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dwarf74 posted:S/I/W/D/Co/Ch has the longest pedigree. It's B/X, BECMI, and AD&D 1e/2e. It was (A)D&D for 20+ years.
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Jan 13, 2015 13:33
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dwarf74 posted:S/I/W/Co/D/Ch is OD&D. Like Men & Magic OD&D. Just explaining this, the order here is Fighter Primary Stat, Wizard Primary Stat, Cleric Primary Stat, Secondary Stat 1, Secondary Stat 2, Secondary Stat 3. quote:S/I/W/D/Co/Ch has the longest pedigree. It's B/X, BECMI, and AD&D 1e/2e. It was (A)D&D for 20+ years. Fighter/Wizard/Cleric/Thief/Secondary/Secondary. The Thief was only added in Supplement 1: Greyhawk. quote:S/D/Co/I/W/Ch is 3.x/PF And as noted 2e. As far as I'm aware it's the only layout with no functional reason.
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Jan 13, 2015 13:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:Yes. Do note that while "+X to hit" is normally derived as STR/DEX modifier, plus proficiency bonus, the one written in the attack actions is already that finally computed sum. Excellent. Thank you. Boy this thread is a bundle of negativity towards this system. It doesn't look perfect, but after trying and failing to get anyone to play Dungeon World or anything else, it looks like my best bet at actually getting to the table. I sure as hell wasn't going to play 4th edition and I'm pretty sure that I can get it out off of name recognition. We are going to use pregens and go through the starter campaign. It'll be my first time as DM but I think I'll be fine. It seems like the thread's complaints can be DMed away with little or no effort. If the goblins are too hard and the players aren't having fun, I'll scale them back and do the whole 'success with a cost' dungeon world thing instead of dealing damage from time to time. I'll hand out inspiration like candy as long as the players are roleplaying. If some of the stats aren't being highlighted, I'll replace some of the checks with them using some improv handwaving situational argument so everyone can feel equal. It seems to me that having to hack it once in a while is something that will come up with any system. In any case, I am looking forward to it assuming that I can actually find players.
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Jan 13, 2015 14:58
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Rusty Kettle posted:Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, the main reason why so many of us are disappointed is that, even after a long playtesting period, they managed to come out with a system that would have been fine a decade or so ago, and having to pay money just to be forced to fix it with house rules later is not everyone's cup of tea. Out of curiosity, why weren't you going to play 4e? My group staunchly refuses to play anything that's not 4e right now, and that's after just one session - they used to play 3.5, and the only guy who misses the old edition is their previous DM, who enforced marxist economy and DMPCs whenever they played.
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Jan 13, 2015 15:12
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Rusty Kettle posted:Excellent. Thank you. The thread is pretty good at answering questions and fostering discussion. The negativity comes from the use of "it's fun!" as a measure of quality, "the rules are fine because I can make a houserule to fix the rules" as an excuse*, and disappointment over needing houserules to fix either issues that were already fixed in previous editions, or issues that really should have been caught by testing or editing. There's just a lot of caveats you have to append before you can say Next is a good game - "if you need to play D&D, period", "if you start at level 3", "if you can't stand feats or other 3.x idiosyncrasies", "if you don't mind wrestling with the monster creation rules", and so on and so forth. Hell, I ran it just to see what it's really like when rubber meets road, and I'd do it again because it does have some mechanics that make it easy to DM, but there's also a lot that can be improved further. * to be absolutely clear, yes every game is going to be houseruled, but a review of the game, as written, is going to have to call out bad mechanics as if they couldn't be. It's something like even if Crusader Kings 2 was and is amazing because of Wiz's CK2+ mod, you can't call CK2 (wholly) good by itself if the base game sucks. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 15:30
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Azran posted:Out of curiosity, why weren't you going to play 4e? My group staunchly refuses to play anything that's not 4e right now, and that's after just one session - they used to play 3.5, and the only guy who misses the old edition is their previous DM, who enforced marxist economy and DMPCs whenever they played. Really I haven't read 4th edition rules so I shouldn't be so judgemental. However, from seeing pictures of games, reading comparisons and listening to the nerd poker podcast, I formed the opinion that the players need to care more about the mechanics of the game than what they are doing. I don't want to make my dungeons into miniature maps and worry too much about line of sight or flanking or whatever. I want the game to live up to expectations set by that episode of Community and other pieces of pop culture, and 4th doesn't appear to do that. The players will say what they want to do, and they'll either succeed or fail to varying degrees depending on a single dice roll. If they say they are flanking or whatever and it makes sense that they could (and/or I have them roll to not be seen or distract the enemy), they get advantage. The players have to deal with minimal numbers and will have me as a black box to determine how things go. It appears about as hands off as it can be for a first time DnD experience. Dungeon world appeared to do this the best, but people roll their eyes when I say 'indie rpg'.
