This is a bit off topic, but it made me nostalgic. My first argument on reddit over a decade ago was with someone, either a scalper or a contrarian, trying to argue that scalpers provided a useful service that made things more fair, rather than assholes creating scarcity so they could profit selling a solution to a problem they themselves create.

So yeah, I hope they all get fucked on this one, too.

I’m super excited to give Barkeep on the Borderlands a go! :D

Also, this paragraph stuck out to me:

Before we take a look at Barkeep, I want to drop a few quick examples to demonstrate how tone can be affected by writing, mechanics, art, etc. I firmly believe that the tone communicated by an RPG author is inteded to be replicated by the GM. So while you could run Blades in the Dark as a sexy dating game, I don’t think that would properly reflect the game’s tone.

I absolutely agree. Burning Wheel has stuck with me for a decade and a half, even though I haven’t played it yet, because it’s the first time I opened a game with a clear authorial voice, and it was explicitly explaining to you not just how, but why the rules work the way they do.

Obviously that’s an extremely explicit example, but it’s also something that clicked for me with the -Borg games. The ratio of style to substance greatly favors style. That’s not to knock the substance, but the games are light and, to be honest, pretty standard for a new-school renaissance type game. It’s not that the rule book is also, separately, an art book. It’s that, when the rule book is an art book, then the acts of bringing it to the table and opening it up to reference the rules become acts that set and reinforce a tone. It made me realize that all games do this, even if it’s sometimes unsuccessful, or negligible.

Heck, to go back to Burning Wheel, I love the digest-sized hardcover with matte pages, because it looks and feels like a novel, and I think the game intends to create that style of play. I might join a Fabula Ultima game, and that rulebook looks and feels like a manga, which had to be intentional. It works.

So I really jive with what the author says about how RPGs should communicate their intentions, especially tone in an adventure like this. Obviously any GM will put their own spin on the performance, but hey, if they’re laughing and having fun just reading through potential encounters, that’s the vibe the GM is going to cultivate in turn. :)

/u/DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca is right on the money. Mana paces the game, so anything that can break that is super good. In an otherwise even matchup, if one player has a Lotus while the other doesn’t, that can easily make the game. It’s not going to win the game in and of itself, but it’s a huge enabler to play the thing that will win you the game, before your opponent can reasonably do anything about it.

On top of that, it’s literally good in all decks. It’s been banned in every format besides Vintage, where it’s restricted to one (and not including casual/fan formats). It had to be banned partly for power reasons, but also because it makes deck-building less diverse. There’s no deck that wouldn’t want a Lotus if it could have one, much less four.

It’s also part of the Reserved List. After WotC overprinted cards, they essentially promised not to reprint certain ones. I think it’s a dumb decision, but they’ve annoyingly stuck to it (and players are worse off for it). Black Lotus is on that list. And it was alreadly limited in printings, because it was a rare card, and a bit of a design mistake.

It’s also simply an iconic card. Despite being a design mistake, it’s a major part of Magic history, and gets referenced all the time. To some extent, it’s famous for being famous. That makes it the biggest prize for collectors.

So, all this together, it has an incredibly high demand, a very limited supply, and no indication of a reprint anytime soon.

So I printed off a proxy at a professional card printer for 30¢. :)

I hate how relevant this question is in so many situations.

“If you’d rather play D&D, are you willing to DM while I recharge?”

In my group, yes. :| We actually have plenty of players willing to run games.

That said, they’re also willing to try out new games, so it all works out just fine. :)

I’d really like to give Monster of the Week a try! I really enjoyed when The Adventure Zone ran it.

Haha, thanks. I just meant that sentence at first blush, I know it’s a reasonable position after that. :P

I’m not sure I’d like it, because I “got” Blades in the Dark, but realized it wasn’t for me. It does what it does well, but my group and I didn’t like so much the “one session, one job” paradigm, and it seemed too abstract at times. I read a comment that said narrative games are like writing with the other players, and it seemed to click. I might just not like that kind of approach, as a matter of personal preference.

But I might like DW2 more, as it incorporates more of a traditional style. That and, to be honest, I might love Blades and other FitD games with some light tweaking. I need to explore!

