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PurpleXVI posted:Nobilis 2E So, basically, instead of playing Noblis, you should play Scion.
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Nov 25, 2019 18:16
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Rand Brittain posted:I don't think Nobilis and Scion are aiming for remotely the same things. It doesn't seem like it, but in truth, all I know about Nobilis comes from the above review (or portion of a review, anyway). I just recently got Scion with an eye toward leveraging the fact that it shares a system with Trinity to port some stuff from it into Trinity. Still the reviewer seemed to indicate that he wanted "gods, sort of" that weren't utterly divorced from human concerns and relationships. And also not boringly all-powerful. Scion seems like the way to go to get to that.
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Nov 25, 2019 20:27
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not comfortable with these attempts to humanize the ruling class. You're going to have to boot them down a mine shaft anyway; why make it harder on yourself? And beyond what Cythereal said, it's intrinsically a better story when your enemy is a three-dimensional person like you with needs and desires who was trying to make his way through the world as best he could than if he's some programmed "evil robot."
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Nov 26, 2019 17:51
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PurpleXVI posted:Dragonlance! I also recall Dragonlance from my high school days. It definitely wasn't perfect and there were many, many ways that it was up its own rear end. Still, it was kind of cool to see a full-on campaign saga that about more than a mediocre excuse for some underground robbery-homicide. The Cataclysm wasn't so much about "finding Jesus" as finding that Jesus got so loving pissed at Jerry Falwell Jr mouthing platitudes while sucking Donald Trump's dick that he dropped a mountain on Liberty University. The kender were kind of rear end in a "why the gently caress aren't these little bastards murdered on sight?" kind of way. I did like the Draconians. They made a nice change from "Oh nos. The Orcs are on the warpath. Yet again." The idea that Ogres are ugly and stupid because of a curse punishing them by taking away their brains and beauty was kind of cool, too. Minotaurs being a bad-rear end seafaring race instead of dumb cow-looking fucks wandering around mazes was nice. Mages having an full-on organization that tested your rear end to see if you were worthy to learn cooler magics (and you died if you weren't) was pretty neat.
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Nov 27, 2019 17:56
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PurpleXVI posted:Also in part incredibly stupid because Evil Wizard Inc. has big ol' super-visible clubhouses and no one's cottoned on to the idea of burning them down. Like, you'd think that part of being a Good Wizard(tm) would be not tolerating the guy one lab over turning peasants into clams or whatever. As noted, the Towers had multiple scary redundant defense that could kill you or make you wish you were dead. Ithle01 posted:I always thought of it as being like the Guild of Calamitous Intent from Venture Brothers. They're evil, but like the good wizards aren't all that interested in doing much about it and would rather the evil wizards just regulated themselves. Good has a very strange definition in Dragon Lance as evidence by elves being the race created by the gods of Good. I guess what' I'm trying to say here is that alignment systems are bad. Maybe a little bit. Probably a closer comparison would be to the hotel and other areas in John Wick. Outside of it, you could kill the poo poo out of your enemies to your heart's content. Inside, no violence. The other aspect is that while wizard have their moral outlooks, the one thing they share in common is their devotion to magic. Whatever disagreement a White Robe has with the Black turning peasants into zombie farm workers, if there's a threat to magic itself on some level they'll join forces without hesitation to combat that threat. Theoretically, anyway. Really, this was the first AD&D setting where people acted like... people whatever their alignment happened to be.
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Nov 27, 2019 22:07
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PurpleXVI posted:And yet the Good Wizards and Neutral Wizards still built these clubhouses alongside the Bad Wizards and maintain them together. From what I recall of the setting, it's highly likely that other Black Robes would zap the rear end in a top hat who was deboning peasants. Deboning peasants stirs up angry peasant mobs to kill wizards, which is a Threat to Magic. So the deboner will himself be deboned.
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Nov 28, 2019 01:40
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The Lone Badger posted:But won't the black robes then go have to burn down an orphanage or two so they don't risk losing their Evil License? One of the cooler aspects of Dragonlance is, that no, they don't. One aspect of the wizards that was neat was a bit from the Dragonlance sourcebook. Black Robe Wizard needed less XP to advance but they topped out faster than Red or White Wizards. There was a bit of the Star Wars "The Dark Side is faster, easier but not stronger" concept mechanically incorporated. Plus the bit with the Moons and spells was cool. Recall that D-Lance came about in 1st Edition AD&D, there were some pretty innovative things it pioneered that got incorporated into later editions.
