Tabletop Community Watch

[Ghostse]

(and BroSR, which I assume is a different thing?)

BroSR as @Gingervitis said, is a semi-cult of tards.

Gygax says in the DMG that "rigorous time keeping is essential to a good game" The BroSR tards have twisted that to mean "Time must be kept at 1:1 pace" and not "Everyone playing needs to state what they're doing during a specified time block" and "If its two weeks travel between towns, that means the game clock must advance two weeks when the party travels between them".

This leads to cult like behavior of having people check in at specific times, requiring sessions be done, and just in general making you reorder your life around the game.

And of course like any splinter sect-cum-cult, they miss is what Gygax says and implies immediately after:
Rule are made to be bent and broken, but you need to intend to bend or break them.

If that two week delay means they won't reach the Evil Wizard's tower before the next full moon and stop his ritual, maybe they are told of a dangerous shortcut. Or maybe they pray for divine intervention and their religious fever gives them superhuman endurance so they make it 5 days instead of 5. There are bunch of things you can do to make the game story more interesting, while still hitting your narrative beats without turning time into a thing you just handwave away as not mattering.

edit: Oh I forgot the other thing they like to harp on which is Gygax suggested stop letting PCs spend too long strategizing and plotting and trying to optimize responses: "Give them as long to respond as they'd have in a real fight and if they don't, they stammer and do nothing this round in game as well". which misses the point that Gygax was trying to make the game go FASTER not slower.

 

[Gingervitis]

BroSR as @Gingervitis said, is a semi-cult of tards.

Gygax says in the DMG that "rigorous time keeping is essential to a good game" The BroSR tards have twisted that to mean "Time must be kept at 1:1 pace" and not "Everyone playing needs to state what they're doing during a specified time block" and "If its two weeks travel between towns, that means the game clock must advance two weeks when the party travels between them".

This leads to cult like behavior of having people check in at specific times, requiring sessions be done, and just in general making you reorder your life around the game.

And of course like any splinter sect-cum-cult, they miss is what Gygax says and implies immediately after:
Rule are made to be bent and broken, but you need to intend to bend or break them.

If that two week delay means they won't reach the Evil Wizard's tower before the next full moon and stop his ritual, maybe they are told of a dangerous shortcut. Or maybe they pray for divine intervention and their religious fever gives them superhuman endurance so they make it 5 days instead of 5. There are bunch of things you can do to make the game story more interesting, while still hitting your narrative beats without turning time into a thing you just handwave away as not mattering.

Jeffro, one of the big guys behind the movement, did an interview with Harmony Ginger, one of the few tolerable female influencers, regarding BroSR. He doesn’t come across very well. I can’t embed it for some reason, so uh. Here.

https://www.youtube.com/live/7zKhVyilJ7w?si=_D0lWX9kPIPyOkVL

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

BrOSR is one of the finest sources of slapfighting between retards who propone it and retards against it

 

[Corn Flakes]

BroSR as @Gingervitis said, is a semi-cult of tards.

Gygax says in the DMG that "rigorous time keeping is essential to a good game" The BroSR tards have twisted that to mean "Time must be kept at 1:1 pace" and not "Everyone playing needs to state what they're doing during a specified time block" and "If its two weeks travel between towns, that means the game clock must advance two weeks when the party travels between them".

This leads to cult like behavior of having people check in at specific times, requiring sessions be done, and just in general making you reorder your life around the game.

And of course like any splinter sect-cum-cult, they miss is what Gygax says and implies immediately after:
Rule are made to be bent and broken, but you need to intend to bend or break them.

If that two week delay means they won't reach the Evil Wizard's tower before the next full moon and stop his ritual, maybe they are told of a dangerous shortcut. Or maybe they pray for divine intervention and their religious fever gives them superhuman endurance so they make it 5 days instead of 5. There are bunch of things you can do to make the game story more interesting, while still hitting your narrative beats without turning time into a thing you just handwave away as not mattering.

I cannot, even after years of pondering this question, understand just how these retards managed to go from "timekeeping is important, actions that take time should require time to complete in-universe" to "THE GAME HAPPENS IN REAL-TIME".

Seriously, was it a prank someone played on Usenet that went too far? A psychotic DM spawning waves of gaslit and brainwashed players who convinced that was a good idea and then started their own games? What the fuck happened?

