What do you like that 'everyone' hates?

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I guess one way to describe my preferences is for the campaign to feel like a well done movie or series with structure and premise but using the Star Wars franchise as an example, the PC choices (and luck...) determine if any particular member is Luke, Wedge or X-wing pilot 239 or if the tone is New Hope, Empire or Rogue One.

My old Star Wars (West End) gm was great at making our game feel like the series but interactive and no predetermined as from a very general course of events (some of which we set in motion) but its wasn't "Sandbox" in the sense we could go anywhere and no anything, etc. There were limits and guard rails but they didn't feel restrictive. If I'm making any sense.
 
I guess one way to describe my preferences is for the campaign to feel like a well done movie or series with structure and premise but using the Star Wars franchise as an example, the PC choices (and luck...) determine if any particular member is Luke, Wedge or X-wing pilot 239 or if the tone is New Hope, Empire or Rogue One.

My old Star Wars (West End) gm was great at making our game feel like the series but interactive and no predetermined as from a very general course of events (some of which we set in motion) but its wasn't "Sandbox" in the sense we could go anywhere and no anything, etc. There were limits and guard rails but they didn't feel restrictive. If I'm making any sense.
I know what you're talking about:smile:.

Personally, I prefer having a sandbox with genre-appropriate characters, and working from there to get something that might have been a structured narrative, but emerges without us trying...
But whatever works for you, man:wink:.
 
As almost everything I can think of have already been mentioned...

And while I had a Pizza with Chicken, curry, pineapple, and banan for lunch; having both banana and pineapple on a pizza isn't too uncommon over here...

So the only thing I can think of, is liking Phoenix Command and consider it being is a mid-crunch system. :smile:
 
Hawaiian pizza lover here! And curried chicken pizza is great too.

Much shade have I received for this forbidden taste...
I've heard that is a common reaction out in the normal world.

Alas, I live in a strange and mysterious northern realm known as Sweden. We do things ... different here. :tongue:

 
Hawaiian pizza lover here! And curried chicken pizza is great too.

Much shade have I received for this forbidden taste...

I'm with you on Hawaiian! (You the chef that came up with it was a Canadian of, IIRC, Greek decent. How's that for some multiculturalism!) Never had curried chicken. Is it spicy? I'm a complete punk when it comes to spicy food. Mild level Buffalo Wings is a walk on the Wild Side for me. O.O
 
I've never had curried chicken pizza, but it sounds fantastic. I might have to try making some myself.
I'm with you on Hawaiian! (You the chef that came up with it was a Canadian of, IIRC, Greek decent. How's that for some multiculturalism!) Never had curried chicken. Is it spicy? I'm a complete punk when it comes to spicy food. Mild level Buffalo Wings is a walk on the Wild Side for me. O.O
Curry varies as much in spiciness as BBQ sauce does. As long as you like the flavor, I am sure you can find one mild enough for your tastes.
 
I think lots of folks like Indonesian food, but we made up a big batch of Rendang the other day. If you haven't had rendang you owe it to yourself to try it - it was voted the worlds most delicious food at one point. Rendang takes a day to cook and requires constant supervision, so it's really a dish for the dedicated foodie. You start with about two tins of coconut milk per kg of beef (plus 11 secret herbs and spices) and boil it down slowly. If you get something that looks like an indian curry it's probably Kalio, which is a sort of half-cooked rendang. Proper rendang should be quite dry.

As a bonus, the surplus bumbu (spicy gunk) from cooking rendang makes a great flavouring for fried rice.

