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Squidster posted:This is pretty great and you should post more about it. I might! We're currently taking a break this week because of gm sanity reasons but I might post more in the cool campaign moments thread when we start up again. I'm not a great storyteller, though, so I can't promise much.
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Aug 26, 2021 15:38
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In my Fate Mecha campaign, we're in the dead of a winter in a besieged Hammerlands city. Outside the walls, a Punican legion spearheaded by two Armours, the Thunder Tusk and the Hangman's Daughter, are waiting for their moment. The besieging army are technically an allied nation to the players, but not to the city. If the players directly engage the two Punican Armours, the resulting battle will likely level the city, and will irreversibly break their fragile alliance of nations. The Punicans want this city very badly, but they don't want to risk open war yet. So it's time for fantasy Christmas! I asked the players to come up with how their respective nations celebrate the winter solstice, and mixed in some local traditions. The Petal-lands pilot decided his nation celebrated with poetry, song, and extravagant gifts, and put his vast personal fortune into finding rich garments for the other players. The exiled Punican pilot decided her nation burned incense to lost loved ones, and prayed at her altar for dead NPCs. The Cutslavian pilot decided her nation celebrated with extravagant dinners of beetroots and candied meat, and invited the others for a big ol' family dinner.. Huddled in the city's great Forge, in the shadows of their waiting Armours, they had one last great feast. They swapped in-chararacter barbs about their year in the Hammerlands, and exchanged little gift cards they'd written for each other and important NPCs. It ended up being really sweet and memorable. The end of their world is coming, but at least they'll face it alongside their closest friends. Squidster fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 26, 2021 |
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Aug 26, 2021 17:41
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Hey check out this pathfinder character sheet play tool reference web app thing that Kiro made and posted about, if you play Pathfinder!
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Aug 26, 2021 18:50
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Squidster posted:Huddled in the city's great Forge, in the shadows of their waiting Armours, they had one last great feast. They swapped in-chararacter barbs about their year in the Hammerlands, and exchanged little gift cards they'd written for each other and important NPCs. It ended up being really sweet and memorable. This rules, thanks for the story.
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Aug 26, 2021 20:48
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Hello TG chat thread, I have a question for you. Some months ago somebody on these here forums posted a Digimon rpg that looked pretty interesting, and on top of that had an intro that described other monster pals rpgs that one might be interested in, pointing out what they were best at. I lost track of that rpg but now i could really use it. Does it ring any bells? e: I remembered where I found it and got a link! Here it is, it turns out it's a general-use moster pal game: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VM682GH41rS8FU3vJ1x0_qaH31FOaEzGJENmpF4-NLU/edit?usp=sharing paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Aug 27, 2021 |
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Aug 27, 2021 11:46
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Dumb question, but does anyone know of a person selling wallet sized x cards? I've had to play the card entirely too many times at the local game store and I want to just pull out this nice sturdy card with an X to signify that you've got too far knock your poo poo off. Edit: this most recent time it wasn't even an RPG. We were playing fuckin Everdell and one of the regulars just kept going to real weird places with the husband and wife cards. Len fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 04:40
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Have you tried getting a printer to put it on business cards? You can get boxes and boxes of them for basically nothing.
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Aug 28, 2021 05:48
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Find a makerspace and make one out of metal so it makes a great noise when you slam it down.
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Aug 28, 2021 12:45
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Subjunctive posted:Find a makerspace and make one out of metal so it makes a great noise when you slam it down. https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Bu...30155306&sr=8-6 This and some paint'll get you there fast and relatively cheap.
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Aug 28, 2021 13:54
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Buy some yellow and red cards made for soccer referees. That way you could give them a warning for a minor first offense or go straight to giving them a red card.
