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Midig posted:Guys. How can I make a feud between dwarvish clans an interesting aspects for PCs to enjoy without massive dice roll combat or having them talk and talk and talk and talk. Maybe one of the clans goes rogue/dishonorable and makes an ambush attack along with vicious creatures and magic that kills many of them. Then they turn against that clan, but to their suprise they have allied themselves with a dragon, hill giants and other creatures? What's your starting point for the characters going into this? Are they already affiliated with or working with a specific clan or set of clans? Betrayal is always an interesting hook, as you've mentioned, but only if the characters are already invested in their allies in some way (or you motivate them in some other way). One easy way to start the whole thing off would be to have the PCs witness an assassination or the moment in which the fracture between clans occurs, which perhaps they played an unwilling or unknowing part in the lead up to, which then means they are somehow responsible (if you have the right kind of thoughtful, conscientious players)? If i was starting from ground zero with this sort of thing, here's an out of the rear end loose framework for a 1-10 campaign: I'd essentially have them do some fetch quests for clan 1 (the clan that ends up breaking away), which unbeknownst to the players is shoring up clan 1's ability to wage war against clan 2 (levels 1-3 or 4). They then witness the betrayal/assassination/whatever, and get captured by clan 2 (level 5-ish). Clan 2 is like 'you jerks are partially responsible for this, so you're going to help us un-screw the situation,' and they spend the next 5 levels undermining the support clan 1 has from their dragon, giant, orc allies, etc.. from there you can lead into a finale around level 10, where they storm the clanhold of clan 1, or something like that.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:08
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Midig posted:Guys. How can I make a feud between dwarvish clans an interesting aspects for PCs to enjoy without massive dice roll combat or having them talk and talk and talk and talk. Maybe one of the clans goes rogue/dishonorable and makes an ambush attack in a diplomatic meeting along with vicious creatures and magic that kills many of them. Then they turn against that clan, but to their suprise they have allied themselves with a dragon, hill giants and other creatures? The players need to acquire a list of macguffins, some of which are held by one clan and some by the other. Initially they can get some of the items by just doing sidequests, but eventually the clans both start demanding that the party participate in the feud on their side, which obviously precludes getting both sets of macguffins without pissing somebody off. There's too many in each clan for the party to take either side in a straight-up fight, but if they pick a side then they can do some infiltration and sabotage missions (which nets them the items held by the friendly clan) that coincidentally let them gather intel and learn about the heavily-guarded vault where the remaining items they need are. Then when the clan they allied with starts the big fight, the party has a window to go break into the vault, now relatively lightly-guarded as most of the clan is off fighting.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:13
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Midig posted:Guys. How can I make a feud between dwarvish clans an interesting aspects for PCs to enjoy without massive dice roll combat or having them talk and talk and talk and talk. Maybe one of the clans goes rogue/dishonorable and makes an ambush attack in a diplomatic meeting along with vicious creatures and magic that kills many of them. Then they turn against that clan, but to their suprise they have allied themselves with a dragon, hill giants and other creatures? The clan war is mostly ritualized at this point because it's been 200 years or some stupidly long time frame. Instead of murdering each other in the streets, they end up doing extremely ritualized mock combat but refer to it as a serious war. The PCs can get hired as "mercs" for both sides to do a war dance and count coup for easy money, or if they really gently caress it up and actually attack a clan member dwarven society starts to break down as people wonder if they still need the feud and young hotheads want to escalate into a real fight.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:27
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Toshimo posted:Cool, I guess we had to do all this one more loving time. I've only played 5e in a few one shots, my experience is rooted in 3.5. This cycle is going to keep being repeated for ever and ever as long as D&D is both the flag bearer of the hobby and mechanically busted, I 100% promise you. Because that's exactly how I originally got involved in these thread, coming in here like "hey I'm playing D&D but I noticed a bunch of poo poo is broken or barely duct taped together" and having a different set of posters say "lol welcome to D&D". You can pretend that it's some specifically bad batch of posters who would quietly go away if they were just told to "shut the gently caress up and deal with it" (lol when have you ever seen this work anywhere on the entire internet) but I'd recommend making peace with it.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:28
