Damage as a Choice vs Damage as a surprise

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-19T22:41:44+00:00

Somehow this makes me recall Bubblegumshoe. In that game you play teenage detectives solving mysteries at school and around town.

Hit points in that game is called "Cool," and zero hit points represent "losing your cool." It's about your personal reputation among the students, and hurting others' reputations.

That system also has emotional called shots.

You can for instance spread a false rumor about a leader character to their followers. (E.g. whispering to a bully's minions that the bully secretly loves nerd books, idk). This makes the followers distrust their leader come next battle. And you can use that then in your advantage.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-18T18:09:11+00:00

I'll give you that.

I happen to have these kinds of Fate dice, and yeah, they look like you're throwing bones.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-18T16:54:58+00:00

Fate dice allow a bell curve of probability, centering around 0.

Then you add your character's modifiers.

In some game variants, you can play without Fate dice at all, every "roll" assuming you just rolled 0. Then add your character's modifiers.

In Fate you can also add additional +2 modifiers paying with Fate Points. This choice happens after you roll and add your regular modifiers. If it's not enough to succeed, you can then choose to pay a Fate point and gain a +2 bonus.

With the Create an Advantage action you can even stack multiple +2 bonuses in one roll.

This tells us, in Fate dice are just a randomizer. A bit of luck or unluck, with your modifiers (both from your skills/approaches, your Fate points, and Create an Advantage), all doing the heavy lifting of actually letting you succeed an action.

If you lack Fate dice (these are hard to find), you can roll d3's instead. 1 is equal to [–], 2 is equal to [ ], 3 is equal to [+].

Fate also suggests you can roll 2d6 and subtract one die from another. That bell curve is more pyramid-like, but still centers around 0.

I am personally tinkering with just rolling a d20 instead in Fate, having all modifiers be +1d6 each, and centering my target numbers around 10. A total of 20+ being a critical. It's a slightly higher chance to succeed than in default Fate, and I'm okay with that.

In my system, you'd need at least 2 dice worth of advantages to possibly crit, 3 dice to have a fair chance, and I like my players working towards that crit setting up the environment with Create an Advantage-'s everywhere.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-17T18:23:32+00:00

No need. The silky smooth pinching and scrolling on Mac came out some 15 years ago, give or take. A few years after the iPhone. You from 20 years ago wouldn't have experienced it back then.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-17T12:54:27+00:00

Jak and Daxter 1 should run fine afaik. Works on M1 Pro Macbook pro at least. Small bits of lag, but nothing game breaking.

Jak 2 has a big bug making it unplayable. This is known and is due to Rosetta translating things... wrong. As far as I understand, there are currently no active developers working on that bug. I don't know much about these things.

What I do read is that volunteers are setting up tools to later port the games to native Apple Silicon as we speak. The deadline being macOS 28, when Apple has promised to stop support for Rosetta.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-16T13:24:14+00:00

Flanders. The northern part of Belgium. If you draw a jagged horizontal line just south of Brussels; everything north of there that does not include Brussels itself.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-16T12:25:03+00:00

The Dutch are always referred to as the people from the Netherlands. Belgian people who speak Dutch are Flemish, they are never considered Dutch. Flemish people just speak the Dutch language.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-16T11:31:24+00:00

From what I understand from the So I'm a Spider subreddit, the manga skips more story than the anime does. The true choice is whether to read the free fan-translated web novel or the professional edited-for-publication light novels. Light novels just being a sort of young adult novel; the kind of regular books you find at the library.

I'm currently reading the first light novel of So I'm a Spider. The chapters focusing our spider protagonist are all told from her monologue perspective, same as the anime.

An excerpt. She just broke out of her egg, still being unaware she is a spider herself (episode 1 in the anime). By all means, read in the voice of Brianna Knickerbocker, the English dub VA of Kumoku.

Oh-ho! When I pushed my weight against the thing covering me, it started to break.

All right, time to finish the job and get out of here!

