Recent content by FrozenNorth

I agree with everything you’ve said. It’s interesting though: « woke leads to failure » is only trotted out as an argument if the game is already failing for other reasons. Baldur’s gate 3 came out in 2023. It has tons of LGBTQ+ characters, including a trans character voiced by a trans actor...

This doesn’t seem like a very effective example because it simultaneously universally true in all RPG systems (whether Narrativist, trad or sandbox, if a character is established in a particular location, he is not going to appear elsewhere), but also false in a matter that is independent of RPG...

Interesting, since this design choice is considerably more common in Level up than in 5e.

If you are exercising your character’s agency, why would you say something that doesn’t really matter? I think this is a circular argument. You can’t immerse yourself into the character, so you claim that what your character says doesn’t really matter. Then you claim that because what your...

Not necessarily. The battlemaster’s Menacing Attack is a non-supernatural effect that imposes the frightened condition.

Of those examples, only the Jedi got in nearly as many life-threatening combats as the average D&D party. And as others have pointed out, super-special space magus doesn’t exactly scream everyman. I mean, the actual everyman in Star Wars is pretty clearly Han.

I think we are talking about more than 1 genre here, and that is causing confusion. When I think of the everyman, I’m thinking of a character who doesn’t fight at all. He supports the party in other ways, knowledge, heart, skills, etc. If that character got involved in battle, or was revealed...

The challenge with this formulation is that it often doesn’t make the character seem like an everyman. On the contrary, it highlights how abnormal and special he is. If I were to traverse a battlefield unarmed and unarmored and not get hit, you wouldn’t conclude that I’m a normal dude. You...

The specific example was the players not biting ONE campaign hook. In a sandbox, that SHOULD be unremarkable. Why are you acting like it means that « the DM should always try to please every single player even if it means the DM and the other players are less happy with the game »?

No, combat is a more complex part of the game because it has more rules.

As does Forbidden Lands, I recall.

My players would probably accept it, depends on the game.

Pasion de las pasiones has a couple of mechanics like this, but its inspiration is telemovelas, so romance is part of the package.

There’s a big difference between Jim (or Jane) puts themself into danger every day and Jim (or Jane) has never had an involuntary reaction to fear. IF you are making an appeal to realism, the more realistic stance is that there are times when the character will have an involuntary reaction to...

And if you roll a 1 on your Climb check, that is what happens. But most cases, it seems to me that a character that is trained in Climbing has a pretty good idea of how difficult a climb is.