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Relevant to the discussion about how people are introduced to D&D- John Darnielle (of the Mountain Goats) just released his novel Wolf in a White Van, that centers around a roleplaying game. I was reading an interview with him, and he had this to say about his experience with Dungeons and Dragons: quote:Had you played any of these sort of role-playing games?
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Sep 19, 2014 04:47
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I almost stole it, but then I punched myself in the dick instead because I am Chaotic Neutral.
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Sep 19, 2014 04:50
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is stole it, and then gave it to someone who needed it more than I did because Potato. gently caress DA POLICE CHAOTIC GOOD UP IN THIS BITCH!
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Sep 19, 2014 04:58
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Chaotic or not, please let the reward for the person who earned it. e: The last Mountain Goats album was mediocre at best. e2: someone in phiz made a real good joke about darnielle and chords but i wont post it here Plutonis fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 05:03
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Gravy Train Robber posted:Relevant to the discussion about how people are introduced to D&D- Reminder, this is explicitly the FEEL OF THE GAME that 5e is trying to gain back.
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Sep 19, 2014 06:00
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I haven't played 5e, but would a group of four first level characters have any chance in a fight against a dragon? even a young one? One of the things I sold me on 4e when it was new is that it was possible (but difficult) for first level characters to confront a young dragon.
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Sep 19, 2014 06:20
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Error 404 posted:is stole it, and then gave it to someone who needed it more than I did because Potato. I deny all responsibility.
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Sep 19, 2014 08:16
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potatocubed posted:I deny all responsibility. monkeycheez fishmalk jambalaya. Chimichangas.
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Sep 19, 2014 08:46
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I won't steal it, buuut I will continue to make these perfectly legal child laborers mine bitcoins by hand until I get my own. Think of the children, give me the code. Lawful Evil.
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Sep 19, 2014 10:08
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Bucnasti posted:Somebody brought up the comparison to comics, but I think that's wrong. Marvel and DC both figured out a long time ago that as their worlds grow the barrier of entry gets higher and higher. So they've both come up with ways to reinvent/reboot their characters and give new younger readers an entry point, a place where they can say "This is my world" those methods aren't always successful (cough New 52 cough) but often times they are. To be honest the New 52 (and the last few years of DC) is a pretty good comparison to D&D. It was billed as a daring new approach, but in reality it just reset the status quo to circa 1970. In this analogy 4e is Wally West, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown et all. Shoved aside so that the creators could return to what they grew up with.
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Sep 19, 2014 10:53
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i won't steal it, but for every code you give me i'll donate 10 dollars to the charity of your choi
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Sep 19, 2014 12:51
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Bucnasti posted:I haven't played 5e, but would a group of four first level characters have any chance in a fight against a dragon? even a young one? In the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure the players fight an adult dragon but it's more of a survival encounter. They even say in the description that the dragon's breath weapon would one shot a level 1 character. I haven't seen the Monster Manual but I imagine it's like 2E and a dragon anything is out of your league at level 1.
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Sep 19, 2014 13:50
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:In the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure the players fight an adult dragon but it's more of a survival encounter. They even say in the description that the dragon's breath weapon would one shot a level 1 character. I haven't seen the Monster Manual but I imagine it's like 2E and a dragon anything is out of your league at level 1. It might be like 3e and you could face a wyrmling white at level 1 if completely rested with good luck on your side.
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Sep 19, 2014 13:54
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BrainParasite posted:I won't steal it, buuut I will continue to make these perfectly legal child laborers mine bitcoins by hand until I get my own. Think of the children, give me the code. Well, you smell bad and have terrible fashion sense. Whale Biologist.
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Sep 19, 2014 14:34
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Arivia posted:It might be like 3e and you could face a wyrmling white at level 1 if completely rested with good luck on your side. Bronze and copper (I think) wyrmlings are CR 1, with the rest being CR 2-3. Young dragons range from 4-6. I don't know how hard they actually are yet though.
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Sep 19, 2014 14:39
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ProfessorCirno posted:Reminder, this is explicitly the FEEL OF THE GAME that 5e is trying to gain back. I have a feeling that junior high kids are capable of wringing an uphappy dickish experience from any rules set. It's kind of inherent to their social development. I say this because two years ago I ran a random encounter with a ghost playing AD&D1e and it was remarkably successful--with grownups. That kind of existential random-disaster style of play can work, but it relies on having good, open relationships with your players. This reminds me though. I was at a convention recently and there were a bunch of questions about how to make sure players send their characters to interesting sites and plot threads and things through various sneaky methods, but at my home game I was like, "This is the dungeon, by the way, so y'all probably want to explore it," and that honesty works well enough.
