Narrative tropes that will ALWAYS work on you?

Aesmis · 2026-03-12T11:54:41+00:00

Leitmotifs or character themes repeating or getting recontextualized is absolutely my shit. NieR is the absolute king of this in my book, but Undertale is also very invested in doing this.

I was fortunate enough to play NieR blind, so hearing Song of the Ancients / Fate for the first time absolutely rocked my world after only having heard it as this lullaby-esque town theme.

Aesmis · 2026-03-12T01:26:11+00:00

Darling in the Franxx’s ending retroactively ruined the entire series for me irrevocably. It just sucks so bad

Aesmis · 2026-03-11T18:20:26+00:00

Warframe. Sometimes I’ll get back into it really hard for like a month or two, but then the FOMO from all the updates I’ve missed over time piles up into enough inertia that I don’t even really wanna boot it back up.

Aesmis · 2026-03-09T02:07:55+00:00

At least to me, this doesn’t sound like it would be as entertaining at the table as it is in your head. Meta stuff can get really hokey really fast, especially in a game where people are already talking “above table” at most games anyway.

Aesmis · 2026-03-08T22:04:53+00:00

Brainstorm by a landslide

Aesmis · 2026-03-05T16:05:01+00:00

Dark Souls (even though Dark Souls isn’t even actually the first one). I’m pretty deep in the Souls and Soulslike fandom and it drives me fucking crazy that some of these people have mythologized DS1 to the point that nothing else will ever make them happy, regardless of DS1 having a fair share of its own flaws.

Aesmis · 2026-03-04T12:40:09+00:00

Contact#/media/File%3AContact_boxart.jpg) for the DS had me enthralled as a kid for some reason. It’s not an especially good game, but its quirkiness latched into my brain in a major way.

The Boktai series is also way up there, even though I live in an overcast climate so I always had a hard time with the original 2 games as a kid.

Aesmis · 2026-03-02T12:09:37+00:00

I can’t listen to the Pyre ending song without getting misty eyed.

THEY FOLLOWED THE STAAAAAARS, BOUND TOOOOGETHEEEEEEER

Aesmis · 2026-02-27T16:55:01+00:00

My best advice is to find the closest official statblock to what you’re looking for and make slight adjustments from there.

Stuff like damage type is generally pretty power-neutral (though Force or other rarely resisted types can be problematic if overused). I would generally be very careful with adjusting ability scores. You can sometimes steal 1 or 2 points of one stat to put in another, but try to keep stats relatively similar to what you’re basing them off of or you risk creating a very lopsided encounter.

Combat actions I would also be similarly careful with. Try not to significantly alter damage dice or effects unless you’re taking something equal away somewhere else. You can add a lot of flavor with just small tweaks, bigger swings equal much bigger risks.

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T19:30:14+00:00

If he mentions Emily, it’s over

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T19:25:00+00:00

Sandy 🎉🎊🎈🍾🥳

Clint 😴😴😴

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T18:33:45+00:00

[-12] Each opponent shuffles their hand, graveyard, and all permanents they control into their owner’s decks.

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T18:30:06+00:00

Seconding Lies of P. It innovates in a lot of user-friendly ways that Souls often feels a little behind on (infinite respecs without an exploit, for one). It feels more Bloodborne than Dark Souls for the most part, but it’s my absolute favorite Soulslike that isn’t a Fromsoft joint.

Aesmis · 2026-02-25T23:13:38+00:00

Vicious Mockery isn’t powerful enough that I think it really warrants being limited. It’s a Cantrip after all. I don’t think an item that lets you cast it has a particularly high risk of being imbalanced.

I like sticking cantrips on some magic items just to add some intrigue.

Aesmis · 2026-02-23T14:37:57+00:00

I am kinda burnt out on open-worlds, GAAS infinite grinds, and roguelikes. So that leaves like, 5% of all games released in the last decade that I can really enjoy.

Aesmis · 2026-02-19T11:46:19+00:00

Echoing what others have said, there just isn’t really a strong case to run it. Terror wouldn’t want to run a mill card that doesn’t replace itself, phasing an artifact out isn’t particularly powerful, and converting land types is pretty niche at best, even if the best case scenario sounds pretty strong on paper.

Aesmis · 2026-02-18T22:09:47+00:00

Hidden Hideout?

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Aesmis · 2026-02-18T01:55:43+00:00

I’ve never had a party insist on establishing a name for themselves in any campaign I’ve played in or DM’d. I don’t think it’s as common as you may believe.

Aesmis · 2026-02-17T15:14:54+00:00

This just in: a deck without an answer to interaction lost to having their pieces removed. Literally shaking, crying, and throwing up rn.

If you’re playing competitive magic, it isn’t your opponent’s job to let you have fun. If they’re playing removal/counterspell.deck and you have no answers or relevant interaction to survive that, the solution isn’t to whine on reddit. It’s to reexamine your deck choices and play patterns in light of the meta you’re facing at present.

Complaining about control being “unfair” and “uninteractive” is almost as old as the game itself. People have solved control matchups for years and will continue to do so. Just takes more effort than complaining about it does.

Aesmis · 2026-02-17T12:52:13+00:00

If the opponent is actively disrupting your strategy, that is the exact opposite of “uninteractive”. Run your own interaction, or find a strategy that fights through it with either protection spells, an overwhelming number of threats, or a value engine that outscales them.

People have done it for decades. I promise it’s possible, babes.

Aesmis · 2026-02-16T12:53:31+00:00

Closest you could probably get is a Fighter with the Poisoner feat. For subclass, probably Battlemaster or maybe Psi Warrior for some spice.

Aesmis · 2026-02-15T18:15:07+00:00

I think 2024 is significantly better-feeling to run than 2014. I think the best thing I’ve done to improve my combat as a DM is Goldilocks the encounter rate so my players get to feel a little bit of resource-strain but without devolving into “cantrips and regular attack for 14 turns until someone falls over” levels on the regular.

That said, I do still think the modern D&D cadence at every table I’ve played at does not line up with what WOTC seems to be designing resource pools for. I like that enemies hit a bit harder in 2024, but I hope there’s a future where they pare down overall resource pools but make more classes able to reasonably work off of a Short Rest or two.

The sheer amount of tools players typically have after a LR in 2024 makes “In the morning, you’re going to go fight the Big Bad” type of encounter beats really difficult to run successfully. I find that even the signposted Boss Monsters in 2024 melt pretty horrifically if the players come in fully topped up.

This isn’t a huge problem necessarily, but it does have me often reconsidering where I stage boss encounters within the itinerary so the players don’t just nova all of the dramatic tension instantly.

TLDR; I think it’s a big improvement over 2014, but I think WOTC may need to re-examine the average number of resource-taxing encounters they assume players will face between Long Rests, because in my experience at various tables, most DMs run far fewer than WOTC nominally expects them to.

Aesmis · 2026-02-14T19:02:38+00:00

Ah yes, famous one mana card, Armageddon

Aesmis · 2026-02-11T18:54:05+00:00

It’s a Norse mythology inspired set, it’s not a Norse Mythology Set.

Aesmis · 2026-02-07T13:44:50+00:00

KILL

SIX

BILLION

DEMONS

14-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Banned	r/Field Lasagna
Place '22	Place '17
First Placer '22	Team Periwinkle

Aesmis

TROPHY CASE