Veeky Forums, how do we make stealth not be reduced to a series of rolls...

Veeky Forums, how do we make stealth not be reduced to a series of rolls, and instead be more interesting and decision based, rather than just luck-based?

I'm thinking about running a game focused one thieves/heists, so stealth will be one of the major components.

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escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/10277-Stealth-Games-Don-t-Have-to-Be-About-Killing-People
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>This pic.
I am so god damn triggered.

Why the fuck aren't you allowed to eat if you're hungry or drink when you're thirsty.

It's distracting and kids are messy little shits. Welcome to the american education system!

I work with children and it's far more distracting to have them whine due to low blood sugar.

Also water bottles are mandatory here.

>american education system
>american
most of the kids are sticky because of how much damn soda they bring. Parents and sister are teachers and they try to keep any and all food out of the classroom. Especially if it'll stain/ attract insects.

My cousins are very big on keeping their kids away from caffeine. Which is understandable because I play with their kids during our yearly family reunions and they have seemingly infinite energy--I get tired long before they do. Although perhaps I'm just out of shape these days.

I've always wondered about that. It seems combat is the only thing in RPGs that ever gets a dedicated minigame. Which is understandable, but it would still be neat to see how minigames for other stuff works out.

I don't have an answer for you, but I do have an article that might give you the inspiration you need to come up with your own answer. This is one of my favorite of all Yahtzee's columns and it always gets me brainstorming: escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/10277-Stealth-Games-Don-t-Have-to-Be-About-Killing-People

Have obtainable blueprints and observable guard patterns that can be exploited to bypass skill checks. Send a familiar through the vents, pay off a man on the inside, have the druid tunnel into the vault/jail cell/kobold rape dungeon. Also:

>Food
Pic obviously unrelated.

>5 Ways to SNEAK
How's it unrelated?

There is no food in that picture.

>I've always wondered about that. It seems combat is the only thing in RPGs that ever gets a dedicated minigame. Which is understandable, but it would still be neat to see how minigames for other stuff works out.
Burning Wheel has one for social encounters. Kult has one for researching new spells/rituals. There are other examples, I'm sure.

Is there a stealth board game you like?

You can homebrew basically anything by looting a boardgame for the primary activity and then filling the rest in with skill rolls. Risus and FATE are decent systems for the "everything else" part.

If there are stealth based board games, I haven't heard of them... or I can't remember any right now.

I am borrowing from Blades in the Dark, though.

>My cousins are very big on keeping their kids away from caffeine.
A good idea for children, to be honest. Caffeine is semi-addictive and has many potentially undesirable effects on your digestive system, aside from making children even more of unbearable little shits.

Or parents could feed their fucking kids decent meals at home so they aren't starving by the time school starts.

Went to school in SK, eating in class was a death sentence

I have been thinking about this, mostly for Souls-like exploration, but that involves stealth as well.

Basically, you need to balance the immediate threat (getting caught) with the pressure (sun rising, wizard coming home, etc.) with the goal (get in and steal shit). It'd be sorta like poker where if you risk your chips you may get knocked out, but if you don't, you'll be bled dry by the blinds anyway.

>Why the fuck aren't you allowed to eat if you're hungry or drink when you're thirsty.
My elementary school quit letting us bring lunches from home, which really sucked because it's not like you got to pick what you got. Everybody got the same shit on their lunch tray and the portions were relatively meager, though you were technically allowed to get seconds on something, you had to eat everything on your tray to be able to do that, and there was almost always one inedible thing, like coleslaw or carrot raisin salad (literally just raisins and carrot strips in mayonnaise--how is that even a thing?). So people would put the nasty thing into their milk carton, but you'd get in trouble if you got caught and the teachers would make you feel guilty for trying to get enough food to eat. It was bullshit.

Veeky Forums, how do we make combat not be reduced to a series of rolls, and instead be more interesting and decision-based, rather than just luck-based?

I'm thinking about running a game focused on warriors/battles, so combat will be one of the major components.

