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Does anyone (and apologies if this has been asked recently, it's a big thread) have any experience with The Burning Wheel Gold? Rym DeCoster from Geek Nights (who I saw at PAX) rants and raves about how good of a system it is, but i'm unable to find anything about it on SA or the rest of the internet. I've read through the basic rules .pdf and loved what i've seen, but its lack of popularity makes me feel like there must be some kind of terrible trap in the full version of the book?
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Nov 4, 2014 13:46
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The rules are written in a needlessly obtuse, informal way that suggests some rear end in a top hat at a renfaire is reading them to you. The game itself looks awesome, Luke Crane just needs an editor / to get over himself.
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Nov 4, 2014 15:12
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Serdain posted:Does anyone (and apologies if this has been asked recently, it's a big thread) have any experience with The Burning Wheel Gold? The rules book is the size of a novel. A thick novel. With small text. It's also really wordy and a pain in the butt to understand. From what I've heard, it's really cool, but getting through that thing is no easy feat.
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Nov 4, 2014 16:24
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Serdain posted:Does anyone (and apologies if this has been asked recently, it's a big thread) have any experience with The Burning Wheel Gold? I think it's mainly due to the lack of a PDF version of the full book, plus the fact that it's fairly niche. It's a great book if you're into what it's giving you, but not everyone is into incredibly dense fantasy game systems.
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Nov 4, 2014 16:48
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I played it at a con once, it was kinda cool. I remember that the best spell was Raise Bread and the best trait was Bee-Speech. Has anyone played the Dune-themed spinoff, Burning Jihad? I like Dune, but I was never able to really figure out how the 'Progress of Jihad' mechanic worked. Or Burning Empires? That one does have a pdf, but it's dupposed to be super-tightly tied to its setting, or so I've heard.
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Nov 4, 2014 18:55
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Rockopolis posted:I played it at a con once, it was kinda cool. Tell me about the Bee-Speech  Is it the ability to talk to bees, or is it the ability to convey complex messages via interpretive dance?
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Nov 4, 2014 19:13
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Serdain posted:Does anyone (and apologies if this has been asked recently, it's a big thread) have any experience with The Burning Wheel Gold? Burning Wheel has recently been discussed in the October chat thread and also in the now-dead Indie RPG Megathread. I own the books but have not ever been able to play it. It's not helped by Crane's insistence on not selling PDFs, not selling books through Amazon, and not reprinting books once they go out of print. I'd recommend looking at Mouse Guard or Torchbearer first; both have more support and available PDFs.
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Nov 4, 2014 19:39
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So, we brought in Roll20 for our Dark Heresy game and it's been helping a lot with planning adventures and especially combats, but I'm having a hell of a time finding good background textures with the inbuilt search function. I'm trying to build a ship interior and I just can't seem to find background tiles I could build a proper maze of twisting tunnels out of. The players really liked having an actual, colorful plains map to fight on in our last encounter, so I feel like I have an obligation to do more than just freehand some location markers. Any advice on where to look for map tiles?
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Nov 4, 2014 21:46
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I found and downloaded Masterplan from the OP and it looks rad as hell, I just have one little problem. It does not seem to come with any libraries and the link to download the standard library from their site is dead. Does anyone know where I can get that library, or another tileset I could use for map making?
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Nov 5, 2014 08:44
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I'm getting tired of using poker chips as monsters/npcs/etc in my 13th Age game, I'm looking to get a hold of a bunch of random miniatures. I found a few amazon stores that sell packages like '25 random D&D minis', but unfortunately they don't ship internationally (I'm in Australia). Anyone have any suggestions?
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Nov 5, 2014 11:52
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If you don't want to make your own, the Pathfinder's Bestiary Box has nice stand-ups, or the D&D Monster Vault if you'd prefer flat tokens. (The D&D one comes with one of the better 4e monster books, which should be relatively easy to translate to 13A.) You can also hold out for the inevitable Reaper Bones III, or try to find a cheap box from the last Kickstarter.
