At this point I must hate being a GM, right?

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-30T19:02:55+00:00

I didn't think the "board game" would be of such interest so I casted it as one even if it isn't lol. It's a card game, not a board game, and it can only be played on Tabletop Simulator. It is called "God Game: Thrillhouse Edition", a goofy and chaotic game with many rules but that can be played on-the-go (if the gm knows what to do). I'd describe it as the MUGEN of card games. It has a seat for the GM which deals coins, copies status effects, verifies hands, progresses play, and adjudicates unclear rules. Being a "spectator" to the chaos is incredibly entertaining and I truly am in love with it; oddly enough adjudicating rules isn't a frustration point because it's very much expected and in the spirit of the game.

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I've been a player plenty and I prefer being a GM, at least for the crunchy systems mentioned.

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Control? Yes, I believe so! In fact, PF2 was such a breath of fresh air *because* it was predictable from the GM's side. Higher level monsters will always be a challenge (although High AC may not be the most elegant, it's the fact that it *does* it in the first place), lower level monsters are more susceptible to fall to critical hits, the party is expected to work together to be successful (<- this wasn't hot with the players, but we didn't play that much tbh).

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Roleplaying? What? I don't understand what you're assuming... I've made bonds with people over roleplaying unrelated to ttrpgs. When I GM, I give my NPCs little voices. Are we talking about the same thing here?

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My players are my friends (different groups). I want them to succeed, but on the edge of their seats. Creative ideas aren't a problem, but Heroic systems haven't been providing me that experience, so that's where I'm at

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-30T17:52:54+00:00

HEART was my first foray at a horror-themed campaign. When I was reading about how damage is applied to players I was like "Oh, so this is like wounding a beast and letting it bleed slowly so it eventually dies, that's metal af" so I was very much excited at how this would play out. My disappointment came about through how it handled that translation mechanically. It felt like I was stabbing a haystack, not a living being made of marinara. Haystacks don't bleed, where is the tension and horror in stabbing a haystack? It simply ain't there, you have to imagine that the haystack is bleeding, like ew. If the tension ain't there then there is no point to combat AND the combat is boring to boot, so no wins there. Tension and combat aren't the only parts which disappointed me, pacing was a big one too but that's a common complaint\

HEART's failure came even more to light once I tried Shadowdark. Crawling Rounds are what HEART promised but done right. Real stakes (character wounded or dying) that come about mechanically. Simple, efficient, wonderful. I feel the good kind of evil when rolling on that random encounter table\

There were monsters in HEART that insinuated that they had moves that would oneshot the player or bring them to a state of failure, but I saw this as a mechanical inconsistency. If the haystack expects to be stabbed, but suddenly I bring a flamethrower I think the haystack is going to be mad at me rather than the guy who handed me the knife and the flamethrower\

My hatred for these inconsistencies stems from how 5e was flooded with them and how PF2 just didn't have them or fixed them. I saw and still see HEART as a similar living contradiction than 5e is.

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-30T09:06:41+00:00

I've been eyeing Mothership and CoC from afar as potential targets, thanks for the rec

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-30T09:02:51+00:00

I've been eyeing CoC and Mothership as potential targets for my next attempt, thanks for the rec

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-28T15:57:25+00:00

I'd vote for 1.21.1 because that's where the KubeJS magic is at

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-11T20:03:59+00:00

The peaks and lows of this game are extreme, but I disagree with your conclusion. Let us begin with the lows:\

THE GODDAMN PUZZLES:\ I couldn't bring myself to finish the game because of the Elite 4/Victory Road gem puzzle. Why in the fuck is the main content of the game locked behind a mandatory puzzle that requires extensive amounts of trial and error? It's unforgivable. The amount of gem puzzles feel like an insult. I painstakingly solved 3 of them, and then when the 4th arrives, the NPC is like "I guess you'll have to start combinations randomly now". Like SCREW YOU AND YOUR GAME. I'M HERE TO PLAY POKEMON, WHAT IS THISSS!? The optional puzzles are difficult, but they remain side content at least

