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OK, you think the opinions of other writers and sci-fi fans are trash, and apparently 1987 is a terrible year for defining space opera (slightly curious as to what you think the best year would have been -- 1990? 1974? 1800?) but please, please, if you are going to keep referring to one of his...

Would this would be the same Brian Aldiss who was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and awarded an OBE for services to literature? The one who as well as being an accomplished poet was an artist with international reputation? The guy who won a Hugo award for his history of science...

Just a quick note on the Heat mechanic. This is essentially a value that can be assigned to a specific area that measures how much the PCs have come to the notice of the authorities. The more heat you have, the harder a lot of actions become, especially those involving avoiding notice. It’s an...

Although you raise an important point on what is "tasteful" or offensive, this is not actually what we are talking about. There is a big difference between "in bad taste" and "causing real hurt to others" which is what we are discussing as the unacceptable limit of fun in a game. Queer as Folk...

yes that cleared it up -- I did have that misconception of your intent, so thanks for the clarification! And I completely agree with the looser definition; hard and fast rules for "what causes people pain" doesn't seem a reasonable thing to expect. With your clarification in mind, I'd say your...

I’m not sure actually that I agree; unless you spent a lot of time describing in detail the process of torture it doesn’t seem offensive. Playing bad people and doing bad things is not in it self abhorrent. But my suggestion wasn’t suggesting that if a game seems awful to reasonable. people that...

I think the main argument against this point of view would,d be aimed at the escape capsule for indirect harm. The OP suggests that if playing a game causes indirect harm to someone else, but is fun for everyone at the table, then it is good. Many people would disagree with that point of view...

Time is the most fitting for a medieval feel. A three-day trip would be a very reasonable way to describe a distance.

@Lanefan : That's the American view, a culture in which for some reason every game musthave a winner and loser. qq: do you have access to the OED, or is this just your gut feeling? I don’t have paid access, so the closest I can get is from lexico.com, which is “powered by Oxford”. That site...

Absolutely -- I wasn't as clear as I should have been. I did not mean to equate "play to have fun" with "no win condition", but meant to say that for roleplaying games at least, "playing to win" is a secondary criterion, with "fun" the more general one. So for some people and some systems, you...

The purpose of a roleplaying game (or at least the ones we eternally talk about) is to have fun. So overall, people play to have fun, and that's why many people will say role-playing games have no win condition, and essentially I'd agree with them. But how people have fun is quite different...

Just started a MIndjammer (High-crunch FATE) game -- here's the trailer I made for it:

In Fate, I would say "Since you are a <choose suitable aspect> you know that fighting this would be near-unwindable" in Night's Black Agents (Gumshoe) "Since you are skilled in Tradecraft, you can tell that these guys re so far above your pay grade that fighting them would be suicide" In...

I don't think it's mentioned because it's always in effect and GMs are expected to use it. I've played quite a few adventures and APs and it's always been a factor. In online convention play. most GMs will ask early on what mode people are using and then use that as we move along through play...

Responding as I feel about them right now, rather than at the time: 1E: A sense of the zany and random that later editions smoothed over. It's unpolished and random, but that can be a ton of fun. The "The frog demon shoots at you with the laser before teleporting to its orbit base" edition 2E...

One suggestion -- have a session for people just to learn the VTT interface. Run a fake combat, explain the default character sheet, but make it just a computer-only session. Much less frustrating than interrupting the elven queen's romantic poetry with "how do I drag my pet's token on top of...

Going to a number of PF2 conventions and for them, about 30-40 minutes a combat for 5-6 players plus a GM is about normal. Some players are much faster and some are much slower, but it averages it. Some notes: Using the Roll20 character sheets speeds things up by about x2. I used not to use...

Yes, it's a quite nice FATE based system; it adds some crunch to cover superheroic levels of ability that work well, and allow you to build the characters you see in the books. FATE's a good choice because the book series has a significant amount of interpersonal stuff happening, and the FATE...

We have played through Ages of Ashes and are in the middle of Extinction Curse, and playing online we typically get through about three combats a session with an equal amount of non-combat time in 3-4 hours. So about 30 minutes an encounter. Some much faster, some slower, but that's probably the...