FRIEND FLEAS (TRPG ENCOUNTER)

Friend Fleas.

    These mischievous creatures speak in short range telepathy, offering to keep an eye out in exchange for a place to sleep and live. They bite you if they believe you're in danger or, if you haven't been in danger for a while, because they hunger. Allowed to live long enough they will multiply and invariably cause anxiety disorders. Hosts cannot be surprised but suffer -2 Charisma per month infested.

PILL-SHAPED ARTIFICIAL LIFE (TRPG ENCOUNTER)

PILL-SHAPED ARTIFICIAL LIFE

1 Meter Tall

Encountered: 2d6

Found: Underground.

4 HP 

Attacks: Grapple, Pull apart d4 damage.

Semi-transparent shell skin, brightly colored shapes cloudily visible inside. Little cloth pants you can burn for 1 hour of light per. Nonorganic, inedible organs, feels like hard plastic.

Unclear what their purpose is. 1/3 chance they are using light, in which case they will have a single carbide headlamp with d8 hours of fuel. 

What are they doing?

1. Climbing up the same rocks over and over.
2. Trying to eat rocks (no mouths).
3. Dance-fighting.
4. Mining without tools, futilely.
5. Deconstructing a peer, 50% chance alive.
6. Motionless, staring at you.

First 3 will not resist interference but once the 4th is touched they will instantly attack en masse.

I wrote my own version of dnd

I had a rush of energy and wrote down my own little version of dnd, like one does. Someday I may playtest it... but for now I'd just to like to curate the good or interesting ideas I had.

SUMMARY OF THE "GOOD IDEAS" IN MY DND-LIKE I JOTTED DOWN:

• Three stats, between which you can distribute 2 points at character creation:
• Strength, Magic, Cunning.
• Strength: 1 point of strength = +3 hp, +2 bab, and +1 ac. Also helps some skills.
• Magic: 1 point of magic lets you cast one 1st level spell per day, 2 points of magic lets you cast as many 1st level spells as you want. 3 points of magic lets you cast 1 2nd level spell per day (and as many 1st level spells as you want), 4 points lets you cast as many 1st or 2nd level spells as you want etc. etc.
• many spells have their own restrictions about how often they can be used to limit the power involved.
• cunning: 1 point of cunning gets you 1 free action before initiative is rolled. So if you have 2 cunning you get two actions before everyone else goes.
• if multiple participants have cunning, these free actions happen in random order.
• skills, from which you get to assign 2 points at character creation:
• hunting- str OR cun +hunting vs. prey. can also be used to track
• healing- d4 hp per patient per day, per point
• climbing- str and cun + climbing vs. DC
• thievery-- includes sleight of hand and all stealth. vs. prey's cunning, or 
• no social skills at all.
• advancement:
• you can improve skills by fulfilling conditions like "practice this skill for a year" or "achieve great wealth using this skill". 
• improving stats, however, happens mostly on the basis of patronage, that is, service to divine figures in exchange for power.
• this is essentially a substitute for classes.
• examples of patronage:
• serving god:
• you get rewards for building churches, burning heretics, bringing righteous justice, leading a flock, converting nonbelievers and so on.
• rewards include the ability to channel divinity, stat bonuses, "taking communion"=full heal by going to church, holy weapons.
• however you are required to follow a strict moral code and receive
•  forgiveness from powerful priests if you misstep.
• serving the devil:
• can directly trade your soul for money or stat bonuses, and greater amts for a more pious soul.
•  Also you're destined for hell.
• Also the devil then can speak to you whenever it wishes, and will try to tempt you with, like, better positions in hell. or other stuff.
• serving the chaos god
• directly trades stats bonuses for people killed, e.g. +1 at 10, +1 at 100, +1 at 500, +1 at 1,000...
• You can improve your magic score by finding eldritch texts, building a library, communing with other wizards, and practicing the art; essentially the study of esoteric knowledge is its own "patron".
• Patronages can usually be advanced to some extent by spending money. Churches built, monuments to satan, etc.
• Failing patronage requirements usually doesn't take away the stats, but rather imposes other penalties: wizards who get their libraries burned get mishap chances when they cast, for example.

REFLECTING ON THE "GOOD IDEAS":

• Cunning
• Cunning awards actions before initiative is rolled, essentially free surprise rounds. Thus, the more often you can trigger initiative being rolled, the more often you get your free actions. So to some extent, paying attention to when initiative is rolled will be necessary for the design to prevent abuse.
• Free actions like Cunning gives might be very overpowered.
• Potentially complex and/or bad interactions with how chases work.
• Making initiative more complicated might not be good.
• This seems like a unique take on initiative, and I'm proud of it. Going first has always been a huge advantage and often underlooked by design, so I'm happy to place it as a primary feature of the character mechanics.
• Also seems like a good way to keep tactics fresh. Goblins have 0 strength but 1 cunning so they're weak but they get to do something surprising.
  
• Simplicity
• Not sure how much benefit there is to constructing a very simple framework for characters, especially since so much of the appeal of DND-like games comes from specialization. With 2 points to distribute between three stats, every character will be shades of each other.
• On the other hand, there is a lot of variety presented by a party composition such as this:
• guy with 2 magic
• guy with 2 strength
• guy with 2 cunning and stealth.
• Patronage
• the essential idea is that instead of XP you have class-specific goals. Improvement happens in a wider context, such as a hero's rise in a church or a deepening debt to the Devil. 
• This lends more drama than just becoming more powerful by defeating monsters.
• Asking players to pay more attention to their advancement seems like it might turn people off or split the party more.

• No social skills at all
• LOTFP gets away with just using reaction rolls, and for a while I've insisted that players offer good deals if they want NPCs to do stuff. I don't like "roll to convince" so I'm fine taking it off the table. However, there will probably be unforseen consequences.

I don't know when I'll give it all a playtest. Sharing on my blog because its where my creative mind is rn. 

You can see the rough design doc here.