Play 4e.

Seriously, how is this considered food?

so you organise into 5 person rotations, each day one kid gets all the inedible smeg dumped on their plate and the other 4 get seconds, each kid goes without one day a week and gets 4 days of enough food

i would have thought that was obvious

Kids would put their shit on another person's tray sometimes, but for some reason, even kids who didn't want seconds usually didn't want to help you out (even if it was part of a future or past trade), and you could still get in trouble if teachers checked the trays around you.

Tl;dr: kids are shortsighted, selfish douchebags, and teachers were out to get you.

but ploting to outfox the teachers is a time honoured childhood tradition

everyone takes turns as the rabbit and everyone benefits...

or is this part of the American hateon for anything even resembling socialism or egalitarianism?

Even in 3.5e you don't need to use the sneak skill to hide, if the guards do not have direct line of sight to you (you have full cover) they can't see you.
(And if you don't move, then you don't have to roll move silently skill either)

Run it like a miniatures game, but hide the position of the guards.

Underated.

Jesus Christ I thought you were lying. That's fucking vile and I feel so bad for you now.

Our school used to steam cook everything so every meal was a watery mess. Even the pizza was steam cooked. They used to just buy that cheap-ass spiral pasta and steam it before covering it in butter and garlic powder. It was one of the only edible things they actually made.

Americans are both more and less socialist than ever. Really depends where you go.
People always seem to forget that America is a huge country with lots of very different cultures.

As for stealth, I usually switch into a much more narrative way of playing whenever stealth comes up. Typically I have a "stealth meter" in my mind where they can increase or decrease how stealthy they are based on purely on decisions and descriptions of what precautions they take to be sneaky and when they actually have a chance of being observed I have them roll stealth modified by how stealthy the situation they have narratively pit themselves in is opposed by the observers.
And depending on the situation a near miss can just cause complications rather than a full alert. Like you prompt a guard to come investigate what he thought he just saw.
Full alert shouldn't happen unless you get a huge fuck up. And even then, they should have a chance to respond before they raise the alarm. Bodies work just as well as a complication because it makes the job harder.

how do you handle bavarian fire drills with regards to stealth?

Holy shit this is actually a thing.

I misread that as Barbarian fire drills at first, which is way funnier. But I will answer both:
>Bavarian Fire Drill
This is pretty much the same thing as before except the narrative descriptions are now about mannerisms and presentation or disguise and stealth meter is now a "Conspicuousness" meter. When someone actually interacts you is when the social skills come into play. And just like before, a near miss can be recovered from with some quick thinking.
>Barbarian Fire Drill
When the barbarian says he's in charge, do you ask questions?

Our whole education system is a travesty.
>now, little shits, sit down, don't move, DON'T YOU FUCKING MOVE, and repeat after me
>do as I say
>you don't like basketball? Fuck you, you playing basketball
>now, repeat the definition of a function, IT'S VERY IMPORTANT
>don't you try being creative

School as it is now is mostly about teaching obedience to the system. It's even more obvious after I spent a year in Finland studying at an art college.
We need to completely redesign how education works, ground up.

don't you lot start every day with a session of crypto-fascist obedience brainwashing?

And Americans bitch about British food.

The only genuine american food is takeout chinese.

Everything else they stole from somewhere.

Eh I'd argue that the majority of dumbfucks need obedience training since thinking is absolutely beyond them.

Wasn't the whole concept of the US a big melting pot where all the ideas came from somewhere else?

Actually the original idea was a haven for upperclass businessmen,traders and landowners who didn't want to kowtow or be taxed by a distant monarch and his friends. It was only after they figured out that exploiting potatofags was profitable that the melting pot meme really got started.

sounds like the Confederacy won after all, the rich got their slaves in the end

t. teenage socialist.

PCs never roll but instead describe all their actions and how they're stealthing around in detail. The guards are the ones who roll instead as the GM plays them as intelligently as possible with only the lucky rolls of the dice and clever player action protecting the PCs.

