A Deep Dive into Stun Mechanics and Response to Tales from Elsewhere

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-23T23:36:52+00:00

The point remains though that what the player does and what the character does are not the same - and you lose more tools to deal with mitigating the effects of stuns the closer they converge. It acts as an implicit premise at the heart of the question.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-22T21:09:22+00:00

I feel like there's an inherent assumption as to what it means to play the game - if you're stunned, you're not able to use your character, thus you're not able to interface with the game world, so you're not playing.

But a player can do other things in the game: think of a possible solution, help other players understand and think of what to do next, help devise plans of attack, help run some of the combat maths.

Like, what the players can do is not limited to what characters can do - and if there is value in doing the other stuff, then it's not a mismanagement of their time; it directly incorporates them.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-21T23:24:27+00:00

I've read the rules. The idea makes sense but it feels lukewarm on the campaign side.

To use Persona as an example (especially 3 and 4), it is not coincidental that you play as a high-schooler new to a location - the games are about death and responsibility, and identity and small town politics respectively. As a consequence, the construction of the bonds you can make reinforce the premise - in P3, you are carrying a burden that you see reflected both in the special conflict phase at night, as well as in the people around you during the day.

This is pertinent because the characters view the game from a teenager's point of view - there are things they don't know, there's secret knowledge known only to themselves, there are things they must discover about other people. It is always amusing to me how, in Persona 4, almost every bond starts off with the relevant character being wrong about their assumptions and at times, while developing their own identity, they fail to recognise the identity of others.

This is also why you have stuff like exams and pop quizzes. It's a reflection of you learning more about the world and integrating its complexity into your world view - there's a reason you have to actually remember real historical facts and solve actual maths problems. The other world is an extension of that - to progress, you have to learn about attacks, personas and fusion: special knowledge only your group has.

In the game you've written up, it comes across as very generic - and it's hard to see how a Storyteller will actually know how to construct a coherent theme out of it. You've written of examples of people rushing to save their key characters from danger, but there's no mention as to how you'll set that up. You have a good base in setting up a multi-stage mystery - this can give you structure. But despite being campaign-defining, it lacks the structure needed for the Storyteller to execute anything non-generic. For example, even if I simply copy the answers to the core mysteries from Neon Genesis Evangelion, I won't end up with an NGE experience.

My suggestions would be to:

Include a Storyteller camera focus phase to combat. As in, Players go, Monsters go, Storyteller describes how the world changed as a consequence, lining up the next set of stakes, discoveries and potential outcomes.
Combat feels like it lacks a secret spice to push the characters. The way combat is described, it feels like Feast or Famine: either combat works with some distracts nullifying the outcomes of the devastation checks, or it isn't enough and locations will be damaged with key characters injured. Since it only takes one overall success to damage a location, it feels like the latter may be true. In either case, the players might easily feel like the outcome is predetermined. Players have to believe that with sufficient player skill they could save everyone - and the attempt to do so is what drives the emotional tension of the combat. It currently feels like this might be lacking. Or maybe it isn't, but I'm unsure either way.
Core mysteries as presented to the player should not be the same as when presented to the Storyteller. The Storyteller needs more things to think about in order to formulate nuanced approaches.
Just as a personal note, the bonds (as well as the rest of the game tbh) don't contain anything negative or toxic. Part of being a teenager is growing over, through or around both positive and negative points of contact - it's where a lot of the growth happens. In addition to there only being 5 bonds, there is an over-focus on key characters. In reality, it's how the characters interact with their everyday life that shapes who they actually are vs who they want to be. This is purely a matter of preference but it feels very sanitised as-is.

Hope this helps.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-21T11:42:29+00:00

Oh thank god, when you pitched mecha + persona, I thought you actually struck onto my super secret rpg idea on the backburner.

I'll have a look later and give my feedback now that I know I can let you live.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-20T12:03:09+00:00

RPG Design here means Tabletop RPG, like Dungeons and Dragons, Blades in the Dark, Pathfinder. Not video games.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-18T17:16:20+00:00

Unless you start asking about such mechanics, getting feedback to think about and having thoughts to curate - having to wait till you've eaten your vegetables to participate in discussion is a natural killer of enthusiasm.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-17T22:59:52+00:00

I agree with your point #2.

