#D20 Monkey

[haleyusesherwords]

How it started:

How it’s going:

[soup-future]

figuring out hob :)

[midnightdemonhunter]

dull caresses, once again, irritate.

[embraceyourdestiny]

Norman’s ptsd flashback is one of the most horrific kind of flashbacks I’ve ever seen depicted in fiction. He’s a whole member of the army and he has ptsd from rat poison head explosions. The popping was so vitriolic and awful

[notanothertvpodcast]

New episode!

This week, we’re talking Agatha All Along, High Potential, The Penguin, American Sports Story, and more.

🎧 https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yBsEwuVLfXQk66W13WnrP?si=nUHvrW57RFOAQ3SsopuQpA

[freakoutgirl]

Things have honestly felt miserable for years and yeah there's the momentary wonders but I'm kind of tired of feeling like this

[loony-bear]

If I had a dollar for every time a character beat their own heart back to life I’d have two dollars whICH IS WILD FRANKLY

Anyway can’t wait to watch @dimension20official today 🥰

[normiewizard]

if i were with my best friends in the forest where dreams are real and one of them died i would simply point behind them and go I SEE HER I SEE KRISTEN SHE'S ALIVEand be so convincing that my friends would believe me and then she would be real again.

[queenangst]

the way timothy goose carries sugar cubes at any time

he's very prepared. what if ylfa needs sugar in her tea

[yourplayersaidwhat]

Me: I’m gonna rub the werewolf’s belly in that spot werewolves love to be rubbed

DM: Make an animal handling check

Me: YAAAS I HAVE PROFICIENCY IN THIS *proceeds to roll nat 1*

DM: Oh shit. The werewolf looks SUPER angry. I’m gonna say that doesn’t count as an action, anything else you wanna do?

Me: I’m gonna boop it on the nose

DM: Ok… Roll a d20 with double disadvantage

Me: 3

DM: It bites at your fingers. Anything else you wanna do?

Me: Who’s a good dog?

DM: Aright, that’s the werewolf’s turn now. He’s gonna make an attack at Cleric.

Cleric: What, not [Druid] who just failed the belly rub?

DM: Good point. He’s going to bite [Druid]. Roll a constitution saving throw or forever be affected by lycanthropy.

Me: *suceeeds* Noooo I wanted to be a werewolf!

Cleric: I’m gonna get my monkey to hold the statue of the almighty squirrel god Doug and throw him at the werewolf.

DM: As the monkey hits the werewolf with a statue, the fur fades away and you see a small naked gnome man curled up on the floor crying.

Me: I curl up in a ball next to him and also cry.

Cleric: I pick up the body of the goblin we also killed and carry it up to [guy who asked us to kill the goblin]’s office

Me: I pick up the gnome and also carry him to the office

Gnome: I’m a 45 year old man please don’t carry me

Me: I carry him.

[pagesofkenna]

apparently this is a bandwagon and i'm hopping aboard

[ileftmyheartinnarnia]

SPOILERS FOR D20 BURROW'S END FINALE

brennan's been angling for pvp for YEARS and he finally gets it in the worst possible way 😫 truly the ultimate monkey's (stoat's?) paw

[threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat]

this is the sound of somethin being born!

as someone that usually is late to joining tumblr fandoms (except six like I think I was reeelatively on time with that one), it feels so weird to like actually fucking witness a fandom build itself from the ground up. especially with a newly published work such as warriors. like I get to see the growth of hype (hopefully) in real time woah

[velvetvexations]

I'm genuinely trying to not just be constantly negative and starting shit and arguing with people. I feel like even the people I mostly agree with are getting put off by it if they haven't already. I'm very self-conscious about my opinions and how much I talk on a given subject, and I know I do have issues that make my expressed opinions more pointed than necessary.

But like, me jokingly comparing the Bad Kids to the protagonists of 8-Bit Theater is interesting, because I love 8-Bit Theater to death, it's an extremely important work to me, it hurts a lot that I didn't hear about the scriptbook Kickstarter until it was over and I'll always be looking for a pre-owned copy for the rest of my life.

Like, I think the issue isn't that I have a problem with the Bad Kids acting so awfully. That's okay, especially in a comedy. Comedic sociopathy is a totally fine trope and I enjoy it on a regular basis. The issue that gets me is that it's such a hard counter to not only D20's usual tone, but also the way the DM, the players, the narrative itself, and most of all the fandom treat them and their actions.

That's why I soured on Kristen specifically so hard and so fast, because before JY I just thought she was like, A Lot, but not really a big deal and had some good, solid moments in SY (I did not like FY in general for completely unrelated reasons, sadly). But with JY, it was like, right out the gate she's ignoring Cassandra literally half to death, and I wonder if that would have seriously bothered me as much as it did if the fandom wasn't determined to completely excuse her for it in spite of the fact that it was clearly meant to be a personal character flaw and not just "unfortunately mental illness is happening to her".

