allows him to take a Cleric cantrip he can use it. MarkB good list.

Wow, that reply was a long time coming. I don't even remember what an Empyrean is. ... a creature who's mastered thread necromancy? :confused:

The Empyrean is a spellcaster. Why would it need a variant that is a spellcaster? I meant class spells, not a handful of innate spells.

One of the Way of Four Elements monk's major weaknesses is that it doesn't get enough ki points to power its abilities. If you're tacking on another subclass as well, you'll burn through them even faster.Exactly. I'm flabbergasted one could think any class could get better by being saddled with Four Elements!

That's easy. Summon the Djinn, and command her "Perform your appointed task!", then watch. Clever. Risky as heck, but clever!

Rogue One had barely a Sith cameo, and it was excellent. It certainly wouldn't have failed as a story if they'd dropped Vader entirely. It was a bad film. Lame story full of plot holes and cardboard cute out characters. And unnecessary. Like Solo's backstory.

Rogue One had barely a Sith cameo, and it was excellent. It certainly wouldn't have failed as a story if they'd dropped Vader entirely. Rogue One performed better than expected. Expectations were lower and it exceeded them. It also did a lot better in its opening weekend. Numbers are also low for Solos second weekend and it's projected to get less than 450 million which is actually a loss. That 450 expectation might be optimistic numbers are very low weekend 2.

And then she simply did a six-foot vertical leap, and came down with the bat in her jaws. Impressive and tragic all at the same time. And, here I must note to our US readers - in North America, rabies is endemic in bats. If your pet has been exposed (like, say, by biting a bat) take them to a veterinarian *immediately*. Better yet, do not let your animal come in contact with bats.

What about monks? Are they considered armed?I'd think the answer to that would be self evident, but yes. Same with creatures with natural weapons, brawling feats, and bad BO.

What about monks? Are they considered armed? I thought they already were. It worked that way in Pathfinder, at least...

Yeah, but that takes place literally days or weeks before Episode IV. They're not going to go that up-to-date in a "young Han Solo" movie series - the kid looks sort-of like he could grow up to be Harrison Ford, but he's not going to pull off being Han as we see him in the original trilogy. Do we know that though? That is not something I have ever assumed, I am not saying that time frame is wrong, but I can't take it as gospel either. All I am supposing, is that Han goes to work for Jabba, and perhaps he works for the Hutt for a while, becoming a known smuggler. Presumably he works for others too, but maybe he starts the Han and Chewy show out with someone on Tatooine. Where, my guess would be Jabba, or even Jabba's father or something.

I've been considering the facing rule in my game because my setting has centuars who can spend a reaction to kick a foe that passes behind them. Maturally, you'd need to know where the centuar PC's equine behindus was facing to make this realistic. After a bit of thought I came to the conclusion that combatants are constantly jockeying about in the combat space they've been given, and that facing in D&D is really more effor than it's worth. I've recently been playing a lot of Battletech (the recent videogame version), which is turn-based and features facing heavily as a tactical component. It works really well in that game, but that's mainly because it emphasises the nature of the combatants as massive, cumbersome walking tanks. It doesn't feel so appropriate when applied to an agile monk or rogue. I agree. Facing in Battletech makes an immense amount of sense, and it plays right into the flavor of a giant walking tank game.

8-sided d4s are a similarly practical solution to the caltrops of doom. I prefer the 12 sided d4s. 97889

The way I envision the Fey is that they are often fascinated by the lives of mortals, but never concerned about them. Essentially, within the Feywild there's this pervasive life force that flows through everything - the plants, the animals, even the land itself has a level of consciousness. And any true Fey can sense this, and to them it's what defines a creature as being truly alive. If something or someone lacks that, as all denizens of the material plane do, then they're just a fascinatingly intricate kind of pseudo-life. As a result, they view mortals as the equivalent of soap opera characters or videogame NPCs. A Fey might become immensely obsessed with the fortunes of a particularly fascinating mortal, might be highly invested in their success or failure - but ultimately they 'know' that this isn't a 'real' person, and the idea of having to be concerned for their well-being of treat them with kindness simply wouldn't occur to them. OMG... Faerie's treating us like Waifus......

