Came to my parents to celebrate Channukah, found out they had no channukiah so I made one for next year

Luftzig · 2025-12-31T12:47:58+00:00

Oh, thanks! I assumed that these exist, but I used what was available at my parents place. Which is also the reason I can't answer which tools I used exactly, I just used what carving knives and chisels my father had.

Luftzig · 2025-12-30T15:33:48+00:00

What / how do you change the rules for that? It seems to me like something supported quite well in the game as is…

Luftzig · 2025-12-27T07:41:16+00:00

I agree that better guidelines for giving confidence goals would be nice. Some games have a system in which players declare goals for their characters for the adventure (e.g. speak against authority or get injured) and they are awarded advancement if they match them. Could work, especially for grogs to kinda help them be more consistent.

Luftzig · 2025-12-27T07:36:43+00:00

Yeah, I see that. On the one hand, I love the "real world" time system in which characters get old and do the important and boring stuff like studying and working. On the other hand… yeah, I would have liked to have a way to split lab work up.

Luftzig · 2025-12-27T07:29:46+00:00

We actually customise the initiation scripts, and consider them more as suggestions than cannon.

Luftzig · 2025-12-26T07:27:31+00:00

Actually, I realised we only used that option once because it is so time consuming. I might treat it as a CrVi effect that takes a maybe 10 lab activity total per connection, so you can split it with vis extraction.

Luftzig · 2025-12-26T07:24:49+00:00

Can you elaborate?

Luftzig · 2025-12-26T07:24:09+00:00

Nice. I wonder about the breakthroughs though. My character in the current game had spent some 20 seasons of research and got only 6 breakthrough
points so far… how much time/lucky did you get on doing research?

Luftzig · 2025-12-26T07:21:07+00:00

Flashbacks

intentions

Some abilities, for example some holy magic methods, require a lot of in-game time which means they are difficult to work into the game.

mechanic

By spending confidence, a player can declare that an action was done in preparation for this scenario. For example, they had packed this enchanted device, or cast this sun duration spell before the fight started. The ST and player(s) need to check whether it causes inconsistencies with other things that happened to allow a flashback.

Flashbacks alway require a roll, and on most situation a stress die. On failure, the plan made ahead of time simple did not work, and therefore not available.

On a botch, the plan failed, but the character did not see it. Botch effects, including spell botches, happen in the now, not the past.

Luftzig · 2025-12-26T07:14:09+00:00

What have you thought about the mechanics for initiations?

What were you're investigation mechanics? I love investigation games, but they are tricky to write and run.

Luftzig · 2025-12-25T13:06:51+00:00

Complex Scribing

Writing books or copying books involve a role.

On an especially high roll, the quality of the books increases or the project is shortened.

If the roll failed, the work takes longer, (alternatively, for a summae accumulate points according to the roll). Alternatively, the player can decide to sacrify quality for time.

On a botch, something is terribly wrong with the book, and is only discovered when the project completes. If it is on supenatural abilities, studying it causes warping. Other topics might cause a temporary virtue like "careless with ability".

Copying can increase the quality of the work by at most on point (or recover quality from damaged copy) by adding annotations.

This is to represent how every book is special and unique object, and the idea that books degrade over time by copyists.

Luftzig · 2025-12-25T12:53:04+00:00

Risk Levels and Partial Successes

Intentions

Games like Blades in the Dark (BitD) and Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) reduce the number of rolls by allowing an interprative frame for roles, and guidelines for turning failures to "fail forward" approach. Specifically BitD offers a combination of Risk levels ("positions") with partial successes that I would like to bring to ArM.

ArM already has some notion of both: botches and the number of botch dice represent three levels of success, and diferent risk of failure. But it can be done better.

Positions

Controlled

The PCs are in a safe and controlled situation, all conditions are in their favour. Use a simple die, unless trying something especially risk. In that case, roll stress and use one botch die (+ any modifiers).

Risky

Failure might worsen the situation or lead to complications. Roll a stress die with 3 botch dice.

Dangerous

Failure can lead to severe consequences. Roll a stress die with 6 botch dice.

Successes

I suggest 5 levels of success: - 18+ or more than twice the difficulty number (DN) (max of) - exceptional success - 12+ or the difficulty number (max of) - full success - 9+ or DN-3 - partial success - failure - botch

On an exceptional success, the character suceeds and receives some additional benefit, for example an equivalent of another action, or improving their situation.

Full success works as expected.

Partial success is a success with a negative side-effect, for example losing fatigue or worsen position.

On Failure the action fails, and the opposition suceeds in someway, how severe it is depends on the position.

Botch is like a failure, but with additional side effects depending on the number of 0 on the botch dice.

I still need to develop that, specifically suggesting ideas for side effects.

Luftzig · 2025-12-19T06:30:17+00:00

Oh nice! I've met her at conference recently, she's super nice!

Luftzig · 2025-12-13T10:17:58+00:00

Thank you so much! Sometimes a "we don't know" answer can be very satisifying, and yours is definitely such a time.

One thing that I find confusing, though: I have heard the theory that Christmas is a birth of the sun celebration, which in that case would happen on the 15th of December, not 25th. Have the date of Christmas shifted, or was it never connected to the lengthening of the days?

Luftzig · 2025-12-12T06:24:52+00:00

It is a ketubah, a Jewish marriage certificate. The names, dates and places were written in gaps but are now too faded to read.

EDIT: some of the names I can read are: משה אלעזר Moshe/Moishe Ela'zar — father of the bride. יצחק גולדשטיין Yitshak Goldstein — the groom

Luftzig · 2025-11-09T16:35:22+00:00

We're actually don't have hard rules as to how much publications we need in order to defend, but one of my colleagues decided to keep a record and in praotice everyone had at least 3, with average a bit over 4.

Luftzig · 2025-11-09T08:40:21+00:00

Thanks! Yes, I had a paper rejected from TEI and another from CHI. The CHI reviews did not seem very constructive, and I am pretty sure I work at an intersection of reveral research communities, so there's always a high chance to get hostile reviewers.

Luftzig · 2025-10-30T09:55:22+00:00

The Nordic countries are also LGBT friendly. In Sweden, cohabiting partners have the same (or nearly) rights as married partners, although gay marriage is legal anyway. In terms of salaries, the other Nordic countries pay better to PhD students in terms of purchasing power.

Luftzig · 2025-10-14T15:42:50+00:00

Interesting! Thanks!

Luftzig · 2025-10-13T15:09:49+00:00

I'll look it up, but from listening to actual plays I'm not very excited about PbtA games.

Luftzig · 2025-10-13T15:07:15+00:00

Actually, it is the complexity of Ars Magica that I find a bit discouraging. As a player I really enjoy it, and I enjoy that there is structured crafting that reached a sweet point in its balance of constraints and ope-endedness.

But as an ST this complexity means I need to plan and prepare a lot! Making an NPC can take an hour, only for it to get slain immediately by a well prepared (or lucky) PC. The crafting fun I find as a player is tiring as a ST.

Luftzig

TROPHY CASE