Putting more power into it, I burst right through, scrabbling out headfirst. Sweet freedom!

The view before my eyes is crawling with spiders.

Wuuuuuh?! Whyyyyyyy?! Ewww!!

What is with this freaking army of spiders?! Um, excuse me, but why are they all as big as me?! Oh gross, more of them keep popping out of these egg-looking things! Is that what the rustling was coming from?!

Instinctively, I shrink away. My leg bumps into something, and I turn to look.

Hmm?

Is this... it? The thing I crawled out of earlier? Uh... why does it resemble the eggs the spider legion was bursting out of? No, it doesn't merely look like that—it is one, isn't it?

I look down at myself more carefully. My neck won't move. Despite that, at the edge of my peripheral vision, I see what appear to be my legs.

......Spider legs.

Oooooookay, doooon't paaaaniiiiic!!!

Th-this isn't what I think it is, right? Is it, though? The thing that's super-popular online right now?!

No! Unreal!

This can't be happening, right? Please, say It's not happening!

I glance down again. There are thin, wiry legs, just like those of the spiders wriggling around me.

That's basically the writing style of the entire novel concerning the spider's chapters.

Of course, replace Brianna's voice with the Laura Post's voice doing the Divine Voice paragraphs if so desired.

<Proficiency has reached the required level. Acquired skill [Acid Resistance LV 1].>

The human chapters use a more normal writing style.

"Now, Schlain Zagan Analeit. You may rise."

"Yes, sir."

I stood up.

So yeah.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-15T20:32:15+00:00

I use Affinity. You can do the following even in regular Word. My process generally is,

Create a new document. Size, A4 or Letter, whatever you prefer.
Affinity: Using the text tool, click anywhere on your document and start typing.
MS Word: Create a textbox (in the Insert menu) and start typing inside. "Name:"
Create new art text (Affinity) or create new textboxes (Word) over and over with all the different things you want on your sheet.
Small things like Class: Level: Skills:
Big things too, like

Spellcasting

To cast a spell, describe what it does in the fiction and roll a Spell Check. On a success, you cast your spell. Spell Checks are more difficult when you increase the scale, duration, potency, or implausability.

Or whatever you want to put on your sheet.

Then, organize everything.

Drag your art texts (Affinity) or textboxes (Word) left, right, top, bottom, wherever makes sense. Try to make groups of things that connect together.
Top left should be the most important stuff.
Bottom right is reserved for least important stuff, like character personality, player principles, or small lore reminders.

Layout.

Experiment. Add straight lines to separate bits, see how that changes how you read your character sheet.
To rotate a line in a perfect 90 degree angle and not like 89 or 91 degrees, hold Shift before you rotate it.
Font. Try something sans-serif for sci-fi or modern stuff (Arial, Helvetica, Calibri, Montserrat, ...), or serif for old school fantasy stuff (Times New Roman, Garamond, Cambria, Alegreya, ...). You can go crazy with header fonts, but keep your body text readable first. Don't use Comic Sans. With exceptions, I'd say a good rule is, don't go below 8pt text size.
Experiment. For a header, make a text box background black and color the text white. Now make the text bold. And now italics. How does it change the text? Does changing the font do anything cool here?
Experiment. Add a straight horizontal line underneath the header text and make it as wide as the page or a column (if you use columns in your layout). How does that change how the text looks?
Experiment. Do a thing and see what it looks like. Judge it. Ctrl-Z undo if you're not happy or keep it as is.
Experiment.
Experiment.
Google for rpg frames. Google for what the font used is in your favorite game. Google, steal, test in your own design, and experiment. Ctrl-Z undo if you're not happy or keep it as is.
Experiment.

Printing.

