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Okay so why was that important? What valuable game-related purpose did those properties serve? For what reason did the GM, who is making up a world that does not exist and does not have objective magical rules regarding skin contact beyond whatever he decides on for narrative convenience, decide to give this player a desirable item with a giant red-flag 'take your attention off this for one instant and it's gone' clause, and then when that didn't succeed in either benefitting the party or derailing the game entirely (take your pick) instantly dropped another with a roughly identical setup on him? Yeah, theoretically I guess it's possible the store owner guy's just inept at doing things that work, playing to the known characteristics of his audience or conveying intent to other human beings, that's not exactly unheard-of in the hobby; but if I was a player in that game with the poor interpretive faculties given to us non-mindreaders, and especially after that first time where the GM confirmed what he's about by having some jackass wizard insult me rather than call it a mulligan, next time something like that got dumped in my lap for drat sure I'd be looking for the most unrewarding possible way to throw the match in the hopes that this dude would lose interest in trying to use arbitrary GM fiat to gently caress with me and focus on running a goddamned game. And then unless I knew that guy was otherwise amazing I probably would find a reason to never play at one of his games again. Tubgirl Cosplay fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 07:12
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When I want to give my players something, I don't just give it to them. That's boring. Saying "You find the office, and the guy gives you the papers" is unfun. You throw kinks into things, for the players to overcome. "He doesn't want to give you the papers, he'll get arrested." Wizards are assholes who do dickish stuff, and it's up to the players to figure out how to outsmart them, that's a pretty common game type. The player had figured out how to outsmart the wizard. He was going to write down the spells he wanted, so when the book disappeared, it wouldn't matter much. The GM was ok with this. Then the guy flubbed for god-knows-why, and the GM had to scramble to give him something else to have fun with. If the GM was an rear end in a top hat, he would have said "As you step out of the wizard's office, and put the book in your pocket, it disappears. The door locks behind you. Hah!" If you're so worried that the GM is out to gently caress you, you throw a bitch-fit every time he lets you shoot yourself in the foot, I'm pretty loving glad I've never had to play with you. Or play with a GM that warrants that kind of paranoia. Man, I need to bake a cake or something for my group, I don't appreciate them enough...
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Nov 3, 2012 07:35
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From a GM's perspective it just comes across as incredibly lazy. It's as if the GM doesn't want the player to have the thing, so instead of saying "no" and being the bad guy, he gives it to them with an overblown mechanic for making it vanish, as the GM doesn't want to think about/worry about/plan for them having the item. Why he did it TWICE is beyond me, but my guess goes to the intense levels of passive aggression shown amongst the awkward.
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Nov 3, 2012 07:46
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Yeah man and when I find out I've got a guy who's bad at public speaking I always set things up so he's the party face and then demand that players roleplay out all their diplomacy rolls in the Land of Men Who Heckle Guys Who Say Umm. That's a pretty common game type! Peasants are ill-mannered! It's boring to just make everything just dicerolling! And hey, if I really wanted to be an rear end in a top hat I'd have lightning strike the lot of them where they stand! 
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Nov 3, 2012 07:52
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Alright, normally I GM for our group, but once not too long ago my little brother decided he'd like to give it a go. He ran Call of Cthulhu, set in a small midwest American tourist trap. This is the story of the worst character I've ever made. My character was David "Tennosuke" Gulliver, an Anime fan and general Japan enthusiast. David's typical attire was an oilskin, cargo shorts, a fedora and a K-On hawaiian shirt. David was overweight, with curly hair grown into a loose ponytail and an attempted beard. He also wore cheap glasses frames. David would introduce himself as 'Tennosuke' and claim to have 'noble samurai blood'. David would not talk to women, and if one spoke to him he would make every attempt to leave the room. David would claim to have abilities or experiences he'd never had, and would steadfastly refuse to admit fault or change his story if found to be lying. David had an interest in the occult, but only if he could relate it back to anime. David would also sarcastically compare anything and everything going on around him to anime, and would occasionally just groan to himself that the later series of Naruto aren't as good. David spent all his funds on a wakizashi blade from the local pawn shop, as well as the hilt from an overblown decorative western style sword. He crafted them together into the 'Masamune', and appeared unable to acknowledge that his sword looked like a piece of poo poo. David was forced to get a job (oh how he groaned) as he'd spent all his money on the Masamune. He took a shift guarding the local graveyard overnight (it reminded him of that mission from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which is a pretty good game, even though it's not japanese, and the final fantasy games are better...) which he did until a lightning storm and a falling crocodile smashed the roof of the undertaker's office in. David fought a zombie there, but described it as a "standard random encounter" and took no SAN damage. David essentially ignored the main plot line and just moaned and avoided his way through the whole game, yet somehow ended up gaining access to magical powers and gaining eternal unlife. A session could not go by without someone saying "I loving HATE David..."
