A one shot should be designed to complete in 4 hours. A good one also has safeguards to ensure it does.
British ex-pat in Switzerland. TTRPGs (mainly Call of Cthulhu), Cyber Security, Philosophy, Psychology and whatever interests me…
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A one shot should be designed to complete in 4 hours. A good one also has safeguards to ensure it does.
SPF50 and a blackout hoodie?
Definitely a first world “problem” to have! 😉 Restaurant bucket lists are what birthdays and anniversaries are made for!
If you're in London - my third evening of lightning talks about Radical Land Policy is next Tuesday - have a look at the Luma page to see the speakers! luma.com/v8knl21z
I wish I could say I bought bitcoin, but alas no 😥
I urge you all to back this - like me - he says in a desperate effort to atone from dropping out of Paul’s play by mail game in the early 90’s!
This 👆🏻
Dragonbane seems to have limited content currently - I have friends who have read/own all of it.
Pray tell, which podcast/discords? The problem with the Miskatonic Repository is there is so much stuff in it I know I’m missing pearls and monitoring and reading scenarios take time I don’t have.
So the 2nd horseman is here (1st is obviously RFK Jr.)
rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crazifi...
It’s the lack of causality that’s most alarming - e.g. drinking and suicide likely correlate but both are symptoms of mental health. Banning alcohol won’t help. This is basic grade school science.
Even if they could successfully implement this, imagine getting your first smartphone phone on your 18th birthday… What could possibly go wrong!?
I thought I was Sharpe who exploded Almeida on purpose! 😉
Feels like like there is some primal need in humans, if they get too comfortable, to just screw everything up again
Yikes! @greatdismal.bsky.social seems to have left them out of his definition of the jackpot:
I definitely wore a suit for some of the Vampire the Masquerade LARPs my friend group ran in the 1990s
Not if you spend hope - one hope point from your Fellowship focus gives you two extra dice.
…you are weakening the right hand column. *BUT* you can make Lore favoured then take MASTERY cultural virtue and make 2 more favoured. (2/2)
Take Rangers of the the North. If you elect to take WITS of 2 then… (1/2)
…and you’ll be weak in the right hand column. BUT you can make Lore a favoured, plus if it’s an issue take the MASTERY virtue and make 2 more favoured.
Not so for favoured skills, or skills for which you are inspired, which quite a lot of cultural virtues give you. Plus stats of 2 or 3 is making a choice to play a lop sided character. 🤷♂️
PS: there are various quick references in rules but if you want my notes DM me
I love The One Ring 2e: character gen, combat flow, journeys and council mechanics are all delightful systems plus the vibe is top drawer Tolkien. Then there is the Moria supplement… 😍
Unless they changed the simulation rules of physics again, sticks burn?
This left: “we can’t have X because they do not precisely and exactly see things my way” is nuts. Do not let perfection be the enemy of good. The right does not do this.
Civilisation can always revert to a state of nature, they should read some philosophy:
At this point the camera drone lifts off, panning backwards up up into the air showing John relaxing in the pool as his butler approaches with a tray of chilled hors-d'œuvre…
Absolutely. Another one I like is if the roll is missed just narrate that the investigator misses clue X and continues oblivious - in survival horror this becomes part of the fun!
I like the “who rolls highest finds it” idea 💡. Putting clues behind spot hidden is a no - my players screw themselves over enough already without that! 😃 However my instinct is players do like some non plot critical/fail forward rolls…
Putting clues to one side, game wise is it more engaging to have 5 players roll spot hidden and then tell the successful one “you notice a humanoid figure shadowing you in the darkness” while the others act oblivious OR just say it straight up to the whole party/a random player?
It would be perfect for me too! 😉
To be fair, I wouldn’t want to sign my name to these incoherent deranged ramblings either!
In The Hobbit the people of Lake Town don’t really believe in the dragon under the mountain anymore. Apparently this is a “feature” of humanity - a potentially very destructive one…
I’m running #TheOneRing currently and finding the very idea of square based movement anachronistic!
The Hobbit mentions trade with Erebor/Dale/Lake Town and the rest of the world being much more before and after Smaug, I guess trade is just not relevant to the plot in LotR?
The current administration is not “just cool”, so that’s irrelevant.
Of course it is worse. Thats the whole point - it’s a deterrent. You are in a game of re-iterated prisoners dilemma, your opponent is repeatedly defecting, but you refuse to leverage your deterrent and punish him for not co-operating, so you loose again and again forever.
Please go read up on game theory and the prisoners dilemma then revert on why “I will never defect” is not a winning strategy.
That would require cohones, no evidence of that whatsoever…
👆🏻Word. I’ve players who will always RP their characters including not going on the adventure. It will ruin the session, they will not apologise, so I always lock the players into the adventure as described above.
Always record a voice note to yourself immediately after detailing what happened, is my GM advice. Do it in the car, on the bus, as soon as the last one left.
Listening to an @apocalypseplayers.bsky.social #CallofCthulhu actual play. The investigators are early 90’s kids. For plot they have flashed back to an earlier game of 2nd edition D&D. So they are 2020’s adults RPing 1990s kids RPing 2nd edition D&D characters! 🤯 Love this Matryoshka meta spiral! 🥰
Going further: write a game with a template for scenarios so I don’t have to make my own cork board in order to be to run it! This is the case with most #CallofCthulhu scenarios - I end up turning blocks of prose into a mind map of locations and clues…
I really like how #TheOneRing #ttrpg has a formal Patron system where the party even get slightly different benefits according to which patron they have.
The Dragonbane core set is also incredible value for money and would highly recommend.
freeleaguepublishing.com/shop/dragonb...
