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Hey my White Hack arrived yesterday! So far I'm liking it, but I'm a little apprehensive of how much adjudicating the Referee is going to be doing. "It's up to the DM!" is a disappointing punchline in D&D Next, but it really seems a lot more at home in a rules-lite retroclone like this. The free-form But I'm still on my first skim-through, and everything will probably click when it hits the table. And if not, I'm only out  , which barely covers a fast-food combo meal where I live.
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Nov 24, 2014 03:57
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Can anyone share some experiences with running Dark/Darker Dungeons? Any pitfalls or rough spots in the rules to watch out for?
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Nov 24, 2014 19:26
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Thief is bad. Just redistribute thief skills with the normal skill system.
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Nov 25, 2014 01:28
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Thief is bad. Just redistribute thief skills with the normal skill system. What's crap about them?
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Nov 25, 2014 02:02
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Definitely the only thing I don't like about Darker Dungeons is the 3e style skill system.
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Nov 25, 2014 02:10
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Ooh. That's a good point. Use the skill system from blue box expert with the increasing d6 difficulty, or something like There's always a chance (TAAC). Thieves are bad because the Halfling has easier equipment restrictions, and the mystic has thief abilities and other cool things like strike to kill. You need a good reason not to fit your martial archetype into some kind of fighter, because there several game breaking fighter builds out there that you will easily make by accident and unless you bring in the gazeteers or something the other fighty classes can't keep up. At level 9 it outclasses the other martial classes, then at ~20 the rest of the classes. Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 02:34
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Ooh. That's a good point. Use the skill system from blue box expert with the increasing d6 difficulty, or something like There's always a chance (TAAC). That sounds intriguing. How does this d6 difficulty system work? I apologize if it's been said before.
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Nov 25, 2014 03:00
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It's in expert box set. Ok, so your stats are rolled with 3d6 (in theory). So to change the difficulty of a skill check you either roll more or less dice under your ability score. You get a curve, so you're not doing the swingy d20 thing. You can easily conceptualize the dice numbers by thinking of what a character with that kind of generation be able to do. If you roll 5d6 for your strength, you should be throwing busses, so if you want to throw a bus roll 5d6.
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Nov 25, 2014 03:08
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The Basic Set says that whenever a character wants to do something that isn't covered by the rules, pick the most relevant attribute, roll a d20 and try to get equal to or less than the attribute score to succeed, and that the DM can assign a circumstantial plus or minus to the roll depending on how easy or difficult it should be. The Expert Set says the same, except you roll a 3d6, and then add (or subtract) d6s depending how easy or difficult it should be. That is, you have a 90.74% chance of rolling a 14 or lower with a 3d6, but that goes down to 55.63% with a 4d6, or a 22.15% chance with a 5d6.
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Nov 25, 2014 05:15
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moths posted:Hey my White Hack arrived yesterday! So far I'm liking it, but I'm a little apprehensive of how much adjudicating the Referee is going to be doing. "It's up to the DM!" is a disappointing punchline in D&D Next, but it really seems a lot more at home in a rules-lite retroclone like this. The free-form I play Whitehack and have had similar questions about handling miracles. One of the players is a Mushroom Priest with the ability to guide the holy spores or whatever from his god onto his friends and enemies. Instead of eating HP, it instead uses piety-points that he has to collect by doing cool poo poo for his god (completely stolen from the "Neoclassical Geek Revival" way of handling characters with faith.) Another player plays a twisted warrior with an ability to channel the void through him in different ways. The thing is that the void wants things in return. Sometimes it wants to feel smarter by "borrowing" some INT from him, sometimes it asks for favors (sacrifice an npc to me), it totally depends on the situation. I did a quick search for other peoples handling of miracles and found this discussion that was pretty interesting.
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Nov 26, 2014 11:53
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waqii posted:Another player plays a twisted warrior with an ability to channel the void through him in different ways. The thing is that the void wants things in return. Sometimes it wants to feel smarter by "borrowing" some INT from him, sometimes it asks for favors (sacrifice an npc to me), it totally depends on the situation. I am looking into augmentations for fighter class PCs in a game I'm running soon. This is some great inspiration. Any splatbooks out there that cover this sort of thing?
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Dec 12, 2014 07:40
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Hi friends, I'm looking to introduce some never-played-before pals to AD&D 2E (the one I played in jr. high) and I'm trying to do some basic dungeon crawls, but I'm wondering if there are any that you folks have made or something that's like a package of crawls to start out with? Something super easy to get absolute newbies accustomed to playing? Any help appreciated. Thank!
