[lexchxn] is creating TTRPG content! @lexchxn - Tumblr Blog

Moved all of my blog posts over to Substack (lexchxn.substack.com), and I intend to publish there from now on. I won't abandon my Tumblr, don't worry! I'll be publishing in both locations going forward. Substack lets people get notifications without an account, which I think is a valuable option.

#30other

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#drawing tablet!#test thing mostly

#5 #30artistry

#30artistry #3

#2 #30artistry

#30artistry #1 #gonna maybe start posting drawings here #if i end up getting into them

velvetys

All YouTubers do is move apartments

prokopetz

The real reason your sapient dragon character needs a "rider":

Dragons on the wing are vulnerable to being mobbed by smaller, more agile flyers, particularly in your large rear blind spot, like a bird of prey being mobbed by crows. Having a human armed with a long spear perched on your back helps to dissuade anyone from getting any funny ideas.

Breath weapons are impressive enough on the ground, but in flight they're really only good for strafing stationary targets; trying to use your breath weapon in an aerial dogfight is a good way to get fire up your nose. A real fight calls for sterner measures – and, concomitantly, a crew to aim and reload the cannons.

In today's competitive world, it's not enough to devour a flock of sheep and call it a day if you want to keep your edge. You're accompanied at all times by a qualified personal alchemist tasked with carefully regulating your internal furnace to ensure peak performance, and sometimes you even listen to them.

No dragon of any quality would be caught dead without their valet. It's not as though you can announce your numerous long-winded titles yourself when introductions are called for, can you? You suppose next you'll be expected to pick up the spoils of your conquests yourself, like a common brigand. Perish the thought!

#30reblog

A Triad for Bosses

The Three S's

I had a realisation about Dark Souls.

This is a design insight, and I think it’s one that’s applicable to TTRPGs.

Some Dark Souls bosses (a lot of people’s favourites), essentially have three methods by which you can beat them: 1. Skill |Just outright pracice and precision letting you take a small enough amount of damage to survive while dealing a large enough amount of damage to kill. 2. Strength | Whether through stats or a power solution (either being 10 levels high enough or using a damage type the boss is weak to). 3. Solution | You “Solve” the combat before it begins, either through an item that trivialises the fight or a puzzle that outright bypasses it. These “Three S’s.” can of course mix and match, and I think the Eldemonsoulsbornekiro games (sorry) lean on Strength as a primary pillar, Skill as a close second, and Solution as a surprise tool they occasionally pull out, but I was considering how these principles could and could not be applied to TTRPGs. So... Do they?

First, they require some adaptation. TTRPGs don’t have the bounding boxes that video games do, nor do they maintain as much of a balance between elements like player skill and character build. What adjustments do we need to make?

Well, while Skill certainly continues to exist in the TTRPG space, dice luck can have a very large dilutive effect on one’s ability to express Skill. Skill also, I’d argue, has much more of a direct impact on “Strength” in TTRPGs than it does in video games. Building a character here has, again, weaker bounding boxes than a preprogrammed game.

Strength can vary wildly depending on the style of the TTRPG, but regardless of the chosen book table play tends to be farther away from insurmountable/trivial encounters than video games due to GM tailoring. If you’re in an encounter, there’s typically both an expectation for you to engage with it and knowledge that it won’t waste your time.

And Solution is interesting. Depending on the GM or the story scenario, this may be all but impossible. But it might also be the primary focus of your game. Every fight you take meant to be solved, every combat a puzzle. Also typically, the higher allowance for Solution expression, the more Skill expression has space to shine. After all, someone’s gotta find those solutions!

With weaker availability for Skill expression, a usually tighter box on Strength expression, and Such a wild variation in Solution expression, what kinds of incentives and rewards can we now build into our campaigns? - We can build in Power rewards for their Skill in character creation. - We can prompt Skill growth by facing our parties with difficult tasks they can still achieve. - We can create narrative or prompt creative focus and reward Skill by putting all of our eggs into the Solution basket, waiting for our parties to “Figure it out.”. - We can create a feeling of immense resistance (or outright despair) by using combats that require more Strength. ...and more! Balancing encouragement and reward between these three pillars to create your style of encounter, I would say, covers just about every design you’ll ever field.

