Good Luck. I had a plant that I brought inside for the cold weather, all of the leaves fell off - it was a succulent - so it looked dead. I saw 1 small green branch, so I put it outside, now that it is warm, to see if anything happens. Low and behold - it's growing leaves! So don't give up
Gosh, I wish I could put my plants outside but they will be instantly destroyed by city nature.
I’m not even sure how she ended up like this. Her leaves just fell off naturally and never regenerated. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Had a quick search: "Grow Alocasia 'Polly' in bright light out of direct sunlight, in free draining peat-free compost. A minimum temperature of 16ºC is perfect, ideally in a humid location, such as a bathroom. If the room isn't humid enough, you can increase humidity levels by standing the pot on a tray filled with pebbles and then add water until it rises to just below the bottom of the pot."
If relevant, try addressing humidity and ensure it stays out of direct sunlight. It could be waiting until conditions are favourable.
Thank you for this info!
I feel like this applies to just general care though. I’m looking to learn specifically what happens when I have a healthy stump, how to stimulate stem/leaf growth.
It’s very happy, I’ve harvested a lot of seedlings that are growing beautifully and I think mama are growing more in the roots. I’m just confused why she be like she be 😅
Fate gives you fate points to spend when you do t like a roll. It also gives you "succeed at a cost" if your fate points are exhausted or not enough.
You can still just roll with it (pun intended) and die to a random goblin if that's fun. But you also have agreed upon procedure for not doing that. "It looks like the goblin is going to gut me, but (slides fate point across the table) as it says on my sheet I'm a Battle Tested Bodyguard, so I twist at the last second and he misses (because the fate point bumps my defense roll high enough)"
This is pretty easy to import into DND, too, if you like the other parts of it
Inspiration in raw DND is extremely under baked. Bg3 expanded it a little by letting you hold more than one, and actually using it. Most tables I've played at don't use it, or it's pretty rare.
Fate by default starts you with 3 fate points per session. It expects you to use them and has clear ways of getting more.
I really tried to get my old DND group to use then more, but it didn't really click. I wasn't a good fit for that group really.
I'm a first time DM and I struggle with this a lot haha. There are times where I feel a roll is appropriate, so I do it, and whatever is supposed to happen fails, then I realize.. "what the hell is supposed to happen if that doesn't work?" so it just kinda happens anyways.. IDK if my players have caught on..
That's where my problem comes from. I'm not experienced enough to know immediately where failure is acceptable or not; rather, I don't always have backup plans or ideas for when things that should be able to fail, fail. So I roll, and it fails, and it should fail, but I've got no idea what happens when it does. So it doesn't fail.
I think I'm getting better at improv-ing events and making backup plans. It's still difficult for me to find the balance between the story I want to tell/ have prepared vs the story that my players wind up creating, but checking in with my party here and there tells me everyone's having fun and only rarely does anyone feel gipped or abused by dice rolls.
Prior to rolling, think about what will happen if the roll fails or succeeds. If you are worried about failure at all, that is a good sign that failing is probably not an option. Basically, if you are able to make the decision to fudge it when it happens you had the same time frame to decide notnto risk that need to fudge in the first place.
Over time with more experience you will find ways to make failure a bump in the road to fun tims.
Thanks for spelling it out like this. I think I've been too focused on "doing something" and keeping the game going, that I don't stop to think before doing some things. Ie rolling before I know what will happen with a failure. I'll try to take more quick pauses to think things through, and worry about smoothness of play later.
It might be a little bumpy at first, but should speed up with a bit of practice and the practice of thinking about failure will happen more often!. Plus the more you think about it the better you will get at coming uo with ideas for failure and that will let you being back the random rolls!
if you don't even roll, then you're robbing your players from the feeling of a near miss
also taken to its extreme, your players will probably just work out that they aren't going to die at all and start taking stupid risks that they shouldn't
and yeah, at that point you can punish them, but you've been responsible for them getting to that state in the first place, so you're essentially punishing them for your own mistakes
This is another thing I fear, that causes me to do probably unnecessary rolls. I want the story/ gameplay to have at least some semblance of believability, so I don't want everyone risking their life on a curiosity because they know I won't kill them, but I also don't want to "punish" players every time they take a step off the walking path.
I'll admit it right here: sometimes I roll the dice just to give the illusion of risk, when in reality I'm buying time to make up the results of what someone just did.
