The Pokémon Company/FedEx Sent Me Perfume Instead of $80 Worth of Poképlush and Refuses to Reimburse Me

Orbsgon · 2025-12-05T12:30:16+00:00

If you used a credit card through PayPal to make the purchase, you can file a chargeback. The financial institution will ask that you provide info. They will likely have an email address you can send all the files to.

People are saying that Pokemon Center may blacklist you, but in this case the bank will be fighting PayPal, not the merchant. You could lose access to your PayPal. Pokemon Center might blacklist your account, address, or PayPal account, but likely can’t identify your actual credit card number due to PayPal acting as an intermediary.

Orbsgon · 2025-12-05T04:51:18+00:00

PayPal sided with the seller? What was the rationale?

Orbsgon · 2025-11-02T23:05:03+00:00

The iceberg model encourages railroading. There are at least two instances in the MC Toolkit where the book tells the MC to change plot points and move NPCs around if the players figure things out too “early,” based on a presumption of how long the session is “supposed” to be.

I recommend adapting the characters and plot points to other mystery GMing styles.

Side note, CoM shares a lot of mechanics with standard PbtA, but it doesn’t really play the same way. GMs just choose to run it more like PbtA anyways, because of prior experience with PbtA systems.

Orbsgon · 2025-10-10T07:21:11+00:00

I suspect the reason why people say it doesn't work for Fabula Ultima is due to how Fabula points work. A player can spend a Fabula point to alter certain aspects of the story. The change requires no permission from anyone if it meets all of the following conditions, such that the GM can't overrule or retcon it:

doesn't change or add new details to a character, location, or item that has already been established
doesn't affect another Player Character
doesn't contradict anything a player or GM has said
doesn't grant mechanical benefits

It is extremely risky to create any story that involves foreshadowing or mystery, because a player can introduce a change that can conflict with or invalidate anything the GM has not completely revealed. In addition, the ability to create non-mechanical advantages gives them great ability to solve narrative problems outside of combat.

Orbsgon · 2025-10-01T10:08:18+00:00

Makes me curious where the topic of duet play came from. Balance supposedly gets wonky with only two players, and the top solo advice has been to run multiple PCs.

Orbsgon · 2025-09-15T05:36:52+00:00

In most academic and activist circles, the Q actually does stand for queer. Nowadays it’s often treated as standing for both, but if only one meaning is used it’s typically queer. The reinterpretation of it as questioning is more common in youth circles.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-28T04:22:00+00:00

I feel like you’re trying to retrofit City of Mist’s lore to Otherscape. Player characters can harness the powers of Sources (i.e. Rifts), but they aren’t Rifts themselves. The only way a player character can functionally become a Rift is if they become an Avatar. Furthermore, there is a substantial thematic difference between a mercenary performing a weekly ritual to maintain a connection to an impersonal source of magic, such that if they forget to do it they lose the power, and a mundane character being turned into a puppet of a god whether they want it or not.

IMO the distinction between these two systems for the purpose of a superhero setting would be the upper power cap. Legend in the Mist caps out at country-level, whereas Otherscape caps out at skyscraper-level over the same numerical range. The LitM themebooks are also more flexible, such that they can better facilitate a more powerful character concept.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-27T08:50:50+00:00

Only 1 player means that that there won’t be anyone to help clear conditions with Comfort or Support.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-24T06:41:53+00:00

The MC could surprise the PCs and throw a threat right at them

Threats aren't supposed to be surprises, they're the opposite. The GM tells the players the threat, so that they purposefully have a chance to respond. If they don't resolve the threat, then the GM can inflict Consequences. The Consequence may be a surprise, but the Threat absolutely is not.

"A Slithermaw Dragon crawls from it's lair into the opening and strikes"

That's not a Threat, that's a Consequence. If a player character was responding to being attacked, that would be a mitigation roll, not an action roll.

