Recent content by TwoSix

Beyond the Wall, by Flatland Games, is my favorite example of this in the OSR space. Each player picks a playbook, like Nobleman’s Daughter or Witch’s Apprentice or Devout Acolyte, each with randomized tables to generate a young adult in a shared village ready to go on their first adventure...

Everything varies from person to person; that doesn't mean that bell curves and aggregate values defining a norm aren't useful. :)

Playing or not playing shouldn't impact your friendships, obviously. There shouldn't be any hard feelings or anything. I'm just saying that if I had a situation like your second paragraph, with half-casuals and half-serious, I would look for a game that could split the difference. If there...

I wouldn't do it myself (I like having a lot of options), but I do something similar in that I'll shape the demography of the setting around the races the players pick. Like, when I had 3 players pick half-orc for their race, I made orcs a much more prominent part of the setting, and several...

I don't think post is being made in good faith. Would you care to reframe?

I think a lot of us are coming at this from two very different angles. It seems like for a fair amount of people on this thread, the game comes first. You decide to start a game, and you look for a group of interested people to play with. Your games might last a while, and it's understood...

Generally, childhood amnesia means we have no memories before age 3, and memories from ages 3-5 are rare and generally highly personal. Here in America, I like to divide Gen X and Millennials based on whether they remember the Challenger explosion (January 1986), since most people born in the...

I love both! Just as long as they aren't in a book with pictures. :)

Assumptions: 1) All characters get a level 1 Origin feat. A lot of "near-human" races and mixed-ancestry options will be available as Origin feats. 2) Races with strongly realized cultural backgrounds will start with an "X culture" feat expressing that background; that feat can be swapped for...

Comic books and graphic novels in general. I have no problem with the superhero genre, but I would rather savor a novel for 5 hours than a comic book for 20 minutes at similar price points.

X-card subjects like torture and slavery, versus ancestries like tortles and centaurs are wildly differing topics; conflating the two will just make the subject unable to be discussed.

Remember, as soon as anyone on the thread is even slightly uncomfortable, drop it immediately. :)

I mean, if I was designing a setting without knowing who the players were (I wouldn't, but hypothetically), I would make the setting as open and approachable as possible.

Yep. Forgotten Realms is a map, a bunch of place names, and occasional pieces of lore, assuming you're running it in the early 16th century DR time frame. You want to stick in half-illithid dwarves or a colony of tortles in the Moonsea, that's absolutely trivial.

Even better then, sounds like a good collection of enthusiastic players.