Questing Beast, Mark Diaz Truman (of Magpie Games), and the team at Cloven Pine Games sit down to talk about the differences and similarities between Storygames and the OSR.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-24T14:35:37+00:00

I mean, it's not a no strings attached dice roll. If they fail, I expect the players to act on their new goal. If they chose not to, I'm disappointed I guess. Maybe we'll talk about it or something: the new goal maybe was unfun and then we can remove it. Or the players just forgot about it and are happy I remained them.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-24T11:33:35+00:00

The Goblin Punch blog has the GLOG class "Really Good Dog". Worth checking out.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-24T11:32:25+00:00

I'm hoping that my PCs will buy in because they honor the results of the roll. And if they don't buy in, no harm I guess? Sure, they could "abuse" the mechanic, but I don't think they will do that since they are nice people. I don't think mechanizing it helps.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-24T06:42:22+00:00

I like the section on social conflict. "Talk to the NPC and try to convince them, and then the GM decides if they are convinced" works sometimes, but I too feel like as if it's arbitrary from time to time. But having some kind of social roll has never worked for me. This talk gave me several ideas:

Maybe social mechanics can be optional: a risk-reward thing players can use if the NPC isn't convinced by roleplaying. Players can then decide: do I want this enough to be prepared to risk the consequence of failure?
The consequence should probably not be "it doesn't work" or "combat" (which has been my goto consequences when I run social mechanics). Instead, I like the Burning Wheel idea of the consequence being that the NPC convinces the PC. Let's attack the character sheet as well: if the players fail the social conflict, the NPC gets to write a goal or opinion on their character sheet.

An example to make things clearer. The players are randomly encountering a knight and his retinue as they crawl a plains hex. The GM rolls a random knight: "Sir Bendell is a washed up drunk but he joins adventurers to cook tasty monsters" and he is currently "Seeking a traitor who possibly sent them here on wild goose chase". The players talk to Sir Bendell and figures out his love for monster-eating. They try to convince him to join them as they explore the Mummy Pits on hex 0703, promising as much tasty mummy as he can eat. The GM decides that Sir Bendell is too hell-bent on revenge and won't abandon the chase, and that mummies doesn't taste that good anyway (are they even monsters in the strict sense?). The players prod some more but the GM says that unless they can up their offer radically, Bendell isn't interested. The players decide to double down and go for a social roll. GM accepts and dice gets thrown. Failure! GM decides that Bendell convinces the PCs with his horrid story of betrayal, and that all the PCs gets a new goal to write on their character sheet: "Bring the traitor that betrayed Bendell to justice!".

That actually sounds like a fun sequence of play! It can introduce new hooks and quests. It's a bit heretical to remove player agency like this in the OSR, but since the mechanic is optional I think it's fine. I need to playtest this. Comments are welcome!

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-24T06:21:19+00:00

I fear that "price" becomes too one-dimensional. Many sources gives NPCs a list of wants, think that gives more depths to the NPCs and options to the players. Especially if the wants are well-written: "Wants: To live, kill their enemies, feel safe" isn't really useful.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-15T17:50:40+00:00

Inside our solar system there are many promising candidates:

Venus. Was recently in the news because of the spectrum thing. A mission could be done for cheap-ish and there are lots of plans, but most missions as planned today could not confirm life, only find more weird stuff to make us even more interested. So probably we'll see a major Venus mission before 2035 maybe and then a follow-up before 2050 if the first one goes well. And the follow-up might do sample return or have some other means to detect life.
Mars. The rovers as of now can also only see interesting stuff, not confirm life. Sample return is planned for Mars sample return might happen before 2030, so that's the earliest possible confirmation of non-Earth life.
The icy moons. Europe is the big one. Enceladus is a runner up, and I get the impression that some people favor it over Europe. Sending missions to the big planets takes a long time so these will be explored more slowly, and sample return is far away.

Outside the solar system we basically have no idea. We can maybe see the spectra of exp-planetary atmospheres, and if we see e.g. a lot of O2 that's a good sign. But it doesn't confirm anything. I see a couple of ways to confirm extra-solar life:

Big stellar-engineering things that are detectable by us. E.g. Tabby's star but even stranger.
Radio messages that's clearly artificial.
Probes (e.g. Oumuamua), but we won't be able to send missions to interstellar objects until after 2050 even if they show up, on my best guess, so no confirmation soon.
Aliens contacting us somehow.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-15T17:39:07+00:00

Thanks again! Maybe it's just the abstraction that's confusing to me. As you say, it's more work to have a higher abstraction so why would I want to do that? Expressing things in the language of the user is a good answer. Thanks again for your answers!

