@pteryx@dice.camp avatar

pteryx

@pteryx@dice.camp

A roleplayer frustrated at the structure of our society. She/her.

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pteryx, to random
@pteryx@dice.camp avatar

Ever just... draft some homebrew in nine hours in a fit of pique?

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

deleted_by_author

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    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @SJohnRoss @foolishowl I gather the blunt-force trauma trend to be a reaction to metaphor frequently sailing over assholes' heads, then being subverted and co-opted for their purposes. People are terrified of the same happening to their writing, so they reach for the anvil.

    nukehavoc, to random
    @nukehavoc@dice.camp avatar

    Totality in Burlington, VT, on the shore of Lake Champlain.

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @nukehavoc The way that came out reminds me of the one I took in 2017.

    SJohnRoss, (edited ) to random
    @SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

    When I try to describe to a designer unaccustomed to it, the Half-Dozen Rule often fills their eyes with horror.

    Them: I need to design prep for SIX approaches?
    Me: Twelve. Sorry about the name.
    Them: [sweating] Uhh ... Violence and ... Convincing? Um ...

    But once you have some tools, it's not hard to hit that tiny minimum. Recall some of the tools:

    • Problems with problems
    • Causal Chaining
    • Fuel-Sourcing
    • People Up
    • Five Root Forms

    Try it. It's (really) fun. 😊

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @SJohnRoss Causal chaining reminds me of a worldbuilding tip I've heard: ask "why" three times deep in order to dig up depth and find routes to originality.

    bedirthan, (edited ) to DnD
    @bedirthan@dice.camp avatar

    Let's make a communal 5e #DnD character.

    We'll start with a piece of mundane equipment -- a signet ring.

    What type of person starts their adventuring life with a signet ring from an important house?

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @bedirthan They left their life of luxury behind in the first place because they're strongly asexual, and like most noble houses theirs leans heavily on forced reproductive marriages to perpetuate itself.

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    "Awen with a deck" concept:

    This might be the output of the startup process for a specific region on a map, along with glass beads put as markers on the cards.

    You'd get a bunch of regions like this, and then history would go on top of them, possibly as more cards.

    Any strong impressions of that?

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen I find myself thinking probably decks with larger-than-standard cards, to accommodate as much info as possible.

    pteryx, to random
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    So, there are licenses for driving a car, which call for a test and can be revoked if someone commits (most) crimes related to misuse or dangerous use of a car.

    There are licenses to practice law, which call for a test and can be revoked if someone commits (most) crimes related to twisting, abusing, or violating one's legal position.

    I have never heard of a business license being revoked for reasons like this... and reasons are multiplying like mold on our economy and society.

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen How the culture manages diseases is likely to be an important topic too. Do they advance medicine to stave off the side-effects of having so many walking corpses around? Ignore it, thinking death by disease is productive and a drop in the productivity of the living doesn't matter?

    18+ pteryx, to random
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    Genocide does not represent me.

    If you agree, say the same thing to the people who supposedly represent you in your country's legislative body.

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    ...what, too obvious a statement to acknowledge?

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen The thing that's always bugged me about detective games I've seen is that they seem to assume that the lack of anything pointing at the act of reasoning through clues is a fruitful void, but in my own experience it's not.

    The reason it isn't is because nobody who isn't intimately familiar with the mystery genre realizes that you have to think through the clues after you find them, and even many people who are familiar with the genre don't make that connection.

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen One that pops out to me as missing is a culture lorded over by some being, or family of beings, significantly longer-lived and more powerful than the population at large. Think draconic god-king, vampiric dark lord, etc.

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen It's not obvious that this is what that sentence means.

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    I have accepted that programs are called apps, now, and I am at peace.

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen Apple was calling major programs "applications" since 1984... (The programs little enough to multitask even on an old toaster Mac were "desk accessories" instead.)

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    An actually smart appliance would be a dishwasher that had exactly one button marked "start", and could figure out the minimum time, water and soap to do the job, and do it.

    This is exactly the opposite of the "smart" we're seemingly getting.

    pteryx, (edited )
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen Then there's "tries to outsmart you". You know, "Have you tried Feature Q?"/"Feature R isn't enabled! Don't you know it should be?!"/"Feature S has detected that you made a decision we disagree with and has overridden your intent."

