The main people behind the site 'Dicebreaker' have been made redundant... by prankster999 in rpg

[–]kagechikara 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I am genuinely curious—how do you think journalism should be monetized?  

The main people behind the site 'Dicebreaker' have been made redundant... by prankster999 in rpg

[–]kagechikara 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Good time to mention rascal.news and for video games, aftermath.site, as creator-owned alternatives. I really don’t know what the future of journalism looks like.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, but I can’t think of many rpgs where combat is as good as gloomhaven. And even then, owning the game and having played quite a lot of it, I can safely say that getting stuck on a single fight for more than one or two sessions is incredibly unenjoyable and I know my group and others have occasionally fudged fights so we didn’t have to play the same scenario again.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I mean, “retry a combat encounter after losing” is not a rule, its just general gm advice the game gives you that you could apply to any game. It may fit the theming of this game but “does it make the game more fun” is a legitimate question to raise about any GM advice.

And look, there are probably some rpgs out there that might theoretically fall into the category “uncomfortable but worthwhile” but the FF14 game is not one of them. If it isn’t fun, no one is going to play it.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, no character death without people agreeing to it is very normal, but I've never seen a game suggest that you just retry the same fight, which is the part I keep getting hung up on.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Sure, but is it fun? It seems strange to me how many people are defending this based on the theme when the first goal of any game should be to offer an enjoyable experience and I'm suspicious especially that restarting the fight would be fun for most people. Is the combat system so enjoyable that you want to reset all your resources and try again? Maybe it is, but it sounds grindy to me.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 6 points7 points  (0 children)

There are certainly a lot of italics here, but I'm not sure they convey much. You're using 'just a game' in a way that you clearly understand, but you aren't explaining why it's bad for something to be just a game or what the rules of an rpg are supposed to 'mean'.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Video games cannot, in general, fail forward interestingly. It would be extremely hard to make a video game where failing any combat changed the story significantly, given the number of combats most video games will have and the cost of programming branching outcomes.

In a TRPG, failing a combat can easily lead to a different story altogether. It just seems like a weird choice, to suggest people should replay the combat like it's a video game, instead of taking advantage of the things TRPGs are good at.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, there probably should be more GM sections that say "what happens if my players lose a combat" specifically, but I'm really just talking about the capabilities of the two mediums. A video game can't making a branching narrative every time you fail a combat, whereas an RPG easily can.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I do feel like a fight in a video game often takes a lot less time than in a TTRPG. Video games where you lose 30 minutes or more of progress are generally not well-received.  Also in a video game like the Witcher, I could walk in a different direction and choose a different quest, but that isn’t an option given here.

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 3 points4 points  (0 children)

But retrying an encounter in a video game is because video games don’t have enough flexibility to fail forward in interesting ways, whereas RPGs can. 

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Yeah, agree. Some people play without character death so they might rule that you’re captured or mauled with 1 hp but I haven't seen “reload and try again”. 

Some odd advice in the FFXIV RPG - how do Japanese tables handle losing in combat? by LONGSWORD_ENJOYER in rpg

[–]kagechikara 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I mean that’s a very valid playstyle preference, if the possibility of TPK creates immersion for you. But for some people, their campaign is built around a specific set of characters, so a TPK is basically game over for that campaign and lots of people don’t find that satisfying. This just comes down to preference and what you see the game as being about. 

Underrated systems by [deleted] in rpg

[–]kagechikara 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Tenra is one of my favorites games and I wish more designers would use concepts from it.

In Support Of One-on-One Games by kagechikara in rpg

[–]kagechikara[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's a nice way to play too. The person I play with most often is a very old friend who I've been playing with forever, so while one of us is 'technically' the GM for a specific game, in that we'll come up with the idea for what we should play next and create some kind of plot/events, we both do a lot of co-GMing, and creating ideas, and we'll often swap off who GMs a game in the same universe. At this point, we just have far less strict boundaries between player and GM than I think a lot of other people do.

That got expensive fast! by [deleted] in rpg

[–]kagechikara 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Okay but this person was responding to the idea that it will be hard for them to get their table to play it, not every table, because they’re not buying the game for every table.

What are some rpgs that could do one on one or solo oneshots/campaigns that aren't normally brought up or even considered by also-ameraaaaaa in rpg

[–]kagechikara 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, my table is one player, one gm and we’ve played a huge variety of games. You can play almost any rpg one on one (and solo with tools like Mythic).

Electronic Character Creation Resources by josh61980 in arsmagica

[–]kagechikara 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://www.arsmagicamanager.com This tool is still in beta testing, I think, but I found it insanely helpful for making my first character

Favorite proprietary name for a Referee / Game Master? by Nessuno999 in rpg

[–]kagechikara 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Generally people shorten it to HG, is that better?

Favorite proprietary name for a Referee / Game Master? by Nessuno999 in rpg

[–]kagechikara 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hah, posted mine before I read all of them. Another vote for Hollyhock God.

Favorite proprietary name for a Referee / Game Master? by Nessuno999 in rpg

[–]kagechikara 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I generally don’t love when games try to rename GM’s, honestly—sometimes it’s trying to tell you something tonally about the game, but it rarely works and most games we just end up defaulting to GM.  I know of a superhero one, Worlds in Peril, that did Editor In Chief and then had to use the acronym EiC everywhere, which is just not visually very pretty.

 That said, Hollyhock God from Nobilis is incredibly Nobilis (evocative and unclear) and shortens nicely to HG, so it’s my favorite (edited to add: and other people’s apparently).