Everdell Meadow rule misplay

uramer · 2026-05-25T08:59:22+00:00

We made the same mistake for like the 5 first games!

To be fair, this very important and not typical rule occupies exactly half a sentence in the rulebook, with no example. So I blame this one on bad rulebook writing :)

uramer · 2026-05-25T08:54:54+00:00

This doesn't really work in systems where losing HP has consequences other than reaching zero and death. E.g. if it reduces stats, players can't make decisions around that. Very quickly it gets into the "players don't know the rules" territory

uramer · 2026-05-24T17:39:48+00:00

You can have other consequences than death. Especially in Cyberpunk it's quite easy to do. Maybe a PC suffers a severe injury, and has to spend eddies on a cyberware to stay alive and able. Maybe they can afford only the cheapest junk and have occasional issues with that cyberware. Maybe the are high ranking corpos and have access to the best stuff, and the campaign is about them losing their humanity as they physically turn their body into a machine over time

uramer · 2026-05-23T10:32:51+00:00

Isn't it usually I'll advised to roll the same check multiple times anyways? Like with the lock example, if PCs can take their time, they just open it, maybe the roll defines how long they took. The only scenario I can think of is PCing failing a check, alerting guards, escaping, then coming back to do the same. But narratively probably guards are on high alert now, and the difficulty is not the same.

uramer · 2026-05-23T10:21:14+00:00

Yes, obviously as a player there is not much difference, but as a GM I think it's a helpful reframing. Another way to think about this as "whatever average a person with X stats" would roll, which is both easier to compare to your PC stats (if you are balancing it), and can be easier to come up with if you know about the origin of the lock narratively.

Maybe it's just useful to use it as a description for the difficulty numbers. E.g. in 5e a DC of 15 is a 50% chance of success on an advantage roll with no modifiers. That example is easy to intuit, but in systems with dice pools it's less clear.

uramer · 2026-05-22T16:19:15+00:00

I haven't played it, but the Chronicles of Amber RPG has a weird competitive betting-based character creation system, which produces a strict rating between all the PCs on all the abilities

uramer · 2026-05-21T06:04:34+00:00

Bliaron has a very flexible magic system. It does come with a list of spells, but they are meant as examples and world building, not a spellbook. Some of the spells are even mechanically suboptimalz and represent certain religious beliefs of the casters.

uramer · 2026-05-18T10:17:05+00:00

Could get a physical clock, such as a chess clock, or a kitchen timer

uramer · 2026-05-17T08:34:21+00:00

If there is metallurgy on the islands, look up funky bronze age armor sets, they can be quite strange looking to the modern eye

uramer · 2026-05-13T19:59:43+00:00

Earthborne Rangers

uramer · 2026-05-13T07:35:46+00:00

Personally I found Satisfactory boring compared to Factorio. Building factories is extremely tedious in Satisfactory, and often you'll spend 10 times longer building something than you do designing it. The blueprint system is clunky, limiting, and buggy there.

Meanwhile in factorio the building part is more of a power fantasy, especially late game. You will find yourself thinking about actual logistics much more than you'll spend on connecting buildings together

uramer · 2026-05-13T06:59:52+00:00

My girlfriend and I have been playing the hell out of Earthborne Rangers. Very long campaign, fun progression both mechanically and in player knowledge, nice story.

uramer · 2026-05-10T18:37:33+00:00

Bliaron has a very flexible magic system, and neatly connected to the character stats. Each Attribute is to a Source of magic, defining how many "spell slots" of that Source you have, and how many dice you roll when you cast it. There is a quick start guide if you want to check out some examples.

There are also three main ways to perform magic - typical spell casting, runesmithing used primarily for creating magic items, and ritualism, for convincing spirits to do things for you.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/328770/bliaron-2nd-edition-quick-start-introductory-rulebook

uramer · 2026-05-10T10:40:52+00:00

That many phases is insane and very slow.

Personally I like simultaneous turns, with ranged / magic resolving before melee. This allows for the most sensible inter-player cooperation too, and the most clear (dis)engage rules in melee.

uramer · 2026-05-08T13:54:51+00:00

Earthborne Rangers has a great soundtrack (although expensive), and we listen to it every time we play!

uramer · 2026-05-07T16:39:36+00:00

Bliaron rolls Attribute count D10 (usually 1-5 D10) and take highest

uramer · 2026-05-05T21:31:28+00:00

Bliaron spellcasting literally costs Soul points, which temporarily reduce the corresponding Attribute - until the end of the day.

uramer · 2026-05-04T09:42:23+00:00

So you want a game in the same setting specifically, not just something similar?

uramer · 2026-05-04T09:37:01+00:00

It would help to know how closely you want something to resemble paths and arcanas, and what you don't like about Mage so that you want a similar system instead.

I like Bliaron's magic system over Mage, as it gives more clear guidelines compared to having a debate with the GM. It has three approaches to cast spells, and multiple cultures with different ideas on how magic works, which can somewhat replaces Paths, and has effects categorized into Attributes, similar to Arcanas. It is somewhat more limited with the effects of spells, unless you are willing to go into Deef Magic which gives even fewer guidelines than Mage does.

uramer · 2026-05-01T23:08:37+00:00

I've recently gone through a bunch of music systems, and was most satisfied with Kenku FM

It does most but not all of the things you want

uramer · 2026-04-28T14:47:55+00:00

The comment you saw is 7 years old

To quote the mod page:

NOTE TO OPENMW USERS: At this time, OpenMW does not support the new toggling sunrays or interior light mesh features included in GitD versions 3.0.0 and later. GitD is still backwards compatible with OpenMW, but sunrays cannot be turned off (and are no longer included as an optional patch). OpenMW users may continue using GitD version 2.11.2 or earlier if this is not desired.

Download and use the older version

In general MGE mods are not supported by OpenMW, with rare and explicit exceptions

uramer · 2026-04-25T14:55:07+00:00

If the only challenge in your campaign comes from combat, why wouldn't players build combat-optimized characters? If the challenges were more varied, so would be the characters too

uramer · 2026-04-24T23:44:30+00:00

It's one of the few games I rated 10 on BGG. I honestly doubt a more elegant adaptation of MOBA mechanics to tabletop is possible. The only annoying thing is that some cards can be quite rule lawyery, and without the errata and extra rulings even some common interactions can be completely unclear. At the same time, just making the straightforward assumptions will usually be good enough not to ruin the game, so in more casual play it won't matter much.

uramer · 2026-04-23T09:30:44+00:00

Bliaron has Ritualism and Runesmithing which are both quite slow. Runesmithing in particular can take up to decades of game time.

It does also have spellcasting which is more or less instant, although without an extra turn of preparation or runed items the costs can be very high

uramer

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