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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="VHawkwinter" data-source="post: 9875423" data-attributes="member: 7040136">That seems accurate. I am now 2 years into making my own heavily redesigned 3.x game.If the X-Card mechanic required explanation upon use it would be better, but a no-discussion absolute-veto, is inherently broken, IMO. If bad actors are going to sabotage the game some other way, confrontation over their behaviour can be swift. Any time I've seen the X-Cards in place they're treated as a sacred ritual which cannot be evaluated or questioned, only obeyed. Which makes it a perfect tool for abuse. I think the X-Card system makes assumptions about human behaviour which just aren't correct. Someone in the middle of a panic attack is likely to forget it exists, while for bad actors it's a perfect tool to abuse. And if I know the group well enough that I could trust them not to abuse the X-Card, I know them well enough that a session 0 discussion will be more than sufficient.If you assume the GM is acting out of Malice, sure (which I understand from your review, that seems to be the Gaming Den's assumption). If you are trying to prevent bad times caused by GM inexperience, or the simple difficulty of trying to keep many things straight at the same time, however, it's offloading some of the cognitive load to an explicit mutual framework which allows a bunch of the little details to be managed by the group as a whole rather than all dumped on the GM.I think that kind of framework that assumes bad actors exist and will need to be addressed is necessary for public tables where you don't know everyone involved well. Many games operate under that environment. Convention games, and online games in particular, everyone in the group may not already be friends with a rapport and trust built up over years.I don't think it's a "casual social hangout" though. It's a commitment to a group schedule where you not showing up affects other people. It's closer to joining a sports team. If you and Jim no-call-no-show, Jeff and Susan shelled out $50 in gas to get here, and now we're stuck playing boardgames instead because we don't have enough people to run a proper session. This particular headache has had me actively consider trying the West Marches structure where each session is scheduled individually and only happens if at least 4 players schedule it.That's fair. I think that's a lot of why I never actually used their "fixes" after I read them (though I considered trying their feat rebalances, without the rest). It felt like they were pointing out problems without fixing most of them.<img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😅" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f605.png" title="Grinning face with sweat    :sweat_smile:" data-shortname=":sweat_smile:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> Okay, fair point. But they do seem to skew more simulationist (the fact that he wrote for Shadowrun 4 or 5 lines up with that), and most of the "Fixes" since 2010 for the issues people identified in 3.x are for a non-simulationist gaming psychographic.Ah yes, cults of personality.What's his argument there? Because I 100% found it to be a bait and switch from what was promised their plan was back when Monte Cook was on the team, and the marketing that they were "Bringing Back" the Realms. I have buyer's remorse for all my 5e books I purchased except for: Lost Tales of Myth Drannor (limited print run Gen Con book I had to PoD); Dragon Heist (which I treat as some additional people and locations and maps for the 2e City of Splendors boxed set and the 3e Waterdeep hardcover, and don't use as intended); and Out of the Abyss (which was outsourced to Wolfgang Baur of Kobold Press). Definitely felt like it was false advertising. My 5e books live in a box at the back of my closet (which is a step down from my WoD books which are on the small book shelf I rarely look at, which itself is a step down from my main bookshelf of books I like and am likely to use again in the future).Yeah, more simulationist gaming is a niche, and one which has been neglected since ~2008. I talked about it <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/lets-talk-about-metacurrency.718286/page-38#post-9875067" target="_blank">yesterday, here</a>. I agree I'm in the minority. One doesn't conclude the industry has mostly stopped making games they like and if they want new games they like they will have to make them themselves, if they're the target audience of many existing productlines.They are inevitable, sure. You can catch the ones which are more likely to come up, but you'll never catch all of them.To some extent I agree, but I think where we disagree is in the fidelity of the mechanics which come up regularly, and how rare an 'edge case' would need to be for it to not be worth patching. There is, afterall, a reason I like GURPS and Shadowrun4e, and Rolemaster 4e, and Mythras, but didn't like Savage Worlds / OVA or Shadowrun 6e or the "new" Chaosium Runequest.I don't think you need a whole accurate physics engine like a videogame, for a simulationist-leaning TTRPG, but there's a reason my more simulationist-leaning 3.x rewrite TTRPG is being built as an app, not a paper book. A more simulationist-leaning game will have more stuff going on to keep track of, and digital tools will allow me to make that more user-friendly than the likes of Shadowrun and GURPS. So, I agree with you here as well, actually. The gameplay I like in a TTRPG are inherently slower and clunkier if it needs to be run entirely through human memory of a big book. I do think you could run GURPS or Shadowrun 4e very nicely through a Foundry VTT Module or similar though.[ATTACH=full]431829[/ATTACH]<img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🐉" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f409.png" title="Dragon    :dragon:" data-shortname=":dragon:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> - I always appreciate someone who can take good-faith minor nitpicking without getting angry and taking it as a personal attack. Fair fair. I'll check out your Elder Evils article later. I've just added it to my reading list.</blockquote>

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