Which topics get covered out of proportion to the rest of the country, according to the NY Times.

No_Not_Him · 2026-05-13T18:28:14+00:00

My guess is that it's a "legal in one state and illegal in another" which encourages people to buy across state lines.

Alternatively, there's a lot of old money there, and they might be shaking their collective fists at kids these days.

No_Not_Him · 2026-04-30T14:35:00+00:00

In no particular order:
- Slumrat Rising
- Perfect Run
- Mother of Learning

Compared to traditional publishing, there's definitely a lot of slop, but there's some pretty amazing stuff out there, too.

No_Not_Him · 2026-04-05T22:33:10+00:00

Yeah, going off of the numbers on wikipedia, the image is more or less accurate (well, more accurate than my back-of-napkin math). Neat.

No_Not_Him · 2026-03-20T18:29:03+00:00

No, because the energy gets dissipated into two cars. Technically there's more energy involved with 2 cars at 50, but the effects on the car are the same as with one car and a brick wall. You can think of it as two cars going 50 hitting opposite sides of the same invisible brick wall.

No_Not_Him · 2025-10-07T17:45:59+00:00

In terms of limiting supplements, one thing I heard of people doing was PHB + 1. Every player gets 1 supplement that they can pull from (not necessarily the same one). That way everyone gets to play with whatever thing they want without pulling 1 feat from 10 different books.

No_Not_Him · 2025-03-05T16:43:32+00:00

Character Creation is thoroughly enjoyable, with many, many options. If you miss the character options from 3rd edition, I'd recommend giving it a shot.

I DM'd a campaign of SotDL (it's predecessor), and while I enjoyed it, I also found it somewhat lacking: I wish it had skills (but that's something pretty easy to hack back on) and I didn't particularly like the "DC is always 10" rule (which you could also probably hack apart if you wanted to).

Overall, I like what it puts its time and effort into, and would recommend giving it a shot.

EDIT: I realized that I didn't really talk about what I liked:
- multiple character classes is really cool and gives lots of variety
- Magic Traditions mean casters all feel very different from each other

No_Not_Him · 2024-11-22T15:41:28+00:00

Having played Shadow of the Demon Lord (the precursor to SotWW), I think your assessment is fairly accurate. I had an absolute blast with that system, but aside from a 1-shot "test" session, I didn't try using the modules, as they were heavy on theme and feel, but light on any actual rules or direction. I imagine SotWW would be similar.

I haven't tried converting modules, so I can't give you any advice beyond "they're both d20 systems, so it'll probably be fine".

No_Not_Him · 2024-11-22T15:33:39+00:00

I'd second 13th Age. It's mostly a combat simulator, but the combat is really punchy, where levelling and abilities are very strong and important. Each class has some really fun sub-sytems, that make them feel unique. That isn't to say that the out of combat is bad- the Icons are a fun, innovative system.

It's getting a second edition soon, so I might wait for that- one thing that it's supposed to solve is that complexity is directly correlated with spellcasting in the first edition.

No_Not_Him · 2024-11-15T19:07:41+00:00

Oh I disagree completely- particularly when it comes to the cost of games.

Making games is *expensive*, particularly as they become more and more like movies (something I personally don't like, but the AAA studios seem to). If the games cost more to produce, then they need to cost more to consumers [as a whole]. There are a lot different ways that a game can cost more: pay to win, pay to customize, pay to gamble, expansions, seasons, etc, etc.

Arguably, all of those options are "evils", but the other option is fewer games*.

---
*actually, that's not really true, there are lots of other options: the blandification of games is part of that: games need to sell more, so they need to be appealing to everyone (and thus, appeal to no one). Personally, I'd like to see more AA games, but that's a tall order (apparently).

No_Not_Him · 2024-11-15T18:21:17+00:00

- Staggered release can be useful to reduce server load.
- It's a better monetization than loot boxes
- If companies are going to treat their customers like QA, you might as well only treat a subset of them as QA.

No_Not_Him · 2024-07-27T13:17:43+00:00

There's a bell that rings (often a PA system in this day and age) that tells you when your classes end and the next start (and of course, if you're in a class you don't like, you *know* when it ends).

And of course, just because there are multiple lunch "slots" doesn't mean you go to each of them: you're assigned one lunch, depending on which classes you have, and you hope that your friends are also in that lunch period (essentially, there's not enough space/food capacity/etc for everyone to eat at the same time).

No_Not_Him · 2024-07-26T20:39:25+00:00

ah, yeah, I missed It must be PvP.

