Kwyndig posted:

And ones are sill automatic failures!

In unrelated health news, never get a uretral stent if you can help it. I've been peeing blood and in pain since Friday, and that's considered a best case scenario for my situation.

So drink plenty of water kiddos.

paradoxGentleman posted:

Can someone remind me what has monte cook accomplished to be considered a tg personality
I know he did a world of darkness thing, what was up with that?

paradoxGentleman posted:

Can someone remind me what has monte cook accomplished to be considered a tg personality

gradenko_2000 posted:

Most of his cred comes from being on the senior design team for D&D 3rd Edition.

gradenko_2000 posted:

He's "popular" partially because the bar to become a "personality" in the RPG industry just isn't that high.

ProfessorCirno posted:

EDIT: On these forums, his bigger claim to fame is talking big poo poo about INNOVATING THE INDUSTRY and then rolling out mechanics that are decades old and claiming he totally invented them, and then doing them real lovely because he's terrified of leaving his d20/D&D/simulationist design fetish behind.

My Lovely Horse posted:

That's right, wasn't he the one who wrote a long column about a new gameplay mechanic, still in early stages but promising as an idea, and you could call it suchandsuch, and it was clearly a very basic 4E mechanic down to the name?

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. Keep high-DC checks for locations where the PCs would expect important things to be well hidden—and well defended.

Alternatively, use logic in the placement of your traps (see Chapter 6 for more about trap philosophy). Just as a PC isn’t likely to fill his home with pitfalls and spring-loaded arrows, so too do dungeon dwellers keep their living areas easy to get around in. Reserve traps for defending places ordinary denizens aren’t likely to go, such as inside a treasure vault, or in front of defensive emplacements. The PCs won’t have to waste time looking for traps in mundane locations. Springing an unexpected trap can be fun—but avoid the temptation to do it more than rarely, or constant searching will again become the default.

My Lovely Horse posted:

That's right, wasn't he the one who wrote a long column about a new gameplay mechanic, still in early stages but promising as an idea, and you could call it suchandsuch, and it was clearly a very basic 4E mechanic down to the name?

quote:

I’m a dreamer. I’ve had a lot of dreams. But for twenty years, two dreams of mine have stuck with me, no
matter what else I was doing or what I was working on. Projects came and went, but these two dreams
always hovered in the background.

The first was a roleplaying game system where players got to decide how much effort they wanted to put into
any given action, and that decision would help determine whether their action would succeed or fail. This would
be a simple but elegant system where sustained damage and physical exertion drew from the same resource (so
as you became wounded, you could do less, and as you became exhausted, you were easier to take down). Where
your willpower and your mental “power points” were the same thing, and as you drew on your mental resources,
your ability to stave off mental attacks waned. And where it was all so integrated into the character that it was easy
to process and keep track of. But most of all, I dreamed of a game system that was designed from the ground up
to be played the way people actually played games, and to be run the way that game masters really ran them.

The second dream that stuck with me was a world that fused science fiction and fantasy, but not in the usual
mixed-genre sort of way. Instead, it was a place that felt like fantasy but was actually science fiction. Or perhaps it
felt like science fiction but was actually fantasy. Could I achieve both at once? The well-known quote from Sir Arthur
C. Clarke that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” seemed to lie at the heart of
this concept. In my mind, I envisioned strangely garbed priests chanting well-rehearsed prayers and invocations,
using sacred instruments and making precise gestures, but then we realize that the instruments are technological
in nature, and some of the gestures are actually fingers playing over buttons or sections of a touchscreen...

quote:

Powerful dweomers infuse Jabel Shammar, making it impossible for mortal magic to affect or damage the outer walls in any way, including bypassing them with teleport, incorporeality, or divination spells like scrying. Using a spell like commune to find out anything about the interior is also impossible—even the gods cannot look inside. This effect is only one-way, from the outside in. Thus, one can teleport out of a tower or scry someone in Ptolus from within the confines of the fortress.

The outer walls and doors remain similarly immune to brute force; they cannot be harmed physically. None of this affects summoning creatures into the fortress by forces or casters within the fortress. Summoning something out of Jabel Shammar is impossible, though, as is summoning something into the fortress when the summoner stands outside its walls.

None of this is true of the interior walls, which have their own unique characteristics in each tower. However, note that no walls, ceilings, or floors in Jabel Shammar (except in the sub-levels) are actually stone, although most appear to be. Thus, spells like passwall, stone shape, and phase door do not work on them.

Each individual tower is distinct from the others in this regard. One cannot teleport or scry, for example, from the interior of one tower to another, although from one room to another in the same tower such magic functions normally.

Unless stated otherwise, doors are made of adamantine and are one inch thick. They have a hardness of 20, 40 hit points, and a break DC of 35. They are not locked unless so stated in the individual locale descriptions.

Windows in the outer walls are opaque black from the outside and function the same as the walls they are set into. However, a pervasive magic keeps all chambers in the towers (except the dungeons) lit in a shadowy illumination. No spell, item, or effect short of the direct intervention of a deity can brighten the lighting here. Darkness spells can make it darker, however.

