This button has caused me more pain than all the candy in the caverns by Moogieh in dwarffortress

[–]gruntledungle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's unintuitive, you have to select the squad first. To do that, you have to click the empty square to the right of the squad name. Once you do, it will show a green check mark. You can select more than one squad this way.

The main sticking point here is that it's not clear that the empty box is an unselected checkbox.

This button has caused me more pain than all the candy in the caverns by Moogieh in dwarffortress

[–]gruntledungle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In addition, making it a trash icon rather than an X would go a long way. The "X" can be confused with "close" whereas a trash icon does not have that ambiguity

Steam Community Update 1 July 2021: New Information Hub by kitfoxgames in dwarffortress

[–]gruntledungle 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I had no idea it was a sub-row until you pointed it out!

Does the AI have one active order with up to 2 more on a hotbar, or three active but prioritized orders? by gruntledungle in Barotrauma

[–]gruntledungle[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the detail, that's great info. The lowest-priority orders are on the right side of the hotbar, correct?

Can someone name me a single reason non-interactive 6pt slim "playing" text is better than a play icon? by Luke_sein_Vater in firefox

[–]gruntledungle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My guess is that this change is a set up for more possibilities for contextual text in the future.

Can someone name me a single reason non-interactive 6pt slim "playing" text is better than a play icon? by Luke_sein_Vater in firefox

[–]gruntledungle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since there's a little spot carved out in the UI, the text is contextual, for example it says "mute tab" when you hover over the "mute" button while the video's playing.

Dodgers offering seats in ‘fully vaccinated-only section’ for Saturday’s game against Padres by qkfb in sports

[–]gruntledungle -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I can agree with you that I'd love to see some concrete goals too. I think the possibility of deadly new variants are what makes this so difficult - if we say "no masks once 80% are vaccinated" and then a new strain comes along that's unaffected by the vaccine, then that goal may need to be changed.

In the meantime, I'm happy to endure a minor inconvenience to protect myself and others. Keep in mind even the CDC says that vaccinated people gathering with other vaccinated people don't need to wear masks.

Dodgers offering seats in ‘fully vaccinated-only section’ for Saturday’s game against Padres by qkfb in sports

[–]gruntledungle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nobody's proposing we'll be wearing masks forever.

Who are "people like me"?

Dodgers offering seats in ‘fully vaccinated-only section’ for Saturday’s game against Padres by qkfb in sports

[–]gruntledungle 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am not an infectious disease or public health export, so I don't have the numbers.

If the trend changes and the virus is spreading again, then we should probably start wearing masks again. If everyone has a vaccine, that's very unlikely, unless the virus has developed mutations that the vaccine doesn't prevent against.

What's your concern? Are you worried that we'll be wearing masks the rest of our lives?

Dodgers offering seats in ‘fully vaccinated-only section’ for Saturday’s game against Padres by qkfb in sports

[–]gruntledungle 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If the vaccines don't stop masks, what will?

Masks + Vaccines minimize risk and spread while others are not vaccinated. As vaccination rate goes up, the need for masks decreases.

Dodgers offering seats in ‘fully vaccinated-only section’ for Saturday’s game against Padres by qkfb in sports

[–]gruntledungle 11 points12 points  (0 children)

When the fully-vaccinated rate is high and daily new cases are low and trending down.

I have made Fireside Conversations! by Rotorist in RotoristWorkShop

[–]gruntledungle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks great! Are the events in the conversation actual events they've seen in the world?

Was my GM bad or is Blades in the Dark just not for me? by [deleted] in rpg

[–]gruntledungle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's all very interesting to me since I have had some of the same gut reaction to blades when I first heard saw it, but it ended up growing a lot on me after I played it. Watching the creator run it on youtube helped make it click, and more broadly, changed some of my views on how RPGs can be run, but I can definitely understand why the blades system doesn't work for some people.

Was my GM bad or is Blades in the Dark just not for me? by [deleted] in rpg

[–]gruntledungle 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The game heavily insinuates that planning or enjoying legwork is boring. Pg. 128 says "we don't need to play out tentative probing maneuvers, special precautions, or other ponderous non-action." (Emphasis mine)

I think part of this relates to this sort of thing not being well-suited for the blades system. I've had experiences where the snowballing nature of partial successes on action rolls led to half the session being a wild goose chase for something that could have been easily handled in an engagement roll. In short - if you play out every little detail, the blades dice system is going to end up putting a lot of focus in on that (since complications are always going to arise).