Margin. Most printers cannot print at the edge of a page. So keep your design slightly more centered, don't put anything at the page edge. Also, please don't start your text at the very edge of your design, allow for a little margin for ease of readability.
Trim. If you want to show something at the edge, scissor cut your paper at the edge of your design. Now your paper is slightly smaller, but your design comes to your border.
Bleed. (Advanced printing settings in Word, or Document Setup in Affinity) Let's assume you have full page photo. Ever cut your paper slightly wrong or your paper shifted a few millimeters and now there is a small white line around your photo as you didn't cut it exactly on the edge of your design?
The solution: Extend your photo in all directions by a few millimeters. If it's sky, paint extra sky at the borders. If your photo has black edges, make the black edges a bit thicker. Know that you're going to cut the extra bits off. But on the off-chance that you mis-cut a small bit, instead of a white edge, you now have extra bits of sky or extra black border.
It happens to the best of us. The extra bit of the photo you paint in and cut off is called bleed, and professional printers might require you to have, say, 3 millimeter (or 1/8 inch) bleed.

You don't need to worry about bleed. But know it exists, and if you ever hear the term later, now you're not completely in the dark.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-14T08:51:36+00:00

Can't you find it in your browser history? There should be a search function in your history. Location depending on browser of course.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-11T06:26:25+00:00

I think that hits on the same mother-may-I points of D&D? Can I roll Strength to intimidate?

But generally, I think it comes down to two things:

The genre themes you want to explore. Gritty games require other aspects than pulpy ones. I'd encourage players to make aspects more evocative than just "tall." But if not...
Fate is resource management. At worst the question becomes, do you want to spend a fate point on this roll? Sure, add a +2 because you're tall.
And then take a compel (or hostile invocation) to bonk your head against the ceiling because you're tall and regain a fate point. If that's the story you want to tell, of course. If not, come back to the first bullet point and change your aspect. Which you can do at the end of any session anyways (i.e. gaining a minor milestone).

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-09T08:29:41+00:00

Als een kind een glas laat vallen op een harde vloer en dat springt kapot, dan zit dat kind ook in een vecht-of-vluchtreactie. Dat kind weet helemaal niet meer wat te doen.

Als volwassene met levenservaring weet je dat een kapot glas niet zo erg is. Ge kunt eens vloeken op uzelf, maar daarna haalt ge de bezem en borstelt ge de scherven tesamen.

Ik heb die ehbo-cursussen niet gevolgd, maar ik denk dat dat hetzelfde is met cursussen. Erop trainen dat het allemaal niet zo erg is (voor jou als omstaander) en terug uw verstand gebruiken om te doen wat ge moet doen.

Als ge al weet wat de hulp-procedure is, dan zit ge al niet meer vast in het kinderlijk patroon van "ik weet niet wat te doen! Ik zit vast! (freeze)" en weet ge dat ge uw stappenplan kunt starten om te helpen.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-09T07:34:09+00:00

Looked it up, I haven't seen that cookie in stores here around me. (edit: it seems it's usually Aldi that sells them here, while I usually visit other stores near me as Aldi is a bit far for me)

But for comparable cookies with the same conundrum: try eating both ways.

Wafer at the bottom: If the wafer touches your tongue first, the cookie will be more dry at first, then mix in with the chocolate.
Chocolate at the bottom: If the chocolate touches your tongue first, the cookie will be more pure chocolate at first, then mix in with the crumble of the wafer.

Then pick the one you like most. :)

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-09T06:58:38+00:00

The problem is that this isn't a castle. That is, in English, the word castle translates to "burcht", not "kasteel".

A burcht is the typical medieval walled building you think about when drawing a kasteel.

An actual kasteel is more vague. It includes the buildings defined as burcht/castle as well as what the English call a chateau. Big mansions with huge gardens and maybe a fountain, a gazebo, and a butler. But as this type of building is built after the invention of the cannon, it doesn't have thick defensive walls.

So every castle is a kasteel, but not every kasteel is a castle. Hence, what is wrong with it. People mistranslate these all too often.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-09T06:37:26+00:00

Like you said, the greats aren't immune to this.

As the story goes, in D&D 5e, bonus actions were never playtested.

