Sunday, 7:30pm Central, it's Inappropriate Characters! Guest starring Jeffro Johnson!
We'll be talking about his whole deal, and also about the latest #ttrpg news & controversy. Check it out!
Who's got odds on Jeffro asking a dumbass question and Venger answering with "Yo momma?"
"Explain it to me like I'm Venger" ;)
Most people rejected his message. They hated Jeffro because he told them the truth.
Too bad the stream was cut short. Been one of the best IC. But the brosr did not win a convert to the cult.
I'm just shaking my head with their level of .... of ..... weirdness.
Eh, there was no actual discussion of the mechanics in question, just a lot of people het up about the memes and personalities.
When there's no discussion of the substance of what they're endorsing, there's no debate or understanding. Kinda disappointing.
Did learn about how pervasive Faction play and 1:1 time during downtime was in the 70's (even if most people hearing the stream didn't listen enough to understand it.)
From Jeffro's blog I get the impression he's much more doctrinaire about 1:1 campaign:real time thanb Gygax is in the 1e DMG. Gygax seems to use it more as a default structure, his main emphasis being that the campaign needs strict timekeeping, but that you may sometimes end up with different groups at different points in time and that's ok.
You guys mentioned there being complications to doing 1:1 time. What are they?
Who is Jeffro Johnson and why should I care?
Quote from: jeff37923 on April 11, 2022, 06:01:20 AM
Who is Jeffro Johnson and why should I care?
He's a guy who's an AD&D RAW purist, saying you need to play 100% by the book AD&D to play true D&D, that this is what Gygax intended and what leads to the best games. He runs big sandbox open table games with "always on" time tracking; ie, when a day passes in real life, it passes in game. He also has players control the patrons and bigwigs of the setting rather than doing it himself, so that way even other players are giving out quests and moving the big blocks of the world. It's sort of like an MMO.
Quote from: jeff37923 on April 11, 2022, 06:01:20 AM
Who is Jeffro Johnson and why should I care?
What mAcular said. But I will add you don't need to care.
I listened to the stream and the brosr philosophy is pretty cultish.
It was interesting to listen to though.
Quote from: S'mon on April 11, 2022, 04:24:02 AMhis main emphasis being that the campaign needs strict timekeeping, but that you may sometimes end up with different groups at different points in time and that's ok.
Exactly how the BrOSR does it.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 11, 2022, 04:37:55 AMYou guys mentioned there being complications to doing 1:1 time. What are they?
If it takes your characters 30 days to travel to a new location, but your players don't have a game scheduled 30 days from now, what do the characters do when they reach their destination?
Is the time of day locked to real-time. Can you only do a night time raid if you play at night?
Is the game over as soon as your party take a long rest?
What do you do if the party splits up?
Quote from: mightybrain on April 12, 2022, 03:27:37 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 11, 2022, 04:37:55 AMYou guys mentioned there being complications to doing 1:1 time. What are they?
If it takes your characters 30 days to travel to a new location, but your players don't have a game scheduled 30 days from now, what do the characters do when they reach their destination?
Is the time of day locked to real-time. Can you only do a night time raid if you play at night?
Is the game over as soon as your party take a long rest?
What do you do if the party splits up?
I think these would be good questions for Jeffro to answer, because they're useful to know even if you just want to play 1:1 time. I for one like the idea.
I do a similar concept in one of my games, but it's not 1:1. I just advance time by a set amount after each session and have people do downtime. Inevitably people split apart in the timeline, and if they are too far ahead I just have them wait til others catch up. But as long as the different groups aren't involved with each other, they can just continue on until something between them would require interaction and thus waiting for catching up.
What I thought you were going to say was that it's too intense/active/always on for most people with busy schedules. Who can always just play D&D all the time?
Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on April 11, 2022, 12:38:53 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 11, 2022, 07:25:48 AM
Quote from: jeff37923 on April 11, 2022, 06:01:20 AM
Who is Jeffro Johnson and why should I care?
He's a guy who's an AD&D RAW purist, saying you need to play 100% by the book AD&D to play true D&D, that this is what Gygax intended and what leads to the best games. He runs big sandbox open table games with "always on" time tracking; ie, when a day passes in real life, it passes in game. He also has players control the patrons and bigwigs of the setting rather than doing it himself, so that way even other players are giving out quests and moving the big blocks of the world. It's sort of like an MMO.
What mAcular said. But I will add you don't need to care.
That's what I thought.
Sounds like a great idea, for anyone who doesn't have a life outside of AD&D.
Quote from: Jason Coplen on April 10, 2022, 09:06:44 PM
"Explain it to me like I'm Venger" ;)
Because Venger prefers succinct and understandishable communication!
QuoteThat's what I thought.
Sounds like a great idea, for anyone who doesn't have a life outside of AD&D.
Even if I can play 8 hours every day as dayjob for 20 grand a month, I'd never limit myself in such terrible fashion.
QuoteHe's a guy who's an AD&D RAW purist, saying you need to play 100% by the book AD&D to play true D&D, that this is what Gygax intended and what leads to the best games.
I hate him already.
Quote from: Wrath of God on April 12, 2022, 03:18:21 PM
QuoteThat's what I thought.
Sounds like a great idea, for anyone who doesn't have a life outside of AD&D.
Even if I can play 8 hours every day as day job for 20 grand a month, I'd never limit myself in such terrible fashion.
20 grand a month? That amount of money might make me dance to their tune, but not for long.
I saw the first hour of the video and I thought to myself that that guy has got to be kidding and it has to be a parody.
That Jaffo guy would be horrible to game with.
Quote20 grand a month? That amount of money might make me dance to their tune, but not for long.
I mean I'm in Poland, so it's worth closer to 60 grand in actual buyer power. STILL. NOT. ENOUGH ;)
Quote from: Wrath of God on April 13, 2022, 12:09:27 PM
Quote20 grand a month? That amount of money might make me dance to their tune, but not for long.
I mean I'm in Poland, so it's worth closer to 60 grand in actual buyer power. STILL. NOT. ENOUGH ;)
I'm not saying that I can be bought. I'm just saying that I can be rented for the right price.
Well yes, but is there really difference between rent and bought in Jeffro system.
I think the only time I have seen 1:1 time system working is way back in the late 70's when people were playing D&D every chance they could get (every day at school for me). Multiple groups playing at different times - one group play once a week and another groups plays once every two weeks - would be a nightmare to keep in sync. I would only do it if I could put those groups on other sides of the world were I knew they couldn't interact with each other. The rest of stuff sounds like he is grandstanding at playing a purer form of AD&D than anyone else. It's kind of pointless, since Gygax dumped the AD&D rules and went back to his house rules. Plus, some rules for things like unarmed combat and morale are just garbage. He is still stuck in the same mindset as us kids back in the 70s and 80s. If we read the rules just one more time , if we just used as many rules as possible, then the magic would happen.
Quote from: zend0g on April 13, 2022, 08:10:16 PM
I think the only time I have seen 1:1 time system working is way back in the late 70's when people were playing D&D every chance they could get (every day at school for me). Multiple groups playing at different times - one group play once a week and another groups plays once every two weeks - would be a nightmare to keep in sync. I would only do it if I could put those groups on other sides of the world were I knew they couldn't interact with each other. The rest of stuff sounds like he is grandstanding at playing a purer form of AD&D than anyone else. It's kind of pointless, since Gygax dumped the AD&D rules and went back to his house rules. Plus, some rules for things like unarmed combat and morale are just garbage. He is still stuck in the same mindset as us kids back in the 70s and 80s. If we read the rules just one more time , if we just used as many rules as possible, then the magic would happen.
It's definitely unfeasible unless you're like, in a college dorm or something and everyone can just come play all the time whenever.
But I am doing something similar that reaps the same benefits, but without being as intense -- just move time forward 2 weeks after every session and have players tell you what they do in between. Some people might be in the "future" but the others will catch up eventually.
With the understanding that my interest is only with core 1E (I'm not a fan of UA, weapon specialization, and so forth), I will put my BtB fu against literally anyone in the world. I actually did take the time to sit down and read the 1E DMG repeatedly when I was a teen, and I took the time to understand it, before ever even being exposed to the internet. So now I've been running core 1E BtB for 30 years.
I think I probably usually agree with Pundit, and based on what I've heard about Jeffro, I was inclined to disagree with him. But as for as what was discussed here, I'm probably leaning 80/20 in favor of Jeffro. 1E rules actually are a great set of tools that if you choose to use them can improve your game a lot. When Jeffro repeats the line about being as much fun as possible for as many people as possible for as long a time as possible, I'm in agreement insofar as the importance of that line. That's the one line I would say sums up the mission statement of 1E. Pundit's "history" view of 1E being for tournament play is bogus, and I'm glad jeffro pushed back on that, and I think on that point at least Jeffro articulated it very well.
That said, Jeffro is most certainly wrong on the 1:1 thing. It's the DMG that has the sentence in all caps emphasizing the importance of time-keeping in the campaign. But in that very same section it spends a lot of time spelling out an example where the campaign is clearly not running on 1:1 time. There's nothing about what Jeffro is doing that is expressly against the rules either. Near as I can tell, he's certainly running a campaign that fits under the umbrella of RAW. But it's definitely not the only RAW way to play.
For me, I do use what the "1:1" passage actually suggests--when there is no active play, I assume 1 game day passes (at least) for every actual day. I've done this since 1992 because that's when I read that in the book, not 2020 when Jeffro claims to have coined the term after discovering this long-lost concept because I don't follow him at all. The reason I've done this is because I want to keep time flowing. During actually play, in a session, you could easily bang out a month+ of game time. As Pundit suggests, if everyone is caught up temporally and engaged in activity that takes an extended amount of time, we can and do fast forward to the point where those characters can play again.
I go with the flow, but what I like to see is roughly time flowing at a longrun average rate of at least 5 game days for every 1 real day. There's a reason I try to do this. And it has to do with the rules as written. Ask yourself--and Jeffro should be asking himself this for sure. Why did Gary plot out all the different lifespans of the different races, including tables for starting age and effects of aging? Gary has Grey Elves living ~2000 years. No one ever has, and I'm assuming no one ever will, run a campaign that lasts 2000 years of real time. So what's the point? When could this ever possibly be used if game time weren't meant to flow substantially faster than real time?
The #1 point I would speak on, though, is the meaning of the afterward in the DMG. I feel as though the hierarchy on which Jeffro hangs his hat--the game first, campaign second, players third. I do not think that actually means that the rules presented therein must come first, the DM's opinion mattering only second.
Rather, I think the reading is more like this: Let's say, fine. I concede. Every DM can do whatever they want. We set that issue 100% aside. You can no longer respond "muh game muh rulez." We're taking this entire debate off the table by conceding the point. The inevitable question becomes, Okay, tough guy. So how exactly are you going to run your game? How are you going to run things in such a way that it doesn't instantly break down? How are you going to run it so it has broad enough appeal to captivate the diverse assortment of players and opinions that you mgiht find present at your game table? How are you going to run it that also maintains your own interest, so you don't suffer from DM burnout? How are you going to run it that people will actually want to come back to play it again and again for the long term?
There's not going to be any one single right answer to these questions. But as every DM who has ever had enough respect for their players to actually try to improve on their game surely knows, it is a lot easier to do it wrong than it is to do it right--there may not be a one right way, there are many, it's just the number of possible wrong ways (in the "if you're not having fun you're playing wrong" sense of wrong) is far greater. So if you manage to even find one out of several possible right answers, that is no trivial thing. That would be worth putting down in a book, and it would be worth adhering to for most people if they know what's good for them.
I'd put this question to Jeffro and those who agree with him. He's conceded that sometimes the DM must make rulings--that there are areas where the rules are silent. So no matter where you fall on this debate, everyone is in the same boat of having to adjudicate at some point. So how do you do it?
I know for me, if a player wants to try something that isn't in the rules, the first two things I'm thinking is, on the one hand, I don't want to be so generous as to the results that they do this again and again and again to the point of abuse. But nor do I want to be so much of a naysayer that a perfectly reasonable sounding thing never works, or that players are discouraged from being creative. So I want to make sure that if allowed this won't dominate everything, but that it won't be restricted to the point of being pointless either. Next, ask myself how I can rule in a way that is thematically appropriate. It should fit the tone, mood, and style of the overall campaign. If after this I have any question on what is the most reasonable call, I tend to side with what would make the players the most happy as my third tier of consideration.
If this seems reasonable to you, or if on reflection you realize this is pretty much the same thing you do, or what any reasonable DM would do, congratulations. You just adhered to the Gygaxian Holy Trinity. You put the game first by making sure the thing wasn't too overpowered or too underpowered. You put the campaign second by making sure the ruling has the right feel. And you put the players third by considering their desires if your ruling was still unclear at that point.
And that's how I take that passage. It's not finger wagging saying, "You better follow all these rules!" To the contrary, the sentence right before tells you not to allow any barracks room lawyer to bully you into putting the letter of the rules over the spirit of the game. Rather, what it's saying is, "Hey, this is one DM to another. We're equal peers, so I know you're going to do your thing. But if you're ever not sure what to do, put the overall game first, your campaign second, and the players desires third and you'll be golden." That shouldn't be controversial. That's just plain good sound advice.
Finaly a point that I always have to bring up when it comes to playing RAW/BtB. The rulebook does specifically instruct DMs that they can add, alter, or abolish rules. And they are specifically given the job of adjudicator. This is no trivial thing. I'm a big fan of SJG's Illuminati Card game. It has a neat optional rule that allows cheating. If you make an illegal move and nobody calls you on it before the end of your turn, it becomes legal. This is an actual rule, and you probably imagine even without playing how that rule would affect the tone and flow of the game. It's not some throw-away thing just because you can't predict how exactly players will take advantage of it. You can't just say it's all a wash. It matters. And so I'd say the same is true when you have this weird sort of game that is the RPG that tells DMs they can make stuff up.
Sure, some DMs will use this unwisely in one way or another. We can't predict that exactly. But what it does tell us if nothing else is that the rules are not sacrosanct. And if nothing else, it's a wise bet that any time the rules make no sense at all for a particular thing that is happening in the game that that's an area the DM is highly likely to adjudicate. So if you know what's good for you, you focus more on having your character behave in a way that is reasonable according to the logic of the situation rather than the one that is most advantageous in the letter of the rules. If this helps get advantage-seeking players to view the game less like a game of chess and more like a game of immersive imagination, all the better. Having those rules-breaking rules serves a purpose. They have a substantial impact on the tone and feel of the game. And any DM who is in derelict of their duty as adjudicator is most certainly violating the instructions of the rules, even if the abdicate that role in favor of running according to the black-and-white text.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 13, 2022, 11:35:44 PMFor me, I do use what the "1:1" passage actually suggests--when there is no active play, I assume 1 game day passes (at least) for every actual day. I've done this since 1992 because that's when I read that in the book, not 2020 when Jeffro claims to have coined the term after discovering this long-lost concept because I don't follow him at all. The reason I've done this is because I want to keep time flowing. During actually play, in a session, you could easily bang out a month+ of game time. As Pundit suggests, if everyone is caught up temporally and engaged in activity that takes an extended amount of time, we can and do fast forward to the point where those characters can play again.
I do this too, and I think Jeffro would say that it's implied in the text by looking at how Gary Gygax actually played the game at home -- he cites a few times the fact that Gygax was apparently doing 1:1 time in his home games back in the day.