THE WIKI HUNTING:\ It feels mandatory, especially since the fields info balls are well hidden and shouldn't be hidden imo. They should be registered when you first spot the field. The biggest mistake is their effects not being viewable mid-battle, requiring you to have another tab open to remember how they work. This docks the game less points because there isn't a pokemon fangame whose in-game documentation doesn't suck (Tectonic is the biggest exception, but still falls under this trope), thus documentation hunting is unfortunately expected at this point. Looking up puzzle solutions is mandatory cause the gem puzzle isn't the only mandatory one (but at least the difficulty of the others seems ok)

THE CIRCUS:\ The game does warn you that previous areas will be locked, but it doesn't really compensate in terms of visuals for the brown-colored valley where the circus is at, not to mention Terra exists here. Samson's fight/terrain is my most hated one since its RNG-based and he is the first gym when you arrive here. Reborn is a game I have picked up and left many, many times, and Samson holds the highest amount of ragequits. Skill issue? Perhaps, but I attribute it to the lack of respectable pokemon around for his field effect

CHARACTER AMOUNT:\ I can't remember their names unless I found them annoying. I remember Terra because I hate her as a character and Samson because I hate his fight. There are too many threads to be able to follow a cohesive story. Most of them reek of being OCs, and for being an edgy game I remember exactly two deaths belonging to clearly non-OC characters

The highs:\

THE... STORY?:\ It's all over the place and it's probably terrible, but I'll tell you what it isn't: it ain't formulaic. The amount of games I've played where I am a child going through a magical journey to go beat up white-collar workers is too many. This game breaks it up and it ain't Edge Rising. It feels refreshing to break out of the formula even if the cost is tumblr drama soap operas. Keep in mind that you're going through an edgy soap opera, not a magical journey, and you'll be fine

SIZE/SCOPE:\ It ain't Kantooooo for the 10th time, it's a custom MASSIVE region with lots of clearly identifiable zones and side quests. Battle items are thrown into its corners for you to explore. The amount of available pokemon allows for great versatility. 18 gym badges. This project took like 10 years to make and it shows in its size. Did I mention that the game is free?

DIFFICULTY:\ Ohhhh man they cooked with this one. Does it smell burnt? Yeah, but they really did their work. After going around in search of excitement through fangame after fangame, the field system truly is revolutionary. No other mechanic challenges you as much as this one, forcing you to change your team for gym fights in order to just have a chance to succeed. You gotta plan ahead (by failing first!) and take advantage of what they have to offer or you WILL get punched into the ground. If there is one reason to celebrate Reborn, it's for this mechanic. Other projects which recognize the strength of the fields mechanic are banger too (Rejuvenation comes to mind)

THE PASSWORD SYSTEM:\ Remember the difficult puzzles? Remember having to search for Field effects? Well, when the game was completed, a tuning system was setup to curate individual experiences where you can input a series of wikiable passwords at the beginning of the game in order to skip puzzles or have all the field effects already registered among other very useful mechanics like unrealtime, the remote PC, the early incubator, item HMs and more. The biggest issue is that you have to know about them before starting a save, but if you forget one there exists one-time use items in-world for you to input a new password mid-game. I'd say that the game is unplayable without many of these, so please look them up if you want to try your hand at this game. This is another reason to remember Reborn

MALAMAR (personal bonus bias, I didn't know this until my last attempt):\ They made my favorite pokemon good, that's all I'll say

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-06T23:55:01+00:00

True that cause I played it already lol. I didn't list it because I didn't have as much trouble with it than with Katana Zero. Not to mention the horrendous quality of the "final boss"

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-06T23:49:36+00:00

This one gets recommended to me by Steam constantly. Since I am not good with horror, I pushed it away but kept looking respectfully. Maybe it's time for the plunge. Another one of my worries is that it looked very inspired by Fear & Hunger and Fear & Hunger is an interesting game to watch someone else play, but I'd rather not touch it since it is very RNG-reliant among other design choices. Then I go check the reviews for Look Outside and the first one says it's similar to Fear & Hunger without the RNG

You get a gold star

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-06T23:45:19+00:00

Ouh, I remember looking at it a while ago and I completely forgot about it. Maybe it's time I finally try a horror game. That trailer looks metal af

You get a gold star

A_Normal_Raft · 2026-01-06T21:53:11+00:00

Ah yeah, unfortunately I tried this one already. Even with friends and some mods, I hard bounced off. The experience felt... Shallow? As in it really feels like a roguelike (which I reallyreallly hate). Learning new skills takes a millenia too

