TG August Cat Thread: it was like a sweaty danny devito

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG August Cat Thread: it was like a sweaty danny devito

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

So I have been listening to The Adventure Zone and lately it's been just a tour of awful DMing. The second-last episode ended with the DM calling for the same roll over and over in hopes of inducing a failure, and then when the player passed every roll, the DM seized on a part of the player's description to justify forcing down that failure he so obviously needed by fiat.

This latest session they encountered the bad guy and tried to talk her down calmly before being pushed to combat. She then practically took the whole party out in round 1 before the GMPCs showed up to save the day by... talking her down calmly.

It's still the funniest AP I've listened to, but the "listen to my story the way I planned it" DMing is coming through pretty strongly.

Who else is listening?

# ¿ Aug 4, 2015 22:33

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 23:54

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

I do. I put this in the MBMBaM thread but I'll be glad to discuss it here.

Griffin is a below-average DM on a lot of levels - much of that attributable to him being new at it - but he does a couple of things very well:

1) He never lets the momentum flag. Ever. Once his players start to bitch/get bored he immediately explains everything or rushes them through to the next scene. He is not a pixel-bitcher and this is so, so, so very important. He also has a player (Travis) who has a very low tolerance for downtime and forces him to react and he usually does so admirably without punishing him (the end of the last episode not being the norm).

2) He tosses the rules in the garbage whenever they get in the way of something interesting (since it's D&D 5e this is a good thing)

3) He doesn't do big lore dumps. His exposition is short (10 minutes, absolute tops) and relatively punchy. No huge amounts of NPCs to remember, no stupid off-screen politics for the players to care about. It's a very player-facing campaign and this is a good thing that a lot of DMs fail at.

His weaknesses mostly come from generally having no knowledge or background in the craft outside of "I'm gonna run D&D!" which means he designs lovely adventures and lovely mysteries.

Yeah, you're right on about all of that. He knows his stuff when it comes to making a funny podcast for sure.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2015 00:23

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Error 404 posted:

Adam Koebel
...
Get hype

Nope. Not going to judge it before it's published, but this seems more like a "wait and see" than a "get hype".

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 20:11

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Oh hey, apparently I stirred things up a bit by accident. I just want to clear up that have nothing against Adam Koebel personally. I simply meant that he never made anything I think is great. Dungeon World is pretty good and the best parts are the parts that are closest to Apocalypse World. There is nothing actively terrible about it in my opinion, but neither is it good enough to make me excited about his other projects in the way I am about Luke Crane or Vincent Baker. If this Rat Queens game turns out awesome, I'll get hype about his next game.

Obviously this is a matter of taste and people are excited by different things. I don't think anyone needs to take my tastes as gospel.

As for specific complaints about DW, I don't have any that haven't already been expressed in my absence.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 16:16

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

drrockso20 posted:

okay people find me a game that can pull this sort of campaign setting off;

Well Strike! has rules for fighting Titans and rules for motorcycle chases. So my completely unbiased and totally objective opinion is to go with that.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 02:49

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

drrockso20 posted:

mind linking to where I can buy it, doesn't seem to be on DriveThruStuff/RPGNow

You can pre-order it on https://www.strikerpg.com and you'll get the final rules text right away, and the prettied up version with a proper layout and pictures as soon as it's done.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 03:41

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Littlefinger posted:

Will it eventually end up on dtrpg, though? That would be nice.

Hey, I didn't reply to this because I was out of town and not keeping up. But yeah, I'm doing PoD through Drive thru and the PDF will be there too.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 05:11

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Paper Mario 2 is the best RPG. Don't know why you're all still talking about bad games.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2015 05:36

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 23:54

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

I just typed up a post asking about an issue at set-up in my last game of fiasco, but looking at the rules, it turns out we just played it slightly wrong. :v:

Also Pain and Gain is a good movie because Michael Bay is a good director.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2015 03:56

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG August Cat Thread: it was like a sweaty danny devito