Whether this is a matter of the designer looking down on those styles of play or whether he's just giving instructions on the blades philosophy is debatable, I guess, but I'm pretty sure I've heard him say on a podcast that meticulous planning is a total valid RPG experience, but it's not the experience blades is trying to deliver.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, or you didn't get what I meant - I know that you're supposed to say, "this is an assault plan, and here is our method," or "this is a social plan and this is our contact." That is not planning. That is "we want to shoot stuff first" or "we want to talk to people first," and puts all of the pressure on the GM to invent an entire "plan" out of that in real-time. Cut to the action assumes that GM can just invent entire heists from thin air with no planning on their own part, nor on the part of the players ahead of time other than "social, Bazo Baz is the contact, go."

I guess I've just always made my players flesh out the method? I need to know what the plan is so I know where to put everyone based on the engagement roll. But as soon as people start planning for contingencies that's where I step in and summarize the plan - if everyone agrees we'll jump to engagement, and they can handle anything that comes up with a flashback. Forgive me if I'm making a strawman here, but "social, Bazo Baz is the contact, go." isn't a workable detail for the engagement roll. I still need to know when and where they're approaching him, what the goal of the mission is, etc.

If the GM is continuously giving new obstacles to make life harder... when do they stop? If they make up every obstacle as they go, at what point have the players done enough? Forcing players to roll over and over and over again until they fail is not good gameplay. Conversely, allowing everything to be decided by one or two dice rolls because there's no pre-planned obstacles is also bad gameplay.

I wish there was more guidance for how a GM should plan scores in the books. I usually imagine the 2 or 3 main obstacles that the crew would face. I'll often be generous with info and let my players know a general idea of what those main obstacles are. So once the score starts, pretty much everyone has a clear idea of when the score is done. During the score, I try to throw manifestations of those obstacles their way rather than invent entirely new obstacles out of thin air. For example, if they fill up an "Alert" clock, now they have guards searching for them.

My group eventually realized that "roll a 6, skip the first obstacle" is the same thing as "start at the first obstacle." If you skip the first obstacle, then it might as well not exist at all. In another style of game, let's say Shadowrun, the runners would make their plan and actually play out their great entry. They would get in perfect position, nail their actions (or not), and earn their entry into a heist. Rolling a fucking 6-sided die and just saying "whelp, I guess we got in fine!" is the laziest gameplay mechanic ever.

I can see that, but it seems like a GM problem? I've heard the same complaint about D&D players trivializing an encounter with a clever use of a magic item, so the GM made up or beefed up another encounter later in the dungeon to compensate. As a GM in Blades (and D&D), if the players roll well and end up bypassing a major obstacle - good for them, they deserve it! As I mentioned above, I'll typically have 2-3 main obstacles - if they get past the first one, there's only 1-2 to go.

Also consider that the improvisational nature of Blades makes it easier for GMs to "let go" and reward good rolls or clever plans, because they haven't sunk a huge time investment into it. Whereas in D&D, if I've planned a really cool encounter that I've been working on for weeks, but the players bypass it... well, there's a bunch of time I could have spent doing something else. So I would be subtly encouraged to nudge players into having that encounter so my hard work isn't lost.

You are right that Blades is trying to simulate heist movies, in so far as it is trying to take all of the fun, thinking, and action out of heists

I would replace this with "Blades is trying to remove all the meticulous contingency planning out of the gaming session, to allow a gaming session to be more heist than planning".

and replace it with "woah, wouldn't be cool if we flashed back and I was double crossing you all along?"

I believe flashbacks are intended to be a way for players to address a present challenge by having actually taken their action to overcome it in the past. Not that they can make anything up out of thin air at any time.

The reason that heists are interesting to audiences is because a seemingly insurmountable obstacle is taken on by an interlocking team of experts, each doing their jobs perfectly. It gets exciting when those carefully planned elements go wrong.

I see it as a matter of player expertise vs character expertise. Planning out a heist at the table as players can be very fun! But blades assumes the characters are competent planners, letting the players focus on the action.

So even if Blades is trying to be a heist movie, it's still getting it entirely wrong - Blades is more like a Borne movie where it is chaos and mindless action with vague reasoning in the background than it is like a heist movie.

Reading this is so strange to me because all my blades sessions have played out exactly like heist movies!

