u/jkobberboel

I find it way more fun to discover locations organically, either scouting them yourself with your spyglass or talking to NPCs. Ezo is so sublimely beautiful and detailed that I honestly find it a bit strange that the game even gives you the option to just tell you where to go instead of exploring.

Besides, your coin is better spent on upgrades and resources. Being short on coin when there is an upgrade you really want is needlessly frustrating.

That was my two cents. Goodbye.

Like most people who get interested in Daggerheart, I'm coming from D&D, so I'm used to a 5% crit chance.

I recently bought the book to plan a future campaign for my table, and while I'm overall impressed with how clever the rules are, there was one thing that jumped out at me as I read.

If my math is correct, the chance of rolling the same number twice is about 8,3%, or 1 in 12. That seems kinda high to me.

The bonus damage you deal on a crit is already higher than in D&D, and the chance to crit is higher, too? It just seems really "swingy" to me.

To be clear, I haven't played the game yet, so I don't know how it plays out in-game, but with a crit rate of almost 10% it just seems really hard, as a DM, to make checks reliably difficult.

Are my observations correct? How does it actually affect the feel of the game?

EDIT: Thanks for your many replies. I now realise I was failing to think about how all the game's rules interact, and only thinking about that one thing in isolation.

I am slowly working my way through Remedy's games, and I like them a lot. They have this unique flavour to them: a neat balance between pulpy, campy, self-aware fun, and dark, dense, thematic richness that I find extremely compelling and totally unlike the works of any other studio.

This is just to preface that I do really like their games, so even if what I am about to say might sound more negative than I intend, just know that I am a fan, and I'm asking out of genuine curiosity.

Why does every single enemy, I believe the only exceptions are animals and the "taken objects" in Alan Wake, ramble on and on in incoherent clichés? I honestly find it a little overbearing, and the things they say a bit cringe.

It does make sense in Alan Wake: "the dark presence" works as a metaphor for artistic self-doubt, the name "Scratch" explicitly referring to the sound of covering over mistakes and regrets with a pen, violently. To my understanding, the enemies' rambling is an expression of the same thing: their endless, incoherent speech is dominated by "bad" writing, in contrast to what you find in the manuscripts, which are actually quite well written for the most part. I'm currently playing Alan Wake 1 at the moment, and while I do find it a bit monotonous, I can still accept it for what it's doing.

But why does the Hiss in Control do it too? I'm not too deep into the lore, so I'm sorry if I missed it in the mountain of collectibles, but thematically, Control is not about art, let alone writing? not the base-game at least.
I get that it's supposed to sound weird, ritualistic and creepy, but I quickly got used to it and it turned a little cringe after that.

Once again, I very much like the games, all of them, and this rambly chant is my only big gripe.

EDIT: Is the answer simply "because Alan Wake"? Does the rambling in Control really have no self-contained thematic meaning?

(This post will discuss the endings of two story mods. If you plan on trying them out, I encourage you to play them before reading)

>!I've been trying out some of the many fan-made story mods to try and scratch that "Outer Wilds itch" again, and a couple of them were fascinating to me for very interesting reasons.!<

>!Both 'The Outsider' and 'The Vision' offer an alternate ending to the game, and to me there is a fundamental philosophical difference in these endings. !<

>!My first instinct was to assume that the mods' creators simply didn't get what Outer Wilds is trying to say, but after thinking about them for a while, I think that assumption was reductive.!<

>!Both mods seem to have been made by fans who loved 99% of Outer Wilds, but when they eventually reached the ending, they didn't agree: The ending of 'The Outsider' shows the events of the original ending, but changes the perspective to third-person, and depicts the hatchling getting mangled, burned and blown up by the Big Bang they create. !<

>!The ending of 'The Vision' has the hatchling and Solanum leave the solar system to spend their time with a community of Nomai as they watch the stars burn out.!<

>!I won't get too much into specifics here, but both mods seem to agree with the Inhabitants of the Stranger, whom the base game presents as the villains, that the loss of the end of one universe is far greater than the beauty of a new universe being created. There is this throughline of mournful dissent in these mods, like a parent discouraging their child's curiosity by lifting a finger and repeatedly saying "Remember: don't take it too far". This leads to palpable dissonance between the mods' content and the base game.!<

