Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 9:27 am

Thanks. I'm still toying around with the magic school game, and I'm at the point of trying to figure out the system I want. I know that for genre (icon) emulation, I want the following results to all be on roughly the same scale, with mods-
-spell rebounds (with Broken condition on wand)
-spells creates small, harmless, embarrassing burst of soot (with no training in spell)
-spell simply fails, fizzling or having a weak effect (know spell, simply a bad casting)
-spell goes of to adequate results
-spell goes off with amazing results, ejecting an opponents weapon to your hand or casting a corporeal patronus in combat with prior safe practice
-spell goes of with legendary results, blowing your enemy through a wall with a disarming spell, casting your first fully corporeal patronus in a high stress situation with only weak sprays accomplished beforehand

I also want the system to be fairly simple, given that this run at making the game is prompted by meeting a cute non-gamer potterhead and given that a lot of non-gamer potterheads want to play in the Rowlingverse and this would be a good introduction to the hobby for them. I'm also really, really really fucking tired of sitting at a table and waiting thirty seconds at lowest for someone to calculate a roll I calculated a few seconds after the die hit the table. Across the table. Looking at their sheet upside-down. So, if I can find some way to make this game easily played by people who are actively bad at math, rather than limited like me, that would be nice.

Edit: it occurs to me that Aspects would help a lot here. The Broken condition for Ron's wand in Chamber of Secrets can be an aspect that can be invoked by Mister Cavern on the slug spewing charm roll, and by Ron's player when Lockheart tried to use it. When characters are learning a spell they automatically have an aspect that reflects their relative knowledge of it. When characters are following a recipe for a portion they've never mixed before, an aspect or two might be in play. I need to tinker with the the value of invoking an aspect, but it would be a way to handle things.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 9:07 pm

Ok, why don't you just make that a dicepool, because they are pretty easy and don't involve much adding things up. So, a disarming hex might have a difficulty of 4. 4 successes gets a normal disarm, 6 throws their wand into your hand, and 8 throws them through a wall. Lacking proficiency in the spell downgrades any success by one level. Using a damaged wand could either downgrade success or add a mishap roll with a variety of effects. Skilled casters/higher levels of proficiency in that spell would give automatic successes, so Voldemort never fails simple spells.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 9:28 pm

And Wandless or Silent casting increases the difficulty. I like it.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 11:26 pm

Quick survey, since this is a diverse community of busy adults with careers and families and shit...

How many different games do you play in?

How often does your main group meet?

How long are your sessions typically?

If you're playing a game like D&D or Pathfinder, how long do you think it should take to level up in real time?

Thanks.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:01 am

Two games, Shadowrun & Ars Magica, both are every other week for 4 and 6 hours respectively.

angelfromanotherpin · Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:03 am

Three at present. My main group meets once a week, and sessions are typically 3-4 hours long. The others meet about once every two weeks, for a similar duration.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:03 am

2 games alternating weekly 4-5 hour sessions.

Battlestations and Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Level up maybe once every 2-3 sessions for BS. LotFP takes longer. Been going at it for like a year or two and am the highest in the party at level 4 and only 2/3 of the Xp torward level 5.

I have cast the Summon spell twice now and that's pretty rad.

dnD games should oughtta level up every 4-6 sessions I'd say. So if biweekly every 2-3 months. 1 level every 72,000 seconds of play seems fair.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:05 am

Well, I'm not a busy adult with many important things to do or my own family, but I am 28, so...

I play in two games, both D&D. I run one on Wednesdays and play in another on Fridays. Wednesday game goes from 6ish to 9 or 10, Friday game has people show up at 6ish, but doesn't start till 730 or 8, really, and lasts a couple hours.

In D&D or Pathfinder, if you know how you want to level up, it should under ten minutes, fifteen at the outside. Experiencially, it could take an hour, depending on the kind of players we're talking about.

On dicepools and Scholomance games-

I kind of want a botch system, it would render degrees of failure like "spell is just too weak," "spell creates an embarrassing blast of soot in your face," and "spell goes off, but backfires because you're the series buttmonkey and you broke your hand-me-down wand." What I'm thinking is something like-


Net Hits	Net Botches	Result
0	Threshold	Spell Mishap, roll on table (certain conditions may have own tables)
0	1	Spell fails embarrassingly, social roll thresholds are increased 1 step for rest of day
0	0	Spell fizzles
Threshold	0	Spell goes off with standard result
Threshold+2	0	Spell goes off with an extra effect (roll or pick)
Threshold+4	0	Spell goes off spectacularly, roll on relevant table)

The numbers are spitballs, and the tables are just concept right now, but this seems sane. At least assuming that care is taken to not allow players to kill themselves by botching the Nuke spell, that is. The idea is that you can get great successes by rolling enough hits, but the worst you can do botching is have a spell rebound on you in annoying by not lethal ways.

