The D&D thread

Locnar said:

we dont use that dynamic light but it sounds nice, i may need to push for it.

As for rolling stats and hps and all that at the table in public, and also DM having access to char sheets to make sure things are update , I think that makes everything more real. When I DM I make all my rolls public except the ones that must be hidden, like a failed find traps roll or hear noise. I want the players to know the dice are in charge.

I tried once to connect via Ipad to our R20 game and we could not get the sound to work. Luckily I'm mostly home now so just use the desktop.

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The dynamic lighting in Roll20 fucks up a lot. It's revealed the entire map to our party more than once. Last I played, they had fixed the horrendous lag issues. When it works though, it's a game changer. I had taken to mapping the campaigns on my own in a notebook because otherwise I just couldn't keep up, but the dynamic lighting kind of kills that requirement. I still do it out of habit and so I can take more detailed notes.

chaos said:

The dynamic lighting in Roll20 fucks up a lot. It's revealed the entire map to our party more than once. Last I played, they had fixed the horrendous lag issues. When it works though, it's a game changer. I had taken to mapping the campaigns on my own in a notebook because otherwise I just couldn't keep up, but the dynamic lighting kind of kills that requirement. I still do it out of habit and so I can take more detailed notes.

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I've had issues with it too. It may just be my lack of experience using it so far, but you have to draw doors and walls if you use the dynamic lighting function. The walls are supposed to prevent players from moving their tokens and lighting up unexplored portions of the dungeon until they open a door. But one of my players discovered an exploit that enables him to shine his light through tiny cracks where the walls meet and reveal rooms before they enter them. Then he found a way to move his token through walls.

Arden said:

I've had issues with it too. It may just be my lack of experience using it so far, but you have to draw doors and walls if you use the dynamic lighting function. The walls are supposed to prevent players from moving their tokens and lighting up unexplored portions of the dungeon until they open a door. But one of my players discovered an exploit that enables him to shine his light through tiny cracks where the walls meet and reveal rooms before they enter them. Then he found a way to move his token through walls.

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Sounds like a dick and I would probably stop playing with him. If you are exploiting in a ttrpg you probably have some issues you need to work out.

Fyff said:

Sounds like a dick and I would probably stop playing with him. If you are exploiting in a ttrpg you probably have some issues you need to work out.

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I guess I made him seem worse than he is lol. We are testing a new RPG system and I told the guys in the group to break and exploit everything they possibly could to find holes. So technically he was just doing what I asked him to do even though I didn't exactly mean break Roll20. Plus he stopped immediately after showing the group he could do it a few times. Ruined a nice ambush I had planned but oh well...

Yeah, that's totally different . I've played at some different stores and cons for one shots with people who were purposefully cheating. I don't really stand for that.

I've got one player in my group who is either super forgetful or is always trying to pull one over on me a lot. I think I have to have 'the talk' with him soon. It kind of sucks.

I think a lot of that comes from people's innate desire to be the hero, you know? It's very much a maturity thing, but it can be a temptation even to fudge dice rolls when they aren't rolling in your favor.

I talked about it a while ago, but my DM doesn't narrate natural 1's and the like as "you completely fail and embarrass yourself" but rather uses environmental or even motivational choices as why you failed.

In my current main game we are a bunch of traveling dwarven merchant craftsmen. In our first session our first roll was about setting up our profession stalls and I rolled a nat 1. He narrated that I was setting things up properly, as I've done this hundreds of times, but I noticed that one of the newer merchants was struggling and so I ended up helping him. I would, however, have to miss out on the evening festivities to finish setting up my stall.

All of a sudden, instead of feeling stupid because my roll suggested that I don't know what I'm doing, the DM made it a positive character trait.

Obviously there are times when reframing a failure in such a way just isn't going to work, but I think that's a way that the DM can work things so players don't feel like they need to cheat just to be recognized in a good way

j00t said:

I think a lot of that comes from people's innate desire to be the hero, you know...

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Sounds like you have a good GM. That's a great way to handle a fumble. Abject, humiliating failure can be fun too, but it's always good to have some touch in your quiver as a GM.

Anyone who has ever GMed has dealt with players who make math mistakes that always seem to add up in their favor. But we keep gaming with them anyway because we ultimately decide they add more to the game than they take away.

Arden said:

Sounds like you have a good GM. That's a great way to handle a fumble. Abject, humiliating failure can be fun too, but it's always good to have some touch in your quiver as a GM.

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yeah, definitely. and i think you can make bigger theatre out of humiliating failures if you take the time to make the players feel heroic on a regular basis. you basically build up credit with them and when the time comes when a nat 1 shows up you can really bury them in hilarious failure. the players don't feel like you're out to get them because you've just spent the last 3 sessions demonstrating how amazing they are.

i know this isn't the thread for it...

but i hope businesses keep giving lip service and i hope these people keep telling everyone that it's not enough.

and then i hope these businesses figure out how nonsensical these shifting goal posts are and just stop getting involved in "movements" and politics. the only way to win, is not to play.

Look man, the people marched demanding that Wizards of the Coast retcon orcish and drow culture, and their voices were heard. Fucking stick to the past boomer, the future is ours.

Fyff said:

Sounds like a dick and I would probably stop playing with him. If you are exploiting in a ttrpg you probably have some issues you need to work out.

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I did the same thing, it's instinct at this point idk, if someone tells me "this is how a thing works" i immediately try to circumvent it, just to check. Even when we discovered tricky stuff like "Oh there's a false wall here for some reason and if I move to the left of it the entire map will be revealed" we didn't take advantage, beyond stuff we can't help like just knowing the map outline.

chaos said:

I did the same thing, it's instinct at this point idk, if someone tells me "this is how a thing works" i immediately try to circumvent it, just to check. Even when we discovered tricky stuff like "Oh there's a false wall here for some reason and if I move to the left of it the entire map will be revealed" we didn't take advantage, beyond stuff we can't help like just knowing the map outline.

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Yeah, as I said, that's different, in my opinion anyways, then what was originally presented (and then clarified). I think in role-playing games there is a lot of trust and a social contract between everyone.

I listened to part of the podcast where they bitch about Oriental Adventures. While some complaints about things like comeliness might seem justified at first when you hear them talk about the exotic look of the east and fetishes etc. You have to realize that comeliness was a whole thing in the 1985 AD&D products including Unearthed Arcana and it was proposed in a Dragon magazine article in the previous years.

The rest of it is mostly talking about how they make a pastiche of several asian cultures to construct this setting and I just have to laugh...as if Waterdeep, the Sword Coast etc. weren't themselves a mishmash of generic European cultures.

Qhue said:

I listened to part of the podcast where they bitch about Oriental Adventures. While some complaints about things like comeliness might seem justified at first when you hear them talk about the exotic look of the east and fetishes etc. You have to realize that comeliness was a whole thing in the 1985 AD&D products including Unearthed Arcana and it was proposed in a Dragon magazine article in the previous years.

The rest of it is mostly talking about how they make a pastiche of several asian cultures to construct this setting and I just have to laugh...as if Waterdeep, the Sword Coast etc. weren't themselves a mishmash of generic European cultures.

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What was the comeliness issue?

I must have missed where Tolkien "admitted" orcs were a racist creation. Anyone care to point me in the direction of the admission, or is this Chris person just full of shit?