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MockingQuantum posted:I may be misremembering but I'm almost certain that 2e had a backstab rule that specifically said you had to be able to identify a target's weakpoints or something like that. It could have been a houserule, yeah, but we definitely played the same way, nothing amorphous could be backstabbed. In 3.5E certain creature types like Oozes (which would cover this) as well as Undead and Constructs were immune to backstab.
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May 20, 2022 16:39
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Halloween Jack posted:I thought part of the point of AD&D was to create a "tournament standard" game? It feels a lot more like the exact opposite of that. Like it was a playtest where he opened the gates for all the people he personally played/corresponded with to test out their house rules. It’s kinda both. It’s a combination of “teach the reader how to fish”, e.g. telling you to set odds for things and showing how dice curves work so you can do that, giving you multiple ways to generate characters, etc. and then a bunch of very situation specific rulings to use if you want an “official” answer. I honestly don’t hate this in theory. Gygax is just very bad at doing both things.
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May 20, 2022 16:47
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Deptfordx posted:I feel like bare bone, no flesh to cushion the impact, blunt should be as effective as slashing. Siivola posted:Cutting through bone is pretty hard once it's dried out. You can try it for yourself the next time you have chicken wings or ribs. if like a dry cow femur needed to be broken with no regard to whether or not it shatters or cleaves, would it be better to use a sledgehammer or a maul? (genuine question. I can tell you that squirrels are efficient at getting through it.)
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May 20, 2022 16:52
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Halloween Jack posted:I thought part of the point of AD&D was to create a "tournament standard" game? It feels a lot more like the exact opposite of that. Like it was a playtest where he opened the gates for all the people he personally played/corresponded with to test out their house rules. Having just finished reading Jon Peterson's Game Wizards, I feel like the point of AD&D was to avoid paying Dave Arneson royalties. I played a ton of a game with way too much concern about wound types and weapon types vs armor (1st edition Deadlands), and feel like it's generally a better play experience to just make that sort of thing a simple to hit bonus and/or damage bonus when it feels situationally appropriate to do so (as did the creators of Deadlands, given that they eventually made Savage Worlds, which did just that, and rewrote Deadlands to simplify it). Very few things are worth an extra table. Random encounters tables and loot tables are fun, keep those, but weapon type tables vs armor types? Never had "fun" with that.
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May 20, 2022 16:59
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aldantefax posted:Does anybody have a recommendation for equipment catalogs out there? Basic Fantasy Equipment Emporium. At $3.90 for a physical book you can't afford NOT to have it  https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Fantasy-Equipment-Emporium/dp/1692283030/
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May 20, 2022 17:11
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Halloween Jack posted:I thought part of the point of AD&D was to create a "tournament standard" game? It feels a lot more like the exact opposite of that. Like it was a playtest where he opened the gates for all the people he personally played/corresponded with to test out their house rules. The point of AD&D was to add enough house rules and general cruft so they could stop paying Dave Arneson royalties
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May 20, 2022 17:19
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Rutibex posted:Basic Fantasy Equipment Emporium. At $3.90 for a physical book you can't afford NOT to have it I like this a lot and was gonna post it but it's much drier/more game-y than Aurora's is.
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May 20, 2022 17:23
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Can someone post a page from the Aurora book? It seems up my alley but I'm curious if it's worth springing for a physical copy.
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May 20, 2022 17:28
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Empty Sandwich posted:if like a dry cow femur needed to be broken with no regard to whether or not it shatters or cleaves, would it be better to use a sledgehammer or a maul? (genuine question. I can tell you that squirrels are efficient at getting through it.)
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May 20, 2022 17:51
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A Strange Aeon posted:Can someone post a page from the Aurora book? It seems up my alley but I'm curious if it's worth springing for a physical copy. Name a thing you would like the page for!
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May 20, 2022 18:12
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Arivia posted:Name a thing you would like the page for! Hmm, let's go with rations? Or if that isn't a thing, how about furniture?
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May 20, 2022 18:23
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Empty Sandwich posted:if like a dry cow femur needed to be broken with no regard to whether or not it shatters or cleaves, would it be better to use a sledgehammer or a maul? (genuine question. I can tell you that squirrels are efficient at getting through it.) Hitting an animated skeleton would be different than a pile of dry bones on the ground. The skeleton would move when hit, and would presumably be a bit more springy from the evil magic that animates it than just dry bones.
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May 20, 2022 18:28
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A Strange Aeon posted:Hmm, let's go with rations? Or if that isn't a thing, how about furniture? This is a pretty good pair, actually. Here's the entry on specifically rations (plenty of foodstuffs in general), and furniture is spread out, so here's the list of bedding for starting your own tavern. That way you can see the full entries and also some of the list items:  
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May 20, 2022 18:41
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That book does look pretty cool. In my experience, mundane items have a useful life of maybe the first level if that before becoming generally ignored. Or like, if a character wants something like that, it's assumed they can just have it and it wouldn't really impact their gold stash very much. Not sure if having more detail to this stuff would make it more engaging or if it would still end up kind of handwaved away. I have the Encyclopedia Magica which seems like the magic item equivalent, and I always enjoyed idly paging through and imagining scenarios centered around some weird item.