You can roll some dice but it doesn't need to be a skill check (or whatever the naming is in your system of choice). When I don't know what should happen, I may roll a die. If it's high then it should be something good and if low, maybe it will give me inspiration to think about some new lurking danger. But I may discard the result and go with the gut feeling. Whatever, it was an "oracle roll" as I like to call it. Not tied to anyone's statistics.
I like to use a deck of cards as well. In Savage Worlds, it is used to determine a random encounter. Clubs indicate an enemy, hearts a friebd, diamonds some good omen and spades obstacles. I like to draw a card so it inspires me on what should happen next (of course as long as it makes sense with the world)
I was worried someone might take it this way. Fudging rolls means stating the result of a secret roll was different than it was in reality. What I'm talking about is using a die to inspire you what should happen in a situation where rolling is not applicable. Players decide to go to the sewers for some reason. What's in there? I don't know. Yet. There are no rules on what to roll when they go to the sewers now. I may ask them what they expect to find. I may draw a card. I may roll a die. I may consult the random encounters table. It's not a "roll" in the gaming sense, it's a way to get some inspiration on my next description. But it's like with a coin toss, sometimes you know what should happen when you make the roll and before you even see the result.
Because the result has no meaning, it's not a roll in a gaming sense. It being 20 or 1 makes no difference, it's just to spark something in the imagination.
it has the meaning you assigned to it before rolling it, whether or not you're pulling that meaning from a specific table, and whether or not you reveal the system to the players
if you decide ahead of time that a low result is going to be a tough encounter, and a high result is going to be a pile of treasure, then it comes up low and you decide to ignore that and give them treasure instead based on your gut feeling, you're fudging the roll
if you decide what's going to happen next based on your pull from a tarot deck, and somehow get "death" four times in a row, anything less than a disaster scenario is fudging the roll
it's the exact same instinct that leads to "hmm, maybe this piss shit little goblin shouldn't decapitate the barbarian in one hit because it happened to roll well"
But that's the whole point, I don't know beforehand what any result would mean. Yeah, generally by habit you think higher roll is good and low is bad but you can't apply it to every scenario. Let me visualize how it works for me
"What's in the sewers? I don't know, let me see. I rolled 14. Maybe it's something good? Maybe someone friendly? No, it doens't make sense in this context. It should probably be a hideout of crocodile people gang."
Did I know 14 would mean that? Should it? Is it good? Bad? I could also not roll. I could use a coffee stain to decide. I could toss a paper clip.
Personally I don't consider it as fudging rolls just because dice is involved. There are no procedures. I use it to guide my imagination because I have it right here before me. Tarot deck? Usually not, but it's also a fantastic tool to do so and you may interpret it however you want. But I agree with you that drawing death 3 times is rather self explanatory and it's an obvious disaster (also what a fun one!). But a die result is just a number without meaning, it only gives me a starting point for my thoughts. It's a habit; a tick; a real object that binds me with the virtual world. Not a roll to hit or a skills check.
If that's fudging rolls for you then I guess I need to stir up some dice to get my flow going.
I occasionally roll dice as theatre myself. In my last session, I had a troupe of traveling performers that I rolled for on each act to see if they did well or not, with each roll hidden from the players, and I would then describe the outcome to them. Most of the rolls were real, but some performers I had already decided would fail from the beginning, because they were plants for the enemy faction and had a plan going on in the background that depended on their failure at the act. But of course I still had to roll to not set off any alarms. Going to be fun when my players later piece together "oh, that hypnotist didn't actually fail, they just used mass suggestion to make everybody believe they did so they don't come under scrutiny." If a player catches on - one actually did pretty quick - then great, let them have the victory, but in general it's one of the ways I like to create expectations so I can subvert them or use them to sneak things by. The enemy faction is very guerilla-oriented, so it fits their MO pretty well.
On a more general scale, when it comes to hidden rolls, if I really need something to succeed, I'll make the roll not a matter of whether they succeed, but who succeeds. Keeps the story moving if I realize too late that that roll shouldn't have happened because a failure brings the game to a halt.
I really like the "who succeeds" idea. In events where I roll a fail and have no idea what to do with it, I can just have the outcome only happen for certain characters, or tweak the "success" so that it isn't quite so successful. Haha.