You can give bonuses/maluses based on decisions in most systems.
Making it purely decision based reduces it to a gamebook, with the same issues.
(very simplified example)
>You can go through the window or escalate the roof and crawl down the chimney.
>Hmm, there's light at the window, I'll try the chimney, it sounds safer.
>The guard hears you coming down the conduit and sounds the alarm.
Basically, in the worst case, the player has to guess the GM's mindset constantly, rather than acting like an experienced rogue would do.

>Why the fuck aren't you allowed to eat if you're hungry or drink when you're thirsty.
Now I understand why america is full of lardasses.

>muh genetic heredity
Maybe it's because they were taught not to think too much?

>Or parents could feed their fucking kids decent meals at home so they aren't starving by the time school starts.
What's your solution for "parents don't have the money"? Keep in mind that "well, they shouldn't have had kids!" is not a valid answer, because the kids already exist.

>Why the fuck aren't you allowed to eat if you're hungry or drink when you're thirsty.

Because it's a needless distraction.

1) Person eating pays attention to their food, not their studies.

2) People around are distracted by the sounds and smells from the person eating.

3) "Hey, can I have a bite?" over and over.

4) Fights when no, you can't have a bite.

5) It's just another way for the haves to lord over the have-nots (many parents struggle to afford to feed their kids three meals a day, much less give them a constant supply of non-stop snacks).

6) Messes will be made meaning time has to be taken from class to clean up. Even if you don't spill your food you still got to dispose of any food trash you create.

7) It's not healthy and you don't need to be stuffing your maw 24/7.

8) Schools provide lunch (and, in many cases, breakfast) so there's no need for food in class.

9) There's also breaks between classes where you can go get a drink of water, and most teachers will let you step out for a quick drink if you can't wait.

Ultimately, it's a classroom, not a cafeteria.

>crypto-fascist
Will you stop saying everything's crypto-fascist? You make me sound like I was a complete git!

But the issue is most parents don't give a fuck. You can cook some cheap-ass meals that actually taste okay and aren't unhealthy these days if you put the effort into learning how, but no, it's just an endless tidal wave of TV dinners which are bad for you, taste like fried vomit most of the time, and importantly, MORE EXPENSIVE THAN A BULK HOME-COOKED MEAL.

>tfw you ate normal dinners in elementary
Poland got few things right.

Then get a fucking job.
Go hungry yourself if you fucking have to, just feed your damn kids.

You mean Jews.

>why don't they eat cakes, though?

ACTUALLY it was originally a bunch of prudes who got so sick of everyone not being all uptight they decided they'll male their own place without blackjack, and hookers

The asshole parents should cook some fucking breakfast and snack for their hell spawns instead of sending them hungry to school.

I am so glad I didn't have to deal with this as a kid, the education system has only gotten worse and it already fucked me up hard

This is why I just fucking eat out

nope, the Confederacy wanted to own their "inferiors", the Jews want to kill theirs

Now tell me why you aren't allowed to go take a leak when you need one.

>My elementary school quit letting us bring lunches from home
What shithole do you live in where this could happen and not get rekt immediately by parents telling the school to get fucked.

>mfw where I live nobody went to school with lunch because either they ate outside with parents/others or just ate at school because it isn't that bad.

You are though

Sorry I expect people to feed their own fucking kids.
Damn welfare queen.

Most students are. It's just the assholes who are pretending to go to the bathroom so they can visit their friends and waste time who ruin it

It's outright dehumanising if you need to ask whether you can go to pee. Holy fuck.

I don't think they can actually stop you from going to the bathroom, it's just polite to inform them that this is indeed what you are doing and not just randomly walking out.

Though they can't really stop you randomly walking out, either.

Then again, my uncle used to be a teacher in one of the really rough areas in London during the 50s. He still has the teeth that were knocked out when students would try to fight him. Both his and theirs.

