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mike12345 posted:I'm looking for a kind of bestiary/monster compendium that show various alien species, with illustrations. System doesn't matter. Is there one that stands out/ you'd recommend? Find the species pictures for Stellaris, they're pretty cool.
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Mar 31, 2019 12:03
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mike12345 posted:I'm looking for a kind of bestiary/monster compendium that show various alien species, with illustrations. System doesn't matter. Is there one that stands out/ you'd recommend? They're mostly humanoid so I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but the various Star Wars RPGs have had pretty prolific alien species guides. WotC's d20 version, Ultimate Alien Anthology, is probably the best for your stated purpose, since it collects all the poo poo from WEG's old books and more, and has largely good full color illustrations for nearly everything. I don't know how cheap it would be to pick that up, or to dig up versions for other Star Wars games that would still contain quite a bit of stuff.
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Mar 31, 2019 12:42
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mike12345 posted:I'm looking for a kind of bestiary/monster compendium that show various alien species, with illustrations. System doesn't matter. Is there one that stands out/ you'd recommend? Starfinder’s Alien Archive has pretty high production values.
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Mar 31, 2019 14:19
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Len posted:I'd be okay with a crash course. I can find summaries of all the different creeds and some real basic summaries but I can't really find anything that covers the plot. I think it's hard finding a summary because there is so much metaplot that it would be novella-length, at minimum.
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Mar 31, 2019 15:13
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Arivia posted:Starfinder’s Alien Archive has pretty high production values. yeah this looks cool and fun
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Mar 31, 2019 15:34
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sexpig by night posted:I'm not advocating adversarial relationships between the PC and GM, but if you have a one shot coming up there are few better results to get than the soft, exhausted, sigh of a woman who's been told you're playing a frog-person Monk variant that lets you shoot DBZ ki blasts and you're name is "Froku" I'm just gonna be boring and do Frog from Chrono Trigger.
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Mar 31, 2019 16:07
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That Old Tree posted:They're mostly humanoid so I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but the various Star Wars RPGs have had pretty prolific alien species guides. WotC's d20 version, Ultimate Alien Anthology, is probably the best for your stated purpose, since it collects all the poo poo from WEG's old books and more, and has largely good full color illustrations for nearly everything. I don't know how cheap it would be to pick that up, or to dig up versions for other Star Wars games that would still contain quite a bit of stuff. Wookiepedia probably has most of this stuff, online and free, too.
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Mar 31, 2019 16:16
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The Alien Compendiums from Alternity are great if you’re into that system’s art style.
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Mar 31, 2019 17:39
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mike12345 posted:I'm looking for a kind of bestiary/monster compendium that show various alien species, with illustrations. System doesn't matter. Is there one that stands out/ you'd recommend? Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials is probably the classic example, All Tomorrows would also be a good choice
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Mar 31, 2019 22:27
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drrockso20 posted:Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials is probably the classic example I got that from the Science Fiction Book Club.
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Mar 31, 2019 22:32
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dwarf74 posted:That's an oldie but a goodie. He also did a fantasy version but I've never had a chance to read that one
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Mar 31, 2019 23:44
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Elfgames posted:Don't do this, Jesus
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Apr 1, 2019 00:18
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dwarf74 posted:That's an oldie but a goodie. Same. I'm glad I didn't know what a credit score was back in the 90s.
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Apr 1, 2019 00:31
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mike12345 posted:I'm looking for a kind of bestiary/monster compendium that show various alien species, with illustrations. System doesn't matter. Is there one that stands out/ you'd recommend?