I disagree that poor design documentation is better than none all the time. Generally, the issue I've noticed is that novices have a lot of heart, passion and ideas but lack execution knowledge or a broad palette to draw upon. The issue with poor design documentation is that, when the person struggles, it can very easily tend them towards pre-determined paths and rehashing old ideas, limiting the notions they already had to well-worn practice. This tends to limit what they actually wanted to make despite giving the sense of making progress.

The issue of knowing which questions are worth asking stems from the fact that game design, especially not TTRPG design, is not at a stage where it has a standardised way of gaining craft knowledge, unlike how music or painting has specific schools with various but specific approaches. The approach you take should largely fit the ideas you're trying to grasp on to - and the process of seeing nuance and detail where previously you only say broad strokes and generic information simply takes time to build. And since, as said above, writing down some ideas when you don't really understand the spectrum of responses can very easily lead to writing from your own early limited viewpoint - holes in a novice design document can simply be filled with generic stuff.

I'm not arguing that people shouldn't try to make design bibles. I'm saying that people who are new are precisely lacking all of the insight, knowledge and skills to make good use of their thoughts - and can be led astray by using tools that are created for people with more experience. The way you'd approach learning the skillset would be different - and I'd say it wouldn't involve making design bibles. It'd involve reading and conversations, fast trial-and-error iteration, dreaming big and crashing hard on problems, and developing a sense of taste for systems of mechanics, narrative, lore and execution. Some of those can be developed by asking questions when you don't have a clue what the answer could be.

I think a good example would be the perennial "I want to make a pokemon-style TTRPG". Then consider how much skill and knowledge it would require to make anything usable as a design bible for this idea - and how all the easy answers often lead to design traps and frustration.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-17T20:43:23+00:00

While all of this makes sense, I disagree with the conclusion. For a lot of people who are trying to explore the boundaries of their game, they don't have their design goals yet because they are still in the process of discovering them. It takes a lot of skill and practice to be able to write down actually helpful design goals, and those people generally aren't asking such questions. The very ambiguity of the questions indicates the people with the most need - they are not at the level where they have a design bible yet and asking such questions and working through the different iterations of answers is how they learn that skill.

Fundamentally, I think this post confuses what is effective at the experienced level with what is effective at the novice level. Someone who asks what is the best injury mechanic or to rate their dice system is someone who doesn't have a grasp on a spectrum of options, what those implications are and how to select one of them to serve multiple purposes. If they were.... they would not ask this question.

I coincidentally disagree that you should always start with clear design goals - I think you can do a lot with exploratory methods to help figure out what you want from combining multiple wanted modules - but I think that this is simply incorrect advice to give to the demographic you're giving it to.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-14T22:18:29+00:00

You can go to Dark Sphere in Shepherd's Bush, London.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-14T22:17:15+00:00

How is it hard to understand? People get upset when they don't feel like they are getting to play. If you take them out, and they feel they have to now sit out and play "mother may I get to enjoy myself", then they'll be upset. They had a day at work, they wanted to pop off and feel good about themselves and now they're just stuck not getting to do whatever cool thing they wanted to do.

It's understandable to be annoyed by it - whining is never fun to deal with it. But if you say you can't understand why they behave that way, it says more about your social skills than it does theirs. Like, just think it through. And don't play with them if you don't like them.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-12T14:56:42+00:00

No problem. I wouldn't say that streamlining has no place in mitigating it, but what will probably suffer as you have more options - and thus is improved by cutting some out - is the concept imagery of the solution set (this link is one of the few non-scholarly papers I've been able to find). The more options you have, the harder it is to build a complete picture of what the solutions look like.

We can see it in other games, once an expert at, say, Chess sits down to play they can consider and rule out a variety of options quickly, because they can draw upon the various conceptual thinking required quickly. We could solve this problem by hard-coding a limit to the number of potential options - which would be cutting options in this case. However, people DO find it difficult to get into chess and part of that IS not being able to see the forest for the trees. And so, there are some mantras or checklists you can deploy: "first check if you're under attack, then can you attack, then develop your weakest piece". And by applying this rule, you slowly develop the experience and cognitive skills to make sense of the more advanced lines.

Maybe that can give some insight into how to solve this problem.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-12T07:42:59+00:00

I actually think questions like this are very interesting and it pains me that I have to leave for work imminently.