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Nov 28, 2019 11:18
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PurpleXVI posted:
Not actually true. In the Dragonlance Adventures source book, both Tinker Gnomes and the steps for their inventions are detailed. They're still pretty rear end and if you play one, you're really rooting for it to go "mad." "Mad" gnomes are better at building stuff (+5 to the roll) and their stiuff is 1d6 sizes smaller. So they actually become a decent, viable character class. I recall actually playing one of those guys. For about five levels "Gnosh" hung at the bang, occasioally shot a crossbow and tried not to die. Then he went Mad (or the GM had pity on me and "Maddened" him). So, he built the Actuating Kineticizer # 4.7. It was a backpack contraption with a couple of hoses linked to a tube with a crossbow trigger and a lever on top. Steel piece coins went into the backpack. The lever controlled the rate of fire which was single or "burst" the trigger was to induce inverse magnetic polarity. Basically, Gnosh built a rail gun. That worked. Everyone fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Nov 28, 2019 |
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Nov 28, 2019 21:10
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PurpleXVI posted:So what you're saying is, they're not in the source book and you need to acquire extra books for them to be playable, at which point they'll still not be as good as an Irda or a Minotaur. No, they are in the source book. Though we might not be talking about the same source book. This is the one that I'm talking about. Tinker gnomes are listed at page 21. The general gnomish race of Krynn and Mad Gnomes are on page 56.
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Nov 28, 2019 23:01
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PurpleXVI posted:As Berkshire said, I'm doing the boxed set. I thought Dragonlance Adventures was a supplement, but as the boxed set seems to be the definitive core for 2E, Adventures appears to be the definitive core for 1E. I've got Adventures but, uh, firstly I'm not as familiar with 1E as I am with 2E by any means, so I feel like any balance-related reviewing I do would be flawed. And secondly by .PDF of Adventures is some incredibly blurry trash. The Tinker Gnomes could be fun but scary - especially with Mad Gnomes. Stupid elevators? Sure. Goofy-rear end Net gun, of course. "Aww, and what do you have little fella?" *Pyong Zsorch* "Holy poo poo, it's a blaster rifle!." Or, "wasn't the Red Dragonarmy camp near here? " "I think it's that way underneath that big, bright cloud that looks like a mushroom."
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Nov 29, 2019 00:32
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PurpleXVI posted:So, the ORIGINAL RACES were Humans, Elves, Dwarves and (Irda) Ogres. Definite me too on that one. I could never get into 3.5 for fear that my character might die from a hernia if I forgot to get the "Take a poo poo" feat. I do remember several years back playing through the "In Search of Dragons" trilogy. Nobody wanted to play a Kender, so the GM let me bring in a multi-classed psionicist/thief with the Investigator thief kit who was a "Tallboy" halfling that most Krynn would initially think was a Kender. His backstory was that he was a Guardsman from Greyhawk, specialized in Telepathy, Lawful Neutral, cold, ruthless and kind of rude. He was a blast to play because he'd match the suspicious/insulting good dragons sneer for sneer and say things like "Please find some other thoughtlessly ignorant way to embarrass your species aside from impugning my honor."
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Nov 29, 2019 12:39
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PurpleXVI posted:Dragonlance I did appreciate that there were a couple of the evil guys you could potentially manipulate in doing bad stuff to the bad side. The supplement at least broached the idea that "Hey, maybe not every battle against evil has to end with "We murder him to death and steal his poo poo. Yay for the good guys!"" I admit I wish this was being done under first edition so you could all appreciate that Dragonlance was kind of the proving ground for some of the second edition. The Wizards of High Sorcery laid the ground works for specialist wizards and making the illusionist a specialist wizard instead of its own class. The Moons thing might've fallen flat, but it was cool that a Wizard of High Sorcery didn't look like the bog standard mage in the book. The Order of the Stars finally put forth the idea that cleric were priests of actual god and didn't all look alike. That some gods granted special abilities and different spell selection.
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Dec 1, 2019 03:06
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PurpleXVI posted:For those not in the know, in literally every loving page of the Dragonlance books where Raistlin appears, the descriptive text will go on for lengths about how sickly and weak he is and how he'd be basically a paralyzed cripple without Caramon to haul him along. Sometimes he even coughs up blood. This is a point where AD&D could have benefited from some kind of Merit/Flaw system. Merit: Cool, somewhat useful Artifact at 3rd level. Flaw: Weak, tired occasionally coughing up blood. And on a completely different topic, Yessssssss!.