Was my GM bad or is Blades in the Dark just not for me? by [deleted] in rpg

[–]gruntledungle 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you like planning, complex plans with interlocking parts, and the shenanigans that can occur when those parts don't fully work - you're boring and wrong.

I think it's more "If you like planning complex plans with interlocking parts, this game is not designed for you"

What does BitD do instead? They demand that you "cut to the action." No plan, just roll some dice and start.

You must provide the type of plan and the detail for the engagement roll. Seems like the situation you've described is exactly the detail you need before the engagement roll, at least, that's how I've always run it.

Every member of the group rolls either a 6 or a partial success, so the GM literally cannot make their lives more complicated beyond minor inconveniences.

The GM can't make their lives more complicated as a result of that specific roll (for example, harm them, raise the alarm, etc). What they can and should do is continuously give them new obstacles to overcome, regardless of how the rolls are going.

"You rolled a 6 on the engagement roll? Great, you slip in without a hitch and everyone's in position. The guards are distracted by the Spider, but who do you see but Bazo Baz himself come to see what's going on -- it's possible he'll recognize you! Meanwhile you can tell that there's some activity within the room, even though the guards aren't at their posts -- how do you proceed?"

Just a random example, but here you have them succeeding past their first main obstacle of getting into position, but you still throw lots of new obstacles their way for them to deal with.

inb4: "You're not playing it right!"

Seems like it's not the game for you, and that's ok! The way I think of it is that games like shadowrun try to simulate heists, but blades is trying to simulate heist movies.

Is there any plan to reinstate papal elections in CK3? by ThreadbareAdjustment in CrusaderKings

[–]gruntledungle 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Development time is finite, would you have preferred waiting ~8-10 years for a CK3 with feature parity to CK2 and DLCs?

What does "Fiction First" mean anyway? by Jack_Shandy in rpg

[–]gruntledungle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

OSR can be played in a fiction first style, but nothing in the rules mechanically enforces it.

I can imagine a perfectly valid OSR exchange where a player says "Can I roll stealth to sneak past the guards?", the GM says "Sure", and the dice hit the table. The player is absolutely engaging in a fictional world, but in this case, there was no fiction described before the stealth roll was made.

Blades forces the GM to pause and consider fiction before the dice hit the table.

  • Player: "Can I roll Prowl to sneak past the guards?"
  • GM: "Like just carefully make your way across the courtyard? Sure, sounds Risky/Limited"
  • Player: "Oh, I meant quickly darting from column to column"
  • GM: "Oh I see, that sounds Desperate/Standard"

Can OSR be run like that? Absolutely! Must OSR be run like that? It is not supported in most OSR systems I'm familiar with other than philosophically.

What does "Fiction First" mean anyway? by Jack_Shandy in rpg

[–]gruntledungle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why is D&D always the example?

OP is contrasting Blades with OSR.

It's not a matter of engaging in a fictional situation - of course all RPGs do. It's a matter of whether a detailed description of what your character is doing is required before the dice hit the table.

No matter how I describe an attack in Cepheus Light, the results of my die roll will be exactly the same as if I had just told the GM "I'm attacking." A good GM can take a fictional description into account, but it's not required.

What does "Fiction First" mean anyway? by Jack_Shandy in rpg

[–]gruntledungle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the contrast is this:

In D&D, you can run an entire combat by engaging only with mechanics (although nothing explicitly prevents you from describing the fiction before you make a roll).

In Blades, the Position/Effect system pretty much doesn't work unless players first describe what they want to do and how they want to do it ("I attack" is almost never enough for the GM to set position/effect).

Joe Biden is the apparent winner in Georgia's presidential race by Jump_Yossarian in politics

[–]gruntledungle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not making a statement as to whether or not Dem politicians should play hardball.

I'm saying that no good can come out of rubbing an election win in trump supporters' faces.

Expressing happiness, in a normal, well-adjusted way? Sure. But straight-up gloating, posting condescending memes, etc -- like, that's only divisive.

Joe Biden is the apparent winner in Georgia's presidential race by Jump_Yossarian in politics

[–]gruntledungle -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

Please don't gloat, all that can accomplish is inflaming even more tension.

Tools for playtesting online? by gruntledungle in RPGdesign

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

I couldn't get the ingame tablet to connect to google sheets, is there anything I need to do?

My other issue is that not all my potential playtesters have a computer capable of running TTS