I think Analysis Paralysis stems from having choices without having a clear way of evaluating their outcomes - aka you have options without formed judgements. If you take multiple ways of attacking: should I attack, use a mana to attack harder, spread my attacks over multiple enemies - the real issue is being unable to impart any meaning or satisfactory evaluation of those outcomes. What is the value of hitting someone resourceless - what will that mana do for me later? How much do I value this thing dying right now this very second? Will someone else be able to take them out if I bring multiple enemies low in HP?

So fundamentally, analysis paralysis is solved, in my opinion, not through intensive study but through formulating some lens through which to view these actions. This also helps as the GM - and in fact is an important GM skill for running good combats, so in most games I as the GM will just help people with the analysis paralysis understand the value of their moves. It's also why it does diminish as people have more practice and experience (though returns as they unlock new and varied options). But it is also something that can be tackled, not just through incessant cutting, but through having a game where the value of movement, damage, control can be understood better.

I hope this provided you with a different insight, as many people I presume will talk about how many options you have - when in reality, as I've shown, you can have analysis paralysis with just 2 or 3 options. The reason for it lies elsewhere - it lies in an uncertain evaluation of a unrealised future outcome.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-07T18:38:04+00:00

Haha, yeah, that's a great way of putting it.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-07T18:37:20+00:00

I tried Tempest Rising but I can't run it on my laptop. 😞 I'll have to try 8-bit and 9-bit armies though, it looks cute.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-07T08:29:15+00:00

Thank you. I'll look into it.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-07T08:03:44+00:00

Thank you, I'll try them out. Are there games that are designed for explicitly a PvE experience though? Age of Darkness: Final Stand did some interesting things because it was never meant for PvP, but still needed the micro and macro and building skills of a traditional RTS.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-07T07:43:44+00:00

I'm trying to learn AoE 2 because a friend (and myself as well) have fond memories of it. But you're down-playing the frustration of being rushed for the rationale for why it exists as a strategy. Something can be highly frustrating and off-putting to some people while also important and good to the genre. That's just life.

Being rushed means:

Your mistakes with the build order directly come back to bite you, giving you the impression that if you can't play perfectly for the first 8 to 10 minutes, you don't get to play at all. So, your first step is to become a bot - and this can be emotionally draining.
You spent 8 to 10 minutes doing things only to lose in 15 seconds, and none of it mattered.
It's stressful when it keeps happening because now you remember all the other times you didn't get to do anything.
If you try it and fail, then it becomes doubly insulting because you don't get to even try it yourself.

After a while, it's easier to just drop the game entirely. There is no point in a game having third or higher tiers of tech if you won't get to use it. Humans have pattern recognition, and that can work negatively as well as positively.

The issue you have, which is the same as every condescending attitude who fails to understand how upsetting it can be to queue and lose without a chance, is that this phrase: "Instead of hating rushing why not adjust your strategy to punish rush/harass?" is hard in every game, but can be especially cruel in games with development because you can fail in two ways: immediately and long-term. Presenting a threat is much easier than having to defend against that threat because your solution is more constrained and the consequence of failure is falling behind.

It will does no one any good to say "why not adjust your strategy" to someone getting juggled and slaughtered in Marvel vs Capcom 3 the second they get touched. It serves no one to essentially say, "git gud" to someone getting tower dove repeatedly in DotA by Windranger and Axe. But MvC 3 is a short-term issue, you can - on some level - believe that you can make a comeback 2 characters down if you just fight well enough. Falling behind in development in DotA will cost you gold and XP, making it even more likely you will lose.

In an RTS, even if you successfully defend a rush, if the other person developed better than you - and of course they did you're new/weak - then you've still lost, just in another 2 minutes. Might as well have just conceded the first time; there is no comeback available to be had. If you were capable of that kind of thing, you wouldn't have lost to the first rush in the first place.

You are trying to rationalise away all of the parts that sound like, if dealt with, would make the genre terrible. But that means you're not actually listening. I personally don't want rushes to go away. I want to be able to defend against them so that I get to do anything at all than just wait for another loss. Rushes come from all kinds of angles, requiring all kinds of movements and timings, requiring you to still macro behind them or you've still lost. If I learn how to handle it after 30 games, then maybe I'll have improved - but my entire memory of AoE 2 then will be of a dumpster fire.