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Dec 15, 2014 18:42
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Power Ambient posted:Hi friends, I'm looking to introduce some never-played-before pals to AD&D 2E (the one I played in jr. high) and I'm trying to do some basic dungeon crawls, but I'm wondering if there are any that you folks have made or something that's like a package of crawls to start out with? Something super easy to get absolute newbies accustomed to playing? Any help appreciated. Thank! Change the hooks to fit your players preferred things. One lame module became a series of entertaining things and a half dozen hooks.
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Dec 16, 2014 02:24
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Power Ambient posted:Hi friends, I'm looking to introduce some never-played-before pals to AD&D 2E (the one I played in jr. high) and I'm trying to do some basic dungeon crawls, but I'm wondering if there are any that you folks have made or something that's like a package of crawls to start out with? Something super easy to get absolute newbies accustomed to playing? Any help appreciated. Thank! The Caves of Chaos (The Keep on the Borderlands, AD&D module B2) is in theory meant to be used for this, but it lends itself to some fairly specific styles of DMing--to run it you need to be willing to read it all before hand and spend a lot of time thinking about how all the little civilizations living in it are going to react to the things the players do. The One Page Dungeon contest that runs each year publishes a big PDF of all its maps that's a pretty great collection of small and simple dungons maps. It doesn't have being an introduction as an explicit goal, but it might be useful.
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Dec 16, 2014 08:12
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OtspIII posted:The Caves of Chaos (The Keep on the Borderlands, AD&D module B2) is in theory meant to be used for this, but it lends itself to some fairly specific styles of DMing--to run it you need to be willing to read it all before hand and spend a lot of time thinking about how all the little civilizations living in it are going to react to the things the players do. This won't help Power Ambient, but if you enjoy the idea of B2, you should check out the Hackmaster module Little Keep On The Borderlands. It's one of the coolest mini-sandboxes I've ever seen, and it was a blast to run (for that style of play). If you're into oldschool sandboxy-dungeoning it'd be worth buying just to read. Unless it's super expensive or something now.
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Dec 16, 2014 09:12
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AlphaDog posted:This won't help Power Ambient, but if you enjoy the idea of B2, you should check out the Hackmaster module Little Keep On The Borderlands. It's one of the coolest mini-sandboxes I've ever seen, and it was a blast to run (for that style of play). If you're into oldschool sandboxy-dungeoning it'd be worth buying just to read. Unless it's super expensive or something now. I've been curious in general about all the Hackmaster versions of classic modules. What are the main differences? Are they generally better? It's easy enough to exclude the Hackmaster specific stuff to use for any other old version, but is there more going on in them than just adding honor and what not?
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Dec 16, 2014 14:12
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I can't speak for all the Hackmaster stuff, and I'm not completely familiar with the original B2. Hackmaster's B2 seems to have quite a bit more going on than the original version. It's also well-organised and easy to use (for a module written for an intentionally complicated AD&D clone). It's my favorite pre-made module that I've ever run in any system. I guess it would be "easy enough" to exclude the Hackmaster-specific stuff, but part of the ease-of-use comes from the way all the information is presented so it might not be worth it. It's got humorous/parody elements, but most of them are more on the level of "AD&D did it like this and it was kinda silly, right?" than "lol wacky natural 20 you stole his pants". That said, Hackmaster's B1 was a goddamn nightmare to run. I'm told that's true of the source material too though. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Dec 16, 2014 |
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Dec 16, 2014 14:44
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p-hop posted:I am looking into augmentations for fighter class PCs in a game I'm running soon. This is some great inspiration. Any splatbooks out there that cover this sort of thing? No splatbooks I'm afraid but blogs! Blogs about selling your soul/parents/dexterity. But at what cost? and also the more warlock-inspired Let's make a deal are both great ways to incorporate a scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours-mechanic. If that's what you wanted. Just ask what your fighty-PC wants (damage bonus, to-hit-modifier, extra AC, whatever) and depending on how great the request, scale the cost accordingly. The easiest way to solve this could be as simple as 2 HP sacrificed = 1 Att. Bon for as many rounds.
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Dec 16, 2014 16:46
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Johnstone Metzger's "Evil Wizards in a Cave" is a good mini-sandbox, and is dual stated for Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord, so converting shouldn't be too hard.
