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"The Legend of Heroes: Trails through the Great Muppet Caper"

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Archipelago has a rule:

● If you're dissatisfied with something that another player narrates, because you don't think it fits into the story, you can tell that player: «Try a different way»

Which arguably causes the plot to back up a little.

You could also argue that the X card or other safety tools are mechanics that can un-advance the plot.

What are some mechanics that don't advance the plot, or perhaps even un-advance the plot?

Hmmm, I actually really can't even imagine such a mechanic. 🫵 Can you?

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hi any life advice for 21yo

Don't date thirty-year-olds until you are at least 25.

Having a glass of water for every glass of alcohol will give you a 50% reduction in hangover viciousness.

Bad people will use your willingness to be quiet as a weapon against you. If someone's being awful to you and trusting you'll be quiet to keep from making waves, surprise them.

There is no physical object in the world that is worth as much as your honor.

Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.

Don't have any sex you don't want to have; have as much as you want of the sex that you do, whether that's a lot, a little, or none at all. Nothing you can do to your own body is immoral, unless you're doing it as an act of self-punishment.

Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.

Learning to sit still and breathe--in, in, in, hold, hold, hold, out, out, out, out, out, out--can give you five feet of clear space around yourself in a maelstrom.

Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.

If you ever get to the point that things are so bleak you can see no other way forward but to die, make any other choice. If that means leaving everything you own and being a beach bum, or quitting your career, or taking up or leaving a religion, or deciding to bicycle across the country, so be it; living means more chances, dying means everything stops and you don't get to see any more interesting things. As you have not yet seen all the things that can interest you, it is better to live.

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In a way this is like claiming that, because an exhaustion system exists, D&D is really a game about getting enough sleep.

you know what? I'm nailing my colours to the mast:

The default rpg that's used as a yardstick, in my view, is not D&D. It's Vampire The Masquerade 20th Aniversary Edition.

It has everything: Action! Melodrama! Politics! Intrigue! Horror! Romance! Bleak Social Realism!

Still want a fantasy game with swords and dragons? We got that, it's called Dark Ages Vampire!

When pitching me a game, the big hurdle you need to overcome is "why am I not running this in Vampire?" Call of Cthulhu? Vampire has plenty of cosmic-horror tentacle monster cults, just throw a hidden baali cell into your setting. D&D? Play a dark ages game and all be members of a vampiric order. Monsterhearts? That's just standard Camarilla Toreador behaviour! Paranoia? The prince is a malkavian, have fun. Rolemaster? That's just dark ages again, and trust me our mechanics are fiddly and pedantic too.

Being picky and don't want to play a vampire? No problem, there's a splat-book for playing as regular mortals, who may or may not have psychic powers.

Seriously, Vampire: The Masquerade has so much range as a game. Even more if you throw in bits of other WoD gamelines or elements from v5. Mage even has sci-fi space explorers fighting tentacle monsters on the surface of jupiter and I am not joking.

This is not a bit or a funny joke. I genuinely, 100% believe that Vampire is a better Default Game that can Do Everything than D&D and its imitators.

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They basically took Masks, crossed out "super powers" and put in "bending/techniques", put in turn-based combat, and added a "balance" traits to make it feel more ... I dunno, avatary?

The trouble is, Masks is a very focused game -- the game is about your teenage-super-hero's feelings. Your stats are what you feel about yourself; your "hit points" are reactive feelings that you can "fix" by acting on them or talking them out with a friend... it doesn't actually *care* about super powers, it's not *about* the powers, they're mostly there so you can have feelings about what happen when you use them. The only move that is combat-specific is just there to make sure there is some team in the pool (and that the players think about how they are as a group) BUT ALSO that move could easily apply to them going to talk to their strictest teacher about an extension on their project that got smashed when they were arguing about which one of them AstraGirl should date.

I can see why someone would think that "bending" basically counts as a super power, but .... then they add a combat system that is kind of interesting but feels like it's from a completely different game, with statuses (which are NOT conditions) and combat techniques that you can be trained on and fatigue points and secret choices.

