u/Laz52now

And to be clear, you can check my history, I'm always the guy who promotes transparency. Heck, i showed every single monster's stamina in my game. I sometimes even showcase monster abilities before combat. I'm all for transparency and showcasing what is happening behind the screen to the player in terms of mechanics.

Which is why it's so weird to me that, running negotiations without letting the player know a negotiation is happening, is kinda, fun? Way more fun than I normally would for giving hidden numbers into RP. And my player is also having fun.

Basically, i usually run my game like this. "Alright everyone, we're entering negotiation. Here are the stats."

But when I don't do that, I just mentally note, write it in a note somehwere, or even just have it in the vtt that stats and motivations and pitfalls, my players suddenly just, be a GREAT negotiator(???) they don't even know it's happening and they're crushing the rp. They asked the npc about what they want very naturally, they express themselves well, they formed their argument as if it was a part of the conversation and it felt very cool. Even more amazingly, the player who has never enter a negotiation for the freight and fear of rolling low because "boo hoo i have a -1 on presence I can't join this session y'all have fun" now just, naturally engage in the conversation.

You know what's more amazing? Given, my players are GREAT roleplayer. They can put themselves as their character, like stat. On demand. Borderline a switch-on button is being clicked somewhere on their brain. Maybe because we do a lot of character work in character creation? Maybe it's because we care about our heroes motivation? Maybe because i let them know that this thing is important to know and to declare to me? Idk. But, it's fucking great seeing them making conversation. And i just, ask for a persuasion roll sometimes. Or even just give them an auto success if it's a good argument. Tell them "they're getting impatient", and other things like that. And the conversation flows much more smoothly.

Why is that? Is it just, objectively better? Have y'all tried doing something similar? Or perhaps even, you've been running it this way and you're not even aware that the other side of very methodical, mechanical, and meticulous negotiation exist?

I feel like I'm finding diamond in a pit that is already full of gold, you get what i mean?

I love it when indonesian linguistic scholars create a backronym (or maybe just an abbreviation?) of what is originally an english abbreviation, to work with the same letters in Bahasa Indonesia. It's so fucking cool, i think they should do it more, but it must've been fucking hard to do, right?

Aku ada 2 contoh.

ATM, automatic teller machine, diubah jadi anjungan tunai mandiri. Apakah artinya 1:1 denhan yang bahasa Inggris? Nggak. But it works! It conveys basically the same thing. And it's so good.

Yang contoh baru (meskipun belum masuk ke kosak kata umum dipakai, but it should be, tho) itu AI. Artificial Intelligence, jadi Akal Imitasi. Anjir lah sejak dapet istilah akal imitasi, itu langsung gak pernah pakai istilah kecerdasan buatan lagi. Bagusan Akal Imitasi kemana-mana, anjir.

Kalian ada lagi gasih contoh keratabasa yang digituin? Again, secara teknis ini bukan keratabasa sih. Kalau ada yang mau benerin istilahnya di komen, I'll be very happy too. Tapi aku pengen contoh lebih banyak lagi. Dan lebih bagus lagi kalau abreviasi awalnya bukan dari bahasa inggris. Yang kalian bikin sendiri pun boleh kok, malah bakal seru banget kalau itu.

The door is gone."

Hey, gang. English is not my first language, heck, it's not even my third. And my fluency isn't too good either (from indonesia by the way).

I enjoy rap, and i enjoy listening to kendrick lamar (duh, i posted here). But there's always this fog in my mind that sometimes, probably because of the language barrier, I couldn't understand entendres, and i miss even some of the most basic bars.

Obviously, watching breakdowns, reactions, and reading about it helps a lot. But there's still this thing where I'm always impressed by someone who can just listen to a lyric and get it immediately. I envy that kind of quick understanding.

My question is, basically, what do? Are there any tricks or tips for learning the language that specifically helps me to understand lyrics and bars? I really want to listen to a rap song, maybe Kendrick's song, and immediately understand the implication and the hidden layer of subtext and entendres like y'all without relying on breakdowns.

