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gradenko_2000 posted:Hoard of the Dragon Queen was really rough because it was written before the main rules were really finalized. Thanks! Do you know if Princes of the Apocalypse can be split up into smaller chunks for specific level ranges? The organizer originally suggested Out of the Abyss, since it has a nice, clean Part 2 that our roughly 9th-level party of regulars could use their main characters for without having to start fresh. (I heard that it's very hard to run correctly, though.)
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Feb 26, 2017 17:46
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blastron posted:Thanks! Do you know if Princes of the Apocalypse can be split up into smaller chunks for specific level ranges? The organizer originally suggested Out of the Abyss, since it has a nice, clean Part 2 that our roughly 9th-level party of regulars could use their main characters for without having to start fresh. (I heard that it's very hard to run correctly, though.) Yeah it can. As princes of the Apocalypse is primarily made out of one huge dungeon.
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Feb 26, 2017 17:50
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Anyone here use Cityographer? I really need to map out the big-rear end capital city of my campaign and I am a lovely artist. Been playing around with the free version and it seems alright, just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the pro version or if there are alternatives people use or whatever.
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Feb 26, 2017 18:05
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Goddamn.  Could you tell us about that artist - cant make out the name. How much was it, if you dont mind saying, how long did it take, etc. blastron posted:The DM for the Adventurer's League table I play at is wrapping up the Storm King's Thunder hardcover and wants someone to switch out with him. I like DMing, so I think I might take him up on that, but he'd want me to run another hardcover. Strahd is out because nobody wants to be stuck in Barovia, so which of the first three should I choose? I recall that the thread hated at least one of them, but I can't find which it was. 9 is right about where Rise of Tiamat picks up, and it has a blurb about how to run it if you skipped Hoard - basically just jump in and go. Rise has some cool setpieces, like the white dragon that keeps a frozen museum, a yuan-ti temple, a hedge-maze holding a time-manipulating wizard tower, and a potentially awesome RP with a council of dragons (probably the highlight of the campaign when I played it). Each section is disconnected enough to run for an AL group that might include different players each time. Then of course you fight Tiamat. It's also vaguely connected with Storm King, as the rise of dragons spurred the giants into action, so your story wont be too disconnected like a jump into Barovia or the Underdark. ritorix fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Feb 26, 2017 |
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Feb 26, 2017 18:08
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blastron posted:Thanks! Do you know if Princes of the Apocalypse can be split up into smaller chunks for specific level ranges? The organizer originally suggested Out of the Abyss, since it has a nice, clean Part 2 that our roughly 9th-level party of regulars could use their main characters for without having to start fresh. (I heard that it's very hard to run correctly, though.) OotA is my favorite of the published adventures. I only played in that campaign but our DM said it was way easier to run than PotA for what that's worth.
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Feb 26, 2017 18:18
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KittyEmpress posted:So, anyone have any experience with the Revised ranger in actual play, and how good/balanced it is in comparison to other classes? Both utility, damage per round, and I dunno, any other places it would shine or suffer. I DM for one (hunter) and play alongside another (deep stalker). First impressions are that they're really good, but we're also in the level range where even the base ranger is still decent (3-10), so take my feedback with a grain of salt. The level 9 deep stalker managed to take down a CR 3 red cap in the first round of combat between the free third attack in round 1, advantage on all attacks in round 1, hunter's mark, and favored enemy's +4 bonus. That was north of 45 HP, I think. Average damage rolls for longbow + hunter's mark + favored enemy are 4.5 + 3.5 + 9 (17), so that's not out of the norm for the first round where they get their third attack. The hunter took aberrations as one of his favored enemies since I was kind enough to let him respec shortly after strongly hinting that the campaign's BBEG are aberrations. So now he's got advantage against the intellect devourer save-or-vegetable ability which is going to feature prominently in the campaign's finale in a couple more levels. The update to Primeval Awareness will also tell him exactly who and where several BBEG agents are in the hub town which can potentially make the finale much easier for the party. Slippery42 fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Feb 26, 2017 |
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Feb 26, 2017 19:30
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I think I've figured out what people like about DnD more then any other system. It has a progression system that can potentially go on for years. Looking at DungeonWorld, 13th Age, Fate, all of these things get labelled as "one-offs" because they only go to level 10, (or in DungeonWorld's case, you pick up more narrative then mechanical stuff.) Where as DnD has you slowly but surely picking up steam into literal godhood. You see this all the time in different games, like Critical Role where they've been playing for 3 years, and are level 14 or 15. You play DnD with the implicit idea that you're playing it for the long haul, and the game facilitates that with rules, monsters, and characters that scale up over the years. I think that might also tie into what people like about 5e (please correct me if I'm wrong,) the reason they play DND instead of another game, is because those other games don't offer the same progression options while maintaining the "rules light" atmosphere they've created for them in 5e. What do you guys think?