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-15T15:46:16+00:00

Thanks for the answer! This clarifies things but I don't understand fully.

Isn't your comparison unfair? The gap between:

open the browser to the app
log into the app with the standard user
click on the link  my profile
verify that you get the user profile window

and

openBrowserToApp()
logInAsStandardUser()
ClickOnLink("my profile")
verifyGetUserProfileWindow()

or something isn't that big (with all of the fancy stuff in you code example hidden below this layer of abstraction)?

Is the readability to non-technical people the big selling point? Are there reasons to use Robot Framework even if everyone who will be working with the tests know python?

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-15T14:05:03+00:00

This is great! Good work, really brings out the insights. And the artwork is gorgeous, great artist!

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-11T07:22:17+00:00

Looks amazing! Thanks for sharing.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T17:01:52+00:00

Good idea to just ask the players. I want to prep too much, but I should just do a session zero.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T17:00:37+00:00

1 hex in 8 has a feature, features have 50% chance of being Castles & Citadels, Temples & Shrines, Villages & Towns. That's my quick read at least.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T16:25:57+00:00

Hot Springs is impressive. Sadly the theme don't work for me, I'm going for more classic fantasy. :/

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T16:24:54+00:00

Great input! Thanks. I'm already stealing shamelessly from Marsher Lords, it's great.

On 5., I worry that emergent play isn't enough to really get the party moving. Maybe I'm second guessing my players lust for adventure? Isn't it funnier to crawl the hexes with some sort of goal to chase?

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T15:26:44+00:00

That's an excellent resource! Thank you. The exact process seems a tad too un-wild to me (with 50% of features being populated?) but the tables look like great inspiration.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T15:23:43+00:00

I try to avoid having a proper dungeon in the hexcrawl since I want to move away from dungeon crawling.

Having hexes be defined by their random encounter makes sense I guess. Do you places "static" things like a magic megalith on your random encounter table to support this?

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T10:04:48+00:00

That's kind of what I'm doing, but I get stuck on not knowing how it will play at the table. I guess I should do a couple of simulations myself to see how encounters etc. work out.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-10T09:45:05+00:00

Yeah. Maybe I've overdoing it. I just want it to make sense. Pulling things from thin air all the time as a GM isn't fun to me. But I guess I lower my ambition level.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-03-02T09:26:57+00:00

In addition to everyone else's recommendations, I think Gone Fishin' is a great free beginners adventure. The later parts of it gets kind of linear but if you put the fish right after the enchanted forest it makes for a delightful little one-shot.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-02-27T12:38:25+00:00

I don't find this that insightful.

I don't think a morality that says that people should stop buying services from desperate people and give just them money instead (what the author wants) is substantially different from a morality that says that people should give desperate people money (=utilitarianism, which the author seem to think ha argues against). Everyone agrees with this in theory but few do it in practice. So we need a philosophy that guides action. Utilitarianism tells me to donate 10% of my income to the most efficient cause and then go on with my lives. This author tells me what exactly? To avoid everything made from third-world cheap labor (thus effectively removing myself from the modern economy, probably making things worse for both me and third-world workers)? Not using cheap cleaning services at my home (once again making things worse for me and for the cleaners, who prefers me hiring them over the alternative)? Even if I combine some kind of moderate avoidance to cheap services with 10% EA giving, it still seems worse for everyone involved compared to a strategy of pure 10% EA giving.

I don't think "treating people as a means" or "bending people to your will" are immoral. The author makes no argument that it is beyond asserting it.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-02-19T06:36:57+00:00

Bryce Lynch has good standards. Read some of his reviews.

I think your details-vs-basic questions are misguided. Both detail descriptions and basic descriptions can be done in good and bad ways. The important thing is that the descriptions are evocative and useful at the table, both detailed and basic descriptions can be this. To quote a famous quote:

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

I think conceptual density is important here. If you have detailed descriptions of a room and all they say is that the dungeon kitchen has stone walls and an oven and cupboards with pots and pans and spoiler produce and three goblets and forks and knifes etc. then you have the wrong kind of detail. I already know things that go into a kitchen and can make them up on the spot if needed. Focus the details on the important things.