I know the answer would probably be "learn the language more", and i guess that's the best way(?) but idk. Perhaps some of y'all have some tips or tricks i can follow.

And if so, how?

I'm not a director that's particularly meticulous about balance. I'd much rather follow my own rules and discover it. While i take a few rules of thumb that i get from the monster books, i usually use my own heuristics and experience with the table to adjust an encounter. From my experience, different tables, even with the same number of players and even with the same class, require a different kind of balance. But I've never build an encounter by meticulously buying and spending EV and adjusting the EV by the level or the victories, etc.

Beside that, draw steel is much easier to balance an encounter with. On that one d20 fantasy game, if you make an encounter too strong, you'll kill someone. In draw steel, i find it much harder to kill anyone because of how recoveries work. Moreover, balancing is not just about an encounter. Even as simple as deciding who to attack during which turn is a balancing act in on itself.

That being said, the one thing that I've seen not really talked about (or maybe I'm just missing the discussion?) is adjusting balance from treasures. Leveled items and trinkets.

So, if you're a director who likes balancing encounters, adjusting and paying attention to each EV of monsters that the hero is gonna face, how do you do it? Is there any particular rule of thumb that you perform? Or do you basically just assume the EV system handles treasures already? Which might not be wrong.

TLDR: That title is mostly bait, but i would be lying if i didn't say my previous tactician players ain't like this guy. This guy is Him with capital H fr fr. This is the first time I've ever played with a tactician and it felt like it's a tactician.

Edit: made a few edit here and there to reflect the story better. My previous wording seems to insinuate that the tactician is controlling the other heroes' turn. Which is not the case at all. To be precise, everything in this story happens in one turn, his own turn, at the very end of the round.

---

Not any shade to my tacticians before this guy, they're playing with their best ability, they get their shit done, and everything is cool. It's not like they don't do cool shit, they did a lot of cool shit, but it's not "tactician" shit. At least, not in the way this new player is behaving like a tactician.

Verbatim, i think, the words he said to me when he took a turn (the last turn of the round btw) is: "Alright Laz, i think i solved this."

And my mind went "Huh? They have killed what is barely a quarter of the enemy. His previous turn is so-so, nothing special, lot's of strike now, lots of marking, what can he possibly do just in his turn? Wdym by 'solve', now?"

And this guy just explained it to me.

1. Turns out, he has been looking at (with the consent of everyone of course), at everyone else's character sheets the past 2 rounds.

2. Me personally, i always show the monster stamina. Precisely so someone can make a precise tactical decision on what or who to attack or how much or whatever else.

3. He found a combination of abilities, free strikes, surges, and everything else in his head (or a spreadsheet) to achieve the optimal amount of destruction GIVEN the assumption of everyone rolling the minimum amount of damage. So he used all of his abilities to do exactly that.

In his own turn, he uses all of the tactician's abilities that let the other players make free stirkes, and signatures, and everything else, to basically erase half of the screen.

And you know what else is cool? These aren't people who know each other. These are practically strangers from the internet (it's a Westmarch game). And he of course gets a few feedback and suggestions from everyone else "wait no why don't you do this instead..." or "no if i can roll this i can..." or "wait if i use my free strike to attack that guy instead..." or "i have this other signature for your strike now if you want to..."

And i wish, i wish, i can record my face at the time, record my reaction to the aura and presence of it all, because he simply says to everybody "no, guys... Trust Me." And everyone just went "okay." Not like "oookaaay dude", like a dismissive okay, no. It's the kind of "okay" that says "oh shot, clearly you have a plan and you need us to do exactly what you needed us to do. We'll do it."

That moment, and the moment immediately afterward where HALF of my monsters are gone, is the moment I understand tactician. It's the moment i understand why they have 2 on their reason score. It's the moment i get why this class can compete with the fucking God being of magical and psionics nonsense that is draw steel heroes even though they're just "they guy that solve the battle."

I aspire to be like this guy. And i wish he would keep my life a living hell and a heaven to witness by being the best tactician I've ever played with ever in any of my tables.

