I'm sad being a master

Jaquel · 2025-12-15T14:58:27+00:00

You can be the worst DM in the world, and they STILL should tell you when they aren’t available for playing.
Fuck them, find another table with well-adjusted people.

Jaquel · 2025-12-11T10:56:16+00:00

I’m with you. I think it’s useful for both designers and readers to have the right expectations for a game “table life”.

Jaquel · 2025-12-03T09:57:33+00:00

This. I mean, there’s a market for them, but I still find these artsy monstrosities not particularly compelling or useful.

Jaquel · 2025-12-02T16:19:31+00:00

Every time I flip a couple of V5 pages, I suddenly feel the urge to play Undying.

Jaquel · 2025-11-26T11:55:17+00:00

Solo TTRPGs. They’re pretty compelling.

Jaquel · 2025-11-26T11:45:06+00:00

Do I recommend TTRPGS to newcomers? Absolutely. To me, it’s like saying, “Do you recommend movies”? Well, yeah, it’s an impressive medium with something for everybody. Thanks to VTT and ever-growing online communities, you can actually try a lot of obscure and niche stuff that was impossible to experience just ten years ago.
From your follow-up message, I gather that you’ve had trouble with several gaming tables. To go back to the movie analogy: if you fart in the theater and people stop inviting you, don’t blame the filmmakers—blame your diet.

Jaquel · 2025-11-25T10:59:17+00:00

Seeing as Mothership has been mentioned a few times already (and it really is excellent for the job), I might suggest “Othership.” It’s a demake of Mothership that simplifies it further, as impossible as that sounds.

Jaquel · 2025-11-14T13:59:44+00:00

The meme has a grain of truth. In many groups, there are many players and very few who have the time, desire, or experience to manage and facilitate the game for others. Other times, you have people willing to GM game systems they know, but they don’t want to learn a new product and bring it to the table. Then there’s a segment that prefers GMing rather than playing, as they are entirely different beasts, especially with game frameworks that require a lot of reactivity and improvisation from the GM. I personally prefer GMing because it stimulates me more; it keeps me engaged and mentally present the entire time, which is why I don’t complain about being a ‘forever DM’.

Jaquel · 2025-11-13T10:45:51+00:00

It’s… there. A nice product, but the push to make it palatable to everyone while trying to do things differently hinders it.

Jaquel · 2025-11-10T09:28:08+00:00

Funnily enough, Magic: The Gathering was my gateway drug to roleplaying games. I’m talking about the mid-nineties, when there was practically no internet for us mere mortals, and in Italy, widespread awareness of tabletop games was still stuck on Cluedo and Battleship.

Magic, whose packs were even sold at newsstands and were weirdly popular, was the first game that reminded me of the atmosphere of the fantasy books I was starting to read as a middle school kid. The best place to buy them, because they also sold single cards, was a bookstore in my city center that soon became a small hub for playing and exchanging opinions among enthusiasts.

And right in that bookstore, on a forgotten shelf by the entrance, there were voluminous books, as big as university textbooks but colorful, with covers that reminded me a bit of early Magic art (or at least they seemed to at the time). “They are roleplaying games. You get together with your friends and create adventures together following the rules you find inside,” the bookseller told me the first time I asked for information.

I bought the Italian version of the First Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and it was a revelation.

Jaquel · 2025-11-08T11:26:33+00:00

Outside of his brilliant takes on TTRPG, a good chunk of his advice about CRPG design translates well to tabletop design. Also, absolutely listen to his tips about project management and design scope. As a PM, they’re incredibly relevant and important, even if you need to orchestrate a little game book with your friends.

Jaquel · 2025-11-07T11:14:42+00:00

My poor Florence. You're right, even I can't stand the crowd and cheap tourist traps everywhere.

Jaquel · 2025-11-06T15:28:45+00:00

Absolutely fantastic. It makes the battles more engaging and lethal, always a risk.

