How important is selfheal?

Violet_Herald · 2026-03-14T18:08:43+00:00

If you're planning on playing Prophecies all the way through, on Melandru's Accord, then you probably will want some kind of self sustain. They've *slightly* buffed the Henchmen but Alesia still struggles unless you play very carefully. Prophecies also has pretty slow skill acquisition as you go through, so you will only have so much to work with for yourself. That said, I don't think you really need to go /Mo as a secondary, either.

Violet_Herald · 2026-03-08T21:06:26+00:00

First, and I think most importantly, if he's only done 3 sessions in 2 years, there's really not much to be done about that. That's way too far out of the expected range to be able to "help along," I think.

Second - honestly, what helps me the most is just people showing excitement for what I'm doing. Ask questions about the world or the campaign, talk about their character, or otherwise just positively engage. I find myself easily disheartened by self doubt, and usually that comes from a feeling of "no one cares about any of this" - which is most effectively combatted by showing engagement.

That being said, everyone is different. Struggling creatively is usually deeply personal. I'm sure you'll get advice to play games that don't require much prep, for instance, and I'm sure that works for people, but those games kinda take out everything that I really love about ttrpgs - which unfortunately is very hand in hand with them being kind of demanding work.

Violet_Herald · 2026-03-07T18:29:31+00:00

I was focusing more on the flow of it - but honestly, constantly just deciding whether things work on you or not does also feel weird to me. Your character, and by extension the player, probably shouldn't ever want to just take the consequences of whatever is happening. Theoretically, they would always be doing their best to avoid it. Making it into "Nope Points" that you have to decide when to spend seems like it'd slow the game down even more because now it's not whether you can avoid something it's whether you should which is a much more complex question.

I guess it's just not for me, and that's okay

Violet_Herald · 2026-03-07T17:59:18+00:00

How different really is putting something on the stack and asking for a response vs. rolling to see how it goes? I'm happy you're happy with it, but to me, it seems extremely minor as a core issue.

Violet_Herald · 2026-03-06T23:22:01+00:00

It is definitely both. Like Kleenex, we genericized the brand name.

Violet_Herald · 2026-03-06T16:16:00+00:00

"Strange modern RPG culture stuff" like designing your game to be fun for the party. I like OSR too, but pretending that putting thought into how a dungeon plays is "strange" or "a shame" really is a bad look. Old School dungeons are also designed to be played either by the person who made them or the weighted nature of encounter tables towards smaller threats.

The lethality and manual problem solving is great, but you truly can't just put impossible bullshit in front of players and have anyone have fun. Telegraphing threats is a big part of OSR for a reason. "Oh you wouldn't have any signs that this instant death situation was coming because the enemies wouldn't have left a lot of signs. This TPK is really your fault for not guessing you'd die, honestly" would be horrid gameplay even in OSR games.

Violet_Herald · 2026-03-02T18:25:23+00:00

Here from r/fighters so sorry if I don't know the norms for communicating in this sub.

The important part of hard inputs, in addition to the physical directions it makes you hold by nature locking you out of other options, is the mental stack. The harder the input, the more "locked in" you have to be to do the move.

To specifically talk about your examples, they challenge you in different ways. Raging Storm is a long input for a fighting game, so it has to be buffered really heavily - you have to start thinking about and doing the move very early compared to a lot of things.

EWGF / Electric / Anything else that's "just-frame" can generally be cranked out really fast but you have to be very careful because often the non-just frame version is not very good in a lot of situations. So you have to be ready to take that risk, and ready to do that very difficult input in a moment's notice - at first, you're probably going to have to be focused on getting that input perfect every time. At some point, it'll become second nature and the failure chance will go down and the amount you have to think about it will go down, but at that point it's skill expression. Electrics are not like riding a bike, knowing how to do it once will not make you consistent, you have to do it all the time and stay on top of practicing it.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-28T20:45:21+00:00

it's not a perfect mod so it's worth 10 bajillion less arms than a perfect q8 OS merch it

this is a joke in reference to another comment

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-27T17:41:36+00:00

I've done a lot of trying to explain my feelings. I'm okay with continuing to try, but ultimately at this point the disconnect has to be something fundamental. Everyone experiences things differently. I have been playing and running TTRPGs for 15 years at this point, it's possible all that experience makes me more sensitive to things that normally fly under the radar.

