I am baffled by adventures that mechanically punish players for choosing to roleplay their characters as showing emotional vulnerability.As a general rule, most players will, given the choice, roleplay their characters as keeping their cool. Many RPGs recognize this, and thus force rolls whenever something might break the PCs' composure. The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide's rules for fear and mental stress prompt saving throws, and a Daggerheart courtier (tier 1 social adversary) uses their Mockery action to force a Presence Reaction Roll from a PC. A roll-less alternative is to offer a carrot/stick approach, such as a compel in Fate Core/Accelerated/Condensed; gain a fate point to play along with the compel, or pay a fate point to ignore it.I have seen a couple of independently published adventures for non-D&D game systems try an odd contrivance: if a player elects to roleplay their character demonstrating a certain emotional response, the adventure goes "Gotcha!" and penalizes them for it.Take The Lost Athanaeum for Mage: The Awakening 2e, for example. One potential major enemy is the Weaver, who reads minds and creates hard-hitting illusions to try to psyche out the characters. There are no rolls involved here, except...>Drain: If the Weaver can elicit strong emotions from its victims – fear, anger, sorrow or hate – it can devour these, sapping the will of its prey. This is resisted by...The Weaver's illusions do not supernaturally incite fear, anger, sorrow, or hate. Instead, if anyone dares to roleplay their character as showcasing strong negative emotions, the Weaver can activate its Drain ability on the PC, siphoning away Willpower.Or take Blood and Midnight for Daggerheart. This has a handful of similar moments, like:>Any PC who did not remain calm and collected marks Stress.There is no roll involved here. If you roleplay your character losing their composure, then mark Stress. (Not the other way around?)What do you make of these?
Aren't those both examples from more storytelling-focused games? Mage literally being from the Storyteller system, and Daggerheart being a streamer game. So you're not really supposed to be thinking in terms of "what's my best move here" but "what makes for the best narrative".
>>98042754It's a roleplaying game. You play it to play a role. Something this involves mechanics and that's good. Mechanical support for narrative events strengthen their impact.
>>98042754>Any PC who did not remain calm and collected marks Stress.I don't understand the context, but in almost any game thre is a point where at least one player "panics." They make a rash move, start mumbling, or outright declare they have no idea what to do. Sometimes they REALLY panic. The DM can easily count that as their character's feelings.
>>98042831Touhou plays RPGs like a game of chess
>>98042782Consider that as a Chronicles of Darkness game, Mage: The Awakening 2e errs on the side of "Reward the player a Beat (i.e. an XP piece) for roleplaying their character giving in to their emotions." Have a look at the following Condition, Triumphant:>TRIUMPHANT>The character has won a Duel Arcane and her triumph radiates through her Nimbus for any Awakened to sense. Until the Condition is resolved, the character gets an exceptional success on three successes rather than five on any Social rolls with anyone in Awakened society aware of the victory.>Resolution: The first time you fail a Social roll with a member of Awakened society, take a Beat, and the Condition ends.>Beat: Gain a Beat any time you throw your success in someone’s face, even if it risks making him angry or resentful.While your character is Triumphant, if you deliberately have your character act on that emotion unwisely, then you earn a Beat for it. The character earns an XP piece, in other words.This is similar to Fate Core/Accelerated/Condensed. If your character is compelled, whether by you as a player or by the GM, and you deliberately have your character give in to that compulsion, then you earn a fate point.Daggerheart shows another way to do it. Its social adversaries, such as the tier 1 courtier, have actions like this:>Mockery - Action: Mark a Stress to say something mocking and force a target within Close range to make a Presence Reaction Roll (14) to see if they can save face. On a failure, the target must mark 2 Stress and is Vulnerable until the scene ends.This boils it down to a roll, which I also think works well enough.These are how Mage: The Awakening 2e and Daggerheart respectively handle such scenarios, in stark contrast to independently published adventures such as The Lost Athanaeum and Blood and Midnight.
Your character being inconvenienced isn't punishment, it's gameplay.
>>98042754>What do you make of these?Primraily that game designers are very very bad at understanding emotional distress and how to build it into games, which also poorly mixes with players who want to do what they want when they want in their fantasies. Part of it flows from most modern style games (gm makes a plot, players follow it with slight variation but largely prescriptive arcs) requiring rails to function and the game rules being quite poor at distinguishing between narrative control mechanics and what are essentially combat mechanics. Its a further issue of a strong distinction between what some consider roleplay. The divide between players who are their characters and players who have a character they're playing, and further from that players who have a character they're running, is quite vast despite a seemingly minor difference in my description. Likely also bad module design, no surprise there most modules are trash. Its the illusion of the illusion of control, like selling a double snake oil to the gm who sells it to their players. Choice and railroads aren't very effective, but just writing >everyone present marks stress makes people feel bad so they have to couch it.
