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Probably in the hundreds, but last few years I've been running basically nothing other than my own designs. As of finding players, there are two things: a) I don't particularly care if other players at the table have played tons of the [SYSTEM NAME] already or will want to in the future, and...

I generally play a system once and never touch it again, and I find it weird that the broader community sees them as anything but one-time occasions. Like, why? To me it sounds like rewatching the same film over and over again.

While I understand how different players can want to play different things at the same time, I think it kind of breaks when in most RPGs characters are in a party. I can easily see how a professional thief who just wants to pay his damn rent, and a bloodthristy berzerker, and a mad lovecraftian...

I thought the Mork Borg consensus was "the presentation is great, the rules are a nothinburger" I don't really have many games where I'm put off by presentation enough to drop it, but I wish TTRPGs took a hint from boardgames on how to present rules in a short and understandable format.

I've heard a lot of good things about Daggerheart specifically for this usecase.

You don't need to teach grandma how to suck EGGS. I know! I am the first proponent of suffocating players and making them choose which absolutely necessary thing they'll have to abandon! My point is, unless inventory management isn't a big part of the pitch, the devs are stuck between a rock...

I think the second one is way more important the first. People shrug off encumbrance even when playing on VTTs that automate the bookkeeping, and don't mind tracking HP and spellslots and superiority dice and blood points and willpower and whatever when playing without any tools. Generally, I...

Related, but I think I've spoke before about the concept of "pointless resources that don't do anything". They are unfortunately common in game design! Light sources are often that. Encumbrance is almost always that. In video games, weapon durability, thirst, hunger, etc — all are things that...

Eyes her night vision goggles suspiciously

Does darkvision ruin dungeoncrawling? No, not really. Dungeoncrawling, at its core, is a slot machine. There's only one important choice: do we press on for a chance to find more gold but at a risk of dying horribly and losing everything, or do we go home and forfeit possible future gains...

I mostly use Roll 20. There's just not much I need from a VTT other than, well, a virtual table to drop pictures at.

While nominally universal, I think Fate applies here: despite being geared towards storytelling it makes a very competent tactical skirmish. With guidelines on creating stunts and creating enemies from Adversary Toolkit it's very easy to create tense encounters. And if you are willing to go...

Special armor itself is just a counter, it does nothing on its own. Abilities that let you use your special armor to resist allow you to, well, use your special armor instead of a resistance roll (and thus not get any stress). I'm reasonably sure you can use any uhh sources of resistance...

In my birthday game, I've had very exciting, fast-paced but first and foremost, tactical combat. The core is very simple: hex grid, your movement = your attack. With a spear, you attack in the same direction as you move, with a sword you attack cells that you are touching, with an axe you attack...

I haven't been around for a while, but I'm not surprised that "using specific words to describe specific things" is still a controversial subject. I think y'all should be grateful that TTRPG "jargon" didn't went the way of gamer slang and isn't abbreviated, littered with in-jokes or referring...

RE: PC death I find it more annoying than anything else, if we are being honest. Games that heavily rely on progression (and thus make losing a character actually meaningful) tend to break down if one of the PCs is noticeably weaker than the others, so replacement PCs must be created at an...

A game about players overcoming challenges demands that outcomes are only contingent on how well (or poorly) the actions taken are suited for the challenge at hand, so the players can express their skill. In a game about creating satisfying stories, on the other hand, the exact same action in...

More pressing question is why uninterested players keep being invited, I think.

You don't think there are mutually exclusive priorities? No, they don't? There's nothing about tacticality that fundamentally requires it being slow. It's a difficult problem in tabletop space (although, no, it's not particularly difficult either, it's just TTRPGs consistently find the slowest...

I mean, like, planning the "component" job of, say, a stealing a big enough transformer from Spirit Wardens through flashbacks.