Search results

Savage Worlds Extent of Experience: GM or player in multiple campaigns of at least 25+ sessions, over 150+ sessions of play from 2012-2020. Status: Was my overall "system of choice" for a full eight years, still love the system, will always hang on to my core rules and setting material. The...

I agree with the general sentiment that for a campaign of around 10 sessions or less, almost anything will work. I had a great time with Tiny D6 last year (as a player, not GM), which is maybe 30 pages of rules tops, and most of that is describing the heritages. Campaign was 9 or 10 sessions...

I'd probably add that there's definitely a "gritty and not swingy" option in GURPS, though I am personally not a fan of GURPS at all. There's also "gritty and less swingy" for Mythras and any of the BRP stuff, which it sounds like you're somewhat aware of with Call of Cthulhu. I'd also posit a...

Interestingly, zero-to-hero, tactical rules + long term power progression is kind of D&D's wheelhouse. It's probably the most directly impactful outcome of using class+level design. Like, there's probably no reason to use class+level in design at all if you're not trying to emulate that kind of...

This is a hard one, because goes right to the heart of one of the reasons I've mostly abandoned Savage Worlds as my "system of choice." Had an amazing eight-year run with Savage from 2012-2020. But by the end, I was very much starting to feel the "cognitive dissonance" around character...

Thanks for sharing your experiences, @Retreater . I'm curious, as there seems to be very little you responded positively to in all of your non-D&D forays. Are there specific commonalities / common components that seem to play into that? Not being critical at all, genuinely curious. The one...

Yeah, the "predetermined" descriptor is confusing. I took it to mean, "There's no immediate/assumed/inherent correlation between the game 'bits' and anything narrative". Game bits like, I/O (mouse / keyboard / game controller inputs and buttons), mechanical number-crunching, how "heavy"...

So my next question then becomes even more interesting --- If you were a player in a GM-driven "trad" game, and that GM comes to you and says, "I really want to aim for some kind of aesthetic experience with this. Can you as players build your characters in such a way that the dramatic needs of...

So I just read the article again, a couple more things standing out to me --- I'm not sure why this particular phrase stuck out to me, other than I can see a parallel to ultra-hardcore pawn stance, dungeon delve, map-and-key play --- Take, for example, your average D&D B/X party of four...

Isn't it obvious? The ability to point to the metamorphosized result and say, "See? I told you that your other systems and ideas are unnecessary, and moreover are dangerous, degenerate ideas that will ruin the hobby if you don't desist."

I'm trying to think of a productive, non-confrontational way to address this concern. It's not that ideas of trad play are dismissed or denigrated out of hand. There is nothing wrong with them! As many folks such as Campbell and others have stated, we're playing trad style games right now ---...

In retrospect my tone may have come across as harsh towards both Formalist literature criticism and trad 5e. Formalism does still have a place in literature criticism. Its principles are still used in many ways in other techniques. It continues to have a presence, though it is largely subsumed...

You're not wrong, but at the same time, both Bennies and hit points do serve one similar function --- they act as markers to both the GM and other players that a unilateral fictional state declaration of "Your character is dead" is a degenerate one. But you are correct that there's a...

I suppose there's an argument to be made that the "trad 5e lens" is a highly effective instrument at explaining how Apocalypse World doesn't work. So it's always useful in that sense. But there's a reason why Formalist literature criticism gave way to Historicist criticism in the early 1960s...

* Puts feet up on desk and leans back in chair * So this is where we get into the argument about just what exactly a hit point is and how much of it is a "meta currency" compared to other kinds of meta currencies, right? Because that's one of my favorites! ;) 😇

This gets me too. The switch from PF 1e to Savage Worlds for me back in 2012 didn't change my overall GM approach nearly it all. It just made my usual "trad" approach much easier, as Savage Worlds is 10x easier to improvise on the fly in play. Claiming that Savage Worlds is somehow an entirely...

The flaw in your logic is to assume that "mechanical support" for a particular style is equivalent to "directed play advice, principles, assumed social contract, and overall exercise of the game's play loop." Construct a D&D 5e Dungeon Master's guide that implements Apocalypse World's advice...

It's not that the lens of D&D, or "trad" principles, or narrative style games, or "simulationism", or "story now", or whatever else is privileged, it's a function of perspective. I played D&D 3+3.5 from 2001 through 2008, Star Wars Saga Edition from 2009-2010, and Pathfinder 1e from 2010...

Good question. I know that I personally have long looked for . . . something, a heightened element of drama, perhaps, in my RPG play for a long time, in an effort to at least glimpse the possibility of finding a true aesthetic value in RPG play. As you say --- and perhaps as the article hints...

LOL, don't get me wrong, I'm totally fine with other people liking and playing GURPS. I've only ever played maybe a grand total of 25 sessions of it in my lifetime. I also recognize that there's a very finely tuned, technically impressive design living under the hood. It just happens to produce...