Post by **fbmf** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:42 am

Three groups. About 4-6 hours per session.

1. Me, my wife, 2 other friends. D&D Tome. 1/month.

2. Me, my wife, another couple. Board games and card games. (BANG!, Munchkin, Settlers of Catan, Citadel, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, etc.) 1/month.

3. Me, my wife, my best friend, occasionally other folks. Star Wars D6, heavily house ruled so as to be playable. 1/whenever my best friend is in town, ongoing game since 1996. Average 2/year.

Level ups every 2-3 sessions (levels 1-6), then 3-5 sessions thereafter.

Game On,
fbmf

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 5:02 am

1 ATM weekly, 3-4 hours. 5th Ed. 1/month

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 5:25 am

Hiram McDaniels wrote:How many different games do you play in?

How often does your main group meet?

How long are your sessions typically?

If you're playing a game like D&D or Pathfinder, how long do you think it should take to level up in real time?

One forum game, and two "in real time" games over the net (one on IRC, one on roll20).

In both real-time cases, every week. Barring various circumstances.

3-4 hours, ish?

In the levels leading up to around 9-10, I'd say every 2-3 sessions, so 6-12 hours. After that, I expect story arcs and adventures to be longer, so up to 5 sessions.

Whiysper · Post by **Whiysper** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 11:22 am

Hiram McDaniels wrote:Quick survey, since this is a diverse community of busy adults with careers and families and shit...

How many different games do you play in?

How often does your main group meet?

How long are your sessions typically?

If you're playing a game like D&D or Pathfinder, how long do you think it should take to level up in real time?

Thanks.

3:
Friday 1900-2200, DND5e, 4 players, me MC. Level up every session or two.
Sunday 1300-1900, Homebrew WoD, 5 players, me MC. Notable advancements take about a month, or 4 sessions (ex. new Gift)
Monday 1700-2200, Homebrew. 3 players, 1 MC.

Personally I think DND 5e is too long, and the WoD homebrew is on the slow side of just right - once a month, your primary schtick should get more awesome, or you get a new one. Once a week gets old fast, and no-one has time to acclimatise. DND5e adventuring days are very short when up against smart people!

Covent · Post by **Covent** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:13 pm

One game, Once Weekly. Five players me running.

Just switched from Pathfinder to Fate, when mythic got too dumb to mindcaulk together. Will be playing my heartbreaker when it is done.

I do not claim that my heartbreaker is even OK, it is just shaped to my particular groups preferences, so not trying to be up my own ass here just being honest.

Play about 8 hour sessions.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:22 pm

Hiram McDaniels wrote:Quick survey, since this is a diverse community of busy adults with careers and families and shit...

How many different games do you play in?

How often does your main group meet?

How long are your sessions typically?

If you're playing a game like D&D or Pathfinder, how long do you think it should take to level up in real time?

Thanks.

Two games, each weekly:
Shadowrun 4e and Black Crusade. Sessions typically last for about 4 hours.

I believe that a level up should come every 2-3 sessions.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:23 pm

Hiram McDaniels wrote:Quick survey, since this is a diverse community of busy adults with careers and families and shit...

I think I'm involved in something like five D&D games, although three of those are play-by-post games. Each of the in-person games are small and meet about once every few weeks for one and once very two months for the other.

The sessions last around four hours, give or take.

I like 3E games to level about once every other session. Maybe once a session if we get a lot done, but that'd be the exception, not the rule.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:03 am

How bad of a decision would it be to make a dicepool system that uses dice that people don't generally have a ton of? d10s work today because White Wolf popularized the d10 dice pool. d6s work because novice gamers can loot them from their childhood board games, or buy a cube of them.

But d8s? I mean, I know I have, oh at least ten of them, but I'm a dice nerd. How irritating would it be for a game to tell you "go buy ten d8s?"

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:45 am

Super annoying if you're not playing it online. If a game uses one or two d8 or d12 as its RNG and you just add numbers to that, that's fine. But if a game told me to buy 10d8 I would put the book down and look for something else.

If you're playing it online, you can get a diceroller to roll 537d29, so it doesn't matter.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 9:55 am

Yeah, I kind of figured as such. Is there anything to recommend one of d6 or d10 dicepool over the other?

Wulfbanes · Post by **Wulfbanes** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 11:46 am

Survey
Q: How many different games do you play in?
A: Three.

Q: How often does your main group meet?
A: One twice a week. Two every other week (alternating Sundays). Both ran for years, so all qualify for main group.

Q: How long are your sessions typically?
A: Twice a week, for 2-3 hours online late evening. The Sunday game for 4-5 hours in the afternoon 'till I cook dinner and it turns into a social that either lasts long or not.

