Samantha Patri's Blog

 What is Says on the Tin. Amazingly, people will disagree, but the Palladium game engine is a hot mess. They make excellent settings - credit where it's due, but the game engine itself is the second worst rip I've ever seen of a D&D engine - the worst reserved for the one that's a rip of D&D and Palladium. A big part of it though, is how it waffles between being a d% system and a d20 system.  So, let's break this down. 1. Skills Skills need to stop being a d% system. First and foremost, make it an additive system that provides a strict + to a d20 skill check (why? Because combat runs on a d20 skill check, that's why. Keep it uniform). The fact all skills go up as you level is fine  - we liked Star Wars Saga, and had pushed for that when Pathfinder was discussing 1e. So, here's how we'd do it. Your OCC / RCC / MOC gives a list of skills. You pick which ones are tagged. All skills from your OCC/RCC/MOC go up +1/2 every level, and your tagged skills go ...

Picture It:  Calgary, 1984. (With apologies to Sophia) I was given the D&D Red Box for my 12th birthday in March.  In April, I got my first adventure, Palace of the Silver Princess , and the April 1984 edition of Dragon Magazine. I'd not run a game yet. I had no idea how to run a game, or even to play, since I'd never been in a game and nobody around me had access to game books. I didn't know what a power game was, or min-maxing, or being a munchkin. I didn't know what a Monty Haul campaign was until I saw the term in the Dragon Magazine - and even then all I knew was 'it's a powerful character'. Two years later, I was running games at school. There was a group who played AD&D, and I'd later dub it the illegal D&D group , because the characters had stats above 18, levels in the 100s, and access to Death Stars, laser weapons, and chromatic dragon familiars.  (Yeah, small, 5-headed dragon familiars of Tiamat). I didn't play with that group,...

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...

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...

 Solo RPGs. It's a fascinating concept. We used to like books like Fighting Fantasy and the Grailquest series (the tinglerings you get in book 1 and 2 don't do anything until book 3.  Yeesh.) I mean, they were fun, you got to throw dice and go through an adventure - but it's kind of a one and done, you know? Solo RPGs seem to be a big thing now. There's a bunch of expansions for games to play them solo, there's a bunch of games which are built from the ground up for playing solo, and ... okay.  Sure. But for me, it's just another Fighting Fantasy / Grailquest thing. It's a nice little story wrapped in dice, and perhaps a bit more sandboxy than you'd normally get, maybe. But I have a hard time seeing it as a TTRPG. Why? Well. To put it bluntly, there's not much roleplaying there. You kind of go along with the script, see where the garden path takes you, and that's it. But what if you want to hang out with a few NPCs, see what they're up to, an...

Religion is a major interest of mine, and looking at it in roleplaying games fascinates me.  I'm quite prone to making characters with a strong faith, regardless of what the character's chosen profession is.  Rogue?  Faithful.  Magus?  Faithful.  Barbarian?  Faithful.  Vampire?  Faithful.  You get the idea. In a recent discussion, we were discussing the difference between Judaism's God and the Shinto faith and their gods.  Basically, how the religion interacts (nominally) with their chosen people. It came down to this: Judaism People:  We made an exclusive pact with God. God:  Don't do the thing. People:  We did the thing. God:  *SMACK*  Don't do the thing. People:  Okay... but we just did the thing. God:  *SMACK*  Stop doing the thing. People:  You mean this thing we just did? God:  *SMACK!* Look, don't make me come down there. Shinto People:  So, yeah.  We did the thing. ...