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Dec 2, 2019 02:10
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Tylana posted:Could be worse, you could start F&Fing the... 4th age (?) nonD&D dragonlance RPG that was deck based. Maybe used special dice too? I forget. I think I found the core book but not the core box. Ah, yes. The Fifth Age with the SAGA system. That's pretty much where I just shrugged and "gently caress this setting." I admit I did like some of the set up. Heroes of the Lance getting the poo poo murdered out of them (in Dragons of Summer Flame if you didn't laugh your rear end off when The Chaos God killed Tasselhoff by stepping on him you have no soul)? Check. A bunch of kender finally feeling fear because a big-rear end red dragon roasted the gently caress out of a bunch of them? Awesome. But the whole card thing? Bleecchhhh! PurpleXVI is razzing the poo poo out of the original Dragonlance, but its biggest problem was that it was written for 1st ed AD&D and by comparison with a lot of RPGs today, 1st ed AD&D sucked rancid donkeys ball. But the SAGA system? I'm half-convinced that was a deliberate act of cruelty .
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Dec 2, 2019 05:25
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PurpleXVI posted:Technically? Yes. Part of it is that I was really, really into the Dragonlance setting in hgih school/college, but I haven't really looked at the modules since then. So yeah, 2d6 Wraiths for 3-7th level characters (and how many of them even had magic weapons at this point?) with no cleric to Turn Undead? Slaughter time - except they allow somehow get washed over a waterfall in the middle of a swamp and turn up alive again. And at the time I was one of those assholes who thought Kender were just adorable. Yeah, Weis and Hickman's tendency to create entire races for the sole purpose of comic relief was a little annoying at times. So part of my tendency to defend Dragonlance is from nostalgia, which is poisonous to reason. But the other part was that 1ed Dragonlance Advenntures sourcebooks, because I can trace a lot of stuff from 2ed AD&D (which we agree is the best edition) to that book and the concepts in it. Sure, the "Flyer" from Kitty Hawk was a deeply lovely airplane, but because of it, we have stealth bombers and commercial airliners.
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Dec 2, 2019 18:11
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PurpleXVI posted:I gotta be honest, while I don't enjoy using level-draining undead, especially with no access to Restoration or similar spells, I actually think there's probably a good reason there beyond "lol Gygax was a prick," or at least a better one than that. For my games I just assumed that the gods of various long-lived races would "call them to higher duties" at which point they'd leave the world. Humans generally had a version of this called "death from old age." The "level limits" were the idea that a lot of folks in that race generally decided to step back and retire to quieter activities once they reached a certain "level" so they wouldn't get called up into some kind of godly forever war. As for level-draining, I thought it was deeply stupid and just removed it. Instead I allowed undead to temporarily drain attributes (Con, Str, Wis) and permanently drain hit points. So, if a Spectre hits you, you'll lose 2 points of Constitution and 2 points from your hit point maximum (though restoration can heal all such damage). I also gave max HP at first level and instituted a half or above policy for other rolls. Your Rogue gains a level and rolls 1d6. On a 1 or 2 he still gets at least 3 hp for gaining a level. And yes, Con bonuses added to that.
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Dec 2, 2019 23:28
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Bieeanshee posted:That's one of the reasons I always detested level drain: it was meant to scare the players, not the characters. Honestly that's been a bit of an AD&D mainstay. When TSR put A1-A4 together into the supermodule, Scourge of the Slavelords the module included a scene (set before the adventure proper even began in terms of the A1-A4 modules) in which the PCs where captured by agents of the Slavelords and enslaved as rowers aboard a slaver ship. Within that scene is a bit where the slavers rifle through the PCs' equipment, taking the items they can use and toss others (like Good-aligned weapons, etc.) over the side of the ship to be lost forever. Process that for a bit. Roll it around in your skull. This scene is the Big Motivator for the PCs - the thing that makes them really invested in taking the Slavelords down. And that Big Motivator is not "They kidnapped our friends!" or "They killed my wife/love/mentor/pet" or even just a basic "Slavery is vile and must be stopped!" Nope, the Big Motivator for this adventure is "They took our stuff!" To be fair this module is one part of a supercampaign that potentially takes the characters from 1st level newbies all the way to being 14th level badasses. It starts with T1-T4 with The Temple of Elemental Evil (which finally expanded the village of Hommlet into a full campaign adventure story) goes through A1-A4 with Scourge of the Slavelords and climaxes with GDQ1-7 (Against the Giants; Descent into the Depths of the Earth and Vault of the Drow and then Queen of the Demonweb Pits) which has this cover:  Yep, just Lloth hanging in her The upshot of all that is that after playing through T1-T4, the PCs would quite likely have ended up with some really good stuff. Dragonlance had its problems and we'll see plenty of them for a while, but at the least it aspired to having players become invested in a story for reasons other than "They stole our poo poo!" Everyone fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Dec 3, 2019 |
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Dec 3, 2019 02:08
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i think some of the issue also comes down to having to model what a character can do vs what the player can do, and having to be able to mechanically differentiate between those two things. players want to be able to play a character smarter or more clever than themselves, but how do you model someone being able to solve a fictional problem that the actual player might not be able to solve in real life? I tend to do both. If a player is bright/intuitive/whatever enough to figure the problem out in real life, that's cool and she maybe gets some minor bennie/reward for pulling that off. But if she or no one else can, than I fall back on "Okay, roll your Intelligence/Riddles/Evidence Analysis/Figure poo poo Out ability."
