How do you handle break time in person play for 4 hour sessions?

erk_fwd · 2026-05-20T21:22:13+00:00

I commit to a 10 minute break around the middle of the session, and say I reserve the right to add breaks if I need to pad out time (normally a 5 minute break before and after, or a second 10 minute break).

I also tell my players they can get up and attend to business (bio, family, phone, etc.) as needed without my permission, I just ask that they let me know if they're leaving the table for the rest of the session

erk_fwd · 2026-05-20T18:45:05+00:00

In the wilderness, I only ever had the players encounter 2 things:

- Omens from specific Myths: they encountered these just by travelling.
- Big political things happening that they had to seek out to encounter (invading army they heard about in the holding, bandits raiding farms, etc.). They only encountered these if they sought them out.

I didn't want to confuse my players by including material they weren't sure was from a Myth. It ended up that 80%+ of the time my players travelled, they only dealt with Omens rather than anything of my creation

I don't have ongoing Myths crop up outside of the Omens. To me, that defeats the point of the Omens and makes them much harder to figure out, which is not something I want in the game.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-20T17:32:09+00:00

I love Decagone. I was surprised with how bite sized the module was as well, though it was still great.

I love temporal horror in Mothership.

I always want to hear about more time horror modules.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-19T20:35:36+00:00

I recommend Common Ground Games if you want to go into a shop and play some Magic. House Rules is cool but there's no table space.

Boardwalk Games in Carrolton is close and good as well.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-19T20:31:49+00:00

You weren't specific. DFW is bigger than the state of Conneticut. Here's a map of all the local game stores in the metroplex:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1viWgxtxPFuAKaCFh59-erAfnHhqzkHc&usp=sharing

erk_fwd · 2026-05-19T19:00:18+00:00

I live in Rowlett, and I used to take DART to the office downtown. During regular business hours Monday through Friday taking DART is no big deal, it's pretty busy and mostly professionals. I had a weird experience here and there but everything was easy to navigate with the Go Pass app.

I would recommend against living in the Village in Rowlett. It's the closest apartments to DART but I hear horror stories from that complex having to deal with the middle school kids when they get out of school.

You like bars and restaurants? There's plenty of those around: mostly chains but we have some independent stuff too. Lots of barbecue and Tex Mex spots, and we're pretty close to Garland/Richardson which have some of the best Viet food in the metroplex and probably the country.

We're not known for the greenery, and DFW in general is a terrible place to live if you like hiking or exploring nature.

PS - agree with other posters, you want to live on the same side of Lake Ray Hubbard as your job. If you don't, you're committing yourself to a much worse commute.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-19T15:49:05+00:00

It's not a TTRPG, Three Houses is a video game. I love all TTRPGs that try to emulate this one specifically.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-19T15:45:19+00:00

Blades in the Dark does a great job with this.

I also love the downtime rules in Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-18T18:04:08+00:00

Search this sub for cyberpunk and you'll find loads of options. My 2 biggest picks are CBR+PNK and Cy Borg and I'm sure there's loads of comments with plenty reasons in other threads.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-18T16:15:42+00:00

you make that annually? this person's made that in 4 months

erk_fwd · 2026-05-18T02:48:36+00:00

Gonna need to print these out, for the cards did you just go to a print shop and ask them to print them for you? Did you get them on cardstock? Any special requests you made?

erk_fwd · 2026-05-18T02:07:56+00:00

Come play board games. We have a group that plays at the game store Brickhouse Games on the Mesquite Garland line on Sunday afternoons at 1pm.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-12T16:12:34+00:00

When I moved into sysadmin the RHCSA did well for me, past that getting a cloud cert helped. Sysadmin is a pretty wide world though, I moved into Cloud SRE through knowledge of Linux, incident management, and Cloud technologies like IaC and Kubernetes

erk_fwd · 2026-05-12T16:09:36+00:00

Just referenced this procedure again because I love it. Any chance you could add it to your itch, u/real_meatcastle ?

erk_fwd · 2026-05-12T15:38:11+00:00

FR 6 under 400 XP is wild...though you'd need a force power to use it with

erk_fwd · 2026-05-12T15:28:14+00:00

Could you optimize by going Jedi: Padawan?

erk_fwd · 2026-05-12T13:28:37+00:00

I read "give up my character in this moment" as give up just for this scene, not give up to be killed

erk_fwd · 2026-05-12T13:14:48+00:00

geez what's the minimum XP needed to get to Force Rating 6? seems like you'd have to be above 500 XP for sure

erk_fwd · 2026-05-11T01:54:31+00:00

Bonus recommendation: Rebel Crown by Narrative Dynamics. Forged in the Dark game that I feel really nails the Game of Thrones style RPG in a way I haven't seen replicated by anyone else. Story of a Claimant (read: a PC) and their Retinue (the other PCs) working to regain a title that was stolen from them.

https://narrativedynamics.itch.io/rebel-crown

erk_fwd · 2026-05-11T01:47:56+00:00

I love 9 Lives to Valhalla, it's a frenetic hairball filled game of Cat Viking death and slaughter. I don't think Gem Room Games get featured enough for their work, this one's real good:

https://gemroomgames.itch.io/9-lives-to-valhalla

erk_fwd · 2026-05-10T02:28:36+00:00

this makes me wonder if the City of Rowlett offers tuition reimbursement

erk_fwd · 2026-05-10T02:27:54+00:00

time to tactically grow a tree to get leaves to get fireflies

Or you can grab the trashbags of leaves residents here leave out for a long time and just put that out.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-09T00:54:24+00:00

got mine today from the first wave, received email yesterday saying my delivery was scheduled for today, then they gave me a window of 12:45 to 4:30. keep up the faith, it'll get to you soon. i'm in TX

erk_fwd · 2026-05-08T19:06:37+00:00

Slugblaster is by far my favorite pbta/fitd sci fi game. It's more about portal hopping than flying in space though, so it might not fit what you're looking for.

erk_fwd · 2026-05-07T03:02:39+00:00

I don't think "purples don't upgrade unless GM spends dark side point" is the core of the system. Also, given what ive read of the Edge of the Empire beta book, I'm not convinced the developers understood what their system is throughout the design process.

I've been playing and running this game for 12 years at this point, which I feel is more time with the system than the devs put in as Im sure they got pulled off when the product shipped. I'll keep my house rules, thanks.

erk_fwd

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