|
kaffo posted:Does anyone have any recommendations for a crunchy system which makes encounter generation/management as easy as possible for the GM? Strike! RPG is your game if you want combat. Otherwise, what is the goal of your system?
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2017 22:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 21:45 |
|
|
kaffo posted:Having just finished my Dungeon World game I'm getting kinda obsessed with the idea of running a crunchy game D&D 4e.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2017 23:27
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:D&D 4e. poo poo, this is hard to get running ideally because you want the character builder and the only way to really get it anymore is to hack the offline version but... Yeah, he's absolutely loving right.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2017 23:29
|
|
|
Moriatti posted:Do you want combat? I'd like to see some other depth too though, like survival elements or other kinds of management simulation in the background Like Mekton had building mechs, Ars Magica has the lab stuff, Outbreak has survival/shelter management... Sorry for not being specific, but I'm really on the lookout for stuff like this I was tempted to checkout exaulted cos the leveling system looks awesome, but the rulebook made me want to blundgeon myself with it rather than read it sebmojo posted:D&D 4e. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2017 23:30
|
|
|
Strike! has that but I found the Team Conflict system... Underwhelming. I'm a big fan for the ways skills work and I think you could hack a decent time/resource subsytem. I know an expansion exist for that but I've yet to use it myself so IDK how that ended up.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2017 23:33
|
|
|
Feng Shui 2 is super easy to set up fights in, with the added benefit of not being boring-rear end eurofantasy all over again.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2017 23:51
|
|
|
We haven't gone back and tried Team Conflict after they got some minor changes in the FAQ, but yeah, we have them a couple shots and didn't go back because we had a bunch of problems with them. Too complicated without actually being interesting, too lengthy without offering good engagement opportunities. Big fan of the system otherwise. Monsters are presented as generic mechanics so while building encounters may take more time than you expressly desire you can slap some different paint on it/mix and match for quick encounters.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2017 23:52
|
|
|
kaffo posted:Yeah, combat is good. I'll check out Strike, cheers Fair enough, though it does hit your points. I'd suggest Rolemaster, but there's a lot of familiarisation and chopping away the irrelevant rules (e.g. nearly everything to do with character building); it's actually a ridiculously simple and good system at core though - roll a die, add/subtract some numbers, look up the result.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 00:00
|
|
|
How do you guys feel about background music during sessions? I started playing some after playing some Final Fantasy 14 and realising how much the music added to my enjoyment of the game, and so far my players seem to like it as long as it's not too loud  Do you guys find it enhances your sessions?
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 02:41
|
|
|
Ibblebibble posted:How do you guys feel about background music during sessions? I started playing some after playing some Final Fantasy 14 and realising how much the music added to my enjoyment of the game, and so far my players seem to like it as long as it's not too loud I love it. I have a selection of period and location-appropriate songs for every game I do, all for playing when the party does stuff like driving with the radio on or going to a bar or concert. There's one thing in a game I've planned but haven't run yet, where the party of monster/ghost hunters has to find a vampire lair at a nightclub in Atlanta. Music will be playing non-stop in that location.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 02:50
|
|
|
I really like the idea of it but it's generally ended up being too much of a hassle to manage that on top of running the game. On the other hand, it's been years since I've tried it, and there are a lot more options for putting together playlists and cuing up tracks.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 03:34
|
|
|
Ibblebibble posted:How do you guys feel about background music during sessions? I started playing some after playing some Final Fantasy 14 and realising how much the music added to my enjoyment of the game, and so far my players seem to like it as long as it's not too loud I haven't used music, but I have done background noise; ominous chanting, creepy whispering, etc.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 03:35
|
|
|
Ibblebibble posted:How do you guys feel about background music during sessions? I started playing some after playing some Final Fantasy 14 and realising how much the music added to my enjoyment of the game, and so far my players seem to like it as long as it's not too loud I have like a dozen Spotify playlists organized by mood: creepy exploration, uplifting, fun battle, serious battle, epic battle, etc. The best part of Spotify is the "related artists" tab; if you start with any sound you like, you can find so many other musicians who do similar stuff. I discovered a dude named Haushka this way: I super recommend his stuff, it works perfectly for tons of fantasy role-playing and he has a billion albums. I also almost always keep this open, if just to have nice creepy wind sounds: https://tabletopaudio.com/dungeon_sp.html
