Post AkSeLbXi3N8NrROi9I by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
(DIR) More posts by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
(DIR) Post #AkQgB5qWrACaFiObsu by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-29T14:39:53Z
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Horror writers have been discussing the ubiquity of mobile phones in the world and how to "handle" that in their plots. What do we spooky gamers think about phones? I've honestly never had any trouble with phones spoiling occult modern games and I've never found that access to apps has affected a good scary story at all - I wonder though is that because I'm never antagonistic towards players and I (try) never to gatekeeper plot points for the sake of it.#horrorrpg #cthulhu #ttrpg #horrorfon
(DIR) Post #AkQgB7Efgt6kYshP9c by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-29T17:14:29Z
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@Printdevil People that complain about the presence of cell phones in their plots are communicating directly that they are uncreative and don't have the capacity to imagine stories which don't hinge on very limited information control or can't figure out ways in which cell phones fail, which either tells me that they are older than 70 years old and never had a cell phone, have never done anything interesting or useful with their cell phone, and are under 40.These people were complaining about the presence of landlines in horror stories and how that made them impossible. And then the presence of the internet in horror stories and how that made them impossible. I don't see any reason to actually care what they think. They certainly haven't given me any reason to.#TTRPG #horror
(DIR) Post #AkQjYk4RliWFWssG9Y by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-29T17:52:21Z
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@lextenebris I remember people worrying about landlines in the 80s. It seemed so odd, at the time I always felt it was an affection for "period" but actually I do think it is signalling bad GMing style. To me players all having phone just seems like a way the group is basically "all together" even if they're off doing different things. There does seem a lot of weird stylistic issues if you're worrying about phones, all of which seem to revolve around information control.
(DIR) Post #AkQmAJXB4yQY8kM98y by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-29T18:21:34Z
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@Printdevil Some stories literally do depend on information control and being in and out of it as primary elements of building the tension. But that just means that you need to find reasons that mechanisms of information control don't exist or aren't functioning.Cell phones are some of the easiest ones to take out. Need cell phones not to function? The cell towers are out. Need them not to function in a city? If cell phones are out in a city situation, you have way bigger problems than worrying about whether your cell phone is out. Sometimes it's about separating the party, as it were, but very few of the people who say they can't work around it ever think about the possibilities inherent in having the team be in constant communication but different locations. You hear about something happening that you can do nothing about. You can build a lot of tension out of that. It's easy to find and prove counterexamples as well. We've had science fiction horror for 70 or more years on a regular basis. High-speed, low friction communication is extremely easy in most science fiction settings, and yet horror still works. How is that? It just requires something that is in somewhat short supply: creativity.#TTRPG #horror #writing
(DIR) Post #AkQqMCXfIjsbkJVYRs by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-29T19:08:33Z
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@lextenebris I think a lot of GMs (and players) model their games on fictions like movies and tv, and if you think about it very few tv shows really represent how phones are used. Soap operas like Grey's Anatomy probably manage it best with floating messages on screens and the like, but generally in media phones are "smol boring things people don't discuss often"I turned that on it's head in my Fallen Leaves game and one of the players was basically obsessed with using his phone for the occult
(DIR) Post #AkQuQY4vZRTJW0OWrg by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-29T19:54:07Z
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@Printdevil In actual practice, if you actually watch people, they don't tend to use their phones all the time. Sure, they have it up scrolling, but they're not actually using it. They're just filling time. It's the behavioral equivalent of the Girl from Ipanema. Just a filler action to do something. People's engagement with their phones is really only when they call someone or look something up. That's about it. And those are the only two things that matter in the context of a horror story. Well, with the possible exception of note-taking and video acquisition, but then you have the question of where those notes get found, sent, or experienced outside of the moment in which they're taken.These are great tools for storytelling. Everybody knows how they're used. I look askance at anyone who tells me they destroy or defang horror.#TTRPG #horror #writing
(DIR) Post #AkQubrTdmslIreLfCy by ericmpaq@dice.camp
2024-07-29T18:34:25Z
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@Printdevil I started the #Traveller scenario “Death Station”. It’s a sci-fi game in the far future. When they found the dead body floating outside, they reached to their patron on their communicators asking to get the authorities involved. As they are on a backwater system, their patron informed thrm closest authorities are at least 1 week away.You can still get folks isolated even if they have communication systems in a horror scenario. #ttrpg
(DIR) Post #AkQubsZLj8vGFe1jkG by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-29T19:56:11Z
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@ericmpaq @Printdevil It's also worth noting that is a powerful storytelling element because without the ability to make that communication, they wouldn't necessarily have known that they were one week from any kind of support unless you simply told them as exposition. It's far more effective it introduced by discovery. And without the ability to communicate, they wouldn't have had that discovery.
