Chebucto Regional Softball Club

On the one hand, it's fun to fuck with players. "So you enter the room? Cross the threshold of your own free will? Ok who's wearing metal?" when none of that matters, but you write it down anyway. On the other, sometimes I've had to be like "ok guys seriously there's no traps here. Put away the ten foot pole and chickens let's just move along"

> That means that a goblin with a dagger is a real threat, especially if he has friends, because you might be able to hit his buddies with a 4 on the die, but he could definitely work together with his friends to get a crit on you. And if he has a dagger with runes on it, or poison, or something like that, your day just got really bad. That sounds interesting, that weak monsters can work together to be mechanically threatening. I've heard about PF2e having more teamwork, but I'm not familiar enough with the system to comment on it. I have noticed that D&D tends to be very much "everyone does their thing on their turn, and then spaces out until they get attacked or are up again". I like how Fate lets anyone "create an advantage", so your party face that can't throw a punch can use their "Bravado" skill (or whatever) to distract the enemy, so someone can use that to land a big hit. I imagine PF2e has stuff like that

> My character has grown in power, why is the rat from the beginning still able to down me? I read an article online somewhere about bounded accuracy, and it brought a question like that as a litmus test for if you like the idea. Should a novice archer, no matter how lucky they are, be able to shoot the ominous black knight? For a scratch? Or a lucky hit in the throat? D&D 3e says no. You can only hit them on a natural 20. I think PF2e also says no in the same way. D&D 5e tried to say yes, the archer should be able to hit the knight. The knight's armor is probably ~22, and the archer is rolling at +5, so there's decent odds. But he certainly won't be able to kill him, because HP is what scales up with power. Other systems are more deadly. Personally, I don't like the "these goblins can't even touch me anymore" mode that much. I prefer less superhero heroics, where a goblin with a knife can be a real threat

Ehh, not really. In D&D 3e-like games, a low level goblin that attacks at +4 can barely hit a mid level character with AC 30. You could have a thousand goblins, and they'd only hit on natural 20 (and for regular, non-crit damage).

How often do pathfinder games do the thing like "The soldiers in the first area attack at +4, but these basically identical soldiers two plot beats later attack at +12, because you're higher level and I want the math to be challenging"? Because I've always disliked that in games. That's more of a video game trope, but I've seen it leak into tabletop games before. I liked the idea of bounded accuracy, and how a goblin is always a goblin. You don't need to make mega-goblins to fight the higher level party, because even the little ones can still hit and wear you down.

I haven't really played PF2e, but from reading it I don't really love that it does the "numbers go way up" thing. I did 3e and I didn't like the "I rolled a 4, but I have a +47 on my check" thing. I'm told PF2e has a "without level bonus" mode, but I don't know if anyone plays it.

The world of darkness games can run like this. If you play new vampires, there's going to be a whole political landscape that is at best neutral to you. Same with Mage. The other types probably also, but I don't know them as well. It does have a paradoxical element in that your character will be a big fish as far as the mundane world is considered. A freshly statted vampire or mage is far more powerful than a mundane person. It does have paths for players to become big fish, too

I think there was an illustration in one of the Vampire books that had a malk kissing a fish. I'd known the term, and then forgotten it, but recently was reminded of it. I was complaining about how some players just always want to be zany and wacky, instead of just playing to the premise. Like, you pitch a gritty game about hunting vampires in 1980s new york city, and they want to play a talking horse. or three kids in a trenchcoat. or a dead man's seeing eye dog. Just stuff that could kind of work, maybe, but is going to take a lot of work and take a lot of spotlight constantly. Instead of playing, I don't know... An investigative journalist who's been looking into mysterious deaths, a nurse at the hospital who's seen some shit, a business man who just can't get promoted (maybe because the owners are vampires). Some of this is subjective, I guess, but I feel like some players are just not on my wavelength about what fits into a theme.

