murlopal

[murlopal]

NGE x BG3

Faerun does have giant robots, and even bg3 specifically...

Considering that Eva is more about kids being mentally abused, I think all it'd take is to rewrite BG3 characters to be teens and make the delivery a bit more dramatic

Like, half the characters already have toxic family dynamics

Make Misora emotionally manipulate Wyll harder

Make Mistra's demand of sacrifice hit Gale harder and show him spiralling

And on top of making everyone a teen and changing the delivery, you can make BG3 into NGE with minimal changes to plot structure

[murlopal]

Can't think of a single person to snuff in my friend group

Tho I would invite them when I nail down the victim

Every friend group has that one cutie that everyone else wants to snuff. That everyone else gets all breathy and excited thinking about, imagining squeezing the life out of them, or chopping off their head, or stabbing them in the chest. That one cutie that everyone else wants to slit the throat of, or shoot through the eye, or suffocate while getting head from them. Everyone wants to hear the crunch as their neck snaps, or the screams as the blade sinks in, or the gurgles as they drown. Everyone wants a taste of their blood, and to feel them clench and twist and jerk in their death throes. That one cutie that everyone else wants to snuff. And if you're thinking "What? I don't think about any of my friends that way! I would never wanna snuff one of my friends!"... sweetie... you're that cutie.

[murlopal]

Pretty sure even Nasu considers Shirou surviving so often to be contrived.

I specifically recall a death scene where the game goes"yeah, this would've been the place you SHOULD have risked your life irrationally. Sorry, such is the plot"

I feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding that gets applied to Fate's emphasis on bloodlines. my suspicion is that it comes from people trying to apply the more clear-cut morality of other bloodline-based magic systems

when Nasu writes about the importance of bloodlines keeping magecraft strong, you can't take it in the context of harry potter or whatever

you have to look at the dysfunctional and abusive families, the supremacists, the politics, and the outliers he's also presenting it with. you've gotta look at the slaughters and kidnappings that are covered up in the name of maintaining that status quo

you could dig into the social implications of Nasu being born and raised in japan and how that informs those themes (not in a "japan is a mystical and alien fairy land" way but in a "have you ever spoken to a teenager who lives in japan about school and parental pressure" way) but even without it, magi are doing some incredibly fucked up stuff in the name of cultivating their abilities

and it usually destroys them eventually

[murlopal]

This man was his father

Also kinda cringe of Kiritsugu not to pass down his crest

Or of his teacher to not have him get his father's cres

He really hates magi culture, it seems, hmmmmmm

I feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding that gets applied to Fate's emphasis on bloodlines. my suspicion is that it comes from people trying to apply the more clear-cut morality of other bloodline-based magic systems

when Nasu writes about the importance of bloodlines keeping magecraft strong, you can't take it in the context of harry potter or whatever

you have to look at the dysfunctional and abusive families, the supremacists, the politics, and the outliers he's also presenting it with. you've gotta look at the slaughters and kidnappings that are covered up in the name of maintaining that status quo

you could dig into the social implications of Nasu being born and raised in japan and how that informs those themes (not in a "japan is a mystical and alien fairy land" way but in a "have you ever spoken to a teenager who lives in japan about school and parental pressure" way) but even without it, magi are doing some incredibly fucked up stuff in the name of cultivating their abilities

and it usually destroys them eventually

[murlopal]

Pretty sure the "adult starting at 18" thing was invented by greeks

It took a second Roman empire, i.e. Germany to start lowering the drinking age

(and yea, this means US is less culturally advanced than Greece 2800 years ago)

shared without comment

[murlopal]

Lol, the game is barely playable without xanathar's and Tasha helps a lot

I personally consider official books to have shit layout and wotc to be extremely bad at language and determining what is and isn't a keyword

So I get most of my dnd info from a pirate website that organises things much better(tho it's in Russian. Dnd.su )

Dnd could actually be a game about faction wars and gods and politics, all supported by interesting mechanics, but the rules are scattered across obscure books and fey lore book can't be obtained legally despite half the classes having fey themed subclass

Also, no official adventure uses any rules from other adventures with some exceptions.

I prayed they'd make 1dnd just a compilation of good rules they had scattered structurer nicely, but somehow they did worse than this. It's truly weird

I believe there's a decent system that can be constructed of official pieces alone, but the game really doesn't want you to do that for some reason

The worst offender is the spelljammer book which famously didn't include any spelljammer rules despite another book already heaving starfinder-like rules for sea ships. They didn't even bother to use these rules for space sea ships for some reason

You know what's really weird(bad) about 5e? Is that encounters "reward" you with gold and valuable items, but they removed the various systems detailing what you spend the gold on. In older editions, you wanted to go into the dungeon to get gold to buy things like a castle or a boat or a bunch of followers or whatever. But in 5e there isn't any of that - they don't even have prices for their magic items. There's a whole "reward" system that is completely meaningless unless your DM wants to put in the work to give you something to do with it.

