|
D&D scratches an itch of mine that used to be filled in by raiding in an MMO, except I can skip all of the dumb bullshit like leveling up, random drops, needing a "balanced" party composition, grinding, gating, and so on and so forth. The game is interesting right off the bat, without having to wait until you reach that point that the developers put down as "ok, NOW the real game starts" Favorite edition is a toss-up between B/X and 4e
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2015 12:31
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:42 |
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:For 13th Age, what is the escalation dice and what are icons? Beyond what's already been said about what the Escalation Die does, the intent behind it is 1. It speeds up combat - baseline to-hit chance is about 60%, so a +6 from the Escalation Die is going to make you hit 90-95% of the time, removing that phase of combat where people keep whiffing, especially when they're whiffing long after the outcome of the combat is already decided. 2. It discourages the 'alpha strike' - that is, unleashing your most powerful attacks in the first few rounds. The idea is that players are going to wait until the Escalation Die has a higher bonus (or until they really need to use their big moves) before unleashing their big moves, so that they're more guaranteed that those attacks will hit It's also worth noting that the Escalation Die is supposed to either not increment or even decrement if the players do not engage in combat, so you can't just "turtle up" or pass on turns and wait for the bonus to go up before you start attacking. If violence isn't being dealt, the Die stays put.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2015 05:41
|
|
|
It's just another of those D&D sacred cows to have combat based around hitting or not hitting, rather than always hitting, but hitting for lots or hitting for less* * and/or that the ability to avoid getting hit should be in the realm of the players, and even that it should be a controlled ability that you can tap into when it's tactically important for you to not get hit
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2015 08:53
|
|
|
SunAndSpring posted:Man, I have no idea what setting I wanna run next time I GM a d20 game. Dark Sun is cool because I like deserts and survivalist stuff, Ravenloft is nice because it's got some decent spooky stuff, and Glorantha is great because it's super detailed and has so much variety. Nentir Vale
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2015 19:00
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:I'm not any kind of expert on sandbox play, but doesn't the book explain how it's expected to be run? There doesn't seem to be a lot of OSR PbPs in here in general, besides that one DCC game and that very long-running AD&D 1e game
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2015 01:26
|
|
|
Galaga Galaxian posted:Its a perfect match, a bad MMO for a bad game. Whoah hey DDO isn't spectacular but it's 10 times the game PFO is and actually manages to be a somewhat accurate representation of what D&D is in some respects.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2015 17:45
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:It was a pretty boring waste of the Eberron license though. 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2015 18:40
|
|
|
I didn't think anything was wrong with the Sunset Invasion DLC for CK2, if that's at all comparable. I say go for it, but you don't want to and they wonder where it is, just be upfront about it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2015 20:00
|
|
|
Tome of Battle question: I know that the Warblade was intended to be a direct replacement for the Core Fighter, but was the Crusader supposed to replace the Paladin? And was the Swordsage supposed to replace anyone in particular? I've only gone through two of the disciplines so far, but I don't think anything's going to top Finishing Move and Strike of Perfect Clarity.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2015 17:37
|
|
|
Their general manager, Alexander Macris, (and possibly other writers) is a Gamergater, and they've engaged in disreputable practices such as plugging Macris' D&D retroclone on The Escapist without disclosing the relationship.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2015 16:07
|
|
|
inklesspen posted:Specifically, I'd like to talk about how game and setting designers can construct things to make it more likely the PCs will need to broker a difficult peace between King Ulfbright and the orc tribes instead of taking a commission from King Ulfbright to slay the orc tribes. A good first start is to strip "Always Chaotic Evil" and such language, but I think there's more to be done than that; most elfgame RPGs have more pagecount devoted to waging war than waging peace. If it's a combat-focused game such as D&D and the likes, the out-of-combat interaction portion really boils down to setting up who, where, what and when the party engages in a fight. It begins with the GM not describing the conflict as a irretrievable mess, and with King Ulfbright giving a directive to find a way to end the war, instead of killin' dem Orcs yo. And the root of the conflict and/or what the Orcs want as part of the truce has to be structured in a way such that the players will have to fight something else. Even if the Orcs are willing to engage in diplomacy straight-up without a fetch quest for a McGuffin, at the 11th hour the party still has to deal with a General Chang figure, that sort of thing. inklesspen posted:I don't think people have to live in a city with buildings and walls and jails for them to be people. I think what he meant was not necessarily that you have to depict the Orcs as living in cities, but just that if the Orcs aren't immediately and overtly hostile right off the bat, then the players are going to want to try to talk to them, if not the Orcs outright trying to call for negotiations or a truce to begin with.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2015 05:36