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They are sent in as diplomats because some people believe someone at the kings feast was poisoned. They had different methods to verify that was not the case at the time. Nonetheless, the rumors have spread. The son of the killed dwarf wanted to seize power, by portraying the king as a murderer and oathbreaker and killing his father at the same time. He has also gained unofficial alliances with a dragon, some hill giants and has bound a wraith to his side. His plan is to use hill giants to attack, wraiths to further sow chaos and the dragon to finish the job.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:41
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What's new to talk about with 5e? I'm serious. There is no splatbook treadmill so we can't really talk about new classes, I have never seen a table let me use Unearthed Arcana (I know some of you guys have), the combat rules are pretty basic, no one is interested in coming up with spell combos because this causes a pile of whining about how the incoherent fighter class doesn't work, and you can't really plan gay tiefling drama hour because it's all improv and I tend to start rolling my eyes because I wanted to have a cool tactical fight against interesting opponents instead of slamming into thick bags of HP with no interesting abilities. Monsters? Half the conversation on monsters is how CR was calculated by grams of crack smoked, but I don't see anyone going "hey look at this cool demon dude, how can I use it to challenge my players?" They don't do anything interesting. You don't have stuff like you did in 3.5 where the pit fiend could grant wishes and then you could write a plot around how the king bartered his kingdom to marry the most beautiful woman in the world and now the PCs have to save it from devils. The Players Handbook and Xanathar's are 95% of the available player options and they've been solved. You either crowd control or you burst damage, and burst damage is awful in this edition because CR is fucky and everything has too much HP, so out comes the Hypnotic Pattern and then you focus fire enemies to death one at a time. The only mechanical discussion to be had is making fun of the lack of mechanics or discussing adventure paths, and you can't really do the latter without spoiling half the thread and making it real awkward if you have to play one. Is the Eberron book out yet? Is there enough crunch to analyze? Otherwise I could write some character guides or something if people are interested.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:41
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Writing Character Guides would be a way to leave this particular repetition of the cycle I think. We'd be looping into a different cycle, but there'd probably be less complaining about being in that cycle as compared to this one.
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Nov 19, 2019 03:03
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I am new to D&D and the discussion about how to make dwarf clan war interesting or what people should do as a DM is super interesting. I am already tired of the drive by making GBS threads. Why not make another thread to discuss the mechanics and how they suck and keep this thread for the actual interesting discussion then start handing out probes whenever the bad thing happens again.
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Nov 19, 2019 03:23
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Questions about worldbuilding and GMing style which aren't reliant on 5E mechanics often get posted to the GM Advice thread instead, so you might want to read that one.
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Nov 19, 2019 03:36
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Ok. I plan to make a barbarian who is also a philosopher. Here are some lines: -I rage therefore I am. -One cannot send your axe into the same skull twice -If I rage and no one is around to see it, do my enemies fall beneath my feet? -There is only one good, hatred, and one evil, goblins. Midig fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 03:40
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A barbarian is most useful when he is raging. (The journey of) cleaving a thousand skulls starts with a single swing. The best warrior is always angry. Stop thinking, and end your problems. (Not even altered)
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Nov 19, 2019 04:01
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Midig posted:Ok. I plan to make a barbarian who is also a philosopher. One cannot rage twice in the same encounter.
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Nov 19, 2019 04:17
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All existence is illusory and all things unreal; thus, there is no task that cannot be reduced to cleaving a skull with an axe. All words are arbitrary and all reality is false; thus, there is no object that cannot be your axe, and there is no object that cannot be a skull. To one with axe, no skull cannot be cleaved. To one without axe, no skull can be cleaved. lightrook fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 04:18
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Where does the axe end, and skull begin?
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Nov 19, 2019 04:23
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the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between axe & not-axe. you imbecile. you loving moron"
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Nov 19, 2019 04:36
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e: Never mind; someone already posted a barbarian philosopher line very similar to the one I'd posted here. (Is there not a way to delete my posts? Oh well.)
