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gradenko_2000 posted:I call this one "The Discourse": I read the rpg.net post in question and it's hilarious. Recommending using Archer Ranger in conjunction with the Beast Companion, somehow comes to the conclusion that having a flimsy little bag of HP with rapidly inconsequential on-hit abilities is worth trading away half of a normal Ranger's DPR.
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Nov 21, 2017 16:16
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xiw posted:Jesus christ, most conventions around here are at schools / university spaces and it sucks when we have two games per room - how loud would this room be? It's generally not bad. Except for the one chick who sounds like she's being stabbed to death when she laughs.
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Nov 21, 2017 16:20
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Sax Solo posted:FWIW my opinion was formed from the sourcebooks. Power of Faerun is a good choice, but it’s got a lot of dry 3e rules in it. I recommend Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster’s Forgotten Realms, which shows you lots of the little details and cool things in the Realms, works for 5e, and is easily accessible. If you want a write up of a different, weird part of the Realms, look at Spellbound or Unapproachable East.
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Nov 21, 2017 17:14
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I was commiserating with a friend who lives in Oklahoma now about FR publications being boring, and he sent me a picture of his massive pile of old dog eared AD&D Planescape books. I miss Planescape.
NeurosisHead fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Nov 21, 2017 |
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Nov 21, 2017 18:08
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Arivia posted:Quite the avatar
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Nov 21, 2017 19:04
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Splicer posted:Uh... who did you piss off there? Woah... gonna adblock that.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:06
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If your looking for traditional faerie inspiration, or just general real world inspiration, try looking through Child's ballads. A collection of songs from the middle ages compiled by a guy named Child, not for kids. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there and most of it's pretty short. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads Also if you want more variety in your Fairy kind, the tome of beasts has a ton of it, along with a lot of stuff from Norse legend and a smattering of more obscure Lovecraftian monsters. https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/tome-of-beasts-for-5th-edition/ warning, this is third party so some of it is a bit wonky.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:08
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sometimes this thread delivers in the weirdest of ways
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Nov 21, 2017 19:09
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Splicer posted:Uh... who did you piss off there? Huh. Probably one of the Kingdom Death defenders is my best guess.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:10
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Splicer posted:Uh... who did you piss off there? definitely one of the Kingdom Death reality winners
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Nov 21, 2017 19:16
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ugh, thank you for reminding me that the wet nurse exists
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Nov 21, 2017 19:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:definitely one of the Kingdom Death reality winners Hey come on. Reality Winner might have made some mistakes but she doesn’t deserve to be thrown in with that crew.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:21
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... Whole lot of psychology going on there.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:21
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I'm on the app and have Arivia blocked anyway, what's the av?
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Nov 21, 2017 19:37
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Sax Solo posted:FWIW my opinion was formed from the sourcebooks. You might not agree, but the three that come immediately to mind are doing a game centered around psionic snake people political backbiting (Vilhon Reach area), doing a 50-50 (or 100%?) underwater game using the printed material for that (Sea Devils, Sea of Fallen Stars (I think that was the book?)), and a shitload of the not-Menzoberranzen Underdark stuff that was scattered around all over the place. Thay would make for a weird/intense game if you actually used the hosed up culture they presented. (Spellbound and the original Red Wizards something, Unapproachable East). All the books have the usual DnD problem of bing out of print and worth a shitload used though. The Volos guides are tiny books and Not Cheap on Amazon now. Theres also the giant book that spawned the 5e "giants are semi-nordic rune magic people that battle dragons", the connections to Al-Qadim (looked interesting, but I never ended up owning any of it), and the now-defunct places you could immediately connect to other settings that some people here love. (Replace Maztica with Empire of the Petal Throne or whatever...) FR also had some developed stuff around "theres like 5+ types of orcs, and their gods and outlooks are not what you think", as well as the looooong rear end complicated elven stuff (Ive posted about this before to fend off the lazy "elves are racism in DnD" but it comes up every year or so). There was also the "star elves" alternate parallel reality or whatever that I never used, but it was there. For crazy high level poo poo they developed a pre-Mystra setting that allowed for off-the-charts powers. (Myth Drannor and some other box about the pre-Anourach era). 