Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

We generally use these sorts of topics as general D&D/RPG topics above and beyond their actual initial purpose, so here's a question for everyone just because I was bored and sort of thinking about the idea.


Let's say you were going to play in a 5e D&D game, and the DM told you that the premise for their game was that every player would play a dual class character. You'd start the game at level 2, taking the first level of two separate classes, and with each successive level up, you'd have to choose one of those two classes to level (but you also have to keep them balanced, so every time you level one, you have to level the other next level up - basically, you'd pick one of your classes every odd level, and the other would get leveled up every even level).

The DM suggests that they'd LIKE you to choose two classes for story reasons and combine them to make an interesting roleplaying character concept (like, say, making a Fighter/Mage who is a combat battlemage or a Cleric/Paladin who is a militant church-knight for their god), and not just power game and choose two classes that synergize best for optimal combat utility mechanically, but they can't straight up stop you from being a filthy munchkin if that's what you really want to do.

Given the traditional starting classes to choose from
(Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard), which two would you choose to combine, and what would your overall character concept be?


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I_Abibde posted...

the game shop had received a trade of a very old copy of Ironclaw (i.e. the tabletop RPG for furries)

Reminded me of a time long ago and far away, when this was a thing and I almost kinda-sorta played it, except none of the people involved could maintain their interest past the character creation phase:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_%26_Other_Strangeness

Which in retrospect is kind of a shame. Because that happened during a period when one of my friends was actively trying to get into GMing games (because up to that point, I was the one running 99% of the games anyone was playing in our immediate area), but he kept picking game systems that everyone thought were terrible (either because the system itself was bad, or because the setting was meh, or whatever), so none of his games ever really got off the ground and he eventually stopped trying.

Had he succeeded, he might have established himself as a good GM and run games that I could actually have PLAYED in (rather than almost always being the GM myself), and I might be more comfortable as "just a player" today. Instead, because so much of my RP has always been me as the one running things, I always feel a bit out of my comfort zone when I step down and let someone else take the reins.

Then again, that friend sort of became an asshole to everyone about six years later anyway, so it might not have mattered much in the long run.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

I'll say. It normally takes me at least 45 minutes to properly think out and make a character limit post, and you made four of them.

I write stream of consciousness. It probably takes me about 10-15 minutes of typing to max out a post.

Normally, I basically start typing and then don't stop until I get to the end, then I have to go back and break up one massive post into however many it takes to get it all posted within GameFAQs character limits.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

(I have now officially spent WAY too much time thinking about unicorns).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

OH, also also:

As much as I know how you LOATHE Alignment (and I assume you probably don't really use it in games you run), I might work it into a unicorn demihuman character class if I were making one.

ie, unicorns are inherently Good creatures (and potentially exclusively Chaotic Good, because they represent the purity of nature, as opposed to the imposed morality of civilization), so a PC who goes around murdering people or doing terrible things and basically acting "out of alignment" would, in a metaphysical sense in-game, be "losing touch with their unicorn nature". In essence, they would be allowing the "human world" to corrupt them, as they gave in to their baser nature and lost their moral balance.

The upshot of which could be that they might find it harder and harder to shift out of human form into unicorn form (and if they fully "Fell" Paladin style, they might be permanently trapped as a human forever, with potential prerequisite need to start over as a level 1 human Fighter or Rogue), or they might start taking "alignment penalties" to their unicorn powers (a la Light Side/Dark Side Force penalties in KotOR). The ability to cause awe might fade, they might start "weakening" (ie, losing spell slots), or whatever else works in tandem with how the build was designed. But basically, the less pure and unicorn-y you are, the less of a unicorn you are.

Physically, it could even be reflected in ways like having the horn and hooves start to "tarnish", or the coat and mane start to "fade", growing greyer or more grungy-looking (or almost mangy) to symbolize the loss of innocence/purity. Or maybe in pure unicorn form the unicorn actually smells like a fresh spring breeze or sweet morning dew, but as they lose their purity they just smell more and more like a real horse (and start drawing flies).

Ultimately, I'd treat it like a Paladin Falling, giving the player a chance to notice the degradation in advance and potentially correct it, but also give them a chance to atone or redeem themselves later if it happens so they can regain their true nature. But if the player either doesn't want to make the effort or simply doesn't care, they'd eventually get hit with the hammer of mundanity, and lose their legendary nature entirely.

Bonus points if a unicorn's "Fall" also involves a slow fading of memory, so after a time (whether it be rapidly, or over a longer period of time) they eventually forget they were ever a unicorn in the first place. To them, they were always human, never special, and a little more light goes out of the world forever.

Conversely, if it's a setting where "hellicorns" or other Neutral/Evil unicorn breeds exist, perhaps the lost of morality and the tainting of unicorn purity is what ultimately leads into a hard transformation into one of those types. Rather than powers growing weaker and appearance growing "impure", the unicorn actually starts to darker and their powers slowly begin to shift to reflect their more amoral or sinister nature.



Also also also!

While writing all of this, it occurred to me that I keep writing "human" as the unicorn's alternate form, but really, there's no reason why a unicorn couldn't choose a different race to manifest as (but maybe this should be set permanently at the time of their "First Change", and determined by whichever race it is they encountered that made them want to take on mortal form in the first place). So you could potentially have an elf-unicorn centaur, or a dwarficorn, or whatever.

Though if a girl player decided to make an elf-unicorn, I feel like the twee levels would shoot so far off the charts the entire universe would explode in a massive fireball of giggles and glitter. So that might be a bad idea unless the player is VERY mature.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Also also as a side note, while writing most of that, the flip-side came to my mind that if there's a magical unicorn girl PC, there's always the possibility of antagonistic unicorn NPC enemies that get all the same benefits and can screw the party over, so creating this class isn't necessarily the bestest thing ever for your PCs.

Whether as a straight-up mirror with a "good" unicorn that is either deluded, a bit of a well-intentioned extremist, or who sees the world in a completely different light (possibly a nature-based, dark druid, fuck all humans one), or as a "dark" version where you have an "evil" unicorn type (almost certainly black-hued, with optional flame-motifs) with mostly the same abilities only flipped (to continue the oldschool D&D Cleric riff, if your unicorn has the Heal spell and Cure Poison, then the evilcorn has Harm and Poison), it could make a nasty enemy for PCs to deal with.

As a side-note, I once had an "evil unicorn" character in a game I ran - it was a White Wolf game (of course), where the players were Dark Ages characters in a really complicated dual campaign (I was running two interrelated games in two different places with two different groups, and the actions of one group affected the world for the other group, and vice-versa). The one group (with two vampires and one mage) wound up accidentally falling into the Underworld, and for a while they were basically sailing around on a ghost ship through the Tempest.

Because the Tempest was so chaotic (and because I owned the sourcebook that references it), I was deliberately random-rolling encounters for them as they traveled between locations (something I almost never do in any game), and I wound up rolling a "Legendary", which is basically a sort of spirit being that takes on the form of some magical creature of myth and legend, and I used a different WW book (the one that lists/stats out a bunch of magical creatures of myth and legend) to random roll and came up with a unicorn.

But I figured that an actual "unicorn" unicorn would be thematically inappropriate for the bleak shadowy tainted underworld of the World of Darkness, so I basically painted it black and made it less "pure and good" and more "amoral as fuck". She could shapechange between human and unicorn form, and traveled with them for a while as a dark-haired gothy-looking woman who would occasionally help them when she could be bothered but who didn't seem overly concerned over whether or not they all got themselves killed (but she was more concerned than she seemed, because she was secretly scheming to help them find the gateway back to the material world so she could sneak through it with them and escape the underworld). Also, she was a bit snippy and acerbically sarcastic.

I used to refer to her as the "hellicorn", though she was less "hell"-ish in the classical sense (no flames, brimstone, or evil) as much as she was more reminiscent of how D&D handles the Shadowfell (because D&D's Shadowfell and WW's Underworld/Dark Umbra are pretty similar in a lot of ways) - dark, shadowy, broodingly ethereal, with a tendency towards decaying architecture and death-motifs, etc.

Though I could easily see someone make a literal hellicorn that is more like the Magic: the Gathering card "Nightmare", complete with flaming mane and hooves and flesh-eating tendencies as a full-on Evil creature. Sort of like contrasting the Paladin versus the Blackguard.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Person106 posted...

It means the horsey would have pretty pastel legs, like the magical unicorn Twilight Sparkle.

That's just a My Little Pony thing, though.

