Reminds me of a DM who had gone to exhaustive lengths to set up a really intricate backstory for his campaign setting, complete with dedicated roles for each ‘class’. He put a lot of time into it and as settings went it was really good—but it bored the shit out of players, because it railroaded them during character…

“Obviously Hopkins Dr. Ford is a genius, and his commitment to Westworld’s verisimilitude borders on the insane. His robots carry on their entire day whether guests interact with them or not, they bleed when shot, and the Westworld “park” clearly stretches for many miles in every direction. So why isn’t time included…

Yeah I tried to get into it but it felt like every game devolved into both sides angling themselves against the nearest wall and taking turns popping up and taking shots at each other. The losing team was either one that didn’t protect support from a diving corvette or someone over committing and being punished for…

I think there’s a disconnect between how ‘gamers’ think games are developed and how games actually get made. I have little doubt the reason for a lot of ‘downgrades’—early reels and builds of the game are aiming for a graphical fidelity that doesn’t work once you start implementing the features/scope/whatever into the…

The problem is the premise behind ‘mixing things up’ is to provide an interesting alternative.

Most brawls are fundamentally not interesting. They’re not worth ‘mixing it up’ because they aren’t worth playing for more than a round in the first place.

Assassin’s wouldn’t get the auto critical off it since it’s not actually a surprise round, and enemies don’t give up their turn, so yeah it’s not the same

“ For these reasons, material in this column is not legal in D&D Organized Play events.”

Unearthed Arcana is not, and has never been legal for AL/Organized play. The PDF is an early draft of a future revision, which is why it includes the blurb.

Start with Adventure League. You sacrifice some of the flavor of a home-brewed game, but because of the open nature of the game you won’t run into any house rules or some table-tyrant-DM restriction decided sneak attack was overpowered and therefore added a number of stupid restrictions (no matter how many times you…

Right off the bat, they’re going to have to tweak natural Explorer or dipping one level into Ranger for advantage on initiative/psudeo ‘surprise’ on enemies you beat is going to become standard, at least on none-caster classes (and quite possibly everyone). Generally good changes though.

So far this expansion is fairly unique in that your questing experience is not actually ‘done’ when you hit Max level. Suramar is a *required* zone that is completed almost entirely at max level (I don’t think it even becomes available until like 109, maybe 110). So even when you hit it you’ll have something to enjoy.

That’s terrible timing. Sorry to hear that.

For what it’s worth, I’m reasonably sure (embarrassed by everything I’ve done) is a default setting for any creative work.

I don’t mean to come across as prickish, but I really do hope the next time around you have a little time to flesh out your pieces a bit more solidly. I think a recurring theme in your posts this weekend boiled down to an interesting concept that felt rushed out the door (which I suspect was in part because you may…

With the story? Well, yeah, it’s an entirely tertiary consideration; Freeman literally doesn’t have a character arc—people aren’t praising Gordon Freeman, they are explicitly praising the *player* for being a ‘big damn hero’ (one could make a small argument that the dissonance between everyone revering him and his…

“There are plenty of other reasons for it; ex-Valve employees have complained about the studio’s structure. Viktor Antonov, the art designer who made Half-Life 2 so distinct and went on to help create Dishonored, said that Valve stopped making AAA games. I’ve heard other, similar statements from time to time.”

That…

In the context of the actual event, the cutscene basically follows the Horde’s screen being literally *filled* with Demons. At that point every player is basically just dying and rezzing over and over and over—there is pretty much nothing they can do.

When you understand the mechanics are designed to enhance a player’s power fantasy, essentially, the reason for the mechanics become somewhat clear. They’re effectively not concerned with every match being a completely even playing field as much as moments where a player can occasionally feel powerful—because the…

Man, Garrison’s. So many people were excited for them, and they ended up being one of the worst things about the game.

I get the logic behind them: They were an incentive to log in for a short while every day (and thus make a habit of playing, keeping you subbing longer), but the net result of Garrison’s ended up…

Even their harassing creators is nothing new. Creators just have a voice to share it that’s visible. (Caveat: It is more focused an inescapable than it’s ever been)

If we’re talking storytime theory, you could very much squeeze out an arc that revolves around a cast solving a number of issues in a clandestine fashion ‘for the betterment of the Federation’, starting off with ones where the answer seems right (at least at first blush) even if it means bending the rules, then slowly…

You’re literally describing Section 31. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Section_3…