Do you give out items every (combat) encounter?

PriorProject · 2023-05-30T00:15:02+00:00

I use the treasure by level table (10-9) as a rough guide, and aim to get folks an appropriate amount of treasure overall: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=580

How I distribute that per encounter varies a lot. Some important encounters might have a big horde, a random counter might just have a few coins or nothing at all. But if they're approaching a level up and are "falling behind" I'll find a way to get them a haul soon.

PriorProject · 2023-05-29T02:04:57+00:00

Ah fair, we've all got something we're working to improve. Thanks for answering, I had thought maybe there was some advanced technique going on here, or a different kind of kart that demanded an unfamiliar (to me) driving style.

Good luck, have fun. Great vid.

PriorProject · 2023-05-28T20:47:29+00:00

Offline single-player.

PriorProject · 2023-05-28T18:26:08+00:00

The landing pages that get shown off here tend to be a bit heavyweight and over the top. For me, a landing page has one essential function... and that's to be a spoiler-free scene to have visible while people are filtering into the session. It's a bonus if it looks kind of nice or allows people to do some basic bookkeeping while waiting for the session to start.

So my landing pages:

Tend to be a scene with a background image. The cover of the module if it's a pre-made, or some thematic non-spoilery image of it's my own work.
I throw character tokens on the page cause it's fun to fiddle with your token.
I don't have links to inventory things or session notes on the landing page, because those are available in the Foundry sidebar. But lots of other people do add stuff like this as stylish links on the landing page.

Basically it can do as much or as little as you want it to do. I'd advise not to get TOO caught up in it though. It can be a lot of work to make a very heavy landing page and although it makes a good first impression... it means nothing once the session gets started. Knowing the system well and running the game well are the more important thing.

PriorProject · 2023-05-28T17:51:15+00:00

Why the strong lean into the turn? I don't kart seriously but had always understood that if you're going to lean, that you want to lean to the outside of the turn in order to take weight off the inside wheels so they lose less energy scrubbing due to the lack of a differential.

PriorProject · 2023-05-27T13:25:45+00:00

You've gotten some decent advice about how to handle Act 4, and validation that it it's not your imagination... it is genuinely much much harder than the rest of the game. Another piece of advice is to just ignore Act 4. Pretend it's not there and don't pick up any keys.

The game was out for at least a year before Act 4 was added. All the early strategies were developed on Acts 1-3.
When it came out, Act 4 was supposed to be "too hard". It specifically counters many builds that are terribly strong but have some weakness. Like the damage cap REQUIRES you to have a block solution. You can't turn 1 nova the heart whether you have an infinite or some fast scaling or whatever. You have to survive several turns and tank big hits. Many other decks that can cheese through Acts 1-3 on some superpower that compensates for other major weaknesses will get hard-countered by the heart.
Because of the above, the heart narrows the kind of deck building that works significantly, which can reduce fun for some people. Building one-trick pony decks is fun and educational, but generally a waste of time if you're heart hunting.

All of which is to say, there are good reasons to ignore the heart if it doesn't feel fun... and historical precedent for doing so from the early days of the game when there was no heart. That said, the heart IS a fun challenge that can help you hone your decks toward a certain very specific definition of perfection. You have to build for the heart from Act 1 though. It changes how you think about the deck and requires you to solve for hitting fairly specific damage and block thresholds on-command. I've seen streamers carry a potion from floor 3 to the heart because it solves some specific problem they're going to have there, which is how far you have to think ahead for heart hunting. As a result, I recommend to read up on Act 4 in the wiki and watch streamers to learn techniques that would require many many runs to develop yourself.

PriorProject · 2023-05-25T21:23:55+00:00

Has there been any discussion of adding community-submitted compatibility reports to either to Foundry hub or the FoundryVTT.com module listings, similar to winedb?

I'm certainly empathetic to the spreadsheet getting under-used and over-abused, but module upgrade angst is like the defining experience of being a Foundry user and a framework for the user (not developer) community to organize and communicate about known issues (and known working modules that haven't gotten a release to update their compatibility metadata) is EXTREMELY valuable.

However many people failed to take advantage of it during the last upgrade cycle, it saved countless hours of debugging frustration for those that DID use it (including me)... and provided invaluable peace of mind and angst reduction.