99.44% of the time, when you're dealing with unicorns in fiction, they're going to be pure white. So she'd probably have to be a centaur with all white horse parts, and likely long flowing white hair (or at least really pale blonde) on her head.

Depending on the interpretation, she might also have weird eyes, because some people give unicorns eyes that look more like a goat than a horse, while others go full on prissy fancy Mary Sue fae and go with violet eyes or some other anime rainbow color that immediately marks it out as unnatural. It's actually very rare that someone draws a unicorn as having normal "horse" eyes, so presumably they wouldn't translate into normal human eyes either (which would mostly just make you a brown-eyed girl in human form for the closest horse-analogue).

Which again ties into the whole "people will hunt you" thing - it's hard to hide what you are when you're a woman with shock-white hair and neon-violet eyes even in human form. People are going to REMEMBER you, and they're going to instinctively know that something is off about you. And when that hunter fellow rides into town a week from now, they're going to tell him exactly which direction they saw you leave town in, or remember that they overheard you and your friends mention where you were planning to go...



Side-note, that reminds me of something else. I could make a case for unicorn PCs having either a Charisma bonus or penalty as part of their design. In lore, unicorns tend to have a sort of aura of majesty, which could potentially be used to awe humans into inaction or obedience (or worship). But the idea of a monster in human form that is absolutely unnaturally DIFFERENT is the sort of thing that creeps out your average normal citizen NPC in even the most magical of fantasy worlds, so that might make it harder for you to win them over in conversations.

Could even split the difference - maybe you gain a Charisma bonus to non-magical humans or other "normal" people when you're in unicorn form (but this is counterbalanced by the fact that you can't speak common and basically have to get your point across entirely via graceful gestures), but in your human form you suffer Charisma penalties because people instinctively know there's something wrong with you and dislike/distrust you for it.

Or could go even more complicated, and rule that you get penalties to persuade in human form because you creep people out but gain bonuses to intimidate because you creep people out. Unicorn form could be the reverse of that (because your calming majesty and awe makes it hard to dislike/fear you), or could just be a straight bonus to unicorn form mitigated by the inability to talk (and I'd rule that spells that allow you to talk or extremely complicated/non-graceful gestures or attempts to write/etc break the awe and you lose the bonus).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

Welp, my gf is now super into the idea of playing a centar, but replace the horse bits with unicorn bits.
Great.

That's not necessarily a terrible concept. Unless she's a full-on glitter and rainbows unicorn fetishist.

I'd probably work it mechanically as an actual unicorn that can shape-change (because they can usually do that in the mythology), then sort of go the White Wolf route (because I go the White Wolf route as often as possible) and have her work like a Garou - ie, she can shift between full on horse/unicorn form, normal human form, and an in-between were-unicorn form where she's basically a centaur.

Then you have it where her horn is a full, large horn in unicorn form, it retracts down to a smaller nubbin in her cross form, and it disappears entirely while in human form (because the whole point of that form is to be disguised).

Depending on my mood, I might even give her a few other "traditional" unicorn abilities, like magic resistance (which is a door that swings both ways, since it would limit healing and buff magic cast on her as well as harmful magic), with the strength of the effect based on the current size of her horn (so most resistant as a unicorn, none as a human, medium as a centaur). Limited healing magic or "purify water" type spells/abilities might work as well, as would some form of Detect Good/Evil (since unicorns only appear to the pure of heart, etc etc). I'd probably do a deep dive on the lore to see if there's anything I'm forgetting, and work it in, or add anything else that seems to make sense (like, say, ruling that her hooves count as magical footwear for purposes of resisting floor-based element or magic damage, or having her horn be a +X weapon that she can use for charge attacks and have it level up in strength as she levels).

(Basically, I'd probably build Uni-taur as a unique race/character class combo, wherein the player has to forgo picking a specific class to gain the demihuman advantages. So you can't multiclass Wizard to gain Magic Missile, but each level up makes you slightly more incrementally powerful as you slowly grow into your unicorn powers from unicorn adolescence. I'd probably work the build around Cleric/Druid as a base, then jump off from there and try to balance as well as I can.)

The flip-side of this is that unicorns should be relatively rare and hard to find even in a D&D-ish fantasy world, and it should pretty much be a given that there are going to be plenty of people of Evil alignment who would want to hunt them for sport, so the more blatant she is about assuming unicorn form (or even centaur form) where people can see, the more people are going to know the general area to look for her (or at least start putting together the clues to track her down over time), and the party will have to start dealing with stronger and stronger assassins, evil rangers, and the like coming to kill them.

Worse once you throw in wizards or evil nobles who really, REALLY want a unicorn horn (because they're usually portrayed as powerful talismans, or as superlative alchemy ingredients if you're willing to grind one into powder and use it in a mixture), it can become a real pain in the ass to BE a shape-changing unicorn, but also to travel WITH one - so the party may not be entirely happy with her. And if she's actually ROLE-playing and not ROLL-playing, there's also the potential for angst due to the fact that she's basically an outcast in two worlds - other unicorns shun her because she's too interested in/tainted by the human world, while she can never entirely relate to humans (and vice-versa) because she's essentially a monster (a pretty, "good" one, but a "monster" in D&D terms nonetheless).

Other weaknesses can factor in as well (again, look into the lore) to help balance the OP issues.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

I need to figure out exactly how this assassination on the NPC the players are supposed to be protecting is going to go down.

Do it old school ninja style.

While they're guarding the NPC, three people show up blatantly looking like assassins. All-black, leather straps everywhere, covered in knives, veiled faces, the works. They basically show up, kind of spread out, and generally draw the PCs' attention and focus, and ideally, the PCs immediately rush them to attack (and if they do, the assassins dart away down a nearby hallway/alley/etc).

And then the little old lady who runs the nearby fruit stand/is a drudge servant in the castle/etc hobbles up and shanks the NPC because that's how actual assassins work. Look as inconspicuous as possible, cause a distraction, do your job and slip the fuck away before anyone notices, blend into the crowd.

Bonus points if the real assassin just slips the NPC poisoned food or shoots a poisoned blow-dart at them from a balcony because the best assassins are never seen, period.

Double bonus points if the actual assassin is a pixie that flies into the victim's window in the middle of the night and pours poison into his ear while he's sleeping, because then you're basically using the character I was going to play as a PC years ago, and I'll be happy.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

Well, Stone to Flesh, I can't really think of anything where you would consistently need it.

If your DM is a dick and is constantly throwing gorgons and basilisks at you, you might need it fairly often.

But even way back in the day, when you were forced to choose a limited number of spells per level in Final Fantasy, the "Soft" spell usually got the axe for not being useful enough compared to other alternatives at its level, in spite of there being areas in the late-game where you could pretty much be Petrified to death by half a dozen enemies per turn (at least until you manage to equip the Ribbon). And D&D tends to be way more forgiving than that (and way more creative with the ways it can insta-kill you at higher levels).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

But honestly, yeah, that's always been a problem in D&D (and most systems where you can "choose" your level ups, honestly) - there are always going to be spells which are pretty much "must have", and spells which almost no one is ever going to take of their own free will, because they're sub-optimal as fuck at best, and utterly pointless or self-destructive at worst.

Generally speaking, you'll only see those spells get used if a given player a) likes them for flavor reasons, and are willing to "handicap" themselves for style, or b) the player figures out a devious spell combo (like, say, Polymorph/Disintegrate) and abuses them in ways most people don't think of.

The same holds true for Magic: the Gathering - if you play on the more competitive scene, you'll notice a lot of decks have similar themes, and people are always scrambling to make decks that are basically just copies of last year's winners. Though the developers have admitted that they actively create shitty cards sometimes solely to see if players can come up with creative or interesting ways to use them in combos.

I'd say you probably shouldn't be trying to think of ways to "force" players into using more uncommon spells if they don't want to. If you're really hung up on the idea of seeing players be more creative, provide a positive example - say, have a more powerful NPC use a particular spell combo or otherwise make them WANT to be able to do the same thing once they're that strong themselves. Or have a villain use those "weaker" spells against THEM. If you can make the spells seem more worthwhile, players are more likely to take them. But if they've only got two open spell slots and there are already at least two spells that are considered "must have", no one's going to want to "waste" that much potential on something they don't see as being all that worth having.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

Like Stone to Flesh is a super weird, super powerful spell.

What can I do, as a GM, to promote players to use these weird ass spells? Other than just wrecking any sort of spellcaster while doing that.

Constantly attack them with stone golems until one of them gets a very twisted idea.





