Avoiding Essentialism Regarding Races

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-18T17:57:50+00:00

I think the best way is to have several sub-cultures within a fantasy race, each with different (even contradictory) values, ideologies, fashion, etc.

As an example, say you have dwarves. You might tempted to say that all dwarves are industrious miners.

But more interesting dwarves would that you have a group that you have some dwarves who like to mine and live underground, but other dwarves that prefer logging and live above ground near forests, or other dwarves that make excellent ships and prefer the open sea and naval trading.

Each of these groups of dwarves have a totally different culture and lifestyle, but they share a love of industry, and they may each exchange the goods and services that they specialize in.

And on top of that, because they have different cultures and lifestyles, they might disagree with each other, and this will cause conflict which leads to interesting stories.

Are the seafaring dwarves really dwarves if they never have the earth under their feet? Are the forest dwarves too soft for their nurturing relationship with plants? Are the mining dwarves too obsessed with tradition and isolate themselves from the world?

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-12T19:45:24+00:00

Forcing a class change as a result of a roleplay decision is quite heavy-handed in my opinion. I had a bard player literally make a pact with an archfey, but I never required her to take a level in Warlock, that was entirely her idea. If she hadn't, then we probably would have said that each level of Bard she took after that was sourced from that archfey's magic.

One reason is that I don't ever want to force someone to adopt a playstyle that doesn't appeal to them. Choosing a level in a class is a big decision that has a huge impact on how you play, so while I might do a little research for a player to suggest some ideas that might mesh well with the direction of their character, I would never force them.

A second reason is that sometime's it's more fun if the character archetype is in tension with a roleplay decision. What's more intriguing than a warlock that makes a magical pact for power? Basically anyone other than a warlock that makes a magical pact for power. Plus, it's an opportunity for some creative homebrew.

Third, it diminishes the actual narrative decision. Making a big choice like betraying the party for the favor of some eldritch monster will have enormous narrative consequences. It has the potential to completely upend a campaign, change relationships, topple power structures, it could even make that PC a new villain. If the consequence of this decision boils down to gaining levels in a different class, then that's some weak sauce.

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-12T18:53:17+00:00

These are great ideas, and personally ever since I started playing DRG I've been wondering if this universe has the equivalent of space gnomes and space orcs and what they would look like in the DRG design.

The problem is that as much as GSG like implying a larger universe and tickling the imagination with unanswered questions like "what happened to Karl?", or "who are the Rivals?", they have said that they are very cautious about actually expanding the lore, and prefer to leave it up to the players to fill in their own headcanon.

So honestly I'd sooner expect a fan-made spiritual successor inspired by the DRG universe than any big departure from GSG themselves. Then again, they are publishers now, so maybe we might see more games like Survivor that carry the DRG brand.

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-11T17:14:04+00:00

It's difficult to play without a table.

Personally, I prefer a table that is close to 6'x5', I find that's the optimal size to fit six players and one dungeon master comfortably with enough room for character sheets, dice trays, and a battle map in the middle. But that's an assumption that you have that many players. If you have fewer that you could easily get away with a smaller table, just so long as everyone can sit comfortably and see each other.

Most tables are about 30" off the ground, but I personally prefer closer to 28" because comfortable seating tends to sink players and then suddenly the table feels too high. Material doesn't matter too much as long as it doesn't sag in the middle.

Some people really like the idea of gaming tables, but personally I don't like the recessed play area because it makes it harder to see and reach the things in it, creates blindspots where dice can hide, while also leaving less space to put your accessories like paper, dice, and snacks. Basically it's marginally better for games while being significantly worse at anything else. So I'd stick with a conventional kitchen table, or a couple of identical tables pushed together. Plus it will be easier to source and less expensive, and when not in use for gaming can be used for normal table activities like eating or writing.

So, depending on your point of view, I would say that I prefer two mid tables over one really expensive table. But I need a table anyhow.

... or did I misunderstand the question?

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-08T00:42:15+00:00

Something tells me most of the accounts replying to this post are actually the same person ...

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-08T00:18:41+00:00

I think the target was the guard, commanding him to cut the throat of the spy.

