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I'm working on playing ACKS with the remastered Wilderlands of High Fantasy! I made an executive decision to size all hexes up to fit the six mile hex template (made more sense given ACKS assumes a scale of 6 miles to a hex). However, the map sizes comparative to what ACKS wants for constructing a region are somewhat larger, so I think I shall need to work on rescaling how many interesting features there are.
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Sep 12, 2014 17:51
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Dude, keep me updated. I've been trying to tackle wilderlands for a while. It's so daunting. To begin with, I had people generate 3d6 style with 3 columns - the other 2 columns could be used to create backup characters (I generated henchmen as they were hired). They started out right outside of the City State of the Invincible Overlord in a ramshackle "Adventurer's Guild". To start the game, the party did the classic "hey who are you guys why are we here, well, let's have an adventure!" I generated about a page of thematic rumors and flavor bullet points for the players to digest: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Ni9LFKVxZo-c0kejNMTLZ6WrJUKyYUHh2Gp1iL_pbs/edit?usp=sharing After deciding by party consensus, they headed out to Darkfield after getting some brief directions from the Guildmaster. Since it was by road, it only took a half day, so they arrived by nightfall. We did some roleplaying and called it a session - soon it will be RATS IN THE BASEMENT. I highly recommend purchasing the remastered maps that are separate from the remastered box set. The remastered maps fix a few naming errors and provide a full color map with a numberless hex overland, and a separate map with a GM key. I cropped the map to remove the border and loaded into Roll20, so now players can hop in to see labels of places they've heard of (but nothing around them) in addition to the hexes they have already explored - all 3 of them! Because the scale in Wilderlands is not that beholden to the setting, sizing up to a six mile hex is eminently doable without worrying about scale. On the "grand tactical" level, this would likely be expressed as adding some padding around the hex sides as is most appropriate based on description (even then, I doubt it's actually needed).
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Sep 13, 2014 02:08
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Arivia posted:I'm curious, aldantefax - how did you decide what was the right amount of rumours to present? One for everything immediately relevant in the setting, or? For rumor generation I did it by proximity from the starting location. I wanted to generate rumors and flavor bits that were important to the most immediate nearest settlements - in Wilderlands, Darkfield is a major agricultural staging point for the City State by its entry, and it's also about a half-day away from the City State. Perfect for a beginning group of adventurers to explore as a jaunt then come back (maybe with a few less party members for their troubles). Other rumors that are basically job postings are also rated as such - though, "out of depth" danger can also be lurking nearby. As far as rumors go you can generate them on the fly or via a bulletin board such as I have. I think three to five rumors per area is fine, keeping in mind that you're generating them because you want players to explore in that specific reason. Since hexcrawl is player-driven (in that they can go anywhere and do whatever there) it's important to give players something they can immediately designate as a goal along with some rumors and mysteries that they can go and explore whenever. Babylon Astronaut is correct in that there are tons of rumors that you can generate via old Judges Guild products - check the Treasure Maps line for examples of site-based randomly generated rumors and non-finished maps you can give to players as a handout. Using this proximity-based concept, the only rumors that players hear about are the ones in their area that they can action on. After a few adventures, it's likely that I will update the rumors sheet with more information or write completely new rumors.
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Sep 14, 2014 21:41
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Aside from OtspIII, has anybody tried their hand at making a from-scratch hexcrawl setting for ACKS using the rules in the Secrets chapter? I have some vacation time coming up and I think rather than go outside and enjoy having some time off I'm going to give that a go just to see how practical it is.
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Sep 18, 2014 21:13
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Silhouette posted:This is just a reminder that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition is still King poo poo of fantasy RPG mountain and you should all be playing it. It's what I grew up with; though, we used to do AD&D 2e + AD&D 1e DMG random dungeon generation rules for a fairly lengthy campaign. It also involved me rolling up a Paladin with a natural 17 Charisma who used a 2-handed sword and got strong enough to ride a giant crab.
