Crafty Seminar

[Crafty_Pat]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Rest assured that we're listening - and that there will be more opportunities to engage with evolving Mastercraft design.

[Agent 333]

Just as a note: I've never air-dropped a party without giving them free parachutes. SC2 explicitly allows GMs to throw in whatever gear they feel is necessary for a mission, that's definitely one of those cases. Or do some GMs out there not let the party air drop unless they've got enough parachutes for everyone and a spare plane? Do you make the group Wheelman take a boat to get to the villains island HQ? Or are the PCs just supposed to say "Well, he's got an impenetrable defense of water. We can't swim out there with all our gear and nobody has a boat, so they win. Darn."?

This actually comes to another point: If you're GMing and nobody has the required skill/feat/ability/gear to progress the plot, do you tend to work around it or make them go out of their way to work it? If a player didn't have a special ability that gave him a bonus when doing X, would X ever come up? (To use the boat example, lets say Mark has a feat that lets him borrow a vehicle from one of his contacts for a scene. Nobody on his team has a boat, but he has this buddy that does, problem solved. If Mark didn't have the feat, what do you do? Make a whole new scene of "The party procures a boat"? If you do, doesn't it seem like you're missing out on what could be a fun boat-theft scheme because you've got the free boat? At what point do character abilities trump party fun? At what point is "procure boat" such a hassle that the party is sick of it?)

Sorry, this seminar has caused me to think more questions than is probably healthy...

[Crafty_Alex]

Just as a note: I've never air-dropped a party without giving them free parachutes. SC2 explicitly allows GMs to throw in whatever gear they feel is necessary for a mission, that's definitely one of those cases. Or do some GMs out there not let the party air drop unless they've got enough parachutes for everyone and a spare plane? Do you make the group Wheelman take a boat to get to the villains island HQ? Or are the PCs just supposed to say "Well, he's got an impenetrable defense of water. We can't swim out there with all our gear and nobody has a boat, so they win. Darn."?

Well, there's common GM sense, based on experience ("don't force an airdrop you don't want to give the heroes parachutes for") and then there's a perception that in a game with so many rules, you need permission to do anything. The signal:noise ratio in SC2 can be high enough it's easy to overlook the "give 'em what they need" rule so you could reasonably presume you need permission - therein lies the problem

This actually comes to another point: If you're GMing and nobody has the required skill/feat/ability/gear to progress the plot, do you tend to work around it or make them go out of their way to work it? If a player didn't have a special ability that gave him a bonus when doing X, would X ever come up? (To use the boat example, lets say Mark has a feat that lets him borrow a vehicle from one of his contacts for a scene. Nobody on his team has a boat, but he has this buddy that does, problem solved. If Mark didn't have the feat, what do you do? Make a whole new scene of "The party procures a boat"? If you do, doesn't it seem like you're missing out on what could be a fun boat-theft scheme because you've got the free boat? At what point do character abilities trump party fun? At what point is "procure boat" such a hassle that the party is sick of it?)

I think this is an issue of trying to plan multiple paths to the same resolution, more than anything. As a company, we are very hard on our adventure writers because we force a certain level of "sandboxing" adventures as a matter of course, precisely so you don't have to force them to detour wildly in order to complete a mission. In your example, I might put a boat in the adventure, but also make a helicopter available to them, or allow the party to stow away on someone else's boat - multiple ways to solve the problem so if they don't have the exact right skill (boating) or tool (boat) they can still solve the problem (get to the destination). It's a crucial and difficult skill to develop for complex adventure writing.

 

Sorry, this seminar has caused me to think more questions than is probably healthy...

No apologies necessary. Now you know where Pat and I are coming from! There are many, many ways to solve these issues, with varying degrees of satisfaction for the players. Finding the right one that balances grokkability, ease of use, practicality at the table, and fun is both an art and a science....and can be maddening.

[Agent 333]

No apologies necessary. Now you know where Pat and I are coming from! There are many, many ways to solve these issues, with varying degrees of satisfaction for the players. Finding the right one that balances grokkability, ease of use, practicality at the table, and fun is both an art and a science....and can be maddening.

I should actually be grateful I'm thinking of these questions now. I hate to think how many missed opportunities for "Get a boat/helicopter/whatever" scene's I've missed due to just saying "you know what, you need it to get to where you're going, have it for free."

