Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Prak]

I picked up my one shot game idea of normal people who get lost in a Pentex facility and turn into fomori over the course of the session again, hoping to run it this Friday, and I have a question...

The intent is for a horror game, invoking body and personal horror as one's body is spiritually transformed by otherworldly beings. I have ten premade characters, each with a corresponding fomori build that they are predisposed to become. One of the characters is a homeless drug addict "with a heart of gold" (and some former EMT training), and I'd planned on his fomor transformation being based on the Normalites*

*

Normalites are an established "breed" of Fomor that are created by Pentex through a supposed therapy system. In the books, this is gay/trans conversion therapy, which.... nah. I ain't putting that shit in my game. So I changed it to a drug rehab program.

But thinking about it today.... I just don't like the whole Normalite thing. Like, canon normalites are pretty fucking problematic--intentionally, I know, but still--and changing it into a drug rehab thing just... you become a fomor that senses other supernaturals, think they're on drugs, and try to proselytize AA on Steroids to them, while also attacking them.

So, thinking about it some more, I thought about making this one character the exception, and have him turned into a Kami with a purpose of healing, while deep within an extremely wyrm-tainted place. It's still this deep change and the exertion of the will of a spirit over your own, so I thought I could make it work, but after writing it up...

I'm just not sure it invokes horror. Partially because, as y'all know, I'm very weird, so horror for me twinges on slightly different things.

Can I get some input here?

Gaia’s Medic (Kami transformation for Jeremy)
The hand of Gaia can reach anywhere, even the bowels of a wyrm-tainted pit such as Pentex HQ. However, the nature of the beings within means that though she can touch, it is for naught. If a being of the right persuasion were to find their way within, however, they might be approached by Gaia and offered the opportunity to be her hand in healing.

First Mutation
Gaia reaches out to the subject in a moment of need and vulnerability, asking if they will be her hand and bring a healing touch to those who need it. If the subject accepts, they are suddenly awakened to a world much deeper than they knew before, seeing spirits everywhere they look as they are plunged into the Umbra for the first time. They also immediately know that they can heal with a touch, even if they don’t understand how. The subject gains Geas- Healer, and may not refuse healing of those who ask for it; they also gain (not driven temporarily insane by the sight of Garou), (see spirits in the spirit world, sometimes without consciously deciding to), (Spirit energy trait), (enter spirit world, sometimes without deciding to), (heal others spell), and (talk to spirits)), as well as the taints ("addicted" to healing others, must do once/month), (see spirit in reflection) and (urged to heal others). As a side benefit, they find all wounds reduced to bruises and contusions (convert all current damage to Bashing), and any addiction they previously suffered eased by one step.

Second Mutation
In a moment of doubt and at a loss to help others, Gaia asks the subject if they accept her touch again. If they accept, they feel a burning in their heart which spreads out over their body, settling into glowing points on their head, heart, stomach, and each hand and foot. These points of light fade after a moment, but the subject knows they can be summoned--and used to heal or protect. They also begin to feel the near constant presence of hostile spirits, as if they are a beacon to them, and an increased drive to heal. The subject gains (spell that lets them heal, give temp health, or add armor with a touch 7 times per cast), and they may spend health levels (character has 7) to gain temporary Spirit Power (used for spells) (taking a box of Lethal for one Spirit Power); they also gain the taints (Urge to comfort others' affliction), (evil spirits come bother them), (Must use Willpower to improve rolls if they can), and their addiction (Heal others) becomes 1/ 2 weeks. They also gain (Ability to perform a cleansing ritual) and a point of Spirit Power; and the flaw Enemy (Pentex, because you’re a gaian spirit fucking around in their HQ).

Third Mutation
When driven to heal something far beyond their ability, Gaia asks the subject if they are driven to heal at all costs. If they say they are, they come into the true fullness of Gaia’s devotion to her creation. They find themselves able to heal even the greatest wounds, if they are willing to risk themselves. They gain (three add'l health levels), (spell to change spirits, including make evil spirits not evil), (spell to remove mental afflictions, usually temporarily), (Raise Dead, at cost of permanent Spirit Power). They also (may instantly learn new rituals upon necessity), though this is mentally and physically taxing, and they (probably take some damage). Finally, they may now exchange health levels for Spirit Power at a rate of 2 Gnosis per point of Aggravated damage. Their addiction (heal others) rises to 1/day, they gain Geas- Heal All (must heal any in need, even if they do not ask for assistance), (urge to cleanse the Wyrm--strictly drive the wyrm out of afflicted people, but also find away to heal Big Bad Animism Satan), and (daily chance to lose willpower at the knowledge that eventually you will join with Big Good Spirit Mama).

