Khrux @ Khrux @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

More than 30 mins is good because I know I can sleep again or at least stay resting and cosy, less than 10 is good because I know I can keep my mind awake enough to get up feeling naturally well rested.

Fuck that sweet spot in the middle.

It resembles mad cow disease because they're both prion diseases, which are more or less only spread by consumption of brain.

Some of the other nasty ones that keep my a little freaked out are Chronic wasting disease, aka the zombie deer disease and Fatal Insomnia , which just sounds like something straight from a horror film.

I'd say that's different from a bad sequel or prequel. A plot driven TV show is selling a promise that it's going to tell a compelling story, and when it falls at the end, it's like a film falling apart in the third act. Still, man didn't suck.

I've got a few.

1: Massive damage cannot result in instant death. With the exception of fall damage, I can't see a reason that I'd ever want to do this to the players, and even with fall damage, players become unlikely to die from this as soon as they have an average of 35 hitpoints. If I have traps or monsters dealing enough damage to kill instantly, then I've misbalanced my game.

2: Similarly, monsters can't crit, however some monsters will now have new features that allow them to crit, some of which may have expanded crit ranges or inflict a condition on a crit instead, although you can presume a monster can't crit by default.

3: There is no heroic inspiration at all. PCs are already powerful and features like bardic inspiration or the help action already allow PCs to reward eachother.
However I'm interested in an idea which is players just voluntarily taking "momentum tokens" any time they feel like the flow of the session isn't in their favour, this could be from a bad spat of missing or fromcthe DM disallowing a broken combo or anything really. Players can then communally spend the tokens to increment a d6 in the middle of the table (1 token to put it down on the table on 1, 2 tokens to increment it to 2, etc to a max of 6), whenever any creature makes an attack roll or uncontested ability check, they add the value on the die to their roll, however if they're a PC, they add it to all 20 rolls. This means all creatures become more likely to cause their stuff to happen, basically. The big downside is that players can just award themselves tokens at their own volition, which is easily abusable, plus they may get used to a high momentum in a session where they have a +5 or +6 and then feel that the next session has less momentum (the 6d resets by session), and award themselves more tokens. Also if they use the tokens as frustration tokens, it may hurt my feelings. But I like the idea so I continue to workshop it.

4: I use the 2024 rules for exhaustion, unless via the sickening radiance spell.

5: If you are hit by an attack while in death saving throws, you don't automatically fail any, but instead instantly make another death saving throw, still failing on 1-9 but not gaining a success on 10-20. This actually increases tension because I'm more keen to actually hit PCs when down.

Those are the big changes, I do have a few other though,

I don't allow any of the "conjure x" spells, and generally wanna look over any features that add creatures to combat to save time in combat. The summon spells in Tasha's are good, as are most class feature that add creatures to combat, and find familiar.

I don't allow silvery barbs. Not just do I feel it's too strong, I also feel that it's flavourless and entirely interested in altering mechanics that are an abstraction of the storytelling.

I don't allow the lucky feat, however I have a custom feat called borrowed luck, it works the same but if you are reduced to 0 hitpoints, you instantly fail a number of death saves equal to the number of luck points you've spent that long rest.

I have a few bits of race lore such as much fewer races having darkvision but dwarves having access to the light cantrip (and other minor benefits) and a few minor stuff like that, nothing too exciting there.

A soon as I started typing I realised it's probably not too exciting. I think it's always had that mythic element growing up near it of imagining the amount of work needed for lots of cups of tea to be made at the same time.

There's a power station in snowdonia, Wales nicknamed Electric Mountain, that just pumps water up the mountain all year round to drop it at optimum times. The cliche examples given are the world cup final half time and after a Dr Who finale. At that point they just drop all the stored water over their turbines to counter the massive surge. I'm sure equivalents of this are common all over the world but it feels so uniquely British.

I'd like to see a horror film where the the generic killer navigates a small town that's had its locals form into a militia under homegrown martial law, and the killer actually thrives in the paranoia that comes from it.

I swear my spelling is getting worse every day.

I played a modpack about 7 years ago that basically removed a lot of official content including most hostle mobs, villages and villagers, and a bunch of other content, but replaced it with lots of non-fantastical creatures, a wider range of materials, different medieval era weapons etc. It really felt like you were alone in an untouched world, in a way that Minecraft already really does, except that the existence of zombies and villages juxtaposes that.

Then on the flipside, it had the Twilight forest mod, perhaps the aether mod (I don't really remember) and this general idea that if you want epic fantasy and magic, you need to leave the overworked, which felt narrativly really nice to do, I think it populated the nether with skeletons and and endermen before official Minecraft did too, I don't clearly remember.

I've longed for that game ever since but I don't know what the modpack was called, and I've never found it again.

I'm amazed anybody is against solar at all, it's the least obtrusive energy regardless of anything else. I'm genuinely happy to see wind power but I also respect people who feel it's a necessary eyesore, as that's basically taste, but who has ever seen a solar panel and been unhappy without the person being a crazy radicalised person who isn't taken seriously anyway.

Also Sim City is old, maybe those costs were more true back then? Either way I think people are generally learning that green energy can be more cost effective now.

My boot drive is too small for 11 but has always been fine for 10, which is a blessing for me as I have loads of other drive space that isn't being considered. An unexpected update would make me so sad.