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Apr 1, 2019 01:02
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Oof I think I'm hitting some kind of DMing burnout. For years I've said, wouldn't it be nice if I had some local players, now I've finally opened some fruitful contact venues and find I can honestly not be arsed to put all this effort in for strangers. Right now I'd rather stick to my 1.5-monthly sessions with my old RPG friends from across the country. It's all the bloody prepwork that gets me. I've spent a whole week doing maps and thinking up plot turns after work, and it's fun doing that but I was swearing under my breath the whole time and I don't think it was a healthy week. That, and as much as I love and cherish 4E I think I've eventually become tired of the whole D&D fantasy thing, especially if people expect me to play it straight which with my regulars I haven't done in years. e: also all these potential players are first year university dudes and it gives me anxiety when my table is a sausage party, my group of regulars has been 50% chicks from day one and I guess I've gotten used to it. e2: in quite possibly related news I have absolutely got to stop reading the bloody RPG stackexchange because the answers and site culture are top notch but the questions are grognards.txt and I think reading that every day is, at the very least, a contributing factor My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Apr 1, 2019 |
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Apr 1, 2019 09:00
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I can't even imagine playing anything "straight", let alone D&D fantasy. Like, I can't think of a single group that both lasted >3 sessions and didn't turn every possible scene into some flavor of dark comedy. It's not enough that we beat the bad guys; we must make them feel stupid for doing their plan in the first place and also feel stupid for fighting us.
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Apr 1, 2019 13:49
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Even if you win you still end up smeared in magic grease and summoned chickens? Had a brainwave that instead of a continuous 4E game that saps my energy, I could run 13th Age one-shots with no fixed group constellation from published mini-adventures, and I'm actually kind of enthusiastic about that. If a group of regulars emerges we can still say, hey, let's meet up more often for a campaign.
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Apr 1, 2019 14:54
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13A has (had?) an organized play program that released a lot of adventures, but I don’t know whether you can still request the materials from Pelgrane. Just don’t let anyone play a Barbarian, Ranger, or Paladin without multiclassing.
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Apr 1, 2019 15:40
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I know those, we played a few. They're actually not that great for one-shots, it turns out. Most of them are intended for 2-8 sessions. And I didn't even enjoy them much, either. I was thinking more of the iconic battle scene books. I used one as an intro for our Stone Thief game, and it was pretty good.
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Apr 1, 2019 15:49
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I ran 13A organized play for a few years, and yeah the adventures are a mixed bag. Some of them were very obviously low-effort "oh poo poo we need something tomorrow" things that were just...there. Also I'd like to point out that in all that time nobody ever multi-classed, or felt the need to.
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Apr 1, 2019 15:59
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There was this super cool segment in the Wild Wood one where the party got trapped in a time loop, and it was something like the 4th out of 6 sessions, with the next being "you run into some merchants but they're actually bandits." I mean how do you not see that a time loop is the climax of the whole adventure and you can't pull "and then, fuckin' bandits" out of a hat. Hmm. You know, since these adventures all have to be able to be played with changing players from session to session, I guess nothing would keep me from cutting them up into their session chunks and running the parts as standalone adventures with new intros and outros. Ditching the bad ones, too.
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Apr 1, 2019 16:53
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My Lovely Horse posted:There was this super cool segment in the Wild Wood one where the party got trapped in a time loop, and it was something like the 4th out of 6 sessions, with the next being "you run into some merchants but they're actually bandits." I mean how do you not see that a time loop is the climax of the whole adventure and you can't pull "and then, fuckin' bandits" out of a hat. just bald-faced steal the end of lord of the rings with the bandits thing? Have it be former big bads reduced to just common brigands and be more about the heroes training others to stand up to them? Or have it be a comically easy fight as a victory lap for how strong the players are now and how broken the bad guys are?
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Apr 1, 2019 17:14
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If you're burning out on 4e, maybe try something that doesn't focus as much on combat? One of the PBTA games is a nice refresher.
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Apr 1, 2019 17:23
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That time loop section of the Wild Wood adventure was a blast; ran that for my Wednesday group about 4 years ago. The party Rogue managed to survive the timeline reset twice so at one point they were three versions of him with me playing two. He killed one of his previous selves to get an extra magic sword.
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Apr 1, 2019 17:25
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Yawgmoth posted:I can't even imagine playing anything "straight", let alone D&D fantasy. Like, I can't think of a single group that both lasted >3 sessions and didn't turn every possible scene into some flavor of dark comedy. It's not enough that we beat the bad guys; we must make them feel stupid for doing their plan in the first place and also feel stupid for fighting us. My DnD games always end up with some flavour of serious. There might be loads of comedy but the players do make an effort of roleplaying, staying in character, caring about the fictional setting and sometimes there's some pathos and insight. Ironically, my Vampire games with the same folks end up with everything going off-rails and absurdist comedy
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Apr 1, 2019 18:21
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My Lovely Horse posted:e2: in quite possibly related news I have absolutely got to stop reading the bloody RPG stackexchange because the answers and site culture are top notch but the questions are grognards.txt and I think reading that every day is, at the very least, a contributing factor I'm there too! I just ignore all the dnd questions and answer the ones about the indie stuff I know. ...so, maybe one or two a week.