12th level spells, genocide fireballs, +8 swords and ridiculous stuff that would break a "normal" game. FR also tended to really lore-develop magic items, enough that if you kept the special ones semi-rare you could build arcs around them. Same with spellbooks. (This was when the assumption was you found spells as treasure, and finding the Lost Grimoire of Necroface the Mean-Spirited was a big deal that might have political effects that mattered to the group if you wanted to do that stuff.) There were some long history writeups of both items and books to use as hooks. Some were generic, some were not. The "greek-ness" of the FR gods also allowed you to go back and forth between Planescape "unstoppable Powers" and Greek Myth "babys having a tantrum" to change world rules however you wanted. I usually started somewhere undeveloped and generic (pick a town on the map in a spot you like that only has a one-paragraph blurb but is surrounded by bigger hooks) and then had people end up sucked into less normal stuff after the intro games. FR definitely had "kitchen sink" syndrome, but it was only stuck being generic if you stayed Sword Coast/Neverwinter.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:55
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The reason no one pays attention to the "interesting" parts of the Realms is that kitchen-sinking the entire setting is by definition not interesting. Making a setting where you can't stick to a setting is a cop-out. The interesting sourcebooks contain stuff that can and should be plugged into other, better material than Elminster and Drizzt. Throwing Dark Sun into FR and then never writing anything substantive about Dark Sun would be no better. In truth begins and ends with its really boring-rear end parts no matter what else they lazily tack on. I'm sure you could run an entire campaign in Chult or the Unapproachable East, but outside of entries in sourcebooks that receive almost no other attention whatsoever, that's pretty much on you to do. You could make FR interesting by giving every region equal time and doing some worldbuilding (you know, the thing keeping wounded duck properties like 40K afloat), but D&D writers don't really know how or don't have the opportunity to write engrossing setting sourcebooks.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:56
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dont even fink about it posted:I'm sure you could run an entire campaign in Chult or the Unapproachable East, but outside of entries in sourcebooks that receive almost no other attention whatsoever, that's pretty much on you to do. If only there was a whole 5e book set in Chult to steal stuff from.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:09
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dont even fink about it posted:The reason no one pays attention to the "interesting" parts of the Realms is that kitchen-sinking the entire setting is by definition not interesting. Making a setting where you can't stick to a setting is a cop-out. The interesting sourcebooks contain stuff that can and should be plugged into other, better material than Elminster and Drizzt. Throwing Dark Sun into FR and then never writing anything substantive about Dark Sun would be no better. The problem is that TSR (and then WotC) really haven't ever had any good ideas for what to do with the Realms beyond kitchen-sinking it. Even at first publication, TSR was stitching on Doug Niles' Celtic Moonshaes, Gary Gygax's Kara-Tur and so on. Now, Mearls and crew are shoving tons of Greyhawk poo poo into the Realms because they can't be bothered to actually work with the setting. There have been people working on the Realms who can create engaging material and who do do good worldbuilding, but WotC has been all too happy to toss that aside for Princes of the Apocalypse or whatever. It's not any surprise that the 5e adventure that feels the most like the Realms and actually draws from it the most - Storm King's Thunder - is also the one with the most effective and well-done worldbuilding. The people who do work on the Realms are passionate and interested in every area, but WotC was never willing to let them actually do the work to make things fit and promote the setting's diversity well. The current crew isn't actually interested in the Realms at all, and just feel saddled by it, so of course they make bad Realms products. The Realms was originally created by Ed Greenwood for his home campaigns, and those Heartlands are the best detailed and most interesting parts because they've had so much attention paid to them. WotC doesn't want to do them justice or make them interesting, so they lay fallow. They also didn't want people expanding on other parts of the Realms for years, so you end up with a mess of a product line controlled by whatever big marketable image Mearls wants to push this year.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:35
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Kaysette posted:If only there was a whole 5e book set in Chult to steal stuff from. Which brings up the other problem with the "interesting" stuff that people allude to in the FR and D&D settings in general. Half the time the "interesting thing" is just a code word for weird racist poo poo.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:54
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Kaysette posted:If only there was a whole 5e book set in Chult to steal stuff from. good thing the book is cool and fine and definitely not full of racist stuff
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Nov 21, 2017 20:56
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Serf posted:good thing the book is cool and fine and definitely not full of racist stuff 
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Nov 21, 2017 21:03
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Don't worry, I'm sure the actual good writers of FR will be able to fix that eventually - oh. oh. they all got fired. SORRY
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Nov 21, 2017 21:05
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dont even fink about it posted:The reason no one pays attention to the "interesting" parts of the Realms is that kitchen-sinking the entire setting is by definition not interesting. dont even fink about it posted:Making a setting where you can't stick to a setting is a cop-out.