Now, I have a question. What do you do if the session ends while the party is in a dungeon or something? Do you freeze the time progression until they get out, do you handwave them leaving, do you do something else? Situations that need to be frozen in time don't play well that way. Or do you just have them escape next time then "catch up" time by skipping ahead the amount that passed IRL?
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 14, 2022, 03:22:08 AMWhat do you do if the session ends while the party is in a dungeon or something? Do you freeze the time progression until they get out, do you handwave them leaving, do you do something else? Situations that need to be frozen in time don't play well that way. Or do you just have them escape next time then "catch up" time by skipping ahead the amount that passed IRL?
You have to get back to town to "bank" treasure before you get any experience at all (and in AD&D treasure is where almost all your experience comes from), and since you don't know who's coming next week, players typically head back to town. Those people who have enough XP to level then pay for training and spend time training, those who don't have enough XP/GP to train have to go back out to earn more of either or both.
Another reason to head back is that once you've filled your backpacks and sacks with treasure (again, tracking encumbrance is part of the rules, so we keep track of that and the consequences of it add greatly to the game), you have to head back to unload your burdens and either spend it, bank it (if available), or convert it into a light, easily portable form (gems, usually).
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 14, 2022, 03:22:08 AM
I do this too, and I think Jeffro would say that it's implied in the text by looking at how Gary Gygax actually played the game at home -- he cites a few times the fact that Gygax was apparently doing 1:1 time in his home games back in the day.
Now, I have a question. What do you do if the session ends while the party is in a dungeon or something? Do you freeze the time progression until they get out, do you handwave them leaving, do you do something else? Situations that need to be frozen in time don't play well that way. Or do you just have them escape next time then "catch up" time by skipping ahead the amount that passed IRL?
If we absolutely must, we freeze time. But I do everything possible to avoid that.
When I was in college, there were tons of gamers around. But everyone had different class schedules, and project due dates and exams and so sometimes players would cancel last minute. That made it really difficult to just stop any old place then pick right up where we left off because one of the players might not be there next time. If it was a really pivotal moment in the campaign and the missing player was super important to the story, we might just have to play something else instead. Nothing unusual hear. Most gamers can tell similar war stories. But I felt it really started to wear on the campaign.
And so to solve for that problem, I said, "Okay. We're getting back to basics. We're going to do mostly dungeon crawls. Every session begins and ends in town. Whoever shows up shows up, and we play." A lot of people scoffed at that because this was the 90's, dungeon crawls were for kids, and everything was about story and "real role playing" back then.
But the darnedest thing happened. Everyone started having more fun. Even those for whom this wasn't their style. Not only that, more and more people kept joining the group. And not only that, suddenly people weren't missing games due to projects or exams. Because it turns out real life doesn't actually get in the way of gaming nearly as much as we think.
In other words, I experienced all the same positive results that Jeffro talks about. But I don't necessarily attribute that to playing RAW per se. And I don't attribute it to 1:1 time at all. I attribute it to the begin in town, end in town motif. I think there are a few reasons for it. First, players feel less obligated to show up. The feeling of obligation can be a terrible thing when you're doing something that's supposed to be fun. Second, players know the game is going to go on regardless. Imagine how much it sucks to pass up the opportunity to do something else to make the game only to find out we're doing Munchkin night instead because a key player didn't show up. How will that affect your decision the next time you have to choose between the game or something else? Third, knowing the game is going to go on, some players are going to wonder what they're missing. In today's social media addicted culture, we've actually got the term FOMO. So this part of it should be more powerful than ever.
I can pretty easily see why Jeffro attributes his success to the 1:1 method. Because if you're strict about the 1:1 and won't ever freeze time, then you're in a way forcing the start in town, end in town motif. And all the good results follow from that.
I caught up and watched the stream. This whole "BrOSR" thing is new to me so I felt like... maybe going into the stream people might have been expected to know more about it than I did, so I was missing context. I might browse some forums now and then, but I'm not on twitter and really don't pay much attention to RPGS and the drama around them, outside of listening to some podcasts.
And I did see the blog linked in the stream, but its not like there's a good "FAQ/About" section saying what BrOSR is. My basic assumption is that it always tries to stick to 1:1 timekeeping and all the rules in the book? I feel like there weren't enough questions going over exactly what it means. Maybe Jeffro should start a youtube channel and just make a video about what it is to be BrOSR.
It also seemed like some things were toung-in-cheek? Or maybe he was serious? It's hard to tell. I do think it would be interesting to have him on again to talk more about it. I think letting players have some control of factions is a good idea.
I saw some people wondering like.. "what do you do when your party is spending 7 days traveling? stop playing and wait until they're there?" am I the only one who was thinking about alternative things that could be done? For instance, I know there are games where people have a pool of characters to choose to play with, why wouldn't it also be possible to have 2 or 3 different adventuring groups that players could control? When 1-2 of the adventuring parties are traveling, 1-2 might be available to actually run an adventure? That's just one idea of how to keep playing while waiting for 1 group to travel, I'm sure other ideas could pop up.
I think there are probably some good ideas that can be mined for other gaming experiences, probably without such a harsh edge? Although since I'm like.. disconnected I really don't see the harsh edge or understand why people are upset.
Quote from: Daddy Warpig on April 11, 2022, 12:02:51 AMWhen there's no discussion of the substance of what they're endorsing, there's no debate or understanding. Kinda disappointing.
Yeah. I had to stop 45 minutes in when it was clear that there was no effort being made by the Inappropriate Characters crew to actually try and understand what Jeffro was saying.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 14, 2022, 07:09:57 AMI think there are a few reasons for it. First, players feel less obligated to show up. The feeling of obligation can be a terrible thing when you're doing something that's supposed to be fun. Second, players know the game is going to go on regardless. Imagine how much it sucks to pass up the opportunity to do something else to make the game only to find out we're doing Munchkin night instead because a key player didn't show up. How will that affect your decision the next time you have to choose between the game or something else? Third, knowing the game is going to go on, some players are going to wonder what they're missing. In today's social media addicted culture, we've actually got the term FOMO. So this part of it should be more powerful than ever.
This is exactly my experience when I switch to an open table style of game almost 10 years ago. It turns out to be a great way to play when you have people whose schedules don't always align.
There is another advantage in that it breaks the current assumption that all PCs need to be the exact same level and that leveling up is somehow involved "tiers of play". In an open table game, leveling up is an accomplishment so having a high level character is a symbol of that accomplishment. It isn't just something that will eventually happen to everyone at the same time. This makes the appearance of a player with a high level character a good thing as it will help the party accomplish their goals. It isn't, as it's looked at today, a case of spotlight hogging.
Also, since that player with a high level character might not show up every session (or the player might play a different character) it means that the position of highest level character and party composition will change from game to game. I was involved with one open table campaign where I was among the lowest level characters one session (standing in the back and trying not to die) and the highest level character the next (leading a pack of newbs through the first level of the dungeon). Plus the party composition changes so you might have two wizards one session and no wizards the next. That variety made the game much more enjoyable.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 13, 2022, 11:35:44 PMAnd that's how I take that passage. It's not finger wagging saying, "You better follow all these rules!" To the contrary, the sentence right before tells you not to allow any barracks room lawyer to bully you into putting the letter of the rules over the spirit of the game. Rather, what it's saying is, "Hey, this is one DM to another. We're equal peers, so I know you're going to do your thing. But if you're ever not sure what to do, put the overall game first, your campaign second, and the players desires third and you'll be golden." That shouldn't be controversial. That's just plain good sound advice.
One of the advantages of BtB play, which I touch on earlier, is the knowledge that succeeding and gaining levels is an accomplishment. That the DM isn't just making ruling in order to insure that the party always succeeds. I know many DMs or players don't actually care if they earned their level ups, but it is a specific style of play with a specific benefit.
This is true even if you point out that Gygax didn't actually follow the rules he wrote. That point is effectively meaningless as it doesn't address the advantage of having a clearly defined rules set that DM and players agree on before play begins.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 14, 2022, 03:22:08 AM
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 13, 2022, 11:35:44 PMFor me, I do use what the "1:1" passage actually suggests--when there is no active play, I assume 1 game day passes (at least) for every actual day. I've done this since 1992 because that's when I read that in the book, not 2020 when Jeffro claims to have coined the term after discovering this long-lost concept because I don't follow him at all. The reason I've done this is because I want to keep time flowing. During actually play, in a session, you could easily bang out a month+ of game time. As Pundit suggests, if everyone is caught up temporally and engaged in activity that takes an extended amount of time, we can and do fast forward to the point where those characters can play again.
I do this too, and I think Jeffro would say that it's implied in the text by looking at how Gary Gygax actually played the game at home -- he cites a few times the fact that Gygax was apparently doing 1:1 time in his home games back in the day.
Now, I have a question. What do you do if the session ends while the party is in a dungeon or something? Do you freeze the time progression until they get out, do you handwave them leaving, do you do something else? Situations that need to be frozen in time don't play well that way. Or do you just have them escape next time then "catch up" time by skipping ahead the amount that passed IRL?
That was also when Gygax was DMing for twenty players in a mega dungeon with no idea who would be there at any given session.
Quote from: Banjo Destructo on April 14, 2022, 09:24:56 AM"what do you do when your party is spending 7 days traveling? stop playing and wait until they're there?" am I the only one who was thinking about alternative things that could be done? For instance, I know there are games where people have a pool of characters to choose to play with, why wouldn't it also be possible to have 2 or 3 different adventuring groups that players could control? When 1-2 of the adventuring parties are traveling, 1-2 might be available to actually run an adventure? That's just one idea of how to keep playing while waiting for 1 group to travel, I'm sure other ideas could pop up.
Here's a Google Doc covering "1:1 Time During Downtime" (and note it IS during downtime, not at the table): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y102v1DSDKMtPf0PDEW43ehD-6tgw3rpDw_vRjVkXg4/edit?usp=sharing (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y102v1DSDKMtPf0PDEW43ehD-6tgw3rpDw_vRjVkXg4/edit?usp=sharing)
It is incomplete, some of the points are just notes, but it explains the principle thoroughly and lists some of the consequences.
Quote from: Daddy Warpig on April 14, 2022, 01:52:55 PM
Quote from: Banjo Destructo on April 14, 2022, 09:24:56 AM"what do you do when your party is spending 7 days traveling? stop playing and wait until they're there?" am I the only one who was thinking about alternative things that could be done? For instance, I know there are games where people have a pool of characters to choose to play with, why wouldn't it also be possible to have 2 or 3 different adventuring groups that players could control? When 1-2 of the adventuring parties are traveling, 1-2 might be available to actually run an adventure? That's just one idea of how to keep playing while waiting for 1 group to travel, I'm sure other ideas could pop up.
Here's a Google Doc covering "1:1 Time During Downtime" (and note it IS during downtime, not at the table): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y102v1DSDKMtPf0PDEW43ehD-6tgw3rpDw_vRjVkXg4/edit?usp=sharing (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y102v1DSDKMtPf0PDEW43ehD-6tgw3rpDw_vRjVkXg4/edit?usp=sharing)
It is incomplete, some of the points are just notes, but it explains the principle thoroughly and lists some of the consequences.
Thanks for the link. I'll give it a go over.
I'm probably the odd man out here.
I don't play, or have ever played any D&D. I've played other games instead, mostly the Palladium Books line of games.
Today I'm experimenting with rules lite games such as The Anime Hack, Mini-6 Bare Bones Edition, Pocket Fantasy, and Dungeons and Delvers: Dice Pool edition.
I might try Pundit's own Star Adventurer, and when it's time to actually play D&D, then I'll break out my unused copy of Basic Fantasy.
I firmly believe people need to branch out to other games. I'll go one step further and say D&D isn't that good. It's just popular since it was first.
For all you AD&Ders who track time -- do you also track strict encumbrance and things like gear needed to camp and start fires and stuff too? Or do you handwave that? How anal do you get about it? Does it make a difference?
1:1, game time equal to real time? This sounds utterly insane. Jeffro mentioned he was doing Isle of Dread. How did he handle the long sea voyages?
What about one minute combat rounds? What does your fighter do with the other 59 seconds when he is not making his one attack*?
*Save 15% on his car i suranceby switching to Geico
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on April 14, 2022, 10:18:20 PM
1:1, game time equal to real time?
1:1 Time During Downtime. See the link above.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 14, 2022, 10:57:56 AM
Quote from: Daddy Warpig on April 11, 2022, 12:02:51 AMWhen there's no discussion of the substance of what they're endorsing, there's no debate or understanding. Kinda disappointing.
Yeah. I had to stop 45 minutes in when it was clear that there was no effort being made by the Inappropriate Characters crew to actually try and understand what Jeffro was saying.
Yeah, the cult stuff was goofy.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 14, 2022, 11:03:39 AM
There is another advantage in that it breaks the current assumption that all PCs need to be the exact same level and that leveling up is somehow involved "tiers of play". In an open table game, leveling up is an accomplishment so having a high level character is a symbol of that accomplishment. It isn't just something that will eventually happen to everyone at the same time. This makes the appearance of a player with a high level character a good thing as it will help the party accomplish their goals. It isn't, as it's looked at today, a case of spotlight hogging.
Yeah, spotlight talk in RPGs always seemed like gibberish to me. Even before I was doing "open table", my very first long-running campaign I ran when I was 12. I swapped off DMing duties with another player because I was teaching him the game A to Z, including game mastering. There were only 3 of us playing total, my, my friend, and my younger brother. So guess what? The DM usually also played a character. Once we got our characters up to 5th or 6th level, we rolled up alternate characters. The idea was, it's kind of tough to get new characters off the ground in D&D. But by mixing in a new character with a higher level group, you could level that character more quickly and more safely. Once you get the engine going, you can get characters leveling more quickly, that way if you do lose your primary character, you're not stuck starting over at 1st level. You've got a few characters waiting in the wings that aren't that much lower in level.
QuoteAlso, since that player with a high level character might not show up every session (or the player might play a different character) it means that the position of highest level character and party composition will change from game to game. I was involved with one open table campaign where I was among the lowest level characters one session (standing in the back and trying not to die) and the highest level character the next (leading a pack of newbs through the first level of the dungeon). Plus the party composition changes so you might have two wizards one session and no wizards the next. That variety made the game much more enjoyable.
Levels aside, mixing up the party from time to time can create a really interesting effect. The idea goes something like this. You've got a couple of fighters with basically comparable stats. Fighter A rolled average hit points. Fighter B rolled better hit points. When these two get together, most people just think B will outshine A and that's the end of it. But really what happens is it creates a "comparative advantage" for Fighter A as the ranged fighter in the group. Even though A is no more skilled than B at ranged attack. A has an advantage because B with his higher hit points is so valuable on the front line, that there is a much higher opportunity cost of putting B in the back.
The different roles A and B take on in the group could influence their decisions when it comes to learning later proficiencies, or which magic items to go for when splitting treasure.
Then imagine the group gets mixed up. B goes off on some side quest, and the party needs to recruit a new fighter at more or less their skill level. Along comes Fighter C who rolled crappy hit points. Now it's C who has the comparative advantage as the archer. At this point, because A took some steps to specialize in the role as archer, A might actually be a more skilled archer than C. Yet C still has that comparative advantage. Because you don't have a back line at all if the front line crumbles. You can't afford to have A in the back now.
It might be levels 1-3 A focused on gaining proficiencies and magic items that best suited an archer. Now levels 4-6, A will be focused on proficiencies and magic items that make for a better front-line fighter. What ends up happening is each character follows a unique and often unpredictable path that makes it impossible to replicate that character (even in something like a point-buy system).
