I, personally, feel like all of he WG mechanics and how in depth they are, aren’t well suited for chat rp. It’s just too much to keep track of. I don’t think a lot of people are going to be confused about what gaining 20 lbs should look like in a WG group 
that’s just my hot take tho, I do really love a lot of the mechanics girth introduces, the GL engine is literally my only hesitation about using it in the fullest sense. I’d rather leave more freedom to the individual RPer.
Well, thats why fat / weight gain can only happen once per long rest. For Gls, you just need to set up thresholds / Limits, and then you should be good. Its a lot at first, but normally its just…
'Okay im Medium, so my metabolism is 4. I ate 14 pounds of food. I gain 10 pounds, and allocate my weight by 10*.25 to my stomach…" Et al. I was trying to compound the systems so that you don’t need to keep track of so many numbers
A pretty helpful breakdown of 5E at its core, for those who aren’t familiar with tabletop. Thanks for taking the time to write that down!
Even in the most rules light groups I’ve played in, we decided to add rolls to prevent godmodding/powerplaying. It was… a big problem. It kept things fair for things like encounters. I agree, calling nonadventuring characters “NPCs” doesn’t make a ton of sense if you take it literally. Citizens is a good suggestion, so there’s no chance for miscommunication.
@hudhouse99 I hope it didn’t come off like I was saying the system is too complex. I don’t feel that way at all. I’m just saying for a chat RP group, with a likely very big percentage of players that will be Citizens, it’s a lot. Also, I could be misunderstanding part of the system where it accounted for how much lactation/orgasm/juice/filling you’ve built up- and while that’s all great, I just feel like in a chat rp it’s a lot to keep track of.
I think a simplified version of the system would work well to give people the freedom to just RP and only worry about the numbers in certain circumstances. Of course, everyone will need to at the very least keep track of their weight, even if they’re just a Citizen. I think having separate sheets for Adventurers and Citizens is a good idea, since the latter won’t have nearly as much they need to track.
Also I’ll be real, I really don’t understand the organ weight and how it plays into everything. I’m just a big fan of keeping things as streamlined, simple, fast and loose as possible for big chat groups, because nothing kills the RP mood faster than people being like “wait, hey…” and needing to consult the rules while trying to do a scene.
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Well you don’t have to keep the sheets on Discord. There are other places to store sheets, such as Roll20. That is where we could keep track of all the info, and if we need to update a weight or something we could simply update the Roll20 sheet.
I was not suggesting we try and keep track of the sheets on discord
Really, I feel like designing special sheets we can keep and change ourselves wouldn’t be a big deal, I don’t think we should need to use the roll20 tools to do so (but I am a fan of it). Releasing an editable google doc you can upload for yourself so you can track it would be more ideal than roll20, because then we’re either making a LOT of games, or only a certain amount of people can edit their sheets at a time. It’ll get messy.
Yeah that could work, making a special Girth System sheet could be a good idea to make this easier. Gus, what do you think?
My official pitch is that we take the Girth engine and create a “Lite” version that would be more suitable to the fast and loose style of chat RP. Something I think I’ll do for fun, is create a wild magic percentile table that would be compatible with Expand and Girth, because I’ve not yet seen one and I want it lol.
Ah! So much to read! I’m glad you’re all so excited~
Where to start . . . well, how about the rooms discussion!
This is exactly how I imagined we’d do it. As much as possible, I don’t want the system getting in the way of the RP. Micromanaging which people are in which rooms shouldn’t be anyone’s job, and definitely not the players’.
You’re right, there are lots of ways to balance the experience between adventurers and civilians. One elegant solution is to just have the town proper be a safe zone most of the time, so DMs take their adventuring parties out into the wilderness or the sewers or something.
If the DM does want to do something in town really fast, we could have “town guards” (maybe actual people, maybe just pretend) clear out an area for a bit. Sometimes we could have events where the town is on lockdown, so all the civilians are holed up in the keep or something while adventurers deal with a direct threat to the town. I think big events like that could be kinda fun!