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Nov 21, 2017 21:11
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Serf posted:good thing the book is cool and fine and definitely not full of racist stuff That’s fair, but I’m guessing going back to older books isn’t going to improve that...
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Nov 21, 2017 21:27
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Kaysette posted:That’s fair, but I’m guessing going back to older books isn’t going to improve that... *whistles while kicking my 3e copy of oriental adventures under a table*
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Nov 21, 2017 21:36
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Tell me about racist poo poo in Tomb of Annihilation.
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Nov 21, 2017 21:44
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Someone who has the book, please spill all the sordid racist details.
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Nov 21, 2017 21:52
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we went over this like a hundred pages ago
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Nov 21, 2017 21:53
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It seems like a genuine attempt to be not racist from a bunch of white dudes who don't really understand what is and is not problematic and didn't do much work to check.
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Nov 21, 2017 22:11
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Serf posted:
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Nov 21, 2017 22:15
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We also argued for like 20 over that illustration and I was hoping you wouldn't dredge that specific part back up.
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Nov 21, 2017 22:17
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sometimes instead of loving around you just go for the headshot and get it over with quick
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Nov 21, 2017 22:18
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The argument was because you keep insisting that illustration is some smoking gun of racism when it's just a night hag version of a grandma.
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Nov 21, 2017 22:20
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dont even fink about it posted:Tell me about racist poo poo in Tomb of Annihilation. Just read this.
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Nov 21, 2017 22:30
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i mean i can't help that the picture is racist. i didn't draw it, nor did i look at it and decide that it was worth including in the book that is ostensibly trying to not be racist. i'm not alleging that anyone involved in the creation of the book is racist or had any intent of making something racist. i reckon it happened out of ignorance more than anything else. happens all the time due to the incestuous nature of science fiction/fantasy writing.
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Nov 21, 2017 22:31
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This is much better if you care to read a long thing. Kotaku's is just clickbait: https://pocgamer.com/2017/10/13/tomb-of-annihilation-review-part-1-chult-in-5e/
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Nov 21, 2017 22:33
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:This is much better if you care to read a long thing. Kotaku's is just clickbait: High adventure in Problematica! PS the second one is probably shorter. Edit: OIC it's multi-part.
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Nov 21, 2017 22:38
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the kotaku article is well-written and features interviews with multiple black tradgames people, so i think its pretty well-deserving of a read if you want that perspective
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Nov 21, 2017 22:40
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mango sentinel posted:The argument was because you keep insisting that illustration is some smoking gun of racism when it's just a night hag version of a grandma. I know when I fondly recall my mema I always think about her skull facepaint and prop necklace she got from a 40s adventure serial about cannibals in the darkest congo.
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Nov 21, 2017 22:59
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mango sentinel posted:The argument was because you keep insisting that illustration is some smoking gun of racism when it's just a night hag version of a grandma. Without dipping my toes too far here, just re-think your position any time you are on board with MonsterEnvy and his or her career of posting provably and obviously wrong opinions non-stop in the 5E thread, going back years.
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Nov 21, 2017 23:00
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