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  1. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    Uh ... The PCs are weirdness magnets. Most of the other people in the setting--the overwhelming, vast majority--aren't. So, no, most people traveling from a city aren't likely to come back and find that the Hunger Between Worlds is forcing its way in through people's minds, there; the PCs, on...
  2. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    I'm pretty sure that's not what I said. Lemme check ... You mean this? That's a comparison, not a statement of how my games work. Let me try to put this into different terms: Because the PCs are the primary characters in the fiction the game generates, I feel free to present any kind of...
  3. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    Neither of those, actually. I present the players with fictional people, places, things, and situations, and they decide how their characters react, then I decide how the fictional things that aren't their characters respond. While I make an effort to focus the things I present to the players on...
  4. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    Linear authored fiction--novels, movies, et al.--are not TRPGs, and confusing the media is in fact one of my pet peeves. That said, the story the game makes is the way things go. There isn't a story in the games I run before things go anywhere. I'm not running the game to tell a particular...
  5. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    The games I run aren't mine, they're ours. There are more of them than there are of me, so the game belong mostly to the players seems to check out.
  6. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    But we don't (that I know of, anyway). We're just playing a game that makes stories set in such a world. It doesn't break my suspension of disbelief in a novel when (genre appropriate) weird stuff happens to the protagonist, that's just kinda how (some) stories work.
  7. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    I am at this point pretty explicit with the players at the tables I run that, as far as I'm concerned, PCs are all, always, weirdness magnets. Being explicit seems to make that not even low-level illusionism, but it's not something I'm inclined to argue over.
  8. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    Unrelated to anything above: I cannot even say here what I'd say in that thread, because everyone would know what thread I wasn't commenting on, and the fight I'd be trying not to start in that thread would happen in this one.
  9. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    All of this is true. If you have reasonably routine trade in your setting, it seems like a reasonable expectation that the road to the castle will be as predator-free as the people at the castle can manage.
  10. prabe

    The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

    The "quantum ogre" at this point tends to generate much more heat than light, causes more arguments than it resolves or even clarifies. My take on the idea, at this point, is that the ogre is a problem if and only if the players were making decisions based on the possibility of encountering...
  11. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    It also plausibly means they see the kind/s of play they expect, especially if their playtesting group is (or overlaps with) their primary gaming group.
  12. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    Not everyone who finds looser rules less enjoyable is a jerk.
  13. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    There's a fairly serious hypothesis that the spike in violence of the 1970s-1990s was at least in part because of kinds growing up with extra lead (and other heavy metals--elements, not bands) in the environment. I just recently read a book that made a pretty explicit connection between how...
  14. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    Fair: I might be wrong about whether and how our preferences overlap, how compatible we'd be at a TRPG table. I think my bigger point is that someone might prefer to game with people who share their preferences, more than they prefer to game with people they actually like.
  15. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    Ya know, I get the sense you and I have very different preferences, very different things we want from TRPGs. You'd plausibly enjoy their tables more than you would mine. (I am sincerely not offended, and not intending offense.)
  16. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    On hiking trails, the rule is that the people going uphill have the right of way. That should not be relevant on a paved path such as you seem to be describing.
  17. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    This concern is a large part of why we don't use this tech.
  18. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    No, that's an idiot.
  19. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    Thank you, ghost of George Carlin!
  20. prabe

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    I find that when I drive cross-country, my habits change--often arguably for the better. It sometimes takes a while for them to change back after I get back to Maryland.
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