Pros and Cons of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Additionally: How to Prep, and the Game's Basic Tenets As I Know It, After 4 Year's Experience

THE PROS OF A GAME OF LAMENTATIONS OF THE FLAME PRINCESS:

1. The game simply enables quick, deadly, and meaningful combat. This was the retroclone that did it for me and keeps on doing it.
2. Character creation is brief.
3. The rulebook is lightweight, full of good art, and generally easy to reference.
4. The skill system is versatile and lightweight and simple. It also encourages "avoiding the roll": the player is encouraged to use inventive techniques to avoid the often difficult skill checks.
5. "Avoiding the roll" is innate to the tactics. The stats are imposing, and this encourages imagination over rote gameplay. 
6. The GM does not know how the PCs can win or even if they will win, so the story is that much more uncontrolled and up to the player's wits.
7. Diplomacy is not a roll, instead it's up to the referee's rulings. In my games the players have to offer good reasons for NPCs to do what they want.
8. Heavily balancing the odds against the players means there's no reason to flinch when the PCs acquire some kind of heavily overpowered item/spell/demon. 
9. The game's portrait of magic is "high risk, high price, high reward" which makes for good horror storytelling.
10. The rulebook has many hidden power levers, the Summon spell is the most standout.
11. A focus on horror is a focus on glorious and weird adult drama.

THE CONS:

1. Players should be warned/informed of a number of factors:
1. Player Characters can easily die.
2. Extreme content. You need to ask what everyone's comfortable with.
3. The skill system is radically different than D&D's. Ditto for magic, XP, leveling up, classes/race, and diplomacy.
4. Combat is super deadly, retreat is important to keep in mind.
5. There are special combat options (charge does double dmg, press, parry, etc.)
6. Alignments don't govern behavior.
2. Being able to improvise well requires having a proper prep workflow (see section below).
3. The encumbrance system works best if it's not thoroughly addressed.
4. Fleeing from combat is somewhat under-written.*
5. Rules for stealth, sneak attack, helplessness, and surprise are not collated.
6. The system of saves is a pain to copy down or check against and seems overcomplicated.
7. The skill system is often confusing for new players.
8. High player character death volume can be demoralizing and hard to explain in the fiction.

"Young Girl Eating a Bird" Rene Magritte,1927

How to prep for LOTFP well:

• Make a large map which has loosely sketched locations on it.
• Have a handful of modules or adventure locations which you bought, read, or wrote, and have (agonizingly) sat on for years. Put some of these on the map.
• If the PCs go beyond your prep, you need to be able to improvise until the end of the session, and then spend the interim week catching up. This is the core of the workflow-- bringing something to the table, and if necessary, catching up between weeks.
• Be able to, at a moment's whim, discard hours worth of prep. This is crucial! if the PCs leave your adventure zone, you need to be able to keep up! Don't dawdle!
• As a gm, your role is imagining and writing stuff which may not ever be played, and the more gleefully you can embrace that, the more efficiently you'll prep, and the more fun you'll have. Plus you can and should save unplayed prep for later campaigns, even for years later in your life.

Basic Core Tenets of Lotfp (as I know it):

1. Success in adventure is not guaranteed.
2. Moral behavior is not especially rewarded.
3. If the players depart from the extent of the referee's prepared notes, the referee must improvise and follow their lead.
4. Humans and their power structures are usually predictable and genuinely powerful in their own rights. 
5. Monsters and magic are by nature horrifying, weird, and variously powerful.
6. If a participant in the game is not content with how the game is played they should address the group's agreements on how the game is played. 

The end result should be a game about planning and taking risks against desperate and weird circumstances, with unexpected results. It should spit out weird horror and invite unique contemplation. 

* It comes down to a fairly random roll off (1d20 + speed/10) with a few additions-- monsters have to pass a morale check if you drop food or treasure. Rules on how failed escapes work would be appreciated-- are the players are able to flee again after being caught?

SILENT TITANS PRELIMINARY REVIEW

"Silent Titans" is kind of like if Joyce's "Ulyssess" was a rpg, same islander's speculative take, a lot of wandering through shitty beaches. Have not covered an actual Titan proper in my game, outside of the first one, Chronos, where the book has you start.

Properly speaking, it's worth your $50, because the book is a3, (a4?), and has good art in it, and has good writing. That's all it takes being worth as much.

The game itself: I haven't gotten to the dungeons/titans yet. I wrote Chris Kessler, the layout designer, a bunch of questions as I read it for the first time. The room labelled #1 is where the PC's start off in. The tubes in Hilb are hallways. Sometimes a bullet point is in the wrong place. I got all mad about the overmap but it's working great as a play-aid.

I printed out all the maps using my work printer, in color, the players loves them. Character creation is lovely. The gang is wandering around Wir-Heal and one got captured by the Court of Wapentake.

Big weird-o's are the combat, which is quick, area weapons are crazy good. Does the keyword "fast" mean they get to act twice? What about "slow"? This is not a book which, as a design choice, makes sure to define every little thing. The navigation system inside Wir-Heal is quite strange and provokes some dictionary lookups.

The navigation system essentially has you experience what I imagine, quaintly enough, Patrick experiences wandering around the post-industrial landscape of his homeworld, kicking trash and occasionally encountering bombastic threats. A lot of loneliness, and then you stumble into another animal-man village, while you're slowly turning into a Woodwose. It's surprisingly somber experience...

...As the rest of the book is, when you get into it, it tells a story which is quite fatalistic, the implicit tale of the Knight of the Pentangle. I originally wrote Dirk Detweiler Leichty that I hoped the game would be kinda board-game-like, considering his art looking like Jumanji/Chutes and Ladders. I definitely do have a board game experience when I print out the maps and slide around my friend's 3d-printed miniatures on them.

There is the added benefit that Dirk's escherian/arcane linework can be displayed to the players without giving away too much; and once explained it becomes clear.

AN EXAMPLE:

Guess what the below map-segment illustrates...

.... it's a library filling up up water... "Ink-black water sheets down the shelves and falls from the sky in an eternal pounding rain." Obviously the verbal description is needed to make this clear, but once done so the image becomes a shorthand. No visual spoilers by displaying the whole map.

The above is hypothetical as I haven't run most of the game yet, although a few illustrations like:

have already served me at the table basically as I've described.

-----

I am worried, or rather, more aware that within my group there will be a lot of character-chucking into the abyss, horribly random occurrences may prevent any dungeons from being explored, or maybe they'll visit just one. What is the larger narrative to be had here; PIGPIP, the players will fall and be consumed by the raging time-lords.

"In the Woods" Review'd

Once you get all the papers settled you'll have a good time with In the Woods. I have it on authority that Pearce Shea pretty much put this together in a fever state, which is saying a lot for Pearce's fevers....

Let's go ahead and say what happened: 3 players went to the woods, and they saw some shit. They got out after two-and-a-half hours. It was pretty good~! It drew people in, it really did.

"In the Woods" is a fairly large document that was pretty easy to run. Even the navigation, given the lack of a map, wasn't that bad. This is a puff piece.