Think about the Three S’s next time you’re building an encounter! Hopefully this can provide a solid framework for your next brainstorm.

#30artistry #game design #ttrpg design #system design #ttrpg

vixensdungeon

No, you can't "do an Arcana check" to see if there's magic around. There's an actual way in the rules to see if magic is afoot, it's called the detect magic spell.

Also, ask me if you can do any kind of check again and I will bite your head off in real life.

cavegirlpoems

I think a large part of why this happens is (perversely) a player desire for concrete agency.

It goes like this;

In standard D&D, with its player/GM structure, there's a strong asymetry in narrative authority. In the standard conversation-loop back-and-forth of roleplaying, the GM essentially holds all the cards when it comes to shaping events; whatever inputs the player puts into the narrative, the GM gets to interpret them how they want, and determine the outcome based on their judgement.

They absolutely can simply no-sell whatever the player is trying to do. If they're committed to railroading (as many D&D GM's are) they absolutely will no-sell any player actions that could go off the rails.

There's an understanding that invoking a game mechanic means that the outcome is not merely subject to GM whims, but pinned down by that game mechanic. That, if the roll succeeds, the outcome is garunteed in a way that the GM can no longer no-sell (without obviously violating the social contract).

So, in many cases, a player who pushes straight for a roll is trying to leverage a game mechanic to exert agency over events, because an action that's backed up by game mechanics can't be ignored by the GM like one without it.

(I think a lot of other poor habits in D&D, such as responding to everything with violence, are maladaptive responses to getting railroaded and attempts to reclaim agency in the game in ways the GM can't easily ignore.)

pun-ishment888

Additionally, as a GM of many years, anyone who is an experienced adventurer can probably tell telltale signs of magic if they focus with an arcana check without needing Detect Magic. Just like how you can find an invisible stalker with a perception check if you dont have See Invisibility prepared.

Maybe they feel different to the touch, maybe it is akin to feeling static, maybe it reacts ever so slightly different to light at certain angles.

Afterall, any character, even the least magically experienced one, can identify a magic item in an hour of examination. So clearly there is something to tell.

Also in my experience, people ask for a roll because they know what they want, you know what they want, and they know you know what they want. If there is an invisible enemy who took the hide action and a player says "can I do a perception check?" Im not gonna be an asshat and go "oh? What do you mean? What are you trying to do hmmmm?" The player can either say "I would like to check if there is any tell that my character could potentially pick up about the invisible stalker's hiding location" or they can tell me what they want to do.

cavegirlpoems

I mean, at least in my own games - which are admitedly based around b/x rather than any D&D edition published in this century - this kind of thing tends to be rather a moot point because magic is Fucking Obvious by nature. (Admitedly, b/x doesn't even have an arcana skill in it). But still.

"So the sword you've found is made of black iron and covered in thorn-like barbs, and there's an inscription on the hilt in softly glowing red runes. Whenever you reach towards it it hisses and crackles. It's slightly warm to the touch." "Can I make an Int roll to see if it's magical?" "Motherfucker, did any part of that description make you think it might not be magic?"

And things to that effect. Basic pattern-recognition replacing making a roll.

cavegirlpoems

Spells like Detect Magic and Identify have very specific use-cases, but mostly you can totally bypass rolls or spells and just exercise basic common-sense and player intelligence, you know? Like wow, the dude gibbered and pointed at you and now you're on fire, you are free to conclude that he cast fireball.

Further, in cases where the process of deduction is trickier, then that's the whole point of the exercise. It's a brain-teaser! players are meant to think about the evidence and make deductions! If you let them not have to think because they rolled a skill check, why are we even bothering to play to begin with?