(DIR) Post #AkQunyutx7nbPfsXSq by ericmpaq@dice.camp
2024-07-29T19:58:21Z
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@lextenebris I had told them via exposition but since this is the player’s first Traveller game, he hadn’t fully realized how far the other civilized systrm is.
(DIR) Post #AkQuqkazee4drjt4JU by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-29T19:58:54Z
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@lextenebris As I said I've never found them to defang horror, it was just doing the newspaper rounds recently about horror writers complaining about it and I was pondering what the greybeards of gaming wisely thought on it.
(DIR) Post #AkRndhBEXLq4zGcrnU by Miyagiyoda@dice.camp
2024-07-30T06:12:48Z
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@lextenebris @Printdevil Equipment: Smartphone (+25% Library Use, -25% Spot Hidden/Perception)
(DIR) Post #AkSdpE0g0pBdbnVUWG by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-30T07:57:35Z
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@Miyagiyoda @lextenebris At my age and with my parental habit of peering at small screens like they're execrable, I'd make me roll spot hidden just to find "the dots? the hamburger menu? what are you on about... why does the Cult of Ubbo Sathla want to link to my google account"
(DIR) Post #AkSdpFI5Fahla4euI4 by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-30T15:57:32Z
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@Printdevil @Miyagiyoda See, that's what you get when you start rolling failures and complications on your research check. The app goes down for maintenance while you're using it. The font is a light spindly gray on white that's almost impossible to make out. The page you want is locked behind a paywall.There's a ton of things this opens up, and most of them are extremely hilarious, reflect the real frustrations of using such a system and are simultaneously horrific. It's a win-win-win.#TTRPG #writing #horror
(DIR) Post #AkSe2H5xqv6swTCdZw by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-30T15:59:52Z
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@lextenebris Of all of those the one which annoy my players the most would be "it's behind a paywall" I can imagine people frantically installing script blocks and circumvents rather than paying to find out what they needed to know. It'd be a hotbutton at my table .@Miyagiyoda
(DIR) Post #AkSeLbXi3N8NrROi9I by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-30T16:03:23Z
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@Printdevil @Miyagiyoda Suddenly the tech guy in the group looks a whole lot less useless as an appendage."That site was added to the bypass list last week. You must not have gotten the latest update!"A good time was had by all.
(DIR) Post #AkSegUtRyEzVJsWrKK by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-30T16:07:09Z
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@lextenebris In the one game I did where one of the players was a total phone addict he crowdsourced problems constantly, looking for FOSS apps and freebies, he was constantly on social media apps going "so who knows about poltergeists" It played out very well, with initially a lot of chaotic stupidity and over time during the campaign a few virtual NPCs who were increasingly dependable. A bit like Mastodon... @Miyagiyoda
(DIR) Post #AkSjClwoUxn5IOkPbM by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-30T16:57:48Z
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@Printdevil @Miyagiyoda That's also a really good way to plant completely false information in the character's mind, with the player knowing that it's false and having the opportunity to lean into it. All sorts of opportunities for fun failure. How can you not love that?"Mastodon says that this green ooze is completely safe. I can't imagine that Ridiculox0045 would ever steer us wrong. Dude says he lives in a library..."
(DIR) Post #AkSjMiEr8wEugjvWFM by Printdevil@dice.camp
2024-07-30T16:59:35Z
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@lextenebris See also "all medical advice online " @Miyagiyoda