There is a map, but it's supposed to be secret. There's a lot of unspecified elements of play, the text written specifically to include lacunae as is the wont of indie rpg games. The DM makes up a bunch anyway. Although its worth it to note that In the Woods intentionally includes game-design-lacunae as a means to engender a creepiness.

That being said, the non-lacunae are surprisingly solid. You bounce up and down on the floors of this thing and it holds! It's not that surprising. There's a solid construction:

1. character creation
2. rules
3. introduction
4. hex map
5. hex map key
6. bestiary

There's mysterious elements, not given much explanation. There's some factions in the hex map. There's a serviceable lightweight combat system.

Benefit of horror often is to keep you guessing at the elements. RPGs tell a similar story, bcuz players elaborate on an archaeology. You won't discover all of the elements; but you can, maybe construct an explanation; but I, the narrator, am waiting, there to stick a thumb in your eye...

to purchase: https://gumroad.com/l/fWSrw

Michael Raston's "Angel's Burial Ground" Review'd

Overall Michael Raston's "The Angel's Burial Ground" suffers from a lack of glamour. There's something here, some things beautiful and interesting, but it's stuck behind (A) the lack of an illustrator and (B) some occasionally mediocre prose.

(A) The lack of an illustrator
1. The cover is ugly.

2. That which is entirely new and interesting within the text can only be visually suggested by the public domain art collages.

3. The angels, in particular, seem begging for illustration, they're colorful as fuck:

for example.

4. It's simply a less-appealing book without beautiful or interesting illustrations.


(B) this book has a smattering of humor and self-aware charm but, for the opening at least, it relies on straightforward description of fantasy elements, which, ultimately, in the scope of other ARTPUNK products, seems mediocre.

1. I think a good introduction is actually quite important to the rpg books that I like. think about Deep Carbon Observatory's introduction... minimalist. A widely loved part of AR&PL's opening:

The many zany intros of James Raggi. A good introduction is a good indication that the writer intends to do away with what's normally dry and boring.

STRAIGHT-UP GOOD THINGS:

1.The space described is claustrophobic and wonderful and detail-rich, unique and scary:

another example.

2. The lore of the scale-men particularly appealed to me.

MIDDLING THING:

This text seems reasonable, although not particularly convenient, to use as a reference text. I'd print out the map page and refer to it, etc.

But: I've mostly stopped using resources that don't fit entirely on one page.

IN CONCLUSION:

about half of what drew me into TRPGS again was texts which were self-conscious departures from the fantasy norms for prose. Not just departures from fantasy norms, but departures from prose norms.-- Surprisingly presented texts...

drug lord generator for Tzop Secret

drug lords template:
1 machine gun kelly
2 pharmacorp head
3 mac os name e.g. "snow lion"
4 irish grandma
5 the godfather
6 roll on dunkey's supervillain generator (http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2019/01/d50-villains.html)

the drug lord retaliates:
1 bombing attempt (ballisitics 40)
2 2d6 gangsters (30 skill) attack
3 pc resource destroyed (skill 50)
4 pc resource subverted (skill 50)
5 poisoning (skill 50)
6 come up with something more bizarre

their resources:
as a base:
>manpower
>supply
>territory
>judges and politicians
>50 base skill

extras: (they get 1/d4/d6/d8 of these)
1 WEB affiliation (may call on one favor from WEB)
2 +25 skill in one skill
3 1 luck point
4 science + piece of advanced tech
5 xtra capable bodyguard (combat skills 70)
6 come up with something more bizarre

the axe hack

IT's just normal DND but the only weapons are axes. Everyone knows how to use axes and there are no other weapons. Everyone has an axe.

d100+ directions, higher numbers weirder

roll several times to get directions, uhhh vary it between d6, d10, d20, d30, d50, d20+25 etc., d100, as the higher numbers are wierder... example:

1. go right
2. there's a lot of Bandits in this zone so be careful
3. crawl in the pipe there
4. think really hard about ladders

...and you're there.

d 1 0 0 T A B L E o F s T R A N G E D I R E C T I O N S: 

