@Ash Yeah, from what I can tell, avocado can chemically replace butter 1:1 in most baking projects.
Taste-wise, YMMV.
I also used it to replace the egg in brownies and cookies and got good results.
user15026
I am curious about it because it might be easier to use it than trying to find vegan butter and likely more cost effective
user15026
Because there is stuff I would love to make for my friends but it is all omg you need vegan butter and a) I still haven't found any reliably and b) when I do it is mad expensive.
@Ash there are dairy free margarines available, but it takes a fair bit of label reading at the grocery store. (Blue Bonnet Light is the stuff we use on that front. Fleischmann's Unsalted used to work, but I haven't seen it around in a while)
user15026
Right, but margarine is not the same as butter necessarily in baking either
@Ash yeah. we're fortunate to have a reliable supplier of a good vegan butter substitute (MiYoko's) over here, but that stuff is NFG for the butter dish at the table (it will melt if you leave it out at room temp)
What should I discuss with my DM prior to my first game? Classes, races and sub-races? There is a lot of info in multiple sources; any word on what to discuss with DM? I'm new to D&D.
Evening all - I just wanted to pop in and say that Godzilla 2 comes highly recommended, and there is a post credits scene
It is a hearty romp-a-stomp, plenty of monster action, with a running commentary storyline to explain Godzilla's motives, some not-so-subtle cheesy references, which I feel all add up to a great monster movies
Does this post: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/80894/44723 that is linked to a question on our activity page require moderator intervention or is it fine/should merely be downvoted instead?
@Akixkisu It does look somewhat like a spambot post. But if it's an trying to answer the question, then it isn't really violating any site policies and doesn't require mod intervention.
Mods don't need to ensure that all questions and answers are well-researched and coherent; that's what the community is for.
I finally am getting a chance to try to run DW, although I'm pretty sure I'm butchering the system in some ways XD (but a bunch of that is due to the nature of my campaign -- there hasn't been a single actual dungeon crawl in it, all the battles have been more war-skirmishes than anything else)
Seeking players for a demo of Fellowship (am in -5 GMT), playbooks in the link. It's a PbtA game about an Overlord, threatened communities, and the heroes (and tagalong siblings, experimental automobiles, big lugs, little guys, and delicious packed lunches) that protect them. Playbooks available at https://tinyurl.com/FellowshipPlaybooks
From what little you'd said above, I'd guess that a game with a highly structured narrative form might be a good fit. Something like Lady Blackbird, maybe.
One big paradox is that of Gamemaster exhaustion. Some games we've run involve a lot of creative forethought and planning, which means hours of prep every week. Generally, this is not sustainable, and a person can only run a "campaign" of this for 3 or 4 sessions before they literally just run out of ideas and/or time/energy to come up with them.
So we've tried systems where the players have a lot of input: Dungeon World, Mythic, other GM-less systems or collaborative-play systems.
But the problem with THOSE is that they are silly and unfocused. There's never a meaningful, coherent story, and it's hard to get into characters in a serious way because everything is all over the place.
Calibration is where the group makes sure everybody's on the same page in terms of their goals for the game, and it's often neglected because we assume that choosing a system means we all have the same expectations about what play will be like.
There's lots of ways to calibrate and I don't have a particular way to recommend; the Same Page Tool is a popular way to do broad playstyle expectations, while A Spark in Fate Core is an easily genericized way to point at specific media inspirations and identify what elements of them the group wants to draw on for the game.
@SouthpawHare I've been in this situation - the GM thinks they want to run a huge campaign, but then the logistics and the writing lead to a sortof burnout, especially if the GM feels like they contribute more during sessions than the players. One method for managing this is to occasionally let someone else GM and write content, possibly using a different story or system. This gives the regular GM time to refresh and generate new ideas.
I find that "silly" is a common symptom of uncalibrated groups because when we're nervous and unsure people often default to a joking position as a defensive choice--not consciously, but it's a common theme.
And "unfocused" is pretty straightforward: if everybody's got a different idea about what game we're playing, the game will quickly sprawl in many different directions at once.
I find that the SPT is not especially great for my circumstances, but it's popular and so I mention it.
If the priority is keeping the particular player group together, then maybe try systems that are outside of what people usually play. e.g. if folks can't agree on how they want their heroic combat fantasy TTRPG to go, then try a system that doesn't try to do heroic combat fantasy.
Long-form campaigns got in the way of a lot of our group's sustainability, not just GM burnout.
By playing stories which only last one to three sessions, prep doesn't become burdensome, attendance commitments aren't onerous, there's room to share GM responsibilities, and the ability to rotate between systems so no single system has to meet ALL requirements ALL the time.
In the artificer PDF I have, you can spend two invention points into getting a robotic arm and with it you gain 'Arm Guard'. I'm maining a druid which would be at level 4 now if I take 1 level into Artificer.
