|
Regina George would have made a great old-school DM.
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 08:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 20:47 |
|
|
I get why lots of people don't think "expect the worst at all times as you attempt to survive a very actively hostile environment" is fun any more, but AD&D was arguably designed with that kind of thing as (one of) the main mode(s) of play, and at the time I guarantee you people were having plenty of fun with it. e: Even ear seekers aren't "rocks fall, everyone dies" or even "lol you can't win this fight I made too hard on purpose" rear end in a top hat DMing. They're not any more unfair than "if anyone listens at this door, the kobolds set the trap off". They're something that one PC dies to once, and then you figure out how to not have that happen again. Again, I get why lots of people don't like that kind of thing. I would get really pissed off at a DM who pitched a "heroes save the world in an epic saga of adventure" game and then included ear seekers or rot grubs with no warning in the third session. But it used to be an expected, standard, part of the game, and it still works as long as everyone's expectations are in line. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Sep 8, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 10:00
|
|
|
What kills me is the unspoken implication that there's a cottage industry of wizards making enchanted items designed to look like something benign and helpful but are actually super deadly cursed items of ultimate murder. It's not just that these are cursed items, it's that they're specifically designed to be replicas of some other magic item, just horrifically debilitating and deadly, and they're scattered all over from hell to breakfast waiting for someone to come along, see this needle, and go "oh, this must be one of the good magic needles I heard so much about, I should totally use this!"
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 10:14
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:What kills me is the unspoken implication that there's a cottage industry of wizards making enchanted items designed to look like something benign and helpful but are actually super deadly cursed items of ultimate murder. It's not just that these are cursed items, it's that they're specifically designed to be replicas of some other magic item, just horrifically debilitating and deadly, and they're scattered all over from hell to breakfast waiting for someone to come along, see this needle, and go "oh, this must be one of the good magic needles I heard so much about, I should totally use this!" Maybe they're what happens when you gently caress up making the good version? But yeah, the needle's poo poo, and so are the cloaks etc that straight up kill you. I just like the idea that "cursed" items are malfunctioning, damaged, or even stuff that wasn't right in the first place. I mean, non-cursed magic swords etc end up strewn all around the world, why not busted ones or QC discards? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Sep 8, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 10:21
|
|
|
"It's the Needle of DEATH!" 'What does it do?' "It kills people." 'How?' "You stab them a bunch with it." Doesn't even sew the people into the clothes, how dull.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 11:09
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:Maybe they're what happens when you gently caress up making the good version?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 11:46
|
|
|
The needle of death is badass because it's great as an assassination object. You could do a good adventure about having your PCs go agent 47 and planting it at some evil dudes lair who likes to knit.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 11:58
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:Maybe they're what happens when you gently caress up making the good version? This is how Pathfinder describes it: when you craft a magical item, you need to make a Spellcraft check. If you fail it by 5, it results in a cursed item. In AD&D 2e's DMG, a similar phenomenon is described: when crafting a magical item, there's a base 60% chance of succeeding normally. Each character level of the crafting Wizard increases the chance by 1%, and "each spell, special process or unique ingredient" reduces the chance by 1%. If the percentile roll fails, the item is cursed (though in keeping with the times, the Wizard might not know it's cursed right away). The other possible cause/source of cursed items, as described in 3e's DMG, is the degradation or mutation of an otherwise good/normal/beneficial magical effects. That is to say, nobody ever really sets out to make a skin-infiltrating sewing needle, but the Sewing Needle of Repair turns into that after years and years of its existence as the enchantment undergoes Magical Cancer. With the exception of AD&D 2e and Pathfinder, the only formal way to get cursed items in other editions of D&D was to roll the chance of them occurring while creating treasure hoards. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Sep 8, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 11:59
|
|
|
If your magic sewing kit has a small but very real chance to slowly and painfully murder you, why would you use it? Why not just use a regular one? Likewise, if there was a chance that you could die from putting your ear against wood, people would stop building things out of wood. There's no incentive to take your life in your hands without some significant incentives.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 12:13
|
|
|
Airplanes crash all the time and people still take flights.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 12:24
|
|
|
AFAIK, automotive transportation is a lot more lethal on average, but yeah, same principle applies.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 12:26
|
|
|
Box of Sending Holding this item to your face allows you to communicate across vast distances. Also comes with games. HTC's Box of Exploding Functions exactly like a Box of Sending right up until it explodes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 12:33
