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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Idk about hit, but decent success maybe? Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers wouldn’t be bad with a re-release that fixes the controls (gameplay is mainly a series of mini-games which the timing is off for making attempting completing them a rage inducing task) and the travel map areas redone to have actual purpose instead of “here’s a zany spot with cyclical weather where you can throw stuff around to play with our gravity code”. The story was pretty good/interesting imo as a Final Fantasy version of Cowboy Bebop.


    • Boardwalk Empire - 1920s-30s period drama about mobsters, prohibition, etc set in New Jersey/Atlantic City
    • Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries - 1920’s period detective show set in Melbourne
    • Peaky Blinders - haven’t watched it myself, but my understanding is it was pretty popular, 1920s period drama about a gang set in 1920s Birmingham
    • Fargo (season 4) - haven’t watched it again, but I’ve heard good things and season 4 (it’s an anthology series, each season is a different cast/story so you don’t have to have watched the previous seasons) is 1950s Missouri with gangs

  • US, 30s, yep. When I needed a new car decided to get one cause I was driving an hour to work and thought it would help me with driver’s trance (cue sad laugh track…). Ended up having to order a new car cause I couldn’t find one I wanted that was manual within a reasonable driving distance that wasn’t complete junk. Didn’t really help my problem, but I do love driving it lol.

    Kind of weird because automatics make me uncomfortable to drive now, they accelerate so easy I feel like I have less control (though I’m sure this is just a skill issue on my part).




  • This is a good article I think for DMs who have only done one system! I can only talk about 5e here, but:

    Backgrounds as Skills

    Iirc in the DMG you are encouraged to take backgrounds into account though not really given a tangible way to figure this. In modules too there are backgrounds tailored to the adventure, but again you’re not really given direction in how to figure this. Personally I just lower DCs, make information more accessible, etc to people whose backgrounds it would apply to. For example I often get the my girlfriend was killed by X and I’ve been genociding them in revenge background from new players so if the enemy they’re facing is X I’ll give them more insight into the enemies’ tactics, culture, etc than other players as their character has a background of vested interest in fighting this foe.

    Super Easy Monsters

    All I can say is the 4e directions on how to run monsters never should have been ditched. I don’t mind the long statblocks that much (though it is annoying because many of the spell selections tend to be nonsensical fluff, what is that lich going to do with prestidigitation…). I haven’t even played 4e, but I do like to convert older dragon and so on magazine adventures to 5e for one-offs and every time it’s a 4e adventure it’s so much easier knowing there will be a how to run the combat section. When I do 5e straight up I usually rework the encounters myself to make a bunch of video game-esque combat cycles (first the monster will use bless on allies and then x and then y, etc). So I feel like it’s not even the long statblocks that are the main issue here, but that it’s hard to divine from them in 5e what the go-to combat round actions envisioned here are.

    Escalation Die

    This is an interesting concept, but honestly I’d just rather lower AC and HP to be more in-line for the experience you’re trying to give. My players talk way more about one shotting enemies in round 1 than they do about finally being able to get that hit to one-shot in Round 4 so I’d rather lower AC if it’s an intentional fight to make them all feel like heroic badasses. Just from a numbers point as well the monsters would also be getting more “heroic” and you have the problem of their ability to one-shot your players (at lower levels) increasing. I think lowering AC/HP and sticking to average damage (no rolls, attacks just do X) for monsters probably works better here, especially at low levels.

    Icons

    So 5e does kind of have this. Modules have backgrounds with built-in connections and there’s an optional rule called Plot Points (p. 269 DMG) that’s similar to this, just not focused around important NPCs. I actually like a rule from another game described to me by someone (I think it’s Blades in the Dark or another heist game) where you get a point and can spend it to overcome a complication as long as you explain how your character prepared for it ahead of time. This doesn’t require the PC to play off any NPC connections which I find to be harder for players who are there more to roll dice than tell a story and new players.

    Range Bands

    I think PbtA uses a similar system (haven’t played it, just been told by my players) and it works really well for TotM. Personally I just limit it to melee and ranged. Keeps it simple and if we’re doing a big boss battle I pull out the map. I don’t really do combats on wide open plains so I don’t find far to be useful, but that’s just me!

    Thanks for sharing!





  • I’m going to throw a few links:

    To start off with though if you’re comfortable with D&D you can get an “oracle” to play solo. An oracle helps determine outcomes, new story directions, etc. There’s a lot of different kinds and if you want a written one you can check DMs Guild iirc there’s some free/pay what you want ones on there. I’m sure there’s some random generator ones online as well if you don’t mind doing partly digital. Oracles can be as simple (flipping a coin for yes/no) or as complicated (not the most complicated, but ex. shuffling a deck of tarot cards and using spreads to decide outcomes) as you like.

    There are also games (like Thousand Year Old Vampire) that are designed to be solo. The reddit sub has a pretty good list here.

    Hope this helps a little! I mainly play D&D solo using pre-written adventures and a tarot oracle so unfortunately I don’t have any recs for designed to be solo games.