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Apr 1, 2019 18:55
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I made a really concerted effort to run a sincere horror game once, and by the third session the players were playing golf with a giant ball of skeleton chefs and the kitchen's open fire pit. I actually count that transition as a bit of a failure because there was basically no warning it was going to go from one to the other and it happened because I was incredibly tired and just fell into the first thing I could think of as a GM; I think I did better balancing the two tones in a later dungeon that same campaign.
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Apr 1, 2019 19:19
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drrockso20 posted:Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials is probably the classic example, All Tomorrows would also be a good choice This is available on archive.org, supercool https://archive.org/details/BarlowesGuideToExtraterrestrialsByWayneBarloweAndIanSummersStarbrite
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Apr 1, 2019 20:15
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Pacho posted:My DnD games always end up with some flavour of serious. There might be loads of comedy but the players do make an effort of roleplaying, staying in character, caring about the fictional setting and sometimes there's some pathos and insight. Ironically, my Vampire games with the same folks end up with everything going off-rails and absurdist comedy
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Apr 1, 2019 21:15
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mike12345 posted:This is available on archive.org, supercool
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Apr 1, 2019 21:28
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Serious/silly is a good take on the topic and by no means stop, but what I meant by "play it straight" was more "fighters and wizards fighting other fighters and wizards and sometimes a dragon or a lich in medieval Europe" vs. my own approach of heavily focusing on left-wing political statements, hokey drug-fueled vision quests and doing fun D&D tradition/game mechanics/metagame mashups like fighting the actual dice you're using in the form of modrons.
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Apr 1, 2019 21:33
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sounds like the problem is you're running good games and considering running bad ones, op
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Apr 1, 2019 21:44
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My Lovely Horse posted:left-wing political statements, hokey drug-fueled vision quests and doing fun D&D tradition/game mechanics/metagame mashups like fighting the actual dice you're using in the form of modrons. Are you accepting preorders?
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Apr 1, 2019 21:45
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I don't always work in leftist political stuff, but I'll be damned if I didn't turn the orcs into the righteous soviets, tearing down the cruel noble class in shadow of the demon lord
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Apr 1, 2019 21:48
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Political commentary and humor on a game should be subtle, not tacked on. Making it a soapbox or something impossible to take seriously are some of the worst signs of storytelling.
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Apr 1, 2019 21:52
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Plutonis posted:Political commentary and humor on a game should be subtle, not tacked on. Making it a soapbox or something impossible to take seriously are some of the worst signs of storytelling. Good commentary doesn't need to be subtle, just competently written. It is in fact perfectly acceptable to have blatant political statements in works without that undermining their literary quality. The fact that hacks aren't subtle does not mean that everything unsubtle is hackwork.
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Apr 1, 2019 22:06
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also I'm pretty sure playing the setting straight in SotDL and going with "the military slave race that threw off its bonds and led a coup against an emperor who inherited his title are an evil force of chaos being manipulated by the world destroyer" is a much shittier take and more hack-ish political statement
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Apr 1, 2019 23:10
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emperor drudge did nothing wrong
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Apr 1, 2019 23:14
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Serf posted:emperor drudge did nothing wrong 
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Apr 1, 2019 23:40
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My last SotDL game had Drudge as well-intentioned pragmatist intent on keeping the throne and building a better empire, but fully aware that he needed to let his people get a measure of revenge if he wanted to be able to keep them together, and if that meant a few tens of thousands of humans being murdered or dying in the chaos, no sleep would be lost. For what it's worth, the game repeatedly calls the orcs' uprising justified and the empire a lovely place. Any interpretation where he's some flavour of good guy instead of a generic evil savage is canon, IMO, especially since he's way more interesting this way. My PC was an apostate orc priest of Grimnir tasked by Drudge himself to find a way of curing the corruption inflicted on them. It was a cool oneshot. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 00:09
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