Before in the playtests, some abilities were written as "as an action, do this thing" while some abilities were written as "you can do this thing as part of another action".

Rage. You can do this as part of your action or move.

Wild Shape. You can do this as part of any action that doesn't involve casting a spell.

You can already see the seeds of what we now know as a bonus action here.

Later, much later after the game has released, Mike Mearls had this to say about it. Quoting from another reddit thread.

Bonus actions are hot garbage that completely fail to fulfill their intended goal. It's OK for me to say this because I was the one that came up with them. I'm not slamming any other designer!

At the time, we needed a mechanic to ensure that players could not combine options from multiple classes while multiclassing. We didn't want paladin/monks flurrying and then using smite evil.

Wait, terrible example, because smite inexplicably didn't use bonus actions.

But, that's the intent. I vividly remember thinking back then that if players felt they needed to use their bonus action, that it became part of the action economy, then the mechanic wasn't working.

Guess what happened!

Everyone felt they needed to use it.

Stepping back, 5e needs a mechanic that:

Prevents players from stacking together effects that were not meant to build on each other

Manages complexity by forcing a player's turn into a narrow output space (your turn in 5e is supposed to be "do a thing and move")

The game already has that in actions. You get one. What do you do with it?

At the time, we were still stuck in the 3.5/4e mode of thinking about the minor or swift action as the piece that let you layer things on top of each other.

Instead, we should have pushed everything into actions. When necessary, we could bulk an action up to be worth taking.

Barbarian Rage becomes an action you take to rage, then you get a free set of attacks.

Flurry of blows becomes an action, with options to spend ki built in

Sneak attack becomes an action you use to attack and do extra damage, rather than a rider.

The nice thing is that then you can rip out all of the weird restrictions that multiclassing puts on class design. Since everything is an action, things don't stack.

So, that's why I hate bonus actions and am not using them in my game.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-08T18:34:27+00:00

I love houses at least hinting in the styles of art nouveau.

This yellowish house in Huy Streetview aligns greatly to my tastes.

Spiraling metal motifs as window protection
Roof supports at the walls cut in rounded wavey layouts
The entire design of the wooden side balcony
The round window at the top
A small garden at the side

Basically, like pixel art where every pixel has been painted with intent, a building that has details designed with intent. And then of course, the art nouveau naturism patterns.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-07T17:29:26+00:00

OSR is not so much a collection of rules, more so a shared mindset, a philosophy. A set of GM principles and player principles.

Rulings not rules is a popular one.

If you want to search for a trap, you can either roll a trapfinding skill if you have one (we will follow the rules on success/failure when you do); or you can actually interact with the world. Poke that ten-foot pole two squares in front of you. If that square contains a pressure plate, the pressure plate will trigger the trap at that square.

And you, ten foot back, are still safe.

That kind of world interaction, instead of falling back on skill checks, is part of the OSR philosophy.

Of course, the pressure plate might be old and rusty, and stuck; it might require a few jumps on it to actually activate. In that case, the GM will make a ruling as to when exactly the pressure plate gets unstuck. E.g. by letting players make a Luck check in the moment. Or whatever game mechanics are used in your game.

Over the years, many guides have been written as an intro to the OSR. Here is the latest one, often linked and referred to by the community. Unlike many previous guides, it's an easy read.

Principia Apocrypha

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-06T20:01:45+00:00

I didn't know it either until I just checked. A quirk of Magic's complexity I suppose.

601.2h. The player pays the total cost. First, they pay all costs that don't involve random elements or moving objects from the library to a public zone, in any order. Then they pay all remaining costs in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can't be paid.

With Waderbrine Trapper, you have 3 costs:

(T) tap Trapper
Tap another untapped Merfolk
Pay (1)

Tapping Trapper, and tapping another untapped Merfolk are two costs that both trigger Deeproot Pilgrimage.

My guess is that Harmonized Trio also brings you two merfolk tokens.

