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gradenko_2000 posted:I can never get the whole mindset of "a player that isn't satisfied with the character they're playing needs to kill themselves first or some other arm-twisting bullshit just to remake their character" in an RPG where nobody's holding a gun to your head and there's no computer code to hold you back from "respeccing". From the description, it sounds like the DM IS refusing to let them reroll their stats. Otherwise I'd be suggesting
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Apr 30, 2015 18:04
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thespaceinvader posted:From the description, it sounds like the DM IS refusing to let them reroll their stats. Otherwise I'd be suggesting I wasn't necessarily referring to ImpactVector's scenario specifically. The ideal would of course be to just have a character creation that's reasonable for everyone (which in D&D usually means using point-buy/standard array) so that you start the game without anyone feeling like their character is shot in the foot, but even if you did that, a lack of system mastery and/or a poorly designed system can still produce characters that are "bad" several days/weeks/months/years into your campaign, and when that happens the answer shouldn't be "kill yourself so you can make a better character", it should be "let the player change their character, period"
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Apr 30, 2015 18:10
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Well yes. Obviously a good system in which it's hard to build useless character would be better. But D&D.
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Apr 30, 2015 18:15
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The answer is is just playing your poo poo tier peasant lord and maybe just learn from your mistakes and deal with the consequences of your failure, maybe try using some CREATIVE SOLUTIONS to deal with your lovely character like a REAL roleplayer and not an entitled wowtard trashbaby. If it wasn't possible to completely gently caress up something at such a basic level as character creation, then how would you distinguish the true dungeon masters from the scrubs? And in order to maximize your roleplaying cred and earn the respect of everyone else at the table for your amazing skill, be sure to play your awful character as obnoxiously as possible to also make the experience just as grating for everybody else as well. VoidTek fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Apr 30, 2015 |
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Apr 30, 2015 18:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:I can never get the whole mindset of "a player that isn't satisfied with the character they're playing needs to kill themselves first or some other arm-twisting bullshit just to remake their character" in an RPG where nobody's holding a gun to your head and there's no computer code to hold you back from "respeccing". "If he can reroll then I should should get to reroll." "If he gets to reroll I'm gonna reroll til I have all 18s." Judgement posted:And in order to maximize your roleplaying cred and earn the respect of everyone else at the table for your amazing skill, be sure to play your awful character as obnoxiously as possible to also make the experience just as grating for everybody else as well. Hell and drat yes. Play your character as one of those old "gypsy" kits from the 2e browncovers, tell everyone in the party that you're not evil, you were just raised in a society where ownership of an object is defined as keeping it on your person, steal everything anyone puts down. But roleplay about it. Describe how your character was raised in a culture where he was taught to strap every item back to himself meticulously as you sell the fighter's sword. Talk about how mamma warned you against thieves as she diligently tied the careful knots that kept your cooking equipment attached to your ankles.
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Apr 30, 2015 18:43
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ImpactVector posted:So for the new campaign I rolled the following array: 12, 12, 11, 10, 8, 8. That's loving terrible. Make a druid, turn into something with better stats.
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Apr 30, 2015 19:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:I wasn't necessarily referring to ImpactVector's scenario specifically. Random character generation is only reasonable when the things being randomized have equal value in game. You probably wouldn't roll a random number of points to spend in a point-buy game, but the default rules in D&D do almost exactly that. The only way any of this makes sense is as an appeal to tradition. No one designs new games like that anymore. Trap options are also awful, but a lot of the RPG community seemingly puts a higher value on customizability than playability. I know you probably agree with all of that, but this is the kind of gaming culture we're dealing with, and it's why we have the 5e that we do. ritorix posted:That's loving terrible. Make a druid, turn into something with better stats.
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Apr 30, 2015 19:42
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Dragon magazine is back, it's free, it's currently iOS only. http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/dragonplus
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Apr 30, 2015 21:58
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I wonder how much of it is ads.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:06
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Everyone should play the same character so as to ensure they don't have less agency. To do so, each of them will have to roll a d6 to determine which stat they will roleplay as.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:09
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Death to ability scores.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:10
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ImpactVector posted:Pathfinder... But then again maybe that's the problem.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:13
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Power Player posted:Dragon magazine is back, it's free, it's currently iOS only. It's free, so why not just make it available as a PDF/ePub/CBR/HTML download instead of bizarre system-specific stuff? It's not like they have other apps on either iOS or Android that they need to push ratings for...
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Apr 30, 2015 22:13
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goatface posted:I wonder how much of it is ads. quote:In the first installment, we take a closer look at the new Elemental Evil story and how it plays out in the tabletop adventure Princes of the Apocalypse as well as the Neverwinter MMORPG. We also sit down with Dan Tudge to talk about n-Space’s new game, Sword Coast Legends, and get our first look at the lovable Gauntlet Gophers in Tavis Maiden’s new comic. There’s a lot more, but we’ll let you dive in and discover it on your own. I don't see anything even remotely resembling crunch in any of that drek. Also, Tavis Maiden is the PVP/PA crew's new golden child, for what that's worth.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:13
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Power Player posted:Dragon magazine is back ... iOS only. That is loving stupid. Even for them.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:26
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Games Workshop are big and successful and beloved, right? Let's borrow their playbook!