|
|
|
Reene posted:While I sympathize with the anti-murderhobo sentiment and support any attempt to subvert this, so many games are built around that paradigm that if you want to have a game that isn't about murderhobos it's something you need to tip your players off to ahead of time. I can't count how many times I've tried and failed to utilize diplomacy in a game (usually D&D or something like it) only for the GM to railroad it into a combat encounter because by god that's what I prepared and that's what we're doing. Maybe this is just me, but I don't really consider murderhobo-ism to be "we use violence to solve all our quests" so much as "we use violence against anything and everything, such against shopkeepers to take their stuff, because as long as we win fights against the town guard we should be okay" I mean, it's D&D - if you can't kill your way to the objective personally, and you can't skill your way to the objective, you find someone with the right skill for it, he's gonna ask you to commit violence in exchange for his services, and everyone moves forward. The creative part is setting up a campaign such that instead of the players killing a faction as soon as they encounter them, they get to pick which factions they want to kill. You're still doing a combat encounter, by god, but you're shuffling around the context and the circumstances. What if the players WANT to parlay with the Mongol Horde? Fine, but that means they need to kill the Hungarian footsoldiers instead.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2015 10:00
|
|
|
I was reading through 3.5's Dungeonscape supplement when I came across this passage:quote:Automatic Searches: Dungeon adventures can be grindingly slow if the PCs make Search checks to scour every last inch of the place. You can keep things moving along by assuming that, as experienced adventurers, the party searches as it travels unless circumstances dictate otherwise. The searching specialist (usually the rogue) simply takes 10 as the PCs explore the dungeon, which is enough to reveal basic traps, hiding places, and obstacles. But never abuse this arrangement by jacking up the Search DCs of traps and hidden items. If the players start to suspect they are missing things, their characters will just revert to frequent Search checks. This book was released in Feb 2007, and closely matches the modification to skill checks that was previewed for 4th Edition in Dec 2007: quote:Another idea that’s been bandied about lately is converting some skills to passive “defense” values. Spot and Listen are good examples. Telling the players to roll Spot checks, first of all, tells them that something is up. Also, if you have everybody roll every time there’s something to see, there’s a high probability at least one party member will see it just due to a lucky roll. Skills like this might work better as passive values: Every player character could have a value equal to 10 + skill bonus. Then, when there’s something to see, the Dungeon Master can compare the DC to notice it to the player characters’ “take 10” numbers. So far in playtests, no one has batted an eye and it’s easier on the Dungeon Master—and on your d20. And then of course the final product we got in 4th Edition's PHB in Jun 2008: quote:Passive Checks Along with a space in your character sheet specifically noting down your Passive Perception Score as 10 + modifiers What I haven't been able to figure out is where Monte Cook fits into all of this. I've heard it repeated several times that he said something about passive perception that was really out-of-place, but I cannot find the original article anymore. As near as I can tell, it was because he started claiming he "invented" passive perception years after 4e's release, and that it wasn't even in keeping with d20 mechanics?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2015 13:15
|
|
|
Finding out that the fantasy setting I'm playing in is actually Dominic Deegan is a surefire way to make sure I'd set fire to everything at the drop of a hat.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2015 18:38
|
|
|
Is there a bell-curved alternative to the d100, similar to 2d10 or 3d6 as a bell-curved alternative to the d20?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2015 07:03
|
|
|
So AD&D 1e just had its third book re-released, I bought nWOD last month, this is coming out and I hear a new Rifts is also a thing? I'm pretty stoked at being able to play through all these classic games. It's like Trad Games GOG.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2015 20:27
|
|
|
