My first thought with the dagger to the throat situation is that PF2e literally talks about how this is a game where it's expected that PCs will be able to lay waste to a city with a single spell on like page 5 of the CRB. Is it *really* being fair to the fiction for a PC to not be able to shrug off a slit throat? In D&D 2e on the other hand... there your intuitions for what would be fair to the fiction would tend to somewhat more closely resemble real life. All of which goes back to previous streams in this series talking about how it's important to know the setting and rules well. It's one of the reasons that one of my pet peeves even after all these years is dismissing the Tome of Battle as the Book of Weaboo Fightan Magic; these people clearly haven't looked at the Greek, Norse, Arthurian, Celtic, Indian, and Chinese myths that most directly informed 3.5's power levels, nor interrogated how it makes sense that martials are meant to adventure in the same party as people who can cast Wish (or, in short, I loathe the Guy At The Gym Fallacy).

We also use a house rule that if you have weapon proficiency with the weapon you’re using then rolling under AC is still a hit but at half damage, you only truly miss on a Nat 1. If you’re not proficient with the weapon then rolling under AC is still a miss.

I see a lot of comments saying just lower the AC or adjust the encounter difficulty… well I’m old school, if you’re missing a lot it’s probably because you’re not thinking creatively and finding solutions, if a monster is fast and hard to hit then find a way to slow it down or trap it first, if the monster has high armour then how can you reduce that or find it’s vulnerability and exploit it first. The problem with “modern” D&d is everyone just wants to deal the most damage.

1:41:10 I think this is where I struggle the most. And I'm not sure I like it anyway. The GM tells the Players, "There's bad shit happening in the mountains" feels like the GM is trying to railroad us into going into the mountains because that is where they want the story to go. We as the Players didn't decide to do that. And then, on top of that, the GM puts it on the Players to decide why their characters would be interested in going to the mountains. Thus using metaknowledge to force your characters into something they don't even know about. It all feels rather icky to me. I would much rather the GM say, "Your characters have discovered X, Y and Z. Is there anything your Characters would want to follow up on?" I would much rather there be Character agency instead of Player agency.

If I wanted to do a very small and expensive RPG community conference I would contact one of those 3 -day Beach yoga/spa/etc retreats and ask them to host it for me. I don't see why they would charge you anymore than their usual fee

In a lot of 5e I see the NPCs becoming the "resource" that the GM uses to threaten and thus add dramatic tension to the game. Most players are not willing to have their avatar PC be meaningfully threatened because that makes the threat is too close to home

Such important and deep reflections on the hobby! WAY more useful for running better games than “12 Magical Treats for Animal Companions and Eidolons” that you see on other channels.

L5R does not expect you to be an adventurer or even a hero. It expects you to be a person whose society has exacting expectations of him as he struggles with real world complications

Derik, love your show. Really big fan of your philosophy and discussion topics. Stay positive. Tomorrow is a new day and life is rarely lived in a straight line. Don't fret. Remember Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: don't mind that which we cannot affect.

Great introduction to PbtA games, good job!

Dealt with a house fire a few months back. It’s so tough. Family should be back home soon. Panic attacks are really awful, can feel like heart attacks. Hang in there.

Freaking love into the cess and citadel. Sorry about your anxiety attack. It can be difficult to take care of yourself, especially when you're used to putting your rest into a tertiary priority. Please be kind to your future self.

Derik...time to catch-up with your stuff having just listened to RFC

I'm not very fond of nimble. In their example video, the characters are facing a single monster. The creature is a non-caster (an Ankheg), the PCs are LV 5, no one is using concentration spells. Every single action is taken instantaneously and reactively, a.k.a. everyone knows exactly what to do when asked to do so. The combat takes... around 9-10 minutes of pure, undiluted action. Which is A LOT for 1 single creature: It took 14 attacks and 100 HP of damage to take the creature down. What takes long on DnD 5e? Bloated HP, players discussing their actions, a ton of rolls and checks, increasing number of damage die, tracking on-going effects, DM turns. All of these elements are what ends up getting inflated at higher levels and encumbers the flow of battle. None of these have been adressed in the Nimble example video. What does the system address? Missing attacks often, rolling bad criticals, initiative, the action/bonus action/reaction system

Assuming FA, Mauler is fantastic for fighters. You get crit specialisation on level 2 for all two handed weapons. All two handed weapons scale to master and legendary on level 5 and 13 + you get to pick another weapon type like bows on top of it. Another great thing is, that it lets a fighter basicly multiclass into fighter allowing you to get Power Attack, Furious Focus, Knockdown, Improved Knowdown and Whirlwind Strike from the Archetype so you are free to take other class feats that synergize well with two handed fighters (tactical Reflexes, lunging stance, etc). You can pick a diffrent Archetype on lvl 6, 8 and 10 without compromising your two handed progression, so getting some Spellcasting, Blessed one, Marshall or something similiar in is no issue. If you get the Armory Bracelet or a Shifting Rune you get to pick for each fight if you want to go crit fishing with a pick, sweep a bunch of enemys with a greataxe, get some reach or knock people prone with a maul since you are equally skilled in all of them. In short: you get to be the Doom Slayer.

