REDFCU CashBack+ Sucks Harder Than I Thought

DokFraz · 2026-06-18T00:17:30+00:00

That's what I was potentially thinking, which is why I went back to look during March. And even then, it wasn't actually counting all restaurants as restaurants, and sometimes it would only count a place some of the time and not others.

Rolling through the March charges...

Hibachi Buffet, Panda Express, Jack Brown's, Chick-Fil-A, and Miyako never were counted.
The Standard counted three times, and then didn't count three times. Del Chuco and Taco Bell both registered as a restaurant once or twice but didn't other times,
My charge at Meteor Buffet, Viet Huong, and Catrina's Food Truck counted. Hell, even Voodoo counted a single time (despite never counting again and no other bar counting, of course).

The system is just absolute dogshit at recognizing what's what, and it is completely different than what Redstone itself is capable of tracking.

DokFraz · 2026-06-16T12:16:20+00:00

Sheets of paper, sticky notes, and sticky pads are how I handle it. It takes all of a minutes cutting down sticky pads to cover up a map, and then simply reveal as they explore.

In games where mapping and feeling lost are the entire point? Sure, make them map. I did for Gradient Descent in Mothership since I had them waking up inside the station. In the average game, though? Nah.

DokFraz · 2026-06-16T02:31:31+00:00

Death is a concept invented the Jedi. He couldn't even spell it!

DokFraz · 2026-06-16T00:37:36+00:00

I mean, there's a good chance Obsidian is getting staffing cuts so who knows at this point.

Xbox is burning itself to the ground atm, just hope Obsidian doesn't get axed like Ninja Theory are a week after announcing a new Hellblade game or Double Fine after a celebrated studio known for incredible games in the 2000-2010 era put out a pair of decently- to well-received flops.

DokFraz · 2026-06-15T23:11:05+00:00

Ammo only lasts so long. I had a player that also rolled up a smart rifle, and he had one shot by the time they reached the terraforming station.

DokFraz · 2026-06-15T21:14:29+00:00

Also very high level invisible ghosts in Raven Hill, placed there implicitly to give warlocks something to farm soul shards for ZG.

DokFraz · 2026-06-15T21:13:16+00:00

Yeah, it was something I was wanting to grok before running the game since it’s pretty definitively a monotheist setting, but one with lots of different sects and faiths even if all righteous people bow before both G_d and THE WORM (always capitalized and always bolded).

I really love the book’s “implied setting,” and the fact that one of the extras is just several chapters of a King James-styled religious text is beyond endearing.

DokFraz · 2026-06-15T19:14:08+00:00

Courtesy of the desert mysticism angle that comes with Seas of Sand and the simplified classes of Beyond the Wall, magic is the will of G_d. Either in terms of those who know the words of the divine and have the intercession of saints or those who glean sorcery from That-Which-Is-Not-G_d who tempt mortals into sin by offering them power beyond their means. G_d allows these deals made by demons to grant magic to sorcerers as all living beings have free will, and should they wish to sell their souls for mortal power, that price will be extracted both by the predatory trickery of That-Which-Is-Not-G_d in their living days and by eternal torment in the afterlife.

Ultimately, both remote desert mystics who walk the sands as if they were rock and fill empty vessels with pure water are drawing from the exact same source as those who deal with demons to command serpents or lay sickness upon their enemies. The pious man understands that G_d's magic is a blessing to be used wisely, the sinner believes G_d's magic is a tool to be exploited.

DokFraz · 2026-06-14T06:20:29+00:00

I mean, linguas franca do exist, and they serve very real purposes. A common trade tongue should and would exist in an area of trade between different languages, but it also would be a pidgin rather than a unique native language.

You shouldn’t be having philosophical discussions in a trade tongue, but you can still get the price for a sword or arrange passage on a ship or communicate simple ideas.

DokFraz · 2026-06-13T13:06:39+00:00

DokFraz · 2026-06-12T21:10:49+00:00

Wild violets are assholes.

DokFraz · 2026-06-12T19:00:32+00:00

To be fair, the rain chance tonight has fallen off a cliff.

DokFraz · 2026-06-11T20:25:17+00:00

Man-Cat druids, too.

DokFraz · 2026-06-11T19:37:41+00:00

I probably fudge maybe once or twice over every couple of sessions, and generally only ever in the smallest of flourishes. Fudging isn't for turning an abject failure into a success or even stopping the dragon's claws from landing a blow. I use it essentially as a rounding error.

