Recent content by CandyLaser

I know I said I was done on this topic, but I did want to chime in once more after all. I think this is largely correct, and one might wonder how to square that with my example, from a supposedly neo-trad leaning game, of the GM inflicting that level of consequence on a player without first...

Yes, and knowingly inflicting treatment on someone that they don't like, for months on end, during an event they ostensibly do because they want to enjoy it, seems performatively cruel to me. Telling me that people will endure it doesn't make it less of a bad thing to do to them. I understand...

This is disingenuous. I was referring to this: I quoted that line and a few others. Turning a character into a duck for months radically diminishes and potentially entirely removes a player's ability to meaningfully play the game in a way that taking away a character's weapon, even their main...

That is a good point, and I'm afraid my last post was reacting to that trend rather than furthering the topic. On the subject of what I like about this style of play: as someone who almost entirely GMs, I appreciate how it encourages player buy-in and gets them involved. We're playing out their...

Rendering a player unable to play for real-time months is ludicrous behavior, assuming you're playing a game where each player has a single character. You are simply wrong about this. This has been pointed out many times, in this thread and others, with people giving examples from their own...

I enjoy pulling ideas out of published adventures, and from time to time I've been known to use them as a starting setup. The last 3.5 campaign I ran borrowed the setup and the initial hex map from Pathfinder's Kingmaker adventure path, but veered wildly from the plot of the path - I kept the...

What counts as "unique" changes over time. If I tell someone I'm starting a D&D campaign and provide no more information, I think that most players would come to the table with the very reasonable assumption that they can use the things in the book. When I started playing some 35 years ago with...

It does help, but it comes at a cost, and it adds a bit of a push-your-luck mechanic - will the extra intel you get from doing more prep and planning help, or will you end up accumulating more Heat than it's worth?

In general I have no objection to homebrew. I love homebrewing stuff for my campaigns when I GM. The last time I ran 5e was about a year ago, and as part of that I made a dozen or so homebrew magic items. As a player, I would be excited to get a homebrew item or learn a unique homebrew spell. In...

Really not sure if you should be tooting your own horn quite so loudly w/r/t your grasp of the language and the lack of mistakes, given the quality on display here. I invite you to consider that there is a reason why most professional writers have editors and proofreaders, even if they are...

I think one of the thinks Dusk City Outlaws shows is that planning can be fun, but it has to be brought into the game, rather than being something than happens outside of it. I find that planning heists - and planning in general - often devolves to people talking about mechanics and offering...

I would like to recommend the underrated Dusk City Outlaws as a game that makes planning a heist fun. Planning a heist in say, Shadowrun can turn into drudgery for exactly the reasons you describe. It doesn't have to, but I think the large number of people saying planning a heist is not fun is...

Earthdawn does have its own system. The latest edition is back with FASA, I believe. I've played it in a few convention one-shots and had an enjoyable time. The rules are decent, about as complex as D&D, and the basics can be gotten across fairly quickly. The setting is great and worth reading...

What style prompt are you using for these? The painterly approach does a good job covering up for the AI's tendency toward intricate detail that is weird when you zoom into it.

I think there's a second distinction being elided here, between rules the players don't need to know and rules that are intentionally hidden from them. I recently ran a Scion 2e game for about 4 months before the untimely death of a player made my group decide to switch games rather than...