Just like flanking and taking cover are tactical actions I think "swinging from a chandelier" could be a kind environmental tactical movement action that grants a +1 to your first attack.

Your example of your your Player would almost counterintuitively swear fealty to the corrupted Daimyo is so much how Burning Wheel works. Lean into your Beliefs, Instincts and Traits to tell a good story!

I love these lessons in advanced roleplaying.

I wonder what it would be like to play a year campaign but every month / every 4 sessions you change systems. You get to know the characters by playing fate accelerated. You then have those personalities deepen via Avatar Legends. Until you finally fight God in space using Fabula Ultima.

Another thing I don't like about the game, at first glance, is that it tries to be dynamic and creative by having actions and reactions be more "free" in a round. But from my experience, I have these things to say: 1) When movement costs something, players stop moving unless absolutely necessary. 2) Reactions break the flow of combat, that's why action-based systems give 1 reaction. The "spell-duel" rule sounds like a cool mechanic, but what ends up happening is that before any spellcasting the player or DM will have to "ask for permission." 3) Action economy is DM nightmare: having to handle between 16-20 actions per-round is beyond reason, and since players can do reactions to improve their saves or negate your actions (spell-duels, blocking, gaining ADV, etc.) reducing your DM actions is actively unbalancing combat towards the player side.

I am playing in a 5e game with my daughter... and this weekend the party were up against 7 wights and a devil. The devil had charmed my daughter's character and it told her to go after the party. As a cleric I have an aura like ability that at the end of each creatures turn I can choose to grant them temp HP or end a charmed or frightened on them. It wasn't up when the charm happened... so I had to use my next turn activating it. The GM had told her at the start of her turn that she could choose what to do, but that since she failed the save and was charmed she had to use one of her abilities against the party. So on her turn she cast her highest level spell on me dealing a boat load of damage and then moved out of the range of the aura... so that I couldn't end the charmed condition on her charmed character. I am not sure a more seasoned gamer might have handled it that way... they might have used a lower level spell and might have not moved out of range of the aura.

I’ve been thinking about power curves, and how I really dislike the steep power curves of D&D and Pathfinder. This is a big part of why. In the Abomination Vaults example, I think Derik made the right choice by telling the players how deadly the trap was. But it’s kind of absurd that he had to, when you think about it. In an F20 game you can describe a spinning fiery blade spear trap and your description will make it sounds like yes, obviously there’s a high chance that thing will kill me if it gets me. But because of the escalation of numbers, that description may or not be accurate. It might do 3d6 damage and if you’re a level 13 character you’ll barely feel it. On the other hand it might do 10d12 damage. How are you supposed to know based on the description of the fiction? And if you can’t make informed decisions based on the fiction, in a roleplaying game, then what are we even doing?

It looks like some people in chat got a little hung up on Derik’s idea of playing a PbtA game with none of the players knowing the rules. I agree with him that would be a cool way to play, but it’s not like it’s required. When I run Dungeon World, players know what moves they have or with basic moves they are good at, and they angle for them. It doesn’t make the whole game fall apart, it works just fine. In fact it can lead to players really embodying their characters well, because in a PbtA game the stuff you’re “good at” really means the stuff that defines who your character is and what their role in the narrative is. The point is they are *angling for* their moves through fictional positioning, not just saying “I discern realities” etc. It’s just about building a culture of play where everyone is thinking fiction first, most of the time.

The game was complex, based on 4-action point system... until the DC introduced the "Combat skill challenge" and described how starting an improvised bar fight can be clunky and convoluted: a problem. Then he designed a "Combat skill check" simple, narrative-based combat. Then I was convinced: DC20 is only a compilation of rules that doesn't have a clear direction nor philosophy guiding it. Does he want a complex 4-action combat system, with tactical use of AP and resources? Or a fast paced, narrative combat where players do whatever? Because the way characters are designed in these two systems are very different.