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Aug 28, 2021 13:57
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Subjunctive posted:Find a makerspace and make one out of metal so it makes a great noise when you slam it down. NinjaDebugger posted:https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Bu...30155306&sr=8-6 These guys have the right idea, something large and obnoxious I can just slam on a table and give a glare to. I can accompany it with verbal words of knock your poo poo off if that doesn't get the initial point across but gently caress man. Don't look at the gay guy at the table and go "husband and wife that's a fantasy for you!" That's just common loving courtesy He also got on some real weird long speech about how two gay farmers could adopt all the orphans and force them to work a farm. When we played Skel-IT-ons in 2019 he asked "who wants to be the first to sexually harass the secretary" I don't think he's actively trying to be a creepy guy, I think he's just used to his social group which probably doesn't call him on his poo poo. But I'm old enough to know not want to deal with that poo poo in my games.
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Aug 28, 2021 17:19
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Len posted:These guys have the right idea, something large and obnoxious I can just slam on a table and give a glare to. I can accompany it with verbal words of knock your poo poo off if that doesn't get the initial point across but gently caress man. My assumption would be that someone as — let’s be generous — clumsy as this guy wouldn’t know what it meant when you slammed it down, at least the first time. This means that you should prepare some catchphrase to bellow as well. “You go too far!”
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Aug 28, 2021 19:42
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I'm a few pages behind on this thread which of you criminals is at fault for there being a thread about D&D 4th edition in QCS? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3977723 quote:Mods should stop defending the honor of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons
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Aug 29, 2021 00:49
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Nuns with Guns posted:I'm a few pages behind on this thread which of you criminals is at fault for there being a thread about D&D 4th edition in QCS?
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Aug 29, 2021 00:53
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NGDBSS posted:Rutibex got a sixer for edition warring in the 5E thread. Instead of calming down they decided to whine about their slap on the wrist (which got them another sixer). I saw, but I don't think a single thread title has made be burst out laughing that loudly in a long time.
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Aug 29, 2021 01:01
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Nuns with Guns posted:I'm a few pages behind on this thread which of you criminals is at fault for there being a thread about D&D 4th edition in QCS?
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Aug 29, 2021 01:49
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dwarf74 posted:Wow this is the first QCS thread I can remember that's about D&D instead of D&D well, it was a nice vacation, complete with members of the tour group mooning the natives and being on their worst behaviour
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Aug 29, 2021 04:09
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Not really edition warring which was a real treat. Just apropos of nothing dropping some moldy "4e isn't even a game" turd on the rug like an incontinent dog(4e was not being discussed at all), then when called out for it saying that 4e people have their own thread and should stay in there. Just faceplanting at a pro level. Should have been sponsored.
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Aug 29, 2021 04:15
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Arivia posted:well, it was a nice vacation, complete with members of the tour group mooning the natives and being on their worst behaviour Thread was locked before I got my mai tai, voted 1.
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Aug 29, 2021 05:16
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y'all look what i fuckin found
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Aug 29, 2021 15:52
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Despite the write up about the shady distribution methods and stuff I grabbed a couple of FAB blitz decks to try it out since I wasn’t planning on whaling hard for the game anyway. Finally tried it and it seemed cool, was an exceptionally dumb mistake on my part by getting two Monarch decks so I had all kinds of stuff like Phantasm and Blood Debt and Auras and Souls to deal with. Two questions that I was pretty sure about but wanted to check: - Even against Phantasm attacks, your defense card must at least *have* a defense value to defend with, you can’t pop an attack at 6+ {p} if it doesn’t have a shield icon, right? - Likewise, defending with a card isn’t “playing” it so all the Brute triggers like “as an additional cost to play this card banish three cards from your graveyard” aren’t required if you’re tossing them to soak damage? (I also grabbed a Digimon starter and the art is freaking adorable and the cardstock is great.)
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Aug 29, 2021 16:23
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They also have a Drizzt one It's just a smidge problematic
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Aug 29, 2021 16:35
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Why? The dude isn’t in blackface, so it seems fine. It’s just legolas with a white wig
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Aug 29, 2021 16:50
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whydirt posted:Why? The dude isn’t in blackface, so it seems fine. It’s just legolas with a white wig purpleface
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Aug 29, 2021 16:52
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That is not the image that springs to mind when I read "adult dungeon master costume".