Even then I was like, hey, I watched those promo videos, this is obviously something that's been planned ahead and will be dealt with. I'm very far from the first person to point out that we're now entering the season finale and chaos has not yet stopped being cute. Partially that in particular may have been hamstrung by the dice rebellion in the mall fight, with the original plan having been for Cassandra to not get separated from Kristen so fast and subsequently unable to have them actively work on their relationship and Kristen's commitment to her. Kristen running for president also likely threw a monkey wrench into decutifying chaos, because there was never any chance of Ally going about that by having Kristen put on a slick suit and say "I need to take this seriously and research school governance and formulate a policy I'll elaborate on in a debate with Kipperlilly". The race for president could only possibly be a bit the second it went to her instead of Riz, not because I don't think Ally could handle that kinna plot if they set their mind to it, Margret Encino would have killed it just as good as Riz, but because it's simply so far from who Kristen Applebees is as a character.

So anyway, I sat there watching this season waiting for Kristen to grow up because I had faith that was going to happen. But lest you think I just hate Kristen and possibly also Ally, these last few weeks they've been the least of the issue.

As hilarious as it was I don't understand how in the good Lord's name we're supposed to care about Oisin "making Adaine think she liked him" by acting a little flustered around her when Fig literally started catfishing Ruben on the first day of school ages before they had any in-character reasons to suspect the Rat Grinders of anything, all so she could...no, really, why the fuck did she do that? What was the impetus for that decision? I cannot emphasize enough how little motivation is given for this course of action:

There is nothing to it except that Emily correctly pegged he'd be an antagonist later. It's like the detectives on Law & Order arresting someone because they recognized the special guest star.

And like, other people, I get it, other people who don't like the direction JY has taken can shrug it off more easily than I can, there are a million reasons to not treat this like the end of the world, but unfortunately my autism gets me stuck on shit and I just cannot reconcile things like this. I cannot take the show seriously and care about the protagonists as people and share joy in their triumphs and sorrow in their failures and ignore something as blatantly breaking the logic as stuff like this.

I'll grant you, okay, Adaine was understandably hurt but neither the Bad Kids nor the Intrepid Heroes were really like "oh now we have to really fucking ruin Oisin for being the worst person alive". The fandom treated it like he Frozen'd her but fandoms are dumb and should not dictate as much of my opinion as they do, I simply cannot fathom the kind of person who'll cry over the deep and traumatic emotional damage Oisin caused Adaine with his missed beer pong shots but doesn't think Fig should be in jail.

That's also not the end of it, though. I could keep going on just about Fig specifically and the fact that she is at least sex crimes-adjacent, not to mention Emily's infantilization of a very autistic-coded character, but I'm trying very hard to not just come off as being like the people who have harassed Emily and Ally over their roleplaying choices in the past. As I keep stressing, I like both of them and especially Emily because I've been a CollegeHumor fan longer than some D20 fans have been alive. I think I actually like Fig more accepting that she kinna canonically sucks and taking her as more a Complicated Woman than someone whose actions I need to reconcile with the expectation of her being better than that, although I know none of it will ever actually be addressed.

So yeah, all the Bad Kids have been fucking weird this season in ways they weren't in SY. Adaine's intense and completely inexplicable loathing of Kipperlilly was funny at first and then increasingly uncomfortable as it fed into the fans wanting to crucify her. Gorgug going full bully was weird but also like, a one line bit, but whatever. Riz stealing Kipperlilly's file was gross and would or SHOULD deeply hurt Jawbone if he ever found out, and you can say they had to do this horribly unethical action in the name of homeland security or whatever, I accept that there were extenuating circumstances, but it's given no thought whatsoever and absolutely no regard is given to the fact that she was trying to address her issues with the closest mental health professional available who Brennan goes out of his way to note is failing her by overcorrecting for his bias towards the BKs.

But as much as I genuinely believe Brennan has been planting seeds the Rat Grinders could be reached, he's not been great here either and like Mice & Murder these things are more on him than any of the players because he's the director here. Like, I'm embarrassed I got snippy with someone who guessed ahead of time that Kipperlilly desecrated the rogue teacher's grave, but nonetheless think it was a weird conclusion to reach and that it's just even more bizarre that it ended up being "right", except the way it's described doesn't even make sense.

