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gradenko_2000 posted:
Yeah that's my problem, and since I'm playing a solo adventure (essentially a beefy choose your own adventure book) I can't really out think my enemies. I d o like big chunks of the system, they just don't seem to work that well in practice.
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Jan 12, 2016 07:16
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The only other thing I'd mention is that players have armor and monsters don't, so even if you were rolling similarly against each other, any rounds that you win as the player will likely start dropping the enemy MR/adds ASAP, whereas any rounds you lose only matter if the damage dealt is strong enough to get past your armor's absorption/soak. I do agree though that within the framework of a CYOA-type adventure it'd seem like some of these mechanics wouldn't work all too well, or at least would require quite a bit of "playing against yourself" pseudo-GM adlibbing.
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Jan 12, 2016 10:21
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AD&D 1st Edition's Unearthed Arcana is now available from DTRPG/dndclassics.
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Jan 13, 2016 17:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:The only other thing I'd mention is that players have armor and monsters don't, so even if you were rolling similarly against each other, any rounds that you win as the player will likely start dropping the enemy MR/adds ASAP, whereas any rounds you lose only matter if the damage dealt is strong enough to get past your armor's absorption/soak. This is really surprising since I remember that a big thing about Tunnels and Trolls was that it could be played solo. Oh, old RPG design...
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Jan 14, 2016 01:41
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Don't get me wrong, you probably really could, it's just that doing it with a single character really reduces your options for getting the death spiral going, doubly-so if you take issue with how long it takes to resolve combats. That said, the highly abstracted combat sort of fits well with the Mythic Game Emulator, since you're boiling down all your combat factors to a single xd6+y number.
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Jan 14, 2016 02:10
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I actually had a book with two solo adventures for Tunnels and Trolls. No idea where it is now...
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Jan 15, 2016 16:12
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I had the chance to try out the solo hero rules for Labyrinth Lord last night. They were pretty great: even though the character could dish out and take a lot more damage, because they didn't have three other characters to act as meat shields it was just as tense as a normal four-player module. Also, running this game rekindled my love for Basic D&D once again, because I just love stuff like reaction rolls and wandering monster checks. At one point the character (a surprisingly charismatic halfling) ran into a green slime, and when I made a reaction test for the green slime we got a result of indifferent, so the green slime just went back to digesting whatever it had been digesting before the halfling turned up.
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Jan 16, 2016 10:31
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Ratpick posted:I had the chance to try out the solo hero rules for Labyrinth Lord last night. They were pretty great: even though the character could dish out and take a lot more damage, because they didn't have three other characters to act as meat shields it was just as tense as a normal four-player module. I love reaction rolls as well. They make encounters memorable and not just set piece death matches. Are there any really cool systems for determining that stuff beyond the 5 or so different results? Like even just an adjective when you encounter something would be cool. Something as simple as "Happy goblins" can lead to interesting places when you start figuring out why these goblins are happy. Maybe they found an old backpack or found a dead monster for dinner or something.
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Jan 16, 2016 17:49
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Not sure what other thread to put this but I got to meet Frank Mentzer today and he is one chill dude. He talked about D&D and Gary and the Early Days of TSR before The Scism/Buyout. I'll be sitting in on a game he's DMing tonight.
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Jan 17, 2016 00:00
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Phuzzy posted:Not sure what other thread to put this but I got to meet Frank Mentzer today and he is one chill dude. He talked about D&D and Gary and the Early Days of TSR before The Scism/Buyout. Dude, give the deetz after your done. I'd be interesting in hearing about how he runs his games. As for the SA Old School Adventure Club, barring a few times I mis-read the notes, I am loving random dungeons. It's like a surprise for me and the players and, best of all, I am blameless if things go fubar. Also, giving people XP for finding ways not to kill monsters encourages interesting solutions to problems. Or them keeping up the facade of being government exterminators. Run under the 4 Int or Higher or they can't talk ideology.
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Jan 17, 2016 03:41
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I would also be incredibly interested to hear about a Mentzer-run game, dude always seemed like he'd be a great DM.
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Jan 17, 2016 04:56
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Just my luck, game filled up before I got there. Got to watch for a while though. He was running an ad-lib dungeon. Hand everyone prebuilt characters and they tell him what sorts of loot and monsters and crap they want to face. Very casual very character oriented. He had a few younger kids from the con in the crowd and he loved it. I did get a 15 minute interview with him though where he talked about how D&D and gaming helps preserve real life face to face contact with people and the idea of oral history and story telling. Very humbling to meet him, would recommend again. Also I found out he ran a bakery in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for years???? How did I not know I would have stopped in and gotten some kringle.