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Nov 5, 2014 13:29
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Roach Warehouse posted:I'm getting tired of using poker chips as monsters/npcs/etc in my 13th Age game, I'm looking to get a hold of a bunch of random miniatures. I found a few amazon stores that sell packages like '25 random D&D minis', but unfortunately they don't ship internationally (I'm in Australia). Anyone have any suggestions? A buddy of mine takes pennies and glues token pictures onto them, it's great because they feel decently weighty and are absurdly cheap.
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Nov 5, 2014 14:28
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If you want pretty pictures you can print out stuff on any old printer and use binder clips to make them stand upright. These are binder clips.
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Nov 5, 2014 15:12
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axelsoar posted:A buddy of mine takes pennies and glues token pictures onto them, it's great because they feel decently weighty and are absurdly cheap. A hole punch, metal washers, epoxy stickers and a lot of patience can make more durable tokens. http://blog.maragnus.com/post/44298806692/dm-tokens Jackard posted:Finally moved on from using chess pieces as monsters, here are the token files Jackard posted:Here are some 1" Diablo 3 tokens I printed up Jackard fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Nov 5, 2014 |
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Nov 5, 2014 17:24
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So here's my predicament. We were looking to get a group together to try out D&D and were going to start with the 5E Starter set. The host decided to invite a bunch of people and now we have 8-9 players for a 4-5 player campaign. What the hell am I supposed to do? This was my first time DM'ing and about 5 players first time playing. Somehow I have to turn a 4-5 person campaign into a 9 person campaign, make it still challenging and somehow make it worth running. Would doubling the amount of monsters/loot be enough?
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Nov 11, 2014 15:45
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m.hache posted:So here's my predicament. We were looking to get a group together to try out D&D and were going to start with the 5E Starter set. Yeah, uh, doubling monsters and loot isn't going to be enough. Beyond the fact that that doubles the number of health pools and stats that you have to keep track of, when roleplaying you now have to make sure that every one of your nine players gets opportunities to shine in and out of combat. The simplest solution to this problem is to split your campaign into two campaigns. Somebody out of your group needs to step up and DM for the other half of your interested individuals. Numbers of players over 7 are absolute nightmares to try to DM for. This does come from personal experience.
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Nov 11, 2014 16:14
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Sade posted:Yeah, uh, doubling monsters and loot isn't going to be enough. Beyond the fact that that doubles the number of health pools and stats that you have to keep track of, when roleplaying you now have to make sure that every one of your nine players gets opportunities to shine in and out of combat. I thought so. I'll have to have a talk with my buddy. I don't think I can even split the group because no one else wants to play a campaign then DM the same campaign.
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Nov 11, 2014 16:31
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"Too many people who want to play D&D/RPGs" is one of those quality problems I'd like to have.
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Nov 11, 2014 17:55
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Captain Walker posted:"Too many people who want to play D&D/RPGs" is one of those quality problems I'd like to have. To be fair it's our wives/fiance's we managed to talk in and we don't want to kick them out all of a sudden. I think we're splitting it into 2 groups after speaking with them.
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Nov 11, 2014 18:02
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m.hache posted:I thought so. It's gonna boil down to: you cannot have a "normal" D&D experience with more than like 5 PCs. Something like 9 people demands more of a storygame approach with a somewhat zoomed out focus. You can still run things that resemble adventures, but I would focus more on exploration or problem-solving than combat. Try and establish the party as like a self-contained "Prospectors Guild" and focus the campaign around using their various skills and powers to circumvent environmental obstacles and hazards as they chart unknown places. Another idea, if the group is okay with one player having more of a "main character" role, is to have the party consist of some kind of traveling diplomat and their entourage. Scenarios involve getting from point A to point B without getting assassinated, and running security at various events. Basically, you'll want to focus on big, open-ended types of scenarios with a lot of room for fudging, because there is no way to wrangle 9 people into a dungeon that won't result in like 6 of those people being utterly disengaged while it's somebody else's turn to decide which direction they want to walk 30 feet toward.
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Nov 11, 2014 18:06
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That large number of players is more suited to things like online play-by-post roleplaying, often without a solid system as backing. I tend to refuse to go past 5 PCs.