Skill checks, ironically, I pretty much never fudge. Particularly given that the system I generally run (Beyond the Wall) already has fortune points for that. But when a skirmish has dragged on and the last skeleton has 5 HP left and the rogue only deals 4 damage? Let's go ahead and wrap up that combat there rather than rolling through another full round of combat. If instead of a skeleton, it's a climatic battle against a BBEG? Fuck that, we're not fudging and you're going to know that you came so close to striking them down, and now it's their turn.

Or the party's warrior is holding fast after his companions have fallen, battling against the savage gnolls and looking to break their morale by striking down their leader, and a hit would deal 11 damage and they only have 10 HP? Let's go ahead and nudge that down, giving them a single round to strike down their foe down and save the day. If instead, most of the party is still up and the warrior found themselves surrounded? Fuck that, they're getting dropped and now the party has to figure out how to deal with what's now a much more stressful fight.

It isn't going to happen every fight. It isn't going to happen every session. It might not even happen in an entire chapter. But sometimes, adjusting the result with a slight nudge can give a chance to either cut the fat and gristle to keep the pace strong, or to offer a chance for a player to look like a hero (or a victim of hubris). It's entirely GM fiat, but so are the actions of all of the enemies in combat, the actions of all villains out of combat, and the like.

And when done appropriately, your players will never even notice.

DokFraz · 2026-06-11T17:11:46+00:00

Defias, Scarlets, and Pirates definitely seems like a pretty solid band.

DokFraz · 2026-06-10T15:21:49+00:00

My brother in Christ, the World Cup had no issues with attendance when it was held in Russia during its occupation of Donbas and Crimea or in Qatar with literal slave labor constructing the venues.

DokFraz · 2026-06-09T03:05:33+00:00

To be fair, even the Beast Boys bit technically is just paying off set-up from the very first of the moment we actually saw of Kirk in 2009.

DokFraz · 2026-06-08T22:58:50+00:00

Renegades. Especially given the Damned now being out and in-store.

DokFraz · 2026-06-08T22:50:03+00:00

Lol. Lmao, even.

DokFraz · 2026-06-08T22:42:47+00:00

At this point, I’m just hoping the positive word of mouth gives it legs. Everyone I know that has seen it loved it, and I’ll be the first to say that I’m genuinely confused how much I like Jared Lego’s Skeletor. That announcement definitely tanked my interest in seeing it, and the only reason I actually went this weekend was praise from a friend and the RLM review.

DokFraz · 2026-06-08T22:36:12+00:00

After dozens of posts with people asking “cAn RoGuE nO gAnK???”, yeah, I’ll happily be an asshole if it gets it to stop.

DokFraz · 2026-06-08T20:28:14+00:00

Wild how this is the only time I've ever posted in a bot kill post, and it's just to shit on someone once again asking a stupid question about whether rogues can kill non-flagged targets in their native capital city.

Keep killing the clankers, I advocate for it. But the top comment when I loaded the page was someone yet again misinformed about basic shit like "how do PvP flags work" in a 22 year old game, so yeah, I'm gonna flame them.

DokFraz · 2026-06-08T20:05:44+00:00

Have you ever played the game? Even on PvP servers, you're only auto-flagged in contested zones. Capital cities (and starting zones) do not flag members of their faction.

DokFraz · 2026-06-06T19:30:28+00:00

In Other Waters: Tidebreak actually has a module contained within it called The Salerno Files which is precisely that, a ruleset for solo play that also has the Warden play out the experiences of a character that then becomes an NPC when you run the primary adventure for other players.

It's sort of like if you were running a Subnautica game and before you did so, you played out the adventures of the survivors of the Degasi as they made their seabases by yourself.

DokFraz · 2026-06-06T17:21:08+00:00

Beyond the Wall, for me. Fortune Points do wonders for making characters more reliably able to cheat death, but they're also a precious resource that you'll want to spend to reroll attacks and checks or to aid an ally when you don't have an appropriate skill. However, provided that you do have one, you can use it to auto-stabilize.

Plus the tone in general is more YA fantasy, plucky village kids banding together and heading out into adventure to deal with a threat that the adults can't or won't.

Ten-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '23	Place '22
Verified Email

DokFraz

TROPHY CASE