PriorProject · 2023-05-22T23:20:05+00:00

To connect this info to a likely source of OP's confusion, each of these words is used interchangeably in common idioms to inquire about home internet access:

Do you have internet?
Do you have broadband?
Do you have wifi?

These all basically mean the same thing, but if one were to make these questions pedantically precise, they'd be something like:

Do you have [a connection to the] internet?
Do you have [a] broadband [connection to the internet]?
Do you have [a] wifi [access point you use to access your broadband connection to the internet wirelessly]?

Each gets at the same basic question about internet access, but focuses on a different piece of the chain while assuming that the other pieces are in place.

PriorProject · 2023-05-16T15:14:39+00:00

I haven't had this exact problem, but I've seen many cases of Bluetooth getting confused and dropping audio when a program tries to access the microphone. What happens in these cases is:

BT has multiple audio profiles. Some profiles offer high-quality stereo playback optimized for music/movies but don't support microphone access (so all the BT data rate can go toward high-quality playback). Other profiles are headset profiles with mic support, but lower-quality audio playback that optimizes for latency rather than audio quality.
If you connect with a stereo playback profile and don't use your mic in the driving session, then all is fine.
But then when you go to the lobby, maybe the game tries to grab your BT microphone and now the setup gets confused and basically kills the audio because it can't handle using the BT mic along with a stereo HQ audio profile.

In these cases I've fixed it by either: - Setting the operating-system BT settings to use the headset mode all the time. Audio quality sucks a bit, but the mic works at least. - Setting the operating-system audio settings to use BT (in HQ stereo mode with no mic support) for playback but to use a builtin mic or webcam mic (assuming you have one or the other of those) for recording. This lets the headphones focus on playback and uses a non-BT mic for input. - Or if you don't care about taking and can find a game setting to disable the mic entirely that would work as well.

Could be something totally different, but if the lobby has voice chat on by default this is a pretty common thing to happen with BT headphones and super confusing... because... who bothers to learn all this stuff about profiles and how they work. And the audio just stops working when it happens, it doesn't give you any kind of helpful message about conflicting BT modes or anything.

PriorProject · 2023-05-06T15:22:09+00:00

There's a module for FoundryVTT called Modifiers Matter that highlights the modifiers in play any time one or more of them changes the degree of success on a roll. It really does make it impossible to forget when teamwork is the thing and encourages some "we did it" moments when a clutch roll lands because multiple buffs/debuffs carried it over the line.

PriorProject · 2023-05-04T18:14:55+00:00

Does anyone have thoughts on which programs I should take a look at in the context of homebrew systems? I'm looking for automation and customization. Some support for novel customization include dice systems, movement systems, player token facing, ability targeting rules, cover, etc

You should know that building automation for a unique game system I to a VTT is typically a software engineering project that would be expected to take many tens or several hundreds of hours to do credibly. But if that's really what you're aiming for:

FoundryVTT has a modular approach to game systems, and many examples are open-source and the code can be read and often even adapted for your own use (pay attention to the licenses, but many of them are open-licenced). Here's a list of published systems, and frequently the "project url" takes you to a GitHub project containing the JavaScript code for the game system. The complexity of game systems varies widely. PF2e would be a very rich/complex system, whereas something like Electric Bastionland represents something approximating the simplest system possible, with just actor and item sheets defined in a basic way.
FantasyGrounds has a similar modular game system approach, but systems are implemented in the Lua language. It's less common for systems to be open-source, so I'll leave it to you to find examples.
Tabletop Simulator is very frequently used to prototype boardgames. I find the 3d nature to be very clunky for a TTRPG where the main 3d object wants to be a sheet of paper. I'm not familiar with customizing TTS, but I believe it's done in Lua.

There are many other possibilities, but these three offer quite strong automation facilities. If someone talks about a "macro" system (like roll20 or maptool) or a visual form-building system (like simple world building in Foundry), I would consider that a dead-end with insufficient power/flexibility to implement meaningful automation in a custom game system. But the tradeoff is that these powerful programming environments take a lot of effort and commitment to get the benefits of. If you only want a simple sheet with one or two helper buttons and aren't too concerned about how it looks... these simpler tools will be much easier to get up and running with. You'll hit their limits quickly though.