Lichtenstein posted:One thing that has always bugged me is fantasy RPG books having no clue what to do with plain humans and going with "uh they breed a lot and are very versatile. A human can turn from fisherman to lumberjack and then to a pikeman like it ain't no thing!" gently caress you, all one needs to respec into a medieval woodcutter is moderate muscle mass, how come all these super-swole or super-smart races can't figure this poo poo out? While the actual mechanical representation of D&D 4th Edition Humans was still mostly bog-standard "they have a bonus feat and can allocate their stat bonuses to wherever", they tried to do something interesting with them lore-wise: they share a world with a bunch of other races that just about live forever compared to a human's lifespan, and so humans are super-aware of their mortality. That kicks their ambition into overdrive and shapes their aesthetics. Their armor is piecemeal and mismatched, and many either wear beards or just shave their hair completely because nobody has the time to care about matching outfits or personal vanity. Their art is mostly representational: they like tattoos and flags and standards and family crests and heralds so that they have something to be remembered by after they're gone. Even the "humans have a broad range of skills/powers/feats" is justified in the form of humans being dilettantes across many trades/disciplines/professions because they don't have a hundred years to spare to study to become a Wizard.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2015 15:01
|
|
|
They just launched a UI redesign. Except as far as I can tell they just changed their front-page - I didn't notice any significant difference within the in-game interface.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2015 21:11
|
|
|
For those of you that played in a game where a character used Vow of Poverty, was the "cannot really own a lot of things and should give all gold earned to charity" an issue? I ask because I made a comparison lately between it and Pathfinder's Inherent Bonuses. Here's Vow of Poverty in its final form: AC +10 Weapon Enhancement +5 Deflection +3 Resistance +3 Ability Scores +8/+6/+4/+2 Natural Armor +2 DR 10/Evil 10 bonus feats Other features: Endure Elements, Sustenance, Mind Shielding, Greater Sustenance, Freedom of Movement, Regeneration, True Seeing, Energy Resistance 15 And here's Inherent Bonuses: AC +7 Weapon Enhancement +5 Deflection +5 Resistance +5 Ability Scores +6/+6/+4/+4/+2/+2 Natural Armor +5 So it's pretty clear to me that Vow of Poverty was supposed to be "you want to not own any magic items for the sake of a certain roleplaying theme, but since the mechanics demand that you have certain bonuses from magic items to keep up with the math, we'll just say gain it naturally" Same reasoning as with Inherent Bonuses being fully fleshed-out in 4th Edition Dark Sun: give the players the numerical bonuses they'd normally get from magic items to make up for the fact that you don't want to run Dark Sun with the players decked out in cool swag. And from a straight comparison Vow of Poverty is even stronger, but possibly to account for the fact that it assumes absolutely 0 wealth-per-level, as opposed to PF only cutting it in half. So anyway, my question is: was the background intent of Vow of Poverty obvious at the time? Or did people struggle with ... I think I read somewhere that the Monk couldn't carry around a torch or had to roleplay out some convoluted system of transfer to accommodate the fact that he wasn't supposed to "own" the torch or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2015 11:01
|
|
|
quote:http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/60714/Slasher-Flick
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 19:10
|
|
|
RolePlaying Public Radio did an actual play of it where they reskinned it into an 80s action movie, but you should get a good feel for how the system plays. Apparently they also did an actual play where they played it as straight horror, but I haven't listened to this one.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 19:26
|
|
|
Yeah that session was more 80s action movie than Kung Fury itself
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2015 08:33
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:D&D 5th Edition by way of Eoris Essence: I have no position on the game itself, but more character sheets should be like this.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2015 04:50
|
|
|
I'm the "FaPs 2"
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2015 20:46
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:That the big number one German ttg is the equivalent of Fantasy Truck Driver Sim is 1000% fitting, I think. But is there a TRPG equivalent of Euro Truck Simulator??? EDIT: Now I'm wondering if Car Wars' rules are actually realistic enough that you could pull of a normal days driving through an autobahn heading for the Ausfahrt
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2015 16:03
|
|
|
EYE Divine Cybermancy was good in the same way that Rifts was good: they just threw everything in there and you look past all the flaws because  look at all this crazy stuff
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2015 02:42
|
|
|
Part of the reason why people resort to violence so quickly in D&D-esque games is because the setting and its assumed trappings do a lot lot lot to make it relatively consequence-free. What I'm getting from that quote is that you're no longer playing such a game and it's no longer in such a setting, so you need to change your perspective, because you will learn that killing other people will very very quickly limit your options, even if the GM isn't siccing the 21st Century panopticon on you just to be a dick.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2015 15:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:42 |
|
|
Are there any traditional fantasy/D&D-type games that are specifically designed for or would work well with just 2 players+a DM? I know pretty much every edition of D&D ever has assumed 4 to 5 players, and I'd like something with a bit more crunch than Dungeon World.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2015 21:05
|
|