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Dec 3, 2019 20:48
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Freaking Crumbum posted:even that is kinda weird to me though, because the inverse is rarely true - i.e. if i am capable of overcoming my DM in a contest of physical exertion (arm wrestling or lap running or knife fighting or whatever) i still have never been allowed to substitute my own physical prowess as a solution to an in-game problem. When it comes to the "figure poo poo out" stuff, the fighter's player gets as much of a chance as the wizard's player because it's the players doing the figuring out. Now, sure, in a rolling situation, the wWzard with his 18 INT is way more likely to figure whatever-it-is out than the Fighter with an 11 INT. But it's more satisfying to the players to do it themselves than to say "I subject myself to the coldly indifferent forces of probability in the hope that they will not humiliate me this day."
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Dec 3, 2019 22:40
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oriongates posted:I think the problem is that resolving social conflicts in this way often makes the resolution less interesting, even if it's easier. The second example gets a "roll your Charmisma/Fast Talk/etc to see if the guy bought it" from me. Actually role-playing out the "plausible lie" means you get bonuses on the roll or maybe bypass it entirely. At least that's how I'd GM it. I'm likely to toss out bonuses/XP for coolness and creativity. I won't actively punish stuff like: "I hit the orc." "I hit the orc a sec-ond time." "For a third time I hit the orc." Me: "Whoops, looks like the orcs killed you by chopping of your head. Now they're dragging off your corpse to use your neckhole as a privy. Roll up something else and try not to make it so gently caress-off boring this time." But I'll play it straight RAW with no extras.
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Dec 4, 2019 14:42
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Review: The Fabled Lands Gamebook Series Part One PurpleXVI's reviews of the DL module and their "Obey the plot! Dance little PC puppets! Dance for your master! And go where loving tell you!" has inspired me to do a bit on what's probably the opposite of that: The Fabled Lands gamebook series. You remember gamebooks, right? They're what you'd play in the 80s and 90s before computer graphics and engines stopped being so lovely. They were like modules you could play by yourself. You'd get a character with stats and equipment, often with a predefined set of goals and mission to accomplish within the book: You are: The Buttfucker. You must save the good village of Sodomy from the evil Vaginaface Witch. It will take all your strength, cunning and bravery (aka good dice rolls) to accomplish this mighty feat. Blah, blah, ad nauseum. And then in the mid-90s in the UK Dave Morris and Jaime Thompson tried to put together an open-world fantasy computer and it turned into a game book series instead, The Fabled Lands. So, diving right in. There are six Abilities in the books that are fairly self-explanatory: Charisma, Combat, Magic, Sanctity, Scouting and Thievery but I'll briefly go through them Charisma is about influencing/persuading people. Want to talk yourself out of going to prison? That's this. Combat is about fighting/strength and is used in tests and actual fighting encounters Magic is about magical/occult knowledge and spells. There really aren't any spells as such in FL. You just use this in tests. Sanctity is about Divine connections and wisdom. Scouting is about wilderness lore and survival, including tracking and the like Thievery is about stealth, lockpicking and such All the Abilities are used in Tests which means rolling 2d6, adding the Ability (and apply modifiers) and trying to score higher than the Difficulty of the Test. You come to a locked door with a Difficulty of 12. You have a Thieving of 5 and Magic Lockpicks (Thieving +2), so you'll succeed by rolling a 6 or higher. Aside from Abilities, you have Stamina, which is basically your hit points, Rank, your "level" and Defence, which is your Combat Ability plus your Rank and any modifiers for armor or other items. A Rank 3 character with a Combat of 5 who was wearing Chain Mail Armor (Def+3) would have a Defense of 11 in fighting. A starting Rank 3 character gets a Stamina of 16. And speaking of that, Combat in this is pretty simple. Your character always goes first. You roll 2d6 and add your Combat, applying any modifiers (-1 for having some disease, +3 for a magic weapon, etc.) then subtract their Defense. Any positive number remaining is the damage to their Stamina. Behind that door you unlocked is a Guard with Combat 9, Defense 11 and Stamina of 15. You have a Combat of 5 with an Enchanted Sword (Com +3). If you roll an 8 your total is 16, minus Defense 11 means the Guard takes 5 damage and his Stamina is now 10. At this point he strikes back, rolling his own 8 giving him a 17, minus your Defense of 11 meaning you take 6 damage, dropping your own Stamina to a 10. Usually defeating an opponent gets you some money or an item or two. The Guard might have a Sword, Chain Mail (Def +3) and a Brass Key. The first two items aren't that useful but can still be sold in markets for