Anyway in conclusion do OSR stuff yo, we don't have this sort of problem. Our problems are much, much stupider.

lilietsblog

So after reading a bunch of the notes, I will point out that there are two very basically distinct DnD playstyles that seem to be clashing here.

Playstyle 1, older, more traditional: The Player Is The Character. It doesn't matter what the character's Int and Wis scores are, if the player is smart enough to think of something, so is the character, and if the player isn't, tough shit. If the player has memorized the Monster Manual, they can recognize monsters, if they haven't but are familiar with mythology, they can make an educated guess, if they aren't, even if they're playing an experienced monster hunter that's their personal problem for not being able to roleplay them accurately.

Playstyle 2, newer, explicitly supported by the rules in 5e: The Character Is Distinct From The Player. The player shouldn't metagame, if they know things the character has no way of knowing, they should not have the character say it or make decisions based on it. If they've built their character to have low Int, Wis and Cha, they should have them act appropriately even to their detriment, to the benefit of the story instead. And if the player doens't know something that the character as described does, then they ask the GM and the GM tells them based on the results of an appropriate skill roll.

Playstyle 2 does in fact frequently result in "can I make an X check here" because there isn't really a way to roleplay "I try to figure out if my character knows this off the top of their head" in a non-meta way.

Playstyle 2 also includes rolls like "Oooh, there's cake? I roll a Wisdom save to know if my character exercises self-control or just attacks the cake like a rabid squirrel".

In Playstyle 1, the players are subjects of the game. They are the people going through an adventure, and the DM is directing them. Bringing up any game mechanics explicitly is inappropriate on their part, since they are just acting out what they're doing in-universe.

In Playstyle 2, the players are storytellers/directors of the game along with the DM. They inevitably refer to the mechanics of the game, and then separately declare/explain/roleplay their characters' in-universe actions according to those mechanics.

Also, in Playstyle 1, players can't invent/suggest new rules, any more than they could in a game of chess or football. They're playing a specific game according to specific rules, and any going outside those rules is cheating. They are after victory, and they must achieve it given the constraints specified in the game rules.

Meanwhile in Playstyle 2, players absolutely can invent and suggest things, because again, they're co-creators on the meta level. They're telling a story first and foremost, and the rules are there to give it structure and assist with generating drama and conflict. Where the rules do not quite fit the story that the table wants to tell, the rules are subject to DM fiat (as it is the DM who has the final word on house rules, homebrew and exception rulings). What everyone is after is creating a fun narrative, and any constraints are self-chosen.

It sounds like the OP and a fair number of people who agree with them are strict proponents of Playstyle 1. Meanwhile, even a number of people who like Playstyle 2 are frustrated at players who are simply bad at engaging with the game in either scenario.

But "Arcana check to detect magic" is a very reasonable Playstyle 2 house rule! You need to be able to handle it properly, as with all house rules, and it introduces new difficulty for the DM and the players in explaining it compared to the built-in lore of the RAW option. But in Playstyle 2 explaining things is where the challenge is in the first place, it's /the/ thing you're supposed to be good at (as opposed to being good at 'beating' the game as in Playstyle 1).

So yeah, a bit of the argument here is definitely people talking past each other / making assumptions that don't universally apply!

lilietsblog

@vulpes-nothus here's some more thoughts I have

so I call them Playstyle 1 and Playstyle 2 above but they're really completely different games with completely different goals!

And I don't know when it started but at this point it's baked into the heart&soul in DnD that the rules support a horrific mishmash of a, like... Playstyle 1.5, which I think is the source of most of the famous DnD table conflicts?

Like... DnD wants the players to play it as a storytelling game with the alignments, backgrounds, character traits, racial and class lore descriptions. But it also wants the players to play it as a for-the-win game with the actual number-backed mechanics - XP, leveling, etc.

So you have the "uptight paladin stops rogue from stealing", "chaotic neutral player messes up the game for everyone else", "dm railroads instead of letting players choose their own adventure", "please don't play a loner character", "players don't go for obvious plot hook" all in a big "someone is trying to storytell and someone else is trying to play the game" nasty pile.