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:AFAIK, automotive transportation is a lot more lethal on average, but yeah, same principle applies. Automobiles are much faster and safer than horses. Going faster than walking (or horse) is a huge deal. We only take it for granted because we do it so often.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 12:53
|
|
|
And wood is a more viable door material than anything else. Plus, ear seekers only live in rotting wood, so they're not generally going to be found outside of dungeons - where they're a feature rather than a flaw. Presumably.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 13:07
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:This is how Pathfinder describes it: when you craft a magical item, you need to make a Spellcraft check. If you fail it by 5, it results in a cursed item. The only people who would actually seek out and use magic items are the ones who 1) are crazy risk-taking fools who are 2) trying to do something that without magic items would be impossible. In other words, adventurers. It also explains why there aren't supposed to be "magic item shops" in D&D settings - as soon as one opens, a mob of superstitious peasants will appear and burn it to the ground.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 13:50
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:I get why lots of people don't think "expect the worst at all times as you attempt to survive a very actively hostile environment" is fun any more, but AD&D was arguably designed with that kind of thing as (one of) the main mode(s) of play, and at the time I guarantee you people were having plenty of fun with it. You have to be a very specific kind of masochist to find that kind of poo poo enjoyable, and you always vastly oversell the sector of the community at large who truly find it something to seek out. It was lovely design then, it's lovely design now.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 14:23
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Box of Sending I had to sell my Galaxy Note after it got literally banned from most airplane companies
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 14:28
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:And I guarantee you that there were and are people being driven away from this hobby by that kind of bullshit. It's not that we don't find it fun "any more" it's that it was never actually fun. What was fun was hanging around with your friends and doing an activity and if your DM was the kind of douchebag who would rather throw rot grubs and needles of death at you than try to facilitate any sort of game and/or story, then you either ignored him and kept conversing until it was time to roll dice or you quit playing because that poo poo is not actually fun. Gary lost touch with his fanbase very, very quickly. There's an anecdote about him taking a module to a convention and TPKing every single group he played with, because they assumed a mysterious portal in the dungeon must be a gateway to adventure and not a pointless instant death trap.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 14:40
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I'm sure there were and are people enjoying that kind of play, but it was never a majority. More often people essentially run AD&D as Basic with a race/class split and treating half the book as optional add-ons.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 14:45
|
|
|
It's kinda depressing to think that the Dark Souls "git gud" mindset is that old.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 14:48
|
|
|
Honestly, I'd need to see some figures on cursed item lethality before I decide whether they're more dangerous than automobile travel.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 14:55
|
|
|
FMguru posted:That would explain why there are so few low-level "flavor" magic items in a typical D&D world and why magic hasn't kicked off an industrial revolution. The world isn't full of peasants who have spinning wheels that card wool by themselves or an always-warm hearthstone because there is a non-trivial chance that what they have is (or will spontaneously turn into) a Hearthstone of Immolation or a Cursed Spinning Wheel of Agonizing Death. Better to just keep on hauling firewood and spinning your own wool. This is a good post! FMguru posted:It also explains why there aren't supposed to be "magic item shops" in D&D settings - as soon as one opens, a mob of superstitious peasants will appear and burn it to the ground. I would add that magic item shops (and wealth-by-level) were in 3e largely to allow players to "skip" the old-school model of having to effectively "grind" until your Fighter had +x swords, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, and until your Magic-User had Bracers of Defense AC 4 and everyone had Rings of Protection. It was a convenience redesign on-par with WoW's Badges of Justice and tier set tokens and other alternative loot acquisition methods to allow people to gear up for later-tier raids without being at the mercy of the RNG.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 15:00
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:It's kinda depressing to think that the Dark Souls "git gud" mindset is that old. TBH, Dark Souls is very rarely actively unfair.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 15:20
|
|
|
The Cuphead of TTRPGs
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 15:24
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:It's kinda depressing to think that the Dark Souls "git gud" mindset is that old. Itīs also very different in that, while of punishing difficulty, itīs really lenient in many factoids. You die? Shucks, try again. "git gut" is not so much old school mentality as it is the expression of human dickery in the face of a constant boot stamp. with the exception that the boot is made of "Earn your fun". Also because overcoming challenge, which is, on a base skill level is what Souls games are about, can be fun for a certain mindset of players. lovely magic items, not so much.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 15:42
|
|
|
Phimose Knight posted:that's on them for not recognizing who their GM was and going "yeah let's not".
