Do you mean that characters shouldn’t be able to do those things at all, or that they should be able to do them without expending any sort of action?
Overall, I think bonus actions slow the game down and we’d be better off without them. I don’t prevent their use in any game I run or anything, I just think it wasn’t a great design choice. In my own game, I’m having a hard enough time with players using the D&D Beyond APP taking forever to finish their turn.
Glad to hear it. I have a couple of friends who work for Chaosium, and I’m just generally supportive of what that company is doing these days.
Chaosium has really returned from the near-dead since the Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed Kickstarter debacle and has ended up producing both definitive versions of CoC as well as (despite my initial reservations) Runequest, and has been enormously supportive of community-developed and 3rd party content (which has always been part of Call of Cthulhu) as well as doing high quality updates of older sourcebooks and campaigns as well as developing new content lines like Down Darker Trails, Regency Cthulhu, various Glorantha sourcebooks, and an official Pulp Cthulhu sourcebook, codifying a lot of the rules that various groups put together to make campaigns like Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror On The Orient Express survivable and ‘fun’ instead of just deathquests. And they’ve been face forward into addressing the implicit (and often explicit) racism of Lovecraft, offering guidance of how to address it without promoting bigotry and publishing the 2nd Edition of Chris Spivey’s Harlem Unbound which is a fantastic sourcebook for the Harlem Renaissance era (which, unfortunately, most groups don’t want to play because of perceived ‘blackface’ issues but it is packed with great historical content and plot hooks).
They’ve also given some market to less celebrated games like 7th Sea and Würm as well as their classic Pendragon, with an eye to quality even if a game doesn’t seem like it is going to be a major hit. Chaosium is basically what a values-forward game publisher should be; devoted to quality over pure sales numbers in expectation of developing loyal following through genuine interest rather than just revising rules for the sake of publishing new material, treating players and third party/independent developers with respect through permissive licensing and freely available resources (and fostering them as a ‘farm league’ through the Miskatonic Repository and the Jonstown Compendium to develop new talent and supplement their own output). The management recognizes and embraces the community as enhancing their settings and product lines instead of trying to control and exploit them, and it is clear from the top management on down that they are genuinely enthusiastic about gaming and supporting players. When I had a delivery issue on a large order, Rick Meints (President of Chaosium) followed up directly with me because the person who would normally be responsible was out on leave, and it isn’t as if this is a small operation. I look forward to what they’re doing because even the things I don’t think I’m especially interested in (like Regency) are very well done and come with intriguing ideas and concepts for expanding the scope of roleplaying.
Stranger
I bought Pulp Cthulhu during COVID and it arrived with a huge scratch on the front cover. I contacted Chaosium and they got back to me quickly and sent me a replacement at no additional charge to me. I’ve since ordered a ton of stuff from them and have never had any problems.
Yeah, that “professor” guy is a hater, and makes his clicks on making crap up about WotC. You cant trust anything he puts out.
People have to learn their character to see if they have any useful bonus actions they can do. And once you learn them, use them quickly. I have a Horizon Ranger- as a Bonus action he can do an extra D8 once per turn, and all the damage is Force. I just do that routinely. When it slows the game down is when a player spends time searching his sheet for any possible bonus actions- which for many classes- there are none to speak of. Yes, clerics, etc can cast a healing Word (Bonus) and a Cantrip (action), but learn that.
We switched over to Pulp Cthulhu rules for our Call of Cthulhu games.
I only brought it up because I think Mearls says something about regretting bonus actions in that interview. Maybe it was another interview though.
I’ve never played it. I even purchased The Two-Headed Serpent campaign for Pulp Ctulhu way back in 2000 and have yet to run it. Looks like a fun campaign too.
In classic CoC the PCs are on a slope towards insanity or death. Either happens too often. In Pulp you get a small little bonus ability or two and death/insanity occurs less often.
From twitter/X-
Mike Mearls
](x.com)
@mikemearls
](x.com)
Bonus actions are hot garbage that completely fail to fulfill their intended goal. It’s OK for me to say this because I was the one that came up with them. I’m not slamming any other designer!
