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I'm from Lake Geneva and I say, kill em all! remusclaw fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Dec 31, 2018 02:14
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Capfalcon posted:Don't get me wrong, Planescape is probably THE most fascinating settings to read, but... I've had a hell of a time figuring out what to do with it, much less explaining it to even moderately invested players. Kai Tave posted:It's hardly an original statement but Planescape seems like a setting that would work a lot better with a game other than D&D. Tuxedo Catfish posted:The key points of Planescape are that the planes are shaped by belief, the default setting is a cosmopolitan city at the center of all realities, and it's got weird quasi-British punk stylings. It's a good setting for "travelogue" style campaigns, and the ideal character is someone obsessively defined by their ideology. You sure can do all kinds of roleplay poo poo with planescape such as factional politics or idealist travelogues or or or all kinds of other things that don't work at all with the D&D system. Or you can use all that as a backdrop for your interdimensional heist team who spend a third of their game time searching for portals/keys/information and casing a place; a third infiltrating the place, stealing the loot, and inevitably betraying or being betrayed by employers etc; and the final third escaping from the various people they've pissed off after it all goes to the place two spaces to the right of hell and one up. "Oh no, Moroseville is sliding into the Grey Emo because the Lord Of The One To The Left Of Hell -2 To Fireball and the Greater Society Of Not Picking Your Nose At Dinner (New Schism) are fighting! Whatever shall we do?" "Moroseville? That the place with the expensive clocks? Could we nick some of those while everyone's panicking about it?" I mean, I fuckin' love Planescape, but you gotta lean into stuff you can do with D&D if you wanna play D&D in it. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Dec 31, 2018 02:45
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Yeah, Planescape is like Ravenloft: a massive, excellent setting but shockingly unsuited to D&D. Play Starjammer
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Dec 31, 2018 02:52
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Nuns with Guns posted:Yeah, Planescape is like Ravenloft: a massive, excellent setting but shockingly unsuited to D&D. Nah there's a bunch of D&D stuff to do in Planescape, it's just that the printed material is shockingly bad at pointing it out and manages to imply that you should be playing an introspective group who are working through differences in their personal philosophies rather than either a) A group of clueless primes being manipulated or b) A bunch of competent Sigil-ites who are either blades-for-hire or all working directly for the same faction, who get sent to do D&D stuff in a different exotic locale each week. Like, literally, you do different dungeons/wildernesses as you normally would but they're in weirdo locations like "the cold hell" or "the one plane that's just a single great big tree tree" or "a ball of crystallized fire floating in the XZAOS STUFF". Then you have downtime and you chat to a dude who's the embodiment of exactly half way between chaotic good neutral and neutral good chaotic but you can call him Big Stevo and he wants to sell you a toenail clipper that can take you to the entrance to the treasure labyrinth of Nvwl'pstrphy and next thing you know oh poo poo betrayal it's taken you to the prison planet of the demon prince you stole the macguffin from, nothing for it but to fight your way out. And, like, memorable campaign, you know?
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Dec 31, 2018 03:05
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AlphaDog posted:You sure can do all kinds of roleplay poo poo with planescape such as factional politics or idealist travelogues or or or all kinds of other things that don't work at all with the D&D system. I nominate Dark Sun as best original D&D setting.
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Dec 31, 2018 03:24
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Wasn't there a thing in the Complete Book of Clerics where you could worship like trees or Law or Yourself and still get spell levels?
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Dec 31, 2018 03:25
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Nuns with Guns posted:Play Starjammer This is good advice Starjammer is loving great
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Dec 31, 2018 03:34
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Starjammer is my second fave setting. Has there been any rumbling about that possibly getting a reboot in 5e? I can't even remember if it got a 4e or 3.5e official redux.