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Nov 11, 2014 18:20
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I played in a game for several years where we had 6 (PCs). It was loving awesome, but it was run by a DM who had been playing literally since D&D appeared (and the predecessor games before) so like 30-40 years, and while I never did figure out precisely how old he was, I think he was not a wee little child when he started. He was definitely old guard, and it fantastic. Best DM ever. One of the few things I miss about that place. Under normal circumstances, 4 seems good, 5 seems really snug.
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Nov 12, 2014 03:41
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6 is my "normal." It's large but not unmanageably so. So here's my question! Most GMs have "emergency files," especially if you're playing in a rules-heavy system like Pathfinder or Dark Heresy or whatever. The file is stuff you've prepared to use in an emergency when the players throw you a curveball - a prepared encounter, maybe a list of names. What's in yours? A dungeon map? A bunch of NPCs? Share!
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Nov 12, 2014 21:49
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Arivia posted:6 is my "normal." It's large but not unmanageably so. For semi-sandbox type stuff, I do up at least 20 short (often randomly generated with a program) NPC sheets with quick bios that I can randomly roll up when I feel the need to insert a new character. I also have various lists of names (both randomly generated and actual names taken from different sources), which is really helpful if the random generator makes something lovely. In general, though, most of my campaigns can function even with a curveball due to how they're written. I write it as events rather than a specific plot, with the encounters following logically if you stay on the plotted line but still being general enough that they can be potentially be redressed and shuffled around. My PCs would usually have to 100% go off the rails and ignore the campaign's very existence (like "I was supposed to take the chance to fly to another continent to search for a world-saving artifact but I'm going to try and become the governor of this province and play the game as a complex economics simulator instead" kind of off the rails) to be completely unplayable.
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Nov 12, 2014 22:22
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I've found that 6+ new person groups are a great time to break out Fiasco.
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Nov 13, 2014 01:25
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A friend of mine is interested in running a cyberpunk-themed game. He hasn't DM or played in any tabletop game before. I told him about Shadowrun, but he wasn't interested in its fantasy elements and he'd rather not re-skin things. He was considering Cyberpunk 2020, but I know not all systems are created equally. He has no preference between rules-crunchy and rules-light. I've only played D&D 4E myself, so what do you guys suggest? Come And See fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Nov 14, 2014 |
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Nov 14, 2014 01:22
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I'm working on a Lovecraft-themed/Chaosium Call of Cthulhu-esque system hack of Kill Puppies for Satan for some newish roleplayers I'm running a group for. I want to set the system up with a sort of inverse Evil, casting spells adds Insanity and you need to reduce it or go insane. Characters will be fairly disposable. What do you guys think about time as an insanity reduction mechanism? Something like every 15 or 30 minutes real time take off a point. I feel like it would encourage them to take risks without being too punishing, but I'd like to hear the opinions of some other more experienced DMs first.
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Nov 14, 2014 02:30
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:Something like every 15 or 30 minutes real time take off a point The problem with real-time is that "slow the game to a crawl" becomes the optimal way to play, and that'll become more tempting when characters are most beaten up - which is often when you most want drama and tension.
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Nov 14, 2014 08:57
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A list of names and maybe a few concepts. Sometimes a few stats. For the most part I've run enough WH40kRP to be able to eyeball stats if the players go after someone I didn't plan on, etc, and most skills don't really come up as much for NPCs as is. Writing up a quick combat block and then throwing them into it or heading to an interrogation isn't too hard. As for Pathfinder/D&D, I don't play those anymore, but when I did I admit I'd just arbitrarily assign HP, to-hit, etc and often alter them as a fight went on to keep it about the right length and let everyone do some things. My players never noticed, or if they did, never really cared much. We were not the right audience for that system, I think.