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 04:02
|
|
|
I am 100% behind the idea of the GM not having planned everything going into the game, and using the players's own suspicions and conjectures "against" them to flesh out the world in real-time. I can also understand the difference between a player vocalizing their hypothesis that the mysterious tracks make them think owlbears are afoot, and the GM retroactively making that true ... ... and the GM directly asking a player in a way that the player knows that whatever their answer is, will be used to shape the world. Besides the fact that the latter puts pressure on the player to come up with a "cool and creative" answer, it also "shatters the illusion" of how the world is built (assuming the players even care about such things). Of course, all of these things (as with all other things) are solvable with proper communication and expectation-setting, but it's not at all unreasonable to say that "ask the player what they spot on the goblin's belt that makes them special" is something that not all players are comfortable with doing. sebmojo posted:Fair enough, though it does hit your points. Can I ask you to elaborate on this some more? I've very rarely seen someone describe Rolemaster as "a ridiculously simple system at core" (though I agree to an extent), and I'd like to hear more about how you'd "chop away the irrelevant rules"
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 04:15
|
|
|
Comrade Gorbash posted:I really like the idea of it but it's generally ended up being too much of a hassle to manage that on top of running the game. I currently use a Discord bot that can play YouTube tracks in the background of voice chat. If I can find out how to queue playlists on it instead of queueing up individual tracks one by one it would be perfect.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 04:29
|
|
|
Polo-Rican posted:I have like a dozen Spotify playlists organized by mood: creepy exploration, uplifting, fun battle, serious battle, epic battle, etc. Any chance you could post those share links?
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 04:35
|
|
|
Ibblebibble posted:How do you guys feel about background music during sessions? I started playing some after playing some Final Fantasy 14 and realising how much the music added to my enjoyment of the game, and so far my players seem to like it as long as it's not too loud Yep. Make a playlist or two and hit shuffle. When it starts syncs up its magical.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 07:39
|
|
|
Ibblebibble posted:How do you guys feel about background music during sessions? I started playing some after playing some Final Fantasy 14 and realising how much the music added to my enjoyment of the game, and so far my players seem to like it as long as it's not too loud My DM does this but uses the same track of fight music from this japanese video game called "final fantasy" for every fight so please if you will do this expand the selection beyond this franchise. There's tons of location/theme specific music exactly for this on youtube. If we're in the forest it's forest music, if we're in hell it's hell sounds, he'll have a little selection planned out and most of the youtubes also have some nice lightly animated visuals as well.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 07:44
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:My DM does this but uses the same track of fight music from this japanese video game called "final fantasy" for every fight so please if you will do this expand the selection beyond this franchise. Yeah I pull my music from various sources. Admittedly most are from FF but there's enough variety in style I don't think it gets old. Also I swap it up every dungeon/boss fight really.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 10:07
|
|
|
Thanks for the system suggestions! We had a great feng shui 2 campaign actually... Might do that again now that I think about it Music, yes If not me one of my players will find something on YouTube When I'm doing like something super atmosphere or a boss fight I tend to use this website I paid 5 dollars like 5 years ago and you can mix this incredible range of dynamic generators, so it's not the same sounds over and over, but you can easily leave it on for hours and it doesn't sound "the same" You've got to heavily abuse the animate feature though to get it right, but I highly recommend for ambient poo poo, even at a moments notice
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 11:47
|
|
|
I often have a hard time thinking of what other people would enjoy or select if given options. If your GM told you about playing a game where you play as a whole village instead of a single character with a heavy focus on village/economic management and this alone wasn't enough to send you running away, what sort of village would you want to make, imagining a fairly traditional D&D style fantasy setting? I'm trying to come up with enough mechanics and options to suit what people would like, but I'd love to hear some hypotheticals so I'm a bit more prepared.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 21:14
|
|
|
Waffles Inc. posted:Any chance you could post those share links? Now I'm self conscious! Give me a day to clean them up and weed out the garbage, haha!