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Jan 13, 2015 15:46
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Rusty Kettle posted:Dungeon world appeared to do this the best, but people roll their eyes when I say 'indie rpg'. I'd say don't call it an indie RPG, then (even if it is). Dungeon World is a game that's made to do a couple of things: facilitate adventure and danger, and (if you use the base classes) work as an homage to what the creators always thought Dungeons & Dragons was supposed to feel like. It's got a few things cribbed from what some people would consider touchy-feely storygames, but it's an extremely deadly system that actually does have strictly-defined rules (especially for the GM). As for 4e, don't judge it from the Nerd Poker podcast. Granted, I haven't listened in a while, but it seemed like they never really bothered to see how the rules differed from the D&D they were used to ahead of time, so they kept butting into things they didn't expect and getting bogged down.
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Jan 13, 2015 15:50
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4th can get silly complicated, I'm not that fond of it beyond about level 15. Much like 3.5 and level 6.
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Jan 13, 2015 15:56
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I would say that if all you really wanted to do was make declarative statements and use the dice to resolve the truth of them with as little "mechanics to get in the way" as possible, then you would be right that Dungeon World does that pretty well, although it's a moot point if you can't sell the group on playing anything that's not labeled D&D either. Yes, 4th Edition does formalize combat a lot, but it's better off for it because everyone has more options that they don't have to ask the DM's permission for. Next's combat can be just as rigid, but you're reduced to "I move" and "I attack"
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Jan 13, 2015 15:58
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Alternative suggestion: 13th Age. It's a version of 4e that shed a bunch of mechanical weight, so for people who thought the abundance of fiddly mechanical bits slowed things down, it might be a great fit. Plus, it has enough crunch that I think it successfully dodges the "rules-light indie storygame" label that Dungeon World sometimes gets lumped into. Dungeon World is straight-up perfect for a game that you want to "live up to expectations set by that episode of Community and other pieces of pop culture," because that is 100% what it is, from top to bottom.
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Jan 13, 2015 16:28
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Harrow posted:I'd say don't call it an indie RPG, then (even if it is). Dungeon World is a game that's made to do a couple of things: facilitate adventure and danger, and (if you use the base classes) work as an homage to what the creators always thought Dungeons & Dragons was supposed to feel like. It's got a few things cribbed from what some people would consider touchy-feely storygames, but it's an extremely deadly system that actually does have strictly-defined rules (especially for the GM). I should have said we are playing Dungeons and dragons, but really played Dungeon world somehow. Really I plan on cribbing parts of all sorts of systems. For instance, in one of the DnD books there was an example of a PC looking for something. Apparently I am supposed to have the PCs describe where they are looking to determine whether they find something or not. That sounds lovely. If they need or really to find something, they will find it whether they fail or succeed on a perception or wisdom roll like the Gumshoe system. Failure will mean that they find it but alert guards, hurt themselves somehow, get a curse or whatever. I'm not having my PCs describe every possible place in the room to mindread where I put it. I would do this with whatever system I used, even DW. So I don't mind if DnD is 'incomplete'. It seems impossible to have a system where this doesn't need to occur, as what makes a good Rpg is subjective. That lovely 3.5 DM with his strict economy thinks that is what makes a good time, while most people disagree. That dude would likely shoehorn his economy into DW somehow if given the opportunity. There are people who like to min max characters and become Gods through rpg math. That's fine but not my cup of tea. I just want to sit down with my friends, drink beer, and generate a story. It seems like 5th is the best place to do that, if I am sticking to DnD.