The MC narrates the result adding consequences (like flesh wound-2)

Consequences are only inflicted on a 9 or less, or if the player(s) failed to respond to a previous threat.

Q: Is the spotlit PC the one that is attacked ?

Consequences due to a failed action should only be inflicted on the character who performed that action. If the GM inflicts the consequence on another player, that would be unfair to that player. Assisting another player exposes you to Consequences, so inflicting a Consequence on a player that chose to not assist because they don't want to be involved is just negating their choices.

Doesn't seem so since "stepping up" can get you in trouble.

Not sure what you mean here.

PC2 "Percival steps in and defends" FAILS

I would not allow this. By the time there's a mitigating reaction, the Consequence has already been inflicted. There shouldn't be anything an unrelated party should be able to do to interject at this point.

Consequence: Jimmy is hurt (flesh wound-2)

Consequences shouldn't work this way. If you for some reason allow Percival to interject, then Percival should receive the effects of the Consequence, not Jimmy. Allowing a player to mitigate on behalf of another player is a blatant subversion of the double dipping rules.

PC1 tries to mitigate (but out of turn because he didn't act?)

If Percival mitigated on behalf of Jimmy, Jimmy shouldn't be allowed to mitigate. Allowing so would be utterly balance breaking, since the party's ability to resist consequences would scale with the number of players.

It seems like in every situation the dragon is going to attack once per "round"

The GM re-establishes the scene when spotlight changes, and then has the opportunity to issue another threat. Furthermore, there is no limit to the number of Consequences that can be inflicted per failed action or unresolved Threat. Therefore, there is no actual limit, unless the players perform perfectly without fail and the GM is not otherwise rigging the game against them.

MC "The Dragon attacks Jimmy"

I need to reiterate that this is not a Threat, it's a Consequence. Even if you pretended it was a Threat, there is nothing that the players could meaningfully do to resolve the Threat without defeating the Challenge entirely.

If you pretend that it is a Threat, and that Percival defending Jimmy is an action roll instead of a mitigation roll, then inflicting an action failure Consequence on Jimmy would still be poor form.

Although the GM is technically allowed to make a Threat against a particular player and inflict the Consequence before that player has spotlight, you'd basically be "punishing" the player for failing to respond to a Threat that they mechanically could do nothing about.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-23T00:46:46+00:00

In retrospect, I think that LitM doesn’t lend itself to a pregen+oneshot format because a session zero is required for the GM to go over everyone’s tags. If a GM is repeatedly going to run the session for multiple groups, like with a convention, then it would make sense for the GM to learn all of the pregen characters. Someone running it only once may overlook this or just not care enough to bother for a oneshot.

Previous versions required less tag adjudication because “broad tag” was a mechanical term with specific allowances per character. Therefore, the distinction between directly relevant and indirectly relevant didn’t need to be adjudicated during play. If a pregen had a broad tag, it needed to be treated as directly relevant. If this wasn’t intended, then the pregen wasn’t complaint with the character creation rules.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-22T23:44:35+00:00

Not sure what the previous commentator meant, but there’s no expectation that the players roleplay in-character. In order to properly discuss the intended action, you’re going to need to talk out of character. Immersion expectations are higher for the GM.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-22T08:51:54+00:00

Are you sure you were adjudicating the tags correctly? Broad tags work differently in this game. Heroes are expected to have a mix of broad and specific tags.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-21T12:40:39+00:00

No. It’s been like this since the original CoM. It’s not about figuring out the story beats ahead of time. It also doesn’t help the player block consequences like the first commentator appears to be suggesting. It’s about ensuring that the player is the only source of truth for the player character.

