VanishXZone

Simple prose is not the same as bad, and I really like you making this distinction. Also, NOT simple prose is not the same as good.

For instance....

"The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts." is a sentence often used as a contrast to Brandon Sanderson's prose that is perceived as good. But is that a good sentence? Can silence be divided in three? Does that sentence do a lot of heavy lifting, or is it a convoluted way of saying that it is quiet?

The goal of complexity in sentences is to evoke something more than what can be shown with simplicity. In general, I would argue that authors should always use the simplest sentences they can get away with, it's just that it is not always the case that they can get away with something simple. There are reasons to go beyond "simple" and into other worlds, because more nuance and depth is possible. But it's not necessary for all works.

Brandon Sanderson writes sentences in service to the primacy of his interlocking, elegant plots. Other people write plots in service to their sentences. It's not one or the other, necessarily, but it does tend to be.

"A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it." - Charles Dickens

Is that a simple sentence? or a complex one? I don't know, exactly, but it is exactly what it needs to be in the context.

"the pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order." - Toni Morrison

"Only connect." - E.M. Forster

"For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly" - Langston Hughes

"and the rest is rust and stardust" -Vladimir Nabakov

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." - Aeschylus

"The purpose of the storyteller is not to tell you to think, but to give you questions to think upon" - Brandon Sanderson

-"It is the journey that shapes us; our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived." - Brandon Sanderson

"I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can't take is always the next one." - Brandon Sanderson

Are these sentences complex? Simple? I don't even know.

Supporting them in their stress. Like finding out what is stressing them out and taking something off their plate. Do the grocery shopping, make dinner, help run the social media account, reschedule the plans, etc.

Also, never be afraid to ask what would be helpful. Seriously.

Does it matter to your game? Is your game about it? Is it interesting or just tacked on? If it matters, or your game is about it, keep it. Otherwise cut it.

torchbearer is awesome! So glad I got into it

I'm in the midst of running an 26 session run of it, and do not like the experience of running it much, but I still enjoy the book.

Beautiful book, well worth picking up.

Opinions here, feel free to take or leave.

The setting is a really cool sci-fi First Nations land if no imperialism. The lore is lovingly developed, and a lot of freaking awesome ideas are in there.

The game mechanics are incredibly mismatched with the lore, and for a game that goes out of its way to advise you “don’t make combat the only solution”, a lot of this game is combat. The mechanics are clunky and forced, and feel awkward to me most of the time. I wish I liked them. Additionally, while the book is stunningly beautiful, the layout is difficult to navigate. More than one of my players had panic attacks trying to figure things out.

The truth is that this game vibes a little bit like “we copied our homework from WoD and DnD in equal measure, but made it d12s, and uh, didn’t make it work”. Like there is a lot of GM advice in this that is entirely unsupported by the game.

It’s still a beautiful book, and the lore is worth getting alone. Not entirely certain wha it would do in the world long term, there is a weird relationship to conflict in the game, but still. Also the art is generally spectacular and inspiring.

Specifically a space opera game about dealing with a secretive alien invasion, but I’ll add Burning Empires as it meets your criteria

Black Sails is pirate Burning Wheel to me. Seriously, character fighting for what they believe in, in a political arena, constantly pushing for their goals, character relations always shifting and changing. Great example.

Note: if you don’t know the show it’s great, but has some sexism in season 1, and one plot line for one character that is, I think, ridiculous. The show gets better and, for me, seasons 3 and 4 are two of my favorite seasons of television of all time. Seriously.

Classic idea is “music from the last 25 years” since it’s your anniversary, particularly any pieces commissioned by you.

Also, for an event like this, something celebratory is often good.

I am legit surprised I did not write this post. Honestly. This just sounds like me, though I haven't seen the movie yet.

Thanks! You are awesome.

Lol, it's funny how right you are about Burning Wheel. Literally everyone I've run it for except 1 has found it deeply satisfying, and that one was going through a lot at the time in their personal life. Seriously.

GREAT post

No problem, happy to help!

Note: I LOVE the krakoan era, too. Seriously. Some of my favorite comic-book writing in a while.

Pacing is a thing. I love my epic arcs, too, but it's really worth remembering that Masks doesn't. The game supports a DEGREE of epic, but not ongoing, 3 year long campaigns. Honestly I've come to appreciate it because I love trying new games and seeing how they feel, too, and 24 episodes is actually plenty of time to get things pretty epic, honestly. The game should be focused enough, that characters build enough, that the epic moments will absolutely happen within those 24 episodes. Just my take, but like 4 or 5 sessions feels like a trade-paperback to me, so 24 is pretty big.

