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Gerund posted:This is a good point, and I should have said that I both expect that Piazo will eventually release an "Advanced Pathfinder" edition and pray that it would have gone in a more 4E easier-to-play route. I remember reading on ENWorld that they're already doing a Warlord-clone. And even with that said, there is a good chance that iPhone-esque smartphones could be ubiquitous by the time that comes around (or even 5E, when you think about it). This isn't exactly a secret clubhouse, dummies.
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# ¿ Feb 26, 2010 05:53 |
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 15:55 |
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Back a page, but the real creepy part of Transhumanism is that it is really an evolution of Futurism with a more idealized end goal as a reason to worship technological expansion for the sake of technological expansion. And the planet isn't really able to allow 9 billion people all to become their own robotic god-kings.
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2010 09:46 |
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Chernori posted:Heh, I mean, the type of "subversion" I think you're talking about would be like inviting people over to play Settlers of Catan and then pulling out Warhammer miniatures to burn their settlements. Which is not only awesome, but the best way to keep the guy with the brick port from winning!
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# ¿ Mar 15, 2010 10:46 |
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Chernori posted:Also, who complains that WotC is giving away too much free stuff? That's like getting angry at a library for letting people avoid buying books. If people couldn't go to the library and read books any time they wanted, then maybe someone, anyone, would spend $5 for my horrible Star Trek Fanfiction pdf (with CGI chicks on the "cover").
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# ¿ Mar 31, 2010 09:01 |
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Countblanc posted:metagames are kewl but for some reason people have made it into a naughty word in some circles. i think the majority of these people are FunHavers and hate the notion that someone wants to think about and analyze something they enjoy. Pulling this up a page not only because this is the new dogfucker, but also- I've had MY GIRLFRIEND tell me that there is a certain dividing factor between enjoying a subject and being an utter dork about the subject. Now this is for all interests- playing golf, boating, football, and TradGames. The simple equation is: Time spent enjoying the subject < Time spent analyzing, theorizing, and playtesting the subject So if you spend more than 4 hours play-testing the week before a 4 hour Friday-Night Magic Tournament, you are a dork about Magic. If you spend more than 5 hours preparing for a 5 hour weekly DnD game, you are a dork about DnD. I am, apparently, a huge dork.
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# ¿ May 1, 2010 23:20 |
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Mikan posted:What if you enjoy analyzing and theories and system tinkering S1 Are you are paid game designer, economist, philosopher, engineer or scientist? If so, skip to S5. If not, skip to S2 S2 Are you a Buddhist? If so, skip to S6. If not, skip to S3 S3 Is the analyzing/theorizing/system tinkering only confined to a certain set ethos/concept? If so, you are a dork. If not, skip to S7 S4 Are you being a twat and reading all the questions before answering? If so, gently caress off. S5 Do you spend more time on your work than you are reasonably paid to do? If so, you are a dork. If not, skip to S6 S6 Achieve enlightenment, self-worth, and/or acceptance S7 Your hobby is inherently dorky and should probably try to be paid for it.
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# ¿ May 1, 2010 23:32 |
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That Rough Beast posted:"Welcome to the game. This would be awesome, not only because you would honestly get a few people upset, but also to watch the cognitive dissonance working as they all come around to say "Well, that's why the DM asked for us to write detailed backgrounds, sucks to be Olodack, should have not gotten caught breaking the law (Which never happened and the DM just decided to narrate it)"
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# ¿ May 7, 2010 21:06 |
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Red_Mage posted:For the folks concerned about elitism, what would you suggest as a non-elitist way to succinctly communicate the concept of verisimilitude, without giving wise-crackers an opening for the old "it's got dragons in it!" line? For the duration of this post, I will refer to this concept with the new monosyllabic nonsense(in English anyway)-word, xun. First, lets imagine a world where my argument makes sense....
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# ¿ May 8, 2010 01:01 |
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Stuntman Mike posted:That is uncanny. The institution of adversarial GM'ing and the competitive nature of fighting games means that there is a lot of rhetorical bleed-over when someone's hard-won effort game changes so that the FunHavers can also enjoy it.
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# ¿ May 8, 2010 23:02 |
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Okay, maybe I'm just Grognard Prime, but I don't even find that review that terrible. The guy obviously isn't into story games and admits that the example he is using is a willful obstinate one, but he has a Beer & Pretzel outlook on the "no chatter" rule and maybe doesn't like adding Jenga to his game or something. I mean, he's reviewing his own version of My Little Pony; a game that isn't in his taste. He isn't honest with reviewing it, but its pretty obvious that he's only using the review structure as a way to riff on it- that doesn't make him a grognard, just one of any million of writers from the SA front page.