To be fair, Stone to Flesh really isn't supposed to be an offensive sort of spell, it's meant to be the "antidote" to Flesh to Stone-type spells or Medusa/Basilisk-type effects.

Though if you ever want to see a bit of odd spell interaction, with spells being used in ways contrary to their original intent (including an odd use of Stone to Flesh), read Crewel Lye by Piers Anthony. You might glean some inspiration from it (or you might not).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

This one is my issue.

That's what I mean! You're the GM - you're not allowed to have issues! There is important RP business to get done!


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Cancel? Psssht!

My players once harassed me into driving to one of their houses during an ice storm about two weeks after I'd had my gall bladder removed, where simply walking from one place to another took most of my physical effort and concentration, and left me busted out in a cold sweat.

If you can run/make it to a game, you'd better be dead!


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

I especially agree on the not just rolling up stats and playing though. It takes me at least a few days for me to come up with a character I want to play. Since I play Pathfinder, I want mechanical things to suit that character's personality. Sometimes, I find a neat archetype or prestige class that makes me come up with a great character, and that's just the best for me.

That's one of the nice things about some games, where they have "Adventure Paths" or "Heritage Tables" where you can randomly generate backstory to help give you ideas for a character, or games that allow for "Quirks" or the like that give you personality traits that aren't handled mechanically as much as narratively. Or even games like Fate where you basically have Aspects that help define you as an archetypal character more than just a collection of stats.

Back when I used to make a ton of NPCs for games, I used to trawl fashion model sites online for pictures, then basically build an entire personality around a random person's appearance. From there you could easily start to establish the more mechanistic aspects of a character based on WHO that person was to you. Some people do things like draw a predetermined number of Tarot cards and allowing the meaning or imagery of each card to inspire ideas about what sort of character they're crafting.

And yes, some people can just start from "I want to DPS so I'll play a Rogue, I'll make them an elf for the stat boosts, I'll give them these abilities because I think they'll be useful in play, and now I will slowly begin to craft a backstory to justify all of those things." Even if that's never really been MY bag.



Mario_VS_DK posted...

Yeah, people can be flaky. But I'm sure it's like that in real life too. You just need to find a group of people who can consistently make it. You probably won't always get it on the first try, or even the second... But if you hang in there and keep looking for people who will consistently show up on time, eventually you'll find a group to play with.

Oh, I agree. The problem is more that PotD in general seems to encourage a more unstable recruiting pool than your average attempt to establish online RP games. Vastly different time-zones, the fickleness of interest (since we're not on an RPG-focused site as much as we are a video game site where some people like the idea of RP), differing skill levels, technical issues, and the general burn-out of organizing an online game tends to kill attempts faster than it would on an RPG-centric site (or real-life).



Mario_VS_DK posted...

I've been picky though and only joining groups I think are good. So maybe, that's why I've been lucky.

I have as well (for the most part - I've been in bad groups from time-to-time).

Which is another reason why I have no real interest in heading to NYC to RP-beg my way into one group or another or put my ad in the Nerd Personals in an attempt to find a local group to glom onto. I've been kind of spoiled by good groups in the past (most of which were friends who wanted to have fun and thus ran a game rather than strangers who wanted to play and thus maybe became friends later), so I don't really feel like putting in the effort to go trawling for a local group at this point in my life (especially when attempts to do so on the past usually never panned out).

Sort of the same reason why, in spite of enjoying Magic: the Gathering and not really getting a lot of chances to play it lately, I don't really feel like going to a local store and playing in tournaments or trying to find other players. I don't love the game as much as I love the idea of playing games with people I already know and like.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

I suppose I can understand that. I feel like it really makes a game more spontaneous and fun when you're using a mic. I roleplayed quite a bit on a forum a while back, and that was fun, but I also think that it's more fun to do it with mics.

The flip-side is that text-only can make it easier for some players to be more immersive. The same player who feels self-conscious as fuck about saying "Forsooth! Let us tarry in yon drinking establishment on this fine spring evening!" might be far more comfortable simply typing it.

That being said, there's always some balance between extremes. In my older days of heavy forum RP the standard practice for a lot of us was to post actions, descriptions, and dialogue in a specific chat client (SeaChat, if I remember correctly? Maybe not...), but we'd also use AIM (either text-only or mic'd) to discuss OOC stuff or ask game-related questions that would affect the scene.

Which made it relatively easy to export scenes as document files that could be read by anyone after the fact without a ton of dice rolls or game mechanic cruft, so even non-players could read it like a story and enjoy it for the narrative alone.



Mario_VS_DK posted...

I mean, there are players who feel really feel the need to talk, but I've found that they are far and between, and if you actually talk to them about it, they're pretty understanding and willing to quiet down a bit so the other players can get a chance to talk.

For in-person games I think it's more indicative of other issues, but in a purely online scenario, I think the problem is the reduced number of social cues and problems caused by lag and delay. People can wind up talking over each other without meaning to, and just casual table talk can become a problem.

It's not insurmountable, and it's not something that ruins live-mic RP entirely, but it's just one of the factors that can add up to problems if other things are also piling up.



Mario_VS_DK posted...

I think I ran into more problems with cross talking in forums than I have with voice chats. Always from same time posts, or people typing a lengthier post and not hitting refresh before they hit submit.

The difference there is that you can still READ cross-talked posts, whereas if two people talk over each other you may miss what someone says entirely, and more passive players may back down rather than reassert what they wanted to say.

Again, not saying this is a specific reason why one style is terrible while the other is great - both styles have pluses and minuses. If anything, I tend to feel like it's just a matter of personal preference more than anything.

(That being said, as per earlier, cross-talk and similar problems CAN be avoided easily in a forum-based game simply by coordinating via a chat client or in PMs or even just keeping OOC talk to a different forum. Or keeping it to the same forum, but deliberately formatting posts differently for OOC talk and IC actions.)


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

*cough cough*
That's because you put too much backstory in
*cough cough*

No, that's what happens when you're told one thing and plan your character around it, only for something entirely different (and opposite) to take place.

It wouldn't have been any different if I'd decided to make a Cleric character with no backstory only to discover Nudo's core setting premise (which was that the world was sealed away from the rest of the universe, so there were no gods and resurrection magic didn't really work properly), or if I'd decided to make an elf character based on standard D&D elves only for him to tell me after the game started that in his setting, elves were actually squat 3ft tall humanoids who don't have magic and who live in caves.

Or if I'd asked him if it was okay for me to make a Pathfinder Gunslinger character, and he said absolutely, only for him to tell me after we started playing that gunpowder doesn't actually work in his setting so none of my abilities work. Or if I made a Ravenloft-flavored character but played them in Planescape.

There are certain implicit things you NEED to know when creating a character, and I consider tone to be one of the more important ones. It helps make a lot of concept, narrative, and stat choices for you, and even if you're trying to be as agnostic about your character as you possibly can ("Okay, I'm a level 1 Wizard but I woke up in the back of a cart with amnesia 20 minutes before the first session starts so I know literally nothing about my personality or backstory"), what the world is like and what the tone/genre of the game is going to be will make a fair number of decisions for you (and will give you problems if dissonance kicks in later). And it's the GM's job to TELL players what to expect. Don't tell me we're playing LotR and then run CoC.

My question was "What's the tone?", and that affected how I made the character, but if I didn't know anything about who the character was and where they came from until multiple sessions in, I wouldn't have been able to play them anyway. They'd have been stats on a page with no personality (and without a seed, they never would have developed one, either).

And it's not even as if this was a huge problem (though talking about it in depth makes it seem like it was) - making a new character that better fit the tone wasn't all THAT difficult (and it wasn't even disruptive - it's not as if my first character was crucial to the plot, and Nudo had deliberately made the setting so that PCs could shuffle in and out whenever). It really only became a problem integrating the new character because Roll20 kept dumping me every other week, and then you guys were in the middle of the wilderness for like three weeks so it didn't make sense to bring a new character into the middle of the scene (and again, it wasn't worth being disruptive about it when there was only a 30% chance Roll20 was going to let me play anyway).



shadowsword87 posted...

Don't act like I didn't see you skipping out on giving a legitimate reason why you can't use a mic like a normal person by the way.

"Because I don't like being mic'd" is a perfectly legitimate reason even if you damned young'uns can't comprehend the concept.

Just because you filthy millennials live your lives on Facebook and the Twitters and love voice-chat in your MMOs and FPSes and post all your private pics to Snapchat and Instagram and so on doesn't mean that someone born in the 1970s is going to see all of those things in the same light.

