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Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Evil Mastermind posted:

Wait, is this a patch or a new standalone?

MMO

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Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008


Aw man, got my hopes up for nothing.

Libertad!
Oct 30, 2013

You can have the last word, but I'll have the last laugh!

Swags posted:

I think the Cormyr/Shadowdale/Anarouch trio of gamebooks for 3.5 were really fun all the way up until Act 2 of Anarouch fucks the entire party and everyone quits. I really like Cormyr and the Dalelands, but aside from a few novels there's really not much one them. It's not like they're so different and wondrous that most people can tell Daggerdale from Shadowdale from Featherdale. Oh, and Chondath was neat, too, I guess. We had a campaign set there once that was pretty interesting.

Why, how did the adventure screw up there?

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Evil Mastermind posted:

Aw man, got my hopes up for nothing.

It actually plays like the original version only less buggy and with content.

ImpactVector
Feb 24, 2007

HAHAHAHA FOOLS!!
I AM SO SMART!

Uh oh. What did he do now?

Nap Ghost

Zurui posted:

Boss Monster is pretty good, if a level or two below on the complexity level.
I'd disagree, unless your definition of "pretty good" includes Munchkin. It's a single deck card game in the same vein (complete with widely varying card power, "gently caress you" cards, and nerd in-jokes) that succeeded on Kickstarter entirely on retro pixel art and the potential of the premise.

Which reminds me, I really need to prune my collection a bit.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

paradoxGentleman posted:

Grizzled war veterans shooting down demonic invaders long enough to allow untrained, barely armored exorcists to complete their rituals and seal off a portal to Hell.
Balancing your resources so that, if a werefolf pack starts assaulting people in the Black Forest, Germany, you can afford to arm them with silver bullets.
A dragon and its brood swooping down on Wall Street.


I see the appeal.

It occurs to me that the Rookie meat grinder of the original X-Com and the 3d6-down-the-line character grinder of original D&D (and Dungeon Crawl Classics, et al) probably tap into the same masochistic streak.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
Hey I work with a convention in the gaming section and I'm going about trying to get sponsors/event support. I'm looking for companies with a solid (or very local to Atlanta) product, especially if it would appeal to anime fans. So far I'm contacting Level99 Games, Privateer Press (they're super responsive), Harebrained Schemes, Soda Pop, and CMON. And Mantic because I'm a fanboy. I'm gonna try for the Battletech people but I dunno who to contact yet. Anyone got ideas for people who need convention-level exposure for games that would be easy to demo and/or are local to Atlanta, GA?

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

ImpactVector posted:

I'd disagree, unless your definition of "pretty good" includes Munchkin. It's a single deck card game in the same vein (complete with widely varying card power, "gently caress you" cards, and nerd in-jokes) that succeeded on Kickstarter entirely on retro pixel art and the potential of the premise.

I'd say Boss Monster is a better game than Munchkin, because at least Boss Monster has some actual strategy involved and has less direct-gently caress-you potential.

Tollymain
Jul 9, 2010

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
yeah, it's not a high bar to clear but boss monster at least makes it that far

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

gradenko_2000 posted:

It occurs to me that the Rookie meat grinder of the original X-Com and the 3d6-down-the-line character grinder of original D&D (and Dungeon Crawl Classics, et al) probably tap into the same masochistic streak.

Without a doubt that's true, but it's more exploitable in X-Com. See, you get command of an entire base worth of soldiers, not one character. If you vet your squadies, you can end up with a squad of super soldiers. Or maybe that only works in New X-Com with Trainning Roulette on, it's been a while.

ImpactVector
Feb 24, 2007

HAHAHAHA FOOLS!!
I AM SO SMART!

Uh oh. What did he do now?

Nap Ghost

Evil Mastermind posted:

I'd say Boss Monster is a better game than Munchkin, because at least Boss Monster has some actual strategy involved and has less direct-gently caress-you potential.
You're right that there's a bit of strategy, but your choices are so dependent on your card draws it's still a bit of a crap shoot.

So yeah, while I'd agree BM is the better game, I don't think it's unfair to call them them similar.

Zurui
Apr 20, 2005
Even now...



ImpactVector posted:

I'd disagree, unless your definition of "pretty good" includes Munchkin. It's a single deck card game in the same vein (complete with widely varying card power, "gently caress you" cards, and nerd in-jokes) that succeeded on Kickstarter entirely on retro pixel art and the potential of the premise.

It's nothing like Munchkin. Munchkin has virtually nothing to offer once you've read all of the cards. Boss Monster is a surprisingly intricate game that requires some important strategic choices to win. The order of your rooms and effects and how you manage your class icons is almost finicky in its complexity. Players play their own dungeon; there are very few "screw you" cards. Of course your choices are dependent on your card draws; that's true in every card game. There's no need to get patronizing because you don't like it.