All of which work perfectly if you don't have any super powers or bending abilities, incidentally -- which is how it worked for Masks but Masks doesn't really have tactical combat. So you end up with a game that is, in part, about bending-powered combat that doesn't really care what powers you have or if you even have bending powers.

I dunno. None of the ideas are bad, per se, but AFAICT they don't really work together -- but it's not like jumbled inconsistent rulesets with a focus on tactical combat do poorly in the marketplace.

I'd honestly rather just run Masks with elemental powers and animals that are two animals. (Although I am honestly curious how it would work if using a reskinned Urban Shadows where the factions are the four elements....)

what are your complaints with the avatar game? i’ve only played it passingly and haven’t played many pbta games, so i’m probably missing something. (genuine question) (seemed rather more gm-led than i think say monsterhearts and apocalypse world are supposed to be) (but again i haven’t played many games of that style)

unfortunately my honest answer is that i've forgotten. I briefly gave it a look when it came out, and - as a big player and designer of pbta stuff - was extremely disappointed up front. But now the details elude me. I remember it being pretty generic and not trying to capture any of the specific stuff - martial arts and bending techniques - that atla does, and not really playing to the strengths of pbta, like it was written by somebody who'd read pbta games but not really understood them. But I couldn't go into detail, since my memory is mostly just "oh, that's disappointing".

Unfortunately I'm not actually very good at remembering things about stuff I don't like. I'm sure I had quite good reasons to write it off at the time, but since I'm not going to bother with it, all I've retained is "this isn't a game I'm interested in" and I've discarded the details. Effectively, I trust Past Cavegirl's judgement enough that I'm taking her word for it that Current Cavegirl won't like it much.

This is, unfortunately, probably not much help for you, but I'm sure other posters can explain better.

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I was in a weird conversation over a decade ago where people were debating if job seekers should turn their resume into an app and I was approaching it as "maybe if you're applying as an app developer, but even then it seems like overkill" and everyone else was taking it seriously as a question and I was bewildered until I realized that they thought app meant "website".

(this was in the dark times before LinkedIn (aka the Even Darker times))

not to enforce gender roles but a computer should NOT fucking have apps okay. if I wanted an app I'd go on my phone my laptop is for Programs. I mean this.

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i tacked the phrase "for reasons scientists may never fully understand" onto some inane statement a while back and i was the only one who found it funny so if anyone needs me i'll be repeating it at literally every opportunity until i am attacked and killed. for reasons scientists may never fully understand.

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have you become less cringe as you’ve gotten older?

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When I was young I didn't know or understand the rules. As I grew, I came to understand and follow them. Now I selectively break them with my whole heart.

have you become less cringe as you’ve gotten older?

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AHEM. *leans on doorway* I would like to know about that time you led a strike in preschool.

Okay, storytime. Both of my parents worked full time, and the woman who ran the family daycare across the street “went away for her health”- a charming euphemism for her family having her institutionalised because they couldn’t cope with her schizophrenia, but that’s another story for another time- so I went to preschool for two years. The preschool I went to was a good one. Still is, actually. My brother and his wife have their little sprout on the waiting list already, and he’s not two yet. It’s built onto the side of an ex-church, and it has great play areas, a sandpit, ducks, the works. Nice. We did all the usual preschool stuff; craft activities, storytime, naptime, playing with toys. To help us learn to be responsible and cooperative human beings, we were expected to clean up after ourselves, and put things away when we were done with them. Being small children, this had mixed results, so at the end of every day, there’d be a big group cleanup, where we went through and picked all the toys and books up off the floor of the main room and put everything in order.

All very nice, right? Trouble was, about half of the kids got picked up at 5, 5:30ish, and the other half, whose parents worked later hours, would be there till 6 or 6:30. The cleanup usually happened around 6, so the kids whose parents could pick them up early never had to clean up, and I noticed pretty quickly that the kids who never had to clean up at the end of the day didn’t seem to pick up after themselves during the day, either. They knew they wouldn’t have to deal with it, so they didn’t care.

