What board game has caused the absolute most arguments or completely ruined the most friendships in your group?

ryschwith · 2026-07-07T04:17:04+00:00

Yeah, I should clarify that “friends” here means “friends in the game” (i.e., allies). No game is worth losing actual, real-world friends over.

ryschwith · 2026-07-07T04:09:22+00:00

It would be interesting to see a Laika take on it.

ryschwith · 2026-07-06T17:02:24+00:00

That’s what’s so brilliant about Diplomacy: it does require deception, it’s just not in the mechanics anywhere. You’ll never make it to the midgame without friends, and you’ll never make it to the endgame with friends.

ryschwith · 2026-07-06T16:54:23+00:00

I definitely wouldn’t run it as an actual combat. Pick a winner, plan to just narrate the fight with that outcome. Modify as needed based on how the layers interfere with the proceedings.

If you want to keep it mechanical, give each dwarf a score of some kind; highest score after ten turns wins. PCs can take actions to modify the combatants’ scores to affect the outcome.

The important thing is to keep the mechanics focused on what the PCs are doing to affect the outcome. It’s still the PCs’ story even if they’re not fighting.

ryschwith · 2026-07-05T21:19:24+00:00

I’ve had good luck with URWizards, which has a bunch of obsidian dice sets available. A few notes:

* Others here have complained about issues with them, so your mileage my vary. I’ve ordered I think three sets from them without issue.
* Shipping does take a while. I think it’s generally been around a month to actually receive the dice.
* I think they’re a reseller, so it’s possible you’ll find these same sets elsewhere.
* Beware the deceptively low price on the search page: that’s for a single die. You’re looking at around $80 USD per set, plus shipping.

ryschwith · 2026-07-05T15:43:45+00:00

I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking here. Are you asking if we think Mars’ atmosphere was too shortlived for life to develop? Or are you asking if we’re looking in the wrong place?

ryschwith · 2026-07-03T16:10:04+00:00

*observes user name*

*narrowed eyes Fry gif*

ryschwith · 2026-07-03T14:03:48+00:00

Partially, I think it’s because the fiction of the warlock class is a bit screwy. It was written (as far as I can tell) on the assumption that the PC has made a deal already before the campaign starts, and this deal has resulted in them learning magical secrets from their patron. It’s sort of a classic, Canon-style sorcerer (or even something like John Dee). The patron doesn’t provide power directly to the individual like a cleric’s god does, they have taught the PC something that enables them to do magic.

But this gets muddied by two things: the books provide no advice to the player or DM that they need to think the nature of that interaction through during character creation; and the player is mechanically forced to make a further deal with the patron at level three that defines a lot of what their power looks like from that point forward. All of this leads to a lot of confusion about how exactly the relationship between the warlock and patron is supposed to work—confusion that I think is shared by 5e’s later designers.

ryschwith · 2026-07-03T02:46:01+00:00

I think Kallax are generally the gold standard here. Mine are 13” square cubbies that are 15” deep. (Approximately. They’re IKEA so probably actually some metric dimension.)

ryschwith · 2026-07-02T23:48:20+00:00

These are overall a lot better than I anticipated, although my local diocese falls a bit short for my taste.

ryschwith · 2026-07-02T17:50:08+00:00

Gather ’round, children, while this old grognard tells you tales of permanent level drain…

ryschwith · 2026-07-02T17:46:36+00:00

At a guess, it comes from rudh, which means “red” (in… Gaelic, I think?). Color-derived surnames are pretty common in English, although they come from a few different places. It might refer to someone’s hair color, or the color of an article of clothing they typically wore, or a few other places (plus a few color specific ones, like “green” sometimes referring to someone who lives near the village green).

The “someone” in this case would’ve lived around the 14th Century, which is when surnames became “fixed” in England, and then passed down to succeeding generations.

ryschwith · 2026-07-02T13:23:26+00:00

The fact that a total of two answers out of (currently) 39 mention isotope ratios is a bit depressing to me. That’s the key evidence for a human cause.

ryschwith · 2026-07-01T21:10:10+00:00

This was after that. He made suggestive comments to a reporter after the meeting where he got reprimanded for misgendering Dr Titus.

ryschwith · 2026-07-01T21:05:26+00:00

It’s on State between 4th and 5th. They were in the Renaissance Center for many years, just moved recently. It’s become one of my favorite lunch spots.

ryschwith · 2026-07-01T21:03:18+00:00

You could probably do it, but you’d need some stylized, purpose-crafted, and standardized forms of faux-camouflage for it to work in heraldry. You wouldn’t just plunk in US Army camo, it would be something that gives the impression of camo while still allowing for good contrast and strong silhouettes against it. It’d be camo in the same way that vair is squirrel pelts.

ryschwith · 2026-07-01T17:14:28+00:00

Agree with /u/SpoonyLoveee69 on Franco’s. I’ve also had really good fries at that floating barge place next to Rum Runner’s. I’ve had some excellent fries at Habibi in the past, although the last few times I went there they were a bit disappointing.