Regarding around 55:00 I quit my most recent campaign over my players scheming so much. I tried to be straight forward after their first implementation and said: "You have to pick a side. It's difficult but you advance the plot either way. You could have tried to play both sides, but that point is over." This sadly didn't help.

Totally agree regarding to the metagaming discussion, but I'd add one thing: it's a system issue, not a player issue. A good game is the one in which players cam use the rules to try to win. If metagaming is a problem, that means the rules don't work for the game you want to run. Blame the game, not the players. If you can't fix it with your GMing, then switch to another ruleset. FitD does this perfectly for me. The parts of the game in which players meta-game are the ones that the system was designed to encourage. If GMs have a metagaming problem I'd encourage them to try Blades in the Dark or one of it's descendants and see if it fixes the issue

Sympathies re anxiety chest pains. I've been suffering from it myself a lot recently! ECG blood pressure etc all fine but it's always hard to shake the worry 😕

Advantage / Disadvantage is a terrible core mechanic. Great for "luck" abilities, terrible for core gameplay. IDK a single person who played older systems who still play 5e. Looks shiny, sounds good, seems simple. But tbh, it's trash. Only popular cause critical roll switched to it and nobody could leave their houses for like a year or 2 while vtts exist.

When you were discussing unconscious, you said it was a modern addition and older versions of the game didn't use it. What about AD&D 1e and it's default unconscious at zero then -10 til death? Is that considered a modern take? 2e changed it to slain at zero HP but carried over the 1e version as "Hovering on death's door" as an optional rule if the game was deemed too deadly for your to tables preferences.

It’s funny that people get resistant to playing grogs because I’ve seen how much players often grow to love them because they take bigger swings with the grogs than their main characters.

For someone talking and making such long videos, you really have some shitty mic audio.

I played it in the 80s/90s, I liked it over D&D because it did not have the insane power scaling, but it was less "aesthetic" than D&D, less pleasing to my sperg brain with how it was structured.

So much of your content is evergreen, thank you for what you do.

lol listening to you say we won’t go long and mining the video is 3 hrs …

I think my ideal TTRPG would be a PF2e sandbox. Crunchy character building and fights, but lots of creativity possible with the world. When you are choosing allegiances and generating your own stories, the fights would matter more. That’s my theory, anyway! Hopefully I’ll have time to make it happen someday.

its called fate because iam going to play this for the rest of my life instead of getting bitches

the 4th edition of Hackmaster was fun because it was a parody of AD&D as portrayed in the comic, including the over the top ridiculous "deadly serious business" approach (players and GMs requiring certification/credentials to be "legitimate", stores required to be part of the "retail association" to be authorized resellers, etc.) that made the comics popular in the first place. The downside though is you had groups treating it like the comic and being complete jackasses. I ended up getting a store kicked out of the HMRA back in the early 2000s by accident because I asked for advice and it came out that they were bringing in new PCs, giving them magic items, then killing them and taking the items and running the players out of the store by saying that was how Hackmaster was "meant" to be played and they were "wusses" for not rolling with it. The 5th edition is Kenzerco's desire to make a "serious" game but bogging it down with crazy stuff to make it feel unique, instead losing all the actual funny parts and not having any of the appeal (that is, appealing to fans of the comics). If someone isn't familiar with the comic, they aren't going to "get" hackmaster despite their attempt to remove the "parody" aspects, because it's tied to the comics and (for better or worse) the semi-serious jokiness therein. It reads bland and uninspiring, although it has some good ideas (armor being damage reduction and the defense roll spring to mind) along with a lot of math formulas and ridiculous critical hit charts.

Excellent example on how PCs should not fail a recall knowledge and learn nothing or some useless false knowledge about the monster but instead the failure should make the situation worse, "You recall that these orcs often use a pincer attack, so the orcs in front of you might not be the only orcs you have to worry about"

I’d love to play Burning wheel with you man. You say all the things that show me you’d love it. You love mouse guard and torchbearer, but worry that it is too complicated. It’s mot

On Shadowdark I think the hype is mostly because it was marketed so skilfully. I think they found a way to laser target it at 5E players who are tired of 5E but have never been exposed to OSR games. And that’s not a subtle dig at the game. I think the other big factor in its popularity is that it’s a genuinely good game that does old school play in a slick, no-nonsense, beautifully presented way - so except for a couple of grumpy gatekeepy whiners, players who *already* like OSR like this game. I can totally understand why Derik isn’t grabbed by it though. It doesn’t do anything particularly new or interesting (unless you count real-time torch duration). I don’t mind that, personally. I think doing an old thing really well is as valuable as doing a new thing. My problems with it are my problems with OSR in general (over-emphasis on player skill and distaste for stats and dice rolls, leading to PCs who are pathetic and die in one hit from a goblin). It is better than most OSR games in that respect, but I still find it frustrating.

