jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
Yeah, the ideas that "I'm not interested in receiving a message, therefore the things I consume have no message" or "this product was inexpensive, therefore the creator has no message" are pretty wild.
Sometimes the politics being presented are invisible to the author, and sometimes they're not. In either case, they're communicating real messages about the world, what the creator believes is acceptable, and what they believe is not. Not seeing those messages really just means that you thoughtlessly agree with them.
Which says more about the consumer than it does the producer.
empathicvagrant@lemmy.world Backstory is probably the wrong concept for a low-level character. They, instead, have a background. Backstories are prequel fodder, while backgrounds are used to figure out character motivation, and how a character reacts to future events.
Generally speaking, you don't want to fill in blanks you don't need filled i, because it's creatively limiting your future self. If the events that got you to Session 1 are too interesting, you've probably written too much.
ensignwashout@startrek.website
I don't know, zero-to-hero is one of the best story tropes out there. Totally nullifying it seems kind of wild to me. But you have to know who you're playing, and if you're playing a highly skilled veteran with a rich history of great deeds, you need to understand that that is not a Level 1 character.
I've become increasingly convinced that people don't want to play low level characters. Level 1 characters are neophyte adventurers. Their backstory shouldn't include significant a mounts of adventure, combat, or heroics, because it introduces a significant amount of ludo-narrative dissonance into the campaign.
Heating on reentry is actually due to compressing the air in front of you, not friction. Falling from orbitall height will absolutely cause you to heat up the air in front of you, even as the air paassing you by is doing you no harm.
Though, if you smash into the atmosphere at orbital speeds, it's probably going to do you some harm as it tries to force you back down to TV.
TTRPGs are games where you create stories, and sometimes those stories are "we did something we shouldn'ta, and someone got ganked". What you're describing is someone reading you a story book.
Well, not every game has Heroic Inspiration, but it still has people that gripe about secret rolls. And of those games that have metacurrencies for rerolls and the like, they're not intended to be used in those situations.
One of my favourite parts about Pathfinder 2e is that items -- magic or otherwise -- are leveled. I can hand out Level 6 weapons to Level 2 characters, and they will feel absolutely legendary.
Until about Level 5, where they start to feel really good.
Until Level 8, where they just feel OK.
This means, yes, I can take the effort to rebalance fights to account for the party's toys, or I can just let them feel like fucking bosses for a few levels, and the challenges they take on catch up to them.
A significant part of the culture that has formed around 5e is about "having it all". And usually by ignoring the (admittedly weak) rules that do exist, rather than exploiting actual gaps. So, you can frankenstein together a caster that has martial proficiency in armour (or even melee weapons), with the only compromise being your capstone abilities (which often are very expendable). And then you can metagame away your shitty social abilities by "roleplaying".
I'm not going to defend 5e -- I genuinely think it's a poorly made game, and place the blame for that entirely on the execuitives -- but the reason why so many people refuse to try something else is because they like the exploits that they believe exist, even though they are totally socially constructed.
I've been listening to the Narrative Declaration playthrough of Kingmaker, and they don't seem to be anywhere near making anyone a king! They seem to have some sort of council-based thaumocracy going, instead!
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network Yeah, the ideas that "I'm not interested in receiving a message, therefore the things I consume have no message" or "this product was inexpensive, therefore the creator has no message" are pretty wild.
Sometimes the politics being presented are invisible to the author, and sometimes they're not. In either case, they're communicating real messages about the world, what the creator believes is acceptable, and what they believe is not. Not seeing those messages really just means that you thoughtlessly agree with them.
Which says more about the consumer than it does the producer.