Recent content by Thomas Shey

Exactly that, in fact, though I don't usually have a huge amount of end-session notes; generally just Icon related requests and reminders to myself to do various bookkeeping things. Usually I put it in red so its hard to miss. I often use blue for encounter header summaries so they're easy to...

As I noted earlier, there's matters of degree here; its entirely possible to think you don't care someone has a bit more oomph, but not expect them to be essentially turning themselves into the Main Character and you into a spear-carrier. Often people who are not naturally inclined toward...

Absolutely, but I've seen this enough to have what seems at least adequate evidence it isn't just me, either. I mean, just look at a number of other posts in this thread.

You'd think, but it doesn't always work that way. Among other things, they can go into it thinking they're going to be contributing adequately, and then in play, find out otherwise. I'm not going to speak of 5e, because I'm not qualified. But I will say that, for examples, it was entirely...

True, but he needs to make it clear that he's houseruling that upfront; players aren't going to just assume it.

Its a great bundle. Unfortunately I already have pretty much everything I'd want out of it.

Well, its based on the fact that even people who aren't oriented toward optimization want to feel like they're contributing. If some people are clearly doing so too much more, that can feel like its not the case and, well, bad. My own feeling is that the game has to have a bit too much of a...

The PF2e games I've played in says you're wrong. And this is, at best, a gross overgeneralization. There are plenty of optimizers who are all about realizing the concept they have to the best degree the system will allow them to, and that concept includes being capable in their area. That's...

You can also have games where the gap is less pronounced because the character generation makes it difficult to produce a character that's really substandard, and where an optimized character isn't dramatically more potent than an average one. Both of those are generally true with PF2e (you...

Its sufficiently uncommon that Maptool no longer assumes you'll have a separate installation of it, so it bakes one into its own install.

Oh, since the above was cut and paste right out of my working document, it still shows some of the bookkeeping (damage and such) in the bookkeeping lines at the end of each encounter. Sorry about that.

Okay, this was the session note for the fourth of a series of related adventures with a group I called the Hexagram, which were trying to take over the cities in the Dragon Empire in my 13th Age campaign. It does not include the maps which were produced directly in Maptool with the help of some...

Okay, you asked for it. Next post.

As usual, this is the opposite of my experience; optimizers are at their best in hard games, and in fact, are often bred by same. The only way a harder game doesn't favor that is if the GM shows no consistency, and talk about a cure worse than any possible disease.

Well, the problem there is that PCs aren't shabby at making a retreat impossible for opposition in a lot of games either, and a lot of players have been taught or just naturally assume that letting a retreat happen just buys you more trouble later.