 

[Ghostse]

I cannot, even after years of pondering this question, understand just how these retards managed to go from "timekeeping is important, actions that take time should require time to complete in-universe" to "THE GAME HAPPENS IN REAL-TIME".

Seriously, was it a prank someone played on Usenet that went too far? A psychotic DM spawning waves of gaslit and brainwashed players who convinced that was a good idea and then started their own games? What the fuck happened?

I worked a job where one year after holidays everything important was shut down, but there was still a presence of computer touchers needed just in case. Not all hands on deck, but more than skeleton crew. We were doing 12-hour "present" shifts, you basically had about 45 minutes of actual work to do over those 12 hours. There was a "Crash cot" room, a gym with shower, and management ordered pizza, and it was middle of winter so snow was usually fucking awful, so the usual thing to do was just stay at work for those 2-3 days and have a LAN party.
At the time DEFCON was fairly popular, and had a 1:1 time mode, and I had a dream doing a 1:1 game Cold War with actual real flight times for ICBMs & bombers modded in. (it would have never worked because of the 3rd-axis of the triad, naval, being impossible to model correctly and still keep the game recognizable)

and in the other hand, a lot of power scale issues with 3e sort of go away with making things take time and not being able to just skip ahead. Or even people talking about Shadow run and the Tech vs Magic debates where fucking up your summon puts your character in the hospital for a month; suddenly tech becomes a lot more appealing if you are out of the game for a real-time month if the pact goes wrong. even in 5e I imagine the impulse to Long Rest Scum would be reduced if long resting actually put the game on pause for 8 hours.

So I get the impetus for this sort of system, where you get to experience actual tension because there are some real stakes.
But also.... just jesus christ fuck that.
Even in my younger, more retarded days when I had more time than sense, couldn't I imagine having the time to do this sort of shit. the 48 hours of defcon cold war would have probably been more reality than I'd have wanted. As you said, BroSR sounds like a Usenet prank that someone took seriously.

 

[robobobo]

I've never understood the 1:1 time thing, to be honest. If you have one game a week, your characters are just sitting in that room in the dungeon for an entire week until you come back? That doesn't make any sense. A combat round takes the five minutes it takes you at the table to resolve all the actions? That doesn't make any sense either. I get that there is some degree of verisimilitude to keeping track of the passage of time in one's game, but keeping track of every minute of time spent walking from point A to point B seems unfun.

 

[Ghostse]

I've never understood the 1:1 time thing, to be honest. If you have one game a week, your characters are just sitting in that room in the dungeon for an entire week until you come back? That doesn't make any sense. A combat round takes the five minutes it takes you at the table to resolve all the actions? That doesn't make any sense either. I get that there is some degree of verisimilitude to keeping track of the passage of time in one's game, but keeping track of every minute of time spent walking from point A to point B seems unfun.

That's where the cult bit comes in. You don't have one game a week. The game is ALWAYS happening. You are in near constant contact with the GM.

So you leave the cult leader GM with general descriptions of what your characters will try to do and when things happen the GM tells you the result.
If you are a meeting or whatever when your character real-time reaches the next town and you haven't told the GM what they're going to do, they will just mill around doing nothing important until you respond to the GM about what they do. And since everything happens at 1:1 time....

And no, a combat round is 1 minute. So you have one minute to get the results of combat and say what your character is doing or they do nothing*. (well, that's a little bit of a misnomer unless the GM is a massive dick. Your character would likely autobattle and just attack the nearest enemy.)
They are doing D&D 1e not 5e so combat is very likely resolved in 5-6 rounds.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I cannot, even after years of pondering this question, understand just how these retards managed to go from "timekeeping is important, actions that take time should require time to complete in-universe" to "THE GAME HAPPENS IN REAL-TIME".

Seriously, was it a prank someone played on Usenet that went too far? A psychotic DM spawning waves of gaslit and brainwashed players who convinced that was a good idea and then started their own games? What the fuck happened?

I've never understood the 1:1 time thing, to be honest. If you have one game a week, your characters are just sitting in that room in the dungeon for an entire week until you come back? That doesn't make any sense.

Having just heard of this, take this opinion with a pinch mountain of salt shit.

This sounds like West Marsh taken to 11. In those games, time moves on when you're not playing the game. However, in that case it's to motivate the players. If they get a lead on some treasure, someone might get there first. If they step away from the game, they come back and things have progressed without them.

