Recent content by Von Ether

For those who want to know the difference between the versions of Cypher, here we go. The first version was more player focused in the character building section. Everything you needed to know about a Type or Focus was listed under said Type or Focus. It suggested reskinning abilities when you...

It's happing in adjacent wargaming hobby as well. CGL's Leviathan's Kickstarter had great 3D renders of their flying battleships but evidently the manufacturer requested the detail be scaled back on some of the pre-painted ships. Until more companies learn how to adjust for for manufacturing...

The industry in general should start using a disclaimer of some sort. "Digital render, actual product may differ."

I understand, it makes me wonder why I get that. When it come to 3pp 5e setting books they are always stand alone books with the core rules for combat reprinted from the SRD. I always wondered why people thought having to reference between two books was so much more difficult compared to...

4d6 drop the lowest, so it's a higher than average bell curve. You assign as you go but you can then swap around two scores at the end. More like random within a fairly common range of numbers. Interestingly, the game has you chose your kin, profession, and then roll stats.

I find you can also turn the dial on the heroic level of the game when players get up to a 17 in an attribute due to the basic/trained skill level and the d6 bonus damage dice. So for my last game, I wanted it to be a bit more gritty and I gave an array of 14, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. It worked...

My fellow is even a bit different in that regard, instead of being solely perfect in combat or skills, he wants to be the second best in everything. It's a competency power fantasy. He always wants to be the one with the all the answers, combat is his last resort but he wants to be good at...

My most dedicated mix/maxer player maxed out his HP and WP with his highest stats after getting no attribute higher than 15. He quickly found out he never had enough WP to "do everything I want." He found it doubly true after getting more HAs. For the first time, he had to engage in the...

I hear you. When ever someone on social media being a try-hard with "realism" in their OSR/D&D adjacent game, I stop myself from writing "Not only do you have magic and dragons, you are also using XP and levels. Drop those and we can talk." OTH:: GMs have been using their homebrew D&D games to...

For me the allure of Dark Sun was just by how different it was from all the vanilla fantasy settings I was seeing everywhere. For me, they could change a lot and I would go with it. Just keep it weird and deadly. Also psionic classes that could do healing and not play second fiddle to magic...

I am not even a fan of the term "hallucinate" as it implies the algorithm was tricked or "sick," in a way that makse it a victim. The algorithm just flat out lies or creates a lie in a fake source. Of course when you think about it in those terms, it really undermines the trust the tech bros...

That does seem to be a big aspect to sci-fi ttrpg, if you don't have a tie to an IP, it's a much harder sell.

The article makes valid points, but seems to assume FTL makes it possible to just warp/drop out of anywhere. Jump gates and how fast ships are in normal space can change a lot of those points. And the jump gates themselves vs planets would be the more likely focus. Boarding: A bit odd to chat...

In my local meta, most players could do the XP bucket but there was always one person who wouldn't and it created hard feelings. One time, a XP advancement player starter even got rude about the whole thing - though that was the last red flag he waved before we kicked him out. House rule...