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Ohhhhh, I see. makes me wonder though if other ability scores aren’t too narrow in scope then.

Looks like you’re pretty set on Strength, Dexterity (fine motor skills), Athletics (gross motor skills), Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, and Perception as ability scores. The problem I ran into with Perception as a stat was that you then need another skill that equates to...

I like it. It’s pretty simple and straightforward, which is good. I do like the human heroic inspiration though and don’t think it’s underpowered, but the « pick two backgrounds » had its merits.

This reminds me of a version of my heartbreaker D&D in 2010 (heartbroken by 4e at the time) where each of the four « stats » had a physical and a mental component, copied from the attributes of Legends of the Five Rings (it would have been the 2nd or 3rd edition at that point). Fire = Agility +...

It’s not that the money is too good to pass up, it’s that D&D ripoffs gives them the one thing that is really dificult to get otherwise: an audience.

I like Vancian casting and prefer it over other types, especially for D&D’s kind of magic. Things is, spell slots are a secondary concept in Vancian magic; the three main principal concepts of Vancian magic apply in many RPGs, some of which use spell points. 1) magic is finite - someone can «...

I love that chart! But in all seriousness, a beefed-up version of this done with a decent interface with images and extracts, third party reviews, in an overly-idealistic, critically-aware industry that allows parties to share descriptions of genres and uniform use of keywords… That’d be my...

Honestly, there are so many things out there that I easily get dizzy and fall back to known games by default. It’s like going to the restaurant and be handed a 50-page menu spread over five different tables, a blackboard the entrance, another by the kitchen, on the back of the napkin dispenser...

Huh, and here I thought it was another thread about generative AI technology in RPG… Another trope not yet mentioned is where the antagonistic AI is not the original, but a second or third gen AI; a program created by the program to independently supervise a certain aspect of its parent AI’s...

The abilities themselves aren’t very far from being balanced, but you’re right, the game favours some more than others. Dexterity is not overpowered because it allows everything; it’s overpowered because the game is overly generous with ranged combat and underplays encumbrance. Intelligence...

I didn’t mean to criticize your work, far from it, so I apologize if that’s how it came across. What I meant is that going outside western culture requires as much research and sensibility as doing a good pseudo-European setting. Lazy writing is lazy. It doesn’t matter if it’s cliché or novel...

Those types of settings have been criticized before though, and many went back to old tired clichés after being accused (rightly or wrongly) of cultural appropriation and use of stereotypes.

I have several settings exploring several different approaches to fantasy, but I like to double down on eurocentrism, making it a conscious and coherent decision rather than an accidental background construction. While European cultures are not as «exotic» as Asian or African cultures, they...

I like it when things are relatable and « feels » like it could be real, or at least coherent with some base assumptions. With that in mind, you can go very very deep in fantasy but at least for the character in the story, their world makes some kind of sense. I know I’m most comfortable around...

True, and the rides of a theme park can only be concluded in one way (unless you start breaking some rules), but choosing which ride to take and in which order is nonetheless an active part of gaming. Active players don’t have to partake in the creation of the gameword to be considered as such.

I tend to see linear vs sandbox as a scale rather than a binary question. Railroad is the end of the linear scale, but you can have a mostly linear game that isn’t a complete railroad. Similarly, sandbox games are rarely purely sandbox; some level of linearity is typically introduced to give...

In this context, I meant scripted as the only predetermined outcome concluding of the adventure, achieved by resolving a series of predetermined steps planned and prepared solely toward this goal

Ah, hum, I guess we don’t! I read your message too fast and misunderstood. Mea culpa, sorry about that.

I disagree; it still was a sandbox game. Now the story that the players made out of it might look linear in retrospect, but the resulting fiction =/= game process. Likewise, sandbox =/= aimless wandering without purpose. Sandbox =/= incoherence; it just means it wasn’t scripted to achieve that...

Now that I’ve got a few minutes, I’ll elaborate on this rather simplistic (if not completely inaccurate) analogy: First, let me start with “linear” and “sandbox” are two idealistic concepts; no games are 100% linear or 100% sandbox. I’d even say that most game are somewhere in a 40-60%...