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Dec 16, 2014 18:02
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OtspIII posted:The Caves of Chaos (The Keep on the Borderlands, AD&D module B2) is in theory meant to be used for this, but it lends itself to some fairly specific styles of DMing--to run it you need to be willing to read it all before hand and spend a lot of time thinking about how all the little civilizations living in it are going to react to the things the players do. Thanks to everyone for the responses, but thanks for this because it got me searching into AD&D modules for low level characters. The Keep on the Borderlands is, it seems, the "7th Greatest Adventure" according to the List of AD&D modules wiki page, so I went and got that from Ebay. I also downloaded the One Page Dungeon PDFs from the last three years. I'm sure I'll be back after I read through this material, so thanks! I did read the OP and printed out the "Building a Fantasy Sandbox" but it's slightly more involved than I'd like to get right now, as fun as it looks.
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Dec 16, 2014 23:32
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Power Ambient posted:Thanks to everyone for the responses, but thanks for this because it got me searching into AD&D modules for low level characters. The Keep on the Borderlands is, it seems, the "7th Greatest Adventure" according to the List of AD&D modules wiki page, so I went and got that from Ebay. I also downloaded the One Page Dungeon PDFs from the last three years. I'm sure I'll be back after I read through this material, so thanks! I did read the OP and printed out the "Building a Fantasy Sandbox" but it's slightly more involved than I'd like to get right now, as fun as it looks.
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Dec 17, 2014 02:06
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FRINGE posted:Just warp/enrich/grow them to your world and group regardless of which ones you use. Thats what makes them go from canned soup to awesome stew. Or whatever analogy you like. If you're starting out a new game anyway, I'd run the first few sessions of a module "straight" and then build out or change stuff from there based on what the players were finding interesting. When I did Hackmaster B2, I ran the opening encounter right out of the book, and played the NPCs exactly as the book said to. By the third session I was adding, subtracting, and changing things so that the players could interact more with the parts that were interesting to them. By the end of the module, the world outside the Keep and the Caves had been fleshed out considerably without me really having to do heaps of work. I just listened to the players speculating (and assuming), kept brief notes about what they thought was out there, and built up the next adventure out of those.
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Dec 17, 2014 02:44
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I like B-2, but there isn't much there. It is more of a framework to get the players and DMs into the concept of wandering around in the woods. B-1 is more like what I consider a dungeon delve. B-2 isn't a commitment though, it's not plot heavy at all so you can just run with it however. The caves themselves kinda suck in my opinion, the keep and environs are the good part. B-2 can take place anywhere in any context.
Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 05:01
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Did anyone ever try to play B/X with the "Fighter gains an army at level 9+" rules? It should be possible to hack something up using either this passage from X37: "Fighter. The fighter will be 7th to 10th level, wandering the land (often going to or coming from a battle). The fighter usually has 2 retainers of 3rd to 6th level who have the same alignment as the leader." Or the creating an NPC party guidelines from page X53, or even from the Fighter's Followers percentile table in the 2E PHB, and then the way I was thinking of doing it would be that they'd be ablative armor: the player still only takes actions as a single character, but he gets extra attacks, HP, etc as though the other followers were the ones doing it (and computer rerolling can speed up this process), and taking damage means they get killed off first, and then you could also just come up with a cost to rehire/retrain fallen dudes. But I suppose the first question is if you even need something like this, or can the Fighter take on high-level monsters all by himself (and his party) assuming you were still just going into Dungeons and killing Dragons and not putting the players in a situation where you'd need to bust out the Mass Combat rules.
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Dec 18, 2014 09:08
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That was the other option. You could be landed or wandering. The wandering fighter was a paladin or avenger. There was an option to wander and get no spells, but not sure why you would ever do that. The avenger is my favorite class in D&D. Charisma as your second best stat is really good for a fighter. We used the army as problem solving tool, and when we wanted to reduce a combat to a single roll and just wanted to let the dudes take care of it. Everyone can have hirelings though and money will buy land too, so I always thought wandering fighter was better. The game will get to a point where you can't level from dungeoneering, you need to acquire a nation's worth of gold as xp.
Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 10:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:Did anyone ever try to play B/X with the "Fighter gains an army at level 9+" rules? It should be possible to hack something up using either this passage from X37: Look up Adventurer Conquerer King, it should fit your needs perfectly(and is one of the best and most complete OSR games in my opinion)
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Dec 18, 2014 10:12
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drrockso20 posted:Look up Adventurer Conquerer King, it should fit your needs perfectly(and is one of the best and most complete OSR games in my opinion) Don't buy ACKS, unless you want to support the misogynist transphobe shitlords behind a good portion of Gamergate.