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Jan 17, 2016 11:39
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Sounds like a really cool dude, from this account. I've heard that kind of ad-lib dungeon setup before and it sounds like it would run just fine. Getting a grandpa vibe from the guy. Also, yeah, I have to agree with him: I feel alot of the appeal with D&D -- and tradgames in general -- is the social element and it's why I think there has been bit of surge, in my perspective, of interest. Then again, I manage a board game club -- well, used to -- so it's probably selective perception.
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Jan 17, 2016 12:12
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I was going to write a really long post about how the aesthetics of old-school D&D are, at least to me, a very large factor in making it so cool, but it served no purpose whatsoever so instead I'm linking some cool character sheets that Tony DiTerlizzi made for AD&D: http://diterlizzi.com/home/download-some-diterlizzi/ Like, holy poo poo, I want to play this kickass halfling: 
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Jan 19, 2016 13:32
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Nah, dude, do your effort post. I do enjoy DiTerlizzi's style more than the more modern D&D artist and such.
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Jan 19, 2016 19:47
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GrizzlyCow posted:Nah, dude, do your effort post. I do enjoy DiTerlizzi's style more than the more modern D&D artist and such. Seconded but only if it comes with a lot of examples. I can't get enough of the OSR style. Backed the recent DCC kickstarter pretty much exclusively out of respect for the art.
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Jan 19, 2016 20:06
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MagnumOpus posted:Seconded but only if it comes with a lot of examples. I can't get enough of the OSR style. Backed the recent DCC kickstarter pretty much exclusively out of respect for the art. It's got the panel-van/high-school-notebook-cover kind of vibe.
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Jan 19, 2016 20:14
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dwarf74 posted:It's got the panel-van/high-school-notebook-cover kind of vibe. The Fantastic Adventures of Bong Wizard. 
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Jan 19, 2016 20:23
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Well, alright then. This line of thought started a couple days ago when I was reading some stuff on a Facebook group. Some guy was basically saying that to him aesthetic is the most important thing in RPGs. This made me reflect on my personal preferences when it comes to RPGs, especially D&D: while I love 4e as a game I only rate it as my second-favorite edition of D&D, Basic being my favorite, simply because not only is Basic much simpler and faster, it also has a great aesthetic. 4e also has pretty books, but somehow it doesn't grab me as well as Basic does. Firstly, here's this Willingham piece from Moldvay Basic:  That elf lady in the front is totally blocking that dragon's fire breath with her shield even though that's not strictly speaking a thing you can do in D&D (I think 4e is the only edition where shields are of any use against breath weapons, which is odd because I'm sure I've seen this same scene depicted across many editions) while that archer and wizard offer fire support and that dwarf with the cool spiky helmet is looking like he's in some serious poo poo. Different version of Basic, this one being from Mentzer Basic:  This is the picture that, at least to me, has solidified the way the main three non-human races are supposed to look like in D&D. The elf is suitably elfy without being one of those weird bug-eyed aliens from 3e (although, admittedly, I liked 4e's elves as well)and the halfling is basically a hobbit, but the important thing is that he's not just a tiny human: he's got proportionally bigger head, hands and feet, which communicates small stature. Even if the elf weren't there you could tell by the fact that those two guys are small guys. Also, that dwarf is loving amazing. And of course, there's the adventures for Basic. This one from the Lost City:  I was unfortunately unable to find my favorite picture from that adventure, namely the dude on the right giving a thumbs up in front of a statue as if he was posing for a holiday picture. But that sort of stuff is part and parcel of the reason I love the old-school D&D aesthetic: it was funny at times, while the tone between the images was often very disparate there was never a sense of the game being taken too seriously, and it was just simply fun. Now, this is going away from the aesthetics of the old-school and into retroclone territory, but character sheets are important. At worst when I made a character for 3.5 back in the day it felt like doing my taxes, and the character sheets were lifeless and without character. Unfortunately there's no picture online of the official Labyrinth Lord character sheet, but it's available online for free and it's got a loving goblin on it or something, so that's pretty sweet. There's also the above custom character sheets by DiTerlizzi, which are a perfect illustration of the fact that simpler games leave a lot more space to get creative with on the character sheet. But let's look at another third party custom character sheet, this from the Labyrinth Lord-compatible megadungeon Barrowmaze:  Oh hell yes. And that's basically it. I love the aesthetic of old-school D&D, don't really know why, but it's cool and good. Also, I've been doodling goblins all day because I've wanted to be able to draw goblins, so I decided to start practicing. e: One minor edit, related to the point about character sheets: I obviously realize that 3e, 4e and 5e have much more to keep track off for a character, meaning that you pretty much have to focus on readability on a character sheet and getting as much of that information to fit there, so having a cool/weird aesthetic becomes secondary. So, I understand that this only really works for Basic where you literally can fit a character on an index card if you're really good. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 20:55
