Recent content by Thomas Shey

I've seen this referred to as a "blackjack" system in more than one place. Both Mythras and Eclipse Phase use D100 versions of it.

I kind of lean into dice pool systems because its usually easier to get somewhat consistent results once you know how many dice are going to be involved. I'm not a fanatic about it (I'm almost done running a d20 based game and am about to do a D100 based one). Second is probably D100-roll-low...

I suspect that's inevitable in the exception based design space the D20 sphere fills. It was even true in D&D 4e from what I saw of it, and they bent over backwards to minimize it. When you don't really have things built to a standard metric, there's only going to be so much you can do to keep...

I'm assuming given the amount of space the feat spaces are intended to summarize the feat and not just name them?

Though i still say most of those tend to be segregated out into skill feats and class feats respectively. I've rarely seen a class feat that actually looked weak just some that only worked well with certain specific build support, I'm not going to say there's none but I hadn't hit many of them...

I'd also argue there's a huge difference between the semi-reflexive decisions of people who are at least trained, and probably practiced combatants, and the people who doing this as a hobby once a week. I also can understand the desire to avoid dithering and overanalysis, but I don't think five...

You can also have a case where the GM wants to keep copies of sheets and it just is easier if their sheet and the player's is essentially the same format.

Ah, yes, another case of using a wrench as a hammer.

Usually they're either fillable PDF sheets (you can bake some calculations into those) or spreadsheets. The problem with both is making sure your players will have the software to properly use them.

I still have a more-than-slightly rickety '84 as my backup car. My observation has been old to mid period GM cars rot from the outside in; they'll look like hell, the upholstery will be bad, if they had air conditioning at all its gone, baby, gone, but they just keep on running.

I'm talking about discussing it with GMs or players from groups that were very clear all discussion was assumed to be in-character as a strong default. I don't hit it often, but when I do the peope involved are very firm about it.

Which is why largely involuntary reactions aren't treated as part of it, I'd assume.

Perhaps one could assume "in a lot of cases" was not intended as a synonym for "always".

1957: Chevrolet Bel-Air. Well, as American cars go, I've always thought GMs averaged above the others.

As far as I can tell from people who've indicated all discussion is done in-character, there's a physical tell if you need say something OOC--raising a hand or turning a cup in front of you upside down or some such. Since I play primarily in third person its never been something I've seen in...