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Overemotional Robot posted:In my Star Wars World game I deal with absences by writing love letters to the players for when they come back. * Their character isn't just hanging around the party being weird and quiet * It adds something to the game * They get something interesting when they come back to roll * There is a legitimate excuse why the party would need to fill them in when they get back, and they've got something to tell the party too
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Apr 7, 2018 17:03
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I already love this idea conceptually but all I can seem to Google for are like, examples of what they are. And searching my Apoc World PDF doesn't bring up anything What...are Love Letters?
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Apr 7, 2018 17:14
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Waffles Inc. posted:I already love this idea conceptually but all I can seem to Google for are like, examples of what they are. And searching my Apoc World PDF doesn't bring up anything Dear John, Please suck my dick. Love Jane.
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Apr 7, 2018 17:22
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They're essentially custom moves for the absence. So say the player of your Thief has to miss a few sessions, and decides that in his absence his character is going to "do something sneaky." Great! So you write him a Love Letter: Dear Devlan the Slick, After a little bit of time spent scouting, a few choice coins pushed across the right bars, and one tense conversation at knife-point, you've found the location of an eminently desirable little bauble called the Eye of Medraxas, which you've managed to steal. The former owners want it back, of course, but that's not the worst of it: Roll+WIS; on a 10+ pick 1, on a 7-9 pick 2. On a miss, all three are true: * You accidentally killed someone important in the process (tell the DM how) * You've left something incriminating behind (tell the DM what) * One of your contacts gets caught in the backlash (tell the DM who) Love and kisses, Your DM
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Apr 7, 2018 17:28
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Waffles Inc. posted:I already love this idea conceptually but all I can seem to Google for are like, examples of what they are. And searching my Apoc World PDF doesn't bring up anything I know the second Ed. AW has examples. I use those as a base and just write my own. The one above is a really good example as well.
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Apr 7, 2018 17:43
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I absolutely love that!
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Apr 7, 2018 17:50
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Yeah that is fantastic, taking that wholesale
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Apr 7, 2018 17:53
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Love Letters are also excellent things to open a session with, if a large amount of time is supposed to have passed between this session and the last. If On A Wint'ry Plane A Freebooter is a) free, b) a trip, and c) an excellent source of inspiration for love letters. Dark Heart of the Dreamer is pretty good to mine in its own way if you're running a campaign where the PCs are just one company of blades for hire in a city of adventure.
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Apr 8, 2018 05:16
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Since Bonds and Alignments are such a huge part of XP and leveling up, do you find that it works as a carrot or a stick to get people out of a roleplay rut and into being an active participant? What I mean is that, when the session end comes and someone realizes they didn't resolve any bonds or do their alignment thing and everyone else did, do you find that it's a wakeup call or just a feelsbad? For what it's worth, I'm good friends with all of my players and have zero qualms having them be different levels if someone isn't "pulling their weight" in an RP sense
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Apr 10, 2018 16:48
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Waffles Inc. posted:Since Bonds and Alignments are such a huge part of XP and leveling up, do you find that it works as a carrot or a stick to get people out of a roleplay rut and into being an active participant? kaffo posted:Ok ladies, here we go. I don't like bonds or alignments, I think they are the weakest part of DW Take my advice as you wish, but I found my games improved a lot once I threw them out and my players all agreed
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Apr 10, 2018 17:14
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kaffo posted:Self quoting because I'm that vain I could definitely see myself swapping out mechanics and stuff after we're all more comfortable with the RAW, but I'm super hesitant to houserule things from the get go. I appreciate it though! I've definitely dropped that post into a notes doc Like, they're all coming from D&D, so there being an actual mechanic for how characters interact is going to be new, even before I start modifying stuff, so I'm interested to see how it all works out
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Apr 10, 2018 17:18