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Jan 13, 2015 16:34
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Rusty Kettle posted:Really I haven't read 4th edition rules so I shouldn't be so judgemental. However, from seeing pictures of games, reading comparisons and listening to the nerd poker podcast, I formed the opinion that the players need to care more about the mechanics of the game than what they are doing. I don't want to make my dungeons into miniature maps and worry too much about line of sight or flanking or whatever. I want the game to live up to expectations set by that episode of Community and other pieces of pop culture, and 4th doesn't appear to do that. The players will say what they want to do, and they'll either succeed or fail to varying degrees depending on a single dice roll. If they say they are flanking or whatever and it makes sense that they could (and/or I have them roll to not be seen or distract the enemy), they get advantage. The players have to deal with minimal numbers and will have me as a black box to determine how things go. It appears about as hands off as it can be for a first time DnD experience. It absolutely does, but you might want to give a version of Basic D&D (either B/X or BECMI) or a rules light retroclone like Swords & Wizardry or even Dungeon Crawl Classics (if you feel the goofy dice and random magic won't be a barrier) a shot. You could easily sell it to people who scoff at indie games because well, it's D&D, just a version without tons of rules, and you can appeal to retro charm. I'm curious why they're scoffing at "indie RPG" though? That might inform what alternative you suggest (if any) if they're hardcore 3.x/Pathfinder character optimizers, they're not going to get much out of Dungeon World or Basic. 13th Age might indeed work better for players like that. But mentioning Community makes me think they're new to RPGs. I've found that newbies respond well to explaining that RPGs are "crazy fragmented" and that "indie" in this hobby doesn't mean an obscure arthouse work, it's more like if I dunno, mainstream TV was just cop shows and you had to turn to weird, obscure channels to get family drama, comedy and sci-fi.
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Jan 13, 2015 16:36
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Rusty Kettle posted:I should have said we are playing Dungeons and dragons, but really played Dungeon world somehow. Frankly, that scenario you described sounds like you're playing Dungeon World RAW. You're definitely right that every RPG system is mutable, but from everything you've described so far, it sounds like Dungeon World already does everything you want D&D to do without you having to change anything about it. (Although I do recommend using third-party and player-made classes instead of the included classes, unless Vancian magic is important to your ideal version of a D&D-like game.) Dungeon World's style of play is seriously just this: players narrate what they do and the GM tells them when they've triggered a move and need to roll. If they succeed, they essentially get what they want; if they partially succeed, they mostly get what they want but with some drawback or extra cost attached; if they fail, the scene still moves forward (as in, they probably still find the thing they were looking for) but with some seriously unpleasant complications for the characters. Unless I'm really misinterpreting what you're looking for in a system, it sounds like it's already everything you want. I mean, you can and definitely should take cues from games like Dungeon World when GMing other systems--I know I'll be cribbing a bunch from it for my upcoming 13th Age game--but I'm not really sure what "real" D&D offers for your stated playstyle other than not being indie.
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Jan 13, 2015 16:45
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I ran BECMI once and it turned into Dungeon World halfway through and nobody noticed.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:06
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Harrow posted:Alternative suggestion: 13th Age. It's a version of 4e that shed a bunch of mechanical weight, so for people who thought the abundance of fiddly mechanical bits slowed things down, it might be a great fit. Plus, it has enough crunch that I think it successfully dodges the "rules-light indie storygame" label that Dungeon World sometimes gets lumped into. 13th age is fantastic. It's built in such a way that encounter design is simple and engaging, fights are exciting due to the escalation die. And the montage system introduced in the organized play packets make it so that the players have a say in how the world works, and can narrate sections of a dungeon crawl that would have just been a couple dead hours of rolling. It's really the sequel to 4th edition. Although if you like picking overpowered feats, min maxing and cherry picking 3rd party content so you break the system it's probably not for you.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:08
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CommaToes posted:13th age is fantastic. It's built in such a way that encounter design is simple and engaging, fights are exciting due to the escalation die. And the montage system introduced in the organized play packets make it so that the players have a say in how the world works, and can narrate sections of a dungeon crawl that would have just been a couple dead hours of rolling. There's influence from 3.x and plenty of character customization though - but the difference is it doesn't break the system into a thousand little pieces, or come at the expense of another class. There is some grousing about the monk and the druid in the 13th Age thread, however.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:14
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The montage system is really good and can be used by just about everything, as long as the players respond to it. It can end up with one or two people prompting everyone else because they can't/won't come up with anything on their own.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:16
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neonchameleon posted:Just explaining this, the order here is Fighter Primary Stat, Wizard Primary Stat, Cleric Primary Stat, Secondary Stat 1, Secondary Stat 2, Secondary Stat 3. It does that to seperate physical and mental stats. 4e changes it again to have the NADs grouped up with each other.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:17
