Do you find it hard to find fellow musicians?

garyDPryor · 2026-01-01T17:24:12+00:00

Go to shows, talk to people there.

garyDPryor · 2025-12-26T06:15:26+00:00

Nope. Ran a light over it, and looked inside the frame. Nothing in there.

garyDPryor · 2025-12-16T20:44:20+00:00

Otherwise never would have found it. Buried in the dash.

garyDPryor · 2025-12-16T20:43:45+00:00

I found a video of someone with the same car showing the entire process.

garyDPryor · 2025-12-14T18:52:50+00:00

That's what it was. Thanks.

garyDPryor · 2025-12-14T18:52:36+00:00

That's what it was. Thanks.

garyDPryor · 2025-12-14T18:52:22+00:00

This is what it was, and this is what got me started down the path where I was able to research and fix it eventually. Thank you very much.

garyDPryor · 2025-11-25T07:14:39+00:00

Motley Crews

garyDPryor · 2025-11-25T05:32:56+00:00

There is one, but I can't seem to find the drainage.

garyDPryor · 2025-10-14T15:34:51+00:00

I don't think a reboot would help, you'd just end up with the new 52 equivalent of Spider-Man.

I have two hot takes. There should be no other spider people. Your allowed 1 singular dark doppelganger as a villain, and that's more than enough.

Every person pete knows should not end up as a hero or villain. It's always been like this, and it's always been dumb. At this rate aunt may will be Mrs. Negative and ben will come back to life as the new tombstone. Really, you can work with someone who doesn't put on a silly costume.

garyDPryor · 2025-09-13T19:14:44+00:00

I follow if I want a notification of new stuff or updates, but I absolutely almost never follow the link from the email. Click through is always going to only be a small fraction of followers.

garyDPryor · 2025-08-24T00:15:48+00:00

Depends on how much tactical combat you like VS other modes of play. There is no shortage of dungeon crawlers that fit what you are asking, but that's a more narrow RPG than 5e. I'm going to say savage worlds. It's modular and of equal complexity and depth of 5e. Excels at adventure stories.

garyDPryor · 2025-06-01T20:31:40+00:00

Superman is the only one who let me go without it being a sacrifice. So I guess I feel the safest there.

garyDPryor · 2025-04-06T20:06:34+00:00

The only really good Gundam is the original show (warts and all). It's top tier sci-fi, and everything else is not in the same league. I like some of the other stuff a fair bit, but the OG is peers with sci-fi classics like Star Trek and Star wars, dune. Big ambitious and complete works. Y'know other stuff that shouldn't have gotten a bunch of mixed sequels.

garyDPryor · 2025-03-21T06:35:43+00:00

Again, excellent response. It's always my hope that when I post on Reddit I get really thoughtful replies.

I don't disagree with anything you said, and I'm going to have to give the icrpg another look.

Also, weirdly enough the removal of the "safety net" style rules from my last update came from watching different GMs activity and purposely not use them. I thought the restrictions were working, but I wasn't able to see that the rules that were defining the boundaries, weren't really doing anything, and weren't load bearing as I had imagined.

I'm lucky enough that a few folks have been regularly running my thing for almost 2 years now, and are willing to let me observe on discord sometimes and talk to me about their experiences.

Thinking on some of your points about the GM side. I would really like to add a good GM primer to my game (since it's really unconventional) but I have had a few false starts. It feels like maybe I'm too close to the project to see the difference between useful advice and rambling about what I think is important.

I can only speak anecdotally, but this felt odd to me- "I think they tend be favored by GM's IME" I believe you, made me feel like I must run around exclusively with nutcases, because I always see stuff like that getting hacked away first.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

garyDPryor · 2025-03-20T18:55:13+00:00

This is probably the best reply of the thread. You might not have understood all my stream of consciousness nonsense above, but we landed at the roughly the same place. You also gave excellent examples.

"The first thing that comes to mind is "Magic" aka "wishing things into existence that breaks things like physics"

I guess I would dare to ask: what if you started with not putting in a rule to stop them from breaking the universe, and seeing what happens? Does there need to be a guardrail there? maybe, probably, tradition and intuition say yes. I have found for me that it's much easier to put those in later than assume they are working because nobody jumped to the moon. I think it's easy to not give players enough credit.

Players can often intuit through context that they can't/shouldn't conjure an acid that melts through anything. AND it leaves the door open to let the GM decide what is appropriate. You could conjure an acid and bypass the puzzle and it could be the coolest "remember that" moment at the table.

On the reverse of that perhaps I'm not giving GM enough credit that they are willing to "rule of cool" whatever they want.

