Search results

Generally, I'm of the opinion that the existence of a GM is a stopgap measure. Game Master in pretty much every RPG that has one (except in maybe PbtA games) does the work of an in-situ game designer, closing gaps that should've never been there in the first place. That is the main reason I...

First, I'm sorry if I lose the thread of the discussion. I'm still at extended vacation and I'm very rarely sober and/or well-slept. To put on a tinfoil hat, I'd say the fact that D&D doesn't really support anything is intentional exploitation of its cultural cachet. An average person probably...

There's a pretty hard cap on how far away you can rewind, and the human element makes, well, actual replaying beyond the last scene if not impossible, at least improbable. If I go for a second walkthrough of Fallout, the game itself doesn't change. I can see with my eyes how different is...

In my experience with Blades, a less "skilled" team that chose a more bruteforce approach would probably accomplish the goal anyway, and the difference between an experienced, good Blades player and a noob is the ability to create intriguing fiction first and foremost. As of D&D, the thing I'm...

All activities produce stories, that is just a natural byproduct of events happening in a sequential order. Yesterday, I played Team Fortress, I flirted with this girl playing Soldier, and then I popped kritz on her and she bathed me in the blood of the enemy team. Story! Or, in-universe...

Well, Snarf @ ed me. Nah, it easily can be. If there was, well, actually engaging gameplay (like in 4E or, better, Strike!) and tight rules on encounter creation, instead of mere "guidelines", it would work. Like, yeah, it wouldn't be a storytelling game (as outcomes are decided by the...

Well, if you think that skill expression doesn't matter, then maybe you should try RPGs designed around creative expression instead? I live in the world where Forge already happened.

While, yes, the first thing I imagine when thinking about "player skill" is hitting railgun shots at supersonic speeds, the first example I lead with was a tabletop wargame -- Warhammer 40000. A good Warhammer player, Before the game: leverages their knowledge of other armies and current meta...

Look. There's this cool game called ULTRAKILL. I've played it enough to know exactly when and where which enemies will spawn, so I can aim at enemies head before the bastard even spawned, shoot, turn around on a pure muscle memory to another enemy, switch to the shotgun and pump them full of...

I've played D&D quite a lot, and I cannot say that I'm really any better at it than someone who just recently figured out how the rules work. I ain't leaving them in the dust. And people who have way more experience than me don't either. I have practically no experience with CRPGs, and those...

But pretty much every game that features... ...asymmetrical opposition, requires learning match ups ...maps, requires learning the layout You don't get better at Warhammer by rereading your army codex three hundred times, you get better by learning what other armies can do and figuring out...

The point is, long campaigns aren't a some kind of feature of rules-heavy games. It's a byproduct of human beings resolving complex rules that makes the density of important events per session low. D&D, when played on a properly configured VTT that automates everything isn't suited for...

Funnily, both the design and the "culture" around D&D specifically and games of it's ilk generally, is pretty decidedly anti-game. High degree of randomness certainly doesn't help, but more importantly, it's expected that players... Actively refuse to play the goddamn game. It's frowned upon to...

A tabletop MMORPG emulator that desperately tried to pretend it can do anything other than that

Well, I have a pretty rigid criteria of what feels like a game to me: when at every point of interaction I can say "yeah, that was fair and deserved". Pretty much none of RPGs feel like games to me, as RPGs, are, by their nature, impossible to replay. There's no way I can end up in the exact...

Several different kinds of points (?) that are awarded for different things. Maybe traits could have a tracker attached to them. As an example, a Fate-like character *Detective down his luck *Crippling alcohol addiction *Ties to the Rose sindycate could be tracking how many times each of...

Awarding "scores" that mean absolutely nothing can be a good reward? Fate Points are part of gameplay and provide bonusi. Not earning them means being weaker, so it makes the incentive more "winning" oriented. If Fate Points were completely unused, earning them would be an optional endeavour...

A game, that doesn't have a continuous fiction. It's played in short scenes that have only vague relation to each other, the characters are more or less the same, but nothing necessarily has long-term consequences. Two lovers can have a bitter break up in one scene, and then be happily in love...

I will respond to the serious points and continue discussing them. I'm having an extended holiday (Nauryz küttı bolsyñdar, everyone!), so my thoughts are a bit scattered. I may post some vague notes here for latter, if I think something is interesting enough to share even in raw, unprocessed...

Yeah, I don't think I know any examples that codify such things. Like, you can ask the other player for their character do something and they can agree, but in ERP it's normally goes the other way — by default you can take control, and the other person can stop you if they don't like your idea.