>>98042874They're sort of stuck wanting there to be story mechanics but not wanting narrative game mechanics. The middle ground is often riddled with contradictions and problems that you can work through if you're socially flexible, but often aren't worth the effort compared to free form or story games, and they're specifically not going to navigate well. I understand their difficulty but I'm not sure there's much to be done about it. On the other hand, it might just be them needing to vent rather than wanting solutions. Most people complain that way, even autists. Especially autists really.
>>98043258>Mockery - Action: Mark a Stress to say something mocking and force a target within Close range to make a Presence Reaction Roll (14) to see if they can save face. On a failure, the target must mark 2 Stress and is Vulnerable until the scene ends.This seems like a good example of a simultaneously overly mechanical and overly ambiguous rule. What is saving face? Why does it last until the scene ends regardless of other actions when people can recover from sass even if it effects them momentarily?
>>98043258>>Beat: Gain a Beat any time you throw your success in someone’s face, even if it risks making him angry or resentful.This is another good example of something that is mechanized but extremely exploitable if you run it mechanically. A player can go around town to everyone they know and gain XP each time. Or even repeatedly with the same person depending, there's no restriction against just being a dick constantly. It would require the gm to make a decision like >okay you don't make them mad enough to gain xp anymore which is this mixed space of narrative, gm fiat and explicitly mechanical rules. This tension is one of the problems with modern rulesets. They still cling to 90s era design and still require ignoring their own design for it to work in a plausible way in the gameworld. There are many simple solutions to the example problem but that they're missing is evident of a detached design that doesn't think about how the game actually plays. Its just caught up in the idea of mechanizing a social interaction. Just give them XP for the duel arcane. Just say >can only earn one beat flaunting victory per scene, does not have effect if flaunted victory has been done to present npcs etc.
>>98043384I am a great fan of the way Tom Abbadon's ICON works: a completely narrative-oriented, FitD-inspired noncombat half, and wholly disconnected, grid-based tactical combat half.I have few issues with this school of game design whatsoever, and I wish more games worked this way. (Indeed, some already do, like Strike! and its spin-off, Tailfeathers/Kazzam.)I also strongly believe that if the game wants to incentivize players having their PCs make bad decisions, give in to their emotions, etc., then the game should offer metacurrency in exchange. This is what Chronicles of Darkness does with its Conditions and Beats, and what Fate Core/Accelerated/Condensed does with compels and fate points. I take little issue with this.>>98043402>What is saving face?Resisting taking 2 Stress and becoming Vulnerable until the scene ends.>Why does it last until the scene ends regardless of other actions when people can recover from sass even if it effects them momentarily?Because the character has been shaken to the core. That is it.
>>98043435This is already a rule. You can gain a Beat from a given category only once per scene, as per Mage: The Awakening 2e, p. 81.So you can have your character continue to be obnoxious 1/scene for a Beat each time.
>>98043458There we go. Good. Clear writing is important. When you're explaining a circumstance to people adding the full context will help.
>>98043442This on the otherhand does not answer the question or help understand what saving face is or how whatever you think >shaken to the coremeans or operates in the game world.
>>98043522Capital-V "Vulnerable" is one of the core conditions in Daggerheart, as per the core rulebook, p. 102:>When you gain the Vulnerable condition, you’re in a difficult position within the fiction. This might mean you’re knocked over, scrambling to keep your balance, caught off guard, magically enfeebled, or anything else that makes sense in the scene. When a creature becomes Vulnerable, the players and GM should work together to describe narratively how that happened. While you are Vulnerable, all rolls targeting you have advantage.
>>98042814He's got a point. A system that disincentivizes roleplay with mechanical penalties is encouraging samey cool tempered badasses, already a problem even without mechanical encouragement or discouragement. All fine to say that the hobby is for non-ideal play, but I think we both know that at least a plurality of players refuse to show in character weakness unless mechanically crowbarred into it (which is usually followed by bitching).
>>98043258For that matter, Blades in the Dark has the following as an xp trigger:>You struggled with issues from your vice or traumas. Mark xp for this if your vice tempted you to some bad action or if a trauma condition caused you trouble. Simply indulging your vice doesn’t count as struggling with it (unless you overindulge).Which is yet another example of a game that positively incentivizes roleplaying a character showing emotional vulnerability, rather than slapping on a mechanical penalty, right?