Yeah, 5e getting rid of all of D&D's moneysinks (hirelings and strongholds in pre-WotC editions, magic items in 3e and 4e) while still having monetary rewards is one of those examples of 5e being hostage to nostalgia because it has to "look" like D&D but completely unafraid to actually do anything with that. Magic items can no longer have monetary values because that's one of the criticisms levied against 3e and 4e, and 5e was supposed to be a return to form, but at the same time actually saying that higher levels should be about stronghold play would actually make the game about something and force them to figure out some systems for it as opposed to their current approach of "high level play sucks, leaving it up to players to fix it." Actually, who am I kidding, they probably wouldn't even give actual stronghold rules, just a suggestion for the GM to make it up.

[murlopal]

This is the state of psychoanalysis we're in

i love saying pervert. im a pervert, you're a pervert, we're all perverts yay!

[murlopal]

Meh.

You can beat ttrpg into a 3-act story quite well

A 1,5 year 5e campaign levels 3-20 went like:

Act 1: Go on a quest, realise shit is fucked, first couple quests is a constant struggle to survive and figure out why is it so hard to walk 7 days across a forest

Act 2: finding different plot exposition NPCs, clearing dungeons, getting builds broken to the point of beating high tier devils and being generally cool

Act 3: Killing 3 final divine beasts and then killing them as an unholy godlike amalgamation of all three in the afterlife. Acquire their souls, ascend to godhood.

Unless my mind automatically stuffed the game into 3 acts. It more than a year ago, I wouldn't remember how it went exactly

What are some examples of mechanics in games that advance the story?

I mean very few mechanics in TTRPGs don't advance the story. So, to provide few examples:

Attack and damage rolls (advance the plotline of "how this guy got fucking killed")

Skill checks (advance the plotline of "how that one asshole did a thing and succeeded/failed"

Gaining experience/other character advancement currency (advance the plotline of "how the character learned from their experiences and learned to shoot lighting")

Random encounter checks (advance the plotline of "look at all this fucking bullshit these idiots ran into while traveling from point A to point B")

Note: I've specifically chosen D&D centric examples because while D&D is the furthest thing from whatever the fuck "narrativist" is supposed to mean, simply by virtue of being a tabletop RPG the creation of an emergent narrative is an inevitable consequence, so if you're wont to look at TTRPGs in terms of "stories" technically all those things do advance the story.

[murlopal]

People keep dunking on anarchists having little, but noticeable positive impact and then they are not posting announcements for events that their vanguardist group hosts to recruit/educate the proletariat... Hmmm...

And anarchists are at fault for this too. You think an average trot group isn't the same arrangement of polycules and mutual aid that you've got but they just don't consider this part important to their political goals?

i’m gonna be real i dont think we’re gonna community garden our way out of this one

[murlopal]

Does anyone have the same happen all the time?

When playing DnD I keep asking my DM to "roll for meta" where I would roll history to mention in character stuff I saw in other modules or Arcana or smth to be able to suggest spells that could solve the problem without having them in my list

[murlopal]

My problem is that gold is dispenced completely on random

Official modules expect players to take quests with no financial gain. Rime of the Frostmaiden literally has "only give lvl 3 and progress the plot when players do 4 irrelevant quests" and some of these quests don't give money, but still require you to spend scrolls, sacrifice mounts and stuff

On the other end of the spectrum, ToA straight up has 25k gold in a low level dungeon and I had to make up 2 sessions worth of content just to let them spend it rather than take them to the end of the module and supposedly to the dungeon of the Mad mage(one of the few high level modules)

You know what's really weird(bad) about 5e? Is that encounters "reward" you with gold and valuable items, but they removed the various systems detailing what you spend the gold on. In older editions, you wanted to go into the dungeon to get gold to buy things like a castle or a boat or a bunch of followers or whatever. But in 5e there isn't any of that - they don't even have prices for their magic items. There's a whole "reward" system that is completely meaningless unless your DM wants to put in the work to give you something to do with it.

Yeah, 5e getting rid of all of D&D's moneysinks (hirelings and strongholds in pre-WotC editions, magic items in 3e and 4e) while still having monetary rewards is one of those examples of 5e being hostage to nostalgia because it has to "look" like D&D but completely unafraid to actually do anything with that. Magic items can no longer have monetary values because that's one of the criticisms levied against 3e and 4e, and 5e was supposed to be a return to form, but at the same time actually saying that higher levels should be about stronghold play would actually make the game about something and force them to figure out some systems for it as opposed to their current approach of "high level play sucks, leaving it up to players to fix it." Actually, who am I kidding, they probably wouldn't even give actual stronghold rules, just a suggestion for the GM to make it up.

[murlopal]

Xanathars guide to everything core book for DnD has gold sinks

You can buy magic items and most gold usually is spent making scrolls

You can also brew basic heal pots

I don't remember where, but the game does have boat rules and boats are a way to spend money too

You know what's really weird(bad) about 5e? Is that encounters "reward" you with gold and valuable items, but they removed the various systems detailing what you spend the gold on. In older editions, you wanted to go into the dungeon to get gold to buy things like a castle or a boat or a bunch of followers or whatever. But in 5e there isn't any of that - they don't even have prices for their magic items. There's a whole "reward" system that is completely meaningless unless your DM wants to put in the work to give you something to do with it.

