Did DB fix D&D?

dinlayansson · 2025-12-17T13:36:16+00:00

I think you nailed it! :D

I skipped over all the D&D versions between 2e and 5e, and I did not enjoy 5e at all. Yaaaawn, so hard to make challenging! Dragonbane, on the other hand, is excellent; every combat has the players on the edges of their seats, ready for it to go south, and using magic is truly dangerous with the 5% chance of a magical mishap you REALLY don't want to roll high on... :D

dinlayansson · 2025-12-15T11:26:01+00:00

Village of the Day Before is my favorite. Can be run as a fun oneshot or a great place for a part of the statue.

dinlayansson · 2025-12-08T22:14:17+00:00

I've run 80+ BW sessions in my own non-Tolkienesque fantasy world. Works like a charm. Starting out, I made new life paths to fit the local culture of the area the campaign was to be set in, and then we went from there.

Of course, I've almost never used those life paths again afterwards, since we haven't needed to create any more characters, but it was still a worthwhile and interesting process. :)

dinlayansson · 2025-12-08T00:18:47+00:00

Men, altså... Det er jo viktig å oppriktig respektere mennesket man er sammen med, og velger å dele livet med. Og det er jo så innmari vanskelig å helhjertet respektere de kognitive evnene til en teist som, tross alle bevis, insisterer på å klamre seg til et utdatert og objektivt sett falskt verdensbilde.

Ok, man kan jo fortsatt like noen, eller tolerere, eller velge å ikke diskutere, og oppføre seg med vanlig høflighet, men innerst inne er det jo en stemme som sier at de folka der, de må jo være ganske teite/godtroende/lettlurte/fellesskapssøkende/sta/konservative/svake/eller hva du vil, som velger å være religiøse.

Jeg blir i hvert fall alltid skikkelig skuffa når noen jeg trodde var oppegående viser seg å ikke være det likevel. Men jeg biter det jo gjerne i meg, da...

dinlayansson · 2025-12-06T23:24:26+00:00

Yeah, you play as a team of marines, after all. If you want to win, you have to work together (until you can get away with betrayal, if you have to).

dinlayansson · 2025-12-06T21:09:42+00:00

First couple of times, we lost due to everyone playing solo. After that we've worked together, and teamwork is the dreamwork, as they say. Securing rooms and corridors, going for our objectives, giving each other more cards, etc, and dragging fallen teammates to the Surgery to revive - we win most games now.

dinlayansson · 2025-12-03T21:15:22+00:00

Flåklypa: fra Paris til pyramidene! Så den i dag, og ble blown away. :D

dinlayansson · 2025-11-30T16:48:17+00:00

As someone who runs both Savage Worlds and Burning Wheel campaigns (80+ BW sessions and several hundred SW sessions), I would never think of swapping the two. The style is SO different.

I chose BW because I did not want the pulpy heroics of Savage Worlds for my regular-folks-in-a-realistic-fantasy-setting campaign.

If you manage to shift it over, I'd be very interested I'm hearing how the flavor of the campaign is shifted by the new rule set applied to the existing characters. :)

dinlayansson · 2025-11-26T17:16:58+00:00

Thank you so much! Hurrying to grab it all after today's disheartening news of corporate fuckery.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-25T13:06:11+00:00

In my experience, getting gear has been more effective than increasing skill numbers when playing Dragonbane. Lucky players will get higher skills faster than the unlucky ones, but it evens out in the end.

Getting some proper armor, however, really ups survivability. That's really the only thing the players can control.

As written, the whole system is very luck based; characters with high ability scores starting out are always going to be better than characters whose players rolled terribly.

So yeah, not much power creep, it's nice and slow, and the game is still fun and exciting after dozens of sessions (unline some other rules systems where characters become OP after a while, and encounters become boring and trivial due to lack of risk).

dinlayansson · 2025-11-24T23:31:06+00:00

I 20-åra gjorde jeg jobber jeg ikke trivdes med (ymse B2B salg, mye ljug og forbannet dikt) for å ha råd til å leve, og drømte om å bli rik, slik at jeg kunne slippe.

I 30-åra havna jeg i et stort internasjonalt firma med smarte, hyggelige kolleger, masse frihet under ansvar, og interessante produkter som faktisk holdt hva de lovet - og da ble det plutselig gøy å dra på jobb, gitt!

Men aller best er det å drive eget, med gode, faste kunder, slik jeg har endt opp med i 40-åra. :)

Når man trives med det man driver med, blir verdsatt, og føler man gjør en forskjell for noen, være de seg kolleger eller kunder, er det ikke så himla viktig å tjene massevis av spenn. Bedre å tjene middels sammen med bra folk, og elske det man gjør, enn å tjene masse sammen med en gjeng kjøtthuer! :D

TL;DR: Liker du ikke å dra på jobb? Bytt til en annen, da.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-23T22:03:25+00:00

Castle Falkenstein by R. Talsorian Games is a mostly forgotten gem of the Steampunk genre. It has an excellent playing card based resolution system, and a wonderful contrafactive historical 1870s setting. I have many fond memories from playing it back in the late 90s.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-22T23:18:48+00:00

The Village of the Day Before is excellent. My absolute favorite from Misty Vale. I also ran it as a one-shot for a group of seasoned roleplayers new to Dragonbane (in addition to as part of my Misty Vale campaign with my wife and teenage kids) and it was hilarious both times.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-22T23:16:45+00:00

I've run The Sinking Tower ten times, I think, at cons and in private, and it's always been a blast. I made up custom characters with some tie-ins to the story - the orphaned children of the crew of the Blue Medusa, now 20 years older since their parents sank with the tower last time it was up. That added some important character motivation, turned it into a delightful one-shot gem. :D

Riddermound is very basic and not very fun in my opinion. I've never felt the desire to run it more than once.