And no, it's not even because I have a terrible squeeky voice or anything - I HAVE been on mic (against my will), and there are about three PotDers (past and present) who've heard my voice. I just don't LIKE using mics. Personal bias.


---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

All that being said, I am ABSOLUTELY capable of having a character's personality change organically through play (ie, a terrible racist winds up in a group with an elf and a dwarf and, through experience, learns to respect them and be less racist, or a wide-eyed idealist slowly becomes more practical and maybe a bit cynical after enduring constant hardship), and I'm more than willing to pre-establish connections with other players or the GM before play starts (I'm not a prima-donna who demands only my personal story be told while every other player is merely my supporting cast - players who think that way are assholes). I acknowledge that players should make more than a passing attempt to make characters who are at least potentially team-players (because otherwise, why are you in the group?), and that players who make deliberately disruptive iconoclasts are generally kind of assholes. But you can be a cooperative and accommodating player and STILL write a lot of personal backstory.

(Which, incidentally, is WHY I asked Nudo a ton of questions about his setting and what various cultures were like before making a character. I wanted to make sure my character "fit" in his world, and that he didn't have to radically change things - or have him try and force me to change things - to make things work. I see the world through GM eyes far more than I do PC eyes, so I'm always inclined to try and cooperate with the GM as much as possible.)

I'm also more than capable of retconning motivation and backstory of NPCs when I'm GM, because that's an entirely different situation for me. A revolving collection of supporting cast don't need to be as firmly established as the single person you're (hopefully) going to be playing for months or weeks to come.



shadowsword87 posted...

PotD actually is just an especially bad pool to pull from in terms of setting up.

For multiple reasons.

Even aside from the scheduling problems, you have the problem of people with radically different levels of skill, different levels of enthusiasm (ie, the difference between the person who shows up for the game and that's it, versus the person who plays the game and then spends 14 hours a week posting about it in the designated topic and constantly obsessing about their character and the story), and creative disagreements of every flavor (like which D&D edition/Pathfinder to use, or whether a game's setting should be fantasy or sci-fi, whether resurrection should be simple or exceedingly difficult, and so on).



shadowsword87 posted...

That's because I imagine you have my dad's first computer, with a whole 5MB of RAM.

I'd never deny that my PC is a relic (mostly because you don't need a PC gaming capable rig when you're adamantly against the entire idea of PC gaming as a whole). But it wasn't actually THAT old/obsolete at the time we were playing (which was like five years ago, remember!).

Though also keep in mind that Roll20 ran like shit on my brand new laptop just as much as it did my PC (if anything, it ran better on the PC) in spite of literally nothing else online giving me a fraction of the problems (for either platform). And Roll20 WAS a relatively new-ish program at the time (it was amateur-developed and only a few months out of initial release), and other people had problems with it as well (even if mine were pretty clearly the worst). It may actually be perfect now (not that I'd know, because I'm too biased to ever want to try using it again at this point), but at the time, it was still kind of a mess.

That being said, part of the problem was that there weren't really any good alternatives to it, either. The idea of an "active" online RPG client was relatively new, and most earlier attempts were usually worse.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

While I understand the appeal of this, I think too much can absolutely be a detriment. Every paragraph you add solidifies your character before the game actually starts, and while that can work for certain games, you can easily run into situations where you need to change the character's personality to either act as a foil to someone/everyone else, fill a void, or anything else that needs to be done on the fly.

That's part of the problem, though - at no point in my life have I ever been capable of "changing a character's personality" on the fly (nor would I even find doing so enjoyable).

I don't see the character as a collection of stats and a blank slate who gets their motivations filled in as the game goes on, and interactions between the GM and other PCs give an idea of what sort of relationship characters "need" to have to progress the story. Even when I play games like Fallout: New Vegas (where you basically start out as a soulless personality-vacuum with zero established backstory or sense of identity) I have to sort of craft at least a rudimentary framework on that character before I can enjoy the narrative.

(And to further that narrative, I will absolutely choose sub-optimal outcomes, or even make decisions that -I- personally wouldn't make, because my character WOULD. I could write radically different essays about every Shepard I've ever played in Mass Effect, in spite of every one of them starting with nothing more than a one-word "origin" and "service history". Every one of my Couriers were extremely different. And I've played Dragon Age: Origins about a dozen times over because every single character would up being different and seeing the world in a different way. Even in Skyrim or ESO, every character I play is different from the last, and WHO they are is far more important and interesting to me than what their stats or build is).

Basically, I NEED to know who a person is before I can play them, and a large part of that is knowing where they come from (even if it never really comes up as part of the game itself). I need to know how their brain works, because I haven't played "me" in a roleplaying game since 1987 or so. I can't just knee-jerk say "Well, my character does this because I would do this" - I need to understand who they are and why they do what they do. Why are they adventuring in the first place? What led them to choose whatever class they are as a life path? What terrible secrets or long-forgotten rivals might they have for the GM to mine for future plot hooks?

Because otherwise I am going to be one of the most passive characters you've ever seen, and I will sit quietly in the corner until the group as a whole says "Hey, we need the Rogue over here to unlock this door." At which point I will tell you "My Rogue goes over and unlocks the door," and then I will go back to sitting quietly in my corner. And I probably won't show up for next week's session, because I won't be having fun.

Writing tons of backstory doesn't "lock" me into anything IMO. What it actually does is give me the framework to actually play a fun and interesting character. It's the foundation that shapes who that person is (in the same way that Alignment can help tell you who a character is - come fight me). It's the programming code that tells me whether or not my PC is going to leap in to save a maiden in distress or ignore her in favor of the more lucrative dungeon delve. It's the style choice that's going to determine whether I'd rather help sneak past the bad guy or stab him in the face (and in that sense, it will also influence every stat I take during character creation).

Backstory is the wings that help me fly. Without them I'm just wriggling on the ground in the mud.


(conclusion to this point next post)


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

I'm actually the same way, but more lenient. Like if a player says, "hey, I'm not too good at the social stuff, can I get some help?" every person at the table gives suggestions, great.

Yeah, I'm not draconian about it, and I've definitely had players across all levels of self-confidence and skill-level when it comes to that sort of thing. But I do tend to try and encourage more creative behavior than simply shrugging and letting players stick in their rut.

In one game I deliberately made ridiculously over-the-top NPCs and handed them to players (ie, each player got a sheet of that NPC's overall personality and goals), and they were encouraged to play them whenever that NPC was involved in the story in some way. It led to a lot of overacting (and a lot of terrible accents - one of the NPCs basically wound up being Sean Connery while another was the French knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail), but the idea of it was to get the players to loosen up a bit with characters that "didn't matter" so they'd feel a bit more comfortable taking chances with their own characters, and I'd like to think it worked.

It also made the game a lot funnier and had the players excited any time one of the NPCs showed up because it meant a fair amount of laughs, and I could use it to relax the tone if things started to get a bit too serious.



shadowsword87 posted...

Also if the player goes, "I just want to roll a persuasion to get past the guard", I want at least some sort of angle of why it would be OK for the PCs to be allowed past the guard, most people can handle things in the abstract.

I wouldn't be adverse to saying a player can roll their Charisma/Persuasion/Social/etc to do something their character would be good at but their player might not be (in the same way I'm not entirely against players using Intelligence-type rolls to make a character smarter than they themselves are), but I do at least try to get the player to say out loud what they're roughly trying to get their character to say rather than just going "I try to convince the guard to let us in. ~roll~ Nat 20, we're in!"

If nothing else, the logic you attempt to use may effect how likely the guard is to let you in (and in 5e, can influence whether or not the DM gives you Advantage or Disadvantage on the Persuasion roll), and may effect future interactions (ie, if you lie your way into a palace by telling a guard you're the local latrine polisher, the guard may remember that in the future if you try to lie your way past the same guard claiming to be the Court Astrologer. Or you might just wind up in a Sir Gareth situation where you acquire a nickname in future interactions).

In the same sense, if I put you in a room and tell you that you have to solve a riddle to get out, and you go "No sweat, I'll just roll Intelligence and my character can solve the puzzle for me," I'm less likely to say "Okay, you succeed" than I am to sort of give you (the player) hints so you can solve it yourself, because I feel like that's way more satisfying than simple number crunching (because remember, again, I'm not a huge fan of "crunch" in general).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

PO steps down from any voice chat game, for some silly unknown reason. Even when he joined a game that had a set time, and we just typed things out.

