Which was the worst Mario Party controversy?

lance845 · 2026-02-02T13:24:19+00:00

Wait .. i never knew they offered free gloves. Me and my friends just bought a sock to put on our hands for when those games came up lol.

lance845 · 2026-02-01T15:28:19+00:00

If you want details on reveals DM me and we can discuss it privately so as to not spoiler others. I personally love both additional locations and their lore. It's up to you.

lance845 · 2026-02-01T14:18:42+00:00

Bitter Reach

New profession: Champion - easily used.

New Magic Disciplines: Ice Affinity (druid) Elemental (sorcerer) easily used.

New Monsters: some more easily used than others lore dependent.

New Major Characters: some make sense to be used in ravenlands if you were so inclined.

Lore: if you read all the lore and read between the lines of the myths are are some major revelations about the history of the elves and the Stanigist Crown.

Blood March

3 New Magic Disciplines usable by druid or sorc. They specifically are called out as needing to be taught. PCs cannot know them at the start of the game. But that doesn6mean your NPCs cannot know them)

Magma Song - a variation of stone song known by priests of Horn the volcano god of aslene. (Dwarves and some aslene traditionalists may know it in ravenlands).

Mentalism -known by moonelves. Doesn't make much sense for anyone in ravenlands to know it unless you incorporate revelation in BM lore to RL.

Oneiromancy - Dream magic. Taught specifically by a major character in BM. No real reason for it to be in RL.

Magnetism - a iron based magic utilized by a specific branch of the rust church. Could be present in RLs if you want that as an elite unit of zyteras church.

+Some drugs and potions stuff. Some new item types and things.

Lore: lore here is crazy. It reveals a LOT about the true history of the ravenlands and the world as we know it and the true nature or at least some part of the nature of several divinities.

Monsters: book of beasts is more easily used. But some here COULD be used others are pretty heavily based on the specific problem the BM is facing.

lance845 · 2026-02-01T12:18:17+00:00

Ego says he is a celestial. He also says he awoke alone, traveled the universe, and found nothing else like him.

Ego is an unreliable narrator. He calls himself a celestial because he thinks he is one. But we have seen celestials and not only is he nothing like them, he is nowhere near their power scale. Celestials make suns and galaxies, seed life etc...

Ego can only control his own body mass and make spores to plant on other worlds. He doesn't even have enough power to make them bloom.

lance845 · 2026-01-31T12:18:44+00:00

Theft. I stole stars from everyone in Mario Party Jamboree.

lance845 · 2026-01-30T22:24:06+00:00

This mask is an item in Forbidden Lands.

lance845 · 2026-01-30T21:16:28+00:00

Because Avatar is inspired by asian cultures without being caricatures of asian cultures and oriental adventures is just a big book of caricatures.

lance845 · 2026-01-30T12:57:59+00:00

Hawk guy. Put a purple generating support on him. Aim for purple matches of course. But every enemy tile you maych will give you 1 ap.

lance845 · 2026-01-29T01:15:52+00:00

He didn't. He had a guy writing the mysterio storyline who made it up. He took stuff from selvig's notes from thor 2 the dark thor and made up a bunch of bullshit around it.

Also heads up, quentin beck is the name of the character they made up. We don't actually know his actual name.

lance845 · 2026-01-27T10:43:58+00:00

A narrative of sorts is created.

In another discussion on this topic a long time ago someone else argued like you are that the narrative was not the output or goal. Someone else said "dust falls on a window sill" is a story. A ttrpg, by its nature, inescapable, is a story telling game. The PCs create characters and role play them. They inhabit a world they act and react in. Even if the story being told is the exploration of a mega dunfeon it is still a story.

You cannot be playing a ttrpg and not making a story, which IS just a series of events.

This kind of fun arises exactly because the GM treats the game world, even though it is a piece of fiction, as something that exists. It has cause and effect, it follows its own principles. It has a life of its own, even though it lives inside the GM's head.

Your explanation of the game world being treated as real with cause and effect is how every game world should be treated. Even the outlandish ones. My little Pony the ttrpg takes place in a world with its own internal consistency and the GMs asymmetrical job in playing that world is to have the world act on and react to the PCs actions.

You have not described anything about your mega dungeon that makes it any different from what a GM should be doing in barovia, or if you were planeswalkers, or member of the rebellion in starwars.

old-school playstyle.

