TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

fosborb posted:

LOL last month a friend asked me: I have a deck of cards. 2 are worth 10 points, 10 are worth 3, 20 are worth 1. What's the average value if I draw 2 cards from a full deck?

And I was like oh yeah super easy to build in Excel. Don't even need vba...

4.375 points

38.31% chance you get 2 points
40.32% chance you get 4 points
9.07% chance you get 6 points
8.06% chance you get 11 points
4.03% chance you get 13 points
0.20% chance you get 20 points

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 19:15

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:29

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Wizards only keeps D&D around because they want to keep the copyright fresh. It does nothing for them other than get them video and computer game royalties and the profits from selling more novels about Drizzt Do'urden.

I think Hasbro regards D&D as a potentially valuable nerd nostalgia brand, in much the same way that a largely-forgotten series of 1980s robot toys turned out to be the keystones of a multi-billion dollar movie franchise 25 years later. Keeping it around and in-print in a nerd nostalgia format (5e, plus those reprints of earlier corebooks and classic adventures) is probably the smart move.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 18:08

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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WotC tried multiple times internally to develop Magic/D&D hybrid products. They all got shelved because no one could make a business case for them. The Magic team's time is better spent making Magic products for Magic players (current and potential) instead of muddying up their IP trying to bring in D&D players (who, if they haven't already started playing Magic, are unlikely to begin playing now), and D&D's team is better off making D&D products instead of pounding square pegs into round holes for an IP that doesn't map particularly well to D&D's setting and play assumptions anyway. And the business case has only gotten worse over the years, as Magic gets bigger and bigger and D&D gets smaller and smaller.

Magic is growing unstoppable dynamo. Why muddle that up by mixing in a fading, backwards-looking IP?

# ¿ Mar 3, 2015 23:52

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Plague of Hats posted:

To RPGSite's credit, no one gave a poo poo about his drat fool antics. Plus all his annoying "quirks" that RPGnet somehow hasn't perma-banned him (again) for, though I probably would have held my nose on that.

He just picked up a long probation over at RPGnet and the rather curt and blunt ban message shows that even RPGnet's mods are getting tired of his routine.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2015 02:11

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Evil Mastermind posted:

Especially with a major part of the fanbase not liking change or New Things.

I've had Fate on the mind a lot lately, and it's interesting to see the reactions of Fate fans to new editions (SotC to DF to Fate Core) versus the D&D fanbase's reactions to the end of 3e.

FATE fans aren't trying to relive the glory days of their teenaged youth when they played FATE all the time and read the FATE rulebooks cover-to-cover so often the binding fell apart. FATE fans think there's a great idea at the heart of the game that hasn't quite come into full focus yet, and they're excited at seeing it improve, while D&D fans believe that perfection was achieved in 1979 or 2003 or something and everything since then has been ill-thought out muddling of the true D&D experience.

dwarf74 posted:

Some dude made a thread where he said, "I'm losing interest because digital support isn't there and there are like no releases." And man... He's getting bitched out for it over like 60 pages.

That whole thread is great. No OGL or supplements or online tools? Hmmph, it's a good thing I'm smart and creative enough to play D&D without needing all that stuff :smug:

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 21:39

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Covok posted:

As someone who has never played rolemaster, care to explain?

1) Monte Cook got his start writing and editing Rolemaster supplements
2) Some Rolemaster features (especially move-in-different-armors as a purchasable class skill) got baked into D&D3E pretty good

The core 3E mechanic (die roll + mods vs. difficulty-adjusted target number) is from Ars Magica (by Jon Tweet, one of the other 3E designers)

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 22:43

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

Edit: I remember it being absolute garbage, too.

RM was perfectly fine as a 1980s D&D-only-more-complicated fantasy RPG.

There's no reason anyone should have anything to do with it now, of course.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 22:44

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Slimnoid posted:

Well that sure as gently caress explains a lot.

Doesn't it? He edited the RM Companion books, which were compilations of additional rules and classes and tables and crits and subsystems, because core RM just wasn't complicated enough, y'know?

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 23:03

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Kai Tave posted:

It's also full of hilarious, half-baked implementations of things that other games have done before and better, like its "GM intrusions" being an awkward not-quite-compel ala Fate and how certain character backgrounds do things like "pick one of your fellow PCs, whenever you botch an attack it winds up hitting them instead."

Numenara is exactly what you'd expect from someone who cut his teeth doing Rolemaster add-ons trying to make their own FATE/HeroQuest/PbTA-style narrative game, combined with a rules-grognard's understanding of the writing of Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance.

The FATAL & Friends thread writeup was hilarious, and worth tracking down.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 23:38

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Night10194 posted:

Imagine if every individual element present was executed in the most boring and cliche way possible. Then you have Golarion, world of Shining Paladin God, Angry Devil God, Fantasy America, Fantasy Nazis (Who Are Totally Neutral And Just Misunderstood And Have Cool Uniforms), etc.

I'm pretty sure there is also Fantasy Egypt (with pyramids and Pharaohs and sphnixes) and Fantasy Japan (with samurai and ninja and curved swords that get special bonuses) and Fantasy Vikings and Fantasy Celts and a Fantasy Africa (with ooga-booga witch doctors and all that) and pretty much every other Fantasy Analogue culture somewhere in Golarion.

Oh, and Fantasy Gypsies. Can't forget the Fantasy Gypsies.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 17:45

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Covok posted:

Also, what were kobolds before the whole "dragon servant" things?