Like, the goal was "find the rogue teacher", right? And the rogue teacher is dead. So to me, it certainly seems like bringing a back hoe to the graveyard is one hundred percent the right move! But even if we accept the apparent canonical intent that was Kipperlilly threatening to merely destroy the grave as an act of vandalism rather than retrieve the body, it's like...so what? Literally who cares? As if the Bad Kids or any other adventuring party wouldn't dig up a dead body to cast Speak with Dead or something, as if the foundational Dungeons & Dragons formula wasn't raiding tombs like 19th-century colonial archeologists? And why would any of that be necessary anyway, when Riz found Eugenia by just...walking up to the grave?

But regardless, that, you might say, is a matter of the Rat Grinders being unfairly presented as evil and not the Bad Kids being unfairly presented as good. When it comes to Brennan's part in it, though, these are the same issue, because as the creator and director of every atom of the world outside the PCs, he's just so very willing to go with what the players start to expect. That's fine for a home game, but this is like, a television show that people pay money for, and that's an issue. He'll plant enough seeds of the Rat Grinders being better than they're treated that a chunk of the audience will notice and think the players are being weird about them, but he won't push it further than that and instead just rolls with the players being weird because his first priority is their enjoyment.

Again, fine in a home game, obviously. But it creates this divide between the players and the audience because the world has been crafted in such a way that when the players being weird is noticed it's like, why are they being rewarded for that? Why are they getting zero pushback? Brennan and I both heavily, heavily value collaborative storytelling for good reason, it's why I love TTRPGs and actual plays, but if this were a story told by a single person you could either have the protagonists pick up on those hints, have it be a point that they didn't pick up on them, or just not even include them in the first place.

One of the reasons I really, really like Aabria's DMing, as I've said recently, is that she truly remains firm in her worldbuilding and is not shy about providing realistic consequences or acknowledging PC behavior is dissonant with what's going on around them. And it just makes it super ironic that Kipperlilly's whole deal is correctly identifying the fact that the world is warped around the Bad Kids, and in this season more than ever the DM is like, fully changing reality to accommodate them and giving them plot resolutions on a silver platter, to the point of letting them just full-on take back spells because the target turned out to not be there, which is pretty far beyond the quibble about the climactic move in Calamity's final boss fight.

It's not that I think D20 is 'rigged' exactly, because it's not really a game, or at least it's not really Dungeons & Dragons. This was a revelation I had when I watched Critical Role other than Calamity for the first time and was amazed by how they'd stand around after a battle looting bodies for random magic items. D20 isn't a sandbox TTRPG, it's a very on-rails shooting gallery with roughly as much choice in the narrative as a modern RPG video game, and it has to all wrap within a certain amount of sessions. That's fine, but occasionally it can feel deceptive when we pretend there's much chance of things going radically wrong. One of the reasons I liked the first half of Crown of Candy and all of The Ravening War so much is because they're the only times where failure has really, truly been on the table in an Intrepid Heroes season, but I still liked most of the other Intrepid Hero seasons nonetheless.

This season, I just, I dunno man. I don't believe Ice Feast just accidentally wah wah wah had the effect of completely neutralizing the primary threat of the final boss fight. And Blimeygate, like, I thought it was mostly a fun moment, but it also felt like the most exaggerated-for-marketing-purposes the "got'em!" bits have ever been.

But despite all that, I am still currently capable of enjoying the next season. I'm hoping next week does not make things dramatically worse.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

i really love your musings on baron! especially the way they're like. The consequences, almost? The monkey's paw? The immutable gap in between Riz and what society wants from him? do you plan to push those boundary-breaking aspects more in your class swap au? how?

you guys are giving me the wrong kinda credits if you think I plan out Anything for these stories lol. I'm havin fun enjoyin! this is not my day job and I will never start treating it as such.

but there is something here though about like, how I as a guy in my room drawing for fun approach these things vs. what canon is, and what I get to do that the d20 team don't. it's evident with class swap baron specifically - which means I'm not gonna ease up on the horror part of it whenever I draw or write or whatever for them, because honestly that's the part that's the most fun for me. so (taps the blog description) if evil and scary things start showing up more in my art you bet ur bippy it's intended babeyy

[roadandruingame]

RaR Musings #7: Meaningful Mechanics

I saw a post this week about other people in the ttrpg design space, lamenting their years of work, and being dismissed for their project seeming like "a dnd clone". A fair concern, to be sure, but it would turn out the criticism stemmed from having a fantasy themed roleplaying game, that uses a d20 and adds proficiency, has character creation that involves classes, and spellcasting with multiple levels of spells. Others suggested there might be similarities if you use the standard stats, like STR, DEX, and INT.

So what's a guy with a fantasy themed roleplaying game that uses Xd10, adding proficiency, has a character creation engine that has classes as a minor element, and spellcasting with a mana system allowing you to cast spells at a higher level, using some basic stats, to do?