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Dec 18, 2014 10:44
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An Echo Resounding plus any other OSR game is better than ACKS for domain level stuff anyway. ACKS is like filing your taxes. ACKS doesn't have mass combat as far as I can tell.
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Dec 18, 2014 10:58
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I don't remember hearing anything connecting the people who make ACKS with Gamersgate or anything of that sort, mind posting some sources to those accusations please, also in regards to mass combat, they are doing that in a supplement
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Dec 18, 2014 11:47
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Short version: http://www.reddit.com/r/SRSGaming/comments/2j13iu/will_gamergate_comment_on_these_ethics_general/ has a link to a Twitter exchange. In that exchange, Grimachu acknowledges that Macris (one of the people behind both the Escapist and ACKS) backed him on the Gor IGG but didn't disclose when giving an interview. https://postmortemstudios.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/gamergate-escapistdesborough-interview-disclosure/ has Grimachu acknowledging the same thing also and in the blog post he also states that the interview got taken down due to harassment against Escapist staff (any links to the interviews and such seem to be through Web Archive services). http://www.autarch.co/blog/escapist-recommends-adventurer-conqueror-king has the publisher of ACKS referencing the fact that when ACKS came out it got recommended by the Escapist. The common element in both companies/entities was Macris, and this is not disclosed. I am unlikely to support ACKS financially any more, since my money went to them before GamerGate and also before I knew about the Escapist thing, but I am kind of suspect. Also, the Escapist hosts I Hit It With My Axe, which may or may not be related or an issue, but there that is also. I think if you want domain play, get your hands on An Echo, Resounding. It's ostensibly written for Labyrinth Lord, but you could use it with almost any game, I figure, since I believe it uses the tag system developed by Sine Nomine to manage all sorts of in the background stuff and is well-handled by genre in each Sine Nomine publication that uses it. I think Kevin Crawford (the one man show behind Sine Nomine) is a smart and cool dude, and his work got me into following OSR, so that's my disclosure. I give him money any chance I get and think others should too because he has stated that he wants to make stuff that any gamer can use, even those who don't care for OSR.
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Dec 18, 2014 12:18
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I already have an idea of how I'm going to do "domain management", my question was more towards "if I don't (try to) include the Fighter's additional men in combat, will that screw over the Fighter?" because I've heard it said more than once that the Fighter earning a posse at level 9 is supposed to make up for the Magic-User getting fifth-level spells. It makes sense, but at the same time the game doesn't really have specific guidelines on how the additional men are supposed to be taken into account during the traditional dungeoneering-combat segments. === drrockso20 posted:I don't remember hearing anything connecting the people who make ACKS with Gamersgate or anything of that sort, mind posting some sources to those accusations please, also in regards to mass combat, they are doing that in a supplement quote:Escapist writers Alex Macris (@archon) and Greg Tito, the pair of idiots responsible for that garbage article that gave voice to rape apologists, got some 'splaining to do.
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Dec 18, 2014 12:21
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Eh doesn't really seem enough to boycott a game over in my opinion, even if this whole Gamersgate thing is kind of an awful thing(and the links between Escapist and Autarch are kinda skeezy on a business level), especially since nothing in ACKS itself reflects these issues
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Dec 18, 2014 12:39
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drrockso20 posted:Eh doesn't really seem enough to boycott a game over in my opinion, even if this whole Gamersgate thing is kind of an awful thing(and the links between Escapist and Autarch are kinda skeezy on a business level), especially since nothing in ACKS itself reflects these issues Macris himself assembled the "game developers talk about Gamergate" interviews at the Escapist, which was not only misogynist and sexist in its setup, but was editorially positioned as a hit-piece on the targets of Gamergate and other women. It gave a pulpit to Desborough, "Xbro," RogueStar (or whatever his name is) and a number of other misogynist devs with questions specifically positioned to come off positively towards Gamergate. Greg Tito (also part of ACKS) spoke about this, even though he was part of it himself. If you think trying to ruin women's lives, kill them, and push anyone marginalized out of gaming isn't a reason to boycott something, that's your privilege showing and you should be ashamed of yourself.
