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...

 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...

The other day, I started discussing monster manuals, and their penchant for being filled with enemies, and being woefully scarce on allies. To some extent I get it - you want a book which provides a plethora of opponents you can throw at your group, so they have things to fight. But the thing is ... what about allies? If the PCs want to, for example, go out on some adventure and want to bring some not-hostile creatures with them, then what?  "We want to go out to the forest and team up with one of the local dryads, and help her with this problem". Or, "so there's a silver dragon around here, we want to recruit it to help us with this significant challenge". Or, how about, "this gold dragon has been driven insane by this dark relic, and we need to put an end to it". What if the group isn't entirely 'good', and has to face down an archon or angel? Or a lesser divine Good creature? Sure, there's options. The GM can reskin a monster to suit...

  Black Bugs by Regurgitator Far too often, a campaign ends after the first big arc is finished. The characters have gone out, saved the world, defeated the big evil end boss, rescued the princess, and defeated the evil vizier. Or whatever the plot is. Cool.  Congrats. So what happens next? That "what happens next" for me is more important than the victory. What does my character do afterwards? What other things does my character get to see? Who does my character get to meet? How has the world changed now that we won? I don't make characters to go through a single campaign and stop. They have goals, they have interests and hobbies and families. They had a life before the adventure, and may want to return to it after - or go do something else that doesn't involve 'go out and kill a lot of monsters and save the world'. The 'save the world' plot, for my characters, is an interruption in their life - it takes up time they would usually rather use to do oth...

 ... 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.