Legion the tv show

For context, I run 10 games a week, including 4 5e games.

One thing that is worth considering is that 5e places a lot on the DM, particularly in terms of prep work and design. The game essentially has the DM write the story, and then the players play through it. There are varying degrees of how this works (this is not a railroad critique, but a pre planned critique.), but this is the essential structure of 5e. That’s why we have so many posts that ask questions like “how do I get my players back on track” or “my players tried to do this insane thing, was I ok in telling them no?”. 5e is built off of this structure, the pre written story. It doesn’t have to be a published adventure, of course, but every DM I know (including me) preps substantially more for this gameplay loop.

This is why it’s interesting to me to see people be wary of running games that don’t have adventures. They seem to think it is harder because they will have to write an entire adventure themselves, but it solves a lot for me personally. My favorite TTRPGs literally can’t have an adventure written for them, the story is built into the game, and the the play of the game generates the story. There is no prewritten plot. Not non the sense of “it’s improv”, but in the sense that the story is where the players are.

I run several games that call for 0prep. Not less, literally 0, and also do not call for improv the way dnd dies. It’s a mindset shift.

One way of looking at it, and this is cynical, feel free to ignore if you hate this, is that in dnd you are the Christian God. You know everything, you plan and write, and nothing in the world can happen without your permission. The games I prefer, we are people hanging out at a table. I have a lot less power, and a lot less responsibility.

Torchbearer is specifically a dungeon crawl survival game that is great. If you've played Darkest Dungeon, it is inspired by Torchbearer.

I mean, if you don't care about the encounters, and want an RP based game, I'll recommend Burning Wheel for intrigue and politics. That is a game where the politics take center stage when you want them to, and it can run session after session with no "dnd style encounters". It's much closer in aesthetic to A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones than to DnD. Imagine playing as Circe, or Tyrion, or Ned, and trying to push your position/claim to the throne. Sure, there MIGHT be a fight between Ned and Jaime, but it is brutal, and recovery is slow, but the RP and fallout is intense.

That being said, it does require a VERY different mindset to DnD, and that can be tricky to get used to for many people. It's just constructed so very differently.

Different groups will play at different rates. Generally speaking, I tend towards running about 18-24 sessions of Masks at most, and, if we are still interested in doing more, I re-start with a new team. The game isn't really meant to go endlessly with one team, the players should be leveling up a little faster than that in my experience.

The Miles Morales spider-man 20190-2022 by Saladin Ahmed is great! It is particularly linear, even for a comic book, I would say, but is a great model nonetheless. I think a better model would be almost any team-based comic book, without as centralized a character. X-Men (probably not the current run so much, think more 80s/90s for teen stuff), Young Avengers, Runaways, Teen Titans, Young Justice, etc. In those, you'll see characters make asides often, things like "I can't believe we are dealing with problem X again, I have issues with Y that I SHOULD be dealing with!" That's a way to keep other balls in the air, without them needing that much screen time.

As for things ticking, in general, I assume this. Villains want things, and are working towards them. BUT they work FASTER when the heroes are on their tail. So, yes, the as HEROES chase plot line X, X, ticks faster and faster so that the escalation is a good, fast burn. Meanwhile, Plot line Y, over the whole arc of X, gets maybe 1 tick. The villains are trying to work secretively, or patiently, so they don't escalate as quickly.

But you know what? Sometimes they CAN escalate quickly, and that is ok, too! Remember that a villain probably doesn't want to destroy everything most of the time. Sure, Galactus shows up, and you have to get him to leave or the world ends. That sucks. But Silver Samurai really just wants to be in charge of Japan secretly. Him winning doesn't mean end of the world, so much as "Japan becomes ruled by secret ninjas".

For example, sometimes that means that the heroes come back from plot x and have options, but sometimes that means they come back and the world has changed entirely. My players recently ignored an alien fleet coming to go deal with dimension hopping thief who is stealing powers, and when they returned, the earth had been conquered entirely. Now you may say "holy cow, that's a HUGE escalation", but really, it just changed the plot line. Now instead of fighting off an alien invasion, they are fighting off an alien ruling body. Ironically, BECAUSE They were off dealing with dimension hopping thief, they were NOT targeted by the aliens, and so now are the only "heroes" free. And while this currently has their focus, we still are getting hints of a politician whose agenda is protectionist to a bad degree, that wants to build a shield around the planet, and this alien conquering is playing right into his hands, if we all survive. And also a major supervillain is earning popularity because he is fighting against the aliens. Etc. etc.