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Oct 3, 2014 19:47
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Libertad! posted:Just a request, but can we change/explain Dungeon Crawl Classics in the OP better than "ahahahaha?" Being right above the "nope" entry which contains Carcosa might cause lots of folk to get a negative impression of it. Apologies if this conversation was had before, but as this thread gets new posts from time to time bumping it to the first page, I think that DCC deserves better. It's a gimmicky game with some wonky mechanics, but I wouldn't put it on a similar level as something genuinely offensive like Carcosa. DCC also has some really bangin' art. It's definitely a "not-for-everybody" type of game and definitely laugh-worthy in portions in how ridiculous it is, but that aside it's a fine game with a lot of stuff that's out for it aside from its goofy dice.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:33
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I'm thinking about a hexcrawl game on the seas (similar to like, Etrian Odyssey 3). Are there any retroclones out there that have a nautical focus, or should I just freewheel it and estimate based on various source material like GURPS Swashbucklers and the like?
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Dec 19, 2014 05:47
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OtspIII posted:I like pretty much all of these, and actually do similar things to a bunch of them. Dropping thieves is a good choice, and I really like the simplifying weapon damage. The fighter changes are actually almost exactly how ACKS does fighters, which works really well. I'd be down to look at it for ideas! Also thanks to everybody else for the good pointers. I had assumed that there were some nautical-type things back in the day (I know that 3.5 had Stormwrack as the most recent example of a boat-based thing) but nothing explicitly for hexcrawling, so this is bound to give me good starting points.
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Dec 22, 2014 02:07
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Yes, that is correct - I believe the bonus NWP slots thing may have been optional though. You could (either optionally or in place of) NWPs roll for Secondary Skill, which can give certain skillsets that the normal nonweapon stuff didn't cover (there was some overlap).
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May 7, 2015 18:26
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That sounds like it would certainly be interesting to say a specific configuration of hallways/rooms/monsters impacts a focal point somewhere else in the dungeon. It could be worth a whole campaign being dungeon troubleshooters to do this type of thing like moving monsters from one room to another.
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May 9, 2015 04:06
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Most of the kits featured in Baldur's Gate and other games in its vein take directly from AD&D, which featured kits in their "Complete [X]'s Handbook". The ones that have more fiddly rules came later in the lifetime of AD&D, but there were kits which were mostly quick pick packages if you had the stat reqs for everything in it, such as the always popular in my book Myrmidon, which was well equipped for every situation a Fighter could want. I think the kits with special rules were featured for ones like Paladins and Wizards, but each of those splatbooks had something.
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May 10, 2015 22:38
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What OSR game has the best dungeon construction rules? ACKS, controversy aside, had rules mostly for building a fantasy economy and a hexcrawl type of setup, but when it comes to actual dungeon generation (whether it be fully randomly, procedurally, or whatnot) I am drawing a blank. Castles and Crusades had Engineering Dungeons, and there is How to Host A Dungeon, but that's about all I know.
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May 14, 2015 04:04
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I think the better question is when are tomes 1 through 4 of the Encyclopedia Magica from 2e going to be digitized? I remember those books fondly as a source of inspirational material for all of the absolutely wacky poo poo that was in there (both new and compiled from elsewhere). If you ever see those faux-leatherette books anywhere they are worth a read just because of the amount of stuff that was in there. It also is a good indicator of TSR being crazy back in the 90s. Looks like you can buy the whole set for 75 bucks on ebay! Actually not that bad a deal since each book retailed for like 25 bucks MSRP when they were new.
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Jul 21, 2015 18:01
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I read "Priests Spell Compendium" as "Pirates Spell Compendium", which would have been a much more interesting book. Those expanded spell libraries did a lot to further reinforce caster supremacy since a lot of really awesome spells and expanded spheres were in the compendiums.
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Jul 21, 2015 18:56
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Does anybody have experience running Birthright, Kingmaker, or similar "D&D-at-the-empire-level" type of games? I used to own the Birthright campaign box (and I found it when I was moving a few years ago, though missing the main rulebook) so I was interested to find that someone made a management tool for Birthright back in 2012: http://brmanager.codeplex.com/ Historically, there has always been a concept of strongholds for sufficiently powerful player characters as part of a natural progression, and I think I've seen it in a few retroclones like ACKS (which is ridiculous for other reasons). I'm interested in hearing about how those types of campaigns are formulated, what tools are used (since there's a lot of bookkeeping), and if there are any house rules that streamline managing an empire from the get go.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:08
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JonBolds posted:- A moment-by-moment and roll-by-roll log of events, one line to a roll/choice, in a notebook. This was huge for us, as we could go back a page and see what happened. Again, much less work than it sounds. This sounds like it would be eminently doable with some agreed division of work (appointing someone in the group as the kingdom's chronicle keeper or just using something that tracks all rolls digitially would likely suffice). I would be interested in setting up a game like that but I'm kind of trying to get a hold on the old rules and reconciling them with modernized rulesets. Do you have any specific things you encountered as difficulties/weaknesses of running the game aside from the bookkeeping aspects? How much of pre-campaign/pre-session setup is required to run the game smoothly? Did you use a physical notebook for record keeping, or something electronic?
