Finished Dredge. What a cool little game.
It somehow found the gap somewhere between a cozy fishing game and a nightmarish eldritch horror game. The story is delivered very well.
8/10 Fishing, who knew?
Just fired up Dredge for the first time. So far, so good.
Heh, yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to comfort with my world and with improv.
I reward all kinds of problem solving, and I don't scale all encounters to the PCs, so I have high-level areas and NPCs in the world. If I didn't let PCs negotiate or flee, I would cut off those parts of the world.
Yes.
I will say that, in my experience, roll-to-cast is less mechanically onerous at the table for the player. They can cast their whole list without tracking slots, and that keeps them involved in the fiction instead of looking at their character sheet.
Just my preference, though.
Yeah, I dislike that. It turns magic into a technological tool, removing mystery and mysticism.
I have run many games this way, and it can be fun, but it doesn't feel like magic to me. Fireball feels more like a rocket launcher with ammo (slots) than a "spell".
I prefer magic be weird.
This is why I like roll-to-cast mechanics with consequences for crits, like DCC and Shadowdark. It creates a potential consequence for magic use.
Spell slots and guaranteed spell success are two of the worst widespread mechanics in TTRPGs, IMO. Every other action has a roll, but magic just works?
Campaigns:
Shadowdark Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur then Caverns of Thracia.
5e homebrew in FR. Giants returned, at war with each other. Some are deities.
5e homebrew in Greyhawk with Age of Worms worked in.
5e homebrew crazy fey shit.
Daggerheart homebrew based loosely on Mayan myth.
The more I look at Call of Cthulhu, the cooler the game mechanics are.
Chase rules are an action packed point crawl. I have run cool chases in other RPGs where I just make it up, but the best were somewhat similar to these rules in CoC.
IT'S ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!
Clara Daly and I are launching a brand-new TTRPG publishing company, Wildmage Press!
Read all about it in this Polygon exclusive! @eldritchblep.bsky.social @wildmagepress.bsky.social
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Cool. Congrats and good luck!
I think, outside of the RPG paradigm, this is why crowdfunding interests me most. Big media and publishing are problematic, from gatekeeping to wealth accumulation at the expense of creatives.
I don't know that KS is the right model, but the idea has potential to be a fly in the corporate ointment.
Fair. I see it, as someone that has freelanced and has that bias, as the pitch being monetized. Not bad, probably mostly good. Just weird.
As for funders, spend your money where you want. I waited to buy Shadowdark until I could play it, and it was finished before the KS. Totally a personal choice.
"Normal and good" is an opinion. Crowdfunding, just like crowdsourced information, comes with caveats and bad actors, IMO. It isn't unilaterally "good".
The buyer is paying for a product that doesn't exist. This can be awesome for community-centric projects and funders, but it is a pre-purchase.
Yeah, I get why developers would do it. Some will be great and some will be vapor.
It is suprising to me how many people will buy unwritten books, though. Untested systems surprise me even more.
Traditional writing means I have to pitch and deliver to get paid. This feels like pitch and get paid.
I mean, some will be normal and good and some will not, right?
As a writer, I have never considered trying to fund an outline. As a freelancer, I have to pitch, and don't get paid until I deliver.
I am not against it. Shadowdark was written first, and it rocks. Lots look very light to me, though.
Nope. Making anything indie is already hard enough.
I don't know how popular solo stuff is, but I would guess the work is more costly than the return.
This said, I have never met anyone who has bought or played a solo game IRL, with a decent sample of gamers, so my perspective is likely biased.
Ok, so I am pretty new to TTRPG social media, but...
That is a lot of kickstarters and backerkits. For everything. It seems excessive from the outside.
There is no way this is all playtested. Some of it probably isn't even written.
I don't get it. I usually buy finished books.
Hell yeah!
I agree with Strahd, though old I6 Ravenloft seems easier to run (haven't run 5e Strahd). Fleshing out classics makes sense. I like Yawning Portal and Saltmarsh well enough, too. Not much new creativity there, though.
Storm King is a OK guide for The Sword Coast.
LMoP is so good, the rest are not.
Reading them is fun, IMO, but adventures are like all fiction, mostly bad with a few gems.
Other than LMoP, I haven't seen a "playable" adventure book written for 5e, but there is lots of stuff you can steal and adapt in most of them if 5e is your jam.
2024 changed hiding to always be a DC 15 check by the PC. What?
So it is equally difficult to hide from a rat, a panther, an archmage, and a dragon. No difference. No logic.
Plus, level 3 rogues will fail to hide a lot. Like 40% or something.
This makes no sense, and will feel bad for players.
Of course, if the setting calls for it.
I also write full descriptions of the available races/classes for character creation if it is a homebrew world.
If my players have specific ideas in mind before we play, we talk about it and figure it out.
Never had an issue with a player on this.
The Magnus Archives by @rustyquill.bsky.social is amazing. It should be listened to. It is just awesome.
Very cool to see this game in the Cypher System, which I will inevitably run at some point.
Ten Bands to get to know me
Tom Waits
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Tool
Repost if you ARE a person who “doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas.” #DnD
Also, shout out if you’re one of Chris Cocks’s “thirty or forty people” he games regularly with, because I’m pretty sure that’s also bullshit.
One thing modern D&D-likes struggle with is spell bloat.
#Shadowdark solves so many issues by removing goodberry, counterspell, healing word, tiny hut, create food/water, revival spells, and darkvision abilities/spells.
Add slot-based inventory/no skills...what a refreshing combo of old and new.
Dude only knows tech bros. He thinks that's the sample of D&D players on which to base his asinine policies on.
A headline that reads "Hasbro CEO says AI will become core part of Dungeons & Dragons" Subheading reads "We've already been using AI"
If you have an artisanal role playing rules set you've lovingly and carefully created, now is a GREAT time to announce that you're doing a kickstarter for it, because
FUCK
THIS
SHIT
Exhaustion rules, by a mile.
While I am trying to move away from WotC/Hasbro for a lot of reasons, there are definitely some improvements in the 2024 stuff. Warlocks and monks also come to mind.