|
Or for fake scifi D&D that is sufficiently ridiculous there's Encounter Critical. Edit: I haven't actually read the entirety of EC.
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 04:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 02:47 |
|
|
SALT CURES HAM posted:Honestly, I could totally get down with Heavy Metal: the Elfgame if it was sufficiently ridiculous. Machinations of the Space Princess was written by James Desborough, actually. He originally intended it to be a LotFP adventure, but turned into its own thing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 06:06
|
|
|
Lexx was brilliance hiding under a veneer of fake-stupid.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 06:57
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Machinations of the Space Princess was written by James Desborough, actually. He originally intended it to be a LotFP adventure, but turned into its own thing. I fail to see how that's better.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 17:55
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:I fail to see how that's better. Never said it was, I just felt like pointing that out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 21:09
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Never said it was, I just felt like pointing that out. We don't truck with your "facts" around these parts. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 21:28
|
|
|
SALT CURES HAM posted:Honestly, I could totally get down with Heavy Metal: the Elfgame if it was sufficiently ridiculous. Man, I would love a setting or game that is all 70-80s scifi/fantasy mashup drawing from Heavy Metal and Wizards and TV stuff like Thundarr and He-Man.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 23:38
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Machinations of the Space Princess was written by James Desborough, actually. He originally intended it to be a LotFP adventure, but turned into its own thing. I heard Raggi was cursed. He can no longer see his reflection in a mirror. When he looks in the mirror, he can only see Desborough.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 23:59
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:Man, I would love a setting or game that is all 70-80s scifi/fantasy mashup drawing from Heavy Metal and Wizards and TV stuff like Thundarr and He-Man. I just found out about this, which is coming out for SWN and Fate Core. e: if nothing else, the covers are great. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 00:01
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:Man, I would love a setting or game that is all 70-80s scifi/fantasy mashup drawing from Heavy Metal and Wizards and TV stuff like Thundarr and He-Man. The 80-est of big haired space games... http://www.dwdstudios.com/starfrontiers
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 01:47
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:I just found out about this, which is coming out for SWN and Fate Core. Could be interesting - I'll have to keep an eye out for that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 02:18
|
|
|
JohnnyCanuck posted:Yes-ish. Here's a bit of history before you get the link. Thanks! I was hoping I could add it to my list of open licensed retroclones, but I see it's unlicensed.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 02:24
|
|
|
Humbug Scoolbus posted:The 80-est of big haired space games... Wasn't there an OSR game, or an actual really old game, that basically let you play not-Jedi and even not-Wookies? I remember finding a page awhile back with a bunch of OSR style Star Wars fanart that might have been related to it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 02:47
|
|
|
I just passed year 2 and 28 sessions with my 2ed AD&D group. We found a deck of many things and I drew the void :'( sad to see my first ever DnD character go (Human Paladin...if I really roleplayed I don't think he would've trusted such magic and drawn....) DM will give me 125k XP for a new character, but don't know what to roll yet. We have cleric, warrior, ranger, 2 wiz, and a flaky rogue. We are playing with all available kits except Psionics, so I'm trying to find some manuals. In the mean time any fun ideas? (not wild mage, everyone else is trying to keep their PCs...)