money. The third might be useful later. Or something that just takes up space. And space is a thing. You can carry a total of 12 Items in your Inventory at any given time. Find a 13th Item you want or need and you'll have to drop something (which is gone forever) to make room for it. That said, you can carry an unlimited amount of mone So far, so pretty much bog standard for these books. Along with Weapons, Armor and other stuff, in these books you can buy Ships, Cargo and Houses. Yes, Houses. You can go to your House and drop off some of the poo poo you're carrying. Most of the time a House/storage area will have conditions like "Roll 2d6 every time you come here. On a 2-9 your stuff is safe. On a 10-11 a thief broke in and stole your money and possessions. On a 12 the house burns down. You lose you stuff and have to buy a new house." However, there are places without conditions where your stuff is safe. Each book have Code Words and Page Ticks that make the book "remember" your actions. Say you meet a wizard who wants you to find his magic aardvark figurine. Take up the quest and you get the code word, aardvark. Some place else an encounter is a "rustling in the bushes." Investigate and you'll find an angry bear that you'll have to fight. After the fight you'll get a few coins or something and then the book will ask "Do you have the Aardvark code word?" If so turn to section 455. If not, there's nothing left but gnawed bones and bear scat. Go left by turning to 300 or right by turning to 222. Assuming you get back to the wizard and turn the aardvark over to him, you'll likely lose the code word or have it be replaced by something else like Aided to reflect your friendly relationship with the wizard. There are also page ticks. At the top of some pages is a small empty box. Your character is going into a cave. When he does the text says, "If you have already ticked the box, turn to 333. If not read on. Reading on means you fight a troll and gets a good bit of money or items. Coming back to the cave and going to 333 shows an empty cave where a fight played out since you already went their earlier. More stuff later. First, building your character. Pick a name and gender. For the most part the books are neutral, gender-wise but there are a couple of points where gender is important. Everyone fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Dec 5, 2019 |
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Dec 4, 2019 22:59
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Speleothing posted:Charisma, Combat, Magic, Sanctity, Scouting, and Thievery. drat that's a satisfying set of attributes. Add in athletics and I think you'd have just about everything covered. Athletics tended to fall under Scouting and/or Thievery. Swimming was Scouting. Climbing could often be Scouting or Thievery. I'll talk a bit more about them later, but while there are Professions, class isn't that much of a thing in FL, though Professions sometimes give situational advantages. Nothing stops a Mage from having a high Combat (or wearing even Heavy Plate (Def +6) as armor). He'll just start lower is all.
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Dec 4, 2019 23:44
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Seatox posted:D&D crossbreeding is an ethical and moral cesspit. Half-orcs and rape implications, Dark Sun's Mul (at least Dark Sun is supposed to be a horrible bleak wasteland, so they're not as jarringly out of place as the gully dwarves). Then gully dwarves exist, blowing even the kender out of the water for cringe-worthy awfulness, since they're treated as comic relief of a particularly offensive, regressive "ha ha look at the r-word" vein. The weird thing for me is that it wasn't until this thread that I grokked the concept that gully dwarves are what happens when humans and dwarves mate. That... is just deeply hosed up on so many levels. First off, enough humans wanted to gently caress enough dwarves to make an entire subrace of these guys. Then, instead of caring for their offspring they threw them the gently caress away in places like Xak Tsaroth. At this point I think the gods should've thrown multiple mountains at Krynn, wiped out the lot of them and started over with something else. Dolphins, maybe. Kender are at least cute. Fine, the halflings of Krynn are an entire race of 9 year olds (who still have sex to make more kender but whatever). I'm surprised we don't have half-kender running around because the human "punishment" for pedophiles in Krynn is exile to the lands of the Kender or something. Half-orcs. Half-elves. Half-ogre. Now Half-dwarves. Half-dragons. Tieflings, which apparently Half-demons/devils or something. Is there anything that humans won't gently caress? I remember a guy from the Dresden Files RPG bouncing the idea of a Half-hob off of us. And my take was: This is a Hob.  Take a look at that thing and realize that what you want means that someone had sex with that thing. Someone wanted to have that thing's babies. And his take was "Maybe it was rape?" Because in RPGs rape always makes everything better. *sigh*
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Dec 5, 2019 06:06
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Dragonlance minotaurs are basically Klingons with wooden pirate ships - so they are absolutely cool.
