Chebucto Regional Softball Club

This feels like a setup for a comic like Villain: casts this spell. "You fools! You're now too gay to defeat me! Cower before my mighty hetero--" Gay fighter stabs villain Double gay ranger shoots him with an arrow. Pause for a beat Party: "So pride is this weekend you want to go to the beach?" Like, the spell had no impact on their combat prowess and the bigot thought it would.

Man, I'd love to play more WoD. One time I got a game going and it was a lot of fun. The other times I've tried, there was always at least one player who didn't read the books or pay attention to the explanations, and dragged the game down with "wait, who are they? Why are they doing that? What do I roll?" Not everyone needs to be an expert on all the minutia, but sometimes it's just a mood killer to have to keep explaining the basics.

Lots of other good points already made, but I'll add my own two cents. When I run a game, I always require players to make characters together. No "go off and make a character in isolation". That's just a recipe for disaster. You can have some ideas already in mind, but nothing is canon until the whole group agrees. Second, everyone needs to have buy-in to whatever the hook is. If the scenario is "you're starting a courier business at the edge of civilization", there are lots of good options. Guy on the run from the law. Lady studying local wild life. Intelligent, local, wildlife. Don't play "guy who doesn't want to be here and is a total killjoy" Third, it's better when characters have connections to each other. You _can_ play the "we just met and we're forming a relationship!" arc, but like "what if we play ourselves in a fantasy world??" **it has been done**. Honestly, everyone should read Fate's "Phase Trio" https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio and the rest of character creation.

Unknown Armies is kind of like this. Most magic requires obsession, and you don't get a lot of well adjusted, friendly, people who also, say, collects all many of coin and money (money is power) but won't spend any (that's giving away your power!) There's a bunch of schools of magic but they're all built on an obsession and paradox. The book is really well written, too. (At least 2e is. I didn't spend much time with 3e)

Microsoft sucks and I don't want their shit. They'll probably cram AI into it or otherwise shit it up.

Game pass is obviously the first stage of classic enshittification. They're trying to be good to users to get them into the ecosystem. Abuse comes later. Don't let them change games into a subscription service where you have to keep paying forever. Think longer term.

Some other games use other terms. Like wod uses "storyteller". GM is the generic term

Oh, I personally agree. I want my players engaged and adding flavor to the world. If I didn't, I'd be better off writing a book. But I used to be more of a "you're having fun wrong" jerk in my youth, so I make extra effort now to be clear that something might not be for _me_, it's okay if you're all having harmless fun with it. ( I still struggle when people tell me about their game of modern day vampires doing political intrigue run in D&D 5e instead of Vampire, but we all have our foibles. )

I discovered a couple years ago that some players *hate* being given any creative control over the setting. They're extremely passive and want to be told a story. that's a valid way to play, but very alien to me. When I had a wizard character mention his wizard school I let him color in a lot of details. I'd intervene if it was badly breaking established canon (eg: we said it's in a remote desert and now you want it to be in a coastal city), but generally it's great.

Interesting, but I can't imagine writing out that much of the game's truth ahead of time. I'm always leaving things undefined so I can slot in a good idea (from me or the players).

Some games ask the players to define the stakes and goals when a conflict starts. This can help keep players on track. Like, the players are on a journey through the mountains, and as they pass through a tunnel they encounter a giant spider. The default mode is "fight the spider to the death!". But if you ask the players again "what is your goal here?" they might remember it's "get through the mountains", not "kill everything we meet." Now they might focus on how to get past it safely. If the DM rewards players for advancing their goals instead of just murder, that can also encourage non-murder behavior.

I still have the onyx path WoD 2e books, and I enjoy them. I find it confusing that there several variations of "World of Darkness"

In one of my old groups, I'd usually verify the player and I understood each other , and they understood the likely consequences. Like, "You can shoot her, but remember this is her club, with her friends , and she's a vampire so she probably won't die. But if you want to roll, it's at -4 from her Celerity you've seen her use." One player was always like "you never let me do anything!" I was like you _can_ do it, but I don't want you to be surprised and mad if there are consequences. Another player, by contrast, would listen to me clarify what was likely to happen, and be like "cool bro let's do it.". We still talk about the time his character jumped out a 20 story window to save his friend's girlfriend. Great player. Took a lot of damage, as warned, but lived.

Yeah, I mostly play Fate or nWoD. But a lot of people are really emotionally invested in D&D, so sometimes I think of ways to try to trick them into playing something different while they think they're still playing D&D.

I bet some obsessive nerd has converted DND to point buy (like wod, gurps, etc) instead of class and level based. You get XP for stuff, and you can spend that as you like on all the stuff you'd get from leveling. Follow the recommended route and get a standard looking fighter. Or go crazy and buy nothing but hit dice. Or make a glass cannon by buying all the sneak attack dice and second attack (in case you miss) and nothing else. Or, per this meme, buy superiority dice and maneuvers, and then also buy extended crit from champion. It would be a mess. I think part of why dnd is popular is its comparably small decision space. There's just not a lot of room to fuck up your character

This is pretty good advice. I've sort of stumbled into it a few times. Sometimes I'd be like "ok so here's the room. Blah blah blah details. What're you doing?" Andy will be like "I'm gonna check out that detail" I'll get like "cool. You all see Andy head over to that detail. Good?" And sort of pause there for a beat to see if anyone wants to interrupt or preempt. I think the linked article is a generally better method as it's more complete, but I think mine is a little faster. Especially if you have a couple passive players.

dangit i was going to make the same pun. well done.

My old pandemic D&D group was the best. They cared about everything. But I remember specifically one time they arrived at a large party. I was describing the scene- large tables set with food, small groups of people mingling, and off in the corner you see a man talking to a woman, her back is against the wall and he's got his arm on the wall so he's kind of trapping her there. She looks uncomfortable. The players all beelined to those two to rescue the NPC from the guy. Oh, Pretty Paul. They hated him so much. Such a good villain. (Started as a riff on Handsome Jack, and it worked so well. One of the players wrote a song about how much they hated Paul)

Order of the Stick is so good, and has such surprising emotional depth for a stick figure comic about D&D. Just be aware that the updates are intermittent.

I remember once my players spent like 15 minutes discussing how to get across a 10 foot long puddle of water in a cave. Eventually I had to remind them that 10' isn't _that_ far, and you can RAW jump your strength score in feet with a running start. They didn't need to build a bridge or cut into the walls. They could also just go into the water, but I understand not wanting to submerge yourself in cave water when you don't know what's down there.