There is a Nimble version 1. The backer project is for the second version that goes farther.

Ok, should I start with the nice things? :) 1. You’re very pleasant to listen to, I’ll definitely check out your other recordings. 2. The entire segment about BitD in the middle of the recording was excellent and spot-on. I think it clearly presents the conversation loop for those who are encountering BitD for the first time. 3. I highly recommend the very old essay by Emily Care Boss, "Skin Deep" (which includes the micro-essay by Epidiah Ravachol, "Five Layers of Fiction"), which beautifully, succinctly, and precisely describes the various levels of the relationship between fiction and mechanics. It talks about playing with color, the exploratory value of fiction, fictional positioning, and using fiction as a mechanical leverage. Elements I would kindly critique: 4. From my perspective, you present a super caricatured version of OSR play culture. Most of the examples were heavily stereotyped, indicating a lack of deeper understanding of the current OSR/NSR/post-OSR movement. I think even reading "Principia Apocrypha," reading more about proceduralism, and listening to "Blogs on Tapes" could fill this gap. 5. This wasn’t explicitly stated, but I’m reading between the lines from your comments, the video comments, and the stream comments (maybe mistakenly?) that you’re using Big Model’s GNS to… describe types of mechanics?? I hope Ron Edwards doesn’t wake up screaming every time someone uses the terms “narrativist mechanics,” “gamist mechanics” etc… You do realize that GNS was NOT about mechanics? :) Additional remarks: 6. All in all, "Fiction first" is a super confusing term for the fandom. It appears in BitD as a term distinguishing board games from role-playing games. At the same time, in different communities, it sometimes means 1) what you’re talking about in the video, sometimes it’s treated as 2) “chronologically fiction first ” meaning a situation in the fiction must first occur, which then triggers a mechanism etc*., and sometimes as 3) a value judgment that if fiction and mechanics are in conflict, fiction should always win. Ugh. (*The second one is also some weird "all PbtA games work that way" myth, which just isn't true.) 7. The discussion about different levels of rules: social, formal, conventional, and diegetic, also seems interesting. You can find a bit more about this in the publication "Hidden Rules of Roleplaying Games." And what happens when diegetic and mechanical rules come into conflict etc. 8. Accepting your definitions and assuming that indeed a game “can be fiction first,” there are PbtA games that will be very “mechanics first,” (according to your definitions) e.g., all Firebrands games (Mobile Frame Zero, The King is Dead), where in many moments, we practically choose any mini-game we want to play :) 9. In my opinion, Ironsworn has the best, simplest, and most transparent mini-chapter on the relationship between fiction and mechanics-I recommend it to everyone. 10. When we look at more experimental story games or, for example, American freeform, the relationship between fiction and game mechanics really starts to get interesting! In "The Between," for instance, according to the rules, you can only defeat a monster during the Night Phase and only after Answering the Question, regardless of the position in the fiction. Until that moment, the monster has 100% plot armor, and we have to justify this somehow in the fiction :)

I absolutely love Legends of the Five Rings. Dragon Clan is my favorite. What is your favorite Great Clan of the 7?

Very helpful! I am excited for Scum & Villainy but the switch away from DnD is hard to shake

Yep - I advocated hard for Prime = Cap and I conceptualize it as your adventuring attribute. It almost always is the same with either rule since there’s other reasons people choose to max an attribute. But it really allows for the jack of all trades build without being a drag in combat to the rest of the party.

I can see how from a cultural, aesthetic and personal perspective that some people would rather speak through a game master character within the fiction rather than as the game master outside of the fiction. The magical quest giver and helper is a common trope. And from a video game perspective many modern RPGs have a mechanism for after you lose a battle for you to retry the battle but against debuffed enemies which I see somewhat analagous to "help my magical story eating GM-PC dragon-sama"

40:15 Those people should try out Oathsworn. Boss battler with a fantastic story (a bit too linear though). And the mechanics are leagues better than that of most “tactical” ttrpgs.

Great stuff

1:57:51 I ended up backing Nimble. The design direction of the classes and spells were intriguing. The whole thing still needs a lot of polish, but he is very upfront about that.

The randomness is great. I've been running hackmaster and creating characters and a lot of players really liked the pregens and character creation. Tho newbs did bitch on random stats distribution lol