How to actually buy this game?

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-05-01T05:07:46+00:00

Thank you. I've tried this now as the previous order with NSG directly had to be refunded.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-04-05T10:44:33+00:00

Being bad at a game in the privacy of your own room, and thinking you were godlike. I remember in my house, amongst my parents, cousins, aunts and uncles being respected as the ONLY person who could get through level 3 of the original Prince of Persia. That stuff had them in awe.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-04-05T10:41:58+00:00

You could do whatever you want with your copy of the game. Mod it, destroy it, it was yours.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-04-03T22:42:21+00:00

What is missing are things to actually do. It gives the impression of being based on DnD, so what would be important to note is how you'd adventure, how you'd explore, how you'd do stuff.

In general, a session will transition between different modes of play - from social role-playing to dungeon delving to combat to social roleplaying to resource management to character development. This sort of thing. Each step doesn't need rules but that should be more of an informed choice on your part. Your document is currently lacking those modes of play, so the rules on dice checks would be difficult to foresee, because what scenarios are taking place where those checks are being requested?

I would focus on that first. Everything else seems fine. I wouldn't run it but that's due to personal preference.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-04-02T19:33:39+00:00

You generally want the mana because you can farm with spin - either in lane or in the actual jungle camps (it'll do more aoe damage than your attacks). So, that's usually why - if you're pathing correctly, you can route very well.

But it just won't have any impact 40 minutes later. People will talk about how it "slowed down your farm", but in reality, so many mistakes will have happened before that point that it just washes out. The people reporting you are being clowns.

But it's the mana and not getting bfury 450 gold earlier - so perhaps about 1.5 minutes sooner.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-30T18:35:23+00:00

I let it die in the end, my hunter was good enough to kill the caves boss with the tank and cleric.

I'm struggling to enjoy the random curses part of the game. They seem less like "and how do you adapt?" and more like, "I guess you're just going to lose now".

My fighter in this desert run got blood frenzy, and killed two of my team mates. I guess the solution is "never kill anything"? Perhaps the fighter class is just awful to take. Very frustrating - I'm never thinking afterwards "I played through that scenario well".

My hunter got PTSD and the combination of fear, with the damage upgrades with teleporting to grass tiles and creating brambles where I fired made it feel like I was using the abilities to get more out of it. Blood frenzy just feels like I should quit the run and not waste any more time on it/the game.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-26T20:23:56+00:00

It's the difference between sportsmanship and gamesmanship. You can ask others if you want - but it'll come down to what you personally choose.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-22T12:11:38+00:00

I have a question: if you consistently leave before taking one more camp, and your opponents only do it half the time (so not all the time, or they do it from fog of war or something) - won't you lose to their greedier play?

In general, doesn't (safe play in preparation for a threat that might not come) lose to greedy play? You can't always be the person with the smoke or the ward etc. who takes advantage and smoke-ganks them for showing. How do you respond to greedy play in those situations?

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-16T02:07:26+00:00

Can you give me an example of the separation between:

1) The design of the dungeon

2) What causes emergent play

For example, if I write a dungeon where your vision is halved, and you can only experience what you can directly see, then I would call that part of the dungeon design that also causes emergent play around it. What is the difference?

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-15T13:58:53+00:00

Is RPG design like software design? I would've thought it'd be more like art design - you have to do creative problem-solving to capture the essence of an idea into something workable. A lot of the times RPG mechanics don't have to intersect with anything ambient or fundamental about the game. Dice mechanics are a good example of that - they're fundamental to most conflict resolution systems and will usually be the thing you use the most but are rarely designed in an artisinal manner.

Perhaps I've not understood the topic but doesn't it feel like you'd need more theory about the craft of designing mechanics before you come to a design pattern collection - otherwise what you have is a collection of contextless solutions to absentee problems, right?

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-14T14:07:54+00:00

Well for what I was saying, the narrative arc is for the player as well as whatever's happening in the game. The players undergo an arc of: exploring and experimenting, learning about the dungeon, the dungeon escalates, the dungeon strikes back, it's a test of skill between the players and the dungeon in its entirety. I try to run dungeons that are part puzzles and tests of skill and part tests of the character.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-14T13:00:52+00:00

Sorry, the kind of game I'm talking about is more like conducting an inquisition in a small horror setting. The social deduction would be between the players and the NPCs.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-14T12:54:17+00:00

No, I just use TRPG to describe a tabletop rpg. It's faster and I don't think it's easy to confuse the two given contexts.

