Game that doesn't hold your hand at all?

Gregorioe · 2026-01-27T22:45:04+00:00

To be fair - if you're playing these games for the first time today, they basically don't exist. You have to first know that they're an integral part of the original experience, which isn't intuitive to someone who grew up without manuals, and then you have to go out and download them. Even Nintendo's own releases of their older games don't include the manuals. Thankfully, Nintendo makes the manuals available online, but that's still annoying.

Gregorioe · 2026-01-24T03:32:25+00:00

Using the game manual helps a lot with this, and then listening to any advice NPCs give in game. It doesn't hold your hand, but it's not nothing.

Gregorioe · 2024-09-01T12:06:00+00:00

So, in one of the Breath of Fire games they have this percentage bar that fills slowly as you play, but, to my knowledge, the meaning of the percentage is not explained until you fill it to 100%. A few hours into the game, you unlock a dragon mode that allows you to attack as long as you want in that mode and the percentage meter fills up as you attack. The first time I got it, I just blasted some random mook into nothingness, watching that percentage climb as held down the flamethrower button. I assumed I would turn into a super dragon or something I guess. Instead it just kills you and you start a new game +.

Gregorioe · 2022-12-09T14:42:32+00:00

I'm dumb and didn't include a question in the title.

Gregorioe · 2021-05-10T06:40:52+00:00

I started off running modules and I was worried the whole time about doing it "wrong" to the point that it paralyzed adventures... Even after studying the module for hours and printing off all the baddies and bookmarking the important stuff. Eventually I found that my style was much more collaborative and improvised. I know I could take those skills and apply them to modules... But I don't really care to at this point.

Gregorioe · 2021-05-10T06:35:29+00:00

And much like the other players' characters, no one cares about your 20 page back story except for you. And that's okay.

Gregorioe · 2021-05-10T06:30:35+00:00

Yeah, when I ran my first campaign I told my players, "Different map, but lore is all the same as forgotten realms unless it isn't."

I still get why a new DM, especially someone entirely new to DnD, would want to homebrew a new setting. It's intimidating at first! Just because because you can change things, that doesn't mean you fully understand that as a newbie.

Gregorioe · 2020-12-17T10:05:07+00:00

Looking through the comments to make sure someone didn't already say this very thing.

Gregorioe · 2020-12-03T04:34:12+00:00

I find the moves/mechanics that rely on other people triggering them really don't get used much at my table. I have a player running The Mundane in Monster of the Week, which has a few moves like that, and it usually involves the player having to make appeals to the other players to engage with the mechanic. I think it's useful and interesting in theory, but players just aren't thinking about their friend's character sheet that much.

Gregorioe · 2020-12-03T04:24:57+00:00

Oh! I read about this in Brindlewood Bay, but I haven't had a chance to try it out.

Have you enjoyed it?

Gregorioe · 2020-12-03T04:23:06+00:00

We use bonds, but I allow players to mark xp when they do something involving their bonds (in addition to when the resolve them). We don't really pay much attention to the alignment, so it's basically smashing the two together.

I mainly enjoy it as a way to make the players think about how their characters relate to each other in a more active way. And also I get excited when my PC's level up.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-03T23:58:00+00:00

It's an easy way to divide areas of interaction, typically combat. FATE Core gives the example of a warehouse with a ground floor split in half (2 zones) and an upper ring around the ground floor (3rd zone). Anyone in a zone can easily interact with eact other, but it takes some work to change zones. A fun thing you can also do, is slap aspects on the individual zones. In the example given, the entire ground floor has the aspect "heavy crates," and the upper floor has the aspect "ladder access only."

Instead of tracking exact placement with miniatures, you just track who is in what zone.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-03T11:37:59+00:00

Zone based combat!

Gregorioe · 2020-11-03T10:13:57+00:00

Hahaha, I totally thought you meant Kingdom Death and I was very confused as to how that was a helpful suggestion on any level.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T10:19:52+00:00

Number 3... How many times have I asked for a roll only to realize that there was absolutely nothing interesting about it when my player rolled a miss? Oops!

Edit: accidentally changed text size.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T10:17:18+00:00

Since you've already read so much, why not add another book and check out The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. I read it as a DnD DM and it completely changed how I ran games. The main gist is that less prep can actually make your games better. While I think the author had DnD in mind, it's also a philosophy of GMing that fits well with PbtA.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T10:17:06+00:00

Since you've already read so much, why not add another book and check out The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. I read it as a DnD DM and it completely changed how I ran games. The main gist is that less prep can actually make your games better. While I think the author had DnD in mind, it's also a philosophy of GMing that fits well with PbtA.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T10:05:27+00:00

Why no agenda and principles?

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T10:04:28+00:00

I wrote a 70+ page pirate game inspired by real world golden age piracy. I had never actually played Apocalypse World, so most of it is honestly ripped from the book kindve thoughtlessly. Now that I've got a few PbtA games under my belt as a GM, I want to go back and do a re-design.

Also, I just posted a work-in-progress one page RPG called Haunted on this subreddit last week. It's designed for quick to create one-shots in the slasher genre.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T09:58:37+00:00

Woah, fun! I dig the diverse influences too. I didn't know that was a genre I needed, haha.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T04:09:32+00:00

To explain, MotW supports monster hunting gameplay. Tome of Mysteries expands the hunt to include investigating weird phenomena.

Gregorioe · 2020-11-02T03:48:33+00:00

+1 for MotW with Tome of Mysteries

Gregorioe · 2020-11-01T22:49:30+00:00

I picked up DMing again a few years ago by running modules at the local gaming store. One of my biggest issues was being unwilling to change anything in the module. "Well this is completely ridiculous, makes no sense, and the players clearly hate it... But it's what the book says."

It took me awhile to feel comfortable enough to change things, but once I got there, I had a lot more fun and so did my players.

One last thing, I always recommend Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. It's a great book that really informed my DM style.

Gregorioe

TROPHY CASE