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Jul 24, 2015 19:02
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So I'm going to run a Darker Dungeons game after looking at some rulesets. Are there any actual resources out there that are like, quick reference sheets or things that I should keep a printout of?
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Aug 4, 2015 06:14
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I have been running Darker Dungeons on IRC for the past two months and it's been going decently but I feel like the combat and skill spreads are somewhat suspect. I am aiming to get around this by accelerating the experience track significantly rather than throwing more monsters at the party up until they get up to a reasonable power level and have a few weapon feats. Rules Cyclopedia is tough!
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Oct 1, 2015 00:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:If you don't mind, could you share some of your experience with running games through IRC, particularly the how? We have a dice bot and we all just pile into a chat room and roll dice and chat. Someone usually saves the raw session logs as a Pastebin and a player has volunteered to do replay notes so that people can get up to speed if they miss a session. Because the system does not explicitly require a tactical map, you can get by with describing fuzzy combat. The trick being, of course, to reduce the amount of combat encounters to notable planned encounters - wandering monsters and whatever would be an 'unnecessary combat' would be better served by having different encounters instead. Since we have a mostly light-hearted theme going on it is not really a big deal - I award RP and session experience, and I am probably going to implement an experience pool award so that people can bank experience and share it among the party for people who do not level particularly fast, like the magic user (4000 XP to level 2 is pretty murderous). Pretty much everything that can award XP, I'll award it, but since our sessions are about 3 1/2 hours long there is only so much progression you can get done at once.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:14
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alg posted:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409961192/dcc-rpg-4th-printing?ref=hero_thanks Specific major changes compared to the current?
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Oct 25, 2015 03:50
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Pham Nuwen posted:I found a really nice map online, but the guy just drew in secret doors like regular doors so I had to put it on the GM layer. As the characters moved, I'd draw in the next 30 feet or so of hallways--I used a Surface Pro 3 for the game, so I could just grab the stylus and sketch. It worked reasonably well. I learned that roll20 lets you use the map on tablet only if you're a premium subscriber. If I end up doing a game that actually relies heavily on the mat, I might consider something like that - used to, I loaded up tactical maps on a TV since we played in my living room for 4e.
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Nov 7, 2015 02:00
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Was Vornheim actually worth reading? The author aside I've heard the actual ideas in it for a citycrawl seem to be fairly well thought out (but I cannot vet any of the sources that go one way or the other on it with a critical review). The other stuff in both OSR bundles seem neat though.
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Nov 11, 2015 22:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:Has anyone ever played with the TSR-era Psionic rules? What was your experience like? Dark Sun, or just regular? Psionics were kind of screwy but used a resource point system and it was so low in regular play that in the groups I rolled with, it was a "well, if you actually can beat the RNG, then good luck with it on your character". Of course, the games where it was allowed in were ones that you could be tried as a witch and burned at the stake, so. Mechanically speaking, it was fine? I don't seem to remember any crazy poo poo with it.
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Apr 14, 2016 00:35
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Speaking of DCC, the current Bundle of Holding is running a fantastic deal on DCC Adventure modules, so if you are weak willed then you can go pick those up. 
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Apr 19, 2016 17:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:"Dungeon Crawl Classics" used to be a line of 3.5e-compatible adventure modules done in "old-school dungeon crawler" style. You can also run it with 5e if that's your bag of tricks, or just file off the mechanics bits and use the adventures for basically any system that's appropriate. I think I might try to run the stuff in Pathfinder, actually, or maybe in DCC's own system? Who knows.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:48
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DalaranJ posted:So, I'm writing up the equivalent of an equipment list for a game. What are the most important dungeon crawling equipment items to put on it? Torches.
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May 2, 2016 19:27
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How is that curve vs. d20 or 3d6? 3d6 tends to make more average rolls and d20 is pretty variable, so I can assume that 2d8 is the middleroad of the two.
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Aug 28, 2016 09:23
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