I used to think my favourite class is the Censor.

I think i fell in love with the tactician now.

Or maybe i just fell in love with that guy, which is possible, but let's not talk about that.

How do you, if ever, run a puzzle in Draw Steel?

I know you can run puzzles in every part of Draw Steel. People can argue that an encounter is a puzzle to be solved by the players and I'd agree with them. Montage tests can also be a puzzle, they basically have to figure out what to do in what order and who to do it. Even negotiation can be a puzzle. They have to figure out someone's motivation and pitfalls, and figuring out "you've always wanted to do this" is a puzzle in itself.

But that's not what I'm looking for.

A riddle, a jigsaw puzzle, a rubiks cube, something you brought outside the game for challenging the players instead of the heroes, is defined as a puzzle. I love giving this to my players. Still not what I'm looking for, but much closer.

Instead, I'm looking for kinda the in between. Something to challenge the player's wit, but also has risk that happens to the heroes.

For example: you entered a room. The 2 metal doors behind and in front of you closed shut, and from the surface of the 4 walls, pour water. You estimate you have about 10 before you're completely drowned. What you do? Go.

That's the kind of puzzle I'm looking for. Another example would be "you find yourself on a chasm of 10 by 10 squares in area, and an unfathomable depth", simple, but a puzzle.it challenges the players, while it's happening to the Heroes.

And I know, i can just run this as a montage test. But that to me kinda defeats the purpose, tho(?) because the point of this is to make it open ended and see if the players can figure out something. Making it a montage test, i.e. giving a set of challenges that the players can tackle, takes away from this being a puzzle.

So, how do i do it? As of right now, the way i do it is just to declare it to the players and let them make tests or use their features and abilities. But I'm curious if someone has done it with a better more robust system.

Let me propose this by saying that I don't use any hack, houserule, or homebrewed mechanics for currency in my draw steel game. Wealth is more than enough, and even so, sometimes I don't even use wealth that much. Or maybe it just never comes up. Idk, we'll see.

But I've seen questions about currency a lot, whether in the subreddit or the discord. So, i bet, there are also some (if not a lot) of directors that hacked / houseruled their own currency system in draw steel for their own world.

But without a set price of items in the rules, i wonder what, if any, do your npc sell in your games.

Do they sell treasures at all? Maybe just consumable? Do they sell manuscripts to treasures? Do they sell material to create treasures? And if they don't sell treasures at all, what did the heroes buy with their money? Do they buy equipment (i mean, a kit is already coming with equipment)? Do they buy a house?

Moreover, how do you reward currency in your games? Found treasures like a chest inside of a dungeon? Given to the heroes by a wealthy benefactor like a king? Maybe commoners put all of their coppers and silvers and give the heroes whatever they can give?

This is from pure curiosity and i want to look into making currency for a game like this.

In your table, can a Hero (not the player) say what their current stamina is? If not, why not?

Hello! In this essay, I'm gonna be talking about just that. I was writing this post in such a way that I may eventually make a video essay about this, so, I'm sorry it doesn't feel like it's meant to be read, and instead to be performed, with voices and stuff.

---

Last thursday i ran my weekly draw steel session with a regular group. This was also by the time i (and a few of my friends at my table) invited a mutual friend to the table. She never played draw steel before, but was excited to try. She loves the witcher, and that game in particular, the heroes are a group of Monster Hunters. Like western monster hunter stuff. Van Helsing, Supernatural, Witcher, etc. as opposed to eastern/japanese style MonHun.

By the way, slide side tracked tangents: the heroes are a devil shadow, a vampire null, a werewolf (stormwight) and a conduit of the god of faith. Not a traditional group of monster hunters, 3/4 of them are monsters themselves. End of tangent.

The new player by the way is a veteran of the ampersand game, and has played a few games that i ran too. The session went awesomely. They fought a puppet possessed by a demonic spirit. Crap, i went on a tangent mid writing. Anyway, not the important part. I believe it was the 2nd or 3rd round that the new hero, who i absolutely love, said something that makes me wanna make this post. In character, she said:

"Master [name of null character], I've got 5 focus. I can do [name of ability], but i have to do it now."