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 14, 2022, 11:22:15 AM
One of the advantages of BtB play, which I touch on earlier, is the knowledge that succeeding and gaining levels is an accomplishment. That the DM isn't just making ruling in order to insure that the party always succeeds. I know many DMs or players don't actually care if they earned their level ups, but it is a specific style of play with a specific benefit.
This is true even if you point out that Gygax didn't actually follow the rules he wrote. That point is effectively meaningless as it doesn't address the advantage of having a clearly defined rules set that DM and players agree on before play begins.
Well, keep in mind, I do play BtB. But this point is not one that's especially compelling for me. I can see how it might mean something to a player. But as the DM running the open table, not so much. Because when I say I run an open table, I mean I run a really open table. Like bring any character you like. It's hard to maintain the idea that levels inherently have that sort of meaning when someone could be dusting off their character full of unearned levels from a Monty Haul campaign many years back.
A crazy high level character may have triple digit hit points and insanely good saving throws. But a roll of 1 fails the save, and poison doesn't care about your hit points. So there are still challenges. You still have to play smart. And if you don't, you won't keep those unearned levels for very long. While conversely, if you're starting out with a new character but you do have the chops, with the aid of the higher level characters in the party (earned or otherwise), it will help catapult you up the levels relatively quickly. In the long run, you rise or fall to the character you deserve. And this is not actually dependent on following the rules exactly as written. But it is a really great rule set for accomplishing what it is I'm trying to do.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 14, 2022, 08:56:50 PM
For all you AD&Ders who track time -- do you also track strict encumbrance and things like gear needed to camp and start fires and stuff too? Or do you handwave that? How anal do you get about it? Does it make a difference?
Short answer yes. Long answer no.
I'm actually more strict than strict as I impose an additional constraint. If you can't explain to me how your character is carrying something, you can't carry it, no matter what the encumbrance numbers say.
It's certainly possible for players to cook up wacky schemes to carry everything under the sun. But what I find is players are reluctant to do that when they have to explain it to me. It's like they know they're committing to the fact that they're holding that spare potion in a belt pouch that's tied to the end of their 10 foot pole or whatever silly thing they had to do to carry way too much stuff. Once they have to say it, I think they come to realize that I could very easily use this against them together, making them spend several rounds, several actions retrieving that potion. Players realized it's best to keep things simple.
When they're keeping things simple, unless you're talking about a character with crazy low strength, there's almost no chance their standard equipment will ever drop their movement rate (keep in mind, I'm playing core 1E, we do encumbered rates increments of 3", and also sometimes a movement rate is imposed by the armor type). The upshot is, there really isn't anything to track.
Until they're hauling back the loot, that is. At that point, we'll just add up what they've got, distributed it more or less evenly, and figure everyone's movement rates for the return journey. I am of the opinion that this is the real purpose of the encumbrance system. You've already kicked the dungeon's ass on the way in. Now you got to go back through all that, this time moving slow as shit. That's what keeps the return journey from being the same challenge they already beat, but twists it into a new challenge.
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on April 14, 2022, 10:18:20 PM
1:1, game time equal to real time? This sounds utterly insane. Jeffro mentioned he was doing Isle of Dread. How did he handle the long sea voyages?
What about one minute combat rounds? What does your fighter do with the other 59 seconds when he is not making his one attack*?
*Save 15% on his car i suranceby switching to Geico
What 1:1 means is that one day of game time passes for every day in real life, in between games. So people meet up to play, kill an ogre, night ends, we all go home. If we meet up 2 weeks from then to play again, it's been 2 weeks that passed in the game too, and the players can have told the DM what their characters were doing this time. To do that though you need to make sure people are back in town or somewhere where they aren't in immediate danger -- ie, you can't stop a session mid-combat. Or if you do it needs to be worked around somehow, like those people are "frozen" in time until the session is done while other characters are doing stuff while time progresses.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 14, 2022, 11:51:54 PM
When they're keeping things simple, unless you're talking about a character with crazy low strength, there's almost no chance their standard equipment will ever drop their movement rate (keep in mind, I'm playing core 1E, we do encumbered rates increments of 3", and also sometimes a movement rate is imposed by the armor type). The upshot is, there really isn't anything to track.
Until they're hauling back the loot, that is. At that point, we'll just add up what they've got, distributed it more or less evenly, and figure everyone's movement rates for the return journey. I am of the opinion that this is the real purpose of the encumbrance system. You've already kicked the dungeon's ass on the way in. Now you got to go back through all that, this time moving slow as shit. That's what keeps the return journey from being the same challenge they already beat, but twists it into a new challenge.
That's interesting. I run encumbrance in 5e and the encumbrance rules there are actually more punishing -- if you have below 15 STR just carrying your normal starting gear will often give you the first encumbrance penalty.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 02:40:23 AMk
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 14, 2022, 11:51:54 PM
When they're keeping things simple, unless you're talking about a character with crazy low strength, there's almost no chance their standard equipment will ever drop their movement rate (keep in mind, I'm playing core 1E, we do encumbered rates increments of 3", and also sometimes a movement rate is imposed by the armor type). The upshot is, there really isn't anything to track.
Until they're hauling back the loot, that is. At that point, we'll just add up what they've got, distributed it more or less evenly, and figure everyone's movement rates for the return journey. I am of the opinion that this is the real purpose of the encumbrance system. You've already kicked the dungeon's ass on the way in. Now you got to go back through all that, this time moving slow as shit. That's what keeps the return journey from being the same challenge they already beat, but twists it into a new challenge.
That's interesting. I run encumbrance in 5e and the encumbrance rules there are actually more punishing -- if you have below 15 STR just carrying your normal starting gear will often give you the first encumbrance penalty.
Sta dare encumbrance in 5e is 15 lbs per point of strength before you're even mildly burdened. That means pretty much every PC can carry at least 120 lbs of gear with no effort. That's not punishing at all.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 14, 2022, 08:56:50 PM
For all you AD&Ders who track time -- do you also track strict encumbrance and things like gear needed to camp and start fires and stuff too? Or do you handwave that? How anal do you get about it? Does it make a difference?
Personally I do strict time tracking, and for sandbox games I default to 1:1 time at the larger scales, especially by year - eg time in my Wilderlands progresses one real year per game year - but I'm not strict about tracking encumbrance unless I think a player is taking the mickey; most players these days probably have their 5e PC on D&D Beyond and have it auto-tracked anyway. If I think a PC appears to be carrying an implausible amount of stuff I will threaten to audit their encumbrance unless they drop stuff; ie RAW is a threat to keep things plausible.
Re camping, well I don't see a lot of extended wilderness expeditions, but if they want to camp comfortably they better have the appropriate gear. In hostile conditions I may be wanting Survival checks. But in the bulk of gaming the PCs return home each night; you get the occasional overnight dungeon camp.
The main thing I do to make 5e work like old school D&D is 1 week 1 Long Rest, and I either use the 5e DMG training to level rules (20 days at level 5-10); or level up during 1 week Long Rest. The 1 week long rest + train to level tends to keep time progression similar to real time. I also use the Downtime rules which make time a useful resource and "OK, 3 months pass" feels more like a reward than a penalty.
I do variable PC level with individual XP, but not 'everyone starts at 1st'. Basically a player gets to start 1 PC at half the level of the highest level PC, and other PCs/henchmen (called 'secondary PCs') at one quarter the level of the highest level PC. Currently in my Faerun Adventures game the highest level PC is 9th, and I round up starting level, so everyone starting a new PC can have one PC start at 5th, and multiple PCs start at 3rd.
Quote from: HappyDaze on April 15, 2022, 03:22:24 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 02:40:23 AMk
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 14, 2022, 11:51:54 PM
When they're keeping things simple, unless you're talking about a character with crazy low strength, there's almost no chance their standard equipment will ever drop their movement rate (keep in mind, I'm playing core 1E, we do encumbered rates increments of 3", and also sometimes a movement rate is imposed by the armor type). The upshot is, there really isn't anything to track.
Until they're hauling back the loot, that is. At that point, we'll just add up what they've got, distributed it more or less evenly, and figure everyone's movement rates for the return journey. I am of the opinion that this is the real purpose of the encumbrance system. You've already kicked the dungeon's ass on the way in. Now you got to go back through all that, this time moving slow as shit. That's what keeps the return journey from being the same challenge they already beat, but twists it into a new challenge.
Sta dare encumbrance in 5e is 15 lbs per point of strength before you're even mildly burdened. That means pretty much every PC can carry at least 120 lbs of gear with no effort. That's not punishing at all.
There's a variant encumbrance in the DMG that's like traditional encumbrance for DMs who want to actually use encumbrance in their games instead of just handwaving it. At 5x your Strength score in weight, your speed drops by 10. At 10x your Strength score in weight, your speed drops by 20 and you have disadvantage on physical rolls.
That's interesting. I run encumbrance in 5e and the encumbrance rules there are actually more punishing -- if you have below 15 STR just carrying your normal starting gear will often give you the first encumbrance penalty.
Quote from: S'mon on April 15, 2022, 03:39:15 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 14, 2022, 08:56:50 PM
For all you AD&Ders who track time -- do you also track strict encumbrance and things like gear needed to camp and start fires and stuff too? Or do you handwave that? How anal do you get about it? Does it make a difference?
Personally I do strict time tracking, and for sandbox games I default to 1:1 time at the larger scales, especially by year - eg time in my Wilderlands progresses one real year per game year - but I'm not strict about tracking encumbrance unless I think a player is taking the mickey; most players these days probably have their 5e PC on D&D Beyond and have it auto-tracked anyway. If I think a PC appears to be carrying an implausible amount of stuff I will threaten to audit their encumbrance unless they drop stuff; ie RAW is a threat to keep things plausible.
Re camping, well I don't see a lot of extended wilderness expeditions, but if they want to camp comfortably they better have the appropriate gear. In hostile conditions I may be wanting Survival checks. But in the bulk of gaming the PCs return home each night; you get the occasional overnight dungeon camp.
The main thing I do to make 5e work like old school D&D is 1 week 1 Long Rest, and I either use the 5e DMG training to level rules (20 days at level 5-10); or level up during 1 week Long Rest. The 1 week long rest + train to level tends to keep time progression similar to real time. I also use the Downtime rules which make time a useful resource and "OK, 3 months pass" feels more like a reward than a penalty.
I do variable PC level with individual XP, but not 'everyone starts at 1st'. Basically a player gets to start 1 PC at half the level of the highest level PC, and other PCs/henchmen (called 'secondary PCs') at one quarter the level of the highest level PC. Currently in my Faerun Adventures game the highest level PC is 9th, and I round up starting level, so everyone starting a new PC can have one PC start at 5th, and multiple PCs start at 3rd.
Haha wow, I do the exact same thing with my 5e game! I make it X weeks to train for leveling, where X is the level. So to get to level 6 is 6 weeks, level 8 is 8 weeks, etc.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 02:40:23 AM
That's interesting. I run encumbrance in 5e and the encumbrance rules there are actually more punishing -- if you have below 15 STR just carrying your normal starting gear will often give you the first encumbrance penalty.
In 1E, armor doesn't use the regular encumbrance rules. This is the sort of thing that goes up a nerd's ass sideways, especially when in later editions they're trying to write cleaner, more streamlined rules. But it actually makes things a lot easier for actual play. Chainmail, for instance, drops your move down to 9". That means for the stuff your carrying to matter, the encumbrance has to be enough to drop you 2 categories rather than just one. The base weight allowance for a character with average strength to drop 2 categories is 700 coin encumbrance. A backpack has a capacity of 400 cn, belt pouches about 50 cn each. You don't really want to load these up completely with adventuring gear anyway, you want to leave room for the loot you'll be bringing back. But these numbers do demonstrate that you have a nice margin of allowance for items held and worn.
And by the way, there are also some more obscure rules regarding 1E encumbrance. So obscure I've literally never seen anyone talk about them. One of which is that items held or worn can have different encumbrance than items carried. This is because encumbrance units in 1E are not weight and take into account how difficult an object is to carry. But then there's a whole different system for overland travel that does use weight rather than the coin system. And that's because the concerns are different. There will be camping gear in addition to the usual adventuring equipment.
It may seem like an extra burden to have extra rules, but I think it actually makes things a lot easier and gets you away from bean counting when it comes to encumbrance.
What I would say about 1E in general is that it is anti- rules obsession. It's not asking, "Hey, what would be the sleekest rule for this?" That would be a rules-obsessed question. It's asking every step of the way, "What is reasonable here?" And sometimes what is reasonable doesn't map very nicely into a streamline set of rules.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 03:52:56 AM
Quote from: HappyDaze on April 15, 2022, 03:22:24 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 02:40:23 AMk
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 14, 2022, 11:51:54 PM
When they're keeping things simple, unless you're talking about a character with crazy low strength, there's almost no chance their standard equipment will ever drop their movement rate (keep in mind, I'm playing core 1E, we do encumbered rates increments of 3", and also sometimes a movement rate is imposed by the armor type). The upshot is, there really isn't anything to track.
Until they're hauling back the loot, that is. At that point, we'll just add up what they've got, distributed it more or less evenly, and figure everyone's movement rates for the return journey. I am of the opinion that this is the real purpose of the encumbrance system. You've already kicked the dungeon's ass on the way in. Now you got to go back through all that, this time moving slow as shit. That's what keeps the return journey from being the same challenge they already beat, but twists it into a new challenge.
Sta dare encumbrance in 5e is 15 lbs per point of strength before you're even mildly burdened. That means pretty much every PC can carry at least 120 lbs of gear with no effort. That's not punishing at all.
There's a variant encumbrance in the DMG that's like traditional encumbrance for DMs who want to actually use encumbrance in their games instead of just handwaving it. At 5x your Strength score in weight, your speed drops by 10. At 10x your Strength score in weight, your speed drops by 20 and you have disadvantage on physical rolls.
That's interesting. I run encumbrance in 5e and the encumbrance rules there are actually more punishing -- if you have below 15 STR just carrying your normal starting gear will often give you the first encumbrance penalty.
Variant rules are not the norm. Most 5e players laugh off encumbrance when the Strength 8 wizard can casually haul 120 lbs without breaking a sweat.
Quote from: HappyDaze on April 15, 2022, 04:15:34 PM
Variant rules are not the norm. Most 5e players laugh off encumbrance when the Strength 8 wizard can casually haul 120 lbs without breaking a sweat.
I know. My point is if you DO use the real encumbrance rules they're unexpectedly harsh. Though based on what's said about armor automatically docking your speed in earlier editions, it makes sense that you'd be at least somewhat encumbered out of the gate.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 04:57:26 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on April 15, 2022, 04:15:34 PM
Variant rules are not the norm. Most 5e players laugh off encumbrance when the Strength 8 wizard can casually haul 120 lbs without breaking a sweat.
I know. My point is if you DO use the real encumbrance rules they're unexpectedly harsh. Though based on what's said about armor automatically docking your speed in earlier editions, it makes sense that you'd be at least somewhat encumbered out of the gate.
You call variant rules the "real" rules? That's odd.
The way 5e works is to lay out a minimalist base and then have a bunch of extra add-ons in the DMG for you to bring in the elements of the kind of game you want. That's basically the "encumbrance plug-in" if you want to care about gear and what you carry.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 04:57:26 PM
I know. My point is if you DO use the real encumbrance rules they're unexpectedly harsh. Though based on what's said about armor automatically docking your speed in earlier editions, it makes sense that you'd be at least somewhat encumbered out of the gate.