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Dec 5, 2019 12:48
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Review: The Fabled Lands Gamebook Series Part Two Continuing into the Fabled Lands, at character creation, you pick a Profession from a list of six: Mage, Priest, Rogue, Troubadour, Warrior and Wayfarer. While there are points in the books where Profession is important (certain Quests can only be taken up by certain Profession and sometimes Professions give bonuses (Warriors have an easier time fighting Pirate in ship-to-ship combat)), mostly the Professions determine which of your Abilities is highest and lowest. Mages have a high initial Magic but a very low Sanctity, for example. I think I'll stop here as far as the game system goes. It's okay. It has its flaws (the 2d6 is absolute, so if your Defense is at least 12 points higher than an enemy's Combat, it can't hurt you) but works reasonably well for a solo-player gamebook. Still, let's move on to the unique parts of this series. First, the Fabled Lands books are organized geographically instead of chronologically. In most other gamebooks the adventure takes place fully within the specific book. Lone Wolf might use the Silver Bow he got in Book 6 to snipe some enemy in Book 9, but all of the Book 9 adventure occurs in Book 9. He can't decide that he really could have used a Silver Bow and travel back to Book 6 to get one. In Fabled Lands you can. Book One details Sokara, a land experiencing a rebellion after a general deposed the old king. Book 2 two details the lands just to the west. Book 3 centers around the Violet Ocean and this is where you get a lot of use from a ship you'd obtain. So during the course of your Fabled Lands adventures, you can (and generally should) travel back and forth between the various books. In fact, there are a considerable number of quests that start in one book and require you to go to one or more other books in order to complete them. Traveling can be accomplished by ship, by gates or teleports or simply by walking far enough within a book to reach a border. However, along with geography, the books are organized by Rank. Book one starting characters begin at Rank 1 Book 2 at Rank 2 and so on. The various challenges and encounters (along with possible treasures) in each book tend to be gear toward the Rank of the book. Can you take your Rank 1 character into Book 6? Sure, but it's very likely he'll run into something that'll cut him up for snack food. And this runs in reverse. A character starting in Book 7 begins at Rank 7. Aside from increased Defense and Stamina the character's starting Abilities generally increase by one in the odd-numbered books. A Rank 7 Warrior in Book 7 starts with a 9 in Combat instead at a 6 as per Rank 1 (and that's out of a maximum of 12) As you can see, most of the encounters in Book 1 will likely be a cakewalk for him. Beyond the geography, is the story of Fabled Lands. The story of Fabled Lands is your story. You choose your own goals and the quests that support them. Book One has as its background the coup and rebellion. In a conventional game book, you'd be working with the rebels supporting the son of the old king in taking back his father's throne from the evil general who usurped it. There might be some side quests, but your main goal would be overthrowing the general. You could still work toward that in Fabled Land. Or you could work for the general in suppressing the rebels. Or you could mostly ignore both sides and do something unrelated, like making yourself rich trading cargo between areas using a Ship. Or just leave Sokara completely with an eye toward coming back later if you wished to choose sides. Fabled Lands has a definite lack of infinite Kapak draconians trying to force you onto the path of the One True Quest. You decide what your "One True Quest" is. Or what your "Multiple True Quests" are. Everyone fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Dec 5, 2019 |
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Dec 5, 2019 18:38
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Mors Rattus posted:...I mean, yes, that’s generally how collaborative fiction works? Is the game trying to present personal agency as an innovation here or are you? It is. RPG mechanics but basically CYOA. And if you've read much CYOA you'll note that most of the time you really don't actually get to "Choose Your Own Adventure" except in terms of playing the book or not playing the book. You might have some agency in choosing how you play through the book (though many times there's one "correct" path and everything else leads to death/bad endings). So, looked at that way, personal agency really is kind of an innovation. And that innovation occurred back in the mid-1990s and didn't really spread all that far. One thing Dave Morris has noted is that Fabled Lands had some trouble because a lot of players couldn't deal with an unstructured adventure setting and personal agency. The Kapaks had trained them against that. Everyone fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Dec 5, 2019 |
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Dec 5, 2019 20:58
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Dalamar? Granted that Raistlin wasn't exactly cuddly or personable but what exactly did Dalamar accomplish aside from loving and then later killing Kitiara? That's an accomplishment, but not exactly an archmage-level accomplishment. Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, as a CYOA it’s fairly innovative, I was just reading it as some heartbreaker at first. The thing I love about FL is that your choices are generally meaningful and will have consequences. But they won't be punished. If you side with the rebels and do what they want, there will be parts of Sokara in the cities where you might get hunted down and slain or imprisoned. Likewise if you side with the general and try to to get to the rebels again, they'll attack. But those are consequences of the choices you made and the actions you took. What will not happen is you getting harried and attacked until you do something the book story wants you to do (like haul rear end for Qualinost). Because the book's story is ultimately your own story. BTW, what does "heartbreaker" mean in this context? Night10194 posted:Also for Inklesspen's sanity you should put a bolded header and a post number on your review posts. Done.
