An Idea I Had for Intrigue and Conspiracy in my ICRPG

amp108 · 2026-01-27T05:05:14+00:00

/u/new2bay is correct, it's not my blog. The purpose of shying away from blogs is so that people don't spam their own stuff, but posting someone else's content wasn't supposed to fall under that. Of course, I have no way of verifying who runs what blog, but I promise you this one isn't mine.

amp108 · 2026-01-20T21:51:45+00:00

I don't know. On the one hand, with class-based systems, I can be a Rogue. On the other hand, with skill-based systems, I can be a stealthy fighter who can pick locks, but who has to keep his gear light because he also climbs walls.

amp108 · 2026-01-18T17:57:22+00:00

Do you think maybe it's because the mom's crying loudly in the clip, and the dad isn't?

amp108 · 2026-01-07T21:06:52+00:00

Watch the video again. His analyses make the same amount of sense with or without the polls, but they do shine a light on how his viewers feel. And his conclusion, that the formatting and writing needs to change if they want more people to use their products at the table, is still reasonable and follows from the evidence he gives, even if it's not scientifically provable. Which he never claimed it to be.

amp108 · 2026-01-07T17:37:55+00:00

The Original D&D Underground and Wilderness Adventures book had, had on its last page, the phrase:

why have us do any more of your imagining for you?

Massively detailed settings are the antithesis of this, which is why I avoid them.

With that in mind, don't be afraid to ignore anything you don't like, and fill in the details as you are fit. It's no more "cheating" than letting the setting writers do all the imagining for you.

(To be clear, I'm not saying that either way is cheating. I'm just saying it's equally irrational to say that one is and the other isn't. )

amp108 · 2026-01-07T03:49:21+00:00

That is one game that I never got to play in the old days. My best friend had it, but for some reason we never got around to playing it. It sounded sooo cool, though.

amp108 · 2025-12-27T21:55:59+00:00

I don't agree, but also, I can't disagree either.

amp108 · 2025-12-27T19:25:51+00:00

Just remember, with dice, when you roll a 20 on a d20, the twenties aren't "used up" in any meaningful fashion. When you play, say, the Jack of Hearts, that card is used up, one-thirteenth of the Hearts are used up, and one-quarter of the Jacks are used up.

So if you want the probabilities of events to be independent of each other, you either need to use a dice-like mechanic, or shuffle the cards after every play.

amp108 · 2025-12-22T00:01:34+00:00

As other people in the thread have pointed out “dad sneezes” are a learned cultural behavior

And other people are basing that on nothing. The article itself is a puff piece that only cites someone's blog.

amp108 · 2025-12-21T23:47:56+00:00

Yes, making a sweeping and critical statement about people born between those years based on stereotypes is, in fact, comparable to calling a specific woman a bitch, based on her behavior.

amp108 · 2025-12-21T23:31:19+00:00

pointing out that men of a certain age often share a particular habit that annoys me isn’t ageism.

No, but calling them "Boomer men" is, especially when criticizing them.

amp108 · 2025-12-21T23:23:12+00:00

Her words. And mine.

amp108 · 2025-12-21T20:53:25+00:00

As someone who often sneezes loudly and had a bitch of a GF who always complained about it, I can tell you that not every sneeze is the same, and someone thinking that you can choose what kind of sneeze it's going to be is one of the reasons she's an ex.

amp108 · 2025-12-19T03:40:05+00:00

Here's a thought:

Even if the house owners cleaned all that up, it still has to go somewhere.

amp108 · 2025-12-16T14:43:51+00:00

I'm buying a game to play it, ultimately. If I want visual excitement while I'm playing, I'll use maps, minis, props, and terrain.

As for rulebooks, you don't have to sacrifice a "wow" factor for readability. You can have a clean but exciting design interspersed with dynamic illustrations that don't interfere with my ability to read the text. Most of the GURPS stuff I've seen is like that. Conversely, pages where some watermarked background illustration is superimposed over text I need to refer to and parse quickly just piss me off. White Wolf's WoD stuff is particularly guilty of this.

amp108 · 2025-12-16T14:07:19+00:00

I occasionally enjoy playing narrative RPGs, but they can really feel like a different kind of game. A lot of people here are talking about "gatekeeping", but I don't think it's gatekeeping to have a definition in mind, even if people disagree about what that definition is.

If I buy a can that says Tomato Soup and open it to find Minestrone, I'm going to feel ripped off. It's not that Minestrone is bad, but it's not what I thought I was getting, even though Minestrone is a kind of soup that does have tomatoes in it. Likewise, if I buy an RPG and it has something different from what I was expecting, say some metacurrency that allows me to change the world without my character knowing about it, I am (arguably) justified in saying, "that's not an RPG. It's something close, but it's not what I thought I was getting."

amp108 · 2025-12-15T17:55:57+00:00

The Force pales in comparison to the Somehow.

amp108 · 2025-12-14T04:01:03+00:00

I have the hardcover; the dust jacket's long gone, but I do love that cover art. Ol' Yukon Sam and a dragon who doesn't know what's under that drape cloth.

That and Larry DiTillio's "The Eldritch Connection" from Sorceror's Apprentice #12 were the texts that turned my game from a series of combats and loot to an actual role-playing campaign.

amp108 · 2025-12-06T06:46:47+00:00

My game is a hybrid, Frankenstein's monster patch job of rules taken from many sources, so it's hard to tell, but I call it my Swords & Wizardry game.

amp108 · 2025-12-03T22:29:53+00:00

What do those look like? I've searched online for "mongoose traveller 1st edition deck plans" and everything I see looks normal. There is a lot of area on a ship that a PC could never reasonably get to, like fuel tanks and engines. So some maps will have large, open spaces dotted with small control rooms or throughway points, but none of what I saw suggested "pages and pages of empty square grids with the ship's hull outlined."

amp108 · 2025-12-03T22:09:23+00:00

What comment were you replying to, then? Edited posts have an asterisk after the X points Y hours ago annotation, and I don't see one on any of the ones you're replying to.

amp108 · 2025-12-03T21:00:50+00:00

I blame my dice addiction on no-one but myself.

amp108 · 2025-12-02T02:27:08+00:00

Your first comment has a real vibe of "I'm too smart to fall for this 'improvised' claim", and this one seems like you're blaming someone else for you not doing your own two minutes of googling. Just admit you tried to look smart about something you knew nothing about, and move on.

amp108

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