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Dec 31, 2018 03:44
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It's too bad Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Spelljammer were D&D settings, because now we will never see any of them ever again. They're not popular enough within D&D to get more than cursory treatment, and will never be released in a system-agnostic way until the sweet release of
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Dec 31, 2018 03:48
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4e had some soft spelljammer stuff incorporated with the default setting when the books talked about the astral sea and spelljamming between the various afterlife planets
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Dec 31, 2018 03:50
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There's always Starfinder 
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Dec 31, 2018 03:51
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Planescape heists sound fun. You can run cons on towns out on the planes to get them shifted into the Outlands or an adjacent plane where robbing the rulers is easier 
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Dec 31, 2018 04:26
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Capfalcon posted:I mean, sure, it has sample adventures, but it doesn't lend itself to simple explanation to players. I've tried explaining to at least three different groups and I've gotten nothing but blank looks in return. It does not lend itself to simple characters and easy start ups. I mean, Planarch Heroes pretty much files the name off and seems to get on fine. "You live in a city at the nexus of all realities, you tumbled in one day (or were maybe born here, lucky you) and are currently one bad day from begging in the streets, and right now the only thing to do is pubcrawl until you find someone willing to drop coin on you in exchange for what they want. You recently finished up :roll on the random mission chart: and that went :pick some volunteer to dice for it: and now you're heading back to your squat. Tell me who's willing to rent to you and roll to see if you managed to convince them not to sublet your restroom to those cultists of the cannibal blood god waving all that red gold around."
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Dec 31, 2018 04:29
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Nessus posted:I nominate Dark Sun as best original D&D setting. Easily.
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Dec 31, 2018 04:35
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homullus posted:It's too bad Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Spelljammer were D&D settings, because now we will never see any of them ever again. They're not popular enough within D&D to get more than cursory treatment, and will never be released in a system-agnostic way until the sweet release of Man I am so glad you said Spelljammer. At first everyone was saying Starjammer and I was like "No man I'm sure that's the X-Team that Cyclops' dad is on." All doubting myself. The thing about Planescape is that it was built with level progression in tiers in mind. Low level characters are supposed to bum around the relatively safe Sigil and do gangland adventure stuff. Minor tasks for the factions and fighting brain rats in the razor hedges. Then when you gain a few levels you're supposed to go play around in the Plane of Concordant Opposition and stop little hamlets from sliding into Hell and stuff. Maybe fight a Cambion. Then all of a sudden you're high level and running around having weird planar adventures same as most parties but now you've got a fun cockney base. It was neat.
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Dec 31, 2018 04:39
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I've been playing too much Starfinder clearly
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Dec 31, 2018 04:41
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any starfinder is too much starfinder
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Dec 31, 2018 04:46
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homullus posted:It's too bad Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Spelljammer were D&D settings, because now we will never see any of them ever again. They're not popular enough within D&D to get more than cursory treatment, and will never be released in a system-agnostic way until the sweet release of The other ones I can agree with, but Eberron's always been pretty popular. It had a lot of material in 3e that's still mostly relevant setting-wise even now, had a couple books in 4e, and there's the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron for 5e. That, and D&DO is set in Eberron, for what that's worth.
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Dec 31, 2018 04:58
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^^^Yea, I'd argue Eberron is up there with Forgotten Realms as being considered part of 'default' D&D. It gets tons of love and seems to be a popular setting still.S.J. posted:any starfinder is too much starfinder I dunno, my group seems to gel better with PF/SF than we do with D&D, probably because we're all of the age where 3.5 was 'our' D&D all so it's just 'this feels most like what we associate with D&D'. Which, since we're in the industry thread is something I wondered about. How does things actually shake out when it comes to 'Pathfinder vs D&D'? Like, I seem to remember back in the day PF actually outsold D&D during the 4e poo poo but I have no idea if the 5e release changed things. It feels like D&D still has the lock on pop culture with tons of actual plays and poo poo like Idle Champions and all but PF still seems to be doing well. Is it just a thing where it's 'it doesn't really matter if McDonalds or Burger King is 'number 1' both are making bank and doing just fine'? sexpig by night fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Dec 31, 2018 05:10
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Kwyndig posted:Wasn't there a thing in the Complete Book of Clerics where you could worship like trees or Law or Yourself and still get spell levels? I mean, Forgotten Realms is basically the only place where Clerics Must get their power from a god. It's also the place where both Druids and Rangers also get their powers from their gods, and not Nature. The 3.5 books stated obliquely that you didn't really need to worship a god to get your divine power, you just needed to get your DM to sign off on your domains. The only class that absolutely had to have a God to Follow was the Divine Mind, and literally no one cares about that.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:22