>It's outright dehumanising if you need to ask whether you can go to pee
I remember when "dehumanizing" meant you were sent to die in a war or reduced to a class that can't even be touched by others. Now having a fucking semblance of order in a classroom is dehumanizing? "Oh no, I had to raise my hand to take a peepee while the teacher is talking. I can't just walk in and out at will during a fucking lecture!".

First world problems up the ass in here.

>Keep in mind that "well, they shouldn't have had kids!" is not a valid answer, because the kids already exist.
I'm sure we can come up with some modest proposal suitable for those situations. Hell, i would not be surprised if somebody already did.

Purpose of the education is to give students skills and abilities that will be applicable in real life. That's the theory anyway. I dare say staying for an hour without wetting or soiling yourself is one of such applicable skills.

>stuck in rush hour traffic
>have to take a piss
>can't get off the road quickly because of traffic
>still have enough decency not to piss myself
Yeah, its a useful skill just one you hopefully won't need often.

Kids aren't stupid. If my daughter can teach herself to scale the cupboards and the fridge to make herself a bowl of cereal at age 5, then what? Is my kid some super genius? Kids are fucking lazy.

On the real though, most of my friends came from poverty and this was their way you get food. Also confirmed that we were being served alpo dog food to save $$$

that always weirded me out, because weight for weightrice and beans are cheaper than dog food

DOUBLE actually it was a handful of get-rich-quick guys who wanted to get money and get out.

Can't just serve beans and rice. Gotta have them staples like pizza, blueberry pancake corn dogs, and shredded pork and cabbage.

>Also confirmed that we were being served alpo dog food to save $$$
Sorry, what the fuck?

Sorry to jump in, but

>pizza
My school had that. If you can call that nasty-ass tomato-paste tasting cardboard and rubber shit pizza.

>blueberry pancake corn dogs
How about fuck you? We had nasty sausage, powdered/carton eggs, those nasty impossibly thin strips of bacon that are more fat and grease than meat, and toast or frozen biscuits for breakfast.

>shredded pork and cabbage
Never even once had that, but we sure as shit had plenty of that weird shit where they put green beans in lime jello.

Best thing we had was, once a week on Wednesdays, if you brought a fiver, you could get chicken strips. They were the gross, frozen, reheated ones, but they were better than anything else that was served. Unless you counted the once-a-year Thanksgiving thing they did for a few years. Actual decent shredded turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, all that. Oh, and, for one year, they had a thing they did where you could get apple slices and caramel sauce.

I got the reference user. I appreciated it.

Well, aren't you a swift one?

My elementary school had a hot lunch system, but looking back on it I can't believe they got away with that because it'd be like, McDonalds, KFC, pizza and other shit that people says kills you nowadays.

>Why the fuck aren't you allowed to eat if you're hungry or drink when you're thirsty.
Now I understand why america is full of lardasses.

Fun fact;
If you eat more smaller meals (say once every 3 hours) your metabolism will speed up. So you won't actually be a fat ass because your body adapts.
Of course if you're eating garbage anyway it won't help as much, but it still helps.

t. a fit person

>reciting the pledge of allegiance to the nation which you are a citizen of I'd "crypto-fascist"
It's called fostering patriotism you godless commie.

Fostering patriotism is done by instilling hero-worshiping death-cult.
t. godless commie

Oh yeah.
As if being at a whim of some underpaid talentless harpy even in the most basic decisions, while everyone else important continuously repeats that it's good for you since you're a dumb motherfucker who doesn't know shit and shouldn't decide for yourself isn't something to be concerned of.

Sounds like you have some personal issues that need worked through.

Okay, listen, I had a shitty schooling, alright? Everyone in that school was just part of a point on a spreadsheet listing how much grant money each group gets the school. I wasn't part of one of the big sellers, so when anything happened, I was in the wrong, regardless of what happened, up to and including the time a friend and I got punched in the face. So, I get the dehumanizing thing.

Being forced to maintain some level of decorum and raise your hand and alert your teacher that you require a visit to the restroom is not dehumanizing. It's polite. You'd tell people at a party where you were going, if not what for, when you need to take a piss, right? Same thing.