Recent content by Fletch

Vampire was a game I thought I wanted to play, but then I discovered Mage and spit on your Vampire. I can't actually imagine running a Mage campaign, but the setting lore was really captivating. Shadowrun had a supplement that included rules for being musicians. I definitely wanted to be a...

Limbs are supposed to come off in Star Wars; it's just what they do.

This comes up every time I try to have a pirate kingdom in my fantasy setting. "Why are there so many hook hands and peg legs just in this area and nowhere else?" But broadly, yeah, you're not getting anyone's buy-in on a system that makes their character worse. I like the idea of critical hits...

Same here. Tonight's kind of a "pick your battles" night, though. Most of our night is spent responding to the bigger complaints like rowdy parties and fire hazards. It's really not the night for "the neighbors have firecrackers." My real complaint is all the callers who are 100% confident it...

This actually feels perfect to me. I don't know when D&D stopped using confirmation rolls for crits, they didn't happen all that often as I recall. In hindsight, they feel perfectly timed to those rare occasions where you risked a disfiguring wound. Oh. I hadn't considered how AOE would...

Wait, I thought you were in Canada. I need to edit my stalker notes. In my professional opinion, New Year's and 4th of July are your best nights for murder. If you're so inclined.

Generally I like my job, but I don't like my job tonight. If you've ever wondered why I post at weird hours and, like, on Christmas, I'm a 911 operator and often just sitting at a desk waiting for a screen to light up. On New Year's Eve, however, it's a non-stop stream of people who have...

I'm fully on board with HP as a general description of stamina. If anything, I'm more annoyed by how often you have to say "you take an arrow to the shoulder" every time a character gets hit by a non-killing blow. So I'm fully on board for stuff like "you stumble back under the blow and have to...

I've heard some rumors about a few match-ups happening in Doomsday and I find that has me really excited. I thought I'd be tired of heroes fighting heroes by now, but Misunderstanding Fights (tm) are why you have a shared universe. Thor vs Iron Man, Thor vs. Hulk, Iron Man vs Hulk, and the...

I approve! My 4e games back in the day had a simple "you still have to explain how the ability works in this situation" rule, and I had one player who pushed back on that from time to time, saying the text of the ability let him do it. I'm still a Gygaxian Naturalist at heart, and some of the...

Okay, I'm almost on board. Is the assumption that these abilities only work if they make sense to work? Like, you're in a shadowy and cluttered cellar, goblins disappear behind some junk. But in broad daylight on the empty sanded floor of the city arena, they're not just turning invisible?

Do these tiers include narratives like "he dodged and weaved and no swordsman was able to touch him"? Or is all that dodging and weaving assumed to be the stamina drain you mentioned?

@altcunningham, my wife likes to write too, and we can't collaborate on anything. She's so freeform and character driven while I'm very structured and plot-driven. But we stay together for the kids.

I'm going to take your word for it. No risk of missing doesn't sound very fun, but I obviously have never seen it in play. I've always believed the risk of failure (or death) made the success (or survival) more exciting. I do like the idea of getting access to abilities as the fight goes on...

I wasn't paying attention when this came up before, but really no missing? Just hit every time? Otherwise, it reminds me that my favorite innovation in 4th ed. was the little unique abilities different monsters can use to demonstrate that they're different. Like an extra shift move or making...