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hyphz posted:The trick with Tomb of Horrors is that there's a bunch of versions of it and just to confuse everyone some of the later versions were printed in the style of the earlier ones. The later ones generally added saving throws to traps that originally didn't have them, or replaced instant death with damage. oh, which one? i'm talking about the green 1e edition that i've run a couple of times, which did have saves for some traps but not for others (generally if you ignore the dm counting down from ten as something visibly prepares to explode or crush you). I just think the meme status of ToH as meatgrinder has obscured how clever it actually is, and it's worth getting a party and some disposable characters and having a go 
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Jan 3, 2023 22:54
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sebmojo posted:it's also the most combat centric of all the modules, I think
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Jan 3, 2023 23:05
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sebmojo posted:oh, which one? i'm talking about the green 1e edition that i've run a couple of times, which did have saves for some traps but not for others (generally if you ignore the dm counting down from ten as something visibly prepares to explode or crush you). I'm not entirely sure about this, but it's a suspicion I've had about leaving the prison area and being attacked by multiple animated weapons and shields, which can't be hit without a weapon, having lost all of yours. Thing is, in most more rules defined versions of D&D you can just run past them.
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Jan 3, 2023 23:20
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hyphz posted:I'm not entirely sure about this, but it's a suspicion I've had about leaving the prison area and being attacked by multiple animated weapons and shields, which can't be hit without a weapon, having lost all of yours. Thing is, in most more rules defined versions of D&D you can just run past them. I think if you can trick or rules lawyer your way around a trap then that's completely fair game. In that case, you can run past them, there's nothing saying they won't chase you though. However if you then threw up a wall of stone behind you, then well done, you beat the trap. Also nothing stopping you teleporting or dimension dooring out, or using passwall or something. Famously gygax allowed someone to put the crown of disintegration on the demilich
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Jan 4, 2023 00:20
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The Tomb of Horrors is perfectly doable, assuming you're willing to resort to the Robilar Technique, aka sending a literal army of hirelings in ahead of you to do all the lethal trial and error for you and/or just clog the traps with corpses until they break.
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Jan 4, 2023 00:40
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Asterite34 posted:The Tomb of Horrors is perfectly doable, assuming you're willing to resort to the Robilar Technique, aka sending a literal army of hirelings in ahead of you to do all the lethal trial and error for you and/or just clog the traps with corpses until they break. 
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Jan 4, 2023 00:53
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sebmojo posted:
And then edited the adventure to stop that working any more. :salty:
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Jan 4, 2023 02:04
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Thank you all! A buddy of mine ran Tomb of Horrors converted to 3.5 when we were in HS, and each player showed up with 5 characters that were put into a pile and if you died you just pulled the next character from the pile. I think there were a total of 5 deaths because we wanted to really explore things and weren't particularly cautious. I'll report back at some point with how things are going.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:03
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i've been stuck in GM Hell for a few years now and want to try finding people online to play with, how do folks generally go about that? i can pretty firmly rule out "get the people who have been my players to run something" as an option either because they're all booked with other games or have no interest in it. i saw there was a stickied thread but it seems to get like one post every month or two and it's just people posting their contact info and I have no clue if it actually leads to finding games.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:14
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Heliotrope posted:I don’t know if this is quite the right thread, but I’m looking into running a short Feng Shui 2e game. Not a one shot, maybe a couple sessions? I’ll be doing it over either PbP or Discord. I’m trying to do a modern day/Heroic Bloodshed story as suggested by the rules. Any threads discussing this system or people willing to talk in this thread about it with me? Would appreciate it a lot!
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Jan 4, 2023 03:15
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Speaking of, are there any suggested alterations to make to the 4e rendition, that you may have seen bandied about?