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Nov 3, 2012 08:20
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Once upon a time, a guy we'll call Sam was a part of my gaming group. Sam was one of those guys who isn't very bright, likes to cause party conflict, and sulks when things don't go his way. This is a guy who once tried to ragequit in a Star Wars game by ripping open the floor of the party's ship with a lightsaber. While we were in space. In retrospect, there were a whole lot of warning signs that we shouldn't have been gaming with him, but at the time we were friends with him, so we kept inviting him. Anyway, we were playing an A Song of Ice and Fire campaign where my character, unknown to himself, was the long-lost heir to the throne. Sam's character and another PC were part of a conspiracy to make him king. We ended up in Pentos, where Sam's character was originally from, and somehow got separated from the other PC. My character didn't speak the local language, so Sam was acting as translator. This proved to be a massive mistake. Within ten real-life minutes of us heading off on our own, he'd managed to sell my character (without his initial knowledge) into slavery to a brothel owner who was meant to act as an underworld contact. Admittedly, she did initially insist that he sell me to her, but the idea was that he'd refuse and instead enter an intrigue (the system's social combat system) with her over it. We rolled with it as much as possible — this campaign was our GM's first time behind the screen and she didn't want to just straight up tell him to cut the poo poo — but after the session we all called Sam out on this. In response, he launched into a massive rant about how much he hated the setting and the system and left in a huff. We stopped playing with Sam after that. (We did eventually salvage the campaign after getting a couple new players to take Sam's place. It was a lot more fun without him.) Der Metzgermeister fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 08:40
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^ Yeah, some folks are real pieces of work, aren't they. The last time someone made a petulant stand in one of our groups, he was just power trippin' because he was supposed to be An Awesome Wizard (a second-level halfling chick) and our fighter was stealin' his thunder. He went his separate way from the group and found a bear in a cage. He decided to make a go at befriending it and let it out before realizing he didn't have Animal Handling or anything. It ate him on the spot, but for one, this was in that moment so hilarious and absurd that it brought him back down to earth from his huff about kill stealing assholes, and our GM--same guy who handed out resurrections for players such as myself who made unfortunate skill checks in premade adventures--decided that the bear wasn't actually a bear, but a demigod that was trapped in the form of a bear until it ate a halfling wizard (specifically), and brought him back to life as thanks. He caught back up with us and everything was cool from then on. Now while that's a story in and of itself, the guy who was playing said Awesome Wizard was a halfling because--well, I ain't mince words, the dude has a midget fetish. What can I say? I play fantasy kobold me with magic, other folks play characters they'd bang. Tubgirl Cosplay posted:Yeah man and when I find out I've got a guy who's bad at public speaking I always set things up so he's the party face and then demand that players roleplay out all their diplomacy rolls in the Land of Men Who Heckle Guys Who Say Umm. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 09:17
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I've encouraged one of my 'Roll' players to 'Role'play by linking mechanical bonuses(+3s and stuff) to a non-qualitative Roleplay. Things like 'For every 30s of blathering you do, your allies get a +1 distraction bonus to their stealth' or 'You can provoke the drow priestess into attacking you if you can get 15 insults in under a minute'. Once it becomes mesurable, it was easier to get him to open up and roleplay a bit. Edit for content: Since this is the notable gaming experiences; I'll tell the small story behind the Blathering/stealth. The guy in question was playing a Paladin; with the rest of the group filling in as (what I think) as rogue, monk, and a caster of some sort. All decent sneakers except him, so they left him out in the streets to cause a distraction while they 'infiltrated' (Robbed) a church for some incriminating documents. We worked out that he could 'Aid Another' with any skill to give a +2 to the stealthing group. When we asked how he was going to cause a distraction, he fumbled with his words a bit and settled on 'Banging pots and pans.' We didn't ask where he got the pots and pans from, and it didn't really matter as he pulled a 7 after everything was totalled up (I think we used his ST modifier). I picked