I remember this game too! The live action cut scenes were really creepy as a kid. I distinctly remember the hands trying to press through the painting and the ghost luring you deeper into the maze. My dad and I got stuck at the one Othello style puzzle with the amoebas. We went out and bought a guide to get past it, only to learn that the author of the guide couldn’t solve it either.
I’ll grant you the first point, the whole game is centered on space travel simulation, but it’s also the only game I’ve seen that handles what you’re describing. You definitely need to consider atmospheric density though. Managing your speed, angle of attack, and parachutes to avoid overheating is one of the major skills you learn while playing. Some are Earth like (Kerbin), other are thinner (Moho), and some are surrounded in an atmosphere so thick that it makes any return mission a huge achievement (Eve).
Kerbal Space Program?
To me, a pan for a lazy cook means easy to clean, and you don’t need to worry about what you cook in it. I wouldn’t care about what types of utensils you need, because a true lazy person would simply throw out all of ones you can’t use.
With that in mind, I think an oven-safe ceramic nonstick pan is your best bet. The nonstick is great for both cooking and cleanup, and unlike a cast iron you don’t need to worry about acidic foods or reseasoning. If all you own are silicone utensils, the only downside is that you can’t crank the heat up too much. And even then, all that does shorten the lifespan of its nonstick properties, at which point you’re no worse off than a steel pan.
Beyond the Bestiary books, I’ve been using Mimic Fight Club to build encounters: https://mimic-fight-club.github.io/ It’s really great for scaling encounters to the party size and level, and it’s useful even if you are just searching and filtering.
I have noticed a lack of normal humanoid enemies though. There have been a lot of battles against Kobold Scouts reskinned as “bandits”.
For treasure, I refer to the Treasure By Level chart (11-1) on page 536 and the Party Treasure By Level chart (10-9) on 509. I try to find something appropriate for the area the treasure would be in, failing that, I start looking at spells to use for scrolls or wands. I tend to use the 10-9 chart as a minimum baseline and add more on top of that, but my group tends to forget the items they have, so your mileage may vary.
I really loved the system used in Firewatch. It was similar to the Telltale system where you have a set of dialogue options, a limited time to respond, and silence is a valid option, but the game didn’t “pause” to let you choose. You could continue walking around and explore your surroundings during these conversations, which is very nice in a game about walking around in the woods. It also took into account context from earlier conversations to make later ones feel more specific and personal.
The developers gave a great talk about the dialogue system in GDC17: https://youtu.be/wj-2vbiyHnI
I agree. Even when the megathread included a list of posts relevant to a topic, whatever nuance was there gets lost in the grand comment thread. We really need a tagging and filtering system so that users can opt out of topics.
That way, it’s not incumbent on mods to make a Megathread, or make a judgement call on whether there are too many posts on any one topic.
Hey! This is a really cool idea. The Matrix universe has a lot of unique themes that set it apart from most game systems, and even other cyberpunk settings. Could you give us a better idea of what your design goals for this are? That will make it a lot easier to evaluate rules you are writing, and determine whether they get you closer to your goals.
For example, what moments from the movies would you like to be possible in your system, that can’t be done currently in D&D?
I really like this system as well. It also makes more narrative sense, in that, you “learn from experience”, and you learn more when things don’t go exactly how you expected them. It does seem odd at first that players are essentially rewarded for failing, but the fact they’ve put themselves in a position where failure is possible means they can’t just rest in their laurels (or seek out numerous easy challenges to “grind” xp).
Just existing as a first time parent. I have a huge amount of respect for anyone that has two or more children, because one is already stretching me to my limits. To get anything accomplished requires stealing time from something else. So over time, everything is in a state of being half-assed, overdue, or forgotten.