Thanks for the good work! Education is important!

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

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

I couldn’t express it better myself. Although in terms of “having a functioning democracy” the colonizer countries aren’t exactly doing well either. (It’s almost like powerful people will exploit anyone and corrupt any system…)

It might not seem more fun that way, but surprisingly it is.

See: BLeeM and how all his BBEGs are actually Capitalism

you have them roll for perception first then you are narrating the area and having players say what they want to do afterwards

now their actions are going to be influenced by their low perception roll

You shouldn’t be rolling for perception first. Players don’t get to roll until they actually do a thing, until then you use passive perception. And even if you are rolling a perception check on their behalf, you do it behind the screen. So they won’t know if they rolled well or not.

rolls come after the declaration of actions

Hard agree! But passive perception isn’t an action or a roll. It’s passive.

The thing about BAD traps versus a GOOD traps, though, is ensuring that players have the opportunity to try avoiding it.

Exactly. The players should have the opportunity to avoid it. If traps are only a binary - perfectly obvious or completely invisible depending on a single roll - then the characters had a chance to avoid the trap, but the player didn’t. And then “optimal play” is painstakingly triple-searching every square foot of the dungeon in case Schodinger’s Trap is lurking somewhere.

Which is either trivial and tedious (in games where you don’t track the passage of time) or stupidly punishing and tedious (if you are tracking time). Since I do prefer to track time spent, I’d rather give my players the sense that they can ‘logic out’ where traps are likely to be and encourage them to spend their valuable time searching only when and where it makes the most sense. After all, skill expression is a very rewarding part of playing a game. And being able to predict where a trap is likely to be and then finding one there? That really makes players feel like adventurers.

Take offense to my original comment if you like, but people responded and so I elaborated. No one’s forcing you to read the comment thread.

If someone is literally a danger to society, sure. But (especially in the US) the jails are absolutely crammed full with people that, by and large, only committed nonviolent crimes.

And even for things classified as “violent crimes” - a lot of it is overblown or committed by people who would otherwise not be violent but were pushed to the brink by a brutal, uncaring society.

Incarceration should really be an absolute last resort reserved only for the worst of the worst, but instead we fill beds like we’re meeting a quota because it funnels taxpayer dollars into rich people’s pockets. (And that’s not just the US, either, although we’re certainly one of the worst ones for it.)

Who advocated for removing dice rolls? There’s still plenty of room for dice rolls here, but it makes traps more interesting and engaging instead of a boring save-or-suck you blindside players with.

Fair enough. I could see a more “lawful neutral” sort of paladin being fond of jails. But usually the stereotypical paladin is depicted as good-aligned.

Are there “evil people” though? What makes someone evil? And what purpose does violence serve - does jail do justice for victims, protect our communities, or reduce the chances of reoffending? It turns out that the answer is no, it doesn’t. A kinder approach also happens to be a more effective approach.

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

Traps are puzzles. Even if they didn’t roll high enough, you should still describe enough about their environment that they could reasonably deduce that a trap was there.

https://theangrygm.com/traps-suck/

(I don’t always agree with everything this guy says - especially when he strays away from the topic of games - but he’s absolutely right about traps.)

I’m sure their democracy functions about like everyone else’s - i.e. not democratic at all

I don’t view language as a cultural heritage thing, just a communication protocol.

Language is absolutely political, a product of its specific environment, and there is a lot that can be communicated in one language that would be difficult in another. Erasing languages isn’t like no longer manufacturing a specific style of plug, instead it silences viewpoints and enforces the cultural hegemony of the dominant group.

There’s a reason fascists are fond of erasing the languages of the marginalized.

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.