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Nov 19, 2019 04:37
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ProfessorCirno posted:I mean, it's just that. D&D is absolutely a capitalist game model; the old way of keeping "score" and getting XP was predominantly linked to gp value of treasure retrieved. But the field of popular RPG systems started out fairly impoverished, and I feel like the current market, especially with Kickstarter, is a lot closer to the PC gaming market. There's a few big-game franchises like D&D and Pathfinder that will sell, and there's a whole slew of systems which are probably better designed but are indy games. A very few of them took off, in relative terms, and a bunch get sustained mainly because there's a vocal minority talking them up. Most of the franchises follow the fundamental "get neat stuff" capitalist model. Even a system like Shadowrun will work like that despite its being explicitly "screw the megacorps." But it is reductive, from my perspective, to suggest that "freeforming" being at the center of a game system suggests that the system is unnecessary or that it sucks. I've played several systems that went "minimum rules, maximum freeform" and they have two major issues: firstly, the ability for things to happen that nobody expects is massively reduced; secondly, they play wonderfully with good players, and they fail miserably if you're forced to play with a group that includes some people who aren't so good. All the best RPG systems, IMO, provide a basis upon which to construct your own stories, with enough rules to produce some unexpected results and to ensure everyone has the same basic assumptions about how certain things work. Most of them provide a set of design elements that you can use to drastically speed your campaign planning, which most of us with limited free time require. The "play pretend" model can be an absolute joy or a total disaster. Game systems operate similarly to bureaucratic systems, providing a set of independent rules which allow the poor game manager some leverage to say no to people who are being difficult without making the "no" personal. It isn't foolish to seek systems to help resolve the supposedly-adult equivalent of "bang bang... you missed... did not... did so...etc" and once you introduce a system some people are going to want as much as possible spelled out, while others would prefer a maximally "freeform" system. Claiming that any group that uses house rules or that freeforms things that aren't actually defined within the game system they use could do just as well without any system at all seems much too optimistic to me, and misses all the ways in which certain players take more pleasure in the elements of the system than in telling interesting stories. Nor does system inevitably prevent story. CritRoleStats is people tracking every single drat die rolled during the Critical Role game, so while some of the most interesting things happen without any dice at all, some of them absolutely depend upon them. And while most groups can't improve and role-play as well as professional, trained performers, most players can roll a d20. I like bad puns. I harm nobody in liking bad puns. I am unoffended if someone calls a bad pun I like bad. I am, shall we say, confused if someone tries to argue that bad puns being objectively bad means that it is objectively bad to like them, much less if that person then tries to get me to admit that I am a bad person for liking bad puns. And I would be especially baffled if frequent posters in a forum thread about bad puns kept insisting on arguing with people who post and who like bad puns that they are bad people for liking bad puns. 5E D&D is better than a bad pun. If you love a particular RPG system, why not convince people it is wonderful, instead of constantly claiming that D&D is terrible? Why not do so by telling stories of the wonderful things that happened playing that other system, or zooming in on specific mechanics that work really well? And if, for some reason, you insist on doing that in the 5E thread, why not point to those specific mechanics that work better and make them gifts to 5E DMs and players?
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Nov 19, 2019 04:47
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where in the rules can i find how to run a dating game show for my PCs and a Kobold Sorcerer?
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Nov 19, 2019 04:57
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is absolutely the impression I've gotten from this thread. It's like 25% interesting discussions and 75% a certain subset of the posters repeating the same flamewar over and over again. People seem to be under the delusion that others need to know that they're wrong and have bad opinions. Like. We get it, you have good taste, and others don't. You don't need to repeat it at every opportunity. While we’re talking about collective forgetting, it’s worth pointing out to the newer people in the thread that 5e directly lead to past popular trad games regulars getting harassed to the point of quitting RPGs entirely and having to stop using the Internet at all, the forum repeatedly being blacklisted by the D&D staff for being too critical/RPG cultural marxists, and a lot of us being personally and professionally attacked over 5e. To Trad Games history and a lot of posters, 5e isn’t just a bad game. It’s a personal wound that cost us friends and that is still a blight on the industry in pretty much every respect. If you want some place that will happily politely talk about 5e, that’s fine. But it’s not here. It will never be here. There is way too much hurt here to ever let this slip by.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:01
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Arivia posted:While we’re talking about collective forgetting, it’s worth pointing out to the newer people in the thread that 5e directly lead to past popular trad games regulars getting harassed to the point of quitting RPGs entirely and having to stop using the Internet at all, the forum repeatedly being blacklisted by the D&D staff for being too critical/RPG cultural marxists, and a lot of us being personally and professionally attacked over 5e. To Trad Games history and a lot of posters, 5e isn’t just a bad game. It’s a personal wound that cost us friends and that is still a blight on the industry in pretty much every respect. If you want some place that will happily politely talk about 5e, that’s fine. But it’s not here. It will never be here. There is way too much hurt here to ever let this slip by. ok boomer