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 23:00
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I often have a hard time thinking of what other people would enjoy or select if given options. If your GM told you about playing a game where you play as a whole village instead of a single character with a heavy focus on village/economic management and this alone wasn't enough to send you running away, what sort of village would you want to make, imagining a fairly traditional D&D style fantasy setting? I want to ranch some monsters.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
Moriatti posted:I want to ranch some monsters. The place caters entirely to adventurers, with blacksmiths, armourers, wizard libraries, alchemy labs, healing temples with teams of rescue clerics, and a large supply of dudes who stumble wounded into taverns gasping about whatever monsters have got out and started eating people. A slightly less-safe Westworld, but with monster farms instead of cyborg labs.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2017 23:21
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I often have a hard time thinking of what other people would enjoy or select if given options. If your GM told you about playing a game where you play as a whole village instead of a single character with a heavy focus on village/economic management and this alone wasn't enough to send you running away, what sort of village would you want to make, imagining a fairly traditional D&D style fantasy setting? An agriculture-focused village, renowned for its mead and its cheeses; for the last twenty years it has been basically ignored by its nominal feudal overlords, but the local baron has just passed away, and his replacement is riding in from the capital. Won't he be surprised to learn that the villagers have established a self-sufficient commune and signed mutual defense and trade agreements with the local faerie folk and dwarven colony, and no longer recognize his right to rule or the archaic feudal system he represents?
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 01:36
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I often have a hard time thinking of what other people would enjoy or select if given options. If your GM told you about playing a game where you play as a whole village instead of a single character with a heavy focus on village/economic management and this alone wasn't enough to send you running away, what sort of village would you want to make, imagining a fairly traditional D&D style fantasy setting? Serious answer, probably a trade hub; a city that formed at the intersection of several trade routes. I'd want to be able to utilize links with other civilizations and call in exotic aid. Perverse answer meant to strain your setting and system: the City of the Dead. A sprawling necropolis formed out of thousands of mausoleums built on top of each other until an earthquake collapsed huge portions of the structure, causing a mingling of the hallowed dead who were awoken by the catastrophic event. At once cosmopolitan, diplomatic and imperialistic, they are surprisingly egalitarian and patient in thought, taking the somewhat unsettling view that everyone will be part of their constituency, eventually.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 01:57
|
|
|
I sometimes run tracks for specific scenes or for specific locations but I try not to loop them. I've been really tempted to run a game where I play a random Queens of the Stone Age track before the major villain turns up to evoke a Pavlovian response.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 03:25
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Can I ask you to elaborate on this some more? I've very rarely seen someone describe Rolemaster as "a ridiculously simple system at core" (though I agree to an extent), and I'd like to hear more about how you'd "chop away the irrelevant rules" So Rolemaster. It has a terrible reputation as 'chartmaster' and to be fair attracts a bunch of terrible nerds with its dewy eyed insistence on simulating every drat thing. Rolling a character takes probably fifty percentile die rolls, and a fair bit of algebra. But at its heart it's immensely powerful and simple, because it has the core idea of adding a modifier of roughly 1-100 (100 is super amazing, 1 is unskilled) to an open-ended percentile die roll (01-05, roll again and subtract, 96-00 roll again and add) and looking it up on a chart. I played it in one form or other for like 20 years, gradually stripping away the stuff that didn't matter (e.g. experience is tracked for every point of damage given or taken, every critical, every skill roll made, every mile travelled and so on) and keeping the stuff that did, which is basically the combat system and this table:  Look at that loving thing. it's a game system in an A4 page. Decide how good a character is at something (if you're using WoDarkness then each dot is 10%, if D&D you could use level + stat), set a difficulty, roll %, look up the result. The number results can be either how much of the task you achieved or how likely you are to get what you want, the extreme failure/success conditions are hilarious or satisfying. So to use that in any game you just need a way of converting your characters skills into a roughly percentile format - it's not necessarily elegant but should be easy enough. I've used it with D&D, Warhammer FRPG, Eclipse