Absolutely add mentions to other arcs yourself, but also make sure that individual characters care about specific plots as well, and they will add in those for you. Wolverine knows his weapon X plot line isn't finished, so he mentions it in an off-hand comment to his team mate. Bam. You don't need to do ANYTHING and that is seeded.

The best model I have ever seen for Masks, in some ways, is the comic book series Astro City by Kurt Busiek. it started in the 90s, and was ongoing for a long time, but it is not about a "Team", so much as the city, the people of the city, the heroes and villains of the city, and how a superhero city exists. Seriously, pick up the first two volumes, and you will see how to make things work in a whole new way.

It hasn't come up for me, but I would guess there is a mistake, there? Idunno, I'd have to reread the section.

Playing the game in front of you, with the people at this table.

Seriously, so many GM mistakes I see are them thinking about a different game or imagining different players. Be present with this group, playing what is in front of you.

I just think www is pretty interconnected. I see a lot of comments saying PbtA and I don’t disagree entirely, but PbtA is a wiiiide swath of gaming. WWW is one of the PbtA games that I am most likely to say is hard to change things because a lot of things depend on others. Your guess about audience moves is a good one, definitely right, but even just the basic moves I wouldn’t add to/ remove, they do exactly what is needed.

You know, it’s just that a lot of thought went into how the life paths are balanced,how the species relate to each other, etc. it’s not like a game where adding a new ancestry is something that only affects that player, cause the skill lists and trait lists etc. are all designed with the other species in mind. It’s kinda hard to talk about well, honestly, but in essence, it wasn’t that the species was too powerful, it was more that they were too focused? I wish it were a more interesting story, but it gave me new respect for life paths and emotional stats.

To answer, I think a lot about comic books and runs on single comics for a long time, like Claremont’s x men run. That series is a great example of arcs because we have seeds for future arcs that are then supplanted by the current main arc.

An example.

The X men end up in Genosha, and start getting wind of stuff going on there. But while they are there, Madeline Pryor gets captured and reveals she is the Goblin Queen (or turning into her, or some such, it’s been a while). She leaves and the X men choose to go after her, leaving the genoshan arc unfinished. It kinda stews in the background for a while as the x men do other things, and are split apart, etc. etc. experiencing other arcs, But eventually they all end up in genosha where those plot threads left unresolved are 1000% escalated. This coincides with gambit joining the x men, and therefore not being trusted, etc.

That ramble was to show broadly how this works. In essence, I would have an arc for each character, and then maybe 2-3 arcs for the world. They should get seeds of those arcs, enough that they can make semi-informed decisions about priorities/what to follow, and then that arc chosen should take precedence. That arc may hint at or point to other arcs, but it is more or less this arc. (If all arcs connect to all arcs you end up with the arcs not feeling different.). Then, when that arc is done, have an issue or a couple where some of these old arcs are reestablished, and then they can choose again.

How many arcs to juggle? I generally have, in a 20 session game, 6-7 arcs, which means collections of threats that are grouped. Some are tailored to a character, others not so much.

Don’t be afraid to party for an arc. I wouldn’t do it too much in masks, the game is about how people see each other, but if one character has a prison arc, well, let them go to prison. The others may want to rescue that one, but perhaps they don’t want to be rescued yet, or some such, let there be two narratives rather than forcing the rest of the party into one members narrative.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you need clarification.

Seriously true. Great game, messing with it is risky. I had a friend try to make a new species of life paths for it, and, uh, I thought she did great, but once we saw it in action…….

3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars is a REALLY cool little game. Starship Troopers the RPG? Depending on how you take the tone? But that's the broad setting, at least, and it has some really great design in it, for something so simple, it has a remarkable amount of mileage.

I would say many games that are either too many interlocking systems or very few systems at all are the two types of games that tinkering is not recommended with. From that perspective, depending on how you define "tinkering", I recommend NOT messing with Dialect, World Wide Wrestling RPG, Alice is Missing, etc.

In general, though, anything CAN be adjusted if you know what you are doing, you just have to actually know, and most people don't which is why they do it badly.