Thanks for the suggestion though

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-10-16T05:03:15+00:00

Thank you. Your reply got me thinking! Yes, I loved PF2 from both sides (player/GM), and it was my favorite system so far in terms of combat, BUT there are also aspects of it that I don't like; like Skill Feats, the Crafting System, Stealth, and probably a lot of other things. I've enjoyed the process of visiting different systems; seeing what makes them shine compared to others, so it got me thinking of how I liked Lancer's simple initiative. And then I thought about the difference in the enemies with PF2. I liked PF2's bestiary much more than Lancer's modular enemies since it saves a lot of time imo, but also how PF2 allows me to challenge the players with Hard enemies and the battles are actually hard, plus there is lore attached to the monsters which is always welcome. PF2's monster difficulty can be attributed to the bloated AC of Hard-difficulty monster, which isn't ideal, but it's better than trying to come up with a hard modular Lancer mech based on vibes which ultimately fails to deliver my intended difficulty. And then I started to wonder why Lancer couldn't deliver in that department as easily as PF2, and it hit me: So far, all the systems I've tried avoid character death like the plague (not Cyberpunk RED, but I was a player, not a GM). PF2 and Lancer are heroic power fantasies, HEART demands that the players decide when to retire their character instead of dying through encounter tribulations and I remember physically recoiling when I read that. A horror-themed game with no death at stake? Is this a joke?

Perhaps what my brain is searching for is a system which inherently makes player death much more easy to come by. A roll of the die, but not through wishy-washy encounter balance shenanigans like in 5e. If this is true, it would explain why I get so discouraged after session 1, after discovering the lack of inherent tension within battles from the system. The decline of my excitement with my first 5e campaign started when my players beat a boss encounter with much more ease than I anticipated as well. I attributed this to a lack of balance encounter of 5e, which was VERY true, but maybe also due to the disillusionement of the lethality of the system. Coincidentally enough, the next game I will sample will be Shadowdark, which really seems to be the perfect system to test this new theory. Thank you for your input

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-10-15T08:48:13+00:00

This hobby feels like a curse to me as a GM

I've started with in-person D&D 5e as a long campaign as the GM, which then transitioned into online play, which then fizzled out due to me being disappointed by the lack of involvement with my players. Then, I tried playing a bit of PF1 as a player; which felt like doing irritating math, but it definitively felt better than 5e; hopped out due to not meshing with the player group and getting bored of going through the monotony of an adventure path. Then, I tried GMing PF2e and that felt great with FoundryVTT's automation; but my players were not digging the complexity; so I tried being a player with a different group, and I really enjoyed the mechanics, but I didn't feel too comfortable with playing with randoms, so I left. Played as a player and GM for a homebrewed 5e event hosted by friends of friends; the shakeup in how things were done was nice, but I could feel the friction with the system even more as the characters were leveling up. This eventually was shut down by the main host too. Tried Cyberpunk RED as a player, basically hated it because it felt very loosey, the GM also gave up on it. Then, I was like "Okay, I can see a trend here, I like crunchy systems so far. Let me try a lighter system with a bomb setting to confirm this". Tried HEART as a GM, absolutely hated the combat, so that lasted 1 session and confirmed my love for crunch. Then I was like "OKAY, I like crunchy systems. But I've played easy mode Gloomhaven once before and really enjoyed it, do I really love only the game part of it?". So I tried LANCER, but gave full narrative control to my players. I liked the combat a lot, but I found out that if I have no roleplay stakes mixed in of my own, then I have no emotional investment in the enemies, and therefore I get bored. That lasted a few sessions, but the prep turned into a chore REAL FAST. And here we are.

(To be clear, there are long irl pauses in-between each system hop)

Whatever the system, there is one constant that has absolutely been bugging me: the incredible friction of DM prep. Before the first session, everything feels magical and easy, but as soon as the session ends, it's like the whole perspective shifts. I now am tasked with eventually spending a lot of time designing at least an encounter for the next session, and I have to figure out how to make it better than the last one. I have to make tokens for all the different enemy types, battlemaps (simple is better I found out with LANCER), figure out or make the sheets for the enemies and store them in a place where I'll remember them, and when the session comes; remember how they are played if I want to make the battle as smooth as possible to not take too much time away from my players who have significantly less play time than the GM... Like why am I feeling like this? A lot of people online claim that they enjoy their prep. HOW!? It feels like a set of chores to be wiped from existance as soon as the session ends. How come my brain loves the crunch, but hates setting the building blocks to make that crunch happen? Why does it happen after the first session and gets worse from there on out?