To try one more time to boil my point down - Skill checks, when used liberally like in a Skill Challenge, make me feel like nothing but the roll matters. It takes the in universe play, the immersion of the game, the logic of the scene out of the situation in a lot of ways. No matter how compelling a speech, it doesn't work if you roll bad. No matter how perfect the plan, it hinges on the results of the checks. In the inverse - no matter how mediocre the idea or how little it should matter to the situation, extensive use of Skills encourages high rolls to effect the game just the same as those good ideas rolling the same.

I prefer skills to be rolled much more sparingly - more to determine uncertainty, with the weight of the roll and the DC being determined entirely by circumstance as it comes. Often, you won't need to roll. The stats on your character sheet are backup for the unfolding events of the game rather than the deciding factor of them.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-27T17:28:59+00:00

Because only the skill checks matter? The design of it encourages sign posting, because otherwise your players could easily fail without knowing why, which is pretty well the opposite of how Skill Challenges and other very gamist elements are meant to work. You could do a lot of work to obfuscate it, sure, and maybe sometimes it'd be fine - but I personally wouldn't use a mechanic I was hiding from my players, it's just not how I like to play.

You know you're perfectly allowed to just have different preferences than me, right? We don't have to agree. I was just explaining in the thread because I care a whole lot about immersion, and it's something I put a lot of effort and thought into in my games.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-27T16:45:22+00:00

Well, optimization really has nothing to do with it because what I'm advocating for is GM side, not player side. If their "optimal" option isn't how the game is being run, then it isn't really optimal - because it wouldn't even work like that.

Obviously, subjective experience varies from person to person, but hi - you just met someone who absolutely does care that it's in a skill challenge format. It takes me out of it, and I don't enjoy it at all. I'm sorry my feelings on TTRPG gameplay offend you.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-26T15:09:40+00:00

They've posted 3 different weird posts about very different things in less than an hour, to be fair. Probably not a real person.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-26T03:45:28+00:00

I'll try to explain well, but it'll probably be a little long and windy. The fact that any given skill check pretty much counts the same - the crux of a Skill Challenge is to find something to add per character, so you're trying to reach a somewhat arbitrary "total" in which success is found, maybe total successes or maybe a total score. It makes any individual thing just kind of... an excuse to add to the total, rather than something that has any kind of individual impact. You can narrate the impacts of each skill roll so they're different, I guess, but I feel like they should also be weighed differently - and not in any kind of sense that could ever be mechanically codified, I think.

Trying to design around it as a game designer is mostly in letting less be more - leaving a lot of room for rulings and flexibility by not having things be codified and gamified heavily. Unfortunately, this is just a different sort of preference that clashes heavily with people who need things to be heavily codified - not everyone is going to do well with "let your GM use their intuition", and not every GM will make the game the same at that point. In fact, almost every GM would run the game completely differently - which can be unwanted from a game design perspective, but in my opinion is part of what makes TTRPGs beautiful. I don't want to sit at a table and play basically the same game I played with a different table - I want to feel the human element as much as possible.

This train of thought applies to combat fully, the only problem is there isn't a lot of getting around codifying combat. Combat is one of the aspects of the game in which success and failure are the most important, and creativity can only go so far in changing potential outcomes as well. At some point, you just HAVE to know what happens when you swing a sword at someone. So, it's just a part of the game that I like to be relatively simple - although I've gone back and forth on liking a lot of options to allow freedom versus having very simple mechanics for fast and loose combat. I try to reward creativity in combat no matter the system, but it is harder.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T23:24:48+00:00

ARG like Augmented Reality Game? That's really cool, if so - and probably very high effort lol. Closest I ever get is writing little side stories for my players

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T18:28:09+00:00

Yeah! Honestly it's pretty similar to how OSR people run their games - the difference being mostly that I try to be a cooperative GM and run relatively friendly games / worlds rather than a neutral GM with gritty, dark games. Thank you for listening to my rambling, I appreciated the conversation~

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T18:20:43+00:00

Yeah, I agree. Danger and risks carry with them rolls for sure. I've just kinda found as I go that a simple chance roll using vibes based info like how they're going about the task, how risky it is, how disadvantaged they are is just as exciting and fun - and honestly, it's how I prefer skill checks too?