Oh, one more thing: On the topic of Signature Gear (the one or two picks idea from the seminar), I'd be OK with it IFF the option to get more pieces wasn't a full feat per piece. At the interest or proficiency level I could get around it, or a feat for three or whatever, but I'm not going to spend a feat to get one more piece of gear. I've yet to see someone take Pack Rat, even after it was upgraded in the second printing (though I have seen someone take Extra Holding because the extra Rep makes it worth it (it also helped that the campaign was entirely within a single city so the Holding meant more)). Also, my players tend to... dislike restricted gear systems, much preferring a money or points based system of acquiring gear. After all, not all gear is created equal. The SC2 system was especially onerous, because if you wanted BETTER gear you had to also get MORE gear, and all those extra Cal I possessions were tedious to track just so you could get one or two Cal III possessions that you actually cared about. The fact you could "trade down" made the opposite (more low-quality gear) never be an issue.

[ludomastro]

Super Detail Specific vs. Thematic Development

My home players were initially overwhelmed with all the options and got mad at me for suggesting FC.  Once I explained that they didn't need to micro-manage every level to have a good character they all switched to thematic development and quit worrying about it.

Stress and Subdual Damage Types

I had players pick both subdual and stress dealing weapons so I had to learn all the systems.  That said, I found tracking them all to be a big pain for me as the GM.  (Players hated taking grades of Shaken or Fatigued but they tended to dislike all penalties so I don't worry about that.)

One character used an axe in one hand and a hammer in the other which was a pain in the ass to track for special characters.  And, truth be told, I really wasn't expecting that.  I like the flavor of the rules (and find that I can flavor the narrative) but it is a lot of extra bookkeeping.  Also, some of my players just can't get over things like a hammer doing subdual damage.  This is normally mitigated by the use of standard characters who go down the same no matter what you hit them with.

Vitality

With my table old hands at other d20 games, vitality is just something you track while getting beaten up.  Some see and use it as a narrative device, others don't care.

For the special NPC, I find that vitality is a giant countdown clock and I don't like it. In my experience the fights with standard NPC's go like lightning and those with specials take FOREVER.  It seems to me that if you give a special Health IV and at least Defense IV, then the fight gets boring unless someone crits.  Sadly the dice weren't favorable and my players normally had to grind through all that vitality more often than not.  What was supposed to be a challenging fight (and the climax of that particular adventure) with an ancient ghoul turned out to be yawn-fest due to vitality grinding.

NPC's - Standard vs. Special

I primarily use standard NPC's but will occasionally throw in a special or two for flavor.  (e.g. I want the captain of the guard to be demonstrably better than those he leads.)

My quibble with standards is the damage save feels like it should be faster than it is.  I've tinkered with giving them a pool of points - damage points for lack of a better name - that are the kind of like a combined vitality & wounds.  Not as dramatic but easier to keep track of.

I tend to get lost if the NPC has a ton of qualities & PLEASEHELPME, character options.  I know the system better than my tabletop players (with one possible exception) but that is too much to deal with in the middle of a furious fight.  (e.g. I had trouble with the reavers in Darkest Hour because the demo-group kept me hoping faster than I could cross-reference things.)

Gotta say though, I LOVE the NPC creation system.  It allows me to make whatever I want and if I'm not feeling particularly creative, I can slightly tweak a preexisting monster and viola, I have what I need.

Combat

I've run both SC2.0 and FC for my home table and never had a problem with combat itself.  (See previous comments for things that touch on combat.)

The only issue I've seen with combat is that a player can create a combat monster that destroys fun.  (My wife was guilty of this in the last campaign.  Her swordswoman was nicknamed "The Blender" due to excessive use of the Cleave feat.)  The issue was ultimately resolved OOC as throwing more at the party so the rest of the player could do something just turned the spotlight on her more.  (And, given that it was a combat-oriented campaign, switching to diplomacy wasn't an option.)

Dice Rolling and other mechanics

My players and I all prefer to have players actively rolling (which might explain their annoyance with passive checks) but there are options that allow the NPC's to do this to.  (See previous comment about keeping up with character based options for standard NPC's.)  Nonetheless, I find that it works anyway.

Speaking of passive checks, I just assume that my players roll a 10 and add the appropriate bonus.  If it is a dramatic scene or suitably important, I'll actually roll for them.

