Recent content by Reynard

I still wish there was some sort of TTRPG trade organization that actually tracked data and did surveys for the hobby as a whole. It feels like we are constantly trying to extrapolate from incomplete or potentially sus data.

That is an excellent little book. And it reminds me i want to try entering some of them into FG now that DH is live.

I think it is worth pointing out that what people are BUYING may not in fact be the same as what people are PLAYING. So comparing GenCon tables to sales data is not going to be especially useful. D&D is popular. Every con has D&D games -- both Organized Play and whatever random stuff us con...

The point of the exercise of it being a 5.5E setting versus something like Modern5E would be to keep the rules modifications to a minimum and focus on expanded options -- similar to how Eberron and Ravenloft treat rules for their milieus.

People like what they like. That's cool. But that is different than calling it "good".

Ah. I replied too quickly. Goodreads -- you know, Amazon's astro-turf book site -- doesn't actually tell us much past popularity. "Quality" does not really come into it. Of course those people would pick RP1.

If The Martian and Ready Player One are the top contenders for Best Sci Fi of the 21st Century, I would suggest the creator of that list doesn't particularly like Science Fiction.

Genre isn't just setting, though. Contemporary/Urban Fantasy is a genre, and so building a setting in that genre necessitates building whatever extra rules you might need with that genre as the primary focus, not some ill conceived attempt at realism in firearms.

I am just curious why "akin to the southwest" and not just "in the southwest"? What is gained by making it second world contemporary fantasy? Not arguing -- genuinely curious. As I mentioned, the one time I did it, it gave us a fresh take on our supers campaign -- D&D tropes as supers...

I think it is easy to overstate the inherent "tone" of Shadowdark, from a mechanical perspective. It is one of the easiest games to hack to get whatever tone you want out of it. Many, many people and small companies have already proven that grimdark, mud and blood spelunking is not nearly the...

Sure, but that isn't contemporary or urban fantasy. That's magitech and aetherpunk.

In much contemporary or urban fantasy fiction, you need enchanted weapons (or weapons of special materials) to harm monsters. Gun don't kill goblins or werewolves or dragons -- starsteel does (or whatever). What I think some people ar doing is trying to construct some logic, instead of looking...

I think there is definitely room to build Daggerheart adventures more around the Savage Worlds "Plot Point Campaign" model than like the 5E model. Give the GM the important inflection points, all the necessary adversaries and environments, and let the GM run it.

If John Wick can do it, D&D certainly can. Some folks are focused so much on how "guns just can't work in D&D" that they are missing the point: it is still an action adventure game. It doesn't have to be realistic, any more than melee combat in "regular" D&D is. Which it isn't, not even a little.

Well, what I am talking about is a much more traditional Urban/Contemporary Fantasy setting. That is, Earth as we know it, but with magical stuff in the shadows. I don't think advancing the Realms (or whatever) to some analog of the 20th century is quite the same genre. And I make that statement...