One home remedy for definition diarrhea I heartily recommend is reading the last paragraph on page 8 of the AD&D 1st Ed Players Handbook, which I am providing here for your convenience:
I'm going to be a gatekeeping POS for just a second here. If you're confused by the use of the term "level"...
Agreed. Because the truth, or at least the truth of what I do, is an endless cycle of evaluating and improving my game to make it more fun, constantly fixing flaws as I see them.
If I'm running a sandbox for 4 players, and the party splits up, such that each player only actually spends 25% of...
Start playing as quickly as possible. Read the 20% or so that will cover 80% of play. When questions, problems, game balance issues, or when the game just seems to not provide a good solution come up, wing it. See what worked and what didn't work. After the session, see if you can find a section...
I pretty much just pay close attention to all the stuff in the 1E DMG that everyone ignores, then combine that with the economics system laid out in Richard Cantillon's Essai.
I think you've very aptly summed up why I hate when people "define their terms."
I clicked on this thread thinking, "Hmmm, he doesn't like plot hooks. I'm really curious to find out why," only to find we've redefined plot hooks to mean something else.
So yeah, I'm definitely feeling your...
Are flashbacks an important distinction with regards to the subject of sandbox? And is the distinction so tentative that it requires a certain level of perfection of execution in actual play in order to hold?
If you were a player in a game and the GM flashed back to fix a mistake, would that kill the sandbox vibe for you?
And let us assume the correct of the mistake is fairly simple and not disruptive. For example, if I forgot about a modifier that means you should have failed a save and taken full...
Reason I ask is that would seem to be a good and fair common reference point that doesn't require explaining what the definition of "is" is. I feel like we do a lot of making things way more complicated than they need to be.
But I see now we've moved onto flashbacks being problematic. So my...
I really just run two systems on the regular. I don't see how I could possibly play 50 gazillion different games and get anything beyond a shallow play experience. I also believe a good RPG is one that can remain fun and interesting after 20 years of weekly play, and probably has little...
I've observed the same thing, that few GMs are strict about such things. And I've also observed those same GMs wracking their brains and bending and twisting to come up with plots that incorporate a race against time or some sort of sense of urgency. So I can't help but wonder, is this really a...
I will be strictly enforcing the monthly disease and parasitic infection checks. Your characters WILL all die. The question is what can they accomplish that will live on?
Is there a dichotomy?
I find players can and usually do want more than one thing simultaneously. And some situations will inevitably be relatively neutral with regards to some of those goals, allowing even the lower priority goals to drive decision making from time to time. For instance, a die...
I think social hangups are easy to handle. If we're talking about an NPC with social hangups, what a PC needs to successfully persuade the NPC to action is first, discover that social hangups is the real motive that's making the NPC hesitate. And this can be a very difficult task in itself...
As a reminder, one of the things I'm trying to accomplish with how i handle social skills in the game is for social skills to have relevance but without taking over as de facto mind control. It would be entirely counter-purpose to draw an analog from the combat mechanic you describe to how I...
I play two different fantasy RPGs that have werewolfs. In one of them, they wouldn't suffer damage to regenerate in the first place. The other, they can be temporarily hurt by normal weapons but regenerate quickly. In that one, it's true if you deal it enough damage, you can gain a temporary...
The way I see it, if I'm using a normal sword and am fighting a werewolf, it doesn't matter how high my skill is. I'm not going to win that fight. You say that the player tells how the character is going about doing something. Presumably the choice of weapon is part of that. And in some cases...
The way I do it is, each GM creates their own kingdom within the world. I figure, if I create 2 or 3 highly detailed areas of the campaign, and two other GMs also create 1 or 2 of their own, that gives the PCs freedom to travel among 4 to 7 places with a huge amount of detail. Great sandboxing...
I'm seeing this a couple weeks late, and holy crap how many pages have been added since.
I have a clarification/rebuttal to this. That this flat out is the one and only way persuasion actually works. Any example to the contrary emerges from not understanding just how deep the principle goes...
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