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I found that a little fiddly to work out — although I like it in theory — so what I tend to do is assume you can take a short move to a wall or away from it; a 5’ step or so for a normal speed character. If you have to move a decent distance, then to me it makes sense to use an action. So hand...

That’s a pretty strong statement. Perhaps you might want to check out what actual people say, rather than make assumptions. A basic web search will immediately give you threads, like this one — the first one I read: () where most people — and all the more experienced GMs — say to use the...

Say I want to climb onto a ledge to kick a flaming brazier on the surrounding cultists. That's one action to move to the ledge, one action to stow my shield and another to stow my sword. Then another action for every 5 ft I want to climb (assuming I make the check). Then another action to move...

Well, to be fair, it is disdain not just for the mechanics, but for a style of play. I like games with complex mechanics, because a lot of the fun I find is in building characters with unusual mechanics and trying to use those mechanics in play in fun and interesting ways. I also like very...

While this is true, some systems make it much easier than others. For example, when I ran and AD&D campaign, combat was pretty brief because there's not a ton of opportunity to work together so the teamwork factor was low. Mostly "clear that space; fireball incoming" or "shoot the caster" sort...

There are a couple of APs that are quite hard, but for the most part you don’t actually need to play optimized characters. If you do, then you are indeed locking yourself into a single way of playing and yup, it may well be very boring. The social contract is not so much “you must be optimized”...

Outgunned is very effective for the action movie genre., Just played a couple of one shots over the weekend -- Knights vs. Nazis, in which we played Knights of the Round Table brought back to WW2 to fight in British Special Services; and Zombies vs. Robotys where we were playing a ragtag...

Answering the OP question: No, not really. The market for people who want a version of 3.0/3.5 that is not PF1 and is not 4E and is not PF2 and is not 5E is essentially people who have been playing 3.0 / 3.5 for decades and have a list of changes they'd like to see, but generally like it. And...

I run for groups of size 4-5, and will run if one player is missing, but not two. I use a variation of the "fade into the background" technique: If it makes sense for the character not to be there, they are not with the group and off doing something else. In my Pendragon game, this is pretty...

It will be interesting to see how this compares to WEARING THE CAPE, which is a rather good superhero game in a modern world where supers interact with bureaucracy, can easily accidentally kill people, have serious social and family issues, and can vastly differ in tiers. At the moment, I...

Yeah, exactly. I don't choose games based on it. I enjoyed Numenéra and found the lack of need to roll nice mostly because it meant I could walk around a lot more than usual. I probably wouldn't like it for Pendragon as the game feels much more competitive in nature and the increased swinginess...

It's a term that makes me think of pulp 1970's sci-fi. I have no real interest in that vibe, so I'll just go with "magic", "powers", or similar for my Fate, BRP, d20 or whatever game. I might use the term for a 4-color superheroes campaign as the vibe fits, but that's probably it. I mean, it's...

Just a technical note here: you can run relatively decent AI models on a desktop machine right now. Slower than a dedicated service, but very doable. With a fine-tuned model, a 7 billion parameter open source model can do just as well as a closed source subscription model. Your phone cannot...

A random number generator is a deterministic generator that, given an initial "seed" number, will generate the exact same sequence of numbers. So if you know the algorithm and the seed number, you can predict the full sequence perfectly. This is why they are often called "pseudo-random". So if...

@Thomas Shey is right: I know we all think we are great at spotting patterns, but we are not. We are terrible at it. Saying "I can always tell when a GM is changing some math" is a useless statement -- you cannot notice that you do not notice it! It would require an active test. And you would...

I also use my dining room table for both TTRPGs and for boardgames. I was replacing an oval chipboard and veneer table and wanted a solid hardwood one. So I already knew I was going to to paying out a ton. Overall, very happy I did so. When I ran games with miniatures I would regularly set up...

This may sound like a trivial observation, but I do not see that there is any consistent philosophical difference beyond the obvious one: A good rules-heavy game make a game fun for people who like rules. A good rules-light game makes the game fun for people who don't want enjoy engaging with...

Other people you disagree with: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” - -- Stephen King “The only way anybody ever learns to write well is by trying to write...

If you replicate an existing system, but not as well, or you produce a game that no-one wants ... it's not going to find an audience. If your goal is a vanity project, sure, go for it. But if you want to find an audience, you need to work. That's easy. Yes, you must read a lot. If you don't...

I can't recall if you played LFR or ran a lot of 4E, Celebrim. For a few years there it seemed like every climax combat was a "combat with challenge" and the writers got pretty good at making sure that "kill everything and then do the skill challenge" was not the best option for most groups. 4E...