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sexpig by night posted:Which, since we're in the industry thread is something I wondered about. How does things actually shake out when it comes to 'Pathfinder vs D&D'? Like, I seem to remember back in the day PF actually outsold D&D during the 4e poo poo but I have no idea if the 5e release changed things. It feels like D&D still has the lock on pop culture with tons of actual plays and poo poo like Idle Champions and all but PF still seems to be doing well. Is it just a thing where it's 'it doesn't really matter if McDonalds or Burger King is 'number 1' both are making bank and doing just fine'? PF outsold D&D briefly, during what was an anemic release schedule from WotC. They've otherwise never overtaken D&D for any meaningful length of time, doubly so since 5e came out, which has proven to be pretty popular. But it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. As you say, both are doing fine financially (or so we can assume, anyway), and both have their niche within this niche of a hobby.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:23
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According to stuff like ICv2, which got cited by a bunch of 3.x diehards for arguments against 4E (the edition wars were bad), PF didn't eclipse 4E until the latter had largely run its course. And metrics like ICv2 can't cover digital offerings like DDI which from all accounts was a tremendous return on investment for WotC/Hasbro. If 4E had a longer supplement line than got allowed by Mearls et al. that shift might have happened even later. I dunno about PF vs. 5E sales these days, but at the least 5E's staff and print budgets have been slashed to hilariously small levels while PF still prints supplements and adventure lines.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:24
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NGDBSS posted:According to stuff like ICv2, which got cited by a bunch of 3.x diehards for arguments against 4E (the edition wars were bad), PF didn't eclipse 4E until the latter had largely run its course. And metrics like ICv2 can't cover digital offerings like DDI which from all accounts was a tremendous return on investment for WotC/Hasbro. If 4E had a longer supplement line than got allowed by Mearls et al. that shift might have happened even later. I was tracking the Amazon selling lists when those were still around, and for basically the entire life of 4e it outsold every other TT RPG by quite a bit if we're just looking at the top 20 spots. They had an aggressive release schedule and a very reasonable price point on all the books. ICv2 "data" is hot garbage for anyone interested: they collect no actual data, and their source consists of Alliance Games Distributors and that's it. They never actually talked to any of the other distributors or any actual stores to get info about products.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:29
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The tipping point of where Pathfinder finally overtook 4th Edition, was after 4th Edition's Essentials line of books came out. Essentials represented a 180-degree turn on 4th Edition's design, where under the leadership of Mike Mearls, most of the game took on a veneer of being more like 3rd Edition, where the martial classes have far fewer powers, where the Wizard can swap spells willy-nilly, where treasure tables were randomly rolled again, and healing potions completely undermined the entire Healing Surge concept. It seems like the goal was to "win back" people who were playing either 3rd Edition or Pathfinder, but people who were already doing that were so sour on the idea of 4th Edition that this was a pandering ploy that didn't work, and in the meanwhile people who already liked 4th Edition for what it was were frustrated at the sharp divergence. Combine this with retailers getting scared off by a repeat of the 3.0-to-3.5 fiasco, and you finally see Pathfinder overtake 4th Edition (in a single retail poll) in the early 2010's.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:30
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Hard figures don't really exist, but it's pretty clear that D&D 5e is pretty firmly top dog these days. My impression is that Pathfinder is second place, but is slowly losing its momentum. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the game line didn't eventually stagnate and fall apart over the next decade or two.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:33
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NGDBSS posted:I dunno about PF vs. 5E sales these days, but at the least 5E's staff and print budgets have been slashed to hilariously small levels while PF still prints supplements and adventure lines. Yea that was what made me wonder, PF is churning books out (and we can argue if that itself is a bad idea and how many of these books are worth the cost and all) but D&D's team seems to be a skeleton crew. I can't imagine Paizo is doing better than WotC with their poo poo like DDI and all that seem to be huge wins, though. I'm sure it's gonna be a neat post-mortem years from now to compare the different approaches.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:34
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S.J. posted:I was tracking the Amazon selling lists when those were still around, and for basically the entire life of 4e it outsold every other TT RPG by quite a bit if we're just looking at the top 20 spots. They had an aggressive release schedule and a very reasonable price point on all the books. ICv2 "data" is hot garbage for anyone interested: they collect no actual data, and their source consists of Alliance Games Distributors and that's it. They never actually talked to any of the other distributors or any actual stores to get info about products.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:36
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Slimnoid posted:The other ones I can agree with, but Eberron's always been pretty popular. It had a lot of material in 3e that's still mostly relevant setting-wise even now, had a couple books in 4e, and there's the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron for 5e. That, and D&DO is set in Eberron, for what that's worth. The real missed opportunity was for there to be a good Eberron video game back when it was more prominent. DDO has always been one of many interchangeable "okay I guess" MMOs and there was an extremely forgettable and not-very-good RTS of all things. Unfortunately Eberron was a bit too early to really hit the CRPG revival wave.
