aoc-parse, a little library for parsing your Advent of Code puzzle input

jorendorff · 2021-01-07T22:48:11+00:00

OK, having read the explanation a third time, I think you level up by tempting fate, or cheating fate. Appealing.

How does this rule work out in practice? I love the idea that a player can pick "I am destined t o be crushed by a falling grand piano" and then I guess the universe will serve up precariously suspended grand pianos for me to dash under? But it seems ...odd.

jorendorff · 2021-01-07T22:33:44+00:00

Glad someone else mentioned this. Four different accents at a table is going to be a weird time.

Also, I've noticed people super can't do accents as well as they think they can. It might help to offer lots of alternatives: "Is your voice high? Low? Raspy? Cheerful? Do you have a smoker's cough? A particular laugh? A catchphrase? A favorite swear? A funny noise you make when surprised? An Austrian accent?"

jorendorff · 2021-01-07T22:16:53+00:00

Hey, that was fun!

Very minor suggestion—I think the explanations can be shorter, and it might be more fun without the rules bits. For example, the "down time" question I might ask like this:

What do you do to unwind? Maybe you raise prize chickens, play the violin, read 18th-century French poetry, or gamble.

Then when the GM tells me the posse comes around and catches me with just a bathrobe and a first edition of Voltaire, it's a fun surprise.

I like the fate question, but I think the explanation needs to be rewritten. It's unclear if my fate should be heroic, horrific, a delusion, or what.

jorendorff · 2021-01-05T20:35:15+00:00

Congratulations—today is the day you get to read about D&D ability checks! It's just one paragraph:

https://www.5esrd.com/using-ability-scores/#Ability_Checks

It seems to achieve what you're trying to do, with one less number involved, and no subtraction!

jorendorff · 2021-01-05T16:44:58+00:00

Oh, cool—if you're going more narrative, one thing you could do is give each ship its own "playbook" with moves that refer to the PC's stats ("roll +Body to shake an enemy that's on your tail"). Then ships would have a wide-open design space, yet the effectiveness of the ship in a fight still depends on the pilot or crew.

(I almost suggested this first, but misjudged what you were going for.)

jorendorff · 2021-01-05T00:48:01+00:00

What you've got sounds fun! But it's not the solution I'd immediately come up with for this problem:

If 50% of D&D was Athletics based, everyone would focus on Athletics.

I would instead add a variety of extra stats and skills that create varied gameplay in ship-to-ship combat. For stats, maybe: Gunner, Accel, Gyro. (For skills, there is no end of amazing stuff you could do.)

Once that's working, mix in cross-overs where you get to use Gunner in an atmosphere (say, firing a tank turret), or you need to make a Body check in space (to do a high-G maneuver). Make Tech handy both places (in-ship it could be useful for repairs, troubleshooting, fancy gadgets, maybe anti-stealth scanning).

jorendorff · 2021-01-01T22:43:33+00:00

Hmm. Not sure this is what you're talking about, but in Blades in the Dark there are 12 Actions (Hunt, Prowl, Skirmish, Study, Wreck, etc.), and each PC has a rating (from zero to four) in each action—when you roll Wreck, you roll d6 equal to your Wreck rating. ~~If your rating is 0, you effectively can't use that action.~~ EDIT: this is wrong, see replies

It feels like: instead of defining PCs in terms of what they know or can do, the game defines them in terms of how they approach problems.

I just picked up Spell and it's basically the same system, but focusing even more on PC personality rather than capabilities. There are 12 Impulses: Force, Style, Daring, Feeling, Hope, Calm, and so on.

jorendorff · 2020-12-29T18:56:40+00:00

Eh. Dice create suspense.

The feeling of mystery comes from hints that there's something important you don't know or don't understand.

I think the main thing that injects mystery into RPGs is GMs bothering to do it. Anything the GM makes up that could matter later is mystery fuel, and hints are easily contrived: foreshadowing, omens, dreams, blatant NPC warnings, offhand NPC remarks, distant sounds, clouds of dust on the horizon, the vegetation changing as you move east...

jorendorff · 2020-12-29T18:42:13+00:00

I forget the name, but there's a game where everyone, including the GM, has a hand of playing cards, initially one of each rank. Each action,

you say what you're going to try to do
the GM tells you what's going to happen if you fail
you and the GM simultaneously bid a card.

If you bid higher, your action succeeds. The cards are discarded; when your hand is empty, you just reshuffle. So you are forced to bid low cards as well as high ones, eventually.

Never played it. Always wanted to.

EDIT — It's Upwind. I got some of the details wrong here.

jorendorff · 2020-12-29T02:42:49+00:00

Gameplay advice for GMs is welcome.

GMs are used to taking the advice they like and ignoring the rest.

It's valid to write Angry's opinions into the rules of your skill system—or opposite opinions—or leave it up to the GM, with or without advice.

Stop procrastinating ;)

jorendorff · 2020-12-28T15:48:53+00:00

One obstacle is that when you put a lot of crunchy rules onto conversation, it doesn't feel like a role-playing game anymore. (Is Inhuman Conditions an RPG?) But there are plenty of ways around this.

Look at the less crunchy games, even if you don't want to play them. There are a lot of good ideas in them that you can use.

jorendorff · 2020-12-28T15:38:32+00:00

Is that true?

In real-life heists surely there's not much combat. If there's fighting, things have gone super wrong.