Unless otherwise stated in this chapter, assume that all magical effects of the fortress of Jabel Shammar have a caster level of 25th for the purposes of dispel magic and spell resistance. The Dread One was incredibly powerful.

quote:

While classes like rogues are tailor-made for urban adventuring, DMs will discover that spellcasters truly shine in city adventures, which usually give the players far more control over when and where they will face encounters. This means that spellcasters are more likely to expend their resources all at once rather than conserving them. Urban adventures, as opposed to dungeon adventures, are far less likely to have multiple dangerous encounters in rapid succession in one day.

The strength of fighters, rogues, barbarians, and so forth is that they have no expendable resource; a fighter can swing his sword as many times as he wishes over the course of one day, and as long as his hit point total doesn’t get too low, he can handle many encounters, one after another, without difficulty. The fact that this kind of adventuring does not happen often in a city virtually negates this strength, however.

The DM needs to remain aware of this issue. Occasionally creating urban adventures with multiple encounters, or mixing in more dungeon-style scenarios with the urban adventures, helps restore balance. Some DMs may want to offer treasure that gives the “nonexpendable resource” classes interesting, nonstandard abilities. For example, say the fighter’s cool magic sword is made of stone and can cast wall of stone once per day. Now the fighter can take advantage of the same situational benefits (fewer encounters) as the group’s spellcasters, even if in a small way.

Zereth posted:

Is there anything to prevent the old trick of "let's just take the doors off the hinges and carry them out"?

gradenko_2000 posted:

On the one hand, Ptolus did sort of illustrate how Cook had a fairly good understanding of what it meant to play in 3rd Edition, and what a world taken to that system's logical conclusions would look like.

For example, the high-level dungeon's description of its walls and environs is very "Wizard-proofed":

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Monte Cook made the worst version of the World of Darkness to date. It's the equivalent of the XBOX 360 Shadowrun game in terms of ports but less than mediocre in execution. It's like a combination of STALKER and some lovely setting where vampires, mages, and werewolves are just types of people possessed by demons. I might be wrong about the mages but that's what it came down to. He is incapable of thinking outside of his own box.



This poo poo is ridiculous by the way and probably the $190 price tag.

SunAndSpring posted:

4d10's?! Monte, you're getting dangerously off the rails here.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

This poo poo is ridiculous by the way and probably the $190 price tag.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Monte Cook made the worst version of the World of Darkness to date. It's the equivalent of the XBOX 360 Shadowrun game in terms of ports but less than mediocre in execution. It's like a combination of STALKER and some lovely setting where vampires, mages, and werewolves are just types of people possessed by demons. I might be wrong about the mages but that's what it came down to. He is incapable of thinking outside of his own box.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Good. loving. Lord.

Man, when your RPG has a special card-holding hand statue and a ~secret envelope~, you really need to take a step back and think about what you're doing with your life.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

On an unrelated note: I finally discovered a dice roller that isn't blocked at work. What'd be a nice PBP to run?

Swagger Dagger posted:

edit: Pendragon

Haystack posted:

Ars Magica

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

This poo poo is ridiculous by the way and probably the $190 price tag.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Good. loving. Lord.

Man, when your RPG has a special card-holding hand statue and a ~secret envelope~, you really need to take a step back and think about what you're doing with your life.

gradenko_2000 posted:

TBF 2d10 is still a drat sight less swingy than 1d20.

On an unrelated note: I finally discovered a dice roller that isn't blocked at work. What'd be a nice PBP to run?

quote:

But consider this: what if a game group recognized all the hard work a GM put into prepping a game, teaching the rules, and all the rest, and chipped in to help pay for the games? Or, in some cases what if the non-GMs did some legwork, found a cool new game they wanted to play, bought it together, and presented it as a gift to the GM. Imagine—just imagine—the incentive to plan and run a great game a GM would have if his or her group did such a thing? And imagine the message that sends: “You’re a great GM, and always provide a lot of fun for us. We bought what looks like a cool game. Will you run it for us?” I know I’d be honored if a game group did such a thing for me. And I think I speak for most GMs in that regard.

Now, this can go for adventures, sourcebooks, and accessories as well. Hell, it can go for the pizza and soda and snacks. But honestly, because of that collector mentality that so many gamers have, I can think of no better way to make a meaningful gesture of appreciation to a great GM than to buy (or pay for) the games and materials that help the whole group have fun. It’s a group activity, so why not make it a group expense?

Your GM is worth it.

Swagger Dagger posted:

The Numenera fanbase will fund it really quickly.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

This poo poo is ridiculous by the way and probably the $190 price tag.

NGDBSS posted:

That poo poo is worth, what, $100 maybe? I know that I've purchased board games for that price with more complex parts than this.

Haystack posted:

loving Cthulu Wars was $150

NGDBSS posted:

Hey, if Monte Cook wants to put out a boxed set with a bunch of specialized minis, then more power to him.

Unfortunately what he's instead selling are mostly special pieces of paper.

gradenko_2000 posted:

TBF 2d10 is still a drat sight less swingy than 1d20.

On an unrelated note: I finally discovered a dice roller that isn't blocked at work. What'd be a nice PBP to run?

grassy gnoll posted:

What is it? Orokos doesn't actually work here, and Invisible Castle's dead, so I'm in the market for something similar.