I always think that if you're wealthy enough to own heavy armour, you can hire a retainer to carry your knick-knacks.
Quote from: mightybrain on April 15, 2022, 07:30:58 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 04:57:26 PM
I know. My point is if you DO use the real encumbrance rules they're unexpectedly harsh. Though based on what's said about armor automatically docking your speed in earlier editions, it makes sense that you'd be at least somewhat encumbered out of the gate.
I always think that if you're wealthy enough to own heavy armour, you can hire a retainer to carry your knick-knacks.
Dead on. I never understood the pictures with a warrior with a heavy pack and gear stacked 4 feet tall on top of it. I watched lots of movies featuring Safaris and scenes of same in my youth. I never noticed any of the "adventurers" carrying anything other than weapons, immediately useful items, or extremely valuable treasure.
Quote from: mightybrain on April 15, 2022, 07:30:58 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 04:57:26 PM
I know. My point is if you DO use the real encumbrance rules they're unexpectedly harsh. Though based on what's said about armor automatically docking your speed in earlier editions, it makes sense that you'd be at least somewhat encumbered out of the gate.
I always think that if you're wealthy enough to own heavy armour, you can hire a retainer to carry your knick-knacks.
What about inside the dungeon? I thought the porters and stuff don't dare go in there or they are going to get killed.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 10:25:53 PM
Quote from: mightybrain on April 15, 2022, 07:30:58 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 04:57:26 PM
I know. My point is if you DO use the real encumbrance rules they're unexpectedly harsh. Though based on what's said about armor automatically docking your speed in earlier editions, it makes sense that you'd be at least somewhat encumbered out of the gate.
I always think that if you're wealthy enough to own heavy armour, you can hire a retainer to carry your knick-knacks.
What about inside the dungeon? I thought the porters and stuff don't dare go in there or they are going to get killed.
In that case you only carry what you immediately need. An empty sack full of empty sacks IMO. I honestly (as a player) entice the bravest hirelings to come on down with once the first areas are cleared, and certainly for carrying treasure back up to the surface. No way I am walking around in a dungeon with a 50 pound pack trying to fight monsters.
"No time to argue: throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip"
I thought this Questing Beast video was good on explaining how 1:1 timekeeping and the Gygaxian campaign works
It makes a lot of sense why you would need 1:1 time between sessions if you are running for multiple groups in a shared world.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 15, 2022, 10:25:53 PM
What about inside the dungeon? I thought the porters and stuff don't dare go in there or they are going to get killed.
For what it's wroth, Appendix C of the 1E DMG has some notes regarding 0th level characters in a dungeon that DMs may wish to exclude such encounters "on levels below whatever point you find them unlikely." Later it talks about NPC adventuring parties being accompanied by men-at-arms in dungeon levels 1-3, and henchmen of one-third the level of the party members for dungeon levels 4 and beyond. And so that gives a good rule of thumb on what the "point you find them unlikely" might be.
Quote from: mightybrain on April 16, 2022, 05:40:19 AM
"No time to argue: throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip"
The Indiana Jones movies were actually highly influential in how I did D&D back in the day. And without question those first ten minutes of Raiders is a great example of use of 0th levels in an AD&D game. You can see there's a lot of trouble bringing 0th level hirelings into dangerous areas. At the first sign of danger, still in the wilderness, one of the 0th level flees. Not too long later, one pulls a gun on Indy. Satipo does go into the Dungeon, but once he's holding the idol in his hands--worth a lot more than what he's being paid--he runs, too. Indy's man a the plane comes through for him, though. When NPCs encounter anything they perceive dangerous, it could be time for a morale check. And so that's what you're seeing fall apart in those first 10 minutes.
Quote from: S'mon on April 16, 2022, 06:47:06 AM
I thought this Questing Beast video was good on explaining how 1:1 timekeeping and the Gygaxian campaign works
I remember when I first saw that. At first I was nodding, right on brother. By the middle, I'm like, huh? The 1:1 thing doesn't actually have anything to do with anything. It's not at all necessary to having this style of play. And it's a twisting of what the DMG actually says. There is a clear example in that same section of the DMG that contradicts it. But it seems to be the lightning rod of attention.
Now maybe Jeffro is right that you need to keep the 1:1 time in order for the campaign to scale to a ridiculous number of participants. Maybe his misreading of the 1E DMG actually led him to something superior to what Gary actually put forth. I don't know. I've never tried to see just how much I can scale up the campaign.
What I do know is, some weeks my group gets together, and the stuff we do will take up 30 days game time. Other weeks, it will only take a couple of hours of game time and we don't even need very much recovery time after. If you tracked and added up the total game time we spent, with zero time passing between sessions, over the course of a year of play it probably would add up to just around 52 weeks. The game is already roughly in 1:1 time without trying to force it.
When I implemented the idea of 1 game day passing for each real day spent not playing (nearly 20 years before Jeffro even knew it was in there), the whole point was to speed up in-game time. So instead of just the 52 weeks of game time that passed during our full year of play, an additional 52 weeks would have passed due to the one week of real time between all our sessions. That rule puts us in 2:1 time.
Then pile on top of that training time. And do monthly disease checks--sometimes a character might have to take a couple of weeks of game time getting over the sniffles. For something more serious, they'll have to drain their coffers a bit to pay for a cure disease.
I also ruled (and maybe Jeffro wants in on this) that clerics are presumed to have religious duties during down time and cannot use their spell slots to heal party members. They're using up the spell slots healing the poor--or the rich who want to pay that NPC spell service price in the form of donation to the church. So you've got to do the bed rest rates of 1 hp per day, 7 hp + CON bonus per week, or 28 days to heal in full.
Sometimes you also have to spend 2 months straight hanging out in a bar waiting for prospects to show up after your ad blitz trying to recruit henchmen. Or two years to build your castle. Or up to 5 years to wait for your followers to arrive once you've built your castle.
The idea is to have the campaign running in at least 5:1 time. 10:1 would be really nice. Because Gary did lay out that nice section in the DMG on aging after all, plotting out the different lifespans of the different races. I figure that should come into play at some point. It's part of teh rulez. In fact, check out this quote in particular from the DMG:
QuoteDeath Due To Age:
This is a serious matter, for unless the lifespan can otherwise be prolonged, the character brought back from such death faces the prospect of soon dying again. Beyond the maximum age determined for the character in question, no form of magic which does not prolong life span will work. (Thus, some characters may become liches . . . .) Of course, multiple potions of longevity, wishes, and possibly magical devices will allow a greatly extended life span, but once a character dies due to old (venerable) age, then it is all over. If you make this clear, many participants will see the continuity of the family line as the way to achieve a sort of immortality.
See that? If that much game time passes in the campaign, procreation becomes a serious motive. Romantic entanglements go from being something either players avoid entirely due to the potential of DM fuckery or else only engage in to fill the gaps between "oh my god so random" moments while pulling shifts at the Firejolt cafe, and instead become a vital objective to long-term play. Just some food for thought.
The kind of campaigns I enjoy, and the sort I run, you could easily find yourself playing the descendants of one of your previous PCs. You might even inherit a magic item or two. When the old man kicks.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 16, 2022, 11:08:08 AMWhat I do know is, some weeks my group gets together, and the stuff we do will take up 30 days game time.
One group, correct?
Quote from: mightybrain on April 16, 2022, 02:21:35 PM
One group, correct?
Well, it's an open table. The players can vary from week to week. But even with the same exact set of players, we have different groups of characters.
im finishing up inappropriate characters with jeffro, so far it's kind of annoying listening to two nerds yell at each other. Playing with rules like 1:1 time and such seem great for club play but it's not one size fits all. The way he pitches the game, he shouldn't be the salesman for this BROSR movement it makes me not want to touch it without a ten foot pole. He claims to know how Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were thinking when they wrote the game, and not taking into account what they didnt write down or what actually transpired at their table.
I'm curious though, Jeffro keeps talking about wargamers in the 70s and 80s... is Jeffro a wargamer? Warhammer? Historicals? Indie? Frostgrave even? warmahordes? Literally anything?
You have to be careful with tracking the wargamer because there is table top miniatures on one side with DBA/DBM in the late 80s, Battlesystem in the mid 80s, and Starguard in the late 70s, and variants or descendants of H.G. Wells' Little Wars going quite a wats back. Robert Louis Stevenson was seen by many as the innovator of toy soldier gaming but he didn't publish his rules. And Prussia made table top wargaming part of their war academic curriculum in the mid to late 1800s.
Chainmail was put out in 1971.
Then on the other side you have board games that were war sims of various stripes which Avalon Hill and GMT were putting out with chits and counters, and later the micro games genre allowed smaller versions to be sold in a little plastic bag which gave us Ogre, Rivets, Car Wars, Chitin 1, Revolt on Antares, and TSR made a few of their own.
Both sides got a bit of a push from stuff like the Tolkien boom in the 60s and Star Trek on TV and a certain Heinlein novel.
D&D sprung from wargamers and wargaming but wargaming itself is a big tricky mess to chart
I think the situation they were trying to avoid was one group jumping 30 days ahead of another. It's a non issue if you only have one group.
Quote from: palaeomerus on April 16, 2022, 08:05:27 PMwargaming itself is a big tricky mess to chart
And then on the shared fictional world side you have the Brontës who as children in the early 1800s created the fictional Empire of Angria for their toy soldiers to inhabit. They probably weren't the only children to do this, but due to their later fame and the fact that they wrote down the campaigns of these soldiers we know the idea goes back at least this far.
The #broSR/Jeffro shtick is to basically act like a mix of Trump and a WWF heel. That's why he talks the way he does. Except he's also serious. It gets a lot of attention. That and he basically claims he either discovered what Gygax MEANT for D&D to be played all along that nobody else realized in the last 40 years, or that he figured out a better way to do it.
I thought the podcast was an awful convo run by RPGPundit, it just felt like the equivalent of two out of the loop guys making fun of a nerd. The fact that everyone who posted about it in this thread still has no idea what was going on is proof of this. It would have been better if they played it more like Joe Rogan and actually tried to get information out of the guest. Luckily I already read up on most of this stuff so I'm familiar with it already. That said, I would tune in if there was a Round 2.
The way the time advancement works is, some people WILL get ahead of others -- but as long as they don't need to intersect, it doesn't matter. Who cares if player A is 2 months ahead if he's in antarctica? As far as the rest of the game is concerned he doesn't exist and it doesn't matter for the purposes of deciding what player B does in a town in Africa. With time advancing every day offscreen, everyone else will eventually catch up -- and if they do need to interact before that, you just "time lock" the player who is up ahead until the other player catches up. That's why you play multiple characters, while another one is doing stuff in the future or waiting to catch up, for example by being in the mountains training to level up for 3 weeks, you switch to your other PCs so you can keep playing.
It's interesting seeing this kind of idea take off -- I started something like this 2 years ago and it was unheard of then, at least on Twitter or reddit which is where all this stuff gets talked about.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 16, 2022, 11:08:08 AM. And it's a twisting of what the DMG actually says. There is a clear example in that same section of the DMG that contradicts it.
The section on page 37 of the AD&D DMG doesn't contradict 1:1 Time During Downtime. First, it includes the guideline itself, "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening." Clearly Gygax doesn't intend the example in which the guideline is embedded, the example that guideline is intended to illuminate, to contradict that guideline.
In fact, at the start of the example given, all five players get together to play, and B, C, and D choose to hang around town. (Weird game session, frankly, but whatever.) Four actual real days later, and four in game days later, they have hung around town and go to a dungeon. So in this example, Gygax gave the principle the BrOSR calls "1:1 Time During Downtime" and Gygax showed it happening.
Second, the crux of the example is about when all the players meet again and are "ready to play about the same actual time [...] only A is at Day 77, B, C, and D are at Day 54, and E and F are at Day 58." Gygax says the three middle players (B, C, and D) can go back to the dungeon or wait for other PC's to show up and because of this people say (not you, but people on Twitter and people in comments to the stream), they say "See? 1:1 Time During Downtime isn't in the AD&D DMG!" Except
Gygax isn't talking about downtime. He's talking about what people can do during play time, game time, table time, adventuring time, or whatever you want to call it.
At the table those three can skip 4 days and do nothing, find something in town to do for those 4 days, or go adventuring. If they go adventuring the players of A, E, and F can skip the session, or they can play another character (one of B, C, and D's henchmen maybe, or a convenient NPC), roll up a new character, or play another character they already have ready to go.
Then, right after the example concludes on pg. 38, Gygax says, "generally, time passes day-for-day". That is one day in the real world, for one day in the game world. An example that shows time passing in downtime 1:1 real days for game days, bookended with two quotes about how time
outside of game time is expected to flow day-for-day is clearly not an example intended to disprove that principle.
Again, during in-game time, things are fluid. You could get hit with a curse and find yourselves awakening a day, a week, or a millennium later. It doesn't matter.
But during down time, that is, outside of when you are actually playing the game, "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day". Which is clearly what Gygax intended, so he didn't misinterpret the DMG at all.
What Jeffro is saying is that, while playing AD&D with the goal of using all the rules as written, they ran across day-for-day time during down time, and implemented it. And it made the game much better in many, many ways.
And now they're telling others about it.
Quote from: mightybrain on April 16, 2022, 08:23:19 PM
I think the situation they were trying to avoid was one group jumping 30 days ahead of another. It's a non issue if you only have one group.
In the section of the 1E DMG where it discusses the importance of tracking time, where it is suggested to have one game day pass for each actual day that goes by when not playing, it has an example that contemplates what happens when one group gets ahead of another, grabs a particular treasure in the dungeon, and then when the behind-the-time group goes down there chronologically later in real time but chronologically earlier in game time, the DM is instructed to just accept fate had deemed that group didn't get the treasure. Perhaps the Minotaur was out at the time they came by.
Because of this example, I can say quite confidently that Jeffro's 1:1 time is NOT the exact same thing that you see in the book.
Now I can understand why you might want to handle it Jeffro's way instead. The By-the-Book way burdens the DM two-fold--by making time-keeping trickier, and occasionally putting the DM in a position to have to make up some lame excuse to patch a hole in the timeline. And then, for the players, it arguably robs the second group in the above example of their fair shot at the treasure.
But that's the key. Players don't want to be robbed of in-game opportunities just because they were a little late out-of-game. So they have an incentive to try and keep up. 30 days behind the lead group? Simple. Now would be a good time to start advertising that they're looking for henchmen. The DM then fastfowards 30 days and hits them with the results then in there, instantly. Now they're at an even place in time with the leading group and can head into the dungeon with the benefits of their new henchmen.
As long as there's plenty of stuff to do in downtime, this "problem" tends to solve itself. And this is where rules knowledge can be helpful, because Gary certainly crammed a lot of stuff in there. If you know about it, it's super easy to draw upon. And in doing things this way tends to push the in-game clock forward faster, which gets me what I like--the "dynastic campaign" where players can play the descendants of the original party.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 16, 2022, 08:40:27 PM
The #broSR/Jeffro shtick is to basically act like a mix of Trump and a WWF heel. That's why he talks the way he does. Except he's also serious. It gets a lot of attention. That and he basically claims he either discovered what Gygax MEANT for D&D to be played all along that nobody else realized in the last 40 years, or that he figured out a better way to do it.
I thought the podcast was an awful convo run by RPGPundit, it just felt like the equivalent of two out of the loop guys making fun of a nerd. The fact that everyone who posted about it in this thread still has no idea what was going on is proof of this. It would have been better if they played it more like Joe Rogan and actually tried to get information out of the guest. Luckily I already read up on most of this stuff so I'm familiar with it already. That said, I would tune in if there was a Round 2.