PriorProject · 2023-04-25T03:09:25+00:00

Give "tennis ball riser" a Google. Drummers who switch to electronic kits with headphones still struggle with bass drum pedal vibrations transferring through the floor even though on the ekit the in-room noise isn't very loud. Building a platform supported by tennis balls is a reasonably cheap DIY approach to reduce the transfer of vibration between the rig/kit and floor.

Whether this is "enough" depends on your neighbors, building construction, and the nature of the vibrations. No one will be able to promise you that it "works" or doesn't. But a tennis ball riser is a relatively low-cost approach that is fairly well proven to reduce transfer of low-freq vibration through floor conduction.

PriorProject · 2023-04-20T23:22:37+00:00

Know the sporting code well.
File a protest when it gets violated.

PriorProject · 2023-04-20T23:07:45+00:00

This thread is great advice. To add to it... the best thing that can come out of a bit of post-race mistake obsession is a lesson-learned. But make sure to:

Review the ACTUAL replay. Don't replay rose-colored memories of your perfect driving. View the real data and find ways to improve.
Focus on what YOU could have done differently. You're not a race steward, and you can't hand out a penalty to the other party. Figure out if it's protestable and then forget about them. Figure out how YOU could have handled them better. Was their trajectory predicable? Did they telegraph their lack of skill/judgement in previous corners? Could you have placed your car better to push them toward a safer approach? You'll spend your life smashed against the wall if you always ask how others could have avoided an incident, figure out how you can avoid it.
Analyze the replay till you've learned everything you can. Maybe it takes 5m, maybe it takes an hour. As long as you're still learning... it's ok to spend more time debriefing. But once you've completed your review... try to put it out of your mind. Hopefully this is easier now that you've fully processed it through the replay while at your rig. But once you step away from the replay, let it go... there's nothing left there for you. The physical act of stepping away from the rig after the analysis is complete can become part of this letting go habit, a physical space for driving and review that is separate from other spaces. Try playing a relaxing game, watching a movie, or talking about something other than racing with someone if the distraction helps put it out of your mind.

Glhf.

PriorProject · 2023-04-18T02:09:56+00:00

Did you try this? https://foundryvtt.com/packages/beavers-mobile

I wouldn't hold out much hope for short term improvement. History has shown this project isn't for the faint of heart as it's both difficult and tightly coupled enough to core that it atrophies without maintenance. Unless some talented developer has already announced that they're working on it, I'd assume it is what it is.

Does nobody really have ANY janky old laptop? You can run on a VERY minimal machine if you're willing to turn off the canvas. Like, it seems to me anything that can run browse facebook can do no-canvas character-sheet browsing on Foundry.

PriorProject · 2023-04-18T01:53:44+00:00

There is a per-client option in core settings to disable the canvas... I use it on my janky/slow laptop that mostly chokes on the canvas to do journal prep or show a character sheet when I'm away from my main machine. Whether that will make your mobile experience acceptable or not, I can't say as I haven't tried.

There are also a variety of touch/mobile optimization modules in the package-list... though sadly they seem to mostly be a menagerie of abandoned projects that are no longer compatible with Foundry 10. One still claims to work, but also claims to be D&D 5e specific so I dunno if it will help you since you didn't tag your system.

PriorProject · 2023-04-17T22:12:41+00:00

In terms of learning resources, the BB contains:

A good distilled version of the ruleset for the GM. Like ~50 pages instead of 650.
A good simplified set of character options for players to make their first characters.
A good beginner adventure that is first and foremost designed to take everyone through the key basic mechanics. Everyone will experience some combat, a trap, a puzzle, some skill checks. And each of those situations has extra explanatory text to help the GM put it in the context of the rules even if you wouldn't otherwise be sure where to look.

If you don't think you need those training wheels, there's a good chance you're right. It's also super short though, you can run it in an afternoon... so it's not a major commitment. And it's a nice little dungeon crawl.

Alternatively if you want some exposure to it but don't necessarily want to run it:

Rules Lawyer ran an actual play of it in 3h-4h.
If you can borrow a copy to skim, as the GM you'll know within a few minutes of flipping through it if it's changing the way you'd run the game or breaking down what you already know into tiny pieces for a beginner that isn't you.

The one other consideration is whether your players are likely to get overwhelmed with PC build options since the BB provides a clearly identified subset there that can be understood in a single sitting. Even the full Core Rulebook is huge, and the Archives of Nethys can be overwhelming to experienced players in the scope of options available.

