Thomas Shey's latest activity

To be honest, even the OD&D's FM was only marginally competent; too easily killed by one hit from even the monsters you expected at the...

Go back far enough and you could question whether they were competent at all. OD&D MUs, clerics and thieves were often of really...

Noted.

Well, to some extent it turns on what you expect characters to do in a game. Most games expect them to be interesting and well...

This is exactly what I've been thinking about the last few pages. In the RPGs I mostly play, optimization in chargen (and progression)...

Sorry, you can attempt to optimize -- be an optimizer -- even if you don't understand the rules well. You'd just not effective at it...

Until the Daggerheart playtest last year, the idea of a session zero never even existed to my group. People would chat on our FB...

An easy line to use when you get to define "reality".

That's why I said degenerate. 'Fighters should have high strength, weapon specialisation, and maybe throw darts' is optimisation but...

Mod Note: Both of you are being problematic. @Thomas Shey has been here long enough to know we’d prefer that, if you’re going to...

Do people really want to see what the adventure sheet I do for my 13th Age games looks like? It'd be easy enough to show one, but its...

I can't speak of AW specifically, but I'll outright say I do consider the two PbtA games I have to land in that category outside picking...

Niche protection comes up a lot in those kind of comparisons, too. Many groups (but not all) are okay when the combat specialist does...

It can even be worse when the person doing better is avowedly not in the same niche, but is still outcompeting someone in that niche...

The problem is they also don't expect to just be spear carriers. Water finds its own level, but when one player essentially grabs...