The way the time advancement works is, some people WILL get ahead of others -- but as long as they don't need to intersect, it doesn't matter. Who cares if player A is 2 months ahead if he's in antarctica? As far as the rest of the game is concerned he doesn't exist and it doesn't matter for the purposes of deciding what player B does in a town in Africa. With time advancing every day offscreen, everyone else will eventually catch up -- and if they do need to interact before that, you just "time lock" the player who is up ahead until the other player catches up. That's why you play multiple characters, while another one is doing stuff in the future or waiting to catch up, for example by being in the mountains training to level up for 3 weeks, you switch to your other PCs so you can keep playing.
It's interesting seeing this kind of idea take off -- I started something like this 2 years ago and it was unheard of then, at least on Twitter or reddit which is where all this stuff gets talked about.
The general idea has been around for a long, long time, allowing for some variations in parameters in implementation. Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1980) had you create a stable of up to 20 characters to take out into the dungeon, no more than 6 at a time. Jagged Alliance (1995) has you playing a contractor who hires mercenaries to complete missions. This game provides you with a stable of unique mercenaries. Sometimes some mercs were unavailable due to being on a mission. Even those on your payroll could sit out missions for training, or to repair equipment, or to take time off to heal, or to do medic work for those healing mercs. Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games allowed for multi-player play, and so the other player's hiring of mercs could also make said merc unavailable. I remember ~20 years ago or so hearing a lot of people talk about Ars Magica with it's "troup" style play. I never played the game, so I don't know what it is. I've always assumed it's pretty similar to the exact thing we're talking about.
One thing we haven't discussed in this thread that Pundit did push back on was the idea that The Book tells you to have a player or players play bandits and whatnot rather than just their regular PCs. Jeffro insisted it is in the book, if you interpret it right, but he didn't articulate a very good defense of it. In fact, I thought the response he gave was anti-convincing. And I would be 100% sure Jeffro was wrong on that point. If not for the fact that I've got some other info that says there might be something to it.
To my knowledge, and my knowledge of the 1E material is pretty strong, nothing in there tells you have players jump into domain play, running NPC types, or any of that. Jeffro seems to be just making that up. However, it is absolutely 100% true that Gary did have that exact same idea and wrote about it. And not "sort of" the same idea. I'm talking the EXACT same idea. And I can prove it. I just can't prove that he had the idea at the time he was writing 1E. Here's what I've got on it, though.
As some of you know, in 1999 Gary put out the Lejendary Adventure RPG. What's lesser known is LA was just the fantasy version of a Science Fantasy RPG he wrote that was never published called AsteRogues. In there, he explicitly describes having players play multiple characters, and specifically characters who operate on different tiers of action--like one group that does straight-up adventuring, another that does domain management type stuff, and so on.
He even gave it a name. The multi-tiered campaign.
I happen to have a copy of the beta version manuscript. It bears a copyright date of 1994. And presumably he had the idea at some point in time before he actually sat down and wrote it. So the idea is at least that old. Maybe he did have it when he wrote 1E. Maybe this was the vision behind every thing he actually did write into 1E. And maybe Jeffro is astute far beyond his ability to articulate that he was able to pick up on that just from the totality of 1E. *shrugs* I was never able to, and as I said earlier up thread, I put my 1E fu up against literally anyone in the world. But who knows? Maybe Jeffro saw something I didn't see. Or maybe this is all just a coincidence.
The good news is (what this site is good for a lot really), is that the BrOSR is getting talked about. Some of the ideas are useful (I really like the idea of player's running factions). But it's not a one size fits all.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 14, 2022, 05:58:03 PM
I might try Pundit's own Star Adventurer,
I hope you do!
Quote from: Ocule on April 16, 2022, 06:06:10 PM
im finishing up inappropriate characters with jeffro, so far it's kind of annoying listening to two nerds yell at each other. Playing with rules like 1:1 time and such seem great for club play but it's not one size fits all. The way he pitches the game, he shouldn't be the salesman for this BROSR movement it makes me not want to touch it without a ten foot pole. He claims to know how Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were thinking when they wrote the game, and not taking into account what they didnt write down or what actually transpired at their table.
I'm curious though, Jeffro keeps talking about wargamers in the 70s and 80s... is Jeffro a wargamer? Warhammer? Historicals? Indie? Frostgrave even? warmahordes? Literally anything?
Considering that on the show he said he started with the Red Box in elementary school, he obviously was not a 1970s wargamer.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 16, 2022, 08:40:27 PMWho cares if player A is 2 months ahead if he's in antarctica?
Distance is not a factor for those with access to teleportation magic.
Are there any RPG systems that attempt to deal with time travel? It would seem such a system would need to explicitly handle the kinds problems that can arise in this kind of asynchronous play.
Quote from: mightybrain on April 17, 2022, 08:21:00 AM
Are there any RPG systems that attempt to deal with time travel? It would seem such a system would need to explicitly handle the kinds problems that can arise in this kind of asynchronous play.
The LUG Star Trek game had a book covering time travel. However, it was Star Trek time travel, which means it works differently each time for whatever technobabble reason the GM and/or players decide.
Quote from: RPGPundit on April 17, 2022, 01:29:15 AM
Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 14, 2022, 05:58:03 PM
I might try Pundit's own Star Adventurer,
I hope you do!
Actually, we were on the verge of trying it out.
Then I found Dungeons and Delvers: Dice Pool Edition. It has such a simple and effective way to play that it was our next test run game.
But, I'm going to play Star Adventurer. I've already rolled up my Star Knight (psychic warrior) and have the basic Galaxy lore figured out. Aka, it's a lot like Star Wars, but it's literally not that universe. For example, psychics are made, but only rarely born with powers. You have to convince an existing psychic to transfer power to you, dropping that psychic down a level.
Those two games are about as "D&D" as I want to go. The official game holds no appeal for me. I'm not a fan of gaining lots of hit points and a fixed armor class.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 16, 2022, 11:08:08 AMThe idea is to have the campaign running in at least 5:1 time. 10:1 would be really nice.
Both Runequest 1e and Warlock recommend 7:1 time. That is, one real day equals one game week. Interestingly, both of the descriptions are written in a way that assumes that 1:1 time is the default and they are trying to convince the reader to switch. Runequest claims that 1:1 time is too slow but Warlock is written so that if the players spend more than one day in game, they must be forced to stop playing and return the next real day to continue the session. It is such a bizarre situation that I have to believe that some DM somewhere actually did this.
The Complete Warlock (1979) pg 5 "One real day (noon to noon) = one Game Week. This allows you to play more than one expedition or adventure in a real day and also allows expeditions to take more than one day of the characters' time without having to come back the next real day to continue."Note that both Warlock and Holmes use the terms "expedition" and "adventure" to represent what we would call a "session." This has to be due to the fact that the assumption was that all characters would return to base at the end of the session.
Also, I find this whole discussion strange because 1:1 is very clearly in OD&D (Volume 3 pg 36). It isn't an AD&D thing at all. And every early RPG I have assumes that some amount of game time passes in between sessions. (except Rules to the Game of Dungeon which doesn't mention time at all, no rounds, no hours, no days, nothing)
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 16, 2022, 10:33:18 PMIn the section of the 1E DMG where it discusses the importance of tracking time, where it is suggested to have one game day pass for each actual day that goes by when not playing, it has an example that contemplates what happens when one group gets ahead of another, grabs a particular treasure in the dungeon, and then when the behind-the-time group goes down there chronologically later in real time but chronologically earlier in game time, the DM is instructed to just accept fate had deemed that group didn't get the treasure.
The idea of what to do if the players or groups get out of sync in mentioned even as far back as the Empire of the Petal Throne manuscript in 1974. Here's what that book says:
Empire of the Petal Throne Original Manuscript (1974) pg 98"The referee will establish a table with the names of regular players and divisions into weeks and months. As a player character embarks upon adventures, spends time resting in Jakálla, etc. etc., the referee will mark off passing weeks and months against his name. Players are not permitted to participate in adventures together unless they are at the same time in the game: i.e. a player at Week 11 cannot join a party now passing through Week 21, for example. In order to join the latter party, the player at Week 11 would be required to sit in Jakálla for ten weeks -- or go on adventures alone or with other players of the same time frame."It may be harsh but at least it's consistent. The fact that games this early are talking about how to handle out of sync characters means that this was an issue that far back. Again, this pretty much assumes an open-table style of play.
Bushido (1981) has a neat system to catch players up with downtime jobs. You can be a thief, bodyguard, gambler, or even exorcist. You roll on a few tables to see how much money you made or if you need to fight a combat. This game assumes that one real week equals one game month, so sort of a compromise between D&D and Runequest.
Quote from: Daddy Warpig on April 16, 2022, 10:04:28 PMThe section on page 37 of the AD&D DMG doesn't contradict 1:1 Time During Downtime. First, it includes the guideline itself, "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening." Clearly Gygax doesn't intend the example in which the guideline is embedded, the example that guideline is intended to illuminate, to contradict that guideline.
Let me clarify. The short version of what this section says, should you choose to use it, is that you can speed the game clock up, faster than actual time. You just can't slow it down. This allows for a wide range possible time flows. 1:1 time is within that range at the slowest possible end. So that's not what I'm saying is contradicted. I'm saying that the idea that that is the ONLY time scale consistent with this is contradicted by examples that do not conform to the 1:1 scale.
By itself, the statement "it is best to use 1 actual day - 1 game day when no play is happening" is saying exactly this. One game day will pass for each real day when you're not playing. Game time passed while you were actually playing. Which could be hours, but could be months. When you add the two together, the passage of time can be as slow as 1:1 without any hard limit to how quick it can be. And the examples are consistent with this.
If you want to force it to mean something else, you certainly can. I'm not saying you can't. All I'm saying is this is the most obvious meaning and makes the fewest assumptions.
QuoteSecond, the crux of the example is about when all the players meet again and are "ready to play about the same actual time [...] only A is at Day 77, B, C, and D are at Day 54, and E and F are at Day 58." Gygax says the three middle players (B, C, and D) can go back to the dungeon or wait for other PC's to show up and because of this people say (not you, but people on Twitter and people in comments to the stream), they say "See? 1:1 Time During Downtime isn't in the AD&D DMG!" Except Gygax isn't talking about downtime. He's talking about what people can do during play time, game time, table time, adventuring time, or whatever you want to call it.
At the table those three can skip 4 days and do nothing, find something in town to do for those 4 days, or go adventuring. If they go adventuring the players of A, E, and F can skip the session, or they can play another character (one of B, C, and D's henchmen maybe, or a convenient NPC), roll up a new character, or play another character they already have ready to go.
You kind of glossed over the meat of the thing, though. It's not, Oooh, loooook! he said "game time will pass more swiftly" gotcha! The point is, what if B, C, and D do decide wait for A; then the DM moves on to E and F and they also choose to wait for A. It's not about any of the characters individually fast-forwarding time during play. I understand that's perfectly allowable. It's that we were just on day 51 on Sunday, and now the characters are all together on day 77 and it's only Wednesday (it can't be any later than Wed, otherwise B, C, and D couldn't have only been on Day 54 as they would have burned more days doing nothing).
Going through 27 game days (or possibly more depending what happens at Wednesday's game) in just 4 real days is a lot closer to being 8:1 time than it is 1:1.
So what happens next? Do we lock all the characters up for 3 1/2 weeks for real time to catch up? Or do we just admit, yeah, actually game time is flowing a lot faster than real time.
I've mentioned upthread, I've been using these guidelines since 1992. And what I do matches the example to a T. And my experience has indeed been that if you account for every single thing in the game that piles on game time, the flow of time normally falls between 5:1 and 10:1 when measured over a time period involving sufficient diversity in activities for a meaningful average to be derived.
QuoteWhat Jeffro is saying is that, while playing AD&D with the goal of using all the rules as written, they ran across day-for-day time during down time, and implemented it. And it made the game much better in many, many ways.
And now they're telling others about it
Yeah. I heard him describe it on Inappropriate Characters. And I felt it was coming from a really genuine place. It resonated with me. Because I experienced the exact same thing. It's just not the 1:1 rule that does it. The biggest thing that anyone can do to vastly improve their game is take an "open table" mindset. One where players come and go. Where stories don't get jammed up just because a key PC wasn't available. Where the game moves forward no matter who shows, so we can count on it moving on each and every time we meet. Where nobody feels like they're obligated to show up.
One way to achieve that--the way I first did it--was to just push the motif that we wrap up whatever it is we're doing by the end of the session. Like get out of the dungeon and get back to town before everyone packs up. Enforcing 1 actual day = 1 game day even when some PCs sorry asses are in the middle of a dungeon is one possible way to achieve it. So I can see perfectly clearly the chain of cause and effect. I do not doubt the claims. More power to you all for having so much fun!
I'm just noticing a shit ton of people pushing back on the 1:1 thing. And I know full well from experience that it's perfectly possible to gain all the benefits of what you fine folks were doing without hitting that so hard. And so I think people who don't like the 1:1 thing probably ought to know that, too. That they can in fact super charge their games without it.
Where in B/X is the patron play idea? Is it in OSE too?
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 17, 2022, 05:58:45 PMGoing through 27 game days (or possibly more depending what happens at Wednesday's game) in just 4 real days is a lot closer to being 8:1 time than it is 1:1.
So what happens next? Do we lock all the characters up for 3 1/2 weeks for real time to catch up? Or do we just admit, yeah, actually game time is flowing a lot faster than real time.
You aren't listening. Which is why these questions are irrelevant. I'm going to restate this one more time, and please read what I write so we can at least discuss the same thing.
The principle of downtime in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is this: When not being played (i.e. during "downtime"), 1 day passes for a character for every day that passes in the real world. And conversely, when a character is "out of play" for any reason, one real day passes for each day of downtime.
This principle is found on pg. 37 of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, under Time in the Campaign: "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening". Some examples:
1. A character levels up. Because of generally mediocre roleplaying by the player, the character must take 3 weeks to train for the next level. That means they will be unavailable to be played for 3 weeks of real world time. (Frank Mentzer referred to this as "Training Jail".) The exact same rules would hold no matter how long the training time was, or even what the activity was (healing, making a magic item, spell research, etc.)
2. The same holds for doing nothing. If your character isn't being played, because you can't come to sessions or you play a different character, one day in-game passes for every real day spent not playing the character.
3. During actual game play, that is, during a game session, any amount of time can pass. Between long-distance travel, time spent searching an area, time spent waiting while an army marshals for the big battle, and so forth, a lot of time can pass in a game session, and time will almost never be 1:1. This is fine.
So whether game time + down time is 2:1, 8:1, or 1000:1 is utterly irrelevant because the core principle is about downtime only.
(Faction play, "always on" campaigning, and so forth add extra considerations, but that's not what I'm talking about.)
Daddy Warpig's covered this pretty well; my only caveat is that Jeffro and the BrOSR are playing it a bit more strictly than Gygax himself did: https://www.enworld.org/threads/q-a-with-gary-gygax.22566/page-411#post-3818408
Quote from: Daddy Warpig on April 17, 2022, 09:41:57 PMYou aren't listening. Which is why these questions are irrelevant. I'm going to restate this one more time, and please read what I write so we can at least discuss the same thing.
No. You aren't listening. You're too busy being condescending.
First, stop repeating the DMG. I'm not the one who just noticed this rule the year before last year. I've literally been using this rule for 20 years.