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 03:32
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I remember ads for this in all the comic books my uncle gave me. Space Patrol, Starships and Spacemen, and Space Opera all let you do that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 04:36
|
|
|
Crazyweasel posted:I just passed year 2 and 28 sessions with my 2ed AD&D group. We found a deck of many things and I drew the void :'( sad to see my first ever DnD character go (Human Paladin...if I really roleplayed I don't think he would've trusted such magic and drawn....) Blade (Bard kit). Take a couple levels of Fighter to get your THAC0 and proficiencies up, and then become a silent murder machine.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 04:37
|
|
|
Or do pure fighter, abuse the weapon specialization expansion and be a loud murder machine. edit - nevermind I guess youve got a fighter and a ranger so make that a maybe depending on how you guys play
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 04:52
|
|
|
I'm prepping a sort of West Marches style game but instead of a frontier town surrounded by ruins set up, I want to have city with a huge palace that was once ruled by a wizard king or something. Some magic junked happened or whatever and the palace area was abandoned for a decade or more. I figure that'll be a fun sandbox/megadungeon mash up. Is there a better tool for mapping out stuff like this than http://davesmapper.com/ ? I'm not feeling up to just free handing stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 04:54
|
|
|
TheSpookyDanger posted:I'm prepping a sort of West Marches style game but instead of a frontier town surrounded by ruins set up, I want to have city with a huge palace that was once ruled by a wizard king or something. Some magic junked happened or whatever and the palace area was abandoned for a decade or more. I figure that'll be a fun sandbox/megadungeon mash up. Is there a better tool for mapping out stuff like this than http://davesmapper.com/ ? I'm not feeling up to just free handing stuff. I ran a campaign a lot like that, so I'd be glad to shoot you some of the materials I used to keep it organized if you're interested. Basically, I just used GIMP to handle the map, with each level's map/key on different levels, then had a big text document that handled the details of what was going on in each room. I actually divided each dungeon level into 'zones' of 20 rooms each and managed to get stuff set up so that I could keep an entire zone's worth of content on the screen easily readable at once. It doubled as a way to condense a lot of info into a small area and a way to make sure I had a roughly correct density of monsters/treasure/etc going on throughout the dungeon. I didn't ever find actual tools for this that worked too well, but I'm actually working on making some right now for myself. They probably won't be ready any time soon, but I'll definitely post about them in the thread as they develop. Edit: Also, Dave's Mapper is great, but I'd also suggest checking out Wizardawn. Similar, but does more with room contents.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 08:26
|
|
|
TheSpookyDanger posted:I'm prepping a sort of West Marches style game but instead of a frontier town surrounded by ruins set up, I want to have city with a huge palace that was once ruled by a wizard king or something. Some magic junked happened or whatever and the palace area was abandoned for a decade or more. I figure that'll be a fun sandbox/megadungeon mash up. Is there a better tool for mapping out stuff like this than http://davesmapper.com/ ? I'm not feeling up to just free handing stuff. I know Dave is currently working on a way to replace tiles with a specific tile, which will greatly increase the utility of the mapper. From there, if you print it off in a smallish size with a grid of your choice, you can enlarge it freehand by drawing like shapes inside the squares like we were taught in elementary school. I have pretty much zero artistic talent and I had a lot of fun doing this. Also this allows you to change or alter the map without breaking out digital editing tools.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 08:51
|
|
|
FRINGE posted:Or do pure fighter, abuse the weapon specialization expansion and be a loud murder machine. Haha yea our fighter is quickly on his way to grand mastery with 2h swords, hoping no one catches on to the 'needs to train for 2 years' piece. I will look into the Blade kit. I was also thinking of something to try and help with the healing(Our cleric is more of a Dwarf battle priest type). I've never played a multiclass before, do they usually end up gimped in the long run due to splitting xp? Looking at it now if I went druid/mage I could have some decent spells on boths sides of the field with ~65k XP in both, but I'm not familiar enough with AD&D to know if the higher level spells quickly outpace what I have.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 14:04
|
|
|
