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jjjalljs @ttrpg.network
Posts 6
Comments 2.8K
You Don't Need a Game System Before You Play
  • This sounds like a personal hell to me.

    I mean, it might work if your group is all kind of on the same wavelength to begin with. But if that's the case, you could also easily start with a system you like and go from there instead of reinventing all the wheels.

    A lot of people have only really played D&D and its close relatives. I like to describe that in this metaphor: Imagine someone who has only every seen the lord of the rings movies. They've watched them over and over, both cinematic and directors cuts. They know all the lore and all the minutia. And then they sit down to write their own movie. Maybe a sci-fi space mystery to change things up. And this movie? it has horses. Because movies always have horses, don't they? They're in like every movie. So when the detective is stuck in the burning theater, his buddy should ride in on a horse and save him.

    So I 0%, maybe even some negative percent, want to have to sell a group on "RPGs don't actually need six attributes" or "you don't need to have separate rolls for to-hit and damage" for the first time in their lives.

    Secondly, most people are bad at design. Sorry. It kind of follows from sturgeon's law ("90% of everything is crap"). Most people don't set out to make crap, but it happens anyway. Most people firing from the hip are just not going to make good systems. Especially if, as above, they've only ever really played one kind of game. So, no, I don't want to deal with the guy who's like "On a natural 1 you should drop your sword" who doesn't realize that, because fighter types make a lot more attack rolls, they're going to drop their swords way more often than you'd expect of the archetype. I am reminded of an unhappy time in an old, bad, D&D game where I fruitlessly tried to explain effective HP to the wizard. (Since D&D 5e stops counting damage at 0, there are some weird interactions between initiative, healing, and damage.)

    Third, even if you avoid all of that, even if you have a group with a deep and wide knowledge of game design, you're going to end up with an inelegant mess. Why does intimidating someone mean a simultaneous roll-off of increasingly large dice, but bluffing someone means drawing poker hands? Because those rules were added on different sessions, and Mike was really into poker and convinced people it would be cool. Wrestling someone you flip coins, but knife fighting you roll d4s. Sword fights use this complicated table Joe insisted would be fun, but magic is just a roll off. No thank you.

    I'd rather just play Fate, which is already pretty loose about how to interpret conflict and consequences.

  • Trump Media Paid Donald Trump Jr. Nearly A Quarter Of Its Annual Revenue. He Attended Just Two Board Meetings
  • The hypocrisy, mostly. Conservatives go on about "waste", and fire a bunch of people who were actually doing work. Meanwhile, this silver spoon'd asshole is making $800k for doing barely anything.

    We shouldn't put up with the rich anymore.

  • Hands off our work
  • "I want computers to do my laundry so I can do art. Instead computers are doing the art."

    All of this AI stuff would be fine (or at least less bad) if we didn't live in a capitalist dystopia where people might have their basic needs (food, shelter, etc) threatened so some rich turd can become a little richer.

  • How to Unlock Luigi Through Jury Nullification
  • Except what Luigi allegedly did was net positive, and what Trump did was some combination of treason and corruption.

    Your take is woefully lacking in context. Sometimes the same action is justified in s different scenario. Cutting someone open is usually bad, but when a surgeon does it in a hospital it's usually okay!

  • Biz (2025-02-26)
  • Anyone who unironically says they want the government run like a business should not be anywhere near decision making power.

    Businesses waste so much money. They fail all the time. Their priority is making money, not quality or service.

  • What was your first ttrpg product?
  • I got the D&D 3e books when I was a kid. I completely, deeply, uncritically loved them. Read them cover to cover. Spent a lot of time drawing nonsense dungeon maps and coming up with terrible ideas.

    I remember I went to some game shop in some local mall and asked the guy for advice. He was like, "yeah i don't know, but that guy's into it" and pointed me to some customer who was a mega D&D nerd. He was surprisingly patient with my youthful excitement. I remember being like "So I can just... do anything in the game? I can be like, you kill the orc and his eyes are magic??" The guy was like ... i can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like "You can, but probably don't spend a lot of time on minutia. You probably don't want your players spending 30 minutes checking every single trinket and orc body part for secret magic."

    I don't really like D&D/its close relatives much anymore, but like many people it was my entry point.

  • The internet used to feel like a treasure hunt. Let’s bring that back.
  • Some feedback: the "hi I'm coi" thing at the top? I thought it was another LLM AI thing introducing itself. I closed the tab immediately, but then double checked when I read the rest of this post.

    The social media links at the top, especially Twitter, are a negative for me. Fuck twitter and Facebook.

    The big color buttons (that are not actually buttons) interspersed with text is a choice but it feels very bad-modern to me. If you're going for more retro pre-shit, maybe take inspiration from https://evenbettermotherfucking.website/ or friends.

  • Who's playing in the .32 tournament?

    Not sure if this community is dead, but here we are!

    I kind of stopped playing new versions around .28 because I really disliked the opportunity attacks mechanism, but I thought I'd give .32 a try. The new shapeshifter things look cool, but in fussing with it a bit it's harder than I expected.

    But now the tournament is live! Who's playing?

    https://crawl.develz.org/tournament/0.32/

    I currently have one win with ye olde MiBe. Got lucky with good armor early on, and then cruised to a 3 rune (shoals + snake + vaults) win.

    There was one dicey moment in the lungs where I went around the corner to reveal 4 orbs of fire, some draconians, and a lightning golem all waiting for me. Hasted + Fog'd my way the hell out there.

    5

    how do people feel about spears?

    I tried it a bit with my reaper in pve and it seemed okay, but I wasn't doing anything challenging that really put it to the test. I haven't tried the others classes yet.

    2
    Polyamory & Open Relationships @kbin.run jjjalljs @ttrpg.network

    How are your metamor relationships?

    Currently, I'm polite to friendly with all of them. No outstanding conflicts. It's sometimes literal kitchen table poly with one, and the others I only see at like parties and such.

    Some years ago I had two partners that absolutely did not get along with each other, and that was rough. Recently I was able to do a dinner with 3 partners and everyone had a good time.

    I try not to make a big deal about folks meeting. I try to model after meeting your friend's friends.

    2
    Polyamory & Open Relationships @kbin.run jjjalljs @ttrpg.network

    How do you find other poly people?

    For me there's a bit of a network effect where the polycule sprawls out into the distance. Partners have partners who have partners.

    But for disconnected folks, it's mostly been tinder (yuck), and a local meetup.

    (Also this might be the first post? That or nothing federated yet)

    22
    LFG @ttrpg.network jjjalljs @ttrpg.network

    Looking for a Thursday Evening Game

    I'm looking for players for a weekly game of Fate. I'm thinking something like a mix of Shadowrun and World of Darkness, where the players are vigilantes looking to make the world better. It would start (and maybe stay) at the street level, rather than global or cosmic.

    I've been playing and running games for 20+ years.

    LGBT friendly. New players okay. Unreliable players less so.

    Message me if you're interested. Include a blurb about yourself, your experience with games, with fate specifically, and a joke of your choosing.

    3

    What's up with memes suffixed with "rule"?

    Like I saw one that was titled "I wonder why rule" and had a picture about overpaid CEOs or something.

    Why "rule"? What's the origin of this format?

    13