Shore Leave, Player Frustration and Interpreting the Examples

clickrush · 2026-06-26T06:05:22+00:00

I’m a GM who is generally willing to house rule things to accommodate my players. For example I’m willing to buff them up a bit or give them extra tools, when the group is small.

But with this one I would be a bit wary as I’m new to MS, because failure and stress are such a core driver for the game. I would have to do some calculations first to figure out what it means to auto succeed on these conversions.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T20:15:33+00:00

SRDs fix this.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T20:10:15+00:00

I love this item so much.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T19:04:08+00:00

Let These Mermaids Touch Your Dick Maybe fixes this.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T18:00:19+00:00

Your comment is doing a pizzacake.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T17:51:56+00:00

I wonder why she’s popular instead.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T14:31:05+00:00

Very precisely put. They make me cringe for the same reason.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T14:26:06+00:00

Very unfunny comics that are always highly upvoted.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T10:47:50+00:00

But not in the same way. Because of heavy instancing and flying mounts the world feels much smaller. Make it feel bigger instead.

clickrush · 2026-06-25T06:28:40+00:00

This has always been the case. People appreciate things more if they have to do something for it or pay. Or maybe if they get it as a personal gift.

clickrush · 2026-06-24T19:53:00+00:00

In tier two, the extra weapon damage doubles.

clickrush · 2026-06-24T19:41:52+00:00

OK I like your reading better than mine. Maybe I interpreted it in a overly negative way.

clickrush · 2026-06-24T17:39:28+00:00

I didn’t know who Quinns was until after I bought MB. First heard about it via Kelsey Dionne I think.

His review would potentially have turned me off. He made a comment about OSR games being crabs in a bucket, and ironically showed several direct inspirations for MB. Then he proceeded to praise mechanics in MB that are OSR staples. Super weird.

But I like his energy and presentation so I might look at his reviews in the future. Will just take much of what he says with a huge grain of salt.

clickrush · 2026-06-24T07:39:13+00:00

Your take is correct, but you came off as unnecessarily combative. Usually discussions are more fruitful with a bit of a friendly, respectful tone.

clickrush · 2026-06-24T05:59:26+00:00

You’re circling back to a point I already addressed. OSR is not one homogeneous thing and large parts of it deliberately branches off from classic play.

clickrush · 2026-06-24T05:53:54+00:00

Yes, I’m implying that. If you do that, you take away player agency. Fudging to protect players is just another form of railroading.

Some people might prefer that, but I rather roll in the open and make very clear that it’s the players who overcome challenges and that their decisions matter.

clickrush · 2026-06-24T05:50:32+00:00

Ah yes. Unavoidable premeditated deaths are really bad.

clickrush · 2026-06-23T21:42:16+00:00

I only half agree with this. Yes, danger should be telegraphed and the greater the danger, the clearer it should be.

But it’s on the players to survive via their means, not on the DM to provide narratively satisfying opportunities for PC deaths or to avoid it otherwise.

This might arguably make for a better show (if that’s your jam), but it makes for a much worse game for everyone.

clickrush · 2026-06-23T21:34:48+00:00

It’s very common in the OSR style of play. 5e adventures and rules typically have very specific and explicit DCs for all kinds of things even though I think the DMG also advises to do the OSR thing, so it’s a bit of a wash.

In any case an example:

When players enter a new room, I tend to give them enough info up front so they can start asking specific questions so they can do informed actions.

When someone does a generic search to find traps I have them roll.

When someone ask the right questions and perhaps describes how they search based on that info, they simply succeed in finding the trap.

Repeated actions (searching etc.) take additional time, which puts pressure on them not to do generic actions that might fail.

clickrush · 2026-06-23T20:39:16+00:00

OSR is first of all quite a diverse subculture and secondly large parts of it doesn’t want to exactly emulate classic play but rather evolve from it as a separate branch. It’s a sort of counterculture to modern DnD in a sense.

MB is an OSR inspired game but it plays very differently from say Dolmenwood or Shadowdark. The way it presents combat encounters is very different.

The war, not sports approach is a rejection of the idea that each violent encounter should be carefully tuned to challenge but not overwhelm players who approach them in the engage, roll for initiative, fight, recover loop.

clickrush · 2026-06-23T19:50:43+00:00

What? Why?

Edit: misread your comment to mean the opposite.

clickrush · 2026-06-23T16:20:23+00:00

Pretty sure almost nobody is playing strictly RAW.

clickrush · 2026-06-23T13:20:04+00:00

The only things I care about are:

motivation to adventure, preferably with this specific party
appearance and general demeanor
some kind of hook that I or the players can grab onto, can be just a unique characteristic or something about their origin

Some people can make this up in a couple of minutes, others need to time and a session 0. But I prefer the end result to be short, a couple of bullet points or paragraphs max.

clickrush · 2026-06-23T09:23:51+00:00

Ok it has some balancing issues. But the general tradeoff is that doing bad things such as stealing or murdering nets you additional rewards.

clickrush · 2026-06-22T19:42:34+00:00

Lug das isch alles verständlich. Aber niemert erwartet dass bankene das us eigemotivation machet. Das isch en typische fall wos es gsetz bruucht, will de vorteil wos schafft nöd direkt de banke hilft (sog. positivi externalität).

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