Recent content by Thomas Shey

Just as a side comment (and for all I know this may be mentioned in one of the videos) my reading of the game suggests there's some pretty strong influence from the computer game Control here.

With a single player, we almost always hand off the character to someone else; in rare cases we might have a character have a committment come up so they don't set off on a mission/job/adventure, but often there's enough specialization in character functions that this can leave an unfillable...

I think its not uncommon in broad strokes; people will often play a character with relitively-high mental stats different than one with relatively-low ones in particular. Of course with a point assign system that often is because they've assigned those points in the first place based on the...

If you're going to try and sell me that a constrained point-range in a point build or array selection method limits a character's distinction as much as, say, the OD&D Fighting-Man did, that's going to be a hard sell. (Of course the real solution, at least at the point buy end, is to have...

I diligently try to avoid it, because I think it damages discussion. Which doesn't mean I may not have slipped in while not paying attention on occasion, but that was error not deliberate choice if so.

I think its optimistic to think that no player or players will get fussy about extent settings "being right". That's enough of a known thing you can't shrug it off completely.

So, as I said, not the majority (arrays are just standardized point buys in the end; they're still not random).

I understand that's important to some people. But given they're going to not be arranged identically all the time, I don't find any virtue in diversity of scores for its own sake, and certainly nothing to balance its downsides.

If that happens, but that's a big if. Its rare for all the die rolls to land within the normal point buy scheme. In addition, some results from the die roll would be extremely unlikely to be chosen by someone using the point buy because they're too painful.

Or, he can, you know, just accept that he doesn't need to be the final word in absolutely everything in the game. That's not required to run a game. As for walking away--of course he can. Same as any player. But no one assumes a player will always do that every time they lose an argument...

If you're knowledgable in economics, you've got to know that assuming rational actors is, in reality, a failure state.

I'll admit it sometimes takes me an additional cycle or two before I notice circling has started happening and I bail.

I can see that one. Honestly I can see a lot of that on big ticket things of that nature. But the question is, let's say its something smaller scale? Do you insist on the last word on it? (At least as an alternate to pulling the plug). If not, that doesn't seem the position of a lot of...

I think if you think that will be read generally as "No other race" (as far as visual/biological structure goes) "will be permitted under any circumstances" you've been playing with the same people who you know well for too long. You can always stop responding to me if you don't want to...

Though uncommon (and I know someone will come along and claim its not possible for this to work without degenerate results, but I suspect that's just expectation rather than any logic), I'd be very cautious to assume that's true at every table everywhere, ever. There is nothing whatsoever I...