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Messages - Borogove

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91
AW:Dark Age / Re: war companies...
« on: September 07, 2014, 12:10:09 PM »
Once someone has rolled Bold and has people following them into battle I'm going to be playing it like they all are in charge of their own armies.

Unless one player musters troops and tries to give them to another players army... which they were talking about... crap.

...

I can just let that happen... but I feel they should have to Win Over their troops to get them to follow their new leader. 

Okay, so you've got A and B, and B's mustering troops for A's army. Here's the big question: is B going to be in the battle? If so, great - it's one big army under A for combat resolution purposes, but B's leading their unit of soldiers for role-playing purposes.

If B's not going to be present, though, that might call for some kind of roll. "Will you fight for me? Uh, well, I mean, not for me exactly. Actually for him. I won't be on the battlefield. I'll be in another province. Totally rooting for you though."

92
AW:Dark Age / Re: Questions from first playtest
« on: September 06, 2014, 12:20:38 PM »
4. Are there plans for a resources or wealth system? There are many mentions of bounties and famines, but it's all fictional for now. Are those just meant to drive MC moves?

The only explicit mechanical use of bounties I've noticed so far is to fuel enchantments.

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5. If a PC loses positioning in single combat, what are his options? Suffer whatever fate the MC chooses? Leap Into Action? Other moves?

Beg for mercy, offer the opponent what they want?

93
AW:Dark Age / Re: Right to call upon god or gods for the Court Wizard?
« on: September 06, 2014, 12:14:15 PM »
Your example notwithstanding, I can't think of a lot of cases in which that right would be denied, and the denied-right move is mechanically pretty soft. To me, it doesn't balance both the Bold vs Weird penalty and the cost of spending a playbook rights slot.

94
AW:Dark Age / Re: The Ungiven Future/Experience
« on: September 06, 2014, 01:59:19 AM »
Hey everyone, I just wanted to make sure I had a full understanding of the Experience system in the game, specifically I'm not feeling totally sure about The Ungiven Future.

I'll take a stab at answering...

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1) If no domain seems appropriate both the MC and/or the other players can choose that option, and the person gaining the experience can take a new right that is already on the character sheet. Is there something else that happens when all four rights have been taken, or does that just mean that the experience granters should mark The Ungiven Future and/or be more creative when selecting domains?

"A right of your own" means the set of not-yet-chosen-rights from the characters playbook or "create a new right with the MC". So if "right of your own" keeps getting hit after you've filled the playbook, there's that option. But I wouldn't worry about it, it should be easy to hit the other rights-domains.

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2) There is a fillable dot to the right of The Ungiven Future on the character sheets. Does this signify that the MC or the player has declared it to be open or does it mean something else? Once The Ungiven Future is declared open does it stay open or does the MC and/or player receiving experience have to open it at the end of each session if one of them so desires?

I assume that's to mark the Ungiven Future as open, and that it's permanent.

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3) Does The Ungiven Future count as one domain where the player receiving the experience gets to choose from the list of five, or do the people giving the experience get to choose from that list as well?

I'd treat each Ungiven Future line as a domain, MC and other-players choosing where to bestow each XP. In practice the receiving player will likely get a lot of input.

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4) How soon should the MC write in the fifth option for The Ungiven? When they first mark it? .. Should the MC define that marking three in this category will cause the character to be retired (like in "Abandon this character to die" or presumably "Create an inheritor to play") or does the MC not have that power (or should it just be left in the open)?

"The Ungiven is the MC's to write." To me that means when as well as what, so the MC should write it when they feel like it, and sure, that could be a character-ending thing -- e.g. "go out in a blaze of glory", or "die at the hands of the one you've wronged" if the character's done irredeemably evil things, but it doesn't need to be that final.

95
AW:Dark Age / Re: Denied right
« on: September 05, 2014, 05:52:47 PM »
The bottom line is this, if I cannot play my PC in the way I intend I will be upset, that's like I have my right denied.
The rights system seems to put this thing in the rules system.

Is it necessary? I don't know, but it is the first time that I see this thing so clearly written.

Yeah, and I think that's the crux of my difficulty. No matter what the game, when we sit down to play it's in a social context that includes some notions of fair play. Rights are part of the rules, but the Denied Right rule reaches out of the game and says "if this part of the rules are broken, this is your recourse" - as substitute for the normal recourse of interaction between players in the outside-of-game social context.

I think the response to my little scene is telling: "you aren't playing by the rules because you have to say what the principles demand... etc." In other words: the MC is cheating in a way other than denying rights. As an MC here, I feel like I can say: if you feel like you've been Denied Your Right, invoke that move. Otherwise, what's your problem? ("I'm thinking offscreen, you don't know everything about how the principles apply.")