Like, the "do I make the optimal decision or the in-character decision" dilemma is built into the rules without being addressed by them in any way, and this leads to a lot of shit.

On a slight tangent...

So why do people play DnD anyway if it's so bad at being a coherent game?

Because DnD is at this point not a ruleset (nobody cares about the ruleset), it's a SETTING. And I don't mean the specific worlds of Faerun and whatnot. I mean the worldbuilding of how things work: dungeons, races, mind flayers, various types of spellcasters with their special relationship to the world - not just sorcerers vs wizards vs warlocks, but also paladins and rangers and druids. (And bards, not fitting with any of the above, basically reprsenting their own mostly-untapped branch of worldbuilding.)

And it's a setting that comes with the conceit that adventurers are trying to Win By The Rules Of This Game Here. So people who want to play in it naturally go to those rules, because that's how you Participate In The Setting. Becoming a level 20 adventurer is just what you do here, a random tavern keeper having a good chance to turn out to be one of those is part of the heart&soul of the setting!

And this setting is baked ever deeper into the popular culture. Not just by WotC properties like the multitude of DnD video games, but also by, for example, webcomics - Order of the Stick, Goblins and fuck knows how many else. The DnD podcasts / video series, you know the ecosystem I'm talking about.

Everyone wants to play with these toys. And the toys come with rules written on them, and so the cycle continues.

(There's little point in telling someone who wants to play their personal take on a DnD paladin to play a different tabletop game. They're not looking for the best ruleset, they're looking for the specific setting that's hooked their imagination)

#30reblog

Expectations, Descriptions, Names

This is a bit of a shorter one than before, but I've found it interesting how many times I've seen the release of a system or a new piece of content within a system be met with hostility, even long after initial exposure, due to some breakdown in understanding for what something is meant to be.

What do I mean by this? I'll use a couple of examples, one old and one new, from Pathfinder 2e. Funnily enough, they're both from the Cleric class: The Warpriest doctrine, right from the start, focused on being more defensible than its Cloistered counterpart at the cost of some of its spellcasting potency, and was long derided as a cheap, unsatisfying alternative. In what I've heard from those who disliked it, this is mostly due to a miscommunication that starts with the name. People expected a Cleric capable of "war"; a damage-dealer and front-line fighter. What the subclass actually was (and remains, to this day) is a way to massively improve your survivability on the front lines, not necessarily your damage-dealing capability or even combative prowess. Not that it doesn't have any of that, but it's ultimately secondary to the Warpriest's attempt to emulate an old-school mace-and-shield, chainmail Clerical role in a party. You retain your full spellcasting suite, and the fact that the spells are weaker incentivises your focus further towards protective aspects of your character, honing in on a utility and support role without the cloth caster trappings of low AC and health. The Battle Harbinger, recently released in Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries, seems to be going down a similar pipeline, at least if the initial reactions I've seen online are in any way representative of general attitude (which they aren't always). The Battle Harbinger gives up not only their spellcasting potency, but most of their suite, and in return gains combative efficacy- ability to hit enemies with a weapon. But they don't gain any significant damage boosts, and their "Battle Auras" (buffing or debuffing auras they can cast and sustain with their unique feats) are still resource-limited by their spellcasting resources (though retain full, or even better, potency than standard spellcasting). Battle Harbinger's role ends up being one of offensive support, and notably still not damage. They can hit with the best of them, but they don't receive the damage-dealing bonuses that are crucial to the "standard martials" damage-dealing roles- and this is pretty clearly intentional, due to their ability to use scrolls and significantly buff themselves and their teammates. Yet, player reaction has skewed negative. What do you mean the Battle Harbinger can't hit as hard as a full martial?