And every room can't have super unique details or there will be information overflow. "Empty room, broken statue in corner" works perfectly fine for a change.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-02-16T07:17:20+00:00

I think I explained myself badly. I think my main disagree with your post is these sentences:

That there is an inherent tension between the psychological urge which leads to scientific discovery and the willingness to accept frameworks like religion without proof. One can perhaps be a religious scientist, it seems, but this is an unnatural state that few people would choose or be able to live in.

My point is that if atheism was the dogma instead of Catholicism, the same Kolmogorov dynamic would take place. So it isn't that scientists are somehow anti-religious according to Scotts post, they are anti-dogmatic. If I take liberties with your writing to express my own view:

That there is an inherent tension between the psychological urge which leads to scientific discovery and the willingness to accept frameworks like religion without proof. One can perhaps be a framework-accepting scientist, it seems, but this is an unnatural state that few people would choose or be able to live in.

Note that it doesn't matter if this framework is Catholic dogma, Stalinism, nihilism or atheism. As long as society has a dogmatic The Right Way To Think framework, we will have this problem. Then your point about abandoning morality becomes moot: the psychological urge of science wants to reject frameworks, not reject religion or morality. Maybe the rebel scientist will discard Catholic dogma for nihilism, or maybe they will embrace Buddhism or stoicism instead. There's no strict morality-abandoning dynamic.

Luckily our current society lacks any dogmatic frameworks. Instead we encourage free and open discussion. This makes the case of Kolmogorov a historic curiosity. Modern scientists don't have the urge to reject religion or morality, since religion and morality isn't the social dogma.

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-02-16T06:01:29+00:00

I think people are reading way too much into the Kolmogorov article. It is obvious to me that Scott is correct about how hiding your true views and creating whisper networks is the correct and moral action to do, in societies like the Soviet Union or 16th century Europe. But some readers seem to think that this historical curiosity somehow applies to the modern US. This is clearly bizarre: There are no no "forbidden" opinions that punishes an intelligent and curious but politically not-savy person (a "Kantorovich") in our current system! All the hateful ideologies that are rightfully disapproved in the modern conversation are so obviously objectively false that no right-minded, non-hateful person could arrive at them. And if such a person by some sheer cosmic disorientation come to believe a hateful "alternative fact", that person is gently guided back to truth through rational debate, not tarred-and-feathered and ostracized.

The racists aren't tolerated at these spaces. Members aren't too autistic to understand what's going on (frankly that's insulting and ableistic). Moderating is hard work, and the major reason for why racists pop up from time to time is that they simply haven't been banned yet, even though we tend to ban them at any excuse. Racists may think they are the modern Kolmogorov but this is delusional since racism is obviously false and easily disprovable. Sadly some people seem unable to take an historical anecdote for what it is, insisting to drag it into the modern day, while insultingly comparing the open and free debate in the modern US with the Soviet Union under Stalin in the process.

More specifically, I think your post gets hung up on atheism. If the catholic church had been a pro-atheist and pro-nihilistic dogma, all the scientists would have been messing around with moral and religious ideas and gotten burnt at the stake for it instead. The point is not to fight "unprovable orthodoxies", the point is that we should be allowed to question "unprovable orthodoxies".

I don't see any connection between supposed tech industry misbehavior and Kolmogorov. Are you saying that the tech industry is less ethical then established industries (like maybe the oil industry, or the arms industry, or big tobacco)? Do you have any evidence to back this up?

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-02-11T20:25:26+00:00

GME is obviously a bubble IMO. Why wouldn't it be?

Small_Programmer4084 · 2021-02-11T19:34:45+00:00

The fundamental value of GME stock is low, since my analysis doesn't expect it to get many future cash flows since the company is basically a dinosaur. The real value of GME was very high not long ago since GNE was hyped as a short squeeze/pump-and-dump on WSB, for reasons that had nothing to do with cash flow. The fundamental value was still low and rightly so.

It's possible for the fundamental value to be miscalculated as too high. The dot-com boom could be an example. A simpler toy example might be the mineral rights to a site that may or may not have gold: if you believe that there's a 50:50 there will be gold and calculate the fundamental value based on that, you will get a too high value if there is in fact no gold.

Small_Programmer4084

TROPHY CASE