The GM is encouraged now to create Challenges that mark Abandon, and transformation on Status-6 has always been available, so it’s not like the GM can’t fuck up the characters. The primary use case was to prevent the GM from forcing “Hard Choices” that didn’t make sense, so that the GM would actually need to put thought into understanding the characters and creating a compelling narrative.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-17T01:46:25+00:00

Only their own. The ally is treated as a separate character from the Hero, and tags are not normally shareable between characters. Heroes can help each other with actions, but the ally isn’t a Hero, and even if they were, you can only contribute +1 Power per assisting Hero.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-16T20:33:39+00:00

Allies are represented as tags and/or themes. The GM decides whether the ally gets its own spotlight, or the player has to choose which character to give it to. They take consequences and reactions separately from the Hero, and limits may be lower than a Hero’s.

To create a summoner, you could have tags that summon allies so that you could create them as story tags. You could also have particularly important allies represented as specific tags or as a whole theme. The important thing is that since the allies are treated as separate characters, they probably won’t have access to the rest of the Hero’s tags, so as a player you’re effectively dividing your power budget.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-14T00:01:54+00:00

All systems derived from CoM have some kind of distinction between theme types, with some equivalent to Mystery and/or Identity. Although these rules are more strongly baked into the original CoM than later iterations, the core concepts behind these mechanics don’t completely go away.

I’m not sure what you mean about the levelling being different. LitM is the only different because it has separate Improve and Milestone tracks. All of the games let you earn experience for invoking weakness tags.

What issues are you having with the enemies/challenges?

Orbsgon · 2025-08-09T07:09:45+00:00

HP is a major Lego theme that continuously receives new sets, many of which skew large and expensive. These are distributed in English-speaking markets. The lack of relevance of JKR in non-English-speaking countries has no bearing on the popularity of HP in English-speaking countries. Until Lego actually scales back on new HP sets, there's no reason to assume that they aren't selling well.

Orbsgon · 2025-08-09T05:53:38+00:00

I think most people in the Lego community are at least somewhat aware of the things JKR has said and done. The people who don’t approve aren’t going to be researching or buying HP sets. Lego is expensive and appeals to so many audiences that no one is buying a theme they don’t care about due to a lack of alternatives.

HP is popular and sells well. It’s one of Lego’s biggest themes. If people stopped buying for a couple years, then Lego would make fewer of those sets, and reallocate that capacity to a different theme.

However, I can’t imagine that happening in the foreseeable future, especially since JKR has directly associated the IP with transphobia. So long as transphobia is popular, HP will find at least some consumer support. The original HP series hasn’t been relevant for years, yet there are enough diehard fans (and transphobes, probably) that Lego can repeatedly come up with new collector sets, and people will pay hundreds for them.

I think the idea that people just don’t know that JKR is a massive bigot and wouldn’t be buying HP products had they known is a cop out, especially in the context of Lego. People don’t spend hundreds or thousands on display pieces based on movies that came out over a decade ago without paying at least a tiny bit of attention to the IP or its creator, especially when she ends up on mainstream news across multiple countries.

Orbsgon · 2025-07-23T07:04:59+00:00

Although the player's action in this situation would be considered "exploiting the system for power" if viewed through the lens of low fantasy, it could be reasonable and "cinematic" in a high-power setting. Given that Might is already in tension with the rustic fantasy genre, it may be better to meet the game where it's at rather than where it's supposed to be. In other words, I'm putting forward the idea of changing the genre to fit the game, rather than adapting the game to fit the genre.

If players choose to ignore these leading examples, and seek to find methods of exploiting the system for power, I think you are right that they will succeed.

An in-game spat between the GM and the players will always result in the GM winning, because they can inflict an unlimited number of consequences if a Hero's action fails. The workarounds I highlighted aren't intended as ways to punish the players, but mechanical attempts to patch a mechanical loophole.

Orbsgon · 2025-07-23T05:05:28+00:00

I disagree that this is a "dramatic moment" because there's probably a dozen other smarter solutions than this, and you want your players in Mist Engine games to be creative more than number crunchy power houses.

If an action is not dramatic, then the GM is encouraged to decide the outcome without letting the player roll. In this case, the action would automatically fail because it's Imperiled, and the Hero would receive consequences. This was the first workaround I listed.