They were basically the lowest-tier humanoid monsters in the game. Below ogres, below bugbears or hobgoblins or goblins, below troglodytes, below lizard-men, below sahuagin, below orcs, there were kobolds. They had terrible stats, terrible treasure drops, and I think they were only non-gimmick (i.e. rot grub and suchlike) monster in the AD&D MM 1E to have less than one hit die. They were kind of a running punchline in the game and their only 'hook' was how much they sucked at everything. There were various efforts made to make them more interesting or threatening - in 2E they were made masters of traps and ambushes and sneakily ganging up of adventurers, and in 3E they got made into li'l dragonlings.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2015 22:33

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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There was a alt-history RPG (FVLMINATA) from the 1990s set in the Roman Republic where initiative was determined by characters' social standing, with highest-status characters going first, which was neat and thematic and oh did it make grognards howl.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 14:22

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Cyphoderus posted:

They've just announced a Dying Earth RPG bundle of holding. Is it worth it? It looks real interesting and I'm a fan of Robin Laws' work but I'm afraid it might fall in the Feng Shui trap of presenting cool ideas in an ambitious but ultimately poor system.

It's superb, and wonderfully captures everything about Vance's prose and worldview. It's really three games in one - a low-power game of scam artists getting into trouble over and over again (the Cugel stories), a mid-power game of grim adventurers exploring a weird sword-and-sorcery world (the original DE short stories), and a high-level game of dimension-hopping politics among bitchy archmages (Rhiallto-level); the system is tuned for the first framework and needs some kludging to really work for the next two.

It might be my favorite RPG of all time.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 21:08

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Another example of how cards carry more information: if you roll a 17 on dice, you need to look at a table to see that it means "block". If you draw a card, instead of just saying "17" and making you look up on a table to see what it means, the card says "block". Even better, the card can have the rules for blocking on them, or maybe even you can put the card on something to signal a status effect. Cards are a really good and underused design space for RPGs.

There are a some problems with cards:
1) Any time there are cards, there are strategies that involve card-counting, which tends to make strategy dependent on tracking the appearance of important cards. Deciding to press your advantage against the monster because you know that all the "reinforcement" cards are already in the discard pile is some bullshit.
2) Lord help you if you lose one of those custom cards. If your Event Deck has 104 cards and you count only 102...well, now what? Losing a D10 means spend another buck or two at the Game Cave the next time you visit (or just using your D20), while losing cards out of your custom game deck is a tougher challenge. There are ways around this (put some blank cards in each deck, number the cards and put a full manifest in the game box and on the website so you can write your own replacement card, etc.) and I think a generation after CCGs were introduced have taught gamers to be more careful with their cards.
3) Online play gets trickier. Again, not insurmountable,.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 23:44

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Serf posted:

I will say that the thing that finally got me to stop sitting around looking at RPG books and run one was WotC and Penny Arcade doing that podcast.

That's a nice compare/contrast between the marketing of 4E and 5E.

4E: Let's do a joint series of videos and podcasts with one of nerd culture's biggest institutions
5E: Let's bring in the "D&D With Pornstars" guy and that expat from Paraguay who rants about The Swine

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 21:25

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Alien Rope Burn posted:

I was never a fan of Call of Cthulhu d20, but I never understood that hate for it given that it's not a vast shift from BRP.

A lot of CoC fans are snobby purists about their game and how different it is from base, pandering, lowest-common-denominator-appealing hack-n-slash junk like D&D, and so the idea of a version of the game built on D&D rules and being compatible with D&D was an abomination. Oh, just what we needed, rules for fighting Nyarlathotep with +5 swords and wands of fireballs :rolleyes:

.

Which was utterly stupid, because good ol' CoC was originally built on the hack-n-slash fantasy adventuring rules used for RuneQuest and Stormbringer, and you can see vestiges of its pulp fantasy wargaming roots with things like %impale and differentiating between kicks/punches/headbutts.

Just as there are lots of grognards who define themselves by the fact that they play D&D, there are lots of grogs who define themselves by the fact that they don't play D&D.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 14:47

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Helical Nightmares posted:

Toon?

Edit: Bunnies and Burrows

B&B isn't funny, it's pretty much Watership Down: The Unofficial RPG Adaptation.

Toon is a good pick, as are Paranoia and TFOS. I'd add Murphy's World, HOL, Tales From The Floating Vagabond, and Ghostbusters to the list as well.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 05:05

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Helical Nightmares posted:

Isn't Bunnies and Burrows the GURPS game with Bunnies wielding chainsaws against dogs?

That was a boardgame called Wabbit Wampage by Pacesetter Games

There was even a sequel (Wabbit's Wevenge)

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 05:10

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Covok posted:

The mine has run dry. The reason it was all ugly poo poo was because there isn't really that much more DM-Mask-type posts out there. We've been mining for years, there is only so much funny grog to take from the internet.

It was running dry long before the Horrible People decided to declare war on decency. I don't remember how many "4e is WoW lol" posts my eyes skipped over in the original thread after the first few dozen.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 22:56

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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DalaranJ posted:

The thing to keep in mind is that BESM was really unplayably bad. It was a game that wanted to be FUDGE but for some reason was designed like GURPS.

The point-based build-an-effect system meant that BESM was trying to be a lighter-math version of Champions/Hero, not GURPS.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 06:27

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:29

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
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Davin Valkri posted:

Doesn't it refer more generically to any sort of border or marking thereof? I don't think pale is meant as an adjective here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

quote:

The archaic English term pale is derived from the Latin word palus, a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 18:26

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG March Chat Thread: Happy Saint Cuthbert's Day