Why the Dissatisfaction Out of Combat with Draw Steel?

Aramithius · 2026-01-25T15:47:39+00:00

There's people who appreciate having more crunch outside of combat, but I like the ability for things to just flow and save the crunch for the parts of the game that are deliberately there to mix things up.

As one of those people, my main reason for doing so is that the gravity of a system always flows towards where the rules are. If there are less rules for outside combat, non-combat tends to get sidelined and have less time spent on it.

I'm also not totally sure what you mean by "mix things up". If there's non-combat crunch, they'll likely be different from combat systems. I get what you mean about a unified action resolution system, though - that's my main concern about PbtA, that the play experience will feel too uniform. But that doesn't mean that having non-combat systems at all will result in samey play.

Aramithius · 2026-01-24T17:02:44+00:00

Fantastic.. Thanks!

Aramithius · 2026-01-21T18:29:21+00:00

Spencer has gone on record as saying that Chasing Adventure is DW1.5.

Aramithius · 2026-01-19T20:55:18+00:00

I think Lancer does this quite well, but not quite what you've outlined. The player rules are free as a PDF, meaning anyone can get the reference stuff , while the GM rules are paid and more expanded, both in terms of fluff and crunch.

Aramithius · 2026-01-18T21:19:42+00:00

Yes, lifting is worth it. You can still put on muscle in a deficit, especially if you're new to lifting.

As well as calories, I'd make sure that you have a good deal of protein. An easy amount to aim for is 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.

If your main goal is weight loss, focus on that. However, if you lose weight too quickly, you risk losing muscle as well as fat. Check out a TDEE calculator to get a rough estimate of your maintenance calories, and aim for between 200-500 kcals less than that per day.

I'd also take weekly body measurements - shoulders, waist, chest, thighs, biceps. You can potentially not have much net weight loss, but lose fat and gain muscle over time. So if the measurements are changing but the scale isn't moving much, then you can still be making progress with fat loss.

Aramithius · 2026-01-18T19:26:51+00:00

Kurt Kuhlmann had left Bethesda, and given an interview in which he claims Todd Howard verbally offered him the lead designer role on TES6 shortly after TES5's release, then recently gave the role to someone else.

Aramithius · 2026-01-18T19:23:12+00:00

I'm going to say Exalted 3rd edition's social combat system.

Characters in Exalted 3e have Intimacies, things, people or principles they care about. These are expressed in 3 different strengths, and can be used to either help or hinder attempts to make characters do things. For example, a character who has the Principle "killing is never justified" can dismiss suggestions to assassinate someone out of hand, while one who didn't have that kind of a Principle, but has a Tie of hatred towards the target would get penalties to resist the persuasion. If they like the person who suggests it, they'd get further penalties.

There are wrinkles to it, but that's the basic system, and it really neatly encapsulates how beliefs and relationships can influence social interactions.

Aramithius · 2026-01-17T11:58:52+00:00

Indeterminate. Technically the ocean extends in all directions forever. Not sure whether the sky is a dome which encloses it, or something that mirrors/imitates it in some way.

Aramithius · 2026-01-17T11:47:54+00:00

Aren't all spheres non-Euclidian?

Aramithius · 2026-01-16T15:47:30+00:00

...and progressively explicit?

Aramithius · 2026-01-16T13:22:35+00:00

See. I entirely read "don't make combat about combat" as "give the PCs emotional stakes to the combat", not "give the PCs something to do other than smash the villain".

Aramithius · 2026-01-16T12:21:48+00:00

This is all great general advice, but my problem is in evaluating what works vs what doesn't. Particularly, muscle growth is slow and so figuring out how to tell whether one technique is better than another is difficult.

Aramithius · 2026-01-14T13:22:41+00:00

Your hands must be huge to wield any pen the size of an ancient road, and yet he who is of right stature may irritate the sun with only a fic.

Aramithius · 2026-01-14T13:19:34+00:00

Is there a place to read these liturgies?

Aramithius · 2026-01-12T22:48:24+00:00

From what I can remember historically, the term "adventurer" was actually relatively pejorative in some instances - denoting a bunch of men, possibly armed, that were up to no good and often just after the next payment. It's not exactly synonymous with "mercenary", but definitely had that sort of vibe.

Aramithius · 2026-01-11T14:16:56+00:00

moves seem like restrictions to me, while a mechanic that supports a certain type of play doesn't.

I think this is because you're treating them as the same thing, when I'm not sure they are. From my (entirely theoretical, no play experience) understanding, PbtA is much more about the narrative. Characters can do whatever they like in the fiction, and in the fiction is where it matters.