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You can swap out Alignments for Drives too for a more dynamic mechanic that serves a similar purpose of "Encourage Roleplaying A Certain Way" https://docs.google.com/document/d/18jBt9n6WK_vibMjGALNDg4D1GN8dd2x1N758kz1OrKo/edit To answer your question tho, my group is trash at Bonds and its probably the least important part of the game for them, they functionally ignore the system for a lot of the time, with the exception of one player who loves them, I never get the vibe they're too upset when they miss their bonds, only when they're close to levelup maybe Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 17:19
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Waffles Inc. posted:I could definitely see myself swapping out mechanics and stuff after we're all more comfortable with the RAW, but I'm super hesitant to houserule things from the get go. I appreciate it though! I've definitely dropped that post into a notes doc But yes, you will certainly have some sticky moments with the DnD players. My bet is bonds will drive you all nuts. Then same 1 or 2 players will get their alignment every session because it's easy and the other guys will just get grouchy that their selection of 3 sucked at character gen I'll shut up about Drives+Flags now though, I'm a bit of a zealot sorry 
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Apr 10, 2018 17:27
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kaffo posted:I totally get you, have a read though before you decide not to run with Flags or Drives. They are incredibly simple swaps (choose from this list instead of this list) and you replace them on the character sheet by just crossing out "ALIGNMENT" and writing "DRIVE", ditto for Bond/Flag Do you have a list of Flags the way that that above doc has Drives? After looking at 'em, I think you're right that Drives are easy to drop in, since they're also just picking from a list
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Apr 10, 2018 17:42
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Oh wow that Love Letter concept is amazing. I wish I'd heard about that sooner. I'm gonna need to remember that to apply to, like... most games I run from now on.
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Apr 10, 2018 18:16
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Harrow posted:Oh wow that Love Letter concept is amazing. I wish I'd heard about that sooner. I'm gonna need to remember that to apply to, like... most games I run from now on. right?! even if I had no desire to run Dungeon World or anything I would still steal it for every RPG I ever did; it's so awesome and elegant
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Apr 10, 2018 19:03
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Waffles Inc. posted:right?! What really drives it home is what Glazius suggested about using it to cover large periods of time between sessions. That's a fantastic concept right there. If you have a system where you can reasonably improvise a session, using something like "let's talk about what you've been up to in the mean time and do some rolls to set up the scene" as a group seems like a perfect way to start a session when the previous session didn't necessarily lead directly into it.
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Apr 10, 2018 20:04
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You can also use it for really short periods of time if it makes sense for the game. For example, say you've got a Ravenloft-type setting and the party splits up after a lunch meeting at the end of a session to prepare for a night of vampire hunting. You could very reasonably use love letters to figure out what the party members were doing for those 5 or 6 hours. Basically love letters are a fantastic transitional tool. Any time you do a significant time skip and the activities of the players meet the criteria of directly influence upcoming events, have narratively interesting consequences for partial success or failure, and the outcome is the most important part, that's a great time for a love letter. And "significant" depends entirely on the fiction - in the right game, a 30 minute time skip could be significant. Or it could be a few days, a month, a year, even a decade. You want to make sure that love letters also set the scene for following action. You can totally resolve something in the process of a love letter, but it should still position the character for whats coming next.
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Apr 10, 2018 20:19
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So, advantage and disadvantage are easy to model in this engine as "3d6 drop lowest" and "3d6 drop highest". I mention this because I like to push people toward their alignment/drive and bonds with Power Aid. Basically, aside from like one bond I might ask people to write in during character creation, depending on how I want to set things up, I leave people to fill their bonds in later. But. When you go to aid somebody, if you want, write them into a bond or find an unmarked bond you already have with them, mark the bond and tell me how the bond applies, and they just roll with advantage, no roll required on your part. When you've marked all your bonds you can still aid normally. If you're doing something really in keeping with your alignment, you can also mark your alignment to roll with advantage. Marks clear at the end of session when you're doing end of session XP. You get alignment XP if you marked it and can change it otherwise, and can erase either the name or the bond from any of your marked bonds, getting a bond XP if you rewrite one with the player's permission.