Here's what it does:
Arm Guard: You craft a mechanical hand that can create a shiel...
My group uses a variety of low/no prep systems and just picks whichever one we feel like using that particular day. Golden Sky Stories, Cthulhu Dark, TERRORSAUR, Honey Heist, Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, Bell Stories, Masters of Umdaar, Bubblegumshoe, etc.
We have several people, including myself, who is most often the GM because I'm the most gung-ho about RPGs in general, who have a lot of social anxiety and difficulty with improvising quickly and being put on-the-spot
I've been working on that skill for over a decade, and it's still a problem
Ok, so maybe the group prefers more structured systems, so there's less stress due to improv. You can still use those systems to run short form campaigns.
> Homebrew artificer. When your dice come up three of the same (+++, ---, or OOO) you can spend a fate point to get the stunt of your choice for the rest of the scene. If you don't spend a fate point, instead you gain a fate point and lose a stunt of your choice for the rest of the scene.
I know I do like structure. But that tends to come with complexity. I have some people that are pretty anti-crunch and are super turned off by mechanics that are too complex.
But then again, I have some people that are anti-simplicity too...
Yeah, I feel like we're just impossible incompatible
It's totally reasonable to run super-low-crunch Accelerated or even skill-less Fate characters alongside extremely high-crunch Atomic Robo or Dresden Files style characters, so long as you tweak the number spread a little.
And while Fate CAN be super big on player improvisation, it doesn't have to be (and again, you can run it so each player is operating on their preferred level).
@SouthpawHare Again, maybe jostling people out of their system comfort zones (occasionally) could help the players be more open to different styles of play.
I also kind of wonder what it is about some systems that make the mechanics distracting (which is probably super opinion-based)
Like, for example, I've really grown away from all forms of D&D, because I can't make a character and not see them as a series of mechanical numbers. It seems impossible really get into a character with those specific rulesets.
@SouthpawHare I find that it's usually when the mechanics are kinda all over the place, and the gameplay is frequently interrupted by someone saying "Hold on, doesn't such-and-such rule apply here?" "Let's look that up." And then the gameplay becomes more about mechanical correctness than a fun story or creative interaction.
Golden Sky Stories has a lot of bookkeeping, but it forces you to pay attention to the things that are important to the story so there's no ludonarrative dissonance.
Like, when I make characters in some systems, I start with the creative concept, like, "I want to make a blind psychic that's kind of like Toph from Avatar, but not as boisterous". Where as in D&D I feel instinctively required to start with the class, and be like, "I want to make a Fighter, and then customize with these special abilities..."
That might be it. In D&D, we often feel compelled to pick the stuff that makes us effective, regardless of whether it's interesting. And times people have picked stuff for flavor, they've been punished pretty hard and horribly suck in combat.
@SouthpawHare Eh, this hasn't been my experience--in games where your choices are derived from narrative, the silliness is proportional to the group's investment in the narrative.
Silliness comes from a lack of investment, not a freedom of options.
I don't really buy the modern view that everyone has to be equally powerful or vulnerable to have fun. Some of the most enjoyable games I have been involved in have involved sharp differences in power.
I think the problems arise more when a specific player's power differs from what they expect
Like, D&D 4E embraced the whole concept of, like, everyone completely healing pretty much every day, wizards never running out of spells completely, no one stays unconscious for very long, etc.
All things based on keeping engagement, but at the expense of simulating any sort of plausible reality
Yes, but that's not new to RPGs, nor is it a universal trend in RPGs, nor was it even new to D&D at the time; D&D 3.5 had released two whole books of classes with similar principles before 4e was announced.
I was confused about Fate character creation during the Core/Accelerated beta testing, so I doodled a game where you make your character as you play.
I'm currently exploring how stories help us make decisions by defining our sense of self and the world, so I'm writing a game where stories and the lessons they teach your character are your character's "skills."
After playing Dog Eat Dog, I felt like something was missing from its themes so I wrote a little game about what I thought was missing.
These days, of course, I'm a lot less interested in its potential as a horror setting and more interested in using it as a way to explore RPGs and relationships.
@nitsua60 Fluxy stuff, resources I can draw on for a unique setting so it's not just a Flux drift.
I think the basic Flux inspiration is the version I'm most confident about being able to implement effectively, but I want to triangulate my aesthetic.
I am planning to multi class and am curious if there is anything that says that I have to let my DM know prior to the game.
In the artificer PDF I have, you can spend two invention points into getting a robotic arm and with it you gain 'Arm Guard'. I'm maining a druid which would be at level 4 now if I take 1 level into Artificer.
Here's what it does:
Arm Guard: You craft a mechanical hand that can create a shiel...
