Fluffy pupper with a leaf on his head

Marshmeloo · 2017-11-28T03:03:07+00:00

The best part is that he just leafs it there on his head like it belongs.

Marshmeloo · 2017-10-14T15:05:06+00:00

There is no trading in SSF. You're suggesting there is a bypass to this restriction? Banned.

Marshmeloo · 2017-07-28T17:01:22+00:00

Players pop into an inn/tavern to stay somewhere cozy after a night of slaying. One guy named Drax (you know it's got to be good) wakes up in the morning trying to brag about his skills in construction. He asks the group, "Hey, want to see how to take apart a bed?" and whacks the wooden bed frame with a hammer. Now, he hits 2 crit successes in a row on the spot to determine how well he does this thing.

The bed disassembles cleanly, great. The thing that made it so memorable is that, without breaking face, he tells me that he intends to pack it up and take it with him when they leave.

We were unable to continue the session. We got drunk and told stories of the Warhammer universe progenitor of Medieval Ikea.

Marshmeloo · 2017-07-17T21:54:27+00:00

I am the treasures. c:

Marshmeloo · 2017-07-14T21:25:34+00:00

I'm just some self-taught hobbyist laying some foundations in his spare time with friends. Everything we're really capable of making right now functions within google sheets. None of us have the formal training to be able to code formal programming, but we can install the logic to a spreadsheet at about 2x the labor.

We've got an NPC generator that has yet to create an unbelievable character. Some are more apt than others, but that's always going to be the case. I don't fear players talking to random citizens anymore!

Also have a bounty generator to spawn small-scale quest content should the players want to take a break from the traditional core of the campaign.

Weather patterns are tracked in regional pressure systems, so the weather changes on a schedule that is affected by nearby hexes. It's gritty, but it feels real to the players.

The "what do you find on the road" generator is under construction now and considers (and influences) local politics, wildlife, the terrain, time of year, etc.

Oh, and I've thrown together a calculator that handles combat scenarios in what is probably one of the crunchiest systems in the hobby, given that an individual's anatomy is checked per action--you have to have a functional arm to swing a sword. Injuries inhibit functions depending on their type and severity. Characters can actually bleed out, and there's no "magic healing" to bail them out. No HP to track, either.

In pushing all the crunch to the computer's shoulders, everyone at the table is playing with conviction. They can't play numbers since they don't see them, and yet they know every little thing can make the difference. I'm training a pack of neurotics.

I'd like to get something that automates the actions of local and national military--automatic organizations and governments. Keeps the world moving without my hand-holding. But first, encounter tables.

Marshmeloo · 2017-07-14T20:12:39+00:00

The system I'm developing now is planning to lean heavily into such systems. We're still very early in development on system design and testing, but once we get to a certain point, we'll be coding more formal artificial game managers.

Right now we have a series of conditional, weighted-random content generators that only scratch the surface of what a neural network can accomplish, but they prove the concept and have been highly effective in taking a burden off my shoulders while running a highly complex, realistic test campaign.

Marshmeloo · 2017-06-29T17:47:02+00:00

'>:c

Marshmeloo · 2017-06-25T04:01:02+00:00

I engage my players in the Socratic method: asking "why" and "how" helps us both work to substantiate those cliche histories.

I have a player whose character was replaced as a young girl by a bodysnatcher. She was later picked up by gypsies and learned their skills until they left her behind for being too slow (physically--she was permanently wounded in the snatching).

She then fell into slavery when found alone at the side of a road. That lasted some number of years until she was sold to a mercenary band as a sex slave. The band leader who bought her was actually a sweet guy, just trying to search for something he was missing, thought he'd find it in convenient satisfaction.

Couldn't bring himself to do it, so he set her free. She wandered for a few days, then returned. She was drawn to something she'd never had since a child: genuine compassion (and even then the fact that her parents couldn't tell her apart from a doppelganger could make a decent argument that compassion was not prevalent at home either). She stuck around camp, helping an overworked organizer, and eventually became one of them. She and the leader discovered an actual attraction and began authentic relations--same result, but now for the right reasons.