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goatface posted:The montage system is really good and can be used by just about everything, as long as the players respond to it. It can end up with one or two people prompting everyone else because they can't/won't come up with anything on their own. I really need to try out doing Dungeon World with a pre-existing campaign setting and see how that works out. I've often thought it can't be done but I'm sure this isn't really the case. It just needs to be a careful balance of player and GM input.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:18
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Harrow posted:Alternative suggestion: 13th Age. It's a version of 4e that shed a bunch of mechanical weight, so for people who thought the abundance of fiddly mechanical bits slowed things down, it might be a great fit. Plus, it has enough crunch that I think it successfully dodges the "rules-light indie storygame" label that Dungeon World sometimes gets lumped into. Also, Feats are boring, and probably need more punch to be mechanically distinctive. They are more like 4e Feats in design.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:22
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Even if you don't like playing 13th Age, reading it's rulebook is one of the better things you can do to improve your experience playing just about any version of (loosely defined, off-brand included) D&D, because a lot of the best things really aren't tied into the system, and are actually more just high quality GM advice and techniques, and are easily portable. (The aforementioned Montage example, the concept of Failing Forward in skill use, hell, even the Escalation Die can be pretty easily brought into most other d20-based games.)
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Jan 13, 2015 17:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:* to be absolutely clear, yes every game is going to be houseruled, but This really isn't true, I think it's one of those Things D&D players say that doesn't really exist outside of it. Yeah there's some house rules for Monopoly or card game variants or whatever, but they're the exception, and even within TTRPG space there's plenty of games that function just fine RAW, especially on the simpler and newer ends of the spectrum. People who come into one of those with the mindset of "I don't understand what they're going for, let's throw away half these rules and add some from D&D and GURPS" are just going to end up with some hideous mess. This tends to happen all too often when groups try to switch to another system for a game or two, then switch back when *surprise* it doesn't work.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:43
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Harrow posted:Alternative suggestion: 13th Age. It's a version of 4e that shed a bunch of mechanical weight, so for people who thought the abundance of fiddly mechanical bits slowed things down, it might be a great fit. This is really inaccurate. I don't understand why goons like 13A so much and why I see it recommended so frequently. From mechanics (e.g. Fighters being garbage) to ultra-grog DM advice (e.g. 'confiscate your Barbarian's greataxe sometimes so he doesn't take the d12 damage for granted') 13A is much more like 3.X than 4e.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:47
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Lightning Lord posted:I'm curious why they're scoffing at "indie RPG" though? To be honest, I imagine a lot of it is me. They are new and don't know they difference between these kinds of nerd things. They trust my judgement on board games for the most part, but I fear that I have a reputation as an opinionated hipster when it comes to everything else. This may or may not be true, but I find myself holding my tongue during conversations about popular movies, music or TV. So they hear indie RPG and think I'm going to spend 4 hours playing some high brow indie thing they don't understand. Meanwhile, the dungeons and dragons name carries a whole lot of weight on its own. There is no argument that it ranks somewhere in the top ten American cultural exports. Maybe even top five. The impact DnD had on video games and modern storytelling is huge, and it doesn't take much to get that point across. That is a huge selling point on its own and deviating from it by saying 'here is basically DnD but better' is countered with 'No I want to play that thing you hyped up'. Basically I just want to play a trpg. I have spent way too much money on bundles of holding and read thousands of pages of other pdfs, and the only time I have ever actually played something is one lovely game of Numenera. If I want to play pathfinder, I could maybe play with a bunch of old timers whose game I spectated once, but they have pretty dedicated groups that have been around for years, so I'd need to wait for a spot. There is a board game pub opening up in the area soon, so I might try hanging flyers or something there. But in the meantime, DnD 5th seems like the best bet.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:50
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Jack the Lad posted:This is really inaccurate. I don't understand why goons like 13A so much and why I see it recommended so frequently.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:51
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I sometimes think goons are still responding to 13A as it was promised in the playtest (3.x, but with 90% of the fiddly cruft swept away and replaced with modern mechanics) and not as it was actually delivered (a decent 3.x variant that's still weighed down by a lot of unexamined D20isms)
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Jan 13, 2015 17:55
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Rusty Kettle posted:To be honest, I imagine a lot of it is me. They are new and don't know they difference between these kinds of nerd things. They trust my judgement on board games for the most part, but I fear that I have a reputation as an opinionated hipster when it comes to everything else. This may or may not be true, but I find myself holding my tongue during conversations about popular movies, music or TV. So they hear indie RPG and think I'm going to spend 4 hours playing some high brow indie thing they don't understand. Maybe play a couple of games of Descent first?