Keep in mind that she's intending to say this in character. And by "in character", i mean the modern rpg sense of in character. Speaking with voices, as your character. Acting as them. The Dimension 20 / Critical Role ttrpg actual play streams with voice actors kind of in character. After that moment, everyone on the table then started strategizing and discussing their tactics in character as well. It's kinda awesome. Did i mention my players love acting?

I'm used to tactics discussion in my draw steel game to be made by the players out of chatacrer, not the heroes themselves. But the more i think about it, is there really anything wrong with planning and executing that plan in character, with them referring to the abstraction and meta-currency numbers?

---

If you've been yelling at me, "of course there is! They don't know what a heroic resource is", i understand you. Of course they don't. An elementalist might know about essence, but they surely don't know that they currently have 6 essence. Or maybe the fury knows that there is something internal that makes their claw attack more ferocious, or make even the strongest of foes fall prone to their ability, but surely they don't know that they "use 2 surges to increase their potency by 1". Of course a hero instinctively knows that sometimes, their strike can penetrate deeper or shallower, almost randomly, even against the same enemy, but surely they don't know that they can get a tier 1, 2, and 3 on their power roll.

Or do they?

---

My next question would be: why not? What stops the heroes from knowing these things? Just because it is the language that we use to understand the "meta" of the game, why is it that they can't use that language too?

I understand that there is this this notion which we instinctively (or perhaps after a deliberate and long thoughts) come to. The language used by the players is an abstraction of the reality that happens in the universe of the game, and that language is not the same as the language used by the people living in the universe. We as players and the directors, knows that our tactician right now has 7 focus, and 3 available surge, and the party has 2 unused hero token. But surely the hero themselves don't know about... right?

Well, not necessarily. At least not for everything. While many "meta" terms are not exactly the same as they are written on the character sheet, a lot of them have the same exact nomenclature being referred to by the characters inside that game. For example, classes.

In my world, or rather in the setting that I'm currently running (i have a lot of settings), the names of the classes are referred to exactly as they are. Especially by scholars and the smarties of the world. A layperson might call your Censor a Paladin or an Inquisitor. But in my world, if you meet someone that is familiar with the proper term, interaction with them will go something like: "That person, as you can see is a- what? What did you call them? A mage? Okay, you can call them a 'mage' outside. But you're in the university, now. The proper term is 'elementalist'. Got it?"

Another example would be ancestries. And this is, i think, the obvious one. For most games, it's deliberately designed. With the exception of reflavouring, we don't usually refer to ancestry differently whether as a player outside the game or as a character inside the world of the game. A devil is called a devil. My character sheet says I'm a human, and every npc in the world says my character is a human too.

You know what i also like? When a hero refers to their features. Before this campaign, I ran another table with a talent. And when she strained herself, she explicitly said "I am strained!". That's cool. Other examples include: "You are judged" or "That guy is marked."

As you can see, it's rather obvious that not every meta-abstraction and nomenclature is forbidden from being said by the denizens of the world of the game. So what makes surges, HRs, even wealth and renown perhaps, specifically referring to the numbers in your character sheet, felt different than just referencing the name?

---

Imagine for a second, that Alien Alien, a game designer, a member of an alien race from an alien civilization, father of three, outside the reality of our 3-spatial-dimensions is designing a not-so-reality-aproximator game about our real world experience. A game about your life, physics, and the universe. And they say "let this guy's walking speed be 5".

What's the first thing you instinctively ask? For me, that would absolutely be "5 what?". 5 meters a second? 5 square per turn? What's a square? How big is a square? 5 what? What does 5 mean? What does it refer to? In other words: what are the units.