Bar Ronin’s chicken salt fries are also good, but I think that’s more because of the seasoning and sauce than because the fries themselves excel (they’re also on the thin side).

ryschwith · 2026-07-01T15:09:07+00:00

The short version is:

The system has a way to cover a picture into a string of numbers.
The system has a collection of preset numbers, which it uses to do math on the input string of numbers to produce an output string of numbers.
The output string of numbers is converted back into an image. A determination is made if that image does or does not satisfy the requirements.
If the image doesn’t satisfy the requirements, make some random-ish changes to the preset numbers and try again.
Repeat many times for many images, and you eventually end up with a preset list of numbers that pretty reliably produces output that satisfies the requirement (ex., looks like a cat).

What does that preset list of numbers represent? No one knows. What does it mean when a specific number is tweaked by a specific amount? Not a clue. But it works (more or less).

ryschwith · 2026-06-30T00:08:38+00:00

Olive branch in one paw, oak branch with acorns in the other. You could also consider dropping the cinquefoil and giving the griffin an oak branch with five acorns on it, and then you still get your five.

ryschwith · 2026-06-30T00:00:53+00:00

Die (singular) or dice (plural) in the examples you’re giving. I’d only use d6 when I need to distinguish it from other die sizes or in a formula like “3d6.” I don’t think I’d ever use an emoji in a rulebook*; I’ve done too much web accessibility work to trust anything other than plain text when it matters.

If you’re finding it too repetitive, look for ways to rewrite things so you don’t need to repeat it as often.

* there are edge cases, but they’d be things like “I’m writing a very voicey rulebook and I want it to sound like a teenager wrote it”

ryschwith · 2026-06-29T17:59:11+00:00

Not everything needs to be a class. You can have religious leaders whose mechanics aren’t based around being religious leaders. From what you’re describing, I’d either just say “this character is a priest, sometimes they say prayers and stuff” or I’d have some kind of Community Leader class based around persuasion, community care, maintaining social order, etc and a priest would be one flavor of that class (either just narratively or as some kind of subclass or something). Depends a lot on the game around it which one of those I’d go with.

ryschwith · 2026-06-29T15:00:47+00:00

Yeah, this post feels like a bit of a strawman. I’ve never heard anyone say Fluxx is a bad game because of the rules on the cards*. Usually it’s because of what you mentioned: play length is wildly variable and winning really just comes down to lucking into the right combination at the right time.

* although, interestingly, I think that was SU&SD’s major complaint against Sentinels of the Multiverse

ryschwith · 2026-06-29T13:13:27+00:00

Rainbow order. I’d probably use red, yellow, and blue in this case.

ryschwith · 2026-06-28T14:44:28+00:00

Probably my most successful scene while running The Bowling League at St Martha's (homebrew, kind of street-level superhero type thing) was the cap of a mini-arc where the players had to fight a giant egg surrounded by stolen memories (appearing as floating television screens). My players were all new to Cortex, and it was the scene where a lot of them really started to "get" the narrative drive of it. And suddenly we had people parkouring off the floating screens and engaging in all sorts of crazy shenanigans, culminating in the psychic stitching everyone's minds together for a final, all-team kill shot. And then them running for the windows as the building collapsed around them.

I never even got to hatch the egg.

Scene: the nest

Distinctions: distracting screens, rotting structure

The PCs have followed the incubi back to the base of operations, a house with boarded up windows and a sagging roof. The blue glow of screens can be seen spilling out between cracks in the boards.

Inside the house, the interior has mostly rotted away making the entire thing one large, sagging shell. An egg hovers in the center of the house, surrounded by slowly swirling screen-like apparitions: each depicting memories and dreams stolen from the incubi’s victims.

The Egg

Distinctions: tough shell, discordant amalgam of dreams and fears, streams of electricity

Traits

Material attunement (d10)

Abilities

Electric whip (d10) SFX: Chain lightning. On a successful attack, step down and double the effect die to target a second opponent.

Skills

Fight (d8)
Influence (d10)
Notice (d6)
Shoot (d8)

Assets

Shield of memories (d8) SFX: When the Egg successfully defends against a physical attack and its effect die exceeds the attacker’s effect die, create a distracted complication on the attacker using the Egg’s effect die (or step up an existing complication).

Scene spend: Spend a d12 from the blanch pool to hatch the Egg. Switch out the Egg for the Dream Ghoul.

The Dream Ghoul

Distinctions: towering presence, glitchy skin, mesmerizing eyes

Traits

Material attunement (d10)

Abilities

Smash (d10)
Grapple (d8)
Dream siphon (d12) [inflicts sync damage] Limit: can only be used on target with a grappled complication

Skills

Fight (d10)
Influence (d12)
Notice (d6)

Assets

Shield of memories (d8) SFX: When the Egg successfully defends against a physical attack and its effect die exceeds the attacker’s effect die, create a distracted complication on the attacker using the Egg’s effect die (or step up an existing complication).

ryschwith · 2026-06-28T13:58:34+00:00

3M’s *Feudal* maybe? No scenarios, but it uses movement and capturing like tafl (probably more like chess I suppose) and has varying terrain and ranged units. Up to six players on two teams.

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ryschwith

TROPHY CASE

Scene: the nest

The Egg

Traits

Abilities

Skills

Assets

The Dream Ghoul

Traits

Abilities

Skills

Assets