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Jan 13, 2015 17:56
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Fuschia tude posted:This really isn't true, I think it's one of those Things D&D players say that doesn't really exist outside of it. Yeah there's some house rules for Monopoly or card game variants or whatever, but they're the exception, and even within TTRPG space there's plenty of games that function just fine RAW, especially on the simpler and newer ends of the spectrum. People who come into one of those with the mindset of "I don't understand what they're going for, let's throw away half these rules and add some from D&D and GURPS" are just going to end up with some hideous mess. This tends to happen all too often when groups try to switch to another system for a game or two, then switch back when *surprise* it doesn't work. Just within the last dozen posts someone said "you should really use some of the third-party classes for Dungeon World because the Wizard still has Vancian casting", and then you've got 13th Age HRs about doing away with ability scores completely and just deriving stats from the character's Skill Backgrounds. I'm willing to concede that perhaps I shouldn't have made such a firm statement on it, and maybe the difference is that HRs in other games tend to be additive instead of just corrective as in Next's case. Jack the Lad posted:This is really inaccurate. I don't understand why goons like 13A so much and why I see it recommended so frequently. 13A retains the AEDU model of 4E and the fast monster creation while throwing out the need for a grid and the item treadmill. I've not played it myself, but those are some pretty compelling reasons. Rusty Kettle posted:To be honest, I imagine a lot of it is me. They are new and don't know they difference between these kinds of nerd things. They trust my judgement on board games for the most part, but I fear that I have a reputation as an opinionated hipster when it comes to everything else. This may or may not be true, but I find myself holding my tongue during conversations about popular movies, music or TV. So they hear indie RPG and think I'm going to spend 4 hours playing some high brow indie thing they don't understand. If you're just going to run the game and they don't see you reading off a book titled "Dungeon World" it's not like they can tell the difference. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 18:01
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Tunicate posted:Maybe play a couple of games of Descent first? I personally didn't care for Decent the one time I played it, but it is still a decent idea. I don't know if it'll generate the kind of experience I am going for.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:06
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Rusty Kettle posted:To be honest, I imagine a lot of it is me. They are new and don't know they difference between these kinds of nerd things. They trust my judgement on board games for the most part, but I fear that I have a reputation as an opinionated hipster when it comes to everything else. This may or may not be true, but I find myself holding my tongue during conversations about popular movies, music or TV. So they hear indie RPG and think I'm going to spend 4 hours playing some high brow indie thing they don't understand. I hear you, and I've been in that position myself. I have the rep of being the guy who suggests some out of print 70s novel when people are talking about Game of Thrones. You've got to explain the situation to them. Are your friends into comics at all? That's another way to explain the RPG situation. They hear "indie" and think "purposefully crudely drawn autobiographical comics about pissing, jerking off and dreams" D&D is basically bad Marvel and DC comics - the other RPGs you want to play are the good stuff published by Marvel and DC, and also Dark Horse, Image and so on. I keep using other things to talk about the situation with RPGs because as you already know from personal experience, explaining it as is is like trying to explain America's political system to Martians. FMguru posted:I sometimes think goons are still responding to 13A as it was promised in the playtest (3.x, but with 90% of the fiddly cruft swept away and replaced with modern mechanics) and not as it was actually delivered (a decent 3.x variant that's still weighed down by a lot of unexamined D20isms) I legitimately like it and while I agree that the monk suffers from too much adherence to 3.x and the druid is spread way too thin, I personally don't think fighter and paladin are awful compared to 3.x. That's just me though, and I can see where other people think differently and accept it. We can all agree it's a way better designed game than 5e though. gradenko_2000 posted:13A retains the AEDU model of 4E and the fast monster creation while throwing out the need for a grid and the item treadmill. I've not played it myself, but those are some pretty compelling reasons. Yes, this is most of the reason why I like it. gradenko_2000 posted:If you're just going to run the game and they don't see you reading off a book titled "Dungeon World" it's not like they can tell the difference. I don't believe in lying to people in this way myself, but if you feel comfortable with it, this might be a good idea.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:12
