Season 07 episode 10

[HyveMynd]

Mar 28, 2012 8:12:17 GMT -8 uselesstriviaman said:

I'll see your viking metal and raise you PIRATE METAL! Alestorm rocks.

You know what sucks about Alestorm, UTM? The fact that they currently only have three albums! Otherwise, yeah they friggin' rock too! I love how the first song on their latest album "Back Through Time" is about pirates who sailed through a portal in time and landed back in the Viking Era.

You put your faith in Odin and Thor,
We put ours in cannons and whores.
Your Viking gods won't save you now,
When the pirates strike from your starboard bow!

I laughed so hard when I first heard that song I couldn't breathe for a bit. The album cover is great too; the Alestorm skeletal pirate captain with his sword stuck through a Viking helmet. Yarrrrgh matey! I'd pay me weight in gold ta hear the Poxy Boggards sing a cover o' one of Alestorm's songs. Hell, I'd even pay Stu's weight in gold ta sweeten the deal.

Mar 28, 2012 4:53:33 GMT -8 azuretalon said:

I love the idea of the mechanic, a very elegant solution. What specifically does "acting under fire" mean in this system?

Basically, a players uses the acting under fire move whenever their PC is under any kind of serious pressure, or needs to do something that requires unusual discipline, resolve, endurance, or care. Just like every other move in Apocalypse World, you simply roll 2D6 +stat (in this case Cool).

• On a strong hit (10+), you do it no problem.
  
• On a weak hit (7-9), you flinch, hesitate, or stall; the MC can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice.
  

So if the persuading character uses 'the stick' option, anything the target attempts to do other than comply with the request (within reason, of course) will call for a roll. On a strong hit they're fine, on a weak hit maybe they hesitate or stall, and on a miss something really bad happens.

It's also worth explaining that a player only has to mark experience five times before they advance; when they mark their fifth experience, they erase all the marks, reset back to zero again, and get to choose an improvement for their character. So choosing 'the carrot' option when manipulating someone can be a huge incentive. Marking experience is like one-fifth of a level, to put it into D&D terms.

It's been a while since I tinkered around with mechanics, mind you, but if you were going to translate that idea to other systems... Hmmm. For Savage Worlds it could be earn an XP point (since you only need five to gain an Advancement) / become Shaken. Being shaken sucks a lot though, so that might be too harsh. For a d20 system, maybe earn a chunk of XP (enough to make doing it tempting) / get a penalty to your rolls. Like -5 or something. I dunno.

[kevinr]

In savage worlds deluxe it specifically says under the persuasion skill that it should never be used on other player characters. SO a little insight there on which way at least that game developer leans on the subject.

[tyler]

Holy fuck.

I just listened to Amon Amarth on grooveshark.

Why did I not know of them sooner?

Edit: I just realized how long it's been since I added any new music to my library. It's horrible what the lack of disposable income does to a man!

[HyveMynd]

Mar 29, 2012 19:32:30 GMT -8 tyler said:

Holy fuck.

I just listened to Amon Amarth on grooveshark.

Why did I not know of them sooner?

Don't worry tyler. All that matters is that you know of them now.

The albums that get played most often on my iPod headphones or blasted through my speakers (I'm sure my mild-mannered Japanese neighbors love me for that) are Fate of Norns, Surtur Rising, Twilight of the Thunder God, Versus The World, and With Odin On Our Side. There are a few other Amon Amarth albums, but even I can't listen to them because they're too damn heavy.

It's hard to choose, but I think my favorite songs are Where Silent Gods Stand Guard, Thousand Years of Oppression, and ...And Soon the World Will Cease To Be all from the Versus The World album. You're welcome.

[jazzisblues]

Mar 29, 2012 18:55:00 GMT -8 kevinr said:

In savage worlds deluxe it specifically says under the persuasion skill that it should never be used on other player characters. SO a little insight there on which way at least that game developer leans on the subject.

I have a deep and abiding problem with the concept of using social powers or skills against another player character. I tend to be very careful with what I say when an npc is using those powers. This is all because I refuse to remove the player's free will. The way I deal with this is to say influencing things and give the player the chance to role play it how they see fit. My opinion is that the player should act on the influence the way their character would react and not necessarily in the way that is most optimal for the game.

As an example, last night in my Savage Worlds game the bad guy was using a mental power to confuse the pc's. What I told them (when they missed on their roll to resist) was that the slippery bastard appeared to be 10' away from where they thought he was which would have had them shooting at one of their own. The affected players knew what was happening mechanically and though they didn't actually get to, I am quite sure that they would have shot at their own knowing (as players) full well what was happening. But I didn't force them to do anything.

If a player wants to use a social skill or power against another player character I REALLY want them to tell me that on the down low (a note is good) and let me handle the mechanics except for the die rolls. As a player I get very not happy when another player tries to use social skills on me. I realize full well that the player may not have the skills that their character does so I will make allowances for that, but having a +20 in persuade does not replace role playing in my opinion.