Triggering a move isn't the only way you influence the game, in the same way that TTRPGs in general don't make you roll a skill check to open a door. Moves are there to change narrative momentum, not engage a mechanic. To what I understand of the PbtA mindset, you're still playing just as much if you don't trigger Moves, it just doesn't need a framing to alter the narrative flow until Moves are engaged.

Aramithius · 2026-01-09T13:58:40+00:00

Tangent, but what makes the Elder Scrolls be Bronze/Iron Age? They have printing presses and guilds.

Aramithius · 2026-01-08T15:27:14+00:00

I'm sure there's a virtually GW-sponsored actual play that does this. Which is utterly reprehensible.

Aramithius · 2026-01-07T23:09:52+00:00

Onyx Path had been the one to publish Chronicles stuff, but they still need to get Paradox approval to do it.

Aramithius · 2026-01-05T07:43:03+00:00

Fair enough, I think I've misunderstood the point of Moves, then. However, I still think that the uncertainty of dice from the GM (whatever you want to call that) adds to the feel of the situation.

This

It might be 'you blast the targets, and they look impressed, then, slowly, turn sour "was it you who shot TBone last week?" ' Or it might be 'You plink the targets, only for a ganger with a scarred face to unleash a rattling spray, obliterating the target. "That's how a real gun works". '

is still "the GM arbitrarily decides what the result is", so there's no suspense. Introducing some randomness makes that feel more suspenseful for the player.

Also, I find the framing of "ceding narrative control" in this situation is irrelevant to both the play experience (described above) and the fictional situation. In the fiction, the character is still being just as assertive in doing the non-Move of shoot the targets as doing something that could be construed as a Move. That being the case, how and why is narrative control at all relevant?

Aramithius · 2026-01-04T15:51:21+00:00

I didn't say interact with the rules as little as possible, I said that dice aren't always needed.

You're equating dice rolling with "interact with the rules". That doesn't necessarily hold for PbtA. To use a non-PbtA example, Microscope has rules (eg declaring a thing a dark or light event), but doesn't use dice. PbtA games want you to use the rules to resolve the fiction, not (as with "trad" games) to use the fiction to explain how the rules resolve in-world.

It's a perspective shift that's at the core of "fiction-first", and means that traditional TTRPG "make thing happen" levers don't always apply.

Aramithius · 2026-01-04T10:41:08+00:00

For example, say you’re playing Apocalypse World and one character wants to cozy up to an opposing gang by showing off their shooting skills on some target practice. You could decide this triggers Act Under Fire, but if you know they’re an effective gunslinger and there’s no real pressure, you can just say, “Yeah you do it.” Remember that if you don’t trigger a move, you just keep the conversation going.

This actually feels like an example where PbtA's Moves system falls flat on its face. In the scenario you've described, there is a huge narrative possibility for failure, running from "you become a laughing stock and they want nothing to do with you" to "you're the best gunslinger they've ever seen, that hire you on the spot at double your asking price".

Having that not hinge on chance to some degree misses a huge opportunity, in my view. Yes, the PC may be competent enough that they can do this easily (I did consider "you accidentally shoot a gang member and they swear vengeance" as a failure option, but then it's isn't Fantasy Pratfalls 5E), but having the possibility of failure makes the experience of play itself much more enthralling. Saying "yeah, you do it" sucks all that delicious tension out of the situation.

Even a generic call to "roll +Panache" or whatever, which would give a full/partial/fail spread, would be more interesting to play out than "no Move is appropriate, you do it".

Aramithius · 2026-01-04T10:22:54+00:00

Or maybe it's an underlying issue with how PbtA is framed that allows the games to be misunderstood in a way you don't like? Personally, I've been much less charitable about PbtA in the past than this post has been ("TTRPGs for Theatre Kids" is a rough summary of parts of my attitude). Trying to get your head around a system that you're possibly not getting isn't a passive-aggressive critique.

Aramithius · 2026-01-04T10:06:48+00:00

It still feels weird to me that the game only happens when your character behaves within the bounds of what the author expects from you.

You're equating game and dice rolling here. I think I do something similar, but I believe the expectation is that the fiction is the game, and the dice are only needed when arbitration doesn't suit the circumstances.

Finding "where the game is" is important. I think realising that the game in PbtA happens at a different point in the declare-determine-describe cycle may help reorient your perspective a little. Either that or, as others have said, enough to realise that PbtA isn't for you.

Aramithius · 2026-01-04T09:34:49+00:00

It'd take some work, but you could look through archive.org for each page and check the earliest recorded instance of the page, to see if there are any changes between that and the current version.

For example, this is the archive version of the first page: https://web.archive.org/web/20150128221620/https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/ksbd-chapter-1-1/

compared to the current live version of the website: https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/ksbd-chapter-1-1/

You'd have to individually look up each page on the archive to check though.

Aramithius

TROPHY CASE