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Feb 26, 2017 21:35
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You're not wrong that people get invested in games because of character growth, but it's not something unique to D&D or even something it does well. I played a Mage: the Awakening campaign that lasted over two years with constant, incremental growth (towards literal godhood, which is what the setting is about), and had a FATE game with meaningful mechanical growth to the characters over time. The Critical Role folks are gaining experience incredibly slowly compared to how often they play. My current Adventurer's League character has been getting XP following the actual XP rules and is nearly level 10 after about 5 months' play. Granted, published modules and hardcovers have a much higher focus on combat than the Critical Role DM's homebrew campaign, but even when playing 3.5 I wound up getting levels every 2-3 sessions. When played straight, D&D will rocket you up through the power curve.
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Feb 26, 2017 21:51
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ritorix posted:Goddamn. Artist is Robert Mallison. He does some really good stuff and has a unique artstyle for sure. Though he took the piss with me, took him 3 and a half months to complete my work. I was told "I have a two week queue, then it should take two-three weeks to complete" Constant emails, no replies. 3 months gone by I said I'm gonna find a new artist. He gave me 10 minute replies on emails then and completed my work in 2 days. It's good if you're wanting that kind of art style as it suits certain pictures but it's a risk going with him for sure.
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Feb 26, 2017 22:20
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blastron posted:The Critical Role folks are gaining experience incredibly slowly compared to how often they play. My current Adventurer's League character has been getting XP following the actual XP rules and is nearly level 10 after about 5 months' play. Granted, published modules and hardcovers have a much higher focus on combat than the Critical Role DM's homebrew campaign, but even when playing 3.5 I wound up getting levels every 2-3 sessions. When played straight, D&D will rocket you up through the power curve. When you have 10,000+ people subscribing to twitch to watch your weekly show, you need to spread out the progression as much as possible. I think they've got characters at level 17 or 18 now and they're up to the mid-30,000s in subs with 25,000+ live viewers on broadcast. It's much harder in those scenarios to just up and retire an entire party and start over. I wouldn't be surprised if they get into some sort of paragon progression for level 20+ and start taking on gods and poo poo. Hell, their druid is still going on about her coming-of-age quest, after defeating a pantheon of dragons and poo poo.
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Feb 26, 2017 23:03
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Turtlicious posted:I think I've figured out what people like about DnD more then any other system. I mean yeah I'm pretty positive the character growth is a key part of peoples enjoyment but theres a metric tonne of RPGs that all do the same, taking a relatively small scale game and escalating it to a titanic battle level of importance as they slowly but surely escalate. A lot of settings are even structured directly to provide the concept of constantly having bigger fish to deal with. Dark Heresy takes a bunch of legitimately incompetent idiots with nearly zero authority and respectability and by the xp cap they are a hyper competent and focused characters who wield planet killing levels of power and authority. The Star Wars systems throughout their line have done pretty much the same, to use the Jedi archetype as the example you go from a character with a handful of skills and the barest ability to do anything force related, where just levitating an object is a major success and where seeing someone pull a lightsaber is genuinely a good idea to run. Then over time having that character getting an array of abilities and power where success is reliable and the character is able to stand toe to toe with another lightsaber wielder for a tense and exciting duel rather than what my group calls a 'chainsaw fight'. koreban posted:Hell, their druid is still going on about her coming-of-age quest, after defeating a pantheon of dragons and poo poo. lol. Yeah thats always one of my weird gripes that I see being done way too often in rpgs (though for some reason especially in D&D campaigns?) where the character/player don't realize they are super powerful beings who have long since blown past anything the real world could hold them to but keep acting like they are just regular people. It's always been an odd disconnect.