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May 20, 2022 18:48
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Siivola posted:Uhhh I have no idea tbh. I'd probably pick the splitting maul to get the smaller face, but with something that heavy I suspect it's a moot point. same, but I'm working off the analogue of chopping down a small tree (so an axe rather than a maul, but still) Rutibex posted:Hitting an animated skeleton would be different than a pile of dry bones on the ground. The skeleton would move when hit, and would presumably be a bit more springy from the evil magic that animates it than just dry bones. ah, further vindication. 
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May 20, 2022 19:12
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The skeleton should cartoonishly collapse into a pile of bones when hit with bludgeoning damage.
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May 20, 2022 19:30
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PeterWeller posted:The skeleton should cartoonishly collapse into a pile of bones when hit with bludgeoning damage. Yeah I always imagined it was less about pulverizing the bone and more about hitting a home run swing on the skull and sending it flying, causing the rest of the skeleton to fall apart.
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May 20, 2022 20:15
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Halloween Jack posted:I thought part of the point of AD&D was to create a "tournament standard" game? It feels a lot more like the exact opposite of that. Like it was a playtest where he opened the gates for all the people he personally played/corresponded with to test out their house rules. Yes, that's what he said, but it was incorrect. All of the tournament modules essentially have their own special case rules, you can run run them with just the attack and saving throw tables and nothing else ( I've been doing this and it's really fun, can recommend)
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May 20, 2022 21:23
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I recently discovered Academies of the Arcane, a Troika sourcebook dedicated to creating and running magic schools. Does anyone have any experience with it? Libertad! fucked around with this message at 23:02 on May 20, 2022 |
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May 20, 2022 22:51
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Re: Weapon Differences, I do want to do something like what Delta does with his 0E hack, but I don't really care about attack type vs. armor type. I am more interested in differentiating weapon types, with the simplest appreciable mechanics possible, not making every individual weapon a special case. So like, all axes do +1 damage, all swords are +1 to-hit and extra durable. poo poo like that.
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May 20, 2022 23:13
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Goods & Gear: The Ultimate Adventurer's Guide is worth a look if you want a gear book in line with Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog only moreso, and right now it's free on DTRPG. It's a weird artifact of the time when KenzerCo had the license to produce officially-licensed D&D material, both for 3e under the Kingdoms of Kalamar brand and as a "parody" of AD&D under the HackMaster brand, and G&G has stats for both systems; as far as I can tell, it's the only book they produced for either system that's still available digitally. A lot of the material is actually compiled and converted from Aurora's (and other contemporary 2e books, like the PHBR/Complete X series). The biggest quibble is their insistence on using setting-specific names for pretty much every weapon not found in the PHB or DMG, so you have to kind of guess whether any of the dozens of different swords and polearms are entirely original or are renamed versions of actual real-world armaments.
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May 20, 2022 23:15
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Rolemaster nailed different weapon and armor types, at the fairly modest price of having one table per weapon. It converts very easily to most systems with anything percentile in the resolution system, though you need to do some fudging around injuries and healing.
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May 21, 2022 01:08
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Ran my playgroup through Demon Driven to the Maw last night and it was pretty excellent - possibly the best one-shot I've ever run. Mystery, danger, romance (kind of), funky folkloric monsters, a lonely giant who just wants to go to the dance, what more could you want?Libertad! posted:I recently discovered Academies of the Arcane, a Troika sourcebook dedicated to creating and running magic schools. I backed it on kickstarter. Unfortunately I grew somewhat disenchanted with Troika as a whole in the time between pledging and the book actually showing up, so I haven't actually used it to play Troika. But I still expect to get some good use out of it because it includes a lot of cool new Troika spells, which are very easily hacked into other rules-light systems, and several new backgrounds, which are generally the most inspiring part of any Troika product. It was marketed as Harry Potter with the serial numbers and transphobia filed off, which does either the book itself or the potential buyer a fairly tremendous disservice, depending on what you're after. It is a much capital-W Weirder setting than Harry Potter. Rolling a character is much less likely to result in a scrappy half-wizard bookworm or beleaguered potions professor than a curious sentient ooze or a "warp-excoriated mutant." With that in mind, if you need to whip up a detailed yet bizarre magical academy for your world, it'll do the trick. It seems like it would be somewhat exhausting to play a sustained campaign in the setting, but then, it is Troika.
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May 21, 2022 05:50
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gtrmp posted:Goods & Gear: The Ultimate Adventurer's Guide is worth a look if you want a gear book in line with Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog only moreso, and right now it's free on DTRPG.
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May 21, 2022 09:32
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Johnny Landmine posted:I backed it on kickstarter. Unfortunately I grew somewhat disenchanted with Troika as a whole in the time between pledging and the book actually showing up, so I haven't actually used it to play Troika. But I still expect to get some good use out of it because it includes a lot of cool new Troika spells, which are very easily hacked into other rules-light systems, and several new backgrounds, which are generally the most inspiring part of any Troika product. I'm in exactly the same space with AotA. I think it's a neat lil book that could easily have a lot of non-Troika utility, but the bloom has kind of come off the Troika rose for me.
