Recent content by Celebrim

The thing I learned from this thread was that originally Purple Worms were more wyrms than worms. That explains a lot, though I'm quite happy with the shai'hulud direction that they went in and just to have wingless dragons be a variant on the usual.

There is several ways you could go. Hawk/Dove is an example. Do you think that violence is a preferred approach to getting what you want, or do you think there are stronger and more preferred approaches to violence. That's kind of obvious at the level of say Neutral Good, where 'Dove' might...

A big part of the Fantasy aesthetic, and this applies to every genre, is being special in some regard. Not every player wants to win all the time and some genres expect the heroes to be grittier and more realistic, but that generally doesn't imply normal. Even the most gritty genre or the most...

They are an important part of my commitment to not overly rely on my judgement or plans but to allow the world I'm presenting to happen organically. That said, they are more interesting and important to me than in D&D than in most other systems. When we enter into a sandbox in any system...

Roll for Effect for a couple of important reasons: a) The players may not actually understand whether or not the task they are attempting to accomplish achieves the desired outcome. Fitting task to goal is a major part of skillful play and a major part of many aesthetics of play. b) Even if...

Nope. Soured me on point buy, non-linear fortune mechanics, active defenses, and a whole lot of other things to this day.

GURPS needs a serious overhaul in just about every aspect. I haven't touched it since 3e or so and I understand there have been some attempts to fix it, but the fundamental design of the game is just wrong on almost every level. It really took trying to run GURPS for me to really appreciate...

I don't have much comment on this but as a general rule of design I would say it is an unbreakable law that if your CharGen uses point buy then it must strongly encourage broad advancement over tall advancement in character advancement or else your system is poorly designed. One of the most...

Tales of the Dogfish Episode #9: Wings of Terror (Session #71) ARRRGGGH!!!! Bit of a vent here. The house Benelux hunters are still trying to capture the terrorist known as The Aguia before he disrupts the peaceful transition of power from the occupation forces of the Empire to the...

Hunters watch televised pod races :( https://www.enworld.org/threads/describe-your-last-rpg-session-in-more-than-5-words.687540/page-32#post-9747027

I have thought about doing GW based on 3e or D20 Modern/Future, but the problem with Gamma World is that I think I just can't accept the conception anymore. The universe of Gamma World isn't a post nuclear war setting. It's needs to be a post trans-dimensional rift war setting, something like...

Just as a very tame example, suppose your enemy orders you to kill your children and you do? It can get a lot worse than that. It wouldn't be hard for me to imagine and layout scenarios where if you were given a choice you'd choose death over the alternative, if it wasn't for the EnWorld...

That sounds like the James Vicary hoax. The evidence for such usage is very thin and most of it is urban legend.

Yes. In my own homebrew, mind control is one of the big categories of "dark magic" or "witchcraft" for which you can be burned at the stake. So much as a "charm person" is considered such a rape of the target's mind to justify the death penalty. Exceptions are sometimes made legally for the...

So the question becomes when does fiat to produce "what is cool" become adversarial DMing to stroke your own ego rather than designing cool encounters with as the original article called them "simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever"...