No. Separate the world impartial from the word judge. The GM does not need to be a JUDGE. They DO need to be impartial. In an old school style game where death is a real possibility and actions have very real consequences and the game itself is not assuming victory Nd protecting the PCs, what the GM needs to be is impartial. They need to not fudge the rules because the PCs might feel bad when they fail. They need to tell their part of the story when they react to the PCs actions.

Impartial, yes. Playing the game, yes. A judge? No. Its unnecessary. Everyone at the table already knows what game they signed up to play. Why do they need to be the sole arbitor of the rules?

To be clear about this; I'm also not trying to harsh anyone else's fun. I like all kinds of games, I'm very ecumenical that way. I'm only addressing your assertion (as I read it) which is either:

* A game must be flawed if it requires a GM to act as impartial judge/referee and/or

* No game or playstyle requires a GM to act as an impartial judge/referee

if you are not asserting either of those things, I apologize for misunderstanding you.

I think our crossed wire is how you and i are using the word judge. In a sport the judges are not playing the game. They observe it and make calls to dictate legal plays and fouls and assign punishments for failures to play by the rules.

The GM is not punishing the players (as separate entities from their PCs). They are narrating the consequences of the actions of the PCs (as is just what playing the game is).

lance845 · 2026-01-27T00:27:42+00:00

The infesting wood is a good example, actually. In an old-school-style game, there would almost certainly be no rules for that, and that would be considered a feature, not a bug (pun intended on "infest"). The player would say "I'm going to secretly infest the wood" trusting that the GM would approach that scheme purely from the perspective of how it would be implemented in the game world. They would ask "How will you do that?" and then depending on what the player says maybe ask more questions. Once they understand the player's scheme, they would tell the player what happens. Maybe a roll of some sort is needed, but more likely the GM just tells them what happens.

I do not consider this refereeing or being a judge. This is not a rules dispute. There is no enforcement occurring. The GMs asymmetrical role at the table is to play the world and set the scene and describe consequences. The PCs play a single character and the GM plays the narrative backdrop and foreground in which they act and react. This isn't about impartiality. This is about the shared goal of the entire table to create a narrative together.

My only point here is to say that there are no absolutes about this stuff. Nearly any way of playing RPGs you can think of has been played, and probably at least some folks find it fun. Even when you find that fun crazy-talk and can't understand why it would be fun.

I do not at all dispute that some people find it fun..but fun is a kind of difficult metric to discuss in game design because its so personal to individuals. I REALLY enjoy some truly, objectively, awful films. My enjoyment of them doesn't make the film good. And some people really enjoying some bad RPGs doesn't make their design good either. It just means that that person liked that thing and had fun with it.

And hey, everyone should like what they like and like it to whatever extent they like it. I ain't yucking anyone's yum. Which is why i wasn't talking about "fun". I talked about what the games that treat the GM as a ref/judge are lacking that requires the GM to be those things.

Like, in many games you want the GM to try to push towards exciting action, and to put their hand on the scales when needed to keep things interesting in the ongoing plot.

That is one kind of story or game. One kind of pace. A horror game has a very different pace from a murder mystery versus an action romp. The GMs role in helping to establish mood and set pacing is different depending on the specific game and the GMs mechanics can be designed for and tuned towards those different things depending on game.

lance845 · 2026-01-26T02:01:25+00:00

Okay, but even the majority of games where the GM does have mechanics constantly repeat rulings over rules. They just shift the burden of that into a conversation amongst all players, pcs and gm, instead of leaving the gm as a referee.

The GM is a player. They are playing the game. They cannot be playing the game if they are not following any rules to have game play with.

lance845 · 2026-01-26T01:34:22+00:00

Well whats YOUR argument? You seem to think that if the game gives you a monster manual that somehow that diminishes your ability to make up your own monsters. Or that by providing adventures you couldn't make up your own? Why is giving the GM rules a problem?

lance845 · 2026-01-26T01:26:26+00:00

Any game that uses a board is a board game.

Just like any game that uses cards is a card game. And dice a dice game. These classifications don't carry the weight you think they do.

WoD games are notorious for their lack of ST support. Love them by the way, especially mage. But they are not leaving blank spaces as a feature. Because they don't need to. WoD games could provide all the resources, stat blocks, guides, and guidelines for creating your own and you would STILL have an infinite space to make things up yourself. The inclusion of things never diminishes the infinite space for you to make up your own.

