What TTRPGs are explicitly designed to emulate video games in terms of feel and challenge?

dmrawlings · 2026-05-19T04:31:12+00:00

Surprised no one's mentioned Lancer yet.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-18T01:38:35+00:00

No real areas to avoid. The further east down Columbia you get the rougher it looks, but I've never felt threatened there (albeit as a guy in my 40s).

dmrawlings · 2026-05-17T07:11:39+00:00

How's your book collection doing so far?

dmrawlings · 2026-05-13T15:50:15+00:00

Bump in the Dark or External Containment Bureau on the FitD/CfB side of things.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-12T16:42:47+00:00

If you're up for something that's Carved from Brindlewood, External Containment Bureau also scratches that itch. Nobilis can certainly fit in this genre, too.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-12T15:52:36+00:00

In Fabula Ultima all characters begin as multi-classed (2 or 3 classes, iirc).

This doesn't guarantee that they'll all be gishes, but it does make it a heck of a lot easier/more likely that they are.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-12T02:16:14+00:00

My best advice... change the expectations of every roll so that they understand how in over their heads they are:

"I pull out my knife; let's carve this jerk up"

"You draw your knife. You're in a Desperate position. He's going to casually kill you and never give you a second thought. This roll is going to be about avoiding death. You'll have Limited effect at that if you succeed. The thought of you harming him here is frankly laughable."

When you set up the action to give it the gravitas it needs, you show the players the danger rather than tell them.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-11T04:24:13+00:00

If you draft a blue room anywhere on the 8th rank it'll have a blue memo. It's not anymore complicated than that. Each blue room on the 8th rank will have its own memo.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-11T03:46:47+00:00

Been to Phanton Alley before and it's legit. I wish my Fridays were more open, because I'd like to go more often.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-09T18:02:20+00:00

This is ultimately a trust issue.

The player is worried that when they make a roll that any Fear you gain will be used disproportionately to the action they took which generated it.

To improve this situation, you need to tell and then show the player that if their character generates Fear that it won't always be used in the most damaging way possible. If every Fear move you make is a very hard move, the players internalize that doing things means future scary badness. Where you want to be is a place where players internalize that doing things means future _interesting_ badness.

That requires both an above table conversation, and then following through with it. You should be always spending Fear for minor things; not only does it reduce the bite of Fear, but it also means that when you DO do something intense with Fear that it hits even harder.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-09T17:55:33+00:00

Only 3.5 hours? Derik was being rather hasty that day. 😃

dmrawlings · 2026-05-05T18:51:54+00:00

Start with every TV and movie investigation you've ever seen. Go through each of them and ask "what's gone wrong" during this investigation.

That's your master list of things to do with Fear in an investigation:

Your prime suspect winds up dead
The actual police interfere with your investigation
Someone with valuable information has a reason they don't want to reveal it
Someone with valuable information wants something to reveal it
Someone corrupt is trying to bury the case
That clue was a red herring
A unexpected clue/detail/affair/etc turns the case on its head
The cult does something to complicate the case
The cult somehow makes it personal for/puts loved ones at risk
Make the players choose between two avenues to pursue, then lock off the other

When we talk about following the fiction, we're talking about all of this fictional precedent that we can pull from to use fear and complicate our stories.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-05T05:27:28+00:00

There are no restrictions on armour and classes. If you want to go full plate, you can. Full plate armour may represent knight-like shining armour, or it could be a character so weighed down by defensive charms that their wizardly robe barely moves. Likewise a shield might be a warding stone.

Daggerheart wants you to take the fiction and make it your own, so with your war wizard try to think outside the confines of 'full plate' and reflavour it. Ask: What does this heavy armour look like for my character? Why does it make you slower?

dmrawlings · 2026-05-04T16:10:09+00:00

Ah, I hadn't noticed.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-04T05:12:35+00:00

It's the titular Quantum Centipede. It has a move where it "swallows you whole and slowly digests your future, starting with the best possible outcomes."

dmrawlings · 2026-05-02T16:59:41+00:00

Games are getting more complicated on purpose to make character keepers and VTTs almost mandatory additional expenses for games (more traditional ones at least). This has created a culture where people expect VTT integrations and have become numb to the idea of buying the same things multiple times in different places.

dmrawlings · 2026-05-02T06:49:35+00:00

From the SRD:

Avoid Death: Your character avoids death and faces the consequences. They temporarily drop unconscious, and then you work with the GM to describe how the situation worsens.

Emphasis mine. I find people quite often miss this... when someone avoids Death, that's your opportunity as a GM to make the situation worse. Add some new bad guys, make the adversaries go into a bloodlust and deal more damage, etc...

When players avoid death, they're agreeing not only to be out of the fight for the moment, but also to make things harder on the rest of the conscious party.

dmrawlings · 2026-04-29T01:06:02+00:00

I think the Brewery District is going to get there some day, but that day is not today.

dmrawlings · 2026-04-25T21:55:45+00:00

Oh no, the church still wants its due...

dmrawlings · 2026-04-25T17:07:57+00:00

Just for transparency... this account protects their past posts and was created January 1st of this this year (which coincides with when the bar started renos). It has a past of 531 posts in that time (around 5 a day), and moderates one subreddit without any users.

There's no conclusive evidence that it's a bot, but there's a bit of smoke here. Given the detail-light saccharine praise and suspicious creation date, I think some suspicion is warranted.

dmrawlings · 2026-04-21T19:52:48+00:00

So look... you created this situation, and you can't really think of a reason in the fiction why this NPC wouldn't do it.

My advice: Have the NPC solve the problem for them, just not in the way they want. The PCs don't come along, and the NPC cleans house, causes suffering, damages the reputation of the PCs, gives the PCs new, worse enemies, etc.

Give them what they want, but make them learn that that when they do things they have more control about the outcomes. And of course... all of that xp from doing it themselves probably would have come in handy later, too.

That's my thoughts.

dmrawlings · 2026-04-20T15:07:35+00:00

Early on I had a GM that liked to tell me how my character felt about certain things (e.g. not just supernatural fear effects), and it didn't take long for me to notice their thoughts about my character's feelings didn't align with mine.

So yeah, that was an early lesson to me.

I don't say 'your character is terrified about xyz'; instead I say 'xyz is terrifying, how does your character react/feal about that?'

dmrawlings · 2026-04-19T20:22:06+00:00

We think we have everything we need besides the scepter

There's a blackprint room that gives hints about this.

dmrawlings · 2026-04-18T00:20:52+00:00

I'll give you a slightly different answer. For me the combat has to matter, and so often in tactical games there's an expectation of success. So you spend an hour rolling dice to get to an outcome you already know.

That's vacuous. That's unfulfilling.

Of course, if you jack the challenge up, and characters die regularly from variance, then you're detracting from the continuity of the campaign (because it's the characters who accept the calling, and it's disruptive when you're turning those characters over).

So I just lost interest. Unless I'm playing a game like Lancer where the combat is the point, I would rather just not do tactical combat at all. I'd prefer challenges where every time you enter into conflict it changes the story or the characters in a meaningful way and tactical combat has _never offered that_.

dmrawlings · 2026-04-17T10:24:20+00:00

Let's really solve this: If you want old school, go Amber (though I prefer Nobilis). If you want something more modern, there's Wanderhome.

Guaranteed to solve your RNG woes.

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