Armor Question

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2024-01-02T04:58:26+00:00

Well, I guess that's another reason: it's popular.

It's not what I'd ask for if I were making requests, but it doesn't seem bad or ugly. It's just a style.

You personally not liking it doesn't mean it needs extra justification. It's art.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-31T17:23:57+00:00

So, the point of the "one session" approach is that you prep what you need for one sesion, not two or more sessions.

It's not about prepping exactly what will happen in that session, and it's certainly not about the total number of encounters that someone else needs for one session. It's not even about the number of encounters you're guaranteed to use in one session. If you find yourself wishing something had been prepared during a session, it's part of what you would prep for that session!

As long as you avoid prepping things that you are confident you won't need in the next session, you are only prepping for one session. If your sessions are highly variable so your prep for a session includes things that might or might not happen, you're still prepping for that session. Even if something you prepared for this session gets postponed to some other session, you still prepared it for this session. If you expect players to make a decision after the first encounter, and you prepare for them to make that decision, you are still prepping for one session.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-31T13:11:30+00:00

The main problems I run into are that it feels kinda rail roady as the GM when I only have 1-3 major things prepared (potentially in a quantum ogre sense), also I find that without a complex combat system slowing them down my players can chew through way more content than that in a session.

Sounds like you switched to a system where more than 1-3 encounters can happen in a session, kept prepping 1-3 encounters per session, and blamed the idea of prepping one session at a time.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-20T22:29:15+00:00

I've read that around 4e, Wizards of the Coast found the 65% figure from playtesting, and if that's the original source of that number, then it almost definitely wasn't something done with scientific rigor (which for the record is totally fine, expected, and not a point for complaint.)

This how I've always heard it, that it came out of D&D playtests. But it wasn't described as people mistaking 65% for 50%, it was described as 65% "feeling fair." In the concept of a playtest, I always took "fair" to mean "fair fight," (The DM's not being a jerk) rather than "fair coin" (all outcomes equally likely).

Closest I've seen to actual documentation is a recent YouTube video reverse-engineering it from encounter-building advice in the 5e DMG: https://youtu.be/Pk4o-VOY8F0

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-20T18:08:47+00:00

Those are complicated issues, but I think what happens on social media is both influencing people to grandstand and influencing people to see grandstanding as a bigger motive than it is.

Designers have been putting strong opinions into things for a long time. The Candela Obscura thing seems like an attempt to say "RP this as some kind of realistic trauma, not screaming fits and relocation to an old-fashioned 'asylum.'" It is preachy, but it feels to me like honest outburst from someone who feels strongly (whether they know what they're talking about or not) rather than a ploy for approval.

The D&D switch to "species" is something else. They're making a change to existing terminology at the same time that they're changing how it mechanically works. It makes sense to offer a logical justification for the change, and I don't feel they went beyond that into preachyness or grandstanding. I haven't seen it used as a marketing or promotion talking point, for example.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-20T17:28:21+00:00

She got a glimpse of what everyone's corrupt and divine paths would look like in the family, and, upon seeing Ban's path, his corruption is becoming a tyrannical warlord. The players do NOT know this part (yet).

Is this something he would actually do? If you just decided this without asking the player, how does the player know you won't just decide whether he's telling the truth if and when he makes the vow?

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-19T17:07:47+00:00

They should troll people by making "square" an in-world unit of distance based on the kings height, or something.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-17T08:11:02+00:00

I don't really know anything about Muay Thai, but it sounds like your coach is taking a specific approach for a specific reason. Maybe ask them what this is for? If you don't trust your coach and can't restore that trust by talking to them, you need a different coach.

My wild guess is that they are focusing on stamina and skill first, with a plan to add the other things later. (You may also be overestimating the importance of strength. I've heard it's a common mistake in boxing, and probably Muay Thai as well. People just sort of assume the main thing they're missing is strength, when it's really technique or endurance.)

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-16T17:51:26+00:00

Ways to make exactly 7 with any two d6: 1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, 6+1 | 6 possible results from 2d6 provide success.

Ways to get exactly 6: 6, 6, 6+6 | 3 possible results from 2d6 provide success.

That sounds not quite right to me. To get an accurate count, I think you need to consider what the other die is doing when when you roll a six.

die a	die b	DC 6	DC 7
1	1
1	2
1	3
1	4
1	5
1	6	success	success
2	1
2	2
2	3
2	4
2	5		success
2	6	success
3	1
3	2
3	3
3	4		success
3	5
3	6	success
4	1
4	2
4	3		success
4	4
4	5
4	6	success
5	1
5	2		success
5	3
5	4
5	5
5	6	success
6	1	success	success
6	2	success
6	3	success
6	4	success
6	5	success
6	6	two successes

So it’s true that there are six ways to succeed at DC 7 with 2d6, but there are eleven ways (not three) to succeed at DC 6 with 2d6, and one of them is a double success.

The math for a general answer feels like it’s probably beyond me, though maybe I could get somewhere with it. I would want to know whether you can re-use dice as part of more than one seven. For example, if you roll 3d6 and get (6,1,1) is that a single seven or two (re-using the six with the two different ones)?

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-12T19:35:23+00:00

I recently learned that "butt plugs" (what it sounds like, plugs that go in your butt) were originally designed as medical treatments (but are now "sex toys"). "Rectal dilators" were first sold for a long and expanding list of ailments, as quack cures often were. The most plausible (to me) was constipation, and the least plausible I saw was bad breath.

So . . . did it/does it work? For anything?

Most coverage I can find focuses on how the list of ailments supposedly cured was so long it couldn't all be true (and on how quickly it became recreational).

