Recent content by Joerg Baumgartner

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...

Advertise, present. Fairs and conventions allow you to interact with potential buyers in person. Youtube videos can provide a canned but optimized presentation. Provide a quickstart pdf of your book for poeple to test your product. Put out a trickle of free pre-rolled characters or encounter...

Personally I prefer playing veteran characters rather than hormonally still unstable teenagers. But then even so, the "knows nothing, accomplishes nothing" (except maybe a basic "class" set of abilities) zero always feels wrong to me.

Exactly. You want cataclysmic events in your setting's past so you can encounter such places.

Not quite. Just time will lead to these ancient ruins having been plundered thrice over before your adventurers ever set sight on them, if you are lucky with a few caches or disturbing some graves. Pompeii and Herculaneum may not have harbored great monetary treasures like you find in burial or...

Much of my gaming is in the world of Glorantha, whose major apocalypse is called the Gods War culminating in the Greater Darkness, typically more than 1625 years ago (before Time). There have been two major cataclysms in history (around 450, and again around 1050), and another one is brewing...

1 - If I could switch to another system: I may not be as comfortable running Questworlds (previously the HeroQuest rpg) as I can run almost any RuneQuest based on my RQ3 experience, that narrative approach fits my approach to Glorantha and its lore better. 2 - I do like the current BRP...

I cannot really say how often I have read through the Lord of the Ring or some of my other favourite fantasy classics, and while they did not serve me as much as a guide to practical GMing, they taught me narrative structure and deep world-building. I haven't yet given any player character or...

A Golden Age rpgs: for whom, exactly? Measured as income or growth for WotC as the market leader? I have no idea about 6e (or for that matter, 5e, last D&D I tried was 4e, and then some 13th Age). Measured in convention attendance: Sure, GenCon is the biggest event in the industry. There are...