[Orion]

It sounds like invoking horror (with this character) is the opposite of what you actually wanted to do. It does not invoke horror and you should consider that a success. Not everything that happens in a horror story has to be, itself, horrifying.

[Prak]

I think I gotta think on that. The basic intent is to invoke horror through the characters being changed but otherworldly spirits. But maybe you're right.

[Thaluikhain]

Was wondering, why did D&D go with half-orcs and half-elves and (originally) not half anything else? I'm guessing "cause Tolkien", and also "cause you can't play as a full orc cause they are all evil", but wondering if there was anything more to it. Or maybe "cause we don't want to make up rules for someone one third orc, one third dwarf and one third kender just now".

[Grek]

No, that's pretty much it. Orcs are evil and for killing, and unlike the drow, RA Salvadore never wrote a book about a misunderstood orc ranger who joined an adventuring party and got into an axe fight with Gruumush.

[virgil]

They dabbled in other half-breed races in 2nd edition - such as the half giants & half-dwarves/Mul of Dark Sun, the half ogre of the Complete Book of Humanoids, the tiefling/aasimar/genasi of Planescape, or even the half-dwarf (and half human, halfling, or elf) of Forgotten Realms

[Username17]

Was wondering, why did D&D go with half-orcs and half-elves and (originally) not half anything else? I'm guessing "cause Tolkien", and also "cause you can't play as a full orc cause they are all evil", but wondering if there was anything more to it. Or maybe "cause we don't want to make up rules for someone one third orc, one third dwarf and one third kender just now".

It's explicitly because of Tolkien. But also if you go to expansion material people did make half-everything else. However, the various other halves had quite variable levels of acceptance. Tieflings eventually became a core race, Muls were pretty much Darksun only, most people thought you were basically cheating if you wanted to play a Half-Giant, and Quarterlings were literally always a joke race not even considered for inclusion save for the most light-hearted campaigns.

Half-Orcs and Half-Elves have always had a much larger and more vocal group of players asking for them. Because Tolkien. I mean, Half-Orcs weren't officially written out of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay until 2005 and Games Workshop Orcs hadn't even been mammals or had females for years before they finally made that editorial decision. And it wouldn't surprise me a bit if Half-Orcs had subsequently been written back into the setting somehow because Tolkien.

-Username17

[Dean]

I've heard a lot of people say that Shadowruns drain system for magic was a good choice as far as making magic disrupt the world slightly less. Could someone explain this in a bit more detail and why the drain system is good for the setting? I've never played a magic character in Shadowrun so I'm not very familiar with it. My initial guess is that making a system where any spell has at least a tiny chance to fuck you up if you roll terribly means you can't just say that your Mage casts 700 spells during a week of downtime and chain binds a million spirits or whatever. But that's just on a first reading

[Username17]

I've heard a lot of people say that Shadowruns drain system for magic was a good choice as far as making magic disrupt the world slightly less. Could someone explain this in a bit more detail and why the drain system is good for the setting? I've never played a magic character in Shadowrun so I'm not very familiar with it. My initial guess is that making a system where any spell has at least a tiny chance to fuck you up if you roll terribly means you can't just say that your Mage casts 700 spells during a week of downtime and chain binds a million spirits or whatever. But that's just on a first reading

That's basically it. If every time you summon a demon it could put you in the hospital but probably won't, the idea that people don't summon demons on industrial scales off camera is very easy to swallow. Even light drain stacks up very quickly if you're just chain casting in down time, but has very little impact on action sequences.

It's an adequate explanation for why people don't do magic for trivial shit when it's literally painful to use it. And that in turn makes the world deformation of the magic much less and thus makes the world much easier to convey to new players without dipping into tippyverse nonsense.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

So in Shadowrun 4e what's the optimized way of looking at what force to use vs how much drain soak you have? Like is there a certain number to stay within, certain odds

[Kaelik]

So in Shadowrun 4e what's the optimized way of looking at what force to use vs how much drain soak you have? Like is there a certain number to stay within, certain odds

It depends on your stats and drain soak what you can manage easily, but the main thing to do is to evaluate the importance of whatever you are doing, the effect of increased force, and if you can heal the drain.

