Chebucto Regional Softball Club

I do feel like sometimes players have a sort of laid back, "we should just win without too much trouble" attitude. Sometimes this manifests as "we take a long rest after every fight". And that's a fine way to play, so long as everyone's on board. It can be kind of bad when half the group is kick-in-the-door-lol and the DM is expecting more tactical depth. I think because D&D is many people's first RPG, you'll find a lot of bad habits there as new players rediscover them.

Running games has definitely helped me run meetings. - Establish turn order. - let people finish their thought instead of immediately following some dumbass tangent - take notes

Not the person you asked but I'm taking this opportunity to talk about why I wouldn't play pbta as my main game. One, I rarely feel like my character is competent. I'm usually rolling mixed success, and that feels bad. A good GM can take the edge off there. they can make it so the problem was circumstances or the strength of your enemy, instead of your fuck up. But most GMs aren't good, they're average. Related, and I think this might have been a result of not liking the GM, when I do get a mixed success it often feels like the GM is just fucking with me. It felt very unilateral. They decide what happens with no buy-in from the table needed. When I run Fate, mixed successes are a proposal the player can accept, decline, or suggest another idea. Third, playbooks feel like mad libs instead of writing. So much is already defined, typically, it's constraining and anchoring. I don't feel like I'm really making something of my own. I can see how that's really helpful for some people but I don't enjoy it. I much prefer the utterly freeform mode of Fate. I want to be a chaos magick using librarian? I can just write that down. I had fun doing a one shot of rapscallions a couple weeks ago, but I wouldn't make it my main game.

I think Mage: The Awakening 2nd edition was a cleaner version of the game, but yeah no version is something you can just phone in. I ran a game of it a year or so back, and one player just refused to read the book in any detail. She was always frustrated by not knowing what she could do, or how to do it effectively.

Well, technically there's Vampire: The Requiem. It's very similar, but not in the exact same universe. Some of the names are reused, but there's no canon metaplot, and many details are changed. I personally liked it a lot, but I think it's less popular than Masquerade. If you want to roll your own setting, I bet there are generic systems that would work. Fate is my go-to, and I can see how it would work. (Probably a stress track for hunger, some consequence boxes for becoming a monster)

> try to talk them out of the idea of “Leveling” they get scared and run back to the system they’re familiar with. I still think about the time in college I tried to get a D&D friend to consider Mage. I was telling him about how you can just do magic, and the real limitation is paradox and hubris. Like, it's often not about 'can you?' but rather "should you?" He couldn't get over "you can just cast whatever you want? Fireballs every turn?" "Yes, but that's probably going to make a lot of paradox, and probably isn't the best way to solve your problem" "Sounds broken," he said, and lost interest.

I'm partial to Fate. It's very open. You don't have to worry about looking up the right class or feats. You just describe what you want to play, and if the group thinks it's cool and a good fit for the story, you're basically done. Now, the downside is this requires a lot more creativity up front. A blank page can be intimidating. I like that players have more control over the outcome. You can usually get what you want, even if you roll poorly, but it's more of a question of what you're willing to pay for it. Every roll will be one of - succeed with style - succeed - a lesser version of what you want - succeed at a minor cost - succeed at a major cost - (if you roll badly and don't want to pay any costs) fail, don't get what you want It's a lot more narrative power than some games give you. I don't like being completely submissive to the DM, so I enjoy even as a player being able to pitch "ok I'm trying to hack open this terminal... how about as a minor cost I set off an alarm?" or "I'm trying to steal his keys and flubbed the roll... How about as a major cost I create a distraction, get the keys, but drop my backpack by accident. Now I'm disarmed, have no tools, and they can probably trace me with that stuff later. But I got the keys!". It's more collaborative, like a writer's room, so if someone proposes a dud solution the group can work on it. The math probability also feels nice. You tend to roll your average, so there's less swinginess like you'll get in systems rolling one die.

> Plus, I don’t know any other system that lets me pull my intestines out of my abdomen and use them like a lasso to climb a cliff when I forgot my rope at home. Nitpick: more narrative systems like Fate let you do this, but then you typically don't get a lot of crunch. Plus it can vary if your group isn't on the same wavelength about what's cool and appropriate for the story.