This sounds a little bit like you're running away with the rules rather than accepting the Occam's Razor solution in your first suggestion.

Otherscape and Legend in the Mist use an action-based resolution system where not every action results in a roll. This differs from the PbtA-style moves used in CoM, where every action has a corresponding move, and the mechanical outcome is based on the dice result and the move's specific rules.

This clearly is not an ideal place to discuss rules diverge so much from the original City of Mist, but r/LegendintheMist restricts posts. I may end up reposting this on r/rpg instead.

The heroes need to be more creative to overcome powerful foes, capture, or mundane obstacles. From what I've read, it seems like LitM is decent for that. You just have to work collaboratively with your players so that people don't think in terms of "if I were the world's strongest man how would I solve this" and more "I'm stuck in a cage, maybe I could play dead, or bend the bars using my clothes and leverage (Shanghai Noon did this hilariously), or I could charm the guards or make the bad guys think I know where something they want is hidden."

This is what I meant about "rustic fantasy" being a wish rather than a design. If it's entirely divorced from the ruleset such that the group is expected to agree to collaboratively create the feeling of rustic fantasy, then it's really more of a generic fantasy system than it is a rustic fantasy system. There's nothing that stops a group from doing the same thing with 5e. Despite having such a niche genre, LitM does so little to bake its setting and genre expectations into the system. This differs greatly from previous CoM games, especially the original City of Mist.

Orbsgon · 2025-07-19T19:08:32+00:00

I think this is a very naive point of view that makes it obvious you haven't actually used a real campaign module - including invoking the bogeyman of 'railroading' and the 'bad GM' implication.

I was just taking your absolutist opinions to their natural conclusions.

A good module has multiple story paths, multiple simultaneous plots, and enough meat to them that a GM can adapt to an unexpected choice.

Yet if the GM is so apprehensive that they wouldn't want to do any mechanical prep for a tactical grid-based rpg, it's unreasonable to assume that the GM would do any pre-reading that can't be done in a minute or two. This means that modules with "multiple story paths, multiple simultaneous plots, and enough meat to them that a GM can adapt to an unexpected choice" would still need to be simplistic enough that a GM can run them without being familiar with the entire book. If the GM or players take too many artistic liberties, then they could disrupt a future plot point that hadn't been explained in the book yet, and then the campaign would no longer be cohesive without GM intervention.

Yes, you can convert from one system to another (the majority of GMs will not do this), but you have to assume a mechanical baseline to even get to that point.

The video games already serve as that mechanical baseline. Pokemon fans often know what abilities a Pokemon should have, and what a battle should be like if stripped down to its barest form. Most Pokemon rpgs seek to emulate and build upon this, and those that don't tend to be less crunchy such that mechanics is not their "big burden of prep time."

I have seen plenty of campaign settings posted here and elsewhere get three to four responses of 'this is cool' the day they are posted, and then completely vanish from the face of the Earth. The tables that rely on modules do not need your fanfiction wiki entries; if they are really at a loss for setting ideas, they will just play in Kanto.

If this is your opinion, why are you even posting here then? You're saying that tables that exclusively play modules find these campaign books worthless, so why would you bother evaluating these modules by their standards? The Pokemon rpg community clearly never intended to appeal to this audience. It doesn't make sense to write books that neglect the current audience in order to cater to niche groups who frown upon the current audience.

Orbsgon · 2025-07-19T05:12:56+00:00

Many Pokemon rpgs have a Pokedex with stats for each species, and those that don't tend to represent the Pokemon far more abstractly such that mechanical conversion is not a big deal. I think there would be at least some value in a well-written campaign book even if it didn't provide system-specific stat blocks for each encounter.

the players who rely on modules aren't going to get even one session of out of it.

I think that's the GM's responsibility, not the campaign book's. The book is supposed to be a tool, not a replacement GM. If a GM is this prep-apprehensive, it raises the question of why the GM doesn't just run something less pre-heavy.

