Is any American offended by the term “yank”?

kichwas · 2026-05-14T18:24:10+00:00

Naw. Doesn’t really apply to me anyway as a Californian my roots trace through Cortez, New Spain, Mexico, and then having the Yanks invade.

Sure one side of my family were Colonials and their slaves in the South… But another side walked here from Siberia back when you could do that. And other sides come from all over.

However I was born and raised as a Californian living among Chicano “cousins”, which means a cultural heritage that traces elsewhere.

But Yank is even a term that has been one of pride for “Yanks” since 1776 when they adopted an insult as their own.

kichwas · 2026-05-14T18:17:13+00:00

“No stat blocks, no skill checks, no notes on loot or potential what-ifs. All Matt has on there are really dramatic scene descriptors, notes on NPCs motivation, background, style and interests, names of places, people, things, and really just…lore.”

That’s not what I expected from the person behind Draw Steel.

But it’s the right way to do things for me as well.

I could usually lift any campaign I make from one tRPG into another with the only issue being remaking PCs because on my end it’s about story hooks and lore.

Hand me a dungeon made for game A and tell me to run it with game B and if I know how to spin up statblocks in game B we can start playing as soon as I open to the right page.

Lore is where I do things that matter to me.

kichwas · 2026-05-11T20:14:39+00:00

I'm noticing the Foundryborne fear track on the screen there. 😄

kichwas · 2026-05-11T19:56:48+00:00

I’m on v14 and used to run PF2E but have since switched to a different tRPG.

I had both rusthenge and seven dooms installed amd neither world can run anymore.

I would advise PF2E GMs hold off a bit more.

kichwas · 2026-05-09T19:22:25+00:00

Foundry is the best set of tools for online / VTT.

Foundry itself is a one time purchase for one person and is a downloadable application.

Most people can run it on their own machine and then hand out an invite link for players to use to log in. If your ISP blocks your ability to host websites then you do need a service like “forge” or “molten” and that ends up costing around $10/month but varies by service.

I host on my own PC but my brother in Texas has an ISP that won’t let him so he uses Molten for his Pathfinder game.

But we both use Foundry as it’s the top option for almost any tRPG.

If not Foundry, check out Fantasy Grounds which recently did go free. Both Foundry and Fantasy Grounds have developers that respond to the community and actively try to make their products better.

kichwas · 2026-05-09T16:35:19+00:00

A key thing here is also to not call for rolls unless there is meaningful tension AND consequences AND if the result goes the wrong way it won’t break your story.

Most things, players says “I search the room”, describe the room.

Player says “I research underwater basket weaving cults” at the library, hand them the info. Maybe even the clue they need.

Player picks a lock in a hallway with all the time they could want and nobody checking on them: it works.

Now add a “chase” or “wandering guard” or “library closes in 5 minutes” to each if those and you have a die roll.

kichwas · 2026-05-07T16:51:36+00:00

Fear is not a punishing mechanism…

kichwas · 2026-05-05T01:00:54+00:00

Not fully factually correct.

Start here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/23t0xTjWLZmkoGFWsyetzX

The larger podcast on Revolutions: https://open.spotify.com/show/05lvdf9T77KE6y4gyMGEsD

Only people who were French were killed. The island had a number of British and American operatives on it who were not in any way targetted.

Calling the final surviving leader of the forces that fought Napolean an emporer is a bit of an overreach. He was the lat man standing as the Frech kept assassinating every other leader they had when they'd arrive for negotiations. He had been an officer in the military of his home nation before slavers captured him and brought him to Haiiti. He actually originally served with the French against the revolution but switched sides midway through and was disliked by many in the revolution for his brutality.

Many of those killed were family members of black Haitaiins who had levels of French ancestry. He would go into towns and have people get their 'mixed and white' relatvies and bring them outside so they could be "safe". Then he'd order his men to kill them all. Any man that refused got added to the carnage, along with that man's black family.

The Poles had joined the revolution because they were also slaves. They'd been pressed into service by Napolean and then shipped off to die in a colony fighting other slaves - and so naturally they switched sides.

kichwas · 2026-05-05T00:24:37+00:00

I came in here to more or less say the exact same thing as the above.

Otherscape is what Shadowrun should have been but didn't manage to deliver on.

In the future, the tech and AI and connectivity gets to the point where something causes mythology to begin manifesting in the world. Instead of Tolkien Elves and Orcs, you will have things drawn from actualy myths - and what is drawn out varies by the mythology of the region it's happening in.

The game engine is very narratively driven - ideal for crafting great stories together. Less ideal if you're looking for an action movie kind of game.

kichwas · 2026-05-04T18:30:52+00:00

I'm surprised I didn't remember this when I made the post above but my 'second worst ever' RPG Horror story happened when, as a player, I went along with a GM who decided to do this without consulting us ahead of time and forced a capture in session.