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Feb 26, 2017 23:33
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Turtlicious posted:I think I've figured out what people like about DnD more then any other system. Eh, not really? WoD games have potentially infinite growth provided you can find new and better things to spend XP on. And most people who enjoy D&D tend to enjoy the early game the most. If I were going to nail down exactly why people like D&D as opposed to other systems, I would say the following: * They remember it/they have brand loyalty/recognition. * Along with the above, D&D is far more omnipresent than other RPG systems. You can't (usually) buy Dungeon World at Barnes and Noble. * Say what you want about it but D&D has a higher art buget than most other gamelines and still produces medium to high quality hardbacks. Most indies have switched to standard trade paper or paperback POD. * D&D speaks a language people instantly understand. Orcs, trolls, and elves are recognizable and appeal to a subset of the population already predisposed to try out an RPG. That's probably about it. FF Star Wars has the potential to hit most of the above points if it can exist long enough to stay on the shelves.
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Feb 27, 2017 00:37
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I can't think of any game I've been in that went on that long. Typically our games end somewhere around level 8 or 9 - which is about where I'm considering ending the one I'm currently in. I like to tell, or take part in, one complete story (albeit with the potential for several arcs), then move on to a new world, new characters, etc. I wouldn't be opposed to a longer-running campaign, but it's not a particular draw for me.AlphaDog posted:What about if the golem required a <max castable level> spell slot be given up to do anything useful, but you could put it into power-saver mode with a 1st level slot and then all it could do was follow you around? You can only depower/repower when you take along rest.
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Feb 27, 2017 01:30
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Dungeon World and 13th Age all have built-in advancement rules, and 13th Age also captures the climb from adventurer-to-godhood. I don't really buy the whole "but D&D has 20 levels!" point because A. you can slow down the advancement of the game as much as you want to and B. the number 20 is completely arbitrary.
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Feb 27, 2017 01:35
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Roll20 DM just hadda look up the name of the kingdom in the campaign he made up himself like -- the grand overall setting Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 04:53
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gradenko_2000 posted:Dungeon World and 13th Age all have built-in advancement rules, and 13th Age also captures the climb from adventurer-to-godhood. I don't really buy the whole "but D&D has 20 levels!" point because A. you can slow down the advancement of the game as much as you want to and B. the number 20 is completely arbitrary. My Heartbreaker goes to level 11.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:08
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I feel like the promise of endless advancement is often more important to a lot of people than the actual practical effect thereof since I would wager large sums of money that the vast majority of tabletop roleplaying campaigns fizzle and end anticlimactically when the GM gets bored or people decide to "take a break" to try a new game or someone's work schedule changes and nobody wants to continue the same campaign without Krag Hack etc. etc. I'm not saying that long ongoing campaigns never happen because clearly they do, but that they're probably in such a minority that a game only having 10 levels or something often doesn't matter in any play-impacting sense as most people playing official-brand D&D aren't actually going to make the complete tour from shitfarmers to divine apotheosis either. I'll agree that there's almost certainly a perceived additional value in seeing that your game of choice has more bigger levels to aspire to but I'm skeptical that it's a practical concern for most campaigns in general.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:41
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Roll20 DM just hadda look up the name of the kingdom in the campaign he made up himself I'm an author and I still have a notepad full of 'dumb names I made up' for people, places, and countries that I use all the time in books I'm actively writing. Judgement free zone here. Super understandable.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:49
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Roll20 DM just hadda look up the name of the kingdom in the campaign he made up himself I GM a lot in a huge variety of games and settings and I'm physically incapable of remembering most proper nouns even if im a huge gushing fanboy of the setting. Kai Tave posted:Nobody wants to continue the same campaign without Krag Hack Mods please rename the thread
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Feb 27, 2017 05:53
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Kai Tave posted:I feel like the promise of endless advancement is often more important to a lot of people than the actual practical effect thereof since I would wager large sums of money that the vast majority of tabletop roleplaying campaigns fizzle and end anticlimactically when the GM gets bored or people decide to "take a break" to try a new game or someone's work schedule changes and nobody wants to continue the same campaign without Krag Hack etc. etc. I'm not saying that long ongoing campaigns never happen because clearly they do, but that they're probably in such a minority that a game only having 10 levels or something often doesn't matter in any play-impacting sense as most people playing official-brand D&D aren't actually going to make the complete tour from shitfarmers to divine apotheosis either. I'll agree that there's almost certainly a perceived additional value in seeing that your game of choice has more bigger levels to aspire to but I'm skeptical that it's a practical concern for most campaigns in general. I mean, this probably goes under the GM advice thread (and I'm sure you of all people probably agree), but common sense says campaigns built that way are basically designed to fail. It goes beyond the question of D&D, even; saying, "I want to tell an epic story, but I have no idea when it will end or what steps it will include" is basically a contradiction of terms. You can't tell a sprawling epic if you have no end point in mind. Considering a 'full' D&D game has to include the dirt farmer stage, it almost seems like a 1-20 game is fundamentally incompatible with an epic storyline for all but the most prescient DM.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:55
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Okay but he's got our kobolds attacking with STR despite using finesse weapons and says we can cast cantrips twice in a turn because of a misread on how action + bonus action works. It was funny to get stabbed with a dagger and watch it bounce helplessly off my clothes once, but...
