Looks like evil Bob.
Wow, lovely shots!
Glad to help! I'm somebody who wishes more videos were blog posts so I totally get it. I tend to enjoy Matt Colville's videos, though.
There's a short summary at https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/collections/the-talent-and-psionics/products/the-talent, with a few excerpts from the PDF (in images, unfortunately), but I felt like in this case the video covered it better.
And yeah, I feel like strain could be so much fun to roleplay, compared to spell slots.
Has anybody tried this while it was in beta? I'm super curious about what the powers are, and what the strain dice rolls look like.
I don't understand this video style where I have to watch a video with words appearing on the screen and a cartoon character talking. Why is this not a blog post so I can just read it?
Typically I'd agree here, but I wonder if that would work when the rest of the party is also paying the consequences? An eight year old might be absolutely thrilled about this outcome...
If the problem is more the time-wasting and less about him doing anything unfair, perhaps the best way to handle this is the way some DMs handle shopping: do it offline.
First, explain to him that this is a collaborative/group game, and unfortunately we can't spend all of our game time on one character's individual adventure. If necessary, explain to him that he is not the main character, and that is not fair to everyone else who is trying to play if their game gets constantly stalled when they have things they want to do, too.
Next, tell him to keep notes of all the things he is hoping to gather and craft as the adventure goes on. He can then bring these to you at the end of the session, and you two can work it out retroactively. Or alternatively, you can set aside designated time in-game for him to negotiate this with you (maybe once an hour instead of every 3 minutes).
I'm impressed with how patient and understanding you've been about this. You recognize that he is embracing the free-form nature of the game, and you don't want to smother that. It's a hard thing to balance with the rest of the table, especially when his parents aren't present. Good luck!
I didn't want to invest in figurines, as there's always some new monster I want to use and would be frustrated not to have a figurine for. So, what I picked tools that lean on everyone's imagination:
- Acrylic character tokens from https://www.c4labs.com/product/set-of-three-gigantic-monster-character-tokens-for-rpg-and-tabletop-games-color-options/ . These are fairly cheap, and you can write on them with wet/dry markers to differentiate characters.
- A blank gaming mat from https://meleemats.com/ and a bunch of markers. I draw fast/simple environments to battle on instead of worrying about printing something with amazing detail, or buying a bunch of models.
Hope this helps!
As a DM, are you tracking PC spell slots? That seems like a lot of extra work! Or maybe you just mean NPCs...
I believe !dnd on Lemmy.world existed prior to ttrpg.network. Sometimes you just make stuff where the people already are.
This is such a great idea! I guess your party already knew about portable holes from previous campaigns and were just assuming that's what it was? A tricky instance of characters acting according to player experience! Sounds like it worked out really well though.
Support for all of those systems is listed explicitly in the Kickstarter and the preview PDF.