Phase, Mage and Traveller. Combat is also great, although it's more intimidating since there's a chart for each weapon that looks like this:  In practice you have a copy of your character's weapon chart to help the DM. Again, roll %, add your number plus any modifiers for surprise/behind, minus defensive bonuses like quickness, and look up the result. The columns are armour types, so 1 is clothes, 20 is full plate armour. The armour type is what Gygax tried and failed to do with his 1st ed armour modifiers, and it works well - an unarmoured character is going to get missed a lot, but when it hits it hurts, a more heavily armoured character will generally get whittled away. The table gives you a result of hit point damage and a critical of specified severity and nature, so a CS is 'C' severity Slash critical. that's another roll on a table without modifiers, but it's invariably tense because the higher crits can end a fight in a stroke.  Aw man that's evocative. I spent a lot of time looking at that as a little nerdling. Having written this out, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to an inexperienced GM or even to any GM as an easy option; it's not an effortless translation by any means, but it makes manoeuvres incredibly dynamic (since they can hyper succeed and ultra fail) and fights incredibly visceral and fun. They're also quick, since an enemy can just be four numbers (hit points, Armour type, offensive and defensive bonuses) and a weapon type. There's a bunch of editions, but the only one I've used are the first two, they seemed to get a bit lost in the weeds later on. there's also a sci fi version, Spacemaster, which is great for loads of guns but gets ridiculously lethal. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Oct 23, 2017 |
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 03:30
|
|
|
I've thought about my players stuck in the Beholder tunnels. The beholder has been sleeping and the glowing pit with audible monster snoring was supposed to foreshadow that there was more going on beneath the ground than they could handle in the immediate moment. Maybe hint that they'd have to alert some folks and come back later. I think the best way to give them something to do that lets them know what the score is would be to have the players fight a remnant faction of formerly enslaved duergar who can't escape because blasting a way out would wake up the Beholder who would surely kill or enslave them. So as they try to survive while figuring a way out, their group has been getting whittled down by oozes, grells, and other hideous predators. Does this sound like a fair resolution?
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 03:38
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I often have a hard time thinking of what other people would enjoy or select if given options. If your GM told you about playing a game where you play as a whole village instead of a single character with a heavy focus on village/economic management and this alone wasn't enough to send you running away, what sort of village would you want to make, imagining a fairly traditional D&D style fantasy setting? I just want to point out that Reign is just about perfect to simulate this.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 10:30
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:It has a terrible reputation as 'chartmaster' 
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 11:14
|
|
|
paradoxGentleman posted:I just want to point out that Reign is just about perfect to simulate this. Was just about to post this. It wouldn’t be that hard to port the Reign company mechanics to another system either.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 12:06
|
|
|
You could probably hack blades in the dark to be purely Gang-focused, just cut down heists to a single role and focus on timers and strategy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 12:31
|
|
|
I'm not sure if this is the right thread to post in, but does anybody having any experience running a campaign through Skype or another voice chat program? I started playing a short campaign with a group of friends I've known for many years, but the problem is that we all live 2 hours away from each other and it's not really feasible to meet every week for a session. I'm not the actual DM but I'm trying to help get some ideas from my friend who is running the games. It'd be nice if we could use something like Webex to illustrate player and monster positions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 13:50
|
|
|
Vargatron posted:I'm not sure if this is the right thread to post in, but does anybody having any experience running a campaign through Skype or another voice chat program? I started playing a short campaign with a group of friends I've known for many years, but the problem is that we all live 2 hours away from each other and it's not really feasible to meet every week for a session. You could use Webex or Google docs, though those can be a little clunky. Roll20 isn't everyone's favorite but personally I think it's about as good as the other virtual table tops out there and much easier to set up and use, and it's free.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 13:58
|
|
|
My group's planning to do DM rotation during a loosely structured 5e campaign, any tips on how to make it so it wont fall apart due to irreconcilable ideas about DMing/5e after two sessions?
Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Oct 23, 2017 |
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 14:09
|
|
|
Posting here as a Player, in a game for a guy I've GM'd for for a few years, with advice for other GMs. Scarcity of magic items is one thing, but extreme scarcity in even the more mundane things is really really irritating as a player. My Paladin could not find a single pair of manacles/hand cuffs in a small-ish town, when asking the blacksmith to make some, he gave a quote in days that I found useless for my purpose, and had to do it with rope and go through bullshit checks/situations that manacles/hand cuffs would have helped with. The Town "sheriff" had some but would not part with them as they were town equipment, okay. Get to a big city, buy those, go to remote middle of nowhere, hit level 5 and get Summon Steed, use mount and think "hey, a lance would be cool." Go to another smallish city that wasn't capital and hit up supply store, no Lances, only option would be to have my character ride for 2 days round trip on a mount when the undead we needed to investigate were 2 hours away. Sidenote: we also needed someone to read some diary we found in a language no one knew, I went to the one magic item shoppe we knew of, no scrolls of Comprehend Language for Wizard, requested one made, over a week in game has gone by, we eventually met the one NPC he had in mind who could read Infernal or Abyssal or whatever, scroll has still not been made. I think literally the only example I can ever even think of me even slightly stiffing the party on something like this was when this player asked for "drugs" out of the blue and I said "yeah I can pull up some stuff with effects and withdrawal and etc but not in mid session, give me next session and we'll have some stuff setup."
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 14:20
|
|
|
Vargatron posted:I'm not sure if this is the right thread to post in, but does anybody having any experience running a campaign through Skype or another voice chat program? I started playing a short campaign with a group of friends I've known for many years, but the problem is that we all live 2 hours away from each other and it's not really feasible to meet every week for a session. I’m playing in a game that recently went over to full Skype (our DM had to move, and another player moved last year and had been Skyping in). While it’s not as easy as in-person, it’s really viable. We don’t use a virtual tabletop since it’s a very story heavy/rules light game, but we would definitely add one if we needed to. We do use video chat, rather than just voice, and I think it ends up more engaging and helps avoid talk-over or accidental interruption- Skype will sometimes mute extra audio, so people need to be patient speaking. I think the most important thing is to make sure people prioritize the session and don’t get distracted by other computer things. It tougher than at a table to follow if your attention is divided, and the biggest distractor is *right there*. Hopefully the group is good, but everyone needs to be on the same page with it or it turns into game poison.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 15:11
|
|
|
Yeah - seconding that you should use video chat instead of just audio. It's gone pretty well for me - we've only played in person a few times and are in different time zones and stuff and it's been okay. Roll20 is like, a necessary evil if you have a detailed combat system though I don't love it. Everyone seeing the rolls in there is nice because people get excited seeing high ones or nervous seeing bad ones.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 15:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 21:45 |
|
|
I think the key here is having some kind of shared visual space to work with. Not everyone is comfortable with video chat, and even more people are in spots where it's not technically feasible for a variety of reasons. However, having something to look at and interact with as a group is definitely going to help keep everyone's attention and on the same page. Not everyone is comfortable with voice chat either of course. And there's the consideration of accommodation for disabilities. But I'm assuming that's already been discussed for your specific group.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2017 17:07
|
|