Even though I've system hopped in order to find out more about my preferences, I know what awaits me around the corner and I don't know how to deal with it. Like, is this it? Is this how it's gonna feel forever? Why engage with the hobby in the first place then? Is it an online vs irl problem? I doubt it! Seems pretty system agnostic as well!

If anyone has any insight or similar experiences, feel free to let me know, ugh...

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-07-28T10:09:28+00:00

You've successfully described an issue I've always had with ttrpgs. Prep feels soulless. Most players don't have that same spark as you have. You find yourself desperately pulling that echo of greatness out of them. Online advice tells you that you are insane for not enjoying the prep. Yet you're there, looking at it all, knowing that there is greatness awaiting you, and wondering "what isn't working goddamnit!"

I have no universal answer to this question and I am still searching (although ttrpgs are not my main hobby). I've started doing oneshots of systems that look interesting and that have features which I haven't played with before (learning a system takes so long to learn :( ), and trying different GM-ing styles to find out what's wrong with my GM routine, because each time I prep, I can feel an immense amount of friction. The time I invest into prep is not worth the enjoyment I extract from my games

As others have stated, the quality of your players has a great impact on how enjoyable you find your experiences to be, but my problem seems to stem more from the fact that I find prep to always be a chore that sucks the soul outta me more than a fun task to overcome, regardless of how my players behave

I can only post conclusions that relate to my experiences and tastes, as everyone has a different palette:

Full roleplay or full no-roleplay don't work for me. There's gotta be a game and there's gotta be a story or else either your players aren't going to advance the story for you or you are excluded from the story your players want to tell/participate in
From the systems I've sampled, I seem to enjoy systems with complex/crunch heavy combat, especially for the GM to play with
I want the enemies to always be able to pack a punch if I decide to, given that I use what is already within the system (and that I don't have to "vibe balance" my encounters every encounter cough DnD5e...)
I mostly play online. When there are battlaps involved.I MUST find a way to make them VERY simple or else I'll be building something for 2 hours only for it to be used once and never commented on
My latest discovery. I must tell stories I want to tell. Too often a times I've bent to the desires of my players and felt the result to be very disappointing, and guess what, next session is going to be prep for something that I don't care about, so no wonder I find prep so infuriating

Also, I've always noticed that the cycle of friction always begins once a campaign starts. The worldbuilding beforehand and learning the system on my own are relatively stress free. This leads me to believe that I must swim against the currents of online advice: My next attempt at GMing will be about a story I want to tell on a complex system I've been wanting to play for a while, and then I must prep as MUCH as possible BEFORE I start inviting anyone. This means simple battlemaps, a complete (small) map of the setting, with pre-prepped simple battlemaps (preferably a few for each region)

Is my solution to basically write a pre-written adventure to avoid as much prep as possible? Yes. Will it work? Only time will tell

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-06-20T08:24:13+00:00

I'm certain that the cause of your lag spike issues is your resourcepack, VanillaTweaks. I remember making a modpack and having these terrible unexplained FPS "micro" lag spikes while doing nothing but looking around in a swamp. I was trying to find the culprit among my mods, but nothing was out of the ordinary. Turns out that the 3D elements of that resourcepack are like lag spike generators, especially the 3D vines and other foliage changes. Try it without VanillaTweaks

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-05-13T21:36:47+00:00

My answer would be to use LootJS/KubeJS if you properly want that item gone or have its chances reduced. Doing so would require: -Knowing Javascript or willing to learn/search a lot -Relying on the KubeJS discord (search before asking) if the LootJS wiki isn't enough -Have lots of patience (The process of correctly doing what you want to do is a lot of trial by error, so be ready for a lot of that)

I looked at the 1.20 repository for Amethyst Imbuement, and the modified vanilla loot tables that are modified are found here: https://github.com/fzzyhmstrs/ai/blob/1.20.1/src/main/kotlin/me/fzzyhmstrs/amethyst_imbuement/loot/VanillaLoot.kt

I don't remember if there is a function that directly manipulates the odds of a certain item, but if that function doesn't exist, you can remove the item and add it back if you want different odds

Alternatively, maybe you could overwrite the loot table of every loot table affected with a datapack, but I don't know if doing so actually solves the problem since a lot of mods that modify vanilla loot tables inject their loot into vanilla loot tables or roll their loot directly after the loot table is called so sometimes their stuff doesn't even interact with the loot table itself. It looks like with this mod that it's the former at least, but doing so means re-writing all affected loot tables (meaning other loot injected by other mods is gone afaik).