Crazyweasel posted:Haha yea our fighter is quickly on his way to grand mastery with 2h swords, hoping no one catches on to the 'needs to train for 2 years' piece. Nah, you end up on average a level behind the party - it's really noticable at the lower levels, less so at the higher. Assuming 2nd edition, at 65k XP in bth would make you a 7th level Mage and an 8th level Druid. You would have to be a half-elf for that class combo. Meanwhile, assuming the rest of the party is around the 125k XP mark, the Fighter is 8, the Ranger 7, the pure wizard would also be 8, nearly 9th. A cleric would only just be 8th, but a pure druid would be 10th. Finally your Rogue or Bard would be 9th. The real problem is that there's a good chance that your half-elf Druid/Mage is only ever getting to level 9 druid and 12 mage, with maybe a few extra levels on top if your ability scores are good. You could go human and Dual-Class, which works a bit like 3e multi-classing, except that you can never go back to your old class, and can't use its abilities until your new class is of a higher level than it. Depending on which class you wanted to keep progressing in, you could start as a Mage 7/Duid 8 and keep going Druid till 20, or Druid 7/Mage 8 which has the added benefit of neatly using up all those 125k XP. Angrymog fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Jun 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 14:37
|
|
|
Yeah, in 2e people go "Ugh! Multiclass means you only get half the exp, so level up at half the speed!" Except most classes need double the exp each level, so it means you're just one level behind in each compared to everyone else. Multiclassing is pretty overpowered when you're just freely given 125k exp to make a character. How I do characters in my 2e game: 1. Everyone starts at level two, and 2,000exp, even if it's not enough to technically be level two for your class. 2. If the party doesn't have a home base, if you die, you re-roll, starting at level two again. 3. Once the party secures some kind of home base, each player rolls up a 2nd character. They can choose which of their two characters to use, with the other doing whatever at homebase. Say, while your mage character is researching a spell, you can play your fighter character. In this way, you can have characters doing things which takes a long time without stopping everyone in their tracks. 4. The character you're playing gets full experience. The character sitting back at homebase gets half experience from whatever your current character earns. 5. If a character dies, re-roll a new one, starting at level two and 2,000exp. Using this, players are encouraged to settle down somewhere, and can do side things with their other characters. Players have had their fighters stay back to create weapons and armor, patrol the streets of a town to win favor of the city guard, bards have spent free time performing and increasing their fame, thieves have worked on locks, traps and finding out rumors, mages can research, priests can preach and convert, etc. It also means that if you die, you don't lose everything, because your 2nd character has been earning exp as well. So you're not punished heavily for rare deaths. Die twice in rapid succession though, and you might be left with only a pair of level two characters. It's also come up that while the main party is adventuring, the team back at home had to defend against some attacks by enemies they'd been accruing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
Angrymog posted:The real problem is that there's a good chance that your half-elf Druid/Mage is only ever getting to level 9 druid and 12 mage Crazyweasel posted:I was also thinking of something to try and help with the healing(Our cleric is more of a Dwarf battle priest type).
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 23:53
|
|
|
Level caps were definitely the thing that was always house-ruled out of every 2E game I ever played.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2014 01:06
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Level caps were definitely the thing that was always house-ruled out of every 2E game I ever played. "700 year old Elven High Mage, still less dangerous than a 25 year old human wizards temper tantrum." And everyone wonders why the humans take over everything 
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2014 01:15
|
|
|
FRINGE posted:I have barely ever seen anyone use the level caps, for what its worth. Our DM is allowing all kits but Psionics, and our gameplay is probably 70% dungeon crawling and 30% RP, maybe even more dungeon crawling. Our cleric got busted for never really praying to his priest or calling his name (He was actually pronouncing his Gods name wrong and was wondering why his heals weren't as effective). My Paladin had a mentor and no God but was starting to commit to Lathander (He led him to a Holy Avenger in Ravenloft  ) We are in Faerun, tying in Zhentarim heavy plot with a stint in Ravenloft as well as some interaction with a group called the Circle of Iron and a gateway called the Arch of Archimedes (Not sure if this is from a book or a unique build)Thanks for all the advice...We only play every 3-4 weeks so I will probably build several characters and if I feel like I could RP a few, I'll run them by the DM. I probably have to opportunity to create an uber character, but I'm happy as long as I don't end up too gimped, and it sounds like whether I multiclass or dual class I won't end up too far behind and possibly even a bit ahead.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2014 01:59
|
|
|
.
Sloppy Milkshake fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Apr 12, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2014 02:30
|
|
|
Crazyweasel posted:Our DM is allowing all kits but Psionics, and our gameplay is probably 70% dungeon crawling and 30% RP, maybe even more dungeon crawling. Our cleric got busted for never really praying to his priest or calling his name (He was actually pronouncing his Gods name wrong and was wondering why his heals weren't as effective). My Paladin had a mentor and no God but was starting to commit to Lathander (He led him to a Holy Avenger in Ravenloft Or theres the full-elf fighter-cleric route worshiping Corellon. (FR - Demihuman Deities) Use the elven archer kit (Fighter book) and rain death down while passing around heal-juice cocktails to your buddies. (Plus both of those are easy to RP, theres tons of story/hooks/fluff on them.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2014 02:41
