I always had the most fun giving the parties items that were powerful but had some sort of risk or tradeoff. Something where they knew the risks, but accepted of their own free will.

Some examples for you to steal, though the numbers probably need tweaking.

Scroll of Immolation.

On reading the scroll, it is consumed and all creatures within 50’ in line of effect are marked for 3d4 turns. When any such creature reaches 0 hit points, it explodes in a fiery blast and is slain. Roll their hit dice for damage. The radius is 5’ for every two such hit dice, rounded up. Creatures exploded in this manner cannot be restored to life by spells that require an intact corpse.

For example, an Ogre with 8d10 hit dice will explode for 8d10 fire damage to everything within 20’.

Note that these explosions can cause explosions, and the player characters are likely marked.

(Inspired by crawl, a classic rogue like)

Helm of Debt

After receiving damage, the wearer of this helm may opt to instead receive no damage. If they do so, mark down the amount of damage that would have been taken. Keep track of damaged prevented in this manner as a running total.

The next time the bearer completes a long rest, they have two choices. They may suffer double the total damage absorbed by the helm. This damage may not be reduced or redirected. Doing so resets the total to zero.

They may instead attempt a charisma save with the DC equal to the total damage tracked. On success, no damage is taken, and the tracked damage total increases by 5.

Distance from the helm, breaking attunement, dying from other means, and similar effects do not end this process. The debt must be paid.

A creature slain while the helm’s debt is unpaid is immediately sent to the hells, and may not be returned to life by conventional means.

I’ve had a lot of DND players, often people that exclusively play DND, tell me they like it that way. They like that there’s basically no rules for conflict outside of combat. “Just talk it out” and “we’re here to role play stop looking at your sheet”.

Personally, not my taste. If we’re just going to “talk it out” I feel like we should write a book instead. That or actually rip out the stunted social rules in DND. That would help the annoying thing where the real life Sales Guy brings his whole personality into his 8 Cha Fighter.

But I also think a lot of those people have never really played anything else, and like dnd’s “barely any rules” better than whatever fantasy they’re imagining.

I like that games with working social rules can let someone who’s shy or quiet play someone socially powerful, just like a physically weak person can play a strong barbarian.

Do you think the people who make Dr Farts want to play with other people who make Dr Farts type characters? And the people who make 1500 dmg/turn combat monsters, do they want to play with other combat monsters?

I feel like sometimes no. Sometimes people want to be the odd one out. Which sucks, because a group that’s homogeneous on this aspect I think can work pretty well. If everyone’s a combat monster the GM can go crazy. But if there’s just one or two combat monsters, now they have to figure out how to keep it fun for them and also Bob The Fighter that hits for 1d8+2 each turn.

Neat idea.

Kind of similar to Fate’s standard game creation, where you go around and come up with how your backstory connects to everyone else. These connections can be invoked for bonuses later.

If you have a machine that runs Windows and the hardware is still good,

Linux is often more forgiving on hardware requirements. I recently put Mint (with xfce) on a like 2013 laptop and it’s fine. That’s not even an especially lightweight distribution.

Never thought about it before, but the two systems I like most don’t do that.

In chronicles of darkness, you get penalties when any of your last 3 health boxes (out of 6-10) are marked. In fate, you start getting Consequences, and those both adversely affect you and provide bonuses for your opponents.

I think some people don’t like this because it can cause a death spiral, where whoever gets injured first is likely to get more injured from the penalties. But, that makes sense for a lot of genres.

I routinely found it extremely irritating in BG3 when I’d do a sneak attack critical, and then the enemy would have like 3 HP left, and then they’d turn around and attack just as hard as if i’d done nothing. Unsatisfying.

I don’t need to know their exact stats, but I like (for example) having a system where you know a human’s health ranges from 6 to 10, and a gun does at least 3 damage, so you can be pretty sure if you shoot him four times he’s down. None of this, “Well, he’s a 12th level accountant so he has 78 hp”.

Maybe I mostly just dislike how vague HP is in D&D.

But it was probably mostly a GM issue.

I’m here to roleplay, not be told immediately whether or not I can take the dude.

I find it hard to roleplay when I don’t know what is in the world. Things that are very different (high level stuff, low level stuff) getting basically the same description is distracting. In real life, you get a lot of information looking at someone.

Maybe I’m still just annoyed at that game where we were all 10th level and so were the basic ass soldiers.

One of the things I realized I don’t like about DND (and close relatives) is it’s kind of hard to reason about the rules and risks. The narrative and numbers are too disjointed.