RPGs depend on mutual respect. If you think your players will metagame you and you need to punish them then it stops being a collaborative roleplaying game.
your players will probably just work out that they aren't going to die at all and start taking stupid risks that they shouldn't
you can't just not metagame
if you know a choice will result in a certain outcome, you can no longer make that decision neutrally
in fact, you literally can't take a risk when you know what the outcome of a choice is, because there's no risk to take
not even bothering to roll is barely a step removed from just telling your players "i'm not going to make the enemy roll to hit you because then you might die and you haven't found your long lost brother yet", and if you can't see that that's a garbage scenario for roleplaying i don't know what to tell you
I'm all for rolls that make sense. If it's an encounter, of course you should always roll. I roll in the open and players know what hit them and whatnot. The consequence is damage and/or death. But if you're a thief and want to open a simple lock and nobody's is trying to defenestrate you at the moment? No need to roll, failure is meaningless. You just killed a dragon? No need to persuade the king to help you. That's a reward for doing something beforehand. But oh my if an orc swings at you with his axe I'm gonna roll the dice right in front of you so you know that critical was not fudged.
I skip rolls if players are either super prepared or their failure will not mean anything. But as I said earlier, it needs trust between players and the GM - I don't make their lives harder as a punishment, I do that for the storytelling. And they don't try to work around me because we skipped a roll for athletics when they had a full day to climb a tree.
Oh but that reminds me. I was metagamed recently. When the team tried to decide what to do with a defeated enemy one of them said "let him live, he will come back as a sidequest. When we kill him then that plotline is dead as well".
Well he was not wrong but that needn't to be said.
But if you're a thief and want to open a simple lock and nobody's is trying to defenestrate you at the moment? No need to roll, failure is meaningless. You just killed a dragon? No need to persuade the king to help you.
this conversation is specifically talking about when you're in a scenario where you logically need to make a roll, but where a bad roll coming up essentially ruins things for both the gm and players
There are more better ways to make a player fear for their character other than death.
Like killing a beloved NPC, making the situation much worse, taking away their valuables, making their god angry, being hunted by assassins, making them wanted across the kingdom.
Death isn't the only punishment a GM/DM has at their disposal.
sometimes allowing an outcome that should mechanically via the rules of the game and logically via the rules of common sense has more downsides than upsides
it doesn't have to refer to exclusively player death
I learned in my first adventure that what I've prepared to happen might just be stupid and unrealistic, so I'm never too attached to it. If the dice say it doesn't happen, they know better than me, so I just toss it. If I lie about the dice to make it happen anyway, I'm making a worse experience for everyone.
If a failure means a path is unavailable, see if you can open up a different path. If there are no other paths, just let them have this one for free.
As long as you're not going super hardcore, I don't see the problem with just letting the truth of the dice decide whether a character receives a 'fatal' blow, only to find after the combat encounter that the character is barely alive, and the rest of the group needs to focus all their resources on triage and emergency evac.
Getting out of a dangerous place with a barely conscious character can make for a pretty tense situation.
That's why revivify is for. What you did here is taken away a meaningful moment from a player, just because you wanted them not to make a different PC. If you want that moment, write it into the story with an NPC. Don't keep someone alive "just because". Playing "hardcore" has nothing to do with this - that's about balancing enemy encounters. Don't throw a dragon at an unprepared party sort of things.
Otherwise people will either be annoyed that a moment was taken away, come to the conclusion that their choices don't really matter, or they would expect of you that every time a character dies, they become "half concious". Suddenly you have a "why didn't my char do that???" moment at the table. It's the same with fudging dice, but when that happens, you are behind a GM screen so you are less likely to be found out. Still a shitty thing to do though.
It's all about what sort of group you're playing with. I run a group for some kids at my school and I know they would be heartbroken if I just straight up killed them.
I've only had to do this once though. I made it a lesson about caution. The player was being reckless, and they 'died'. Seeing how distraught he was, I decided after the encounter, that the other players should roll for a perception check, and noticed the character still breathing slightly. It was nice to see the kid perk up immediately afterwards.
Some games have this built in and you don't have to fudge it.
Fate, my go to example, has important but simple rules around losing a conflict.
At any point before someone tries to take you out, you can concede. That's a player action and not a character action. If you concede, you get a say in what happens to your character. That's where you as a group say "maybe they stab me but leave me for dead in the confusion" or "maybe the orcs take me prisoner so you all can rescue me next week". Whatever the group decides is cool goes, but you get a say. You make this call before the dice are rolled. You also get one or more fate points, which is nice.