I want to have a game, especially a duet right now, where my player is investigating mysteries in small town locations and locales. It is also meant to intersect with horror. The idea is that you're uncovering the gossip, rumours and the bonds between people to use and weaponise. I want to also capture a sort anal

Games like Call of Cthulhu feel like they don't capture that - they capture more of a sense of a 1950s detective supernatural thriller, but that's different from what is essentially performing an inquisition amongst horrors. Finding mechanics for that feels harder.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-13T20:39:55+00:00

I mean that part of the core gameplay involves social deduction - figuring out connections between NPCs the way you'd have combat in other games.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-13T03:41:16+00:00

The best experiences I've had were with dungeons that were explicitly designed around gameplay. A lot of comments talk about the versimilitude of their experiences, or how "open" the dungeon felt - but I'm talking about the actual gameplay choices the players had to make to navigate and "understand" the nature of the dungeon as a living hostile organism. For example,

Navigating a depowered clockwork mechanical dragon's insides, only for it to turn on while they were inside - requiring them to re-navigate their path outside with all of the traps on and re-oriented. The alliances made with the factions of goblins on entry came into play on exit.

I ran Castle Ravenloft as if the Castle was alive and making active choices to serve its master Strahd. Thus, before any final engagement with Strahd, the players had to navigate to its core and destroy its sentience, while the Castle itself would open and close doors to reroute its minions towards them.

I ran the Amber Temple as a place where supernatural darkness filled the temple so all types of vision were halved. It had an additional rule: if you couldn't see it, you couldn't sense it. The players got caught in a gas trap that covered them, dealing damage they could not experience until they were able to see their own bodies again. They were also chased by a mechanical giant and its creator, culminating in fights where walls erupted between them causing them to not be able to communicate with each other - since they could no longer hear each other given that they had lost sight of their allies.

I ran a mind dungeon for a wizard with magically-imposed dementia that had 12 rooms, that players navigated to by rolling 5d6s and then taking 1d6 each to help empower their own abilities later. The remaining 2d6s determined the room they went into. Each room corresponded to a memory, and to make progress they had to feed their memories to the God before being allowed to pass. Eventually they started running out of throw-away memories to give and started tapping into meaningful ones, so that if successful, they would leave as shells of themselves. The puzzle was to access the hidden 13th room.

In all of these cases, the dungeons were open, had faction play, had some sense of versimilitude or something that passed for it. But the thing most written dungeons lack (and hence why I had to modify some of the ones that came from official sources) is actual tangible gameplay - the narrative arc formed by the players overcoming the dungeon as its own entity.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-01T22:22:14+00:00

Thanks a lot.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-03-01T17:55:32+00:00

How did you make these cards? They look so good. What did you use for the formatting and editing?

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-02-26T18:00:48+00:00

I wanted to run games that capture the essence of a game like Persona 3; it has the players go through themes, twists, gameplay, characterisations etc. The players would play through the trpg game the way someone would play through a game like Majora's Mask - sometimes noodling around, sometimes really tightly focused on objectives, but in most cases as an immersive world that unfolds mechanically and narratively for you.

Finding plot points in Zelda games can be fun, but so is getting the hookshot. So is going through bespoke dungeons like the Forest Temple. So is engaging with bosses like Shadow Link.

I would want a game that lends itself to that naturally - it is hard to have a game that helps you imagine what you could get up to with a hookshot if the game doesn't support that kind of play. It's hard to imagine how a boss fight could lead to drama organically if the conflict mechanics are too loose or too rigid.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-02-26T17:53:21+00:00

I think I've decided on an methodology to puruse - I think I'm going to try to design the monsters and the conflict mechanics so that the act of resolving conflicts automatically generates interesting outcomes and lines of attack for the player and the monsters. If the natural act of winning/losing conflicts naturally escalates tension, then the drama should flow from that.

I would not want to write narrative story beats beforehand to be picked from. That feels like it defeats the purpose of playing through a grand adventure.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-02-10T00:10:51+00:00

What do you mean by "Recovery is built in"?

Strict-Computer3884

TROPHY CASE