I am *NOT* reading that paragraph out to the player! 🤯 I totally could text the screenshot and say “check your phone” while looking meaningfully at them… 🤓
You came up with game mechanics for tummy bugs Paul!? 😃
Just watched the ‘73 version recently. Presumably the guys with swords would have cut him down if he’d tried anything. But then again, what did he have to loose?
Think you can bring it to fruition?
Fair, B) is tactically very different and much more fun, challenging and memorable. Interestingly it might be most fun of all played PBTA style, if you’ve got the cognitive energy.
D&D combat is right between the two, so in spite of feats and abilities every combat is crunchy enough to takes ages but abstracted enough to be the boringly familiar. The setting, like the changing backdrop in a martial arts video game, is just scenery.
I’m not sure if the designers are responding to your OP or just making character creation into a mini game? I’m seeing two routes to randomness: MERP/WFRP style crit and fumble tables. OR PBTA storytelling game “you succeed at a price” style combat.
The Yes Prime Minister scene on polls remains definitive on this: youtu.be/ahgjEjJkZks?...
Coincidentally I had a lot of fun playing in the Blizzard’s Teeth one shot last weekend. It went full PvP but somehow playing Finn Redtooth I made it out alive - the sole survivor…
Your history is incomplete without mentioning the CIA introduction of “Panama disease”, or “Fusarium wilt” - cleverly decimating the production Gros Michel bananas and ultimately leading to the overthrow of democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz
He used a dice pool of ‘em and rolled for “success at a price” - I wonder what how things are going to fail forward from here…?
This is how I feel about making PowerPoint right now!
I am so here for a different dinosaur on each note! 😃
For a proper love triangle one party can’t decide between the other two, who are vying for the his/her affection. What you describe sounds more like limerance and in The Hobbit Legolas just seems a bit jealous 🤷♂️. [I do prefer the fan edits that properly represent the book]
Seeking power through people’s emotions: - Nostalgia - Fear of “the others”
“Don’t upset the gravy train” is perhaps how they justify to themselves being the most supine, spineless cowards ever seen?
I sometimes offered loans and co-investments to other players and people would get so mad when I’d explain there was nothing in the rules to prevent me doing so!
We are just a bunch or monkeys promoted to our level of incompetence
This basically leaves us with new school being limited to: - Storytelling games such as PBTA, BitD derivatives - Games using dice pools like The One Ring, Alien
I’m more worried about a briefcase full of hummingbird sized drones that do facial recognition!
Tangentially it is basically impossible to capture all of Iran/Persia in Europa Universalis - all those mountains, would be Afghanistan all over again.
I have no clue why one would read a #TTRPG rulebook unless planning to run it or play in it imminently. Suggesting one does is essentially asking a huge favour.
Great list (since I own 5!). I hate learning new systems but it can be worth it if it better enables the story you want to tell. E.g. TOR has such a strong Tolkien vibe I had to buy it in order to run Moria, no other system could do Moria justice.
Come on Joe, that never happened before! 😬
This is why #CallofCthulhu should always be set in the UK. Tea is the perfect counterpoint to cosmic horror.
Is this a commercially available scenario? I too have interest in Cthulhu Inviticus: bsky.app/profile/skii...
Yes, Amber!
@fuzzybunny.org & I once shared an office. We talked nonsense at the coffee machine. Follow us both now and you too can join the party! 🎉
You did this to yourself - the cancelled flights are a result of ripples in the space time continuum caused by all those tweets where you meddled with history!
It’s “Mon Français est très mauvais” but it certainly proves the point!
Looks very professional - I like that NPC format. If you want someone to run it and gripe about every single missing cross reference or ambiguity would be happy to do so, Regency is popular and my favourite setting…
100% - games you will never learn or play can be sold off, but you can never sell your Star Wars or Forgotten Realms books because they physically represent memories and ideas
Ah, I see the problem, this is not pile of shame that can be moved on but well thumbed source material that you could never part with 😔
Isn’t this a cue for the obligatory shelf photo?
If your legion was destroyed by shogoths what would you write in dispatches? QED.
…but I have something more sinister in mind…
9th legion was recorded as being stationed in York and then it vanished from the record. Cue fun speculation about what happened to it… in the film Centurion it’s destroyed by picts: youtube.com/shorts/C0Fjn...
It is, not #callofcthulhu but close, another #ttrpg by @modiphius.bsky.social called Cohors Cthulhu whose kickstarter I backed specifically to get this GMs screen. Time to write a scenario that showcases the real fate of the 9th legion!
Close but no cigar. He was actually part of a legion slaughtered by a Celtic death cult. Artists impression of what happened based on a floor mosaic from a Verulamium villa
So it is! Every time you tweet the fabric of reality shifts. Where will it all end?
That’s bait that is 👆🏻
Opportunity missed 😠 bsky.app/profile/zoew...
Best. Shakespeare. Ever.
bsky.app/profile/basb...
Don’t be sad - it’s a zero sum fallacy that D&D needs to die.
I wonder if they are like this in their personal relationships too? Must be quite unpleasant…
Presumably the same human drive to explain random events as causes conspiracy theorists to believe in lizard people and dark age peasants to believe in magic…
All of this. I played a game of 10 candles which was excruciating: completely incoherent as the narrative passed from player to player. I guess theoretically a really good group could succeed but why take the risk?
A tale as old as time
Yea, just got to chapter 9 _Of the flight of the Noldor_ and Fëanor - oh my gosh elf, get a grip on yourself for goodness’s sake!
Melkor, later named Morgoth by Fëanor, was once the mightiest of the Ainur before becoming the Dark Enemy of the World.
Oromë/Aldaron/Tauron (hunter of monsters) spouse of Vána the Ever-young (flowers and spring). The Maiar are lesser Ainur who serve the Valar as helpers and agents.