Samantha Patri's Blog

To: Premier Doug Ford  Happy Solstice. For much of the year, there's complaints about the homeless. Building shelters in parks, in alleys, out in the woods. And steps are taken to evict them, tear down their shelters, and get rid of them.  The thing is, everyone knows that isn't a solution. It's kicking the can down the street, and hoping you don't ever have to actually deal with it. All that's costing is human lives. You can't fix the homeless problem by tearing down shelters, all that does is cause human misery and death. Homeless shelters can't really deal with people who have mental illnesses. ODSP doesn't give enough to cover rent (and food, and bills). I've been to a homeless camp in the middle of the woods, in winter. I saw tents, I saw tarps. I saw people starving. They go out and beg and go to places where they can get food, then rush back and eat in their tent before shivering through the night. That's no way for a person to live, but i...

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...

 I'm not a fan of the third act. It feels ... overused in Western storytelling. The first act:   The set up, we learn about the main character, see the social dynamics. The second act: The main character makes friends, is a rising star, that sort of thing. The third act:   The main character fucks things up , everyone turns against them, and they're alone / abandoned until... The fourth act: they make it right. Usually, this doesn't involve the idiot ball ... which is almost a shame, because if it was a case of idiot balls, we could chalk it up to bad writing. But usually... it isn't. This is very much a Western mindset though ... this idea that the main character has to fuck up, has to make additional drama, has to atone or have everyone realise they were right all along. Part of it, I think, is the West's fixation on being the underdog. That the hero has to be abandoned so that they can rise up and say 'see? I was right all along!' or even as some sort o...

Renegade Studios  is releasing the Cobra supplement to their GI Joe setting, and the Cobra pitch is ... pretty spot on. It points out society is corrupt, the lazy and greedy hoard all the wealth, while the working class effectively slaves under them. And Cobra wants to change things! The thing I enjoy doing when I run games is have the villains be perfectly honest about things - it makes them sound reasonable, and makes the hero's job harder. But this means GI Joe isn't 'fighting for what's right', they're fighting to keep the status quo - they aren't effecting positive change. At the end of the day, the world is as it was, with little changed. And this is a problem with most super heroes - they're pushing to keep the status quo against anyone who would change it. There's this fascinating little story I saw on Tumblr, showing what happens when you have a superhero who tries to enact positive change. That story doesn't miss the mark, either. Imagi...

Alright. If you've been paying attention, you know who Mr. Beast is. If you're in the loop, you know that recently, he helped  restore the eyesight  of one thousand people, then dropped a whack of cash more to cover the lost income of some of these people, then a whack load more to cover even more surgeries to help restore more people's eyesight. He's known for doing huge, charitable events, and making YouTube videos of it. He has an entire channel dedicated to philanthropy . He's also known for doing games and contests to give out money, too. And there's people who aren't happy with any of this. They complain he's using the disabled and poor as a commodity. They're saying that if he's going to help people, he should shut up and not make videos of his work. And we're saying these people are missing the point, or don't understand the reality of the situation.  If he didn't do video, he'd not get money.  No money, no means to help...

   Do you give your players a 'warning shot' when they're being ambushed or sniped? "An arrow strikes the tree inches from your head" kind of thing - the thing you see in movies and TV shows, alerting the hero they're in imminent danger so they can dive for cover. We're not fans, really. It's plot armour that the PCs don't need. If they've made an enemy that's going to use ambush tactics, or the creatures they're going to face are known for ambush tactics - then the ambush tactics should have a chance to actually succeed. The PCs get their Perception Checks (if it makes sense).  The enemy get their Stealth rolls. The attack roll is made to hit the PCs.  All of this is fair . If it drops the PC, so be it - the PC drops. And there's nothing wrong with the PCs doing the same.  PC rolls stealth, enemy rolls perception, attack roll is made.  If the PC one-shots the BBEG because of this? So be it, the BBEG drops. Is it 'anticlimactic...