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Jan 4, 2023 03:16
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Countblanc posted:i've been stuck in GM Hell for a few years now and want to try finding people online to play with, how do folks generally go about that? i can pretty firmly rule out "get the people who have been my players to run something" as an option either because they're all booked with other games or have no interest in it. i saw there was a stickied thread but it seems to get like one post every month or two and it's just people posting their contact info and I have no clue if it actually leads to finding games. I know there was a quite active SA Tradgames Discord not too long ago, I'd call that a pretty decent place to go looking for new players that are likely to be reasonable people.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:19
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sebmojo posted:I have done just this and it is an absolute blast! Not precisely on topic but the 4e remake of Tamoachan is excellent
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Jan 4, 2023 03:22
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Countblanc posted:i've been stuck in GM Hell for a few years now and want to try finding people online to play with, how do folks generally go about that? i can pretty firmly rule out "get the people who have been my players to run something" as an option either because they're all booked with other games or have no interest in it. i saw there was a stickied thread but it seems to get like one post every month or two and it's just people posting their contact info and I have no clue if it actually leads to finding games. You could try the roll20 LFG feature.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:30
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How does one run a PbP game without like losing interest and giving up? All my PbP games go that way and I want to play Fabula Ultima and I don't have time for another discord game.
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Jan 4, 2023 04:13
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Countblanc posted:i've been stuck in GM Hell for a few years now and want to try finding people online to play with, how do folks generally go about that? i can pretty firmly rule out "get the people who have been my players to run something" as an option either because they're all booked with other games or have no interest in it. i saw there was a stickied thread but it seems to get like one post every month or two and it's just people posting their contact info and I have no clue if it actually leads to finding games. I've been primarily playing rpg's online for a while generally the places I have the most success as a player are on reddit /r/lfg and on roll20 lfg but usually you'll run into the problem of every dm getting dozens of applications and the fact that people online are super flaky.
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Jan 4, 2023 04:44
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mellonbread posted:A tour of the published adventures across the years will probably highlight the shift from "loot the dungeon" to "clear the dungeon" as the objective.
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Jan 4, 2023 06:04
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Siivola posted:That’d be a fascinating project. I was looking at old modules the other day and realized that lots of the classic adventures like Tsojcanth and the Giants series were run as official tournament games. Until then I’d thought Tomb of Horrors was some kind of a special case. The A series even had scoring rules, according to Wikipedia. Yeah that's where most the early adventures came from. They would premier them at Gencon as a tournament and then be like "and you can buy this adventure down on the floor."
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Jan 4, 2023 06:21
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Countblanc posted:i've been stuck in GM Hell for a few years now and want to try finding people online to play with, how do folks generally go about that? i can pretty firmly rule out "get the people who have been my players to run something" as an option either because they're all booked with other games or have no interest in it. i saw there was a stickied thread but it seems to get like one post every month or two and it's just people posting their contact info and I have no clue if it actually leads to finding games. Hang out in subreddits for specific systems that you'd like to play in. In my experience pretty much anything non-D&D has its own subreddit where people are always eager for a game as soon as someone starts attempting to organize one. A lot of the time the game itself and/or its subreddit will have an active Discord (like Delta Green's "A Night at the Opera" server) that is pretty active and makes it easier to find a game, even if it's just a pickup. /r/lfg is hit and miss imo. As a GM posting for an open game you'll usually get at least a couple bites, but rarely as just a player trying to join a running game. roll20 LFG is probably a bit better about that as most GM's will post their games up weeks in advance of the first session for applications, but those tend to have a poo poo ton of applicants. Unfortunately both of those have the issue of players often dropping quickly. I've joined a few games from LFG and so far only one of them has been good and memorable -- unfortunately a That Guy who joined later kinda sucked all the fun out of that one. Also occasionally you'll find a group in a non-TG space, but again usually this is easier if you remain in GM hell. Last year I ran a short campaign in a gaming discord, and I'm preparing to do another one for a different offsite SA server in the coming weeks. Usually you'll find people who are interested in at least trying something out.
