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  1. loverdrive

    The Many Faces of Roleplaying: How ‘RPG’ Became Everything and Nothing

    Speaking of RPGs, tend to be greatly improved by explicit win conditions and scoring. Like, the same game with an explicit way to win flows like ten billion times better and there's not much reason not to have them.
  2. loverdrive

    The Many Faces of Roleplaying: How ‘RPG’ Became Everything and Nothing

    I do disagree heavily with "aren't really games but activities" idea, and especially with the tone it's often presented. It is, frankly, puzzling to me. Of course they are games! And all games are activities! What's funnier is that even that sort of inflated sense of uniqueness isn't unique to...
  3. loverdrive

    The Many Faces of Roleplaying: How ‘RPG’ Became Everything and Nothing

    I used to be a big proponent of tight focused design of every part of the experience: from rules to setting to presentation to curating the play group (you would be amazed at benefits being a cult leader provides wrt running games) Running a 50 player game changed my perspective a lot. There's...
  4. loverdrive

    D&D General Gaining spell slots (and other resources) during the fight

    Balance would certainly shift, but I doubt it would be broken beyond repair. I would expect to have to buff healing and other protection effects a lot to enable surviving into late game as a viable strategy. ...and find a way to speed up combat significantly in IRL time.
  5. loverdrive

    D&D General Gaining spell slots (and other resources) during the fight

    Flavor-wise, it works pretty nicely: the cleric gets invigorated by lasting divine connection; a sorcerer draws more and more power from the latent magic around them; a wizard plans ahead and assembles the bigger spells piece by piece. It is a different flavor from what currently exists in D&D...
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    1761054681638.png

  7. loverdrive

    D&D General Gaining spell slots (and other resources) during the fight

    The thing I'm workshopping right now is to give additional effects for slots already spent, so like Dimension door You teleport to a location within range. You arrive at exactly the spot desired. It can be a place you can see, one you can visualize, or one you can describe by stating distance...
  8. loverdrive

    D&D General What's your view on a pirate-driven campaign?

    I apologize for not reading 18 pages of discussion, but: I think the most straightforward approach is to use ship as the "base" characters resupply and talk to NPCs on, while most events of the session happen on various islands they can visit. Generally, having some sort of a hub location with...
  9. loverdrive

    D&D General Gaining spell slots (and other resources) during the fight

    So. In card games, there's this Aggro vs Control contrast. It is omnipresent: even between two most aggressive monored decks, one of them is gonna be faster, and even if they are equal, one of them is gonna have first turn advantage. In basic terms, one side wants to drag the fight out, while...
  10. loverdrive

    Tell me about your experiences running games at a FLGS

    Tends to happen even sooner if you are a woman...
  11. loverdrive

    D&D General Combat Against Player Engagement: A Systemic Challenge

    (I apologize, I accidentally clicked "Post reply" before I finished my though lmao) I'm running a big 50+ player organized play (not D&D, but D&D-esque, soo I think it's relevant here), so the subject of many different players with wildly varying preferences finding their place in the same...
  12. loverdrive

    D&D General Combat Against Player Engagement: A Systemic Challenge

    I don't really enjoy dnd and don't play it much haha, basically only when one of my friends' campaigns is several players down and they need a ringer But the situation where I don't really have anything worthwhile to do is a reasonably common scenario in all games, I just learned how to live...
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    1760546834970.png

  14. loverdrive

    D&D General Combat Against Player Engagement: A Systemic Challenge

    Sure, but circumstantial bonuses are a pretty bad and clumsy way to handle the situation in most cases. It generally does very little to make the experience deeper. A good rule of thumb, I think, is: implicit > explicit. Like, "you gain +2 to hit when attacking an enemy together with an ally"...
  15. loverdrive

    D&D General Combat Against Player Engagement: A Systemic Challenge

    As someone who doesn't enjoy D&D combat (I'm more than fine with tactical minigames in general, I just find dnd combat loop to be sleep-inducing), I'm perfectly fine with just going for a smoke break during a combat scene. I think rather than building experience around engaging everyone, it's...
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    Screen_Shot_2021-02-01_at_3.06.05_PM-2570681591.jpg

  17. loverdrive

    D&D General Favorite Creepy Monster To Run?

    I love aristocratic, affable, intelligent and unimaginably cruel kind of villains. Ones that will invite you for dinner, show you around their gallery, because where's the thrill in just vaporizing you in a pile of ash and dust? It's undignified. Peasants just kill people for their petty peasant...
  18. loverdrive

    Long-term survival rules?

    Ideally I look for something complex and with a lot of moving parts, so I can use it as a separate subsystem. Like, structurally, I want the game to work like: During a session, players go adventuring to secure some big resource (hunt a giant beast—gather rare medicinal herbs—beg spirits of...
  19. loverdrive

    D&D 5E (2024) Why doesn't D&D have fire arrows?

    Jokes aside, specialized arrows, be it combat-oriented (like fire arrows) or utility like Thief-style rope arrows would make playing archer characters much more exciting. Although I guess there's already Arcane Archer...
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