That, i postulate, is what makes saying numbers felt, wrong. Unimersive. Meta. If you tell your hero that they have a might of 3, i think they will also ask the same thing. "3 what? What does a unit of might measure? It's probably referring to my strength or a measurement of my athleticism. But I don't know what that number refers to. What does a might of 3 even mean? If i have a might of 2, does that mean I'm twice as strong as someone that has a might of 1? By what metric? What are the scales? What are the units? 3 what?"

And i believe the problem of missing units is what makes saying things in the abstraction of numbers felt meta and unimmersive. Because of course it's gonna be a bit weird to say that you have a speed of 5. It'll be much more natural if you can say a unit after the end of a number. "I can walk 5 meters every 3 seconds". See? Much better. And even without an in-world measurable unit, it still feels somehow nicer to say it like: 5 squares in a turn. How big is a square? Idk. How long is a turn? Idk. But because we have the dimension of the unit, we can just translate them into whatever measurements we feel is appropriate.Maybe 1 sq in your game is 10 feet. Maybe it's 1.75 meters. Maybe a turn is a fixed number like roughly 20 seconds. Maybe it's a bit more arbitrary, like between X-Y minutes. But at least we have a unit at the end of that number that we can translate to soemthing else. A start.

So, that's it then? We solved immersion! We can make our character say meta abstraction number without it being unimmersive. Just put a unit after it, in a measurement that they understand in the world! That's it! Yay!

---

I bet most of y'all already know the problem with my previous statement. I deliberately choose speed, to be honest, because that's kinda the easiest thing to take from an abstraction into real world measurements. Everything else is a lot more difficult.

First of all, you might not have as quick and easy a unit to assign a number to. Stamina for example. We know that stamina is a measure of well, stamina. How long can a hero take strikes before they become winded, exhausted, and finally take the blow that brings them to their dying breath, or worse. But, how can we even assign a unit to that? What dimension of unit, even? Joule as in energy? Milliampere hours? Idk. And it's not trivial to do so.

Worse yet, we have things that we might not be able to even assign a measurement into. What's a clarity? Yes, it's described as a measure of how much focus, thoughts, and mind power your talent has. But, what is it exactly? What is it measuring? Is it thoughts per unit of time? What are thoughts? We know we need 5 clarity to use Flashback. But, what does that mean? How much units of concentration does it take to do that? How are the heroes even able to measure that? How do they know? Those are again, not very trivial to answer.

The truth is that these games are built on abstractions. They are gameplay mechanics designed for players to navigate a system, not for characters to measure their reality. In fact, a lot of games out there are deliberately designed to do so. It's not exactly a measurement, is it? It's a tool we use, gameplay mechanics, intended to be read and used by the players. Not designed to be measured or even known tothe characters inside the game.

So yeah, that's the end it, i guess. It seems virtually implausible to say the abstractions in your character sheet, in character, without it breaking immersion. We lost. After all, the game is not a reality approximator. And if it was, it probably wouldn't be as fun.

Huh... Fun...

---

This is a written quote (paraphrased) of a quick QnA between me and the new player shortly after we finished the session.

Q: "Are you okay with your character referring to her meta currency in character? Doesn't that break your immersion? Doesn't it feel unimmersive? A little bit meta, even?"

A: "I don't know, actually. I didn't think about it at the time. I guess i just love speaking as [her character name] and I didn't even think about it too much. So, i just follow what everybody is already doing, discussing tactics, but i mistakenly did it in character. Hehe, I'm sorry about that. I didn't realize how that was a little bit meta. I'll speak out of character when discussing tactics in the future."

Q: "What? No! That's super cool! I'm not opposed to it at all. I'm just checking in. I was afraid that you were feeling weird because this is a new thing for you, and for me as well to be honest. But if you enjoy it, by all means! I enjoy it too."

A: "Right? And then everyone joined in too at the end, oh my god! That was so cool and so much fun."

---

Yeah, so...

I was asking the wrong question after all. An inaccurate question, focusing on something that should be the second item or even further in the priority list. Immersion, unimmersive gameplay, meta roleplaying, those are all, cool. But not as important. You know what I should've been asking from the beginning? Not whether it was meta. Not whether we could do it without breaking immersion. Not whether it felt wrong and unimmersive.