|
|
|
EDIT: Well, as I was in the middle of writing this the forums went down. Here we go.TheSpookyDanger posted:That would be awesome, thank you! If you don't wanna post stuff here you can email me at ohmightybiwako@gmail. I'll check out Wizardawn too. I'll post it here, why not. It might come off as a bit intense, but handling a megadungeon is just really complicated and if you do a bit of stuff to make things easier for yourself now it'll save stupidly huge amounts of work in the long run. A big part of why I do things this way is because I reuse the hell out of this dungeon and will just repopulate it with new monsters/treasure/etc between campaigns/RPG groups (leaving the various marks and messages left by the previous players for the new ones to find). If you don't want to care about repopulating stuff you can probably skip my whole section where I talk about how I set up my key--it's optimized to make it easy to find/re-add what I'm running low on. The map drawing stuff is still pretty much just by hand. I use GIMP for it, and you can make a graph-paper layer pattern just by going Filters-Render-Patterns-Grid and then turning that layer down to 25% opacity. Then, you can do Image-Set Grid followed by View-Snap To Grid to set it so that any lines you draw automatically snap to the graph paper lines, making it super quick to draw walls. From there I just put the walls/etc on one layer, the room numbers on another layer, and then any notes I want to keep directly on the map on a third layer. Here's an example of what a small bit of my map might look like:  It works pretty well. You just keep GIMP open and whenever the players pass between levels you just swap out which layers are visible/invisible. Makes it real easy to figure out where stairs lead and so on, too, which can get surprisingly tricky in a big dungeon. And here's what my key for that area looks like:  (click for a bigger picture) This is my key for one 'zone' of my dungeon--basically just a semi-arbitrary set of 20 rooms. I've done a lot of work to get it compressed down so I can have the full keys for 20 rooms all on screen at one moment--I've found that the less description I have of most rooms the more naturally I can describe them. The left page is a list of all the rooms and a quick description of them. Unless I have something specific in mind I'll just write a one-word description and jot down details as I pull them out of my rear end mid-game. NSTMI stands for "NPC / Special / Treasure / Monster / Item" and lets me know if any of those things exist in the room. If so, one of the other tables on the page will go into more detail. The Faction/NPC area is where I can take semi-detailed notes about any people/groups that the PCs have had interactions with, so I can better remember what kinds of deals the PCs have struck with who. The three tables on the right are for any rooms with interactive stuff in them (traps, magic fountains, whatever), treasures, and monsters. They serve both as a place to jot down notes on that stuff and as a guide to how many of these things this set of rooms should probably have--I try to set it so that I have about 1/3 of my rooms empty, 1/3 with monsters, and 1/3 with something else that's interactive or especially interesting. Also, I break treasure into treasure (T--coins and jewelry and poo poo), consumables (C--potions and scrolls), and items (I--magic weapons, armor, and gear) and try to have 7 Treasures, 3 Consumables, and 2 Items per 20 rooms (loosely). I have a bit of a houserule on wandering monsters--whenever a wandering monster happens I just roll on the monster chart for the zone. If the PCs haven't already killed the monster in that slot and the monster isn't, like, a ghost bound to a specific room, that's the monster the PCs run into. If the PCs run into a room with multiple encounters in it I'll roll some dice to see how many of the encounters are currently there. That 99% stuff is all part of my old process, where I measured this all a bit more carefully, but that method was dumb so you can ignore it. Now, the key might seem pretty intense and hard to fill, but keep in mind that just one of these will last you a month of play-time, and that you don't need to go too deep into it the first time you mess around with it. All you really need is a map and a list of which rooms have NSTMIs in them and you can really just ad-lib it and fill in the details as the players discover them. Oh, and in the event that your response to all of the above is "but how can I make it even more complex?" I actually am currently in the middle of working on a guide to making megadungeons, but it's currently more of a thought exercise than a guide for people who aren't me. Basically, I'm making a megadungeon (you play a village of people trapped in the middle of it trying to find a way to escape) and I'm writing down every little step I take in designing it, no matter how obvious or boring, so that I can try to recreate my process in code and make a procedural map generator out of it. I'm still very much in the middle of it, but people are welcome to read over my shoulder as I work if for some reason they find it interesting. Just keep in mind that these are all basically notes that aren't really being written with readability in mind.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 07:58
|
|
|
That's awesome and really helpful, thanks!