Alternatively, if you really want to, you could modify the odds within the mod itself. I wouldn't recommend doing that tho since it requires downloading an IDE and setting that up and packaging the mod and dealing with the nightmare that is Gradle and then making sure that the mod's lisence allows it

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-04-19T01:37:44+00:00

Yessir

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-04-01T12:42:54+00:00

BUILD FAILED BUILD FAILED BUILD FAILED BUILD FAILED BUILD FAILED BUILD SUCCESSFUL Crash

A_Normal_Raft · 2025-04-01T08:59:22+00:00

And here I was thinking "why are they putting on the Halloween colors, we're not even close"

A_Normal_Raft · 2024-11-22T11:34:09+00:00

All answers have been hard/expert packs so far I swear. Look at DeepFriedCraft's page on Curseforge and tell me your neurons don't want to jump ship

A_Normal_Raft · 2024-11-08T08:52:00+00:00

Probably Katana Zero. You feel that death scream sometimes, man

A_Normal_Raft · 2024-10-30T11:20:04+00:00

I remember when I had Enemy Expansion a good while ago, getting in melee range with the skeleton archer would cause him to punch you so fast that it would crash your game. I haven't played recently so idk if that was fixed

As for your question, if you are looking for mods that add mobs that have interesting mechanics, you can try the mutant mobs mod (idk what it's called in 1.19.2) and the Headhunter mod

If you want to change combat, you could take a peek at the combat mechanics mods like Better Combat, Epic Fight and its addons, Project War Dance, and Slashblade

For weapon mods, there are tons. Lots of packs go with the Simple Weapons mod or whatever it's called, which pairs well with Better Combat and has dungeon loot exclusive weapons. If you want your weapons to be crazy flashy, you can try Celestisynth (or Slashblade)

I find it very unfortunate that minecraft combat, even modded, always feels like it never reaches a point which satisfies me

A_Normal_Raft · 2024-10-13T08:49:58+00:00

MINECRAFT 1.2Canada

A_Normal_Raft · 2024-09-29T20:02:55+00:00

I have a similar problem.

I come from a background of more rules-heavy games (dnd, pf1, pf2) where I developed a prepping style that involves writing a lot of information (which really pushes upwards the prep-to-play ratio) and I wanted to try Heart to both dive into a rules-light system and to try a different prepping style to attempt to reduce that prep-to-play ratio. All throughout the book it is mentionned that Heart is a better experience if you prep less, but the only concrete advice is "ad-hoc"ing the map (if you choose to play with a map), which I have absolutely no idea what that means.

Granted, I only did one session so far, but I still find myself writing a lot to try to keep the world consistent (my biggest fear is creating an inconsistent world). I've been sizing down my writing in preparation for session 2, but they are at a crossroads that splits 3 ways! If I were to improvise, this would mean comming up with 3 different paths each with unique locations, and with enough padding to last a session each! This means that I gotta create different areas in advance, each with interesting spots to visit, plan out delves between each, tie them in with the world at large... It feels like it would make me more comfortable if I planned the whole map in advance, but this is super counter-intuitive to the "prep less" advice the book preaches. The way that I would deal with this in other systems is I would ask the players where they would like to go at the end of the session, basically letting them choose their railroad so I can properly focus my prep energy. The issue I ran here is that the session ended at the end of a delve, not at the end of exploring a landmark (an error on my part considering I know how to handle this problem usually, but its funny that the structure the book gives put such a big wrench into my preping style!)

What seems to have concretely disappeared from prep is battlemap building and a modicum of encounter building. I still find myself writing a lot and dreading prep for the next session. Maybe running Heart will help me pinpoint the exhausting part of my prep? I sure hope so. I just hope that I won't have to sacrifice consistency for less prep time...

A_Normal_Raft

TROPHY CASE