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Dec 5, 2019 21:31
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Night10194 posted:It's the Forgotten Realms; the whole setting is about nothing interesting happening. It's pretty much the other generic AD&D setting aside from Greyhawk. It exists to give Drizzt do'urden a place to stand while he kills stuff and looks cool.
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Dec 5, 2019 22:06
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Mors Rattus posted:Essentially? Someone trying to sell their RPG that is 'what if D&D plus some houserules and maybe one good idea that just breaks your heart to see in this lovely-rear end fantasy RPG clone.' Well, Fabled Lands isn't that. Or if it is, it definitely has more than one good idea. Like, there are elves and goblins in the setting, but they aren't the bullshit D&D versions. They're the Fair Folk of Celtic/English/Norse folklore and they one reason to keep your Sanctity somewhat high.
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Dec 5, 2019 22:13
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Freaking Crumbum posted:forgotten realms is so generic fantasy that for a good portion of my adolescence, i thought FR was AD&D and that any other setting was a completely different game. like, it didn't make sense that any of those other settings were AD&D because FR was the most bland tolkien fantasy and that's obviously what AD&D was so they were clearly the same thing. I'm 51 now. I was lucky to have landed in college with a group and GM that rapidly decided that D&D was gently caress-off boring and rapidly moved on to other games and systems. I was even luckier to have been able to maintain a friendship with that GM over the years. So, I got lengthy campaigns in Feng Shui, Deadlands, Fading Suns and Warhammer Fantasy. Plus some exposure to White Wolf WoD, West End's Star Wars (still the best incarnation of that setting as an RPG IMHO), TORG, Gurps Car Wars and just a poo poo-ton of other stuff so I never labored under the delusion that D&D was the be-all/end-all of RPGs.
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Dec 5, 2019 23:41
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Terrible Opinions posted:I'm aware of bastards and bloodlines. Which is more about the weird eugenicsy stuff that should really be avoided. I'd just prefer if the baseline assumption, for games not explicitly about fighting prejudice, was that two sapients of different species can be attracted to one another and gently caress without there being any weird explanation needed. That's fair and reasonable as far as it goes. If a drow elf and a beholder are adventurous enough to get their freak on together, I'm cool with it. But no, you don't get to play their magic resistant offspring who also has a Disintegrate gaze. At least not in one of the games I'll run.
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Dec 6, 2019 01:11
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U.T. Raptor posted:You will probably not like this, but there is actually a half-kender in one of the short story collections. I'm reminded of the bit from Doctor Who. Rose: "Wait, you mean we just go out into the the universe and..." The Doctor: "Dance." And the half-Kender doesn't really bother me all that much. I recall reading another short story with Fewmaster Toede (from Dragons of Flame) getting involved with a Kender resistance movement and one girl Kender in particular with the implication that there would likely be some hybridization occurring between them in the near future.
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Dec 6, 2019 14:29
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Halloween Jack posted:The answer to that problem is that if someone wants to play a beholder, fine, but they don't get all its abilities at level 1. Granted, writing a balanced monster class from scratch is easier said than done. In 4e I think I would treat special attacks as alternate power picks. A beholder ray would be maybe an alternate Lvl 13 encounter power. That's your answer. My answer is "No, play one of the normal races. If you really want your backstory to be 'Mommy hosed a beholder and I came out.' that's fine, but in terms of abilities you're still playing a human/elf/etc." As a GM figure I'll have plenty of other stuff to do aside from building a custom monster class because one of my players wants to start with an overpowered character.
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Dec 6, 2019 17:15
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Selachian posted:I should note that there's a free Java-based version of the Fabled Lands gamebooks available here. I think there's also an Android version floating around out there. The JAVA game is a little broken. It adds the Combat bonuses of weapons to Defense. As you noted, the FL series is actually up to seven main books with the release of The Serpent King's Domain a year or so back as a double-sized book with Paul Gresty as the writer. Dave Morris also rewrote the old Fighting Fantasy book, Keep of the Lich Lord to work under the Fabled Lands rules. Meanwhile, there are real plans to Kickstart Book 8, The Lone and Level Sands perhaps next year with Paul Gresty as the writer. There's also another remastered book by Paul Gresty that has been rewritten and mostly edited which could see publication at any given point. While it was in a deep coma for a good long while, the Fabled Lands series is still very much alive and progressing, if slowly.