I find that capped skill checks work for me.  My players don't like them but then again they don't like limits.  I look at it this way: If you have no ranks in something then you should NOT be expected to do well under pressure.  If it is not a pressure situation, why are you making your players roll for it anyway?  I've pointed out that even hitting the cap represents a significantly better than average effort.  Although the players accept this argument, they point out that by level X (varies by example) the character should have picked up at least a rank or two in skill Y. Then they point to the prohibition on cross-class skills.  That said, I haven't spent any time worrying about it.  The Well Rounded feat exists for just this reason.

Hypothetical System Questions & Miscellaneous

Regarding gear picks: My players both loved and hated gear picks in SC2.0 - yes, I mean they simultaneously loved/hated it.  They liked the options but felt overwhelmed.  Therefore, for SC3, I would vote for the system you proposed at the seminar.  Each player gets one or more pieces of signature gear and/or gear picks (based on some mechanic) and the GM provides the rest of the mission critical gear.

I like the FC character sheet but find that I always need more room.  I often end up using the spellcasting sheet as blank paper for all my other feats - particularly, combat feats.

Yes, I would like an official talent/species building supplement.

My players always have AD because I am always looking for ways to reward them.  If I didn't, I wouldn't have any to use.  If they don't use them, it's their fault because I am using them to pump up the bad guys, add damage, make saves, etc.

I loosely script all my adventures and tend to break them up into scenes. However, I can somewhat mitigate the omg-we're-off-the-rails effect because of my FATE experience.  I tend to script multiple possible scene endings and build some scenes that fit into the overall plot without a time sensitive nature.  Nevertheless, that never seems to stop my players from coming up with something I didn't think of.

Yes, I think that the time has come that attribute scores/modifiers should be collapsed into a single number.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Removed poor wording and some typos.

[Dawnblade]

 While we're on the Crit subject, has anyone else found the Casting B/M/S tree to be a little over powered? Casting Supremacy gives your Spellcasting checks a 17-20 threat range AND makes activating those threats free. On any other skill that wouldn't be a problem, but when that skill is also used as an attack roll for highly damaging spells, it becomes an issue. The fact that they're spellcasting feats (and thus increase the Save DC of those spells) is just icing on the cake.

Lol, stop hating on Naiwyn.  Hell once I even tried doing his plot and spent 4-5 turns revving up a machine that had a sign on it "Plot Machine used to kill this guy" then on the 6th turn after getting it running I turned around and cirt the big bad dead in 1 shot O.o  OHH and there was that one time you attacked us on the Seas with a WOODEN boat HAH good times.

[Dawnblade]

This actually comes to another point: If you're GMing and nobody has the required skill/feat/ability/gear to progress the plot, do you tend to work around it or make them go out of their way to work it? If a player didn't have a special ability that gave him a bonus when doing X, would X ever come up? (To use the boat example, lets say Mark has a feat that lets him borrow a vehicle from one of his contacts for a scene. Nobody on his team has a boat, but he has this buddy that does, problem solved. If Mark didn't have the feat, what do you do? Make a whole new scene of "The party procures a boat"? If you do, doesn't it seem like you're missing out on what could be a fun boat-theft scheme because you've got the free boat? At what point do character abilities trump party fun? At what point is "procure boat" such a hassle that the party is sick of it?)

I think this is an issue of trying to plan multiple paths to the same resolution, more than anything. As a company, we are very hard on our adventure writers because we force a certain level of "sandboxing" adventures as a matter of course, precisely so you don't have to force them to detour wildly in order to complete a mission. In your example, I might put a boat in the adventure, but also make a helicopter available to them, or allow the party to stow away on someone else's boat - multiple ways to solve the problem so if they don't have the exact right skill (boating) or tool (boat) they can still solve the problem (get to the destination). It's a crucial and difficult skill to develop for complex adventure writing.

I don't think he is talking about lack of decisions. I think what Agent 666 is really trying to get across is why bother spending character decisions on say feats that would give you a guy to borrow vehicles from when if nobody in the group had the feat it would most likely be provided for them for free or they could miss a fun side mission getting one, and had used that feat on something else.