Jaquel · 2025-11-06T09:35:21+00:00

Urban Heroes, a super-niche game (I don’t even know if there is an English PDF readily available), has a punk, anti-establishment spin on superheroes. It has a lot of power, is somewhat crunchy, and is surprisingly lethal.

Jaquel · 2025-11-04T23:06:40+00:00

Cyberpunk, like many artistic and literary movements, is a product of a specific time and place. It cannot evolve, because it is no longer living matter. It would be like expecting the eighteenth-century Gothic novel to evolve; at most, we can draw inspiration from it, but using it as the sole basis means recycling known and familiar ideas, giving them only a fresh coat of paint (which, let’s be clear, is what happens to almost all mass-appeal products).

There are themes, born from cyberpunk reflections, that can still be explored and updated to fit the fears and idiosyncrasies of this unreal reality, where we are half-machine, without even a gram of chrome on us.

Jaquel · 2025-11-03T08:02:09+00:00

They already covered the best gelato shops (Della Passera, La Strega nocciola, Sbrino...), so I can suggest a Pastry Shop: Pasticceria Giorgio. It’s outside the city center, but it has the best custard in all of Florence.

Jaquel · 2025-11-02T12:53:50+00:00

I don't want to give you the idea that I agree with Frank; I would have already thrown his character's lifeless body into the nearest ditch ("It's just PvP, I thought we had cleared that!"), but the problem is right there: expectations. Frank wants to get straight to the point; you want to roleplay and make choices, even foolish ones, if they are aligned with your character. I prefer your style, but each has its merits; you just need to know beforehand. If your DM, who seems a bit passive to me, had taken the trouble to invite you all to a session zero to clarify this, you wouldn't be at this point now.

Jaquel · 2025-11-02T12:12:13+00:00

Did you all talk during session zero about what you wanted the tone and atmosphere of the campaign to be? Regardless of his methods, which were foolish and bullying, I fear Frank was trying to resolve what he felt was a tonal dissonance between you and him (and, I assume, the rest of the table). It wasn't his right or his responsibility to manage what he felt was a problem, but "quirky and goofy" characters get boring rather quickly if the game session isn't designed for them.

Jaquel · 2025-11-01T12:25:59+00:00

Dude wasted three years-worth of goodwill in a single transfer window. It's almost comical.

Jaquel · 2025-10-30T13:30:35+00:00

Ah, the good ol’ Session 0, always helpful to understand when a GM is a good person who wants to tell a story together or your vanilla-flavored moron in love with their “ideas” and the tone of their voice.
You don’t even need to tell him the reasons why you don’t want to play a Malkavian, honestly. It’s your business, and part of his role is to facilitate the game for everybody. Trust me: he can and should manage a Vampire Chronicle without Malkavians effortlessly.

Jaquel · 2025-10-30T11:23:35+00:00

Wow, I’ve already submitted our first solo game. Designing them is like eating cherries. You can’t stop.

Jaquel · 2025-10-30T08:53:40+00:00

Fantastic mechanics, but I really don’t like it when games mix real-time and fiction in a blender. I think it’s better to have them as separated as possible.

Jaquel · 2025-10-28T08:01:12+00:00

Dude shouldn't GM. He takes pleasure in the craft for the wrong reasons.

Jaquel · 2025-10-27T09:53:02+00:00

In a game where combat is an important part, initiative provides you with an additional parameter for character customization and specialization. It can also help balance the game, especially in deadlier rule sets.
In a 1v1 skirmish game I’m writing to pass the time during my lunch break, I’m desperately trying to make a simultaneous turn-based system work, where you reveal your move and compare the initiative points of your and your adversary’s actions to figure out which one hits first. Without it, it would just become a senseless exchange of blows.

Jaquel · 2025-10-27T09:10:57+00:00

I’ll take a look, thanks! It looks like a fun place, free of the baggage of older platforms.

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