TG September Chat Thread: Back To School Thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG September Chat Thread: Back To School Thread

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

It's September now. It's still hot. It's still humid.

Why not cool off by hiding in your house, behind your computer, yelling about elfgames?

To start things off, why not a quick discussion on your best gaming experience this year, so far?

# ? Sep 1, 2015 16:46

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 09:18

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

My brother got us to play Spyfall the other weekend, which was really tense and fun.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:14

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Best gaming experiences this year have been an Apocalypse World campaign of which I posted frequently in the AW thread, featuring my three players deciding that their group was going to be a post-apocalyptic motorized mongol horde and the game coming to an explosive finish with the Savvyhead riding the psychic highway and finding out what lie at the end of it while the khanate completely disintegrated.

Currently I'm looking forward to running Burning Wheel set in the Kingdom of Jerusalem after the First Crusade.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:15

My Lovely Horse: Aug 21, 2010

A recent session in my ongoing 4E campaign went really extremely well: we hit an excellent balance between combat and noncombat parts, I hit upon a puzzle idea that was both a perfect mechanical representation of "summon a spirit" because it worked according to actual occult principles and fit perfectly with the grid-based movement system, and my players were proactive, steered the action and came up with a really clever plan to solve a problem which may be an everyday thing for a lot of people but I take my small victories over their tendency to get bogged down in pessimistic overplanning where I can get them.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:19

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Covok posted:

To start things off, why not a quick discussion on your best gaming experience this year, so far?

Got a Legends of the Wulin game going, which is always great fun. We each independently managed to tie ourselves to a different one of the four banes, which has guided the story in a really odd but interesting way since only one of us is actually a full member of any of them.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:20

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Ratpick posted:

Currently I'm looking forward to running Burning Wheel set in the Kingdom of Jerusalem after the First Crusade.

Strangely, I can see this turning out sour. Depends on how certain subject matters are dealt with and the sensibilities of everyone. Then again, it might just be that I'm one of those "friends who want to stay friends never discuss religion or politics" kind of people.

Regardless, I, of course, hope it turns out awesome.

Yawgmoth posted:

Got a Legends of the Wulin game going, which is always great fun. We each independently managed to tie ourselves to a different one of the four banes, which has guided the story in a really odd but interesting way since only one of us is actually a full member of any of them.

Four banes?

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:27

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Covok posted:

To start things off, why not a quick discussion on your best gaming experience this year, so far?

The finale of the 13th Age organized play, which I admit I completely rewrote to make it more interesting for the group. They were level 10 instead of 8, and I changed the last fight from "fight a vampire and some liches" to a Squaresoft boss fight where the vampire grew to enmormous size and they fought its head and hands. The fight was won by the half-orc barbarian both hands at once with a Cleave and leaping in slow-motion into the giant vamp's mouth while raging (and critting). I even had Children Of The Grave playing so it was indeed :rock:

as gently caress.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:37

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Covok posted:

To start things off, why not a quick discussion on your best gaming experience this year, so far?

There isn't any single experience, but playing pbp on sa continues to own.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:06

paradoxGentleman: Dec 10, 2013; wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

My best gaming experience so far this year was a FATE game about crazy races all sharing an archipelago world that didn't really get far off the ground because people stopped posting.

I wish I had more gaming experiences.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:07

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Ratpick posted:

Best gaming experiences this year have been an Apocalypse World campaign of which I posted frequently in the AW thread, featuring my three players deciding that their group was going to be a post-apocalyptic motorized mongol horde and the game coming to an explosive finish with the Savvyhead riding the psychic highway and finding out what lie at the end of it while the khanate completely disintegrated.

Currently I'm looking forward to running Burning Wheel set in the Kingdom of Jerusalem after the First Crusade.

i read your posts on this and it fuckin' rocked

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:08

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Error 404 posted:

There isn't any single experience, but playing pbp on sa continues to own.

I second that. I feel like I could really start a few more and still keep up, and the players have been great so far.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:15

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Covok posted:

Strangely, I can see this turning out sour. Depends on how certain subject matters are dealt with and the sensibilities of everyone. Then again, it might just be that I'm one of those "friends who want to stay friends never discuss religion or politics" kind of people.

Regardless, I, of course, hope it turns out awesome.

