I wonder if dnd would have taken off like it did if the dude’s name was like Smith or Jackson instead of GYGAX
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Both the american steve jackson and the british steve jackson were popular, important figures in the rpg scene of the 80s
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Yeah American Steve Jackson really leaned into the “Steve Jackson” branding too. I don’t think he’s even done anything himself since at least the late 90s but his company remains Steve Jackson Games.
Like Knights of the Dinner Table called their Gygax Equivilient Gary Jackson for a reason.
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I HAVE to talk about how insane rank is in Star Trek Adventures, as a thing to have in a tabletop rpg.
Further Star Trek Adventures shennanigans
A very fun scenario today in Star Trek Adventures about a micro-wormhole being discovered in our plasma tubes and it turning out to be the “sun” that warms a micro-planet in a micro-universe on the other side. I’m a pile of one quintillion nanites so this was perfect! I made a tiny spaceship and worked with the doctor to rig up a holodeck bridge! We flew threw it!
Now throughout, the GM and I were fireman-carrying each player through the session, with me badging each person when, say, the doctor needed to figure out how to rig up a neural interface, or when we were piloting the ship and needed a pilot, etc. I am here describing what I am presenting on-screen in our meetings, and saying such as “One option might be ____… it would be risky though! I know it sounds a little batty… what do you think?” Sustained 15 seconds of silence "Quint gazes into the blank stares of her comrades. ‘Ah! Well it’s worth a shot surely!’ " I then ultimately asked the captain of the ship directly if this sounded like a good course of action and he said “Yes, that sounds good.”, so we did my fucking insane plan with no collaboration or input. Madness!!! Zero interaction!!! Perhaps it is not me that there is something wrong with but in fact something wrong with the universe???
So we reach the end of the session, and the entire group becomes very invested all of a sudden in one thing: WILL WE GET PROMOTIONS??
Far and away the most engaged they’ve ever been is on this question on if they have gotten enough points to move from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander, or from Lieutenant Commander to Commander. Am I insane??? Why would this matter in the absolute least?? Y’all want to have more hypothetical responsibility but also don’t want to do anything at your current rank? Madness!!!
One player in particular did get promoted by the game’s system four sessions ago, meaning that she now is a Commander, right below the Captain of the ship, and complains nonstop about how she doesn’t like having to do things. Why the desire to rank up yet more??? Did you all not see the heavy burdens of command?? Did none of you recall the B plot in Thine Own Self exploring this very concept???
For the record I am Lt. Jr. Grade because I certainly did not want to be any other player’s “boss”, and it seems super irrelevant because even if one player is captain and another is ensign, at the table we’re never going to like, see the captain override an ensign’s wishes or issue a direct order that goes contrary to their desires (unless we’re on some next-level rp), so from my perspective it seems like nothing more than flavor.
I dunno I just could not quite wrap my mind around the notion that the most interesting thing to do in STA is CAREER ADVANCEMENT??? I imagine us all power-leveling to become 5 admirals and then winning STA by nature of not being at the rank where one would go on adventures. This is the behavior of madmen!!! We’re here to explore the goddamn universe!! Seek out new life!! Figure out weird shit!!
The other thing that really blew me away was the fact that in STA, you can have just many characters, which is a-ok in theory but with this particular group, each other player has 3 guys with different sets of skillsets but no differences in personalities, who solve each problem, in the event we ever encounter a blocker. So like, we need a security guy, a player puts their doctor on ice and takes the security guy out of storage, and then crushes all the security rolls, then puts him back on ice. Madman behavior!!!
I am still enjoying the game quite a bit but it is truly just me and the GM riffing. Perhaps playing a tabletop game need not involve anything further! This is the two-player ttrpg I had previously only heard tale of!
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There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a passive player, but it def sounds like this is not the game for these people. They need a roll dice & kill stuff game.