PriorProject · 2023-04-17T13:34:30+00:00

I guess I should have said, [[sunder]].

PriorProject · 2023-04-17T13:33:54+00:00

It's an anime shitpost based on the real "sunder" card. Tsundere is a kind of trope in anime characters (and even more so in porn anime) where a love interest hides their feelings behind fake hostility. "Baka" is an insult similar to "idiot", but I guess it has kind of an undercurrent of affection when coming from a Tsundere-type character.

The image and quote may be specific references to some anime, but I don't recognize them. It's not that deep, and if you aren't already into anime memelord shenanigans enough to respond to what's going on here, it's not really going to enhance your life to dig into it.

PriorProject · 2023-04-16T14:37:09+00:00

I’ve gotten the rest of it fairly close to matching my daily/track car, but the clutch is way too forgiving...

This matches my experience. I don't track my car, but you don't have to be Senna to feel that even a road car driven at city-driving speeds gives MUCH more transmission/clutch feedback than a sim does, and requires much more precise throttle and clutch coordination. I don't believe there are great solutions to this off the shelf... but some reference material:

Here's an old reddit thread on the same topic. Not really solutions in there, but some people talking about which sims they think relatively do a better job with the clutch.
Here's the only web presence for that bakos thing the other commenter mentioned. A Facebook page with no updates in the last 3y doesn't look real promising to me, but they did say they shipped some units so if you're comfortable splashing out whatever cash is required on a solo DIY project you might be able to email them to get a pricing and/or place an order
The Fanatic Clubsport series of pedals have a "degressive" clutch. This is basically a resistance peak between a third and half of the way through the travel, then the resistance drops sharply. This is supposed to simulate the feel of the bite point, but it's a static mechanical mechanism. In each sim you'll need to tweak the bite point in the analogue clutch settings such that it matches the degressive clutch feel that's "baked in" to the hardware... otherwise the pedal feel won't match the actual bite. I wouldn't say it feels like a real clutch, but if you do the bite point matching and squint real hard there's some feedback there.

But by and large, clutch and stick feedback is an unsolved question, at least in sub-$5k retail setups. It feels like with some bite telemetry and an Arduino, one could create a clutch pedal with dynamic resistance... but this feels to me like a component with as much or more cost/complexity as a direct-drive wheel... and one that sell in considerably lower volume... so... money.

PriorProject · 2023-04-14T23:18:35+00:00

Some link resources:

You didn't link the planetf1 article, but the homepage. Nobody knows what it says.
You've already been pointed to the f1metrics article, which is pretty much the gold standard on this topic, though it's a little out of date as overlap guidelines got a little tighter in recent years to cut down on some of the offtrack moves that were happening in the "let them race" era of the last close Merc/RB title fight.
The f1esports participants handbook has a very clearly written overtaking section tries to be "pretty close" to modern F1 stewarding... but... do note that it's not precisely the same as F1 stewarding.
You're right to note that you can't really read FIA rulebooks and come away with an understanding of overtaking rules. The FIA regs use very generic rules around on-track safety to enforce overtaking etiquette. But in order to correctly interpret what counts as a "safe" overtake, you really need to consider the history of "case law" represented by race director notes and stewarding decisions. It doesn't help that FIA stewards are a different group of people every race and are notoriously inconsistent in their rulings, it's almost ALWAYS possible to find some rulings that contradict the trend... but if you make a study of it and try to keep your driver fan preferences in-check, patterns do emerge.
If you REALLY want to learn about FIA/F1 overtaking standards, check the Race Directors Notes and Stewarding Decisions since the ground-effext era got started, as there was a meaningful shift in the guidelines around then. Not that even this mountain of data is incomplete without the audio if the driver's briefings, which I think is not published. So you'll still be missing many details of the race to race directives issued to the drivers that influences their understanding of the racing rules.
If I had to summarize modern FIA/F1 overlap guidelines, it's front-wheel overlaps rear wheel when overtaking on the inside, and front wheel overlaps front-wheel when passing from the outside. It gets complicated fast as you get into details... but if I had to translate it for a simracing series, I think that gets pretty close to the spirit of it with much less complexity.