Rendang recipe

Per kilo of beef:
  • 2" of galangal grated (this can be optional)
  • 1-2" of ginger, grated
  • 1/2" of turmeric root, grated
  • 2 kemiri (candle nuts)
  • About 10 red chillies (add another 10 birds eye chillies for extra heat)
  • Half a red onion or 10 red shallots
  • 6 cloves of garlic
  • 1 or two stalks lemongrass
  • Half a dozen kefir lime leaves
  • 1/2 nutmeg, grated
  • Two tins of coconut milk
  • Half a lump of brown coconut sugar (about one tablespoon)
Steps:
  1. Remove any connective tissue or gristle from the beef and cut into pieces about 2" x 2" x 1" (they need to be big as cooking will shrink them down).
  2. Peel the garlic, shallots, galangal, ginger and turmeric. Bruise the lemongrass.
  3. Put the chillies, ginger, garlic, turmeric, kemiri, chillies, shallots, garlic, sugar and nutmeg into a blender and blend until smooth.
  4. Fry the mixture until aromatic.
  5. Put the mixture with the coconut milk, lime leaves and lemongrass into a pot/wok and bring to the boil.
  6. In the meantime, brown the beef (this is a recommendation from the MIL, who is an actual Indonesian chef).
  7. (Optionally) boil down the coconut milk/spice mix a bit. The process involves slow cooking the meat, and if you are using softer beef like rump, boiling it for too long can make it start to disintegrate. If you're using tougher skirt or stewing steak you can put the beef in right away.
  8. Add the beef. Simmer until it starts to go dark brown. Stir every 5-10 minutes. You can boil vigourously at first, but as the mixture gets thicker you will need to turn it to a low heat. This process can take 6-8 hours.
  9. Once the fat starts coming off it, you need to turn it right down and stir every 5-10 minutes until the bumbu is solid enough. It should not be too liquid to stick to the beef. At this point it's done.
It will look like you're putting an ungodly amount of chilli into the mix, but the cooking takes the edge off the heat, leaving a nice slow burn effect. Serve with rice and something green. Cassava is traditional but cucumber or cabbage works well.

Rendang is quite happy to be frozen and reheated as many times as you want. In fact, it gets better with re-heating. If it's properly done it can last a month with no refrigeration (it was originally invented as trail rations), but don't try this at home.
 
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If Phoenix Command is a mid-crunch system, what would you consider a heavy crunch system?
With Phoenix Command, you can front-load quite a bit of it. A character's strength, agility, and intelligence will most likely not change very often. Nor the skill level. So table 1A-1D can be made into one row tables and put on the character sheet, only to be consulted when picking up or dropping anything. A character is often using only a few different weapons, so the aim time table can be updated with the skill level as well.

So the main crunch is range, stance, and target modifiers (table 4A-4G), and the rest is mainly a few table lookups. Far easier than say Pathfinder in my opinion :smile:

Now, a heavy crunch system. Hmm... Hero System? Maybe it's easy when one get past generating the powers and creating a character, but I have never got that far. Fire, Fusion and Steel for Traveller TNE have quite some crunch to it as well.

Then, there is also the point of combat being quite unforgiving in Phoenix Command. So whenever I've used it, or one of the derivatives, the players have mainly been trying to avoid combat even if I handle all of the mechanics.
 
I've heard that is a common reaction out in the normal world.

Alas, I live in a strange and mysterious northern realm known as Sweden. We do things ... different here. :tongue:

What's so weird about these recipes?

And no, I'm not joking:smile:.
 
Hmm, things I like that get pushback from gamers:

  • Weird fantasy settings without any Tolkien influence.
  • Rolling dice in front of the players and not fudging.
  • Passive or "descriptive" roleplay.
  • Adventuring as the fantasy equivalent of being a gangster; the world gives you crap options so you gotta do whatever it takes to become rich and badass.
  • Hacking 5e for intense weird fantasy dungeon crawls instead of using a retroclone.
  • Awarding XP for treasure instead of for killing monsters (5e).
  • A "less is more" maxim applied to design and rules (e.g. focused and thematic settings, reskinning instead of creating new mechanics, terse adventure writing).
  • Revising my opinions in the face of evidence.
 
What's that?

