Samantha Patri's Blog

Let's talk about this a bit. One of our favourite games as far as setting is concerned, is Exalted . You play larger than life, epic heroes in a super high fantasy world, who can do the impossible, casually. The thing is, there's different tiers of Exalted, who draw their power from different sources, and each type of Exalt has different castes, which focus on different things. The game allows you to build your character how you want - what skills to pick, how you want to set your attributes, what powers you get, what backgrounds, the whole nine yards. You have so many options, so many ways to build your character to be just what you want. Some examples? An Abyssal Exalted who can command you to drop to your knees, tear out your heart, and turn you into her thrall (while keeping you alive). A Solar Exalt who wears power armour, and pilots a self-aware mecha, and in a week turn any normal mob of people into an elite fighting force. A Sidereal Exalt who can leap into the way of a...

Superheroes We're a big fan of the superhero genre - the telling of stories not too dissimilar to the myths of the past. The idea of characters, larger than life, performing great deeds of heroism and villainy, of human pathos and hubris. Not so big a fan of the 'perpetually bound to the same, unchanging characters, for generations' thing -- a big part of this would be to allow the characters to age, hand off to the next generation, and keep going, but that's more an 'us problem'. Also not a fan of the 'no hero is allowed to be happy' thing that keeps going on, and the big glowing 'reset everything to zero' button. Anyway. The one thing we do find difficult is trying to find a good tabletop roleplaying game for playing heroes. The first one we ever encountered was the Classic Marvel Super Heroes RPG (or what we like to call the FASERIP system after the attributes for the game). The game is a relic of its times - everything is charts, and random d...

At the tables we run, we've got a diverse crowd. We've people with autism, PTSD, dyscalculia, ADHD, DID, and many other issues that they need to deal with. We've had players like this for most of our life; enough so that we've picked up a number of skills to help keep the games going. Not always, not always well , but we've got a lot more successes than failures under our belt. Running tables for those with special needs is a bit more work than normal, but we also feel it's a lot more rewarding -- gaming should be for everyone, and we make it a point to try to keep our tables open for everyone , including those players who would be seen as 'problem players' because people don't know how to deal with, say, an autistic player.   Don't Lie The unfortunate thing is some players on the autism spectrum just don't take lying well -- like us, for instance. It causes stress, frustration, and anger if we feel we've been lied to -- even if the lie w...

  So, a new He-Man cartoon is coming to Netflix. And I'm here for it. But already the whiners are coming out of the woodwork - people who didn't like the first series, and are thus automatically expecting the second series to suck. Notice:   The first series didn't suck. You just didn't like it. There's a difference. Me? I liked the new series. Why? Because it was more than a 30-minute toy commercial. Because it added to the lore of the setting. Because we got to look at other characters and learn more about them. Because it showed a very interesting side to society - that being 'everyone relied on He-Man, how does the world react to him  dying ?' His very absence and how people responded to it - how society changed - was  interesting . He doesn't have to be there to have his presence felt. We got to learn more about Castle Greyskull, more about the power of He-Man, more about Teela's heritage, more about Evil-Lyn. The world became more complex, more...

  A Review      I've had the luxury of picking up pretty much every one of the current e20 books by Renegade Studios -- including GI Joe, Transformers, Power Rangers, and My Little Pony. Because of the campaign I ran, I'll mainly focus on the first three, but you can expect that my comments would hold true for MLP as well. For this review I'll be using short form from time to time: GIJ: GI Joe, TF: Transformers: PR: Power Rangers, MLP: My Little Pony, and CRB for 'Core Rulebook'.     So where to begin.     Renegade Studios is using what they call the Essence 20 or 'e20' engine. Each of the game books uses the same engine, allowing for ease of play and of bringing one's characters from one setting to another (or fusing the settings together). Because of the order the books came out (I believe PR, TF, then GIJ) there are some slight bits of difference in the mechanics as Renegade got more comfortable with the engine and had a few more months or more...

Bear with me, this is 100% my opinion, and isn't necessarily going to work at your table. Everyone has their own desires at the table, and everyone's table is different -- and if you play a different game with me, it doesn't mean you're playing it wrong . If you're having fun, that's all that matters. Your table, your rules. And with that out of the way. If I'm going to have a new game master -- one I'm not familiar with (and it's been a long time since that's happened) the first thing I ask is this: do you fudge at your table. And if the answer is 'yes', then I walk away. I don't begrudge the GM -- I hope they find good players and have a blast -- but it's not for me.  And here's why: Agency. To me, agency involves the following: freedom of choice in character creation within the bounds of the campaign setting and rules. My attributes, abilities, feats, gear, etc, are all decisions I make. During the game, agency involves bei...