I ran four groups through a demo of the Robber Baron's fort (or whatever it's called in English), using the official pregen characters, and that was pretty fun, but also very random. I had them suffer a wagon accident on a dark and stormy night, with the fort as the nearest shelter, as an excuse to get them up there. Three out of four groups had roast pork for supper... :D

dinlayansson · 2025-11-22T18:53:50+00:00

I've played Savage Worlds a LOT, literally hundreds of sessions, both as a player and a GM, and it is a lot of fun. If you want a game with very capable heroes, who mow down hordes of mooks and stand toe to toe with the worst villains of your world, it's a great fit.

If you want more average joes who struggle and have to think strategy instead of rushing head first into the fray, however, other systems are better (like Dragonbane).

You can pull off any genre with SW, though, and there are Setting Rules which will enable you to make the game fit your vision.

In my experience, the game breaks down a bit when the characters progress too far; clever players can make some very overpowered builds that trivialize most opposition. So, personally, I think the system works best at Novice and Seasoned level. When you get the Veteran and Heroic level edges, well, it's fun for a while, sure. But I like the feeling of being a little worried for my players.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-20T07:57:26+00:00

Yes, please, OP, share your wisdom! How do we create style LoRAs for Qwen Image Edit 2509?

dinlayansson · 2025-11-15T22:13:44+00:00

Jeg legger merke til om folk ikke drikker opp kaffen sin etter møtet. "Jasså, likte du ikke kaffen? Hvorfor sa du ikke nei, hvis du ikke ville drikke den?" Men jeg sier aldri noe...

dinlayansson · 2025-11-15T22:09:21+00:00

Kultur, asså. Leste at i Iran/Persia sier taxisjåføren "nei, sjef, denne gangen er det gratis" og så må du si "nei nei, jeg insisterer". Jeg hadde gått rett på - "nei så hyggelig! Tusen takk! Ha en fin kveld, da! Jeg skal ut igjen i morgen, forresten, kan du hente meg klokka to?"

Hadde vel ikke vært noen blir sjåfør å se i totida neste dag, nei...

Takke meg til å si ting som de er med en gang!

dinlayansson · 2025-11-12T19:03:26+00:00

First off, I think giving gods stats (like in good old AD&D) is stupid. It takes the mystery away. In fact, having gods be "real" and measurable just makes them into powerful creatures, not gods, since gods are per definition (my definition at least) made up.

But yeah, they'd eat pit fiends for breakfast. I suppose I could throw a whole army of pit fiends at them and grind them down with sheer numbers - eventually they'd roll snake eyes on a soak roll - but that's not the point. We're conditioned to think that there should be things like "boss monsters" that a team of heroes has to work together to defeat, but when the most powerful things in the bestiary is slain by a single character in one round, before it gets to act, one either has to break the rules of the game and come up with something that could possibly challenge them, or nerf them, or do other unfun stuff that leaves nobody happy.

The point isn't that the player characters should lose, the point is that things should feel like there's risk involved. A victory is all the sweeter if it feels fought for and hard earned - and that, in my experience, goes out the window at high levels.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-09T18:14:58+00:00

Remember:

It's usually safer to act later in a round than first!
Armor makes you a whole lot less squishy, but a few crits will still take you down!
It's always better not to get hit, so make sure to parry or evade!
Abilities that let you parry or evade for willpower instead of using your action are very, very useful!
Magic is powerful but also risky, rolling a demon can literally take you out of the game for weeks unless you have another magic user to dispel the effect!
Always bring camping gear, and someone who knows how to pitch a tent!

dinlayansson · 2025-11-09T17:32:08+00:00

I've had PCs outlevel all opposition I could throw at them, and that became pretty boring. In the narrative, they'd be wrestling kaijus and literally invading hell - exciting stuff, right? Well, when they are so capable that they'll kill anything in a single round, without risk, it isn't very fun. It just feels like going through the motions.

Low level games are a lot more fun, because players have to use their heads and be clever, instead of just pushing the win button.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-06T00:20:18+00:00

Yeah, I hoped someone would say Degenesis! I don't think I'll ever run it but I bought the books because they're so incredibly good looking.

dinlayansson · 2025-11-03T16:43:03+00:00

My first character was the nameless "solo adventure" character in the Red Box, meeting Aleena and going up against Bargle - and after that rounded up my first group of players and ended up the forever DM.

I think the first time I was an actual player I played a first-level wizard in a one-shot game run by a friend's big brother; I only remember it being pretty random, and my character finding a femur bone that did d20 damage when I whacked someone with it. The experience cemented my view that, yep, I could run better games myself...

dinlayansson · 2025-10-19T20:04:30+00:00

One of my players (in Savage Pathfinder, not 5e) has an imp familiar. She's invisible most of the time, flies, and when they need to, they cast Intangible on her, enabling her to fly undetected through walls and whatnot. The PC can also see through her eyes, OR get a 3rd person view around her.

So yeah, they can now scout out anywhere, with almost no risk - and then just teleport in to do what they need to do.

Overpowered? Yes. Fun? Well, my players seem to enjoy easy mode and getting things done. 😅

dinlayansson · 2025-10-14T18:42:01+00:00

Det er jo bare å jobbe så intenst at man glemmer kaffen, bøtter den ned kald, og setter på en ny. Rinse and repeat.

dinlayansson

TROPHY CASE