I don't really see that happening in my group's case: the group of friends I game with are what you might describe as casually irreligious. Nobody has particularly strong feelings about religion one way or another (beyond "Dude, whatever you believe or don't believe in, don't be a dick about it") so I think it's safe to assume that the game won't ruffle anyone's feathers. The time period is of interest to us simply because it's so filled with potential drama and conflict, and also because it provides a really good backdrop for the sort of play that Burning Wheel is about, i.e. fighting for what you believe in.

Also, the way I'm framing this campaign is not in terms of "Christians vs. Muslims." I assume that most of the players will end up making Christian characters, although the setting does allow for Muslim and Jewish characters, but the game will mostly focus on the internal conflicts within the Kingdom. Actually, thinking about it now, the time between the Second and the Third Crusades might be better for the latter, simply because it was characterized by internal conflict within the Kingdom.

We're not sure about the extent to which we're going to strip out the supernatural elements of the game: I know that Sorcery is going to be right out, but given the setting I can sort of see Faith being a thing.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:20

Serf: May 5, 2011

Best experience so far has been getting my first PBP off the ground and running. I'm having such a blast that I'm considering starting a Roll20 game to try out Strike!

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:26

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Covok posted:

Four banes?

The four organizations that are essentially the premade antagonist groups. LotW is unique in that you get specialized xp to buy into "loresheets", which are sets of assorted plot points related to a given group or location or the like. At chargen you usually get a handful to tie your character to the setting and mechanically represent your backstory, and we ended up with a 4-way split between each of those antagonist groups.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:41

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

Serf posted:

Best experience so far has been getting my first PBP off the ground and running. I'm having such a blast that I'm considering starting a Roll20 game to try out Strike!

If you decide to do the Roll20 thing, lemme give you some advice that should make things go a lot snappier in combat (and snappier combat keeps people engaged and the general mood optimistic); Have your players make macros. This is useful for a few reasons.

1) You simply push a button on your bar and it automatically rolls your ability for you, which is a nice little timesaver [CountTip: click the little "In-bar" box next to your macros in the Settings menu to do this]
2a) It will presumably be a new system for many/all of you, and having a macro which barfs out the entire text box, effect and all, lets people immediately know what your power does without you having to explain it or cross-referencing the book.
2b) This gets people learning the system quicker since you're associating names with powers every time you hit your macro or see someone else's. This helped me internalize the game immensely.

This probably sounds like a huge chore though, especially if you've done things like Veggiesama 4e macros in Maptools. Fortunately you couldn't be further from the truth. To make a macro that looks as clean and useful as this:

All you have to do is c/p this into the macro box (which again is found in-game at the top of the the "My Settings" tab):

quote:

&{template:default} {{name=Cant of Inexplicable Lust}} {{attack=[[1d6]]}} {{damage=3}} {{effect=Pick a creature. If possible, the target must attempt to move adjacent to that creature on its next turn.}}

And it's easy to customize. Say you instead wanted to make an at-will that does 2 damage and grants the next ally to attack the target Advantage (like the Warlord's "Knock Him Off Balance" for instance). You'd simply change the "name=Cant of Inexplicable Lust" to Knock Him Off Balance, the "damage=3" to 2, and the "effect=[...]" to the Advantage-granting thing. If you just paste the above macro and tweak it as needed it takes like 3-4 minutes to make a full macro suite for a max level character. You can add as much as you want too, here's an example macro from the Psion class I've been designing/testing:

Which has this as the macro text:

quote:

&{template:default} {{name=Focus: Shatter - Encounter}} {{Range=Melee or Ranged 5}} {{attack=[[1d6]]}} {{Trigger=An enemy is Bloodied.}} {{Target=The triggering enemy.}} {{damage=4}} {{effect=Target makes a saving throw. If it fails, it is Taken Out. If it succeeds, it is Blinded until the end of its next turn.}}

Quite a bit more complicated, but still easy to understand.

If you go for this I highly, highly recommend you do the same for your monsters as a GM. In 4e this was a huge pain and notable time commitment, but since enemies in Strike have few abilities and macros are so easy it shouldn't be that big of an issue.

e: It's also useful for non-rolled abilities like your Role powers, hitting a thing that just outputs "Mark: Mark one enemy until the end of its next turn" is super easy and seeing that on your bar is a good reminder that you can do it.