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# ¿ May 11, 2010 03:56 |
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eviltastic posted:It's bad because the only way that anything he said would of itself be useful or funny is if you are willfully blind to how people play games. It's like reviewing Paranoia's rules by doing a straight side by side comparison with D&D. That could be intentionally funny, but only if the writer actually does 'get' Paranoia. Things that can be not your particular style while playing Dread: Lack of a discreet "GM" figure (I guess) Lack of Gygaxian attributes, combat systems, levels, magic blah blah blah The conflict resolution system in itself The way that upon failure the conflict resolution system is disconnected from the in-game action That the conflict resolution system has one and only one punishment The "no talking" rule Grognardy? Really? I know 4E owns and all but getting all bothered because Notable Internet Personality is riffing on a game that isn't his style ain't worth it.
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# ¿ May 11, 2010 06:28 |
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:You mostly just need the Book of 9 Swords and Tome of Magic expansion packs from 3.5. Alternity is bad y'all, don't play it. However if you want to purchase out-of-print hardcovers, do I have a deal for you! Man, is the d20 system a breath of fresh air after that malformed crap. The selling point about it was how the randomization bellcurve was shaped, not how it actually worked in game play.
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# ¿ May 13, 2010 22:13 |
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Mikan posted:At worst, it'll be worth mentioning in the thread! Best case, you become The Colonel and spend the next 6 months* unironically espousing Skill Points and 50% magical item trade-in value and iterative attacks. *because, really, how long do you expect this game to last
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# ¿ May 15, 2010 06:23 |
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Gr3y posted:So who here has experience with Alternity? I had to play a session of it this weekend and it seems like it's some sort of unholy amalgam of GURPS and AD&D. It seems like it manages to combine the worst aspects of a class based system and point buy. You should have gnawed your leg off like a desperate animal rather than go through that game. gently caress rolling your penalty/bonus mod using the same type of dice. Was that d4 a positive or negative, Bob? gently caress I don't remember either I'm trying to run a combat for 3 other people and everyone has all these loving modifiers from all over the book and poo poo. If you look back at 3E and see all the charts they had for spell-casting attribute, individual classes spells-by-level, charts for weapons and armor (pretty much the only thing that survived), you'll see that for much of its history Gygaxian RPGs were defined as "Charts & Chapters" more than anything.
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# ¿ May 17, 2010 23:31 |
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nerfninja posted:This actually sounds really fun. Have you ever played this way? I think it would make a great intro or a one-shot Monster Squad type game. A Mimic, a Dragon and and a Two-Headed Ogre Magi storm the castle! Recharge powers would be nice for prolonged fights. Anyone know how well Monsters are balanced against each other? One year ago, a crack commando group of monsters were sent to a dungeon for a crime they did not commit. They promptly escaped from the Underdark. Today, still hunted by adventurers, they survive as Elite Soldiers, Brutes, and Artillery for hire. If you have a quest, and if no one else can help, and you beat DC30 Streetwise- maybe you can hire: The A Team.
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# ¿ May 20, 2010 21:36 |
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ZeeToo posted:I have that on hand. Me, grognard, etc. It's two pages long. His hoard is another full page of crap, including 2.5 million copper pieces, a scandalous dress, the lost works of Shakespeare, and a mechanical bird. Thank god Paizo understands what is necessary to make an interesting, challenging, and realistic encounter for high-level play.
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# ¿ May 22, 2010 22:38 |
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Red_Mage posted:Equally interesting is that Dungeons and Dragons still does not rate a mention in the discussion. And that the current waves of firings began right after this call. So we can dispense with any conspiracy theories that the cost reductions mentioned had anything to do with Andy Collins leaving. But we can infer that D&D is not doing as well as hoped, because it was just after they opened up the books for Q1 that they felt th need to give Magic the Gathering a couple of shoutouts for being awesome and start firing half the creative staff working on the current edition of D&D. I'm quoting this from a page ago because nothing, I mean nothing matches the all-out insanity of Fans of any stripe attempting to read the tea leaves w/r/t business publications and press releases. The only thing that goes beyond it is the folk who think that Actors who are in the same ensemble are secretly dating but are prevented from speaking publicly and are giving "clothing-color shout-outs" to each other.
