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A big part of the Fantasy aesthetic, and this applies to every genre, is being special in some regard. Not every player wants to win all the time and some genres expect the heroes to be grittier and more realistic, but that generally doesn't imply normal. Even the most gritty genre or the most...

They are an important part of my commitment to not overly rely on my judgement or plans but to allow the world I'm presenting to happen organically. That said, they are more interesting and important to me than in D&D than in most other systems. When we enter into a sandbox in any system...

Roll for Effect for a couple of important reasons: a) The players may not actually understand whether or not the task they are attempting to accomplish achieves the desired outcome. Fitting task to goal is a major part of skillful play and a major part of many aesthetics of play. b) Even if...

Nope. Soured me on point buy, non-linear fortune mechanics, active defenses, and a whole lot of other things to this day.

GURPS needs a serious overhaul in just about every aspect. I haven't touched it since 3e or so and I understand there have been some attempts to fix it, but the fundamental design of the game is just wrong on almost every level. It really took trying to run GURPS for me to really appreciate...

I don't have much comment on this but as a general rule of design I would say it is an unbreakable law that if your CharGen uses point buy then it must strongly encourage broad advancement over tall advancement in character advancement or else your system is poorly designed. One of the most...

Tales of the Dogfish Episode #9: Wings of Terror (Session #71) ARRRGGGH!!!! Bit of a vent here. The house Benelux hunters are still trying to capture the terrorist known as The Aguia before he disrupts the peaceful transition of power from the occupation forces of the Empire to the...

Hunters watch televised pod races :( https://www.enworld.org/threads/describe-your-last-rpg-session-in-more-than-5-words.687540/page-32#post-9747027

I have thought about doing GW based on 3e or D20 Modern/Future, but the problem with Gamma World is that I think I just can't accept the conception anymore. The universe of Gamma World isn't a post nuclear war setting. It's needs to be a post trans-dimensional rift war setting, something like...

Just as a very tame example, suppose your enemy orders you to kill your children and you do? It can get a lot worse than that. It wouldn't be hard for me to imagine and layout scenarios where if you were given a choice you'd choose death over the alternative, if it wasn't for the EnWorld...

That sounds like the James Vicary hoax. The evidence for such usage is very thin and most of it is urban legend.

Yes. In my own homebrew, mind control is one of the big categories of "dark magic" or "witchcraft" for which you can be burned at the stake. So much as a "charm person" is considered such a rape of the target's mind to justify the death penalty. Exceptions are sometimes made legally for the...

So the question becomes when does fiat to produce "what is cool" become adversarial DMing to stroke your own ego rather than designing cool encounters with as the original article called them "simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever"...

Yeah, by the end I had nothing but hatred for Luthen and felt nothing at this death. He turned out to not be the man he seemed to be, which I guess isn't technically surprising, but still is disappointing. Things "worked out" for him it felt largely by dramatic convenience and because his...

I start with the layout of the space, do the big gross details of the interior, and then move to whatever is most immediate last, not because I want to create drama, but because I don't want the players to forget that there is a sleeping dragon in the room or a bomb about to go off or some other...

My main concern is always in describing just enough to the players to make sure the important details of the scene are shared between everyone.

Alignment is as I said about core values, ethos, fundamental beliefs. You separate it in two or three ways, first by noting that all people have flaws and predilections which directly or indirectly impact their core values. These are habits that they are often not proud of, consider...

At a very broad high level, if they are doing things because they see no other options they are probably neutral.

So alignment is always separated from personality to a very large degree. Mistaking alignment for personality is one of the most common mistakes of thinking about it. I mentioned earlier the miserly shop keeper that pinched every penny, never gave store credit, and weighed every grain and...

I think it would be a mistake to think that everyone of the same alignment agrees on every issue or that everyone of different alignments have different views on an issue. In fact, some alignments are such that disagreements with members of your own alignment are probably more common than...