Countblanc fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Sep 1, 2015

# ? Sep 1, 2015 18:46

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

GMing Strike on Mondays and playing Exalted on Sundays on Roll20 has been fun.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 19:19

Serf: May 5, 2011

Countblanc posted:

A really awesome post

Well shoot now I gotta run it. Thanks for this!

# ? Sep 1, 2015 19:23

fosborb: Dec 15, 2006; Chronic Good Poster

Running Dread for friends. The hook was everyone goes to Vegas for a bachelor party and wakes up the next morning in a very nice hotel suite with no memory of the prior night, a missing groom, strange symbols written on the walls, a dead DEA agent, and a blood red sky.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 19:27

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

fosborb posted:

Running Dread for friends. The hook was everyone goes to Vegas for a bachelor party and wakes up the next morning in a very nice hotel suite with no memory of the prior night, a missing groom, strange symbols written on the walls, a dead DEA agent, and a blood red sky.

The Hangover 4: Hell on Earth

# ? Sep 1, 2015 19:32

Ratpick: Oct 9, 2012; And no one ate dinner that night.

Countblanc posted:

If you decide to do the Roll20 thing, lemme give you some advice that should make things go a lot snappier in combat (and snappier combat keeps people engaged and the general mood optimistic); Have your players make macros. This is useful for a few reasons.

1) You simply push a button on your bar and it automatically rolls your ability for you, which is a nice little timesaver [CountTip: click the little "In-bar" box next to your macros in the Settings menu to do this]
2a) It will presumably be a new system for many/all of you, and having a macro which barfs out the entire text box, effect and all, lets people immediately know what your power does without you having to explain it or cross-referencing the book.
2b) This gets people learning the system quicker since you're associating names with powers every time you hit your macro or see someone else's. This helped me internalize the game immensely.

This probably sounds like a huge chore though, especially if you've done things like Veggiesama 4e macros in Maptools. Fortunately you couldn't be further from the truth. To make a macro that looks as clean and useful as this:

All you have to do is c/p this into the macro box (which again is found in-game at the top of the the "My Settings" tab):

And it's easy to customize. Say you instead wanted to make an at-will that does 2 damage and grants the next ally to attack the target Advantage (like the Warlord's "Knock Him Off Balance" for instance). You'd simply change the "name=Cant of Inexplicable Lust" to Knock Him Off Balance, the "damage=3" to 2, and the "effect=[...]" to the Advantage-granting thing. If you just paste the above macro and tweak it as needed it takes like 3-4 minutes to make a full macro suite for a max level character. You can add as much as you want too, here's an example macro from the Psion class I've been designing/testing:

Which has this as the macro text:

Quite a bit more complicated, but still easy to understand.

If you go for this I highly, highly recommend you do the same for your monsters as a GM. In 4e this was a huge pain and notable time commitment, but since enemies in Strike have few abilities and macros are so easy it shouldn't be that big of an issue.

e: It's also useful for non-rolled abilities like your Role powers, hitting a thing that just outputs "Mark: Mark one enemy until the end of its next turn" is super easy and seeing that on your bar is a good reminder that you can do it.

I've actually been thinking of running Strike! on Roll20 in between everything else, and this post is really helpful. Thanks!

# ? Sep 1, 2015 19:34

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

Serf posted:

Well shoot now I gotta run it. Thanks for this!

go for it! The system almost feels custom designed to work in Roll20 honestly, it's crazy how well it fits in. The one thing to note is that the book assumes you'll be generating more action points (using Complications and Kits) than you probably will be in an online session, just because it's logistically more difficult to do via text. Skype or Mumble alleviates this somewhat but if you're a pure roll20 game then at the very least I recommend emphasizing to your players that they can hand out a single free AP per session to someone whenever they do something cool, since those precious APs are a bit more rare otherwise. Also you can stockpile up to 3 APs between sessions, for some reason I never remembered this for like my first year of playing, so generating surplus AP at the end of a session or whatever isn't a waste.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 19:38

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

Also consider starting your players at level 2 if they have any experience with D&D 4e because the level 1 characters feel a bit plain if you're used to that sort of combat already, the extra Encounter Role action does a lot to spice it up (and it means you're closer to level 3 so that's cool). If you're worried about the non-combat stuff that comes from leveling up just tell your players to design for level 1 and after a session or two they can level their non-combat side to 2 once they figure out what their Fallbacks/etc should be.

e: Also also make your game Monster Hunter so I can play in it.