People end up missing the playstyle and role defined and supported for these subclasses, instead projecting their own desires for the name or the concept onto it and being disappointed when it doesn't pan out. I'm left wondering what's more important here when it comes to player response- the name, the flavour text, or the mechanics themselves. And I think it might be skewed towards name and flavour text more than one would assume. Would the responses have been the same were the subclasses named "Heavily Armoured Support Cleric" and "Rallying Offensive Support Cleric"? They're certainly less evocative names than "Warpriest" and "Battle Harbinger". Where does one draw the line on these things? Ultimately, this will all be up to the writer to weigh and decide. But it's worth thinking about next time you name or describe something- what image are you trying to present? What image might your chosen words conjure? If there's dissonance between the two, is it worth conceding ground to mend that gap?

Little bits of TTRPG and player philosophy like this are what I live for when I'm not considering the mechanics themselves. May your quests be fruitful, friends.

#30artistry #30thoughts #pathfinder2e #game design #ttrpg design #system design #ttrpg

lexchxn

"Rulings not Rules" and Insufficient Design

So I've been considering many aspects of design as I delve back into the OSR (where I cut my teeth as a kid playing ttrpgs, but where I have not been for over a decade and a half), and I've been met with many catchy lingo phrases touted religiously by long-time players. I want to address one of them today: "Rulings not Rules.".

The phrase, at least according to cursory research, originates from Matthew J. Finch's excellent work, "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming", where he describes it as the first "Zen Moment" that can make OSR-style TTRPG click for players. The thesis he sets forth is that the rulesets of old games were intentionally left sparse so as to exclusively be a resource for the GM, an incomplete collection from which to create your own rulings in the moment using some combination of "common sense" and die rolls.

Further, he (and many others) elaborate that in this lack, player engagement with the world is deepened; without a skill to roll for "Disarm Trap", everyone is encouraged to interact with and "solve" the trap as they would were they really there. See Brooks Dailey's "The Danger of Skills" for an excellent breakdown of this design outcome separate from Finch's work- I'm perpetually left considering and reconsidering the phrase "Before the addition of the Thief, everyone was the thief." from that blog post.

But I digress- I've discovered, over the years, that this thesis is immensely successful and informative, foundational really to an entire, rewarding style of play. But I do also find, to my taste as someone re-entering this older style of play, that many games seem to take its words too literally, or misunderstand the core message it's trying to impart.

If the fundamental idea is that a rule restricts the players, I have found some to take this message to mean that as few rules should exist as possible. That rules are a detriment to a game, and only the barest essentials should be provided. And I find, increasingly, frustration with this attitude. Rules are not a nuisance to be excised from the hobby, they are a tool to be carefully considered and wielded, a fine-honed blade that can sculpt the experiental clay of the player experience before the kiln firing of publication.

Let's take some unnamed examples, because I feel as certain that this post will be receieved extremely poorly by some as I do that my conclusion is an important one to some others:

1. Falling is codified in the rules. If you fall X amount of distance, you take some calculable, consistent amount of damage. 2. Being prone is codified in the rules. If you are tripped or otherwise fall over, you suffer some number of penalties and others gain some number of advantages. 3. Your ability to disarm traps is codified in the rules. It's a talent that can be practiced, perfected, and invoked, and it has a consistent outcome, whether chance-based or otherwise. 4. Your ability to carry things as an adventurer is codified in the rules. You can hold only so many things at once, and you cannot hold any more than that.

Now, one of these should stand out to those with a savvy eye for design. Examples 1, 2, and 4 are all foundational aspects of the game system, things that shape how the world responds to being interacted with. Example 3, on the other hand, is a rule creating interaction with the world, it decides how a player can interact with traps. If you can't disarm traps, you can't disarm traps. But a fall is always a fall.

In Beau Rancourt's "On Pathfinder (and most TTRPG) Combat Being A Separate Game" (and sorry for the long quote), they state of rules-heavy (sub-)systems "This allows players to reason about the game and make future plans without the sense that they're playing Calvinball. It allows the GM to be fair and consistent when the PCs' lives are on the line. It encourages and rewards system mastery for the folks who seek that (since now there's a coherent system to master).". I would extend this out into interactions with the world- the standard methods through which the world responds to players (the occasional necessities (and unrepresentable through player reasoning) of swimming, climbing, picking locks, falling, and especially combat should be heavily codified and reliable.