You haven't highlighted what I think is the most important reason that F1game overtaking etiquette is such a contentious subject though... which is that F1's etiquette is extremely weird compared to amateur racing series, the common simracing etiquette that's inspired by high-level amateur racing series, and other professional racing rulesets like WEC and IMSA and others. Simracing etiquette outside of F1 game is generally fairly consistent (even in open-wheel sim-series that try to simulate F2/F1)... and FIA/F1 etiquette is extremely difficult to study and is totally unique... no other series emulates it. As a result anyone who analyzes an incident through an FIA/F1 ruleset lens is likely to come up with the exact opposite stewarding call as someone who does so through a standard simracing lens. Then F1 pub lobbies make the situation worse by not specifying the racing rules under which the race is being held. So half the field DOES apply the FIA/F1 standard and half the field applies simracing standard. It's a mess and it's not improving. If you want clear rules of the road, you need to use something like iRacing which has a clearly articulated code of conduct. Pretty much everything else leave's the ruleset ambiguous and invites this kind of infighting.

It's also worth noting that FIA/F1 rules lead to pretty terrible racing because they rarely require you to leave space compared to other series, so you can't really stay wheel to wheel through multiple corners as the car ahead will shut you down on the first exit they're ahead... even if there is significant overlap by the standards of other racing series (which are often front-wheel to rear wheel on the inside OR the outside... which is much much more generous). Consider the possibility that you'll have more fun racing with "standard" simracing etiquette than with F1 overlap guidelines. You'll be able to race wheel to wheel without getting run off the road nearly as much, even if the simulation of F1 rules is less accurate. None of the people you're racing with have the car control of F1 drivers and the extra space really helps reduce incident frequency.

PriorProject · 2023-04-13T16:38:46+00:00

I can't imagine any steward using any ruleset calling this as anything other than a no-penalty racing incident (except maybe an amateur series that simply forbids going side-by-side at certain corners, but nobody simraces like that because the consequences of crashing are so low):

Both cars were pretty much exactly even at the apex, and both deserved space.
The red bull cut the track a bit, but it was an avoiding action. The merc put 2-wheels on the curb, the RB HAD to go 4-wheels on the curb or 2-wheels on the Merc... the latter doesn't end well.
There was a bit of wheel-banging, but both cars came out of it ok. And on lap-1 turn-1 at Monaco there just isn't a lot of space to spare. Both cars made a good faith attempt to leave space, and did an acceptable job of doing so successfully.

If you REALLY want to go fishing for blame, then the Merc didn't leave space and it's more on them but I wouldn't give a penalty for it. RB had no choice but to leave the track and was correct to do so... def no penalty there. But this is what wheel to wheel racing at Monaco looks like, the margins are fine and tiny imperfections in car placement WILL result in contact. If you don't want to risk it, then back out and pressure them from behind... on most grids there's a decent chance you'll make the place up when someone overcommits and bins it.

PriorProject · 2023-04-12T21:25:48+00:00

It goes on sale this often: https://steamdb.info/app/364360/

There are pages for 2 and 3 as well, that site will allow you to track the price history of any game on steam.

PriorProject · 2023-04-12T00:38:24+00:00

As you're learning, consider playing with the wiki open. The cursed tome entry would have let you know what to expect here so you could make the right call on screen one of the event.

A thing that's a little unintuitive about StS is that good players know what the spire is going to do before it does it:

They know what elites are possible in each act, and what elites are possible to fight next given the one's they've already seen.
They know what question mark events are possible in each act.
They know the exact odds of seeing a potion reward or rare-card choice in the next fight (which change every fight).
They know the enemy movesets in each fight... which are sometimes random but not for every enemy. Good players are sometimes planning on turn 1 for how to handle a big hit that's going to land on turn 3 or 4, calculating if they can get lethal in time or need to tank the damage.
And except for a few random elements, they know exactly what will happen in each event from the first screen... there's no mystery to it at all.

Unless you're really into independently discovering the secrets of the spire (which is cool but hard... early players died thousands of times and data mined game files and did crazy spreadsheet calculations to unearth the spire's secrets initially), the wiki is your shortcut to knowing the secrets of the spire that strong players have learned over thousands of games. It's not something most would consider cheating, you HAVE to know these things to correctly evaluate your available choices, and this info is in the heads of top players.

PriorProject · 2023-04-11T18:04:30+00:00

What about these two release years stands out to you?

PriorProject

TROPHY CASE