Well, I think there are kind of two things here.

Let's start with the basic move: All of the options except the final one in Denied Your Right are in-game, right? They're largely narrative rather than mechanical, but they serve the in-game purpose of establishing conflict or motive or relationship. It's not that the MC is Denying Your Right player-to-player, but that some agent in the world is - another player, a powerful NPC, or what have you; your choice of response moves the story in some way. Do you have any problem with that part of the move?

As far as the last part goes, we aren't talking about an MC move called Deny Their Right. The MC shouldn't do that except if it falls out of the MC moves and principles. The denial isn't an invisible god-hand blocking things from happening, and what your example is lacking is any explanation at all about the in-game things that are denying your rights. I'm not suggesting the motivations can't involve thinking offscreen, but there has to be something for the PCs to respond to.

"Not gonna happen" isn't a valid response to "I demand that my daughter's suitor be brought before me". Who in the world is denying this right, and how? Did the suitor blow off your messenger? Did your Castellan intercept your messenger and tell him not to deliver the message? Did the suitor get caught in a sharknado on the way to the keep? The answers to those kinds of questions can move gameplay forward.

96
AW:Dark Age / Re: Denied right
« on: September 04, 2014, 11:48:28 PM »
I suspect that if you're picking the hold it against you option, but you;re not /really/ going to hold it against them, you should pick something else?

This puts me in mind of the Contempt Token mechanic from McDaldno's The Quiet Year -- you take and hold tokens when you feel you've been wronged, but they don't really have any mechanical effect, only a social one. (That mechanic really doesn't work for me in that game, but there it is.)

I can see that taking the "hold it against you" option might serve a similar purpose in saying "I feel like I was wronged here as a player, but not so badly that I want to interrupt the game to get my way; please do better by me next time".



97
AW:Dark Age / Re: Denied right
« on: September 04, 2014, 06:35:05 PM »
That whole exchange is destroyed by the Master of Ceremonies Principle: Give the players' characters their due.

98
Dungeon World / Re: Actions with Cost on a 10+
« on: September 04, 2014, 12:15:10 AM »
Most of these sound like you just need to separate the move from the positioning and fiction that happens before and after the move.

The Fighter plunges his sword into the Burrow Worm (10+), who is actively eating away at the castle's foundation.  The sword sinks to the hilt, based on the damage roll and the description of the action by the player.  "The worm pulls the sword from your hands, spraying ichor, as it re-enters the ground.  You can feel the trembling floor shake less for a few moments before their vibration begins RAPIDLY escalating again.  What do you do?"

Fighter succeeds completely, then GM takes a golden opportunity (assuming you've got some kind of move for the Worm that applies).

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The Flame Gollum's blast of fire seems never ending.  The Ranger stands, momentarily, from behind the tombstone and fires an arrow (10+) into the Gollum's face, killing it.  Having stood up into fire the Ranger takes damage regardless.

"I stand to fire an arrow." "There's flame everywhere; you'll need to **Defy Danger with CON** to endure it long enough to get a shot off." "Okay, fine. That's... 10 for the Defy Danger... and 11 for the Volley!"



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The Thief hides behind the only rock in the Red Dragon's lair, rolling 10+ on the group's custom move for setting up an ambush.  The Dragon is clued to the presence of the party, because she had a brief tussle with the Ranger outside.  Her standard action when entering her lair (decided beforehand, what the prep demands) is to breath fire into the *one* decent hiding spot in her lair which she's left for the sole purpose of tricking would-be heroes.  Does she?

This is a little tricky; it's not possible to set up a successful ambush there, because the Dragon is going to blast it, but the party has no way to know that. I'd say that the ambush is abstractly successful -- some other critter passing through would get ambushed -- but the fiction demands that the Dragon does what she's supposed to do, so, again, I'm gonna give the Thief a Defy Danger to pull his cloak around him and not scream in pain -- after which, maybe the Dragon is fooled!

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The Cleric is halted by three guards of the Heathenistic city of the godkiller Prince.  He rolls Defy Danger CHA and gets 10+ to convince them his robes, coated in holy symbols, indicates he's a member of minor royalty, not a member of a religious sect and therefore not worth their attention.  "Fine, you may be on your way M'lord.  Sorry for the inconvenience, welcome to the godkiller Prince's domain." Cleric, to the party, still in the company of the guards : "Godkiller Prince?  That guy's the jerk with delusions of grandeur we wanted to kill, right?"  The guards pull their swords and sound the alarm.

