Recent content by zakael19

My wife was just noting that geological studies in the PNW have confirmed various extant tribal stories about the last major earthquake (1700ish), passed down as legends and similar tales. We used to think that oral histories degraded after a few generations, but that's now understood to be much...

I mean, Forge Steel already exists and is incredible. Somebody with patreon access please tell me if there's any benefit at all here?

Yeah, I’ll note that I don’t really run any direct “D&D” product right now, so for my games action doesn’t mean combat but a grabby situation with some degree of peril and challenge which may or may not involve direct violence at any point (and in fact often tries to avoid it depending on the game).

Or just actual history, right? Im reading a fantastic book on medieval history and it makes a point of noting how often histories by various of-the-time sources make the effort to create mythical tie-ins for rulers and peoples (check out the Lebor Gabala Erann / "Book of Invasions" which more or...

As often with your posts, a glimpse for me into an incomprehensible alternate dimension of TTRPGing!

Always curious about the frequency and hour length of a game like this. Is it weekly?

All but one of the games I’m running right now build this into the core design. It works so well.

I dont understand this. Pretty much every dungeon-focused game has an emphasis on tracking time, some degree of procedure where you mark down light sources (from Shadowdark's real-time to a more classic "at the end of a dungeon turn"), etc. The reason they're not computer games is because the...

My two Stonetop campaigns, with a set of provocative questions at a few of the PCs to set the scene ("Judge, when the last kid went missing from town, what made you finally call off the search?"); and then the hook based on the session 0 tensions and threats they had created. Pre-bitten for...

I mean some people world build as a creative hobby or passion regardless of if a player will ever see it (or to satisfy their need for a level of detail), but yeah that doesn’t really answer the OP question.

A great example is how ethnically and culturally diverse even real-world rough historical analogues were. Travelers travelled, often away from their homes for years at a time (I was just reading an account of an African-homeported Jewish merchant and philosopher who floated and caravened off to...

And given how much some subclasses require deliberate L1 / stat choice that are very different then others, are many people really going "yeah Imma play a Fighter and then see how I feel at L3" or are they like "Imma play a Weapon master and just passing the time until I hit 3!" Given my table...

Yeah? Like, I don't see Session 0 Lines and Veils as a trade off. I wasn't planning to drop sexual assault on the group, nor does it harsh my fun to veil out harm to children or whatever comes up. Asking the players what they want to see within the context of the larger frame I'm already excited...

I don't see any trade-offs in the games I'm running, unless you mean that by being selective with who the group comprises such that they're all really into the core conceits so we can coalesce around a shared-table-fun is inherently a trade-off? Like, I put a game and world in front of people...

I'm not even sure what this is anyway. There's something really fun about a player going "oh heck, your questions and framing took me down a path I hadn't really thought about for my character at all! Time to reflect on what that means for them."