Second, whether or not you consider these questions irrelevant is itself irrelevant. These are the questions that go to the heart of the confusion and the contention people are having. And that's just as true regardless of how you feel about the questions. The first time I heard people griping about this shit was a few month months ago. And I told them, "No. That's not how the rule works. You CAN fast forward time." And they said nuh uh, these guys are strict, and this is the thing they point to to say "Look how crazy these guys are."
I carefully worded the questions so that all you had to do was answer them simply and directly like a normal person and it would clear up a lot of confusion. I swear, it takes a special talent for you to botch such a softball and come off as a pissed-off snot.
Third, realize that your own document is contributing to this confusion. One of the selling points you cite in the google doc you posted was that if you go on vacation for 2 weeks, you'll know just 2 weeks have passed. In the example in the DMG, if I went on just a 4-day vacation, I'd come back to find 3 1/2 weeks had passed. Yeah, yeah, I get it that my guy will still be 3 weeks in the past since I only lost 4 days. But what am I going to do with this 3 week lead I have on the rest of the party? Romp through empty dungeons that they already cleaned out in the future?
In the inappropriate characters convo, one of the good questions Pundit asked Jeffro point blank was, can't we just do all this stuff with careful time keeping? Do we really need the 1:1 rule? And Jeffro insisted the 1:1 rule serves a coordinating function, that it cannot work otherwise at scale. And I don't know. Maybe it's me. I would consider things to be decidedly uncoordinated if my character was sworn to protect the princess, I take 4 days off, while I'm on vacation and 1 week later in game-time the active PCs kidnap the princess, and when I finally get the chance to play out the time period when that happened, I find this is now a plot point set in stone that I can't do anything to change.
I'm not saying this is badwrong at all. This is, unfortunately, exactly how it would go in my game, too. We do the best we can with it. But when you go out of your way to say you're using a system that solves coordination problems of multiple or split groups that you don't really solve, to the extent that I take you at your word, I have to imagine you're doing something different from how you actually are. Because what you're saying you're doing here does not solve any unique problems that cannot be solved by careful time keeping alone. So Pundit's skepticism is justified.
Basically, you're over-selling it. The over-selling is creating confusion. The confusion is causing you frustration. And you just don't have the temperament for it.
I find for long term tracking of multiple campaign worlds, it definitely seems to work best to match 1 in world year to one game year. Eg my Wilderlands campaign chronology since I started using 1:1 looks like
AD 2013-4 = 4433-4444 BCCC: Jana Vex meets Lance Harcourt, goes to Golarion
AD 2015 = 4445 BCCC: Jana Vex returns, Hakeem begins his adventures
AD 2016 = 4446 BCCC: Closing of the Black Sun Gate, Fall of Yusan, Oriax flees. Birth of Hassan, son of Hakeem. Full moons 4446: 21/10, 18/11, 16/12. 4447: 13/1, 10/2, 8/3, 5/4, 3/5, 1/6.
AD 2017/18 = 4447 BCCC: Destuction of the First King in the Caverns of Thracia. 3/4/47 At Hara Hakeem slays Kainos Warbringer, Shieldbiter slays the Cormarrin Princes. 29/4/4447 Borritt Crowfinger destroyed by Hakeem, Neo-Nerath ended. Kingdom of Altanis-Nerath proclaimed, with Hakeem as Regent. His infant son Hassan will marry Eratha Bronze of Hara, and rule when of age. 10/8/47 Hakeem resigns, Lord Namelin Bronze of Hara becomes King-Regent of Altani-Nerath, appointing Minars Rappak as Vice Regent/Commander of the Altanian Host/Warden of Nerra. Then Hakeem returns to Nerra 15/8/47 and falls out with Bronze, angry at his presumption. 18/8/47 Malenn declared Golden Queen of Ahyf. 20/8/47 Hakeem Godslayer vanishes, apparently having undergone Divine Ascension. 21/8/47 Namelin Bronze declared King of Nerath, the restored kingdom centred on Hara. 12/9/47 coronation of King Bronze.
AD 2018 = 4448 BCCC. End of Wet Season: 1/4/2018 = 1/4/4448. M7/48: Skandiks defeat Overlord's fleet near Sea Rune, Alkazed kills Archpriest Thuruar. M8 Skandik invasion fleet on the Roglaroon near Modron destroyed by hurricane-force storm. Modron claims this is the work of their new Archmage.
AD 2019 = 4449 BCCC.
6/1/49: Beneath Trolltooth Ridge in caves west of Stonehell, Sandro & Danor Gordak flee mountain trolls, leaving Talakan to die, but he turns into a bird and only flies away.
12-19/2/49: Talalakan Tzapachi & co find great wealth in Stonehell.
Shieldbiter is absent for 7 months on the Astral plane after an incident on Golarion with a bag of holding.
AD 2020 = 4450 BCCC Shieldbiter defeats the black dragons of the marshes beyond Bisgen, and adds their territory to Nerath. He is granted Bisgen by King Bronze, but shows little interest in the town.
AD 2021 = 4451 BCCC Shieldbiter establishes relations with the Amiondel Elves in the Claws of Oricha. Travelling north he subdues the red dragon Xathragot, and takes most of her treasure.
13/12/4451 BCCC: Hytirus Vex returns to Selatine with Ralluan mercenaries and conquers the village, exiling his sister Jana Vex, and killing or enslaving her followers.
AD 2022 = 4452 BCCC M1-3: Set on revenge, Jana Vex trains in martial arts with the monks of Sun Soul Spire. M3: The dying Archmage Dyson Logos, knowing he has only a few weeks remaining, retires from Hara to the Earth Womb beneath Dyson's Delve, "to sleep until Nerath has need of him again".
I find this lets me take breaks from a campaign, come back years later, and player mindset matches with in-world development. It also allows for sporadic, regular, or intense play. Freezing a world/campaign in time, or advancing it decades into the future, messes with GM and player time perception and tends to leave an artificial feel, whereas 1:1 feels very organic.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 18, 2022, 12:07:23 AMIn the example in the DMG, if I went on just a 4-day vacation, I'd come back to find 3 1/2 weeks had passed. Yeah, yeah, I get it that my guy will still be 3 weeks in the past since I only lost 4 days. But what am I going to do with this 3 week lead I have on the rest of the party? Romp through empty dungeons that they already cleaned out in the future?
QuoteI would consider things to be decidedly uncoordinated if my character was sworn to protect the princess, I take 4 days off, while I'm on vacation and 1 week later in game-time the active PCs kidnap the princess, and when I finally get the chance to play out the time period when that happened, I find this is now a plot point set in stone that I can't do anything to change.
I've been reading your posts but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Both of the situation you describe can happen whether or not the DM is using 1:1 time.
If a player misses a session, he misses out on the dungeon looting done in that session. If a player misses a session, the other players might do something to an NPC that the absent player may have not wanted. Both of those things can happen regardless of how much game world time passes between sessions. In fact, whether the absent player returns four in-game days later or four in-games months later is almost entirely meaningless. The only effect it would have is on the age of the character.
In both situation, the DM is not obligated to run a special session to catch up the absent player. The DM could, of course, but that would be an exception because of real world time constraints.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 18, 2022, 10:26:32 AM
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 18, 2022, 12:07:23 AMIn the example in the DMG, if I went on just a 4-day vacation, I'd come back to find 3 1/2 weeks had passed. Yeah, yeah, I get it that my guy will still be 3 weeks in the past since I only lost 4 days. But what am I going to do with this 3 week lead I have on the rest of the party? Romp through empty dungeons that they already cleaned out in the future?
QuoteI would consider things to be decidedly uncoordinated if my character was sworn to protect the princess, I take 4 days off, while I'm on vacation and 1 week later in game-time the active PCs kidnap the princess, and when I finally get the chance to play out the time period when that happened, I find this is now a plot point set in stone that I can't do anything to change.
I've been reading your posts but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Both of the situation you describe can happen whether or not the DM is using 1:1 time.
If a player misses a session, he misses out on the dungeon looting done in that session. If a player misses a session, the other players might do something to an NPC that the absent player may have not wanted. Both of those things can happen regardless of how much game world time passes between sessions. In fact, whether the absent player returns four in-game days later or four in-games months later is almost entirely meaningless. The only effect it would have is on the age of the character.
In both situation, the DM is not obligated to run a special session to catch up the absent player. The DM could, of course, but that would be an exception because of real world time constraints.
It's a bit different since this 1:1 "always on" paradigm presumes every player is their own individual free agent -- you COULD get together with different party members, but you don't have to, everyone can be up to their own thing.
So normally a game proceeds without you because everyone is together, but when you're alone you play through what you missed anyway -- it's just that if other people already be at a boss or something, it would break the timeline if you beat the boss earlier in the timeline while you were still in the past even though the other players already beat it later in the timeline (thus necessitating that boss still be alive). So in the example above, the DM is just making it impossible for the PC to do that because they missed their chance so to speak, even though in the timeline they're still in the past when it would have been possible.
So I guess if you strictly adhere to the 1:1 time that can't happen because the team would not be able to get ahead of the lone wolf player. Perhaps that's what Jeffro was getting at.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 14, 2022, 10:57:56 AM
...
Yeah. I had to stop 45 minutes in when it was clear that there was no effort being made by the Inappropriate Characters crew to actually try and understand what Jeffro was saying.
IMHO; that is 50% Jeffro's fault.
He was a victim of his own hyperbole.
Especially since even in his online discussions he never breaks "BROSR Character" when explaining why 1:1 time is great. The hype and smack talk never stops, so it is often difficult to cull the wheat from the chaff if he is putting you off by saying how you suck at RPG's at the same time.
i.e. "...your playing Fake D&D" "...been playing D&D wrong" etc, ... For Jeffro to not expect serious push back for smack talk like that is just silly.
Pundit has been reacting to their hyperbole/smack talk since day one, and of course with Jeffo right in front of him he was going to zero in on it, and go to town.
What did he think would happen?
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 16, 2022, 10:33:18 PM
...
To my knowledge, and my knowledge of the 1E material is pretty strong, nothing in there tells you have players jump into domain play, running NPC types, or any of that. Jeffro seems to be just making that up. However, it is absolutely 100% true that Gary did have that exact same idea and wrote about it. And not "sort of" the same idea. I'm talking the EXACT same idea. And I can prove it. I just can't prove that he had the idea at the time he was writing 1E. Here's what I've got on it, though.
As some of you know, in 1999 Gary put out the Lejendary Adventure RPG. What's lesser known is LA was just the fantasy version of a Science Fantasy RPG he wrote that was never published called AsteRogues. In there, he explicitly describes having players play multiple characters, and specifically characters who operate on different tiers of action--like one group that does straight-up adventuring, another that does domain management type stuff, and so on.
He even gave it a name. The multi-tiered campaign.
I happen to have a copy of the beta version manuscript. It bears a copyright date of 1994. And presumably he had the idea at some point in time before he actually sat down and wrote it. So the idea is at least that old. Maybe he did have it when he wrote 1E. Maybe this was the vision behind every thing he actually did write into 1E. And maybe Jeffro is astute far beyond his ability to articulate that he was able to pick up on that just from the totality of 1E. *shrugs* I was never able to, and as I said earlier up thread, I put my 1E fu up against literally anyone in the world. But who knows? Maybe Jeffro saw something I didn't see. Or maybe this is all just a coincidence.
I readily admit this 1:1 stuff is a recent idea for me, and I've never even set foot in a Holiday Inn hotel, so given that...
I think Jeffro derives this derives from p.7 in the PHB where it says:
"... And perhaps a war between players will be going on (With battles actually fought out on the table with miniature figures) one night, while on the next, characters of these two contending players are helping each other to survive somewhere in the wilderness."If players are regularly swapping out between domain level fantasy battles and party wilderness adventures with different PC's, I think it is a reasonable inference to make that players are operating on many tiers of play simultaneously within the same 'campaign world'.
And having some players electing to play at different tiers more heavily or to the exclusion of others would seem to be an inevitable feature that would emerge as a result of running a "multi-tiered campaign".
That seems like a reasonable conclusion to me. (Which is the conclusion that Jeffo makes)
Your reveal that Gygax later on describes the exact same idea seems to verify Jeffro's deductions.
In my opinion; it strains credulity that Gygax pulled the idea of the "multi-tiered campaign" out of the air whole-cloth in '99. Especially given other anecdotal evidence from 'back in the day' that Jeffo gives. (buried on his blog and twitter)
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 18, 2022, 12:07:23 AM
...In the example in the DMG, if I went on just a 4-day vacation, I'd come back to find 3 1/2 weeks had passed. Yeah, yeah, I get it that my guy will still be 3 weeks in the past since I only lost 4 days. But what am I going to do with this 3 week lead I have on the rest of the party? Romp through empty dungeons that they already cleaned out in the future?
My understanding of the BROSR interpretation:
1:1 for downtime only. Session time can be varying length and that gets added to the game calendar at the end of every session.
So in essence
Downtime = 1:1
Session: Variable. Added to Game calendar at the end of each live game session.
There is no pausing or going back in time to "catch up" PC's who aren't active. (Inactive PC's are on "Lock")
So you get the effect with inactive PC's of the in-game calendar "fast forwarding" due to game sessions that they missed.
So you don't have a 3 week lead.
You get 3 weeks' worth of downtime if your GM is generous because you didn't actively play for 3 weeks.
Otherwise, your PC just sat around.
I believe the BROSR derives this mode of 1:1 play from p.38
"Players who choose to remove their characters from the center of dungeon activity will find that "a lot has happened while they were away"..."So:
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 18, 2022, 12:07:23 AM
... I would consider things to be decidedly uncoordinated if my character was sworn to protect the princess, I take 4 days off, while I'm on vacation and 1 week later in game-time the active PCs kidnap the princess, and when I finally get the chance to play out the time period when that happened, I find this is now a plot point set in stone that I can't do anything to change.
BROSR: Tough luck. Your PC's mouth wrote a check your ass couldn't cash. Shouldn't have sworn to defend the Princess before you took off for vacation.
Bob the Viking beat you to it. Next.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 18, 2022, 12:07:23 AM
I'm not saying this is badwrong at all. This is, unfortunately, exactly how it would go in my game, too. We do the best we can with it. But when you go out of your way to say you're using a system that solves coordination problems of multiple or split groups that you don't really solve,
I think that the BROSR interpretation does solve certain problems, as long as you adopt their hardcore
"you snooze you lose" always-on single timeline paradigm.
No going back in time or pauses for PC's to catch up. You don't have to worry about that stuff because players are either actively playing their PC's or they are not.
If PC1 is travelling on a journey of 18 days that would normally be about 3 weeks of IRL time, So PC1 is out of play until his journey ends and his player will play PC2 in the meantime. But three game sessions happen in that time that could "speed up" the timeline so that player may get to play PC1 after only one or two weeks of 1:1 downtime.
Or the player misses a session, and PC1 sat around for a week he could have been played but the player wasn't there. To bad so sad...
i.e. Players have to "keep up" with current events if they want to 'optimize' the in-world game time for a particular PC. If they don't then the game world will happily move on without them.
I think that for a normal gaming group of a GM and 3-5 players just carefully tracking time would be enough.
I think that the BROSR implements the 1:1 downtime + strict always-on single timeline to due to the patron play moves that they advocate for which in turn effects the session moves.
i.e. It forces everyone to "keep current" or they will miss out. Off loading from the GM the need to inform/remind players where the game world is at, and getting rid of the burden of having to track different timelines.
Now how does that mesh with what is written on p.37-38 for TIME IN THE CAMPAIGN...??