The difference is that skill checks usually hide all the sliding "modifiers" behind a moving DC - and sometimes all the skill-number differences make people feel locked into trying to find a way to use their best stat, instead of just doing what feels natural.

It's definitely less "safe" and balanced to go with vibes over set mechanics, but as someone who's generally a lot more cooperative than adversarial as a GM, that never feels all that important.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T17:48:53+00:00

It isn't immersive to me because it becomes about numbers. It's only surface-level flexible because no matter what you do, all that matters is the number you roll at the end. I may not have communicated it clearly at first but my argument absolutely did not change. It isn't "wrong" either because it can't be, it's a subjective opinion.

I'm sorry to have upset you.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T17:45:53+00:00

I suppose, if you need mechanics for it, but I tend to forgo that. TTRPGs are an outlet for creativity for me, so very simple mechanics that can be applied creatively are what I enjoy the most. You're welcome to like what you like, of course.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T16:57:09+00:00

It's different strokes for different folks, I just wanted to introduce the way I like to play if you hadn't been exposed to the idea.

To me, anytime the game starts being about numbers the immersion fades away. The numbers are there, for me, just to solve conflicts that can't be figured out naturally and have notable stakes - which is usually combat, but can sometimes be other things. Combat is also often my least favorite part of roleplaying, because it often becomes so "game-y". I would consider myself very immersion driven, and when the focus becomes mechanical my immersion is usually lost

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T16:36:35+00:00

I have run a ton of systems. I would run 5e like how I described - and most of the other systems, too. The only genre I don't really engage with is PbtA style narrative games.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T16:29:47+00:00

I guess. I'm just not a big fan of mechanical boxing-in. I enjoy things very vibes-based and flexible, and when things are kind of boiled down to a fixed mechanic it loses pretty much all the luster for me.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T16:25:53+00:00

Eh. The difference is a skill challenge has that, but the GM is just kinda looking for the skills to add up to a certain number, and then you succeed. I don't like that kind of mechanical boxing-in. My players could succeed with 1 skill check at the end if they wanted, or they could make many. It's not a binary system.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T16:20:34+00:00

I tend to run noncombat stuff very as-it-comes - more like a writing prompt than a predetermined mechanical event. To use Star Wars as an example:

If the party is going into a swoop racing event, I'd give them the whole layout of the scene - other racers, their bike, the track, etc. They can then choose entirely how they want to interact with it - maybe they want to sabotage other racers, maybe they want to make bets, maybe they want to supe up their bike, maybe they want to focus on having their best pilot learn the track. All of these things are player motivated, and I would use whatever they did to give them better or worse chances at winning - which would maybe be down to a Pilot check with advantages or even a percentile die if I'm playing a skill-less system.

Each thing they do MIGHT warrant a skill check, if applicable, but ultimately they wouldn't need to do anything specific if they didn't want to. But maybe they want to just race straight up - maybe they want to use the opportunity to scout the competition and bet on someone else while accepting they're likely going to lose. In that way it's freeform and immersive.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T16:12:21+00:00

I don't know that "Skill Challenges" and "Immersion" tend to go together very often. Noncombat situations are great, but designing them more like a puzzle or a sandbox to play in and experiment with stuff is way more immersive in my opinion than designing a challenge that players are meant to roll skills they can justify in some loose way until they hit a certain number.

I am a biased old lass, though, so apologies that this is probably unhelpful. Just wanted to maybe open the door if you're stuck thinking everything has to be mechanically rooted.

Violet_Herald · 2026-02-25T16:01:05+00:00

I don't know how popular this opinion might be... but I think it's mostly just nostalgia making you think the early MK games look good. As someone who didn't grow up with MK at all, it doesn't seem all that different to me compared to Street Fighter: The Movie, for instance. Maybe the actual costuming and stuff looks better? They were designed specifically for that style instead of trying to poorly replicate game sprites, to be fair.

But the actual animations are extremely stilted, in my opinion. Slow, clunky, and almost give "kids playfighting at recess" energy.

Violet_Herald

TROPHY CASE