Our playing group likes to open most encounters with parlay. It just happens to be their thing. If it is at all possible, the party tries to prevent combat - they'll talk things out, try to negotiate, look for common ground, and even win over enemies if there's an opportunity. The excuse that D&D is mostly a 'combat' game doesn't hold water. Yes, most of the rulebook is on how to hurt your opponents - but that doesn't mean that's the best path (or first option) people should take. There's social skills for a reason - so why not use them? "Well, I don't want the BBEG to be defeated with a single roll." Then think of a way to draw it out. How many successes are needed? Each success prevents combat for a few rounds, as the PCs try to work on the opponent's resolve. But it goes beyond this. In 1st edition Mummy (World of Darkness), they discussed what a character with higher-than-human social charms could do (in D&D, we'd go wit...

There's a lot of talk going on right now about WotC's, new "OGL 1.1". First and foremost, something to consider. WotC isn't going to be able to enforce 1.1. They can't. 1.0a already says it can't be revoked if someone's following the rules that are laid out for it. That, right there, protects people using the original OGL. Second, if 1.1 is enforceable, this gives WotC the rights to Lord of the Rings , Diablo , World of Warcraft , Wheel of Time , Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser , Mutants and Masterminds , Star Wars , DC Comics, and Wild Cards . That's a whole lot of companies that would be righteously pissed off with Hasbro. It would most likely lead to a class-action lawsuit. And the courts, when it comes to the kind of contracts you see here, lean in favour of the people signing the contract, and not the people who wrote it up, when there's a grey zone. Not that there's a grey zone. With all that being said, WotC needs a smack upside the head....

This is from an essay we wrote back in 2012, when Shadowrun 5e was first announced. A lot of this still holds true to this day. We're going to tweak it slightly, but for the most part it holds up well. Shadowrun 5e  is slated to come out this summer.  I decided to make a wish list about what I would like to see in it, and I was (not entirely) surprised to see people wanting a reversion back to the first edition "feel" of mirrorshades, cyberdecks, and the removal of the wireless world from the setting. Having just finished writing an essay on science fiction, this debate was already fresh in my mind. Good science fiction uses the setting as a framework to reflect aspects of the modern world and raise questions, while near science fiction will usually extrapolate from where we are to where people think we will go. Shadowrun , I feel, does this very well, which is why it is one of my favourite roleplaying games. When dealing with many science fiction games, I tend to think ...

Or: "How to play an Evil character in a Good party without alienating yourself, pissing off the players, or pissing off the Game Master.  Our sister is in a Pathfinder campaign, and decided she was going to play a rogue - with a major focus on stealth (+20 by Level 5), deadly sneak attack dice (3d8), and a Neutral Evil alignment. The game master, who has played with us for over a decade, trusted her enough to let it slide, and away we went. The way she's been playing the character's pretty straightforward.  She doesn't quite hang out with us as we travel - she's perpetually in stealth mode (can move her full speed or even run while remaining stealthed). So our group never knows where she is or what she's doing until she lets herself be seen. She does talk with the group but her interaction is usually light during travel time. During a mission into a building, she infiltrated ahead of us because she was the only one who wouldn't trip security. She scoured th...

Ever run a game and have one player just implode during the first session because ' you're not doing fantasy right '? Running a game, and the group is heading into a village. We describe the farms and farm houses along the way - low stone walls to mark regions, low, one-level homes, and the like. It was winter, and the players decided to check on the farms, and we described how the people living on there tended to keep the animals in with them, sharing the body heat to protect them from the cold. One of the players (we'll call him 'Fred') grumbled about this, saying that there should be barns and haystacks and people didn't live with their animals. (Hint. People did .) Whatever. Once the group made it into the village, the first thing that happened was the player immediately looked for the tavern. They found the village pub, and the group went in to sit down and get a meal. There was a few things to eat - not much, mostly bread and a bit of broth, but plenty...