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Eow Links 17 |
| 2021-04-24 |
Eow Links 17
"Eow" for End Of Week. Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 17.
For more weekly links, head to The Seed of Worlds Shiny TTRPG link collection or Alex's Blogosphere posts.
Most of the links below are found via the RPG Planet that Alex Schroeder built and maintains. If you have a RPG blog, please consider joining the conversation.
The Planet was quiet this week, it made my life easier on this gorgeous Sunday morning.
As pointed above, Alex has been looking at the TTRPG blogosphere for a while, be warned, it's a treasure trove of links and intuitions.
Injury and the Abstract Combat Round
Here are two common dissatisfactions with D&D style combat. The first is that there's something weird about how you can stab Lancelot with a knife 24 times with no chance of killing him. (...) My objection to this picture is rather an aesthetic one, both a repulsion to the aesthetic of the life bar, as well as to the associated picture of people taking and dishing out endless beatings
It's at Mazirian's Garden, enter with a coffee or a tea, sit down and enjoy the lecture.
What should Sword & Sorcery campaigns feel like?
I think at the most fundamental level, long before going into any specific elements, they key aspect that makes Sword & Sorcery a thing is that it is not a rational form of fantasy, but an emotional.
But sometimes, the emotion of fear forces the players to be precise and meticulous in their handling of the characters.
I love this essay, it touches at core aspects of play from a high level.
13 Tips to Speed Up D&D Combat
Though not nearly as big a problem as it was in previous editions, some DMs still find combat in the fifth edition of D&D takes too long for their or their players' liking
I don't like "N things blah blah" titled posts, but I went on and since I love "want faster combats? Have fewer players!" tip, I point to this post. It's tight and very good.
Why is each species language seemingly monolithic? Humans don't all speak the same language so why should goblins or lizardfolk?
With an excellent comment by Grymlorde that reverberates in the next Viridian posts.
Words of Power, Chaos and Law as Weaponized Speech
When Gandalf makes the faux pas of reciting the Black Speech from inside the one ring aloud at the council of Elrond, a shadow passes over the sun, everyone trembles, and the elves stop up their ears.
The Viridian Scroll devolves into an "April of Language", very instructive.
I can't help but jump head first into Wikipedia:
A Lingua Franca is a language or dialect systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages.
Shoulders of giants (50 years of RPGs)
The original DMG is one of those books that leave you in awe. It makes you wonder if there is anything left of value to add to that. There is treasure to be found in every section.
My (french) DMG is waiting in the attic of my parents, or is it? Did it survive? I still remember opening it for the first time. There was hype too, "you should not show it to players!".
Rumors, Information, and Legends
Original D&D has what I think is a marvelous little rule about gathering news, baked right into the core books. This didn't get copied forward into any later edition
It's not directly related, by that reminds me of the introduction to Early Christian Ireland. When a person shows up and requests hospitality, the host requests scéla (tales, news) from the guest. The scéla is just not news but also formal identification (gens, condition in life, and reason for journeying). Some minsters are more charitable and they request just news, they don't care for identification.
Another Reason I Dislike Character Backstory
Instead of letting us find out who the character is by deeds and words during play, they tell us who the character is before we start. I would rather be surprised by a small, discrete piece of information that hints at deeper mysteries of the character.
Must read.
When I first read Wanderhome, this twisted my mind a little. How does one play a game with so little conflict? And then I created a character. And then I immediately got it.
That looks like an intriguing game to play. I wonder how a cross with Ryuutama might turn out.
What are my odds? Description as DC
I had a recollection of seeing an exercise someone had done that assigned all our common words to state a likelihood of something happen to a percentage value - I did not find that but I did find a report with US/UK policies for communicating probability and I thought it might be useful to convert it to DCs
Unlikely is DC 13.
J’avais écrit ceci pour faciliter le démarrage d’une nouvelle partie d’Apocalypse World avec de nouvelles joueuses. Il s’agit de 15 courts messages à envoyer aux joueuses avant la partie, un par jour. Cela permet de teaser pendant les deux semaines avant la partie et d’avoir des joueuses qui arrivent en connaissant tout ce qui est essentiel.
I had written this to bootstrap a new Apocalypse World game with new players. These are fiften short messages to send to the players before the session, one message per day. It teases the game during the two preceding weeks and results in players that arrive to the table knowing the essentials.
That deserves a translation to English.
