Lessons from Games

Strong late additions!

Gamersplane showed me how to think in-between posts to make a story I am GMing more engaging for the players!
The asynchronous, slow-paced nature of this format allows us to develop the story, to follow the players' curved balls...

GURPS (and to a lesser extent EABA) taught me how good consistent logarithmic scaling is, the concept of free lunches and package deals and what makes them iffy in system design. And the 'it costs what it costs for the utility, regardless of flavour' principle.

Transhuman Space taught me to differentiate between continuity- and pattern-based theory of the self.

Transhuman Space along with Eclipse Phase taught me to reconsider how a body-hopping-OK system should be designed (though I don't agree with all the design decisions).

Exalted, WoD and FATE Core taught me to appreciate the 20-30-Skill minimalism (i.e. when everything is covered by them, no Custom Skills required).

Exalted also taught me linear Dawns, quadratic Sorcerers.

Golden Sky Stories and Active Exploits gave me an idea what diceless systems with resources should look like (even though I consider the specific implementation very flawed).

Cortex seems to have so far only showed me that I don't enjoy irreducible swinginess, even more so than I thought.

Mindjammer taught me the horrors of the stovepipe design antipattern applied to RPGs.

Theatrix may not have taught me anything specific, but contributed indirectly to my vision of what a diceless or low-randomness but high-characterisation RPG should look like.

I'm currently running a 6th level monster hunt game in 5e, where the players are up against a Suneater Owlbear and its minions. With 5e, legendary actions and higher level character, a lot is going on and its easy to miss or forget something as a GM (for me anyway)

I found a solution that works for me: We are doing initiative groups, but in the end of my GM posts I have this table, where we can see who has acted, and an ultra-short summery of what they did, and what conditions they are under. It has helped me a lot to keep track of and not forget my player's actions