Q: If you're playing a game like D&D or Pathfinder, how long do you think it should take to level up in real time?
A: I think every other month. Otherwise, it's easy to progress in story, but don't see changes to your character to reflect them.

Dicepools
Q: Is there anything to recommend one of d6 or d10 dicepool over the other?
A: Everyone can easily get D6's, if you're talking logistics like not wanting to pick up d8's, the same problem exists for d10's.

EDIT: What is up with that font?
EDIT2: Like seriously, even setting font size in BBcode doesn't reform.

angelfromanotherpin · Sat Oct 10, 2015 11:52 am

You have a loose 'close italics' at the end of the first Q line.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 1:30 pm

Prak wrote:Yeah, I kind of figured as such. Is there anything to recommend one of d6 or d10 dicepool over the other?

Well, the d10 could let you pick a target number with a bit more granularity if you want to have a 2/5ths chance of success per die. On the other hand, d6s are pretty much the only die where you can reliably go out to a hobby store and buy a brick of two hundred.

violence in the media · Sat Oct 10, 2015 1:33 pm

Hiram McDaniels wrote:Quick survey, since this is a diverse community of busy adults with careers and families and shit...

How many different games do you play in?

How often does your main group meet?

How long are your sessions typically?

If you're playing a game like D&D or Pathfinder, how long do you think it should take to level up in real time?

Thanks.

I only have a regular weekly board game meet up right now. That lasts for about 5-6 hours.

For games like D&D, I like the level-up time to vary a bit. 1st to 2nd level should happen by the end of the 1st session. That first session should be, ideally, a complete self-contained adventure as well. I've played or run a lot of games that had 1 or 2 players new to RPGs in them, and this seems to be a decent way to give them a condensed experience to decide whether they like it or not.

After that, 2nd-to-3rd and 3rd-to-4th should take about 2 sessions each. After 4th level, I like level-ups to happen after every 2-3 "productive" sessions. A productive session being one where we advance the plot, make progress towards a goal, defeat a significant foe, or have some character-defining moments.

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 1:51 pm

I'm in 3 games at present; savage worlds, shadowrun 5e, and a PbP Pathfinder game. The two live games meet weekly for ~3 hours each.

The PbP pathfinder game hasn't levelled up yet in the 2.5 months it's been running, which is both understandable given the rate of action in even an active PbP game (this one is) and frustrating. Based on this I'd say that less than 1 level per 2 months is too slow.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 2:59 pm

For my part, I play in a Shadowrun game every other week, 4 hour sessions.

I'm also taking over DM duties for my wife's D&D group. They meet once a month, presumably 4 hour sessions.

I kind of assumed that the average game is comprised of bi-weekly sessions, at about 4 hours apiece, but that's largely anecdotal.

I'd like to find a way to eschew XP tracking for a D&D style game. I thought that in lieu of awarding xp, the game could just declare: you level up every X sessions. The goal is that the average group reaches top level after about a year of real time, if I could pin down a good baseline.

The trouble is that different groups vary pretty wildly in terms of frequency and session length; when you're in middle school you can play for 8 hours every saturday no problem but once jobs, families and other adult stuff gets thrown in, you might be meeting once a month to play for 2 hours.

Also, the following concepts have to be jettisoned:

XP as a balancing mechanism, ala' AD&D.
XP as currency, ala' 3E.
Level Drain.

Anyway, thanks for your input everyone.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:58 am

Working on the magic for my Magic School game, I want to check to make sure the limitations I'm putting on magic do what I want, which is basically to make it so that wizards still need to interact with people and can't just fuck off to their tower made of succubi and cocaine-

Magic cannot create real permanent objects. It can change objects, and the closer the end object is to the starting object the longer it will remained changed (think Polymorph Any Object but sans permanent transformation), and it can be shaped into short-lived functional mimics of objects or creatures, thus allowing summoning and creating ropes as the visual effect of a spell that binds an enemy, but you can't magically create a pig, slaughter it, and then eat it, the shaped energy has no nutritional value. Changing the size of a real pig is possible, but it doesn't do you much good as a source of food, as the property-changing magic is short lived.

Magic can give you information, whether about the past (what happened here?), present (where are my keys?) or future (what will we encounter in this dungeon?). But the less readily available the knowledge, the harder this is.

Magic can influence people, since attitudes, memories, emotions, etc are qualities of a person.

The overall goal is to allow people to throw around combat spells, control the battlefield, and use utility magic, but not create their own demiplane, tower, hookers and blow and fuck off from worldly concerns entirely. Now... if they want to take over Hell in order to fuck off from the concerns of the mundane world, I'm cool with that, they have to actually play out a story about conquering, and then keeping Hell, but the story about "Genesis, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, Permanency, Planar Binding, Major Creation, fuck you world" is not one I'm interested in running or playing. Does the above set up work, or do I need to rethink things?