If you mean Nudo's game, I mostly kept missing that game because Roll20 always ran like hot garbage for me. It froze and crashed multiple times almost every time we played.

The sessions where I was actually THERE were nights where Roll20 managed to only crash 2-3 times. The nights you didn't see me were usually the times when Roll20 crashed a dozen times in the first 15 minutes and I just said "Fuck this noise" and told Nudo on AIM I couldn't make it.

To be honest, I think I was online for every single session (which is more than you can say for most of the people playing in it). I just couldn't log in, so I was usually just talking to Nudo in AIM about what was going on.

I also skipped a couple weeks entirely because I'd asked Nudo what sort of tone he wanted the game to have, and he said relatively serious, so I made a serious-flavored character who didn't even remotely fit since everybody else seemed to make mostly goofy characters. Which is why I eventually dropped my first character and came up with the Dwarf Warlock (who I was actually kind of fond of, and was disappointed I never really had much of a chance to play him).

That was also why I was thinking about making the Unseelie Pixie Assassin/Evil Tinkerbell character I mentioned in Dreaming King's topic - I was considering it for Nudo's game before I went Warlock.


Though when it comes to voice chat games specifically, if I'm literally the only one not on a mic I'm more likely to drop out (or not join in the first place) mainly because I feel like it makes me the disruptive one, and I'm more or less trying to avoid making the game less fun for other people. I'd rather whoever was running the game just find someone else to take my spot who is willing to play the same way as everyone else to help keep things running smoothly. I'm not really egotistical enough to feel like the entire game should revolve around me and my preferences.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

Why exactly?

Because I'm old, and just have irrational distaste for mics and cams. It's not a "These things are objectively bad!" sort of deal as much as it is just a matter of personal preference.

It also doesn't help that I RPed online for years via forums and IM clients, so I'm always apt to immediately call bullshit when people act like you can't run a game online without voice-chat.

Generally speaking, if anyone needs to be mic'd at all, it's the GM - everyone else being audible can just create even more problems if constant crosstalk comes into play. Good players who know what they're doing and can generally read/type fast aren't going to slow things down all that much if they're text-only as opposed to on mic.



Mario_VS_DK posted...

But one of the games I play in, I hardly RP at all and leave the RPing to the more social players. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to find a group like that too.

An RPG without actual RP is pretty much the opposite of fun to me. Too many dice-rolling stat monkeys in a game makes me not want to play it.

Which is not to say that every player needs to be speaking in their character's specific voice and acting like they're in an improv theater class, but when I ran games I always expected even the meeker players to at least be "I do this," "I say this," and generally try to be a bit more immersive. You should see your character more like a character in a story than a token in a board game or a collection of optimal build stats in a video game.

That's also part of why I can't just roll up stats and start playing a character in 20 minutes - if you want me in a game you better give me a good overview of the setting and give me at least a week to come up with a character concept. Because I'm probably going to give you back multiple essays worth of backstory.



Mario_VS_DK posted...

And what exactly makes it hard to get a game running on a schedule? I will admit that there are those flaky people out there, but once drop them and you find people who actually show up on time then you're golden.

Based on PotD's previous experience attempting to run RPGs, it will take you at least a week of discussion to pin down an exact day and time when most people agree to show up to play, and even then, you're almost certainly going to lose at least a few would-be players who can't show up on that day, or who can't be there at that time (often due to time-zone differences).

Then, once you actually start RUNNING the game, about a third of your players will show up all of once or twice before informing you that they can't make it on a regular basis anymore and drop out (or they'll just stop showing up without telling you at all).

Then, after a few sessions, you'll notice you lose another player about every other week or so as stuff comes up or they decide they're not really as interested in playing anymore.

And if by some miracle you actually manage to retain enough of a playerbase to keep playing, or just keep subbing in new players constantly, the GM will probably burn out from juggling all of those plates and wind up dropping the whole thing entirely within three months.

While SOME people can absolutely establish long-running and efficient online games, PotD has NEVER been good at it.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I, too, believed such things once. But time and tide shall wear down your illusions. Inexorable fate shall claim you, as it claimed me.

The Dark Side waits for us all.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Yeah, but I'm 40. I already went through my meeting new people and hanging out in NYC phases.

Remember, I am the specter of your dark future.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

Oh I know, it's just that over the years I've realized I don't really like masturbation-RPG stuff, where people sit and think about playing RPGs rather than actually playing them.

Yeah, but to continue that metaphor, when you live in the middle of the desert alone and masturbation is really the only thing you have, then you're going to flog the hell out of it.

Though to be perfectly frank, I technically never sit around and think about RPGs. What I mostly do is sit around and think about narrative and plot and concepts that could be easily used in an RPG, but which could just as easily be in a book, in a TV show or movie, in a video game, or even in the flavor text of a collectable card game.

Or, for that matter, as part of interactive improv theater.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

Ugh PO, this is why you don't play enough games, you have ideas and not do anything with them.

I've admitted in the past that brainstorming is sort of the most fun part of games for me. Part of why I enjoy haunting RPG threads and just tossing out ideas for other people to either use, ignore, or be inspired by. I like the idea of being more of a chaotic creativity generator than I do going to the effort of hammering all that raw material into a more cohesive framework.

It's the same reason most of my attempts to write genre fiction never really went anywhere (that, and my obsessive perfectionism).

But honestly, the main reason why I play enough games is because there really isn't a strong local RPG scene near me that I'm aware of, most of my friends are older and don't have the time/interest to RP anymore, and because I refuse to RP online if people want to use mics/cams. It makes it hard to really get a game running on any realistic schedule.

But if you're talking about me mentioning the idea of a forum-based game, I DID say I was thinking about the idea, not that I was actually planning to or really wanted to. If anything, I thought I was pretty clear about the unlikelihood of it ever happening.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Ohh, and one other thing:

shadowsword87 posted...

Eh, modules are great for oneshots, I should run a few for you PO, you can see that they are pretty damn good for what they do.

If you did, you'd have to run them as a freeform forum game where we post in turns, because I don't see it happening any other way.

That being said, I was actually thinking about potentially offering to maybe run a freeform forum game just yesterday (I had a ton of free time to think about inane stuff while changing a flat tire), but I know you sort of sounded disgusted the last time the idea even came up in passing. And I have no idea what I'd even run anyway. Or if I'd even realistically have enough time to run it at this point (ie, the same reason I stopped running Mafia games forever ago).



(You're also too young to remember when I actually DID run a forum-post RPG on PotD with a homebrew system and about a dozen or so players, which mostly petered out because too many players/scenes + lack of free time = burn out, but that was a thing at one point. I'm not sure there's anyone still LEFT on PotD who was a part of it at the time, though. And I'm not sure if I ever archived my notes for it or if they got eaten in some hard drive crash or another at some point.)


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

You might just be used to DnD and WoD ones which are notoriously awful.

Possibly, though keep in mind I own like two dozen different RPG systems and a lot of books that go with them, and that includes a fair number of adventure modules.

Personally, I just tend to like the whole Seed/Adventure Hook concept (a la GURPS or L5R/7th Sea) much better than full modules.

For example, in L5R they have Adventure Hooks, which are broken down into a Challenge, a Focus, and a Strike. The Challenge is basically just a paragraph or two summary of the situation as-is, the Focus is the developing plot, and the Strike is the resolution (ie, how the characters respond). So you might have a Hook which is basically "Challenge: A samurai lord is accused of a crime, and is ordered to commit seppuku, Focus: The players discover a clue that leads them to believe the samurai may be innocent, Strike: The players have until the end of the day to gather enough evidence to prove the samurai's innocence before he commits seppuku.

Then it's left in the hands of the players how to respond - do they actively seek to prove the samurai's innocence? Do they remain silent because they consider the samurai a rival, and want to see him fall? Do they go one step farther, and actively seek out evidence to HIDE it so that no one else can save him, or to potentially use later to blackmail whoever it was who framed him? Or do they just shrug and not care because the samurai isn't an NPC they care about and doesn't really help their own preexisting plans? (And if you're willing to allow PC division, what happens if SOME players want to save him while others want to screw him over?)

How the players react to the Hook changes based on what the players want to do, and because it's a self-contained nugget you can use it as a springboard for other plot hooks later. If the players save the samurai, perhaps the person who was trying to frame him now consider THEM enemies, and may attempt to frame (or kill) them. Or perhaps the samurai himself will reward them in some way. Maybe he'll invite the PCs into his castle, where they will meet NPCs such as his daughter or a rival swordsman who will become the seeds for future adventures, or he'll reveal that his rival was trying to kill him to prevent him from revealing a portentous secret...

