14159th poster gets a cookie (cookie thread (Part 7)) (Part 11)

ALWAYS be arguing over what should be possible.

Um actually it says here that zombies are dead? So they cant be alive to fight us

3 Likes

youve got the spirit

1 Like

imo a fundamental thing that seems missing is the fact that rp isnt just social situations. it isnt just one character talking in character to the DM, its the actions any character takes. ik multiple people who have rpd super well with mute characters, there is a lot of personality that is present simply from things like how you approach a problem, how irritable you are, how your spellcasting looks and so on

im also just a big fan of inter-party conversations. like i could have fun just having an in-character conversation for like 3 hours about what we’re cooking for dinner that night, kinda like that scene from no way home

3 Likes

a good dm will present problems outside of social problems, and will allow players to show off their specific skills
bc ya while u may have a bard or something whos really good at the social stuff, there are some situations where maybe they shouldnt be the one talking (maybe their personality isnt fit for the conversation, maybe they dont have a personal connection to the NPCs youre interacting with), and they also probably wont be good at every skill (unless a player like, min maxxed for that :joy_wolf:), so while that player might still hadnle a majority of social rp things, there are still other things to describe like how your character navigates a city, how your character is inquisitive and asks a ton of questions, how your character is childish and impulsive and willl do things without thinking them through, how your character is very self-confident and vain

and combat can show these things, but like so can rp

4 Likes

rambling a bit
kinda lost the plot
but i hope my point got across

1 Like

something ive seen dms do that i really enjoy personally is kinda doing turns out of combat
presenting a situation adn then going ā€œhow do you, uniquely, cross this barrier?ā€
shoutouts to skill challenges from daggerheart bc they work super well in dnd

2 Likes

It’s ok I’m at work so I can’t respond much rn.

No, Vermont doesn’t require you to prepare for the GEDĀ® test in an adult education classroom. However, instruction and tutoring are available through Vermont’s Adult Education and Literacy system at no cost to eligible students. Students can find contact information for their local Vermont Adult Education and Literacy provider here.

Don’t know where you live but
https://education.vermont.gov/student-learning/adult-education/local-services

@min

2 Likes

As a dm, I usually try to engage the players on what they find interesting
For some players that’s Social Encounters and Intrigue (that was the basis of basically all of the VtM game)
For some that might be raw mechanical combat
For some that might be roleplay without any real stakes

idk
It’s like…read the room

3 Likes

I have no strong preferences as a player other than hating pvp (extends to arguments in character)

2 Likes

Like oh my god if I wanted to argue about shit I would just go on reddit

2 Likes

I wasn’t arguing in favor of combat in lieu of other things, but pondering on why combat is such a regular mainstay of TTRPG gameplay. You don’t have to, certainly, but when a game is designed for mass appeal, combat is just an incredibly rich and deep system that it’s both easy for designers to develop, and an easy tool for GMs to reach to increase the engagement and tension of a session. Yeah, if a character has a personal connection to an NPC, they should probably be the one talking, but how often does an NPC connected to a player character come up on average? Some systems, it might be a lot, but on average it’s likely not a regular occurrence and it’s still one player suited to that encounter.

Combat is round-robin with discrete actions everyone can take, and is usually very action dense. In contrast, conversations are usually none of these things. Sometimes everyone is conversing and getting a turn, but if your party has an audience where they need to ask a favor of the local lord with a reputation for capriciousness in a fiefdom none of the party has been to before, that’s going to be a single player game for the bard. And yeah the actual act of roleplaying the conversation is fun, but a lot of players enjoy rolling dice too. You can do this in the absence of combat, but it seems like it puts a lot more on the GM. I haven’t played Daggerheart, but skill challenges seems like it’s trying to creating a non-combat toolkit to solve some of the problems combat does.

But I do also want more opportunities for RP both in and out of combat since I think that is really cool and enriching (which is why I’m excited to play the Star Wars RPG because it’s designed to facilitate that).

3 Likes

Crunchy combat is preferable to ā€˜make it up’ combat because you definitely haven’t run ā€˜make it up’ combat if you think it’s good (not like, commenting on anyone’s post here)
It fucking sucks

3 Likes

I’ve told this story before but the longest-running campaign I was a part of with my high school friends, we had a guy who was a genuine all-time minmaxer. I don’t remember all of the bullshit but basically the DM had given everyone (especially the casters) a bit of leeway with some of the more cumbersome requirements, but he took every loophole he could with the kindness and made an incredibly busted character.

We had a plotline where a player character betrayed the party and was supposed to attack us and then leave to become an enemy (it was like apparently a decently-long-planned thing, it had a good setup, the guy’s main PC was severely wounded but was in the process of coming back). There was supposed to be no way for us to escape the beatings

except the minmaxer guy 1shot the betrayal character through some bullshit. The next session the party ran into the main antagonist of the campaign, who for years of real time by this point had taunted us and we were so underleveld that we couldn’t do anything and would die if we tried, so it was just for dialogue/plot. Except minmax guy just 1shot the antagonist during dialogue

both sessions were retconned and we kicked him out. The campaign’s last session was us, all of our allies, and the antagonist/her team, fighting against the dude’s character. Literally just using his sheet and how he played it. He was like level 9 or something and we were all lvl 15 or 16 by this point and we still almost lost.

8 Likes

all that is to say I have nightmares even with the most well-planned pvp

3 Likes

OH MY GOD :sob:

1 Like

My one experience with ttrpg pvp was in a campaign where I accidentally revealed myself as aligned with the enemy evil cult in an actual cartoon villain moment

10/10 would probably never do again because the in character party was dysfunctional to hell

3 Likes

no you also got one-shot by locke that one time

I was not in that

1 Like