ImpactVector
Feb 24, 2007

HAHAHAHA FOOLS!!
I AM SO SMART!

Uh oh. What did he do now?

Nap Ghost

Zurui posted:

It's nothing like Munchkin. Munchkin has virtually nothing to offer once you've read all of the cards. Boss Monster is a surprisingly intricate game that requires some important strategic choices to win. The order of your rooms and effects and how you manage your class icons is almost finicky in its complexity. Players play their own dungeon; there are very few "screw you" cards. Of course your choices are dependent on your card draws; that's true in every card game. There's no need to get patronizing because you don't like it.
Maybe we just have to agree to disagree, because I disagree with pretty much everything you wrote here.

Most modern card games have a way to mitigate the randomness inherent in drawing cards. Whether this is through multiple decks (where the choice of deck matters), drafting, cycling, or a central market.

Or you can go the other way and have predicting the odds of the central deck be a major part of the game like most traditional card games, but that's not what BM is trying to do.

Even a "draw two, discard one" rule would make a huge difference here.

Because basically every game of BM I've played has had someone get a mitt full of advanced rooms you can't play or something similar where that player is basically soft eliminated. And if you have a poo poo hand with no way to mitigate the randomness, your number of real decisions drops accordingly. Plus after the first few plays you're probably holding a hand of crap that you don't want since there's very little (if any? it's been a while) cycling in the game.

Also most of the spells are screw cards.

Anyway, that's not to say no one should play it. I'm just giving an opposing view to your recommendation. And while I may have overstated their similarity, I really do put it in the same category as Munchkin (central deck+screw cards+little randomness mitigation) even if it is a better implementation of it.

On the plus side, the game has a pretty predictable play time, which is an area it's not at all similar to Munchkin, and trying to set up a solid hero murdering engine is fun when it works.

Swags
Dec 9, 2006

Libertad! posted:

Why, how did the adventure screw up there?

As the players get farther into the desert toward the city of Shade, they enter a place where normal magic no longer works, only Shadow Magic. So suddenly, there's no spells, no SLAs, no magic items. The only way you have any of those is if you're a Shadow Magic user yourself (which you likely aren't, because you wouldn't be trying to stop the spread if you were).

Per the rules about non-Shadow people using Shadow Magic, you either straight up can't activate Shadow Magic items or you take Wisdom damage each time do.

Immediately upon entering the Shadow Magic area the rulers of the city of Shade start sending strike teams of level fourteen wizards mounted on two-headed acid dragons after your group. The tactics specifically mention how they wizards just stay at range loving with the party and trying to kill them. The monsters also have DR, which, without any magic items, you probably can't beat.

Basically, if you actually do it as it suggests, it's annoying and kind of unbeatable. Our DM did it as it was written (he's big on that) and after our second wipe against the Dragon riders we said gently caress it and didn't play anymore.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



ImpactVector posted:

Which reminds me, I really need to prune my collection a bit.
That reminds me, I wonder how much my still sealed copy from the kickstarter would go for.

Zurui
Apr 20, 2005
Even now...



Were there Kickstarter exclusives? Because any pleb like me can walk into a game store and buy it for a Jackson.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



It's got a fancy box.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

And like four unique hero cards.

Libertad!
Oct 30, 2013

You can have the last word, but I'll have the last laugh!

Swags posted:

As the players get farther into the desert toward the city of Shade, they enter a place where normal magic no longer works, only Shadow Magic. So suddenly, there's no spells, no SLAs, no magic items. The only way you have any of those is if you're a Shadow Magic user yourself (which you likely aren't, because you wouldn't be trying to stop the spread if you were).

Per the rules about non-Shadow people using Shadow Magic, you either straight up can't activate Shadow Magic items or you take Wisdom damage each time do.

Immediately upon entering the Shadow Magic area the rulers of the city of Shade start sending strike teams of level fourteen wizards mounted on two-headed acid dragons after your group. The tactics specifically mention how they wizards just stay at range loving with the party and trying to kill them. The monsters also have DR, which, without any magic items, you probably can't beat.

Basically, if you actually do it as it suggests, it's annoying and kind of unbeatable. Our DM did it as it was written (he's big on that) and after our second wipe against the Dragon riders we said gently caress it and didn't play anymore.

See, in my own Pathfinder campaign I had this city which was hit by a mage-driven mini-meteor in a war. The city rebuilt, this time inside a crater, but as a side-effect there was a giant anti-magic field about the area. The PCs were sent to the place to find this long-vanished dragon architect who built a superweapon which the campaign's BBEG wants to find. Basically the dragon lived in a series of monster-filled caves below the crater city, its tunnels beyond the effects of the null magic. The giant anti-magic field acted as a natural barrier against scrying, making it the perfect hiding spot for all sorts of folk.