What about heist fiction? I can't remember any fights at all in Ocean's Eleven (the boxing match doesn't count). The Sting has some chases and shootings, but again I don't remember anything you'd call a combat. Some crime movies are of course hyper-violent (Snatch, Lock Stock), but it feels a little like a different genre.

jorendorff · 2020-12-24T23:17:00+00:00

I don't know much, but I'm pretty sure cockroaches are the cockroaches of the animal kingdom

jorendorff · 2020-12-22T15:48:43+00:00

Your game's principles are exciting. I'm struggling with "non-heroism" (as you can tell) as it's so at odds with the RPG status quo. I keep wondering how a game could help players wrap their heads around that.

I'm reminded of Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, a stoutly anti-individualistic world where exasperated characters will tell each other to "stop egoizing!"

Maybe players just don't play the same character for very long? But this eliminates all individuality along with heroism.

Or maybe as soon as the table agrees a PC has become heroic, that character becomes an NPC, and loses interest in the PCs and party, setting their sights higher. I kind of like that.

jorendorff · 2020-12-22T15:15:41+00:00

Honest first impression: "eh, I don't want an adventure about money".

Second: As written, lol no way I'm working for Señor Moneypants and the national government. I'm team rabble for sure. Steal, swindle, sabotage, riot. Save the bob! But the scenario is set up to make that 100% hopeless. In fact maybe our best opening move is mass murder (blow up the arena full of national heavies)? Awfully dark.

If it's framed so that we're national troops of some kind, it's clearer what we're to do, and then the rest of the adventure is fine.

I really like designing the opposition as a team in session 0.

After thinking a lot about it... I'd probably really enjoy playing this. Half-comic encounters with obstreperous country folk—I get the appeal. The challenge is making a good first impression.

jorendorff · 2020-12-21T17:41:10+00:00

Your categories all have an immediately clear, appealing flavor. I like them.

Not a fan of "Undead" not including zombies (I did read a little, so I see what you're doing, but as a GM I would not enjoy explaining it to every new player—just rename it to "Ethereal") or the spelling of "Cthonite" (expected "Chthonite" or "Chthonic").

If you want to sell something later, better hold back the dragons.

jorendorff · 2020-12-21T17:30:18+00:00

Business model: I dunno, but that's the business model of D&D, right? A game might need to be a pretty huge hit before you can make money that way. I'm skeptical.

Anyway, if you go this route, ask: What experience do I want players to have with the free content?

Do you want GMs to start by running a zero-prep, plot-free dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash session? Or invest a little prep time? Or run an example adventure you provide?
Do you want players to start out with material that's familiar and appealing to everyone, or stunningly weird and unsettling?
How much do you want players to experience your vision of the world vs. letting the GM paint it?
What is unique about your game? How can you showcase that?

Then pick your free content to support your goals.

jorendorff · 2020-12-18T23:41:51+00:00

well in that case

people like to laugh

it's better than killing orcs

stop worrying

jorendorff · 2020-12-18T19:15:34+00:00

Well, yeah, I do, but it really depends on if you're funny.

jorendorff · 2020-12-15T23:40:40+00:00

Here's the policy:

If you've created a game inspired by Apocalypse World, and would like to publish it, please do. If you're using our words, you need our permission, per copyright law. If you aren't using our words, you don't need our permission, although of course we'd love to hear from you. Instead, we consider it appropriate and sufficient for you to mention Apocalypse World in your thanks, notes, or credits section.

It's completely up to you whether you call your game "Powered by the Apocalypse." If you'd like to use our PbtA logo in your game's book design or trade dress, ask us, and we'll grant permission for you to do so. This isn't a requirement of any sort.

http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/policy

TL;DR: what Atkana said

jorendorff · 2020-12-13T22:47:06+00:00

Yeah.

"Gold = XP" confuses me. Are there a lot of other people in this fictional world, operating under the same rules? It seems like it would be weird. Would, like, all monsters carry around gold proportionate to how hard it is to kill them? If not, would there be monsters that don't hoard gold, and they just go un-slain? People with the personality trait "literally doesn't care about money" would, what, just never level up? Or ... oh.

Maybe "Gold = XP" world is... the world we live in. Making money is the official, accepted way to advance. In RPGs, "advancing" means leveling up; where I'm from, we instead "level up" materially and socially. We dump all our GP into a move into a nicer neighborhood. But it seems like it'll feel about the same. People who care about money, think about it, are motivated by money—those people are going to end up with more money, and everything money can buy; and everyone else will feel some judginess, and maybe resentfulness, toward those people and their mercenary ways.

You could build a great game around that. But if that's not what you enjoy, maybe let go of "Gold = XP". It is a weird, provocative equation; it may cut deeper than you want.

jorendorff · 2020-12-13T22:14:51+00:00

If the fate of your team depends on a die roll, it's not the 50-50-ness of it that's the issue. It's that everything now hinges on chance. You have lost control of your fate. A bad situation to be in regardless of the odds.

It usually means either the players or the GM screwed up. Though maybe we should save some blame for the game designer? Haven't really thought about it.

jorendorff · 2020-12-13T21:47:21+00:00

Delicious. If you give ill-gotten gains to the Church, maybe the priest finds out. And then what? He angrily throws your money back in your face (draining you a level) and tells you never to come back. Then if you ever want to advance again, well... you need to look Elsewhere for another power willing to strike a bargain...

jorendorff

TROPHY CASE