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Aug 29, 2021 17:00
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whydirt posted:Why? The dude isn’t in blackface, so it seems fine. It’s just legolas with a white wig
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Aug 29, 2021 17:08
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Rockman Reserve posted:Despite the write up about the shady distribution methods and stuff I grabbed a couple of FAB blitz decks to try it out since I wasn’t planning on whaling hard for the game anyway. Finally tried it and it seemed cool, was an exceptionally dumb mistake on my part by getting two Monarch decks so I had all kinds of stuff like Phantasm and Blood Debt and Auras and Souls to deal with. These are both right. Typically the only cards that straight up don't have a defense value are instants and the fabled resource gems, but yeah for the baseline attack/block step you have to have some kind of block value even for popping phantasms that are worried about attack action card values. Putting down cards from the hand for defense in the baseline defense step isn't "playing" those cards, but once you both move onto the reaction step supplementing the block with defense reaction cards is playing them, and entails paying any upper right hand corner resource cost and activating any effects on it as that reaction stack resolves ala Magic. Flesh and Blood is still working out some balance kinks but it really is a very fun game in spite of the past year + of people looking for grifts with a bunch of tabletop properties.
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Aug 29, 2021 17:13
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Done some self-reflection on RPGs and the issues I've been having with playing them, think I've managed to narrow it down some. I'm pretty reactive, rather than proactive, by nature. This works okay-to-well for GMing, where I've been mildly successful by repurposing prewritten material and reacting to players' actions. This sometimes works as a player, if I'm something very basic like "be the street samurai in this shadowrun party" where the solution to problems is straightforward and established in advance. This doesn't work as well with anything more complex than "go fight mans"; I've had to drop from two campaigns (Cyberpunk RED as a Media, Hard Wired Island as a Thief) from complete paralysis on "what do I even do as a character", and struggled with my other games-as-player before it. Solo endeavors have mostly met similar fates. It's not something "just get in the character's head" can easily solve, either - I can't get into characters' headspaces, at all. They don't exist as an entity in my mind, more than levers to interact with the game world, and I don't know how to make them exist in any more useful format to guide play. How the hell do I become a proactive player with an imagination? I don't even know where to start. I can expand further if needed, I don't want to turn this into a half-page ramble right off the bat.
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Aug 29, 2021 23:47
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Is it decision paralysis? I've had a few players suffer from that before. Or some people with RPGs just want to solve problems presented by the GM or contribute to what a group is already doing. Like I've tripped up someone who specifically never wanted spotlight time, and just wanted to occasionally say something or do something badass in helping other characters meet their goals.
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Aug 29, 2021 23:56
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Being unable to get into your character's headspace must be frustrating! Good on you for looking for ways to improve your experience. Off the top of my head, you could try playing characters that are either mostly very familiar with a twist ("legolas, but he hates killing") or that are mash ups of two familiar things ("Spock meets Guinan"), so that you have a much deeper supply of that character's actions to build on going forward. You might start tropey but build comfort and add in more quirks as you go.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:06
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SkyeAuroline posted:Done some self-reflection on RPGs and the issues I've been having with playing them, think I've managed to narrow it down some. I'm pretty reactive, rather than proactive, by nature. This works okay-to-well for GMing, where I've been mildly successful by repurposing prewritten material and reacting to players' actions. This sometimes works as a player, if I'm something very basic like "be the street samurai in this shadowrun party" where the solution to problems is straightforward and established in advance. This doesn't work as well with anything more complex than "go fight mans"; I've had to drop from two campaigns (Cyberpunk RED as a Media, Hard Wired Island as a Thief) from complete paralysis on "what do I even do as a character", and struggled with my other games-as-player before it. Solo endeavors have mostly met similar fates. It's not something "just get in the character's head" can easily solve, either - I can't get into characters' headspaces, at all. They don't exist as an entity in my mind, more than levers to interact with the game world, and I don't know how to make them exist in any more useful format to guide play.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:13
