-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mith
Agreed. The other advantage is that emergent stories gives you the flexibility to not railroad your players.
Which is really useful when a player tries to use the railroad as raw materials :smallwink:
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dimonite
The trick is to not have a script. :smalltongue:
Or just be really good at improvisation, as was the GM of an RPG called Star Frontiers I played many years ago. The entire scenario he had us playing just involved a monster escaping from the zoo, heading across the city to kill its keeper (who was in the hospital), and then going back, but as soon as he realised that we weren't going to stop shooting a mirror-surfaced beast with *lasers* (no, I don't know why we didn't realise the problem there either), he just threw away the scenario and played it entirely by ear, to the point where we ended up in the middle of a civil war...
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
factotum
(no, I don't know why we didn't realise the problem there either)
In my experience, that kind of situation is usually caused by people missing/misunderstanding/forgetting the initial description of the creature. Like, maybe, when described as, say "looks like a creature made of mirrors", someone pictured some very shiny scales, but not actual mirrors.
If the picture in the DM's head doesn't match the picture in the player's head, Fun! frequently occurs. This is bet exemplified with the mythical Gazebo battle, but I have experienced similar scenarios often, when in the after-battle discussion, someone says, "but wait, I thought X was going on" when Y was going on instead.
Grey Wolf
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
In my experience, that kind of situation is usually caused by people missing/misunderstanding/forgetting the initial description of the creature. Like, maybe, when described as, say "looks like a creature made of mirrors", someone pictured some very shiny scales, but not actual mirrors.
If the picture in the DM's head doesn't match the picture in the player's head, Fun! frequently occurs. This is bet exemplified with the mythical Gazebo battle, but I have experienced similar scenarios often, when in the after-battle discussion, someone says, "but wait, I thought X was going on" when Y was going on instead.
Grey Wolf
My party once took on an entire battalion of soldiers because they saw us and demanded our horses. Everyone else was willing to do so, and I thought we were dealing with 5 people right up until the end of the 1st round of combat when the other men started running to us.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Speaking of "not quite the same thing", I was just watching a YouTube video with autogenerated captions (I really hate when people who are trying to make a living at this don't properly caption their videos - seriously, if you're asking for money and this is your job rather than beer money, treat it like a real job and do all the parts!).
For whatever reason, it went with "sad tire" instead of satire. I now have a vivid, yet useless, mental image...
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Is it even possible for Youtubers to subtitle their own videos? The automatic option might be the only one the platform offers.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
factotum
Is it even possible for Youtubers to subtitle their own videos? The automatic option might be the only one the platform offers.
I think they can, I've seen several YouTubers release already subtitled videos. There's also some that I'm fairly certain release the video, then subtitle, then make the next one, but that could just be community added subtitles.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
factotum
Is it even possible for Youtubers to subtitle their own videos?
It is. Tom Scott has a video on the subject.
Grey Wolf
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mith
Agreed. The other advantage is that emergent stories gives you the flexibility to not railroad your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Anonymouswizard
Which is really useful when a player tries to use the railroad as raw materials :smallwink:
Yeah, in the first campaign I DMed I had a player "roll to spot the railroad tracks." I got good at improvising quick.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
factotum
Or just be really good at improvisation, as was the GM of an RPG called Star Frontiers I played many years ago. The entire scenario he had us playing just involved a monster escaping from the zoo, heading across the city to kill its keeper (who was in the hospital), and then going back, but as soon as he realised that we weren't going to stop shooting a mirror-surfaced beast with *lasers* (no, I don't know why we didn't realise the problem there either), he just threw away the scenario and played it entirely by ear, to the point where we ended up in the middle of a civil war...
Yeah, sometimes you think your players are going to infiltrate a cult, then they ask a stupidly obvious question and give identifying information about themselves so suddenly it's a fight/chase scene. No plan survives first contact with the enemy PCs.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
factotum
Is it even possible for Youtubers to subtitle their own videos? The automatic option might be the only one the platform offers.
Yeah but like with all of Youtube's back-end interface for creator's it's tricky and stupid. You can open up videos to be subtitled by anyone by the way, and as a creator you can choose what ones to keep and that's neat.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
I don't subtitle my Youtube videos. The subtitle option is very complex and outdated.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dimonite
Yeah, in the first campaign I DMed I had a player "roll to spot the railroad tracks." I got good at improvising quick.
I was once in a game where we'd come to an unwritten agreement to follow the railroad tracks.
The end result was my character trying to roll Search to find the plot sheet every character individually followed a false lead and nobody knew what on earth was going on.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
An old Star Wars RPG (the 2000 version, IIRC) i was in had something like that; I don't remember the circumstances, but I remember rolling a nat 20 during an absolutely ridiculous moment after quite a large number of increasingly ridiculous moments, the DM took one of his notes, crumpled it up, threw it at me, and said, "no, you don't succeed, you get hit with the Plot Rock."