1. go right
2. go left
3. reroll (until applicable -ed) and add "two times"
4. reroll (ditto) and add "three times"
5. go north
6. go east
7. go west
8. go south
9. add "at the junction," and reroll
10. walk twenty five steps thataway
11. keep going until you see
1. threatening graffiti
2. the big hole
3. all that moss
4. fat Derrida
5. the community board
6. that church
12. turn at the big rock
13. if you see the ... you've gone too far. 
1. big rock
2. pile of horse skeletons
3. stuck-in-wall guy
4. magic fountain
5. really large grass field
6. hole
14. take the less-trod path
15. oh yeah, there's a shortcut: (reroll 5 more times) 
16. "about a mile down the road" and reroll
17. there should be double doors, go through those.
18. a ... will guide you:
1. a grey wolf
2. a brown cat
3. a fat dog
4. a fat rat
5. a talking bat
6. a pretty lady
19. you'll have to bribe the guard there. like $5
20. staircase up.
21. ...that'll get you most of the way there. (nullifies remaining directions. If this is the first instruction: no directions necessary)
22. at this point you should smell:
1. bacon
2. bread and iron
3. waffles
4. smoke
23. at this point you should hear:
1. screaming
2. bees
3. rushing water (a waterfall -ed)
4. howling wind
5. a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard, don't worry tho
6. thunking
24. reroll and add "...usually."
25. you'll have to climb up that wall.
26. there's a magic door there, to unlock it, you'll have to (roll d50 + 50, two times until applicable)
27. should just be a hill or two before...
28. there's a lot of Bandits in this zone so be careful
29. there's a shortcut through someone's house... if they ask tell them 'Chinnie' sent you
30. if you get that far it should pretty obvious where to go next.
31. hug the treeline for a while
32. watch out for broken glass, here.
33. should be a red crank there, turn it, it will raise the portcullis, I think.
34. you'll have to go and meet the jester there, I don't remember the rest (nullifies remaining rolls)
35. follow the tracks for like a mile
36. ladder up
37. ladder down
38. you'll have to go and find a ladder to get up, there.
39. crawl in the pipe there.
40. there should be a bridge directly above you.
41. should be a large fuzzy crack in the wall.
42. should be lava at this point
43. you'll have to breeze up the way until you hit, like, pawn's five knight's gopher
44. try to deliberately piss off Chinnie
45. ok, there will be a delicious feast there, but don't eat anything, right...
46. eat breakfast here, or if it's night, you're gonna wanna have some fruit and coffee.
47. it'll be warm.
48. .... keeps the key on their person but they'll give it up for liquor/sex/riddle/jewlery
1. Bechelrose
2. Donny
3. Fat Matilda
4. The Worst Case Scenario, Don Bluth III
5. Chinnie
6. A.M.Y.
49. should be a sudden breeze, and that's when you have to drink the poison
50. eat the
1. meat.
2. collected building supplies- bricks, two-by-fours, nails, wire
3. lightbulbs (it's candy glass)
4. cartwheels (actually a delicous cake)
5. cake, made of wood :(
6. fat angel
51. dig through the sawdust
52. some kids might try and throw rocks at you but all you really have to do is beat the shit out of one of them
53. crawl
54. reroll (until applicable) and add "until someone stops you"
55. spin until you throw up
56. hit a high note like a *imitate sound of high note*
57. scoop water out of the dark pool, drink it, pass out
58. kill a
1. red badger
2. woman wearing a blue dress
3. known thief
4. building (demolish a building)
5. child
6. fetus
59. take the frozen path along the abyss with the falling icicles
60. hunt some of the {minibeasts} and throw one against a wall, killing it, should knock over the wall
61. walk down the hallway backwards
62. jump in the pit (50% chance deceptive information)
63. one of the screens has a door behind it
64. pull on the chandelier.
65. there should be a tunnel UNDER the dining room, try not to make too much noise...
66. think really hard about ladders
67. roll off veins table of interstices (use these for like 10 entries -ed)
68. hedge maze! 
69. use a tunnel under a river; roll off the veins interstice table.
70. tunnel made of appliances.
71. clear a path through the Room of Spoons (the auditorium from A Clockwork Orange) (next time rolled: forks, knifes, salad tongs, teapots)
72. ring any bell.
73. curl up into an egg.
74. nestle into the coffin.
75. zipline!
76. if you're not underground at this point you miffed it
77. thin bridge
78. scenic bridge
79. you'll have to find some way to move that rock.
80. marketplace bridge
81. shaky bridge will collapse 
82. shortcut through palace of fire which requires arson
83. strike the gazebo
84. get in the coldest hole
85. watch out for the paintings with the arms
86. sleep
87. jump out the window
88. sign the guestbook.
89. catch a rabbit to burn
90. the guard there will ask you to get nude, but don't believe his lies...
91. gravity switches there
92. jump off the bridge at the part with the missing link
93. fat cheerleader has the answers...
94. {jerk off} into the bowl... free of charge, here's some porn... hehe
95. come back, and find me, and hurt me.
96. you'll have to take those pills I just gave you.
97. you'll have to commit seppuku at this point.
98. you can fit into the fat angel
99. you have to let the fat angel suck someone's dick
100. avoid the tarrasque

comparing rpg and poetry workflows

Was talking with my friends last night about how my workflow for rpgs is so much better than my workflow for poetry ever was.

that's a workflow.

trpg workflow:

1. draw on the osr/diy dnd community for good texts like books and blogposts
2. schedule gaming with any interested friends
3. generate fragmentary prep. post some of this on blog
4. run the game with resources from step 1 and 3 and improvise.
5. depending on what players did, set some prep goals. goto 1

steps 1, 3, and 4 will generate a constantly growing pile of resources which can be published via blog or used in future games, step 5 will generate weekly creative goals

example:
1. read patrick stuart's "veins of the earth"
2. over like a month period got a group together
3. wrote up a bunch of veins stuff inspired by the book, mainly a starting locale
4. during our first game the players buzzed past the starting locale into some unknown tunnels, I used the veins random tables to fill these in
5. write up the tunnels proper for next week

I'm doing research, writing my own stuff, organizing it, sharing it with my friends, and contributing to the community; and I have little weekly goals.

my workflow for poetry is more like:

1. see someone else's shitty poetry
2. think "I can do better"
3. get on a writing kick and produce some stuff
4. potentially share the poetry at a pittsburgh reading
5. try to edit the poems a little. either produce a finished piece or move on

comparing the two, the biggest missing elements from my poetry workflow are:
1. a constant stream of writing that I actually like
2. a regular space and time to share the writing with friends, irl
3. regular writing goals
4. a welcoming community I can self-publish to (he has several of these, they just don't produce work he likes all that often -ed)
5. an organized space to amass all my writing
(6. the poetry workflow is completely meanspirited. -e)

#1 and #4 are pretty hard to find, I've been looking for years. #2 can be more readily arranged and like as I wrote this I put out feelers on facebook for a poetry group. but I know just like you know that knowing where to find good writing is pretty essential for an artist of any kind...

the other thing to immediately note is how important social media is. it can provide a constant stream of good writing to read, a community to self-publish to, and like google hangouts edges into a regular space/time to share the writing with friends.

there's also a lot of synergy with social media: sharing is the same thing as organizing and documenting. A constant stream of writing that I actually like is (in many cases -ed) the welcoming community I can self-publish to. etc

it would be good to find a social media community that did poetry I liked. but maybe I just don't like (other people's) poetry that much! who knows

thirty-four reviews

eric andre.

boiling point (1990)

/psychological realism doesn't have much credo and yet I find a definite gap between some director's ambitions and other's. Credit to the filmmaking practices which honor "the dreamy look" or heighten the everyday boredom we all face.

old forester bourbon

originally I thought it had a nutty taste but now I'm not so sure. all whiskey starting to taste like soda to me. tried "angel's envy" at my friend's wedding and it was like, not top shelf? but it had that tasty burn with the flavor in the high notes

dead man, jim jarmusch

my friend (roommate) kept going gaga over the textures in this film, her friend too, talking about how black and white movies often the filmmakers want to bring out the textures, three or four textures in this film, linear, floral, feathers/hair, and a weird beehive one she couldn't place

edward saint albee's "alice"

I just bought this because it was cheap and signed by the author. the bookstore I bought it from was the fence for theft from the library system I work at.

heaven can wait 1948

old style of gentleman which was a sexuality in this face and lips, delicate and gentle. kind of winning presence you immediately feel like you could trust. don ameche takes this trust and abuses it

the paintings of zak smith

I mentioned this in my "frostbitten and mutilated" review but I don't care for portraits drawn from photographs. it's dumb to say that considering how do I know what is, and what isnt, drawn from a photograph. I usually miss the appeal w.e.