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# ¿ May 24, 2010 02:39 |
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There isn't really much to tear down developer-wise about 40k, because the rules themselves don't contain any ethos that we can show that they are betraying with Rule X or Conf-Reso Y. I mean its a game where chainsaw-swords are legitimate weapons, its not really trying to evoke anything but an Action Trash aesthetic. There is some interesting discussion as to how vehicles and infantry interact, and how psychics are and are not supported, and how each army has a "playstyle" and how the rules serve that... but really, those are game balance problems, not rules development problems. And really, I haven't played a game since about a month after the post-3E Ork Codex so its all fairly fuzzy to me.
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# ¿ May 24, 2010 19:00 |
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Countblanc posted:40k is stupid because sci-fi is stupid. Sci-fi is only cool if anime does it.
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# ¿ May 24, 2010 19:22 |
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Mikan posted:Man, there is a paragraph in the 4th ed. DMG that tells you that you can play the game without a DM, just roll random monsters and hack away! It suggests 4th ed. can be played as nothing more than a combat simulator! Read the god drat manual before you complain about a viewpoint which is considered valid by the game you're trying to defend. Positive allowances of a flexible game system = nope, this is always what the game is, wrap it up folks.
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# ¿ May 24, 2010 20:42 |
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TheAnomaly posted:Both settings are a great deal of fun. It's really random and fairly deadly, but very flavorful. For example, poker plays a significant roll in character creation, several groups powers, and combat. Poker Chips are also tossed around in the game. It's difficult to explain why it was great, because if you talk about it RaW it's chock full of everything that made every game designed in the 90's super lovely. And what would that be? Man, we really need to start an "eras of RPG design" thread.
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# ¿ May 27, 2010 06:21 |
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Lets get us back on track with some low hanging fruit:4E CharOp superstar posted:The problem is there are a lot of whiners on this board, whom love nothing more than to cry and moan about things that aren't that bad.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2010 04:50 |
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Benagain posted:I wasn't satisfied with just creepily RPing something that no decent human would even think of, I needed rules so that everyone would know exactly how good my pretend character was at this and be in awe. Y'know, at first, I was like "yeah, Brian, I get that you dominate slaves you can stop talking about it". But then I saw his intimidate skill and his whipping power and I was like WOAH.
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2010 22:19 |
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Gr3y posted:Edit: He's not even green! What the hell is he supposed to be? A horrible reminder of America's minstrel legacy?
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# ¿ Jun 3, 2010 18:36 |
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OtspIII posted:It's only not immoral to kill cops operating in the line of duty if they can defend themselves, I guess? Debating the morality of killing the guard before he wakes up is kind of like debating if you should get a diet soda to go with your biggie-sized McDonald's lunch because you're trying to lose weight; it's sort of missing the point. By this argument, Luck Skywalker is the worst mass-murderer of all time.
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2010 06:58 |
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OtspIII posted:I might be misunderstanding something, but it sounds like the guys they killed weren't actually perpetuating anything especially objectionable. Luke can get a pass for killing as an act of war, but weren't these guys just murdering soldiers to try to stop a murderer from being able to further murder? It's the difference between killing the evil king's guards in the process of trying to stop the king and killing a cop because he pulled you over for speeding while you were on the way to something important. Oh yes, that incredibly well defined and all-agreed-upon term "act of war".
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2010 10:23 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Are you actually arguing about this? Hey, my grandfathers might have killed some totally innocent Axis janitors, by the by. Ask me about being descended from mass-murderers. Don't worry, you get a Perma-Pass 3000 because there was a Ticking Time Bomb. And it was an Act of War. And the people were Socially Bankrupt. And it was the Lesser of Two Evils. (objective-alignment is poo poo)
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2010 10:57 |
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Don't worry OtspIII, I was just mocking the idea of alignment in general and of moral passes being given using loaded/vague terms. I guess we mostly agree, except I figure that if you've already killed a guy in the heat of battle, whatever the reason, then killing his sleeping comrade is "As Moral"; saying that one is Neutral and the other is Evil is placing an objective moral on it. Once you kill a dude you're pretty much in for the long haul murder-spree.quote:Someone with enough skill can write good stories about anything. But in the end, Batman's still going to hit that guy with a car battery and the Joker is going to escape from Arkham Asylum again and, within the context of the books, the world is supposed to be a better place because of it. At the end of your story, once you're finished with your giant epic tale of loss and redemption, everybody forgets about it and things carry on just like they have been for 70+ years. There's no layers. There's no symbolism. There's the next issue out in a month where Batman is back to kicking Mr. Freeze in his big glass dome. I've said this before but not on TGD: attempting to create literature out of modern super-heroes is much the same as attempting thought provoking Campbell's Soup advertisement. Not only are you trying to place value on the packaging over the product, but its already been done and better and you're only here because they want to push copy out the door.