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Jan 4, 2023 07:55
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Lemon-Lime posted:
So the basic gist of the game I'm going for is "The villain is a dangerous maverick cop who the PCs have decided to take down." There's a couple things I'm wondering about. 1) The cop is definitely going to be a Boss. I want him to be the hardest enemy, so I'm wondering if it's fine to make the other important enemies just Featured Foes with some Foe Shticks, or if I should have more Bosses for climatic fights. I don't think he needs to be an Uber-Boss since that seems it would make him too powerful. 2) I'm thinking of having the PC get some advances during the game, probably when they achieve an important goal. What would be a good amount for a short game? 3) Do the stats for vehicles work differently for enemies then PCs or am I reading the stats wrong? The example Features Foes in the book that have vehicles have lower stats for what's listed then what the section on vehicles gives. For example the Security Sports Utility Vehicle has Acceleration 6 / Handling 6 / Frame 7, but in several write ups it's listed as 3/5/6. hyphz posted:Just ban the Killer Archetype. It’s an exemplar of bad design. By bad design do you mean broken or just not fun to play? Covok posted:How does one run a PbP game without like losing interest and giving up? All my PbP games go that way and I want to play Fabula Ultima and I don't have time for another discord game. The person running it definitly needs to have interest and constantly update. It also helps to prod players and make sure they don't forget to post or see if they aren't sure what to do. Aside from that, I find it helps to get players who you've done PbP with before and you know will try to stick around.
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Jan 4, 2023 08:16
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your questions in here.
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You need to run a game and scenario where you can keep updating if one or more players don't respond in a timely manner. Otherwise your update schedule is pegged to the slowest player, which causes a death spiral where everyone else gets tired of waiting and loses interest.
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Jan 4, 2023 08:32
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Heliotrope posted:By bad design do you mean broken or just not fun to play? There's absolutely nothing wrong with the Killer, it's just an anti-mook archetype (which therefore requires you to add mooks so they have stuff to do, and to be aware your mooks will die quite quickly if there's a Killer). Heliotrope posted:So the basic gist of the game I'm going for is "The villain is a dangerous maverick cop who the PCs have decided to take down." There's a couple things I'm wondering about. 1) FS2 is most fun when fights move at a brisk pace - bosses tend to slow things down because they're harder to kill. It's better to add more, weaker enemies than to add more bosses or uber-bosses. Making his lieutenants/mob connections/pet special forces squad/etc. featured foes is fine, just remember to add several of them per fight instead of just having one featured foe and a bunch of mooks against a player party. 2) Think cinematic. Characters reveal new abilities or increased resolve at dramatically-appropriate moments in this genre - you should tie these to character's melodramatic hooks, to their backstory being shaken up in play, or to major "plot" twists. I'd suggest getting your players to pick archetypes and hooks early, and asking them to stay vague with their hooks, so you can tie all of them in with the "main plot" for your oneshot. 1-3 advancements isn't going to make PCs too much more powerful so that's probably the right amount, but you definitely don't want them to spend 30 minutes going through the book looking at their options. I'd heavily suggest you pre-pick a couple of options per player per advancement and have them pick between those, so they still get to choose something but they can make that choice in 2 minutes instead. Just remember that schticks are more fun than skill increases, but those skill increases can make a real difference in connective tissue scenes, so don't offer the players a choice between a cool schtick and a boring-but-practical skill increase. 3) I'm not sure why they're lower in the enemies chapter, but it's universal (not just a typo with the security SUV). Pretty sure the difference is just a print mistake, even though it's still not fixed as of v2.1 of the PDF. Ignore the enemy vehicle stats and just use the ones from the vehicle chapter instead.
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Jan 4, 2023 11:33
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Heliotrope posted:By bad design do you mean broken or just not fun to play? Their main ability is to kill huge number of "mook" enemies at the tradeoff of being weaker against stronger enemies. That's the opposite of what you'd expect for a class based on a hitman, who you'd think would be good at taking out a high-value target with minimum disruption. But the problem every time I've played with one, the Killer trivially guns down all of the mooks in the first few shots (the term for actions on initiative), and then has to spend the rest of the fight attacking the boss/lieutenant at a disadvantage. They're so good at their niche, they destroy the table time assigned to it, and spend most of their table time exploring the bit their character sucks at. This isn't an uncommon design flaw but the Killer is the worst case of it I know. You can add a bunch more mooks to deal with the situation, but it tends to just move the problem later, and can make the player feel redundant if they know that's what's happened. The other thing with Feng Shui 2e is that they (probably unintentionally) made the metaplot very bleak. But it sounds like you're not worrying too much about it.
