Samantha Patri's Blog

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

The topic of how D&Done  ( yes, we know it's called 'one D&D' but it is supposed to be the final edition ) is handling "race" has come up a few times lately, and there is a lot of mixed reactions about how it's being done. We compare this to the new Advanced 5th Edition , which we feel is not a bad way of doing things. To wit - your race is not your culture, or nation, or anything of the sort. It's a heritage and should deal only with your genetic traits, and nothing else.  In A5e you choose your heritage, and then you choose your origin - your background, what you've done and where you've done it. Essentially, your homeland. This is what give you skills and ability score modifiers. And honestly, we feel this is a much better way to do it. Consider.  You're playing a dwarf. You were raised among, say, halflings. Let's look at dwarves in basic 5e. Dwarven Combat Training : You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hamm...

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...

There's a type of fantasy setting called a thousand points of light . The premise is that civilization is huddled in towns and villages, or behind city walls, and out there is a dangerous world, with monsters roaming around, and dark forests you don't go into, and all sorts of nastiness. The PCs are heroes, who go out into this dangerous world and fight the monsters and collect the treasure and return with stories of their heroic deeds. I was discussing a pacifist character that we've played from time to time, and even have the write-up for her. We recently redesigned her for 13th Age.  She has an Str of 3, and a Con of 5, and not a single attack ability, spell, or weapon. She's a cleric, and she heals and buffs, and raises the dead, but she is definitely not a combatant. And a few game masters said that she'd probably not be welcome at their table, and the reasons given were pretty straightforward: She's not pulling her weight (by doing damage in combat) The pl...

 ... we're here for the giant monsters fighting Was watching the new Godzilla anime on Netflix (Singular Point), and briefly had a talk about the fact that the first few episodes were about the people, without a single kaiju battle taking part (well, okay, there's something adjacent to it, but you get the point). Much like how Godzilla vs King Kong had a strong human element before the kaiju battle, or the human element in Godzilla: King of Monsters, or Pacific Rim having human drama. There's a reason for all this.  It's the same reason J-Horror is the way it is. And a big part of this is how Japan does storytelling on these subjects.

 One of the most consistent things I have ever seen when it comes to roleplaying games is the format that is expected for the campaign itself. 1)  It is presumed there is going to be lots of combat. 2)  It is presumed that there are going to be lots of adversaries.      Which, honestly, works.      My beef, however, is that is typically the exclusive focus.  "You will be going out, getting into a lot of fights, and here's a huge catalogue of monsters / enemies for you to face."     What about if the GM wants to run a campaign with little combat, and a lot of cloak and dagger stuff, behind the scenes politics, etc. What if a player wants to make the character one whose entire purpose is to not be seen , and not get into fights . What about the adventuring party who talks their way out of every situation they can, and save fighting for the ultimate last resort.     Where's their 20-40 pages of class abilities,...