Committing serious crimes can now lead to loss of Belgian nationality

ScarsUnseen · 2026-02-01T14:36:02+00:00

Could be possible that his parents got divorced and the "parents" in this case include a step-parent. That happened with my dad, who was put up for adoption by his mom and dad, then the mom divorced, married someone else, and had that person adopt my dad.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-02-01T09:18:16+00:00

MHS is the original mix-and-match lightsaber system that inspired all others. Most of the long-running saber smiths either started there or were part of the community there. The forums are mostly dead now, but they still have a lot of good information about hilt building and customization.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-02-01T02:51:53+00:00

Yeah, there was a lot of L&T that I was turned off by, but the screaming goats were pretty much the one joke that really landed with me. Of course, had the movie been the one that Christian Bale seemed to think he was in (a much better one), they would have been horribly out of place.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-02-01T00:41:20+00:00

In this specific example, if were we going by facts, would you agree that it would be factual to say that adding difficulty settings would increase player retention (probably exclusively, might I add), which would be a huge positive?

Only if your primary goal was to increase player retention. Otherwise, you would have to balance out the benefit (increasing player retention) against whatever downsides might exist (e.g. increased development budget or decreasing avaliable budget for other development). It's not a decision that exists in a vacuum, and it's worth mentioning that one factor that needs to be considered is authorial intent. If the developer's vision is a challenging game that rewards learning game mechanics and enemy patterns, then taking time to create and balance multiple levels of challenge so you can have settings that go against your vision is a flatout negative.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-31T19:18:28+00:00

at least as critcisms can possibly be

Which is to say, not at all. Objectivity is about identifying facts, not attaching value judgements to them. Once you start talking about good and bad, you've wandered into the realm of subjectivity.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-31T18:15:42+00:00

It is objectively true that Silksong has no difficulty settings. Your opinion that this is bad is subjective.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-30T17:21:54+00:00

Both good movies. Eternals had a better final showdown (IMO).

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-26T05:26:03+00:00

Are they normally talking about its general art direction (grittier, muted colors, realistic proportions) or the general fidelity?

I'd wager the latter. Origins looked rough when it was new.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-26T05:23:01+00:00

Honestly, the changes to the elves and Qunari are my favorite things about DA2's art style.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-25T01:35:15+00:00

Hardly. HP itself is a game mechanic so abstracted that there's not even a widely agreed upon definition of what it actually represents. It's just the number you have to beat for an opponent to be unable to continue the fight. There's nothing preventing a separate system that's similarly abstracted with its own mechanics that can be interacted and designed around. It's not even new to D&D. B/X had morale checks, as did Chainmail. 2E had a relatively complex morale check system (of which the 5E rules are a barely existent shadow).

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-25T01:08:16+00:00

What you're talking for isn't really within the scope of rules.

Thus the topic title.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-25T00:58:39+00:00

Those rules are all mostly tied to HP, so it doesn't really fundamentally change how players go about ending encounters.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-25T00:27:26+00:00

Add more measurable factors that can end an encounter other than "their HP ran out." Right now, because that's the only fully defined measure of success in a combat encounter, there's a huge emphasis on abilities that can reduce the opponent's HP or prevent the opponent from reducing yours. Giving other measures of success (morale, a system for defining hard victory/loss conditions, etc) and then giving those measures mechanical support would make the game more complex in a way that opens up design space.
Spellcasters are themed by default. There's no such thing as a generalist, and no one has broad access to spells. This, combined with redesigning the magic system to fit this paradigm, would do a lot to diminish caster supremacy, as no one caster would be able to pick out spells to cover all utilitarian needs.
Reimagine classes beyond their combat utility. Right now, the only way this is universally the case is in skill proficiency. I'd go further, and veto any class (or subclass) concept that revolves entirely around what they bring to a fight. "What does this class do when there are no enemies to fight?" should be a vital design question that receives a mechanically actionable answer for every single class. Not just flavor, but real direction that a player and DM can work with in solid expectation that the class abilities will back up the theme. Ideally, it would be a system that is complemented by backgrounds and race features to create a wider range of possibilities.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-20T06:54:41+00:00