I've heard of Bleed, but maybe in the context of a horror story. A player's character was cursed so they couldn't play music anymore without some unknown bad stuff happening. They were going to play anyway, since music was everything to them. The other player characters intervened, and took away their instruments. The cursed player had their character sneak back, break into the cleric's chest, and steal their instruments back. We were all like "Wow this is such good drama and tension!" But then the cursed player got really mad and upset at us in real life, and was like "Of course I'm upset! You wouldn't let me play music and stole my instruments!" We were all like, "..in the game, right?" They were like, "No! I'm really upset at you all! Don't you feel bad when you watch a movie and bad things happen to the characters?" We were like, "Well, sometimes, yeah, but it's not like.. the same as it happening for real." They calmed down eventually, but left a few sessions later in a similar blow up. So whenever I think of bleed, i think of that player just yelling at us in real life for stuff that was happening to their character.

I think a lot about this one time in a game of modern day magic. The players wanted to contact another group. They knew the other group was _double_ warded against magic. An anti-teleportation spell on top of a general anti-magic spell. Serious business. The players wanted to some time and resources trying to punch through these wards to teleport directly to this other group. I told them the odds, they said ok, and rolled. The dice said no. They mulled about for a bit, and then said they wanted to try again. I said ok. They got their spells together, spent their resources, and rolled. The dice said no, again. I said, "Do you want a hint?" They said, "Yeah" I said, "You just want to talk to them, right?" "Yeah", they said. "Why don't you just call them on the phone?" I said. "...oh." Sometimes players get tunnel vision.

**Some people just aren't a good fit.** That doesn't mean they're a bad person, nor you're a bad person, but sometimes you just don't get on with someone in a particular context and that's okay. You can still be friends or do other things together. You don't have to do everything together to be friends. **It's okay to let people have fun** even if it seems stupid to you, or they'd have more fun doing something else. So long as they're not hurting anyone, let it be. It's tempting to be like "you know, there's a whole game series about playing modern day vampires doing politics while holding onto their fading humanity" when some folks are doing that in D&D 5e, but it's almost certainly not worth it. Many people don't care about what you care about. **People learn in different ways**. Some people really struggle with things that seem easy to you. That person who asks _every week_ "what do I roll to attack?" or "Can I roll my armor against their sneak attack?" probably isn't doing it to be annoying. They're probably trying their best, even if their best is pretty bad by objective measurements like "getting the rules right'. Don't be a jerk about it. You can gently ask them about what they think would help them keep the rules straight (one player liked little notecards, another player benefited from watching games on youtube), but you can't just make someone learn.

I'm very much "old man yells at cloud" so I don't really watch actual plays or consume podcasts, but the fate site has a list: https://fate-srd.com/actual-play I can't speak to their quality, but there's a bunch on that list. The game should feel different than DND. Players have a lot more control, and that kind of affects every aspect of the game. DND tends to put everything on the DM, and players can only do stuff in character. a fate player can be like "I want to spend a fate point to say the king is in fact looking for a witch to _hire_" or "I wanna declare a story detail: the farm is run by a family of loyalists, so I'm a loyalist they will hopefully see me as a friend". That plus the ways to change rolls and outcomes makes for a different game. And the lack of focus on minutia like distance and spells per day.

A note, if you pursue this: There's fate _core_ and fate _condensed_ that are very similar, but have a few minor changes. Stress (similar to HP) is handled slightly differently between them. I prefer core's method, but some people like condensed. There's also fate _accelerated_ which is even lighter weight. They're all free on the website linked above - https://fate-srd.com/ - rules drop down has all the options

You could use Fate. Fate is a generic system that can do high fantasy just fine. It doesn't need a full party like D&D does. It handles social and physical conflict equally well. The way aspects work is very "As long as I can justify it in the story, it could happen". You can spend fate points as a player to alter the story, too, which is fun. I also like that it's generally "You can get what you want, if you're lucky *or pay the price*". "Succeed at a major cost" is almost always on the table. The downside is it has big "tyranny of the blank page". D&D-likes you can just point at "Human Fighter" and go. Fate asks you to come up with your high concept, trouble, and background on your own. If you're creative and that excites you, it's freeing and exhilarating. If you're shy, it can be overwhelming. The core rules don't have a detailed magic system. It's up to you to decide how you want it to work, or to buy a splatbook where someone else made a system. It's pretty easy to tinker with. It's also up to the GM to make sure the threats are reasonable. There's no "CR" system like D&D. But players also always have the power to concede, where they lose the immediate conflict but survive. You don't have to worry about accidentally wiping the player(s) usually. You could look for some PbtA games, which are extremely popular. I personally don't like them much because playbooks feel more like mad libs than creative writing. I also don't like the dice system, and often find it punishing to the point of not being fun. (I just played a PbtA game last night and don't think I rolled even a success on like 6 rolls in a row. I felt incompetent and it sucked).

