TheDevTeam

Yeah not making 6e meant that their current products aren’t artificially outdated, but they are becoming less relevant. The edition wars happened regardless, but D&D is still fighting with the tools of the last war.

That’s… *not* that me espresso?

remember in 2024 when the harris campaign advisors said "stop calling them weird"

This is a much better and more succinct recap: bsky.app/profile/maxk...

To recap:

1. Google invest billions in AI without any discernible return.
2. They use AI to upscale and expand a royalty-free film for a dome screen.
3. It doesn’t work.
4. They hire numerous VFX artists to do the job AI was supposed to do.
5. They still pretend it was AI doing the heavy lifting.

This is how I get away with rations being really easy to use and keep around but not try to imply that characters don’t have basic needs. It’s also how I can have Treasure be a thing characters get rewarded with without worry about quality of life standards or such.

Equipment The following section details rules for adventuring gear for player characters. Importantly, these rules don’t cover all items that a character might own. They just detail the gear characters use to go on adventures and quests. So having 0 Treasure does not mean a character has no money, nor does having 0 Supply mean that they have no food or items. It simply means they don’t have such resources to use for the adventures they’ll go on. Generally, characters are assumed to have a basic standard of living within Refuge relative to the state of Refuge. If a character’s livelihood is uncertain, create that as a threat with a countdown clock or custom move related to the hardships they face.

With Scroll & Steel, one thing I’m wanting to do is make use of mechanics like inventory and hit points, but unlike trad games, only use them in the places where they’re interesting.

Case in point: have equipment, but don’t try to simulate everything a character owns.

Procrastination: Justice is Grey Edition

I tried to do the thing where you make your phone grayscale to make you less likely to use it, but now everything’s Neo-noir and it might be even worse.

I think some games resist premade adventures, but then you have to make sure all the other tools and play examples are like three times as good. Give campaign frames, examples of play, explicit instructions on the first session, etc.

Those are always what I’m looking for most in a new game.

It's hard to do lower power and tactical. It's not a great solution, but low level PF2 might still be best.

A variant I've thought about is low level PF2 where you repeat levels 2+, and each repeat gives you another feat available there. Keeps things low while still offering horizontal progression.

this blew up way way outside context so please be chill and remember that i originally wrote this addressed to TTRPG small press/indie publishers, and if that's not you , it may not 100% line up with your perception/experience of the world

Well Starfinder 2e like just got released and this is compatible with it so better late than never?

David Hogg got a lil too unwieldy but luckily Dems can make up a person who didn’t survive a school shooting to rally voters for tepid gun reform.

I saw that live and it was one of the most transcendent experiences I've had. I remember just sitting in the crowd after it, digesting all the emotions I had.

Yeah whenever the "play nice" criticisms get too specific and pointed, it feels a lot like tone policing in a way I don't love.

I think there are a couple big games people are being weird about, but it's also good practice in general. There's a lot of ways shittiness gets shared quickly and widely in this space.

I love that I can just put a 🦊 next to this and TTRPG-folks who’ve been around long enough know exactly what I’m talking about.

my mom taught me there's two kinds of businesses: hot dog stands and art galleries

- hot dog stands protect territory and keep competition off their turf
- art galleries benefit from more adjacent art galleries, cluster together to amplify reach/support

youre an art gallery, not a hot dog stand

Pathfinder 2e stay winning.

People who are never wrong aren't smart or wise, they're just cowards.

If Savage Worlds can get away with bennies*, I think you’re good.

*And, come to think of it, also the word, “savage.”

Would’ve been hilarious if they had succeeded at turning enemies gay but, instead of distracting them, accidentally turned them into a modern Sacred Band of Thebes. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_...

Like earlier today I was replying to a post about hit points and saying, “Hit points work well with combat encounters but games should use something else for violence outside of combat encounters.”

And hey, that’s what Scroll & Steel does. Hit points are used in combat encounters and nowhere else.

Hope my feed hasn’t been too annoying now that it’s like 75% Scroll & Steel.

I promise I’m not trying to be annoying, but it’s just that, now when I have a thought about RPG design, I can point to Scroll & Steel where, chances are, it does the thing that I’m talking about.

When I got big into Magic a few years ago, I made a basic AI simulation to play against. Then, when I got a booster box, I’d open a few packs and make a deck, face against the AI, and reward myself with more packs when I won. I’d repeat on higher and higher difficulties until I opened all the packs.

The Naked Gun was so good. So many good jokes all over the place.

What's hilarious is that no, they're not good for chess, and also being good at chess isn't impressive given that actual AI has been able to play chess at a beyond-human level for years.

The problem is that hit points are a really good mechanic for combat encounters and no one else. I think more games should use them just for that and explicitly have different ways of handling violence outside of combat.

Happay borth!