Hawkwinter

I'm sure it made more sense coming out of 4e though. 4e players wanted a ton of combat each session.

P2
I can't imagine paying for advice from someone who wildly misconstrues what I say, that would be horribly irrelevant advice.

Anyways, enjoy raging against reusable prep and improv tools, I think it's clear nothing productive will come out of continuing this discussion.

P1
"Stop trying to write a story" - I suggested the literal opposite. Alexandrian: "Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situations and Tools". Custom random generators are great open-ended-sandbox-campaign-tools. I disagree that they have no value and have to be flat and bland, and provided counterexamples.

Malleable drop in encounters that advance the plot are what I would say RNG encounters are best for, with unpredictability that's better than me just deciding what happens. Then, we're all finding out what happens through play.

But yes. If you know they're raiding a guildhall, flesh out the raid.

Planning for where they want to go presumes I knew what that was before the session. *sometimes* that's possible, often it isn't.

But it's not planned. I usually don't know where they're going to go or how they'll react. Set up lots of stuff going on, that can happen where it's possible, and then seed relevant info that tell them new details about what has already happened, around, wherever they go and whatever they do.

The only way I can reliably plan an encounter is if it's the beginning of a session, or the players are entering a sealed environment like a crypt. Otherwise, they're choosing where to go and what do do - and I don't know these things in advance. Thus, prep tools that can be called upon on demand.

These sorts of modifiers are definitely important, but that initial encounter can also be RNG'ed to good effect.

RNG encounters don't have to be combat or to the death. Roll for which plot factions show up. Roll for which of your many floating threads get tied in.

The emerald consortium sent men to eliminate the X Merchant company, and when you capture one alive he spills the beans.

RNG needn't be bland.

100%. Roll in the open. I want to play to find out what happens, not decide it in advance.

Understandable. It's a lot. I'm mostly sticking to my topical social feeds, RSS, and topical interest forums.

Also: You can speed up combat by having attacks do average damage on a hit (or double average damage on a crit). The Buffy RPG in the early 2000s just made that the rule.

Introduce yourself with your top 5 #TTRPG picks:

- Forgotten Realms, 3e (D&D).
- Shadowrun 4e/20th.
- Rolemaster 4e
- The Dark Eye 5e? The one translated to English in the mid-2010s.
- GURPS 4e.

The only kind I might actually want.

This is why we don't have these, and our phones have Google assistant disabled and microphone permissions disabled for everything but our actual calling apps - not *perfect* but better.

My favourite part of Bluesky is you can choose your feeds. If you want all TTRPG stuff: doable. If you want one that's all artists and illustrations & 3d: doable (that's what mine are). You want XXX, Politics, w/e: your choice, not forced on you. Only wish I could follow YouTube / Peertube Channels.

Oh. I misread the post. My apologies. I thought it said it was removed /here/. Yeah, I could totally see it being removed from Threads. Again, I'm sorry. should have read more carefully.

Wait... Don't they allow actual porn? Is the problem just that you didn't flag it properly?

FYI you *COULD* def. use GURPS powers + enhancements/limitations to build exactly what you want, but you'd need to learn how Powers works & figure out how to use it off-label to design stuff you intend for use with a different game. Such as what houserules you'd want to apply to power-building.

That said, SR and Buffy's magic basically let you sling weak spells all day if you're a sufficiently powerful mage, and you can still learn other abilities. Neither game has fixed, rigid classes. They may be what you want.

These will give you more than a couple, but they're still a limited resource of sorts.

Since they're often much more powerful effects than hitting it with your axe, games tends to try to counterbalance it by making you need to ration your magic.

You may also find yourself enjoying Rolemaster's Spell Law and Arcane Companion, it uses a spell point system, the spells are pretty simple, and a variety of thematic spell tech-trees which (for RM4e at least) each fit on one easily photocopied (or printed) page.

🤔 Both the Buffy RPG magic system (or its souped up version in Ghosts of Albion) and the Magic system of Shadowrun might fit your wants. You cast your spells spontaneously, and accrue fatigue type penalties.

What kind of magic system?

When you say freeform, do you mean "whenever the GM feels like it" or "classless"?

I'm going to answer assuming the former.

My preference is neither. Simple time release if D&D. "You level every 4 sessions unless you guys waste a whole session shopping or something. Then that one doesn't count".

I have this one too. Good read, haven't had much chance to play it though.

Yep. Mechanics matter. 100%.

✦ Note to self: Read this later.

Who doesn't like a good morale subsystem?

Its probably overkill if you just want a dungeon crawler, but if you want a fantasy sandbox (I generally do) to run around in and get embroiled in faction conflict or establish a city-state (level ~13+), I think it has the best support for more than just combat and dungeons. (Some 3pp)

Quite well. IMO the best blend is to combine the 3.5 corebooks with mostly 3.0 supporting books, and very selectively cherry-picking the good stuff from PF1.

I think 3e's the best designed of the bunch, though it's not perfect.