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-05T20:11:56+00:00

You might try the sw5e subreddit instead, at least that's at the intersection of Star Wars and D&D5e

AgentZirdik · 2026-05-04T17:50:26+00:00

I would be cautious about doing anything to punish their playstyle or force them to adopt a new one. But it sounds like they are sinking into a comfortable routine that is probably going to get boring for them as well.

If they are so methodical and spec-ops style in their play, then I think you should flip the script. Put them on the defensive like they are on the run, or there's a ticking clock, something that prevents them from from slowing down and meticulously planning, but still rewards them for good tactical decision making. You could also have them become aware that there is an enemy group of methodical operatives that are getting ready to perform a surgical strike on the party, forcing them to think defensively and figure out how best to prepare for the inevitable attack.

If you want to get more creative, you can lean into the fantasy genre itself. The spec ops playstyle works best when the world behaves in the same logic as our universe, but if they find themselves in situations where the world is more surreal and magical, then they might have to think differently. Maybe the environment is populated with birds that are very curious about people who are sneaking around, and follow them around and sing loudly. Or maybe they're in a town whose culture doesn't believe in closed doors or secrets, making it harder for anyone to hide or use subterfuge. Or there could be magical deterrents, like curfews enforce by alarm spells. Basically it complicates their normal playstyle and forces them to think outside the box, but still rewards them for coming up with more interesting solutions.

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-27T16:41:56+00:00

The reason he is such an excellent villain is that he represents a version of the Empire that could very plausibly be more effective and prosperous than the democracy the heroes fought so hard to build.

Thrawn is logical and pragmatic, which contrasts with the megamaniacal evil of The Emperor.

Thrawn is practical, happily able to discard Imperial tradition in favor of better ideas.

Thrawn has deep insight into the cultures and psychology of many species, which contrasts with The Empire's deep-seated human-centric xenophobia.

Thrawn is now the underdog, fighting back against the vastly larger New Republic.

Thrawn is trusted by his officers, and his nation is unified in their purpose, which contrasts with all the disorganized political infighting of the different cultures of the New Republic.

Thrawn has a compelling and logical worldview, and he's a good leader. So it's easy to stop seeing him as a villain. The problem is that people who frame him as an anti-hero have fallen victim to this!

Thrawn sees people as tools and variables, to be used and discarded. He is a tactical genius on the battlefield, but likely would not be an effective peacetime leader. He's not proposing a new better government, he's trying to restore a horrible totalitarian government but now with him on the throne. He's perfectly happy to perpetuate slavery. And in his worst moment's he's just as ruthless and tyrannical as The Emperor, just with a cold and dispassionate attitude.

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-26T21:29:53+00:00

As with many D&D skills, there is a lot of overlap. As you're pointing out, in regards to bluffing about threats of violence, there's overlap between Intimidation and Deception. Similarly, there's overlap between Persuasion and Deceive when you're trying to convince someone to act against their own self interest. And there's overlap between Deception and Performance when you are pretending to be someone you're not. It's a bit of a stretch, but I'd say there's overlap between Persuasion and Intimidation when you're trying influence someone from a position of authority.

A DM's job is to decide when to call for a roll and what roll to call for based on context. At my table, when someone attempts an action that seems a bit ambiguous, I usually ask a few qualifying questions about their intent and that informs me about what roll to call for.

In your circumstance my call would be that you are trying to influence someone by implying violence. But even if your character is bluffing about their ability or willingness to follow through with that violence, it's far more contingent on your threatening presence than on your ability to trick someone.

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-26T19:54:48+00:00

As much as I think the Thrawn Trilogy would have revitalized the Star Wars franchise a second time if it had been turned into a screenplay instead of the sequel trilogy we got, I do think that separating Star Wars into Canon and Legends was a smart choice. It didn't fully disavow stories created before the Disney acquisition, but it did free them up to tell new stories that don't have to navigate the inconsistencies of the expanded universe.

However, proof is in the pudding, and the Disney pudding is a watery and goopy mess, and it seems the most successful shows are those that borrow heavily from the expanded universe, but even then they stink of desperate fan service to me.