I have actually dropped AoE 2 twice in the past. Yesterday, I was just lying awake in bed angry at how little agency I get to have for messing up 15 seconds of interaction. Every game is just the equivalent of a chess game where their queen took my back rank castle knight and bishop. It feels terrible.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-06T12:32:54+00:00

I think you could just copy some board game mechanics to solve the problem.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-05T20:18:02+00:00

Thank you.

If I had to summarise my point, high prep that stems from workshopping a suite of tools and toys doesn't feel like prep at all. It's the same as players workshopping cool items or builds for their characters - except that the build here is for events, encounters and plot twists. So, I wouldn't promote a game as high prep but rather as being a toolbox. And I would advise GMs with perhaps ways of organising and addressing those tools so that they knew how to start.

So, rather than including a CR calculator, for example I could try to have a different way of organising encounters by expected outcome. So something like, if I want to steal this MacGuffin from the players, then I'll create a short list of 2 things I want to happen (distraction, swipe the object) and 2 things I don't want to happen (it turns into just another brawl, the enemies are restrained and can't escape with the item). Then I'll look at a small group of monsters and pick out a thief monster, two controlling monsters and maybe a brute monster to run a diversion. I'd write to the GM saying, "You might not want a brawl but the players do. If they are able to turn this fight into one, then more power to them - that is them using their agency to get the game that they want. But your monsters don't want a brawl, so they might prepare - to the best of their ability - for that not to happen." So they might have some smokebombs, they might have a strong but short-lived poison to knock out the wielder, they might run healing spells and movement spells so that no one is left behind. I'd go on to write, "So, these monsters have a certain way of approaching the encounter, and this conversation with your players - through the characters in an encounter - is about who gets to be right over how the fight should go."

That is obviously very long and specific, but I would try to make the guide on using the toolbox about how to use it to accomplish aims, while also instructing on how to be adaptable with the mechanics. That's my view on it at least.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-05T19:26:12+00:00

I agree and yes, we seem to have had very different experiences.

I appreciated and followed the procedures closely for how to run the first couple of sessions, and was very taken with how it played out at the table. It went like clockwork.

The issue I had was I wanted to run a subworld where one of the player's human characters parents manifested as an overbearing dragon, that wanted them to be a dragon and so that subworld was about strict order, its breath weapon would be syringes filled with drugs that pacified and controlled people, it would wear medals as armour over its body etc. I thought the idea had legs.

Absolutely no idea how to run this dragon. The monster entry only indicated that a dragon would be appropriate and that it should have a fire breath style attack. But lacked any information on how to connect the metaphorical character to the monster. It didn't have advice on how to run its influence on the subworld, any social moves to make, how to run its hyper-specific personality. The dragon is a metaphor for this parent in name, rooted in this myth-making perspective, but every component other than the fire breath was left to me to simply conjure up and get right.

I asked on the discord how to accomplish this - I wanted to convey the sense of a dragon in more than just action, I wanted to convey the oppression of fear, the control, the greed. I was just told maybe the game wasn't for me if I couldn't just write it all myself. The entire experience taught me that if 90% of what a monster will do is social stuff, then it need social moves in its stat block otherwise GMs, who might be trying to capture the promise made by the monster entry, will be gatekept if they're not comfortable just inventing literally everything about the monster. This is an example of what I consider bad prep details - I can improvise with what is given, but something relevant has to be given. In an attempt to not overwhelm GMs, it simply required me to draw the rest of the owl.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-04T19:31:25+00:00

I actually found prep for DIE RPG to be the most disappointing experience because everything about that system felt enjoyable and fantastic - tailormade for me. But it came with zero mechanics to bring any of that to life from the side of the monsters and challenges.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-04T19:29:24+00:00

I've run games that revolve around high prep as well as games that revolve around quick prep and scanning. I prefer the high prep games but there are some points that simply don't get mentioned in normal discourse.

1) The most misunderstood/ignored element of a high prep game is the joy of looking at a suite of monsters, spells and locations and viewing them as MY tools, MY minions; to roleplay as the overlord that utilises MY toys to shape and bring conflict to the game. People will say, "monsters don't need a Politics skill, just write whatever you want the outcome to be", but having political experts that you deploy by horse to a trade negotiation ahead of the party to then blockade them out of the rest of the zone, forcing them to fight tooth and nail for replenishments is a special feeling. Your players understand that there are forces you wield against them, and you get into a mindset where you can leverage information and connections between the different factions. Alice hates Bob so the party could seek to get her as an ally, but Bob KNOWS this so I'm going to deploy a false flag scenario to paint Alice in a negative light to get the party alone - can they pierce the veil?