Well, I think that you can pretty much make the BROSR interpretation fit...
But!Paragraph 5 is a big sticking point, as Gygax does indicate that after playing with one group that cleaned out a room of a dungeon – he then went back in time to play out a session with another group, and made an ad-hoc justification why they "missed" the monster killed in the future by the previous one.
And the BROSR interpretation is that game time is continuous. No back to the future stuff...
With paragraph 5 Gygax seems to be down with tracking multiple timelines. And having different game sessions going back and forth keeping pace with the campaigns 'overall' timeline. Without paragraph 5 you can make the case for the BROSR tracking of a single continuous timeline.
So either the BROSR has some legal wrangling to do, or I read something wrong.
Or I just misrepresented the BROSR 1:1 downtime + session time position...
Quote from: Jaeger on April 18, 2022, 10:01:21 PMNow how does that mesh with what is written on p.37-38 for TIME IN THE CAMPAIGN...??
Well, I think that you can pretty much make the BROSR interpretation fit... But!
Paragraph 5 is a big sticking point, as Gygax does indicate that after playing with one group that cleaned out a room of a dungeon – he then went back in time to play out a session with another group, and made an ad-hoc justification why they "missed" the monster killed in the future by the previous one.
And the BROSR interpretation is that game time is continuous. No back to the future stuff...
I would say that in this example Gygax is being very generous. As you said, I've played in and run open table style campaigns and the general rule has always been that if you miss the session, your character also misses the time. That being said, however, the example given is pretty extreme with the party burning through 50 game days in a single session. I've never seen anything close to that. And the reason given for keeping track of multiple timelines in this example seems to be out of a sense of fairness rather than verisimilitude.
Also, there is a separate issue with how to handle a similar situation if you are running multiple groups. Just because the Tuesday night group wasted 50 game days in their single session shouldn't mean that the Friday night group be forced to skip ahead a month and a half of game time.
But my main point was that if you have a situation where the party goes through 50 game days and some of the players are absent, then that is a problem. And it's the same problem whether you are playing 1:1 time or not.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 18, 2022, 10:26:45 PM
...
Also, there is a separate issue with how to handle a similar situation if you are running multiple groups. Just because the Tuesday night group wasted 50 game days in their single session shouldn't mean that the Friday night group be forced to skip ahead a month and a half of game time.
But my main point was that if you have a situation where the party goes through 50 game days and some of the players are absent, then that is a problem. And it's the same problem whether you are playing 1:1 time or not.
I read that as him talking about when traveling PC's will be "avaliable" to play again.
They are not really burning through 50 gamedays in one shot, They travel, do a thing then travel back. Gygax is marking on the game calendar when they will be 'back in play' from traveling back.
i.e. They are 'out of play' for so many days on their return journey that it makes no sense to advance the timeline when other PC's can do a lot of adventuring during that time.
So other PC groups can play while the out of play PC's are "Locked out" traveling.
Of course this is all rather unclear as Gygax leaves out a whole lot of context IMHO... You have to arrive at your interpretation of Gygax's ideas by inference.
To be honest, the 1e rulebooks are a hot mess. And maybe he is talking about tracking multiple timelines and coordinating them onto one mainline...
But who would want to do all that tracking?
I can easily see some teenager from across the country in 1981 reading the PHB p.7 and Campaign time rules on DMG p37-38 and thinking:
"WTF is this dude taking about!?"And so he does what most people did - use AD&D as the best supplement B/X ever had...
In my opinion the BROSR still has a few questions that they need to satisfactorily answer if they are to really claim that Gygax 100% intended D&D to be run the 1:1 way:
1: It is a matter of record that Gygax didn't always play 1:1 during his lifetime. If 1:1 was the preferred play mode why didn't it make it's way into any other of his post D&D RPG's? Other than the cutting room floor...
2: If 1:1 was the way AD&D was meant to be played... Then why did Gygax write tons of modules that don't mention the 1:1 style of play? By BROSR standards Gygax put out a lot of "Fake D&D" material after he wrote the DMG...
3: If 1:1 is so transformative... Where are all the Dragon magazine article extolling its virtues? Where are the interview quotes of Gygax telling people that they are doing it wrong? Why did Gygax basically go
radio silent on the subject
for decades after the core books were published?
And this is from someone who is starting to sip a bit of the BROSR kool-aid...
I want to give their patron play model a shot after my current star wars campaign wraps up. I think that it can add an additional dimension to the old school campaign I have in mind. I know players form the Tuesday game I play in that can act as factions for my Sunday game.
But Lunarmancer is not wrong when it comes to BROSR proponents over-selling things a bit...
I run a timeline game like this and I jump around sometimes -- given the issues that can popup in real life, sometimes it just makes sense.
For example, sometimes, before a session happens, I MYSELF haven't finished catching up through resolving everyone's downtime. Then we play a session and those characters jump ahead, but through no fault of their own the other PCs who were waiting on me to tell them what was happen to them fell behind. In that case I go back and make sure they can catch up to the best I can.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 17, 2022, 10:53:37 AM
Quote from: RPGPundit on April 17, 2022, 01:29:15 AM
Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 14, 2022, 05:58:03 PM
I might try Pundit's own Star Adventurer,
I hope you do!
Actually, we were on the verge of trying it out.
Then I found Dungeons and Delvers: Dice Pool Edition. It has such a simple and effective way to play that it was our next test run game.
But, I'm going to play Star Adventurer. I've already rolled up my Star Knight (psychic warrior) and have the basic Galaxy lore figured out. Aka, it's a lot like Star Wars, but it's literally not that universe. For example, psychics are made, but only rarely born with powers. You have to convince an existing psychic to transfer power to you, dropping that psychic down a level.
Those two games are about as "D&D" as I want to go. The official game holds no appeal for me. I'm not a fan of gaining lots of hit points and a fixed armor class.
Sounds great!
So I went into the podcast really rolling my eyes at the "BrOSR". I've seen their conduct on Twitter and I still take umbridge with this idea that their way is the ONLY way to play DnD ever. I can see why they think the way they do about AD&D 1e. It's right there in the rule book and DMG. Fine. But if we're going RAW because RAW is the only way to play then B/X and BECMI make no mention of 1:1 time. I think the debate here is between the Basic way and the Advanced way. B/X was made with a different methodology than AD&D 1e. Both can exist. Both are okay. I like both. I am not a "gross nerd" because I want to play B/X over AD&D. Nor am I a "gross nerd" if I want to play Shadowrun, VtM, or the many other non DnD pen and paper RPGs. That also make no mention of any 1:1 time. You can certainly add 1:1 time to whatever game you want. That's your prerogative as a DM. But if you're adding it to any game other than AD&D 1E you are no longer playing the game as intended. You're playing the game WRONG! You are now a gross nerd. The BrOSR argument conveniently side steps that even if Gygax intended DnD to be played 1:1. Other games exist. This includes other editions of DnD made after Gygax exited TSR. Am I a gross nerd because I play "how Gygax intended" but not how the designers of 3.5 a game not written by Gygax intended? What's the objective metric here? Because the BrOSR are acting like there is one. "We are right. You are wrong." for ALL DnD and all tabletop RPGs.
However...
The brief bits of Jeffro's opinion I could listen to through Pundit's shouting actually intrigued me. He seemed to have answers for any of the questions asked. Even if the other guys weren't really looking for answers. This lead me down a rabbit hole. I looked at the Trollopolus stuff. I looked at other blogs with similar campaigns. And you know what, this kind of 1:1 campaign idea actually intrigues me. It will require a large degree of logistics. But I have run multi party adventures before. So I'm down for this. I love the idea of dip in dip out. The game goes on regardless of who is there or not. A lot of my best group members don't have the time they used to. And only get free time every once in a while in a non scheduled manner. So I can easily see myself running a game where people drop in and out through a discord group with a schedule negotiated on a per session basis. I love the idea of patron players. I love the idea of becoming a patron being a long term goal of PCs. I like the idea of players having multiple characters doing things when there's downtime. I love the idea of patron players as dynamic forces affected by and affecting the PC's actions.
It reminds me of how MMOs are. You log in, do some quests and whatever else you want in the time you have available, log out and the other players go on with out you whilst the game persists. At least the sandbox sort of games I prefer and not those shitty theme park MMOs like FFXIV and WoW.
I see this as an OPTION for my games however. Not a requirement. And I refuse to be talked down to because we differ on an opinion of how to play an RPG.
As I've said, I catch a lot of the BrOSR on my Twitter feed, and they're making a pretty good case that they've hit on many of the elements that Gygax had in mind as the context for using AD&D 1E, even if they may be overstating their case for rhetorical or entertainment purposes.
What they haven't done is made the case that AD&D 1E as intended by Gygax/rediscovered by the BrOSR is the only kind of game worth playing. :)
Quote from: King Tyranno on April 19, 2022, 01:32:16 PM
So I went into the podcast really rolling my eyes at the "BrOSR". I've seen their conduct on Twitter and I still take umbridge with this idea that their way is the ONLY way to play DnD ever. I can see why they think the way they do about AD&D 1e. It's right there in the rule book and DMG. Fine. But if we're going RAW because RAW is the only way to play then B/X and BECMI make no mention of 1:1 time. I think the debate here is between the Basic way and the Advanced way. B/X was made with a different methodology than AD&D 1e. Both can exist. Both are okay. I like both. I am not a "gross nerd" because I want to play B/X over AD&D. Nor am I a "gross nerd" if I want to play Shadowrun, VtM, or the many other non DnD pen and paper RPGs. That also make no mention of any 1:1 time. You can certainly add 1:1 time to whatever game you want. That's your prerogative as a DM. But if you're adding it to any game other than AD&D 1E you are no longer playing the game as intended. You're playing the game WRONG! You are now a gross nerd. The BrOSR argument conveniently side steps that even if Gygax intended DnD to be played 1:1. Other games exist. This includes other editions of DnD made after Gygax exited TSR. Am I a gross nerd because I play "how Gygax intended" but not how the designers of 3.5 a game not written by Gygax intended? What's the objective metric here? Because the BrOSR are acting like there is one. "We are right. You are wrong." for ALL DnD and all tabletop RPGs.
However...
The brief bits of Jeffro's opinion I could listen to through Pundit's shouting actually intrigued me. He seemed to have answers for any of the questions asked. Even if the other guys weren't really looking for answers. This lead me down a rabbit hole. I looked at the Trollopolus stuff. I looked at other blogs with similar campaigns. And you know what, this kind of 1:1 campaign idea actually intrigues me. It will require a large degree of logistics. But I have run multi party adventures before. So I'm down for this. I love the idea of dip in dip out. The game goes on regardless of who is there or not. A lot of my best group members don't have the time they used to. And only get free time every once in a while in a non scheduled manner. So I can easily see myself running a game where people drop in and out through a discord group with a schedule negotiated on a per session basis. I love the idea of patron players. I love the idea of becoming a patron being a long term goal of PCs. I like the idea of players having multiple characters doing things when there's downtime. I love the idea of patron players as dynamic forces affected by and affecting the PC's actions.
It reminds me of how MMOs are. You log in, do some quests and whatever else you want in the time you have available, log out and the other players go on with out you whilst the game persists. At least the sandbox sort of games I prefer and not those shitty theme park MMOs like FFXIV and WoW.
I see this as an OPTION for my games however. Not a requirement. And I refuse to be talked down to because we differ on an opinion of how to play an RPG.
Yeah, what I realized is the old school "big table" D&D is basically MMO before MMOs.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on April 19, 2022, 04:14:18 PM
Quote from: King Tyranno on April 19, 2022, 01:32:16 PMIt reminds me of how MMOs are. You log in, do some quests and whatever else you want in the time you have available, log out and the other players go on with out you whilst the game persists. At least the sandbox sort of games I prefer and not those shitty theme park MMOs like FFXIV and WoW.
I see this as an OPTION for my games however. Not a requirement. And I refuse to be talked down to because we differ on an opinion of how to play an RPG.
Yeah, what I realized is the old school "big table" D&D is basically MMO before MMOs.
I like that analogy.
Kinda makes me wonder if it should be more common for dungeon masters to get together as a group and set their games in the "same" world to let groups interact indirectly with each other. I certainly would be interested in a game like that.
I did at last get around to looking at the Blackmoor documentary. Thanks for the reminder.
Quote from: Banjo Destructo on April 19, 2022, 04:41:17 PM
Kinda makes me wonder if it should be more common for dungeon masters to get together as a group and set their games in the "same" world to let groups interact indirectly with each other. I certainly would be interested in a game like that.
I've tried it a fair bit. Communication is an issue, as is different visions for the campaign. Overall I tend to be more in favour of a singular vision.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 18, 2022, 10:26:32 AM
I've been reading your posts but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Both of the situation you describe can happen whether or not the DM is using 1:1 time.
I don't think I was making a point so much as trying to untangle this mess. I mean, it's difficult to even formulate a reply to you because it is not clear what "1:1 time" even means. Among those I've talked to and heard from who claim to use it, there isn't exactly consistency as to what 1:1 means. And what the majority (of those I've heard from) take it to mean does not jive with what it means in the DMG.
QuoteIf a player misses a session, he misses out on the dungeon looting done in that session. If a player misses a session, the other players might do something to an NPC that the absent player may have not wanted. Both of those things can happen regardless of how much game world time passes between sessions. In fact, whether the absent player returns four in-game days later or four in-games months later is almost entirely meaningless. The only effect it would have is on the age of the character.
In both situation, the DM is not obligated to run a special session to catch up the absent player. The DM could, of course, but that would be an exception because of real world time constraints.
DaddyWarpig's google doc listed one of the benefits of 1:1 time as ensuring if you go on vacation for 2 weeks, you will not miss more than 2 weeks of the campaign. There are only two ways to keep that promise. One of them is somehow someway placing a 1:1 time ceiling on campaign time. Whereas if you go by what's in the DMG, 1:1 time acts as a floor on campaign time.
Special catch-up sessions is not really apropos of anything I'm saying. It's simply tying up loose ends, anticipating the fact that technically you could run a campaign without a 1:1 ceiling and use a catch-up session as a way of keeping your promise that the player will only miss two weeks of in-game time. I cite the problems in doing that to illustrate that it's not quite as good as the real thing. Almost like it's adhering to the letter of the promise but not to the spirit of the promise. I address it mainly to dismiss it. It may from time to time be beneficial, even necessary. Sometimes it makes the most sense. And the DMG certainly makes allowances for this--so hard ruling it out is not exactly going adhering to this section of the rules. But I wouldn't want it to be the glue holding the campaign together.
It is the claim of DaddyWarpig's document that this is necessary to making the open table work because it's necessary for planning. And in the discussion with Jeffro, he also states that 1:1 time is an essential element of what he's doing, although unfortunately there wasn't enough meat in that conversation to pin down exactly why and how he thinks that.
I happen to strongly disagree. I don't think 1:1 time is the magic sauce at all. I think Pundit is correct in suggesting that careful timekeeping would suffice. It doesn't have to be 1:1 time. I use the 1:1 time floor to keep campaign time flowing because I want overall campaign time to flow substantially faster than real time. In my experience, the magic sauce is as simple as making every effort to always begin and end each session in town.
Quote from: Lunamancer on April 16, 2022, 10:33:18 PM
...
As some of you know, in 1999 Gary put out the Lejendary Adventure RPG. What's lesser known is LA was just the fantasy version of a Science Fantasy RPG he wrote that was never published called AsteRogues. In there, he explicitly describes having players play multiple characters, and specifically characters who operate on different tiers of action--like one group that does straight-up adventuring, another that does domain management type stuff, and so on.
