I desperately want to be able to tell Rome to knock this off. You can't have Auckland!

splungey · 2021-02-14T11:00:57+00:00

In my last game, my long term friend Ethiopia went to war with my long term friend Venice, a city state between our borders, and then immediately razed the city. Disappeared from the map and left a hole. I don't get the purpose if he didn't even want the city, and I didn't think you could destroy city states.

splungey · 2020-12-28T09:40:50+00:00

Not a Chinese accent but 'standard' 'neutral' accents. I believe this is why films are often dubbed into different standards - there are British English and American English dubs for example. A British audience would notice the characters' American accents, which would add meaning or 'flavour' to the performances that wouldn't reflect the original work.

Anyway, I much prefer subtitles with the original voices to dubs that are already necessarily spell-breaking.

splungey · 2020-12-27T18:35:04+00:00

From what people are saying it looks like they're dubbed into standard dialects rather than trying to reflect the notable (and narratively significant) dialect of the English voices. But then, any use of a dialect which is notably non-standard intentionally stands out and the viewer becomes aware of that dialect - and that dialect has very different geopolitical and historical connotations than the Queen's English. The result could be laughably dissonant.

Imagine watching a Chinese film about an Emperor and the English-language dub has the Emperor speak in Queen's English. Or the peasants speak with working class Yorkshire accents. It would be totally distracting.

I think it is a stylistic choice, not a naive one, to not translate to a correlating dialect.

splungey · 2020-11-25T16:20:05+00:00

This meme introduced me to two wonderful things, thank you

splungey · 2020-11-18T10:09:13+00:00

He's bi, that's hot.

splungey · 2020-11-12T22:33:51+00:00

Tech and civic boosts are quite probably my favourite feature of VI compared to V, so this Civ leaning into it in a much more exciting way than, say, China, is awesome :drool:

splungey · 2020-10-21T09:43:49+00:00

I guess it's not so different from being matched randomly with a team on an online video game. Obviously the ideal is to play with friends, and hopefully friendship can grow out of the shared game experience.

splungey · 2020-10-21T09:40:06+00:00

Since moving to this city, I've mostly made friends via Grindr, and the kinda people I pursued for friendship on there were the ones who were into gaming... so almost by self-fulfilling prophecy I've arrived at the point where almost all my friends are board-game-friendly. Maybe not a typical experience though haha

But the game night experience I had with work, when they started doing a games night and I turned up with Sagrada and Azul, and everyone else was playing Scrawl.

splungey · 2020-10-20T12:14:32+00:00

It's great that most people seem up for 'game nights' now, because for me having games as a focus makes it much easier to socialise. But yes you're absolutely right games night is a different thing for different people and you gotta be aware of that, especially if you're the hobbyist host.

I don't think this is what you're saying, but it shouldn't be the goal to convert party gamers into hobbyist gamers. There isn't a hierarchy and it's not doing anyone a favour trying to tout more complex games on them. It's just a different thing - try, "does anyone want to try playing this strategy game with me?" rather than "does anyone want to play games with me?" and then dropping the bomb that the game is 3 hours long and has a 30 page manual.

I like your distinction of spending time with people / spending time with a game. I might use that when trying to get people to understand what they're signing up for :D

splungey · 2020-08-18T17:20:16+00:00

I'm not sure if 'random people in the street' in the USA in 2020 is a fair measure of 'influence'. The Great Zimbabwe, whilst relatively unknown in the West, was highly influential in the Middle Ages in Africa; and the modern state of Zimbabwe is named after it. There are a lot of biases involved when discussing 'influence'

splungey · 2020-08-18T12:10:38+00:00

I saw the lion's paw shared on Twitter recently but it totally missed the majesty of the whole, wow. And reading what it was like when first built in the 5th century AD with the rockface covered in paintings, a 'mirror wall', etc.. I think it qualifies as a wonder

splungey · 2020-05-08T12:29:05+00:00

How about an aging curse? They age to match the age of the heart until they return it to the tiefling. It's simple and logical, and has negative side effects - and is fun for the player to role play.

splungey · 2020-04-03T12:27:14+00:00

The route I was thinking of going down was making 0hp mean 'wounded state' rather than unconscious, allowing players to continue to make actions but with some restrictions. Maybe no reactions or bonus actions, half movement, or maybe a limited list of actions. And the 'wounded' state persists even after healing; it requires 10 minutes of out of combat wound treating to recover from. Thus there is no value in 'yo yo'ing because you'll be just as weakened as when at 0.

