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The faster you talk, thebfaster the game goes... Literally

Running my fist session of microscope with my group to wrap up a ten year campaign. Plan is to use microscope to wrap up questions and plot lines that never got fully explored.

Cairn is great. But, at age 50, B/X is still perfect for me as actual D&D. Rules-lite, rules-easy, rulings for whatever else. Easy. Fun. That’s all. Moreso with a game such as Cairn… Or RISUS, or a fleshed out iteration of the old Fighting Fantasy rpg, such as Troika! Or better still Spellzard!

I love your channel - and your voice is like Vincent Price’s voice had a baby with Matt Berry’s voice

We love a rich worldbuilding, light-on-stats character creation system. Thanks for the Cairn tutorial! Looks like a facsinating game!

Figuring out a well thought-out backstory can do wonders for informing character decision s and behaviour later on - bravo to resisting the meat-grinder! Great video!

Ok you got me wanting to try Cairn

That's great some some DM's. My brain don't work like that lol. I need examples, some narrative, some ideas haha. I like the idea of having a simplified small guide and then a more narrative format!

Hit points, how many blows from the environment can you survive. For health dnd has another system.

2:18 - We are angry on other people but nobody is touching them - because we all are better than this. But what we do instead is: just pushing some goblins back and forth, yoinking 'em, sometimes even inviting to 6d6 "hearth". Nothing too unusual

delicious in dungeon on netflix is a great example of how to do races

You seem to have the opinion that it's better for players to know how much fight the enemt has left in them, but surely this will vary table to table. There are certainly times I knew the monster was nearly dead and felt all the suspense to the fight suddenly evaporate. In regular D&D, I find hidden HP to be the more immersive and satifying way to play and I typically only reveal monster HP for a small number of reasons: Players need a reality check, not realizing the end is much closer or much further than they seem to understand. This is about keeping everyone on the same page about the fantasy we are sharing and isn't needed often. Bless a tactical/insightful/perceptive character with unique information they can share with their allies, letting them take a bit of spotlight in the story they might have been missing. Enemies are throwaway. The fight is likely improvised, the enemies not meant to be a huge threat. I'm not aiming for suspense in these encounters and have decided that giving players more control encourages gleeful bug stomping. Not all fights should feel this way, but the ones that do can be enhanced with the extra info about how much work is left to be done. By making progress clocks known by default, it risks making the game feel more like an equation to be solved than a scenario to be engaged with. Granted, HP can be this way as well, but I guess the point is that in this regard, a progress clock is a simplified HP bar.

5E combat is the least fun system I’ve ever interacted with in any game

5E combat is the least fun system I’ve ever interacted with in any game

Are you putting on a voice? Or do you really talk like that

I made a dual system and my players find it amazing. I think it needs a lot of tweak. But whatever. You have a small pool of health point that is "surface damade" or what you can endure before you are really in bad shape. Once those are gone you are on a harm system. Some weapon crit does harm on top of health point when criting instead of double damage. All weapons have an arm level. How many harms a weapon does once health points are gone. So once health point are gone you roll for attack success but not for damage. If you crit on an harm roll you do 1 to 2 extra harm. Also it makes the moment I say that a creature is bloodied way more exciting, it means its just harms from there on unless it heals. But I also had a sort of "frenzy" state to a lot of monsters when they're bloodied. The exact effect of the state depends from monsters to monsters and also situational sometimes. A lone frenzy goblin will run away. A goblin in frenzy with a bunch of others around him will jump you like theres no tomorrow. Anyway. Steal it if you like it. Trash me if you don't.

Originally, Hit Points were meant to express your characters limited ability to avoid getting hit. You never got hit. This is because scar tissue and injuries are generally fatal. That's why hitting Zero was the thing that killed you.

The spear is the Spear of Longinus/Spear of Destiny that pierced Christ's side. The event is called the Dolorous Stroke, and brings about the wasteland in Arthuriana. Pellam becomes the Fisher King thereafter.

I asked this about a pretty deep fantasy universe I like. And got a lot of people who didn't understand what the inherent idea was.

Have ever tried voiceover work?

Is this where dc20 came from?

In name of witcher, in books it looks a little different...

I just ordered a decree at my current table. 30 more sessions until the end 😤

Wasn't sure if the button to pledge my soul was like or subscribe, so I just did both.

I've watched a number of videos on this game after purchasing the book on DriveThru RPG, and I've noticed that no one that has done a review says anything at all about ability score loss/damage, with the exception of the STR stat, which is explicitly gone over in the rules. There are conditions that are given for cases where DEX and WIL are brought to zero, but no indication whatsoever of how these stats get to this state. It's odd because it's specifically mentioned, and seems to be a fairly significant part of the game, but is discussed nowhere in the rules themselves, on the Cairn website, or in any of the reviews that I've watched, which is quite a few. It's a mystery.