Passive or descriptive is 3rd person roleplay such as "Brock walks over to the bar and ordes a drink." Active is 1st person or in-character, including mannerisms, body language and funny voices.

For years I was convinced that "active" was the only true way to play until I started playing with people who are 100% new to the hobby. I was surprised to find that most of the prospective new players I spoke to found the amateur theater aspect of RPGs to be a cringe-inducing deal breaker.

Nowadays my players use descriptive roleplay the vast majority of the time and that's perfectly fine with me. Maybe it wouldn't work if I was running a sandbox soap opera focused on intrigue and politics but I don't care for those kind of games anyway (no offense to the good folks who prefer those games of course).

Page 185-186 of the 5e PHB explains it better.
 
Passive or descriptive is 3rd person roleplay such as "Brock walks over to the bar and ordes a drink." Active is 1st person or in-character, including mannerisms, body language and funny voices.

For years I was convinced that "active" was the only true way to play until I started playing with people who are 100% new to the hobby. I was surprised to find that most of the prospective new players I spoke to found the amateur theater aspect of RPGs to be a cringe-inducing deal breaker.

Nowadays my players use descriptive roleplay the vast majority of the time and that's perfectly fine with me. Maybe it wouldn't work if I was running a sandbox soap opera focused on intrigue and politics but I don't care for those kind of games anyway (no offense to the good folks who prefer those games of course).

Page 185-186 of the 5e PHB explains it better.


I have players that do both, I'm fine with either approach, although I find the cringe-factor of first-person goes away for most players after a few sessions of other players acting in character. I think that's just a general social thing though, in most of life it's socially "unacceptable" to be silly while simultaneously taking goofy things seriously. It takes a bit for the trust to build up that they are in company that won't judge them.
 
Passive or descriptive is 3rd person roleplay such as "Brock walks over to the bar and ordes a drink." Active is 1st person or in-character, including mannerisms, body language and funny voices.

For years I was convinced that "active" was the only true way to play until I started playing with people who are 100% new to the hobby. I was surprised to find that most of the prospective new players I spoke to found the amateur theater aspect of RPGs to be a cringe-inducing deal breaker.

Nowadays my players use descriptive roleplay the vast majority of the time and that's perfectly fine with me. Maybe it wouldn't work if I was running a sandbox soap opera focused on intrigue and politics but I don't care for those kind of games anyway (no offense to the good folks who prefer those games of course).

Page 185-186 of the 5e PHB explains it better.
Way back in high school, a friend in my gaming gaming group always gamed in the third person. "My character does this. My character tells the guy..." He was actually the best player in the group though. He maintained a kind of distance between himself and his character, but his character's were always interesting and involved in what was going on. I agree that its a perfectly valid approach.
 
I find I swap between first person and third person. Usually I'll switch to first person if there is in depth conversations going on, but I use third person description other wise.
 
I find that I and the people play with tend to switch back and fourth as it seems comfortable at the moment, generally using first person during in depth conversations or for very "IC" moments in f2f and usually 1st in PBEM.
 
What's so weird about these recipes?

And no, I'm not joking:smile:.
Not a clue. But the pizzas over here seems to be odd to quite a few.

Now, the pizzas with a baked in hamburger or ice-cream is a bit odd, even by our standards. Those are however not something you can find in 99,99% of the pizzerias.
 
I went to a place in Mexico City that served pizza with chilaquiles and pizza with huevos rancheros. They're delicious! I suppose this is also blasphemy?
 
I went to a place in Mexico City that served pizza with chilaquiles and pizza with huevos rancheros. They're delicious! I suppose this is also blasphemy?
I'm quite fond of shakshuka, which is a similar sort of concept, and also dead simple to make (I'm not very good at poaching eggs normally). Having it with pizza had never occurred to me though...