up the dice and said. "Alright; instead of banging pots and pans, for every minute you can keep talking about something -- anything, I'll add a person to this crowd. Each person you get will give the group a +1 to their stealth." We paused the game for shots, and he talked me down to 30 seconds/a person, I agreed, and he dissapeared into his bedroom for a bit. Comes back out with a huge freaking bible(King James?). It turns out that his grandpa was one of those fire/hell/brimstone preachers, and he used to go to church alot when he was little. The next 7 minutes of him giving one of those speeches while throwing random passages from the bible at before he ran out of steam, as the rest of the party was trying their best not to laugh, which netted the group a +14 for their stealth. To quote the party's rogue: "This place is god damned empty!" It was full of 'Uhh', 'Umms', and the occasional frantic bible flipping, but it did really open him up. (I can only assume the alcohol helped) TalonDemonKing fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 09:38
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TalonDemonKing posted:'You can provoke the drow priestess into attacking you if you can get 15 insults in under a minute'. Holy poo poo this rules, every game needs an insult fighting system
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Nov 3, 2012 09:55
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:Holy poo poo this rules, every game needs an insult fighting system
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Nov 3, 2012 09:59
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Captain Bravo posted:When I want to give my players something, I don't just give it to them. That's boring. Saying "You find the office, and the guy gives you the papers" is unfun. You throw kinks into things, for the players to overcome. "He doesn't want to give you the papers, he'll get arrested." Wizards are assholes who do dickish stuff, and it's up to the players to figure out how to outsmart them, that's a pretty common game type. The player had figured out how to outsmart the wizard. He was going to write down the spells he wanted, so when the book disappeared, it wouldn't matter much. The GM was ok with this. Then the guy flubbed for god-knows-why, and the GM had to scramble to give him something else to have fun with. There was nothing to "overcome" here, there was no interesting or enjoyable struggle to acquire the book, there was no task. It was simply "here's your book, now don't interact with any plot because the moment you do it's gone!" and that is bullshit. quote:If the GM was an rear end in a top hat, he would have said "As you step out of the wizard's office, and put the book in your pocket, it disappears. The door locks behind you. Hah!" If you're so worried that the GM is out to gently caress you, you throw a bitch-fit every time he lets you shoot yourself in the foot, I'm pretty loving glad I've never had to play with you. Or play with a GM that warrants that kind of paranoia.
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Nov 3, 2012 16:01
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Section Z posted:You matron so hairy, Lolth's spider legs look silky smooth by comparison. SPIDER PUN COMBO DAMAGE MULTIPLIER! Today, by myself, twelve people I've beaten!
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Nov 3, 2012 16:54
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Asphyxious posted:the worst character I have found a contradiction in your tale. 
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Nov 3, 2012 21:23
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Sormus posted:Today, by myself, twelve people I've beaten! From the size of your gut, I'd guess they were eaten.
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Nov 4, 2012 01:07
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Fast edit: Oops, I misread the whole "we were playing 2nd ed AD&D and..." as happening recently and got all set to defend it as "they're parodying the way 2e was often played". Edit edit: That sort of thing can be played for laughs, and honestly, in a silly game, with my usual group, I would have done the exact same thing with the cloak. The player probably would have rolled with it, and it'd be a running gag where this one guy always finds a cool thing and then somehow loses it after a session or two, only to find another cool thing almost immediately. You need a group that likes to play that way, a player who consents to the idea, and a game that's set up for that sort of play though, otherwise it's poo poo. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Nov 4, 2012 |
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Nov 4, 2012 01:52
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AlphaDog posted:You need a group playing Hackmaster, though, otherwise it's poo poo. No, really, Hackmaster was made basically JUST for this sort of thing.
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Nov 4, 2012 02:56
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Colon V posted:Fixed that for you. Well, yeah. I am an unashamed Hackmaster fanboy. But it's not like you can't do the exact same thing in D&D. It's just important to get everyone on the same page before the game starts. With Hackmaster, it's not necessary because the assumption is that everyone's going to be a dick about everything at all times forever. It's glorious, but if there's someone present who's somehow got the idea that it's like "normal D&D", that person will have a bad time, and probably so will everyone else. Just like you could run a Paranoia game with the d20 modern rules (well, you could), but doing so without letting anyone know would be a dick move.
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Nov 4, 2012 07:49
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AlphaDog posted:Just like you could run a Paranoia game with the d20 modern rules (well, you could), but doing so without letting anyone know would be a dick move. If (and only if) everyone present is familiar with Paranoia, a surprise Paranoia game sounds loving hilarious.
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Nov 4, 2012 09:38
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Yep, it's the sort of thing that's absolutely hilarious with an established group who's into that sort of gaming, knows each other well, and has a collective sense of humour. Try it on a group you're unfamiliar with and I guarantee at least one person gets all bent out of shape about it, even if they usually like Paranoia. I once ran a sorta-kinda Paranoiaish oneshot where I'd brutally kill the PCs at every opportunity, only to have things "reset" at a safe point 10 or so minutes before their deaths. It took them by surprise the first time (they thought I'd killed them all in the first 3 minutes of the session), then they quickly realised that whatever had gone wrong in this apocalyptic cityscape, it had something to do with the way they'd "reset" after every death. Fun session. They ended up figuring it out (in that they came up with a reason that was way cooler than what I had planned), and broke out of the reset-cycle. I had this bullshit "it was a super villain that did it, and you're all super heroes trapped without your powers and memories in his mad scheme" thing where they had to find the source of the reset and break it, then emerge in their superhero forms for the final battle. They "figured out" that they were in purgatory or some kind of pre-afterlife test, and the only way out was to act virtuously and prove that they were worthy of an eternal reward, so I rolled with that instead. They'd also previously thought that they were trapped in a video game, in a dream, or that (bizarrely) they were actually in a session of Everyone Is John and this is what it looks like when the personalities vie for control. I sort of wish I'd latched onto that last option instead. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Nov 4, 2012 |
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Nov 4, 2012 10:05
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Half of the satire in Paranoia is targeting death-heavy mother-may-I dungeon crawls. The arbitrary dictates of friend computer represent the mis-match of expectations in the shared imagination space in groups without functional trust and communication. E: I am 100% sure that I read a story in g.txt about someone going "Of course the player should have known that cloak was covered in death-mold! I told him what color it was and everything!" Doc Hawkins fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Nov 4, 2012 |
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Nov 4, 2012 17:27
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Doc Hawkins posted:E: I am 100% sure that I read a story in g.txt about someone going "Of course the player should have known that cloak was covered in death-mold! I told him what color it was and everything!" I agree that's a dick move. It's still pretty much the opposite of literally saying "this thing is so loving invisible that if you put it down, you probably won't find it again". One is "all dark green cloaks are poisonous idiot it's always been that way you should have known lol" and the other one is "here, explicitly, is the one thing that will cause you to lose this item, try not to do that one exact thing".
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Nov 4, 2012 17:44
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Back on Thursday night, I played my first session of AD&D 2E ever. Our party consisted of Cord, the human rogue, Drusilla, the half-elf paladin, Steve, the halfling cleric, and my character, Brand, the elven mage. I was the youngest player in the group by a solid 10 years, and our DM was a hardcore greybeard who had owned his sourcebooks since roughly the late 80s. On top of this, it was a Forgotten Realms campaign, so I was expecting to have hit a rich well of explosive grognardium. Instead, what happened was the stuff of legends. We started off having been brought before... somebody in Arabel because we looked like adventurers. This person offered to hook us up with a charter in exchange for us doing some legwork for him and clearing out the Haunted Halls of orcs and goblins. Naturally, being adventurers, we all took this offer, because not doing so would be stupid. Our ragtag group, the Black Dogs, started trudging towards the Haunted Halls, eventually setting up camp near the road for the night. The DM made some dice rolls behind his screen, and told us to roll a surprise check. Turns out, oh gently caress, orcs. In an attempt to be useful, I looked at my spells. The only ones that were immediately useful were Grease, Magic Missile, and Armor. I looked in the PHB to see what, exactly, Grease did and noticed that the material spell components (a gameplay aspect we mostly weren't going to gently caress with, because it's kind of dumb) for it were either pork fat or butter. A  expression formed on my face as I looked at the DM and asked, "Is Grease flammable?"The expression formed on the DM's face too. "Yeah, it totally is. "As the rest of the party was busy trying to hack up orcs with their level 1 ~mad skillz~, I stood next to the fire and cast Grease on a chunk of the orc ambush. The very next turn, I picked up a log from the fire, cast it into the grease, and proceeded to burn two of the orcs to death and scorch another one. The rest of the encounter went surprisingly smoothly- a natural 20 from the rogue ended one of the remaining orcs and the paladin hacked up the other. The next night of our trip to the Haunted Halls, we were a little better prepared. We had set up shifts to sleep in, knowing that at any moment we could be ambushed. Naturally, a pack of about 8 goblins attacked during my shift. I got a free action since I rolled well on a surprise check, so I cast Grease again (this time at a much larger area of effect covering 6 of the 8), and on the next turn lit the grease. The rest of the party was awoken by a raging inferno and the screams of goblins encased in magic-napalm. All four of us were blinded for two turns because the three of us that were demihumans had infravision and the human was disoriented by the massive loving bonfire, but no matter, the goblins weren't exactly in any position to attack us while we were blind. When our eyes were adjusted, the 6 goblins that were dead became very, very crispy, the remaining two were surprisingly undeterred, and Steve and Drusilla were not having a lot of luck killing one of the remaining ones. So naturally, I charged towards it and, with a howl of anger, swung my quarterstaff at its head. Let me try to sum up the conversation that occurred.  : So, you'll need a roll of-: Natural 20.:  Roll damage. 6. Times two is 12.: Your staff gets stuck in the goblin's skull. You're out of commission for two turns until you can pull it out.The rest of the party is laughing their asses off. I just used a spell that should, by all accounts, be nearly useless to light 3/4 of the DM's encounter on fire, and then obliterated one of the stragglers in one shot. The DM, however, is just staring straight forwards in a mix of awe and horror. He rolls a morale check on the last goblin, which it somehow makes. Cord, who had up until now not been doing a whole lot of anything, shoots it with his crossbow and staggers it. Drusilla had been helping me remove my staff from the goblin brain, so the DM shortened that penalty to one turn. On my first free turn, I turned to the surviving goblin and pointed my brain-covered staff at it. "Go back to your friends, greenskin! And warn them of Brand the Mage!" Another morale check. It fails miserably and bolts like hell. Unfortunately, Drusilla killed it, being a paladin and whatnot, which sucked because I was excited for the prospect of the goblins making GBS threads bricks every time they saw me because of my magic carpet of flame. But that wasn't the end of this session, oh no. Not even close. Next: This can only be described as divine retribution. Or a flaming owlbear. Those both work.
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Nov 4, 2012 18:18
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WickedIcon posted:A Man, this is so familiar. I don't think anyone has played a d&d2-3eds wizard without asking that same question. How your GM answers says a lot about him and the game. Technically, Grease isn't flammable, it just trips people. But a good GM will allow your grease fire inferno in a heart beat.
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Nov 4, 2012 18:54
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Grease is never useless, it is in fact one of the (if not the #1) most useful level 1 spells a caster can have.
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Nov 4, 2012 19:11
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I was talking last night with a girl who used to play in a game I ran. She's since moved, and I asked if she had found a new game to play in. Apparently the only game she has been able to find is full of grognards. I run games fast and loose, with only light handling of the rules and with an emphasis on action and rule of cool. In her new game they spend hours packing their backpacks and debating about what rations to buy before heading out. In the last game she forgot to say that her character had eaten lunch, so the GM penalized all her actions for being "hungry." The GM makes her keep track of each individual copper she spends and exactly how much her money weighs. And he doesn't allow bags of holding cause he thinks they ruin the verisimilitude. I told her to congratulate her group on turning "having fun" into a job. And then I told her to start her own game.
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Nov 4, 2012 23:19
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Yawgmoth posted:Grease is never useless, it is in fact one of the (if not the #1) most useful level 1 spells a caster can have. It's as useful in higher levels at it is at first, flammable or not.
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Nov 4, 2012 23:30
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SlimWhiskey posted:I was talking last night with a girl who used to play in a game I ran. She's since moved, and I asked if she had found a new game to play in. I'm kind of curious how best to handle this. The game is supposed to have weight limits, and currency itself has weight so that if you have literally millions of copper pieces, it presents an interesting logistical problem. Most of the games I play don't even keep track of ammo, though, let alone people's weights and such. Penalizing her for not eating lunch is kind of stupid (it should be a "don't forget to tick off a ration in your inventory!" sort of thing, not a "ha ha, you forgot to eat, stupid!" kind of thing), but I really feel like the inventory management adds an interesting dimension which usually gets ignored for convenience. How do the rest of you handle this? Do you let players just ignore weight altogether? Do you keep track of perishables/ammo/etc?
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Nov 5, 2012 01:37
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Man, I kind of almost want to play a game with a dickwad GM who's anal about weights and equipment, just so I could hire a ranger caddy. Little gnome pulling a golf bag filled with arrows, giving advice. "See how his skin is that shade of red, sir? I recommend Ice Arrows for this instance." "Thank you, caddy! That sounds like an excellent choice." "Very good, sir." Wait, gently caress, what am I saying? I don't need a bad GM to do that, that's crazy. I can just do it anyway.
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Nov 5, 2012 01:40
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Depends on the game. I've had some games where we tracked rations by the day and bulk weight (weapons, armour and large items), and a game where the DM wanted us to track everything down to the contents of the wizards spell components pouch. The latter just pissed everyone off, a character sheet is only so big. If you're running a campaign in a situation where starvation is a real problem (wilderness adventures in Dark Sun would be a good example) then tracking rations and things can certainly add an interesting aspect to the game.
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Nov 5, 2012 01:51
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Captain Bravo posted:Man, I kind of almost want to play a game with a dickwad GM who's anal about weights and equipment, just so I could hire a ranger caddy. Little gnome pulling a golf bag filled with arrows, giving advice. "See how his skin is that shade of red, sir? I recommend Ice Arrows for this instance." "Thank you, caddy! That sounds like an excellent choice." "Very good, sir." On a related note, hireling NPCs are a pretty solid investment in a 3E/3.5 game. Just enlist a 1st-level Warrior to carry a Tower Shield for instant cover, and some commoners to pull a wagon full of junk.
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Nov 5, 2012 01:54
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You know what, no, gently caress it. That's not going to become a character. I'm going to start working on statting that up in 13th age, for an antagonist. don't want to give too much away, since I know some of my players read this thread, but they might want to keep an eye open in the next session for any guys who have goblins following them around.
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Nov 5, 2012 01:58
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To the extent that gaming is a way to create stories, equipment only matters when it's dramatically appropriate. The Coney Rabbit in Return Of the King is interesting as a contrast to the hunger and desolation of the characters, not because Samwise has +10 to cook.
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Nov 5, 2012 02:26
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Oh man, Google Image Search has returned unto me a veritable bounty of goblins. I'm definitely going to token a billion of these, and plan a goblin-centric kerfluffle for our next game.
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Nov 5, 2012 02:30
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Nov 5, 2012 02:38
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Survival works well where it's a core point of the game. Like, if you and your group were playing a STALKER tabletop game, tracking rations and ammo and water and weight would make perfect sense.
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Nov 5, 2012 02:50
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Volmarias posted:I'm kind of curious how best to handle this. The game is supposed to have weight limits, and currency itself has weight so that if you have literally millions of copper pieces, it presents an interesting logistical problem. Most of the games I play don't even keep track of ammo, though, let alone people's weights and such. Penalizing her for not eating lunch is kind of stupid (it should be a "don't forget to tick off a ration in your inventory!" sort of thing, not a "ha ha, you forgot to eat, stupid!" kind of thing), but I really feel like the inventory management adds an interesting dimension which usually gets ignored for convenience.
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Nov 5, 2012 03:59
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Yawgmoth posted:I don't keep track of encumbrance or ammo or food or anything of the sort because I want to run a game about mismatched mercenaries saving the world, not medieval accounting. To that end, the very first thing all of my PCs end up with is a pack that is extradimensional and contains a sleeping bag of restfulness, a tent of endure elements, an everful mug, a bag of unending trail rations, and a stick of prestidigitation (at will). I also let them assume they have all the rope, chalk, and other misc. mundane crap they need. I get these things during any game that starts me with enough gold to buy them during character creation, even if it means I skip out on an extra +1 magic item. A Handy Haversack full of mundane crap (and a nonmagical toolbelt with even more mundane crap) has saved my characters' collective asses so many times when we've spontaneously found ourselves thirty feet down a pit in an antimagic field.
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Nov 5, 2012 04:13
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Colon V posted:Survival works well where it's a core point of the game. Like, if you and your group were playing a STALKER tabletop game, tracking rations and ammo and water and weight would make perfect sense. Yeah this could be legit cool in a high-lethality, low-resources game that's all about making do with what you can carry on your back and still fight or run and agonizing about carrying that spare mag of ammo or another day's water ration and where every little bit makes a huge difference, but motherfuck trying to inventory like 100lbs of food and healing supplies and arrows/bullets and every magical geegaw that's the key to every possible situation you might encounter. D&D dudes can stab abstract concepts to death they can loving well carry infinite food in their backpacks and if they bought a quiver of fifty arrows they're gonna have forty-nine arrows left when the campaign ends. Also note that STALKER generally ends with players getting like half a dozen of those super electric speedup artifacts and infinite-sprinting around the map with enough supplies to feed and arm a battallion for a year, the inventory system mostly just discourages compulsively hoarding hundreds upon hundreds of broken AKSUs like the rest of the game drives people to. Tubgirl Cosplay fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 04:43
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Resource management can be fun in a game about a wilderness expedition. I don't mean "travel to the dungeon of doom, crawl the dungeon of doom, travel back from the dungeon of doom", I mean more like a Livingstone expedition, or a Burke and Wills expedition. The point at which you realise you'd rather leave the huge bag of gold and gems behind and take an extra barrel of fresh water from this river can be awesome. So can trying to provision your wagon and pack train, and stressing about fodder/forage for the animals. And defending the baggage against goblins, not needing to kill them all, just needing your supplies not to be torched/stolen otherwise you're more hosed than if they wound you a bit. The problem is (as usual) that D&D is bad at this. Except 1e, kinda. That was basically the best way to play 1e. Edit: Or 2e Dark Sun if you ignore the metaplot stuff and focus on surviving in the desert. The deadly, deadly desert. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 05:10
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I'd figure at MOST in a standard not Survival focuses game, make them pay attention at level 1. You're just starting out so you got to make those Character creation funds count. *Theoretical conversation* "You've been firing two arrows every five seconds for the past five encounters." "So?" "You only bought five arrows you cheap-skate bastard. You are why I have been putting one Archer enemy in every encounter to loot." "I hate those guys." Got a friend meanwhile who while I keep hearing good things about their prep work for some 3rd, Pathfinder, and 4th ed DnD games they run off in Flesh and blood real world games, seems to turn off their brain when I see any character sheets for stuff we play together online (I've never been GM for anything, but I've the run combats for 4th at times). *real conversation* "Okay here is my Wizard sheet." "...This is just a paste export from a character builder, it doesn't even have your initiative on it. What did you even give your wizard item wise?" "Oh, a Staff." "And?" "That's it." "I'll... I'll just write you up a sheet. What did you want as your spare spell options" "Oh, just skip those ."This is a guy who apparently runs some stuff at Cons without it being crazy, and writes up GOOD sheets to hand people for those complete with pictures and stuff. Speaking of Dark sun... Another friend has been crazy busy for forever, the one who wanted to run us through a gimmick Dark sun run where we're all Shardminds and Warforged (And one cannibal revenant Halfling). Still counting survival days because the sun even hates robots, but makes the goods counting a bit easier and had survival days weigh less for our weight counting needs. Items Lazy Sheer Friend originally listed for their Invoker/Mage? Staff. That is all. Yeah I worked over that sheet too for the sake of other friend's sanity. Section Z fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 05:22
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