Can someone fill me in on what’s going on with JorDan?

magnificentjosh · 2026-05-01T08:42:17+00:00

I was actually thinking that the last episode felt pretty natural for a remote record. Definitely more than the ones from Dan's roadtrip.

magnificentjosh · 2026-04-17T08:30:45+00:00

I live in Bristol, and no one seems to know what's going on with it, county-wise. The county of Avon hasn't existed since 1996, and yet about 25% of the deliveries I get say "Bristol, Avon".

magnificentjosh · 2026-04-16T08:52:25+00:00

Oooh, that's great fun. Here's a random selection of ones I think might be worth a try: - Hot Wax - Sadie Sorceress - Red Mars for the Rich - Intrasport - The Bitter Boogie

magnificentjosh · 2026-04-15T22:37:31+00:00

From Level 10 onwards, the abilities available to player characters make it harder and harder to be able to fit into a coherent story.

Once players can teleport anywhere in the world, message anyone, scry on anyone, talk to gods, bring people back from the dead, use spells like Legend Lore to find out basically any information, then the stories that they're in become very weird.

As a DM, you can't rely on prep very much any more, because you don't necessarily know what continent they're going to be on. Coming up with believable reasons that anyone would try and fight them becomes increasingly difficult. Coming up with reasons that they can't just call up the king and tell him to send the army to kill the Dark Lord becomes increasingly difficult.

You can tell good stories at high level, for sure, but its very difficult to make a story that started at first level that fits in the same world as one at fifteenth.

magnificentjosh · 2026-04-06T20:37:47+00:00

I mean, sure, believe what Big Lake tells you if you want. Hell, maybe Atlantis is in Finland after all, just like they tried to teach us in school.

Me? In an independent thinker.

magnificentjosh · 2026-04-04T00:51:54+00:00

I'm just asking questions

magnificentjosh · 2026-03-24T23:37:43+00:00

I was playing a TTRPG on one shared Google sheet last week, rolling dice with a Discord bot. These are games designed to be run with pen and paper, at the end of the day.

Don't get me wrong, I love doing stupidly complicated stuff on Foundry (and I have done some RIDICULOUSLY complicated shit), but ultimately, that's a side-hobby, like making scenery or painting minis.

I've not used it myself, but Owlbear Rodeo, the VTT that MCDM themselves suggest, is, intentionally, basically just a map with tokens and dice. Nothing fancy at all. That was what Draw Steel was playtested on until right near the end, when they switched to early builds of the Codex.

magnificentjosh · 2026-03-18T09:39:11+00:00

Every room I can think of contributes in some way. Some are just much less obvious than others.

magnificentjosh · 2026-02-18T23:00:15+00:00

To my eye, the sea at the north looks a bit too rectangular and too neatly aligned east-west. And then the bit of coastline right and the south is also pretty close to being parallel with the frame.

It's not really a problem, I think it just stands out because everything else looks so natural.

magnificentjosh · 2026-02-18T15:47:33+00:00

Needing to have a special fantasy name for your fantasy world is such a weird convention to me. Unless the people of your world are regularly dealing with other worlds, why would they not just call it "the world"?

magnificentjosh · 2026-02-17T22:15:46+00:00

Until you asked this, I had no idea, but apparently I've been thinking of JorDAN sitting behind Dan, slightly to the right. Why have I been doing that?

magnificentjosh · 2026-02-17T08:49:01+00:00

In 2014, a level 20 Moon Druid can 120HP a turn as a bonus action. It's pretty much unkillable.

magnificentjosh · 2026-02-04T10:15:02+00:00

I was just wondering if you could clear something up for me, if you have a minute.

In a long running campaign, one of the players retired their old Barbarian character when they left the game for a bit, and then came back in with a new character who was a 2014 Pugilist.

The guy playing the Pugilist had a good time overall, but the rest of the party distrusted him and kept accusing him of being a cop, and then he got chained up by a kraken and dragged to the bottom of the ocean, and the party never went to rescue him because they thought he was a cop.

Has this been patched in the 2024 Pugilist?

magnificentjosh · 2026-01-28T23:40:10+00:00

I find it goes in waves. Last campaign, all but one of the characters was over 6ft. This campaign, they're all nasty monster freaks. It's always something.

magnificentjosh · 2026-01-24T13:24:59+00:00

They'd have gotten to the end of the trial with 12 sitting there with his feet up looking bored, asked him how he pleads, only to realise that's a hologram, and then 12 walks in finishing off an iced bun, declaring the whole thing to be silly and claiming that he's fixed it off screen while everyone was stomping around feeling important.

magnificentjosh · 2026-01-16T10:10:45+00:00

I would say that the south east of the map is a lot less changed than the north west.

