ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling

joined 2 years ago
[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling 3 points 19 hours ago

The oldest members of Gen Alpha would be 14, turning 15 this year..

[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling 31 points 20 hours ago

I have a friend that has been trying for the past 2 years to get me to stop using Linux because its a "security risk". My wife is also scared of piracy and adblockers. This is what most people are like.

You are in a tech-literate bubble.

I would probably call my wife's vagina her Temple Garden, even though she'd rather me call it the Breeding Pool.

So, first off, Satanists dont actually believe in magic, but they do believe that people need religion to some extent, that people need to live in a world of wonders. So, they turn things under their control into magick. For example, you combine some ingredients correctly in a baking pan, nurture it with heat for the correct amount of time, and you transmute these base ingredients with the power of life and death into bread. That's magic. You enacted your agency upon the world to transform it in a manner that you will it to.

LaVey had some very insightful descriptions in the Satanic Bible, which otherwise is fairly useless beyond being an edgy bookshelf decoration, about how ceremonial magick works. (I tend to refer to this as ritual magic, since I think he was rather limited in his imagination). As he puts it, every ceremony needs an appropriate ritual space to invoke the correct state of mind in your audience, a leader (you) dressed in the appropriate vestments, a wand to direct the attention of your audience, and an altar to act as the focal point. You may also need a throne or crown to perform your authority.

When I started DMing, this was how I approached my task. The ritual space is the table with the map and the minis, the DM screen was my altar, my metal dice (or rather their rolling sound) was my wand, my vestments were the stack of rulebooks directly to my left, and the one nice chair I possessed was my throne. Each helped convey a message that supported my authority. My DM screen has transparent pockets that I would put art into that was appropriate to the vibe I wanted. My books, which i would gesture to whenever I made a ruling, had three meanings: first, the rules are what the game derives its authority from since the published rules feel more official; second, I had read them all and my players knew it, so I could usually imply any given rule was in the books somewhere; third, they were mine, but the players could also use them, as I am a generous and benevolent god. The dice also give legitimacy, but I had also found that (if used sparingly) nothing instilled greater dread in the hearts of gamers than the sound the the DM rolling on tables behind the DM screen, which is why i used metal dice rolled on a dice tray I had made by taping two plates back-to-back. Additionally, lending my metal dice to my players was a literally weightier display of my benevolence.

Teaching can be interpreted similarly. The ritual space is the classroom; it should be decorated to go along with your curriculum, and the desks and items in the room should be arranged in a way that encourages behaviors you want and discourages unwanted behaviors. Your vestments are your teacher clothes, because you need to look like a teacher to be respected. The altar is the whiteboard for obvious reasons. Every teacher has their opinion on what kind of wand is best, but I prefer a yardstick over a laser pointer. And finally, the throne is the teacher desk.

This is also why I am really opposed to virtual learning. I cannot create my ritual circle when I am not in the same room as my students. If I am physically present but don't have a classroom, I can just put more work into my appearance and performance. But I guess i will have to adapt. Besides, I also realized that adhering strictly to Satanic ritual practice made my DMing rather rigid and encouraged me to act like an asshole sometimes, so these days I'm more focused on creating a space having where my friends can have fun with me.

[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is sort of the reverse, but I learned how to DM from Satanism. I'm not a Satanist anymore but I still use the framework of magick to talk about the practice of authority. It has come in pretty handy as a teacher.

[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Ah, yes, the bronce age, my favoeite

[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Damn, I forgot about her for a while

[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling 45 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That's a strange looking cat

[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling 27 points 4 days ago

I have been informed that the spoilers i gave are misleading and factually wrong. I stand by my incorrect interpretation of a movie I havent seen.

How long do we have left before we are hitting a milestone per second?

 
 

Ok, so I've been hammering away at my homebrew ttrpg-wargame and I decided to give clerics the ability to conjure troops. Different alignments get different things. So far, I've given clay golems to the good alignment, flesh golems to the evil alignment, and awakening plants to the chaotic alignment. I am unsure what to give to the lawful alignment.

To clarify the vibe I am going for, here's a a paraphrased version of each one's fluff text:

  • "This clay golem you have given life to is a person. It is, by its nature, inclined towards kindness, helpfulness, and generosity."
  • "The flesh golem you have constructed is a person with a different alignment from yours. They respect you as their creator, but may rebel if you do not discipline them, or if they feel disrespected, or if they disagree with you strongly enough."
  • "You grant sapience and mobility to a number of plants of your choice. They may or may not appreciate this."

Vibe-wise, whatever I give to the lawful alignment should be obedient, predictable, and honest. My first thought is to give the lawful alignment stone golems, as in animating statues. However, i think it needs to parallel the mass troop creation i have granted the chaotic alignment. I have a number of ideas, but everything I've come up with either doesnt seem to follow the Lawful vibe in at least one way (Animating armor seems very scary and somewhat evil) or doesnt seem sufficiently exceptional or awesome (You have a class feature that lets you rally a peasant mob? Watch me do that with a Persuasion roll.)

I am also very averse to giving them the ability to call down angels, as I think creatures that powerful or abstract should never be easy to call upon unless the DM wants them to be easy to call upon.

For a last bit of context, lawful-aligned clerics are basically paladins. So, a better version of the question would be how you think paladins would conjure or fabricate troops if they had a class ability to do so?

 
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submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling to c/[email protected]
 
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49854495

Came across the Bunnies and Burrows ttrpg, and it made me wonder if there was a wargame equivalent. I mean, the Warriors series is still super popular, sk there's gotta be a cat-bases wargame somewhere!

 

Came across the Bunnies and Burrows ttrpg, and it made me wonder if there was a wargame equivalent. I mean, the Warriors series is still super popular, sk there's gotta be a cat-bases wargame somewhere!

 

I have been chugging away at making my own fantasy ttrpg for several months now, and a decision I made early on has been bugging me as possibly being misguided.

I really want a fast combat system. However, there are two ways the interpret "fast" here. The one I committed to early on was to make each round one second long, so on your turn you only have time to either move or act or do nothing. This does mean each turn feels really fast, since the amount of choices you need to make each round are extremely small, and this also make spellcasting seem way more risky and expensive than it actually is since you need to commit multiple rounds to the casting. It feels fast, but combat can take hours.

The other option I did not pursue is to compress each scene into one big roll, creating a system similar to the Narrative Dice system of Genesys where you spend several minutes gathering a pool of dice which represent the chaos and misfortune of the scene, roll them once, augur the bones, and then combat is done. Usually the entire combat scene will take less than 5 minutes, but it's a long 5 minutes filled with details, debate, and checking your work.

The reason I was attracted to the more granular first option was mainly because it's ironically the less crunchy option, since your options each round are to either Move, Fight, Defend, Aim, or do a quick Skill Check. However, as the system is growing it's becoming more clear to me that my game is fundamentally not about the fighting, its about the journey there and back to the community you call home. So, I'm starting to think I should have taken a more zoomed-out approach to combat, maybe starting with wargame rules and then working backwards to derive 1-person combat, maybe trying to make my own narrative dice system using the normal polyhedral dice.

In the end, my priority is to avoid what most DnD-likes end up doing, which is combat that feels slow and also takes hours, but I gotta go in one direction or other. I'm curious what y'all's preferences are. When you are playing a TTRPG, would you rather play combat that feels fast but actually takes hours, or combat that feels slow but actually takes minutes? What's more important to you?

 
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