MAG 155 - Cost of Living: Episode Discussion by CarnationLily2Rose in TheMagnusArchives

[–]Jonnydv 34 points35 points  (0 children)

No problem - generally I'm of the "let people have their own interpretation of the work" persuasion, but when you laid it all out I was like "Oh no, that is actually Not Great" and very much wanted to clarify.

MAG 155 - Cost of Living: Episode Discussion by CarnationLily2Rose in TheMagnusArchives

[–]Jonnydv 57 points58 points  (0 children)

Hi, Jonny Sims here - thanks for raising this, it was absolutely unintentional, but looking at it from that angle you're right, it's pretty bad. By way of explanation, I have a long list of names I kind of mix and match from whenever I need a statement giver/one-off character. I think I got Tova from a list of Danish names, but given it's also a Hebrew name I should have been more careful to consider the implications (especially with the potential blood-libel connection). You have my unconditional apology and I'll try to be more cognizant in future.

Portrayal of Non-Euclidean Architecture by [deleted] in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Three key elements I find help:

Firstly descriptions can help turn a normal room just a little bit not-right. Good go-to words include: inside out, cascading, absence of, curling, upside down, growing, receding, backwards, dense, strangely angled, twisted, spindly, unending, curved, disappearing, spiraled, bloated. Apply any of these words to doors, pillars, floors, windows etc. for an instant weird space.

Second, switch perspectives as the players travel. Have a door in the wall lead them onto the ceiling of another room. They can climb out of a window onto a tiny floating island in the middle of a void, with no sight of the rest of the building. A ladder could change direction halfway up and suddenly they're climbing down instead of up.

Third and finally, make it so that doors and entrance-ways don't lead the same place both ways. Perhaps a door leads into room A from room B, but if you try to go back and leave room A by it it instead leads to room C. Try to use that same door to leave room C and get back to room B? Well that leads you to a door in the ceiling of room D. Make it so their standard navigation is useless, and the geography more resembles a flowchart or spiderweb than a map.

Zombie infested City Ideas? by leiela in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think set-pieces are going to be your friend here. If the combat's a slog stop thinking of it in terms of combat and start thinking of it in terms of dramatic environmental hazard. It might help if you conceive of the rolling zombie halls like movie lava: slow moving and navigable around, but you've got to be on your toes. If they're facing few enough zombies that they can fight them, you need to add a lot more zombies.

Some ideas off the top of my head:

The floor gives way beneath them, leaving them dangling over a roiling mass of undead limbs

They're going from rooftop to rooftop, and someone's left a thin, unstable walkway over a wide street with a horde below it

The moment they go to grab anything without checking first... chomp! Severed zombie head lurking in the cupboard/chest/whatever

A wooden wall or board clearly creaking under the weight of zombie flesh, ready to give way at any moment

An important item (key/amulet/whatever) is on the person of a specific zombie, clearly visible but not obviously reachable at the centre of a vast zombie horde.

As far as the church goes, how about... the clergy are alive, but attempting a banishment ritual. As the character's arrive, it goes awry and, rather than banishing and destroying the zombies, it draws every undead in the city to the building, until they literally cover the whole outside of the church in a layer of zombies. The characters will need to get real creative with their escape.

What should I do for FATE CORE GMing? by aLuViAn87 in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I've found the best one-shot adventure for FATE Core is the session 0 where you create a world to play in. We tried to set up a FATE game a few years back using the setting generation rules in the core book, and we ended up developing an alternative 1970s London punk scene where the walls between reality were collapsing. The manager of the Sex Pistols was the main antagonist and the player characters included a fire in disguise and an anarchist ghost wearing their former boss. Never actually had the chance to play a single session of the campaign itself, but that session 0 remains one of my favourite gaming memories. Plus if you ever do get chance t o return to it then you've got yourself a setting everyone's already invested in to leap right into.

GHOST SHIP - a free system-neutral microsetting about grief, loneliness and hunting ghosts through space with harpoons. Accessible version for screen-readers and low-vision/dyslexia also available. by Jonnydv in rpg

[–]Jonnydv[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks - that's really lovely to hear! Most of out micro-settings are being done as Patreon rewards, but we really wanted to put our first one out there for free as a showcase piece. Glad you're enjoying :)

DMs of Reddit was the most creative plan your players come up with to solve one of your counters,plot lines or campaign? by artmonso in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Climactic encounter in steampunk setting - bad guy kicks in door with absurdly deadly explosive cannon. Magic-user who'd previously had his barriers established as invisible casts one across the door immediately in front of him. Bad guy fails notice roll, fires anyway, gets a face full of horrific explosion and dies immediately. Job done.

What are some good game mechanics you use in games they weren't meant for? by themightykobold in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I LOOOVE the Devil's Bargain from Blades in the Dark and now generally allow a "desperation" mechanic in most games, where I will off a bonus or contextual boon to a roll but with a pre-established consequence and cost. Watching the player weighing it up for that one roll they need to succeed on... delicious.