He even gave it a name. The multi-tiered campaign.
I happen to have a copy of the beta version manuscript. It bears a copyright date of 1994....
Any chance we could see a scan, or even cellphone pics of the relevant passages? I'd be interested to read what he said.
I do find it interesting that his 'multi-tiered campaign' description ended up on the cutting room floor when he finally put out Lejendary Adventure's. I wonder what the reasons were for that cut.
Quote from: Lunamancer on May 26, 2022, 11:15:45 PM
...
I happen to strongly disagree. I don't think 1:1 time is the magic sauce at all. I think Pundit is correct in suggesting that careful timekeeping would suffice. It doesn't have to be 1:1 time. I use the 1:1 time floor to keep campaign time flowing because I want overall campaign time to flow substantially faster than real time. In my experience, the magic sauce is as simple as making every effort to always begin and end each session in town.
That, and I think the non-session campaign downtime just needs to be consistent. 1:1 or 1:2 if you game every other week... Whatever, just so long as you are consistent.
.
Quote from: Banjo Destructo on April 19, 2022, 04:41:17 PM
Kinda makes me wonder if it should be more common for dungeon masters to get together as a group and set their games in the "same" world to let groups interact indirectly with each other. I certainly would be interested in a game like that.
The closest I have come to achieving something like this is to incorporate NPCs, artifacts, any time travel or dimension hopping, from the different campaigns I've run in different genres, even different systems. If you play in a lot of my games you would be able to notice when something from a different campaign world just passed through. If not, you would miss it, I'm sure. This is all inspired of course by Moorcock's fictional creation of the multi-verse. The latest occurance of me trying to weave elements from disperate campaign worlds is about a universal form of energy. In my B/X game world it is known as Trans-Arcana Contamination. In my modern superhero game it is known as Q'rrr'mm Energy (from Atlas Unleashed) and in my far future Classic Traveller campaign it is called "Dirty" Anti-Matter.
Quote from: Jaeger on May 27, 2022, 12:46:24 PM
Any chance we could see a scan, or even cellphone pics of the relevant passages? I'd be interested to read what he said.
I do find it interesting that his 'multi-tiered campaign' description ended up on the cutting room floor when he finally put out Lejendary Adventure's. I wonder what the reasons were for that cut.[/quote]
Gary had woven his "multi-tiered" campaign tightly with the AsteRogues setting. On the title page of the players book it actually says, "LEJENDARY ASTEROGUES (TM) MULTI-TIERED FANTASY SCIENCE ROLE-PLAYING GAME." There are bits of it sprinkled throughout the players book. The meat of it is in the game masters book and runs about 11 pages. This was intended to be a huge (albeit optional) part of the AsteRogues game. I'd be happy to go through it and pull out some key quotes.
As to why it was cut, probably the simplest, most obvious answer is because it wasn't written in a generic tense of, "Oh, by the way, here's a way you can manage your campaign." It was specifically integrated into AsteRogues. It's not like you could just copy and paste it into a fantasy game.
Quote
That, and I think the non-session campaign downtime just needs to be consistent. 1:1 or 1:2 if you game every other week... Whatever, just so long as you are consistent.
The difficulty with consistency is, one player's non-session time could be another player's session time. I had no intent at the time to run multiple groups at all. My sole focus was "Begin in town. End in town. The game always goes on. Whoever shows up, plays." But the fact is, the group on week 2 could be comprised of different players than the group on week 1, and so you end up with de facto multiple groups as a consequence. It's unavoidable. You could have a case where all of Group 1 is taking 2 weeks off. But group 2 will still have sessions in that time. If time flow is allowed to vary in-session and without limit, there's no telling how much campaign time Group 1 might miss.
I don't want to hold group 2 up. I want the game to always go on. On the other hand, I also don't want group 1 feeling like they're playing a Rip Van Winkle campaign. So there is a sense in which you have to squish the two extremes together. And I think that's best handled with sound judgment rather than a consistent rule.
On the slower end of the scale, I'm going to say 1 game day is lost for each real day the players are idle in keeping with the 1:1 rule. As to whether or not there will be special catch-up sessions is going to depend on what I think makes the most sense at the time.
On the faster end of the scale, I have to decide what's reasonable in terms of how far ahead I can let the fast group get. 30 days max feels right in most circumstances. But if they're 60 days travel away from the slow group, then there's no reason I can't let them get 60 days ahead since the two groups really can't affect one another. If the faster group is suddenly teleported back to where the slow group is, though, they'll get put in time jail then and there--playing alternate characters until the slow group catches up. Once the slow group is caught up, the fast group suddenly appears and we take it from there.
Here are a few select quotes from AsteRogues on the Multi-Tiered campaign
Quote01.01. Definitions:
Multi-tiered role-playing means more than players having multiple game characters. It means that the Legend Master has a campaign milieu that operates on many levels, and that the participants in the campaign are thus empowered to have personas of vastly different and unrelated-to-each-other sort. The latter means, in a nutshell, that players might be allowed to have Avatars ranging from princes to paupers operating all over the solar system and likely at cross purposes too.
So there's the basic idea laid out. So we're pretty much talking about the same thing the BroSR is doing. Gary goes into a lot of detail, though, and the details may vary.
QuoteClearly the multi-tiered concept is not the ordinary approach to role-playing. Its rewards are great, can be far greater than the conventional method can deliver. If the demands of multi-tiered role-playing place too great a burden on the individual Legend Master, or are such that the players are unable to cope with the requirement of assuming separate and distinct game personas, possibly in the course of a single adventure, then the utilization this aspect of the game should be set aside. Conventional play is fully accommodated. In truth, another way of thinking of multi-tiered play is the conventional—but multiplied in complexity of role-playing, and thus increasing entertainment therefrom, by the same factor. So if conventional, single-character-type participation is wholly satisfactory, then this game will be eminently satisfying. Furthermore, the expanded opportunity of multi-tiered play remains open and available.
Note here he is actually stating that this is not a usual way for playing the game but rather something distinct. Sure. Back in the day, in his actual campaign, he had tons of people coming and going. Bits and pieces of this idea, with multiple groups interacting, were things he had to give consideration to.
QuoteThe design bases used to facilitate the concept of multi-tiered campaign play, the easy creation of the character and the simple and fast resolution of situation variables, mean that conventional play is extremely easy. The statistical information is arrived at quickly, the Abilities (five or six of 45) are relatively few in number and correspondingly broad. Avatar details can be limited initially to those absolutely necessary for role-playing bases, with origin, heritage, and various personal details of the character created left to the Legend Master and player to develop through play.
Here, Gary is "selling" his system. But the main idea is you need an RPG that is sufficiently simple in order to pull off this style of play. I have heard several RPG commentators point out that one of the differences between new school D&D and old school D&D is that the old school rules better allowed the style of play where characters had entire entourages of henchmen, hirelings and followers. Newer D&D, where the characters were too unique, had too many stats, skills, feats, and powers, would be a nightmare to manage an entire troupe.
His Dangerous Journeys RPG was notoriously complex (if you played Advanced Mythus). With LA, there are a whole list of instances I can point to where he clearly, intentionally, even boldy stepped back to the old D&D vibe of things. One of my favorite examples to point out is in the fantasy version of LA, he included illusions that can physically hurt you--making it clear that it could even cause wounds to open "as stigmata do." This kind of puts a pin prick in the story Frank Mentzer spins that no such details were ever hashed out in the old days--like how illusions worked--and that developed later over time. And you shouldn't stick to the old ways because nobody knew what they were doing back then. Well, here you've got Gary going back to illusions causing physical wounds after having 20 years to think about it. It tells me it was always his intention and Frank's story is just isn't true. I wonder how many of the "stupid" things we've since evolved and improved over the years were actually 100% as intended in the first place, and that rather than having improved on these things, all we did was lose some of the artistry like much stained glass.
QuoteIf all participants are veterans and have at least a modicum of expertise in role-playing, the Legend Master should indeed plan a multi-tiered campaign approach, providing he or she is desirous of this expansion and has the time and willingness to make the extra effort. That decision must also consider the players, of course.
In summation, all campaigns should begin in a conventional mode, with the Legend Master unveiling the initial information regarding the campaign milieu, and the players developing their game personas accordingly. The multi-tiered campaign commences at such time as the Legend Master decides to introduce additional story lines and plots, and the players are willing and able to develop and role-play two or more characters in the milieu. Thus, conventional play is standard, multi-tiered is optional . . . . but compelling in its capacity to make the milieu come alive.
Here he's suggesting easing into this. It's to help players acclimate. But I also think it produces a neat effect of only gradually putting the pieces in play--at first, those pieces don't interact with one another, but gradually they do and you get the interplay that people gush about with Patron style play.
There's a LOT more to the section. It's packed with details. He's got many different categories of "bases" for the different tiers of adventure, and for each of those categories he gives 4 sample starting points. I could just roll a bunch of d4's and put together the skeleton of a multi-tiered campaign just from his jumping off points, then go back and flesh it out.
I just have short meeting with BrOSR on Twitter, and I have to admit after like four backs and forths I decided I prefer TBP for RPG discussion ;)
You want a guide to inappropriate characters?
Ok.
Anyone playing any type of active Nazi. Period. Yes this happened to me and to this day I would push that guy in front of a bus if I could get away with it.
Anyone playing a character who must dominate other players, or backstab them, or make other players lives hell and ruin the game for them.
That's pretty much it based on my personal experience. I've never been in a game where someone wanted to play a pedo, but yeah that's a nogo too.
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 08, 2022, 10:29:09 PM
...
Anyone playing any type of active Nazi. Period. Yes this happened to me and to this day I would push that guy in front of a bus if I could get away with it.
...
I don't know much about pushing Yahtzee LARPer's in front of buses. But I did watch a holiday in express ad on tv, and recently did a little internet searching...
You can read the sections Gygax wrote on Multi-Tiered Campaigns yourself here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050219194209/http://www.quiklinks.com/grip/AsteRogues/downloads.html
Lejend Masters Lore Vol I pg 13, has the intro bits section on Multi-Tiered gaming Lunamancer was quoting above.
It's actually quite an interesting read and a unique look on the type of RPG that Gygax was developing before he died. Weird setting IMHO...
QuoteYou want a guide to inappropriate characters?
Ok.
Anyone playing any type of active Nazi. Period. Yes this happened to me and to this day I would push that guy in front of a bus if I could get away with it.
Anyone playing a character who must dominate other players, or backstab them, or make other players lives hell and ruin the game for them.
That's pretty much it based on my personal experience. I've never been in a game where someone wanted to play a pedo, but yeah that's a nogo too.
Playing pedos is indeed icky, but playing genocidal maniacs is lot of fun :3
I agree about backstabers unless it's part of premise of campaign - we're not a team, and betrayal is on table.
Also: dude you clearly read just title of this thread, and made random answer due to wrong interpretation of the title. Come on, do better.
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 08, 2022, 10:29:09 PM
You want a guide to inappropriate characters?
Ok.
Anyone playing any type of active Nazi. Period. Yes this happened to me and to this day I would push that guy in front of a bus if I could get away with it.
Anyone playing a character who must dominate other players, or backstab them, or make other players lives hell and ruin the game for them.
That's pretty much it based on my personal experience. I've never been in a game where someone wanted to play a pedo, but yeah that's a nogo too.
I bet you are really fun at parties.
Mel Brooks played a Nazi, wrote a play and screen adaptation that featured a Nazi storyline and music that glorified the master race.
In the video game Stellaris, I've exterminated whole species. Death camps, work camps, processed them as food. I find it relaxing.
It technically offtopic - but somehow I'm not surprised that thread about BrOSR finally ended on "relaxing genocide" note.
Quote from: jeff37923 on June 09, 2022, 01:34:54 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 08, 2022, 10:29:09 PM
You want a guide to inappropriate characters?
Ok.
Anyone playing any type of active Nazi. Period. Yes this happened to me and to this day I would push that guy in front of a bus if I could get away with it.
Anyone playing a character who must dominate other players, or backstab them, or make other players lives hell and ruin the game for them.
That's pretty much it based on my personal experience. I've never been in a game where someone wanted to play a pedo, but yeah that's a nogo too.
I bet you are really fun at parties.
I'm sure you are. People probably line up to punch you. I know I would.
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 09, 2022, 07:36:42 PM
Quote from: jeff37923 on June 09, 2022, 01:34:54 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 08, 2022, 10:29:09 PM
You want a guide to inappropriate characters?
Ok.
Anyone playing any type of active Nazi. Period. Yes this happened to me and to this day I would push that guy in front of a bus if I could get away with it.
Anyone playing a character who must dominate other players, or backstab them, or make other players lives hell and ruin the game for them.
That's pretty much it based on my personal experience. I've never been in a game where someone wanted to play a pedo, but yeah that's a nogo too.
I bet you are really fun at parties.
I'm sure you are. People probably line up to punch you. I know I would.
No you would not. You haven not punched anything past a bag of doritos ever.
You're absolutely right, you goatcocksucking cumstain, I haven't not punched anything but a bag of doritoes....
ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?
What kind of a world is it when millions die of covid and you weren't one of them? :(
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 09, 2022, 10:39:32 PM
You're absolutely right, you goatcocksucking cumstain, I haven't not punched anything but a bag of doritoes....
ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?
What kind of a world is it when millions die of covid and you weren't one of them? :(
It is called being healthy and strong. Give it a try and you might not be such a pussy any more.
In 2014 I survived a case of pneumonia doctors said I wouldn't. I was in a coma they told my family I'd never come out of, 13 days later I did.
Try that sometime, oddmush.
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 09, 2022, 10:53:51 PM
In 2014 I survived a case of pneumonia doctors said I wouldn't. I was in a coma they told my family I'd never come out of, 13 days later I did.
Try that sometime, oddmush.
Refer back to healthy and strong...I had Pneumonia and I watched TV for 3 days and then went back to work on the 4th. Try to not be such a pussy.
You are literally bragging about surviving an ailment than only kills old sick people for the most part.
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 09, 2022, 07:36:42 PM
Quote from: jeff37923 on June 09, 2022, 01:34:54 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 08, 2022, 10:29:09 PM
You want a guide to inappropriate characters?
Ok.
Anyone playing any type of active Nazi. Period. Yes this happened to me and to this day I would push that guy in front of a bus if I could get away with it.
Anyone playing a character who must dominate other players, or backstab them, or make other players lives hell and ruin the game for them.
That's pretty much it based on my personal experience. I've never been in a game where someone wanted to play a pedo, but yeah that's a nogo too.
I bet you are really fun at parties.
I'm sure you are. People probably line up to punch you. I know I would.
Oh, noes! I'm up against an Idiot Internet Tough Guy! Whatever will I do?
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 09, 2022, 10:53:51 PM
In 2014 I survived a case of pneumonia doctors said I wouldn't. I was in a coma they told my family I'd never come out of, 13 days later I did.
At least this explains the brain damage.....
Quote from: oggsmash on June 09, 2022, 10:59:42 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on June 09, 2022, 10:53:51 PM
In 2014 I survived a case of pneumonia doctors said I wouldn't. I was in a coma they told my family I'd never come out of, 13 days later I did.
Try that sometime, oddmush.
Refer back to healthy and strong...I had Pneumonia and I watched TV for 3 days and then went back to work on the 4th. Try to not be such a pussy.
You are literally bragging about surviving an ailment than only kills old sick people for the most part.
Its all about the Battlemasturbation with this guy.