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Apr 10, 2018 20:50
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Comrade Gorbash posted:You want to make sure that love letters also set the scene for following action. You can totally resolve something in the process of a love letter, but it should still position the character for whats coming next. Love letters aren't really anything special. They're just an outgrowth of your responsibility as GM to write new moves as the situation demands and existing moves don't exactly suit it. Your campaign is guaranteed to mutate away from any kind of generic assumptions about it, so "when your campaign skips ahead six hours" and that still should mean something, it's up to you to make it mean anything.
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Apr 10, 2018 21:04
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Waffles Inc. posted:Do you have a list of Flags the way that that above doc has Drives? After looking at 'em, I think you're right that Drives are easy to drop in, since they're also just picking from a list For the record, Drives are originally from Inverse World, which I only mention because that book contains a big list of non-class attached Drives that anyone can take: http://www.mediafire.com/file/2h0xlekt2ul0tfx/Drives+Cheat+Sheet.pdf So if even those lists of 5 drives for each basic playbook aren't enough for you, here's 30 more anyone can take with any playbook.
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Apr 10, 2018 22:52
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Waffles Inc. posted:Do you have a list of Flags the way that that above doc has Drives? After looking at 'em, I think you're right that Drives are easy to drop in, since they're also just picking from a list https://rpg.divnull.com/wiki/index.php?title=Dungeon_World_Flags You can also just make your own, but it sounds like your DnD players will probably just want to pick one off a list, then realise 4 sessions later that they actually wanted something different Don't you love players? (I do  )
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Apr 11, 2018 07:56
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kaffo posted:Yes, sorry, I was running my Exalted 3E game last night: Haha yeah you absolutely nailed it--I'm thinking it's going to be a big enough mind-gently caress of a Session Zero as it is, without having to ask them all to come up with flags off the top of their heads Thanks for this!
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Apr 11, 2018 15:20
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Waffles Inc. posted:Haha yeah you absolutely nailed it--I'm thinking it's going to be a big enough mind-gently caress of a Session Zero as it is, without having to ask them all to come up with flags off the top of their heads Post here after you run it and let us know how it went!
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Apr 11, 2018 15:30
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So, let's talk about mind control effects. They're a staple of the type of fantasy fiction that Dungeon World does well - evil wizards seizing the minds of the heroes temporarily, until their heroic wills (or staunch allies) can break them free of the effect, dark gods that corrupt the perceptions of those who oppose them, and so on. How do you all handle them? I usually handle them by turning to the player afflicted, and saying, "Okay, with a sudden start, you realize that those people over there -" pointing to the other players "- are your true enemies, and must be destroyed." That's more fun for everyone involved, in my opinion, than me simply saying, "Okay, now I play your character until the effect ends." It also allows them more agency, in that they can try to use their Bonds (which I generally treat as a stacking modifier each time they're resolved - i.e, if Spanked Monkey the Fighter has resolved two bonds with Five Finger Shuffle the Thief, then Spanked Monkey has a +2 to any rolls involving his past relationship with Five Finger Shuffle. It caps at +3 for the bonuses, but they can keep forging and resolving bonds to get that sweet, sweet XP.) However, the question has arisen about the other players' efforts. Suppose that Five Finger Shuffle is trying to stop Spanked Monkey without actually hurting him. Hack And Slash is the go-to 'Attack' move, but I've been using Defy Danger, since the Danger here is either 'You accidentally inflict actual damage on Spanked Monkey' or 'Spanked Monkey brains you with his mace'. One of my players, damaged by long years of D&D, actually apologized to the mind-controlled character's player when he rolled well (14), and thought I was 'softballing' it when I said, "Okay, you disarmed him and got him on the floor - now you've got to keep him there." It arose from his confusion - in D&D, a higher roll generally means you hit harder, but as I explained to him at the time, the rolls don't measure how hard you hit necessarily, they measure how well or poorly you do at accomplishing your goal. Since his character wasn't actually trying to hurt the other character, his high roll just meant that he achieved his goal of disarming and disabling without harm splendidly. So, how do you all handle mind control/mind-influencing effects in your games?