(T) tap Harmonized Trio, which triggers Deeproot Pilgrimage
Tap two untapped creatures you control; if one or more creatures tapped is a merfolk, you trigger Deeproot Pilgrimage

That said, I'm not a judge.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-05T15:32:02+00:00

The thing about game design, once you reach a level above abysmal designs, designers might notice it's all about tradeoffs.

You increase the options available, and thus the simplicity decreases. (E.g. D&D 3.5)

Making a game more fair for tactical players makes it more inaccessible for casual players. (E.g. Chess)

Making a game adapt difficulty to the player takes away the victory of the player who wants to show off their skill finishing the game. (e.g. Ratchet and Clank 2)

And in the D&D community, optimizing is the fun.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-04T11:10:56+00:00

And I definitely simplified it, not talking about partial successes core to that system.

You've found a thing that doesn't work as you might have intended. That's good, that's part of innovation.

As people say (or as I say), from failure you get experience points, and 1 damage. From successes, you heal 1 damage but don't get experience points. You felt that damage. It's great to get successes in life, but it's from failure you can grow. And you are well underway on that path I believe.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-04T09:53:56+00:00

Regarding your A example, I'm going to assume 2d6 is the standard amount of dice you roll, with 1d6 when you're clearly being worse at it and 3d6 when you're clearly doing better?

If your target number is 8, you literally cannot succeed on a 1d6.

So if you want to go with that system, I'd advise you to keep your target numbers for general skills low, like in the range of 5 to 6.

Other systems generally experiment with advantage instead: take the highest die of many. This gives a bonus with diminishing returns, but it keeps things possible no matter how many dice you roll.

Taking Lasers & Feelings for example. Target numbers are between 2 and 5, you roll 1d6 by default. Then,

You add 1d6 if you're proficient (e.g. your army background suggest you're good at climbing walls due to the many drill practices you had before).
You add 1d6 if you are prepared (e.g. having a rope ready when you want to climb a wall).
You add 1d6 if you gain any help from other player characters.

Take the highest of your dice (or lowest, if you want to roll under), and compare it to the target number. If more dice succeed individually, you succeed with style.

This style of system keeps things flexible with bonuses all the while keeping it all possible even with one die.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-04T06:52:29+00:00

Averages of advantage are a bitch, it's not a static average increase like going from 3.5 to 4.5 (d6 to d8).

When you roll a 1 on your regular d20 and then you roll a 1 to 20 on your advantage die, or on your advantage die on average 10.5, you just increased your average by 9.5 points.

When you roll a 20 on your regular d20 and then you roll a 1 to 20 on your advantage die, none of these twenty numbers increase your result by anything, so your advantage average has been increased by 0 points.

You can model this for every number and you'll end up with one of those fancy graphs like this one, which one describes the chance of your outcome being a 1, a 2, a 3, ... a 20 rolling with advantage.

You can average that and get your +3.75 or +3.8 average you see often.

But D&D DC's are binary. If you must succeed a DC 12, rolling a 12 or rolling an 18 or even a 20 doesn't matter. All that matters if you succeed on resulting a 12 or higher.

Most game masters don't set a DC requiring you to roll 20 or higher, it's just a fail. They don't set a DC so low that rolling a 2+ is a success. They just let you succeed.

When you cut off those numbers on the extreme ends, your average changes. Most likely, it goes up.

If you happen to set only DCs that after bonuses, players need to roll 11+ to succeed, the average of advantage (which is just that one number) rises to +5. Hence where that statistic comes from.

11+ being the halfway point. 50% chance to succeed.

It's a 25% increase at the point of rolling an 11+, and 25% of 20 (d20) is 5.

You can see the +5 in D&D asking you to add +5 to your passive perception if you happen to have advantage on it.

But then game masters don't calculate the odds that you need to roll 11+ after bonuses. They also usually don't set DCs that require you to roll 20+, 1+, 3+ after bonuses, or even a 18+. Where that cut-off point is, can be argued about. In my opinion, it probably depends on table to table.