Nitpick: It's probably not the _devs_ so much as the capitalist owners and management collaborators. I'd guess most of the people making the games would be happy to have someone play their game at all. It's not like they typically get a cut of the profits (again: capitalism)

In session 0 we set a quorum. "We play if there are at least 2 of 4 players here," for example. During a session, if some players don't make it, we'll decide on the spot what to do. This is typically either "They take care of some of their own business" or "we play them by committee". Rarely, it's "the GM plays them." In a recent game of mine, one of the PCs bailed. His character backstory said he owned a small business, and since the session started in a low tension scene, we said he had to go take care of that. In a game where we picked up in the middle of a fight, we decided to play the wizard by committee. It was a little slower than normal, but it worked. After the fight was over, they didn't do much other than a few committee approved skill checks. I wouldn't typically make big story decisions or put the character in serious danger when the player was absent. It's also important to set attendance rules. Are you okay with people showing up whenever? Or do you want to set an expectation that people will be there every week barring emergencies? Those are two different, valid, modes. For a game that's trying to have an arc, and not just monster of the week or a dungeon crawl, having players frequently missing can be disruptive. I typically bring that up in session 0, and say that if someone repeatedly misses sessions it might not be the game for them at this time.

True, I'm definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn't have entered the console market at all. I'd probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up "Games For Windows! Live" or whatever it was called.

I said in another thread but I've been unemployed for a while now. Even jobs I'm referred to my old coworkers aren't giving me interviews. If capital wants me to spend money, they have to pay me money first. Until then, fuck them.

It's funny because like 20 years ago or whenever Xbox launched I was like "why don't they capitalize on the fact that they own windows? The platform everyone plays games on. Why are they competing with themselves?" Hypothesis: businesses are run by idiots and people whose contradictory incentives create behavior indistinguishable from idiots.

I need that meme where in one pane, the gymnast is like flipping over spikes and flames and stuff. Label that one "being creative in D&D". The other pane is the gymnast just walking across the mat. Label that one "Games that support creativity" or something.

I really like Awakening but it's hard to find players for it. I had a group for about six months once, and it was pretty good. Except one player just never learned the rules, and refused to read clues. Like they found a clue on site that was like 10 sentences and she was like "I'm not reading all that".

I feel the same, but tell myself that for many people "DnD" is a stand-in for any sort of imagination game. Like people say "kleenex" for tissue or "xerox" for copy.

This feels like a setup for a comic like Villain: casts this spell. "You fools! You're now too gay to defeat me! Cower before my mighty hetero--" Gay fighter stabs villain Double gay ranger shoots him with an arrow. Pause for a beat Party: "So pride is this weekend you want to go to the beach?" Like, the spell had no impact on their combat prowess and the bigot thought it would.

Man, I'd love to play more WoD. One time I got a game going and it was a lot of fun. The other times I've tried, there was always at least one player who didn't read the books or pay attention to the explanations, and dragged the game down with "wait, who are they? Why are they doing that? What do I roll?" Not everyone needs to be an expert on all the minutia, but sometimes it's just a mood killer to have to keep explaining the basics.

Lots of other good points already made, but I'll add my own two cents. When I run a game, I always require players to make characters together. No "go off and make a character in isolation". That's just a recipe for disaster. You can have some ideas already in mind, but nothing is canon until the whole group agrees. Second, everyone needs to have buy-in to whatever the hook is. If the scenario is "you're starting a courier business at the edge of civilization", there are lots of good options. Guy on the run from the law. Lady studying local wild life. Intelligent, local, wildlife. Don't play "guy who doesn't want to be here and is a total killjoy" Third, it's better when characters have connections to each other. You _can_ play the "we just met and we're forming a relationship!" arc, but like "what if we play ourselves in a fantasy world??" **it has been done**. Honestly, everyone should read Fate's "Phase Trio" https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio and the rest of character creation.

Unknown Armies is kind of like this. Most magic requires obsession, and you don't get a lot of well adjusted, friendly, people who also, say, collects all many of coin and money (money is power) but won't spend any (that's giving away your power!) There's a bunch of schools of magic but they're all built on an obsession and paradox. The book is really well written, too. (At least 2e is. I didn't spend much time with 3e)