Commander Pulsar

Cast them all while drinking the potions you were saving, too.

“It Depends.”
What’s the goal of the AP? To tell a story? Use a system the cast knows well. To showcase & teach? Maybe something new to at least a couple cast members. To raise money? Something light that isn’t derailed by stopping frequently to thank people.
“It Depends.”

"Sounds like you're Going Aggro, roll it."
"What? No, I just want to get in his face and intimidate him. Make him think twice about talking to Shirl."
"Ah, got it. That seems more like you're Manipulating him; sound right?"
D&D has Moves. "Make a Perception Move." "Everyone use Roll Initiative."

To me, calling something a Move is a way to identify a chunk of mechanics in a way that lets you engage them as the fiction determines. There's an example I like in first edition Apocalypse World, where a player grabs an NPC and throws them against the wall, knife to their throat.

I'll see your hot take and raise you.

You only need the modifier. Writing down the other number is archaic and a waste of effort.

I give myself an appropriate pile for the NPCs in the scene. When a token gets used, it's pushed onto the map, where everyone can see it. You can tell how momentous a scene was by the size of the pile at the end.

The VTT I generally use (Roll20) has customizable card decks. I customized one to be an infinitely large deck of identical tokens. For my Fate players, I just pull out a number of tokens to bring them up to their refresh and drop them on the player icon.

[Immediatrly getting a Romeo & Juliette vibe]

I do not fuck with you, Ser, but I do fuck, Ser.

Great deal--and it is--aside, it makes me sad that $18 is less than the price of a movie ticket.

If the word 'investigation' is in the question, then Gumshoe is in my answer. Trail of Cthulhu is probably the closest fit, but I would look to Swords of the Serpentine for system options--it's my favorite iteration.

Monster of the Week is also an excellent option if your taste runs more PbtA.

I agree this was a weird note in a book that otherwise hit well for me, tone-wise. So long as the oractice -is- being promoted, I guess. I call it Jaquaysing, 'cause I've played since the eighties and can say difficult to pronounce words like "otyugh," "catoblepas," "glaive-guisarme," and "Gygax."

and Daggerheart has just been an interesting read, borrowing great mechanics liberally from other great games like Edge of the Empire and Blades in the Dark, and melding them with classic fantasy vibes. I think it'll be an influential read even if it never hits your table.

Proactive GMing was revelatory and fundamentally changed the way I plan games, which after three decades is saying something. Most games have PCs reacting--acting to stop the Big Bad's Evil Plan. This book proposes letting the Players come up with plans and having the world react to *them*.

The best ttrpg reads for me in the past year or so were @alexandrian.bsky.social 's So You Want To Be A GM, the Gamemaster's Handbook of Proactive Gaming, and Daggerheart. SYWTBAGM is the best comprehensive book on the art available, and the book I'd hand to every new GM.

Congrats on the new campaign! 'Based on MechWarrior' as in set in the universe, or "I'm going to set up my nations in D&D like the great houses of the Inner Sphere?" Either way is cool; I feel like the latter would be too much work for me.

Of course! No reason to let perfectly good coffee go to waste. I just like my Found Familiar & Death Wish coffees too much. And I keep finding cool roasters I want to support.

I will also congratulate you. That's non-trivial work.

Bought my first Keurig recently, and the new smaller ones are very nice. Also bought a couple nice stainless steel refillable k-cups because less waste, no having to store a ton of coffee pods, and I *like* having a ritual to prepare coffee.

"If you keep encountering enemies, you're headed in the right direction."

My first impulse is to use Toon from @stevejacksongames.bsky.social. Built to do Looney Tunes, road runner v. Wile E. Coyote, etc.

I use tools from many games. Return of the Lazy Dungeonmaster by @slyflourish.com as a framework, with GM faction turns from Stars/Worlds Without Number. When building the game I use Pathways from Smallville/Cortex Prime. All this is organized using Obsidian for notetaking.

Agreed. Doing the math it works out to a little more than I charge for a pro GM gig, with a bunch of perks like enthusiastic players and a whole gaming convention.
Now, if a company offers to pay me on top of that, I will not say no, as that goes to offset travel expenses.

The room was shared--no big deal; I made a couple new friends--but I value it against the room I would have had to pay for otherwise. In exchange I ran games for 16 hours. I got to play a ttrpg I like with new folks enthusiastic about it, for two workdays of a four-day event.

The first question I'd have is: how detailed do you want or need to get? Are you writing a fisticuffs simulator? Is the game combat-focused? My gaming style sees fights as a last resort method of conflict resolution, so they don't get as much emphasis.

If the only fight I've ever been in is any indicator, that formula seems fine, except that everything is chaos, you're spending as much effort avoiding your opponent hitting you as you are hitting them, and luck eventually favors someone and the tide tips in their favor.

A good friend works for a ttrpg company, and when they work the booth at PAXU, that's a paid business trip. We didn't discuss it in fine detail, but room and badge were covered. Covering room and badge is not insignificant payment, for PAXU that saves me nearly $1000.

My Envy is going to be high this weekend. I had planned to go to #PAXU. I bought a badge for #PAXU. But hotel & flight & money for those didn’t come together. I’ll miss those I would have seen, the games I won’t get to try and then buy, the books I’d ship home.
Saving for next year starts now.

To be clear, I hate everything about that GMing style, but I wonder if some part of Shopping Trips doesn’t derive from covering your butt & creating a paper trail in the event your GM does pull a similar stunt.

When the relationship isn’t adversarial then you can say things like “because we’re professional & seasoned adventurers, it makes sense that we stocked up on [thing] when we were last in town.”
The Adversary might counter with “you never said it so it didn’t happen.”

With shopping specifically, I wonder if it doesn’t also come from a Gygaxian GM-as-Adversary desire to make sure the Party is equipped for Shenanigans. Importantly, because the GM is going to ask, to have receipts (almost literally!)