If you're basically starting with a paragraph or two outline, it's easier to come up with a bunch of different possible scenarios, and it's easier to justify throwing them away if players don't seem interested. That way you can grow the plot a bit more organically based on what players actually pursue rather than trying to jam them into a hamster tube and force them into the One True Plot.

It also makes a world feel more real, and not as if there's only ever one "story" happening in the world at any one time, and the players are always part of it.

So, say, if your PCs are at the archetypal tavern and listening for rumors, rather than just feeding them the one key plot rumor they need to follow "the story as written", they might hear rumors about an old mine outside of town full of gold and monsters, a local noble's daughter who either ran away or was kidnapped, a ship captain looking to hire mercenaries for protection, and that mysterious dark silent figure sitting in the corner looking sinister and plot-y. Then they go after the noble and resolve that plot, only to come back to town later to hear about another group of rival adventurers who looted the mine, and a mysterious assassination that took place shortly after they left. The hooks they don't follow can make plot happen without them, but it's always up to them which hooks matter and which don't.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Lightning Bolt posted...

As for getting the players to do what you want, you usually handle that at the buy-in. "This adventure involves you escaping from prison, joining a cult, and working to destroy the government in evil ways. Bring a character that would do that." That's half done right there.

I'm very much behind the idea of "controlled creation", where you basically set limits for players during character creation. "Don't make any Evil characters", "Try to make a character who isn't a moody loner, you sort of need justification for staying together as a group", or even "Your characters all met before the adventure began and swore vengeance on an evil organization, work that motivation into your backstory" are all fine. I could even see something like "You should all make morally questionable Rogue-type characters" or "You're all apprentice wizards" or "Make vampires from one of the Camarilla Clans because we're playing a Camarilla game."

What I'm objecting to is when it happens organically in play. Where you basically get something like this:

Player: "Ok, we go left."
GM: "Well, you can't go left, because the plot is off to the right."
Player: "Yeah, but we want to go left."
GM: "Actually, upon reconsidering, your character decides they want to go right."
Player: "No, fuck you, we're going left."
GM: "At this point the police show up to arrest you, but you can escape by going right!"
Player: "Fuck this game."

That's obviously an extreme (and very generalized) sort of example, but it's the sort of railroading you tend to get with modules and pre-generated adventures, because they usually have a singular plot path that doesn't allow for much branching (some good ones do, though).

If the plot of your story says the heroes have to stay in the haunted mansion until morning and try to outwit the vampire, but they decide they don't give a crap and figure out a way to escape at 7pm, you're either left completely scrapping the entire module or having to keep coming up with ways to force them back into the established plot.

Though to be honest, I'd have a lot of respect for a GM who decided they wanted to run the Tomb of Horrors adventure, but then willingly scrapped the whole thing the moment the PCs decided they didn't want to go in, headed back to town, and started up a gold-investment scheme that spirals off into a weird economic/political game where they all wind up becoming merchant lords.



shadowsword87 posted...

Eh, modules are great for oneshots, I should run a few for you PO, you can see that they are pretty damn good for what they do.

I've both run and played in modules before, you know. It's part of why I formed the opinions I have of them.

And again, I freely admit they're not terrible, and can work fine if they mesh with what the players want (ie, if you want to run Curse of Strahd, and I want to play Curse of Strahd, I will probably enjoy it if you run Curse of Strahd), but I think a GM is better off mostly avoiding them (or potentially just reading them for ideas but not trying to run them exactly as written).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Lightning Bolt posted...

APs work fine without narrative agency, and wouldn't be so popular if they didn't. Neither would video games, for that matter.

They're mostly popular because they're "minimal effort" time investments. A GM who doesn't have time to plan can easily run players who don't really care about their characters through a module or adventure relatively easily and everyone involved can be happy. But once you start dealing with players who like to have a bit more freedom or GMs who enjoy building their own worlds, they can start to become more of a hindrance than a help.

They're also useful as "training wheels" for newer GMs who aren't entirely comfortable with the idea of improvising everything on the fly quite yet (ie, they're still learning the rules and aren't comfortable focusing on narrative or setting), but I tend to think that it's better for newer GMs to try and branch out on their own as soon as possible, and not get hung up in developing a habit of relying on adventure paths and the like. They can always fall back on pre-printed adventures later (especially once they have the confidence to change anything and everything if they need to), but I feel like a good GM needs to avoid them as much as possible early on.



Lightning Bolt posted...

In fact, it's usually the kinds of people that enjoy GMing (not necessarily exclusively) that think players need narrative agency, because GMs are the kinds of people who value narrative agency/worldbuilding.

I'd argue it's more the kinds of players who tend to want to stretch their options and who get frustrated when GMs say no that are the ones most likely to think players need narrative agency. I'd also tend to argue that, the more invested players become in their characters and the world they're in, the more important it becomes.

Yes, some players could absolutely play nothing but pre-written modules for the next 20 years and never be bothered by railroading at all, but other players will start to balk the moment it becomes obvious they really aren't being given any real choice at all in what they're doing. After all, if the results of all of my actions are being dictated by random dice rolls while all the major decisions are being made for me by the GM (or the guy who wrote the module), at what point post-character creation do I have any significant input at all?

But yes, it mostly depends on who you're playing with.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Adventure paths/modules/scenarios/etc are kind of annoying, because they almost rely on players doing exactly ONE thing, and the GM needing to force the players to do that thing in order to keep the plot moving. While some allow for branching paths or discuss alternative options, most of them just boil down to "railroad the fuck out of your players, and slap the shit out of their characters if they complain." Which is terrible roleplaying, in my opinion.

I've always seen the best games being the ones where the GM is willing to compromise and improvise. Build the framework of a plot before a session, then play it out and see how things go. As the players explore the world, casually throw out all sorts of plot hooks and adventure possibilities for them to consider, but don't push in any particular direction. If they latch onto a particular plot hook and begin to pursue it, then you start fleshing out that plot and generally working it into the overall story, but if they blatantly ignore or abandon a plot you wanted to get going, it's better to just shrug and let it drop than it is to try and force them into a story they clearly aren't interested in.

On the macro level this can be something as obvious as trying to force a bunch of combat enthusiast players into scenes where combat is useless and they have to scheme or talk their way out of trouble, or where every challenge is some sort of cerebral puzzle, when all they really want to do is hit things really, really hard. But on the micro level it can be stuff like having a friendly NPC ask the players to delve into a ruin to recover an artifact, and then when the players reject the offer, you just keep throwing more and more important NPCs at them getting more and more insistent about them getting it until you basically have the king telling them if they don't go do it he'll throw them in the dungeon. At that point, it's painfully obvious to the players that you don't actually give a shit about their input, and mostly just want them to be a passive audience for the stories you personally want to tell, and why would they want to do that?

I'm not sure I've ever played a single campaign long-term that ended in any way I could have predicted when it started. I've always sort of tried to start off a bit aimlessly, shape the narrative in the direction the players clearly wanted to take it, and often asked players outside of the game what sort of stories or plot elements they might want to see worked into the overall story in the future. It helps players feel like they're really contributing to the world they live in, which helps them grow emotionally invested both in their own characters, as well as the NPCs and the world itself.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

but I still believe that... ...the city as a whole functions very lawfully to anyone who doesn't look too closely.

In Ankh-Morpork's case, the usual assumption is that the city looks chaotic as hell, and an outsider will see a dozen or a hundred different smaller groups all pulling in different directions for their own personal interests, but somehow, the interweaving pattern of self-interest manages to produce something resembling a functional city. Very few people outside of the Patrician himself are entirely aware of how the city doesn't pull itself apart almost constantly (and the stories themselves imply that's at least partly because the Patrician has people to step in and "fix" things whenever someone particularly chaotic wants to throw a wrench into the workings - in later books, this almost always involves either the City Guard or Moist von Lipwig).

Ankh-Morpork originally started out as something of a parody version of Lankhmar (from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories), but it basically evolved into a fantasy version of what a medieval city would actually tend to be like. As Pratchett once put it, when you're building a fake city, you should start by figuring out how they get rid of the sewage and then work your way up from there, rather than starting with the king and working your way down.

Here's probably the best quote from the books as to how (and why) the city wound up with an officially recognized Thieves' Guild:

"One of the Patrician’s greatest contributions to the reliable operation of Ankh-Morpork had been, very early in his administration, the legalising of the ancient Guild of Thieves. Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore, if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organised crime.