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Jan 4, 2023 14:33
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I'm not really into OSR but I'm digging the vibe of CY_BORG.
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Jan 4, 2023 16:00
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hyphz posted:But the problem every time I've played with one, the Killer trivially guns down all of the mooks in the first few shots (the term for actions on initiative), and then has to spend the rest of the fight attacking the boss/lieutenant at a disadvantage. They're so good at their niche, they destroy the table time assigned to it, and spend most of their table time exploring the bit their character sucks at. This isn't an uncommon design flaw but the Killer is the worst case of it I know. The Killer has a primary AV of 15 (only the Old Master has higher), and gets to make double attacks at Guns 14 against single targets right out of the box. They do not have any issues killing featured foes or bosses. hyphz posted:That's the opposite of what you'd expect for a class based on a hitman, who you'd think would be good at taking out a high-value target with minimum disruption. It's not an archetype based on being a hitman, it's an archetype based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killer_(1989_film).
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Jan 4, 2023 16:07
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Lemon-Lime posted:The Killer has a primary AV of 15 (only the Old Master has higher), and gets to make double attacks at Guns 14 against single targets right out of the box. They do not have any issues killing featured foes or bosses. But unlike the other classes, they don't get many of their other funky abilities at that time. Also, with Heroic Bloodshed they do have an issue not being killed by them, especially since there's limited defense options (the other thing that made the Killer throw their dice across the table is that there was no way for them to simply stand behind another character, and taking cover behind an object has no rules effect) quote:It's not an archetype based on being a hitman, it's an archetype based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killer_(1989_film). In which the titular "killer" character is a hitman.
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Jan 4, 2023 18:05
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hyphz posted:
So is the main character in Grosse Point Blank. You do understand that there's specific fiction being emulated, right?
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Jan 4, 2023 18:23
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Xiahou Dun posted:So is the main character in Grosse Point Blank. Sure. But having that particular fictional trope as a thing set for a character feels awkward. The Killer is a film about a hitman in which there are shootouts in which lots of mooks are killed. That is a stylistic decision that applies across the whole film. Feng Shui implements that by having mook rules. They may be more mooks killed in the film, The Killer, than in other films. But the killer character himself, Ah Jong, is not a character whose speciality is killing mooks. A character who did have that speciality in-character would basically be a cowardly mass murderer (after all, they specialise in killing large numbers of people who are unable to stand up to them) and not an appealing character to play. So if you say that "by playing The Killer you're saying you want the game to be more like the movie The Killer, but not for your character to be like Ah Jong", then that's fairly different to the other archetypes. If you play the Old Master, you're saying you want your character to be like the fictional old master archetype such as Mr Miyagi, not that you want the whole game to be more like the 1979 film The Old Master (by, for example, having less mooks since the focus is one-on-one combat)
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Jan 4, 2023 18:46
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You are applying your own preconceptions of what the character should play like. The fiction being emulated is being able to destroy whole hordes of mooks. In-fiction, mooks could be incredibly deadly killers in their own right, but as part of the emulation of a very specific fictional background, they get mowed down easily by the more skilled main character. Like the Bride in Kill Bill. That's the sort of emulation that is being attempted. You want to play a different character that is not consistent with what the character is meant to be and then complaining about it.
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Jan 4, 2023 18:54
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I mean Lemon-Lime isn't wrong about the original theming of the class, but it's clearly expanded way beyond that film since the original Feng Shui came out. If someone wanted to play John Wick in Feng Shui I'd hand them the Killer playbook. Also I've never considered the Feng Shui Killer niche as a genre film decker problem, that's hilarious. What's the meme for people who can't handle the idea of the game not being pre-simulated? Schrodinger's attack bears or whatever? Now we've got schrodinger's ninjas.
