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I do like the skills arguing. Having Empathy be like "Oh, she's very upset with you." followed by Physical Instrument sliding in with "Nah dog she's totally into you lay on the charm" That's not really something that works in a TTRPG though for obvious reasons. Making character motivations and skills conflict mechanically is a fun idea though. I like games that incentivize acting against your own self interest.
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Nov 13, 2019 17:31
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While people are doing dragonchat, one of the things I enjoyed out of the 4e draconomicon was making metallic dragon morality a little more complicated, instead of just having the good dragons and the evil ones. I mean chromatic dragons are still just evil assholes, and metallic dragons are at the very least nicer, but they're still dragons and have all the greed and arrogance of dragons so while a gold dragon probably won't burn down your village for having the temerity to exist like a red one might, a particularly dickish one still might eat you for having the unmitigated gall to speak out of turn in its presence.
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Dec 15, 2019 15:17
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Okay I didn't read the Vampire thing through but... is there seriously VtM poo poo taking place in Gary? Like... that Gary? Gary, Indiana?
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Dec 18, 2019 00:17
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I have also definitely ended up in Gary on my way to Gencon before so that definitely sounds like something that might happen.
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Dec 18, 2019 03:10
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I feel like any Kender who has spent any time among humans is gonna figure out pretty quickly not to just grab their poo poo. It might still happen but like, it's like learning the local customs. Humans get offended when you Handle their stuff so don't do that. Otherwise it makes no sense anyone would ever associate with them. They can have a loose concept of ownership but they have to be intelligent enough to fit in with people who don't.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:40
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Having played a one shot of The Dark Eye with the DM holding our hands pretty strongly the whole game at pax was an eye opening experience. There was some novelty to the dice mechanics but daaamn did it feel like if OSR nerds decided to make a more modern game with modern mechanical heft. Fuckin 30 umptillion skills each with 3 ability scores they key off of, and separate lists of spoken vs. read/write languages. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant experience but definitely not the sort of game I'd ever wanna play with regularity.
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Mar 3, 2020 07:15
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I definitely appreciate the A Wizard write-up. I agree the Abyss is kind of a weird addition because it's just such a mixed bag of strange encounters, but some of them are very useful. Little bits of "treasure", secrets, buffs and bonuses that can help you win, and there's some fun encounters there. I especially enjoyed that there's a vast, inhuman, and sinister alien being that somewhat mockingly tells the characters about how much danger they're in and how they really need it's help, and offers to "improve" them and guide them. And if they accept then... it does. It buffs the characters, gives them advice, and helps them on their way, with absolutely no ulterior motive or lies or sinister agenda. It's just genuinely a big alien thing that sees some puny mortals in trouble and decides to lend a hand.
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Jul 8, 2020 23:26
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Yeah I agree. I don't think it works that well for CoC unless you swap wizard for a different thing. I enjoy the beginning of A Wizard when they're exploring a town and hearing about The Wizard and getting a vibe that something is wrong about the whole situation.
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Jul 9, 2020 14:41
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Everyone's reading a lot more into A Wizard than I ever did when I did my read-through. My take was just ordinary adventure trope turns out to be something far more horrible and whatever it is, no one can say what it really is, and in fact several people seem incapable of acknowledging what it truly is. Not as an examination of the true horror of adventure. I kinda like that interpretation though.
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Jul 9, 2020 23:20
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3.x (and hell, 5e) CRs are pretty much just wild guesses. Some are wildly overestimated (the Tarrasque in 3.x is not that difficult to kill for its CR because it's mostly just a huge sack of HP and some physical attacks) while low level monsters are extremely underestimated like the CR 3 party killers, the Shadow and the Giant Crab.
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Jul 27, 2020 14:09
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MonsterEnvy posted:I quite like the Inevitables portrayal in 5e. There are much less of them, but they are far more powerful. I kinda like these maruts. It would be kinda fun to have one be antagonistic towards a party that's not strong enough to confront it. Make it a sort of terminator type threat where it's single-minded about enforcing its contract and the PCs have to try to outwit it and avoid it rather than fight it. It wouldn't be particularly interested in hurting the PCs outside of dealing with them if they try to interfere, so it would be a sort of fun, implacable force of nature type of obstacle.
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Jul 28, 2020 15:59
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"Oh she left, pick up Dave's corpse and let's go pawn her bathrobe" is the most murderhobo d&d thing.
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Aug 5, 2020 11:00
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I kind of like the idea of Deja Vu at least as far as a town having doppelgangers that they're pretty chill with.
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Aug 5, 2020 15:41
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It did seem silly how the Migou who apparently also do not like the idea of old gods returning on Earth, are still hellbent on fighting humans. They apparently find the idea of humans roaming free across space just as horrifying though.
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Nov 16, 2021 14:05
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I'd be kind of okay with the Migou being unreasonably hostile to humanity even in the face of a common foe if they were the kind of cosmic unknowable aliens I've seen in Lovecraft stuff before where it's like "oh, we have no common frame of reference with these alien fungus lobster bugs, they can't understand us any more than we can understand them" but in Cthulhutech they're VERY knowable which makes them being blindly hostile even when much bigger things than Humans In Space are going on sort of absurd. Anyway Cthulhutech is the kind of thing I like in theory but the actual execution is either weak, or fuckin gross. I'll look up that eldritch skies thing someone mentioned though.
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Nov 16, 2021 17:41
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Cultures feels marginally more valid as there could be some mechanical balancing requirement (though my preference is always for Warhammer style nationality-agnostic social occupations) but telling players to make an aesthetic choice from only 4 feels needlessly reductive, and personally I don't find the choices themselves all that evocative of anything unique in terms of fantasy. Just fill an entire page of every possible recombination of physical features and tell players to pick whatever or make up their own. We all know Abaddon can draw a mean crowd scene... I don't agree with this at all because Icon has a setting, and setting up what kind of people exist in this world is important. It's also important to explain what the different kin are like so players can make a conscious choice of playing with, or against type. It's really good set dressing to tell whoever is reading the book that we don't have orcs or gnomes, but we do have frog people.
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Nov 30, 2021 15:33
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