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Dec 18, 2014 12:44
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Arivia posted:Macris himself assembled the "game developers talk about Gamergate" interviews at the Escapist, which was not only misogynist and sexist in its setup, but was editorially positioned as a hit-piece on the targets of Gamergate and other women. It gave a pulpit to Desborough, "Xbro," RogueStar (or whatever his name is) and a number of other misogynist devs with questions specifically positioned to come off positively towards Gamergate. Greg Tito (also part of ACKS) spoke about this, even though he was part of it himself. It didn't just give them a pulpit, some of them used it to rally fans to harass others, including some former goons - and didn't edit it out until sometime after there was a public stink about it. The Escapist and Macris are directly involved with helping people in this hobby attack others. Period.
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Dec 18, 2014 12:50
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This is a rough draft of some ideas I'd been bouncing around in my head for giving OSR Magic-Users some 4E-style at-will and encounter powers. It came about because as I was rolling up a random dungeon using the B/X tables, it occurred to me that a level 1 MU might find this place deeply unsatisfying because he'd just be hurling rocks after his one spell (not exactly a huge revelation, I know). As well, it steers the MU away from being able to handle all sorts of utility. The problem I'm seeing is that of scaling: if a spell targets AC, a Magic-User is going to be +2 attack behind a Fighter by Name level, and +6 attack behind a Fighter by level 20. Granted, 10% less chance to hit by the point where most campaigns peter out maybe isn't that bad a deal. Similarly, if a spell targets Saving Throws (vs spell), the chance of a spell going off just gets worse and worse as you get later into the game (around 40-50% chance to save by Name level) with no way for the MU to negate it (unless that's also another spell by itself). I was thinking of just fudging monster spell saves into a static "13 or better" at all levels. Also, if the distance or targeting definition in the spells seems rather vague, I did intentionally write it that way with a mind towards an abstract [Ranged > Melee Scrum < Ranged] behavior. Any thoughts / feedback would be appreciated.
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Dec 18, 2014 20:06
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Arivia posted:Macris himself assembled the "game developers talk about Gamergate" interviews at the Escapist, which was not only misogynist and sexist in its setup, but was editorially positioned as a hit-piece on the targets of Gamergate and other women. It gave a pulpit to Desborough, "Xbro," RogueStar (or whatever his name is) and a number of other misogynist devs with questions specifically positioned to come off positively towards Gamergate. Greg Tito (also part of ACKS) spoke about this, even though he was part of it himself. It's less me trying to be privileged and more me trying to stay as uninvolved in this whole mess as much as possible either way(not much an overweight, white NEET can do to progress the causes of Feminism and Multiculturalism, and boycotting something as niche as a tabletop RPG isn't going to help one way or another)
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Dec 18, 2014 22:17
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drrockso20 posted:It's less me trying to be privileged and more me trying to stay as uninvolved in this whole mess as much as possible either way(not much an overweight, white NEET can do to progress the causes of Feminism and Multiculturalism, and boycotting something as niche as a tabletop RPG isn't going to help one way or another) As a for instance: not financially contributing to poo poo bags that do this kind of thing. Also, pretending the poo poo happening to other people isn't really your problem is, in fact, pretty privileged.
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Dec 18, 2014 23:46
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TheSpookyDanger posted:As a for instance: not financially contributing to poo poo bags that do this kind of thing. Also, pretending the poo poo happening to other people isn't really your problem is, in fact, pretty privileged. It's less that it's not my problem, it's more that there's nothing I can do to help, so I'm keeping out of it entirely(and I bought my copies of ACKS and it's expansion a long time ago, so it's not like I'm financing them now), also this is off topic so let's stop talking about it
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Dec 19, 2014 00:13
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drrockso20 posted:It's less that it's not my problem, it's more that there's nothing I can do to help, so I'm keeping out of it entirely(and I bought my copies of ACKS and it's expansion a long time ago, so it's not like I'm financing them now), also this is off topic so let's stop talking about it But you aren't since you specifically decided to weigh in on whether or not it's an acceptable reason for other people to not buy their product.
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Dec 19, 2014 03:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is a rough draft of some ideas I'd been bouncing around in my head for giving OSR Magic-Users some 4E-style at-will and encounter powers. It came about because as I was rolling up a random dungeon using the B/X tables, it occurred to me that a level 1 MU might find this place deeply unsatisfying because he'd just be hurling rocks after his one spell (not exactly a huge revelation, I know).
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Dec 19, 2014 03:16
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