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Link to content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tFgRCu0qbA

Bounded accuracy is a phrase that gets touted a lot in discussions of D&D and adjacent games, and is honestly quite misunderstood overall imo. In this video, I use the original design goals of bounded accuracy and use them as a benchmark to evaluate how D&D 5E did with them. I then contrast this with Pathfinder 2E as an example of vertically scaling math, and Draw Steel as an example of (a successful implementation of) flattened math.

Timestamps

• 0:00:00 Intro
• 0:01:45 Bounded Accuracy Discourse
• 0:05:44 D&D’s Design Goals
• 0:09:40 Goal I
• 0:17:58 Goal II
• 0:23:50 Goal III
• 0:31:02 Goal IV
• 0:38:36 Goal V
• 0:42:33 Goal VI
• 0:48:29 Goal VII
• 0:53:28 Verdict on D&D
• 0:57:41 Pathfinder’s Worldbuilding
• 1:04:35 Draw Steel’s Flat Math
• 1:09:46 Draw Steel Verdict
• 1:16:52 Verisimilitude?
• 1:22:03 Outro

I’ve had this idea for a really long time but I haven’t had the right system to put it in. I could do dnd and home brew it to death but, square peg, round hole. I’d rather just have a system that lends itself to the genre of a murder mystery. Any suggestions?

By "hooky" I mean NPCs that naturally generate hooks - NPCs that are easy for me to create errands and goals, and NPCs that are easy for the players to bargain with and/or manipulate because the players understand those NPCs. I don't merely mean "I need help with NPCs" - I specifically seeking help to develop conflict burping world objects.

Running Mythic Bastionland at the moment. A basic part of the game is building out (essentially) a King, and about three vassal Lords that swear fealty to that king (and the relative holdings of those four). The game is built towards very improvised and spark table style play but for things like Local Politics, that hasn't really worked for. I need to know who the major players are and their goals ahead of time, and probably more importantly, the players need a solid idea of what these NPCs are 'about'.

One of these Lords I've absolutely nailed - players know what he wants, and he has a great personality that communicates a lot about his strengths and weaknesses at the table. The NPC works so well that even if the specifics of his desires aren't clear - the players know the kind of thing he's after and why. But another lord is very under baked, and the third lord I've kept basically off the table entirely because I have no idea what to do with him.

Complicating this is while it would be easy to say "they all want the throne", I'm trying to keep their motivations more complex than that and importantly, varied.

The lords are important to me because they feel like the obvious sources of conflict and tension in the setting, resources for players to use and objects that complicate other plot developments. I feel like this sandbox would basically run itself if I could just nail these three characters (for this early part of the game anyway)

I'm looking for good blogs and guides on these ideas - do you have any? Building better NPCs stuff would be appreciated but especially anything that leans towards "this is how you make an NPC that has gravitational force in the setting" and "this is how you give an NPC a clear personality that communicates a lot"

Thanks!

So after my last post, I got to talk with my friends a bit more about the dislike they have for Monte Cook's systems. Aside from playing up the dislike as a joke, and feeling Numenera didn't really do the sci-fi/fantasy blend all too well. The main reason they mentioned disliking Cook went back to DnD 3.0, where there was an emphasis of System Mastery over anything else, to the detriment of new player experience.

However, someone in my last thread brought to my attention that Cook had spoken openly about the focus on System Mastery, specifically feeling like it was a major mistake that they have since tried to rectify. With a physical copy of Old Gods of Apalachia at my local game store, I think I'll give the Cypher System a shot (After I recover from buying a Stormcast Eternal army at discount.)

But one thing I love is reading interviews and discussions from designers on the problems or flaws with their systems, why they were made, and how they tried to course correct in the future. Whether I agree or not with the solution or what was seen as a problem, I think it's interesting to read a designers thoughts and how they adjust.

So today I want to ask, are there any other examples of designers talking about what they saw as flaws in earlier editions of their work? Do they go into how they tried to adjust or fix them, and what caused the original 'flaw' to happen in the first place? Really curious to read some answers on this one!

I’m thinking about putting together what I’m calling a super campaign, a series of campaigns and individual scenarios all in a CoC or DG system that are to varying degrees of intensity, connected, even if the individual PCs aren’t directly.

My question is, is there precedent for this, something to build off or refer to (even in another system), or just general advice?

Biggest problem is of course getting committed enough players to play for years to do all this, but one hurdle at a time lol

I'm about to GM a Fear and Hunger RPG to a bunch of friends, the system is algophilia2e, but im kinda new to gming and i want to know if anyone has any tips for a campaing being a bit of survival horror, like, i want the players to be really cautious in the beggining and grow reasonably stronger so they can fight more Reliably later on.

To anyone who watched, i kinda want to make it like the Hardcore curse of strahd campaing from the World of IO channel.

I've been really, really loving LANCER and Draw Steel. My table loves it. Every turn is a blast, combat never feels like it has a dull moment. Starting at level one you feel like a badass, and it's absolutely amazing. My only problem is that I really want the world to feel threatening and that is quite hard to do when players are so high power. Is there some kind of old school game I've been missing out on that has character customization at level one that isn't "+1 to sword hit or learn the spell John's Slimy Feet!"?
I feel like I'm trying to mix Darkest Dungeon with World of Warcraft and it's getting me a soup made of shit. Please let me know if you have any advice or suggestions.

(I am not involved in the creation of this game, just excited about it)

To Feel Your Warmth is a game about two people in love, one of which has been cursed with vampirism, and the final hours before sunrise. Played on opposite sides of an open doorway, an invisible threshold that cannot be crossed until the game has ended.

It's the spiritual successor to The Time We Have, where two players play brothers in the zombie apocalypse. One has been infected, and you play on opposite sides of a closed door.

Building on the excellent question, Times When Designers Openly Discussed What They Saw As Mistakes? by /u/Authorigas, I am wondering what changes you make at your table to fix the mistakes the designers made, whether those are mistakes the developers admit too or if they are your own self-identified mistakes. What are those mistakes and how do you fix them?

The Locked Room Murder Mystery Game is a hybrid board game + TTRPG where you make your own murder mysteries from scratch. Check it out here!

Each time you play, you choose a case file, make a bunch of suspicious characters, and take turns telling the chapters of a classic murder mystery story, leaving clues behind each time. After a few chapters, the game determines which character is found murdered in a locked room, and you add crime scene clues based on the cards drawn.

The story then continues with the detective's investigation, until eventually the game determines which character is the culprit. When the culprit is revealed, it's your final challenge to bring together all the clues you've made throughout the game and make sense of the mystery.

This emergent mystery style is meant to evoke the feeling of reading a golden age mystery novel by authors like Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, or Ellery Queen. In those books, it feels like all of the clues could point to any of the characters as the killer, so the final summation is full of excitement as the detective shines a light on all the different secrets at the heart of the case.

I am the designer & publisher, and would be happy to answer any questions you might have!

A little bit ago, I saw a video of someone talking about a solo journaling rpg about killing bugs. I'm pretty sure it was part of a one page rpg jam. The biggest part that I remember, is the that the rpg ends when you stop killing bugs.

I can't find it anywhere and I completely forget what it's called. If anyone could help me out, that would be amazing! Thank you!