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Apr 30, 2015 22:29
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ImpactVector posted:Straight up, rolling for stats in D&D is awful. It almost kind of works when characters are super disposable, but even then, for the life of a bad character (however short), you have less agency in the game than the guy who rolled 3 18s all other things being equal. What was that you said? 2nd Ed, Player's Option: Skills and Powers, you say?  Yes, they actually did that. I mean, obviously it's an optional rule, but still.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:30
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Alhireth-Hotep posted:What was that you said? 2nd Ed, Player's Option: Skills and Powers, you say? Reminds me of the budget for robots in Heroes Unlimited. Why is it randomized? So that some robots are purely better? Presumably.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:34
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mastershakeman posted:Everyone should play the same character so as to ensure they don't have less agency. To do so, each of them will have to roll a d6 to determine which stat they will roleplay as. Or, y'know, they could earn their paycheck and make all the classes fun to play and fixed character generation. A decent array option would speed up character generation considerably and make it so the players can concentrate on more important decisions. Give 'em something like (18, 16, 16, 12, 10, 8).
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Apr 30, 2015 22:34
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Do people not read articles anymore? It's coming out for Android too
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Apr 30, 2015 22:35
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2e had options, charts, and hooks for everything.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:37
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Dr. Tough posted:Do people not read articles anymore? It's coming out for Android too The issue is more that it's an otherwise free product that is being witheld from general consumption (PDFs) for some reason. Are they that concerned with viewership tracking that they want to curtail secondary ownership of a free product?
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Apr 30, 2015 22:41
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mirthdefect posted:It's free, so why not just make it available as a PDF/ePub/CBR/HTML download instead of bizarre system-specific stuff? It's not like they have other apps on either iOS or Android that they need to push ratings for... Seriously, it just speaks to how brain dead their marketing is. The idea that "this needs to be an app" is the kind of panicked reaction to the original iPad that real businesses were having 5 years ago. This is all text and pictures, there is no reason to make this a native app. Dr. Tough posted:Do people not read articles anymore? It's coming out for Android too He said "currently" which is accurate. iOS and Android still ignores other platforms this could be distributed to. Which again, makes zero sense because the content doesn't require this kind of specificity. Make it a responsive web site or a PDF like everyone is saying.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:43
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Alhireth-Hotep posted:What was that you said? 2nd Ed, Player's Option: Skills and Powers, you say? Though to be fair, it at least tries to balance things with the total points/max score ratio. Still, well played.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:49
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goatface posted:Death to ability scores. Hear, hear
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Apr 30, 2015 22:50
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Ability scores as a set of central modifiable statistics that each govern several lesser statistics can be a great method to keep new players from accidentally making unplayable characters by ensuring that they can't focus too heavily on one thing without picking up a certain minimum of defense, offense or utility. D&D has almost never used them for that, though.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:25
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ImpactVector posted:Holy poo poo, I'd totally forgotten about that table. I think we may have used that once or twice. Also notice that the spread in points isn't insanely large- rolling snakeyes still lets you create an effective character (even if it will likely have some deficiencies and probably limits your selection of classes due to being biased towards specialization in one stat), and the vast majority of characters created by rolling on that chart are going to end up within 2-4 stat points of one another. I mean I still don't think it's a good idea, but regardless of what you roll you're still going to end up with stats that lend themselves to an effective character at the end of it, something that is not the case with traditional rolling.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:28
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Give everyone an array, but require random rolling to determine what ability to put each score into. Better hope your fighter isn't super charismatic , smart, and wise. In all seriousness, I love 2es charts. I was trying to decide on a holy symbol for my gnome and found a huge chart of types of gems to roll for based on rarity and color and who knows what else. Fantastic.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:29
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LGD posted:Also notice that the spread in points isn't insanely large- rolling snakeyes still lets you create an effective character (even if it will likely have some deficiencies and probably limits your selection of classes due to being biased towards specialization in one stat), and the vast majority of characters created by rolling on that chart are going to end up within 2-4 stat points of one another. I mean I still don't think it's a good idea, but regardless of what you roll you're still going to end up with stats that lend themselves to an effective character at the end of it, something that is not the case with traditional rolling. It's also interesting that they cap maximums, too, so with snake eyes you can use 18s, but with the more common 9 or 10 you can't. So there's some thought of balance even if for some reason 7 is strictly better than 6.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:31
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The Dragon Magazine thing is a free e-zine that will be made up entirely of fluff articles. I just don't think it's a huge deal if it's only on iOS and Android
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Apr 30, 2015 23:56
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Dr. Tough posted:The Dragon Magazine thing is a free e-zine that will be made up entirely of fluff articles. I just don't think it's a huge deal if it's only on iOS and Android if it was html or pdf if could be on all platforms simultaneously. Do you seriously think they're going to spend the money to make them interactive emagazines?