With my poor context, it sounds infinitely worse than it was; guy was a fantastic DM, that was honestly the right call, and was pretty hilarious to boot.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
An old Star Wars RPG (the 2000 version, IIRC) i was in had something like that; I don't remember the circumstances, but I remember rolling a nat 20 during an absolutely ridiculous moment after quite a large number of increasingly ridiculous moments, the DM took one of his notes, crumpled it up, threw it at me, and said, "no, you don't succeed, you get hit with the Plot Rock."
With my poor context, it sounds infinitely worse than it was; guy was a fantastic DM, that was honestly the right call, and was pretty hilarious to boot.
At some point you have to do that. Otherwise you end up with your players having really crazy stuff going on. Playing a battletech TTRPG, we ended up taking over the underworld organisation with enough (ridiculous odds) rolls to fund R&D development that would have allowed us to punch well above our weight class.
It was fun then, but as a GM, you need to keep a bean bag around to throw at your players every so often.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
I don't remember the circumstances, but I remember rolling a nat 20 during an absolutely ridiculous moment after quite a large number of increasingly ridiculous moments, the DM took one of his notes, crumpled it up, threw it at me, and said, "no, you don't succeed, you get hit with the Plot Rock."
There was an RPG called Rolemaster many years ago (no idea if it still exists) which basically used percentile dice, but with a twist: if you rolled over 95 you would "roll and add", e.g. roll percentile dice again and add to the original result. This stacked, and one of the people I was playing alongside in a game rolled a natural 340 or thereabouts. Needless to say, he succeeded at whatever it was he was doing!
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
An old Star Wars RPG (the 2000 version, IIRC) i was in had something like that; I don't remember the circumstances, but I remember rolling a nat 20 during an absolutely ridiculous moment after quite a large number of increasingly ridiculous moments, the DM took one of his notes, crumpled it up, threw it at me, and said, "no, you don't succeed, you get hit with the Plot Rock."
With my poor context, it sounds infinitely worse than it was; guy was a fantastic DM, that was honestly the right call, and was pretty hilarious to boot.
One campaign I was in used the triple natural 20s for instant death houserule. It was a pirate campaign and I attacked the enemy ship at low levels with a boarding axe only to roll 3 20s. My DM ruled that crits don't work on objects to prevent me sinking the enemy pirate ship.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
factotum
There was an RPG called Rolemaster many years ago (no idea if it still exists) which basically used percentile dice, but with a twist: if you rolled over 95 you would "roll and add", e.g. roll percentile dice again and add to the original result. This stacked, and one of the people I was playing alongside in a game rolled a natural 340 or thereabouts. Needless to say, he succeeded at whatever it was he was doing!
Rolemaster. Sounds like a neat game. :smile:
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bartmanhomer
Rolemaster. Sounds like a neat game. :smile:
There was a simplified version called "MERP" (for 'Middle-Earth Role-playing'), which was the first RPG licensed by the Tolkien estate.
If my dim memories are accurate (a big if!), it was pretty good.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
2D8HP
There was a simplified version called "MERP" (for 'Middle-Earth Role-playing'), which was the first RPG licensed by the Tolkien estate.
If my dim memories are accurate (a big if!), it was pretty good.
Cool. I might be interested to play Rolemaster and MERP! :biggrin:
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
In the roleplaying system of Feng Shui you roll a positive and a negative d6 to calculate your roll, modifying your modifiers with the result which normally ends up between -5 and +5. However, on "interesting" checks, 6's explode, doing the same roll-and-add as Factotum described. Furthermore, if the modified roll ended up lower than 0 (before comparing against the difficulty of the roll), it was a fumble, and would apart from quite obviously being a failure (nothing had a difficulty lower than 0) also cause a negative backlash.
In a game which Zodi GMed a few years ago, my character had gotten pretty banged up after a fight and wanted to heal herself with a healing spell, as well as repair her clothes. Sorcery was by far her best skill, I think it might have been 15 at the time, but modified to 14 because she was badly injured. On the clothes repair, I rolled two negative 6s against a positive 1, and then a negative 2, for a total of 1. Had I rolled above average on that last negative die rather than below, she would have fumbled, and to quote the rules: "On a Backlash, the [clothes] is permanently destroyed and cannot be repaired by any means.". I'm... happy it didn't go there.
Now, that was the less ridiculous outcome, because on the healing spell, I managed to roll no less than 4 negative 6s in a row, netting me a total of -8 in the end. To quote the rules again: "In a Backlash, the sorcerer suffers a number of Wound Points equal to the patient’s current total.". Since, in this case, the sorcerer also was the patient, my character effectively doubled her number of wound points, bringing her so far above the threshold for dying that anything but "final words, then unavoidable death" was too much to hope for. And this is a system in which getting killed is hard.
