Khrux

If you get around to Microscope and enjoy it, it recommend both The Quiet Year and For the Queen.

When I played Microscope, I found that the game was a little too unconstrained and it was very hard to keep things from becoming totally silly, then in the close up scenes, everyone would basically want to default to playing a super rules-light generic TTRPG, and two or three of those scenes would dominate the session. I feel that it may get better with frequent play, but that’s not really what it’s designed for. Ben Robbins, the creator is a very talented game designer and is also famous for the West Marches style of D&D play, and has made numerous GMless TTRPGs since, and I’ve only ever heard great things about them.

The Quiet Year is a game with a more constrained setting, that basically uses a map you fill in as you please and a bunch of prompts tied to playing cards to play out the 4 seasons of a small settlement moving from it’s founding to a final point where either the settlement is implied to die out, or is a fantastic springboard for a traditional TTRPG to take over. There are plenty of hacks online that move the tone from a post apocalypse feeling survival focused game to basically anything that charts a settlement for a year, including one by the creators called The deep forest which I understand to be a decolonising focused and a bit more cottagecore / cottagecore. I preferred this to Microscope mostly because of the fact that it’s prompts constrain the tone from becoming all out silly.

Finally For the Queen has been one of the best games I’ve ever discovered. I’ve played the first edition but there is a second created by the same creator, Alex Roberts, produced by Critical Role’s Darrington Press. If you’re Critical Role averse for some reason, the first edition was not tied to them at all. This game is by far the easiest to teach new players, and is the first game I’d bring to play with absolute TTRPG newbies. In my opinion it generates the best story, although rather than being solely worldbuilding, it places a primary interest on your characters and relationships to a queen figure. I find that despite this, the world’s that comes out of it are far more evocative and exciting to develop than other GMless TTRPGs, and a large part of that is the hard to hack reality that it’s just got good prompts. Despite that it’s got the most hacks of the original of anything here, as the original game is so streamlined and well playtested, which really shows while playing it.

I had a similar experience in my 5e game, no real combat but basically the intrigued that drove the game got tenfold more complex and was revealed to involve each member of the party in a varying but believable way.

Seperatly, I also played Alice is Missing the month before and it lived up to the hype I wanted, but it’s very up.my street. What I seek in an RPG is being able to move between being immersed enough to feel what my character feels when I want it, but when I don’t, be able to act as my own drama maker for later. AiM absolutely delivered that for me. It also didn’t need magic or tech to deliver any agency which is a big plus to me.

To be fair, modern AI voices sound pretty real. Making it artificial would have been a tell in it’s own right.

Also the toxicity that is implied to exist by this post is pretty rare really. Even back when I was using Reddit, toxicity generally sank to the bottom of comment sections, and even more so here. When I got into D&D close to the beginning of 5e, some online voices on YouTube for example carried this toxicity but nowadays, most voices are far newer and friendly.

In general, most people are more interested in what happens at their table instead of all tables, and the rules are just guidelines to aid that.

There’s a book called Tabletop Role-playing Therapy: A Guide for the Clinician Game Master by Dr Megan A. Connel that’s a really standout resource about this, she appeared on the official D&D podcast a year or so ago talking about it.

I’d say that this is more a resource for therapists to use TTRPGs than it is for DMs to act as therapists for their players. There’s a fine line between accommodating your players’ preferences and needs and providing unwanted therapy; if you want to actually put any therapy techniques into your game, ask your players approval first.

I don’t want to throw the word enshitiffication around, especially when I’m not sure if I can spell it, but the platforms that people jump ship to when that happens are probably especially vulnerable to people jumping ship again.

I can’t imagine Mozilla effectively marketing Firefox as anything but the bullshit free browser, and when they lose that, people will just move to the next actual bullshit free option.

This is also probably off topic because I can’t load the YouTube video.

I was talking about the second Dune film a little while back and saying how much I enjoy a well realised world that doesn’t try to convey itself by comparing itself to ours. I get the same feeling watching Dune and Lord of the Rings as I do when I watch a film from a culture I’m not familiar with; a sense of needing to adjust to their way of storytelling.

Pairing this with what you mention which is basically extra subtle show don’t tell, and you end up with something I absolutely adore, which is a story in a fully realised culture I know nothing about, that understands that the bare minimum amount of that culture I need to understand to fully enjoy the story can be the best amount to have.

I was going to say how rare this is but thinking about it, it actually isn’t. Tolkien’s cosmology is fully realised and vast yet I learnt basically no fluff about the world that wasn’t necessary to the story. Sometimes I just had to make peace with the fact that I didn’t understand the cultural context, I could only measure it’s importance in the attitude of the characters.

That’s the shit I love.

Feign death every time. Most OP spell in the game.

Temporal Shunt already narratively does this I believe, although only for a round.

I suppose they’re all sent to the end of time, in a point that you’re unlikely to get to naturally.

Having all creatures thrown forward in time to the end of the current month would see a lot more use than the end of time.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.