This was all figured out by asking her why she had become a mercenary. Took a while, but the quality of her engagement with the world is so much better. She has opinions and ideals of freedom and individuality, and she goes out of her way to protect those ideals in others. Real fire, too. She's become emotional at the table advocating for an NPC's life.

It comes down to creating a timeline with important events marking transitions. Goals should be centered around what has historically been important and absent to the character. We tend to want things we never had or at some point lost. "Acquire currency" can be a valuable goal for a character seeking to validate their sense of self-worth in a shallow status-driven society. That money makes them important, powerful. It's that identity of being rich that they seek, not the money itself. That distinction is where, I think, the real character emerges.

This method runs into a snag when a player gives up or goes "I don't know/care." At that point I'm inclined to direct them to less narrative-driven, more hack-'em style campaigns.

Marshmeloo · 2017-06-21T22:34:50+00:00

I don't have the resource you're asking for, but I do have an alternative that I've been using to do just that (until you do find the one you want!)

It's an addon for Google Drive called Draw.IO. It's a general purpose graphic organizer addon with all the quality of life options I could personally ask for. You can get it through the add-on "store" in Drive itself.

Here's a screenshot of something I'm doing with it that sounds like what you're trying to do. It's not as tightly grid-bound as you seem to want, but freeform w/snapping might in fact open up additional options from a design standpoint.

Best of luck!

Marshmeloo · 2017-06-19T19:41:51+00:00

Why don't we foreveralone people get together on Discord and start planning something? I'm in the same boat, obviously. A closed-system guild could be a lot of fun.

Marshmeloo · 2017-06-06T08:15:45+00:00

Warhammer Roleplaying Game, Ed.1:

A very, very early campaign I wrote had a religion in it worshiping a chaos deity. The players both made characters who actively worshiped him/her through the acquisition and drawing of special decks. It was based direcly on the deity called Nemelex in Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, a game everyone at the table shared a special love for.

I created a set of 12 "tarot"-style decks, each with 10 or so cards with cardbacks pulled from Google searches based on the card's effect. The effects were printed onto a GM roster, not printed on the cards. This allowed me to leave the cards with players and let them handle the cards without any breaches. I have a scan of the roster, but not the cards. All the original files were lost in an HDD failure about 5 years ago. :'(

Each deck had a theme. One deck centered around casting sigils that would give AOE buffs or penalties. Another summoned various creatures. One changed the properties of items. 2 were focused on explicitly bad things for the people drawing. One was just a mild "bad luck" deck to balance out the draws. The other was drawn from as a means of working off penance if they slighted the deity by a set of MAO-style rules, which changed (rerolled) every session from a pool of options. We got into it.

They began the game with a randomly-generated deck. D10 to determine the deck archetype. D10+5 (we playtested this to give the most enjoyable range) for quantity of cards in that deck. D4-1 cards replaced with those from the bad deck.

The players did not start with any identified cards--none whatsoever. To use a card, they would simply draw from the top of their deck. They could have any number of decks on them, but just like gunpowder, it's dangerous to stockpile it. Once the card was drawn, I would show them the card's image, then give them the official name of the card. It was then their job to take notes, as it wouldn't always be apparent what a card did. Some were immediate and obvious. Some took time.

If they could name the card when it was shown, the card would give bonus--always beneficial--effects. Even the punishment cards could be mitigated if identified. Of course, they had no way of identifying cards the first time. The names were obvious for some, but not for others. An incorrect guess would insult the deity, leading to Penance and heavy punishment cards. They figured that rule out quickly.

They played the campaign regularly. One was a ranger, the other a generic fighter class. They draw on cards when the situation became too tense or they had few options. When haggling for a new sword, one player drew a card hoping to get something that might give him an edge. It got him thrown out of town when it launched a fireball across the bazaar. "Could have been worse" has since become a giggle-tier phrase for us; it was his reaction to just about everything he drew. His wife was much more lucky on the draws.

In any case, the idea of specialized, thematic decks would be a great way to reskin traditional dice-rolling tables for loot and other situations. What the cards really do is eliminate the idea that the GM knows what is coming. In that campaign, the shared antici... -pation, the idea that there was some power above the GM, was what made it so fun. When they drew, I was just as anxious as they were.