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May 21, 2022 21:15
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Johnny Landmine posted:Ran my playgroup through Demon Driven to the Maw last night and it was pretty excellent - possibly the best one-shot I've ever run. Mystery, danger, romance (kind of), funky folkloric monsters, a lonely giant who just wants to go to the dance, what more could you want? Thank you for your answer! I may still pick it up if the GM tools are useful, which it sounds like.
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May 21, 2022 22:26
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Just as a heads up, it is not the same size as all the other Troika books, and yes I did nearly cancel my physical reward-level pledge when I found out about that
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May 22, 2022 03:46
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So other than the odd dice, DCC is gonna be pretty much 99% identifiable/compatible with your average OSR/OSE/B-X thing, right?
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May 22, 2022 06:45
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sasha_d3ath posted:So other than the odd dice, DCC is gonna be pretty much 99% identifiable/compatible with your average OSR/OSE/B-X thing, right? It has ascending armor class, so you will need a conversion chart for some OSR systems. It also uses fort/reflex/will saves. So technically it's most compatible with 5e  I find it works great with Basic Fantasy modules. Rutibex fucked around with this message at 06:58 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 06:55
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Once you get through the funnel, DCC characters are also significantly more powerful than (insert D&D of choice here) characters of the same level, too. The rule of thumb generally seems to be that a DCC character is more or less equivalent to a D&D character of twice their level.
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May 22, 2022 07:04
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Though honestly DCC has enough high quality modules both official and third party that I'd argue actually needing to convert anything is probably unneeded for the most part
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May 22, 2022 07:45
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DCC is dope and I discovered it through this thread last year when the company had a Black Friday sale. The amount of modules out there is just a plus— definitely almost second ranking (like, a distant second or course) to actual 5E for straight up amount now. I personally love the funnel idea because it is a perfect way to distill the gameplay down to core elements without bogging people down with classes or class skills, perfect for introducing people to the system. Plus I find that people tend to have way more affection for the random level 0 gravedigger that survived a fantasy-Vietnam scenario with a pilfered half-burnt spell book that lets them graduate into becoming a level 1 wizard than an actual “bespoke” character generated from scratch. It strangely gives way more depth and back history to the characters than people making stuff up pre-game for their level 1s.
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May 22, 2022 16:47
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For what it's worth, I don't think DCC conversion is a big deal either. You might need to convert a save against death or fortitude or a listen-at-door to an ability check or something, but I assume people are doing this on the fly with most OSR modules. Or like if you're running Xyntillan in anything other than Labyrinth Lord for example, you're probably going to have to decide what the magic items it uses from LL do in your game (potions of heroism come to mind, I had to actually search that one up in LL). The biggest difference is mostly comes from DCC characters being tougher, but I would argue this is not something to worry about in conversion. With all the wacky poo poo that can happen to you using the DCC mechanics, it's not going to result in dramatically different risk assessment.
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May 22, 2022 20:46
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Rutibex posted:It has ascending armor class, so you will need a conversion chart for some OSR systems. It also uses fort/reflex/will saves. So technically it's most compatible with 5e I think you mean 3e, not 5e. But yeah, DCC is pretty easy to convert to for modules, creating new player materials can be a pain (spells for example).
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May 22, 2022 22:28
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Arivia posted:I think you mean 3e, not 5e. But yeah, DCC is pretty easy to convert to for modules, creating new player materials can be a pain (spells for example). Yeah I hear that. I have a players who has a custom patron (who's basically a beholder god) and I offered them a custom patron bond spell. But I'm just procrastinating so much, it's a big pile of work to write up a page of tiered spell effects
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May 22, 2022 22:34
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aldantefax posted:Does anybody have a recommendation for equipment catalogs out there? It's a huge pain in the rear end to track down as, to my knowledge, it's out of print now and never saw an official pdf release, but ICE's And a Ten Foot Pole sound slike it would be much like what you're looking for. Just a big-rear end list of every conceivable piece of equipment across multiple time periods with pricing guidelines...
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May 23, 2022 22:10
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KingKalamari posted:It's a huge pain in the rear end to track down as, to my knowledge, it's out of print now and never saw an official pdf release, but ICE's And a Ten Foot Pole sound slike it would be much like what you're looking for. Just a big-rear end list of every conceivable piece of equipment across multiple time periods with pricing guidelines... I hope this book has a long winded section about the value of currencies in different societies and regions throughout time, and how prices can't be directly compared between very different economic systems. Then it lists every item with a fixed price in gold pieces
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May 23, 2022 22:54
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I mean, it's a Rolemaster supplement, so obviously it does!
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May 25, 2022 15:21
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Goodman Games just acquired the rights to Caverns of Thracia: https://goodman-games.com/blog/2022/05/26/goodman-games-acquires-caverns-of-thracia/
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May 26, 2022 20:09
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I recently bought their reprint of it, though now I'm curious what the DCC version of that would look like!
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