#ttrgps

[pocketdragonpub]

Cast Spotlight: A Line in the Sand - Katelyn Summers

Introducing Katelyn Summers as the final member of the cast for A Line in the Sand!. Katelyn is a graphic designer who works within the TTRPG community. A long time ttrpg player, Katelyn is excited to join the table for A Line in the Sand!

[other-peoples-coats]

coats what!! you can't just say you wrote a prize winning rpg and leave it at that!!! deets? 👁️👁️

Oh lol, it was just a 200 wrd rpg thing, not like, Big Deal Shit; iirc the prize was like, a bunch of rpg ebooks and indie published stuff?

This was like. 5+ years ago now though so... uh, don't quote me on that exactly! anyway it was just a simple little game for three people, one's an amnesiac spy, the other two have to convince them that they're not an infiltrator, whoever's less convincing gets 'shot'; I think the infiltrator/handler was assigned by secret coin flip? so you could have 1 of each, or 2 infiltrators, or 2 handlers -- I seem to recall there was a sentence like 'Reveal if you were really the handler, if you were lying, or if you let your comrade die to save your own skin.', after someone got 'executed.'

(I would put the text of the game here but.....I did not find it when scrabbling around my drive breifly, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Anyway, would rec making 100-200 wrd rpgs; they're heaps of fun, and you can bang one out in an afternoon dead easy, if you want.

[sewickedthread]

GM tip (for ttrpgs)

Learn stuff. Watch that 20 minute video about the biggest car wash in the world. Read about textiles in the Tang-Song dynasty. Research Dahomey Amazons. You never know what will spark an idea or be a great location for a fight or add detail to a scene.

Know food? Add details to that tavern menu or royal feast. Know alcohol? Spice up the contents of that cellar. Learned about the Emperor of America? AU idea. Took a tour of a packing plant? Great modern fight setting.

Watch old movies, old tv shows, listen to old radio shows, read old books & read old plays (how many times has The Tempest by Shakespeare been done?). Some of those plots are very elaborate. You don't have to follow them exactly as they can spur other ideas.

I got a setting & 3 plot seeds from an old Superman tv show episode.

They can also inspire PC & NPC ideas. Example: the medium married to the police officer, who arrested them for 'taking money under false pretenses' when the medium was unable to contact the officer's fake Aunt Milly. When the medium was provided with an actual relative & made contact, the officer dropped charges & they dated & married. (from an old movie) - minimum 3 potential NPCs: the medium/psychic, the cop, & a relative.

[evilroachindustrial]

That moment when you realize you’re gonna have to entirely rework your back up character because Inquisitor isn’t a class in 2e.

[steveneiman]

It’s kind of a pity that Dungeons and Dragons, and to a lesser degree World of Darkness, are the household names of tabletop RPGs because D&D and WoD are both pretty terrible introductions to the hobby. While there’s definitely a place for hefty systems with deep, crunchy mechanics, it can scare off a lot of people to have a few hours of mandatory busywork just to build a character and get started. Even for people who would eventually want to play something like GURPS or Mindjammer (both of which make D&D look rules-light), I think a gentler introduction is usually in order so that new players can acclimate to playing an RPG at all before they have to learn a complicated system.

[steveneiman]

My take on why Save-or-Die effects in games like Dungeons and Dragons are bad isn’t that they’re arbitrary, it’s that they’re too fast.

The part of a typical ttrpg which really produces drama is when a threat is introduced, and the players realize that if they can’t scrape together a counter in time something bad is going to happen. The terrified civilians scream and give away their location, and now the party has to protect them from the zombies. That Frost Giant took out half of Greg’s health in one round even though he’s raging, you’re screwed if he gets at the wizard. The summer solstice is in two weeks, and if you can’t stop the ritual every man, woman, and child on the continent is going to be turned into frogs. It raises questions of what the party can do and what they’re willing to risk or sacrifice to get what they need. And by introducing the threat a while before you threaten to follow through, you create rising tension as the deadline looms ever closer and the party becomes ever more desperate to resolve it.

But when you use a save-or-die, there’s no time for that tension to build. By the time the threat is visible, it’s too late for anyone to actually do anything to prevent, mitigate, or even work around it. You just make a roll, and when that roll is resolved you’re either in the clear or hosed. And by definition, a save-or-die has effects nasty enough that you’re going to be thinking more about grieving what’s already happened than damage control, so you can’t say that failing the save is the introduction of a threat.