AldinTheMage

joined 2 years ago
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Microsoft concedes that 'The Outer Worlds 2' retail price was too high — Xbox says it "will keep our full priced holiday releases at $69.99," with refunds incoming in c/games@lemmy.world
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 5 points 14 hours ago

Definitely recommend playing or replaying old games. I've recently put hours into replaying Morrowind and Jedi Academy.

The main game I've been playing lately is Mount & Blade Warband from 2010. Got it for a couple $ and have been loving it. I missed it when it came out and recently a friend had been talking a lot about how much fun it used to be.

I have played a few newer AAA games that I uninstalled after a few hours. Sure there's some great new games, especially from small publishers or indie devs, but there's a lot more slop like you said.

I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people (especially in the US) regularly demand that their food be chauffeured to them. in c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 4 points 6 days ago

Highly depends on local infrastructure. Unfortunately the most common city planning philosophy in the US (from what I have seen) is pedestrian hostile. And really it's not great for driving either. It just sucks to go anywhere.

I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people (especially in the US) regularly demand that their food be chauffeured to them. in c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 4 points 6 days ago

If it were easier to walk or bike to get food it would be different. Sometimes I don't want to spend 30 minutes in a metal death box for a burrito. We cook most of our meals at home but occasional delivery is nice.

AI cannot replace humans spiteful spirit in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 week ago

Nah, we'll just SELECT * from both tables and loop through the arrays in JavaScript to associate the records.

I made a solo rpg that just needs a notebook, pencil, and 1d6 in c/rpgcreation@ttrpg.network
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 week ago

Yes I was just thinking a few minutes ago (after my Dwarf Warrior's untimely demise) that I should try human again next, and really there isn't a situation where they are better. I think I should update it to +1 attribute and +1 skill, so they don't get modifier bonuses that boost them long term, but start slightly farther along than other races.

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I made a solo rpg that just needs a notebook, pencil, and 1d6 (aldinthemage.itch.io)
 

I started working on a solo notebook RPG after getting sucked into GnollHack on my phone ruined my progress on reducing screen time (also RIP Grindor, level 19 elf ranger, killed by Scorpius due to me not understanding illness mechanics😭).

I wanted something on paper that has a similar vibe (though this has nowhere near the depth). Just fighting monsters, exploring infinite dungeons, collecting loot and learning spells.

I have never written an RPG system before, but it was fun! I'm still finishing up development and making tweaks as I play, but it's finished enough to play test!

The more I get into WoD, the more I'm Jesse to my friend's Walt in c/rpgmemes@ttrpg.network
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 4 points 3 weeks ago

I love the magic system in Genesys, with just basic spells (attack, heal, augment, curse, etc), some varying effects with suggested flavor (e.g. "Ice" adds ensnare to an attack, but mechanically it doesn't matter if it is vines, goop, whatever), and how much that effect increases spell difficulty. It lets the players go into a brainstorming session trying to come up with a spell to get out of a very specific situation, and having the game support almost anything.

E.g. this create water idea could be an attack spell with the poisonous quality (making it a hard check), which requires the target to make a hard resilience check or take a bunch of extra damage and strain, which for a skilled mage against a non-boss creature (e.g. an overly ambitious bandit) is well within one-shot range. If they pass the check, they would still take damage from the attack, but would be able to cough up most of the water before it got too serious.

This system sounds very cool also, and I have recently heard of Mage in another thread. I would like to play a system that gives players the ability to come up with spells that the GM doesn't know ahead of time (I seriously dislike long lists of predefined spells), but also has a little more of that hard magic-science set of rules to satisfy my inner Sanderson fanboy. I have built in some external scaffolding around the magic in my Genesys setting that does this, and it has been a ton of fun so far.

My main gripe is that I wish I had more time to play RPGs (more than a couple sessions a month) so I could try out more systems.

Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds in c/games@sh.itjust.works
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 5 points 3 weeks ago

But have you tried Outlook (NEW) and Teams (NEW)?? Microsoft made changes to deeply integrate copilot into them, while making the UI unintelligible and broken as well. It's a much more authentic Windows experience

I have finally gotten rid of Windows in c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 month ago

Love me some Plasma. I'm still running the default styles after over a year as well. It's just nice.

I really should spend some time experimenting with customizations though

‘It’s terrifying’: WhatsApp AI helper mistakenly shares user’s number in c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, every thing they say is "horrifying" about this, and that they call "AI gone wrong" is just describing exactly how LLMs work and what they are designed to do.

Like of course the AI doesn't have opinions on your actual writing - it cant! And of course it says whatever the user wants to hear, that's literally just describing what an LLM does.

As much as I get frustrated with AI companies pushing this stuff so hard, if users bothered to understand even at the most basic level what they were using, we wouldn't have these issues

It's a trap in c/funny@sh.itjust.works
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 month ago

It's beautiful <3

It's a trap in c/funny@sh.itjust.works
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 month ago

I do that too 😅 I'm getting better at avoiding the scary trigger words and getting them to agree with the principles

It's a trap in c/funny@sh.itjust.works
[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 28 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm the guy but instead of a pyramid scheme I'm just trying to get all of my friends to install Linux and switch to fediverse social platforms

1
Mad libs Prep (ttrpg.network)
 

Recently came across this post on writing up a redacted document of all of the important info related to the world / story, and un-redacting things as the PCs discover. This lets them know what they don't know, and kind of the shape of what they don't know. https://ttrpg.network/post/20269477

Which reminded me of this well-known write up, Don't Prep Plots, which, while not entirely incompatible, is at least a very different approach.

Got me thinking of the way I do things, and a mix of all of the different things I have read. I try to run a pretty sandbox style game, but still have a lot of stuff going on in the world for the players to follow. In many cases the players will go towards something I haven't prepped or thought much about, and that improvised collaborative story telling lets me as the GM find out new information about the world right alongside the players.

I have started to think of this kind of gm prep as "Mad libs prep"

Mad Libs is a game where there are pre-written sentences, with blanks that need to be filled in by the players. E.g. "We get into our and to the beach" - players don't know what the sentence is when picking the words, so you can end up with that becoming "We get into our toaster and sleep to the beach". The idea is to have enough existing structure that things can get where they need to be, but with enough unknowns that can be filled in with whatever the players (who don't know the whole story) throw out there.

For GM prep, this can be knowing that there is an evil wizard who wants to take over the kingdom, and he needs to do it. The missing noun can be filled in by the players without them knowing.

For example, they become very interested in hunting for ancient magic artifacts? The essential is a legendary amulet and now the PCs are in a race against the mad mage to decipher its secret location.

Or maybe the PCs become monster hunters for hire, and the is the scale of a dragon or something similar, and the PCs run into the evil guys and uncover the plot.

Or perhaps the PCs really latch on to a side NPC that doesn't have much background fleshed out and becomes this person, who has some previously unknown connection to events that is discovered along the way (e.g. Martin Septim in TES IV).

The idea in general is to have enough material to know interesting things will happen, but not getting hung up on having every detail filled in. This also can be holding the things you do have prepared loosly, so maybe you had planned for the BBEG to have a secret lair in the mountains, but the PCs are really into a swampy forest area and end up wanting to spend all of their time there. Rather than "Ok, the BBEG has been up here uncontested the whole time and now the world ends, you all die" - the of evil layer is now deep in the wilderness, which can lead to a lot of changes, creating new lore, creatures, quests, etc.

Maybe all of this stuff is obvious but I am a relatively new GM and have mostly been figuring it out on my own. I'd love to hear other prep methods and tips!

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