• 26 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • rules lawyers are as happy as a pig in mud

    In my experience, rules lawyers get a certain special high from remembering some obscure piece of info and digging it out at the right moment. It’s their own special kind of magic. And - from time to time - it does make the game better, because you’ve got a guy who can say “Actually there IS a rule for jumping off a cliff, grabbing onto a big vine, and swinging onto the back of the rampaging Wyvern”.

    But when the DM thinks they know the rules and the Player thinks they know the rules, and then they spend half an hour arguing over the results of a dice roll, it is my experience that neither of them walk away from the table happier than when they started. The best you can ever get is the table stakes and the worst you get is feeling robbed or cheated.

    Fate is definitely among my top games. I recommend it to everyone who brings up gaming, but I never seem to be able to get into a group with it these days. I personally hate d&d for how it not only is the name everyone knows, but somehow has cemented itself as the only game people are willing to play.

    The d20 system is pretty quick to pick up but contains enough depth to allow for wide variations in setting and style. So many of the variants are just right there at surface level. Nobody has to work hard to make fireballing a goblin legion or sneak attacking a mind flayer cooler than it already is.

    FATE is perhaps too vanilla and really relies on the players/DMs to pick up the slack in their descriptions. The fundamental problem with a very story-based game is where you go with it when other people at the table just aren’t exciting enough to keep it compelling. Easy to say “I like this system over that system” when what you really liked was the group of Theater Kids (or just the friends you knew with a good set of in-jokes) that made the game pop.

    I know a few friends who swear by Call of Cthulhu as a system. But their DM is a phenomenal amateur horror writer. So, I feel like it isn’t the system that’s doing a lot of the work.




  • “How likely are you to recommend putting your hand up to the elbow in this wood chipper?”

    Like, if you’re in the business of building PCs? I definitely understand swapping build tips with friends and colleagues. Even strictly within the “No Linux Allowed” space, there’s no shortage of online tutorials and consultants recommending this or that version of Microsoft.

    But Win10 is going away and Win11 is so fucking bad…


  • makes everything turn into the rules lawyer heaven hell.

    👹

    As a personal experience, mutants&masterminds is just, so, horrible about the arguments for how powers interact, and they didn’t help by mixing fuzzy and binary rules

    I’ve never played. But if that’s the Palladium version and it’s adjacent to Rifts… ye-gods. Why even have game mechanics at all? Just give us the setting material and a bag full of random dice mixed with cheetos and Chucky Cheese tokens.

    I remember people excitedly snapping up the d20 version of Exalted back in their 2e, almost entirely because they adored the world but despised the White Wolf mechanics. Also seen some decent mileage taking games like this to FATE or Big Eyes Small Mouth, just because it does become much more of a narrative auction than a dice game.



  • NDAA authorizing almost a trillion dollars to the military industrial complex

    Congress authorizes it. I guess you could just put “Congress” on the list. Or maybe “The Pentagon”.

    Hundreds of thousands of civilians have died by US bombing in the last fifty years.

    With Iran, Syria, and Yemen you could probably get to 100k in one or two years.

    Nevermind our airstrikes across Latin America, the various African states, and our collaborations with Israel in Gaza.

    Hell, the US can take credit for quite a few kills in Ukraine thanks to our long standing policy of playing both ends against the middle.

    But you don’t get all that out of “The NDAA exists”. We’ve been passing NDAAs since The Korean War without hitting this level of mass slaughter.



  • I tend to find an 2:1 or 3:1 combat/non-combat gives people a good mix of the action/adventure elements and the high drama. Combat just tends to take longer than drama, so even when you try to minimize it, you can often find yourself in a time-suck.

    I also tend to feel that any “withering encounter” should resolve as soon as the players are more-or-less assured of victory (like, 2-3 turns, unless things go disastrously wrong for the players). Big center-piece boss battles can take longer, but need some kind of high drama element (exploding volcano, NPC dangling off a cliff, evil wizard powering up a death ray, etc) that (a) gives players a puzzle or drama point to resolve and (b) gives someone an opportunity to do something passionate or wacky (swinging in on a chandelier, flinging themselves on a hand grenade, asking their beau to marry them in the middle of a sword fight).

    Any encounter that’s just “roll the dice, pass the turn” is a waste of everyone’s time, IMHO.


  • your turn should be no more than 1 minute at the longest

    “I cast Invisibility”

    “You can’t”

    “Yes I can”

    “No, you can’t, you’re in the Antimagic Field”

    “No, I’m not. I’m on the edge of the field. Look at the table.”

    “There’s still a corner of the field in the square.”

    “Then I don’t stand in that corner.”

    “The rules say it doesn’t matter.”

    “No they don’t. It has to occupy at least 40% of the square.”

    “Yes it does. Look, its right here in the DM’s guide.”

    “That’s the 4.32 manual. You need to check the rules updates from 4.71”

    “I’m not using 4.71 rules.”

    “You referenced a 4.82 rule just a turn ago!”

    “No I didn’t, that was a house rule.”

    “That’s not anywhere in the house rule guide! I was just reading it before I cast my spell.”

    “Well, I sent out an email two months ago.”

    “GUYS! Just make a decision and move ON!”

    “Okay, fine. I take a five foot step and cast Invisibility.”

    “My hydra gets an AoO. I roll a 43 and deal 290 points of damage. Your wizard dies.”

    “THIS IS BULLSHIT!”



  • by level 10 you should already know what spells you took and what they do at minimum

    As often as not, the control wizard is trying to figure out if they can drop the AoE template to just hit the bad guys. Blaster Casters tend to have less of a problem because every turn is “Does it have fire resistance? Yes: Magic Missile / No: Scorching Ray”

    The really annoying wizards are the Summoners, because “it’s my turn so let me add another 1d4+1 turdlings to the battle field and take 6 attacks with the gumbas currently out here”.