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“cleric stabbed a surrendering bandit”

“cleric stabbed a surrendering bandit” Today was a pretty exciting session. We had three combats, which might account for 20~30% of all combat we’ve had all campaign (~40 sessions). We picked up after last session when Firlax (the fire dragon) left. The PCs returned back to their settlement...

It seems like downtime training should be a solution to the rate of advancement problem. If adventures are separated by periods of downtime, the campaign is going to take place over a longer (and more natural-feeling) timespan. The important thing is designing and running the campaign in a way...

Even if you’re (probably) running something else, you may want check out Worlds Without Number. It has a number of useful and system-independent tools and advice for running an adventure-driven sandbox game. In my homebrew system, downtime is an important part of play. It’s the only way (other...

The one in @Crimson Longinus’s post #568.

Incidentally, the video prompted me to check out Adept Play, and I saw that Ron posted recently about a session of “gamist play”. Details of the session itself are light, but there’s some interesting commentary at the end. https://adeptplay.com/2024/04/06/setting-it-out-there/

Nah, it’s fine. I thought it was an interesting interview.

Thanks for sharing this. I ended up staying up to listen to it all. 😂 I was surprised to hear he ran 3e D&D and didn’t seem to have anything bad to say about the experience, especially compared to what he discussed later about some PbtA and story game design problems he sees. The issue with...

It’s been an interesting read. I grew up in the ’80s, but I didn’t get involved with the hobby until college in the ’00s. Not really sure how I missed it, but we typically played video games growing up, so maybe we lacked the exposure. We did play HeroQuest though, which I recall enjoying.

According to The Elusive Shift, people were talking and worrying about it from the beginning. The wargaming community had long since learned that different players might prefer different levels of realism or playability when they sat down to game around the same table. In 1970, Gary Gygax...

Is this a reply to me or someone else? I feel like there’s some connective tissue in the discussion I’m missing.

Do they mean “effect”? It’s not usually what you want (that would typically be “affect”), but they’re talking about bringing something into existence, which is correct usage of “effect” as a verb.

I think the important part is that the players adopt the persona of their characters, and that is the intended (or at least commonly practiced) mode of play. I’m generally willing to use a broader definition so that unusual games are not excluded unnecessarily.

If the players are playing a game as their characters (meaning they’re identifying with them and/or making decisions based on character concerns rather than game-optimality), then it sounds like they’re playing an RPG to me. A lot of stuff that is taken for granted is a layer on top of that...

I’m going to suggest Kevin Crawford’s games as a supplement to other games. Sometimes you get stuck, and rolling up a few tags can be what it takes to get your creative juices flowing. Otherwise, I’m a big fan of Necrotic Gnome’s adventures. I don’t think I’ve run any of them for Old-School...

I used the hell out of mine when I ran Pathfinder. It’s also how I can remember that I ran a twenty round combat (because the round tracker went off the right side of the board).

I ran into this problem running for my group. I would stretch to come up with complications, and they were sometimes rather bad (besides slowing down the game). It’s why my homebrew system requires the GM to foreground consequences as part of the process of making a skill check. If you can’t...

It seems like a necessary distinction in light of complaints that “narrative” is being redefined from its plain meaning in a harmful way. The word used is similar, but it’s not that word. I think it helps avoid confusion by preferring “Story Now” to “narrativism”, which I believe many others...

dragon burninated the PCs’ plans

dragon burninated the PCs’ plans We had sessions two weeks in a row. Next week is going for three! 🥳 This session picked up from where we were before. The PCs had successfully negotiated with the raiders. They wanted to make it back to their settlement (Cal Maestros) before Firlax (the fire...