Good idea! It definitely makes sense to have some way to preemptively make sure channel owners will play nice. Some things could be more restricted than others, like town guardians who have moderator powers, especially if they’re really important to making sure things run smoothly. Things like bakeries which are more for flavor could be approved based on if anyone has an idea for a shop they want to run, with a process to test out their wares.
Ooh! As I wrote that, I had an idea! People who want to set up a proper shop and have their own channel could try to show their stuff off at a bazaar! It might be pretty chaotic, especially if there are lots of different people trying to buy and sell at the same time, but I think that’s sort of the fun of an open market like that~
I was imagining some sort of job board! Just in case some people group up spontaneously and there isn’t a DM who has a high-stakes quest ready to go, they can go to the job board and pick a quest out. Quests could be posted by other players (after being approved), then when the quest is complete they can give out the rewards. Maybe there’s even an adventurer’s guild, sort of like in KonoSuba! That sort of thing we can figure out in our worldbuilding discussion. I think that should either be in its own thread or on an out-of-character part of the discord server (which I will have set up by tomorrow, I promise).
This has a ton of thought put into it! Thanks, Gus~
But I’m definitely leaning on saying ExpanD&D should be the core of the adventure system.
Somewhere in this thread I was talking about Pathfinder and 4E. More recently, I started reading into the Shadowrun rulesets, and I think that what I said about Pathfinder and 4E applied to Shadowrun . . . and also to Girth. I like how streamlined 5E is, and I like how minimalist and how similar ExpanD&D’s rules for stuff like bulk are to vanilla 5E. Girth adds a lot! Growth Levels, Bloom points, classless archetypes, and other stuff that feel really different from 5E seem hard to balance with basic 5E stuff, at least relative to ExpanD&D. If anything, I’d love to see Girth as its own system, or maybe as a computer game! It seems like a lot of fun, especially with the different body types.
Comparing Girth to ExpanD&D, I saw a lot of content that was shared between both, like the bulk calculation, some spells, and items. The more I looked at Girth, the more I felt like it could be used as a supplement to the ExpanD&D whenever DMs wanted to add something new to their group’s session without having to brew something up themselves. A lot of the systems in Girth are really good for kinks besides weight gain, and I feel like if a given DM and their party want something like that, there’s no reason not to let them!
Thanks so much for this! The issue of rules for civilians/town RP are definitely really important, like tripledecker said. It’s a bit simpler than the full character creation for 5E. It still feels like we can go further, though!
I’ve played some more rules light systems (relative to D&D), like Roll20’s Burn Bryte and Fate Accelerated. While I don’t think trying to get people to learn two entirely separate systems is ideal, there’s something to be said for how the two encourage you to describe what you do before you roll for it. If we decide to just have a civilian be a slimmed down version of an adventurer, that’s fine too; but I think we can slim it down even further to something like Fate Accelerated’s approaches.
I don’t want to get into too much depth here, since a Google Doc might be a better place way to pitch a new system so people can put comments on different parts. But . . .
Here’s a short proposal! The skills in 5E are all based on a core stat, with each skill representing specialization. If we ignore specialization, then all the rolls you ever need to do are basically rolls based on your core stats. Feats, bonuses, and stuff like that could just be hidden behind the character’s stat total. That way, no matter your race, your background, your education, or anything like that, you can just roll one of six stats to determine success or failure. And to judge if a person has succeeded or failed, in the case that there’s no contested roll, people can add a reaction to their roll (there are plenty of dice rolling bots for discord) to vote. Again, I don’t want to go into too much depth here since this is a pretty big topic and it would require a lot of discussion, and I don’t want to drown out other conversations.
Anyway, that’s all I have for now. I’m really glad you’re all so interested in this, and I promise I’ll have a discord server up within the next 24 hours, even if the RP won’t start until we nail down the world. Look forward to it!
Ah shame. I really only came here because I thought we were using Girth or ExpanDnD because they were both pretty good. Can you at least give Girth a try? Me and Gus can give you help in making sure things will go smoothly, and we assure you that any changes in weight and GLs and stuff we can keep to updating via bot PMs for the changes. That way the Girth System will become simpler to run, and you won’t have to worry about the complexities.