And so the Guild had been encouraged to come out of the shadows and build a big Guildhouse, take their place at civic banquets, and set up their training college with day-release courses and City and Guilds certificates and everything. In exchange for the winding down of the Watch, they agreed, while trying to keep their faces straight, to keep crime levels to a level to be determined annually. That way, everyone could plan ahead, said Lord Vetinari, and part of the uncertainty had been removed from the chaos that is life.

And then, a little while later, the Patrician summoned the leading thieves again and said, oh, by the way, there was something else. What was it, now? Oh, yes…

I know who you are, he said. I know where you live. I know what kind of horse you ride. I know where your wife has her hair done. I know where your lovely children, how old are they now, my, doesn’t time fly, I know where they play. So you won’t forget about what we agreed, will you? And he smiled."

So basically, the major crime lords of the city agreed to organize, after a fashion, because they assumed they were duping the Patrician, but ultimately, they didn't realize the trap they were stepping into until it was too late. But also, after the Guild had been running for a while, they realized they were all making far more profit working together and relatively organized than they had ever made working alone, so most of them settled down and got fat and generally grew satisfied with the arrangement (and then went out of their way to murder the ever-living fuck out of any freelancers or would-be rebels who rocked the boat).

In some ways, it fits the pattern of how organized crime groups tend to form and establish territory in the real world, albeit with the official civil government actually recognizing them as a valid entity with permission to operate "outside the law" (not entirely dissimilar to the Mafia's offer to work for the US government during WWII, or implied Mafia/CIA ties afterwards).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

I also believe that the guilds in the city work together more out of necessity rather than to make the city better functioning.

To use Ankh-Morpork as an example again, each guild generally sticks to its own business, and does what it needs to do to turn a profit in its own field. Each group works selfishly in and of itself, but because their own self-interest requires the city to be successful (ie, if the city fails, the population will drop and the wealth will leave, so thieves will have nothing to steal, beggars will have no one to beg from, and assassin's will have no one to hire them). And since keeping the city as a whole successful benefits every guild, the guilds tend to work together to help minimize disruptive influences and encourage urban growth. Because it is in the best interests of most guilds to see the city survive and prosper, they will act in ways to support the city (except when it seems like a lost cause), and ultimately, without entirely meaning to, will help turn the city as a whole into a solid, functioning entity.

In some ways, it's like the ideal of free-market capitalism carried to its conclusion. The system is self-regulating, and as each individual works for their own benefit, they also benefit the whole, and thus, the other members, because each individual profits more when the group profits as a whole.

In theory, the Thieves could rob indiscriminately, or the Assassins could just start killing whoever they wanted without any sort of rules, or the Beggars could start robbing people, etc, but they all have a vested interest in keeping the city functioning because they make more money as-is than they would if things were thrown into anarchy.

That being said, each group in and of itself tends to have its own rules, and its own muscle to enforce those rules. If you're a thief who pisses off the assassins, they're still going to kill you, and you won't be able to appeal to the city guard for help (and your own superiors probably cut you loose for causing trouble).

It's not really LAWFUL, per se. It's orderly in its own way, but it's an order made up of multiple ordered systems coexisting in one place and operating independently of each other. Yes, there are laws, and rules, and traditions, and assumptions about what one should and shouldn't do, and all of those things are enforced in various ways, but it's definitely a system that can be played by anyone devious enough to do so, and there's no singular control or force of order involved. And while any number of guilds MIGHT be willing to cooperate from time-to-time, they're just as often willing to act almost like separate overlapping fiefs within the same space rather than an organized network.

Though an adventurer used to the idea of trying to befriend the guy in charge and let their authority trickle down might be cruelly shocked to discover that things don't really work that way there.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

I suppose I failed to mention that the player who is from a major assassin family effectively left the family in favor of poetry. So anything that comes up would be either some thugs trying to bring him back 'home' or the guilds being wary of him and potentially doing something.

Someone can leave a family but still retain a fondness for it. Or, at least, be inclined to feel bad if they learn that someone else is murdering all their family members.

The idea is to create conflict, and conflict isn't always combat. Forcing the assassin player to come to terms with how he sees his family is itself drama.

Of course, maybe he hates them all and would be happy to see them all die. In which case, casting them more into the antagonist role (ie, "bringing him home" or a relative deciding to hunt him down because he "knows too much") definitely becomes the more likely course to take. Though you could also touch on it obliquely (a rival assassin family is killing your entire house, and you're a target because they either don't believe or don't care that you've left - so now it's your problem whether you want it or not. So now you ostensibly have to help - and potentially work with - your family to help yourself. Or do you look for a third option that puts a pox on both of their houses?).

And then there's more complex interactions. What if his family makes an alliance with a rival assassin family, but the conditions of the alliance involve marrying one of their daughters to the PC (whether the PC likes it or not)? Then you've got two families actively trying to force him to marry, while combative factions in both houses might instead be trying to kill him to prevent the marriage/alliance. Then throw in the proposed spouse, who might actually be a lovely young woman who is quite pleasant and who actively wants to marry him (maybe she's a hopeless romantic and feels like they're destined to be in love), and who is willing to become an active support NPC to the group... how does the PC react to all this?


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

As I said earlier, the city would be controlled by the guilds, and looking it over, for each of them to have a major role to keep the city functioning as a trade city, it would have to be a very lawful city. To the point where crime is only done by the darker guilds in order to prevent crime from being widespread. (The darker guilds would be committing these crimes either to protect the city from others trying to take control of it or perhaps because they were paid by someone. Regardless, they would be sanctioned crimes.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilds_of_Ankh-Morpork

Of particular note to you might be the Thieves' Guild.

Ankh-Morpork's also a VERY nice example of a city that is regulated to the gills but which is still pretty damned chaotic at its core - legislation and conflicting spheres of control doesn't always lead to orderly interactions. At a certain point, bureaucracy becomes king, and a unique sort of chaos tends to seep into things.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

One of the players is from a powerful family of assassins, so I'd really like to implement that somehow, but I'm not really sure how.

Someone staggers up to the group. They've clearly been stabbed multiple times. Gasping out their last breath, they die before they can say anything. In their hand, they're clutching a signet ring with the PC's family crest. Did they kill this person? Is he an ally of theirs, murdered by an unexpected threat? Was it coincidence that he found the PC, or was he actively trying to find them to deliver a message? Or worse, were they killed by someone specifically to send a message to the PC?

The answers to all of these questions depend entirely on how the players react to the scene (and how it fits with your greater plans).

Or perhaps they're in a large city, with a bit of a carnival vibe. Describe multiple acts, including a clown-masked juggler in fool's motley who deftly juggles three or four knives without cutting himself. Later, there is a commotion - the fool has killed someone by throwing a knife (or three) at them, then dashed off into the crowd and down narrow alleys. Do the PCs chase, or decide it's none of their business? If they follow, in one alley they discover a discarded mask and motley - now the killer could look like almost anyone (bonus points if they looked like a man in disguise but it was secretly a woman all along, because PLOT TWIST). Can they find the killer in a crowded city full of strangers, with no real idea of what they actually look like?

And if they find the killer, who are they and why did they do it? Are they part of the assassin house? Does the assassin player possibly realize this before the other PCs, and is thus forced to choose to either risk revealing their secret or subtly help the killer escape? If they do catch the killer, what if they claim to have a good reason for the killing? Their victim was evil, or they were acting on orders of the king, or the victim was themselves an assassin sent to murder a powerful and important noble (perhaps implying a brewing civil war in the assassin family itself?).

For more funzies, perhaps there are rival assassin houses with conflicting motives (like the Iga and Koga ninjas of Japan). Perhaps they are now on opposite sides of a political struggle, and their covert shadow war will cause all sorts of problems unless the PCs investigate and do what they can to end it (one way or another). Do the PCs support the other PC's assassin family? Or does a conflict potentially occur if the rival family seems to have the more "noble" (or at least convenient) goals? Will the party split as one player chooses to side with his family while his allies turn against them?

And worst of all - if this seemingly coincidental side event starts to unravel into a major conspiracy or behind-the-scenes threat, can they afford to spend time investigating it? Make it clear that they can either meet with the contact they were already waiting for to continue that plot line, or must pursue this new (and seemingly unrelated) mystery. If they wait and continue their original goal, the assassin trail starts to grow cold, and events may play out in their absence. If they rush after the new mystery, they miss meeting the contact they were originally waiting for, and later find that he was killed by someone (either because he knew something important, or possessed something). Or they attempt to split the party to accomplish both goals, but potentially risk getting killed in a fight they're not strong enough to win. Make it feel like they live in an active world that doesn't simply wait for them to get around to finishing sidequests, and that there CAN be consequences for their choices.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Mario_VS_DK posted...