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Feb 27, 2017 06:06
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Roll20 DM just hadda look up the name of the kingdom in the campaign he made up himself DMs have to remember a lot of names yo. I've blanked on lots of poo poo.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:07
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Mendrian posted:I mean, this probably goes under the GM advice thread (and I'm sure you of all people probably agree), but common sense says campaigns built that way are basically designed to fail. It goes beyond the question of D&D, even; saying, "I want to tell an epic story, but I have no idea when it will end or what steps it will include" is basically a contradiction of terms. You can't tell a sprawling epic if you have no end point in mind. Considering a 'full' D&D game has to include the dirt farmer stage, it almost seems like a 1-20 game is fundamentally incompatible with an epic storyline for all but the most prescient DM. Its not that bad to be honest its mostly being able to keep a group together and playing regularly for a long time thats an issue. Building a big 1-20 campaign is something i've done, and its mostly just running it like you would a movie franchise that you think could implode after every movie. Standard 3 act story where you set up the tone/theme/style to be different each time as you get up in power level and make sure each resolves the main thing that act has been about. In older versions of DnD I would run it as 1-7 or 8, 8-14 and then the 15-20 block. Have the 3 acts link by maybe an overarching problem but don't have any depend on eachother so that each can collapse and/or new people can be brought in at each of those natural end points without them being overwhelmed by the plot (though good luck if they are dont know what they are doing rules wise at the higher tiers lol)
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Feb 27, 2017 06:07
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Vengarr posted:DMs have to remember a lot of names yo. I've blanked on lots of poo poo. In the Out of the Abyss campaign there's a kind of wild magic zone or something spelled phaerzees or whatever and our DM has justifiably given up on trying to pronounce it 'correctly' every time.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:09
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bewilderment posted:In the Out of the Abyss campaign there's a kind of wild magic zone or something spelled phaerzees or whatever and our DM has justifiably given up on trying to pronounce it 'correctly' every time. Alternative names: DarkDark, Darklight, LightDark
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Feb 27, 2017 06:12
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kingcom posted:Its not that bad to be honest its mostly being able to keep a group together and playing regularly for a long time thats an issue. This is it right here. I feel like the fact that a lot of RPGs still sort of tacitly assume that you and your 3-5 best friends have infinite free weekends to devote to getting together to spend 8 hours per Sunday around the kitchen table to play out this single sprawling campaign with a nebulous endpoint and that this is the ideal state a TRPG should aspire to does the actual reality of trying to wrangle an ongoing game group together a severe disservice, especially considering that more and more RPG players are no longer the kids from Stranger Things but the kids from Stranger Things grown up, with jobs, spouses, mortgages, and kids of their own. And that's not even taking gamer ADD into account which my last irl tabletop group was super prone to. I'm not saying that one-shots and hyper-limited campaigns are the One True Way but a lot of RPG designers are still sort of stuck in the mindset of "I have to make this game about campaigning from level 1 to level 20 first and foremost" and while gradenko is absolutely right that level pacing is ultimately pretty arbitrary and can be slowed or decelerated as you see fit, I don't think it's a bad thing for more games to take the approach of a more clearly-defined endpoint or at least less of an emphasis on the endless progression treadmill (though some sort of progression will always be attractive because people love getting new poo poo to play with and hell, so do I).