Usually the cap for summoning is your Magic because that is what decides if it is physical or stun, and Stun heals much faster so you can Summon something and just have it chill while you heal up and then use it, later if you are are mid combat, you want to summon something towards maximum size because if you need to summon during combat you are having a rough time.

For spells, it really depends on the spell, Heal just picks the drain based on the wounds, buff spells usually aren't worth casting at higher force than the hits you think you will get, detection spells grant wider radius with more force, but little else so it's usually trying to decided how much you need.

Attack spells you usually are just deciding if you want to do low cost to take someone out that isn't much of a threat or really high at least Magic because it's life or death and they are going to hit you for more than the drain next round if they live.

[Iduno]

So in Shadowrun 4e what's the optimized way of looking at what force to use vs how much drain soak you have? Like is there a certain number to stay within, certain odds

Because of rounding, unless the spell specifies otherwise, you want an odd-numbered force. You also have a 1/3 chance of getting a hit/success on each die, so you can calculate how much damage you can handle as ~1/3 of your drain soak + however much damage until you start caring (varies depending on how close to finishing the mission you are, but zero isn't a bad target). That's only on average; getting extra hits on the drain resist has no benefit, and getting too few hits means you actually get hurt.

Trauma damper also reduces stun damage or converts a point of lethal damage into stun. That's effectively +2 Force for the same drain, and it's available at chargen.

Also, the drain of the spell varies pretty wildly. The formula is (Force/2) +/- some number. Grabbing the highest and lowest drain spells I found in the first 2 pages of listings in Street Magic, the number added to the drain is anywhere from +7 to -3. Those are larger numbers than I remember seeing before, so they're at least close to maximum and minimum you'd see in non-theoretical play. Assuming they're cast at the same force (they're both combat spells, and damage is Force + hits, with hits capped at Force, so they're cast at "how high can I cast it without being hurt too bad?"), that's a difference of 10 damage back to the caster, or an average of 30 dice. To understand how much that is, capping allowed dice at 20 is a common enough house rule that it's been published (by Catalyst, so...). That's a lot of explanation, but the take-away is you generally look for the lowest-drain version of a spell that will accomplish what you need (stun spells are always lower drain, and elemental spells are higher). Force being halved means it's less important than the modifier number.

[Thaluikhain]

Was wondering, how much time does a published setting need to describe things clearly based on well known things?

I mean, if you are doing the real world + vampires, you'd probably want to concentrate on the "+ vampires" bit, if you are sticking dinosaurs into your fantasy game you probably need the stats more than an explanation of how the triceratops has 3 horns.

Can you get away with indicating your northern sea-borne raiders have horns on their helmets and your race of short fat people have hairy feet and no shoes and assume everyone knows where you're going with them? Or do you need to explain these things in detail and not just leave it up to the GM if there's any doubt?

[Mord]

Was wondering, how much time does a published setting need to describe things clearly based on well known things?

I mean, if you are doing the real world + vampires, you'd probably want to concentrate on the "+ vampires" bit, if you are sticking dinosaurs into your fantasy game you probably need the stats more than an explanation of how the triceratops has 3 horns.

Can you get away with indicating your northern sea-borne raiders have horns on their helmets and your race of short fat people have hairy feet and no shoes and assume everyone knows where you're going with them? Or do you need to explain these things in detail and not just leave it up to the GM if there's any doubt?

The problem with "well known things" is the same as "common sense," specifically, that different people will bring different values and interpretations to any issue. I think most RPG readers will recognize a pop culture Viking or Hobbit knockoff straight away, but they may have wildly varying expectations of how those things are "supposed to" behave.

This is why you can get away with less explanation about dinosaurs - as long as they're just animals in your setting, different people can project comparable mammalian behaviors onto them and end up with broadly the same outcome - triceratops act like cattle, velociraptors like wolves, T. Rexes like tigers, etc. - even if they get it wrong in the specific details, the domain of "ways animals can act" is narrow enough that they can't get it so wrong that it unintentionally destroys the rest of your setting. Sure, I may wrongly assume that your triceratops act more like goats than cows, but at the end of the day it's not going to strongly disrupt your notion of triceratops being used to pull huge wagons or turn dynamos.