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Sep 19, 2014 14:54
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Lord of Bore posted:Bronze and copper (I think) wyrmlings are CR 1, with the rest being CR 2-3. Young dragons range from 4-6. I don't know how hard they actually are yet though. Well, bear in mind they also deliberately lowballed dragon CRs to make them scary challenges at the level they're listed for. In other words, the CRs are there to trick GMs into throwing dragons at players their PCs aren't prepared for, because dragons, amirite?  This is how I ended up with a very unhappy player group that nearly got TPKed by a dragon at level 3.
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Sep 19, 2014 15:08
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MalcolmSheppard posted:This reminds me though. I was at a convention recently and there were a bunch of questions about how to make sure players send their characters to interesting sites and plot threads and things through various sneaky methods, but at my home game I was like, "This is the dungeon, by the way, so y'all probably want to explore it," and that honesty works well enough. I think this kind of also depends on the relationship with your players. I've read a ton of stuff about how you shouldn't railroad your players or don't railroad them so blatantly or don't prep because that just leads to disappointment when people want to run off elsewhere, but honestly if you guys want to mess around in a bunch of rooms with 2d6 kobolds then you should start in the first room. It just seems that a lot of the time all this DM advice is just jumping through hoops to get people to latch onto a plot hook rather than just talking to your players about what they want to do.
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Sep 19, 2014 15:12
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Hello friends, I have come to shill my art at you all. If you've ever wanted to have your busty elven wizard character drawn now would be a good time to jump on it. I may also be willing to offer discounts to TGers.
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Sep 19, 2014 16:03
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ProfessorCirno posted:Reminder, this is explicitly the FEEL OF THE GAME that 5e is trying to gain back.
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Sep 19, 2014 16:24
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Bucnasti posted:Somebody brought up the comparison to comics, but I think that's wrong. Marvel and DC both figured out a long time ago that as their worlds grow the barrier of entry gets higher and higher. So they've both come up with ways to reinvent/reboot their characters and give new younger readers an entry point, a place where they can say "This is my world" those methods aren't always successful (cough New 52 cough) but often times they are. WordMercenary posted:To be honest the New 52 (and the last few years of DC) is a pretty good comparison to D&D. It was billed as a daring new approach, but in reality it just reset the status quo to circa 1970. In this analogy 4e is Wally West, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown et all. Shoved aside so that the creators could return to what they grew up with. The thing about comics is that even if we take that article at face value that it's become "cool to be geeky" lately, comics haven't exactly experienced some huge upsurge in readership and turned back into some super-mainstream thing that you talk with your coworkers around the water-cooler about. What has happened is that movies based on comic books have blown up big, but part of the key to the success of Marvel's movies is that they aren't being aimed first and foremost at comic book aficionados, they're being aimed at blockbuster movie watching mainstream audiences and if they also happen to appeal to comic book geeks then that's gravy, but I guarantee you that if a Marvel movie makes umpty-gazillion dollars and gets good reviews but comic book geeks hated it that Marvel wouldn't be scrambling to release movies engineered to placate them. I brought this up in the Next thread and it doesn't even have to do with Next specifically but tabletop RPGs in general are an extremely hard sell. They're often a lot more complex and involved to learn how to play than a board game, card game, or video game, and the default assumption of play throughout the hobby is "buy these textbooks, then devote 6-8 hours every Saturday to playing this game until it eventually peters out months down the road" instead of "pick up and play a complete game in 90 minutes while you're looking for something fun to do with friends." Bringing RPGs to the masses may be possible, but doing so probably means reworking them into something that "traditional" RPG fans look at and go "what the hell is this poo poo?" And even then it's not a sure then because, again, there are board games, card games, and video games out there competing for peoples' entertainment time (and money).
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Sep 19, 2014 16:38
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Kai Tave posted:I brought this up in the Next thread and it doesn't even have to do with Next specifically but tabletop RPGs in general are an extremely hard sell. They're often a lot more complex and involved to learn how to play than a board game, card game, or video game, and the default assumption of play throughout the hobby is "buy these textbooks, then devote 6-8 hours every Saturday to playing this game until it eventually peters out months down the road" instead of "pick up and play a complete game in 90 minutes while you're looking for something fun to do with friends." Bringing RPGs to the masses may be possible, but doing so probably means reworking them into something that "traditional" RPG fans look at and go "what the hell is this poo poo?" And even then it's not a sure then because, again, there are board games, card games, and video games out there competing for peoples' entertainment time (and money). I think you're pretty much dead-on here. You could probably explain the basics of a *World game to people in minutes, but at the same time it's pretty much the kind of game that Next's market would scoff at (assuming they like Next, because gosh there's still some violations of BECMI/3.x tradition in there!)