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May 1, 2015 00:07
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Yes, I could see them spending money on that rather than more game designers.
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May 1, 2015 00:21
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My Lovely Horse posted:I once had a DM force an alignment change to Lawful on my freshly made new character because he thought I was changing characters too much. Apart from everything else appalingly wrong with that, it was also a Bard. Given that there's eight hojillion class/PrC combinations I really can't fault anyone who didn't feel like sticking to one thing for two years.
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May 1, 2015 00:41
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Power Player posted:Dragon magazine is back, it's free, it's currently iOS only. Well, first thing's first, the name was a terrible choice, because searching the App Store for Dragon+ yields 7,000 results, and Dragon+ doesn't actually show up in the first five pages, due to the popularity of Dragon City and Dragon City clones. Hell, Bejewelled shows up before Dragon+. So you need to go to their site to click the "get on the app store" button to take you to the app store, so already it might as well have been a web page. So the app itself is mostly just an RSS feed reader, pulling their Facebook and website posts. so already it's redundant with the website. Inside the app you download the issues themselves (separate from the RSS feed) which then, for all intents and purposes, downloads a PDF to your phone while you watch a progress bar. Can't tell you exactly how big, but it took a couple minutes over LTE. Despite downloading the entire thing lots of thumbnails are still broken, at least on my phone. Just an empty square link where the image should be. Oh, and the app doesn't rotate. The articles themselves are... um... what's a polite word for "terrible"? Like, it's baldfaced, shallow advertainment. It's not a value-added loss leader or something like that, some solid free content that's only usable if you buy their product. It's even less substantial than your average "sneak preview", because at least those are often 1-2 pages out of the actual book. For example the Goliath "article" is basically "Goliaths are competitive, and have nicknames, here's a premade level 1 Wizard that you can't print off because you're reading this on your phone." There's an article on Black Dragon's that's "Black Dragons are awesome, you should avoid theme, buy our books!" There's the "useless trinkets crowdsourced from the community" collection, which is at least what it says on the tin and comes with some cute art. Several actual ads for FR books and WeLoveFine. A "magic item store" that's just a pile of links to the online store for the DM screen, spell cards, &c. A ToEE retrospective that's just six short anecdotes in a thinly veiled ad for the classic module (buy now). Remember when Dragon was re-launched as a digital magazine and everyone who'd been buying the physical magazine freaked out and started doomsaying about how it was going to turn into pure crap with microtransactions like an F2P MMO? Well, this is that nightmare made flesh.
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May 1, 2015 01:22
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LFK posted:Dragon So... 2 months or thereabouts before the announcement that the third-party contractor responsible for this so-called "Dragon" app is no longer going to be producing it, were never supposed to be doing it like that in the first place, and are terrible people for showing the beta version to the public, and also that since the app was never actually announced by WoTC it was thus never really released and it is therefore not truly cancelled at all?
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May 1, 2015 02:28
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Alhireth-Hotep posted:What was that you said? 2nd Ed, Player's Option: Skills and Powers, you say?  OSR-compatible point-buy?! Now I've seen everything (and my opinion of AD&D 2e is slowly being revised to be better and better over time)
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May 1, 2015 03:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:
The Player's Option books were a weird mix of clever, innovative ideas that took AD&D into genuinely new places ... and poorly thought out, gamebreaking poo poo. Of course, everyone tends to focus on the latter.
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May 1, 2015 04:57
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Selachian posted:The Player's Option books were a weird mix of clever, innovative ideas that took AD&D into genuinely new places ... and poorly thought out, gamebreaking poo poo. Of course, everyone tends to focus on the latter. The Player's Option books were proto-3e in pretty much every sense, yes. e: gradenko_2000 posted:my opinion of AD&D 2e is slowly being revised to be better and better over time 2e with the Player's Option and DM's Option books is a very different game. Coverting a game from core to Options (or back again) would be a nightmare and I would never want to try it. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:21 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 05:03
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mastershakeman posted:In all seriousness, I love 2es charts. I was trying to decide on a holy symbol for my gnome and found a huge chart of types of gems to roll for based on rarity and color and who knows what else. Fantastic. And you then proceeded to read through the chart for ideas, take the one that appealed the most, and not bother rolling, right? The charts are great, but they're not great because they have dwhatever attached to them, they're great because they get the creative juices flowing by giving quick ideas that can plant the seed of an encounter or setpiece once fleshed out.
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May 1, 2015 05:48
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AlphaDog posted:So... 2 months or thereabouts before the announcement that the third-party contractor responsible for this so-called "Dragon" app is no longer going to be producing it, were never supposed to be doing it like that in the first place, and are terrible people for showing the beta version to the public, and also that since the app was never actually announced by WoTC it was thus never really released and it is therefore not truly cancelled at all? I'd be mildly surprised if there's a second issue. Also, some small addendum to the WTFKery is that it's not a standalone app, it's actually a magazine inside iOS's Newsstand app that no one uses. So that's a little less nonsensical, even if it is still dumb.
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May 1, 2015 08:05
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