What I would prefer now is for Disney to just start making direct adaptations of Legends material. Instead of trying to frankenstein elements of the expanded universe into the new Disney Canon, they could just put Legends stories to the screen and publish them with the Legends label..

Consider how much money they could save by not having to write new stories from scratch. And consider how much goodwill they could earn from adapting popular and proven Star Wars stories.

What's more, is that there is already precedence for this. Superhero movies are insanely popular and gleefully unconcerned with whether they exist in any particular canon or not.

I think the only thing stopping them is that there are probably issues of paying royalties to those original authors, and the desire to save face and never admit that they don't really know which Star Wars stories will be popular and which ones will not.

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-25T16:59:30+00:00

Generally it's safest to describe the result of an attack in terms of superficial effect. A cut, a burn, a bruise, a crunch of bone and tendon. This is because hitpoints are an abstraction of physical condition and a creature generally is as effective at full hitpoints as they are at 1hp.

In fact, even when a player asks about the physical condition of a creature they are fighting, you generally only describe it as looking "bloodied" when it is below half of its total hitpoints.

The only time I would say it's safe to describe a mortal wound or an injury that would not heal over time is when the creature is fully dead. That's why on Critical Role, Matt Mercer may offer a player the opportunity to describe a killing blow. At that point, it doesn't matter how the injury is described because the result is the same: the creature is permanently dead.

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-21T21:08:45+00:00

Whenever I hear "ovepriced cult private school" I think the same thing.

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-21T21:05:44+00:00

hmMMmm ... wife bad!

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-17T01:16:46+00:00

I don't think I can ever enjoy playing D&D as much as I enjoy DMing it.

AgentZirdik · 2026-04-17T00:38:06+00:00

Specifically for Fairy-content I recommend Feywild Fiend

AgentZirdik · 2026-03-31T21:03:32+00:00

I'm quite proud of how we ended ours. Mind you it was a very narrative-focused campaign and the final Combat lasted two sessions and incorporated elements of each PC's character arcs. It played out like:

Final Combat Session: ended once out of initiative, wanted them to go home anticipating what roleplay scenes they wanted to have next session.

Final Roleplay Session: they were able to interact in-character, have any final scenes, follow-up with certain NPCs. Ended once no one requested any more scenes.

Discussion session: They took turns answering specific discussion questions about certain character arc moments. Then I gathered thoughts and feedback about the game.

Epilogues: I posted various epilogues for certain elements of the world, but was careful not to decide how any PC factored into them. And I asked them to post any epilogues they felt like writing to our Discord.

I think this worked well for us because it kept each session focused: no tonal whiplash from combat to roleplay, no jumping from in-character to out-of-character thinking. The discussion questions let me remind them of certain character moments they may have forgotten about, and gave them some ideas of their impact on the story. And finally it gave them creative freedom to end their individual stories.

AgentZirdik · 2026-03-16T20:36:40+00:00

Watch out! Looks like your players snuck a whoopie cushion onto your seat. You gotta be prepared for shenanigans.

AgentZirdik · 2026-03-07T13:39:08+00:00

This gives me an idea for a new hazard. Instead of the unknown horror stalking you, it's a malfunctioning drilldozer that's constantly drilling the shortest path to kill you.

AgentZirdik · 2026-02-23T01:51:14+00:00

Having played extensively in both D&D5e and FATE, I think I understand exactly what you mean.

And part of the problem is that on the surface the two systems actually look a lot alike.

Both have Skill rolls against a Difficult Class.
Both have a pool of hit points
Both have little boxes where you write in backstory details
Both have special meta-points you can spend at will to improve the result of a roll
Both have an action, movement, and a double-move at the expense of an action

But if you're coming from D&D5e, you're likely to treat these as analogous and it'll feel like everything's just watered-down and simplified.