If you instead push your luck and let them roll, and their attack is more than you can take, you're done. The rest of the table decides what happens but you don't get a say beyond what was agreed to in session 0.
This would also be pretty easy to import into DND or most other systems.
i'm kind of torn on this. because, if the dice are the be-all-end-all, why have a GM at the table? i'd wager the vast majority of GMs tune difficulty and pacing on the fly without realizing it, even if it's just "i'm gonna skip this last encounter because we're already a half hour over and i have work tomorrow" or even just "wow everyone is bored as shit right now, we outta pick up the pace" but on the other hand, I have seen a fee bad rolls in a low-stakes encounter spiral into a character dying, and it was cool as shit. that's part of the magic of rpgs- no do-overs or back to the title screen, instead the rest of the party (or the whole party if the player rolls a new character) needs to contend and deal with being down a person. in our case we had to drag a corpse across a continent to get to a cleric powerful enough to bring him back, and in doing so accidentally let the big bad into the otherwise secure city limits. we would have completely missed out on all of that if those dice were fudged. i guess it all down to context- fudging to prevent the GM railroad from being derailed robs you of experiences, but we also have GMs at the table for a reason, and i'm ok with them using fudging when they feel it's warranted so long as they're not abusing it to the point where there's no risk to anything. at the end of the day, if we're all having fun, i trust the GM with whatever they're doing, and if we're not, fudging is probably a symptom of whatever actually is the issue
What I found in the TTRPG community is that a lot of GM's like to hear themselves talk. They write these huge paragraphs of sentences stringed together jumping from one topic to the next.
You can even notice this in the way the D&D books are written. Instead of using easy to navigate bullet points, it is just walls of text one after the other. Trying to find some specific knowledge in that is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
i've been writing a pretty big RPG module for years now and feel the same. in the beginning i was all about the prose and beauty of the written document. now, i'm just like "bullet points. go."
My 2 cents is that at the low levels, players need a bit of a buffer. A Lvl1 wizard with +0 CON can be one-shot by a goblin rolling a crit, to say nothing of the bugbear boss of the first encounter in Lost Mines of Phandelver (many people's first introduction to DnD 5e)
So minor selective fudging to keep the characters alive long enough for them to at least be wealthy enough to afford a Revivify seems like a small and harmless enough concession to me
Year, our sorcerer got one shot by the goblins. Later on a mage wanted to punish whatever attacked him with magic missile and accidentally killed him. Now bro's a meme for dying in the first round.
Speaking of the bugbear, we were all at 1 hp at the end of the fight, and only because we managed to turn goblins to our side (and Kelemvorism).
If it's a 1st level character is there any harm in simply letting them be killed by a goblin? Depends on what you're looking for in a game but an early death can lead to some nice storytelling
Because it takes longer to roll up a new one than a table really needs as an interruption.
Purely practical imo. You don't want things derailed that early. Later on, a death can be worked with, made part of a story. In the first three sessions? It's just a pain in the ass
That’s when we find out the player’s wizard character, Ehariel, has a long lost brother named Aharial with a suspiciously identical set of stats and backstory
He also has been looking for his brother for years only to conveniently find the party minutes after his brother dies
Look if someone's having a bad time, it don't cost much to throw em a bone. Like sure, that last attack killed them a round early because everyone has had a moment to feel proud today but you. Or like the spellcaster who is feeling a bit shitty because every monster has saved against their spells by some fluke today.
Like if they aren't having fun, what am I doing here?
Video games do this shit all the time. Famously the first GoW gave new players a small boost in multiplayer. It led to a community and better engagement in the long run because people had more fun. BG3 has that goofy 'karmic dice' system, which is on by default. Fire emblem lies. etc etc
the problem with flubbing is the dishonesty and unilateralness. You can play a different system that doesn't create the situation your players don't like so easily.
Or honestly just import Fate points and "succeed at a cost" into dnd. The dice system still sucks but that would help tremendously.
Legit, I don't fudge rolls because it's not fun for me.
If a roll would fuck up the session/adventure/campaign, I just straight up tell the players I'm making a call and override the results. It doesn't happen often, and it's really only when rng just screws things, like when you get multiple nat 1s in a session, way out of line with what makes sense without some kind of gymnastics to explain things in game.
I think the difference is being transparent about it. This is saying "I know that shouldn't hit, but I'm saying it hits anyways." Traditional fudging is "That... hits, yeah, totally."
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