To harvest your data! Why else?

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The “writer’s room” stuff is, by definition, not role-playing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely enjoy it, but if you tell me we’re role-playing and then hit me with that, I’ll be upset at the whiplash.

I feel like games like FATE need to pick a lane. Either we’re all writers telling a story together, or we’re trying to role-play as characters and be immersed in the world. But you can’t accomplish both things at once.

And if we’re doing the writer’s room thing, we should just play Microscope. It’s my favorite improv-game so far (although I’m open to trying others).

FATE is my favorite least favorite system. I love so much about it, but find about half of it absolutely intolerable.

For example - players making up their own consequences. It’s so metagamey that it immediately kills my immersion.

Edit - Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of the Consequences system, but it rubs me the wrong way for the players to be the ones choosing them.

The 5-min adventuring day is more of a “poor GM management” problem than anything. If time effectively stands still when the PC’s rest, of course they’ll rest at every opportunity. But yes, PF2 has a bit less of powers per day and a few more powers-per-short-rest (well, PF2’s equivalent of a short rest, anyways).

Pathfinder absolutely can be used to tell a great story. In fact, I think it’s better at that than most of the so-called “narrative systems” out there. But perhaps that’s because most of the narrative systems out there run into some of my own pet peeves - namely encouraging metagaming via player abilities that are entirely divorced from the character you’re playing as. Some other pet peeves include giving players the ability to retcon/declare things as an ability, or having mechanics that explicitly assume that the world only exists insofar as the PCs interact with it.

In my personal opinion, player’s choices only feel important if they have real consequences. This means that the GM must, at a minumum, have enough mechanical ‘rigging’ to work with that players can reasonably predict the likely outcomes of a given course of action, and see those consequences ripple out into the world in the thousand tiny ways that make the game world feel real.

Plus, there are dozens of ways to streamline a crunchy system and make it easier for new players to handle. But there just aren’t that many (good) ways to add complexity to a game that’s transparently simple on it’s face. I find that simpler rules systems paradoxically encourage power-gaming in this way - if you know you can solve any problem with a +8 Tomfoolery skill and a pile of “story points”, why would you ever do anything else? But if you have to choose your approach based on its consequences - not just based on what number is higher - then all of a sudden he decision of whether to bribe, lie to, persuade, sneak past, or assassinate the guard becomes a whole lot harder. And there’s no way to weasel out of it because the skills have extremely defined uses that can’t be bent to mean something other than what they mean.

(Sorry, that reply kinda ran away with me there 😅)

(But if you would like thoughts/help/advice on how to run a crunchier system in a way that produces very “story focused” results, I have a lot of practice with that. It’s both very rewarding and not as hard as it seems. Anyone who reads this and wants to chat, please do. My dms are open.)

I always found D&Ds “linear fighters quadratic wizards” thing to be kind of garbage

Not to be a walking stereotype here, but you’ve really got to give PF2 a try. It’s hard to succinctly say why martials feel so good in PF2 - it’s due to a lot of little changes across a lot of different systems - but let’s just say that Fighters and Rogues are legitimately my favorite classes in PF2. And I’ve pretty always been a magic girlie in D&D.

gross.

So we remind them. Preferably by fielding candidates that will actually fight for us, and aren’t afraid to point that fact out. Loudly.

Building up a real base of support takes time. As in, 4-5 years worth of time. Might as well get started while people are pissed.

Vote them out. End their careers, every last one of them.

well you didn’t explicitly say you were checking this tile

Yep, that sucks. But tracking time is still good for gameplay

Hot take: jails are evil, so someone good would be more interested in rehabilitation

I was a little skeptical at first, but “Anxious Fry” does kinda sound like a horse 🤔

different stations on the bridge of a starship

If you find that TTRPG, please send me a link. Otherwise, well, it wouldn’t seem too hard to homebrew something really quick if you aren’t picky about systems

Oof. That’s definitely not how it should go.

But GMing isn’t something the rulebook is all that good at teaching people how to do, so stuff like this is quite common :(

I dislike FATE for exactly this reason - it breaks my immersion too much

Within the same campaign? Yes, I expect the statblock to be (reasonably) fixed.

But from one campaign to the next? Not necessarily, unless they’re explicitly set in the same setting.

I prefer the BLeeM method: try to kill them and then be amazed at how they, like cockroaches, survive anyways

What the player says determines what the character says - but the dice determine how they say it.

It’s just like everything else, the player chooses what to attack, but the dice say how it goes.

Naturally, the player’s choice of words could give them a boost or hinder them. Also, I wouldn’t let the player just “roll to seduce.” You gotta rp a little if you want a rp reward.

“their sins will always find them out”

If only that were true.

No gods will save us. The only justice in this world is that which we can enact with our own hands.

Honestly, that’s on theme for pirates