Simons Mith

I still fondly remember Howard's Prandial Palace, somewhere deep in the depths of Schlock Mercenary. Shown as it was, from a distance, that looks like a couple of wine bottles and some wineglasses on a tray. Surely nothing but a wild architectural coincidence. :-)

Favourably?

and designers and GMs can fall into the error of striving to model real-world stuff that they shouldn't be emulating.

'Realism' in an RPG almost never means faithfully modelling actual reality. 'Realism' in an RPG means faithfully capturing the spirit and tone of the intended setting. For a superhero game, that's obviously not going to match the real world, but for some settings the differences are less blatant,

Subtle gaps and holes in rules, and undesirable consequences arising from them, can take years of play to expose, and can slowly poison a game - or cause it to diverge from the designers' intent - before anyone notices. And even when spotted, successfully articulating the problem is a separate issue

... Goals first, lives as a secondary. How's that ?

That's why the below is an expert-level tip. Don't threaten the PCs' lives, threaten their goals. NPCs can do that just fine.

bsky.app/profile/full...

See also: bsky.app/profile/beho...
Those tips work just as well for adults

into your preconceived lines.

you spent hours working on. Unless the boss gets the hump at being upstaged and leaves in a huff, in which case he might get a reputation as a sulky prima donna. Memorable, but not what you intended. When those things happen, it's generally more fun to roll with it than trying to force things back.

rumour told by a third party - any of those could work, but to a degree you have to run with the ones that DO work, and accept that that's not necessarily the NPCs you were hoping would stick. It's entirely typical for PCs to fixate on the one cowardly goblin guard and largely ignore the scary boss

a game script I read with one of the players. I played the boss, the player played his sycophantic 'loyal' lieutenant for a few minutes. Thing is, you don't know what's going to stick, so an accent here, a cool prop there, a physical mannerism, a notable quote, some background music, a scurrilous

Iron Man, a techie girl with cybernetic hair implants whose colour she changes ever few days, a group of very generic security guards who suddenly commanded the PCs' attention much more effectively when they showed up for the /second/ time, a superficially affable East-End style crime boss who had

Variety. Accepting that you can't make them ALL memorable, or control reliably which ones actually click with the PCs.
Recent memorable NPCs have been a sleazy information broker whose theme song is Dirty Deeds done Dirt Cheap, another information broker Droid who looks a bit like a discount

I should say, this is for an /action/ campaign. For campaigns which are emotionally grounded, the story arc may be quite different. I don't have any strong insights on that, but if I come across any I'll post them.

Even in Star Wars, it’s possible to run out of ‘up’. In campaign B, the local climaxes will seem bigger by contrast with the surrounding lower-key scenarios, and the campaign will ‘feel’ more epic overall.

#ttrpg 6/6

great victory in Episode IV, Episode V was The Empire Strikes Back.) Dialing things back for a few scenarios resets the tension, and allows you to reintroduce some higher-stakes elements later without constantly having to outdo yourself.

#ttrpg 5/6

and maybe do a bit of roleplaying. In campaign A, the pressure just rises relentlessly, and that’s hard to sustain over the longer term.

If you blow up a Death Star in Episode IV, how do you top that in episodes V–IX? (GMs should take good note that in the movies, after the Alliance’s

#ttrpg 4/6

In campaign B, the difficulty fluctuates a bit – 1 2 6 3 4 7 2 5 9 10.

Campaign B is likely to be more satisfying, because it has a couple of mini-climaxes, and a lull in the middle where the stakes are slightly lower again and the characters have a chance to relax a bit, take stock,

#ttrpg 3/6

failure) should creep upwards. But there should be some variation. Imagine two campaigns, each lasting ten scenarios, and with the scenario difficulties ranging from 1–10 on some arbitrary scale.

In campaign A, the difficulty escalates linearly up to a climax – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.

#ttrpg 2/6

#GM tip of the day

What makes a campaign a fulfilling one?

Getting the campaign power level right is important for your and the players’ enjoyment. The first few scenarios should start off reasonably low-key, but over time the difficulty of the scenarios (and the consequences for

#ttrpg 1/6

In the Skyrim setting of Tamriel, when a Khajiit pushes a breakable item off a shelf or other high place, this is known as a Puss Ro Dah.

#dailylie

If it's an in-universe map, a prop representing an item owned by the PCs, then it doesn't have to be accurate :-)

inhabitants do like it, very very much) then it reflects very poorly on you, very like Dubai. Which makes it topical at least :-)

Other planets, there's something nice for everyone, but these two, in their different ways, are the worst I've come up with.

Reuss VIII is a polluted industrial hellhole of a world. Everyone's miserable; the only difference is in degree. Hard to think of anywhere worse. Pleasant Islands is a corporate world which is superficially nice but soulless and bland in every possible way. If you like it there (and most of its

In this very thread we have someone saying "Taking your foot off the brake is the command." and not seeing the inherent problem with that

User interface design is a subtle art. Car companies used to excel at it, but the institutional knowledge is being lost as older staff retire and the new hires (and let's be honest, most people) don't appreciate which aspects of UI design are good practice and which are not.

Oh, now you've reminded me of the Mod Archive

modarchive.org

Haven't been there in ages.

chat is it bad when one of the FAQs on your products webpage is “is this a joke” - commenter Dawn on OP

Sausages need close supervision. You should let your resident expert handle this.