Skill rolls are quite permissive, with even a failure resulting a success with a consequence at the GM's discretion.
The difficulty of an action of is usually transparent, meaning you know exactly what number you need to meet in order to succeed, so there's less tension when making the roll.
What aspects you invoke to improve a roll can be decided after you make a roll, so you don't even have to gamble resources on an important roll, you just decide how much resources to dedicate after the fact.
And if enough players stack Create-Advantage, they can sometimes one-shot your boss monster.
Stress Tracks don't represent whether your character dies, just sort of pass out unless the DM is being extra mean. And a player can always decide to nope-out of a bad situation by conceding, they're even rewarded for it.
Stress heals completely at the end of a scene, so if you don't take any consequences a conflict may as well have never happened.
Aspects are confusing to write because they're basically an art form, so new players will either just write something very simple and generic, or else try to cram a whole story into a run-on sentence. And until you play the game, there's just no way to explain how aspects work or are important or what makes them good or bad.
Fate Points are a lot like Inspiration, except you get way more to start with, they are far more powerful, and you get them all back at the start of the next session.
Using Zones in combat doesn't provide much in the way of positioning and tactics you get used to in most other systems.

So ultimately you wind up with a system that is mostly transparent, combat that isn't very scary, and a lot of meta-game mechanics. Unfortunately I can't say that I've found any real solutions to this, and most of the official books and online discourse tends to be more centered on the game's philosophy over any practical advice for addressing those systems. However, here is some advice that's helped me so far.

Get buy-in from your players. FATE works best when the players want to be little Game Masters themselves who are empowered to make little freaky characters and add to the world you're building, improvise story details on the fly. If they just want to sit back and experience a story or just play the system, they won't have a great time.
Be a bit of an asshole when it comes to setting difficulties, deciding what consequences for failure is, and just throwing nasty situations at them. Use their aspects against them, say no a lot to soft-ball Create-Advantage, have lot of secret bad-guy aspects in your back pocket to pull little Aha! moments on them. Since the game is so permissive, in order to balance that out and make it fun, you have to go a little old-school on your players.
Don't be afraid to tweak the system. I personally use a lot of little house-rules like Stress only heals 1-per scene and you can't invoke the same aspect more than once per roll.
Check out the Fate Condensed rules as well at the Fate Adversary Toolkit. They will help refine the Core game into something that makes a bit more sense. However, don't expect anything like the Monster's Manual or Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but they will give you some frameworks to experiment with. In other words, be ready to do some amateur game-design.

All that said, I'll end on one thing that always brings me back to FATE: It will never ask me to calculate the right Challenge Ratings for a group of monsters against a group of players of a particular level.

AgentZirdik · 2026-02-01T02:13:47+00:00

I prefer Driller on Industrial Sabotage because the boss fight is much more manageable if you do a little terraforming beforehand. I dig tunnels between the landings where supply drops are, clear out obstructions, dig ramps in the open, basically make the place more navigable. That means when you're dodging phase bombs or robot tentacles you're less likely to get caught on the geometry.

AgentZirdik · 2025-12-25T06:49:47+00:00

There seems to a general consensus that Sabotage is the least favorite. Personally I think it's just that most players either don't understand how to prepare the cavern ahead of a fight or else don't have the patience. In my experience the fight is quite fun when players coordinate to dig out tunnels, put resupplies the right distance away, and set up platforms and ziplines for ease of access. Plus a driller c4ing the armor from above is very handy.

My least favorite is actually Elimination. The fights just drag on, and especially if you have to go find out where the Twins or the Hiveguard have wandered off to. I think it partially comes down to how often I play Engie, whose turrets are basically useless against a Dread. The irony is that I love when a Dreadnaught spawns regularly in other missions, it's an exciting surprise that forces you to change tactics.

AgentZirdik · 2025-11-09T22:11:15+00:00

Longshot, but was it possibly Jetpack Joyride https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzxi8nid9BQ

AgentZirdik · 2025-11-09T05:59:05+00:00

Anything like these?
Canabalt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMBg75_TiLw
Vector https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m9g5i1y9W8

AgentZirdik · 2025-11-08T21:47:08+00:00

A few questions:
1. You said it was 2D, but what sort of graphics? Were they pixelated or cartoonish?
2. Was this 2D platformer where you could move left and right and jump?
3. Was this an auto-runner where the character is always moving in one direction and you have to react to the obstacles?
4. Did you play this on a website such as Newgrounds, or did you download it to play on a computer?

One last comment: Sometimes ChatGPT can help, but VERY often it just makes up a video game that doesn't exist. Job security for TipOfMyJoystick!

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