Not in such a way that creative engagement is espoused, or that overcodification becomes a problem (as per Arnold Kemp's ""Rulings not Rules" is Insufficient", where they say "[If I've written] two pages of rules on how to attack tiny animals in your stomach, I've codified the acceptable options and excluded more esoteric solutions."; it takes a delicate hand, yes, but I'd argue a not-too-subjective line of where is "too much" or "too little" to make that decision, and I think I can offer a few considerations and a few pointers to internalise when designing your systems.

1. If the thing is a result of the world's response to players, it should be a rule. Falling damage should be a consistent rule (though how individual players attempt, or don't, to mitigate such damage may not be). 2. If the thing is reliable in how it can be handled, it should be a rule. How swimming does or doesn't impede the movement or survival of characters, dependent or not on their gear varying by your level of simulationism, should be a consistent rule. 3. If the thing cannot reasonably be expected of a player, it should be a rule. Lockpicking is perhaps the most obvious example of this because short of pulling out a real lock and picks and asking the player to solve it, there is no way to reason your way through it. Instead, we either set time, roll dice, or require certain tools. 4. Finally, if the thing is a risk the players can consistently encounter, it should be a rule. This is best exemplified in combat, and re-referencing Rancourt's words above, how ensuring this engagement is consistent creates a game that is fair. How individual players may attempt to interact with, subvert, or succumb to catastrophe within these rules remains a viable avenue of expression, but giving a foundation off which to build pitches the onus onto the players and takes an immense load off of the GM. Rather than someone falling into the waves and the GM having to come up on the spot with some variation on "slower movement", "ditch some things or drown", "you just drown", or "test [attribute] to see what happens", a decision that may end up needing revision or reminding down the road, the decisionmaking is immediately in the players' court; they know the risks at stake, and must imagine a way out of them.

There are pitfalls to this as well though, and while I won't itemise them I will detail my favoured solution as of now: While a rule should create a reliable response from the world, it should also allow for the player to engage in many different avenues. In this way, skills themselves become detestable, but attributes remain important tools, alongside some "other method" of specialisation (without some way to differentiate yourself from your companions, you end up gaming exclusively as players, not characters. perhaps your will to impede or differentiate from yourself through roleplay is stronger than mine, but i prefer when the system can support that all its own). Joshua McCrowell's His Majesty the Worm, I think, exemplifies the virtues I've been espousing quite succinctly. Each character has four Attibutes, which are the simple, physiologically-bound modifiers that are added to many "tests" (the game's term for checks). Each character then also has three Motifs, which are two-word descriptors of your character or their past experiences (say Zen Wizard, Naughty Acrobat, and Fanatical Scribe). These Motifs provide an additional bonus on tests to represent your experiences and specialties. In this way, the virtues of skills (the ability to express specialisation, the shaping of a character with history or talents, nudging towards certain handlings of tasks) survive, with their pitfalls rotting off into the void.

In short, I find that games that provide a reliable route through which the GM can adjudicate as little as possible on the standard things, saving their mind and energy for the inventive and the clever, for the players' imaginative solutions, rather than their mundane actions, have far more virtue on both sides of the screen than those that expect for every table to imagine their own guidelines for swimming, for falling, and for picking locks. I hope to see more games, going into the future of this hobby, embrace what does work with the new and wield it to the betterment of our collective fantasy.

Thanks everyone. All of the cited reading is below for your convenience.

Referenced and Additional Reading: Matthew J. Finch - "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming" Brooks Dailey - "The Danger of Skills" Beau Rancourt - "On Pathfinder (and most TTRPG) Combat Being A Separate Game" Arnold Kemp - ""Rulings not Rules" is Insufficient"

lexchxn

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#30thoughts #30artistry #ttrpg design #ttrpg #system design #game design #osr