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Nov 19, 2019 05:09
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Toshimo posted:It is definitely in the spirit of the thread at this point to mindlessly spam the exact same thing you've said before while adding nothing new, in order to smugly self-congratulate while making the thread nauseously unreadable for yet another page, so yeah, sure, I guess, whatever. Toshimo posted:Are we treading new ground here or did you all animate the dead horse to beat it to death, again? Toshimo posted:Cool, I guess we had to do all this one more loving time. In a row. It's you. Throw a discussion topic out if you wanna change the course of this stream.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:13
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:
Eberron is out tonight. theironjef posted:Throw a discussion topic out if you wanna change the course of this stream. When Eberron unlocks shortly I will answer questions about it if people are interested.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:21
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Arivia posted:While we’re talking about collective forgetting, it’s worth pointing out to the newer people in the thread that 5e directly lead to past popular trad games regulars getting harassed to the point of quitting RPGs entirely and having to stop using the Internet at all, the forum repeatedly being blacklisted by the D&D staff for being too critical/RPG cultural marxists, and a lot of us being personally and professionally attacked over 5e. To Trad Games history and a lot of posters, 5e isn’t just a bad game. It’s a personal wound that cost us friends and that is still a blight on the industry in pretty much every respect. If you want some place that will happily politely talk about 5e, that’s fine. But it’s not here. It will never be here. There is way too much hurt here to ever let this slip by. Are you really arguing that this thread has to suck because you have PTSD from playing pretend with your friends?
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Nov 19, 2019 05:25
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D-Pad posted:I am new to D&D and the discussion about how to make dwarf clan war interesting or what people should do as a DM is super interesting. I am already tired of the drive by making GBS threads. Why not make another thread to discuss the mechanics and how they suck and keep this thread for the actual interesting discussion then start handing out probes whenever the bad thing happens again. There are several other threads where you can talk about world building, story building, and gming without ever having to see anyone criticising D&D mechanics or saying that Mike Mearls is a bad person for supporting and enabling a rapist who harasses people. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 05:27
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D-Pad posted:Are you really arguing that this thread has to suck because you have PTSD from playing pretend with your friends? If that’s your treatment of how this game supported a rapist monster for years and ruined the careers of my friends, you can straight gently caress off with your privileged bullshit.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:31
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Arivia posted:If that’s your treatment of how this game supported a rapist monster for years and ruined the careers of my friends, you can straight gently caress off with your privileged bullshit. I already stated I am a new player so I don't know about any of this and you also didn't mention rape in your post. Glad people like you are out fighting the patriarchy in... *checks notes*.... the Something Awful D&D thread. Thank you for your service.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:35
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Arivia sucks but ZakS and is a legit blight upon the world and Mearls not only enabled, but also aided him.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:40
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D-Pad posted:I already stated I am a new player so I don't know about any of this and you also didn't mention rape in your post. Glad people like you are out fighting the patriarchy in... *checks notes*.... the Something Awful D&D thread. Thank you for your service. You asked m8.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:41
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D-Pad posted:I already stated I am a new player so I don't know about any of this and you also didn't mention rape in your post. Glad people like you are out fighting the patriarchy in... *checks notes*.... the Something Awful D&D thread. Thank you for your service. So at this point, now that you've been informed that the game is tied in pretty tight with some awful poo poo, are you going to go look into it? Or is it gonna be more whimsy about dwarf beards because the year is ... checks notes ... 1988 that can't be right.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:41
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D-Pad posted:I already stated I am a new player so I don't know about any of this and you also didn't mention rape in your post. Glad people like you are out fighting the patriarchy in... *checks notes*.... the Something Awful D&D thread. Thank you for your service. You can gently caress off with this bullshit, too. I do plenty of other activism that isn’t about bad elfgames. Just this week I’ve done three different media interviews as a queer activist after giving a presentation to 300 people at a national conference, then leading a first-of-it’s-kind day of workshops. I am the only person in my country doing what I am doing; there is no one else with my experience doing this advocacy. I am preparing to give another speech this week to honour my dead siblings, and then I’ll be diving into the advising committee for a collection of survivor stories. Tonight I was convincing a provincial legislator to support queer rights in his province. You don’t know loving poo poo. You’re scum. gently caress off forever.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:46
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It’s not like this stuff is ancient history either. Didn’t Mearls just go into hiding for an extended period of time when the latest Zak S poo poo broke?
