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GeekNights 20100504 - A Bunch of Dwarves
Tonight on GeekNights we discuss Burning Dwarf Fortress and Project D.O.R.F.. In the news, Castlevania rumors and Street Fighter Legacy.
Comments
Also, I just remembered, the song Ilmarinen and I made in the "Good Hip Hop" thread is a perfect example of flamewar-cum-creativity. The conversation went something like this:
Me: The music you listen to sucks.
Ilmarinen: No, it's awesome, but the stuff you listen to isn't so hot.
Me: Nuh uh.
Ilmarinen: Yuh huh. By the way, I wrote some lyrics.
Me: I did too.
Ilmarinen: Nice, I wrote some more with the same concept.
Me: Let's record a song.
So we did. And to Ilmarinen, my man, I haven't forgotten about that song. Now that I've got all computers running and where they should be, it is going to get re-recorded.
As for Scott's accusation, I never claimed DF was programmed good, so do not say such foolishness. I said the way you played ignored the knowledge of the game being programmed by an amateur writing mediocre code, resulting in the game AI calling its mediocre code constantly and in large quantity trying to find alternative routes that did not exist. I then pointed out in response to Rym that pathfinding is still slow, especially in a 3D grid with A* path-finding when there is no path.
And then later others repeated it and suddenly people listened.
1) Never suggest something easy to a player. Any solution that you, the GM, offer should be harsh, difficult, and/or in conflict with one of their BITs. Leave it to them to come up with the easy clever workarounds
2) Once an obstacle leaves your mouth, don't lower it due to player suggestions. If they come up with a valid reason it should be easier in this context, give them a bonus die, two in extreme cases. You can also make them justify "the easy way" mechanically through use of FoRKs and linked tests.
Finally, Luke suggests something in Burning Empires that has held up pretty well in BW for me: if you're really in doubt what the obstacle of a task should be, it's Ob 3. Set the obstacle lower for things that are clearly trivial and higher for things that are clearly difficult, of course, but it's a nice middle ground with enough room for failure AND success to make people think about it.
Taking it out a little broader, though, I can offer up a very valuable piece of GM'ing advice. Once you've made a call, go with it. Never, ever, ever, ever stop to argue about the call you made during gameplay, and do not go back on it during the game. It doesn't matter if what you did is correct by the RAW; it is far more important that your rulings stick and are applied equally to everyone during the game.
If you made a particularly bad call - and you will make bad calls - revisit it after play with the players and come up with a way to handle it in the future. You can do the referee thing - make a different bad call later on to make up for it - but I would do that sparingly. This also goes for the players; if the GM makes a bad call, voice your concern but roll with the call. Play now, be correct later.
So, basically, be consistent. It's more important than being correct. Obviously, the best scenario is to be consistently correct, but that won't always happen.
And remember, the rules are, at their core, suggestions. That's it. If it doesn't make sense, do something else that does make sense. So long as you do it consistently, everyone will be on the same page and the game will run smoothly.
And because other people are giving their guidance for BW, I'll say my opinion too. In my opinion digging a hole in the wall is ob 0, no roll. That's because just digging a hole is boring and we don't waist rolls on boring stuff. If there is something else in the situation like digging a hole before goblins attack, then it's different thing.
I think that in the podcast there was a mention about possibility of some kind of public forum thread for the Burning Fortress game, I'm interested to know more details about the campaign, like PC;s believes and such.
Digging a hole before goblins attack is a perfect candidate for using one of the time complication bonuses. Fail to dig the hole in time? Goblin'd!
Now I'm not making excuses, yeah the code is utter shit, even from my perspective.
For example, in the Civilization games since Civ2, all the game data is just in regular old audio, graphics, text files, and python scripts that make modding incredibly easy. That's open data. However, the source code used to build Civ.exe is completely closed. This makes it easy to make mods of Civ, but it puts strict limitations on how far you can go. For example, I can make a Gundam version of Civ, but I can't do anything about the shitty netcode.
However, I think DF as a whole isn't so much the Toady One saying "Okay I'm gonna make the best possible generic fantasy world simulator," as he is saying, "Okay, I'm going to make a fantasy world simulator, the best I know how." This is a labor of him proving to himself he can do something like this, and all the versions of DF have been phases in the continuous beta test.