Yeah, 5e getting rid of all of D&D's moneysinks (hirelings and strongholds in pre-WotC editions, magic items in 3e and 4e) while still having monetary rewards is one of those examples of 5e being hostage to nostalgia because it has to "look" like D&D but completely unafraid to actually do anything with that. Magic items can no longer have monetary values because that's one of the criticisms levied against 3e and 4e, and 5e was supposed to be a return to form, but at the same time actually saying that higher levels should be about stronghold play would actually make the game about something and force them to figure out some systems for it as opposed to their current approach of "high level play sucks, leaving it up to players to fix it." Actually, who am I kidding, they probably wouldn't even give actual stronghold rules, just a suggestion for the GM to make it up.

[murlopal]

I love how little of actual "DnD" D20 play

Like, yes, you have DnD classes, but characters have flaws that come with their own mechanics and game plays in two stages "combat, story" where story parts CLEARLY have scenes and downtime is a single long rest and nobe of actual downtime rules are used and gold is waved off(and many money interactions could really benefit from wealth point system)

Magic items are limited, there are no consumables, etc

During combats, all combats are 4x deadly, iirc, but usually with weaknesses to monsters, almost every encounter has a puzzle solution and allows for improv solutions. Almost all days are 1 encounter days

Like, the game they play may be good, but it sure isn't DnD

"I would rather freeform roleplay off of 5e's bare bones social rules than have a game system that any more integrates social interaction and character into the rules" is something I see a lot and like.

Obviously my experiences arent universal but that was patently untrue for me, and I'm wondering how many people have actually sat down and given a narrative game a chance, and how many are kinda just parroting a post-hoc explanation to not step outside their gaming comfort zone.

[murlopal]

I specifically got burnt out on 5e because I got into optimisation and quickly found out that DnD is solved

Not only is it solved, it actively hates being played by skilled player. All of encounter generation and official materials need tons of work just to make them anything but a breeze. Not only is the game solved, having an optimised build player necessitates that other players heavily restrict their gameplay just not to shoot party in the leg.

Again, starfinder, my beloved, can have you playing a specialist who can't be replaced and outdone by a wizard and these specialists are much more capable in combat than, say, a rogue is in dnd compared to peacechron.

I hate how much better bg3 is compared to dnd(even without gameplay being balanced around having tons of artifacts giving conditions that would be hard to track in game)

People whose main job is making videogames are better about premade encounter design than people who've been doing it for years, ffs(including letting go of stupid 8 encounter day balance in favour of 3-4 encounters while keeping resource management in)

What the heck happened somewhere between 2000 and 2014? D&D 3rd Edition was all about "back to the dungeon!" and 4th Edition was most definitely also a dungeon game.

So what happened where players of 5th Edition suddenly seem to abhor the idea of a dungeon?

I think they messed up with the adventures, honestly. You didn't get a bunch of solid dungeon adventures to start your game with like in the previous two editions, so DMs had no example to build from.

[murlopal]

@wiwoozy

US cooking moment

[murlopal]

AI trained on weebs talking online rather than English-Japanese dictionaries

why is that the example sentence

[murlopal]

I once saw a Tremeri player twist the rules so hard, he could measure to mages in terms of creativity with magic

Tho I'd say it's a special case, given the guy was a Vampire supernerd and did some extremely dodgy RAW interpretations

you know what? I'm nailing my colours to the mast:

The default rpg that's used as a yardstick, in my view, is not D&D. It's Vampire The Masquerade 20th Aniversary Edition.

It has everything: Action! Melodrama! Politics! Intrigue! Horror! Romance! Bleak Social Realism!

Still want a fantasy game with swords and dragons? We got that, it's called Dark Ages Vampire!

When pitching me a game, the big hurdle you need to overcome is "why am I not running this in Vampire?" Call of Cthulhu? Vampire has plenty of cosmic-horror tentacle monster cults, just throw a hidden baali cell into your setting. D&D? Play a dark ages game and all be members of a vampiric order. Monsterhearts? That's just standard Camarilla Toreador behaviour! Paranoia? The prince is a malkavian, have fun. Rolemaster? That's just dark ages again, and trust me our mechanics are fiddly and pedantic too.

Being picky and don't want to play a vampire? No problem, there's a splat-book for playing as regular mortals, who may or may not have psychic powers.

Seriously, Vampire: The Masquerade has so much range as a game. Even more if you throw in bits of other WoD gamelines or elements from v5. Mage even has sci-fi space explorers fighting tentacle monsters on the surface of jupiter and I am not joking.

This is not a bit or a funny joke. I genuinely, 100% believe that Vampire is a better Default Game that can Do Everything than D&D and its imitators.