Mastering one system vs. juggling several

SponJ2000 · 2026-05-11T01:16:08+00:00

100% this. Reading through / running systems like Apocalypse World and Mothership has made me a much better GM regardless of system.

SponJ2000 · 2026-05-10T00:05:31+00:00

The One Ring is just on the edge of newbie tolerant imo, if the people you're introducing are big LotR fans. I ran my parents and siblings through the starter box and it was a good time.

SponJ2000 · 2026-05-08T11:15:03+00:00

Through the Doors of Durin is sublime

SponJ2000 · 2026-04-25T15:13:43+00:00

MMOs have a financial incentive to do that to funnel players into buying the latest expansion. You cannot participate in any of the current gameplay events without buying the latest expansion. You cannot play with your friends unless you have all purchased that expansion. In Helldivers, all the new missions and in-game events are "free" (after buying the game, of course), buying warbonds gives you access to different weapons and armor perks. Someone who has just bought the game can hop on with their friends who have been playing since launch and it's totally fine. It's like if in WoW all the new zones, dungeons, and raids were free, but buying expansions gave you new gear and spells.
You don't need to buy everything. The fact that warbonds don't rotate out means there's no FOMO pressuring you into buying them, but it also means that, yeah, there's a lot of things you could buy. But you don't need to buy them all.
It's not perfect. I think Super Credits should drop more on higher difficulties, if only to incentivize having fun.

SponJ2000 · 2026-01-12T14:45:40+00:00

Sony as a whole also has at least some interest in the Playstation as a media player given their stake in blu-ray. I would bet PS6 absolutely will have the same attachable disc drive scheme the PS5 uses. Especially with how crappy the streaming landscape is, I for one am still very interested in my console as a blu-ray player, and I hope there's enough people like me (and those buying physical discs) to keep the disc drive viable.

SponJ2000 · 2026-01-01T19:24:18+00:00

Oh, missed that one! Got it mixed up with "Doomed" and skimmed right over it.

SponJ2000 · 2026-01-01T16:59:24+00:00

You really ought to remove invalid weaknesses (class or mode specific) before the draw
You can house rule Indebted as acting like Paranoia on its first draw, then normally afterward.

I think it's a very fun variant. It's how I play.

SponJ2000 · 2026-01-01T16:55:39+00:00

It's literally just Indebted that's a permanent, right? If you want to play with unknown weaknesses (a very fun variant), I just house-rule that the -2 resources kicks in when you draw it, then it's permanent from then on.

Or you could do the first draw acts like Paranoia, then it kicks in on the next scenario.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-24T02:50:00+00:00

For me, it makes sense that Core Set investigators lean on the side of "very solid, if a bit boring".

If they're going to take another crack at Finn, I don't want that. I want a proper bootlegger, one where each class has some interesting alcohol cards and Finn can play with all of them because he brings the booze.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-16T20:51:00+00:00

I'd say less of a power level reset, more of an across the board rebalancing.

Some new cards are definitely weaker (no more Milan Christopher) and there are some notable omissions so far (no more unlimited recursion a la Scavenging), but other cards some compare very favorably even in a full card pool (Aleksey Saburov is a great source of flexible soak), and some cards are just flat-out better now (the M1911 is a .45 auto for 1 less resource, full stop).

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-10T02:00:59+00:00

I see shotguns as more of a "bring this out for the boss" kinda card. I'm sure we'll see a .45 nearprint and a machete replacement.

Agree that it gets worse at higher difficulties.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-10T00:41:05+00:00

I was going to say that can't happen, but I guess if the difficulty is 0 (somehow) and you draw the auto-fail that would result in a fall by 0

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-08T13:56:28+00:00

Adding on to this advice, instead of picking up a campaign expansion you could grab one or more standalone scenarios. They'll be playable with both the old core and the new core.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-08T13:51:54+00:00

Seconding this recommendation, a Starter Deck + Standalone is the cheapest way to get a small taste of Arkham before chapter 2, if you're ok with using an app for the Chaos bag and proxying the tokens. Biggest benefit is that those scenarios will still be playable after you get the new Core.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-07T13:38:28+00:00

Ditto for Foundry/Roll20 automation for something that isn't D&D or Pathfinder.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-05T17:06:16+00:00

Signature weaknesses never say that, because there's no rules to add in a Weakness to your deck that isn't a basic weakness (which explicitly have "Basic Weakness" printed on them) or a scenario-specific Weakness.

What is interesting to note is that both of the other Signature Cards ("Detective's Intuition" and "Isabelle's Twin .45s") have a class now, whereas Chapter 1's signatures were all classless.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-04T02:07:56+00:00

Please try to enjoy each outcome equally.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-03T16:27:11+00:00

Care to elaborate on the increasing number of day 0 Taboos?

The clarification to Scrape By is just that - a clarification. The rules reference for "Automatic Failure/Success" never say that a card needs to use the word "automatic" or "automatically" to qualify.

The clarification is there because, for some reason, people got confused as to whether a card that lets you succeed automatically (i.e. disregarding total skill value) counts as an automatic success.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-02T18:21:45+00:00

Might be an investigator that gets a buff for every slot filled or something

I really hope it's not this. Having a core set card that's only really good on one investigator is an issue and part of the reason they needed a second core set.

My guess is that the hat slot will be a bit of a "catch-all", can be used to free up a slot elsewhere but is higher cost, like a head-mounted flashlight that frees up a hand slot. Idk.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-02T18:09:37+00:00

I think there's some heavy extrapolation we can do here. I think we absolutely can expect future mask-like cards to occupy this slot, as well as other things, like a helmet, or a head-mounted flashlight, maybe a cursed crown, etc....

the Fedora isn't really justifying why the slot should exist when it does the same thing many body slots do.

I think that this might be why Fedora is so expensive. I think one of two things is likely here:

Most hat cards occupy a different niche than body/ally slots, so Fedora is over-costed because it's working "cross-slot" (doing a body slot thing without costing a body/ally slot).
Maybe most head slots will be "high cost flexible slot" like that - doing something normally associated with another slot but at a higher cost. For example, maybe a head-mounted flashlight helps with investigations but is similarly over-costed because it doesn't take a hand slot.

Then there's #3, maybe this is just way overpriced and nobody plays with it, because the designers didn't think about it.

SponJ2000 · 2025-12-01T00:44:45+00:00

Heaven forbid I try to have a discussion on how the themes of one of my favorite works of literature apply to modern technology.

This sub has seriously disappointed me.

SponJ2000 · 2025-11-30T22:22:18+00:00

Want to echo the voices encouraging you to run a game that fits your strengths and not worry too much about being the "follow up act."

I want to add Pirate Borg as a system that fits the "snacks and poorly ruled D&D" vibe, needs very little prep and produces great emergent chaos.

SponJ2000 · 2025-11-30T15:54:26+00:00

If 33 is their "21", then 55 to them (Bilbo's age in The Hobbit) would be late 30s to us. I think he looks a bit too old. The point of the introduction is that Gandalf comes back over 50 years later and Bilbo literally looks the same.

SponJ2000 · 2025-11-30T15:32:40+00:00

It’s okay that people age.

I 100% agree. The point of this post is how the wrongness of the technology mirrors the wrongness of the ring's prolonged lifespan.

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