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Apr 19, 2018 10:08
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I bribe them for playing along but give them a chance to resist. If they attack I let them mark an experience.
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Apr 19, 2018 13:37
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Overemotional Robot posted:I bribe them for playing along but give them a chance to resist. Any time I force control on them I tell them they can mark an experience if they go along with it.
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Apr 19, 2018 13:39
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FrozenGoldfishGod posted:So, how do you all handle mind control/mind-influencing effects in your games? If it's going to be a long-term effect rather than a one-off compulsion, have it happen in concert with something else dangerous. Otherwise players are going to be monofocused on shutting someone out of the game, which is at best a lot of running to stand still.
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Apr 19, 2018 21:06
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I generally don’t do mind control, but I’d give the victim a ‘if you do X, mark XP’ trigger.
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Apr 20, 2018 00:58
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kaffo posted:Post here after you run it and let us know how it went! So I had our Session Zero last night and on the whole it was a great success! I can't thank y'all enough for the help with Drives/Flags and the like. I explained how the rules and "mechanics" work and such and definitely got a great reaction out of 2/3 of the players, who definitely went on to embrace the freedom and the ability to cooperatively create the world I had the characters introduce themselves and give talk about where they were from and all that stuff, and anytime someone mentioned a new place we added a notecard to the map (I brought colored pencils)  Then in creating initial Bonds and Flags they established how they all knew one another and I dropped them into a situation and we all went from there. I had a blast! The toughest things were trying to shake old D&D DMing habits. During the one real like "combat" scenario, my attempts at spotlight probably read as like, de-facto rounds, so I need to figure out a way to shake that, but it'll come with practice. I also really struggled with a poor Discern Realities roll and felt really bad about it because it was probably exactly the sort of feelsbad that I hate. Anywho, I've been putting my notes into Campaign Logger and creating a front at the moment, and I'm absolutely loving it. Here's the Front I've got going: Adventure Front: The Village of Felicitus The Fox People of the village of Felicitus, nestled within the Finning Forest, their crops have been burned and their treasure and treasury stolen, are mad. Those they accused of the crimes not only refused to come peacefully to jail to await trial, but murdered several townspeople (ed: this was the party; they did not burn the crops or steal the treasure, but they didn't like the agitated mob of fox people and felt threatened). Something must be done. Danger: Human settlements at risk; Maro overrun Impulse: To grow strong and show their strength Impending Doom: The conquering of Maros
Agents from Felicitus begin proselytizing in other animal villages; buying weapons and training The defenses of Maro are tested and Felicitus' defenses are strengthened The Finning Forest becomes dangerous for Humans Maro is overrun and conquered Danger: Animal folk are united Impulse: To breed, to multiply and consume, to earn their "rightful" place Impending Doom: All out war between animal kind and humanoids
Animal riots break out in population centers Animals move from the cities, forced out by laws and fear Skirmishes and fights for resources occur, driving humans out of human towns Battleships are stolen and humanity is "truly" threatened
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Apr 20, 2018 16:58
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Waffles Inc. posted:I also really struggled with a poor Discern Realities roll and felt really bad about it because it was probably exactly the sort of feelsbad that I hate. What was the struggle you ran into with Discern Realities? I ask because I had a really hard time at first figuring out how to follow up on a player failing a Discern Realities roll, which is partially why one of my players was tempted to just roll Discern Realities any time he could because he had crappy WIS and could get bonus experience for his failures. It took me a bit to learn when it made sense to roll in the first place, and how to make a GM move that follows from a failure that both makes sense in the fiction and makes the failure sting.
