Scampir

Be the Choster you wanna read

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One Canuck built the #ttrpg tag and the #mecha tag. And that was me.

Cohost Cultural Institution: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots
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Scampir
@Scampir

I read Fellowship Books 1, 2, and 3. Now I am reading the 4e DMG.


Scampir
@Scampir

If you need a Game Master's Guide for ICON I would recommend reading the 4E DMG.


Scampir
@Scampir

oh my god it actually explains mapping in the game terms that it needs. It's an encounter flowchart. Fuck. Those School Games better be taking notes.


Scampir
@Scampir

I have read a lot of dungeon-creating advice since I started listening to the Adventure Zone in 2016, and never have I seen a design process advised where the contents should be created prior to the container. It's always build your map and fill it.

I've seen adventure flowcharts before (FFG's Edge of the Empire) but the specific example I always remember pivots based on if the players achieve a certain goal in a stage of the adventure. But here I feel a little more compelled to envision a series of self-contained activities (combat minigame, room investigation, roleplay scenario) that once decided, are organized first into a flow chart to appraise them for sequencing, then afterwards coated with a paint of "dungeon map." I thought I would just be reading over GM books and sections but I want to take a shot at getting a dungeon together in this way for ICON.


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in reply to @Scampir's post:

I'm only reading for GM (Overlord) stuff, but I was really intrigued by the explanation on Cuts and how it seems like setting scenes and stakes is a collaborative exercise. It reminds me of playing Galactic 2e when we would do the Idle Dreaming.

in reply to @Scampir's post:

Oh absolutely I'm keeping tabs on it. I haven't checked to see if a new update has posted after 1.5, but I'm bad at being a play tester, so I shelved it to focus on LANCER

in reply to @Scampir's post:

I know people hated 4E and I know it has lots of problems, but also that game always felt like it really knew what it was doing mechanically (even if that wasn't what people wanted it to do.)

Fascinating...this is something I'm realizing I have trouble with as a player coming from video game experience, in video games sometimes space is just space, like in real life, sometimes spaces exist because of functions you don't care about. But in narrative land, that's all gonna get abstracted away most of the time. If there's space, it's for doing something in. It's foolish to expect to wander into a room without something happening.

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I agree! Space is a medium for action. Contrast this with place, which is an object where we invest meaning.

Video games are interesting to prop up against roleplaying games because descriptions take the place of visuals in the ttrpg, so the exercise will often deal in easy to understand cultural symbols, which you point out as a process of abstraction.

that's not dissimilar to the way TSR's SAGA system laid out acts and scenes. If the group does this, that leads to this scene. If this, then this scene. Else this scene, or if that doesn't fit at all improvise for the time being and find your way back to the plot when you can. Flowchart that takes you from place to place, moment to moment.