u/great_roommate

purely hypothetical. I do not have $30.

Any advice for finding the fun in early game designs? Unfortunately I can't playtest as often as I'd like, and I can't afford more board games to expand my horizons at this point.

I can tell my prototype has fun elements, but I'm struggling to improve it at this stage since I've largely ironed out the major mechanical issues.

I'm working on a board game concept which involves a board made of equilateral triangles arranged in a continuous tiling pattern and would love some certainty on a question:

Assuming the following:

- Every triangle has exactly one "Red" edge and two "Black" edges.

- No two triangles may share a border with both of their "Red" edges. (When setting up the board game, players would be told to rotate one of the two pieces wherever this occurs).

- All edges on the border of the board (where corners contain fewer than 6 triangles) count as "Red" even if they are not actually "Red."

Can the following be possible:

- A single "Red" edge does not connect to either another "Red" edge or a border at either of its two corners.

- A string of "Red" edges connected to each other at corners do not connect to any other "Red" edges or a border at either of its two ends.

Basically I'm just wondering if it's mathematically impossible for a "Red" edge to be stranded on its own or for a few connected "Red" edges to be stranded on their own given the above assumptions.

So far I've attempted numerous drawings and rearranged physical tiles but have yet to uncover a situation where either of those two situations occurred. I'm not a mathematician so I don't have any ideas how to solve this type of problem via equations, but I am considering looking into some basic Tesselation concepts to see if I could figure it out.

Thanks for any help!

As a relatively new DM, I'm curious about some of the things I can't "see" when listening to podcasts or watching actual plays.

For example, a PC gives a backstory with some jumping off points for you as a DM to build upon (PC was in the circus). How exactly do you go about this?

1. Do you add some context to the backstory and send it to the players outside the game to see if it's okay with them? (your character knows Bob the Bartender from your time with the circus. you were pals)

2. Do you just add things during the game (You recognize the bartender. He's Bob, one of your circus pals) and the players just sorta go along with it?

3. Do you ask the player to continue building out their backstory between sessions? (Who did you know in the circus?)

I understand some things are meant as surprises to the PCs and the Players (Bob was a werewolf the whole time!), but I'm interested how you build out backstories with or without your players.

Thanks!

I'm looking for two monsters similar enough to each other that they could be mistaken for each other. Here's the situation:

- A mine was recently closed due to monsters arriving and setting up a den.

-Some miners saw the monsters (briefly in dim light), while others may have been attacked.

- Separately, the PCs will learn about the theft of a plant from an academic institution where a Scholar of Underground Ecology works.

- The scholar believes this plant can attract Monster B to a location.

- The guards at the mine claim the monsters inside are Monster A, when in reality, they are Monster B.

- Whoever stole the plant intentionally put it in the mine to attract Monster B, to close the mine.

So which monsters A&B might look/act similar enough to each other to provide a plausible case of mistaken identity? Ideally low intelligence and no shapeshifters. Preferably monsters which could be found living underground and could be a fun boss+minions combat (not deadly) for my party of 5x Level 3 PCs? I can scale statblocks up or down if necessary. Monster A doesn't need to be balanced for obvious reasons.

Thanks!

I've been writing and producing my own stuff on and off for a while, and I just learned about parallel processing a few days ago.

I feel like an idiot, and I don't know what I don't know.

Give me the name of a technique or concept you think I should learn about. No need to teach me, just names please.

In a few episodes of S4 (including a particular moment in E28), I've heard BLeeM mention a flowchart. I've seen him talk a bit about his prep methods more generally in things like Adventuring Academy, but I was wondering if anyone has any insights into what these flowcharts might include? Given his worldbuilding is so extensive yet he's clearly very improv-forward at the table, I wonder how he might be using flowcharts in this campaign.

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Whether he's discussed this before or this is just your best guess, I'm curious what y'all think! Thanks!