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Apr 20, 2018 17:26
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Harrow posted:What was the struggle you ran into with Discern Realities? I ask because I had a really hard time at first figuring out how to follow up on a player failing a Discern Realities roll, which is partially why one of my players was tempted to just roll Discern Realities any time he could because he had crappy WIS and could get bonus experience for his failures. It took me a bit to learn when it made sense to roll in the first place, and how to make a GM move that follows from a failure that both makes sense in the fiction and makes the failure sting. Thinking back on it, it probably wasn't a good Discern Realities moment, though I dunno. The situation was the party were on a pirate sky ship being forced to walk a long plank that anchored them to a floating island, but on the other side of the plank were the inhabitants of the island shooting at them. This character wanted to peek up and see what was going on, and the language she used for what she was doing seemed to trigger Discern Realities. She rolled a 6, so I said like, "as you peaked up you see a bit too late that an arrow is headed directly at you, so you're unable to get a clean look at the action, what do you do?" (Put them in a spot) Where I feel I "failed" is that what the player was wanting to do is understand about who or why was shooting, I should have sensed the"real" reason she wanted to do it and had the failure still be illustrative towards that end in a way that still made the failure meaningful. So like, the failure could have meant she spotted reinforcements, or they're rolling out a ballista! or something
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Apr 20, 2018 17:37
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Waffles Inc. posted:The toughest things were trying to shake old D&D DMing habits. During the one real like "combat" scenario, my attempts at spotlight probably read as like, de-facto rounds, so I need to figure out a way to shake that, but it'll come with practice. I also really struggled with a poor Discern Realities roll and felt really bad about it because it was probably exactly the sort of feelsbad that I hate. The AW2 answer to a poor DR roll is "on a miss, ask 1 anyway, but you won't like the answer." I couple this with my basic framing device for DR, which is to ask people to pick one of the questions and tell me how they're working out the answer. As for combat, yeah, it takes some work. Just keep in mind you should be setting up whoever's turn it is with a situation that puts somebody in some danger, rather than assuming they're in a position of safety and can act with impunity.
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Apr 20, 2018 18:03
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Waffles Inc. posted:Thinking back on it, it probably wasn't a good Discern Realities moment, though I dunno. The situation was the party were on a pirate sky ship being forced to walk a long plank that anchored them to a floating island, but on the other side of the plank were the inhabitants of the island shooting at them. This character wanted to peek up and see what was going on, and the language she used for what she was doing seemed to trigger Discern Realities. Sounds like it went well, good to hear. PbtA really is a fantastic framework and even when not running PbtA games, I still run them like one as much as I can. It's a wonderful feedback loop
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Apr 20, 2018 18:59
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Sounds like the session went great Waffle, nice work!
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Apr 20, 2018 19:30
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DW seems particularly sensitive to the number of players you have. When I had a huge cast it was really hard to keep track of everyone, and it kind of devolved into "oh i dodge, oh i dodge again and attack". When I have only 2 or 3 players its a lot easier to handle the fictional positioning, and I have fights that are much more brawly and messy in that way that DW handles really well.
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Apr 20, 2018 23:39
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Strom Cuzewon posted:DW seems particularly sensitive to the number of players you have. When I had a huge cast it was really hard to keep track of everyone, and it kind of devolved into "oh i dodge, oh i dodge again and attack". When I have only 2 or 3 players its a lot easier to handle the fictional positioning, and I have fights that are much more brawly and messy in that way that DW handles really well. Yeah, five is about the limit of what I can handle playing DW. Five at once, anyway. I haven't tried a more West Marches-style thing with a rotating cast.
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Apr 21, 2018 01:37
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I am in the middle of a Star Wars World campaign with 6 PC's (most I've ever had) and it's tough shining that spotlight in a way that feels fair. Coincidentally it's also the first game where I've had an astounding amount of named NPCs.
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Apr 21, 2018 03:03
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Anew RPG group met on Thursday at my shop and I complimented the GM when I saw him with the DW book. But apparently they discussed and took a vote and the players wanted to do Pathfinder. I’m so disappointed in them.
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Apr 21, 2018 14:27
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Anew RPG group met on Thursday at my shop and I complimented the GM when I saw him with the DW book. But apparently they discussed and took a vote and the players wanted to do Pathfinder. Audience wants what the audience wants, I guess. Though as the post above yours said, there's a lot of DW stuff you can port back into other systems.
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Apr 21, 2018 14:40
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