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2010 21:20 |
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Dominion posted:As advice to people on the internet, this is sound, because most people who set out to do this are vastly overestimating their own skills. But as you said, it's been done before, and well, and there's no reason it can't be done again by good writers. I agree that Killing Joke is a classic. But you're presenting an argument that "work changed the world in which the characters lived" and created development makes it more valid than the episodic weekly plots. By that token, Zahn's Thrawn trilogy is equally non-crap for all the growth it created... except all he is doing is making EU Star Wars fiction.
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2010 21:32 |
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shotgunbadger posted:See, though, that has a basis in fun though, like, he died to do something funny as hell. I just can't grasp that there are people who honestly enjoy killing fake people for no good reason. Christ at least with GTA and all you get a neat fake blood spurt and ragdoll physics, with D&D it's just 'welp, sure am dead'. Is this why you can't see the joy in killing a fake dragon with your fake elf using your fake sword enchanted with fake magic (god isn't real)?
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2010 05:36 |
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double postin' like a champ Y'know how Grognards are proud that the DM can spend 20 hours a week on making your Gygaxian Naturalist game work entirely within the rules? Well, some one just proved it to win a flame war. Its a wall of text, so I've got some notes interspersed. quote:Spells and spellcasters in a campaign world
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2010 06:30 |
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CaptainJuan posted:has anyone on EARTH read that entire post? Having skimmed it for the clumps of best grog, the Executive Summary: I really hate that people refuse to properly simulate the world in which dragons fly and magic works. So I'm going to use the tables in the DMG to figure out how many spell casters there are on the planet (assuming the entire planet = Tolkien Middle Earth) and then make a huge amount of Drake Equation level assumptions in order to show how many unique spells are being created per year. This is important because, P.S. I already know that Elves rule, here is why:
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2010 07:24 |
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quote:The problem isn't that he makes too much or not enough assumptions, but that he attributes specific numbers to them that he pulls out of his rear end in order to make the final result sound better. No, the real problem is that he is infected with Gygaxian Naturalism to the point that he believes that his goal of "finding out how many spells there are" makes the world more magical.
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2010 18:29 |
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PeterWeller posted:I will say this for old Gygax: some of his writing was worth a chuckle. I mean, seriously, this is the way we should look back at poo poo like NE evil outsiders and demiplane of Salt.
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2010 23:14 |
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Android Blues posted:Exactly! That's like, exactly what it is. Like, ha ha, that guy's like a tenth level wolflord. You're insulting a guy by implying that he has a large number of levels in class X Its you, you're the Grognard
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# ¿ Jun 10, 2010 00:42 |
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counterspin posted:From the beloved FrankTrollman over at theRPGSite again, what does all this mean? Like, other than showing you've got a wordcounting program (or just bullshitting).
