Recent content by Desdichado

How about just, "you're not a writer and this isn't your novel. Just describe stuff conversationally, the way you would when talking normally." I actually think a few descriptive elements is more important for players than GMs; they should find ways to remind people of who they are. I don't like...

Meanwhile, here's my four PCs, which took over after that point. All of them had some backstory rolls generated by the tables in Knave 2e, so they're all a little random. For that matter, that's where their names came from too. The bold below is either the random pre-game career or the two...

The actual "story hour" to come later, I suppose. I wanted to start archiving characters first—both NPCs and PCs. I make character models using Hero Forge Pro. Some of them are a little older, but as new features and assets have been added, I've tried to make sure that things are upgraded to...

Neither would I. Because that's not a tradition that anyone in living memory has celebrated, making that another ... funny ... use of the word traditional.

That's a ... funny ... use of the word traditional.

It never left. Rules light may be the darling of the indie internet crowd, but every game that is leading in sales is extraordinarily crunchy. To me the question isn't is crunchy going to come back, it's is it ever going to freakin' wear out its welcome and leave.

Everything that I have through either my cable internet provider or my cell provider, which is actually most of them, albeit with ads in many cases. I don't pay a separate bill for any of them. Amazon Prime is the only one that we pay for explicitly, and that's actually mostly because we want...

Fair enough, I guess. I would not happily run it. I'd either quite, and tell them they're on their own, or I'd throw all kinds of interesting things at them anyway. I don't advocate for my preference, except at my own table. I'm happy to discuss my preferences and talk about them with anyone...

So, are you suggesting that if the players decided that they wanted to avoid all of the weirdness and go open a bakery in the quietest, least weird town in the Realm, that that'd be OK with you? You'd run that for them? This is part of the reason this issue, and many others like it, struggle...

I've always liked Eberron, but my biggest hurdle in running it has been its focus on themes that I'm not interested in pursuing. I've actually found that "remixing" Eberron to something that is Eberron-like but not exactly Eberron works better for me. That's largely true for every setting...

I think the "dilemma of the quantum ogre" makes more sense if a few points are considered. In spite of what sandbox cultists say, the Platonic ideal of a sandbox isn't a very good model for an RPG, and very few players really want to play that kind of game. Anything that isn't a Platonic ideal...

They might have had. There's plenty of stuff in the History of Middle-earth series, and I'm sorry I can't remember which volumes now, that suggest that their ears were leaf-shaped. My own personal pet peeve is the certain declaration that orcs are corrupted elves, when no such thing was ever...

That's extremely debatable.

Steel is the great equalizer. Orcs are like Neanderthals in being bigger, meaner (but admittedly probably not greener) than people, and yet, there are no Neanderthals today. Humans can last just fine against orcs, just like Romans lasted just fine against Gauls, while admitting that individual...

Frankly, I think that in order to fight dragons, except for exceptionally small ones, you should have some kind of fantasy ordinance, like ballistas with magical or blessed bolts or something like that, and large weighted nets to hamper its ability to fly, and otherwise a whole host of special...