As a gm I prefer for a player to say, "I'm going to go talk to the guard and try to gain us entry into the tower," and then go talk to the guard and then we'll work out the mechanics rather than to say, "I'm going to go use my persuade skill to convince the guard to let us in." It's a (possibly) semantic point, and like I said I do recognize that all players do not have the ability to persuade a guard to let them in, but I want to see the role play and then I'll fit the mechanics to it rather than the game just be about rolling dice.

As always, just my 2 krupplenicks on the subject, your mileage may of course vary.

JiB

[CreativeCowboy]

Mar 30, 2012 6:57:38 GMT -8 jazzisblues said:

The way I deal with this is to say influencing things and give the player the chance to role play it how they see fit. JiB

I did the same, for the same reasons, and in a Blue Book. Sprites attacked two players (and evil PC and a good PC). The evil one they put to sleep and the good they confused. They confused him into thinking a large constrictor snake was going to attack him - both were up in tree boughs (evil roped in and sleeping, good sitting up on a branch) and the good guy just jumped down.

This, I rationalized, impressed the Sprites who ended up not killing one or both characters. They took the good PC's word for escorting the evil thief. The good character acted according to his alignment - and the player had never played RPG before. To him the Sprites spoke.

I play OSR. Sprites are 4 CR. It's their forest. The players were 1st level. By the mechanics, if its about rolling dice and by the book, the PCs die. But the combat itself had role playing - much in accord with Angry DM's post describing role-playing here: angrydm.com/2011/08/defining-your-game/

It was full of win and was a memorable episode much remembered in later games because, I contend, neither the rules as written nor I could take credit for it. It was the players of the game (DM included) playing the game. Together.

[heavymetaljess]

Mar 27, 2012 21:19:32 GMT -8 HyveMynd said:

I'll give a big shout out to Amon Amarth, Ensiferum, Turisas, Tyr, and Wintersun. Amon Amarth is fecking awesome, though a lot harder than "hair metal" mentioned on the episode.

For my D&D game, especially, I listen to all of the above. Hell, I listen to all of them all the time but I find they are great for writing a game about a frozen county. I have to add that I also listen to my fair shake of Man O War as well as my all time favorite for fantasy games - Summoning. If you haven't enjoyed them before, ALL of their songs are about Lord of the Rings, but they're just a tad different sounding then Blind Guardian...

youtu.be/B8IC4aSq-Mg

When I play my free-form text based games online I have a playlist for each character. My time traveling occultist listens to a lot of chamber music where as my gun-slinging former goddess listens to black metal and industrial - Ministry, Rotting Christ, Leather Strip, Astarte.

[ironnikki]

To echo what was said above, this episode was definitely one of the most entertaining yet. I'm going to have to be careful not to listen to HJ while working with dangerous chemicals again...

Stu, I received the first book of the Thomas Covenant series as a gift about a year ago. I tried to get through it, and just couldn't. I've heard people say that it's a great series, and I've heard others say that it doesn't get much better than the first book, but I just refused to read something that left such a bad taste in my mouth. Honestly, I could live with disliking the main character, but he was pretty vile, and the rest of it really didn't make me want to continue reading anyway. Glad that it wasn't just me that wanted to throw the book away, haha.

[Deleted]

I am also one of those people who stopped reading the Thomas Covenant books, I threw the first book into the trunk of my car and forgot about it for a couple of years.

Then I tried again. I have to admit, they are in my top 3 favorite series of all time. The first 3 (Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant) are my favorite. Sure the main character is a dick, and does some really horrid stuff at first, but if you really think about the way he was taught to think about his sickness and his just recently finishing his therapy, he had reasons for the things he did. Self preservation is a powerful thing. Yes, what he did to Lena is inexcusable, though, and he is later wracked with self loathing once he realizes it. Also, this was just a normal guy, not a gamer or fantasy fan, but a writer with both feet firmly planted on the ground who is suddenly dropped into another world. People demanded things from him he could not deliver.

Before I make this a long post about the books, let me stop here.

For a long while, I was really into finding books where a normal person was dropped into another world and told to deal. The Thomas Covenant books were the first where the character refused to believe it. Barbara Hambley had the Time Of The Dark books which were awesome. Alan Dean Foster has the Spellsinger series. Christopher Stasheff has the Wizard in Rhyme books, also awesome. Terry Brooks with his Magic Kingdom For Sale books. And another all time favorite, Rick Cook's "Wizard's Bane" books, where a guy is placed into a magical world and realizes magic is like programming. He ends up programming a spell to SPAM the world with a sensor to locate a woman captured by the evil guys. There are more, but I've already wasted an hour tracking those down from what I remembered their titles being.