Search results

At one point I coined the phrase "principled illusionism" as an analogue to "imaginary naturalism", but it was still too "loaded" a term, as illusionism is seen as bad, and the worst kind of GM-ing generally. But it's the right idea. D&D adherents of "living world" aren't at all interested in...

Exploratory question for you, @bloodtide -- how many years have you participated in the RPG hobby, and what systems have you used? Truly just curious, wanting to get a sense of where you're coming from. What types of GMs have you played with in your earliest participation in the hobby? Were...

I appreciate your input and desire to engage with the ideas being presented by @Manbearcat and @The Shadow. It's difficult to conceive of the kinds of techniques and playstyles they're describing unless you've experienced them first hand. I similarly struggled for a long period of time until I...

At the point in time I read the baseline / core GNS essays on the Forge (sometime around 2016) I would have called myself a gamist/simulationist hybrid, with slight leaning to simulationism. I personally didn't find the core essays to be terribly biased against simulationism, and as far as I...

Chris Pine sits on the floor of a rustic inn, strumming his lute to a tune he's writing. "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold And she's buying a stairway to heaven." Michelle Rodriguez: "Stairway to heaven? Isn't that a bit poncy even by your standards? No one's going to buy...

It is evening. A man sits alone in his outhouse, both reading this thread and not reading this thread (1HD commoner, 4 HP, AC 10, -1 Atk, Weap: Sewing scissors, 1d1 dmg, percent lair 80%, percent liar 90%). In the distance he sees the Rod of Seven Pants in his closet, faithfully housing the...

I'm a huge fan of the way Ironsworn does it, where it's an abstract rating --- but it can actually be used as an ability score to make checks. And certain failures/pressures put on the characters can reduce the Supply track rating. The other thing is, the GM is constrained in how they allow...

I think this was a bit disingenuous of Gygax, in a sense. Beyond maybe character level 3, hit points cannot reasonably be claimed to model actual body/health/injury status. Claims that it does are dubious at best. So of course it's only modeling "action hero fighting logic." I've said it...

To follow on, the RPGs I own with what I think are the coolest titles are Interface Zero, Court of Blades, and  Ironsworn.

Personal admission: I've come to seriously despise anything RPG related that uses the "Noun & Noun" paradigm for product naming. It's so over used that it now actively turns me off to whatever the product is. Same thing with "Noun: The Gerund". Whatever you choose, don't do those. Or do, as...

Savage Worlds Extent of Experience: GM or player in multiple campaigns of at least 25+ sessions, over 150+ sessions of play from 2012-2020. Status: Was my overall "system of choice" for a full eight years, still love the system, will always hang on to my core rules and setting material. The...

I agree with the general sentiment that for a campaign of around 10 sessions or less, almost anything will work. I had a great time with Tiny D6 last year (as a player, not GM), which is maybe 30 pages of rules tops, and most of that is describing the heritages. Campaign was 9 or 10 sessions...

I'd probably add that there's definitely a "gritty and not swingy" option in GURPS, though I am personally not a fan of GURPS at all. There's also "gritty and less swingy" for Mythras and any of the BRP stuff, which it sounds like you're somewhat aware of with Call of Cthulhu. I'd also posit a...

Interestingly, zero-to-hero, tactical rules + long term power progression is kind of D&D's wheelhouse. It's probably the most directly impactful outcome of using class+level design. Like, there's probably no reason to use class+level in design at all if you're not trying to emulate that kind of...

This is a hard one, because goes right to the heart of one of the reasons I've mostly abandoned Savage Worlds as my "system of choice." Had an amazing eight-year run with Savage from 2012-2020. But by the end, I was very much starting to feel the "cognitive dissonance" around character...

Thanks for sharing your experiences, @Retreater . I'm curious, as there seems to be very little you responded positively to in all of your non-D&D forays. Are there specific commonalities / common components that seem to play into that? Not being critical at all, genuinely curious. The one...

Yeah, the "predetermined" descriptor is confusing. I took it to mean, "There's no immediate/assumed/inherent correlation between the game 'bits' and anything narrative". Game bits like, I/O (mouse / keyboard / game controller inputs and buttons), mechanical number-crunching, how "heavy"...

So my next question then becomes even more interesting --- If you were a player in a GM-driven "trad" game, and that GM comes to you and says, "I really want to aim for some kind of aesthetic experience with this. Can you as players build your characters in such a way that the dramatic needs of...

So I just read the article again, a couple more things standing out to me --- I'm not sure why this particular phrase stuck out to me, other than I can see a parallel to ultra-hardcore pawn stance, dungeon delve, map-and-key play --- Take, for example, your average D&D B/X party of four...

Isn't it obvious? The ability to point to the metamorphosized result and say, "See? I told you that your other systems and ideas are unnecessary, and moreover are dangerous, degenerate ideas that will ruin the hobby if you don't desist."