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# ¿ Jun 11, 2010 04:58 |
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Red_Mage posted:The RPGPundit's Politically Incorrect Guide to GMing Like, how many pages can you really write about stealing poo poo from other games and making it up as you go along? Like, I imagine 90% of this book will be copy-pastes of other, better manuals and then going "This sucks because," underneath it. There is seriously no way to write a reasonable guide or how-to for "poo poo just roll a random encounter and see what happens"
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# ¿ Jun 11, 2010 05:35 |
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Yesterday, I received my copy of Pathfinder #32: Rivers Run Red, the second part of the new Kingmaker Adventure Path. Unlike previous Adventure Paths, this one is much more open-ended, in terms of allowing the PCs to explore various locations – and meet various combat encounters – in almost any order, and largely determine the pace of the adventures themselves. This issue is significant, however, in that it has the rules for building, sustaining, and expanding a kingdom. About a dozen pages long, the rules are very intuitive, measuring a kingdom’s stability, loyalty, and economy over time, while also keeping track of unrest. PCs (or NPCs) can occupy one of eleven various official roles (from ruler to general to royal assassin, and others), which have effects on the four aforementioned scores (Stability, Loyalty, Economy, and Unrest). But that’s not all. Various activities can be undertaken, but most cost Build Points (the abstraction of your kingdom’s wealth). So by spending BPs, you can make various edicts (promoting your rule, throwing festivals, or raising/lowering taxes) and engage in new acts of expansion and/or construction. Hence, you can build a new library in your city, and it will raise your kingdom’s Economy and Loyalty by +1, but it will cost you 6 BP to construct. Of course, none of this happens in a vacuum. Every month the ruler must make various checks to determine the state of the kingdom, pay the Consumption Cost (where a certain amount of BPs must be paid as the simple monthly cost of keeping your kingdom up and running), and check for unexpected events happening, among other things. So yeah, these rules do a pretty good job of letting you run your own kingdom in the Pathfinder RPG. Recently, though, I came across something rather amusing. On a thread on the Paizo messageboards, one person noticed that among the various official roles, the “ruler” one allowed for up to two characters to occupy it at the same time, e.g. a king and queen ruling together. This is different from all the other roles, which can only be held by a single person at a time. What was so amusing though was that this poster joked about the nation’s ruler having a harem instead of a co-ruler. This generated some gentle ribbing from the other posters, and even from Paizo’s own James Jacobs himself, but of course there wasn’t any sort of rules-based answer. That’s not the sort of thing that the mechanics for running a kingdom – which necessarily includes some level of abstraction – are designed to deal with. I got a good laugh from the idea of having rules for a harem among the kingdom-building mechanics, though, and so just for fun I thought I’d make some up. So here they are, the rules for making your kingdom include a royal harem: quote:Harem: A harem is a collection of individuals dedicated to serving the realm’s ruler in a personal capacity, usually as confidants, entertainers, and concubines. Establishing a harem is a type of promotion edict. It does not grant a Stability bonus; instead, having a harem grants the ruler a +1 circumstance bonus to his Charisma score when adding his Charisma bonus to the nation’s statistics (see the ruler entry under Leadership Roles). Establishing a harem increases a kingdom’s Consumption by 2 BP. Sexy, ain’t it? The above rules serve as an adequate representation of the costs and benefits of having a harem. Namely, that it’s an extravagance that has little practical value to the kingdom as a whole. After all, paying for a lavish lifestyle for several people who don’t do anything but be available when the ruler wants to be entertained can be quite expensive, but doesn’t really do much for the nation, besides serving to make the ruler seem more virile. I’ve deliberately ignored the specifics regarding how many individuals are in the harem, what their levels are, etc. Those details are simply too minute to make a difference in the kingdom rules Paizo has written. For those who want such particulars however, I recommend the following: a harem has 1d4+2 individuals (each of whom has a Charisma score of 12+1d6), with 1d3 NPC levels each (usually expert, but if you have it I recommend using 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming’s courtesan NPC class, from Paths of Power). This increases by another 1d4+2 individuals each time the harem edict is used. And there you have it – rules for one of the perks that comes with wearing the crown. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? Well, that’s up to you to decide, because making the big decisions is what you do now: you’re the king.
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# ¿ Jun 11, 2010 22:45 |
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Hodgepodge posted:So it's basically a stock criticism of romanticism, applied in the context of fantasy? It also goes into how the way that the prose is written by Tolkien and his kith also calls to mind those themes, beyond the actual nuts-and-bolts of the plot and Romantic touches like Shire and rural life superiority. And TBBchat: I'm reading Aubrey Maturin for the second time: does that make me a Tory or a Whig?
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# ¿ Jun 17, 2010 02:33 |
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 15:55 |
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Ansob. posted:Red Mage, your grognard sense really is off. That's not grognardism at all; that's someone having a sensible complaint about D&D's system-as-written and explaining why they prefer other roleplaying games to D&D. It's sensible, rational and not mindless "hurr this edition is poo poo, previous edition is betar " stuff. Also, that dude has a valid point: 4E does make it easier for unimaginative players than a narrativist game (for obvious reasons). Note that whoever wrote that doesn't say it's an objectively bad thing and 4E should die, but says that it's why he personally does not like 4E, because he prefers systems that enforce creativity, which are more fun for him. The 'nard is that his entire argument is based on his reductive concept of "levers" that is never defined or criticized. There are WAY too many cases of let me define my term as You Suck screeds in RPG conversations and elsewhere for us to let it slide. From what he says in his thesis, a lever has to be A- on the sheet B- implemented in a predictable way Guess what- that is literally everything that is ever on a sheet, rules-wise.
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# ¿ Jun 17, 2010 10:43 |