Recent content by Duke_

"Be a fan of the players" isn't just good advice for GMing, it's good advice for playing too!

I just look at the cloud storage account where I keep all the PDFs. Almost everything I have a physical copy of that matters, I also have a digital copy. I can remember the couple of exceptions.

The citation on Wikipedia is from the Oxford English Dictionary (though the direct link on the original citation is now dead). The OED is a pretty good authority in my eyes.

I know, that's why I said it (raised Catholic). Wikipedia said it's because the design resembles prayer beads on a string, but just because it's on Wikipedia doesn't necessarily mean it's true, so your version is plausible to me too.

I prefer games that are relatively light on rules, and theater of the mind. My VTT should also be pretty simple. What I want in a VTT: Rollable character sheets that are easy to create Chat (text & voice, maybe video) Dice rolling and card deck support (including custom decks). Has to support...

Pater Noster is presumably also a prayer a Christian might say before getting into one of those apparent deathtraps.

If you're down to four options that are equally appealing to all, you could just roll a d4 at that point. Maybe it's the solo gamer in me that's perfectly fine leaving impactful choices up to the roll of a die...

VTT play definitely requires more comms discipline than FTF. We put all the humorous asides and peanut gallery comments in text so that the people speaking can speak uninterrupted. We've been playing online for years so we have it down to where nobody talks over each other. It's true that the...

If you like PbtA-ish games, Ironsworn is built for solo play and does a good job of hex crawl type stuff (even if there aren't necessarily actual hexes).

D&D 5e Defeated archdevil. Campaign nearing conclusion.

For me, it depends mostly of what I think of the edition I have, and what's changing. For example, I have the BRP Big Gold Book, tons of RuneQuest stuff, etc. I don't really like the BRP system anymore, and won't play it or any of its spinoffs or incarnations, so why shell out for the new BRP...

The IPAs of the RPG world. There are already umpteen bazillion of them, and odds are good that whatever you're thinking of making, someone's already made it, or made something so close it that the difference is almost indistinguishable. A second vote for Stone Age.

I highly doubt this based on anecdotal experience. Most people I know who say they have very active internal monologue have strong language skills. From personal experience, my internal monologue will be in Spanish from time to time (which is not my first language). You also proceed from a...

MM&D is awesome. It's the only "actual play" I watch... I find most of them pretty boring. But Trevor is just so damn entertaining and so into it that he can really hold my attention. Given my usual thoughts about APs, I wouldn't have thought that watching a guy play all these characters and...

Tunnels & Trolls was designed with the idea that it could be played solo from its first edition (1975) and started publishing solo adventures in 1976, that's the kind of thing you're talking about. So it's pretty much as old as the hobby. I'd say interest really took off during the COVID...