Kichae

[email protected] Sure. You should be able to use LotR to explain the rules of any fantasy RPG system, really.

LotR is running Pathfinder 2e under the hood, by the sounds of it, using Proficiency Without Level.

Ok, that’s brilliant and awesome. Brisome.

[email protected] Backstory is probably the wrong concept for a low-level character. They, instead, have a background. Backstories are prequel fodder, while backgrounds are used to figure out character motivation, and how a character reacts to future events.

Generally speaking, you don’t want to fill in blanks you don’t need filled i, because it’s creatively limiting your future self. If the events that got you to Session 1 are too interesting, you’ve probably written too much.

[email protected] I don’t know, zero-to-hero is one of the best story tropes out there. Totally nullifying it seems kind of wild to me. But you have to know who you’re playing, and if you’re playing a highly skilled veteran with a rich history of great deeds, you need to understand that that is not a Level 1 character.

I’ve become increasingly convinced that people don’t want to play low level characters. Level 1 characters are neophyte adventurers. Their backstory shouldn’t include significant a mounts of adventure, combat, or heroics, because it introduces a significant amount of ludo-narrative dissonance into the campaign.

Unless there’s a reason they’ve been de-leveled.

This is functionally what Fellmarrow is doing in Narrative Declaration’s Kingmaker 2e actual play.

Heating on reentry is actually due to compressing the air in front of you, not friction. Falling from orbitall height will absolutely cause you to heat up the air in front of you, even as the air paassing you by is doing you no harm.

Though, if you smash into the atmosphere at orbital speeds, it’s probably going to do you some harm as it tries to force you back down to TV.

TTRPGs are games where you create stories, and sometimes those stories are “we did something we shouldn’ta, and someone got ganked”. What you’re describing is someone reading you a story book.

Well, not every game has Heroic Inspiration, but it still has people that gripe about secret rolls. And of those games that have metacurrencies for rerolls and the like, they’re not intended to be used in those situations.

So many people hate secret rolls. So many people feel like they remove agency from them.

But that’s what the dice do. They’re agency-revoking machines.

One of my favourite parts about Pathfinder 2e is that items – magic or otherwise – are leveled. I can hand out Level 6 weapons to Level 2 characters, and they will feel absolutely legendary.

Until about Level 5, where they start to feel really good.

Until Level 8, where they just feel OK.

This means, yes, I can take the effort to rebalance fights to account for the party’s toys, or I can just let them feel like fucking bosses for a few levels, and the challenges they take on catch up to them.

A significant part of the culture that has formed around 5e is about “having it all”. And usually by ignoring the (admittedly weak) rules that do exist, rather than exploiting actual gaps. So, you can frankenstein together a caster that has martial proficiency in armour (or even melee weapons), with the only compromise being your capstone abilities (which often are very expendable). And then you can metagame away your shitty social abilities by “roleplaying”.

I’m not going to defend 5e – I genuinely think it’s a poorly made game, and place the blame for that entirely on the execuitives – but the reason why so many people refuse to try something else is because they like the exploits that they believe exist, even though they are totally socially constructed.

I’ve been listening to the Narrative Declaration playthrough of Kingmaker, and they don’t seem to be anywhere near making anyone a king! They seem to have some sort of council-based thaumocracy going, instead!

My players have yet to discover any paths. They just keep following the ones that are readily visible on the map!

Yes! Exactly! And some of the aliens in those caves might be somewhat monstrous!

I bet you could build something off of Starfinder.

Those are Social Justice Alchemists, I think.

11 definitely gets closer to 11 than 12 does.

[email protected] said in Just don’t: > According to the creator - who vociferously defended this stance claiming it was based on “research” - bisexual men like me don’t exist.

I, too, spent much time 15 year ago sitting at the back of the bus reading Savage Love on my way to work. Research scientists, unite!