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Nov 19, 2019 05:49
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That is cool and all, but bottom line is that poo poo talking DnD won't do anything because there is a 98 percent chance we already paid WoTC if you are posting in this thread.
Midig fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 05:50
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Kaysette posted:It’s not like this stuff is ancient history either. Didn’t Mearls just go into hiding for an extended period of time when the latest Zak S poo poo broke? He's popped his head out like a prairie dog a few times, basically running up test balloons to see if he can maybe be allowed to talk about Baldur's Gate videogames. So far the answer seems to be gently caress no he can't.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:50
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theironjef posted:So at this point, now that you've been informed that the game is tied in pretty tight with some awful poo poo, are you going to go look into it? Or is it gonna be more whimsy about dwarf beards because the year is ... checks notes ... 1988 that can't be right. Yes, I will actually. Do you happen to know of any article or the like that covers the whole drama? Sounds like it is probably a lot and spans a lot of time. I'll do some googling in the meantime. Arivia posted:You can gently caress off with this bullshit, too. I do plenty of other activism that isn’t about bad elfgames. Just this week I’ve done three different media interviews as a queer activist after giving a presentation to 300 people at a national conference, then leading a first-of-it’s-kind day of workshops. I am the only person in my country doing what I am doing; there is no one else with my experience doing this advocacy. I am preparing to give another speech this week to honour my dead siblings, and then I’ll be diving into the advising committee for a collection of survivor stories. Tonight I was convincing a provincial legislator to support queer rights in his province. I too have black friends.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:52
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D-Pad posted:Yes, I will actually. Do you happen to know of any article or the like that covers the whole drama? Sounds like it is probably a lot and spans a lot of time. I'll do some googling in the meantime. Ask who Zak S and RPG Pundit are, and their relationship with Mike Mearls, in the TG industry thread.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:58
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D-Pad posted:I too have black friends. What the gently caress have you done for marginalized people?
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Nov 19, 2019 05:59
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D-Pad posted:I already stated I am a new player so I don't know about any of this and you also didn't mention rape in your post. Glad people like you are out fighting the patriarchy in... *checks notes*.... the Something Awful D&D thread. Thank you for your service. D-Pad posted:I too have black friends. Please gently caress off. You have no clue what you’re talking about.
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Nov 19, 2019 06:03
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I'd like to apologize for my post above btw. As I lacked an understanding of that post, which without said context seemed completely overwrought.
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Nov 19, 2019 06:05
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Dexo posted:I'd like to apologize for my post above btw. Apology accepted.
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Nov 19, 2019 06:06
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D-Pad posted:Yes, I will actually. Do you happen to know of any article or the like that covers the whole drama? Sounds like it is probably a lot and spans a lot of time. I'll do some googling in the meantime. Sure, here's a polygon article about the guy that needed his name removed from 5e books: https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/20/18232181/dungeons-dragons-zak-smith-sabbath-abuse-accusations-players-handbook Now, this is gonna look like they cleaned up the problem. But the stain was already there. This article doesn't include a few key details, like how it was Mike Mearls (something something second in command or so I forget) who contracted this guy (and also Pundit, a different sort of rear end in a top hat) to consult, despite being warned a HUGE amount on twitter and via email and forums and stuff. He didn't just dismiss those warnings out of hand, he said "Hey, email me (obviously not a Hasbro PR person or something, just me, a loving guy) with any problems you had." He them sent Zak some messages about how whiners were complaining about him, and reportedly also sent some of the emails (including addresses) to Zak for whatever he wanted to do with them. After all the poo poo broke, yes, WOTC released the statement in the Polygon article. Mearls himself also posted, with the most mealymouthed post anyone has ever posted, including guys who posted "I have a mouthful of meal right now!" He basically downgraded Zak to the title of "A certain playtester I barely knew" instead of "Consultant and apparent friend Zak S." So yeah. Plenty of details, plenty of problems. For me, not worth it to support this game, and I have yet to have given the 5e era of WOTC any of my money. But mileage may vary. theironjef fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 06:08
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