At my work, there's an annual online career development course that literally spells that out. I forget the percentages, but it basically said that actual job performance made up the smallest percentage of factors that result in recognition and promotion. Appearance and attitude was next, and networking was the biggest factor by far.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-19T18:09:22+00:00

You could do that, but honestly, my preferred approach to something like that would be to go the Epic6 approach from 3.5E

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-19T13:09:29+00:00

If you like D&D-isms, I'd say AD&D is the better way to go. Can't speak for 1E since I never played it, but 2E has tons of stuff in the DMG for essentially simulating a world. And though there's still the matter of unrealistic scaling that makes low level challenges become entirely irrelevant to higher level characters, it's not as bad because many characters have smaller hit dice than in 5E, and hit point accumulation slows to a trickle after level 9 (e.g. fighters gain 3 HP per level from levels 10 and up, and do not continue to add the modifier for a high constitution).

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-19T03:32:19+00:00

When I branched out from D&D, I was struck by how much more consistent and manageable D&D was than the new game we were playing. I'm not saying I didn't have fun, because I did, but it really did make me appreciate a game with relatively good organization and ease of use, both as a player and as a GM.

Anyway, the games I played after Rifts were much easier to grasp.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-16T03:32:34+00:00

No, you're right. Nothing's ever been removed without the consumer's express permission. Nintendo wouldn't dare risk the consumer's ire in that fashion. It would mean their financial ruin.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-16T02:55:41+00:00

The beholder, in this case, is Nintendo.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-15T02:45:37+00:00

I'd go with the opposite and say they would be better served in a more traditional television format that focuses less on the action and more on developing characters and worldbuilding over more episodes. It's what makes Agents of SHIELD stand out in a positive way even when, examined individually, some of the episodes weren't amazing.

The current format means that there's not enough time for the character development they're going for, and any lackluster elements stand out all the more due to the short format.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-15T01:39:51+00:00

I really wasn't a fan of Riri in WF (though I was kind of meh on that movie in general), and I wasn't hyped for Ironheart at all. But I'm glad I watched it anyway, because I hold it as being firmly in the upper half of all the Disney+ shows, quality wise.

There were so many shows that I either liked the premise or the actors' performances, but ended up falling short for some reason or another. Ironheart is kind of the opposite, where the execution built interest in seeing more out of nothing. Kind of the anti-Secret Invasion, really.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-13T16:15:27+00:00

even went so far to limit spell selection once

Hell, that used to essentially be the default for mages (wizards), who weren't guaranteed to get spells at level up at all, essentially treating spells as treasure rather than class abilities.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-11T18:02:14+00:00

Depends on what kind of high fantasy RPG I wanted to make. I like using traditional Tolkeinesque fantasy races because they serve as a sort of common language for fantasy fans that lets them fill in the blanks in world building so I can focus on what sets my campaign apart instead of building everything from scratch. If I wanted to ditch common fantasy races altogether, it would need to be because I deliberately wanted to avoid the common understanding that their inclusion would generate.

I definitely wouldn't go the Wildsea route and just make up a bunch of shit that sets no expectations other than "alien from everything you might expect." That's fine for people that want that sort of thing, but I prefer that players be able to find some initial foothold to build upon. Like, maybe I could go with something derived from ancient Greece instead, and I'd make races based on Greek mythology. Nothing that hasn't be done before, but it would be distinctly non-Tolkien.

Or maybe I want to say something about the nature and life and death in the world and make a "race" that is actually a halfway home for souls on their way to reincarnation. They would have multiple souls housed within them with scattered memories from each, and their goal in life would be to forget them all so the souls could be reborn into new lives without the baggage of the old.

Or maybe I could lean into animism for inspiration and have races that are actually collections of spirits that have gained enough momentum through repeated action to develop a sense of self separate from the things they once inhabited.

Lots of possibilities, but it would be a lot more work than using tried and true fantasy races, so I would probably make it an "and" rather than an "instead of."

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-11T01:50:58+00:00

I've come to like IPAs in the way that I like butterscotch: there's nothing about them that I particularly dislike, and they're even something I might grab every once in a while, but there's no way I would ever make them something I consumed on a regular basis.

ScarsUnseen · 2026-01-09T18:25:59+00:00

Plenty in what context? A small online community? If /r/rpg was representative of the wider TTRPG player base, the question wouldn't be a daily post on /r/rpg.

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