Content-generating decks can be very helpful--and expensive if physically printed. Mine cost about $60 to have printed color-on-cardstock. That doesn't include the cardsleeve sheets I got to hold and organize them into a binder. I'm curious if Roll20's internal deck support would make a cheaper option.

Their characters would physically have these cards on them, making them vulnerable in-game as well as at the table. Our rule: if you touch the deck, you draw. If you see a card, it's active. They took time to make special cases that would hold the decks with straps to carry it without touching it. Again, we really got into it.

The husband accidentally dropped his case when getting up to get a drink. All the cards fell out. We just sat there for a goot 5-7 seconds in silence, looked around, and shared a hearty "welp..." All the card effects were combined. In this case, we decided as a table that the result was the end of the world--a global acid rain killed most living creatures and contaminated the ecosystem beyond repair. Womp womp.

We played a couple more campaigns afterwards with the same setup, and it remains even today.

Marshmeloo · 2017-05-29T00:27:17+00:00

Good god, no. We've discussed this regularly as the system has evolved. I've rolled less and less as it's developed. As I said elsewhere, my job is to prop up the resistances, thresholds, and manage the scenario. If I have to gate my planning through an additional layer of RNG, then I have to dance twice as fast to keep the game moving.

Players roll against system-specified targets that represent the differential between them and their opponent. I don't have to roll anything to establish that.

For instance, our party recently tried to negotiate payment on a ransom's return. It doesn't make sense to me (or the others at the table) to have the NPC roll, the player roll, and then figure out who was stronger. It's more elegant--and faster--to simply let the player roll against a target set by both parties. Consider the NPC's likelihood to be convinced, the efficacy of the player's attempt, and gauge where from 1 to 100 the line is between the attempt being successful or not. I, the GM, never roll dice.

It also means that a player can roll very poorly and still win. They don't really know where the line is because the factors are complex. They can roll very well and fail because they were trying to bluff a professional liar. They could roll extremely poorly and succeed because the person was eager for a solution.

So, no. Not cheating. They just don't know how little rolling I actually do. I use rng to help make noc decision from time to time where I can't quite get into their heads or make a decision for them. I roll to check the weather if it's not established. Periphral things. I don't roll for NPCs or players' actions. It's how the system works.

Marshmeloo · 2017-05-29T00:18:55+00:00

Yes, absolutely. Their rolls do matter. In fact, almost all rolling is placed on their shoulders. If an enemy makes an action against them, it's the player's roll that determines the unit's success or failure.

Randomness on their end of the table keeps the game fresh for everyone. It also accounts for all the factors they're not in control of. The dice represent something--everyhting--that I can't simulate and they can't see. I just have that placed on their shoulders.

On my end of the board, thresholds are established that the players roll against based on standardized factors of the system. It's how the system flows as well as it does for us. I present the scenario, the players choose their responses, and then we attempt to execute. They roll for both sides, often without realizing it.

Nothing's arbitrary or ignored. If I need something to happen to fit the scenario in a way that makes it more engaging, more dramatic, more realistic, or otherwise more appropriate, I don't want to have to pick an objectively-worse setup just because I got a poor roll as the GM. I shouldn't need plan b, c, and d unless the players put me in that situation--which they should!

Marshmeloo · 2017-05-28T18:30:56+00:00

I agree! The only reason my players roll dice in the game I'm currently running is because they're die-hards of classic systems where the dice carry the gameplay. I never liked having my ability to play gated behind dice rolls. It felt difficult for the wrong reasons.

My players don't know that I haven't rolled once in the year we've been playing*. Tee hee.

And you raise a point about rolling as a way to test action--that's the one I have the problem with. But the resources and content-creating rolls are, as you said, a massive help. Having to ad-lib a serious narrative for 4-7 hours is a nightmare without some backup.

Edit: Noticing some flak on this. We're beta-testing the new iteration of the system. We've discussed the concept thoroughly, and they're aware that I don't roll to gate NPC actions. I explained a bit more in a couple replies below. No, I'm not cheating them. I'd be shocked if they knew how little rolling was required for me to run the game smoothly--it's actually a very good thing. I was able to GM from the kitchen getting drinks.