Zodi, like any good GM, just said "Nope!" and invoked Deus Ex Machina to save my character, but I still tell the story of the time I killed my own character with a healing spell. http://i.imgur.com/rcxULF7.png
And, since it happened on these boards, here's the evidence.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Ah, I remember PBPs on here. All of them died pretty soon, sadly. Would like to get back into that.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
I find that play-by-posts in general can be pretty hard. Even when you've got some real-time OOC chat - which in my experience really helps with the lifespan - its... not an easy road.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
I have a D&D dream last night:
Spoiler: My D&D Dream
Show
Last night I was dreaming that I was a Fighter. And I saw a female silver dragon wyrmling was being bullied by Group of Male Orcs. I told them to leave her alone, she's just a baby. The group of Orcs stop bullied and want to fight me. I sheathed my Greatsword and Power Attack them to oblivion. The female silver dragon wyrmling spoke to me in Draconic and she thank me for stopping the group of Orcs. Luckily I understand the dragon language and spoke back to her. I ask her name and she told me that her name is Tamera. I was very surprised from my knowledge that Tamera is one of the Dragon Deities. I asked where she from and she told me that she from the heavenly plane of Elysium. I ask her who do you worship? Which deity do you worship. And she said Tamera because her parents named after the dragon goddess. My mind was blown. And that was the end of my dream. :smile:
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Spoiler: I wonder if I can make this text, but not the content, red...
Show
I can't, apparently.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Teddy
In the roleplaying system of
Feng Shui you roll a positive and a negative d6 to calculate your roll, modifying your modifiers with the result which normally ends up between -5 and +5. However, on "interesting" checks, 6's explode, doing the same roll-and-add as Factotum described. Furthermore, if the modified roll ended up lower than 0 (before comparing against the difficulty of the roll), it was a fumble, and would apart from quite obviously being a failure (nothing had a difficulty lower than 0) also cause a negative backlash.
In a game which Zodi GMed a few years ago, my character had gotten pretty banged up after a fight and wanted to heal herself with a healing spell, as well as repair her clothes. Sorcery was by far her best skill, I think it might have been 15 at the time, but modified to 14 because she was badly injured. On the clothes repair, I rolled two negative 6s against a positive 1, and then a negative 2, for a total of 1. Had I rolled above average on that last negative die rather than below, she would have fumbled, and to quote the rules: "On a Backlash, the [clothes] is permanently destroyed and cannot be repaired by any means.". I'm... happy it didn't go there.
Now, that was the
less ridiculous outcome, because on the healing spell, I managed to roll no less than 4 negative 6s in a row, netting me a total of -8 in the end. To quote the rules again: "In a Backlash, the sorcerer suffers a number of Wound Points equal to the patient’s current total.". Since, in this case, the sorcerer also was the patient, my character effectively doubled her number of wound points, bringing her so far above the threshold for dying that anything but "final words, then unavoidable death" was too much to hope for. And this is a system in which getting killed is
hard.
Zodi, like any good GM, just said "Nope!" and invoked Deus Ex Machina to save my character, but I still tell the story of the time I killed my own character with a healing spell.
http://i.imgur.com/rcxULF7.png
And, since it happened on these boards,
here's the evidence.
Feng Shui is such a good system and Exploding Dice is SUCH a good mechanic. As is the Shuffling Off The Mortal Coil table.
Aaah god, what good memories.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
LaZodiac
Feng Shui is such a good system and Exploding Dice is SUCH a good mechanic. As is the Shuffling Off The Mortal Coil table.
Aaah god, what good memories.
The whole "flashy Hong Kong action" theme suits the PBP format quite well. Reading through the combat scenes is quite entertaining even this far into the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
WarKitty
I see I need to come shed over a new thread.
This thread has now been blessed with kittiness! The only thing which could top that would be if it was blessed with even more kittiness!
ION:
I live very close to the train station nowadays, and often run at least part of the distance to get a few minutes better seat. Along one of the streets is a building whose bottom floor wall consists entirely of toned glass windows, acting as a giant mirror for the people passing by. And every time I run past it, I get the Tintin theme playing in my head. It's quite the motivator! http://i.imgur.com/haudcUB.png
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
I've gotta take Lalique, brush Matisse, Van Gogh to bed.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
WarKitty
I see I need to come shed over a new thread.
You make the sun shine, WarKitty.
-
Re: Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222
Quote:
Originally Posted by
FinnLassie
You make the sun shine, WarKitty.
I am the cat goddess of the board. Which pretty much just involves acting like a cat.