The PCs stayed in the city and did some investigation and stuff, but all combat was held in the caves below.

Dead magic zones (or ones which are effectively dead-magic) can be neat places to explore. But in 3.X you never, ever hold regular combat in them. I'm genuinely surprised that Wizards of all companies did not grasp this concept.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

Swags posted:

I think the Cormyr/Shadowdale/Anarouch trio of gamebooks for 3.5 were really fun all the way up until Act 2 of Anarouch fucks the entire party and everyone quits. I really like Cormyr and the Dalelands, but aside from a few novels there's really not much one them. It's not like they're so different and wondrous that most people can tell Daggerdale from Shadowdale from Featherdale. Oh, and Chondath was neat, too, I guess. We had a campaign set there once that was pretty interesting.

Wait what? There's plenty on Cormyr: Haunted Halls of Eveningstar, Cormyr, Volo's Guide to Cormyr, every core campaign setting book, various adventures and a whole brace of novels. Much the same goes for the Dalelands, which have the Randal Morn trilogy of adventures, Dalelands, Volo's Guide to the Dalelands, Ruins of Myth Drannor, Cormanthyr, the most detail in the 2e and 1e campaign settings, etc. This isn't including the various products that focus on various things but aren't explicitly about those two areas: The Seven Sisters, Forgotten Realms Adventures, Power of Faerun, et cetera.

Cormyr and the Dalelands are the eastern Heartlands to match the west; they're easily some of the most detailed and most dense parts of the Realms. Check out Backdrop: Cormyr in Dragon magazine, then go try to find everything on that map. I can't, I doubt you can. The Dales have plenty of differences to separate them; it's easy for them to run together when you're not thinking about the politics of the Dales but that's kind of intentional.

If you want an area of the Realms with almost nothing to it, how about Sembia? No updates besides novels and some references in gaming products, ever.

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.
Hey chat thread, my Kickstarter is up!

This game owes a lot to you folks in TG and to these chat threads in particular. Thanks to everyone who helped me get this far!

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Arivia posted:

.

If you want an area of the Realms with almost nothing to it, how about Sembia? No updates besides novels and some references in gaming products, ever.

To be fair, wasn't Sembia originally supposed to be the equivalent of Glorantha's "Blank lands" where you can basically make up whatever you want for your campaign?

Talkc
Aug 2, 2010

Mizuki! Mizuki! Mizuki!
***DEVASTATINGLY HANDSOME***
Im in an awkward dillema with my superhero campaign. Ive sorta fallen into a trap of making too many characters, without a lot of substance to them. To top it off, i have a bad head for FATE Core. So ive been trying to come up with superhero type things that would work for the campaign, but when it actually comes to the mechanics i pretty much fumble them.

Any advice for salvaging a bad run on a campaign?

I mean i have a long history of running stuff like DND, 13th age, and stuff like that with no problem. But when it comes to narrative games like dungeon world and fate, i always have a harder time. And its not that im not telling a decent story. Its more that i keep struggling to merge the narrative mechanics with the story im telling.

Error 404
Jul 17, 2009


MAGE CURES PLOT

Talkc posted:

Im in an awkward dillema with my superhero campaign. Ive sorta fallen into a trap of making too many characters, without a lot of substance to them. To top it off, i have a bad head for FATE Core. So ive been trying to come up with superhero type things that would work for the campaign, but when it actually comes to the mechanics i pretty much fumble them.

Any advice for salvaging a bad run on a campaign?

I mean i have a long history of running stuff like DND, 13th age, and stuff like that with no problem. But when it comes to narrative games like dungeon world and fate, i always have a harder time. And its not that im not telling a decent story. Its more that i keep struggling to merge the narrative mechanics with the story im telling.

So, look at your characters through the lens of games you are familiar with.
If you have too many NPCs, then cut a few, but then why not give them backgrounds and an OUT just like 13A?
it can help you conceptualize your characters, and then it's just another step or two to turn a background and/or OUT into a couple aspects and maybe a stunt or two.

Edit: This vvvvv

Error 404 fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Jan 31, 2015

moths
Aug 25, 2004

I would also still appreciate some danger.



Talkc posted:

Im in an awkward dillema with my superhero campaign. Ive sorta fallen into a trap of making too many characters, without a lot of substance to them.

You're lucky it's a supers game! Because this actually happens with superhero comics, and that's when titles get cancelled. You can either play it as a meta joke about staff-cuts at Whattacomic Publishing, or tell your players that they're starting the New Infinite Secret Crisis Wars Invasion arc and start piling up the bodies.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Talkc posted:

Im in an awkward dillema with my superhero campaign. Ive sorta fallen into a trap of making too many characters, without a lot of substance to them. To top it off, i have a bad head for FATE Core. So ive been trying to come up with superhero type things that would work for the campaign, but when it actually comes to the mechanics i pretty much fumble them.