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Feb 27, 2017 06:35
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Kai Tave posted:This is it right here. I feel like the fact that a lot of RPGs still sort of tacitly assume that you and your 3-5 best friends have infinite free weekends to devote to getting together to spend 8 hours per Sunday around the kitchen table to play out this single sprawling campaign with a nebulous endpoint and that this is the ideal state a TRPG should aspire to does the actual reality of trying to wrangle an ongoing game group together a severe disservice, especially considering that more and more RPG players are no longer the kids from Stranger Things but the kids from Stranger Things grown up, with jobs, spouses, mortgages, and kids of their own. And that's not even taking gamer ADD into account which my last irl tabletop group was super prone to. I'm not saying that one-shots and hyper-limited campaigns are the One True Way but a lot of RPG designers are still sort of stuck in the mindset of "I have to make this game about campaigning from level 1 to level 20 first and foremost" and while gradenko is absolutely right that level pacing is ultimately pretty arbitrary and can be slowed or decelerated as you see fit, I don't think it's a bad thing for more games to take the approach of a more clearly-defined endpoint or at least less of an emphasis on the endless progression treadmill (though some sort of progression will always be attractive because people love getting new poo poo to play with and hell, so do I). I don't know if i've ever played an rpg for 8 hours at a time or really anything like the marathon sessions that people tell stories about. Its always been a once a week for 3-4 hours kinda thing at best and we're all still pretty young without families to worry about AND in order to save everyone time and effort most of my gaming is done online.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:44
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kingcom posted:I don't know if i've ever played an rpg for 8 hours at a time or really anything like the marathon sessions that people tell stories about. Its always been a once a week for 3-4 hours kinda thing at best and we're all still pretty young without families to worry about AND in order to save everyone time and effort most of my gaming is done online. Admittedly it's pretty rare to go the full uninterrupted eight hours doing literally nothing but gaming from the word go but the last time I had an actual sit-down group it was about 5-6 hours of gameplay plus a few hours of tabletalk and digressions before and after and a dinner break somewhere in there, but without that allotted amount of loving-around time we'd probably get even less actual gaming done if we only had like 3-4 hours total to spend because none of us were so super-hardcore that we were ready to start rolling dice as soon as we sat down.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:55
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bewilderment posted:In the Out of the Abyss campaign there's a kind of wild magic zone or something spelled phaerzees or whatever and our DM has justifiably given up on trying to pronounce it 'correctly' every time. Faerzress. It's one of those "very easy to say as written as long as you're familiar with Ed Greenwood things." It's fey-er-ze-ress (like rest without the t.) Arivia fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 07:02
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Personally, and I think this is just good GMing practice in general, I am very upfront with both myself and my players on how long we'll be playing, whether it's a oneshot, or to the end of this one adventure, or to the end of this series of adventures, or some other clearly defined endpoint. I daresay it's even more important in a more mechanically-dense game, because if you tell your players you're only planning to go up to level 10 or something, it informs what kind of character they'll "build" towards if they know that the 12-level prestige class or whatever is never going to be in the cards.
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Feb 27, 2017 08:13
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bewilderment posted:In the Out of the Abyss campaign there's a kind of wild magic zone or something spelled phaerzees or whatever and our DM has justifiably given up on trying to pronounce it 'correctly' every time. I woult be writing down my pronunciation just to make sure i never say it the same way twice and i'd definately call it the p zone and maybe the p'zone at least once
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Feb 27, 2017 09:54
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Turtlicious posted:I think that might also tie into what people like about 5e (please correct me if I'm wrong,) the reason they play DND instead of another game, is because those other games don't offer the same progression options while maintaining the "rules light" atmosphere they've created for them in 5e. It also has huge brand recognition. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 11:02
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Dumpster diving and lots of splatbooks ... good?
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Feb 27, 2017 11:06
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Splicer posted:Extra Credits did a good episode on this in relation to WoW, the crux of which is you spend a lot of time engaging with WoW, D&D, Magic etc. outside of the time you're actually playing it. A friend of mine created wowwiki.net, and people used to spend hundreds of hours maintaining entries there.
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Feb 27, 2017 14:31
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Hot new character concept: three dogs, but one of them has a gun (Druid 2/Ranger 3/Artificer 6)
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Feb 27, 2017 14:48
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Allstone posted:Hot new character concept: three dogs, but one of them has a gun (Druid 2/Ranger 3/Artificer 6) learn Find Familiar, get a rat, name it dog
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Feb 27, 2017 16:19
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Rip_Van_Winkle posted:learn Find Familiar, get a rat, name it dog No. Get a male Fox. male foxes are referred to as Dogs, as opposed to vixens, in situations where that terminology matters
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Feb 27, 2017 17:04
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Kurieg posted:No. Get a male Fox. you can't get a fox with find familiar though
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Feb 27, 2017 18:15
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Allstone posted:Hot new character concept: three dogs, but one of them has a gun (Druid 2/Ranger 3/Artificer 6)
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Feb 27, 2017 18:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:Dumpster diving and lots of splatbooks ... good? Sunken cost fallacy works on human brains?
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Feb 27, 2017 19:15
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