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I still remember the first campaign I ran fondly. Is it the best one? I don’t think I’d say that. I wouldn’t mind playing 3e (not 3.5e or PF1) again. I don’t think I’d want to run it.

We played in the default setting. My character really hated the Church of the Stellar Flame. I wanted to train assassin orphans, but the GM wasn’t really having it. 😅

We’d played Call of Cthluhu before too, but those games tended to be smaller scale and focused on a particular situation. We mostly played it smart in Masks, but there were a couple of moments where it seemed like people forgot how dangerous things can be.

We played through it a few years ago. I made the mistake of wearing the mask on my first character. My second character lasted until Egypt. She died because for some reason the other PCs thought it was a good idea to fight shotgun-wielding cultists. After I got shot, they continued fighting like...

Sneaky thief stole nothing. Shazbot.

Sneaky thief stole nothing. Shazbot. After some delays, we got to play again. This session was focused mainly on two things: Dingo (the thief’s infiltration of Léon’s quarters and the party’s negotiation with “Maria”. Dingo’s infiltration was first. He had opted to exploit the patrols in the...

It’s a shame we stopped our Scum and Villainy game because that’s something I was starting to do. Otherwise, the crew is just very silly with three guys running the whole thing. (Unfortunately, neither of the other players were likely to ever retire their characters. They always opted to pay the...

I tried really hard to stick with the leech playbook, but I eventually had to start looking at other ones and take advances from there because the remaining leach advances didn’t really make sense for what I was doing.

I voted for “It’s alright”. My experience is with two FitD games: Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy. I liked Blades in the Dark a lot, but the game’s mechanics have a sweet spot. If the PCs get too many dots, they start succeeding too often. At higher tiers, the game starts getting silly...

I can only speak for myself, but I haven’t been talking about D&D (except for the side conversation about how things have changed). Personally, I’d rather play in a classic campaign than a “kicking butt for goodness” campaign.

A protagonist is a character whose dramatic needs drive the story forward. A protagonist may be a hero, and hero can be used to refer to a (kind of) protagonist, but I wouldn’t use the two interchangeably. Like I said before in post #62, my Blades in the Dark character was no hero. I would not...

Yeah, I think if I were going to portray a wizard, I’d go a different route. You’d definitely be able to tell it’s a wizard though. When I saw the illustration, I drafted my response, then I saw it went over 40 pages in a few days. I was like: do I reply and risk stepping in it? Maybe I erred in...

There’s a balance though. Armor worn in battle needs to be functional. If there’s the wrong kind of ornamentation, it will be less effective and potentially endanger the wearer. However, that’s not the issue here. The armor the wizard in the illustration isn’t functional. It’s there to evoke a...

I think WotC dropped it, but the point I was trying to make was whether it had become an assumption that (for example) of course fantasy RPGs are about heroes fighting villains. My interest in a survey was in seeing how changes in assumptions tracked with how TSR was changing what content it put...

It’s not my favorite, but it’s not terrible. The only thing I really don’t like are the shoulder pads, but I hate that style in general (e.g., the huge shoulder pads in WoW). The only thing worse would be if it had too many belts.

I’m referring to the TSR code of ethics they imposed upon themselves and freelancers working for them. Players would experience them indirectly through the games they play using content designed according to them (e.g., “hero” or “heroic” doesn’t appear at all in 1e PHB [outside of product...

This is an interesting observation. I came into the hobby with 3e, but we mostly did our own thing. We didn’t really do any published adventures for quite a while (other than stuff like Forge of Fury). Consequently, I never got inculcated into thinking of my character as heroic by default. I...

Assassin is one of the crew types¹. There’s also a cult crew type. We played an assassin crew that eventually started leaning into the occult. Note that a “score” is more than just a heist. It’s closer in scope to “adventure”. We did steal a few things, but most of our 60+ scores were about...

I don’t see a conflict. My Blades in the Dark character, Beaker, was not a nice guy. He tried to do right by his crew, but he murdered and schemed to get what he wanted. There weren’t any “villains”, but there were antagonists working against my goals. I can see the same thing working for a...

I think you have the hook basically right. The PCs in my game had found a deed to a ruined manor in random treasure, which eventually became the settlement they’re developing. The first time they went there, there was a black portal, which they naturally couldn’t resist entering. I use Hall of...