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Coolness Averted posted:Is it decision paralysis? I've had a few players suffer from that before. Decision paralysis (and spotlight paralysis) mixed with what I'm suspicious are knock-on effects of (diagnosed) brain defects. Complete aphantasia, serious memory issues, whole nine yards. Hard to envision a fictional character doing fictional things when the "envision" bit doesn't have a function, and I have to work entirely from written notes for everything since I can't remember anything we've done or seen otherwise (which also makes continuing a character with a consistent personality hard, because I don't remember how I've been playing them!). Multiple layers of barriers making it harder to get "into" the game, and not really sure how to deal with them or if they can be dealt with. "Use tropes and existing characters" advice - that's most of what I do currently, and it patches things over for... a bit. A friend has offered to try running one-on-one games in the hopes that it helps both of us, but that's a ways off still, and I'd like to go in better-equipped than I am as well.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:39
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SkyeAuroline posted:Decision paralysis (and spotlight paralysis) mixed with what I'm suspicious are knock-on effects of (diagnosed) brain defects. Complete aphantasia, serious memory issues, whole nine yards. Hard to envision a fictional character doing fictional things when the "envision" bit doesn't have a function, and I have to work entirely from written notes for everything since I can't remember anything we've done or seen otherwise (which also makes continuing a character with a consistent personality hard, because I don't remember how I've been playing them!). Multiple layers of barriers making it harder to get "into" the game, and not really sure how to deal with them or if they can be dealt with. I wish I could suggest Blades in the Dark; at least for the macro state (crew, faction game), it's really good at recording what's going on session to session. It's not as good for individual PCs, though, from my experience.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:48
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So I was in a game of “the circle” in fear itself second edition, and the GM declared my character randomly tried to commit suicide at the start of day two. Is that in the module? It seems like a bizarre thing to declare without any roll, any abnormal mental trauma for my character, or any abnormal behavior on my part (Reading weird books, taking drugs, etc.) Obviously quit because that’s bullshit, but is that part of the module? (Weirdly enough, there’s a module called the seventh Circle… Which is completely different.)
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Aug 30, 2021 01:52
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Golden Bee posted:So I was in a game of “the circle” in fear itself second edition, and the GM declared my character randomly tried to commit suicide at the start of day two. Is that in the module? It seems like a bizarre thing to declare without any roll, any abnormal mental trauma for my character, or any abnormal behavior on my part (Reading weird books, taking drugs, etc.) The point of The Circle is that one of the previous drug testers died while on the drug and due to Outer Dark influence from his lovely abusive dad became a psychic ghost bound to the drug and bound to the people taking it. He wants to pick off the people who are doing the current trial because he wants to get a body back, but he's too spread out across multiple people. He can possess people for a bit, as can other users but because they're not hopped up on eldritch mojo their ghosts fade and they pass away, but the less people are alive the longer he can possess folks and the more control he has. The PCs are supposed to delve into the previous test's data where the guy died and figure out what's killing the previous and current testers and have a show-down where he keeps hopping from person to person, and the cure to the problem is for everyone to stop taking the experimental anti-depressant/try and banish him/trap him in a viable body and off him. One of the big ways to tip off people of what's going on is for the players to just loving lose time somehow or find themselves in weird and precarious situations at first and give them the Stability hit, and he's really only supposed to push for the suicides later in the game or put people in situations where they could die but could also escape. One of the examples is "you have blacked out for god knows how long and woke up hand-cuffed to a bed in a lovely motel, there's an empty gas can and you smell smoke" for something you can escape with expenditure of resources. Because it's Fear Itself the point is that you really didn't do anything wrong or take any questionable actions to invite the doom, you've just been unfortunately t-boned by a truck full of doom while minding your own business. That said while it is a tool in the horror game hardware store, your GM should've use a lighter touch that early in the scenario.