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 15:42
|
|
|
Phimose Knight posted:that's on them for not recognizing who their GM was and going "yeah let's not".
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 16:34
|
|
|
My guess is that it's frustration at the sense of tension and danger that should be everywhere in a hostile dungeon (I mean, just caving is pretty scary) being eliminated by SOPs. That can't really be resolved socially, because if you tell the players not to follow the SOPs then any time something goes wrong that a SOP would have prevented then it's now a social issue and "your fault". Of course the real problem is that what would be bravery in a world without dice becomes stupidity in a world where you know absolutely that your fate is set by blind odds.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 17:33
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:I wouldn't have recognized Gygax's face when he was alive and I've been playing for nearly 20 years. But that's not important, because the point is that putting a huge thing next to the players and then expecting them to walk past it is the complete antithesis of RPGs and fun and fun RPGs.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 19:06
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:Short form: back in the grogs.txt days, Red_Mage and Gau started a tabletop company (mainly out of spite) and did a kickstarter for a Ravenloft-esque 13th Age setting. It funded back in 2013, progressed okay for a while, then R_M vanished with the KS money before the book was finished. As a point of clarification, Red_Mage vanished but in retrospect Gau is the most likely one to have run off with all the money.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 19:10
|
|
|
I also remember Red_Mage being real into Bliss Stage, the game about 12-15 year olds having sex in order to power their giant robots.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 19:16
|
|
|
I've always thought of cursed items as like things that get used in some horrible way and then become cursed because of it. Like maybe someone kills their brother with a sword and now that sword is cursed.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 19:39
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Keep in mind as well that a good amount of that boiled down to Gygax not wanting to say "look don't do that." Yeah. The amazing thing about the pass-aggery of it all is that it's not just "don't do that", it's "don't do that or I yank your character sheet away". There's no warning, no three strikes, just whups, you annoyed the GM, bye-bye character... or at least bye-bye the cost of whatever resurrection spell you have on hand. I'm reminded of the recent Corruption mechanic in the recent 7th Sea, which is a very similar notion, just done with more modern mechanics*. * and by modern I mean circa 1995 or so
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 19:43
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm reminded of the recent Corruption mechanic in the recent 7th Sea, which is a very similar notion, just done with more modern mechanics*.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 20:05
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Uh dude he's the guy at the gaming convention with glasses and a beard and 70s hair. Probably wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 20:34
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:As a point of clarification, Red_Mage vanished but in retrospect Gau is the most likely one to have run off with all the money.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 20:46
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Uh dude he's the guy at the gaming convention with glasses and a beard and 70s hair. Probably wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I was about to say something and then I realized... 
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 20:55
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:The Cuphead of TTRPGs Which game has a mediocre system that serves only as an excuse to sell it as a game rather than as an art book?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 22:39
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Which game has a mediocre system that serves only as an excuse to sell it as a game rather than as an art book? Anima?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 22:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 20:47 |
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Which game has a mediocre system that serves only as an excuse to sell it as a game rather than as an art book? Degenesis? Tales from the Loop? Exalted 3e? Edit: Lamentations of the Flame Princess? RIFTS? Dungeons and Dragons? Cyberpunk 2020: 3rd Edition? I guess what I'm trying to say is: There are probably way too many RPGs that fall into that category. Certainly not many Apoc Engine games, though. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Sep 8, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2017 23:06
|
|