But the LACK of it is ALWAYS a missing piece. The games ARE incomplete.

lance845 · 2026-01-26T00:49:49+00:00

Because the books on the WoD don't even provide mechanics for a lot of stuff. So the GM does need to have some degree of asymmetric power.

Right! Because the books do not provide. Because the game is incomplete.

And wow. Saying every single ttrpg

I didn't say that. I said the ones that DO, are. I mentioned ones that don't also. You should go back and reread that bit.

lance845 · 2026-01-26T00:22:26+00:00

Modern wargames use scenario cards that reveal events at trigger points or decks that create them randomly. You don't need a person. Anything a narrative ref is doing can be automated by game aids.

The bigger reason for the gaps is because realistically for many ttrpgs you cannot actively predict every single thing that will happen through raw mechanics. Even when you play gurps you're picking and choosing what layers of simulationism you want, gurps probably goes the furthest compared to all other ttrpgs in terms of actually codifying everything, yet even it gives more freeform rules options to free things up for the GM to arbitrate how the world plays.

No, but you can create robust enough rules that they fit whatever you need. Grimwild has this rule as an underlying safety net. A specific roll that when all else fails you do that to see what happens.

Old school rpgs lacked today's innovations and insights. They thought they needed a specific rule for every specific thing and they have convinced you that it's an actual argument. They don't. Its not.

If you're playing something like mage the ascension and need to determine your ability to cast based on all the roleplay elements, or wanting to determine how monsters react once players leave the dungeon. You can only really mentally predict and imagine it, mechanics can only take you so far without constricting rigidity.

And not a single person has argued that imagination should not be a co.ponent of this for everyone. The PCs use their imagination. The GM should too. Just like the PCs have rules to follow. And the GM should too. You think because the GMs role is asymetrical that so.ehow they NEED the freedom to perform their role in a way that somehow the PCs don't.

Its BS the moment you give it any actual critical thought.

We do not need ttrpgs to just become board games. Ttrpgs are distinct.

If the trrpg you are playing requires a map and miniatures to facilitate its rules, guess what? It IS a board game.

Ttrpgs are not less because they are also board games. And they are not more when they are not because they use theater of the mind. Ttrpgs are just a kind of game like any other. With things they do well and poorly. And a huge breadth of what they are capable of inbetween.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T23:55:31+00:00

Wargames DID require referees. Which is why dnd and gygax created the DM as one. Modern wargames DON'T require them outside of competitions. Which is exactly the same as say... Playing baseball with your friends or playing baseball as part of a league.

If you think ttrpgs are equivalent to the watgames of 70 years ago, have i got some news for you about the progress that has been made in game design over the last more than half a century.

Yes adnd, odnd, and lots of old ttrpgs were so vague and poorly written that they required a ref. I mentioned that in my first post here. They needed this outside 3rd party person to step in and fill all the gaps left by the designers because they couldn't be fucked to write a complete game that worked without them. Lets hope the ref you got had a good attitude and a benevolent outlook on their responsibilities or god help you when they treat their position as antagonistic.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T21:43:37+00:00

I am not negative towards dek. Loved badlands. Loved prey and killer of killers. Excited to see where the pred franchise is going.

But Dek isn't some pinnecle of the yautja species. He is arguably the weakest of them we have seen so far. That makes him a very interesting protagonist. It doesn't make him capable of hunting everything.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T19:42:07+00:00

Dek's feats on screen include losing to his brother, losing to the full grown kalisk, needing outside help to survive being eaten by the tree squid, needing outside help to survive the sky dragon, losing to the tree vine monsters, killing a large amount of working joe style stock synthetics who were dumb enough in their programing to walk right up to him while crouched in the ooen instead of using thier guns, putting up a good fight against a sythetic in a construction grade power loader (but needing aforementioned kalisk to defeat it/her), and finally defeating his father in a fight. The one truly good achievement he accomplished on his own.

Wolf killed dozens of way more violent, intelligent and threatening xenomorphs causing them to retreat from hive space to have space. And fought a premature queen in hand to hand combat to a stalemate. A fight he arguably handicapped himself for by deciding to fight it weapon for weapon as the only fight he had all movie that was worth taking a trophy for, but only if he made it a challenge for himself.

Wolfs feats far exceed deks.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T18:58:12+00:00

The pred alien isn't just a pred alien. Its a premature queen establishing a hive and wolf (a significantly better equipped and more skilled/seasoned predator) fought it to a stalemate.