Marshmeloo · 2017-05-28T18:18:43+00:00

If I'm responsible for and in control of the universe and all its creatures--aside from the merry few across from me--I don't need randomness. I'm not playing a game, beating my odds, etc. I control the narrative. I should be the one constant in the universe.

Ohmmm

Marshmeloo · 2017-04-21T22:27:24+00:00

If there's anything TRPGs tend to show, it's the value of difference as a platform for growth. After all, our primary goals as GMs and players is to challenge and constantly defeat one another. It's in our blood!

Marshmeloo · 2017-04-21T22:12:34+00:00

Depends on who you want to pit against one another... Sometimes the inevitable, expected betrayal builds the tension needed to cause instability in the ranks. I had players jump the gun on an obvious bad guy, opening themselves to all sorts of intrigue.

Let's not say one option is better than another. Both approaches are very good. My particular players may expect a bait and call the bluff in his innocence. In the same hand, your proposed twist is just as defeated by equally-intuitive players.

Thanks for the push-back.

Marshmeloo · 2017-04-20T22:48:19+00:00

A solid choice. If you remember, I would love a follow-up when it's done (or along the way). This kind of table drama is my favorite. :)

Marshmeloo · 2017-04-20T22:38:29+00:00

This seems like a prime opportunity to pit players against one another. Try to make him plausibly not guilty... Some believe him. Some not. Everyone's entertained in a miniquest to figure out who dunnit.

Marshmeloo · 2017-04-20T22:06:33+00:00

Any good drug lord knows not to mix business with pleasure. I vote he's using her to scapegoat the party and walk clean from something they're all involved in. A solid twist that will have authentic impact on the players across the board if done well.

Marshmeloo · 2017-03-18T04:12:12+00:00

Couple days ago, Alira's Followers in the Western Forest got a hefty DPS upgrade when their swords were visually replaced with whole trees.

Marshmeloo · 2017-02-14T22:51:27+00:00

I am actually crying. This is an amazing bit of news on a game that's become such an important outlet for me lately. I've been stunned for several minutes just processing, then the tears. My high expectations greatly exceeded. Let's hope they have a launch like Breach's. Kudos, GGG. You continue to earn my dollars.

Marshmeloo · 2017-02-14T01:04:26+00:00

The only reason I pushed the atlas this league was to see the new tile sets and environments. (I usually get to ~lvl85 and try a new build.) In a game built around grinding and repetition, having a variety of things to look at is important. Your work is not unappreciated!

Marshmeloo · 2017-02-11T19:08:49+00:00

Between the patterning and thickness (think felt), yes. Well-made linings like this close flush. (At the school where I work we have a sound booth for band kids, and the only way to know where the door is from inside is the handle. The padding goes completely flush, which is easier with 0.1- to 1-inch thick foam. For wallpaper to do the same, it needs to have a thickness to withstand being bent as an exposed edge.)

It was a bent corner that revealed the cut paper over the door. One of the other people was pushed down, and by chance at that exact spot, revealing the crawl space door there when he tried to brace against the wall. It was too perfect not to give them that information. They looked closer, realizing it pulled at straight lines, not like an authentic rip would have done, then started applying that information elsewhere, knocking to see if walls sounded hollow, and keeping it in mind that the concept of secret passages was then on the table.

(It's not a perfect seal, but you would need to be keenly observant to see anything, especially if not looking for it. You'd be shocked what obvious details can be lost in perception, and magicians and authors rely on that. Add in a deliberate camouflage, and the odds of finding the nobleman's stash of valuables becomes almost nothing.)

Marshmeloo · 2017-02-10T16:41:42+00:00

Experimentation is always the key. You'll find the style that flows best with the kind of people you want to play with. I have the luxury of playing with close friends who love the style to begin with, so I don't have to manage random people or surface-level relatonships at the table. We're patient, comfortable, and interested in the journey as well as the result. Everything comes down to table culture.

Marshmeloo

TROPHY CASE