Recent content by Joerg Baumgartner

Other than in D&D-inspired derivates, I haven't seen "class", "level" or XPs in any of the fantasy that I like to consume. BECMI Basic and Expert were among my first purchases, but never played as the alternatives I had beat it. I did play a little AD&D 1st and 2nd because friends played it, but...

Call of Cthulhu Great Old Ones are Kaiju that will drive you mad, but being (almost) helpless in the face of huge monsters is one persistent theme in the game. There are rules for various forms of exposure (radiation, poison, magic) to threaten to break the characters. Your typical Call of...

I expect from the publishers: 1) to ensure playability of a game system by clearing up unintended ambiguities and addressing/resolving contradictions 2) to provide world-building or to provide tools and niches for customer world-building (ideally providing a community content platform for the...

Piloting may be little more than inputting the target location into the navigation system. Maintenance of the ship systems might be a far less glorious but harder task. When it comes to space combat, you need to decide on space combat lethality. Fasa's ancient Inteceptor/Leviathan/Prefect...

My first non-solo tabletop rpg game I ever played (actually GMed for two other newbies) used the Fighting Fantasy 2D6 system plus the player magic from one of the subsequent books. The first game explored a dungeon that I improvised (featuring among others a major kitchen feeding the denizens of...

This thread sent me into a rabbit hole of SF sources I more or less remember having read, read the rules, seen on screen or played that I used AI assistance to create a taxonomy of FTL travel modes. Anybody interested in the intermediary seed prompt?

If you intend to play a sociopath, why not do it the Ferengi way with a huge network of cousins to exploit and run under the bus? Just don't pretend to be either Lawful or Good, and be ready to be backstabbed by your party whenever convenient, "in self defence". "Yeah, I know my parents. I sold...

As with wet navies, the means of travel decide how space navies work. Hardly any SF setting acknowledges the vast emptiness of space. Most asteroid fields look like a fresh accretion disk. Travel times are reduced to intercontinental flight times, or at worst to the travel times of Diesel- or...

Outside of rpg context, a simulation is a test engine for determining outcomes for certain sets of parameters based on observed relations. In the rpg context, simulation drives certain game mechanics, depending on the game system you are using. Simulation (to a certain extent) provides the...

Setting lore matters in numerous ways. Sometimes the "opponent" of or challenge to the players is the nature of the setting. Starting with environmental challenges like seeing in the dark, stepping lightly across snow, breathing underwater, or species-specific allergies/poisons like cold iron...

There are players who can immerse in their Theatre of the Mind space. I guess that this is a "session zero" or party contract topic whenever you start a new game with a new cast of players.

As the narrator/GM, immersion needs to be defined differently. As player, suspension of disbelieve can be a hurdle to player buy-in. A player can still participate as co-narrator rather than as immersed participant, and the experience for immersed players may be upheld.

I think that immersion is what makes the difference between in character roleplaying games (whichever platform) and tactical games (including video games where you lead an entire party of characters through the dungeon).

I tend to ignore published scenarios but do mine them for ideas, setting info or well-developed NPCs. Story arcs are useful for a setting, but not exactly set in stone but as aspirations of major stakeholders. I like playing a living sandbox, with known places subject to gradual change, whether...

Eating your kills reminds me of endless nights playing Nethack, with the tinning kit at the ready to handle surplus bodies. Harvesting a dungeon's inhabitants reminds me a lot of whaling or seal hunting, unless you are playing dungeon denizens yourself who are hunting, gathering and/or farming...