>!Outer Wilds' "flowers will bloom from dirt made from death" philosophy; the invitation to view history as a tapestry of curiosity and ambition, where failure is a misnomer because the knowledge and experience you gain from trying to answer great questions will be useful to somebody else, even if you don't personally reach an answer, is to me one of the most beautiful, special and moving things about it, and it's so strange to play a mod, presumably made by fans who love Outer Wilds, that fundamentally disagrees with that philosophy.!<

>!This is the end of my thoughts for now, though I might continue to think about these things for a while. I didn't like these mods very much, but regardless, I feel like I understand Outer Wilds more after playing them.!<

I've been playing DD2 since EA, and I've racked up 400 hours in the game, and throughout I've been playing around with every character, to the point where I feel pretty confident fitting them all into teams effectively.

... Except for Hellion.

I initially dismissed her because I felt her "Viking aesthetic" clashed a bit with the rest of the cast (and I still kinda think that tbh), but I've been trying to give her an honest shot recently, and I just do not understand what her deal is supposed to be.

'Winded' feels incredibly punishing relative to the benefits it can bring. The buff she gets at low health is thematically neat, but feels too weak to reasonably play around.

I'm at the point where, while I understand what every ability does, I don't understand how to use them in effective ways.

I've only been using Wanderer since it's supposed to be her baseline kit, and I want to figure that one out before trying other paths.

Hellion enjoyers, I'm begging you: show me your ways!

My current campaign is nearing it's end after 2 years, and with how it's currently going, the climax of the story is probably going to be a war between two factions, with the party fighting for one side.

My current plan is to run it mechanically like a standard encounter, and explain through narration that while the battlefield extends beyond the battlemap, what happens on the battlemap is just the enemies the party encounters during the battle.

But I'm curious to know if other DM's have done something similar, or something entirely different.

(I realise now, after writing this, that this is more writing advice than DM'ing advice, but I still think it's useful for DMs to think about)

I'm currently running a long campaign with war as a core theme, and I am aiming for a certain sense of moral ambiguity, and I can sense in my players that I've been at least somewhat successful.

I've seen a few "D&D horror stories" about DMs trying to run a morally grey campaign, but it actually just ends up being boring or depressing. I've seen some, not many, but some, on this sub, asking for advice, seeking to run a "morally grey" campaign, and I've also seen some explicitly advising NOT to go for moral ambiguity.

However, I find many seem to misunderstand what "moral ambiguity" means. It is not "the world is grim and dark, and people will suffer no matter what" - That's the material condition of the world, but it has very little to do with morality.

The horror stories I've read often centre around the common mistake of writing a campaign with a clear moral victor, but the DM arbitrarily punishes the party or some NPCs, to "even things out". Darkness and grittiness do not make a campaign morally ambiguous: You can run a campaign in Candy Land, and it would still say nothing about the morality at play.

If you want to write a true, morally grey campaign, which is absolutely possible to do well, you have to write a central conflict that you, the DM, are not sure about. It's tough because all our instincts as writers automatically push us towards dualism, where we view the conflict from one side and write the other as opposition to that side. To achieve moral ambiguity, you must reject this instinct and write the conflict as a neutral observer standing between the two sides.

Fellow philosophy buffs will notice that this is very similar to a dialectical approach, and indeed, being familiar with Hegelian dialectics does help, but it's absolutely not necessary.

Now, once the campaign is up and running, you should be careful not to hold on to this neutral stance. The neutrality should mainly stay in the writing stage, since, as the players will inevitably skew one way or the other, the DM should do so too in order for the narrative to flourish. Essentially, the campaign should start off neutral, but then gradually pick a side based on the events in-game.

I currently store all my prep and stuff on Google Drive, with all my lore and other notes in one big document. It works fine, but I've never tried using one of those tools made specifically for organising notes when worldbuilding. I run a very improv-heavy DM'ing style, so keeping stuff organised has never been much of a worry for me, but my current campaign has been going for twice as long as any of my previous campaigns, and the one doc I use for notes is starting to balloon a bit.

What are your experiences with such tools? Are they good? Do they lend themselves to a particular style of DM'ing?