How about this: The target is subjected to the spell with no saving throw and becomes Restrained. They then need to make Constitution saves at the end of each of their turns. Successful saves progress their condition from Restrained to Slowed to free of the spell. Failed saves progress their condition from Restrained to Paralysed to Petrified. The spell ends when they become either freed or petrified. I like that idea. Maybe instead of slowed though I would just make their speed zero, that is simpler.

... to allow, for instance, every record of a specific individual to be removed without screwing up the database. On my forum I can remove every post and attachment by a user in a few clicks, it's just a cosmetically polished phpBB. From reading the FAQ for the GDPR, it seems fairly vague in that logging user name and IP address is illegal? Or could be looked at as so, that is some troublingly vague language there.

Nah, it's just "walk into trap, breeze through the saving throws thanks to Aura of Awesome, fix up the few minor scrapes with some mutual laying-on-hands, wonder what all the fuss was about." Paladins see no need to disarm their opponent before combat, whether living or mechanical. You keep using that word, "awesome." I do not think you are aware that the proper word is "smug." Despite the perfidy of paladins, the two words are not synonyms.

Nah, it's just "walk into trap, breeze through the saving throws thanks to Aura of Awesome, fix up the few minor scrapes with some mutual laying-on-hands, wonder what all the fuss was about." Rocks fall. Everyone dies. Everyone, that is, except the Paladins, because Aura of Awesome, and a few rogues who Evaded, a few Druids who were in Wildshape, a few Barbarians who happened to be Raging at the time, Mages with clones, and so forth. We then avenge everyone else, possibly starting by smashing the rocks into sand while the mages and rogues investigate why the rocks fell.

If the DM gets an idea in his head for a campaign setting that really resonates with him, but the players either aren't interested or just don't really grok the concept that he's going for, that's just going to be an exercise in frustration for everyone concerned. And sometimes the answer is going to be "get different players", but sometimes it may simply be to put that special project on the back-burner until you can develop it more, get player buy-in, or find a different crowd to run it with - and meanwhile, keep playing with the friends you have, and running something they can have fun playing. Or write that novel that's obviously begging to be written :D

For some DMs it's not about the setting, or even the storyline. Just as you suggest players creating stories within the interstital spaces of the campaign lore, some DMs - some of them good ones - like to spin their narrative out of the backgrounds and interactions of the characters. And they will be fully invested in those narratives, no less so for the fact that they came up with most of them on-the-fly based upon a few off-hand remarks and character interactions rather than planning them meticulously in advance. And if they know that's what they're ultimately going to be doing for most of the campaign, then they're really not going to be too concerned about nailing down its starting point. Yes, but that isn't different from what I'm saying. To use your example, would a DM who is comfortable with extemporaneous storytelling poll his players and say, "Hey, we could either have this awesome campaign that starts in the city of Yeasand ... or we could just do a railroady adventure path I...

It's somewhere on a continuum between those concepts. Some of the games I've played have been very close to one end, others have been very close to the other. Not even with different groups, or different campaigns, in all cases. Sometimes it's just a matter of the mood and tone on that particular night. Interesting. I would say ... no. If you get together on a regular (semi-regular?) basis with friends to do something social, you are doing that thing. Even if it involves drinking, and talking, and having fun. Because those other things are collateral to the "thing." If you get together with a group of friends to play soccer, or golf, for example, even if you have a good time and you're drinking and talking, that's still not a party. If you get together with a group of friends every week to have dinner and drinks and then watch a movie and discuss it afterwards, that's not a party either. Heck, if you have a weekly bookclub where you get sloshed ... not a party. I would s...