  • Awarding XP for treasure instead of for killing monsters (5e).
If anything, 5e may be the most accepting to messing around with the experience system, milestone leveling being an explicit variant in the books for example, and having few mechanics that interact with XP directly. One of my favorite variants that I've seen is in Black Hack 2e (And some Cortex Plus games before it, and doubtless more before that), where you spend "experiences" to level up by having a story to tell about the adventures you've been on.

  • Revising my opinions in the face of evidence.
You're a goddess damned monster.
 
If anything, 5e may be the most accepting to messing around with the experience system, milestone leveling being an explicit variant in the books for example, and having few mechanics that interact with XP directly. One of my favorite variants that I've seen is in Black Hack 2e (And some Cortex Plus games before it, and doubtless more before that), where you spend "experiences" to level up by having a story to tell about the adventures you've been on.
Thank you, I am very interested in XP variants that incentivize different styles of play.

I wish the DMG explored the utility of using experience point rewards as incentives along with examples. There is great untapped potential here.
 
I find I swap between first person and third person. Usually I'll switch to first person if there is in depth conversations going on, but I use third person description other wise.
I usually swap back and forth, though I think I prefer first person (and funny voices) a bit more. I won't do it if the rest of the group aren't doing the same, but it's fun when it happens.
I've been in groups that took one or the other approach farther than I liked... full thespian or full wargamer general.
 
I'm quite fond of shakshuka, which is a similar sort of concept, and also dead simple to make (I'm not very good at poaching eggs normally). Having it with pizza had never occurred to me though...

Cracking a couple of eggs onto a pizza before it goes in the oven is totally doable. Goes great with ham and spinach. And Hollandaise sauce if you really want to mix it up :smile:
 
Indian Pizza’s becoming a big deal in Northern California. Spicy Curry Chicken with Tandoori Lamb, oh my Lord it’s good.

My friend’s wife makes a chorizo, eggs, onion and peppers flatbread pizza with cheddar and pepper jack. I drop their kids off at school sometimes on my way to work and she always makes it those days. :angel:
 
My friend’s wife makes a chorizo, eggs, onion and peppers flatbread pizza with cheddar and pepper jack. I drop their kids off at school sometimes on my way to work and she always makes it those days. :angel:

Oh lord that sounds good. Granted, Chorizo and Eggs are like two of my favorite foods anyway.
 
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.
Honestly no variant of Cortex really does it for me, even though one of my favourite characters comes from a C+ game, but I can absolutely see why it would work for any sort of action-drama series.
 
I thought MHRP was pretty popular and was cancelled mainly due to licensing issues (which I hear are a nightmare with Marvel).

I know just as with FASERIP, Marvel insisted on no chargen system. Grubb and Winters had to fight tooth and nail to get one in the game.
 
I thought MHRP was pretty popular and was cancelled mainly due to licensing issues (which I hear are a nightmare with Marvel).

Here is the whole story as told to me by MWP staffers at a con: when Disney bought Marvel they reviewed all the licenses, and when it came to MHR they wanted to see points/return equivalent to what they were getting on video game licenses. This being manifestly impossible, they pulled the license and part of the condition was that every scrap of MHR material on MWP's Internet presence had to be scrubbed and they're under NDA not to tell anyone that. Hence the transparent BS story about the forums crashing with no backups. The licensing with Marvel was fine; Disney just seemed to not understand what a TTRPG was (and the size of the market).

I have no idea what sales were like - I'm assuming they were buoyed by Marvel collectors - but the system itself garnered a fair bit of no limit hat from a lot of people who just couldn't seem to get their heads around a superhero RPG that wasn't based on D&D or Champions. For instance:

I know just as with FASERIP, Marvel insisted on no chargen system.

According to Cam Banks this is true, but it's also irrelevant: the base Operations Manual has a character generation system. It just isn't a D&D or Champions-style one, and people couldn't seem to grasp that "game balance" is handled by the core mechanics rather than the numbers on a datafile.

I honestly think a lot of it came from the fact that the majority of the people confused by the game read it and tried to make characters but never actually played.
 
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