Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Then increase the DC. It's all just numbers.
Unpopular opinions go here
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
- Start date
- Status
Thomas Shey
Legend
That's your gig, but I don't find random character gen desirable, why should I find another bit of it baked into a core functionality of a character better?
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
We all have our preferences. I don't need my character to be exactly what I want most from the get-go, and am ok with weaknesses.
If the goal is to make sure all the casters don't have the same spell selection, I think the more efficient tool is to randomly roll for spells found (scrolls, captured spellbooks, weird sigils in deep dungeons) and not allow the wizard to pick their spells known.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
That works too. As you say, the goal is what's important, not how we get there.
Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
Not only is there already a worthy network TV successor to Lost, but it already ran for seven seasons and was a ratings juggernaut for over half of its run.
It's also deeply stupid.
But in a weirdly enjoyable way?
Let me tell you a story.
The year? 2010-ish. The setting? Wherever most TV execs live. Let's say Los Angeles. Our subjects? A pair of ABC producers who have been tasked the same impossible task every network TV producer had been tasked with since at least 2005. Lost had just wrapped its final season, and everyone wanted to come up with the next Lost. Our two protagonists had the benefit of previously working on the flagship show, but were as stuck as everyone else trying to figure out how to crack the formula. The incredibly gallingly titled FlashForward had already crashed and burned, failing to even outlive its predecessor. NBC was already desperately trying and miserably failing to get people to wonder what The Event (sorry, "THE EVƎNT") was. The even shorter-lived Alcatraz was still only just a gleam in J.J.'s eye. So what did our heroes do? They say nobody knows for sure, but here's one theorized version of the events:
The two producers, partners in all things, were failing, badly, to come up with the new TV Killer App. None of their ideas worked. Despondent and likely soon out of a job, they were left with nothing to do but that great pastime of all incredibly depressed TV Executives: just absolutely crush a pile of coke. Just going to town on that yeyo, Scarface style. But, also being millennials, our partners spent their time high as a kite playing video games. Their game of choice? The recently released Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
They say* that night the two had a shared dream. What if, instead of putting a bunch of Disney characters in a Final Fantasy, they put a bunch of Disney characters in basically Lost?
That very night, Once Upon a Time was born. As soapy and convoluted as Lost, and as absolutely guano-crazy as Kingdom Hearts.
In this essay I will...
It's also deeply stupid.
But in a weirdly enjoyable way?
Let me tell you a story.
The year? 2010-ish. The setting? Wherever most TV execs live. Let's say Los Angeles. Our subjects? A pair of ABC producers who have been tasked the same impossible task every network TV producer had been tasked with since at least 2005. Lost had just wrapped its final season, and everyone wanted to come up with the next Lost. Our two protagonists had the benefit of previously working on the flagship show, but were as stuck as everyone else trying to figure out how to crack the formula. The incredibly gallingly titled FlashForward had already crashed and burned, failing to even outlive its predecessor. NBC was already desperately trying and miserably failing to get people to wonder what The Event (sorry, "THE EVƎNT") was. The even shorter-lived Alcatraz was still only just a gleam in J.J.'s eye. So what did our heroes do? They say nobody knows for sure, but here's one theorized version of the events:
The two producers, partners in all things, were failing, badly, to come up with the new TV Killer App. None of their ideas worked. Despondent and likely soon out of a job, they were left with nothing to do but that great pastime of all incredibly depressed TV Executives: just absolutely crush a pile of coke. Just going to town on that yeyo, Scarface style. But, also being millennials, our partners spent their time high as a kite playing video games. Their game of choice? The recently released Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
They say* that night the two had a shared dream. What if, instead of putting a bunch of Disney characters in a Final Fantasy, they put a bunch of Disney characters in basically Lost?
That very night, Once Upon a Time was born. As soapy and convoluted as Lost, and as absolutely guano-crazy as Kingdom Hearts.
In this essay I will...
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I'm actually re-watching Once Upon A Time right now! It's is everything you say it is.
Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
I've been slowly watching it with my partner and daughter, and I am just constantly baffled by the decisions they make. Red Riding Hood is The Big Bad Wolf? Yeah, okay (sample dialogue: Prince Charming: "Uh... you have a little someone on your chin"). Pinocchio is a hot dude that drives a motorcycle? Sure. At one point The Actual Winter Soldier shows up and who's he playing but The Mad Hatter who has been reimagined as a M:tG-style Planeswalker, because why not? Our heroine spends most of the series co-parenting with the Evil Queen? Checks out. 30 seconds after learning all the fairy tale stuff is actually true, she (a bounty hunter from Boston but also, you know, Snow White's daughter) is handed a sword and sent to go slay a dragon, which also happens to be Maleficent.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Whereas while I have no problem with weaknesses, there's a difference between that and being crippled, and if my character is going to have a weakness I want to be the one to chose that, not dice.
- Status
