I like the concept but not the execution. I see the game played so poorly and it requires way too much on the spot making shit up in combat especially on a 7-9. The damage you take makes no sense. The monster hp is way too low. A hill giant had less hp than a first level character
Alas poor Borik. Great game, sir. I enjoyed listening to the story. I just finished solo playing Escape the City with one character and the zealots captured my burglar with a sleep toxin. His fate is now unknown. Thank you for your gaming work. Very enjoyable.
New sub! I’m super new to RPG and have been wanting to learn about solo-playing and stumbled upon your channel. Great livestreams (watched #1 first), thank you!
My rule. Each race should be fundementally different from one another to the point that they form societies and cultures that other races wouldn't. It's hard sometimes, but it's worth it.
I don’t like Death saves, at all, in any game… if you die, you die. There should be no save. Don’t want to die? Retreat. The early PF2 was the worse, but D&D is rapidly catching up.
Having played and run DnD, 95% of the rules aren't needed for any given character. It's a reference document, not a novel. If you approach it like a novel, it's garbage. If you look at it as a reference manual, where you look up the things you need during character creation, and then take time between sessions to do in between session things, that tends to make a difference.
Love Dungeon World. I was introduced to it last year, began a new campaign with the players all building the world with me as we sat around round robin style and each took turns adding some place next to some other place with rumors etc. Was a wonderfully fun session zero. We just played Session 20, and it's the best Fantasy gaming I've ran since 2012 when I ran Kingmaker sandbox style. I've given up on rules heavy games and constant changing of rules like we get with Pathfinder and D&D. Blades in the Dark plays a lot like Dungeon World and is my go to favorite if not doing fantasy RPG; but Dungeon World has now become my go to for fantasy. 2 great examples of the "ask the players, take notes" 1.) During a big annual celebration I asked them what their character would be looking for at such an event. The xenophobic cleric who despises the people of the neighboring country (due to past wars), said he would be looking for upstarts from that land to be trying to cause trouble and spoil the fun. When I asked him what he found, the play told the story of how his character overheard a food vendor with a cart of cabbages was from that neighboring land and the cleric overheard him speaking to two lackeys about setting the "opium tent" (not exactly opium but equivalent thereof) on fire. This led to a huge story arc dubbing the guy "The Cabbage Man" long after they stopped the two ruffians from burning down the tent. The Cabbage Man led them on a long hunt to catch him when they learned he was a necromancer turning the villagers into zombies. Was a great story. What's really cool is that cleric died a few sessions later, and the player created a new cleric - a wizard - who is the brother of the now dead Cabbage Man who was killed by the other heroes. 2.) Just recently (Session 20), they needed to retrieve a stolen relic from a tribe of beastmen (akin to forest bugbear savages). The same player (now a wizard) used telepathy to speak to one of their warriors and wanted to convince him that he was voice of their totemic god. I asked the player what his character knew of their religion and how he knows this. When a max result (two 6's) on his Spout Lore, he knew a lot. The player came up with the name Mourgbork, the lord of rot and decay, and told us all some facts about this religion on the spot - this has now been added to canon for the world. I am now writing a spin-off that the god of the dryad NPC ally of theirs is an enemy of Mourgbork, and that the beastmen were once men, who were cursed by her god of nature because they killed a sacred unicorn and dared to defile, a sacred grove and in honor of their new god after stumbling upon the ancient cult and awakening Mourgbork's presence. This will lead to more plot hooks and adventure ideas as their allied dryad and treant have an enemy on their doorstep. All because of player contributions to the story. That's the "ask questions; take notes" and "Make a map; leave blanks" principles. 2.)
One of my favorite Game books ever written I love everything in it. The game gives you a lot of theme and impact and mechanics but it lets you figure out the Nitty Gritty of the details for yourself. What example is ghost how do you bind a ghost? The game gives you some tools to carry around ghost like Spirit bottles, and it gives you a lightning hook, but it never tells you that you pull goes into the bottle with the lightning hook. When my player was asking me is it possible to form a binding agreement with a ghost we came up with a small little ritual. In which both the ghosts and the whisper both make a agreement that is only binding if both are telling the truth. And you might be like wild why does that matter, are very vengeful and always going just that little bit more insane. So as a whisper if you make a ghost promise that he will leave you and your friends alone as well as do you a favor you will let him out of this Spirit bottle. And as long as the ghost is not too far gone to actually agree to leave you alone and your honest about letting the ghost go the Binding is complete the ghost will never come back and harm you even though he's going insane inventful because the idea of doing so is physically harmful to the ghost. This actually let me play with the fun couple of things number one there's a ghost out there now that if the player tries to harm or stopping anyway they will then take you know harm from trying to stop them. And it gives Whispers a reason to track honestly with ghosts just for their own self-protection
One thing I learned from the "#8 ask questions, use the answers" is to ask _leading_ questions. Instead of saying, "at the beginning of the scene, you find yourself at the village inn," turn it into a question... "Why are you at the village inn tonight?" or "What are you looking for at the village inn?" Use the "who, what, where, why, how" constantly... "Who are you worried might be at the village inn tonight?", "Where were you planning to go after your visit to the inn?" All of these questions make it clear that the characters are at the inn, but they also make a space for the characters to fill out the scene themselves and maybe even create their own adventure hooks.