As for how it's handled. There's a gentleman's agreement that your party heads to town before the session is done. There was some third party 5e book that had a feature "roll to return" which was basically a table you rolled on to see what happened if you didn't make it to safety before the session ended.

I've never got West Marsh to work, but I remember hearing a lot about it years ago as the superiour way to play RPGs.

 

[Ghostse]

This sounds like West Marsh taken to 11. In those games, time moves on when you're not playing the game. However, in that case it's to motivate the players. If they get a lead on some treasure, someone might get there first. If they step away from the game, they come back and things have progressed without them.

I've had mixed success with West March-type games. The issue with West March is you have to be able to fire players - if you don't have enough dedicated people playing to make that an option, or alternates on tap, it won't work. You also need to...sell your game. West March runs on FOMO so you have to make sure the flakers realize they're missing out. Which I didn't have with a bunch of randos. The issue I had was the "gritty serious high-stakes adventure" falls the fuck apart when you need to keep orchestrating up a mid-level fighter showing up so the party isn't completely hosed because they were mid-delve.
Someone I saw who was running a game for people on a forum had a bid of "curse of success" because he had a chat thread for post-session OOC so anyone who didn't attend could get their noses rubbed in all the shit they'd missed out on. And given this is TTRPG lead to a bunch of Spergs tarding out because the thing they wanted to explore was now off the table because they had to miss a session to get their boils lanced or w/e, and then sperg drama because there was a waiting list so it went to "miss a session, go to the end of the line" so the game fell apart because of slapfights off the table.

But its the same sort of impetus of "If you aren't in a session, you're missing out".

 

[Adamska]

Honestly the more I hear about West March in here the more I know it's not a game I'd like. But then that's because I think it's still leaning too hard on the 1:1 time aspect.

As for how it's handled. There's a gentleman's agreement that your party heads to town before the session is done.

The problem with that is sometimes you're in a real big dungeon delve, or far in the wilds. That'd mean you'd still have to redo progress and are more likely to get cucked in a treasure hunt for example, since you'd have to travel back. Also because 1:1 is still in effect, sometimes it'd make logical sense for monsters to rehole in areas you cleared, and you just have to smile and eat shit.

You could just bench and make camp, with the expectation that at most a few hours happen. That's usually what I do, give or take monsters finding them depending on how good they hide their camp or find somewhere safeish.

I've had mixed success with West March-type games. The issue with West March is you have to be able to fire players - if you don't have enough dedicated people playing to make that an option, or alternates on tap, it won't work. You also need to...sell your game.

Honestly that kills any interest I'd ever have in this system. It turns a game for friends or compadres you pick up along the way into a job where you play the awful manager.

Doesn't help that trying to sell up FOMO by describing what I missed due to life or some shit happening is one of the quickest ways I'd lose interest in a campaign.

 

[Ghostse]

Honestly that kills any interest I'd ever have in this system. It turns a game for friends or compadres you pick up along the way into a job where you play the awful manager.

Doesn't help that trying to sell up FOMO by describing what I missed due to life or some shit happening is one of the quickest ways I'd lose interest in a campaign.

Its not a "system" its a system-independent philosophy/strategy. and its definitely not on 1:1 time bullshit. (though I guess you could run it like that if you hate yourself and your players)
The idea is that the world keeps moving independent of players, the people who attend the session drive the session, and if you do miss a session the only real consequences are 1) You miss out on any loot from previous session and 2) You miss out on driving the adventure. Its meant to be very drop-in, drop-out friendly, but it still requires you have access to enough players to fill out a party for any given session.

And you're letting me pointing out the times the system didn't work reinforce your perception.
The idea of "West March" is that game isn't about mandating attendance, its about getting people to really want to attend a session. Its supposed to be nearly all carrot and almost no stick when getting people to show up on D&D night.
When I say "you need to be able to fire players" I don't mean you fire the player if they miss a session (in fact you AREN'T supposed to do that). What I mean is while it tolerates absences, if its the usual case of three flakes and one or two solid people, West March'ing your game won't save it. If you are player-poor environment while you wouldn't have the ability to fire a player, you probably won't have enough regular attendees.
But if you do need to fire a player, it makes it easier to bring people on board or soft-boil them - try before you buy is much lower risk.

