Search found 339 matches
- Wed Oct 07, 2020 5:06 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Miscast risks as a balancing system for magic
- Replies: 59
- Views: 13649
- Wed Oct 07, 2020 8:08 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Spotlight is Not a Conserved Property (No Zinegata, thanks)
- Replies: 35
- Views: 8677
Some want to feel smart or clever. They get that by having their plots work out well, finding emergent uses out of things that were only meant for utility, or for overcoming challenges through subversion instead of direct action. This is absolutely me. I'm happy with a session if I get to help some...
- Wed Oct 07, 2020 4:54 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Spotlight is Not a Conserved Property (No Zinegata, thanks)
- Replies: 35
- Views: 8677
- Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:06 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Flexible abilities for low level characters
- Replies: 16
- Views: 3126
I like that one so much, Josh Kablack. Also, since Return Of The Obra Dinn has a specific concrete implementation of that... Memento mortem . If you touch a dead person, you can see the moment they died. You can hear five seconds prior to their death (from their perspective) plus explore a full 3D s...
- Wed Oct 07, 2020 12:28 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Flexible abilities for low level characters
- Replies: 16
- Views: 3126
Anyblade . You possess the Anyblade, a magical sword that, with a thought, can be transformed into any bladed weapon, and which is too lenient. Handy for suddenly having reach, a dagger, a giant honking sword, as appropriate. But also can be a sudden pole for pole vaulting, a sword too big for you ...
- Wed Oct 07, 2020 12:16 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Flexible abilities for low level characters
- Replies: 16
- Views: 3126
- Tue Oct 06, 2020 5:09 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Flexible abilities for low level characters
- Replies: 16
- Views: 3126
Flexible abilities for low level characters
In this thread Foxwarrior and I (and maybe MGuy?) think RPGs should try to give everyone the tools to do something memorable each session, and that a good way to do this is giving people flexible abilities. Foxwarrior adds that flexible limitations can accomplish this just as well as useful abilitie...
- Tue Oct 06, 2020 7:52 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Spotlight is Not a Conserved Property (No Zinegata, thanks)
- Replies: 35
- Views: 8677
There are cooperative board games that solve the alpha gamer problem. For example, Space Alert solves it with a harsh time limit and private information. So I'd hardly call addressing it pointless. Yeah, sometimes someone is just bringing out-of-game baggage in and causing a mess for reasons that th...
- Tue Oct 06, 2020 6:57 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Spotlight is Not a Conserved Property (No Zinegata, thanks)
- Replies: 35
- Views: 8677
I think that on a design level though you are trying to design a game that allows or promotes everyone to have the chance to do something memorable. I like this goal, and I think you said it well. Let's look at options for how to make it happen: It's good to give every player a nice toolbox that th...
- Fri Oct 02, 2020 6:00 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: What's the fun of having both Daily & Encounter recharges?
- Replies: 27
- Views: 6771
- Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:19 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Miscast risks as a balancing system for magic
- Replies: 59
- Views: 13649
I guess players often [conflate balance and consistency] though, they look back at a session and notice that one character accomplished nothing (because of poor dice rolls possibly) or stole the spotlight by rolling well, and infer that the game is unbalanced when really it's just designed to have ...
- Thu Oct 01, 2020 10:12 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Miscast risks as a balancing system for magic
- Replies: 59
- Views: 13649
- Thu Oct 01, 2020 7:22 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Miscast risks as a balancing system for magic
- Replies: 59
- Views: 13649
But the question is whether they're a good balance lever. Math-wise, they are the very definition of adding imbalance. It sounds like you're conflating balance and consistency, which I don't think is the most helpful definition for balance. I'd consider balance to be more akin to expected value. Th...
- Mon Sep 28, 2020 9:42 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: What's the fun of having both Daily & Encounter recharges?
- Replies: 27
- Views: 6771
- Mon Sep 28, 2020 4:50 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: What's the fun of having both Daily & Encounter recharges?
- Replies: 27
- Views: 6771
As a DM it's nice when players have resources that line up with the thing I'm designing. If they have N daily powers, then I get a cheap source of tension when I give them nearly N daily problems. They have to consider when it's worth rationing, and are more likely to have to resort to tools that ar...
- Mon Sep 28, 2020 7:41 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: [Let's Read] The Class Alphabet for Dungeon Crawl Classics
- Replies: 17
- Views: 4426
- Mon Sep 28, 2020 2:01 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Miscast risks as a balancing system for magic
- Replies: 59
- Views: 13649
Rare miscasts that completely hose the character (or worse, party) aren't a very good balancing system for the reason Foxwarrior covered. Entirely reasonable mechanic for a big dumb hack and slash meatgrinder though. Very common miscasts (on par with missing) might be workable. That lets you make ma...
- Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:58 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Digimon Card Game's shared resource mechanic
- Replies: 6
- Views: 3242
Mana Khemia is a good example of a game that very explicitly uses the system you're describing, Foxwarrior. Time is an infinite line of cards, and your turn gets inserted N cards into the future. I think you're right and the Memory Gauge might be mathematically the same thing as that, but it's a ver...
- Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:53 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Another Thread About Social Combat
- Replies: 115
- Views: 20892
6 rounds sounds fine to me, no weirder than it taking 1 minute or 60 seconds. It's just a time unit. You only need to chop the flow of time up into round-sized chunks when there's so many of them going on that tracking them as partially overlapping blocks would be impractical. It's perfectly okay fo...
- Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:38 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: [Let's Read] The Class Alphabet for Dungeon Crawl Classics
- Replies: 17
- Views: 4426
I'm enjoying the gonzo nature of these, it's nice to see people just go for it and see whether things work out or not. Goblin gang and intelligent weapon are suitably weird ways to play with the format, and look like they're executed well enough (to the level of detail I can see from a summary in a ...
- Thu Sep 24, 2020 12:21 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Stone to Flesh on Stone Golem:
- Replies: 17
- Views: 4646
- Thu Sep 24, 2020 12:14 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Digimon Card Game's shared resource mechanic
- Replies: 6
- Views: 3242
- Thu Sep 17, 2020 4:46 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Another Thread About Social Combat
- Replies: 115
- Views: 20892
Three thoughts: [*] If you want to make progress, it'd be best to come up with 1-3 complex social encounters suitable for running as oneshots. Try to fit (enough of) your system into 1-2 pages. Run the oneshots, tweak the rules, try again with a different group, repeat. [*] Status effects and battle...
- Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:26 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Crafting, Encumbrance, and dealing with "Stuff" in game
- Replies: 31
- Views: 7889
That's good your logistics sim is a sideshow, but if you want logistics to be a big part of the game, it'd probably be better to make it more nuanced and complicated over time rather than more streamlined. Like maybe hauling all your loot via airship is more efficient and better, but the fuel is har...
- Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:57 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Magic the Gathering's design articles
- Replies: 38
- Views: 12192
The thing that confuse me is that they say they want an interactive game but then make things that can't be interacted with (emblems, Hexproof, can't be countered), or it doesn't matter because you already get all the value anyway and not care (Uro...oh you counted it and didn't exile the card/grav...