On the other hand, once you get into pastiches of sentient beings, especially those informed by real-world cultures, things fall apart. One thing that I bring with me to the table is a set of knowledge and assumptions about "Vikings" that is mostly informed by the Varangian Guard and mercantile activities on the Dnieper, so I always find it kind of jarring when fantasy Viking knockoffs are predominantly guys with double-axes and body paint who work themselves up to fight all naked and crazy.

Additionally, the evolution of pop culture is something that creates generational divides in assumptions. More people these days probably have their unconscious assumptions about Vikings shaped by the History Channel show and Marvel Cinematic Universe Thor than by... whatever fiction my dad's generation had that featured the Norse (I genuinely don't know). More people certainly have their assumptions about Hobbits shaped by Elijah Wood and Sean Astin's burning homoeroticism than by Tolkien's actual words on the subject. Once the Amazon Lord of the Rings thing kicks off, maybe that will change the broad understanding about Hobbits once again.

[deaddmwalking]

... whatever fiction my dad's generation had that featured the Norse (I genuinely don't know). M

The Vikings starring Kirk Douglas (1958).

[Blicero]

Was wondering, how much time does a published setting need to describe things clearly based on well known things?

I mean, if you are doing the real world + vampires, you'd probably want to concentrate on the "+ vampires" bit, if you are sticking dinosaurs into your fantasy game you probably need the stats more than an explanation of how the triceratops has 3 horns.

Can you get away with indicating your northern sea-borne raiders have horns on their helmets and your race of short fat people have hairy feet and no shoes and assume everyone knows where you're going with them? Or do you need to explain these things in detail and not just leave it up to the GM if there's any doubt?

My preferred answer is that it also depends on how much those well-known things matter in the context of your setting, and how much you care about different people interpreting the same aspects of your setting in different ways, all with the fundamental caveat that what people consider cliche or filler varies wildly.

This is a decent blog post on the subject:

If an RPG supplement is worth reading (let alone buying), [t]he contents need to be something better than you could come up with, unaided, simply by following cliches and/or random madlibbing and/or coming up with irrelevant filler. Otherwise, how have they improved your game?

[Username17]

One caveat I would add is that getting people on the same page is an advantage, and essentially prerequisite for cooperative storytelling. A book that names the mayor of some town doesn't add anything that you couldn't Madlibs yourself. The name 'Tobias' or 'Frederick' is neither better nor worse than 'Jonathan' or 'Claudius'. But it's important that having it written down somewhere that the other players could have read and could read again has value.

Many setting decisions are completely neutral, with one declaration being neither better nor worse than any other. But making that decision still has value, because making the decision takes time and conveying it to other people takes time and writing it down is how we keep these parts of the story from drifting.

-Username17

[DenizenKane]

If you were designing a 3e classplosion hack with tiered classes, what would be the ideal levels to divide the playspace into? (Throwing out all the old classes) I was thinking probably 1-6, 6-12, and then 13-20. That way it lines up with vancian casting. But would 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20 be better?

[Username17]

If you were designing a 3e classplosion hack with tiered classes, what would be the ideal levels to divide the playspace into? (Throwing out all the old classes) I was thinking probably 1-6, 6-12, and then 13-20. That way it lines up with vancian casting. But would 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20 be better?

That depends entirely on what your challenge space is supposed to look like. We talk about things like "Wizard Tier" and "Rogue Tier" in 3e precisely because the 3e design implies very different meanings for any particular level. And that applies on both sides of the DM Screen; with Druid >> Monk and also too Gold Dragon >> Crawling Head.

Before I could tell you whether 6th level made sense as a breakpoint for tiers, I'd have to know what you intended 6th level to mean. If it means that you get +1 BAB, +1 to each save, and +1 to Trap Sense, I'm not much impressed. If it means that you get a Cohort and start tracking followers based on world map accomplishments, then that seems like a pretty reasonable tier breakpoint.

I would say that the most obvious breakpoints for tiers are Leadership Scores, Domain, and Immortality. With the last one being optional, because the Gold Book in BECMI was pretty weird. But Leadership and Landlord are the most obvious tags in 3e that the game has changed.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

If you were designing a 3e classplosion hack with tiered classes, what would be the ideal levels to divide the playspace into? (Throwing out all the old classes) I was thinking probably 1-6, 6-12, and then 13-20. That way it lines up with vancian casting. But would 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20 be better?

If you're throwing out the old classes, you have some questions to answer about whether there should be 9 levels of spells and/or should people get them at the 'standard rate'.