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Dec 31, 2018 05:46
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let's all get sad for a moment about the 4e eberron video game we could've gotten but didn't
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Dec 31, 2018 05:50
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Kai Tave posted:Unfortunately Eberron was a bit too early to really hit the CRPG revival wave. I thought you wanted a good video game
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Dec 31, 2018 05:55
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Slimnoid posted:I thought you wanted a good video game
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Dec 31, 2018 06:04
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poe and d:os were cool, still need to play their sequels
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Dec 31, 2018 06:06
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Slimnoid posted:I thought you wanted a good video game The Divinity games are pretty good though.
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Dec 31, 2018 06:33
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joke: Eberron in the Infinity engine broke: Eberron in the NWN engine woke: Eberron in the PoE engine bespoke: Eberron in the XCOM engine
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Dec 31, 2018 06:47
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Kai Tave posted:The Divinity games are pretty good though. Now imagine how good they'd be if they weren't stuck in the constraints of the humorless slog that cRPGs are. Shitposting aside, I'd much rather that the default answer for an Eberron game (or really, any D&D setting turned into a video game) just not be a cRPG. I think that wouldn't really work with the kind of two-fisted fantasy pulp action that Eberron likes to portray itself as. Doing anything other than a cRPG or turn-based game would require a lot more time, effort, and money than a D&D video game could really get, but ideally it'd be something akin to the Uncharted series, with its focus exploration and combat and teamwork. Let me swing across a chasm as a warforged, only to punch out a guard that my shifter friend distracted, followed by both of us rolling on top of a speeding lightning rail in a frantic getaway from a bunch of pissed-off halflings riding dinosaurs.
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Dec 31, 2018 06:54
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Slimnoid posted:. Let me swing across a chasm as a warforged, only to punch out a guard that my shifter friend distracted, followed by both of us rolling on top of a speeding lightning rail in a frantic getaway from a bunch of pissed-off halflings riding dinosaurs.
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Dec 31, 2018 07:04
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RudeCat posted:That's sounding a bit like Warframe. Warframe's an entirely different beast and wouldn't really be suitable for anything other than Warframe.
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Dec 31, 2018 07:08
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sexpig by night posted:Yea that was what made me wonder, PF is churning books out (and we can argue if that itself is a bad idea and how many of these books are worth the cost and all) but D&D's team seems to be a skeleton crew. I can't imagine Paizo is doing better than WotC with their poo poo like DDI and all that seem to be huge wins, though. I'm sure it's gonna be a neat post-mortem years from now to compare the different approaches. I think WotC is definitely ahead at this point. 5e isn’t a good game but it’s really grabbed the market. It is worth remembering that Paizo has significant income that doesn’t sell through the channel too, however. They sell all of their gaming products as subscriptions with significant subscription incentives, and those subscriptions are a huge part of their income. We don’t know how much, but they have publically stated that subscriptions make up the majority of their business. They have canceled product lines that no longer work at the subscription level (there are no longer standalone Pathfinder adventures because the subscriptions weren’t selling.) That’s how Paizo actually gets away with selling and doing so much. They have actual audience numbers and sales for their product lines. New things are always a leap, but they know better than anyone else how many guaranteed sales they have for Outhouses of Golarion and if it’s worth producing more products of that type. They have a foundational, guaranteed sales audience like no one else in the industry. It’s quite smart.
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Dec 31, 2018 07:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:joke: Eberron in the Infinity engine
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Dec 31, 2018 07:28
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Slimnoid posted:Warframe's an entirely different beast and wouldn't really be suitable for anything other than Warframe.
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Dec 31, 2018 07:33
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