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I have actually seen one specific player roused to action:
She did a lot of coursework in the medical field, and desires greatly to use this knowledge, so any time the GM involves a virus or goop or bacterium, the player will ask the GM extremely specific questions about the nature of the symptoms or organism, so that the player can from there Dr. House it to gather essential scenario information.
As you might expect, this has almost exclusively led to the GM saying some variation of “Ah… heh… I suppose I don’t know that much about viruses…” as the player begins launching off of assumptions from the stated observations. On the one hand, I love the engagement and excitement there, on the other hand, is it not the absolute zenith of absurdity to expect the GM to meticulously design life-accurate interstellar organisms for every session, ones which hold up greatly to scrutiny by a professional?
I guess all of this is just to say that I’m always interested in how different people interpret what we’re doing in a ttrpg. There’s players that want a power fantasy, there’s players that want to build a collaborative story, and there’s players that see the game as a thing to be won, defeated, and 100%ed. And there’s players that just want to hang out socially and the game isn’t even something they’re interested in!
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I confess I’ve never played but I always liked the sound of this one
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The tulpa vs. shrug arms race of learning about and describing new medieval & renaissance locking mechanisms was something to behold…
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the obvious thing here is the GM should be asking the player to describe them, as in-character technobabble dumps. and if they don’t want to, yep it’s once again an extreme reaction to a newly-discovered alien species’ semen
ymmv with your play group
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I was thinking this too: When I come up with some crazy-ass science solution, I’m sort of just throwing together in the moment what it looks like (I usually describe it as happening with the effects of TNG), and this is the collaborative part, where the GM will typically ask for a roll and based on that roll, says if it works or not. If it does work, he may adjust what I had done to fit the nature of the mystery.
Like, Star Trek is about our heroes cooking up solutions to baffling space mysteries, and we’re cooking up this episode together.
Another reason I was so into Sentinel Comics’ system where it made negotiation of the successes and the failures and the scenes part of the ttrpg system. You were very much building the story of the comic book together.
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my youtube recommendations have a permanent presence of lockpicking videos because of this
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When you spout Technobabble about a problem, roll +Science
On a hit: you accurately described the problem and know the means to solve it
On a critical hit: take +1 forward to solving the problem
On a miss: your technobabble contains a mistake that worsens the crisis. Prepare yourself.
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The desire to play more rpgs has driven me to becoming a more socially outgoing person and to reconnecting with friends or reevaluating some of them too. It’s been interesting though a little intense. I am being pretty proactive about trialing people as players. Personalities or expectations of play don’t always mesh well and I am far more willing to keep going with the people I think work well together than to drag someone along that, obviously but not explicitly, doesn’t vibe with the rest. I used to be desperate for players. But now I only want to play games with friends, make stuff up together, feel something exciting and memorable with each other around the table. And that seems very possible if I put a little care into curating the space. Which has meant uninviting or not inviting back players willing to take space from others, and just kind of keeping any stereotypically overwhelming masculine energy at a minimum. At least that is the kind of table I want right now. Maybe in the future I’ll want to be at one or host one that’s more “grognard” or obnoxious.
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YouTube keeps trying to make me watch that questing beast guy’s videos if I fall asleep on the couch but I don’t want to hear him talk about how cool that racist willy Wonka game is nor say “faction play” over and over
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Why is the Willy wonka game racist? Also why is it an rpg?
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Oompa Loompas were originally just african slaves, so the racism part is just part of the property.
RPGs on the other hand? No idea.
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This one
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Kind of surprised the Burzum endorsement from Raggi years ago wasn’t enough to keep him away but yeah, I’d distance myself from a guy who liked Jordan Petersen too.
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LotFP is always so cringy. Gross
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I admittedly have watched a bunch of this dude’s videos lately. And others. None of it has been worth the minimal effort it’s taken to watch them. But beside that fact, I also think that dude is particularly annoying.
He helped me to hate the kind of “content creator” who just makes a vid ostensibly citing like a blog post or published piece of writing but actually just recaps the entire thing for their own audience. And now I see the truth that 98% of youtube just sucks.
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