Hmm. Anyone know of some cool quests I can give the players while they'll be waiting for someone for a few days in the small city next session?

I always like to tailor mini "throw away" scenes (ie, stuff unrelated to the main quest) to the characters themselves, based on how the players have been playing them (or just how they play in general). Know your player and how they play, and you will have a kit full of hooks you can use to reel them in.

For instance, if you have a player who tends to be sympathetic to NPCs, have the group see a woman being manhandled into an alley, or a fat merchant apparently being robbed. Imply they (the PCs) are the only ones who really notice it, so if they don't act no one will, but TRY to describe it all as part of an overall flavor description of the city, and don't linger (so they don't assume this is the deliberate plot they're meant to follow and immediately chase after it). Make it obvious that they're welcome to pursue or ignore it as they see fit.

Then, if they do intervene, there are complications. If they move to save the woman, the person manhandling her accuses her of being a criminal, and he's a bounty hunter sent to retrieve her. She claims he's an abusive ex she ran away from, and he's trying to take her back. Who do you believe? Maybe BOTH are lying? No matter which side the players choose, there will be future repercussions. There can even be repercussions if they don't choose either side - walk away from the whole mess or ignore it entirely, and they may later discover via other means that the conflict was important and they should have acted. Perhaps the woman was really an evil sorceress, and they had a chance to catch her early. Or perhaps she was a messenger of the king, and now the villains have one of the secret magic keys they need to do naughty things.

I also have a tendency to loot Lone Wolf for throwaway scene ideas:

http://www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/06tkot/sect219.htm

How do the players react to a scene like that? It might be only a momentary thing, but it can easily have later repercussions (that throwaway noble in that single scene shows up like three more times as an antagonist over the course of the next 20 years in those books).

You can also throw in minor, fun, not overly important scenes with a minor chance of reward, like this one:

http://www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/08tjoh/sect151.htm
http://www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/08tjoh/sect126.htm
http://www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/08tjoh/sect166.htm

To summarize, while on a barge and killing time before the "important" stuff happens, the player can either antagonize a fight or make a new friend depending on what type of beer they order. Then they can play a riddle game to make some extra coin, and ultimately wind up having an opportunity to fight a criminally wanted necromancer who just coincidentally crosses their path.

None of it has any real significance to the overall story, it's all just the little stuff that happens between the big scenes. But all of it CAN have much larger importance if the players really latch onto it (say, they begin an investigation into the necromancer, distracting themselves from their previous goals). Maybe they discover the necromancer is tied to their existing enemies... or perhaps they learn of a new, entirely unexpected threat...

Or maybe he's just a random dude in a world filled with random dudes.

Generally, though, every PC should have backstory you can mine for the occasional minor scene. Maybe they see an old friend they used to know. Or an old enemy they once defeated is now in the street begging for change. They see a pretty girl who reminds them of a lost love, or a painting of a far away land they once knew but can never return to.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

Oh yeah, I built a character in Traveller yesterday. It was pretty damn fun, I could see myself just doing that while I'm break at work or something.

Which version of the system? There were some relatively significant changes between editions.

And are you just making one for the hell of it, or were you think of running/playing a game of it?



I_Abibde posted...

Those are my next GURPS goal. I need to look up a general list and see which ones might be handy to have around.

Depends on what you want to use them for.

If you want them as literal sourcebooks, which ones you want would depend on what setting you want to play in. Medieval Russia? Buy the Russia book. Sengoku-era Japan? Get the Japan book.

Then there's the one-step remove sort of deal. Like if you want to make an entirely new nation in a fantasy setting, you might say to yourself "Hey, I want a kingdom that is really Egypt-flavored," at which point the Egypt sourcebook might come in handy. Or you might say "Man, my current sci-fi space adventure game could really benefit if I introduced a space empire that is basically Arabian Nights in space," in which case the Arabian Nights book would be key, but you could also benefit from things like GURPS Aliens or one of the other sci-fi/space sourcebooks.

With Amber I'd do that a lot - I'd do deliberate fusions that were combinations of two radically different real world cultures, and try to figure out how they could work. Like a Roman-esque trading empire entirely based on tropical islands, or a Celtic/Chinese mix, and so on. I also had one character who basically grew up in an Arabian Nights-esque land, and one who was straight out of a Western.

And, of course, if you just have a bunch of them, you could always just sort of read through them at random and see if any ideas stick for you. Like having a Roman gladiator arena, populated by Egyptian priest warriors and Arabic sorcerers, set in a space station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GURPS_books

I basically used that as a checklist myself to see which sourcebooks were out there that I didn't already have (in Ye Olden Days I used to just buy them off the shelf of my local gaming store, but more recently - after the RP bubble burst - I mainly just order them via Amazon). Most of the newer ones should be relatively easy to find, but some of the older ones are a bit harder (and cost more). Then again, the writing in the newer ones tends to be much better, so tracking down stuff like China might not be worth it to you (especially in the Wikipedia era, as I mentioned).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

PMarth2002 posted...

In my experience the DM rolling for a player isn't very common at all.

Didn't say it was common, just said that some GMs do like to handle things that way.

Usually, it depends entirely on the level of trust between GM and players, and whether or not the GM sees themselves more as a narrative facilitator (which tends to be the more modern view) or an active antagonist to players (which tended to be the older stereotype for GMs).

If you trust your GM to be fair, you may not mind them rolling in secret for you. If you assume they're going to cheat, you're more likely to demand to roll your own rolls.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

PMarth2002 posted...

The DM doesn't have to tell you the odds. You've got a character sheet and will generally add a number to the die based on how skilled your character is. After you roll the die, the DM will tell you if you succeeded or not.

In some games, and for some rolls (like "Insight", "Sense Motive", "Perception", etc), they won't even give you that much - they'll roll for you where you can't see the number, and then give you information accordingly.

There are some rolls which are WAY too easy to metagame just from the result ("I rolled a 1, I'm totally not going to trust anything the GM tells me!"), where it can actually be way more fun if the GM rolls for you so you have no idea whether you rolled low or high, and if you roll low, they can actively lie to you.

"Yes, while you were initially suspicious of Mr. Sinastrov McEvilface, in retrospect you get the feeling that he's actually quite trustworthy, and is probably telling you the truth about the Definitely Not a Trap Inn, and how you should go there to meet with his contact, Bob Absolutelynotgoingtotryandkillyouson."

Some GMs may do the same thing if a bad guy is using spells like Charm Person or something similar, where rather than having you roll your saving throw (and thus knowing for sure something bad likely just happened if you roll low), they'll just roll for you and then subtly encourage you to like/trust an NPC by how they play them, or just slip you a note so YOU know what happened but the other players don't.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I_Abibde posted...

Is this a good place to tell you that I picked up the core books for GURPS 4th Edition? Apparently, they recently got a reprint.

They've never really been fully out of print, as far as I know. And if you're into the system, more power to you.

All I've ever really said about GURPS in the past is that it has a system that's a bit overcomplicated for a lot of people, and that I've never known a single person who actually USES the system, as opposed to just buying the sourcebooks (which were very good for what they were - ie, useful as hell historical setting info in an age before Wikipedia) and using them to supplement other systems.

Like, I've got a ton of setting books for GURPS, and I've used most of them for Amber games at one time or another. I also used the Japan one for an Akashic mage I was playing in Mage, and some of the Celtic Myth book for one of my Changeling characters.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

So the game I'm running, Eclipse Phase

~rolls eyes theatrically~


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

No because there's not 20 minutes of bitching about rules.
In theory, yes that's how it can work, but it's entirely dependent on the group of people who run it

To continually reemphasize my usual accusation that a lot of your perceptions are colored by playing in shitty groups, I've never actually had a 20 minute argument or complaint about how the rules work in any game I've ever played.

If anything, I think I've played with precisely one rules lawyer-y type player out of every group I've ever been in.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Rampage or Gauntlet.

They ate SO MANY of my quarters back in the day.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

SusanGreenEyes posted...

I've heard of Duck Season and Rabbit Season.
Why is Elmer Fudd running around shooting cats?!?

Was more or less the same thought I had.

Though I was mostly wondering whether kitten season is a bow hunting or a rifle season.

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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family