It’s the Christmas Season 1, I’ve eaten way too much food, have not imbibed enough coffee, and have the week off so my brain is glitchy. These are random thoughts.
- Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh! I got my Shadowdark shipping notification!
- Brindlewood Bay arrived at last! Yay! The Book ribbon was glued to a page and ended up damaging the book. Boo!
- Raccoon Sky Pirates is an insane game I may have to live stream.
- I’m going to be on a live stream tomorrow at 8 PM Eastern testing out the new SAGAS system.
- I very much want to run Candela Obscura on Christmas Eve 2.
- I’ve had the Hyperborea PDFs for a while now, but I was gifted the print copies for Christmas. They are beautiful and use flat paper 3!!!
- I now have the 3 core books for 4e. I know the game gets a lot of hate but I’m trying to collect the core books for each edition of AD&D. Then I’ll work on the OD&D/Basic line 4.
- Anyone got a Monstrous Compendium with which they could part? That would complete my 2e core book set.
- I need more shelves.
- Reviews coming up: Adventurous, Marvel Multiverse, and then Heckin’ Good Doggos.
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The actual one, not the one that gobbled up Advent. Also, happy Kwanza. ↩
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Please, publishers, relearn the joy of flat paper for the reading experience.↩
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Also, the book’s design language for 4e is a lot better, in my opinion, than 3.5.↩
Can people please explain the hate for this game? Is it because pronouns get listed? Is it just it’s from Critical Role? Is it because people were playing horror or heist games “before it was cool?” The vitriol is silly. The game has some weak points, the linear way investigations are presented is a big one, but the hate is weird.↩
8 responses to “Random TTRPG Thoughts #10”
I don’t know about hate for Brindlewood Bay. My game group has rotating GMs, one of whom is more adventurous than the rest of us. He ran Brindlewood Bay and we went NUTS for it. A group of 50 year old dudes playing the Murder Mavens with an enthusiasm I *wish* I could get for my dungeon crawls!
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Ah, the hate I’m seeing is for Candela Obscura.
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Oh, jeez. My bad. No opinion on that other than the reviews I’ve seen don’t light a fire for me to try it.
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If it’s not what you’re looking for, it’s not what you are looking for. That is a fair take.
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Re: Brindlewood Bay, you should reach out to Jason Cordova about the gluing error. He’s pretty responsive.
Re: Candela Obscura, I haven’t been following it very closely because I’m happy with the horror games I’m already playing. I think some of the complaints stem from the writers/publishers trying to be progressive in some ways while pursuing non-/less-progressive ideas in others. One example that I saw was discussing how ableism was not acceptable, but using ableist mechanics/language in the way they describe harm to characters.
I do wish they’d taken the opportunity to prop up an indie publisher by producing a setting for an existing system rather than further balkanizing the world of systems beyond 5e – Blades in the Dark/Bump in the Dark would both be good options, they already lean heavily on the former.
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I have reached out, with the holiday haven’t heard back yet. The Candela Obscura complaints all just seem to be weird to me. The way scars are handled is one of the most impressive aspects of the game, actually. You don’t lose action points, you move them, because the scar changes how you act. Having lived through a series of traumas from late 2019 to the present that behavior change concept rings true. Characters are mechanically still as capable, but in different ways because in game events have changed them.
As for Balkanization… as someone who’s been told by “successful” groups for YEARS that I shouldn’t bother making my own thing because someone else is doing it and I should just use theirs it’s not an argument I can embrace. Creative folks wanted to make a game to do the things they wanted to do, good for them.
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Yeah, I can’t weigh in on whether the complaints are valid or not … I’ve got no dog in the fight. I was just relaying what I’ve heard.
As to the Balkanization, they have every right to do what they did. They also have something of a privileged position. I wish (not this is just me thinking out loud, not saying they couldn’t or shouldn’t have done it) they’d thrown that privilege behind creators who aren’t in that position.
I’ve made a couple of runs at designing a game to scratch my own itch. I haven’t been successful yet, but maybe someday. I just think there’s a huge difference between the “little guy” working on a project, and a well-funded company with a powerful reach jumping into the pool, even though they’re absolutely allowed to do so if they want.
Ok, I’ll climb down off my soapbox.
Thanks for continuing to post and make videos, and best of luck in 2024.
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4e definitely had a pretty good design language to it. I’ve got the 4e DMG on my tablet and it’s a good one to reference just based on how it ties systems to problems with examples that show you how to take the advice and apply the systems to it.
Of course, I have a lot of good memories playing 4e alongside Pathfinder and Shadowrun and other stuff. Encounters and Living Forgotten Realms had a life to them I haven’t seen back from Adventurers League.
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