But whether it was fun.

And i can definitively say that at least at that moment, everyone at the table, including me, was having so much fun.

It's fun to speak in character. It's fun to make tactical decisions and make plans and crate combos with your friends. To be able to combine both of them, which my table finds a way to, and to do it in a way where it's fun for everybody? What more can i ask? I basically won draw steel.

And who knows. Maybe it doesn't work at your table. Maybe you're reading all this and say "nah, that's some bullcrap. I know my table would be livid if i allow that, some of them will straight up leave", or something. Or idk, maybe you read this and think "that sounds fun as hell, i wanna try it at my game tomorrow!"

Even for my own table, I'm not even sure if it will be as fun in the future. We have yet to see. A lot of things can affect the fun of the game, and if this one is indeed just fun because of novelty, i trust my players to stop doing it the moment it becomes unfun.

But if it will continue to be fun, i bet my players will keep doing it. And they fury can keep telling the conduit not to heal them because they are close to their winded value, and the shadow can keep telling the null that they have 3 surges so they don't need anymore surges, and i will keep having fun with them.

So, at my table, can a hero (not the player) say what their current stamina is? Yes they can, because you bet your ass it's fucking fun to do. And as always, thanks for reading my post.

Let me start this post by defining the scope. Let's assume that the strat is to "defeat everything as efficiently and as quickly as possible". This might not always be the strat/the goal of your combat, but, we have to start somehwere.

So, what are the generally true tactics that you can apply for combatants to accomplish this strat?

Let me give a few for a strat:

- Ask your director for information. They might not give you, but it's always cool to ask. Asking "Hey [name of your director], do i know how fast that guy is?". Information is shared among heroes, so knowing things helps, a lot. You don't always get the information, depending on your director, but again, it's always cool to ask. This is less tactics, and more "a way to help yourself (potentially) be more tactical"

- reach the enemy if you can. If you can't, position yourself such that they can't reach you. Failing that, position yourself such that they can't reach you without charging. I.e. position yourself either 2 + enemy reach + twice their speed or 2+enemy reach + their speed. E.g. if you know an enemy is 12 away from you, has speed 5, melee reach of 1: reach them if you can, if not, put yourself 8 away from them, or, move back to put yourself 13 away from them, whichever is more appropriate. This way, either the enemy has to charge to reach you, which gives you lower damage potential, or can't reach you at all, which has 0 potential damage. This rule has many caveats, but generally, positioning yourself such that a melee enemy can't reach you without charging is cool.

- Jump 'em. Focus on a single enemy, or a single group of enemies that share a turn. If you split your damage to many enemies without killing/stopping them, there will be more enemy standing, meaning more enemy attacking, meaning more damage. If you take at least one enemy, and you take them out of the combat, they can't attack you now, can they? Which lowers the damage potential.

- This one is for directors, but I'll still use the assumption that the goal here is to kill the heroes. Which certainly is not always true, most of the time, it's not. But, given the assumption: Move your wounded monsters first. Imagine the bad guys lost init, you have 2 monsters (or 2 monster groups) 1 of them is still at max stamina, one of them is winded or even almost dead. Who should you move first? The wounded monster of course. If you move the healthy one first, there's a chance the wounded monster will be dead before taking a turn. Also, if we revert the assumption, and you want to make the combat a bit easier, generally, you wanna do the opposite.

- Don't be afraid to game. I feel like the term "metagaming" has been used in a very negative way. It's okay to say, "hey, i have something that can add +2 to that roll, because you rolled a 15, i can take it to tier 3!" that's not metagaming, even if it feels like it to some people. It's called playing the game. The only time metagaming is not fine, as with everything else, is when it makes 1 or more participants of the game enjoy it less. If it's not fun for everybody, don't do it. Especially if it is detrimental to someone else's fun. This also includes the Director. You know your table better, you will know what's acceptable and not better than anyone on the internet.

Give more in the comments!