squidbillies-- seasons 2&3 are good

tommy tone "bad to to the tone"

listened to this uhh twenty three times

wigle's rye whiskey

rye tastes like flowers and shit but wigle's is good enough to stay appealing. although I hate rye I can get it

stonecutter volume 5

good

kero blaster

bosses are good played 1/2

bayonetta

hate how the scope of the game narrows to be about this generic classical architecture + industrial setting especially since at the beginning it promises to be world-hopping

simpleflips

what's the appeal of simpleflips? he's sorta rotten at the core and always on the verge of falling over. he's not that good despite being talented. watching him is like someone trying to renovate a too-old skyscraper

tfue (a twitch streamer- simpleflips too -ed)

I keep thinking of david foster wallace's tennis youth in "infnite jest" who have nicknames and have a sort of pecking order eaten away by sheer athleticism, that there's something worth pursuing... comradely sort

communism

talked to some maoists who might see this. afai can tell viewing the cultural revolution in a mostly positive lens is bleh, seeing anything but all the usual negative patterns of communism in the great leap forward is eye-and-ear shutting. plus all the stuff about stalin and like, didn't the bolsheviks establish a secret police almost immediately??

did some research on the movement, learned maybe for the first time that some topics are wide enough to encompass several international views. that being said I feel 48% confident that these maoists are relying on conspiracy theories to wipe clean the slates of their heroes

anarchist coffee down the street

it's actually called "artisan's coffee house". zeke is friendly but the coffee's never been good, and even the good stuff, although the chai is to die for I've heard

kraynick's

best bicycle shop in pittsburgh epicenter I wonder if it's the case that as an artist your job is to go find a budding community and sit over it like a fat toad sharing criticism and free talent

barry lyndon

not actually all shot in natural lighting kinda ruins the movie once my friend john told me this. that being said though:

--the scene with the german farm wife
--the scene where barry throws the glass at leonard rossiter
--leonard rossiter is so hype
--the natural-lit scene with the english flag, like the second scene
--steven berkoff


the duelists 1977

fantastic but the ending sucks

johnny depp

johnny always gives the movie something to work with albeit it's often wasted. that's all there is to say

drive (the movie)

I didn't have much appreciation for the film outside the kissing scene and the opening, however in retrospect I like some of the settings, like the pizza shop, I like bryan cranston although he's underused, and I retroactively like oscar isaac because he's my crush

annihilation (the movie)

there's only two good parts, the first scene where natalie portman is grieving, and then the videotape near the end where oscar isaac is talking to his double. I like the interior of the lighthouse, I like jennifer jason leigh although she didn't save the end

the hateful eight

"quentin taratino can just shit out good movies" - the red letter media guys, paraphrased

el topo (already reviewd, albeit this review was written before the previously published review -ed)

quite excellent and jodorowsky gives a fucking excellent performance especially in the last 1/4

fellini satyricon

I watched the opening of this movie like the first forty minutes that my free trial of wondershare file converter managed to convert every third day for about a month

impressionism about anthropology and history is the way to go!!!!!!!!!!!!

the cook the thief the wife and her lover

I watched the first forty minutes of this film an awful lot, too. fellini satyricon just stays really fucking good the whole movie though and this film only knows how to do 2 scenes

the rum diaries (2011)

this movie only knows how to do three scenes and it just vacillitates between three: johnny depp is doing something, aaron eckhart says "sea of money", amber heard blue balls johnny

aaron eckhart

kind of our george clooney if george clooney had to retire

ex machina (2014)

think about this all the time. not bcause of technology but bcause of oscar isaac weird sexiness he imposes on "domhnall". "I put a port in her and if you fucked her she'd like it". modern male tech sexuality dominance stuff like who else doin that???

the tech industry's full of nerds

guardians of the galaxy vol 1-- bad

a woman under the influence (1974)

a bunch of good scenes and can't give enough credit to how it was filmed, handheld with an attention to and somewhat sloppy focus. think about gena rowlands gesticulations. stopped at the 2/3 point never got around to the end

eric andre show

in the eric andre show, isn't he filming himself grabbing at people's genitals or getting his staff to do that? if you watch the series as I have there's a lot of eric reaching for people's genitals or his staff doing that to irritate the guests/people.

lamentations of the flame princess- good but my developing dm style, the harsh stuff, is drawing criticism... is an instadeath trap so inappropriate?

luke kennard's "cain"
Luke Kennard is FUCKING AROUND with this one. "31 anagram poems [of] Genesis 4:9-12". around each of these is a frame of red text transcribing a fictional DVD commentary. can't figure these out

wuvable oaf: blood & metal

wuvable oaf is good and queer baby

marquis de sade's "juliette"

somewhere within this tome is the chapter wherein juliette goes to visit kinda a bluebeard guy who has a castle full of human furniture. read that excerpt in andre breton's anthology of black humor. can't find that part

Anointed skeleton Class for lamentations of the flame princess

Your corpus was blessed by necromantic energies and blessed again by an ancient ritual applied widely within Vecna’s ranks. As a result you are an animated skeleton with intelligence, devoted to Vecna, who is missing as of late. You have a gem embedded in your forehead and may be painted.

Stat adjustments:
int = 10
cha = 1
dex +2
no con score.

Immunities:
Skeletons are not affected by cold and cannot eat, sleep, drink, or breathe. They can speak.

Darkvision:
Skeletons can see 60 feet without light in black and white.

Damage Reduction:
A skeleton has damage deduction 5/bludgeoning. They are destroyed at 0 hp.

Purpose:
You may never act against Vecna in thought, word, or action.

Starting Hp d12, minimum hp 6. Hp increase as Dwarf.

Saves/xp as fighter, BAB does not increase.

d100 city encounters

still from 1978's "Jubilee"

if necessary roll 2d6x10' for encounter distance.