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Dec 6, 2019 20:57
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Kaza42 posted:Gave the java client a try as a Warrior. Did pretty well, until I got a mission to cross into a new book and immediately got my rear end kicked. Was fun though, and the first volume is only like 8 bucks, I think I'll try the actual book form The books are better than the JAVA, especially after the first one. Random encounters of sorts tend to be a thing in Fabled Lands and they tend to break down to Roll 1d6 or 2d6. On a 1-2 or a lower number, X happens. On a 5-6 or higher number z happens. On a 3-4, etc. there's no encounter and you proceed. And while in some cases the low number is a thing to fight and the high number is a useful item (even in the you can sell for shards sense), a lot of the encounters are flavor and/or informational. And you'll find yourself going through quite few of the same areas as you travel. So, once you've heard from the "wise friar" and know all the stories that Storyteller has, there's no reason not to just skip ahead via the "no encounter" section. Which is where you end up after the encounters are resolved anyway. Except that the JAVA program will not let you do that. You have to roll, have to go through whatever it and only then do you get to move on. Also, remember the "personal agency" bit. You choose what quests you want and when you want to pursue them. The books don't care when you do them. Though if you go back to somebody who's issued you a quest without having fulfilled it, you will eat some version of "Why the gently caress are you here? Get back out there and get my poo poo done!" Also, money/shards are very, very useful in this series. You can buy better equipment. You can also buy Blessings which give you re-rolls on failed Ability checks. Or protect you from the effects of something. Safety from Storms is nice, though traveling in a Galleon with an Excellent crew is almost as good. But Immunity to Poison/Disease is a literal godsend. And Luck lets you re-roll any other roll. Emphasis any. That enemy that just tagged you for a bunch of damage? Re-roll. It's expensive by really nice. Also, Resurrection Deals. Finally, there are potions. Potions can be drunk right before a roll or combat to add +1 to a specific ability for that roll or combat. And they add to the Ability. So drink a Strength (Combat +1) boosts your attacks and you Defense by 1 for that fight. Finally, potions can be used at any time - even during a fight. And there are healing potions too.
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Dec 7, 2019 03:04
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Prism posted:That part isn't in the AD&D Monster Manual (I just checked) though it makes a lot of sense. Did they just... forget? Presumably for the 1ed AD&D they decided that dragons weren't immune to their own breath weapon effect - so that hitting a red dragon with a lit torch could still do damage. For 2nd ed they went full tilt the other way. Fire/heat does nothing to red dragons (and gold dragons), etc.
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Dec 7, 2019 03:38
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Selachian posted:From what I remember in the 1E days, there was a general feeling that dragons were too weak for what were supposed to be some of the most fearsome enemies in the game. Even the mightiest huge ancient red dragon had "only" 88 hp, and dragons were subject to special subdual rules that other monsters weren't. This led to many variant rules intended to power up dragons, particularly adding more attacks (tail lash, wing slap, etc.), and eventually to 3E's supergenius caster-dragons. I "loved" the subduel rules. "Yep, I'm gonna make this evil, centuries old engine of fiery destruction into my flying horsie by spanking him with the flat of my blade." As for DL3, in terms of the novels, you finished the books in DL2. The books had a pretty decent final fight with Verminaard and had Flamestrike sacrifice herself to kill Ember. Cut to Book 2 and some southern city near the Krynn South Pole? that I don't remember and the refugees are safe with the party splitting up to do other poo poo. Everyone fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 01:47
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Libertad! posted:Imagine seeing the healing miracle of Goldmoon's divine magic, converting after realizing you were wrong all along and that "The Gods did not leave Krynn, Krynn left the Gods." That kind of rates a "gently caress you! gently caress YOU! Send me to Hell, you unbelievable deific oval office! Hell is better than eternity with you!"
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Dec 8, 2019 02:01
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Seatox posted:I'm sure they're going to lean on some kind of "oh putting up with all of Fizban's idiot murderous antics were a TEST! OF YOUR WORTH AS HEROES!" crap at some point. That's loving abuser logic, Hickman, you hack. Nope, not even a little bit - in the modules, anyway. I think in the novels Fizban didn't come off as quite as much of a "Tom Green with funny Alzheimer's" but I could be wrong.
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Dec 8, 2019 03:39
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Angry Salami posted:Yeah, the books basically skip 90% of this nonsense. They especially don't have the party recruit a dragon, since it's a big surprise later on when they find out there are good dragons... Purple skipped over it, but as per the cover, the brass dragon sacrifices himself luring Verminaard and Ember away yet again to lead into DL4 - where if you're lucky, you can finally be shut of these whiny-rear end Pax Tharkans once and for all.
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Dec 8, 2019 03:42
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