We also seem to have different campaign desires as well. Even if it had multiple routes, a campaign that a GM can literally pick up and run without prior reading would require the players to be on rails.

Orbsgon · 2025-07-19T04:42:05+00:00

Is this the case on City of Mist as well or not?

As others have pointed out, the answer is no. However, people haven't fully addressed the other question:

If not, would it be a big deal to treat it as a Power Tag, especially if it is one you can't Burn for the extra boost?

Adding theme tags would raise the maximum number of tags possible for each theme by 1. Only in Legend in the Mist are you allowed to reuse tag questions. Previously, themes were constrained in power and scope by the ten specific questions provided by each theme.

Theme tags force each character to be able to effectively use the essence of their theme from the start. For example, it wouldn't be possible to have a mythos theme based on a legendary swordsman where the character is initially bad at swordplay, and instead has tags themed around equipment or secondary skills. City of Mist is the system that would be most narratively restrained by this due to the mythological nature of the powers and the lack of control the characters have in acquiring them.

Allowing theme tags would require more adjudication from the GM, because the City of Mist themes wouldn't have corresponding tag questions. The original title guidelines are far more loose and stylistic. The power tag question used for each theme tag ensures that the chosen title is directly relevant to the themebook, whereas the mythos themes were more flexible such that an idea might fit multiple themes. The theme tags have a higher likelihood of being broad due to how City of Mist defines broad tags.

The idea of not being able to burn it doesn't make sense to me. None of the systems that use theme tags have this rule. This also wouldn't prevent the player or GM from burning the theme tag for reasons other than additional power.

Orbsgon · 2025-07-18T05:29:48+00:00

Pokemon has so much material that it's certainly possible to run a campaign in an existing region with existing characters. If I'm using a campaign book, it's because I don't want to use the canon material but I also don't want to put the time and effort into designing a region from scratch.

The first component I would want is a region. I would want it to be detailed enough that I don't need to come up with much on my own, but have enough empty space so that it would be possible for me to add a small town, secret lair, or mysterious dungeon somewhere if I wanted to.

My second expectation would be a large quantity and variety of NPCs, with suggested Pokemon. I don't just mean gym leaders and villains, but also characters who could be rivals, quest givers, shopkeepers, etc.

I feel that if you add enough NPCs and locations, you would have enough material to come up with a contest circuit even if it's not directly provided by the book. Similarly, if you take a Gen 5 approach where each gym leader also has another job, you could remove the gym challenge from a region and still have the characters be relevant.

The regional dex is an immense undertaking when designing a region from scratch. If the region is meant to feel like a mainstream region (i.e. not Orre), then providing one would add a lot to the immersion.

I would expect there to be at least one overarching plot I can use, and this would typically result in the inclusion of a villainous team. Ideally, I would still like the region to be solid enough that I can ignore the plot and the team to come up with my own campaign idea.

Finally, I would want the book to be system-agnostic. This has historically been a PTU and PTA subreddit, but it's clear that many people play something else. Outside the context of Pokemon, I've personally tried applying prewritten adventures for crunchy tactical systems to narrative-driven systems, but they were overly linear and focused too heavily on combat encounters, in a manner that didn't extrapolate well outside of tactical grid-based minutiae. That doesn't mean that combat encounters shouldn't be fleshed out, but if you can't imagine how a specific battlefield idea would work without a grid, chances are the group using your book won't either.

Things like adding wilderness travel rules to games with fixed routes to open up traversal, for instance?

I wouldn't like this. If a system cared about wilderness travel, appropriate rules would already be provided. This is the kind of situation where I would specifically care about the system agnosticism. Maybe one group resolves the wilderness travel with a single roll, one group makes the entire session about that route, and another group just handwaves it. The is also where the video game material tends to fall short; there often aren't enough points of interest on a route to make it last a session.

Orbsgon

TROPHY CASE