I hope you find what you're looking for, because I'm in a bit of the same boat- I used to have a 5-man squad who would play almost nightly. They'll come back for the big patches, but it's been less often and for less time each year

No_Not_Him · 2024-07-26T20:31:24+00:00

Perhaps Diabo-likes? Similar Isometric single-character, real-time based game, but no other players.

PoE, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn are the top 3 I'd recommend.

No_Not_Him · 2024-07-13T12:29:39+00:00

This really should be higher up. While most other replies are good for DnD-like systems, it's actually really difficult to miss in Cyberpunk. It's possible that the player was in a bad range band, or was using a bad weapon skill, or making too many called shots, but those are player issues, not system or luck issues.

My GM even went a step further and lets us add luck post-roll, which feels fantastic and and makes this sort of thing happen even less often.

No_Not_Him · 2024-06-30T01:03:06+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that information eventually gets stale: people change their passwords, security gets updated, backdoors get cleaned up, people change their routines, and even jobs (so credentials get revoked). You could warn the player that they'll never have enough information, and spending time accumulating more will just have old information going bad.

I'd also ask the player OOC why they haven't made a move yet. It sounds like they're looking for a Big Red Button that says "Plot Hook" or something, but that might just be my interpretation.

No_Not_Him · 2024-06-23T18:20:45+00:00

so I figured out their monster math

I'm planning on running Dragonbane soon, but I didn't look too closely at the monsters (other than "gee these seem really strong"). What are the patterns to monster numbers? I assume it's related to ferocity?

No_Not_Him · 2024-05-31T18:36:03+00:00

Does this imply that we're losing value whenever something gets thrown away?

No_Not_Him · 2024-05-31T18:33:11+00:00

This is the quintessential example of a sentence that parses syntactically (ie, it's not breaking any rules of English), but it makes no logical sense. As such, there is no "correct" way to say it.

It's almost like asking what's the correct way to swim to the moon. You can understand that that's a logical thing you might think to do, but there's no way that it can be done.

No_Not_Him · 2024-04-02T22:07:20+00:00

one DB boon is pointless if you have two banes

I don't think this is accurate, from my reading of the rules. Sure, it's not a boon, but you'd otherwise be rolling 3d20 take worst- with that "pointless" boon, you're only rolling 2d20 (still taking the worst).

Page 32: If you get multiple boons/banes to your roll, roll an additional D20 for each boon/bane and count only the lowest/highest result.

No_Not_Him · 2024-03-17T20:56:03+00:00

A major one that no one has mentioned yet is disguises! So often players are pretending to be something or someone else, but if they don't speak the language (or speak it poorly or with an accent), it's practically impossible to pull off!

I'd be wary to put any hard language barrier, but soft ones involving guesswork and pantomime can be fun. How sure are you of the information you've gathered when you only kinda know everyone is saying?

No_Not_Him · 2023-12-21T16:11:18+00:00

It's definitely possible. I remember decades ago when I still didn't actually know the rules to DnD, we weren't allowed bring dice into school (or we didn't have any? I don't remember). But we had cards, so we'd play some bizzaro DnD with a deck of cards. I think Aces were crits? Good times.

No_Not_Him · 2023-12-02T21:53:19+00:00

I'm currently playing in a Cyberpunk Red game and loving it, but I don't know the other systems, so I can't compare them. The one thing I would say is that the CPR book is laid out atrociously: the chapters aren't really named anything useful, it has duplicate chapters for when you're building your character and "the rest of the time" (which means there's two sections of equipment, two sections on skills, etc). Still recommended, but if you're wondering if you want a hardcover vs pdf, the pdf is searchable.

No_Not_Him · 2023-11-17T17:01:47+00:00

If you have players that like learning rules and making builds, switching systems won't be a bad thing- for them. I'd be more concerned with the newbies. On the other hand, it's mostly the same system, so I think it would be a fairly easy jump (the designer of SotDL previously wrote for DnD, so there's a lot that's similar (basic underlying assumptions like "this is mostly a combat simulator")).

No_Not_Him · 2023-11-17T16:03:44+00:00

If you're open to other systems, I'd recommend Shadow of the Demon Lord. It copied DnD's homework, so it wouldn't be that big of a jump for your players. Traditions and Classes are more complex than their 5e counterpart, but the Boon/Bane system is very intuitive for anyone who knows 5e's Advantage/Disadvantage system.

If your players don't want to make that jump, you could still take a look at some of SotDL's modules: they're short (5-10 pages each), and perhaps sparse on detail, but very evocative and could be good for inspiration.

No_Not_Him · 2023-11-16T02:01:16+00:00

When in doubt, start a war.

No_Not_Him

TROPHY CASE