I feel I should mention that my mother was, at the time, the secretary of a large public sector union. She’d been a unionist for some time (we’ve got a great picture somewhere of baby me on her lap at a Women In Leadership conference) and sometimes she had people over for dinner, and they’d talk about union business. I knew what was going on, here. This was a discriminatory practice. It targeted kids whose parents couldn’t afford for one of them to stay home with the kids. It encouraged unfair behaviour in the kids who didn’t have to clean up. This had to stop.

I went to the staff first. Mostly they laughed at me- in their defense, please picture a tiny blonde four-year-old in a princess dress squaring up to you about “dithcriminatory practitheth”- and told me I should set an example for the other kids by being tidy. Well. That wasn’t going to change anything. Having been knocked back by the administration, I took the struggle to the people. While we were cleaning up, I talked to the other kids who had to stay late, and we came to a consensus that things had to change. Look, to be honest, I don’t remember this happening with any kind of clarity. I was very small. Mum has told this story with great pride for some years, though, and most of the details come from her retelling. I don’t know if it was me who first suggested strike action, but I know it was me who led the sit-in protests; I’m told it was me who made an inspiring speech about fairness and division of labour, and it was definitely me whose parents got called.

Upshot was, we went over to a system of shorter clean-up sessions throughout the day- one before lunch, one after naptime, and one at the end of the day- and my mother has never let me forget that four-year-old me was a rabble-rousing monster child.

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Ys Babyon 5.

... it could work

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Types of players I really enjoy running games for

Players who write extensive backstories. Provided they're willing to work with me to make sure their story fits into the lore for my setting, I love hearing all about their OC's personal history. I live for the drama and the passion and enjoy finding ways to work it into my campaign.

Players who do voices. I love it when people get into character and try and bring some theatricality to the table. I admire their commitment and the courage it takes to perform.

Players who cleverly use the mechanics for teamwork. It's always satisfying when a player strives for system mastery, but it's particularly pleasing to me to see a player that is able to take advantage of the mechanics to produce strong synergy with the other players. I love rewarding this kind of play.

Players who fail graciously. I love it when a player sees a critical fumble as an opportunity for drama or comedy instead of something to be avoided at all costs. This is what it looks like to be a good sport.

Players who match my vibes. I really appreciate it when a player reads the room and plays their their character accordingly. Who is silly when I want to be silly and serious when I want to be serious and supports me in building and maintaining an engaging atmosphere.

Players who pay attention. I am so grateful when players let me finish my narration and take notes and connect the dots.

Inexperienced but enthusiastic players. It's so much fun running for people who are new to the game. I love being the one to introduce them to this hobby and show them how much fun it can be. Most of the time, their excitement more than makes up any awkwardness that comes with learning the game.

There are probably some things I'm forgetting, but this post is getting long enough as it is. You all are a delight and I love having you at my table.

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were you perpetually and exclusively praised for what you could one day become, instead of what you were, leading you to a lifetime of feeling like you were not only never good enough, but that the best thing about you was a future that would never come, that constantly felt like it was slipping away? Did you become so afraid of closing doors, of losing that one good thing, that potential, that you stagnated at the crossroads until your life began to rot around you and the asphalt ground to gravel and the roads grew ever rougher, the doors closing one by one even as you tried in vain to keep them open, instead of choosing a path and committing to a direction for your own progress? Did you watch the best thing about you, the one thing you were praised for, slowly collapse in your arms as you tried desperately and hopelessly to save it, finding yourself kneeling in the ruins of your unexplored promise, looking for a way out, and wondering if there was no where else to go? no way forward? When someone tells you they're proud of you, that they love you for who you are, that what you are is good enough, do you cry? do you struggle to believe them? do you have to try your damnedest just to make yourself hear the words? Do you wonder if, one day, you'll learn to be happy with who you are?

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Words don't even always have the same meaning in the SAME language.

strangely common misconception that words have basically the same meanings in every langauge and that translation is just a matter of identifying which exact word in the target language corresponds to the word in the original language