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Sep 19, 2014 17:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think this kind of also depends on the relationship with your players. I've read a ton of stuff about how you shouldn't railroad your players or don't railroad them so blatantly or don't prep because that just leads to disappointment when people want to run off elsewhere, but honestly if you guys want to mess around in a bunch of rooms with 2d6 kobolds then you should start in the first room. It just seems that a lot of the time all this DM advice is just jumping through hoops to get people to latch onto a plot hook rather than just talking to your players about what they want to do. Well in this situation there was an option to go around and contend with patrols coming from the dungeon, or just do the dungeon, as they were midway through a hexcrawl. They're ultimately on their way to Highport (we're doing Slave Lords). I just told them the dungeon was there, but I didn't leave them with no reason to explore it, which really would be lazy. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 17:14
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This is why my group and I tend to try out MicroLite20 or Dungeon World over proper D&D. If I can't explain the majority of the rules, create characters, and get going in the first session, we don't want to play. We want to play a tabletop game together, get into our own wacky adventures, and we don't want to have to study for it or do much with numbers. We've tried out 4e with another friend and that was alright. I tried out 3.5e on my own and that was... not really my thing. I don't know. I like to picture there being a separate product made that's an official D&D Lite that's a barebones MicroLite20-like. Very simple, get people interested in PnP gaming, and try to get people to buy up into D&D proper? Rotten Cookies fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 17:38
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, bear in mind they also deliberately lowballed dragon CRs to make them scary challenges at the level they're listed for. In other words, the CRs are there to trick GMs into throwing dragons at players their PCs aren't prepared for, because dragons, amirite? This is one of the few things that makes me genuinely upset about 3.X The designers were being deliberately obtuse and not communicating their design principles, which ends up resulting in TPKs like you mentioned. That, along with Ivory Tower Game Design, is one of the biggest flaws about it.
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Sep 19, 2014 17:44
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I only just found out about Thornwatch - Penny Arcade's RPG - and it's looking fairly good as something that is to 4e as Descent is to dungeon crawling. (And much better than Descent I think). Anyone involved in the playtesting? And what mileage is there in the Mage Knight style card design for RPGs?
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Sep 19, 2014 18:02
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Kai Tave posted:Bringing RPGs to the masses may be possible, but doing so probably means reworking them into something that "traditional" RPG fans look at and go "what the hell is this poo poo?" And even then it's not a sure then because, again, there are board games, card games, and video games out there competing for peoples' entertainment time (and money). Again I haven't played it, but doesn't this describe the Pathfinder Card Game?
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Sep 19, 2014 18:55
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Bucnasti posted:Again I haven't played it, but doesn't this describe the Pathfinder Card Game? The Pathfinder Card Game directly translates an RPG into a board game by cutting out...well, the roleplaying. There isn't really any acting out your characters unless you really push it, the outcomes are pre-defined, the story is immutable. It breaks down the very basics of Pathfinder to "You roll some dice and something happens based on the result."
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Sep 19, 2014 18:58
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Rotten Cookies posted:This is why my group and I tend to try out MicroLite20 or Dungeon World over proper D&D. If I can't explain the majority of the rules, create characters, and get going in the first session, we don't want to play. We want to play a tabletop game together, get into our own wacky adventures, and we don't want to have to study for it or do much with numbers. We've tried out 4e with another friend and that was alright. I tried out 3.5e on my own and that was... not really my thing. I don't know. Well hey, someone else that runs/plays Microlite! How do you find it? It's the only system I've really played so far.
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Sep 19, 2014 19:03
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I think it's a great, nifty little system they have. It works great for my friends, who generally like rules-light stuff. I'm biased because I like simple stuff, and this is just that. You can print out like 3 pages and be good to go. I like that spells cost HP, though I get that it's not a popular mechanic. I like getting rid of the spellbook thing. You're free to cast any spell that's your level. Awesome. I just like it in general. If you like this, try Dungeon World. It's also fantastic.
