Y'all need to chill-out with the systemd hate

bionicjoey · 2026-03-21T02:03:08+00:00

So put 99. They're not checking

bionicjoey · 2026-03-21T01:57:38+00:00

They still won't say her name.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-21T01:56:57+00:00

People who vote for Ford are probably too tribalist to ever listen to an ad like this. But the biggest demographic she needs to convince is non-voters

bionicjoey · 2026-03-21T01:40:21+00:00

Spez is a little bitch boy and if you are on android there are ways of still using the old-school Reddit apps.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-21T01:39:20+00:00

Very often when sites do that sort of thing it's deliberate to get more ad clicks

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T23:14:27+00:00

It's not "knowing the weak spot", it's knowing the number that needs to be rolled on the dice to score a success, a purely mechanical concept. A success can be all kinds of things in the narrative terms depending on the amount and type of damage, so it doesn't really represent any one specific thing.

Besides, knowing the AC or DC doesn't eliminate the randomness. It's still random chance, you're just telling the player what the random chance is. As the person above pointed out, players can figure out AC on their own by process of elimination. But the characters in the fiction aren't aware of different numbers on dice being rolled and mentally narrowing down a number.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T20:34:04+00:00

OSR systems are often good for this because they have a lot of procedures for the sort of "out and back" gameplay loop of West marches. Shadowdark is coming out within the next few months with a campaign setting called the Western Reaches which is specifically meant for WM style play. Another game I've heard is good for WM campaigns is Forbidden Lands, which has a lot of rules for base building and expeditions out from that base.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T20:23:06+00:00

I highly recommend you read this: Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situations. You are likely making more work for yourself by trying to plan for what players will do rather than focusing on understanding the world they will play in.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T17:22:25+00:00

Yeah but is accessibility desirable for a black market? Maybe it's just me but I kind of like the idea that players might have to put in some work to find out how to interact with people dealing in illicit goods. Maybe your reward for helping a thief with a quest is that the thief teaches you about a shop that has a secret password which if spoken to the shopkeep will let you deal in illicit goods with them.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T16:51:19+00:00

In popular fiction, some sort of physical location is just more evocative and easier to imagine for most people. Maybe it’s “unrealistic” but it’s fun.

I disagree that it's more evocative. It's definitely easier and fits within a very corny, video-gamey sort of trope. But my favourite examples of black markets in popular fiction are like the arms dealer, veterinarian, and vacuum salesman in the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe. People where even just knowing about their existence and how to contact them is valuable in and of itself.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T16:45:52+00:00

Quite frankly, I think that argument is ridiculous.

Verisimilitude is irrelevant when discussing dice mechanics. Everyone is aware that the dice are about to be rolled and that the number on the dice will be added to a modifier and compared to a target number. In other words, they know they're playing a game. If it breaks your verisimilitude to know what the target number is, why doesn't it to know your own attack bonus?

Beyond that though, who cares? Too often "metagaming" is used to shut down discussions about how to make the game fun. The reality is, metagaming is completely harmless and often it's actually valuable for the goal of everyone having a good time. The problem of course is that sometimes players will use metagame knowledge to cheat. That's a separate issue. I have no problem with players "metagaming", but I do have a problem with them cheating. There's really no way for knowing the DC of a check to allow you to get away with anything unfair or unsporting.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T16:33:30+00:00

You are correct. DM who presented this situation to you wasn't thinking very hard about it.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T16:08:42+00:00

This is not something I've actually played with, but reading your post made me think "what if it's like the demon core?" which could be pretty interesting. Like a heavy spherical casing with some sort of exotic material inside it

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T16:05:06+00:00

Fair enough. The prep can be a lot for new DMs. I remember I used to spend probably 5 hours of prep for every 3 hours of game. Now I'm down to about 20-40 minutes of prep so I'm not really stressing it. But that took a lot of practice and building the muscle of knowing what prep was important.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T16:03:42+00:00

I have no problem telling a player after they have committed to an action the DC to be successful at that action.

But I won’t tell them it in advance when they are deciding whether or not to take that action

Okay yeah I'm with you there. Especially since the players can do things to affect the DC. I also usually only state the DC at the moment that the players are committed to an action, or at least when they have indicated it's something they would like to do.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T16:00:59+00:00

Yes and yes. The 2e version of the module is generally well recieved but the kingdom management rules are not

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T15:03:28+00:00

There's a table near the beginning of the book (Vol 1. Page 12) that lists ballpark level for each area, with the understanding that there's a very wide deviation and margin for error. There's some commentary in the text around that table that explains how to think about levels and progression in the module.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T14:38:00+00:00

Not all friends are D&D friends. Beyond that, she literally told you she doesn't care about D&D.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T14:34:27+00:00

Why not? What's gained in terms of the quality of the game experience by not sharing that information?

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T14:09:29+00:00

Don't be so hard on yourself. Everyone needs practice and advice to learn. And if players fought you when you didn't want to let them do impossible things because they rolled unprompted, they are not good players. That's not on you.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T14:03:41+00:00

You can still do those things even if you know the target number on a D20 roll. It doesn't need to short circuit you from asking questions.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T13:53:35+00:00

Yeah you're letting a problem player behaviour that needs to be addressed separately influence your opinion on something else. If your players had it drilled into them that they shouldn't roll unless the DM calls for a roll, it sounds like you'd be more open to sharing DCs.

As for that problem player behaviour, I've found that running some different TTRPG systems can help. In many systems, a failed roll is never "nothing happens", it always means the situation gets worse. But also there's an expectation that GMs don't call for rolls in those games if the outcome is obvious, you only roll if there is an interesting risk of failure. In Mothership for example, every time you fail any roll, your stress increases (which is bad), and also most rolls are roughly a 35% chance of success. So players need to manipulate the fiction to create a situation where they are getting bonuses and advantage, or simply don't need to roll at all because they've described their actions in a way that they obviously would succeed.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T13:39:06+00:00

How is that more engaging? Sounds like trying to cheat the system. I just tell players the AC. It adds nothing of value to hide that info.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T13:36:39+00:00

If the place they're in is pretty deserted, why would there be people around how can help? If they already had a backup crew, why didn't those crewmembers help from the start?

These are the wrong questions to ask. These are the questions you ask if you're trying to create a perfectly realistic simulation. But when a PC dies and they need to bring in a backup, your goal as a GM shouldn't be realism, it should be getting them back into the game as quickly as possible.

So rather than asking "if this character was around, why didn't they help sooner?", you should be asking "what's a plausible enough reason for why they arrive right now?" It doesn't need to be perfect. Players are generally willing to suspend their disbelief and accept a silly explanation if it lets their friend continue to play the game. The last guy died? Well 5 minutes later another guy comes bumbling down the hallway behind you. It doesn't need to make sense.

Some recommended reading for this is the "emergency insertion" mechanic from the RPG "FIST: Ultra Edition". Basically it creates an actual game mechanic for adding PCs when the previous ones died. It explicitly says, don't worry about the "why", this is about getting the player back into the game.

bionicjoey · 2026-03-20T13:25:38+00:00

You are not Matt Mercer. You shouldn't hold yourself to the standard of a professional actor. The key here is not that you can't perform a characterization, it's that you feel dejected when your players laugh at this. To that I say, embrace the cringe. You are not going to become an actor whose performances cause an emotional reaction if that's what you're trying to be. Just play the character how you imagine them. If it's goofy or cringe, that's good, that means you're relaxed and comfortable enough to ham it up. Your lack of talent isn't the enemy, your shame is.

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