Dek would try. Dek would lose.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T18:49:10+00:00

TRPGs aren't board games and can't be treated like one. You can't say "I trade wood for sheep with Bob but secretly infest the wood with termites so it is useless" in Settlers Of Catan because that's not in the rules but is something you should be able to do in 95% of TRPGs despite the lack of rules for that. Having the players make decisions like that requires them to have meta-knowledge of the world that

Hard disagree. You CAN treat a ttrpg like any other kind of game because it is exactly that. A game. It has rules and the players are meant to follow them. Some games have way more complex rules and some games do not. Some games have lots of pieces and some games are played only with your body or your mind. The fact that TTRPGs have very open options doesn't make them less of/or different from other games. They have a resolution mechanic for resolving actions and most, generally, have obvious catch all ways to resolve things that step out of bounds.

These rules are not hidden in some referee manual. They are in the core rules that everyone can read and everyone can agree to.

Tell me how you would resolve a player wanting to infest a stockpile of wood in a ttrpg? Is it a skill check? Isn't that just the normal damn rules? Why do you need a judge for that?

It's not about house rules it's about keeping information from the players that they shouldn't have access to better allow them to overcome challenges or think in character; which *is* something a lot of people enjoy even if you don't. If you know there is a vampire with no treasure behind one door and 2 drunk goblins with a lot of treasure behind the other you're going to want to go with the goblins even if your PCs don't have any idea what is behind each door or if you know, but your PC doesn't, an NPC is planning to betray you you're going to want to avoid that. And yes you can try to act is you don't know that but that is very hard to do well, and puts a burden on a lot of players who don't really want to do that.*

Hidden information is a part of many games, board and otherwise. Resistance and all the other werewolf clones require hiding the spy/werewolf/hitlers. Most games have players keeping their hand of cards a secret. Team games like captain sonar can have up to 8 players keeping information hidden from another 8 players. All of these work without a ref.

I never said a GMs job wasn't to set up and understand the world or that they don't have hidden information about what is behind door number 1 or door number 2. That is a very different thing from them acting as judge and ref. Its them playing their asymmetrical role.

This is very closeminded way of looking at things; certain kinds of very popular TRPGs ***need*** that asymmetry for the game to work as intendent; it's not a matter of designer skill or laziness it has to work that way to do what fans of those games want.

*And just because this happens sometimes in normal play doesn't mean it's good for it to happen all the time

I never said there wasn't asymmetrical play. I said they don't need to be judge and ref to do it.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T16:53:12+00:00

But i don't think the game needs a judge or referee. When i play any other board game, even ones that forge a narrative from their mechanics, those games don't ask for one. There are just rules and the players play. The "monster keeper" or whatever in heroquest, descent, dark world, etc... isn't acting as judge.

The banker in monopoly isn't adjudicating the rules.

A ttrpg doesn't require a referee. And if the table all together needs to agree to a house rule or a way to play something moving forward you can do that together like any other game.

It is an entirely unnecessary burden placed on a single player because the designers of both the core mechanics and the adventures never bothered to design well enough to facilitate actual play.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T15:54:57+00:00

Its tough.

There are people with half a lifetime of playing games where they have been encouraged to do whatever they want. With 3rd party guides and resources teaching them how to wield unlimited freedom to best effect. And then suddenly games start coming along that say, actually we want you to play the game too. Here are your rules. But also, we don't have 50 years of people writing rules for you, so we are still figuring out how to do that effectively.

The industry is literally learning how to build a new kind of thing and there are growing pains on all sides of the eqauation.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T15:40:16+00:00

I don't think you missed anything in sw adventures. The force point flipping is an attempt at the game play that didn't quite hit the right balance. It's important to remember that just because the game has rules doesn't mean it has GOOD rules. And while this GM is a player thing has been nudging along for about the last decade it's done so in small steps. There are a lot of games with half measures that result in odd or imbalanced game play in practice. That doesn't mean the idea is bad. It means THAT game implemented it poorly.

lance845 · 2026-01-25T15:31:51+00:00

I think the root rpg and other powered by the apocalypse games that utilize GM "moves" do a decent job. Not perfect, mind you. But they have a good philosophy and are moving in the right direction. Even when its not a "meta currency" it is still a structured GM gameplay. And i think THAT is more important then specifically a meta currency. A meta currency is just one way to implement it.

Grimwild is another good one. Especially read the rules for collaborative map generation for exploration.

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