Sir Thomas Malory must have been using a seriously messed up random scenario generator.

Are you related to the Pitch Meeting guy?

I'm my two groups, we measure how many otherwise mortal blows a person can take. One of any kind of damage would kill your 1-hp villager, so an adventurer can rake a lot of those and keep fighting. It even makes it a bit more fair to wizards, that they can put up with more than mere mortals, but still aren't the tough sort like fighters.

Based on the title I thought you were doing a tier list of other peoples tier lists.

Thanks Lil' Orson Wells.

I also dislike how turn order can make things very awkward. If Charlie went down just after 6 enemies had their turns, then their friend Bel can heal them, but before they get to do something again with their like maybe 7 HP, the 6 enemies will smack Charlie down again. Not very fun gameplay for anyone. More consequences for when dropping to 0 are welcomed, but also more ways to prevent going to 0. Going to 0 happens easily in 5e, being at 0 often has not much repercussion, being at 0 isnt very engaging for the one that is at 0.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of Tiny Dungeon and Mausritter You'd probably love Panic at the Dojo, too

Cairn is amazing! D&D is bloated!

Hey fella. I haven't seen your videos lately. I hope everything is good!

Mothership taught me some of these messages too, and it's great

I find it endearing how enthusiastic you get at 13:26. I'll never not enjoy seeing people get carried away while discussing their interests

"The opposite of subtle" ... Conspicuous? Brazen? Flashy? Egregious?

I’m very recent to ttrpgs. I’m pleased to find your take on Cairn and somewhat validated by your observations about how much we are expected to read in order to play 5e. Thanks for the video.

My D&D group is planning to use Microscope to co-create the next world we play a campaign in. It’s gonna be great.

Hit points = video game violence. I know dnd cane first but still the same. No one in dnd can get a broken arm or any specific injury due to hp loss.

I am a substitute teacher covering this in my humanities class tomorrow and this is the closest thing to a scholarly analysis I've found on RUclips. Wish me luck.

I think you've landed slightly off the mark on the 2nd one. "George, what does Novika do?" seems fine to me, but "George, what do you do?" makes Novika feel like a gamepiece rather than a person. Now George acts through Novika, rather than Novika taking on a life of her own and George asking himself how Novika feels. 3rd person and 1st person roleplaying are both fine and some players find 3rd person way less awkward, but asking a player what *they* do cuts out roleplaying altogether.

You didn't learn that from other rpgs? You must be new. No shame just truth.

So if US history was made by microscope it might look like Overview: A small colony becomes a world super power The bookend is probably when it becomes a world super power, so maybe you'd say, "Becomes a world super power after victory in a great war" Periods Idealistic revolutionaries defeat the King and become independent (tone light) Event: The Battle of Yorktown The young country makes the Louisiana purchase and greatly expands its borders (tone light) Event: The Louis and Clark expedition The Country is divided by the question of slavery, and descended into a civil war, and slavery is ended (tone dark) Event: The assassination of Abraham Lincoln The country rapidly expands outwards into the wild west and overcomes all obstacles (tone light) Event: A group of settlers are wiped out by Indians on the Oregon Trail. Greedy industrialists dominate society in the Gilded age and create monopolies (tone dark) Event: Rockefeller becomes the richest man in the world by monopolizing oil. The economy suddenly collapses sending the country into the great depression (tone dark) Event: Black Friday stock market crash Ambitious reformers take on the robber barons, and end the depression (tone light) Event: The New Deal is passed Fascist nations try to take over the world, and the country defeats them after a long war, establishing itself as a global superpower (tone light) Event: The atomic bombs are dropped This is used as the foundation for a campaign in which this country finds itself opposed to a nation it allied with in the war, but it opposed to it ideologically. These two nations engage in a war of spies and espionage seeking to gain an edge. The players, shall play as these spies.

The nice thing about RPGs is that there are so many different releases with varying levels of complexity and different genres (fantasy, sci-fi, espionage, etc). My favorite is constantly changing. Currently enjoying Ironsworn the most.

So instead of hit points we can say health progress? I don’t see the difference between hp and progress track… Wether we are taking points of a number and making that number smaller (hp) or filling in sections of a little pie diagram…it’s all the same thing. We just end up calling it something different.

I like the concept but not the execution. I see the game played so poorly and it requires way too much on the spot making shit up in combat especially on a 7-9. The damage you take makes no sense. The monster hp is way too low. A hill giant had less hp than a first level character

Eh, Ad&d 1e appendix a is still the dungeon generator king in my book

Nice recommendations, thanks

Thanks for the detailed introduction. Now I understand what playstyle is meant for and it has certainly too much randomization for my taste.