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Sep 19, 2014 19:26
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Spincut posted:The Pathfinder Card Game directly translates an RPG into a board game by cutting out...well, the roleplaying. There isn't really any acting out your characters unless you really push it, the outcomes are pre-defined, the story is immutable. It breaks down the very basics of Pathfinder to "You roll some dice and something happens based on the result." And really, there isn't any story either, unless you go out of your way. It's just a variety of board game scenarios to play through.
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Sep 19, 2014 19:26
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I'm reminded of one of the products that got me into gaming - Mini Car Wars. It was a $1 pamphlet that compressed the rules, complete with markers and maps you cut out of it. There's a lot of free introductory adventures, but I think "free" may very well be a mistake. That gives them the seeming of an ad or promotional item. I think introductory RPGs in the $15, 32-64 page range would be ideal, if you can fit in some cheap dice, that'd be even better. Having games with more of a starter deck model might be a strong idea, with portability being important, and having things like smartphone integration might be a good way to add functionality and invest somebody in the game. Things like *World sheets could easily work on even a phone screen, and you could charge access to have full access to additional character material, etc. I don't even know how you would market something like that necessarily, but thinking of that first game just had be dreaming of solutions. What should an introductory RPG look like?
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Sep 19, 2014 19:27
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Alien Rope Burn posted:What should an introductory RPG look like?
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Sep 19, 2014 19:34
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S.J. posted:And really, there isn't any story either, unless you go out of your way. It's just a variety of board game scenarios to play through. There is story, and it's told in an okay manner. There's not a TON of it, and there are definitely gaps, but Sagan and I had fun reading the backs of cards to each other and seeing how the plot developed.
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Sep 19, 2014 19:44
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Kai Tave posted:The thing about comics is that even if we take that article at face value that it's become "cool to be geeky" lately, comics haven't exactly experienced some huge upsurge in readership and turned back into some super-mainstream thing that you talk with your coworkers around the water-cooler about. What has happened is that movies based on comic books have blown up big, but part of the key to the success of Marvel's movies is that they aren't being aimed first and foremost at comic book aficionados, they're being aimed at blockbuster movie watching mainstream audiences and if they also happen to appeal to comic book geeks then that's gravy, but I guarantee you that if a Marvel movie makes umpty-gazillion dollars and gets good reviews but comic book geeks hated it that Marvel wouldn't be scrambling to release movies engineered to placate them. I don't think you could realistically compress a complete, self-contained story into 90 minutes with an RPG. Fiasco, after all, takes two hours to play for experienced players, and has several advantages over a more conventional RPG. RPGs are probably going to have to be a multi-hour commitment for an introductory or one-shot session of play unless there's some kind of revolution in design.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:04
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I think you want to sell this new RPG for non-rpgers in a box. I think you want to call it something other than an rpg. It has to have game pieces, like monopoly. It has to have a board, with the option to buy or make your own boards. I think it would suit the game to have the rules printed like they are in a board game, on the same kind of book you find in say Arkham Horror, so as to divorce the game from feeling as one person earlier said, like a text book. The writing should avoid the kind of verboseness that it common with rpg products. Character creation should be simple, and optional, pre gens should be included. The ideal format for these pregens should be similar to Dungeon Worlds playbooks. A name that divorces itself from D&D may or may not help. There should be a boxed expansion that allows you to randomly build an adventure, like a boxed version of AD&D solo dungeon charts. Maybe it could be packaged with a graphing wet erase board and stencils for rooms. Thank you LongDarkNight for the Mountain gaming system ideas, I have access to both games you suggested and will look into doing something with them. Fiasco appeals to me, but Cortex may appeal more to the players that frequent my table. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 20:37
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Video games will save role playing games. A computer-augmented collaborative storytelling activity will come out of nowhere. This I believe.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:39
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Bongo Bill posted:Video games will save role playing games. A computer-augmented collaborative storytelling activity will come out of nowhere. This I believe. Storium?
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Sep 19, 2014 20:42
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Now that I think on it, WOTC already hit on a format real close to the one I was suggesting. Gamma World. I don't know how successful it was as a seller, as Gamma World is something of a niche property, but similar games in fantasy of Sci-fi could be what it takes.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:59
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Though Fiasco is a great game to have those less familiar with RPGs exposed to, I'm not sure it or something like it would ever have great market appeal unless it somehow got some powerful heat behind it.remusclaw posted:I think you want to sell this new RPG for non-rpgers in a box. I think you want to call it something other than an rpg. There are a lot of fine ideas here, but never do this. Scratch that, "Storygame" is also an acceptable label. 
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Sep 19, 2014 21:17
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