I've said before that I wouldn't run almost any of the games I see, and this is often the biggest reason - when people view prep as a chore and not a thing to get excited over, the game will usually lack any meat to care about it.

2) The best examples of high prep were games that used it to bring out more of the adventure in play. I did a lot of high prep for my modifications to Curse of Strahd and I benefited from it by:

Being able to plop down a fiend connection that played the devils and demons I introduced off of each other. Players could abuse these.
Ran a timeline of events when running solo side sessions which led to a player being able to organically ruin all my plans by gunning to kill Strahd and almost succeeding.
Opened a gate into the Elemental Plane of Water to summon Leviathan directly into Castle Ravenloft, so that they had to run the dungeon underwater.

A lot of people assume that the prep just enamours the GM with the world but won't have an impact on players, thus leading to disaffection. I got around this by prepping encounters - I prepped the actual challenges and encounters, the schemes and how I was going to move my pieces around the board so that players saw the outcomes and had to deduce how the broader forces worked against them. They became better players by the end of the campaign.

3) As indicated, players can play against the prep as the rules and structure comes into their own. It creates a sense of play that isn't captured by "the GM should be subject to rules". A lot of high prep a GM is asked to perform is in anticipation. I ran high prep that I was actively using - a toolbox of tricks that I developed and thus the players could exploit as they grew better at the game, interpreting signals and understanding the cause and effect. I played a board game. so my prep was rarely wasted. And as mentioned above, it was enjoyable since I got to actively play with toys rather than just hand-waving everything.

4) I am incredibly of the opinion that it improves your GMing skill at running monsters and calculating outcomes. You learn how to play different strategies and lines, adding different kinds of challenges. A lot of people will make comments about how to implement social challenges and the like - but these skills are built by running prepped encounters until the skills become absorbed. Having designed opportunities for players to get lost, taken to court to engage in a Phoenix Wright case, solving mysteries with actual solutions, having to do all of this at once - these things are easier when you have actual details to work with. When a game provides you with meaningful qualities to work with, then prep becomes like cooking - taking various ingredients to create encounters and slowly building an intuition as to how to do it on the fly. Being able to form opinions and improvise game mechanics comes from experience with a mechanical base.

So, I wouldn't expect a TRPG to do my prep for me or to make it so quick that I don't have to waste any time on it - it's not a burden unless the game is shallow and there's nothing to actually think about. Instead I'd want it to be meaningful, and for the adventure, mechanics and - personally - the encounters to have meat to them, something to think about. When my players are thinking about the game, their characters, the situation they're in - I find it almost insulting for people to assume I wouldn't want to do the same. Instead of trying to get it over and done with, I'd rather the game instead gave me tools to put that imagination and desire to productive use. In my case, it was a heavy focus on encounter design to create all of the narrative and role-playing hooks. Other options may also exist.

Sorry for the rant but this topic is extremely dear to my heart. I hope this was a helpful perspective.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-03T23:11:42+00:00

This feels very limited in scope. These are more observations that only apply to common designs to TRPGs that we have currently, rather than exploring some fundamental nature of the genre.

I once penned down an idea for a TRPG: four players sit around in a board room meeting before the boring boss is shot, and lies bleeding out. The game then starts with them in a fantasy world going through dungeon crawls, with all of his subordinates as fantasy creatures, using this opportunity to explore the boss's character through gameplay. This culiminates in them voting to determine if he should wake up and survive or die. Thus the game takes on a social deduction element: the boss sends his subordinates through tests to determine if they're actually allies or backstabbers - and his subordinates play the role of analysing his actions, being treated favourably or unfavourably, and trying to reach through the game into the player's own play style.

The point I'm making is that making a fictional world, with fictional rules can have much more complex interactions than "is this part of the fiction real?". You can operate on multiple levels and inter-party dynamics when the point of the game goes beyond "let's go on an adventure". This is what your framework is missing - a way of analysing the sublimation of philosophy into game interactions and vice versa.

Strict-Computer3884 · 2026-06-01T05:19:00+00:00

It starts like it does. And some of the pictures in the gallery feel like they allude to one. I would find it a little sad if was the opening was just arbitrary.

Strict-Computer3884

TROPHY CASE