My thoughts on it are if a character put points into say the getting a free ride feat then when the situation arises where the group needs a boat, plane, ex then they get one.  However if they don't have that feat then yes I would have a side scene where you get one, but it would cost you.  If its a time sensitive scene its going to cost you time,  If time is not a factor then its gonna cost you in game money, and if you decide man I don't want to pay that then your going to get a combat that could potentially get you in trouble with the authorities, alert the group to you,  or perhaps get you killed, or any combination of those things.  Now if that's what you call a "Fun boat-theft scene" and I hope you do then don't take the free boat feat and roll initiative

[Agent 333]

We're gamers. We, like JFK, do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Yes, the boat scene costs us... but it just makes the whole adventure more exciting when things don't go smooth. I don't know, maybe the boat wasn't the best example...

[Sletchman]

While we're on the Crit subject, has anyone else found the Casting B/M/S tree to be a little over powered? Casting Supremacy gives your Spellcasting checks a 17-20 threat range AND makes activating those threats free. On any other skill that wouldn't be a problem, but when that skill is also used as an attack roll for highly damaging spells, it becomes an issue. The fact that they're spellcasting feats (and thus increase the Save DC of those spells) is just icing on the cake.

I'm seriously considering making them Skill Feats because of precisely this reason for an upcoming magic heavy game.  At least then the players have to choose between being better at casting / potential crits and having a higher DC, rather then getting at all at once.  As it stands I'd take them every time ASAP, as Skill Feats I'd actually think about it.

EDIT: That's before mentioning that these no-brainer feats also contribute to Familiars too - they really add to almost everything a "standard" Mage archtype would want.

[Mister Andersen]

Does the return of the Wheelman in 10KB mean the return of the Chase tree?

[Crafty_Pat]

Does the return of the Wheelman in 10KB mean the return of the Chase tree?

This, like the Wheelman's final composition, has not yet been decided.

[ComicJam]

Man, there are so many things that I want to say, so I'll try to keep it short.

Stress and Subdual Damage Types
My players have been confused and forgetting to apply the different grades of fatigued and shaken. As a result, we mashed them together and created one Health Track (a la Saga Edition). It seems to be working and is going down better.

Vitality
Maybe as mentioned in the seminar it's the name that's confusing people.

Because of the above mentioned Health track we've kinda coined the term 'fatigue' instead of vitality, but we're still trying to justify why DR comes off near-misses. Maybe armour makes you more confident...?

Then we have the problem of subdual always hitting. Meh, it's all in the narrative.

I have found that characters have too much vitality though, and so we always use the Fragile Heroes campaign quality (I apply this to NPCs also - we had a really boring fight once where it literally took 10 rounds to take down a special!).

Combat
Not much extra to say here except the group prefers defense rolls, which of course is a personal preference.

Action Dice
Wonderful, but we have the 'five minutes to midnight' problem where the group saves them for the (possible) big boss.
How about a way of the players giving out action dice to each other?

Character Options
I think that a character starts with slightly too many, but the progression is just about right.

Standard vs. Special
If there's a 1 vs Party combat in a scene with no other combat, I usually use special. I always use mobs if the party are 'dungeon crawling', though I might split them up.

Cheers!

[aegis]

Just to say, many people mentioned there are too many rolls at the seminar. After a few questions, it seemed it was mostly a GM perspective. I had this feeling too, and that's how I solved it: I give all my NPCs (and only them) the ability to take 10 on any skill or save, for free. So whenever they are not in a situation where their error/threat range increases, I always take 10 and use "defensive values" rather than opposed rolls. It saves a lot of time for some PC actions (Threat, Disarm, etc.) and attacks qualities that require a save (massive, keen, etc.). Yes, it makes these effects a little bit more deterministic, but the time saved is worth it.

[mathey]

Just to say, many people mentioned there are too many rolls at the seminar. After a few questions, it seemed it was mostly a GM perspective. I had this feeling too, and that's how I solved it: I give all my NPCs (and only them) the ability to take 10 on any skill or save, for free. So whenever they are not in a situation where their error/threat range increases, I always take 10 and use "defensive values" rather than opposed rolls. It saves a lot of time for some PC actions (Threat, Disarm, etc.) and attacks qualities that require a save (massive, keen, etc.). Yes, it makes these effects a little bit more deterministic, but the time saved is worth it.

I like this.

Less die rollin' for the GM (me) but lets PCs roll saves if they're into that.

[VisualStatic]

Gear - (question in Seminar)

One thing I like was the kits from SG1.  For a charater, he has a few items are his, but for the mission(s) he's given his mission duffle full of gear he should need.

Or some variation on that, I think would great for SC3.