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Jan 4, 2023 18:56
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hyphz posted:Sure. But having that particular fictional trope as a thing set for a character feels awkward. My dude. You are either being neutron-star dense or are just making up a problem for the game to have.
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Jan 4, 2023 19:03
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tokenbrownguy posted:Also I've never considered the Feng Shui Killer niche as a genre film decker problem, that's hilarious. It's the reverse decker problem. The decker problem is when one character has a niche that takes a large amount of time, so the other players are left twiddling their thumbs. The wrong way of fixing this is to make their niche take less time, because then you have a player who doesn't get to enjoy their niche for very long, and spends most of their time at the table experiencing the downside of having that niche. The right way to do it is to make their niche and the other players able to operate in parallel, which is difficult with the FS Killer because the task division is different and they're so drat good at it. Once they're higher level the PCs would basically have to be being constantly swarmed by a small army. As for the previous issue, James Bond is also able to kill large numbers of background characters, and he does. But that does not mean that the identifying archetype of James Bond is "good at shooting lots of people dead instantly" (and FS has the Spy archetype). This is also not the identifying archetype of Ah Jong - it's something he does, but it's not who he is. It is not the identifying archetype of most HK action-movie heroes. It may fit better with US military action based heroes like Rambo? hyphz fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 19:17
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I mean yeah that's... exactly how's it's intended to play out? "Swarmed by a small army" is cool, mechanically easy to run, and incredibly relevant to the genre. e: catching your edit. if you wanted to play James Bond in Feng Shui, play the Spy archetype?
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Jan 4, 2023 19:25
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Xiahou Dun posted:My dude.
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Jan 4, 2023 19:27
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I think it's generally better in a tactical combat RPG to distinguish characters by what they do to enemies/obstacles (what their verbs are, as it were) rather than by what specific enemies/obstacles they're specialized in combating. Even setting aside spotlight time for a moment, the latter largely precludes target priority as a skill test, which is otherwise a relatively easy and intuitive source of depth and hard to make up for if your ideal target is prescribed by your build or other decisions made prior to the encounter. e: it's not a binary decision, of course, just a shift in emphasis; CC is always going to be more valuable vs. enemies that can do more harm per prevented / mitigated action, AoE is always going to be better against crowds, etc. it's just not much fun to play a pre-defined matching game compared to a more dynamic one Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 19:31
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"Look if I simply refuse to engage with the game directly and clearly saying what it's doing and make up my own poo poo that has nothing to do with that, there's a problem." It's like leaving a negative review for a bicycle because you tried to eat it.
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Jan 4, 2023 19:33
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tokenbrownguy posted:I mean yeah that's... exactly how's it's intended to play out? "Swarmed by a small army" is cool, mechanically easy to run, and incredibly relevant to the genre. That was only an example. Ok, last try. 1) "Do all killers have a sense of honor?" "The world has changed. Honor is now a dirty word." 2) “AK-47, the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.” Which of these quotes is from The Killer? Now, which of these quotes embodies the special abilities of the FS2 Killer archetype?
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Jan 4, 2023 19:33
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Martin Blank also gets in fights where, like, Benny Urquidez runs through a gas station with a SMG blazing in each hand, so I don't really understand the distinction.
Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 19:40
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hyphz posted:That was only an example. It’s A and also A op, you’ve got a Gun Nut quote there as option B
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Jan 4, 2023 20:07
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hyphz posted:Also, with Heroic Bloodshed they do have an issue not being killed by them, especially since there's limited defense options (the other thing that made the Killer throw their dice across the table is that there was no way for them to simply stand behind another character, and taking cover behind an object has no rules effect) I would strongly recommend against Feng Shui for players who want that kind of tactical defensive option. There is nothing wrong with wanting them, but Feng Shui is the wrong game. Also, man, people who throw their dice across the table. Talk about making the rest of the table deal with your inability to control your own emotions.
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Jan 4, 2023 20:08
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