1. saxophone music is coming from somewhere
2. man publically selling eggs, cutting hair
3. a mouse election?
4. 3 card monte but the shill won't stop winning or let anyone else play
5. something the players would really want is on sale
6. ...at a closed store that never opens
7. competing funeral processions
8. whatever building the players are trying to get to, a horde of golems are dissembling it for complex bureaucratic reasons, all the building's staff have their possessions in their hands or in piles at their feet (original, similar idea by d. sell I think -ed)
9. fat, gross cat to accompany party
10. man selling trained bats
11. graffiti is obviously a url, if you follow it leads to clues (let's see you improvise THAT -ed)
12. quality brothel
13. street-side liposuction & other cosmetic surgeries... tummy tuck... bone reduction
14. abandoned death ray
15. folks burning a library
16. lynching
17. brick thieves tearing up a street
18. coal truck leaking coal, urchins follow
19. 3 card monte but dumbass dealer
20. herd of pigs playing flutes guided by pigherd
21. ugly and territorial goose terrorizing schoolchildren
22. superhero makes appearance, saves someone
23. leaping suicide
24. leaping suicide but there's still time to save them
25. nearby bombing
26. violent protest + suppression by
1. police
2. soldiers
3. rival faction
4. mysterious hooded beings
27. red neighborhood of gushing communists
28. chase + cliche
1. fruit cart
2. workers carrying glass
3. "kiss me!"
4. banana peel
29. evil plan they were wondering about clearly reported in blown-by newspaper
30. bicycles recently invented
31. demon inviting you into its well, inside:
1. needs people to try its demon candy, effects: (will give you a package of the candy if you try one, and will let you go)
1. horrible lust for the worst possible person
2. eyeballs permanently switch to reverse side of head, uncurable
3. genitals yell extremely loud next time used
4. snake pills make snakes grow inside your body, they never leave, somewhat friendly
2. "care for a game of chess"? willing to bet metaphysical stakes
3. you find yourself leaving the well as soon as you climb in, and some time has passed
4. needs someone to scratch its back, but only with their big toe... rewards demon jewlery:
1. stinky bone attached to rope of beads, wards against good ideas
2. toe ring that doubles your aging
3. fat bracelet, makes you unconsciously always do rude gestures
4. choker that completely removes the desire to do good from your brain when worn
32. random PC has STD flare-up
33. russian roulette street preacher (from "el topo" -ed)
34. a bunch of kids all coming this way playing russian roulette each with a gun. they all keep winning but there's some incidental fire
35. shore leave sailors en masse harass, cajole, befriend, fight, entertain, won't let you leave
36. flock of schoolkids running with scissors
37. firefighters dousing melting piano + burned pianist, another victim of the mysterious "piano killer..."
38. fancy duel
39. megalomaniac archer trying to find a kid to shoot an apple off the head of
40. public execution by strangling taking really long and exhausting stranglers, officiant wants to know if PCs can help out
41. weed-whacker style invention on the loose, pursued by inventor
42. persistent singing merchants, as if leading up to a musical number
43. speakeasy raid
44. cheap crabcakes
45. the mayor is making a speech...
1. and an evil clown is standing behind him & to the left
2. ...banning:
1. knives
2. open sale of furniture
3. all dogs
4. -- establishing a curfew due to the "piano killer"
3. presenting a medal to a heretofore unknown but somehow still popularly known superhero 
4. he's at the part of the speech where he's taking questions
46. team of horses transporting giant stone head (from: "fellini satyricon" -ed)
47. mass suicide
48. man beating wife in street
49. man beating domestic partner in street
50. panhandler is persistent to the point of archvillainry
51. giant scoby everyone ignores
52. loose, wild horse is really destructive
53. girl-watching crowd assembled and in wait
54. the emperor is visiting
55. public theatre performance features a real punitive amputation and then an incidental, real drama about a slave (also from satyricon -ed)
56. old men in quantity trying to win the favors of noblewoman who is obligated to do public tryouts, she can't leave till they all go
57. hideous, racist memorial unveiling
58. the olympics are here
59. fresh-faced youth recruiting for suicidal adventure
60. near-perfect-quality fakes being painted and sold on street; these have obvious value, there's a growing crowd
61. gang sawing off head of feminist hero statue
62. it's one of the days where a nearby factory, or the equivalent, releases so much pollution that activity has to be limited and people with trouble breathing nearly die. 
63. gang of artists stalking and assassinating cops
64. street gang with rocks really trying to hurt you
65. large and terrible fire
66. adults egging on a child protester to stall carriages and throw rocks
67. spies making contact but they're loud enough that it's obvious
68. extremely powerful rare earth magnets on travelling display and for a high price
69. accurate fortune telling from nomads
70. feast
71. you overhear a demonic ritual taking place in a building, they mean to cast Summon
72. mass shooting, one shooter many victims, underway in nearby basement
73. conmen attempting the "pigeon drop" on y'all
74. eating contest, presumably bizarre
75. people are chasing a feral cats to bag and burn
76. fan of your exploits wants to join your party, has law trouble secretly
77. crowd of your fans going "beatles"-level crazy and tearing at your clothes
78. stand selling hemlock at steep discount + a feverish rush to buy
79. rich and jealous lover burning effigy of copulating rivals... semiritual... 
80. ventriloquist + dummy have stolen crown jewels and are openly wearing them (and mocking the crown). highly powerful ppl
81. community college is offering some appealing classes
82. band playing songs with subject matter distantly about the player characters
83. dispute over plagiarized poetry about 10 seconds away from becoming a gunfight
84. drug dealers offering regional variants on meth
85. quality hand grenades for sale
86. people are looting a gun store in advance of the cops. a battle has already killed the original perps and almost all of the staff 
87. dedicated & doomed advance on the capital building, will result in a hours-long siege
88. Guru CAN teach you the secret to levitation
89. Tourists in quantity also curious about you
90. Large public dance
91. abandoned & spilled mailbag
92. posters everywhere advertise a play, tickets are expensive, going gives you 1 skill point in Art Appreciation
93. Black cat keeps crossing your path
94. Alley tank is damaged, seeping much:
1. Powerful glue
2. Lantern oil
3. Jellied Goldschläger (delicious!)
4. Plasma (can be used to refill plasmic cores or inhaled as plasmic cores, is quite dangerous)
95.  Economic boom! All characters offered reliable jobs.
96.  Economic bust! All characters with reliable jobs are fired.
97. One random character with a reliable job is fired with little cause.
98. Chance encounter with a previous villain, now reformed.
99. Uncanny doppleganger adventuring group encountered
100. Police brutality.

spidergoat magic item market

purchasing a magic item requires paying 5,000 coins and d4 days of research simply to view d3 items for purchase. Each of these items can be bought for an additional 5,000 coins upon viewing. to find other items for sale an additional 5.000 coins and d4 days must be spent for d3 more items.

benefits: roll 1

1. stronger: +2  armor
2. reflecting: magic deflects off item
3. if used to strike opponent will deal d4 extra lighting/acid/fire
4. item has personality, knows shit
5. opponent's weapons stick to item
6. softens blows to wielder/wearer: attacks use next lower damage die
7. doesn't interfere with spellcasting (if applicable)
8. casts magic missle 1/day
9. grants nightvision, 35'
10. has large "A" on it; reflects spears only

additional attributes (roll 1):

