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I checked Hartless’s LinkedIn and saw that Shay Pierce was one of those affected by the layoffs. His experience lists him as a senior software engineer working with UE5 at WotC, which I think is VTT stuff.

The author isn’t talking about design, and neither am I. It was recognizing that there is a difference between the culture and the design of games they play that prompted me to agree with the author’s suggested change to just “OC” for the play culture.

Correct. I rolled, got an event, and then decided it was raiders-related. There’s an active clock for the raiders to come after the PCs’ people.

I was originally trying to determine whether OC and neotrad were separable because I wanted to push back on the idea of calling it just “OC”, but I ended up finding myself agreeing with the author about the culture being just be “OC”.

“fire beetles = bad in bed” We’ve had a couple of sessions since last time. The gist of it is the PCs wiped out the stirge nest. Along the way, they met Malif the ice dragon, and they set a lot of stuff on fire. Last session, we picked up after that. This was the first session after some...

“fire beetles = bad in bed”

Where I was trying to go initially was to push back on the essay author’s suggestion that he should have just called it “OC” and not mentioned neotrad, but I’m coming around to his position. If neotrad is going to pull things back to design, it should be left separate (since the author mentioned...

Reliable mechanics / conflict resolution. If the player states an intent and rolls success, they should achieve that success. The GM can contextualize it, but that context must not negate the success. This is how check resolution is handled in my homebrew system. For example, in our last...

It could be, but the distinction being made in the essay is the extent to which the GM has authority over the story. Consider the following quote from the description of “OC / Neo-trad” in the original essay. OC basically agrees with trad that the goal of the game is to tell a story, but it...

I understood “OC” to be a reference to online OC culture where people create a character and mythos around it, then write stories, create art, etc involving that character. Those OCs would sometimes interact with other OCs, participate in exchanges, shared stories, etc. Neotrad play (as I...

@Emberashh I apologize for not replying earlier to your response in post #267. I was busy this morning preparing for and then this afternoon with running my homebrew system for my group. It’s the first session we’ve had since early November, so I didn’t have a chance to check the forum until...

This assumes an animosity towards “improv” that I do not have (see below). I should also like to say that I find the personal turn the rest of this reply took rather disappointing. My disagreement is not because of whatever opinion I have of improvisational theater, which I would describe as...

Attackers in my homebrew system roll 2d6 + <proficiency> + <attribute> versus the target’s Armor defense, which has a base of 8. A PC with absolutely no modifiers to the roll at all (so rank +1 and a −1 attribute), has a ~41.7% chance of hitting (before mitigation, etc). More realistically...

I do disagree. I don’t accept that RPGing is just improvisational theater. Improvisational theater is a performing art. It does not have a monopoly on improvisation (or is jazz also improv?) nor it a fact of nature. Some RPG discourse has adopted the language of improv, but it doesn’t follow...

It depends on the game and how the crunch is integrated and flows. I don’t like having a lot of fiddly bits with no purpose, but a game doesn’t have to be high crunch for that to be a problem. If the crunchy bits are structured well, then it’s fine It’s usually a sign that a game is not going...

Including the rules as a player seems like a stretch. I am having trouble with it because common definitions of game definite it as an activity where players act in accordance to rules. The issue with calling rules a player in that game is they do not operate in accordance to themselves because...

I like to have a map drawn out prior to engaging with the dungeon. That helps me make sure there are multiple paths around and through, so the diagram of decisions is not just straight forward. The key has enough detail to prompt me to say the things I need to say. It doesn’t need to be...

When I played in @Manbearcat’s torchbearer game, we got to the point of establishing an actual base camp, though I don’t think we got to do much with it because the game went on hiatus after that. I don’t recall spending checks on stuff though. I know we’d set out with a caravan of donkeys and...

I’d like to include commentary and essays along with my homebrew system explaining what I did and why. It shouldn’t be a mystery why something is done the way it is. My homebrew system also assumes a particular default setting. It has some implications for the system that I plan to discuss in...

Does that mean homebrew is discouraged, or is it more that you want to focus mainly on bigger expansions? To be honest, that doesn’t sound very evocative of a “thief” to me. If I were looking for something that embodied the Gray Mouser or a character who was interested in stealing lots of loot...