I definitely learned from the experience. Specifically, be explicit about what tone and such we're going for, and be firm if someone is going off in some other direction. In her defense, she'd played little to nothing before.

I don't think giving that kind of arbitrary power to a small number of private entities is a great idea.

> Then again you did say they physically stopped the player so maybe they’re not the only person whose lines are a bit blurred. I communicated poorly! _In-game_ they stopped the player _character_ by saying their characters physically took the instruments away. We were playing remotely, so no one was physically interacting.

I'd never heard of "Bleed" until one player got very in-real-life upset about their character having a moderately bad time. The rest of us were like "this is some great drama and storytelling! And good job {upset-player} roleplaying!", but then they were like actually mad at us. Kind of unsettling. Not a good experience. Their character was a musician and had been cursed, in a recent session, so if they played music then unknown bad things to the tune of a demonic incursion would happen. The other players didn't like this, and the bleed player didn't really believe it. They'd tried to play a song anyway, and when I described how the lights in the room became _thin_ they physically stopped the player from continuing, and put their instruments in their locked chest. The bleed-player didn't like this. They secretly went and broke into the chest to get their stuff back. The other players were then mad, in-character, that this had happened. Like, they put the group at risk by fucking with their curse, and also **broke into their personal belongings**. It was good drama. Good interpersonal conflict. Big argument and juicy scene. Both sides had good points. Except the bleed-player was actually, genuinely, real-life, upset about all of this. We had to pause the game. To me it just felt messy and, I don't know, like poor emotional regulation. You can feel a thing but why are you lashing out at the other players? Maybe that's not a typical usage of bleed, but that's what they said was happening.

Do you remember your first character death? Was it memorable? I usually GM, and NPC deaths don't hit as hard. I don't even remember my first. I lost a warlock in a D&D 5e game, but we were high level so raise dead was just right there. Not very impactful. Last night, I had a player's first character death ever in a game I've been running. It's sort of Shadowrun + World of Darkness, using Fate for the rules. The player had learned a kind of magic I stole from Unknown Armies: If you take big risks now, you can do more powerful magic later. Blindly crossing a busy street might be a mild charge, but russian roulette would be a major charge. The players were trying to investigate a warehouse for plot reasons. This player ends up by himself in the basement while the ground level is on fire (for player reasons). He finds an armed goon, a guy dressed like a doctor, and several unconscious people wired up to a machine. The player goes, "I'm going to russian roulette for a charge." I go, "Are you sure? It's all or nothing. No take backs. You get a major charge, or you die. You'd roll 1d6, and on a 6 you lose." They go, "Hmm okay." The player tries to threaten the goon, but the dice don't favor them. Now they're in a slightly worse position, mechanically. The player goes, "I'm going to roulette" _and just rolls the die_. No more discussion. It came up 6. The rest of us are like, "Wait, what? You just..? Right then? That's so... anti-climactic." I wasn't sure what to do. I hadn't expected them to so casually go for the big score! I thought it'd come up in a big climax scene, not a fully escapable conflict with an unarmed goon! We talked a little about ways forward that keep the character but don't cheapen the mechanic, but the player was like, "No, I rolled the dice on it and lost. His brains are all over the floor now." The player had to go sit on their own for a little while. They're thinking of rejoining as an NPC they'd worked with, but said they absolutely do not want to use magic again. This is one I'm going to remember for a while.

I'd want to do some research before making a serious answer, but firing from the hip, not in order: - DND 5e. It's the big one. Even if you don't like it, it's popular. If you're going to learn about a hobby you should learn what's popular in it. - a white wolf game like Vampire. This was also pretty popular. It's got dice pools, no levels and classes, and themes that are more than "get treasure" - a pbta game. They're popular now and typically have a very different feel from DND. I'm not sure which one to pick but there are many. - one of those one page games, where you have like two stats. I don't like them but it's a good exercise to show what's possible. - some other indie game with an unusual mechanic, like drawing tarot cards instead of dice, or using a Jenga tower.