>>98043546Okay thanks for clarifying. This helps understand what the writers intended with Mockery, but still seems off for making fun of someone meaning they suck at everything for the rest of the scene. Although it might tie in with the melodramatic tone of the game.
>>98043442>I am a great fan of the way Tom Abbadon's ICON works: a completely narrative-oriented, FitD-inspired noncombat half, and wholly disconnected, grid-based tactical combat half.>I have few issues with this school of game design whatsoever, and I wish more games worked this way. (Indeed, some already do, like Strike! and its spin-off, Tailfeathers/Kazzam.)This makes a lot of sense given our interactions over the years. Glad you've found things that work out for you.
>>98043574The Vulnerable condition does not make a character worse at everything. It simply makes them more susceptible to incoming dangers.The courtier is a tier 1 social adversary. It represents someone whose tongue is so sharp that it can really cut into someone's core.>>98043632>Glad you've found things that work out for you.Unfortunately, no.Strike!'s mechanical side is very lopsided in balance (and I say this as someone who is in the credits). Strike! 2e is currently in playtesting, but it is a long way away.I would like Tailfeathers/Kazzam more, but I really, really do not like school-type settings, and it is hard to reflavor the combat side of Tailfeathers/Kazzam.I do not like the current state of combat balance in Tom Abbadon's ICON 1.5 or the pre-playtest alpha of 2.0, as someone who has played a lot of it. The next playtest version of ICON 2.0 is still a long, long way away.As you might expect, this leaves me in an awkward position. The games whose noncombat/combat dichotomy I like are currently in limbo, waiting months or years for an update.
>>98042831>Punishing players for paying attention and being investedGreat.
>>98043693Is tier 1 the highest or similar? I mistook that as level 1 if this is the case.
>>98043693>I do not like the current state of combat balance inwell shit. I had hoped you'd found something. I see the area you're looking in and for, its pretty far from what I tend to like but have you seen Maleghast? Might be too far into wargame for you. Same for Moonstone. They're both missing the rpg part enough I don't think they'll land but just throwing spaghetti at the wall.
>>98044335No, tier 1 is the lowest tier. Enemies come in tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, and tier 4.A tier 2 social adversary, the courtesan, has the following reaction (a reaction, not an action):>Searing Glance - Reaction: When a PC within Close range makes a Presence Roll, you can mark a Stress to cast a gaze toward the aftermath. On the target’s failure, they must mark 2 Stress and are Vulnerable until the scene ends or they succeed on a social action against the Courtesan. On the target’s success, they must mark a Stress.This triggers whenever a PC makes a Presence Roll, and the effect is based on whether the character succeeds on that roll or fails it.
>>98044367No, I am not interested in wargames at all.
>>98044378>lowest tier adversary can create highly negative long term status effect everything I hear about Dagerheart just gets worse and worse.
>>98044424NTAIt's actually pretty good, been DMing it for a while, /tg/ are just being contrarian about it cause muh critical rollTier 1 mobs scale through a scaling table, if you want to throw it at higher tier players but use the mechanics. "Long term status effect" is generally an effect that persists throughout the current situation, not long-term. For example, during some ballroom/diplomacy situations, where the tongue is sharper than the sword, and one would be inclined drop an inconvenient truth or step on a noblewoman's dress rather than pull out a dagger.
>>98044424Vulnerable, if applied by PCs onto enemies, is fairly good. PCs often make rolls against enemies.Vulnerable, if applied by enemies onto PCs, is less of a hindrance. It only really affects attack rolls made against PCs: actual attack rolls, not just social maneuvering.I am not particularly bothered. The courtier is an adversary, after all, same as any other monster. The courtier needs an action to use Mockery, and it costs the courtier a point of Stress.
>>98044414The weirdest part is you are but can't really see it and on account of that, can't really put the narrative part into it. Its like watching a dog trying to hump a football. I hope it works out for you man, glhf.
Maybe you should use better games, Edna.
>>98042831>>98042814>>98042782You’re missing the point.What 2Hu is saying is that these mechanics incentivise players to nosell everything Basically furthering what they were already doing in playing their character like a video game,No fear, no nausea, no reaction to the world.
>>98043275How are you people so fucking dense
>>98045822Not a problem if you're trying to roleplay.
>>98043258I see. I guess I'm with >>98043344 then, it's likely the designers simply not understanding the system. Seems like that's not just a d&d problem.>>98045878Maybe not on the surface, but subconsciously you're gonna be influenced by it
>>98042754Good, it's a slippery slope that turns game into vapid therapy sessions if left unchecked
>>98042754Your threads were more interesting when you pretended to play games, Hoyoshit spammer.