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Aug 30, 2021 02:10
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SkyeAuroline posted:Decision paralysis (and spotlight paralysis) mixed with what I'm suspicious are knock-on effects of (diagnosed) brain defects. Complete aphantasia, serious memory issues, whole nine yards. Hard to envision a fictional character doing fictional things when the "envision" bit doesn't have a function, and I have to work entirely from written notes for everything since I can't remember anything we've done or seen otherwise (which also makes continuing a character with a consistent personality hard, because I don't remember how I've been playing them!). Multiple layers of barriers making it harder to get "into" the game, and not really sure how to deal with them or if they can be dealt with. As another aphantasia sufferer, I hear you on this, though yours sounds even more extreme than mine. While I can't offer any complete solutions, something that helps me a great deal is art. Concept and mood art help a lot for me. If at all possible, when I'm GMing I like to have an image of an NPC up on a laptop at the table, or just off to the side in a virtual tabletop. When I'm playing, having a central piece of evocative character art surrounded by several ancillary pieces representing other parts of the character works well. Even if you can't remember what this person is like from session to session, being able to glance down at the array of images and be hit with their combined aesthetic effect might jolt you back into the right headspace. For getting proactive, two suggestions. First, go with your impulses. What do you as a player want to do in that moment? If it's not detrimental to someone's fun, then do it. Drive your characters like stolen cars, and try to cultivate an attitude of zen about the outcome: it'll be interesting no matter what happens, and memory issues mean you're looking for moment-to-moment engagement over the satisfaction of long-term arcs. Second, leverage your notes. The fact that you take notes at all means that if you're diligent about note-taking mid-session and reviewing them before every game, you may have a better grasp on some aspects of what's going on than you're giving yourself credit for, and even better than some of the other people at the table at times. It also means that when you're doing your review, you can find something in what's going on in the upcoming session that you as a player want to engage in; highlight that thing! Make a stickynote for your character sheet or similar in-your-face kind of note, and pursue it aggressively in that session. Whenever there's a lull in the action, leap forward with something that will drive toward that goal. Above all, keep trying new techniques and don't give up! You're confronting a legit disability, but you're motivated to overcome it because you enjoy the hobby. With support from your fellow players and with the right "prosthetics," whatever those end up being for you, you can get where you want to go.
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Aug 30, 2021 02:24
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Hostile V posted:Yeah, sort of, but the short non-spoiler answer is your GM should not have been rude about it and hit you that hard and that fast with that. This sounds weirdly similar to the modern-day horror intermission game I ran for my 5e group. The first arc had them trying to solve a murder mystery in the Hamptons where it turned out the hot new drug going around was actually dried and ground oblex slime that was slowly driving the users mad and encouraging them to "join the mass."
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Aug 30, 2021 02:26
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If art helps you imagine things, this might be a godsend for running fantasy-ish games, it's a visual random generator for stuff you tend to come up with for RPGs: http://lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-city-visual-generator-pdf.html
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Aug 30, 2021 02:27
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Hostile V posted:Yeah, sort of, but the short non-spoiler answer is your GM should not have been rude about it and hit you that hard and that fast with that. It didn’t feel viable to continue a character who has done that and then be like “Oh well, time to go to my 1 PM police interrogation covered in bandages at 1hp.” Or “I’m going to skip it and get arrested during our next investigation scene.”
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Aug 30, 2021 02:39
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I wish I could suggest Blades in the Dark; at least for the macro state (crew, faction game), it's really good at recording what's going on session to session. It's not as good for individual PCs, though, from my experience. Blades is actually next on my docket of "games to see if I can make them work solo" and I already have a crew written up, just have to figure out how to make it work mechanically - when I tried running it as a fresh GM it went pretty poorly due to misunderstanding of the rules. One of those games I really do want to love! Kestral posted:As another aphantasia sufferer, I hear you on this, though yours sounds even more extreme than mine. While I can't offer any complete solutions, something that helps me a great deal is art. Concept and mood art help a lot for me. If at all possible, when I'm GMing I like to have an image of an NPC up on a laptop at the table, or just off to the side in a virtual tabletop. When I'm playing, having a central piece of evocative character art surrounded by several ancillary pieces representing other parts of the character works well. Even if you can't remember what this person is like from session to session, being able to glance down at the array of images and be hit with their combined aesthetic effect might jolt you back into the right headspace. Yeah, might be a bit more extreme. Art does help sometimes (though my art folder has gotten unmanageable with size... which I should really work on). The ideas around notes are a pretty good set - definitely something I'll keep in mind. As far as going with impulses, I do try to do that... when I have them, and I've been trying not to step on toes too hard in the process. Hard boundaries to draw. I thankfully have a pretty understanding pair of groups that have been willing to work with me now and in the past. Appreciate the advice, folks.
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Aug 30, 2021 02:45
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