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Infinity RPG contains a lot of Justin’s advice in the GMing section (which makes sense because he was the line developer for that game). The ideas behind “Don’t Prep Plots” are in the section on revelation lists.

Sure he does. He has a section on using the three clue rule in his “Don’t Prep Plots” essay.

If one sets up the scenario so the PCs reach a certain conclusion, then it seems one does actually care what they will do, making it more of a plot than a situation. But you’re not supposed to do that, so the advice is contradictory.

A plot provides not just a sequence of events but also has expectations of what the PCs will do. A situation would just have the orcs attack and leave it at that. Possibly, you could have some kind of countdown or sequence building up to what happens once they breach the town. No plans though.

Last session, the party found the coeurl in their hex and negotiated with it to leave and go bother Thief’s Town instead. That took care of the last problem, clearing the hex (converting it from wilderness to frontier). I meant to post about it here, but I never got around to it. “raiders are...

raiders are different from bandits

Most favorite? Not sure, but it’s definitely one of my favorites: the Rules Compendium for 4e. It’s a well-organized and easy to read book of rules. I read it cover to cover.

Seems like a pretty typical degrees of success system. Pathfinder 2e does something. My homebrew system, which also uses 2d6, does something similar¹. Probably a bunch of games do that. I’d be more concerned if he weren’t willing to make changes when things aren’t working like they should...

The intent is you would use Mage in place of Bow or Firearms. I can address that when I find a format and rework combat actions.

It was an attempt at humor to set up a hypothetical for the sake of discussion. I also wanted to say I was looking at things from the point of the character in the game world. 😅 That’s what I get for scanning! If only there were a way to flag the important bits. 🤔 Sure, though I seem to be...

Teleportation was the one that came to mind, but teleport in 5e requires you to see where you’re going. However, dimension door doesn’t, so I guess my hypothetical wizard self can do that for a bit (though it doesn’t appear to care about line of effect to your chosen destination, so it’s still...

I imagine myself as a wizard with my staff and pointy hat, but the hat is too big and falls down over my eyes. What spells can I cast? Not many come to mind. Even teleport requires me to see where I’m going. I guess I can find familiar and use its eyes, but that’s not an example of the third...

I hate when games provide obviously fake examples of play. It’s a major pet peeve. I want to see how the game works when people who already know play it, especially when it involves new and unfamiliar mechanics. Don’t make me go look up an actual play on Youtube either. 🙁

I need a conflict resolution process that I can reason about. When something is at stake, I should be able to understand my options and how to respond. I should also have confidence in the impact my decisions will have. For games that are about something, I want mechanics that support what they...

The stuff in the chrome would be whatever is common to everything. For spells, using 5e for example, that might be level, school, and components (V, S, M). That leaves the body to focus on the unique effect instead of restating boilerplate properties every time. Restating it every time risks...

It’s also not great for lengthy effect blocks. Look at spells like disguise self or powers like Divine Challenge. They have a couple of keywords followed by a wall of text. In spite of its origin in OSR systems, 4e and (and PF2 to a lesser extent) are influences on my homebrew system. Carefully...

You do have to scan it, but the formatting draws your eyes to the mechanics. I’m not sold on incorporating flavor text that way (especially once it’s more than a trivial example like fireball), but I wanted include it in the example. That doesn’t really challenge my contention that 4e’s format...

It’s not that they’re bad per se, but I’d like to take more advantage of the layout the way other types of games do (particularly board and card games). I explore this a bit in post #250. I thought it was obvious when I used “effect’s description” that I meant the mechanical stuff, but maybe it...

I handle them in my homebrew system the way I do every other skills. When the someone expresses a goal, the opposition foregrounds consequences. That triggers a Skill Check, which is a form of simple conflict. What you are doing establishes the method, and how you go about it establishes the...