It would be pretty easy to divide spells into 3 simple tiers and make them available at Level 1, Level 6, and Level 11; after Level 11 you get MORE spells that are high level, but there is less difference between a 15th level and a 17th level caster; if the DC is based on Caster Level rather than the spell level, gaining levels gives you MORE and they work BETTER, but you don't actually get access to new shiny toys.

I would posit that dividing the spells into 3 categories is actually easier than trying to divide them into 9 (or really 10 when you consider cantrips) levels.

If you do a rough sort and you decide that you need more than 3 categories, you could look at doing that, but I'm pretty sure that you can't actually tell the difference between a 7th level and 8th level spell without looking it up.

[Foxwarrior]

So if you are cutting up a level space into tiers, you can make some tiers bigger than others because you want to devote more resources to making some styles of game work than others. If you're making basically a Tome hack, you could expand the Tome sweet spot of levels 7-14 (after you scootch Efreet-spam up to 15. Sorry, I'm still not entirely convinced that an extra 100 8th-level spells per day is a good thing to get when you hit level 11.), so then you'd have the tiers of:

1-3, origin story tier: equivalent to Wizards leveled 1-6, three level ups is enough to have a superhero origin story if that's the sort of thing you like.

4-20, marvel tier: equivalent to Wizards minus Planar Binding leveled 7-14. You can totally split this up into sub-tiers as desired, probably 3-6 levels per tier is best for chunking things up into having big and small level ups.

21+ (not appearing in this game), crazy tier: Wish economy nonsense. Sometimes you might find it expedient to get past a challenge by crafting an island populated by perfect people.

[merxa]

I recommend looking through the cleric and wizard spell lists to determine tiers.

In play I find there's roughly 4 tiers in level

Low fantasy / 'gritty realism' / lvl 1-4
Standard fantasy / power levels / lvl 5-10
High fantasy / superheroes / lvl 11-14
Epic fantasy / godlings / 15+

For me a big break happens around lvl 9-10 when teleport and planeshift come online.

[OgreBattle]

If you were designing a 3e classplosion hack with tiered classes, what would be the ideal levels to divide the playspace into? (Throwing out all the old classes) I was thinking probably 1-6, 6-12, and then 13-20. That way it lines up with vancian casting. But would 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20 be better?

What are you keeping, the monsters? The monsters/challenges is what sets the 'same game test': https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Dungeons_and_ ... _Game_Test

Do you expect people to level up every 1 or 2 or 3+ sessions? Level speed expectations will determine how long a 'tier' lasts.

I like multiples of 3, 6. D&D3.5 fighters getting extra attacks make those levels feel special.

So 1-6 is your '1800's people believe you can do this in real life' tier
1- wolf, chimp
2- jaguar, gorilla
3- tiger
4- bison
5- rhino
6- horny elephant, dinosaurs

Most people will be at this tier so a flying horny elephant is what your system needs to handle well

Classes here are Robert E Howard's Conan, Solomon, alchemy and pact based sorcerers/priests. Immunity monsters get owned by silver, fire, whatever their weakness is so it's more puzzle and info gathering than a pro wrestling match.

7-12 is explicitly supernatural
here be horny dragons and demons and angels and devils
Flight+ranged attacks, teleportation, dimensional warping, lots of 'must be this tall' effects

Classes here are D&D casters, wuxia/kabuki martial arts leads,

13-18 is D&D casters, 90's dragon ball, demigod and god mythology of various traditions. The horny offspring of horny gods

19-20 are for your planar god punching expansion where you create and snuff out stars, Dragon Ball Super. Just by having horny thoughts, monsters spring from your head

[Antariuk]

Random question: does anyone remember details about WotC's Setting Search back in 2002, or knows about a blog or something about it? Since Eberron has been officially announced as a 5E release, I'd love to get some background on that setting, but I haven't found anything beyond the most vague of descriptions.

[Blicero]

Random question: does anyone remember details about WotC's Setting Search back in 2002, or knows about a blog or something about it? Since Eberron has been officially announced as a 5E release, I'd love to get some background on that setting, but I haven't found anything beyond the most vague of descriptions.

Are you asking for details about the Setting Search, or about the initial Eberron conception?

Quick googling found this link that references pyramid article, maybe you can track down a digital version of the magazine. http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=3904

WotC did an "introducing Eberron" series of articles starting here: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp? ... /20031216a

There was an OSSR of an Eberron splatbook, where the main text and some responses discussed what the initial Eberron looked like:
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55875