That seems like it might be confusion about what's said in-character vs. out-of-character. (Insisting that everything said at the table is in-character and in-scene is high-end GM rudeness, IMO.)

Either way, the Defy Danger was completely successful and the guards are convinced he's not a Cleric: end of move. When the guards hear he's here to kill the boss, though, they do what they do.

99
AW:Dark Age / Re: PbP Playtest
« on: September 03, 2014, 08:31:44 PM »
Well, I'm willing to try snacking. I've gone ahead and registered at GotExp.

100
AW:Dark Age / Re: Typos/spelling
« on: September 03, 2014, 02:09:59 PM »
Household & Belongings / Personal Belongings / Plain: sunblreached

101
AW:Dark Age / Re: PbP Playtest
« on: September 03, 2014, 12:41:27 PM »
I'm somewhat interested. Do you use roll20?

102
AW:Dark Age / Typos/spelling
« on: September 02, 2014, 08:47:45 PM »
I don't know if I'll have a chance to playtest anytime soon, but I can pick nits at least!

Rights: Personal Prowess: exhilerating s/b exhilarating (also appears on Peasant Beauty playbook)

Battle Moves: Harrassingng Your Enemy

103
AW:Dark Age / Re: Using the maps
« on: September 02, 2014, 08:24:32 PM »
I'm intrigued by the tessellated random polygons thing you've used as a map on the Stronghold sheet, Vincent. Are those all custom drawn or do you have a program that generates them? Is there a reason they all have a single pixel dot in each polygon?

They're Voronoi diagrams. You start with the seed points (the single pixel dots you noticed) and each polygonal cell is defined as that part of the field which is closer to a particular seed point than to any other. You'll note that each straight-line border is exactly midway between two seed points.

Not sure how they're supposed to be used, though!

104
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Everyone in the group wants to look for traps (magic and/or physical traps) and/or try to figure out more about who the statue is supposed to look like - possibly someone wants to be and guard/scout duty at the same time figuring out how if someone can be heard behind the doors.

That sounds like they're trying to have everyone do everything at once, which, nah. Question the players carefully and see what they're actually doing.

"Brother Gotha, are you looking for traps or are you studying the statue's face and robes?" "Ummm, I'll stay close to the doorway and study the statue." Okay, Cleric's going to Spout Lore.

"Tinyfeets, how about you?" "I'm carefully moving around the room looking for death traps!" Okay, Thief's using Trap Expert.

"Zalbar, what about you?" "I'm going to look for traps too!" "Okay, are you tagging along with Tinyfeets looking for mechanical traps?" "Ummm... no, actually, I'm going to cast Detect Magic." Wizard's Casting a Spell. If he had said he was tagging along, that'd be an Aid roll instead.

"And Jorg?" "I'll follow Tinyfeets around the room at a safe distance, but listen at each door as I come to it." Fighter's doing Discern Realities.

So, actually, once you held their feet to the fire and asked what they were actually doing, it turns out that they're all making different moves, not stacking up on Discern Realities.

Now, going to your particular questions:
1) "Their chances of figuring out every secret in the room is generally too good for my taste" -- why are you hoarding secrets? What good is a secret that the GM knows and the players don't figure out? But, no matter; each player is making a different move, so they aren't likely to find everything.

2) You don't tell them what to roll until they've told you what they're doing, period. The Wizard decided to cast Detect Magic, so if it fails, he still doesn't know if there's a magical trap.

3) Use first come first served in general, but keep an eye on who's getting screen time and who's racking up XP, and turn to the wallflowers every once in a while and say "what do you do?"

4) The definition of the Aid move is that it uses Bond. The assistance is applied to the character making the main roll, it's not applied to the situation. Aiding a Spout Lore: the Cleric rolling 6 says "I know this statue looks familiar somehow"; the assistant says "oh, was there maybe an illustration in a tome in the monastery you were talking about the other day?" The assistant doesn't have the information about the statue, he has the information about the Cleric. If someone has a high WIS and a low bond, they can always do their own Discern Realities rather than assist.





105
Dungeon World / Re: Cantrips and Rotes - failed rolls
« on: September 01, 2014, 06:30:51 PM »
I was watching someone else play Dungeon World and they said that Cantrips and Rotes didn't require dice rolls. I looked in the rules but can't see officially them being different than other spells.

The rules as written don't spell out the exact relationship of Cantrips/Rotes to ordinary spells. It's very explicit that they don't count against your spell limits, and no other distinction is made, so claiming they don't need die rolls is an ex-recto house rule.

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