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Nov 14, 2014 09:11
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petrol blue posted:The problem with real-time is that "slow the game to a crawl" becomes the optimal way to play, and that'll become more tempting when characters are most beaten up - which is often when you most want drama and tension. Instead, you could have a track (an actual physical track with a counter on it works really well for all kinds of stuff) and move the counter back when certain things are achieved in-game. So "cast a spell" moves the track X points towards "insane". X could be determined by the spell, be a flat "2 points per spell", or whatever. When a monster is killed, a cult is stopped, booze is consumed, or whatever else, move the track Y points towards "sane". You could even have a track with varying effects depending on how far along you are. code:
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Nov 14, 2014 09:15
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Tomero_the_Great posted:A friend of mine is interested in running a cyberpunk-themed game. He hasn't DM or played in any tabletop game before. I told him about Shadowrun, but he wasn't interested in its fantasy elements and he'd rather not re-skin things. There's an old Rolemaster cyberpunk book that uses a stripped down version of the rules - it's fast and brutal with lots of good detail. Rolemaster is a good system for cyberpunk because horrific things happen fast on a regular basis. edit: review here. The system also straps really well on to Eclipse Phase, so if you like it then that's a nice option. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Nov 14, 2014 |
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Nov 14, 2014 12:27
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sebmojo posted:There's an old Rolemaster cyberpunk book that uses a stripped down version of the rules - it's fast and brutal with lots of good detail. Rolemaster is a good system for cyberpunk because horrific things happen fast on a regular basis. Great, thank you! I'll definitely send this his way. I've heard a lot of good things about Dungeon World and that it has a plethora of hacks. Is there a good cyberpunk DW hack out there?
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Nov 14, 2014 16:22
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There's an extended feywild journey coming up in my 4E game. I want the feywild to be a place that makes the idea of going there be a very bad one already. Elves don't give a poo poo about your well-being and will do whatever they like for amusement. That's the best-case scenario because at least they're not actively hostile. Eladrin, if anything, are worse, and let's not even think about the chance of running into a Drow. If you go to the feywild it's basically guaranteed you'll go from one kind of trouble to another in a hostile, alien, but incredibly beautiful environment, and you're not generally expected to come back as the same person you were before. On the other side of the equation, of course, is a well-equipped 4E party that as a daily occupation steamrolls poo poo. They're pretty used to getting their way. What are some good feywild situations to make them sweat a little?
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Nov 14, 2014 16:38
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My Lovely Horse posted:There's an extended feywild journey coming up in my 4E game. I want the feywild to be a place that makes the idea of going there be a very bad one already. Elves don't give a poo poo about your well-being and will do whatever they like for amusement. That's the best-case scenario because at least they're not actively hostile. Eladrin, if anything, are worse, and let's not even think about the chance of running into a Drow. If you go to the feywild it's basically guaranteed you'll go from one kind of trouble to another in a hostile, alien, but incredibly beautiful environment, and you're not generally expected to come back as the same person you were before. Put them in situations that aren't readily "steam-rollable", things involving hostile or confusing environments: 1.)Maybe pull the classic, "You weren't sure before, but now you're totally sure- you've passed by that one rock formation every day for the last three days" scenario- some elves emerge from the trees as soon as the party realizes it, snickering about "the joke", and won't tell the party how to escape from their groundhog day loop unless they get a specific favor out of them. Maybe for effect drop a comment like "I remember when Syllv'adre put me in one of these! Hilarious. I figured out the trick quick as a flash, though- she only had me stuck in there for two, three years, tops!" 2.)The trail they've been following comes to a sudden halt at a massive cliff face or at the base of a gigantic waterfall- the map they were following was made before a catastrophic geological event!
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Nov 14, 2014 16:51
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My Lovely Horse posted:There's an extended feywild journey coming up in my 4E game. I want the feywild to be a place that makes the idea of going there be a very bad one already. Elves don't give a poo poo about your well-being and will do whatever they like for amusement. That's the best-case scenario because at least they're not actively hostile. Eladrin, if anything, are worse, and let's not even think about the chance of running into a Drow. If you go to the feywild it's basically guaranteed you'll go from one kind of trouble to another in a hostile, alien, but incredibly beautiful environment, and you're not generally expected to come back as the same person you were before. a swarm of flesheating gnomes that reproduce via clonal fragmentation.