Its not the fact that you introduced too many characters more than the fact that you are trying to juggle too many characters at once in a session. Its something I don't even like to do because I feel really dumb talking as multiple NPCs at once. And I wouldn't worry about screwing up the mechanics too much . As long as you don't go on tilt that one day I actually got frustrated at the dice rolls.

moths posted:

You're lucky it's a supers game! Because this actually happens with superhero comics, and that's when titles get cancelled. You can either play it as a meta joke about staff-cuts at Whattacomic Publishing, or tell your players that they're starting the New Infinite Secret Crisis Wars Invasion arc and start piling up the bodies.
Noooo..... That is going to get my character killed somehow. I know it. :saddowns:
EDIT:
Im not saying that Talkc is that type of DM. Im just that inept.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jan 31, 2015

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Man, playing Darkest Dungeon is really making me want to play Torchbearer. :(

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Man, playing Darkest Dungeon is really making me want to play Torchbearer. :(

Holy poo poo, you got the game too? Dude, I was thinking the exact same thing: it so like torchbearer. Also, it's mad hard. Like, two of my people got loving slaughtered on the first mission and I had to retreat and come back. The ones who survived had SO MANY mental illnesses and traumas and that stuff is expensive to treat. Also, of course, the priest had to be praying when I got back and the Crusader has a condition where he can only destress through prayer.

That said, Jesters are so worth it. Due to necessity, I needed to take two in my party and it felt like easy mode...until I realized how much it sucked to not have a healer. Food only gets you so far. Actually, that said, healing is rigid. You don't get alot of it and you quickly feel spread thin in that dungeon after one or two fights.

Any idea how initiative works? I still don't get the turn order mechanic.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Covok posted:

Holy poo poo, you got the game too? Dude, I was thinking the exact same thing: it so like torchbearer. Also, it's mad hard. Like, two of my people got loving slaughtered on the first mission and I had to retreat and come back. The ones who survived had SO MANY mental illnesses and traumas and that stuff is expensive to treat. Also, of course, the priest had to be praying when I got back and the Crusader has a condition where he can only destress through prayer.

That said, Jesters are so worth it. Due to necessity, I needed to take two in my party and it felt like easy mode...until I realized how much it sucked to not have a healer. Food only gets you so far. Actually, that said, healing is rigid. You don't get alot of it and you quickly feel spread thin in that dungeon after one or two fights.
I am enjoying it (and I normally don't like intentionally hard games), but my biggest problem with the game right now is the lack of real healing, especially when one or two crits can utterly wreck your character.

The death spiral is amazing and frustrating at the same time. I had one of my Vestals get killed, which did enough stress to drive my Highwayman insane, and his babblings about how they were all going to die drove another character insane.

quote:

Any idea how initiative works? I still don't get the turn order mechanic.
It's based on speed with some randomness and is rerolled every turn, but you can't see the turn order and the devs have already said they're not going to make it visible.

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

It actually plays like the original version only less buggy and with content.
I loved Hellgate: London to pieces until I realized that the enemies respawned if you waited around too long--like if you, for example, played a sniper who just enjoyed killing everything without it being able to get to you, which took much longer than being a berserking idiot who just ran into everything. :( So somehow I doubt my biggest problem (said respawning) is fixed. IF IT IS, THOUGH, OH MAN, that game was so much potential fun

Also it is February

If I did not already have a stickied thread I would go post the apocalypse myself

Edit: Also being preemptively banned from Pathfinder Online is kind of irritating. Even though I have been 1,000,000% anti-griefing for the entirety of my gaming life, I now want to join a stealth Goon group to go ruin that game someday. (Though only because they apparently do want intrigue and player-versus-player insanity and are just shooting themselves in the foot by trying to ban the Internet's best gaming antagonists)

Dr. Quarex fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Feb 1, 2015

OtspIII
Sep 22, 2002

Quarex posted:

Edit: Also being preemptively banned from Pathfinder Online is kind of irritating. Even though I have been 1,000,000% anti-griefing for the entirety of my gaming life, I now want to join a stealth Goon group to go ruin that game someday. (Though only because they apparently do want intrigue and player-versus-player insanity and are just shooting themselves in the foot by trying to ban the Internet's best gaming antagonists)

I'd be surprised if goons are banned. I'm assuming they meant that they'd shut down big organizations dedicated to griefing, especially if they end up being large enough to dominate the server (which is pretty common for goon guilds). I'm still not sure how they'd actually judge that, and think it's probably a really bad idea for a game that's meant to be all about player-player interactions, but there's no way that SA membership is grounds for banning.

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Ettin
Oct 2, 2010

Quarex posted:

Also it is February

New thread here!

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