Recent content by overgeeked

My favorite sci-fi author is Philip K. Dick, so I'm a big fan of mindscrew sci-fi stories. Despite having a few adaptations made of his work, most of them are not that great as movies and the best, Bladerunner, has already been listed a dozen times so no need to repeat that here. City of Lost...

I’m not sure I buy that as a criticism. The core box has a fleshed-out sandbox setting with the Misty Vale and the Secret of the Dragon Emperor. The Vale map covers about 150 km W-E and about 100 km N-S. That’s bigger than some “complete” settings.

100% this. It’s a stellar movie in every way. The soundtrack kicks ass, too.

Sigh. You can take the player out of the D&D, but you can't take the D&D out of the player.

I think it's safe to say that 5E is most long-time gamer's second or third favorite version of D&D. It's not even in my top five favorite editions of D&D. B/X, BECMI, 4E, AD&D, and AD&D 2E. 2E is only there because of the mountain of amazing settings and splat books. I've never actually played...

Yes, it was an awesome scene. The only way it could have been improved is if he did pull the trigger. We're reading that scene differently. To me every word from his was a warning. His manner from the start was "Go away, kid, you bother me." He warned her off and so did the Dean several times...

Not, really. No. There was plenty of back-and-forth during the scene. Several exchanges occurred between them. Marisha had plenty of warnings. She chose to keep going. It wasn’t rocks fall, you die. It was two NPCs telling her to stop, including her friend. She didn’t listen. Exactly.

Yep. And with one scene, even without Brennan slaughtering a PC, he made it crystal clear that this is, in fact, not one of those basic escapist power fantasy games. Simple, brilliant, and effective.

Well, at least you're proving my point. What one party of a conversations wants or hopes to communicate is irrelevant when the other has agency and autonomy. You get to decide how you react to any given situation and my thoughts on the matter are irrelevant despite being the other part of the...

I'm uncertain what you think I've done or what line you think I've crossed. But that's illustrative of the point of this interaction we're discussing in the game. A thinks B has crossed a line while B is unaware that there was a line or that they crossed it. So, should the behavior of A be...

Exactly. The world is treated as a real place, not a power fantasy theme park for the PCs. The NPCs act like real people, they don’t fawn over the PCs. This is one thing that’s making me more interested in this campaign, not less.

Yes, and? Brennan has stated multiple times that the PCs don’t have plot armor and that the world exists independently of the PCs’ level. The super-powerful NPC are super powerful, regardless of the PCs’ level. Here be dragons. And Marisha poked it. Nothing arbitrary about it.

Could be. Some were also friends and family. I'm also fairly thorough when bringing people into a game. I want them to know what to expect, so I have a several page document with my referee style, house rules, expectations, etc. Some might not have read it, sure. But I tuck a cookie or two in...

Ah. Then we fundamentally disagree about most of that.

Yes, that’s true. I’m still curious why you think it’s a bad thing to do or a bad tone to set in a live play.