You might say the knight is hulking and looming ominously, but does that mean 20 AC, 50 HP, one attack at +6 for 1d8+4… Or does that mean 24 AC, 500 HP, three attacks at 1d8+8 (slashing) +1d4 (negative energy)? Could be either! The range of possibilities is largely unbound and arbitrary.

Compare with another system that like, constrains the numbers. Strength is rated 1-5. Melee is rated 1-5. This guy is pretty buff looking so he’s probably got a total of six. That guy’s a demigod and probably throws ten. Cool I can reason from that who I can take in a fight.

This whole problem is such an archaic D&D-ism. Most other games provide strong guidance or even explicit rules about how to make a party that works.

Fate has the “phase trio” where you go around and make up as a group how your characters have a past together. None of this “everyone makes their dude in isolation” nonsense.

How is Ted Cruz still alive? Can I file a bug report somewhere?

Ring of protection. Grants everyone around you protection in a fairly large radius. Might be useful for long range combat, maybe. Might also be useful to navigating certain environmental hazards.

Boots of Flying. They can fly, but only have a carry weight of a few pounds. If you’re more than say ten pounds, the little wings flap but gain no altitude. They are not autonomous. Might be useful in condunction with other magics to reduce weight.

Gauntlets of Ogre Might. Do not affect strength. They do tell you the odds of nearby ogres taking particular actions. They might do this, they might do that, and so on.

Hammer of Striking. Social bonuses when organizing labor. Combat bonuses only when near many allies.

Boots of Haste. Gain extra actions but large penalties to all checks. Haste makes waste. May be useful if combined with large bonuses or fixed outcomes (eg: DND diviner wizard).

Classic RPG strategy of “just basic attack and heal afterwards” works too often, even when playing the game in fast forward

Whenever I meet someone and mention I like video games, and they go “…like call of duty?” I have to respond “nooo no no, not that slop”

I mean, I play a lot of mainstream stuff too (eg: fromsoft, larian) but this kind of shooter just rubs me the wrong way, and makes me kind of sad that’s the placeholder people have for games in general.

Is the thing in the original post here real? Or is that a joke at the expense of Internet duds? Poe’s law is too intense. No one can really believe that sincerely right?

I decided I was done with reddit. I never used apps so I just signed out of my account and never went back.

I’m still kind of disappointed and irritated about an old D&D group. The guy ran a game that was literally patriarchy.

There was a king who died. He had a daughter, who was ruling competently presently. But he also had an infant son. Now a civil war is brewing because some people want the son on the throne, because that’s the male heir.

And he just played it straight and seemed to expect us to be like “Oh, obviously the son has a legitimate claim to the throne. and also absolute monarchy is unremarkable”. To his credit he did let us decide which faction to support, but it was kind of exhausting getting a constant stream of “no, absolute male hereditary rule is good and normal”.

It was a pretty fleshed out setting in terms of details and subfactions, but the core of it was just so very basic and unexamined. No one else seemed to give a shit, though. I did not gel with that group.

Meanwhile, some time before that I’d had a blast running a game. The players came upon an anarchist collective that had overthrown the old despot, but now there are counter-revolutionaries lurking that want to return the now undead tyrant to the throne. Also the neighboring state is rattling their sabers because they ideologically do not approve of a state without a king.

So I guess the lesson is games are better when you vibe with the group?

I’ve had players do that kind of counter-productive behavior. I usually tell them that we’re here to engage with the game’s premise. If the game’s premise was “we’re going to rob a bank”, your character needs to have reasons to engage with that. You can write a book about Jimmy the Marketer that works a 9 to 5 and has a rich social life, but that’s not what we’re here to explore.

If i’m running the game, I really make sure to hammer on this stuff during session 0. I also don’t typically approve “you all met in a tavern” setups. Your characters should have history together when we start. I don’t want to have to handwave “wait, why would i trust this guy I just met to take first watch?” again

I feel like sometimes people refuse to “meta game” in a way that is also metagaming, except targeting bad outcomes instead of good.

Like your characters live in a world with trolls. They’re not a secret. Choosing to intentionally avoid fire because “that’s metagaming” is also metagaming. You’re using your out of character knowledge (fire is effective) and then avoiding it.

Usually cleared up with a "hey dm, what are common knowledge and myths about this stuff? or whatever.

I assume it’s the usual stupid “they’re talking about other people who happen to sound a lot like me”.

That or they exist solely in the emotional realm, and the words don’t really matter.

Good. Fuck Google and fuck the ai slop