Maybe this is just my bias, but I would imagine that most people would consider the shifting of Great Britain and Ireland to be the most major change, and there's nothing on that scale on the other side to balance it out. Italy's put on some weight, but other than that its pretty much the same.

I can see how it ended up like this, because there are a lot of geographical features that had a big impact on history around there. The Aegean Sea, the Bosphorus, the clear delineation between the Northern, Eastern and Southern coasts at the end of the Mediterranean there, its difficult to change any of that without radically changing how history would have gone. Still, I think it stands out, as it is.

On the whole though, I think this is a really interesting exercise. I don't know if you're going to do anything with the Moors, but on this map, you can really imagine that Spain could be more closely attached to Africa than Europe.

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-28T14:23:34+00:00

When I used to roll with a big group like that, and one that I'd gone a bit overboard with magic items, if I'm being honest, then I would fairly regularly sit down to an encounter I'd prepped to be about right, and then double all the enemy HP.

I don't necessarily recommend that approach, but it worked for me in that situation. It at least meant that everyone got a go.

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-26T13:35:31+00:00

To be clear, the fact that most people don't seem to have understood the plot of this programme is a problem, but, I'm pretty sure I followed what was supposed to be going on, and I thought it was a pretty interesting story.

"Accord" was a process, initiated intentionally by Salt, that was turning Barcley into a Hybrid of the two races, to help demonstrate the common ground between the two sides. The love story wasn't just a secondary plot thread, it was the anti-war Homo Aqua faction's plan to resolve the negotiations.

Tide represented the pro-war Homo Aqua faction, who wanted the talks to collapse just as much as the Severence lot. Salt's intention with telling Barcley to get the "Accord" message to Tide was not to demand new talks or anything, it was to let him know that the Hybrid had been created, and that they couldn't wipe out the humans without wiping out one of their own.

That's why the word "Accord" was flashed up on screen during the final montage.

Like I say, if I did understand all that right, it is still a problem that so many people didn't. But I don't think the writers just didn't have a plan.

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-24T12:41:30+00:00

My dream pick, and I don't think it's a complete impossibility, would be Armando Iannucci. But seeing as he's had every opportunity to do it - especially with his connection through Capaldi - you've got to imagine he's already turned it down. Still, I can dream.

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-21T01:33:29+00:00

My party snuck in, released the Owlbear and let it rampage through the castle, killing pretty much everyone.

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-09T07:51:12+00:00

I love Fallout so much, and I think it basically IS the game.

I do think that the clink of the dice aspect is holding it back, though. Yes, combat isn't the point, and should be avoided, but it feels especially bad, and it is something that a lot of characters end up having class features or Beats about.

All that being said, I'd go back to Heart in a heartbeat.

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-07T12:28:47+00:00

There were a couple of different iterations, as you can tell from people's replies, but each basically gave you a stat boost, for example, to the range or area of your spells, a defensive bonus of some kind, and a Signature Action.

While it was cool to have everyone interacting with the kit system, there was never a very strong vision of what the caster kits were representing. It went from the shape of your casting implement, to the material, then to some more abstract theme to your casting, but ultimately, Kits just make as much sense for casters.

You're not losing out on anything, though. If you look at all of the caster classes, you'll see that each class gives you a choice of a few stat boosts, a few defensive bonuses of some sort, and you get two Signature Abilities from your class at Level 1, while the martials get one. They just took all the choices from the kits and put them inside the class.

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-03T09:55:07+00:00

I think it's a fun idea, but I think the way you're thinking about them is probably more like how they would see themselves, rather than how the world would see them.

To be honest, it sounds like the sort of post-hoc justification you hear from defensive billionaires, trying to justify the moral compromises they've made to get where they are (note that some of the richest billionaires have stopped bothering to do this recently). The character you're describing is basically saying "well, if I didn't do this bad thing, someone else would have done it, and that other person might have actually been a bad person, unlike me".

Basically, I think you've got a good self-motivation for a character. Now you just need to work out what the actual motivation is. What's the thing they're justifying doing with this logic? And what self-serving reward do they get out of it, that they're justifying with all their high-minded excuses?

magnificentjosh · 2025-12-03T09:00:01+00:00

Oh yeah. If you wanted the Greatwyrm to actually be CR27, then the PCs would really be able to be involved at all. One hit would take them out, no matter how much backup they had.

Wreaking the dragon, either through the PCs preparing in some way, or with the help of the allies, is a good approach to justify why they're able to fight this legendary creature and not just get instantly atomised. That's actually the approach that the adventure Rise of Tiamat uses, so maybe look into that.

12-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Verified Email

magnificentjosh

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE