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Next monster is done!: Behold the Beholder! I took some inspiration from other INT based classes, like the Wizard, Mage, and Artificer. I wanted the build to rely heavily on the eye beams, and to have moves expand them in versatility, resilience, and power. Any constructive criticism? I've only got two more to go on my planned monster books. Then I'll playtest them with a game or two and work on a monster adventure for a nice little packet.
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Mar 12, 2014 03:00
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Deltasquid posted:It's giving me some serious James Bond vibes. Yeah, I was focusing more on building on the Inquest rewards Deltasquid made and less on how they interact with how you get Inquest. You'd definitely need to make Inquest harder to get if you're using my suggestions. Maybe make it build up if you strike a major blow against your Target Group. (Also, the James Bond vibes are totally intentional.) As for the Beholder, it looks like it's both really good at being a beholder and really good at putting the dullest options at the top of the list of Advanced Moves. Looking at it again the rest of the moves are actually pretty cool, but you might not want to have the basic "get more types of eye ray" moves at the top of the list. Also, you can probably do something more interesting with the Gear if you can make space for it, but I'm not really going to blame you if you leave it as-is.
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Mar 12, 2014 03:50
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Lurks With Wolves posted:As for the Beholder, it looks like it's both really good at being a beholder and really good at putting the dullest options at the top of the list of Advanced Moves. Looking at it again the rest of the moves are actually pretty cool, but you might not want to have the basic "get more types of eye ray" moves at the top of the list. Also, you can probably do something more interesting with the Gear if you can make space for it, but I'm not really going to blame you if you leave it as-is. Thanks! Those moves are kind of dull on first reading, but the Beholder is really all about the eye rays and getting more makes you more effective, more versatile, and longer lasting. I guess that formatting is a habit I have, I tend to put the most "dull", workmanlike moves on top and the most out-there moves on the bottom. I think that's how a lot of playbooks are. Fighter gets "more damage" at the top. Bard gets "more healing" cleric gets "extra spell, Wizard gets "slightly higher level spell". I'll consider changing the move placement, but I'm glad you think it really puts the theme forward.
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Mar 12, 2014 04:00
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Mr. Prokosch posted:Next monster is done!: Behold the Beholder! The Beholder is great, I like the moves and the drives are really strong. But the races feel like a bit much. Evasive Maneuvers and I Have A Mouth Too would make great race moves, and then probably one having to do with the eyes. Extra eye to start? +1 to Discern Realities when you look real hard? Maybe a treasure hoard instead? As for the current races, you might add Arcane Eye, Undead Eye, and Psychic Eye to the stalk list. Magic Eye's "When you spend time examining a magical item..." would make good advanced move if you name it something item-centric. Dead Eye feels like it could be a more general advanced move as "When you Spout Lore about something relating to your eyes, take +1 forward to acting on the answers". And Dominating Eye could be "When you gaze into a sentient being's thoughts and memories, roll+INT to do telepathy..." Behold My Magnificence is awesome. Eyeless One is metal as hell! Panopticon and Antimagic Cone are good. The simpler eye moves do come off a bit dull, but I like the utility ones. Enchanter's Eye is a great concept, but why not just say "describe the enchantment"? You might end up with Mage-style power creep I guess, but hold doesn't feel right for some reason. Similarly with Beams Everywhere, "up to three" seems like an unnecessary mechanical limitation - not fiction first.
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Mar 12, 2014 08:29
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I'll take another look at the race moves. They are a bit much. I think they're balanced against each other but they might be overloading a starting beholder? They are each worth about two moves, a bit more than is standard with a race move. I'll probably keep the stalk list as is, because I want them all to be aggressive, but I might see if I can correct general dullness by combining some moves and then putting those in the advanced moveset. I wanted the total number of eye powers to potentially number 10. I'll take another look at the enchanter's eye. I don't want a complete "do anything" move. I think it's a major weakness with the mage. I prefer the artificer's method of letting you apply your tools creatively, but I might open it up some. The Beams Everywhere is a bit of a wording trick, the same one I used with the Ogre, and it originally from the fighter. The idea with Bend Bars is that if you don't pick "works fast" or "doesn't break anything important" then that will be an issue. You can protect 3 allies. Which means if you have 4 someone might get blasted. I'll try to tweak the wording to make it more clear that you are rampaging and this is limited control, and maybe drop specific numbers. I think I was in a very numbery mood when I wrote it. I also just had to get the Eyeless move in there. Its a reference to Baldur's Gate 2, which is my biggest exposure to Beholders. I'm also now noticing a number of typos! I'm usually better about proofreading before I upload. Thanks so much for the feedback. Any comments on the other playbooks I've written would be much appreciated. Mr. Prokosch fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 08:50
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I kinda want to run/play a game where everyone is a monster, but otherwise it's a bog-standard DnD type dungeon crawl, complete with the PCs meeting in a tavern (a MONSTER tavern) and being given a quest to save a monster princess.
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Mar 12, 2014 09:43
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Bucnasti posted:I kinda want to run/play a game where everyone is a monster, but otherwise it's a bog-standard DnD type dungeon crawl, complete with the PCs meeting in a tavern (a MONSTER tavern) and being given a quest to save a monster princess. Are all of the dungeon antagonists humanoid? Maybe the dungeon is a castle. Or an elven forest, or a dwarven underground city.
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Mar 12, 2014 10:41
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Reverse dungeon crawl: it's Saturday night and you and your monster buddies want to go down to the pub for a pint of lager and some crisps (maybe watch the footy), but you'll first need to fight through the hordes of adventurers trying to loot your dungeon so you can get to the surface and reach the pub.
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Mar 12, 2014 11:01
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Reverse dungeon crawl: it's Saturday night and you and your monster buddies want to go down to the pub for a pint of lager and some crisps (maybe watch the footy), but you'll first need to fight through the hordes of adventurers trying to loot your dungeon so you can get to the surface and reach the pub. Should everyone be required to speak in thick Cockney accents and scream at the top of their lungs when battle is joined?
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Mar 12, 2014 12:40
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InfiniteJesters posted:Should everyone be required to speak in thick Cockney accents and scream at the top of their lungs when battle is joined? No, because believe it or not going to the pub for football and a pint is something that people who are not Cockney also do. Requiring everyone to speak in a thick Geordie accent is fine, though.
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Mar 12, 2014 13:14
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I scribbled a semi-random move or two on the side to clear my head from the tunnel vision and somehow overnight it sprawled to something longer than the buddies themselves.  I'll definitely finish the buddies first, but I guess there's no harm in sharing this silly little thing: Private Inquisitor, holding his demons at bay with a trusty bottle and a pocketful of silver bullets. He's saving the world for twenty five silver coins a day, plus expenses.
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Mar 12, 2014 21:10
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Dungeon Noir is enough to make me want that playbook finished all by itself.
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Mar 12, 2014 22:56
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I would play the poo poo out of the Private Inquisitor.
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Mar 13, 2014 01:08
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Haha, that's pretty great. You need to get some "He was two days from retirement, drat it!" line in there somewhere about your ex-buddy cop. EDIT: on the subject of inquisitors, mine is all about done now. I should just get an iconogram thing to add to the bottom of the page. What do I do afterwards? Just throw it in the Google+ group? Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 01:35
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New Beholder I ended up slightly downgrading the racial moves, but not that much. Then I redid the extra eye-stalk moves so someone can pick up all of the racial moves and they'd be more interesting. I changed the Enchanter's Eye to be more open and friendly. I re-worded Beams Everywhere, it really was terribly constructed before. Does anyone have any suggestions for Beholder equipment? He basically has nothing because I couldn't think of anything a beholder would carry around. In general I've been equipment light for all the monsters, both because I think it makes sense thematically and because I didn't have any ideas. I'm working on ideas for the Djinn now.
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Mar 13, 2014 04:50
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I think monsters don't need to carry gear. The Beholder should probably feed on magical energy rather than D-rats, anyway. Maybe it should gain some sort of hold when it dispels magic and later it can use that hold when it is called to consume a ration. I mean, it's obviously not like they have a regular digestive tract.
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Mar 13, 2014 06:30
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Here's the first pass of my next class, The Illusionist! I've got most of it down, just need a few more advanced moves to fill it out. Any comments and questions are welcome, as per usual! Spincut fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 07:36
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I was thinking about the Core classes and how they do work really, really well for what they're intended - which is OD&D dungeon crawls, which not everybody likes or plays. Would it be worth an attempt to "3.5ify" the core classes to make them work better for Eberron style sweeping adventures and generally up power them across the board? I tend to find that if I offer every playbook I own, the Grim World and Inverse World ones along with things like the Mage and the Dashing Hero tend to overshadow any core class, because they're meant to be larger-than-life heroes while the cores are meant to be dungeon robbers. As a vague concept: Fighter: Change it from "guy with quite good sword" to "guy with a motherfucking Excalibur" who either is the charismatic leader of men with a fort and a small army or the baddest Ronin-type you've ever seen. Thief: More like the City Thief or Assassin. Has a den of thieves, black market connections, the ability to source anything and get aid in unlikely places. Parkour, better stealth, better gadgets. Ranger: Legolas or Aragorn, straight out. Sniping people with a bow, identifying monsters perfectly and Spouting Lore about their weaknesses, doing the Wingfoot thing where you can push your party to take a Perilous Journey at a sprint. Is either stupidly well travelled or has some loose organisation backing him up. Druid: Radagast the Brown. More Wizard-like Ritual stuff to do with Ley Lines and places of power. Can talk to plants and animals and command them to do his bidding. Can scry and even teleport around the forests. Has a circle of druids to back him up. Bard: Either a Skald or a more Dashing Hero style duellist. Sonic based attacks and support magic, illusions, swordplay, a bunch of social moves. Gets lodging, preferential treatment, opportunities and pay just for being himself. Wizard: Gandalf. Switch away from Vancian casting to a more mana based one. When you run dry on mana you can either burn spells for mana, scour yourself or the environment, drink elixirs or deal with other alchemical ingredients. Rather than a spell list, has the Ritual move, a "shooting people in the head with magic" move and a "create your own spell from these effects" move, which you add to as you level up. Make a big distinction between cantrips which don't cost mana and spells which do. Cleric: Righteous crusader of the gods. Either has a whole religion or a cult backing him up or is the lone crusader of a forgotten god. Miracles and deity-assisted beatdowns as well as more Inquisitorial or Cultist-like stuff. Think Hocus from ApocWorld. Some sort of "favor of the gods" hold mechanic rather than Vancian. Paladin: Taking a Liesmith lesson here and having Paladin be an Arthurian Knight thing. Either a lone champion of a cause or of a god or you have some patron - church or king - backing you up. More of a defensive fighter than the Fighter, who is about wrecking things, the Paladin is about inspiring the people and inspiring terror in enemies. Access to miracles - either from a god or from some other source.
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Mar 13, 2014 12:56
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Yeah that would be pretty sweet, and you're 100% right in that classes in DW must have a very narrow focus, and changing them to fit your campaign is totally cool.
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Mar 13, 2014 13:28
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Personally I quite like the core DW classes. They're not larger than life, but they don't have to be. It's cool to have a bunch of averages trying to survive an exceptional danger. But I guess if you wanted to buff them up to legendary style heroes, that does seem the way you could do them.
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Mar 13, 2014 14:26
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Yeah, I don't think most of the classes need changing specifically for Eberron, other than being made generally more technologically advanced (which is mostly done through flavour and gear choices). That, and everyone should get MC moves on general principle. The City Thief and Assassin were actually both written for urban games in the style of Sharn campaigns. The Druid, Ranger, Wizard and Cleric are fine. The Fighter needs changes, but he needs them for stock DW anyway. The Paladin also needs the same couple of minor changes that he needs in stock DW. Probably the biggest change I would make specifically for Eberron would be to the Bard, to give him a more developed grifter/mercantile angle that's missing from the original because stock DW is all about bumpkin little villages precariously perched on the edge of monster-infested ruins.
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Mar 13, 2014 14:39
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Well, DW is all about the fiction so being a little loose with Defy Danger rolls can make the classes either action heroes or gritty adventurers, it's honestly up to how you handle your game most of the time.
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Mar 13, 2014 15:43
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Elmo Oxygen posted:Awesome! Thanks for the feedback! Using it as a one-off break from your usual character is totally what I made it for. Hey, here's the feedback he wrote. Sorry it took a while. My Player's Redshirt Feedback posted:The core moves of the class didn’t really give me many good personal option, which I suppose was mostly the point. But they also didn’t really help the party that much either. “Nothing Special” and “Sacrificial Lamb” were just there to allow the character to function, that’s fine. But “Pointless Death” should have been the core of the class and it just kind of fell short. Our party limited it to one XP per member per session but even if it wasn’t limited the move doesn’t really seem that rewarding to the party. I would rather see the party gain Forward or gain some other buff until I come back based on how I died.
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Mar 14, 2014 18:56
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-- Oops, sorry for the double-post! Doodmons posted:I was thinking about the Core classes and how they do work really, really well for what they're intended - which is OD&D dungeon crawls, which not everybody likes or plays. Would it be worth an attempt to "3.5ify" the core classes to make them work better for Eberron style sweeping adventures and generally up power them across the board? I tend to find that if I offer every playbook I own, the Grim World and Inverse World ones along with things like the Mage and the Dashing Hero tend to overshadow any core class, because they're meant to be larger-than-life heroes while the cores are meant to be dungeon robbers. Why not just use the newer playbooks people have made (that you reference) rather than reinventing the wheel? (Or, as it stands, like 10 wheels.) Is it that you want the heroes to feel classic-D&D'ish, but be more powerful? Because part of the classic D&D feel, I think, is how overwhealmed the characters start out, so I think it'd be a difficult thing to build.
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Mar 14, 2014 19:16
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I personally think that you could easily use the standard Dungeon World classes without changes in Eberron. The mechanics of Dungeon World already support the kind of action that is supposed to take place in Eberron, what it comes down to is how you frame the situation and challenges that the characters face through the mechanics. For an example, suppose you're running a traditional fantasy Vietnam dungeon-crawler with Dungeon World. The potential threats include death traps, running into a dangerous monster in a darkened hallway, and your torch getting extinguished just as you hear voices from the darkness, and then you just use the basic mechanics to address those threats. In Eberron mode the mechanics stay the same but the dangers and threats are just framed as being more pulpy and action-moviey. So, in fantasy Vietnam the Defy Danger move triggers just as you make a last-ditch jump to avoid falling into a spiked pit, while in Eberron the Defy Danger move triggers while you're on top of a speeding magic train and drow ninjas riding sky surfboards rain shurikens on you. Also, there's a dinosaur somewhere, just off-frame, waiting to be unleashed when a player rolls a 6-. That said, you would do well to throw in some third party classes that work in Eberron. The Dashing Hero definitely fits into Eberron, as would the totally awesome Private Inquisitor from upthread, and you can't not throw in the Captain from Inverse World if you want to see your players playing sky-pirates that strike fear into the hearts of all creatures in Khorvaire.
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Mar 14, 2014 19:48
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New Monster! Bow before the mighty Djinn! For this one I pretty heavily pushed the Elemental Lord thing. The Djinn makes an excellent party face and focuses on using the elements, guiding others, and making good decisions. Basically the straight man in a monster party. As always I absolutely appreciate any feedback and constructive criticism. I take it very seriously and I'm always grateful to see it.
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Mar 15, 2014 05:05
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Mr. Prokosch posted:New Monster! Bow before the mighty Djinn! Shift in the Elements says you only succeed on a 12+. Is that intentional? If so, the 7-9 should maybe be changed to 7-11, since it's not clear what a 10-11 does.
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Mar 15, 2014 09:22
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:Shift in the Elements says you only succeed on a 12+. Is that intentional? If so, the 7-9 should maybe be changed to 7-11, since it's not clear what a 10-11 does. Nah, just a typo. 12+ should be 10+ like normal. Thanks for spotting it.
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Mar 15, 2014 09:28
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Remember when I said I'll finish the buddies first? Well, I lied. The Private Inquisitor (Trigger Warning: he eats pulp and shits out ham) lacks just a few level 6-10 moves and probably a good deal of polishing. Stuff colored blue is what I consider an almost placeholder weaksauce and really hope to rewrite. Besides, any other major clichés in desperate need of being included?
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Mar 15, 2014 17:47
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I feel like there should be a Columbo based move, but I feel like that about every detective writeup ever, so. Maybe an upgrade of some kind to Hardboiled call "Oh, one more thing?"
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Mar 15, 2014 19:21
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I fixed a few typos in the Djinn but otherwise I didn't change much, it looks good to me and I didn't get any other feedback. I made some small changes to the Beholder in light of today's playtest. Finally, I have the last of my planned monster playbooks, the Pixie! It was probably the one I was looking forward to the least, but I really liked it once I got started. I think it could be super fun to play. Any constructive criticism for this new release or any of the monster playbooks would be much appreciated. I'll start recruiting for playtesting soon, for both the playbooks and the adventure I'll pack them with. After that I'll finalize things and then start selling them.
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Mar 16, 2014 05:08
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Just wanted to jump in and give kudos to Gnome and Mikan (and all others involved) for Inverse World. It's great, I love it, and my group's about to make a game set in it (gonna survive so much poo poo)!