He goes on to say- But, that’s the intent. I vividly remember thinking back then that if players felt they needed to use their bonus action, that it became part of the action economy, then the mechanic wasn’t working.
And like I said, that is a good point. If you have a good bonus action combo- learn it well and use it. Dont take ten minutes scanning your sheet to find one. But the same goes for spellcasters- have your spell ready and know what it does- when the DM asks if that is a Wis save or what- you need to know that, not look it up.
But I note he said all that after being asked to leave- so there is a large element of sour grapes there. . Mearls was apparently asked to leave as he was handling abuse violations poorly, or so the internet says. But who knows?
So, take out the old salt shaker on some of his comments.
Probably not worth its own thread but Ernie Gygax passed away from medical issues. He played the original Tenser the magic-user and apparently came up with the idea of different classes using different hit die for hp advancement.
Unfortunately, his later years were more remembered for a number of bigoted remarks, questionable acquaintances and failed attempts to reboot TSR including a cringey Star Frontiers prototype riddled with racism and transphobia.
Phil Edwards (formerly of Vox video) has made a really interesting video inspecting the history of D&D OGL and the expanded economy it built. His videos are really well made and edited and include multiple topics like history of pizza in US. Worth checking out this D&D topic for those in this thread.
I know a bit of what was going on- I am not sure if Ernie was the bigot, but his partner, certainly was, and he took advantage of Ernie. On the groups I moderate, I told posters no Ernie hate now that he is dead.
That does not make sense to me. My paternal grandmother was an evil, selfish, unloving bitch. After she died, I struggled with the question of what to say about her if the subject came up. Eventually, I decided that telling the truth about her is arguably disrespectful to her. Pretending she was a good and loving wife, mother and grandmother is disrespectful to those depareted relatives who really were those things.
Sure, but you have heard “if you cant say something nice, dont say anything?” I mean, we let people say things like “I disagreed with Ernie on many subjects” But not “he was a bigoted asswipe waste of oxygen”…
Dont lie, but dont hate either.
I can agree with a policy banning hatred. But you said
The wording suggests you allowed Ernie hate whle was alive, but have banned it since he died. Is that not what you meant?
Ernie didnt come up much before he died- then there was a spate of threads and posts announcing his death- and usually at least one hate filled screed in each. Before it was more like “Can you believe the bigotry in this product?” Death brings out strong emotions. I wouldnt have allowed
Before death either.
Oh, okay. That clears things up.
When my husband’s uncle died, we had to deal with that issue. Let’s just say that my husband was his heir and executor because he’d driven away all the closer relatives, and some of the others at the same degree. My husband gave the eulogy and invited others to speak. He acknowledged that Uncle David had many flaws, and said he wanted to talk about his good traits at the funeral. So we did. We told true stories about him that reflected well on him.
The niece who hated him the most didn’t attend, perhaps she had her own private celebration of his death. I don’t think we’d tracked down his son, yet (although we did eventually do so, and he was happy to be informed, and happy to say he had no claim on his father’s estate.) Sometimes you just need different spaces for different needs.
I’m surprised Ernie only came up after his death, though.
See, that is the reasonable way to do it. Dont lie, but dont concentrate on the bad stuff.
We have mentioned him or his partner and their racist stuff before. But since no one bought that crap anyway, it wasnt much of a issue.
Sometimes, as was the case with my paternal grandmother, those are the only choices. She had no good qualities. She literally did not show kindness to anybody or do a single good deed in all the time I knew her. Out of respect for Zeyde Herman, the rest of us kept quiet while a rent a rabbi who had never met any of us before gave a eulogy on what a wonderful person she was. Even at the time, I felt praising her was an insult to my maternal grandmother and all the other Jewish women I had known who really were wonderful.
While Arcane Library and Shadowdark aren’t anywhere near threatening the juggernaut of Wizards of the Coast (or even Paizo), there is clearly an appetite for classical ‘DnD’ type games with challenges to player success and real potential for character death, and what’s more there is a burgeoning industry of high quality third party content including supplements, settings, and even adaptation to different genres that is enthusiastically supported by Arcane’s third party license because it whets the appetite for the core game and content that Arcane can produce with their small team of creators.
Stranger