While I would fully support you coming out as a time-traveling trans man… people have left their thinking brains in a drawer somewhere.

To be fair I’ve never had it come up, strangely enough, and have only ever read the name.

But my DM texted me that one of the three scrolls I found last session was Melf’s Minute Meteors so I am writing it down on an index card.

“But Cass everyone is too busy for that.”

Well maybe we tear down the foundations of society and build a more amiable situation for everyone. Weird how that’s the answer for most things.

This goes for any campaign style traditional RPG, not just Dungeons & Dragons specifically.

Weekly 5-6 hour sessions is realistically the ideal, I’d say, based on past experience from the campaigns I’ve truly enjoyed.

Exactly. The number of "it could have been a movie" comments are... frustrating.

The grocery scene in episode 3, the end of episode 4... these things are art.

As if everything about it can be boiled down to wiki articles and lore.

I read these things and despair.

There are days I read comments about TV shows where it genuinely feels like people expect reading a plot summary of the show and actually watching it to be a 1:1 experience.

I’d also want to record any other speakers on a completely separate audio layer so that I could edit their vocals separately from mine. E.g., record discord separately from my mic vocals.

All this to say, if as a player you claim to care about the story of the game, you have to be willing to not just take actions to affect and change the narrative, but also be willing to let the narrative affect and change your character.

And I find that many players know how to get invested in THEIR character, sure, but can lose sight of their place in the big picture. Or simply not care about it.

Yes! So much ink has been spilled about D&D and other traditional RPGs’ difficulties with this as systems, but I think it’s doable—I know because I’ve done it quite a lot.

But it does require players to take the bait. It requires them to invest in the game and the world and the characters.

Xanaphia Moonwhisper is a bookish sage of Candlekeep who is making eyes at a Cult of the Dragon cultist. She has been trying to infiltrate the Cult to get info that the party can’t seem to otherwise get. Also aren’t dragons a bit FASCINATING?

Anyway I’m thinking about this because I am playing in a Tyranny of Dragons campaign and desperately wanting it to be a little more engaging, so I am in talks with the DM about putting temptations in my character’s path so that SHE CAN ACTIVELY MAKE BAD DECISIONS.

Yes I think on some level the play culture finally accepted that the GM isn’t supposed to be antagonistic to the PCs, but I think it still remains acceptable for the PCs to be antagonistic to the GM (or the GM’s proxies in the form of NPCs).

I think many players refuse to be stymied by anything that does not let them “win” in the most direct way possible.

Shopkeeper won’t give you free healing potions? That’s keeping you from saving the world; gotta threaten them.

Villain offers you power? Diversion from slaying the villain. Say no.