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Instead of giving out specific skill abilities, I encourage players to come up with creative uses in particular situations, and I set a corresponding DC. Example: "I would like to flip over top of bad guy and kick him in the back of the head." "Sure, you're proficient in acrobatics so that's...

I really liked it. The backstories are quite a lot more developed and in some ways substantially different from the campaign, but that's fine; this is its own thing. The tone is a lot more serious and epic, but that's to be expected in this medium. One thing that I'm unsure about is that all...

Why does almost every team story feature members with different skill sets? Because it makes the story more fun.

Painted up the D&L Minotaur and Ettin from the stretch rewards:

Leaving the central story unfinished between seasons is especially irrtating to me in the age of streaming. Sometimes it has been so long since the last season that I've forgotten where we were, or lost interest altogether. It was a bit more viable in the era of network TV when you only had to...

I agree - I like that seasons have a complete story, even as they leave threads to picked up in the future. Fast Horses is a great example of how to do it, IMO. That said, I did think season 1 of this show gave us a fairly complete arc, in that by the end we know the kids are in charge with...

Yeah, plus as soon as you fire that weapon the Death Star will catastrophically implode while being be hurled in the opposite direction.

A year or so ago he speculated about purchasing WotC because he didn't like that the foreword to the 50th anniversary book acknowledges that some of the original publications reprinted therein are racist, sexist, etc. But yeah, it just seemed like more attention-seeking behaviour. He didn't...

Usually it goes without saying that your choices are what your character would do, so if you have to say it, there's a good chance that you know your choice is going to be objectionable. I just veto choices that are likely to cause strife. I don't bother coming up with a story justification, I...

The dire fate of the earth seems pretty obvious here. I'm more interested in what would happen to the sun in that scenario. If all of its radiating energy was focus down to a narrow beam pointing in one direction, wouldn't that push it in the opposite direction?

I'm on reading week and finished the first draft of my Term 1 reports, so I'm powering through books now. Next up is the first Hunger Games prequel. I enjoyed the original trilogy, particularly the first book, and don't begrudge it the host of lesser imitators that followed. That said, I'm...

I wanted something short after Anathem, so I grabbed Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, which won the Booker last year. It’s gorgeous, but is it a novel? Or a prose poem? There’s virtually no plot, but rather a paen to earth from the perspective of six astronauts as they complete one day (sixteen...

I think the basic shift that happened, starting with the final arc of Campaign 2, was the shift from themes being driven by the players to themes being driven by the DM. Until that point, Mercer’s stories had focused on fairly simple plot points, and his attention was given to his amazingly...

Ohhhhh, now I have to check and see if the newest season is available on one of my subscriptions. Oldman is predictably great, and even though the plots do get a little loose on occasion, the performances are so strong and the tone so compelling that I find the whole package riveting. Fantastic...

Finished Anathem. It's a singular novel that takes huge swings, I found kinda boring to read, and yet interesting to think about. About 3/4 of the way through this seriously epic novel a new character is introduced who is literally named Jules Verne, after the author, which really helped me...

Still mostly working on terrain but got around to this D&Lairship. It ties nicely into our campaign - it started with the party being hired to help protect a driftstone mine, and many levels later they have saved enough, and the artificer is skilled enough, to use some of the driftstone, along...

Another big difference between 1e and 5e, that might be a feature or flaw depending on taste, is that in 1e power-ups came from magic items to a much greater extent than in 5e, both in terms of how many items you got and in terms of their relative power.