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Nov 14, 2014 18:07
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I would play up the hostility of the terrain. Those six-hour extended rests that a party becomes reliant on are far more difficult to come by when the foliage keeps on interrupting your sleep. In the interests of fairness, it's worth making sure your players are aware of this before the first fight, so they know they'll have to ration their daily powers more carefully than they might otherwise. If the party flub their rolls to keep watch, then thieving pixies make off with their supplies (taking a 4e party's weapons and armour etc. is a dick move, and makes fights unfun, but consumable supplies and especially food rations are fair game and mean that you can give the party hard choices between being Weakened from hunger and eating the food of the Feywild). In combat you can play this up by filling the battlefield with terrain hazards that their enemies are able to ignore, whether that's difficult terrain or stuff that damages you when you move into the square. Use lurker and skirmisher enemies that are able to hide, use decoys and misdirection, and flee before they're slain, so that the PCs don't get the satisfaction of finding a corpse. Basically, if they are feeling like the US marines in Vietnam, you're doing it right.
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Nov 14, 2014 19:49
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Great ideas! Definitely doing the groundhog day bit - that specific favor could be a whole brief adventure. Supply shortage is sounding great as well. We usually don't track mundane supplies, but I can easily play the idea up a bit in advance. Last shop before the feywild, "you can't trust the feywild food, buy enough rations (the best deal around at only 250% over the usual price)", and we're good to go. I might even make or look for a list of possible effects for when they do eat fey fruit. For extended rests we usually have a gentlemen's agreement - my players don't try to find ways to rest after every fight, and I don't gently caress them over with impossibly many fights between rests - but the annoying foliage is a good bit of background definition, I'll see where I can drop it in. Not really gonna do the 250% markup, though. One idea I had was them meeting a very friendly elf noble who invites them into his castle to rest (I could bring that one up when they're nearing exhaustion) and tell him their story. He'll be so impressed with their adventures that they simply must stay one more night, his good friend Illu'thar will visit tomorrow and he will want to hear it. And so will the noble's whole extended clan and social circle, who live between two days and three months away - what's that, you would like to leave? This once, I'll pretend I didn't hear this grave insult to my hospitality. Between that, groundhog day, the Deku Tree dungeon I have in mind and the thing they're actually coming to the feywild for in the first place, I think that's about enough for one trip already, too. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Nov 17, 2014 |
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Nov 17, 2014 13:39
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Speaking of that groundhog day, is there any way to do a groundhog day situation with genre-savvy players in a different situation than that, like, where a day within a major city keeps repeating and only the players know for some reason? I like the idea but I feel like the people I play with would just start murdering recklessly until the right switch clicks, or something similar. Edit: Step 1) is obviously to make it a Daybreak-style situation, where wounds incurred carry over to the next loop.
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Nov 18, 2014 19:14
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Did it with my players as a dream-sequence, which gave me more chance to ignore physics, but npc's being missing/dead (an extra one per iteration) worked. Given the wierdness of the idea (in that it's out of their normal comfort zone), I'd err on the side of making the solution, or at least the path to it, more obvious than usual. The non-dream explanation for me was the big bad attempting to brainwash the pcs, appearing as the monster in a shared-hallucination school, but any sort of handwave would work. If you really want to gently caress with their heads, have the characters start changing, just minor stuff at first, clothes, etc, but increasing over time. Make sure they can change back at the end, natch. Thinking about it, Dread could work well as a system for it. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 20:19
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I had schemes to run a Groundhog apocalypse in an Unknown Armies campaign. Players would show up in the remote town where two godwalkers were clashing. The duel was between a wounded and half-mad Masterless Man who refused to die until he slain his foe, and a scheming Chronicler who was fated to observe the death of the unkillable man. The force of their hatred and magickal bullshit broke time in the area, and they were trapped replaying the same cycle that ends with the destruction of the entire town. The only way out was for the players to tip the balance of power between the two avatars. Whenever the town blew up, the world reset, and the players were thrown back to the beginning of the day. Only they remembered what had happened, although the Chronicler could at least sense that something was terribly wrong. Whichever avatar they helped would owe them a favour, and the other avatar would curse them forever. The bonus twist would have been that there was an assassin hunting the PCs, who was also aware of the loop. He'd pretend to redo the same actions, but he could be caught in pre-emptively bracing himself for explosions. He was added to throw their plans off and and give them a sense of being haunted.
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Nov 18, 2014 20:44
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