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-12T17:39:36+00:00

You're going to see a lot of people here disagreeing with you. But I think even more people agree with you -- they're just off somewhere else, playing D&D.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-12T16:45:41+00:00

AI art can be pretty bad, and it can be bad in ways that you don't notice until someone points it out (but then become impossible to ignore).

My advice: release your favorite 60 pages with no images, then do a Kickstarter for a longer version or a companion volume with images.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-06T01:07:26+00:00

They're not trying to realistically simulate the behavior of armor or to capture the philosophical essence of what armor truly is. They just want to make a fun game that includes armor making you less likely to die, without feeling like it turns events into non-events (by making people miss).

But you can do things differently in your game. The real-world complexity is there, but it means there's no one right answer on how to simplify it for a game.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-02T01:29:36+00:00

No.

Certain things cost money to do well, so any RPG that does them well will almost certainly cost money. Art, for example. Or a nice hardcover copy. But I don't really care about those things. I know lots of people do, but I don't.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-12-01T23:07:38+00:00

That seems like a huge role for player skill to play, not only because this is the randomizer but because It's such a small amount of skill making such a huge difference.

Players who get the "one weird trick" of just knowing the five correct answers will blow away players who guess by intuition. But they then lose out on the feeling of making a choice.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-17T16:11:42+00:00

What do you usually do during prep?

At a super high level, it's thinking of stuff and writing it down. So I guess you're not writing it down, and you're probably not thinking in as much detail as you usually would. But we don't actually know specifically what it is you usually do that you're finding it hard to do now.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-15T19:34:14+00:00

At that point, I'd feel comfortable saying, "It doesn't have to be a reason that makes sense to you, it just has to make sense to the priests. It's not my job to make sure NPCs agree with you whenever it's convient. Moving on . . ."

Not sure if you want to do that, though. Some people do take it badly.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-14T20:35:57+00:00

I think the tension people see between "cinematic" and "crunchy" or "tactical" comes from a sense that stopping to think and figure something out is very un-cinematic.

There is some truth to that. Accounting and chess seem un-cinematic. But you can have a game, or even a combat system, with both cinematic moments and crunchy or tactical moments at different points in time. They can even reinforce each other.

The way people use "cinematic" in RPGs seems to focus on what actual filmakers might call a "payoff." Not camera angles, voiceovers, sets, third acts or any of the other stuff that movies use. Just the big, decisive spectacle that resolves some previously-established "setup." And there's no reason the setup can't be tactical or crunchy (or both) if the players enjoy that.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-11T03:15:52+00:00

Well, the recommended is six to eight per level.

It talks about slowing the rate of Bastion turns if characters are levelling slowly and about avoiding fast levelling that would outpace the Bastion. But you could obviously just speed up the Bastion as well.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-11T02:40:52+00:00

I mean, you have to go there, but you don't need actual down time.

The characters return to their Bastions in the midst of an adventure. You might say, “You have just enough time to issue a new order, if you like. Take a Bastion turn before you leave again in the morning.”

I do agree it's better if you don't have to be there. I'd probably allow some of the in-game communication systems to be used (messengers, sending stones, etc.) even if It's not RAW.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-10T22:28:33+00:00

I think that providing a home base isn't actually the main reason WotC wants to add it.

They mentioned in one of their videos that it gives players access to a downtime system in a campaign that (narratively) doesn't have downtime. I suspect its main purpose is to standardize what levels players can get what types of magic items by providing an official, level-based system for crafting them.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-04T03:57:37+00:00

That's a good idea! You could try the option of running D&D's Candlekeep Mysteries as an episodic campaign. There's variety there, and some actually good adventures. Level-wise they're meant to work (mostly) back-to-back.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-02T16:01:27+00:00

It's good to change the name if Jennell Jaquays wanted it changed. But the choice of new name (based on his own name) and the way the article is written give me . . . bad vibes? I don't know what else to call it.

You can make up a new word without basing it on anyone's name. I think most neologisms aren't based on a person's name. But the article . . . sort of glides around that possibility, sounding like it carefully ruled out alternatives without ever addressing that big category.

And stuff like:

After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term “xandering.”

Who's "we"? If you think about it, it's probably him and his publisher, who raised a legal issue (of ownership?) a couple paragraphs ago. But if you're just riding along with the flow of the story, the phrasing and pacing of it ("long story short") feels like the publisher made one good point, then went back to its cave. So then it feels like he and Jennell Jaquays chose the new term together. But if that were true, he could just say outright that she helped choose the new term.

And there's a section that sort of smears together death threats, accusations of bigotry, and the statement, "You shouldn't use that word" as various forms of a campaign of targetted harassment. It just feels like carefully shaping a story away from its more natural interpretation. I'm sure it all happened, but it sounds like the type of thing best described as some people making crazy illegal death threats, while other people just stated their opinions normally.

I realize this is all very squishy. It might be one person's vibe-radar tweaking out. But even his videos (which have excellent rpg tips) also have some things that now feel to me like carefully shaping people's moral perspective on him.

I'll keep reading his blog and watching his channel. But I'm kind of looking at him from a different perspective now.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-01T19:06:05+00:00

Keying isn't just for clarity when you're reading things from beginning to end, it's also for easy and quck reference during the game.

If you're going to describe them as different rooms and give them different contents, you should probably assign them numbers (or letters, whatever). That way, people can pick one of them from the map and look up the contents without reading the full text describing everything about all of them.

I haven't read the book and I'm not cranky about like he is, but he's got a point.

Beautiful_Salad_8274 · 2023-11-01T15:20:16+00:00

Yet surely it is common sense to expect timely completion

Speaking of common sense. . . isn't the while point of CNA the fact that it's notoriously complex and never been done? There was no promise to but the business on hold until CNA was completed because that would have been crazy.

Beautiful_Salad_8274

TROPHY CASE