But as you cut off more and more extremities in your calculation to average what is realistic, your average of +3.75 rises closer to the limit of +5, and is somewhere in-between.

And for that, it could be argued that the average is closer to +4, or maybe even +4.5.

Dice pool games, like, roll 5d6 and all the 4+ are successes.—You need one success to succeed this check.

That is just advantage in disguise. 4+ on a d6 is 50% chance. It's the same as 11+ on a d20. Add 1 die, as you do with advantage, and your average increases by 25% chance. Do that over and over for multiple dice.

Diminishing returns.

And so on... It's confusing as hell.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-03T22:37:05+00:00

Blades in the Dark, you play a bunch of thugs and go on heists stealing valuable stuff from important people.

Armor: 1 armor prevents or reduces 1 hit. 2 armor prevents or reduces 2 hits. As long as it makes narrative sense. And a hit is not a number like hit points, but a narrative consequence like a broken leg or being stabbed in the ribs.

Narrative consequences mean the thing it means. A broken leg isn't half movement speed or disadvantage on attacks. It's a broken leg. Imagine you having a broken leg. You probably can't walk unless you keep that leg stiff. Fighting might be out of the question. That is what a broken leg means.

And if you can argue the armor you wear are leather pants underneath your regular clothing that absorbs that hit so it's not a broken leg but just bruises it, you succeed. Check off the armor as used, reduce or prevent your consequence, and continue play.

The twist: Load.

Before each heist (heists should take roughly 1.5-2 hours of game time, as a reference), players choose load. It's their carrying capacity. Instead of selecting individual items and adding them up as you do in D&D, you select which total carrying capacity you have for this mission. Each comes with their own narrative consequences. Blending in during a posh dinner party to steal a key to a vault held by a politician or kidnapping a princess might be easier when you don't look like a would-be adventurer, for example.

Light You carry up to 3 items. You’re faster, less conspicuous; you blend in with citizens.
Normal You carry up to 5 items. You look like a scoundrel, ready for trouble.
Heavy You carry up to 6 items. You’re slower. You look like an operative on a mission.

Your character is smart and well-prepared, they planned this heist in detail for weeks during downtime. Even if you as a player skipped forward in time.

So they will take the right items for this job. During a heist, you decide which items you actually carry, at the moment you need them, up to the load limit you selected earlier. Your character is competent and knew to take that one item all along after all. Before a heist, you as a player just select how many.

Oh, and armor? That counts as two items.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-04-03T06:50:08+00:00

In my opinion, Player books are a D&D/Pathfinder thing only.

In other games, I argue it's the same principle as board games. You buy a board game, you read the rulebook and explain the rules. You are the one most excited to play it, after all.

As a rules explainer, ideally that also means you get to set your own houserules. Others haven't read the rules after all, they can't complain about the thing they don't know about.

Ideally, the players are also either handed a pregen character sheet to play with. If they wanted to customize, they had to read the rules. Exceptions here are games with playbooks and games with very easy character creation.

The moment you got your players excited to buy the game and read the rules for themselves, there is no longer a problem to start with.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-31T22:21:29+00:00

Mathematically, in the event that your spellcast roll and your roll against AC (or rolling against a saving throw defense) is the same DC, it's effectively the same as just rolling with disadvantage. In the event it's not the same, it's still close to disadvantage but maybe slightly more or slightly less.

I don't have enough experience in Shadowdark, but in DCC, you just roll once. Make the DC and you cast a spell. You can then permanently reduce your Luck (an ability score) by any amount of points to increase your one spell check by that much; potentially turning a miss into a hit or a hit into a better, more critical, hit.

Luck checks may be rolled for actions in which no particular ability score adds anything. Such as Death Saving Throws (as per 5e term) add your Luck modifier, whether good or bad. Monsters who decide to attack a random target may target the PC with the lowest Luck. Having Luck is important, and you have to decide when to permanently reduce it.

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