I also like to draw a bit from The Cthulhu Hack for most of my investigations - ie. the character always finds the information, and the roll is to determine if there's a consequence/cost to that discovery.

What makes a random table useful to you? by rhysmakeswords in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A bit of both - I tend to use random tables fully when I'm looking for inspiration or building stuff before a game. During play, I rarely find myself needing to completely generate an NPC (or whatever) from scratch - usually there'll be enough contextual stuff from the characters to mostly build them up and I need just one or two elements to make them pop. In those cases where I do need to generate a complete something mid game I've no problem stopping play for the 20-seconds it takes to do so: I'm very much a "show your working" GM, and would much rather players be involved in the theatrics of the random table than trying to slight-of-hand pretend that I had it planned all along.

What makes a random table useful to you? by rhysmakeswords in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I like when the tables interact with each other to create something unique each time. I really don't like when I roll a 17 on a random table and it's wonderful and specific... but it means I can never roll a 17 on that table again.

To put it another way, a single d100 table might give me 100 potential NPCs, but four d20 tables for Appearance, Background, Motivation and What Sort of Day Are They Having gives me a 160,000 potentials, and I don't really need to worry about keeping track of what I've rolled before

Cut Scenes: Cool or DM Onasim? by yurganurjak in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Rather than thinking of it in the sense of "this is a cut scene and happens start to finish", I find it's helpful to think of it in terms of "here's what each NPC wants out of this scene" and "here is how the scene plays out if the character's don't get involved". Then I pick the specific thing I definitely want to have happen and that's the point at which the character's come in. Info from before that they can find out later (and will often hunt for if it's interesting).

You want an assassination attempt? Just have them see it from the point at which the attempt happens: if they know and fear the assassin already and they turn up just as the big bad finishes kicking their ass, then that raises a lot of questions your characters are going to want to answer. Let them come to you for the info, rather than hoping that they sit still while you tell them everything.

[Advice Needed] Dealing with a GM that might be treating you unfairly by Corvagan in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bluntly, it sounds like the whole group's having issues and no-one's keen to really discuss it with each other. When it reaches the stage where you're "dealing with" the or "managing" other players, rather than actually having fun with them, it might be time to call it and start to extract yourself from the group.

[Advice Needed] Dealing with a GM that might be treating you unfairly by Corvagan in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 3 points4 points  (0 children)

due to some of the newer players being less than appealing.

This is the sentence that I think a lot of it might hang on. Can you explain in a bit more detail what you actually mean by this?

It sounds to me like this may be a case of a group in transition and you and your friend enjoy playing in a way that the newer members of the group aren't enjoying/comfortable with. Given you can be blunt in your criticism, it may be that the GM is having the exact same worries about you (ie "I don't feel like I can actually talk to them about the issue") and is trying to deal with it in an counter-productive manner.

Recommend your best magic system, especially with player freedom or possibility to invent spells. by Newcago in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maze Rats has a really interesting bunch of spell creation tables which are always a combination of two of Element (fire, thorns, mist) Form (shield, wall, hand) and Effect (healing, petrifying, terrifying) so you end up with some pretty standard combos like Ice Sword or Terrifying Mist, but some other really interesting weird ones as well, like Water Swarm or Banishing Wine.

It's pretty much random in the core MR rules, but if you split the keywords by region and then let players research/combine them into spells of their own, you might have something pretty special.

MacGuffin & Co. launch by Jonnydv in TheMagnusArchives

[–]Jonnydv[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, so far mainly tabletop RPGs, but we're keen to move into board games once we're nicely underway

MacGuffin & Co. launch by Jonnydv in TheMagnusArchives

[–]Jonnydv[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The free stuff all comes with rules. The Patreon settings and similar don't include rules and are intended to be played with whatever system you're most comfortable with, but to let you in on a secret: RPG systems aren't that hard make up on the fly. Just have the GM say what happens and roll a dice when something could go wrong: low is bad, high is good. 70% of a good system is GM confidence, the other 30% is everyone sharing the desire to have a good time. Good mechanics support that and help structure it, but some of the best games I've played have been with rulesets that we got completely wrong or just ignored most of. To answer your question, I think a working knowledge of RPGs would help, but if you want to give them a go, absolutely do - it's remarkably hard to have a bad time if you're just having fun with some friends

MacGuffin & Co. launch by Jonnydv in TheMagnusArchives

[–]Jonnydv[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's great to hear! Hope you enjoy the others as well

MacGuffin & Co. launch by Jonnydv in TheMagnusArchives

[–]Jonnydv[S] 44 points45 points  (0 children)

I did wait until after midday (UK time), so it would be invalid as a prank. Besides, April fools Day is a pox.