The two times I tried to run it, even if I hadn't been trying to do a "West March" approach, the games would have fallen apart due to too many flakes. I the issue where it was always "drop-out" and there was no reserve bench to tap to fill out the party. There was also no real way for me to jiggle the carrot because it was a bunch of pick-ups who didn't know enough other, so no option to hear about all the cool stuff they missed out on. That was not a flaw in the approach; If I had done this philosophy at the FLGS in college where on "open table" night there were always a few unattached people floating around it would have worked out great; someone can't make it, grab a rando, maybe the Rando becomes a regular.

The forum game that imploded due to drama was sort of poorly run. But it was also a forum game so I sort of get it, where again you had your solid core of 2 people, one mostly steady, and then at least 2 flakers. The DM just filled empty slots with who ever was around. So if you flaked out on a session, he just sent them to back of the queue for invites to fill the roster. And you of course had the issue where people would sign up as alternates and then not be available, so sometimes #4 or or #6 on the invite list would get called up.
which is what lead to the drama spiral where as interest grew, and people who would sign up then fuck off did as well, you had less and less time to respond if a slot was open, which of course got the usual "I WAS IN THE BATHROOM/ANSWERING THE DOOR THIS IS SO UNFAIR. YOU NEED TO DROP SO I CAN PLAY IT WAS MY SLOT." and people who signed up and got slots more and more often didn't want to play the game, they just wanted to do the popular thing. The DM called it quits after not quite a year because all the people bitching about game was more than he cared to manage, as well as all the slapfights, and waning interest - probably due to said drama

The one guy who had a melt down because he missed for "a valid and necessary medical procedure" was just pissed because he had been trying to push for exploring some plot line that only he was interested in. So he missed a couple sessions and when he came back, the people who had attended opted to do something else and they were on the other side of the ocean from the contacts for his Magical Quest. So the sperg had a big bloviation about "I can't believe you'd do this to me, this was a core tenet of my character, blah blah blah" usual sort of tard tantrum when they've been outvoted.

 

[Flexo]

Having just heard of this, take this opinion with a pinch mountain of salt shit.

This sounds like West Marsh taken to 11. In those games, time moves on when you're not playing the game. However, in that case it's to motivate the players. If they get a lead on some treasure, someone might get there first. If they step away from the game, they come back and things have progressed without them.

As for how it's handled. There's a gentleman's agreement that your party heads to town before the session is done. There was some third party 5e book that had a feature "roll to return" which was basically a table you rolled on to see what happened if you didn't make it to safety before the session ended.

I've never got West Marsh to work, but I remember hearing a lot about it years ago as the superiour way to play RPGs.

I have a fondness for the Margaret Weiss Cortex system which the Supernatural and Firefly RPGs utilized. (it hit my sweet spot of combat vs narrative focus) Given that both of those properties have villains and opponents that are acting on their own plans and timelines and the players are supposed to be stopping - I could see the West Marsh method kind of being utilized to maximize those worlds. Ok so we quit the session last week, here's some signs of what the Blue Sun corporation has got up to since then. Or these are the new victims in town of the monster you are hunting. Heck just imagine running an XFiles themed game in such a system. "You've got to figure out what the Conspiracy got up to while you were away."

I dunno, seems like there's a core of a good idea here, but it's not fully realized just yet.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Honestly the more I hear about West March in here the more I know it's not a game I'd like. But then that's because I think it's still leaning too hard on the 1:1 time aspect.

I dunno, seems like there's a core of a good idea here, but it's not fully realized just yet.

I think it might work on paper. As @Ghostse said, it requires a large pool of self motivated players, which is not something I have. Examples I've seen online of it working are generally workplaces full of nerds like a AAA game studio or a school (and in one case, an army barracks). We've used negative examples, but it could also be positive. eg. FOMO on not getting to horde of treasure could be negative "I didn't get that loot", but the positive would be hearing from another player about a cool item they got and wanting to join in so they can get something cool. This is why having a public world map the players fill in is often cited as important, because people see something new added and either want to explore it or be curious to see what else is out there.

Oddly enough, getting suck in dungeon delves is a problem, but not as big of a one as it might at first appear. If you're using small dungeons that are 3-5 rooms, and a fast playing game, it's not really an issue. It's mega dungeons when players will have 10 minutes, decide to open one last door and suddenly they're in combat.

I don't know how BroSR handle it, but my understanding is it's not meant to be a prison, but an element to enhance the game. The idea of other factions doing stuff in the world, or monsters repopulating dungeons (and filling them full of treasure) is intended. There's also seasons. A lake might freeze over in the winter so you can walk across it. In one module, you were meant to swap out wildlife random encounters with undead ones as the villain's power grew.