1. loved ones think you smell bad
2. eyeballs
3. item bruises, will die if overused
4. can self-destruct as time bomb, 5d6 10'
5. item is so large that it cannot fit in house, perfectly usable, does normal damage (think buster sword -ed)
6. has many cracks in it
7. seems very old ans cannot be cleaned, trails dust, makes things around it seem old
8. throwing this item in a pit will "hurt" the pit
9. feather falls - just the item, tho
10. item occasionally goes and has its own adventures
11. attracts mice
12. user feels time slower, no benefit
13. peripheral vision has clowns
14. item poops and needs to be changed
15. ~

additional benefits (roll on this table half of the time):

1. sticky
2. shitty
3. shiny
4. bloodlust
5. x2 damage, x2 price
6. destroys armor
7. accurate +1 skill etc.
8. vomits
9. glows
10. causes lust
11. sings
12. sticky
13. hands attached
14. reverse time for those struck
15. rusty

curses (roll as needed):

1. gets very hot
2. half of the time, not "real", 
3. random targets
4. opponents occasionally get bonuses
5. screams in pain
6. super heavy
7. damns you to hell
8. eyes bleed when using
9. occasionally hits monster with you!
10. converts life force into more {item}

troika! review

what's good about troika!? it's a fresh retroclone. it has lethal combat, but everyone starts at 14+ hp. the promise of levelling (a somewhat false promise in many retroclones) has been done away with mostly. there is the initiative system that is oft-touted and I really love it for some surprising reasons*. but there's also the fairly ridiculous damage system, which although it seems awkward (you have to cross reference a roll to a table to determine damage, a modifiable roll even), it gives us what we've always wanted; sorta realistic damage values. like, a knife probably doesn't do much but it can fuck you up! it's not just a puny d4.

that being said not having a levelling system hurts my heart a little bit. I mean, there is a system for progression: you improve your skills, which means you do better on rolls, but there's no d&d/WoW classic rpg dripfeed of new cool class abilities... that appeal is near and dear to me, but we must make sacrifices...

...the argument against such a dripfeed is of course, an emphasis on picaresque fantasy "strange people meeting in strange places" which is what troika! says it's about. your characters are not starting from the bottom, they are starting as wanderers, and of the two I think being a fully-formed picaresque wanderer is preferable to an endless series of 1st level eggs.

...finally, troika! encourages planar prep, as at the drop of a hat you must be able to invent or at least remember new spheres for your friend's toons to be whisked off to in the case of a particularly bad whoops! table roll, if not for some other reason. it has that delectable rpg vibe where the rules contain in just a few places campaign-breaking levers. this is something LOTFP does that I always talk about-- that "summon" spell.

also there's a little monster manual in the back of the book bc its so concise; to paraphrase my friend, "they had the room to just squeeze a little monster manual in the back!"

*initiative system being good: the way troika! initiative works is that everyone places initiative chits in a bag along with a end-of-round chit, and chits are drawn randomly; if your chit is drawn, you take an action, if the end of round chit is drawn, all chits are placed back in the bag. this makes chases in particular easy to run; you may simply draw more chits than your opponent does, so you may get away; therefore no tedious comparison of movement speeds in order to draw an equation are necessary. many tedious elements such as these may be folded into the randomness.

....also everyone talks about how good the backgrounds are so it's a well-tread point, but the backgrounds are very good; all of the players love rolling up

reviews: lotfp new yields GOING THROUGH FORBIDDEN OTHERWORLDS, SHE BLEEDS, SOUNDS OF THE MUSHROOM KINGDOM, and OBSCENE SERPENT RELIGION 2

These are mostly bad.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the role playing game publisher, reintroduced me to trpgs and I’ve bought $100s of their products and love most of them, legit lit. ok reviews:

GOING THROUGH FORBIDDEN OTHERWORLDS:
Zzarchov is talented so it’s weird to see something so bland. The crux is either melted-together maggot men, some summoned demons, or some one-off magic items. The layout is standard “constantly refer back to the map on page one” stuff. It’s a dungeon with some basic features and no strong attractions. None of this is inspired.

INTERIOR ART: Scrap Princess’s pieces are nothing special, for Scrap, meaning they’re moody and fun but nothing is huge or central it’s just accents.

SHE BLEEDS:
The most interesting of the bunch, this is basically a lotfp prestige class based around menstruation. Takeaway is, there’s no referee-only information, so this could be a very gory player’s tool and would work best as managed by a player.

However there are several unwieldy elements-- tracking rituals and the timing of the moon’s phases, overspecific bonuses/penalties. Also the blurriness of the in-fiction cult writing, like the use of capitalized pronouns and only capitalized pronouns to refer to the goddess and her cult, is just bad literary technique. The last couple pages which clarify some of this content read as sort of an apology for the unclearness of the text.

INTERIOR ART: the soft compositions of Rachael Tew here seem like DeviantArt quality, not much detailed, sketched together pictoral symbols. really did not enjoy these.

SOUNDS OF THE MUSHROOM KINGDOM:
Easily my least favorite although Raggi is usually my go-to. This just details some samey mushroom mans (I do like how they’re “mans”) and some like mushroom monsters. There’s no dungeon, nothing feels clever or interesting, it’s like a joke.

There’s a couple good bits: the psychadelic f/x table is decent, the mushroom king is kinda good.

It's like if Slügs! just had same-y boring slügs.

INTERIOR ART: Serviceable and cute and detailed illustrations by the Magnussons albeit they can’t do much to help.

OBSCENE SERPENT RELIGION 2:
My favorite of these. Rient’s writing is inspired and well-informed when describing a medieval hamlet. I feel educated on what any such hamlet would be.

Nonetheless the central premise: “The point of this adventure is to provide the players with a little slice of the world they can get invested in, then to cruelly rip it from them to see what they do about it” is flawed, for my use. No hamlet is particularly special enough to deserve all this detail in my games. To go into detail is suspicious- if we play Lamentations of the Flame Princess there’s misery around most corners.

That being said it might work. I have a player who would loves personal and peaceful detail like Fraulein Gela and she (the player) would possibly get sucked in. These characters are well-written enough to stick in my mind after one reading. The end result would be yet another terrible outcome from hope which is a commonality in the games I’ve ran.