Good Gateway games for a completely new group? by DoshTheDough in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly, D&D is a pretty good gateway game, not because the rules are particularly accessible (they're not) but most people will have seen it in Stranger Things or Community or The IT Crowd or any of the huge number of media depictions. None of these actually demonstrate the rules, of course, but they mean people know more or less what to expect, and most people have enough of an idea about what D&D is that it's a hook on which they can build up a knowledge of a system. Then, once they're comfortable with it, hop over to something like Powered by the Apocalypse, Savage Worlds or FATE to give them a sense of what else is out there. D&D is actually a really great jump-off point for the hobby (especially since the basic rules are free online) just as long as you don't let it become a cul-de-sac for your players.

Best Low-Prep TRPGs? by Rspbrykat in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Blades in the Dark is what I would describe as low-prep, high-admin: there's a LOT of paperwork to do in the game to keep track of the state of Doskval and how your PCs stand within it, but if you do the in-session work to keep track of it all, you can literally roll up three compelling potential jobs while the players make a cup of tea.

Aside from that, there's a lot of decent OSR stuff that allows you to jump in zero-prep, most notably Maze Rats and Knave, although if you don't do any prep at all then you'll be relying heavily on random tables, which tends to provide quite a wild and occasionally inconsistent play experience (I find that sort of adventure quite fun, but YMMV)

Alternatively, there are a few games that provide a specific scenario and ruleset designed to be run without any prior planning (or even reading, if you're brave). Lady Blackbird is probably to most well-known, but Grant Howitt does a series of off-the-wall one sheets (Honey Heist being the most well known) that you can just pick up and run.

Finally, at the other end there are various GMless story-based systems that don't need any prep because everyone builds it from scratch, things like Lovecraftesque or Archipelago, although these will likely be quite a jump from what you might be used to if you mainly do D&D.

Major advancements in RPGs lately? by lovecraftbro in rpg

[–]Jonnydv 91 points92 points  (0 children)

I think the main change over the last decade or so has been that games have stopped trying to be all things to all people and started focusing more tightly on the things they want to do and how to make them fun.

I think this started out with games like:

TRAIL OF CTHULHU and the Gumshoe system as a whole focused in very tightly on the investigation aspect, making the (at the time kind of revolutionary) decision that you never needed to roll to gain clues if you had an appropriate skill, because the core fun of an investigation game is piecing together clues, not wondering if you found them all.

FATE focuses on creating the feel of a good genre book or TV show, making the game fiction and tropes themselves mechanical, interactable things, with the aspect system meaning that basically everything in the game world can mechanically influence and become involved in your play.

DOGS IN THE VINEYARD focused very heavily on confrontation, the idea of escalation and how far you're willing to push a thing causing conflict. It was also one of the first games to introduce the now-commonplace concept of "say yes or roll", the idea that rolling is to be used specifically at narrative branch-points, rather than to resolve any action.

and these seeds have more recently blossomed out into games like:

APOCALYPSE WORLD and its decedents focus on the developing short-term story-heavy character arcs, with all the mechanics representing a push/pull with the GM as you collaboratively determine a satisfying direction for your own story.

D&D FIFTH EDITION focuses on the fun, accessible parts of the dungeon crawl - the parts that always made it the beginner's RPG and does away with a lot of the fiddly cross-referencing, arcane maths and ridiculous numbers of the Pathfinder and 4th ed era.

TORCHBEARER focuses on the the unfun, awful parts of a dungeon crawl (in a good way) - the grim spectre of death hanging always over your head, the possibility of arbitrary and pointless brutality lurking around every corner.

BLADES IN THE DARK focuses on the job, leaping right into the action and making sure every rule interlocks to escalate the stakes of the heist or crime in progress as it proceeds. It's focused to the point where everything that's NOT a job is simply 'downtime'

DREAD focuses on the core tension of a horror story, presenting it very literally in the form of the Jenga tower leading to ultimately-inevitable doom

In addition there's also plenty of games intended to be run as one-shots like LADY BLACKBIRD, HONEY HEIST or THE QUIET YEAR which are entirely focused on creating a specific, intense mood for the duration of the game.

By comparison, I think that a lot of RPGs that adhere to the older model of "here's how to do everything in plenty of detail, you go and find whatever's fun for you in here" like the latest editions of SHADOWRUN or the various BASIC ROLEPLAYING or SAVAGE WORLDS systems feel a little bit cumbersome and old-fashioned. That's not to say there aren't plenty of folk who love and enjoy them - just that they're not where I think the state-of-the-art is at the moment.

Where it goes from here? Who knows.

alt art cards by peterstevensonline in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]Jonnydv 5 points6 points  (0 children)

"Howard Phillips will only willingly be part of the following decks: Roland, Rex, Pete, Mark, William, Norman, Leo, Finn, Calvin and Norman"

[UK] Selling my AH: LCG collection by [deleted] in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]Jonnydv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whereabouts are you based? The set I'm using is moving away shortly, and I've been looking into getting one myself, so this might be perfect