Recent content by Thomas Shey

Ironically, of the two people I ever blocked, both were simply problems no matter what the topic, ableit in quite different ways.

You can have both with the same person, in fact: "They really have a lot of insight when talking about X, but gods above don't get into a conversation with them about Y; it'll go nowhere good."

Most of mine don't fish that far afield; they're usually just exploring a new (but not radically alien) system or dipping into subgenres people are known to like or at least tolerate.

I think recognizing experiments inevitably are going to fail sometimes is one thing, but its another when you have a campaign setup you have every reason to believe will have good lifespan and it--doesn't. Basically, going in expecting a potential failure and--not--are kind of different beasts.

Well, there is a difference: the player was still a watchmaker god when he created the character. You can argue how much he "controls" along the way, but I can't help but think a railroad of your own construction where you don't know the final destination is a bit different a beast than one...

Though I have to note Intergang was Apocalpyse-affiliated from its creation; the times when it haven't been have been the exceptions.

Sometimes I start to a bit toward the end of a long run like that, but I'm very much a completist and have a non-trivial dose of OCD, so...

I think you're being a little blase about how easy it is to come up with a meaningful variety of such things that are equally impactful. I've seen parallel situations where even very experienced game designers struggled here. There's some land between "inconsequential" and "notably less...

I think that's fair to an extent, but I think it risks consequence shopping (i.e. picking the one that rather than being most authentic is simply least impactful).

I also should note that the confused effect was used rather more strongly in the prior edition, so its clearly been an evolving perspective.

I've got a player who responds extremely strongly to mind control effects. Even he thinks he overreacts some times, but its still a thing he reacts strongly to. I have avoided asking if there's a--history--involved.

I'm going to say that this assumes the choice is made at the time, rather than as a, from lack of other term, policy. Once I'd set up that sort of thing the only thing that would cause me to either reject or rewrite it would be external factors (i.e. disrupting the game excessively for others)...

Then it still comes back to "desire" being a bad term. Once you set up that set of heuristics, playing them honestly can absolutely produce things I don't know any other term to use that "undesirable" results, perhaps as a consequence of the way the character is set up you didn't think would...

I'll probably have had about 60 sessions total in my 13th Age game by the time I'm done (42 arcs, but not all of those got done in one session, and it took more time as we got up to the upper levels).

Yeah, that's about right. If you read enough of the setting, far as I can tell the Fae proper are, well, out of play at the current time (as in they're apparently hibernating or something).