Recent content by Umbran

Well, you try casting a spell while covered in hot fudge, see how that goes for you.

Nothing fancy for me. I've finally picked up Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldtree.

I don't think it is a formal requirement, but I do think that the GM as organizing force is so common as it cannot be disregarded. If nothing else, it is probably safe to guess that wherever the GM does have the organizing role, it is not work they can shift to others, and they will viewing as...

"Could have been" is a hypothetical, not in the actual text. Force points stand in solid contrast with, say, Vampire: the Masquerade's Blood Pool, because in V:tM, a vampire character had to get access to blood in the narrative to add to their Blood Pool. One does not need to gather a pool...

Does Obi-Wan ever say, "Use your Force Points, Luke" ? Force points don't exist in the setting itself. Indeed, the Force is explicitly described as something outside of the practitioner, rather than banked within them, that they could run out of. Nowhere in the fiction do they describe the...

Let me give a concrete example: Fluorescent light bulbs. Fluorescent bulbs are an efficiency improvement over the prior incandescent bulbs. More lumens of light out for fewer kilowatt-hours of electrical energy in. They were marketed and bought with the idea that public buildings of all...

Somewhat - you could form a Team Karma Pool, and allow team-members to spend from it. You could not take from that pool back into personal karma, to spend on advancement.

I mean, I gave you Shadowrun, just five years later in 1989. WEG Star Wars used Force Points in 1987 - while the Force exists in the story, it isn't a resource that characters in the fictional universe have to spend.

Are we sure? TSR's Marvel Super Heroes (aka "FASERIP") used a meta-currency called "Karma", and it was published in 1984. Shadowrun's "Karma Pool" mechanic came out in 1989. In a 50-year history, something that started in the first ten years doesn't seem terribly "modern".

So, think this highlights different tasks the GM may need to engage in. "Adjudicating" is about determining how the player's declared actions interact with the rules - determining if what they are trying can work at all, what the difficulty is, and so on. "Interpreting results" - is about the...

Mod note: This thread has generated 8 post reports in the past day. You folks are all being really rude to each other, and are not collectively demonstrating you can have a civil conversation. Thread closed.[/color]

Not much into the splatter, so I'll wait to see what else Keery ends up doing.

Mod note: Guess what? Your insistence on being insulting probably means that your statement won't change a thing, either. So, really, resist the temptation. It isn't helping.

How about a couple of more basic arguments: 1) Efficiency, in and of itself, is not of value. Only with a plan to usefully use the savings does it become valuable. If you don't plan what to use it for, you will waste it anyway. 2) Generative AI, in general, has not been shown to raise...

Not really. It was technically correct, but value is not generally found in technical correctness. Let's face it, absolutist arguments are almost always unserious in rhetorical terms. Finding the one single item that dispels them does not make your overall argument serious, or move the...