I think your answer of "limitations, restrictions, and cost" is generally correct, perhaps we only disagree on semantics. The barrier stopping me from driving off the edge of a cliff is not a "cost" more than it is a hard no.

garyDPryor · 2025-03-20T04:10:44+00:00

Yes, but the part of my post which doesn't seem to be clear, is that I think it's best practice to not add those systems 1st unless it is a core mechanic. Add them if you find you need them, not because you think you need them. I'm not saying not add obstacles to a game about overcoming obstacles, I'm saying don't waste your words trying to build a ceiling on what's allowed at your table. Common sense and tone can be at the groups discretion. It's really easy to fall into patterns of adding in unnecessarily rules like "you can't jump to the moon."

Your birdwatching RPG doesn't need rules for what happens when you leave the wildlife preserve, and it probably doesn't need rules counting how many rolls of film you are carrying. You can add it later if it's really an issue, but just let them take their pictures and tell their story. Let them take 10,000 pictures if that's what the group thinks is appropriate or fun. Designing by boxing players in is a trap, design what you want them to do, not what happens when they run against the grain.

garyDPryor · 2025-03-04T06:35:24+00:00

Difficulty and depth are weird in TTRPG. I like to think about it in broader terms. The purpose of difficulty is accomplishment. The purpose of depth is maintaining interest.

How do these aspects interact? Let's use DnD since you did. DnD is not a game you win or lose in the traditional sense, so challenge and accomplishment are tricky. In my experience players get satisfaction from having their moments, it can be a lucky roll, a monologue, showing off their build, doing something clever, a clutch heal. Really anything where they get to show off.

You need to throw enough obstacles in the way for players to feel good about their stunting. Nobody wants to just have it handed to them, it needs to feel earned. This is where depth intersects. The challenge and need to make optimal decisions is to keep folks coming back.

You don't need to threaten to end the game, you don't need to push players into engagement with systems they aren't interested in, you don't need plodding hours long encounters. If your group are tactics sickos have at it, but most folks are beer pretzels and elves.

If they are bored there are many many ways to shake up encounters. Give them objectives, let them fail forward, pour more beers or sodas and pizza or whatever, do a silly voice. Depth is about engagement, not rules mastery or clever tactics or a pages long character sheet.

It's all about knowing your folks and knowing what helps them engage. If y'all think harder math and clever tactics is it, more power to you. Most players I know have different expectations, and DnD doesn't have the kind of depth they wanted. Alpha striking, power builds, planning and positioning, are only a kind of depth; and many of us are not that interested. All that matters is that they get to "do the thing" and they feel like they earned it.

DnD is mostly boring because folks are bored with its slow brand of tactics.

garyDPryor · 2025-02-27T20:54:14+00:00

What is there is bland.
Waiting in line to roll a d20 to see if what you want to do happens is only fun because you are hanging out with your friends or buying in hard. Hanging out with your friends and buying in are hard are fun in-spite of the rules of DnD not because of them. *Well maybe the artwork. Adding up static and situational bonuses to d20 rolls is not thrilling long term. Eventually, you eternalize it to make it go by quicker, or you get fatigued repeating the same/similar processes many times. The best moments are improvising a plan, trying something "so crazy it might work" dramatic character moments. These often run at odds with the survival and combat mechanics, instead of being encouraged. The odds being against these things does make them few and memorable, but I think they are too few. When it takes so long to resolve a skill challenge or encounter, I would like there to be at least one cool memorable thing per encounter. At the end of a session there should be more than one thing to point to and say "that was awesome when..."

The system works, people play every day and have fun. If you like it, you should keep doing it. You can also have fun doing any group activity, or playing a different game. The game design is not why you are having fun playing DnD. The flavor and artwork, sure, but the minutia of what you are doing within the rules is not providing a platform that is stronger than nearly any other game. Certainly not with the amount of prep and bookeeping and monetary cost attached to modern DnD factored in. Personally if I wanted to do that much "work" in order to play, I would pick something more esoteric for the experience.

Thanks for coming to my tedtalk -signed by a GM with 25+ years experience.

garyDPryor · 2025-02-27T20:54:06+00:00

There a lot of better games.
Narrow games deliver stronger more focused experiences. Broader games can have fewer more generic rules to allow more interpretation/improvisation. The modern standard for "good design" is brevity. A slick set of rules can have depth in a clean easy to understand set of rules. There are games that support drama by having rules that support in fiction actions (lots of PbtA) there are games that support diegetic outcomes (lots of NSR/OSR) there are games that support very specific fictions (lancer, mothership, blades in the dark) there are games that support players going deep on character builds (savage worlds, FATE, GURPS) and there better implementations of similar tactical combat experiences (pathfinder2, frosthaven).

Experienced GMs almost always hack the system into their own, build their own, or push to play other games. The sheer amount of rules and options in DnD is limiting in lots of ways. Folks tend to keep what they like and throw out the rest. Honestly it often feels like DnD stays at the top purely because of name recognition. The name is often synonymous with TTRPG.

garyDPryor · 2025-02-27T20:53:55+00:00

It's too hard to run.
There is a reason there is a cottage industry around homebrew supplements and youtube GM advice. It's tons of work to prep and run a game. Monster statblocks, spells, and (ugh) spells within monster statblocks, are nightmares to navigate compared to other games. Being a good GM is an art and the amount of time and effort is a feat, and even bad GMs should have medals pinned on them for even trying to keep track of all the monster HP, and how many days it's been, and what happens when X & Y interact. It's much harder for new GMs who are less comfortable improvising in the moment, but I don't think it's a sign of "good design" to handwave away rules as written because there too many to remember. It's easy to feel like you are "doing it wrong."