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Fuschia tude posted:This really isn't true, I think it's one of those Things D&D players say that doesn't really exist outside of it. Yeah there's some house rules for Monopoly or card game variants or whatever, but they're the exception, and even within TTRPG space there's plenty of games that function just fine RAW, especially on the simpler and newer ends of the spectrum. People who come into one of those with the mindset of "I don't understand what they're going for, let's throw away half these rules and add some from D&D and GURPS" are just going to end up with some hideous mess. This tends to happen all too often when groups try to switch to another system for a game or two, then switch back when *surprise* it doesn't work. There's a middle ground here, too, though. Ultimately, I regret not bolting a crunchier "magic & powers" system onto FATE for my current campaign, for example, because almost everything that goes down once the weird poo poo begins amounts to GM handwaiving and "I don't know, give me a Lore check and we'll see what happens". I feel like I should have at least imposed some kind of "Magical" stress track to give the whole thing more punch, but hindsight and all that. Conversely, I never really had to houserule D&D (3.5) beyond things like tweaking the starting conditions of a campaign, but I think that's only because the DMG or a splatbook already had a paragraph on hand to account for the thing I was thinking about doing. Do your PCs have to undergo special training in order to level up? DMG has a price chart for that. Do the players want to take a crack at keeping the guy who got turned into a Wight in the party? Try Libris Mortis. At some point, due to the sheer volume of content that Wizards is able to publish, anything I might have needed to houserule during the 3.5 era was pretty much accounted for somewhere. I played 2e in middle school and high school, though, and that was one giant houserule from start to finish   :"Guys I printed out this netbook that lets me be a level 1 Goku"GM: "FUCKEN DO IT" At one point a guy played James Bond. Just James Bond, transported through time and space. He began play as a level 1 Thief with a fancy tuxedo, a bulletproof vest, and a semiautomatic handgun with precisely 8 bullets that he had on him when he fell through the portal, which we treated as a save or die against pretty much anything if he didn't miss.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:13
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deadly_pudding posted:There's a middle ground here, too, though. That's not really the kind of "Game's broken needs fixing" houserule that's being discussed though, that's just a different system consideration. Fate is specifically designed for that. I don't think it's just D&D though, games that are just as crunchy but accused of being busted like Shadowrun can be house rule central.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:14
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13th Age isn't nearly as horrifically out-of-whack as 3.x, and the fact that it's less crufty and a lot more transparent in its design makes it a lot easier to hammer out the rules problems that do exist. 3e's "a rule for everything" mentality, combined with writing that basically said "Well, you could give out fewer magic items but it will change the balance in ways we're not going to actually discuss in detail" made it really tricky to work with, 13th Age talks about why it's doing things and genuinely removes a lot of unnecessary bits. Adherence to "TRADITION!" hurts it in a lot of areas but it's workable and has a lot of neat stuff to make up for it. There's still a yawning void where 4e once was in terms of an RPG that's actually well-balanced and tactically robust though.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:22
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Lightning Lord posted:I don't believe in lying to people in this way myself, but if you feel comfortable with it, this might be a good idea. To elaborate a bit on my tale, I brought a copy of the original Basic D&D to play with some old friends from high school, only one of which had ever played D&D before. I gave them a stat array of 18/16/14/12/10/8, their choice of class, some gear and off we went into a dungeon. We all played WoW a lot, so when I'd ask them what they wanted to do, the Magic User would say "I'll cast a Cone of Cold to put out the fire" or the Fighter would say "I drop into a defensive stance" or the Thief would say "I jab for the thing's kidneys to stun it". And I would say yes and just rely on whether or not they rolled high or maybe beating AC or rolling under their attribute score. By the end of the night the Fighter was whirlwinding and cleaving and the Magic User was casting Blizzard and the Thief was shooting homing arrows and we were fighting "death knights" with abilities that were straight out of a raid boss' guide book and it didn't really resemble anything like D&D. A grog would have called this a Magical Tea Party, but there was still more than enough tension because we were still tracking HP and half the party got knocked out and so on. It wasn't that I set out to deliberately not play the rules in the book I had brought with me, but it was going to be funner for the group to just roll with it, so that's what I did.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:26