This writing is skilled enough to be subtle, it’s effective, and simple, and the she-creature at the end is a concise image attached to a long table with fucked-up shit on it. My group might not be a match and I have doubts that the structure of the module-- luring people into safety with a detailed hamlet-- is a good bet.

INTERIOR ART: pretty good and has an impressive full-page piece featuring two snake-bellied mutants which sold me on the mutants. that full-page illustration of snake mutants is detailed and moving and graphic and beautiful. art by Journeyman

Common between the texts:

covers:  Yannick Bouchard’s covers are shocking and attractive as per the usual.
copyediting: lots of errors which are slightly inconvenient, in one case a table has a duplicated entry. the errors are often quite obvious, it’s strange to see this from this publisher

Copyediting errors.

overall: I have these pdfs in my back pocket, but I’m not tempted to run any of them, even fragments of them, very much at all. That’s a huge departure from my lotfp experience. They do not seem high quality or innovative (exception: OSR2 - ed).

thanks to +K Yani for purchasing GTFO for my review.

fun, non-threatening combat system by peter

melee
--attacker rolls d12 and adds strengthmod + ab
--defender does same
--winner does damage to loser equal to difference between results
--you can only deal damage in melee x number of times per round where x= your bab (overcomplicated rule, might drop -ed)
--ties = miss

example: smaug has +6 to hit and he swipes at bilbo baggins (+2 to hit). smaug rolls a 10 for a 16. bb rolls a 4 for a total of  6, so smaug does 10 damage. this kills the hobbit :(

ranged
attacker rolls d8 and adds dex + ranged ab.
if they roll higher than the defender's Dodge score, they do damage equal to their result.

Dodge is a stat, for 1st level humans is like 3+ dexmod. max is 8

example: bilbo baggins shoots smaug (dodge: 4) with an arrow. BB rolls a 4 and has a ranged attack bonus of +1 so he hits (5 vs. 4 dodge) and does 5 damage.

weapons
weapons don't have different damage values but have various bonuses and drawbacks like
greatsword/greataxe +3 damage, two handed
rapier +1ab
dagger = light weapon can be used in grapple
heavy crossbow +3 damage, takes a round to reload

armor
just gives damage reduction and dodge penalties.

shield = 1 dr, one hand
light armor = 1 dr
medium armor = 2 dr, -1 dodge
heavy armor 3 dr, -2 dodge

consequences

• ranged weapons are likely more deadly than melee
• dodge isn't that great bc you still take the big hits
• dodge stat max is 8 or whatever the ranged roll is if adjusted
• dr and dodge interact strangely 

advantages

• no need to roll for damage, potentially faster combat (depending if considering armor dr and weapon bonuses doesn't take up more time -ed)
• less misses = faster combat
• ranged attacks should be even quicker
• if you're good at melee fighting you hit more, are better at defense, and do more damage all at once

troubles

• "roll over for damage" is already a thing
• armor dr seems like it should be folded in somewhere
• no critical hits or automatic hits

inspired by troika! 

THE IMPROVISED DUNGEON

common dungeon elements

mazes:
drawing a maze as they explore is actually fine. you can easily put things in the maze while you sketch the paths and make decisions about which way is the right way. trick is to make those decisions before the players decide which way to go if possible

riddles:
difficult to come up with a good riddle on the spot

monsters:
a good monster can just be something stereotypical with a twist

traps:
seriously easy to think up... again just think of it before the players encounter it. blades in the dark jab out at you... there's a magical energy field generating blades. and uh it's coming from a little magic machine running in the corner. great trap.

treasure:
can actually be negotiated with players as described or invented randomly

puzzles:
I would say that you can actually make this up as the players solve it, similar to a maze. you see a bunch of colored blocks that can be rotated. green yellow blue orange. they correspond to... some charts on the wall. the charts? well there's a series of checkerboard patterns that have those colors... no, it's too difficult for me to draw out... yes, let's just have someone roll an intelligence check... you can bail out

secret passageways:
as convenient (goes without saying) and you get to use fiat  whether they find any in a search. it's important to use fiat. because life is arbitrary

an overall sense of dungeon logic:
will emerge as you play.

advantages

• no prep
• don't need to reference prep
• dungeons are pretty random collections of elements anyways
• surmising quickly thought-up elements into larger overall themes is actually easy
• I might be better at improvisation than reference
• can elide easier, bring out the important bits easier
• can use fragmentary prep easily
• simple stuff is probably easier to play with
• good work flow: make or find fun fragments and improvise rest
• credible way to run a red & pleasant land

disadvantages

• some elements are hard to improvise such as riddles (solved via fragmentary prep -ed)
• a sense of prewritten secrets being divulged is perhaps lost
• requires the ability to improvise
• "fairness"???

what I want and do not want in rpgs

I read " I feel the compulsion to explicitly state the things I desire in play and assumptions in the material I write, " in scrap's post and have, honestly, been gushing over the pig pip stuff zak put out lately. 

what I want in rpgs:

1. a framework of power

in the game, the king's guards can protect the king from most threats, there's a military logic behind it. you can always refer to that logic. this is how you get cool stories in like plays. in "sexy beast" a retired mob employee is being pressured by his superior to come out of retirement. the retired mobster does not want to come out of retirement because he is afraid of death, but he is also afraid of angering his superior who has the freedom to beat him up and maybe even kill him. the superior doesn't want to kill the mobster, his former friend... thus a drama. in the end the mobster kills the superior and then has to go deal with the superior's superior... consequences for the actions along a framework of power, a basis of drama like they taught me in playwriting class. 

not just the drama but also clever circumnavigation thereof... fun shit.

2. fun potential power levers

this is what lotfp has with the "summon" spell, or all the little rules which can be cleverly used, like casting "bless" to aid a pickpocket attempt. fun because they're clever, fun because they're dangerous, fun because they feel fair... that's one of the great uses of magic in games. powerful artifact has bad downsides.

honestly #2 is optional because with #1 I can just come up with fun power levers in whatever setting it is. my "top secret" campaign was one of the best bc the players would just use their knowledge of 80's airport security to bypass challenges.

.do not want:

1. railroading- a loaded term but basically any understanding applies

2. complex world of warcraft style combat which will always always be difficulty and pixel-bitchy and take too long to run.

3. non-optional homework. I should be able to drop in, having like library content to pour through can be good but I shouldn't have to or we should be able to do it quickly at the table.

interesting note here is that both categories above reflect a player's desires.