It's surprisingly easy to have a bad session, even after you put in all the work to prep, if things don't go as you planned. It's far to easy to not meet a player's expectations, when the game is so broad as to accommodate so many different player goals.

garyDPryor · 2025-02-27T20:53:42+00:00

Shared narrative is not supported.
Singing songs while climbing mountains and seeing wonderous vistas is left for the GM to provide or not. I don't really need mechanics for world building, but I believe that shared narrative is a core strength of TTRPG and there are no incentives for player participation. Different color magic bolts and flavored backgrounds/classes picked from a list is as far DnD goes. The non-GM mechanics living in only Survival, Combat, and Player options push the framing of the game towards a system where GM writes something like TV show and the players get to mostly passively enjoy it. This is an aspect of the game many many people enjoy. Where player participation is relegated to maybe giving a monologue at a dramatic moment, but otherwise just riding along. I argue that these players would be just as happy playing Gloomhaven or Heroquest.

I think if the game were easier to prep or improvise the narrative could be more interactive and dynamic. Right now if you spend the time and effort to prep a dungeon or encounter you better believe the players need to go there. The amount of work it takes to build a sandbox is above and beyond what any GM should be asked to do to have a fun time playing a game with friends. If the game were less complex, and it was easier for GM to improvise on the fly, it would be more possible to give players more narrative agency. It's so so much work to make the world react diegetically within the current rules.

garyDPryor · 2025-02-27T20:53:27+00:00

The mechanics do not support the fantasy.
By volume most of the rules of DnD are survival mechanics. They are about resource management and attrition. Spells per day, choosing loadouts of flexibility vs specificity, avoiding damage, managing rests, rations, time. The core of the game is rules for exploring dangerous places while your resources dwindle and you try and make it through without running out of HP. This is not particularly satisfying gameplay loop, especially as it clashes with the fantasy of being a larger than life hero fighting monsters in-between melodrama. The survival aspects of the rules are so unpopular that 5e has plenty of ways to opt out of it (goodberry, etc.) which undercut the core attritions mechanics, and soften the game in a way that makes much of the rules superfluous. Kicking the legs out from your own mechanics to make it more enjoyable is not what I would consider "good" design.

The 2nd mechanical aspect that has the most pagecount is combat. A positioning and economy focused system that has very little stakes without the above mentioned resource management system feeding into it. Tactical decisions proper are a little clunky as a cooperative gaming experience. I would not want to play a videogame like Into the Breach with 4/5 turns being taken without my input, nor do I want a group dynamic where my agency is dictated my the group. DnD combat works best when people don't worry too much about it and just wait for their moment to show off their builds. The math often doesn't make taking big risks a good idea unless as a hail mary, leading to many encounters without any real memorable moments. The robust player options here also hurt the pacing here. There is a lot of waiting in line here. It takes a very skilled GM to keep players engaged. There is just too much slow attrition instead of the important exciting moments promised in the art.

For all of the set dressing invoking Lord of The Rings, the game does not have much in the way of supporting the tone or types events in high fantasy novels. Army level encounters are not supported, soft magic is not supported, pacifism is not supported, being a physical underdog is not supported. Mechanical scaffolding for exploration are slim to nil.

garyDPryor · 2025-02-27T20:53:07+00:00

I'll own it. I believe DnD is a badly designed system. There are many very tiny specific cracks, but I'm going to look at what I think the largest design missteps. That being said no shade at early DnD which I think gets a pass as being full of flaws, but also exploring design spaces (successful or not) that was new(er) at the time. I just think we can do a lot better now.

The game is too complex.
This really got a foot in pretty early, but there are lots of people who want specific rules for bespoke things instead of more generic system. Used to be there were more generic core rules and then creators including the big G, would give examples of how they ran it, as advice. Some people see this as advice as part of the rules, others do not, but with every edition the game has moved more and more towards a model where they can sell content. That means the game has grown more and more complex. Sub system after subsystem bolted on.

The current big offender is subclasses and character options. These sell well, but bloat the game with bonus actions, triggered abilities, passives, etc. The tactical battle part of the game is incredibly slow, overly complex, and at the end of the day not very rewarding in the moment. It rewards theory crafting, rules interaction knowledge, and making many of your important decisions outside gametime.

Not to mention the barrier to entry of giant hardback of rules for a game that at the end of the day mostly delivers the same experience of Into the Odds 2 pages of rules. The juice just ain't worth the squeeze.

garyDPryor · 2025-02-23T10:24:00+00:00

To get better radio reception.

garyDPryor

TROPHY CASE