BartyDeCanter @ BartyDeCanter @lemmy.sdf.org

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3

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251

Joined

2 yr. ago

Shadowrun: Great Dragons don’t have stats because the players will lose.

That strongly depends on where you live, how much you need, and how good of a home chemist your are. Enough to take down a large building? Hard in most places. Enough to kill a bunch of people in a crowd? Quite easy.

This one, officer, this one right here.

canon

That is a surprisingly strong recommendation. I'm glad everyone was safe, keep it shiny side up.

Thanks for the review; I'm glad it's working out well for you. Time for me to meander out for a test drive.

Oh, that's really handy to know. Thanks!

How do you like it? It's on my short list for my next car.

The most important things are that they happen on a regular basis, at least biweekly, and that it's possible to have a conversation while doing them or that there are at least enough breaks to have them. So, here's a list of examples:

• Table top RPGs
• Fiber arts circle
• Hiking group
• Choir/music ensemble
• Ballroom/swing dancing
• Soup kitchen volunteer
• Shibari practice
• Martial arts
• Recreational team sports
• Community theater
• Fraternal organizations e.g. Elks, Kiwanis, etc

Updated to add, I’ve been using this method for about 20 years at this point and it has worked well across a variety of employment and family situations, including when I was doing shift work that varied seasonally, unemployed, and in a multi-family household. Knowing what my monthly burn rate is and being able to easily experiment with different scenarios by copying my budget to a new tab is so useful.

I use a spreadsheet, following the method outlined in this deck. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about it. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KWMaKKUYPGuuxnQa10Yfzryy5JQsplmvhVtGbajm9is/

How did I forget to put that on my list? I love not worrying about action types and if I can do this action as this other kind of action. I just have to count to three.

The synergy part is so huge. PF2 is very strongly based around making your party as awesome as possible instead of just making your character individually powerful, which I think trips up a lot of people coming from other systems or video games.

I haven’t seen a lot of that, but what I have seen comes down to organized play vs home games. The online community has a very strong organized play culture, which requires closely adhering to RAW and fairly strict guidelines for play in order to keep the ability to jump and character into any table of a random session. I’ve found that being clear about if this is a Society game or a home game helps to avoid those misunderstandings.

I think that the perceived complexity, particularly for people coming from 5e comes down to two issues.

There’s A Rule For That 5E leaves a lot of things to GM fiat, while in Pathfinder there is probably a specific rule. Now, the rule is going to be the same systemic rule that is used everywhere else and probably be the way you’d want to resolve it anyway, but there mere existence of the rule makes it seem like there is a lot of complexity.

Close, But Not Quite Because 5e and PF2 have a lot in common, players with a lot of 5e experience will assume that something works the same way as in 5e when it doesn’t. This can lead to gameplay feeling like walking in a field of rakes. I ran into this with a new player who had listened to a lot of 5e podcasts and picked up some 5e rules that they tried to use, like attacks of opportunity.

FWIW, I’ve been running a game with a group of new players, most of whom have never played an RPG before and they seem to be handling it fairly well. Well, once I talked with the person who listened to all of the 5e podcasts.

If you’re looking to run a cyberpunk setting with Pathfinder, I’d recommend checking out Starfinder 2e. It’s currently wrapping up playtesting, and will be out in late July. It uses the core PF2 rules and is fully compatible with them, but a new set of classes, ancestorys and equipment for a science fantasy setting. If I ever run Shadowrun again I’ll probably use Starfinder as the rules.

When it come to more traditional RPGs, I really like Pathfinder 2E for the following reasons:

• It scales very well from level 1-20. The math just works
• Encounter design and balancing is easy for the busy GM
• All of the classes are good, there aren't any trap classes
• Teamwork is highly encouraged through class and ability design
• Degrees of success/failure
• Easy, free access to the rules
• The ORC license
• https://pathbuilder2e.com/
• Pathfinder Society Organized play is very well done and well supported by Paizo
• Women wear reasonable armor
• The rune system for magic weapons/armor
• And so many more

Oh! Dread is fantastic at the thing it is good at, which is horror one-shot sessions. The rules are incredibly lightweight, which makes it nice for people who have never played and RPG before or people who just want to jump into a story. By using a real, physical Jenga tower as the mechanic everyone can see the tension building up as the story goes on and the crash always provides a good jump scare. Then there is a tension break as the tower is rebuilt but goes up again as the initial pulls for missing party members happen. I also love the 20 questions style character creation, which lets people put as much or as little work into it as they want, doesn't get bogged down in mechanics which break immersion, and lets the GM really surprise them with difficult dilemmas.

Iron

Does a just released mega patch to a 25 year old game count? If so, the 25th Anniversary edition of System Shock 2 is great.