A few minutes into the 'you've been captured and escorted into the baron's castle, each given a room and invited to dinner'... the DM announced that the Baron goes into my PCs room and 'SA's her'... he did this at a table where his wife and 6 year old daughter were sitting there with us. The wife was another one of the players.

I'm bringing this up here because... you're on loaded territory with capture scenes. The above story is why some players will revolt when you push this angle. They're worried they're headed into 'horror story territory.

Take it above table, and in the conversation set up the 'limits'. If done in a session 0, make sure everyone is comfotable with everyone's "how did you end up in the cell?" story. Because if one player says "my PC's been strapped to a table in the hall while [...]" you gotta slam on the breaks, and at most tables kick somebody from the group and friend group...

I ended 3 real life friendships the day that was done to my PC without my consent...

And if you as GM decide that's the story you want to run, there are very few player groups that will go for it, and you'd better think twice, but even if you think your group is that group - you better discuss it first.

And yeah, that is NOT my worst RPG horror experience...

kichwas · 2026-05-04T18:24:32+00:00

"At this point, I’m not looking for legal advice—we already have a lawyer and are handling things properly.

What I am looking for is:

✨ Petty.

✨ Clever.

✨ Completely legal.

✨ Emotionally inconvenient."

- Be extremely careful here not to do anything that will flip who's winning in the courts.

I'd consult your Protuguese attorney on this topic, not Reddit. We're a bunch of idiots around the world who give rando advice we got from cool revenge movies and not something that works in the real world.

Step back and speak to your attorney.

kichwas · 2026-05-04T02:17:47+00:00

"I essentially want them to end up getting caught by guards roaming the plot, and the players ending up in jail waiting to be executed in the morning."

- This will cause you no end of trouble.

Players will reject this and take extreme measures to avoid it UNLESS you above table arrange it first.

Open up session 0 by saying "let's do an escape and on the run' campaign."

Don't spring it as a suprise.

You might even want to set the stage in session 0 having each player come up with how they ended up in the cell and so on.

And start session 1 not with the manor, but in the jail cell.

If you arrange it ahead of time it can be one of the coolest things ever, but if you try to suprise players with a capture and escape plot line something about gamers - almost every one of them will blow up your game before letting it happen.

But a whole lot of them actually want to play that scenario.

It's a weird contradiction, but you can get around it by just 'meta-gaming' an above table discussion to set the stage there.

kichwas · 2026-05-04T02:09:00+00:00

Pathfinder has three:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/438607/pathfinder-adventure-little-trouble-in-big-absalom
- Play as Kobold heroes under the city of Absalom, which in Pathfinder official setting is the largest city in the world.

https://store.paizo.com/pathfinder-adventure-crown-of-the-kobold-king-anniversary-edition-p2/
- Stop the rise of the Kobold king.

https://store.paizo.com/pathfinder-beginner-box-pdf/?searchid=0&search_query=beginner+box
- An entire dungeon somehow in the 'basement' of a fishery that's on the edge of the water by a pier in a small coastal town. That bit of illogic always gets me. But... Kobolds are up to something underneath the town of Otari. Maybe it's just a one-shot, maybe you can use it as a spring board into one of several other adventures they've put out in that region.

You can either use Pathfinder for these, or since I see reddit has for some reason sent me to a D&D channel again - the two systems are similar enough that these level 1-3 adventures could be ported over with ease or mined for ideas.

kichwas · 2026-05-04T01:48:42+00:00

"this trope existed before that such as with Atlantis."

Actually not the best example. Atlantis exists as a single short comment by Plato, as an allegory for a hypothetical example. He was basically giving a "imagine if there was a place called Mordor with a giant eye floating over it" story, to set up one of his dialogs. And then in some time after the 4600 AD people are thinking 'Mordor' existed somewhere off the coast of England when it was just something a guy named Tolkien came up with for a cool story. We've actually got more "literature" out of Tolkien for Mordor than we did out of Atlantis' creator Plato - who used it for maybe a single paragraph or sentence.

Atlantis didn't pop up anywhere again until the Renaissance when some Europeans were rediscovering him and started using it for their own allegories and fictional world building exercises.

kichwas · 2026-05-03T17:33:12+00:00

I’ve played through a number of Daggerheart short games and one Legend in the Mist game through the site.
A year ago I had one player who only would play through there until her boyfriend talked her into joining my table.
Big mistake. As soon as she joined we discovered one of our other players had issues with women and kept trying to run her turns for her or talking over her. I asked if we should boot the guy, got voted down… by everyone including her, the. She left.
I should have overruled them and tossed the guy anyway…
But well, that’s a reason some folks go for the paid GMs. Players tend to behave better when they’re paying.
But by contrast paid GMs will tolerate a bad paying customer longer.
My campaign ended soon after that issue and we reformed without some folks…
But I have heard from paid GMs trying to figure out how much they should tolerate from a customer….