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My personal favorite OSR artist is Peter Mullen, his stuff is always fantastic
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Jan 20, 2016 01:21
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drrockso20 posted:My personal favorite OSR artist is Peter Mullen, his stuff is always fantastic His DCC poo poo is awesome. That new DCC cover 
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Jan 20, 2016 01:27
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That was a good post, thanks for making it!Ratpick posted:That elf lady in the front is totally blocking that dragon's fire breath with her shield even though that's not strictly speaking a thing you can do in D&D (I think 4e is the only edition where shields are of any use against breath weapons, which is odd because I'm sure I've seen this same scene depicted across many editions) while that archer and wizard offer fire support and that dwarf with the cool spiky helmet is looking like he's in some serious poo poo. I'd just like to point out that under the high abstraction of D&D, "I block the flame breath with my shield" can be represented by a successful saving throw. I get what you mean by it's not really something you can trigger or decide to do, and "I block it with my shield" is really just the post-hoc justification for the result of an automatic/passive mechanic, but Gygax made it a point to mention saving throws as part of a adventurer's heroic repertoire.
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Jan 20, 2016 01:40
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It's funny; weapon mastery in Basic can give a shieldbearer the ability to deflect several attacks in addition to granting its AC bonus, but that never manifested (AFAIK) into bonuses to saving throws. You'd think bouncing rays and dragon breath off your shield would be a thing.
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Jan 20, 2016 02:30
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My favorite Mullen piece is the Swords and Wizardry Whitebox cover art. Those hoods and capes for all the adventurers are adorable. 
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Jan 20, 2016 03:55
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I will never feel that SIWDCCh is not the correct order for Real D n D.
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Jan 20, 2016 04:07
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Is that why Kevin Crawford always uses it?
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Jan 20, 2016 04:30
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I think so? There's a difference in design philosophy evident in that order, too. Rather than group physical stats and mental stats, it puts the 4 core clases Prime Requisite stats together, followed by the "useful for anyone" stats.
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Jan 20, 2016 05:14
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Yeah - Fighting Men use STR, Clerics use WIS, Magic-Users use INT. The rest are almost "miscellaneous" stats.
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Jan 20, 2016 05:24
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Although I'm use to a differing order, it's hard to argue against SIWDCCh when the rules specifically say 3d6 in order. Attribute-wise I've always had a bee in my bonnet that two of them start with the same letter.
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Jan 20, 2016 05:46
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Ratpick posted:Different version of Basic, this one being from Mentzer Basic: You know i really don't think 4e's art is the greatest but for me 4e has the best presentation for what the races should look like i really hate the cartoony hobbity look, and while that dwarf is rocking a luxurious beard i am no fan of the potato nose.
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Jan 20, 2016 08:12
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Elfgames posted:You know i really don't think 4e's art is the greatest but for me 4e has the best presentation for what the races should look like i really hate the cartoony hobbity look, and while that dwarf is rocking a luxurious beard i am no fan of the potato nose. Oh yeah, I understand that. To be fair, in comparison to 3e 4e presented the races very well (for an example, halflings were no longer the size of toddlers and elves lost the aforementioned weird bug-eyed alien syndrome) and the art on the different races is undeniably good, but at least to me the cartoony look and the potato nose are selling points! gradenko_2000 posted:I'd just like to point out that under the high abstraction of D&D, "I block the flame breath with my shield" can be represented by a successful saving throw. I get what you mean by it's not really something you can trigger or decide to do, and "I block it with my shield" is really just the post-hoc justification for the result of an automatic/passive mechanic, but Gygax made it a point to mention saving throws as part of a adventurer's heroic repertoire. Of course! It's just weird that only one edition of D&D has actually represented a shield being of use in blocking fire breath in spite of the fact that this scene is so ubiquitous in D&D art.
