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...

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...

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...

World Building The short of it is simple: we love world building. We are fascinated by culture, religion, magic, and how this all intersects. What's the point of having a campaign if the characters aren't given the chance to immerse themselves in some aspect of the society they're in or reflect where they're from? We're really not that interested in lots of combat, or delving into dungeons, or world-shaking plots. We're really interested in looking at the cultures of the people around us, what the local faiths are and how they're reflected in the culture, and how these reflect the style of magic used by the local cultures. We're not interested in generic magic or generic faiths or in a culture which matches every other culture in every other fantasy game out there. If it's vanilla, something's missing. For an example? Well. We've a campaign world, Inspiritus . We've not had a chance to run things in that world in over 30 years, but we...

  "It's Magic / It's Fantasy" Maybe it's the autism speaking, but when someone gives that kind of answer as an argument, it gets under our skin and pisses us right off. It's a conversation stopper, and gives absolutely nothing to the discussion at hand. It's also a lie. Because, such discussions are usually about RAW (rules-as-written), and unless that answer is listed in RAW, it is not the default answer. If anything, it would be a house rule, maybe. And if it's a house rule, say so.  "At my table..." rather than simply, "it's magic." You know what game setting exists where it is magic?  Exalted.  Because in Exalted, the world's physics and natural laws are governed by gods and spirits.  And if a god or spirit is not paying attention, the physics break down. You can literally have someone who's both alive, and dead, at the same time.  Or, gravity may suddenly, inexplicably, stop working, and someone might get flung into...

Sorry, had to slip an Exalted reference in the title. 😉 How much is too much when it comes to sourcebooks? Our simple answer is this: It takes as many books as is needed to cover the major groups within the game and the choices provided in the core rulebook. The rulebook is expected to give broad strokes of the setting and what's available, as well as the rules for playing the game. If it covered everything , it'd be thousands of pages long. For example: Legend of the Five Rings      - Clan          - How do the different Clans stand apart from each other? What are their beliefs and traditions? What makes them unique, culturally?      - Family          - How does one Family stand apart from the others? What are the duties of the families, what's expected of them?      - Dojo          - What is each dojo, what do they teach, what special techniques do each have? In L5R...

This idea that somehow magic and technology are at odds in fantasy settings is, in our mind, incredibly lazy thinking. We had a long talk with a friend about this, and we spent the time basically pointing out just how unlikely it would be for magic to be an actual hindrance for technology unless the game master / world builder made the two forces artificially hinder one another in some fashion (like the idea that technology doesn't work around magic / magic doesn't work around technology). He believed that with magic, people wouldn't put the time and effort into developing technology when magic could do it 'easier'. We pointed out a few things that put the lie to that: Magic is generally restricted to the middle or upper class. Magic tends to be 'local', with a small area of effect. Magic use is restricted to specific individuals. The use of technology can generally be taught and shared. Technology has a longer 'duration' than magic tends to. Technol...

Food for Thought We've seen a number of people - especially game designers it seems - think Good is uninteresting or weak . That evil is a lot more interesting for game play. Whether this be character classes, abilities and options, or simply entire races. Monster manuals? Filled with evil stuff. Opponents and foils? Evil. Who get all the cool powers? Evil. Who performs world-shaking magic? Evil. In most adventures, Evil is rarely the underdog. The PCs are left scrabbling to deal with whatever plot Evil has come up with. We find this boring . Very, very boring. Time and time again it's 'the weak heroes have to band together to stop the all-powerful bad guy'. Here's the thing. It's unrealistic. It's a tired trope. It's overused. We want to see Good creatures given the same treatment Evil creatures are. We want to see powers and abilities given to Good creatures that are on par with the Evil creatures that are depicted. And we want to see th...