I bought a fancy desktop PC recently so I’m not in the market. Otherwise I would consider it, but only if the desktop environment was usable for general computing. I believe it is, but I’m not sure if its version of Linux would be best for like software development.
Sometimes the word “Interesting” causes my brain to recall the character generation in Morrowind. The guy says something like ““Interesting. Now before I stamp these papers, make sure this information is correct.””
Conservatism, mostly.
Give him the ability to divest his wealth first.
Imagine you roll 3d6. There’s exactly one way to roll a 3. You need all three of those dice to come up 1. But there are many ways to roll a ten. [{1,3,6}, {1,4,5}, {2,2,6} …etc]. You’re more likely to get totals in the middle of the range. If you rolled 3d6 many times and charted the outcomes, it would look like a bell curve. Most of the results are in the middle, with fewer results of the outliers like 3 and 18.
If you roll 1d20 many times and chart the results, it’s a flat line. You’re just as likely to get one number as any other.
Go play around with https://anydice.com/program/e6 if you like.
I personally find the flat probability of 1d20 unsatisfying. I prefer when the average, most expected result comes up more often.
Like imagine you’re throwing darts at a dart board. You probably don’t have an equal number of darts on the floor as in the bullseye, and also an equal amount in between. They’re probably mostly clustered, with some outliers.
One of the reasons I don’t really like 1d20+stuff. Just as likely to get the best possible outcome as the worst.
Is there a name for this trope of cramming really wacky, difficult, high spotlight, stuff into a game like DND that doesn’t especially support it?
I usually feel bad because I want to encourage creativity, but I also don’t want this guy to have 80% of the table attention while Bob the Fighter and Joy the Rogue are playing by the numbers.
Gop is like a clock where only the minute hand is stopped and the hour hand is flapping all over. Sometimes it’s kind of correct, but not for the bigger picture.
I’ve had a couple cases where I didn’t change their mind on the spot, we at least reached a point of “I see what you’re saying and why you believe that” that was better than we started.
It’s just a lot of work, and is doomed if the other person isn’t present in good faith. But it’s nice when it happens. It helps to ask sincere questions, and try to clear up any assumptions you might not share.
And DMs, if you want to surprise people, do it with plot and stakes, not constant item ambushes.
A good surprise has foreshadowing so the players go “ooh that makes sense. We should have thought of that”. If all the corpses in the room look like they died of drowning and there’s scratches on the door, it’s not a total surprise if there’s a trap that locks the door and fills the room with water.
I think it’s the kind of thing new groups discover and then usually realize it sucks. So it’ll keep coming up as long as new players are entering the hobby.
Like every group has done the “what if we make characters based on ourselves??” trope.
Riddles are often lateral thinking or other cleverness, so they seem more finesse than power. But yes, I wrote “dexterity” when I meant “Wits”.
I think a lot about the guy I worked with that said he was going to Palantir. We were like “but what if they have you doing awful things?” He was like, big shrug. He was always friendly to people in the office, but I guess that’s as far as it went.
One of the things I liked about the Chronicles of Darkness system is it cleared this up nicely. Stats were in a 3x3 grid.
One axis was physical, mental, social
The other was Power, Finesse, Resistance.
Want to shove something? Physical + Power. That’s strength.
Want to figure out a riddle? Mental + Finesse. That’s Dexterity Wits. (Edit: wrote dexterity originally, meant Wits)
Command attention? Social + Power. That’s the Presence stat.
Lie and misdirect? Social + Finesse. Stat was called Manipulation.
Now you can have a character that’s commanding without also being a natural liar and flirt. DND doesn’t help let you do that because the concepts are bundled together into a single stat.
(You could invest separately into like Expression for making speeches and Deception for lying, of course)
Humans are rated 1 to 5, where a 5 is the peak of human capability. Presence 5 is like AAA movie stars and great leaders.
Of course, if you add supernaturals to your game a starting chump vampire could have seven presence if they take Majesty as their power, and become a nearly irresistible magnet of attention.
Have you talked to a lot of tech workers? I feel like there’s a set of left wing ones, a larger set of libertarian types, and an even larger set of people who are shockingly ignorant of politics and history.
As GM, I would ask the party for their standard operating procedure and then fast forward until something interesting happened. I really don’t like the “well you didn’t explicitly say you were checking this tile so you set off the trap” mode .
And the ultra rich would deserve to lose everything
Probably get as many conservatives out of power as possible. Once they’re gone we can work on climate change, better electoral systems, removing the evils of capitalism, and so on.
I could accept it matters more than 0, but it is pretty far down the list of issues given the state of the world.
I occasionally become insufferable and recommend people play other games, but people don’t really care. It’s like getting people off twitter.
Does Japan not have the fervent anti intellectualism that we have in the US with our right wing? And it’s not in bed with racism to fuck public education together?