Recent content by JConstantine

This is a bit of a rehash of a line of discussion that has already happened, so this feels like a bit of a misrepresentation. From what I've seen, it's more: A: It looks like this style has a problem, and nobody will tell me how it is handled! B: I handle it by XYZ, someone else may handle it...

I've always found I'm able to improvise far more readily when I've done some form of prep as a scaffolding, even if none of it got touched. That research seems to explain why.

What, like a giant apple pie? Maybe a swimming pool full of ice cream? ...Oh.

There is no inherent conflict there. A "need" for prep is simply a matter of a GM's skill and comfortability with improvising. The conflict comes in execution and strict adherence to prep. As long as a GM is willing to deviate from it, including ignoring it outright, then there is no conflict.

Yeah, the only one really is spell slots for enchantment spells or buffs like guidance and enhance ability. Vampire allows for social conflict to damage Willpower, and The Witcher has a social combat subsystem so the non-combat characters can a similar crunch experience. In BitD, I'd have...

Sounds like you agree with me. Definitely sounds like you agree with me. You might be an outlier, because from what I've witnessed, there's a prevailing attitude in the PbtA community that it's not a generic system but a "game design philosophy". I'm also not so sure about them being any more...

When I tried looking up what "Xuan Piu" could be, the translation of "mysterious woman" was basically all I could find, which seemed like a not-so-subtle nod at Jen being masked, but I wasn't sure if there was more to it, since I know Chinese has it's own cultural variant of wordplay (for lack...

Sure. What I meant was that it was intended to drain resources. Whether it actually does comes down to the players. If they're savvy enough to resolve/bypass it without resources expenditure, more power to them. The flip side is that they sometimes spend resources on thing that weren't...

I'll admit, I'm not a fan of what the hypothetic GM did in this example, but by itself, it's not indicative of anything, which is why you were told that a pattern of behaviour should be established. If there were multiple examples of you being stymied like that, absolutely the GM is at fault...

Personally, I've never considered there to be one. As far as D&D is concerned, I've always viewed it as any situation that was designed to drain resources.

Coming back to this. During the earlier fight with Jade Fox, where Li Mu Bai intercedes, later followed by Jen, this technique gets mentioned again when Li Mu Bai asks Jen where she learnt it. In the English dub, Li Mu Bai seems to say "xuanping". Not sure of the first syllable, but the second...

Okay, Green Destiny, take two: The Green Destiny This exquisitely crafted jian has a blade that appears to be inlaid with jade and is decorated with a finely sculpted jade guard. The techniques used to make it are unknown. The sword is said to only be fully utilised with specific martial arts...

Odin really needs to change it up a bit. The framing means the GM has thrust an encounter upon the party. They have some choice in how they resolve it, but the hard framing precludes bypassing being a possibility.

I hadn't considered that. Maybe, instead of fixed bonuses, they scale with ranks in Internal Martial Arts? i.e +1-3d10 damage, +1-3d10 bonus, and 1-3 extra wounds. That is where I've hit a stumbling block. There's a few signature abilities already in the book that could be considered to...

I'm not sure this is actually true of 5e. Back in the early days of 5e, Jeremy Crawford mentioned that they assumed 6-8 encounters a day, with 2-3 short rests, per adventuring day. Plenty of people - my self included - understood this (as far as D&D is concerned) as any situation that was...