Recent content by Lanefan

Character generation taking hours is (dubiously) fine if you only have to do it once. If your game has any decent level of lethality to it, however, your players won't be doing it just once. They'll be doing it several times or more each, meaning that anything that can be done to shorten the...

The main issue I have with collaborative character creation is that inevitably someone gets stuck or talked into playing something not their first or even second choice because nobody else wants to play it and it's (actually or perceived as) a vital party role that needs filling. With character...

Why do all those images remind me of Taylor Swift, only with white hair?

Speaking of AI images that are excellent, I just yoinked the one of the party in the tavern with their loot on the table and beers in their hands - priceless! :)

And yet if its a formula that works every week for that table, so what? In any situation, if everything is otherwise fine, stagnation is not a negative thing. Just keep on keepin' on... :)

While the culture still exists, perhaps not. Once the culture's gone and nobody's keeping up that oral tradition, however, it's all lost.

Yes it does. Easy means little effort is required. Hard means the opposite. Doesn't matter if that effort is mental (i.e. learning, problem-solving, etc.), or physical, or a combination of both: the principle is the same. Edit to add: I too am starting to wonder if this is a regional thing...

Same here, only dialled to eleven. When I start a campaign it's with the intent of it going on for (by modern standards) ages, and so the more of these little seeds I can plant early, the more runway I give myself for introducing later plot developments and story arcs. And sometimes the...

The rather large advantage of writing - even more so if the "writing" consists of nigh-indelible carvings in stone or metal - is that it has a half-decent chance of still existing well after the culture that produced it has died out.

I don't consider those sessions wasted in the slightest, for a string of reasons: --- having to introduce their character in-character - and thus by extension being forced to speak in character right away - can help give the player an idea of what might make that character tick and-or spark...

For me, it tends to come across as very strongly implying that a metric crapton of experience in one area (say, D&D) doesn't count for anything unless there's a certain level of corollary experiences in other adjacent areas (here, other RPGs) to back it up. And sorry, but I ain't buying that.

The same reason walking 10 miles is harder than walking 100 yards: success is guaranteed, but it takes more effort.

Factual history, such as who reigned when and what years the red comet appeared, should be fairly reliable in any society a) whose language has a written form and b) puts any value on recordkeeping. In a typical RPG setting, the longer-lived species would seem to make the best such...

I've often had that sort of disparity among players, and my answer has always been to just neutrally run whatever I was going to run anyway and let the players sort it out among themselves.

It was weekly for the first year or two, then very intermittent for a year or two, then weekly for a while, then twice weekly (too many players so they split up into two groups running on different nights) for most of the last six years. Typical evening sessions, so 4 hours or so each with some...