Apr 16, 2025
RPGs will be like. Okay, here's the the most beautiful portrait of a character we could render. And here's the goofiest fucking 3D character model you've ever seen.
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RPGs will be like. Okay, here's the the most beautiful portrait of a character we could render. And here's the goofiest fucking 3D character model you've ever seen.
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PS2-era JRPGs where the dialogue portrait is wearing an expression of exquisitely wrought anguish, and then the character's actual 3D model in the background is just
Smallville
Saddled with the inescapable knowledge that the Smallville TTRPG, published in 2010 to coincide with season nine of the show, is really really really smart.
adding real-time minigames to your turn-based combat is a great way to engage the more action-y parts of our brains. it's also a great way to make combat trivial to anyone really good at those minigames.
I've touched on this in a couple of other semi-related posts before, but I find it hilarious and I appreciate how much Johanna Hezenkoss thinks Emmrich is the protagonist of Veilguard. Like, this woman could not give less of a fuck about Rook. She almost always refers to Rook only by their relationship to Emmrich. She refers to Rook as "one of Volkarin's hangers-on," "that impudent whelp following [Emmrich] around," "Volkarin's companion," and as Emmrich's "paramour." None of these imply that she thinks Rook has much agency. Instead, she acts like Rook is just helplessly following Emmrich around like a puppy, helping him complete tasks (which I guess is partly true).
If Rook romances Emmrich, Hezenkoss assumes that Emmrich seduced Rook and not the other way around, even though Emmrich is noticeably older than Rook and has hardly left the Necropolis in years. She's seemingly amazed by it, and yet it never once crosses her mind that Rook might have initiated the relationship (which is actually the case).
She also refers to Emmrich as the one who destroyed her construct, which is technically true, but she ignores the major assistance he had from Rook, another companion, and most notably Manfred. He couldn't have pulled it off without their help, and had in fact given up, but Hezenkoss acts like Emmrich was her sole opponent in that battle.
I've said before that part of the reason for this is that Hezenkoss seems to think of herself as the main villain of the story, so Emmrich must be the main hero. Hezenkoss says that some of the other big bads of Dragon Age, the Venatori, were nothing more to her than slightly useful and genuinely annoying. She clearly thinks herself above an entire organization of some of the most powerful mages in the world. And she sees Emmrich as pretty close to her in terms of raw power, since she almost invited him to her Vengeance Party but ultimately decided he was too much of a danger to her plans. She also states that she tried to get him to join her in the past, which I don't think she would do for anyone she considered to be less than her equal. Emmrich is genuinely the only person in the game she shows any respect for. Though she mocks his age and finds him to be too sentimental, too moral, and too fearful, she shows signs of agreeing with him on some topics, and she obviously respects his abilities if nothing else. No one else in the game acknowledges his frankly ridiculous knowledge and skill level (except Solas in the end) as much as Hezenkoss does.
And really, Emmrich does have main character energy. Though he does have some age and mortality related fears, dude is overflowing with confidence. When you first meet him, looking for a Fade expert, he has absolutely no problem telling you he's the best possible person for the job. Though he apparently hasn't left the Necropolis in years, he's totally down to join the team and go anywhere you want him to go. If you romance him, he is initially surprised, but he quickly turns into the smoothest dude around, and throughout the game you can hear him comment on some of his many relationships through the years. He's well-dressed, well-spoken, charismatic, highly educated, unfailingly kind, extremely powerful, and he's done so well for himself that Harding mistakes the son of a butcher and a cook for a member of the Nevarran nobility. No wonder Hezenkoss thinks he's the protagonist. The real protagonist is just out here winging it on guts and good luck alone.
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Many will say about TTRPGs “fun trumps rules” (actually often meaning “my short-term gratification trumps rules, disregarding of any other type of fun they or anyone else may have), but then why are you playing with any rules at all? If the rules are applied arbitrarily - they apply when they result in an outcome you immediately want, and cease to apply as soon as they result in an outcome you don’t immediately want - they aren’t actually being applied at all. If you don't use them consistently then all they are doing is getting in the way of what you seem to actually want to be doing.
If you don’t want rules which result in different outcomes than the first thing you can think of, you should really question why you’re playing a TTRPG at all. You’d be way better served by sitting around a table and actually “collaboratively storytelling” without any sort of rulebook or procedure, which is a thing you can do. Make a discord server and do some freeform RP.
If you do want rules but the rules of D&D aren’t accounting for the majority of stuff you want to be doing with a TTRPG, there are thousands of other TTRPGs out there, some of them even good.
I'm bored of elemental giants. Use environmental giants instead.
Environmental Giants all start out the same, but their bodies take up the features of the place they live in. They become a reflection of their domain.
Giant takes up residence in the cliffs of dover? Not a stone giant. No, that's specifically The Giant of Dover. Its body is made of chalk. It can create dust clouds of chalk with its breath, its shoulders are padded with tufts of short grasses and blackberry bushes.
Giant takes up residence in the ruins of a highway during an apocalypse? That's the I-95 Giant. It has rebar spines along its back, skin of pavement and concrete, and wears wrecked cars as armor.
And to make this idea more dynamic, the giant's form changes as the ecosystem changes. A river gets diverted away from a Giant's domain? Then the Giant dries up along with its land. Now the Giant has an incentive to protect its dominion, and a weakness that its enemies can exploit.