I loved this video and 100% agree. I want to like 5e but just don't and games should be fun and I found that 5e just isn't fun to play. I have found the most fun with about any other game systems like Free League Publishing, Powered by the Apocalypse, Forged in the Dark, Palladium, Savage Worlds, Mutants and Masterminds, or just about anything other than D&D or Pathfinder.
I always like this subject because AD&D has changed so much since the late 70's when I first started playing. First you did not have the inflation then that you do now. Second, massive damage,[anything over half your hp], would require a System Shock roll, [They took this out after 2nd Ed], if you failed this roll you died. No barbarians jumping over a cliff unscathed. Even Resurrection had a chance of failing based on CON. Just to give you ballpark numbers a low Con of 7 gave you a System Shock of 55% and at 16 a 95% those same Con Scores for Rezzing a Player gave a 60% and 100% and in this case, each time you rezzed you lost a point of Con. You could not take this lightly even with high CON. Additionally, AD&D never matured it's system but presented options which they never expanded or improved on. I look at HP more as Fatigue, as you fight you become more and more fatigued. A cleric, after a battle would easily see this amongst his cohorts. Just change the name from Cure light wounds to Minor Invigorate, Moderate Invigorate and so forth. It's more a naming convention than anything else. There are systems that allow you to spread your HP throughout various body parts but this is so much more complicated and far more deadly. It's easier to just say when a player gets a Critical hit, that hit is an actual wound that requires an actual healing spell, potion or bedrest. Its super dependent on how gritty you want your world to be. I hope this gives you more or better ideas on HP. Why they took these systems out without replacing it with something that compensates for the HP inflation is beyond my understanding. Cheers!
I rather like the idea of no attack rolls. So often, in D&D combat, you sit there waiting for your turn to come around. You declare, "I'm going to swing my sword at this goblin," fail, then say, "I missed. That's my turn," and go back to waiting.
Interesting. I've always thought of hp as being representative of all sorts of things. Say, like, a medium-size, medium-strength humanoids might have their experience-level's skill at turning at the right moment to keep a blow that would have been devastating to simply painful. That's on top of the base hp of the resiliency of their bodies. (AC would still represent whether the blow actually makes meaningful contact with the creature.) But my hp definition is ultimately just another way to say "progress." The one thing I like about adding my definition on top of your definition is that, as a DM trying to narrate the scene of combat, it's more conducive to describing how someone's mace puts a good dent in the bad guy's armor, crushing his lower ribs and a kidney.
I just did a sample combat scene for a solo Dungeon World game. Here's how that played out: A tavern is being coerced into paying off a band of thugs for protection. A thief in the shadowy corner of the dining room looses an arrow at their leader, immediately drawing the ire of the bandits. Just as they are running at the thief, the wizard next to him fires off a Magic Missile, brutally wounding their leader. The bandits attempt to go to their leader's aid, but he tells them to get the wizard and take his spellbook. The wizard fails his dex roll, and he gets brutalized by them. Just then, the cook steps out of the kitchen, wielding a massive meat hammer. Huge guy, built like a brick shithouse. He brushes his way through the crowd like a bouncer, grabbing the wizard by the scruff of his robe and holding him high above their reach. One of the bandits then stabs him in the back, only to hit his armor he secretly wears under his apron. The cook/fighter then takes the wizard, and uses him as an improvised blunt weapon, knocking two of the bandits out at once and knocking the others away. This finally causes them to back off and leave. However, the wizard, upon getting healed via some herbs and poultices, looks around and notices his spellbook is nowhere to be found. This fight scene took maybe 10-15 minutes to play out, and the mechanics caused me to think like the characters in the moment, rather than like an armchair tactician. It was incredible.