It's always seemed like an interesting idea, but as said, I never got it to work. Partly because I didn't have enough players interested in filling in the map, checking job boards, or doing any of the game scheduling. They just wanted to turn up and roll dice.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I'm pretty sure the whole concept of Adventurers' Guild, with a rotating roster of players all showing up to one-shots whenever they're available, is just a more casual and accessible version of that West Marches concept.

 

[Ghostse]

I think there's some muddling of terms.
Both West March and BroSR use open world ideas and are big on players driving the narrative focus, but are very different.

BroSR do 1:1 time keeping - the game world continues in real time even when you're not at the table. Time neither speeds up, slows down, or pauses (unless you're using magic I guess).

West March is an open/semi-open world where time moves like normal TTRPG session time. The GM might skip ahead, or compress time, and (unless there is a time skip between sessions) the game world pauses between sessions. The main difference is while time only advances during a session, it advances uniformly across the world. Factions enact plots and don't wait for the PCs to show up for things to happen. That letter you ignored for 3 game months, the writer might be assassinated by the time you show up.

I'm pretty sure the whole concept of Adventurers' Guild, with a rotating roster of players all showing up to one-shots whenever they're available, is just a more casual and accessible version of that West Marches concept.

Its pretty close. The difference is West March is supposed to get the players invested in events in the game world, and turn up to see how those things are going. AG from my understanding you just show up to get points for your D&D Pokemon Go! faction.

OMO on not getting to horde of treasure could be negative "I didn't get that loot", but the positive would be hearing from another player about a cool item they got and wanting to join in so they can get something cool. This is why having a public world map the players fill in is often cited as important, because people see something new added and either want to explore it or be curious to see what else is out there.

This is what its supposed to do (and seemed like it was doing very well in the forum game until forum drama ruined it). Player feedback from the players who showed up on my two abortive attempts was pretty positive, it just wasn't very fun for me to run.

Oddly enough, getting suck in dungeon delves is a problem, but not as big of a one as it might at first appear. If you're using small dungeons that are 3-5 rooms, and a fast playing game, it's not really an issue. It's mega dungeons when players will have 10 minutes, decide to open one last door and suddenly they're in combat.

My issue was even a moderately sized dungeon was taking too long, and even stripped down 5e was too slow. So what should be a one shot turned into a multi-session which is hard with irregular attendance.
I could have used something like the "roll to return" stuff, but that always feels unsatisfying to me; I could just roll a few d20s and decide how the adventurers would fair in the dungeon if I was looking for something that abstract.

If/when I try again I think I might use Pre-gens and am definitely doing B/X. Not only should things resolve quicker, but then I'll have an idea of the character and motivations so if there is a mid-delve flake I can just take over their character.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Games Workshop confirmed femstodes and it has caused a firestorm with some celebrating, while others are gnashing their teeth, and thousands of closeted neets are masturbating in celebration. I suspect Majorkill is hard at work commissioning more femstodes hentai as we speak.

This is from 4 months ago but still applicable.

 

[Adamska]

I personally only dislike it on the "they've always been there angle" year zero style bullshit that was pushed for it. The way the custodes were made doesn't necessarily lock them solely to being men like Astartes, so that's not an issue.

Though TBH Sisters of Silence were the female custodes essentially.

 

[Second Missing Primarch]

I personally only dislike it on the "they've always been there angle" year zero style bullshit that was pushed for it. The way the custodes were made doesn't necessarily lock them solely to being men like Astartes, so that's not an issue.

Though TBH Sisters of Silence were the female custodes essentially.

Yeah. If I'd been in charge I'd have just said that the Custodes were running out of suitable male candidates, so they tested the procedure on a few potentially compatible females, and when it worked they said "Great, more warriors for the Emperor" and went into mass production. No need for bullshit Orwellian retcons.

 

[Penne Dreadful]

I personally only dislike it on the "they've always been there angle" year zero style bullshit that was pushed for it.

I prefer it to a Primaris-style "turns out that some guy was better than the Emperor at his own job and just happened to change everything".

That aside, it's amusing to see GW explicitly acknowledging that there hasn't been much distinguishing Custodes and Marines since the former got their Codex and the latter got Primaris in 7e.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

If women get female custodes than I want brothers of silence too.