I’d… Rather not force them into giving it a try? Its a more, ‘oh hey I made thing, maybe thing will help!’ And I’d prefer to explain my own system to people if you don’t mind…
Fair enough. But really I was hoping for a open world Girth System Discord, so I’ll probably make my own if this doesn’t end up being Girth, while also trying whatever system this ends up being.
For sure, I’d love to be able to give it a try if I had the time! Like I said, it seems pretty interesting. But I’m trying to think of this from the perspective of people who aren’t necessarily going to be interested in the more mechanical, rules-heavy part of RPG, at least not in the town. DMs and parties who want to use Girth, like you, should definitely use Girth. But even in the very earliest versions of this server I had in my head, the town would be as close to rule-free as possible, and each DM could run their party with whatever ruleset they wanted. Choosing ExpanD&D as a standard was more of a way to set a baseline. I’d definitely love to have both you and Gus be DMs for if anyone wanted to quest with Girth!
I think the idea is to use Expand and not Girth because Girth is pretty rules heavy for chat rp. I agree with Echo that there’s a lot of mechanics that can really bog things down for the style of play in chat rp setting.
That being said, I’ve not really experimented at all with using bots to manage these sort of mechanics. I’m not opposed to it, but I don’t think there’s really a need to do so for what most people are looking for out of this server.
And yes, thank you Gus! I really did love reading Girth over, and I plan on thumbing through it more this weekend, too, especially when coming up with ideas for my WG/TF wild magic table you’ve inspired me to finally make.
also @echo_tine I DO really love Fate, but re-figuring all of what we love from Expand/Girth into a narrative based system like that when most of us seem familiar already with 5e might be more trouble than it’s worth. Personally I always describe what I’m trying to do before I roll, anyway, lol. I’m a storyteller at heart.
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I will say though, if you guys would want to join a open world, DnD campaign, I am running the Girth System.
Yeah, I could be a DM for people who wanna use Girth for a faster gaining experience if they want. And if someone wants go to ExpanDnD once in a while, if your class isn’t in the core of that I’ll try to convert it if possible to a ExpanDnD-compatible state.
ah jeez don’t tempt me! What day of the week do you play? Do you use roll20 for it?
Really I am available on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as every weekday after 5PM. And I was referring to doing that for what Echo suggested.
We play as often as people can stand, but 7/8 Pm Est on saturdays we are guaranteed to play, and yes on Roll20
I see the approach that you’re going for, but I think it’s unfair to players who don’t want to dive into the D&D system to create their characters when they only want to use them for RP. I was hoping to simplify the D&D rules as much as possible while still giving Citizen characters most of the options that Adventurer characters had. After all, for a Citizen character who can’t rely on their combat or spellcasting power to make their way in the world, their specialized skills and trade will be more important than ever, and I think that a Player who wants their Character to be a chef at a fancy restaurant should be rewarded for their choice by having the same kind of bonus that an Adventurer could earn: up to a +5 in cooking, which only the most extremely luckiest of adventurers could hope to surpass.
TL;DR, reducing a Citizen to only having their Attribute stats of Strength, Dexterity, etc is unfair to them, even if my system is more complicated and they deserve to be more special. It will make the RP part more interesting. Also, they only have to work their way through my system one time and then it is fixed forever. I have plenty of free time these days and if you, @echo_tine declare this system as law, then I will help any player in choosing the numbers that fit them best, while still avoiding most of the drama and effort of creating an Adventuring D&D character. I doubt that @Pixel23 will be the only player who wants to play a part this without spending too many hours to learn the D&D 5e system.
I have played the Fate Accelerated system, and although it is great for combining adventuring and RP elements, it won’t combine with the D&D rules at all. If you want to have D&D 5e rules to be standard, then you will need to play by D&D 5e rules and modified or simplified versions of them, and not try to combine other rule systems.
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