Unfortunately, I can’t speak from experience at the table, so it’s just that my impression of BW’s mechanics seems more optimistic. That said, we can agree on the BITs, because the Artha cycle is the star of the show. I don’t know if they’re going to incorporate elements of that into DW2e, but it might just be a great direction to go.

Dungeon World was a big flop for us… and I’m excited about the next edition. :P

I think it flopped largely because we were playing it wrong. I know that sounds stupid, and you usually hear that from people making excuses when people don’t like their favorite game. What I mean is that we tried to play it like D&D, and while it’s clearly trying to bridge the gap between PbtA games and D&D-type games, you have to approach it a bit differently, which we didn’t. Maybe I still won’t like it, but I want to reevaluate it on its own terms.

I’m also a big fan of Burning Wheel productions. Burning Wheel is my favorite game I’ve never played, just because there are so many things I find interesting about the system, and I love the presentation. (Still trying to get a group together, though!) If DW2e takes the form of a chunky, digest-sized hardcover, I’d be thrilled.

Yet again.

Somewhat off topic, but the names of both the publisher and the developer are also used by unrelated tabletop game companies. Hero Games makes the Hero System tabletop RPG, and GameScience (no space, so there’s a difference) make dice. It threw me for a loop.

That user is basing their position on a Daily Mail article citing LePoint, a french right-wing magazine, that quotes one of her trainers, who said (with context) “There was a problem with her hormones and chromosomes, but she’s a woman. That’s all that mattered to us.”

Nowhere does that even suggest she has XY chromosomes, and, to state the obvious, he’s not a doctor. He’s responding to an unsubstantiated allegation, and probably giving it too much credit. He even says that she underwent a testosterone test that came back within female norms.

It really is simple. The burden of proof is on people making these claims, and we’re not taking the word of a blatantly corrupt organization, that had a vested interest in disqualifying Khelif, who would not say what test was administered or what the results were. If they had more specific information, they wouldn’t shut up about it, because won’t even shut up now with less to go on.

Fair point. I just don’t like the move, and don’t want to support a company doing it. Even putting that aside, it really makes me worried that they’re at the point that they’re trying to ride on their reputation while increasing profit margins. It makes me think that, if I buy their newer models, they’re more likely to cheap out but charge more.

It’s about PROTECTING WOMEN! And if I have to hurt a bunch of women to protect them from hypothetical scenarios I made up to demonize trans people, so be it!

Same. I’ve been thinking of replacing the cheap immersion circulator we have, and was going to go with Anova. This blatant enshittification is enough to make me look elsewhere.

I think part of it is that meme discussions are just a great place to actually talk shop about D&D.

Back on reddit, the vast majority of D&D subs were flooded with fan art and very little discussion. There were DM subs, but those obviously left out players. I loved /r/rpg, but that place was also a refuge for people who don’t want to talk about D&D and only D&D all the dang time. (And even if I’m mostly over D&D, I still like D&D in theory, if not always in practice). So… that kind of left /r/dndmemes as, unexpectedly, one of the few places to get in-depth discussion about all kinds of RPGs and experiences from around the table.

Oof. I wouldn’t like that at all. I’m already bothered with how many player powers just shut off certain parts of the game. Also putting it on the monster side seems like it will make the game an arms race of things not mattering.

Oh yeah. The campaign already had a lot of comedy in it (the whole cast are improvisers), and the one-off was extra silly, but there was also a log of nostalgia and genuine joy.

The fascinating thing about this is that, in context… it’s still fucking weird, but for different reasons.

He’s technically joking about how it makes you transition, saying it’s a claim he heard from “scientists.” So he wants to call men women as a misogynistic insult, but also to poke fun at the concept of scientific study. It’s wrong to distinguish between gender and sex as part of evidence-based medicine and basic conscientiousness. It’s cool and good if you’re doing it to be a dick, though. He’s got to police gender roles, but also insist that they are completely immutable based on your sex.

What a creepy weirdo.

Somewhat off-topic:

I really enjoyed the NeoScum podcast, which is a Shadowrun actual play, but they also had a one-off side-quest in the digital world of Neopets. So I’ve kind of seen a Neopets RPG in practice, before this bespoke system. :P