Countblanc fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Sep 1, 2015

# ? Sep 1, 2015 19:41

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Count, I'm adding your post to the OP of the Strike thread. That's awesome. Gonna up my Roll20 skills!

# ? Sep 1, 2015 20:50

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

gradenko_2000 posted:

I second that. I feel like I could really start a few more and still keep up, and the players have been great so far.

Be careful, as an old PbP hand around these parts it's easy to get yourself in way over your heard and burn out quickly. That being said, everyone's got their own abilities and game stamina, so don't be afraid.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 21:08

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Captain Foo posted:

Be careful, as an old PbP hand around these parts it's easy to get yourself in way over your heard and burn out quickly. That being said, everyone's got their own abilities and game stamina, so don't be afraid.

Yeah I find my 'sweet spot' to be between 4 and 6.
Not every game will update everyday.
It only takes 5-10 minutes to put together a post.
You can cruise pretty easily on 2-3 posts per day for games.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 21:10

long-ass nips Diane: Dec 13, 2010; Breathe.

I'm learning campaign cartographer and it's really, really hard. Part of that is me not having a mouse to work with at the moment but it has less of a learning curve and more of a learning brick wall.

So far all I've managed to do is a Dracula Dossier-style map for a Night's Black Agents encounter, it took like 2 and a half hours and was not really worth that time.

I'm going to bring a mouse and my knockoff Wacom tablet to school tomorrow and see which one of those works better.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 21:11

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Error 404 posted:

Yeah I find my 'sweet spot' to be between 4 and 6.
Not every game will update everyday.
It only takes 5-10 minutes to put together a post.
You can cruise pretty easily on 2-3 posts per day for games.

Sometimes I can bang out a post, sometimes it takes me longer to get what I want out of it. Running games demands more time than playing in one as well.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 21:21

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Captain Foo posted:

Sometimes I can bang out a post, sometimes it takes me longer to get what I want out of it. Running games demands more time than playing in one as well.

Definitely.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 21:27

Serf: May 5, 2011

Countblanc posted:

e: Also also make your game Monster Hunter so I can play in it.

I would, but I've never played a Monster Hunter game, so I wouldn't be able to do it justice.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 21:39

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

Serf posted:

I would, but I've never played a Monster Hunter game, so I wouldn't be able to do it justice.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 22:08

Vulpes Vulpes: Apr 28, 2013; "...for you, it is all over...!"

Error 404 posted:

There isn't any single experience, but playing pbp on sa continues to own.

I agree, I've been really enjoying the games I'm in. QuantumNinja's Spirit of '77 game has been flying off in all directions and it rules.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 22:28

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Error 404 posted:

Definitely.

you should come play in XCOM Mafia II

# ? Sep 1, 2015 22:44

gnome7: Oct 21, 2010; Who's this Little
Spaghetti?? ??

Fellowship Kickstarter launches Friday! :dance:

I just finished fully setting up the KS page, I'm real excited to launch.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 00:49

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

gnome7 posted:

Fellowship Kickstarter launches Friday!

I just finished fully setting up the KS page, I'm real excited to launch.

I am excited to give you money!

# ? Sep 2, 2015 00:56

Speleothing: May 6, 2008; Spare batteries are pretty key.

I hate to say it, but the gaming den's term "master of ceremonies" is growing on me for super-lite drinking game rpgs to keep away from the "game master" slash "dungeon master" terminology.

It just seems differently nerdy in a more appealing way.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 03:17

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

The world is not binary, The bad may have good ideas, and the good may have bad. Master of Ceremonies sounds OK, if still a little pompous.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 03:44

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

is there any way to have hidden information, as a player, in Roll20? Specifically something you can put on the table and later reveal. I know you can make a custom deck of cards but that seems cumbersome, but may be the only option.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 03:52

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

What are you trying to hide from me???

# ? Sep 2, 2015 03:56

BlackIronHeart: Aug 2, 2004; The Oath Breaker's about to hit warphead nine Kaptain!

I wrote a Prohibition-era murder mystery scenario and I'm probably going to be running it next week, which is terrifying. Writing it has been a blast though.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 04:02

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 09:18

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Speleothing posted:

I hate to say it, but the gaming den's term "master of ceremonies" is growing on me for super-lite drinking game rpgs to keep away from the "game master" slash "dungeon master" terminology.

It just seems differently nerdy in a more appealing way.

It's not a Den Original™, anyway.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 04:05

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