Dana Fried

One of the benefits of wearing glasses 24/7

Don't you fucking DARE. They are best hacker and 100% friend-shaped.

I'd rather see you-know-who die for a third time.

If you're going to send me something written by an LLM then save us all time and resources and just send me your prompt instead. I'll value a text that says "Heartfelt condolence message with reference to a list of events" more, because this way I at least actually know what you were thinking

My take on the discourse:

I, too, want to look sexy in jeans.

The old look (a hellsguard roegadyn)

The new look (a highlander hyur)

#FFXIV folks: I need your input.

I fanta'd a while back (old and new models below).

I like my new look, and it's nice to have more fashion choices, but I also miss dirtbag Lea.

Now that we have several free fantasia potions, I was thinking about maybe bringing the old look back for 7.3.

WDYT?

At Least It's Not COVID™ 🙃

(And on a long weekend, to boot.)

Can highly recommend K-W or the surrounding area; Toronto is cool but I wouldn't live in the suburbs.

OH YES IT IS

It's pretty cool tbh

If you can find a job, definitely recommend

When we moved to Southern Ontario we went from having pure glacier meltwater to the hardest well water I've ever seen.

My hair is SUFFERING.

Are the reported numbers always this much higher than the revisions? It seems like there's a strong incentive to always juice the numbers.

Also, even pre-revision, the numbers for July are downright anemic, and I think after we get revisions for those we're going to start to see negative numbers.

I knew this was coming but I'm still sad.

I am going to be very tempted to elaborate on the items from this list that get the most engagement.

(28)

Speaking of APs, the best introduction to role playing is Wil Wheaton's original 2-part Tabletop AP of Fiasco.

(27)

TTRPGs are such a small niche (still!) that anything sufficiently popular will distort the space like a massive object distorting spacetime.

D&D (and now D&D AP media) are the supermassive black hole at the center of TTRPGs, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

(26)

Actual play - isn't.

Or at least it isn't anymore.

I'm still salty about that.

(25)

The second kind of player will immediately freeze up, then spend the rest of the session frantically conferring with the rest of the table on which of the options are most strategically advantageous for the party.

This player can be taught, but it's usually not worth your time.

(24)

There are two kinds of players:

One kind, when presented with an Apocalypse-World-style "love letter" move (pick N of M narrative choices) will break out into a big grin and try to figure out how to screw their character in the most interesting way.

This is the player you want at your table.

Also if you didn't like the flavor of your class for your particular character, you could erase the name and flavor text and write in whatever you wanted.

This was the genius of 4E.

You had a set of powers that described exactly what you could do in a fight, and you used minis (or markers) on a map, so you could see the entire board. Combat became a fun puzzle rather than a test of knowledge.

I printed my powers out on cards and put them in sleeves.

(23)

Corollary: authorly world-building is a way less important GM skill than improv skill/actorliness. This is a shame since the former tends to be what motivates people to become GMs.

(22)

There's absolutely nothing better a GM can do than create an NPC the players really like.

...then you want something new and interesting for them to do in the next story arc, so maybe a between-arc level-up training montage/time skip/whatever.

I'd love to pick that apart.

To me, you want that thing from fiction where the protagonists bump into the villain in Act 1 but they're not quite powerful enough/positioned correctly to do anything about it, then over the second act they grow in power, and by Act 3 they can take the bad guy on.

(21)

It doesn't matter how I coherent a world/story you create as a GM as long as you periodically reincorporate details. Your players will think you're a genius.

(20)

Corollary: railroading is only a problem if you overplan and then can't convincingly explain why the thing you had planned happens in the context of the players' actions (or adapt it for the new reality).

Your players thinking you're railroading is entirely a skill issue.

(19 for real)

If you plan it and the players don't find it, then it doesn't exist.

Secret doors (and the stuff behind them) only exist if the players actually discover them.

Understanding this can greatly reduce planning overhead.

Oops I accidentally one too many 🙃

Looks like #19 was a freebie

(19)

Corollary: Marvel Heroic's "popcorn" style initiative works in almost any game that has rounds, and especially in FATE.

(18)

Many games are bad as written but can be improved by substituting an (often simpler) mechanic from another game.

Absolutely DO NOT do this until you have played the game exactly as written long enough to truly, fully understand it.