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Jan 20, 2016 09:03
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This Jeff Dee pic is, to me, the definitive D&D Halfling: Not this loving disturbing mutant:  The gonzo, slightly (sometimes really) amateurish B&W art of B/X and 1e is what I always think of as the 'real look' of D&D. The more professional/serious linework of BECMI and 2e is too clean and staid, and any time a Jim Holloway piece appeared it just made me think of Paranoia. (No bad thing, but I associate his style more with comedy sci-fi.)
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Jan 20, 2016 10:54
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I though Dragon under TSR had some pretty good art, whereas under WotC it was not great. Bad art looks better on tiny cards than it does on magazine spreads. Like this was the first time (the article this was attached to, long before Salvatore showed up) I remember Drow being more than just another Fiend Folio entry: (That issue also had a bunch of stuff on demihumans, including the introduction of the halfling paladin! http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_magazine_129 )  Whereas this looks like generic fantasy trash to me:  Looking for that old Dragon made me re-find some historical gems. #62 introduced the gods of the orcs, which expanded them from "generic enemies" quite a bit, as well as the (soon to be everywhere) faery dragons. 58-63 introduced a many of the demihuman and humanoid gods: http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?articleid=11348
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Jan 20, 2016 11:28
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Making a linebackerish mundane class defender type in 3.5. What should I to to convince the dm do allow Tome of Battle? DM probably won't like the spell-like maneuvers, but i have like 5 even more broken builds on the same concept that go through already acceptable books. Trying to avoid becoming a stereotypical spike chain tripper. So far I've started monk and plan on going to fighter 6 with dungeon crasher ACF. Warblade in ToB will give me versatility instead of leaving me to simply go crazy with damage optimization. I eventually want to be able grapple and drag people while I'm bull rushing other people into walls. May dip back into fighter and ask dm about letting me get multigrab and greater multigrab for Scorpion's Grasp (Improved Grab for PCs). Then finish with hulking hurler to be able to just throw enemies. may throw bloodstorm blade in there for measure idk Lamebot fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 12:33
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Lamebot posted:Making a linebackerish mundane class defender type in 3.5. What should I to to convince the dm do allow Tome of Battle? DM probably won't like the spell-like maneuvers, but i have like 5 even more broken builds on the same concept that go through already acceptable books. Trying to avoid becoming a stereotypical spike chain tripper. There's a dedicated D&D 3.5 thread, you might get more responses there: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3416565 Also relevant to your question because just last page there was discussion on a Fighter/Barbarian using Mountain Rage or something.
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Jan 20, 2016 12:45
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God protect the 3.5 / Pathfinder gamers; I'm way too busy these days to build a character (as opposed to rolling one), let alone building encounters. Not trying to edition war, I have great memories of 3 and 3.5, but the retroclone style just suits my life more today. I wish I still had the time for all that intricate stuff.
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Jan 20, 2016 13:52
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Regarding old B/X variants, is anyone familiar with the "Gray Book" version of D&D? I recently came across a PDF of it, and from what I can gather it seems to be a heavily expanded version of the Holmes D&D rulebook from the late 70's, including rules for higher levels (20th and above, where the original Holmes only covered levels 1-3), additional classes (paladins, rangers, illusionists, etc.) and a lot of other stuff I don't think was ever in the original booklet. It clocks in at 140-something pages (the original was around 50 pages, I think), and is listed as being edited by one Steven J. Ege. The cover is the same as the Holmes book, but in grayscale instead of blue. The title page also has the WotC logo and a copyright notice that says it was produced in 2008. The foreword is the same as in the 1978 printing. Is this a semi-official product in some way, or just some dudes own expanded fan version?
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Jan 20, 2016 15:23
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MagnumOpus posted:The Fantastic Adventures of Bong Wizard. Dont doxx me please. Also my waist-skull-fog machine has been acting funny, anyone ever sent theirs in for repair?
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Jan 20, 2016 15:24
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Comrade Koba posted:The title page also has the WotC logo and a copyright notice that says it was produced in 2008. The foreword is the same as in the 1978 printing. I'm 99% sure that it's just some dude's compilation of material. FWIW I have something called the "Greyharp edition" of OD&D that's similarly just tying all the books together and giving them a nice spiffy format and layout, but that's nowhere near an official product, either.
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Jan 20, 2016 15:40
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If I wanted to get into Spelljammer, where would I start, what adventures could I run?
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Jan 21, 2016 09:26
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