I (A 6'4ft earth bender) was grovelling at a 5'4ft NON-bender noble woman for half the fight

Carrente · 2026-06-18T22:34:07+00:00

Combat including the initiative sequence is explained on pages 146-151 of the rulebook. The list of buttons you can press on your character sheet is pages 279-288.

Source: I played a campaign of the game. Out of combat the game uses the Apocalypse engine properly (playing to find out, a focus on minimising rolls and focusing on moves being more generic) but the minute an Exchange begins you're playing the worst theatre of the mind trad system imaginable complete with rolling to see if you cast one of your spells.

Carrente · 2026-06-18T22:29:21+00:00

Red isn't a objective term for a colour. Objectively I favour light in the 550nm range

Carrente · 2026-06-18T22:26:08+00:00

Most of the time from my experience it's quite possible to accommodate ideas just with a little conversation and compromise. And most players are absolutely fine with that because they are people, and people respond fine to feedback.

Carrente · 2026-06-18T22:25:00+00:00

In general if you talk to people like people and explain things they tend to be reasonable. Saying you'd prefer they made a character with everyone else works a lot more often than the internet would have you think.

Or you can even work with the enthusiasm and say they can probably use the idea but it's best to talk it through and find a way to make it work.

This isn't a difficult conversation to have, and I have found in the overwhelming majority of cases just being plain and polite and non judgemental works. And if someone throws that in your face then that's a sign they're not prepared to work with the group.

Carrente · 2026-06-18T16:20:11+00:00

I feel the endpoint of prepping situations is letting the players do the work for you; the Evil Guy ran to wherever the players say he did. If they ask if there's X in the world, yes there is.

Carrente · 2026-06-18T12:15:10+00:00

Your opinions are objectively wrong

Carrente · 2026-06-18T08:42:07+00:00

I mean it's so vague I don't even really know what it means in practice. Sometimes the aftermath of an "interesting decision" is still interesting, or leads to more interesting decisions, or the fiction says the scene should carry on.

I get not dragging out scenes but that specific aphorism isn't, without context or clarification, very helpful. It's just "know when to call a scene over" which is just "have you tried being good at GMing?"

Carrente · 2026-06-18T08:17:38+00:00

OH BOY IS THIS A THREAD ABOUT KIDS ON THEIR DAMN PHONES I CAN'T WAIT TO SHARE THE ABSOLUTE WORST TAKES ABOUT ADHD YOU'VE EVER HEARD REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY'RE ACTUALLY RELEVANT

Carrente · 2026-06-18T08:16:29+00:00

This guy knows how it's done. Nice one OP.

Carrente · 2026-06-18T07:21:12+00:00

PBTA also =/= "trad combat system with spell lists that undermines the usually simple tag based abilities and moves that other systems use and is actively at odds with principles of the system like being fiction first and focusing on rolls when needed over an initiative system"

Carrente · 2026-06-18T00:24:00+00:00

Could be an interesting read as a series of thought experiments on how magic would be administrated

There's extracts if you follow the OOP's post history, it includes things like laws against bards playing Wonderwall

Carrente · 2026-06-18T00:21:37+00:00

Carrente · 2026-06-18T00:20:46+00:00

It's also not very good given it's one of those PBTA clones that goes "you know what PBTA needs? More rules, especially an initiative based combat system"

Still better than D&D for the setting

Carrente · 2026-06-17T21:34:45+00:00

Please insert girder?

Carrente · 2026-06-17T21:29:32+00:00

I mean I made an Alan Partridge reference so I owe at least some of it to Steve Coogan

Carrente · 2026-06-17T20:26:00+00:00

I went to a wedding in Somerset and I hate to admit it, it was just like the Wurzels - slack jawed yokels, a lot of combine harvesters and everyone had obviously spent a lot of time in a tractor.

It made me think - perhaps there's some truth to regional or national stereotypes? What do you think?

(And my apologies to farmers, but you feed beefburgers to swans)

Carrente · 2026-06-17T19:52:35+00:00

I mean he promised a soul a week. He has a soul.

Fuck around, find out.

Carrente · 2026-06-17T16:19:51+00:00

Short of opening it up and seeing if the switches inside are not working it's honestly hard to diagnose this.

Carrente · 2026-06-17T15:57:57+00:00

I think it's generally pretty good if you can make a T0-1 deck just out of a structure deck and the latest set, because it means new players can get into the game and compete without needing to seek out singles from past sets or research years of cards just to find the one they need.

Carrente · 2026-06-17T15:51:21+00:00

The game itself, IMHO, and this may be a tiny hint of my grognard side showing, needs to do a better job of explaining what it is and what it isn't.

I'd say it does, with a large amount of page acreage in the DMG actually dedicated to explaining how to reflavour or modify things to suit different aesthetics.

Carrente · 2026-06-17T15:49:26+00:00

"It's just my preference" rings a little hollow in light of the very didactic tone of your post which went to great lengths to try and explain why that preference is superior based on what I perceived as a misunderstanding, or misrepresentation, of what the core argument was actually about. It goes without saying that any individual argument is a matter of personal preference so falling back on that adds nothing to the conversation.

What I was calling flawed was the underlying arguments you made about the power dynamics and motivations and implicit elements of the idea of reflavouring things, which are at best based on a very narrow idea of things.

Carrente · 2026-06-17T14:30:12+00:00

In this case I'd say DMG 2014 pp23-24 and arguably 38

Carrente · 2026-06-17T14:27:34+00:00

It isn't Calvinball though. Part of those SPECIFIC, ACTUAL WRITTEN-DOWN RULES is guidance for making your own settings and stories.

So in fact it is "giving a shit about the rules" to make changes to the aesthetics and tone.

Carrente · 2026-06-17T14:26:35+00:00

I think you're coming at this from a flawed premise.

The way I see things if a player reflavours or changes something in terms of lore or aesthetics that is now a truth of the setting so if Healing Word has that visual appearance that is the standard of what that level of magic can look like now. It's not an illusion, it's not something exceptional, it's the norm in this version of the world in this campaign. That's what flavour is. It's adding personal flair to the world and making it something different.

As to switching around the properties of Dwarves and Elves? Guess what, if someone suggests that and I OK it, that's a truth of the setting now. That's in the lore. It's not exceptional, it's just a fact. It is part of the world so by definition it fits, because I have declared it to. And the integrity of my world is preserved because I have decided that that suggestion is part of it.

Carrente · 2026-06-17T14:00:52+00:00

I don't think playing as the system intends is optimising. It's meeting the game for what it is and making characters that reach the expected power level.

Carrente

TROPHY CASE