Samantha Patri's Blog

Let's talk Nationalism An interesting thing which isn't really touched upon when you talk about fantasy RPGs. Nationalism ... wasn't really a thing until the late 1800s, when revolutions became a big thing. The idea of countries wasn't quite a concept as such.  Instead, it was more a case of "this ruler rules over this region, and you just happen to live on their land." This video above goes into the idea of national anthems and touches on how and why nationalism became a thing - when people stopped thinking of themselves as people under the crown, and people of the place itself (a big thing that happened in North America and such). Before that however?  Well, God Save the King was a big hit, it wasn't so much a song about the land and not the crown, but about the fact that the crown exists. A lot of other kingdoms decided to use variants of the that same song - because it was a popular song, thus got borrowed liberally. So, here's the thing - in some ...

When is the PC party allowed to fail? Not just "well, you've suffered losses, but can rally and succeed".  Not even, "you have woken up, and have been captured by the enemy, now escape!" We mean completely, utterly, failed . This could be a TPK. Or the PCs could be so overwhelmed they have to retreat - allowing the enemy to succeed in whatever it is they're planning to do. Or the PCs get to the big end battle, only they took too long and the enemy won. Or they completely failed to collect the McGuffin, and the critical weakness it would have granted simply doesn't exist, allowing the enemy to defeat them. Or they didn't do the research, and thus have no idea what they're facing and are just not ready for what they're up against. Or they skipped over all the obstacles and encounters, and thus show up drastically underlevelled for the fight. Or they broadcast their intentions, and the enemy takes the necessary steps to counter them before they ...