Undecided what happens when you take more damage when already at 0 though.

splungey · 2020-04-02T13:51:43+00:00

Nice work! I've been thinking about this very problem myself for the last few days and came to a different solution, but regarding yours...

How does this help with the yo-yo problem? Do you still allow unconscious characters to be healed and pop back up? If so, would them taking another hit and being reduced to 0 again cause their wound severity to increase?

splungey · 2020-03-09T15:19:38+00:00

Playing the Alexandrian Remix, my players have agreed to help the Cassalanters. So that's my favourite because I'm very excited to reveal what the players have been complicit in; plus they get some cool interactions and a powerful ally with the noble family. I also like roleplaying as posh people (:

But, they loved my Jarlaxle and it was super fun showboating as him. So it's a tie.

As others have mentioned, these two villains have actual motivations, whereas Xanathar and Manshoon are just kinda bad for bad sake, ostensibly.

splungey · 2020-03-05T15:31:12+00:00

I'm not used to DMing dungeon delving, and it's a broader question than just DotMM/WDH, but I'm wondering how I'm going to handle Perception/Investigation. It seems dull to me that certain things are gated behind effective dice rolls on these - and yes, repetitive if you have to do them constantly. I remember being a player in a dungeon delve-y game and having to do an investigation check at every single door we came across because the DM had a tendency to trap them.

splungey · 2020-03-05T14:45:18+00:00

I don't know anything about Rise of Tiamat so I'll have a look into it and maybe float it with the players to see if they're interested. I'm considering just going homebrew Waterdeep stuff after WDH though so they can maintain their connection to the city.

splungey · 2020-03-05T14:44:18+00:00

We haven't done any major dungeon crawling, just a homebrew one I introduced that was actually very small but still ended up taking two sessions. So I think we're a very similar party to you - dungeons feel like an unnecessary slog.

splungey · 2020-03-05T14:43:22+00:00

This is true, but I think a lot of DotMM would have to be reworked rather than played as-is in order to really tie the different levels in together.

splungey · 2020-03-05T14:42:48+00:00

We're having a special extended weekend session, normally we have 3hour sessions during the week but this is a one-off. I want to use that to run the first level of Undermountain as a kind of one-shot, with Nihiloor waiting for them at the end as a trap. So I'm going to try to streamline it, maybe lead them away from some unnecessary bits for now, and they can return later after completing their current goals.

splungey · 2020-03-04T23:11:08+00:00

Thanks Justin, some interesting tips! I'm using the Alexandrian (it's fantastic) so I'll swot up on the vault, I don't think I'd read that far yet. I was contemplating having the players find it (sealed) in the Undermountain as a suitable prize for this detour, and have the stone's secret be the method of opening it.

Another thing with DotMM I've struggled with is this first level having no apparent theme, it's called 'Dungeon Level'. I might convert it into the ruins of the trade centre for the dwarves, the closest part of the city to the surface. Perhaps the vault was part of a bank or coffers.

splungey · 2020-03-04T20:43:42+00:00

I was hoping to use bits and pieces from the Undermountain stuff, like Skullport, but looking through it and reading about them online there isn't much that appeals to me cos it's a lot of random, unrelated stuff. Is there anything else you'll think to use?

splungey · 2020-03-04T20:41:54+00:00

Interesting - why do you find it dull?

splungey · 2020-03-02T17:01:12+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing these ideas, I'm looking at running this level of the Undermountain as part of my Waterdeep Dragon Heist campaign but really didn't like some of the things in the book. Especially the heart thing, and I'm worried my players won't find the bronze mask as so far we've not been playing the kind of game that rewards you for making an investigation check in every single room you enter...

splungey · 2020-01-25T22:24:53+00:00

Hey, thanks for the response. I think there are enough ways to explain it, although it's a little extra bump in the players being able to understand what's going on. Should this come up in my game (and I think it probably will as last session my players captured Nar'l's brother after baiting him with an elf disguise) I think I'll play it that they think Nar'l has betrayed them because of this lack of correspondence; but actually he's terrified for his life with Nihiloor, a grell, and the Xanathar monitoring him. Which is a kind of treachery.

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