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  1. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

    Actually, there's often a bigger reason for that: players who have learned that at least any living attachments may well be used against them.
  2. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

    No, my answer indicated what some of them think is evidence of those things. It in no way said that was actually the case. You asked why they considered that a good advertising statement. That's why. However, unless your question was rhetorical (and it wasn't self-evidently so) your...
  3. Thomas Shey

    What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

    When you're talking about it--as that poster appears to be--in the context of what the players are doing and why--of course it is. Otherwise you're just projecting your wants on other people and being annoyed they're not supplying what you want. And my suggestion is "If you want other people...
  4. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    Except I wasn't clear from your first post what the actual premise was. At first I was trying to figure out if you meant whether a GM should have a map themself. Again, that was far from clear to me or I'd likely not gotten into the thread in the first place. Until post #109 I would not have...
  5. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    Over and above any general feeling about maps, that seems to limit the kind of structures you can use there, and of course its of no use outside. To be clear, I'm not arguing against having a map at all; I'm arguing whether its necessary to make players duplicate the map the GM has already...
  6. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    I'm sorry, I think I either missed or forgot context for what you're talking about here.
  7. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    Again, I disagree. If you think both of those are required to be "exploration", then you're going to have to supply a word for a game that only uses the first as I've run. I don't think you get it. That's absolutely true but it doesn't mean its relevant in play. You can just assume once...
  8. Thomas Shey

    What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

    Well, the simple answer to that for at least some people is that they like the set dressing and stat bonus. They don't need another reason. (And of course not every game ever does bother with races and heritages, or at least make a big deal out of them. D&D historically has, but that's as...
  9. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

    No, but since I'm usually talking about what I think gamers as a group think (and when I'm not, I try to make that clear), you're going to see me do this every time, and if its annoying, that's as it is.
  10. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    Though that still assumes the map element is important. It deals with the "is this a player skill or character skill?" question, but it doesn't handle the cases where the question is whether the process is important and interesting at all. As I said, I can run an exploration game where mapping...
  11. Thomas Shey

    What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

    I'd say they're even moreso. Far as that goes, I'd question how deep most people's play of elves even gets to the Tolkein elves; its just a certain broad-stroke concept of "elf" they've absorbd from multiple sources (including Tolkein, so there's some of that there, but its not the only thing).
  12. Thomas Shey

    What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

    I think you're making a categorical error here. Let me explain why. Both Middle Earth and the Witcher's setting has a previous existance that would have been absorbed by people in a fashion where lore and setting is more critical as a primary element of the experience before hitting it in a...
  13. Thomas Shey

    What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

    IME, with most players that's liable to just cause them to gravitate toward clerics unlikely to run into that, and if they do anyway they'll (probably somewhat legitimately) wonder if the fix is in rather than it being a legitimate setting decision (i.e. did the GM know the particular cleric...
  14. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    And the latter phrase is the part I was trying to get you to clarify. Note "exploration" and "mapping" do not automatically go together. Mapping failure as a player game element doesn't have to be present in an exploration game. I've run all kinds of exploration games in the past where there...
  15. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    The simple answer to that is "No, it appears something odd happened along the way." Being coy there only matters if you consider mapping itself part of the gameplay loop. I have two answers to this. 1. In many cases, I just don't care. Since the players getting lost or disoriented isn't an...
  16. Thomas Shey

    What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

    Bluntly? Inform the mechanics in some fashion. Nothing else will matter to some of them, and even for those who it can matter to, on the whole if it doesn't impact the mechanics, its prone to losing. That's the point, here. As I've noted before, some people are here just to fight things...
  17. Thomas Shey

    D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

    The problem, again, is the ambiguity of "mapping" here. I think the GM having a map is part of that, but I don't see why the players doing so manually rather than just being assumed to have have a pretty good idea as the GM reveals it has to be important.
  18. Thomas Shey

    What was your 1st RPG and what was your favourite campaign about or best memory?

    My first was definitely OD&D; a lot of really good early games I was involved in were in Champions or RuneQuest, but my memory is such that specifics are long gone (these were likely 40 or more years ago). The favority campaign I ran was a hybrid Mekton II/Cyberpunk 2020 game that was a...
  19. Thomas Shey

    What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

    I'd say there's no general answer for that. What will catch one person's attention will be of no concern to another. And there are some people who aren't going to really care about the setting lore in general.
  20. Thomas Shey

    General video game discussion

    That was more or less what happened with most of the ones I acquired recently. I had them on my wishlist, but I just couldn't justify buying them with my backlog. And then their prices dropped (in at least one case, to a quarter of its normal value, one a game of at least moderate price), and...
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