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @Whidou @Ziggurat @mozz Absolutely this. A "random encounter" can be finding a magical spring, a traveling merchant, a lost child, faeries who invite you to a riddle-game, or any number of other things that don't involve combat.

    pteryx, to random
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    New blog post: Connecting to the missing half of mysteries

    https://pteryx.dreamwidth.org/5757.html

    In which I lay out all my thoughts thus far on how I'd design a trad mystery game, and agonize over that one major piece of connective tissue I'm missing...

    Inspired by a thread with @LeviKornelsen , @Silverlion , @thoughtpunks , and @squishymage42 .

    Faintdreams, to random
    @Faintdreams@dice.camp avatar

    About once every five years I eat a Cabdury's creme egg and then remember why I don't eat those eggs because ...

    Omfg CONCENTRATED SUGAR BOMB !

    :: SHEESH ::

    Feels like the entire inside of my head is made of chocolate !?

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @Faintdreams I never saw the appeal of the Creme Eggs either. I prefer their solid-with-sugar-shell Mini Eggs.

    masukomi, to random
    @masukomi@dice.camp avatar

    @malin linked me to their idea for calculating "faff" in games. It's a way to generate a numeric rating for how much work the player has to go through to accomplish a task. https://ttrpgs.com/post/faff/

    I tackle this problem with flow charts. I find them to be an incredible way to expose hidden complexity. Most folks think D&D combat could be simplified, but isn't too bad, but then you see this. 1 rounds worth of decisions & actions for 1 player. Ignore the text. Focus on HOW MANY STEPS there are

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @masukomi @malin I presume that "roll three dice and keep the middle result" would rate as a 3 as is... though I'm left wondering what adding in "...and if you roll doubles, it's a but/and result" would rate as.

    bedirthan, to DnD
    @bedirthan@dice.camp avatar

    The WotC art for 2024 has a wizard that wears glasses.
    The discourse around the glasses is demonstrating a lot of people I'd never want play at a table with.

    If I could qualify expert, be functionally fluent in a foreign language, get combat medic training, use explosives and the much more I did in my assignment to 5th Group with glasses your D&D game of wizards and rogues and elves can have glasses.

    Glasses belong in the game.

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @bedirthan Not only does it make perfect sense for glasses to exist in a D&D world, glasses also just so happen to be shorthand for nerdiness in our culture, and wizard is the nerdiest D&D spellcaster (just ekeing out artificer for that title), so of course you introduce new players to the concept by showing a wizard with glasses.

    kyonshi, to random
    @kyonshi@dice.camp avatar

    Huh. Thunderstorm outside.
    That's weird for March.

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @kyonshi No no, it's:

    Thunderstorm outside?
    That's weird for this time of year.
    March is meant to melt.

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    Here's an assertion that should be fairly agreeable with a second of consideration:

    In a trad game, when it comes to how much gravity the game mechanics exert on play, the pull of the character sheet and the things the player imagines based on it is notably stronger than the great majority of of other rules. It's the dwarf star of rules gravity.

    image/jpeg

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @thoughtpunks @LeviKornelsen @Silverlion (As an aside, that it's this hard for me to get people on the same page as me, even over the course of a long thread and with blog posts I've written to help, is disheartening, both in terms of my ability to design a game and my ability to GM. If I'm supposedly such a good writer, then why can't I communicate anything?!)

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @squishymage42 @thoughtpunks @LeviKornelsen @Silverlion Concerning genre blindness and making use of clues once they have them not being in the players' skillset, I think both of those are very likely (alongside fear of looking stupid), hence why I think the game needs to make the methods of that skillset very, very obvious without actively forcing the players through it.

    1/2

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen @squishymage42 @thoughtpunks @Silverlion It would be limiting, suggesting that this is ONLY a game about being a cop and not many other kinds of investigator... and for obvious reasons, being a cop specifically could make people very uncomfortable.

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen @squishymage42 @thoughtpunks @Silverlion It's enough on the right track to be worth thinking about, though I remain skeptical that people who react to even so much as scheduling a game or talking through out-of-game problems as "unimportant" and "boring" things that the GM should do themselves (somehow) would actually treat turning in a written status report as anything but busywork getting in the way of the game...

    pteryx,
    @pteryx@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen @squishymage42 @thoughtpunks @Silverlion Another issue that comes to mind with "writing a report" specifically is that writing a report doesn't in and of itself imply that the entire group participates. Writing is traditionally a solitary affair, and I want to massage people into doing this as a group. (Would probably make an ideal central pillar for a solo game, though!)

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