Khrux

I’ve read quite a few anecdotes and quotes about Gygax’s misogyny before but I agree with you, I don’t think there is nearly enough information I these gods to extrapolate that it’ embodies all powerful masculine forces as good and all feminine as evil, especially as the article mentions how this perpetuates pre-existing coomo themes in story and myth. Everything we know about Gygax would say he’d lift from myths with sexist themes without adjusting that, rather than add them with intention.

Do do think there is myriad evidence that Gygax believed femininity to be inherently inferior, but that’s different from evil. It’s still stupid and worth highlighting but by excessively demonising him to the point of nearly making things up, it’s just fuel for people to dismiss the valid points.

A flash of light streaks toward a creature of your choice within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 4d6 radiant damage, and the next attack roll made against this target before the end of your next turn has advantage, thanks to the mystical dim light glittering on the target until then.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding something and the phrasing isn’t perfect but I’d say the combination of saying that the advantage is caused by the light and the advantage lasting to the end of your next turn would mean that the light also lasts until the end of your next turn?

I agree completely that it’s inconsequential, one issue with the arguement about creative characters is that people often blend being unique with being compelling. A compelling character is where it’s inconsequential what choices you make.

That said, I think players who aren’t aware of the tropes PC’s often fall into may end up playing “the straight man” to the group, who is comparatively very plain. Players who have played for longer may feel that this is similar to PCs they’ve seen before. But even then, it doesn’t really matter as this PC trope shines in contrast to the rest of the party and that rarely changes.

Unrelated but I wanna say how proud I was of my Baldurs Gate3 character. I felt that your TAV in that game was quite plain and generic no matter what you chose, so played as a human fighter called John Baldurgate who was the most generic character possible and had a blast.

Studded leather, 20 Dex and Int, then something like haste is definitely possible.

Yeah I don’t like Microsoft but like Office, I just run offline pirated version of their main programs. It’s like how I avoid Google for 70% of options but absolutely love Google Maps and Google Translate.

Honestly I feel it was way more exciting in concept than execution anyway. Hell, I think it would make a fantastic TTRPG setting, since it’s strongest in premise and has strong ludo-narrative cohesion falling between a narrative game and a wargame.

A well roleplayed Marut is great. As a CR 25 construct, it’s going to be enforcing a universal law, such as attempting to stop a world ending threat.

It’s primary aim is normally to planeshift it’s quarry to court, rather than kill them, and may even prefer not to kill those who come between that goal.

Here’s The Monsters Know What They’re Doing’s blog post on them. It really telegraphs how helpless a targeted creature is to them.

Indie also covers an enormous financial area. People generally group games into AAA, Some nebulous middle ground games that are generally produced by the major studios but aren’t AAA and Indie.

There is a difference between indie games that sell millions of copies vs dozens and this lack of discrepancy makes this complex. I once pirated a game called infernium after seeing a friend play it on switch, then learnt that it’s an absolutely tiny game by a solo developer. I happened to adore the level design and lore of that game so much that I bought it on steam and then bought all of his other games too just to support him.

On the flipside, we refer to a game like Hades as indie. I love supergiant games and have purchased all their titles but I would have felt zero remorse at pirating Hades.

Maybe the only thing that I feel is sad in all of this is that the massive AAA games takes years to be cracked nowadays, which means only indie games are pirateable. I don’t like the unfair dichotomy this creates. There are probably a reasonable amount of people who pirate indie games and buy AAA games for this reason, and that’s bad for industry.

Season 1 is also great because it did a great job having the kids be basically doing ET, the teens doing a camp horror and the parents doing a cold war conspiracy thriller.

Every season since of course needs to alter the group compositions, so we rarely get this again, although the elements are still there, they’re now shaken up enough that the show is often more focused on riffing on its own formula then emulating the media that inspired it. And that’s fine, it should probably be a good thing that it’s not in the shadow of it’s inspirations, but man do I miss that specific vibe.

Although you could travel the land. Perhaps not cross the Sahara but if you lived in the Roman world, you could quite easily take some years to walk off the edge of the map and just explore. There would of course be a good chance of death from illness, animal or person, but equally like today, you may also meet plenty of kind people who would let you stay and maybe even share their knowledge of the area and culture.

Bold of you to assume I’d ever remember this counting technique. Hell I’m shocked I remember counting my fingers for base 10…

Some people argue that it would be harder to count on your fingers but we could just surgically give everyone more?

Oh no, I hate this art and design style:(

It’s a shame that knowing average monster hitpoints is generally metagaming and there is no ranger option or similar to show you this.

It would be cool to follow a fireball. If you know the enemy you’re fighting has about 32 hitpoints for example, such as the thug, and a band of them got hit by a fireball for 30 damage, sleep is a perfect spell. But getting this combo off in game always feels a little metagamey in a way that just makes it ineffective.

I’d say the Rage beyond Death feature of the zealot is pretty major to how they’re played. A level 14 barb may have 150 hitpoints or more, plus their resistances, but people play the zealot in high level games for this feature.

The idea of getting to fight to 0 hitpoints, then keep fighting until you die and then still not relenting until the fight ends is rad. Hell I’d say that their level 3 and level 6 features, while cool, were designed after their level 14 feature and designed to let you get as much out of that final feature as possible.

I’m only talking from watching PF2e actual plays and playing a lot of 5e but I’d say PF2e combats would run 1.2x longer under the same conditions as a 5e game.

I’d say DM style is easily the biggest influence, I’ve played in games where a one hour combat is the significant boss battle of a campaign, but rules for 6 rounds, and I’ve played in games where a 6 hour battle may be normal, potentially with as few as 4 rounds passing (the latter one absolutely does kill me though, I think my character in that game has actually developed to avoid a fight because I dont want the faff). I’d say DM style can influence a combat length by 3x or more.

Similarly an understanding of general efficiency in combat from the players too can half a combat length pretty easily.

I wouldn’t worry about it extending the game length, any extra time is pretty negligible compared to steps you can take to stop the time of combat unraveling.

Idk if anyone else follows the rule of thumb of “let the party pull the same trick 3 times before you make it backfire”.

In a story, it would fail on the third try, in a game, it would never fail. I find 4th time doesn’t leave many people dissatisfied but also doesn’t let every encounter be trivialised.

Bust out your fireball empowered cultists responsibly.

Yeah I absolutely do not miss snagging my headphone cable on every door or drawer handle in a 1 mine radius. Also I think I used to go through 3-4 sets of headphones a year by wearing out the cable, spending the last few weeks precariously holding the cable 24/7 to enjoy the music.

Wireless does have it’s issues but I’m on my 2nd wireless pair, both bought in the £30 region and it’s probably been 5+ years since I used wired now. Battery hasn’t been an issue really, and although I lost one headphone on my previous wireless set, I can live with it.

I absolutely support the want for a headphone jack so people can choose wired, but I’d still choose wireless.

I find I really need to get over the hump into it feeling like a parasocial relationship, which is kinda a shame. The only time I’ve enjoyed actual plays is when I’ve seen people who I was already fond of from other internet content play, and on top of that, never in a gimmicky setting like a promotion one-shot.

Basically it’s not for the actual play, it’s for living through their friendship, then occasionally the drama of the game spills forth and gives it an extra kick.

2-3 years of pumping shit video games is 2-3 years that they aren’t fucking with the core product, which is the only part I don’t want ruined. The can make bad games, bad merch, bad brand tie-ins or anything else for all I care as long as they don’t harm the game.