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Mar 16, 2014 08:25
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With regards to the buddies, I'd like to request a move that upgrades your death move to do something along the lines of this
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Mar 16, 2014 09:20
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Lichtenstein posted:Hey buddies, it's Buddies time again! I've polished a few things and done a first batch of advanced moves. I've hit a little block, as I obsess about two moves I'd like to include, but don't have a clear vision on how to handle. This class looks like it owns bones at the moment, although I'm not sure if a later version has been posted. Just a couple of questions, if I may:
-- I'm currently working on another money based class, albeit a slightly less serious one, as part of a set I'm currently working on - I should have the first draft up by Tuesday sometime if people are interested in criticism/thoughts/using it/whatever.
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Mar 16, 2014 23:20
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unseenlibrarian posted:I feel like there should be a Columbo based move, but I feel like that about every detective writeup ever, so. Maybe an upgrade of some kind to Hardboiled call "Oh, one more thing?" This is the sort of great idea one feels shame for not thinking of first. Despite the classic Columbo maneuver being cool on its own, I feel it really fits the archetype in a roundabout way - while Columbo as a character was far from hardboiled, his style (and this maneuver in particular) also focused on messing with the culprit rather than being a forensic autist. It sure deserves to be a proper 6-10 move with a sting, rather than some "ask extra question" crap. I'm loosely thinking about something in vein of asking about one more important detail which retroactively becomes a part of opponents plan. Perhaps tweaked with some conditions or guidelines to help the DM stay sane. Arrrthritis posted:With regards to the buddies, I'd like to request a move that upgrades your death move to do something along the lines of this Trollhawke posted:This class looks like it owns bones at the moment, although I'm not sure if a later version has been posted. Just a couple of questions, if I may: 2) My gut instinct is against it. The forced difference between buddies is both for flavor (creating a certain tension) and a certain character mechanics-wise (versatile, but rather underpowered at each particular thing they do. Slinging buffs, but vulnerable because of gimmicks). I'm afraid that with that suggestion, by level six you'd end up with having pretty much a certain playbook (having stolen about 6-7 moves from it), except with some buffs and annoying resource engine tacked on top of it. It's probably best to just use that class and use the buddies as reference for stuff like how to deal with two dudes using a single health pool. Then again, I'm not really sure how it'd work in practice, so I'll probably try a sample encounter with this "variant" once the buddies hit playtestable stage. Though I was thinking of an advanced move or two based on grudgingly learning from your buddies style and perhaps stealing some little tricks from him when he's not looking and being able to brag about his kung-fu indeed being superior. 3) Huh. I did pretty much the exact move in my PI playbook and it somehow didn't occur to me something in this vein would also fit the playbook literally fueled by quips. The base wisecracking already has some interaction with enemies (by provoking them), so targeted burns are a pretty obvious direction in hindsight. Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Mar 17, 2014 |
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Mar 17, 2014 00:20
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My inquisitor class is officially done! Where should I put it? Just in the Google+ community? Can Gnome7 put it in the OP?
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Mar 17, 2014 01:10
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So I ran my second game of Dungeon World today. I talked about the ill-fated first session earlier in the thread, but this one ran way more smoothly, despite the fact that I hadn't looked at the rulebook in quite some time, and that this was an impromptu game thrown together at the last minute. This was helped out by there only being two players this time around, rather than four. Since there wasn't as many people shouting each other down, (and because the mage player wasn't there to confuse me,) things kept rolling along smoothly, and we actually got something done in the game. (Granted, most of the game was focused on the Ranger running all around town covered in horse poo poo, trying to get away from an angry innkeeper and his cronies, but progress  ).
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Mar 17, 2014 03:03
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Lichtenstein posted:Hey buddies, it's Buddies time again! I've polished a few things and done a first batch of advanced moves. I've hit a little block, as I obsess about two moves I'd like to include, but don't have a clear vision on how to handle. I love this! Not only it's a fun playbook to roleplay, but it's actually pretty good for any party. A homoerotic overtone would be the icing on the cake since that's always fun for a silly game. Hugoon Chavez fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Mar 17, 2014 |
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Mar 17, 2014 09:34
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Tag Team: when one buddy is in a bad situation that the other buddy could handle better, roll + DEX. On a 10+ the two buddies switch places perfectly. On a 7-9 they stumble a little in the transition, -1 forward. I'd Ship It: when the buddies do something that could be mistaken for romantic, but totally isn't because they're just really good friends, +1 forward.
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Mar 17, 2014 10:57
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Why isn't there a Wingman move? Something about one buddy taking on an ugly opponent so the other buddy can focus on the real threat.
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Mar 17, 2014 11:20
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