Firstly: not worry about it. Creativity is iterative, and DND has been the fantasy roleplay standard for nigh on 50 years, having affected pop culture and videogame design alike. It'd be hard NOT to have anything similar to it, and for those who have no experience outside of DND, dipping a toe outside that space can seem daring and adventurous. The writer is probably upset because they don't understand how generally meaningless their reinventing of the wheel was in terms of convincing people to play their game instead; in fact, there wasn't any mention of WHY he made the effort to design his own game in the first place. Was it distaste for existing products? Because he had vision? Or just to prove that he could do it too, a kind of intellectual parroting?

Game mechanics can't be copywritten, so while it's not illegal to copy mechanics, there needs to be certified thought put into what those mechanics are meant to achieve, and why they may fail to do so.

As an example: both d20 games and Road and Ruin involve rolling dice to generate a random value, and then adding your proficiency as a flat number.

DND falls down here because even high proficiency, like +11 or +13, barely crests over half of the value generated by random d20, much less the more regular +1 to +6. This means a specialist, someone who has lifelong expertise at their craft, can still bungle even a basic action, giving other players a chance to perform, but completely botching the class fantasy of being a specialist, and there's no coded mechanics for varying levels of success or failure to even reward being a specialist beyond increased binary success rate. Multiple overlapping proficiencies don't have cumulative value, and outside of house rules, you can't mix and match Attribute to Proficiency, such as using Strength for Intimidation. However, the system is simplistic, and easy to understand. Not having different values for different proficiencies means only having to refer to a single number as a bonus, which makes stat scaling much more predictable, and as mentioned, giving other players the limelight means the skill monkeys won't hog it.

Road and Ruin HAD a much more 'unique' skill check system; roll your attribute (1-10) as Xd10, and your proficiency (two 0-5 proficiencies combined) determined the minimum score any dice could land. Dice were adjusted, totalled, and the sum divided by 10 to find Success Rate, with scores of 1 or higher expected. This ended up being too much adjusting and adding; it produced the ideal values, but was too slow, and not very fun, especially to do repetitively. Worse, it didn't enable 'skill' to exceed 'raw talent'; you needed a high attribute for the guaranteed 'floor' that proficiency provided to matter, and I wanted those with training to potentially exceed those without training. If INT4 rolls 4d10, and Proficiency 3 meant you couldn't get below a 3 on each, for a 'floor' of 12-40, that still meant an average ~22, regardless of if you were trained or not. Specialization 'rolled' an additional 1d10, but set it aside as an automatic 10, thus improving skill checks beyond what was possible via random dice rolls, raising both floor and ceiling by 10, but not solving the issue of speed or reliability.

So now, Road and Ruin has a Roll + Proficiency system too, except you roll Xd10 (1-5), and Proficiency is two scores (0-5 each), combined, and multiplied by Specialization, with a cheat-sheet of the most common Proficiency results for your character. Adding the dice, and Proficiency, before finding successes, is still slow, but faster now, and due to the multiplication of scores and specialization, your character may even automatically succeed basic tasks, without the need for a roll at all. Such skillmonkeying requires utmost devotion though, and is far better suited to an NPC assistant; but, said NPC will still be built using the same mechanics as what goes into a character, making it easier to understand and appreciate their service.

More importantly: I like it. I understand that others might not; it doesn't have the hallmarks of DND's 'gamble' economy, getting high rolls and confetti when you hit a 20, but frankly, I'm building this game for me, not for people who are satisfied with DND. Even my nine attributes are inspired by World of Darkness, though slightly redefined to suit the needs of my setting instead, and the proficiency skill list is entirely my own, designed to offer as many cases of two overlapping skills as possible. Using any attribute in the skill check, based on what you aim to affect rather than what the proficiency is most known for (using DEX and herbalism to get plant clippings, or INT and herbalism to recall plant facts, for example) is a much more direct and diverse way to handle skill checks, rather than trying to remember whether Nature in DND is Intelligence or Wisdom, and why. Rolling multiple dice instead of 1d20 helps protect against fringe rolls, making the rare cases truly rare, as well as creating a market for spells, equipment, and abilities that affect your skill checks to have meaningful use, rather than simply adding a +1.

But I'm having fun doing all this. Road and Ruin began because I was upset with DND, and over the years, I've done a lot of work, first to intentionally distance it from DND, and only later to begin to paint it in my own colors, doing what I want, not in rebellion of what I don't. Anybody looking to design their own systems should be more preoccupied with how their mechanics feel; if people think that it's too similar to an existing product, one that you intentionally avoided? Then that's tough beans for them. They don't get to define how you have fun, and at the end of the day, that's what playing, and designing, a game is all about.