This isn't just your world, meticulous planning, even with preparation to be fluid is often worse than pure improv. When your players know that there isn't much lined up ahead, they start to contribute lore and tone, and they seek adventure instead of reacting to it. Players may be enjoying a TV show, book or game at the moment and want to echo something they enjoy, either a character or even just a vibe, oftentimes a game that encourages that to come forth is more fun.

I have a beloved campaign setting that between last time I used it and now, I've made thousands of changes and improvements and I'm truly excited to run it, but after I next run it, I'm going to shelve it indefinitely until running it for my children one day, if I have any. Instead I'll just sit down in session 0 and ask people what tones and fiction touchstones they're enjoyjng, and then build the setting then and there with them, vetoing options that I'd not enjoy running but keeping things open. From there, I'll encourage them to build the world with me, a player will care more about the kingdom they named or the wandering superweapon automaton that they suggested than anything I could come up with, not because they're better writers but because people do just care about the things they enjoy more.

It's like when players are overly invested in their own backstory over the plot, it's not because your plot is bad but because they have daydreamed about that and are keen to explore it above all else, not all players love to make a complex backstory character but the majority who won't may still enjoy collaborative worldbuilding and be excited to explore the parts they build, as a GM your role is to keep things concise and develop the through line that allows all these factions and locations to shine, while even keeping that flexible and casual.

TTRPGs are often about escapism and having fun often outweighs having something meaningful, players will remember the session they smiled through more than the session with well achieved complexity or good writing. Get those dice off the shelf and have another go, and remember to have fun first. It's always fun to build your setting and story, and it's a great way to enjoy this game away from the table, but your players don't share in that enjoyment, and if you need them to have the most fun for you to have fun too, then remember that the times you have fun daydreaming about your world without them are moments that may be fun to have together.

After having a bit of time to stew over the bastion system, I'm not that excited by it.

My only major critique is the fact it generates specific magic items, 5e was designed around not giving players inherent access to specific items and some builds can get a little nuts once they're added. Although artificers can generate them through their replicate magic item option, it's still limited and requires investing into that class. Although sourcing a magic item can be done in downtime, that's not as codified and easy as this is.

My main thoughts overall is that this just isn't that exciting, oftentimes specific sourcebooks and adventures have a tertiary system such as the relationships in strixhaven, franchises in Acquisitions Incorporated or the dark gifts from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. A key reason that these don't see wide adoption is that because by necessity they're optional, the game is perfectly balanced to not need them. I think the only fix to this feeling is to have it more integrated through character options such as spells, feats and perhaps even a bastion specific subclass or two, but this content isn't suited for the DMG and rather a bastion centric sourcebook. The other thing that could cement it is if a few major adventures across the lifetime of

A couple of other things on my mind is simply that I like that fact the bastion scales with level but I don't love that it scales with time and gold. A 1-20 campaign can last anywhere from a month to a lifetime in the game, and the amount of gold that is rewarded is totally dependent on the campaign and the story, typically fighter may be able to afford full plate armor at level 6 but that's not codified anywhere, while a monk kr barbarian's AC scales naturally with leveling, not just is this one of those hiccups in 5e's design but finances will be incredibly different in a bastion centric campaign. The paladin may need to choose between +1 armor and a better home while a monk will get both. I'd have like to have seen a system totally removed from time and money and pinned entirely to leveling.

None of these really matter too much to me, except maybe the magic items, as it could open the game to problematic builds which new DMs may not catch and stop, and otherwise these new rules are very new DM friendly which is nice to see.

I'd recommend Photopea for casual use that's not miserable to use. It's in browser only and is basically a photoshop clone with slightly less features, but it's amazingly close to Photoshop when I need it to be, even with things like using a pen or a really specific option menu.

It does generate it's revenue via banner ads but I've never seen them with my adblock, if I'm needing to quickly whip something up and utilise my Photoshop familiarity, it's my go to.

I didn't realise Skyrim blocked achievements when modding, I'd definitely didn't back in the day, it's one of the few games that I have all achievements on and I've modded it to hell basically every time.

I do agree, and generally I don't want everything to be a franchise or a verse. However I feel that a trilogy although generally profit driven can expand a film in a nice way, such as the original star wars or Indiana Jones trilogies.

I used to boot it up and just play through that one repeatable painting heist that was optionally 4 player, although I'd do it by myself.

I have a huge soft spot for the second and third pirates films. I think looking at the first and thinking it could make a great trilogy is totally valid and although they're definitely much more long winded than the first with less lovable characters, they're good films and if I ever revisit the first, I generally revisit the second and third too.

I watched the Dungeons and Dragons movie when it came out and really enjoyed it, but it definitely felt like I was watching a marvel movie, albeit a well written one, Pirates may be the last YA action adventure franchise that isn't just the re-skinned marvel formula, which makes it far more watchable than 80% of the genre since.

Also Pirates 3 is basically the creator of the horrible pressure CGI artists have suffered under for the past 15 years, so take that as you may.

Unity spent a long time being unplayable in an are where that was unforgivable than it is now. I picked it up just before the big patch where they also threw in the first DLC for free as an apology and I ran pretty well on my device, but nobody cared because nobody was playing it.

I feel it also had a pretty lackluster story, I opened strongly but generally but then just became blander as it progressed. I really wanted to like the characters, but they never landed for me.

The last game that I feel had a great plot was black flag, largely because everything since origins has been enormous in scope in a way that's just directly detrimental to a linear cutscene style story. Also as historical RPGs they're good but Assassin's Creed has something really special that has been forgotten, and I was hoping this game would reignite it, but it seems not.