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 01:45
|
|
|
TheSpookyDanger posted:That's awesome and really helpful, thanks! I'm working on a big project with this all right now, so I'm feeling especially talkative. If this is your first megadungeon I figure I should toss in a few basic things I didn't realize until I had made my first one, too: The biggest thing is that you can actually treat a megadungeon as basically a little self-contained setting. Cram full of both enemies/monsters and also potential uneasy friendships. Don't be sparse with the NPCs, but also try to avoid unambiguous allies. Just throw in lots of NPCs and factions who have things they want and are willing to buddy up with the PCs to get it, and watch as the PCs befriend some and make bitter enemies out of others. Try to make lots of little pseudo-hooks within the dungeon, like putting two factions at war with each other and deciding that both will probably try to get the PCs to help them tip the odds. Just don't put too much effort into writing the backstory on any one element, since you never know which ones the PCs will get really into and which they'll completely bypass--I try to limit any backstories in my dungeon to one sentence blurbs I can build off of mid-session if needed. One thing that's useful to do super early is think of any level-spanning things you want to add. Do you want to have an underground river that cuts across multiple levels/zones of the dungeon? Do you want a giant elevator shaft that connects level 2 and level 9? How about a half-dozen legendary swords named after your favorite death metal songs? Did three brother-wizards come down into the dungeon, only to turn into three rival undead lich-kings operating out of different levels of the dungeon? It's way easier to come up with these at the start than to try to cram them in half-way through, so it's worth brainstorming these things early on. These things are also super fun to find--finding "The Crown of Winter" is cool, but then later hearing about how the goblin king's rule is aided by his possession of "The Crown of Summer" is even cooler. Similarly, you only need to make the first level or two before you let your players start playing, but it's nice to sketch basic skeletons of what's going to be in the lower levels very early on, just so you can start slathering on the hints and rumors early on. Hearing about "The Black Library of Magus Xabathran" for six months before finding it makes its discovery feel incredibly satisfying and makes the fight against the undead magus within all the more memorable. Think about how much treasure is on each level. A first level party should be able to reach character level two before they run out of content on dungeon level one. Also, they'll lose half of any treasure on the level to either never finding it, character death, or random tragedy, so try to make sure that each level has, at a minimum, enough treasure in it to level up the entire party twice over. Oh, and my experience is that it's way better to go too heavy on the hallways than too light. Megadungeons should actually be fairly easy to move around in, with lots of hallways/stairways/interlocking rooms. You can block off individual groups of rooms to be kind of hard to move through, but in general you should be able to move between levels or zones fairly easily by taking the dungeon's major travel arteries.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 08:05
|
|
|
OtspIII posted:like putting two factions at war with each other and deciding that both will probably try to get the PCs to help them tip the odds. Just don't put too much effort into writing the backstory on any one element, since you never know which ones the PCs will get really into and which they'll completely bypass NPC groups have motivations/goals and their own enemies. Knowing the physical context of an area will automatically fill in a lot of blanks in how you think about it as you build and then describe it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 11:39
|
|
|
Are any of you interested in playing DCC online over Google Hangouts / Roll 20? I'm trying to get my GM chops and could do this on a weekday night.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 16:08
|
|
|
OtspIII posted:So much stuff By all means feel free to keep going, it's really helpful. obeyasia posted:Are any of you interested in playing DCC online over Google Hangouts / Roll 20? I have zero knowledge of the game, but i'd be down. I'm pretty interested in seeing how online games work anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 17:56
|
|
|
TheSpookyDanger posted:By all means feel free to keep going, it's really helpful. Cool. Can you PM me? Or obeyasia@gmail
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 19:29
|
|
|
Does anyone have experience with The Arduin Chronicles? I've seen a few mentions of it today in odd places, and I know it's got a sort of sci fi fantasy thing going on, but I was wondering if anyone had some details or experience with it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2014 22:19
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:Does anyone have experience with The Arduin Chronicles? I've seen a few mentions of it today in odd places, and I know it's got a sort of sci fi fantasy thing going on, but I was wondering if anyone had some details or experience with it. Not personally, although I know it was old school gonzo. But try here
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 01:17
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:Does anyone have experience with The Arduin Chronicles? I've seen a few mentions of it today in odd places, and I know it's got a sort of sci fi fantasy thing going on, but I was wondering if anyone had some details or experience with it. Not the Chronicles but I have a ton of experience with the original. I did a brief post of the insanity before http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3495106&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post405488350
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 04:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 02:47 |
|
|
Hey OtspIII, regarding your NY Red Box: I have read some stuff from fans of Greyhawk and the Realms regarding what they feel are the essence and distinct characteristics of their favourite campaign settings. Do you have any similar insight into Mystara? From 30 Years of Adventure I gathered that Mystara never took itself too seriously and was designed to host not-Vikings, not-Romans, not-Mongols, and, uh, not-plutocrat-sorcerer-guilds sharing borders without worrying about whether or that's believable, because "having lots of new and interesting places to adventure" was more important than anthropology. But I've also read that in Mystara, as in Greyhawk, nations and rulers are pretty much concerned with the same things that concern them in the real world, as opposed to epic battles of good vs. evil. Either way, when I actually have time my next campaign will be with Darker Dungeons and set in Mystara. What do you like about Glantri as opposed to Karameikos or other Gazetteer nations as a place to set the campaign?
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 17:55
|
|