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Lightning Lord posted:I hear you, and I've been in that position myself. I have the rep of being the guy who suggests some out of print 70s novel when people are talking about Game of Thrones. You've got to explain the situation to them. Are your friends into comics at all? That's another way to explain the RPG situation. They hear "indie" and think "purposefully crudely drawn autobiographical comics about pissing, jerking off and dreams" D&D is basically bad Marvel and DC comics - the other RPGs you want to play are the good stuff published by Marvel and DC, and also Dark Horse, Image and so on. I keep using other things to talk about the situation with RPGs because as you already know from personal experience, explaining it as is is like trying to explain America's political system to Martians. Lightning Lord posted:I hear you, and I've been in that position myself. I have the rep of being the guy who suggests some out of print 70s novel when people are talking about Game of Thrones. You've got to explain the situation to them. Are your friends into comics at all? That's another way to explain the RPG situation. They hear "indie" and think "purposefully crudely drawn autobiographical comics about pissing, jerking off and dreams" D&D is basically bad Marvel and DC comics - the other RPGs you want to play are the good stuff published by Marvel and DC, and also Dark Horse, Image and so on. I keep using other things to talk about the situation with RPGs because as you already know from personal experience, explaining it as is is like trying to explain America's political system to Martians. I recommended Saga to someone who likes Sci fi and comics, but they couldn't get past the 'TV headed people loving each other'. It is an excellent comparison but it would go over like a wet blanket. I don't mean to be too harsh about my friends. They are genuinely nice funny people who are very stubborn. I'm not going to lie to them. It seems disingenuous and unfair to the authors of DnD and DW, as well as my friends. I don't want them to tell people they had a good time playing DnD when they really played DW. Besides, from an initial read through (and listening to the awesome Adventure Zone podcast), I don't think it is as bad as you folks are saying in that it isn't unplayable garbage like Numenera. It could be better, but it'll work out just fine. I'll make it fun, we'll have a good time kicking goblins around, and that's all that matters for me.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:35
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Rusty Kettle posted:Besides, from an initial read through (and listening to the awesome Adventure Zone podcast), I don't think it is as bad as you folks are saying in that it isn't unplayable garbage like Numenera. It could be better, but it'll work out just fine. I'll make it fun, we'll have a good time kicking goblins around, and that's all that matters for me. Well yeah that's kind of what I said to begin with: it's not as good as it could be, especially for someone deep into the hobby (and some of its rougher parts are hard to deal with if you're new to the hobby) but it's perfectly playable, especially with your specific situation.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:40
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Rusty Kettle posted:unplayable garbage like Numenera Speaking of that do you think Numenera's setting is worth bothering using another system with? I've heard it described as good, but then I've heard it described as poo poo Moebius meets poo poo Jack Vance too.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:40
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Isn't it a pretty basic "sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic", but civilisation has collapsed because of... a sort of existential ennui? I've never quite understood that. I've been told it's riddled with wizards though. They took the "..seems like magic", ignored everything other than "magic" and made everyone use swords and call things by silly names.
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Jan 13, 2015 19:06
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Lightning Lord posted:There's influence from 3.x and plenty of character customization though - but the difference is it doesn't break the system into a thousand little pieces, or come at the expense of another class. There is some grousing about the monk and the druid in the 13th Age thread, however. I saw the 13th age monk playtest and it seemed really good, way better than the 3.5 monk. Did they move away from that? Is there a link to a summary of it?
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Jan 13, 2015 19:34
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Seldom Posts posted:I saw the 13th age monk playtest and it seemed really good, way better than the 3.5 monk. Did they move away from that? Is there a link to a summary of it? It is better than the 3.5 monk but there's a lot of "The monk requires STR, WIS and DEX because tradition" stuff in the design.
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Jan 13, 2015 19:41
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