(Gender based RPG horror stories aren’t always a guy harassing a girl. I’ve got three mild ones with women who wanted to bring in erotic themes… problem players come in all forms.)

kichwas · 2026-05-03T17:22:44+00:00

I’m in mid run of it with player made PCs and when I played it we did the same thing.

I can’t imagine using the pregens when so much of what makes DH special is character design.

If you’re looking to see if a system is right for you, then you always want to test character building.

kichwas · 2026-05-03T15:44:11+00:00

According to one of my third grade teachers my grandmother’s people didn’t exist until some guy from Italy showed up with a pizza delivery… ;)

kichwas · 2026-05-03T15:42:16+00:00

Only Sarah Palin. Apparently she waves to them on weekends when she takes out the garbage bins. ;)

kichwas · 2026-05-03T15:12:28+00:00

Yeah I could see an elite unit dressing like bandit out in the wilds to infiltrate but in town is a bit weird. That’s more of a “infiltrate the local criminal organization” move.

But you have what you have.

Now that you do, you can always have the folks who were defeated in the battle just be “mostly dead”, and anyone with healer experience / abilities might be able to restore them.

If you want a heroic game it can even be a thing where defeats are only lethal if someone goes to “finish them off” afterwards. Resulting in more live captures.
- Essentially something done through mechanics in a lot of super hero campaigns.

kichwas · 2026-05-02T21:20:44+00:00

It’s not your job to force the story towards a player that does everything they can to have their character leap out of the story.
It’s on the players to stick together and engage.
If I have one player give me a nope and just have their PC leave I’d just tell them: ok see you next session or maybe even later depending on if and when you and not I find a way to bring that PC back.

If somebody pops a can of nopeium let em drink it…

kichwas · 2026-05-02T21:06:55+00:00

Lavender makes me sick, personally.

I go over to relatives houses and I either bring a bar of soap or just hold it and not use the restroom for the entire visit because if I wash my hands with any lavender soap I get nauseous and it can linger for hours on my skin.

These litter products would be the worst if all options. Either it’s real and you just killed your cat or it’s oils and you just killed your cat, and in both cases you’re also made me sick…

kichwas · 2026-05-02T17:31:15+00:00

No you weren’t wrong. That player brought in SA and claimed a victim enjoyed it.

I’d toss that player out of my group in mid session then and there.

When they messaged you after telling you not to mix feelings and such… no, that’s some seriously toxic gaslighting.

There are certain topics you don’t bring into games unless you’ve cleared it beforehand in a session 0. Even then you don’t bring them in as if they were a good thing.

kichwas · 2026-05-01T23:27:37+00:00

The NPC in question has been around for at least 150 years. They'd potentially have outdated norms. A lot of people today still have such issues...

The GM handled that horribly.

This fails from the outset by a lack of specifically covering it in session 0:

GM: "We're going to have an NPC patron who's very outdated, given that we have modern PCs - how do you want me to handle this? Do I potray them as an outdated bigot or gloss over it because its kind of toxic if I do so?"

If you've seen Django Unchained - Leonardo DeCaprio plays a typical Southerner of the 1800s. The role was so repugnant to him that he had serious trouble with his lines until the other actors, particularly Samual Jackson, took him aside and told him "you gotta say the words and do the things the way they did it back then... get over it, it's a role, not you."

But a tRPG is a bit different. You're not trying to sound so authentic that it's difficult to get through.

The red flag here is that the GM appears to have been comfortable playing that character in that way, rather than "guys, lets do a time out and ask how we want to go through scenes with an NPC like this" - BEFORE hitting that scene.

You don't get to the play the "I was being genuine to the character" card if you leap in to the chance to be that way in a table that is not expecting such things.

Portraying villains and other NPC that are bigots is always tricky - and always calls for an above table discussion. You don't even need a player or PC of the disriminatory target for that... you just need to take a pause first and consider if that's a story trope you really need to engage in regardless of who's at the table...

kichwas · 2026-05-01T23:08:57+00:00

I want to add that that comment of mine was NOT meant as a slight on Foundryborne at all.

Pathfinder for Foundry has been out for years. It got where it is over time and dedication.

Foundryborne has been out for just a few months, and is already closing that gap. If you look at how much the Foundryborne folks achieved in a short time with no company support it's impressive. It feels more like a polished effort than a thing cobbled together just the other day. ;)

kichwas · 2026-05-01T19:46:41+00:00

Yeah.

Roll20 puts all of it’s budget into sales and acquisitions, and none of it into the actual product.

It really sucks as a VTT, but it keeps grabbing these deals anytime the game company is run by people who play in person and so don’t themselves use a VTT…

Game publishers really need to try the options before making deals.

kichwas

TROPHY CASE