This had been saved in my drafts for five years with just the title. However, I still do remember the original motivator for this piece.

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Can AIs be helpful for GMs? Yes, but not for very many things.

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I’ve been playing the old Arkham PC games recently. I like those games, but they have made Batman less interesting as a character to me. He is just too morose. Playing with Catwoman in Arkham City is much more fun. But this is about the bad guys.

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There’s a MtG-related Discord server, which happens to also have a channel for tabletop RPGs. It isn’t very active, but someone noted that Blades in the Dark was available in a bundle of some sort, so that sparked a little bit of discussion, as I claimed that because of how the game approaches the role of players, it’s actually easier to run than D&D, because there is not a lot of planning needed. Someone disagreed, so, as Ryan Hollinger would say, let’s talk about it. (Have I already used this somewhere? Not sure.)

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Ever notice how players don’t trust anyone and just kill everyone over anything and with any excuse? Well, it might be your fault.

Now, I would like to note that this might not be only you. If players have learned from through previous games and GMs that violence is often the answer, perhaps the only answer (I’ve played under GMs, who have actually forced combat encounters, when players were actively trying to find other solutions), these players will have learned certain modes of operation, and unlearning them might be difficult. Continue reading →

There’s a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album by that name, but that was named after a genre of music. That album is largely inspired by this kind of music, in fact.

Basically, we are talking about traditional ballads dealing with crime, but it goes deeper than that.

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