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I hadn't listened to an Actual Play in what must've been over a year but I tried one again for a change of pace and "The Contractors" by Roleplaying Public Radio was so good, just a top-shelf Delta Green scenario. Thanks to Ross and the team for continuing to make content, I really enjoyed it. It's also nice that DG APs tend to be one-shots so I don't have to worry about walking into a long campaign where I'm a dozen episodes behind.
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Feb 24, 2021 10:38
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aldantefax posted:Are there any RPG systems which focus on resource mechanics regarding wilderness survival other than, uh, the old Wilderness Survival splat book for D&D? There's Perilous Wilds for Dungeon World that I remember finding interesting, also helped by how much I like the illustrations in that company's books.
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Feb 24, 2021 20:22
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aldantefax posted:Are there any RPG systems which focus on resource mechanics regarding wilderness survival other than, uh, the old Wilderness Survival splat book for D&D? Ryuutama? Mind you it's in something of a pastoral nature hike mode, but it does a pretty good job of it. One party member has the sole responsiblity of just reading the map.
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Feb 24, 2021 21:07
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These are all great suggestions. Just for further context I'm in exploration mode for looking at different systems of resource management for wilderness travel and journeying for use in the West Marches / Wild Crawl thread and to see what might be better - crunchiness, granularity, and all that good stuff are good. I am also running not-Ryuutama in BYOB right now (or will be starting next week) so I'll be probably cracking open the book again to look at the party roles in greater detail again for mapmakers and stuff like that. I was playing Valheim recently and there's what I feel is a really intentional design decision to not have a shared map in multiplayer, which means you generally need to communicate with one another for major landmarks and interesting finds. I think this is also related to more old school design philosophy, since I was also by chance looking at the old thread for Final Fantasy XI and people were reminiscing about how that game was unforgiving (some might say crappy) enough in its original release to force people to group together and get out into the world with no easy fast travel, no instanced anything, experience loss including de-leveling, the whole shebang. For a certain kind of player this is interesting, but the mechanics behind it are work exploring for informing future design, since I kind of miss it (and I did go back to play classic FFXI awhile ago as well as EQ1 classic etc. where these design decisions are commonplace). Anyway, keep those suggestions coming and I'll very likely turn that into some kind of effort post in the future in the other thread. Cheers!
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Feb 24, 2021 21:42
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aldantefax posted:These are all great suggestions. Just for further context I'm in exploration mode for looking at different systems of resource management for wilderness travel and journeying for use in the West Marches / Wild Crawl thread and to see what might be better - crunchiness, granularity, and all that good stuff are good. Check out Strike!'s Survival mini-expansion for some content and subsystems focusing on that sort of stuff.
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Feb 25, 2021 03:34
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 Final 12 hours of my Morkus und Borgus Kickstarter for EVERY GOD WILL FALL. We're at $661, which is almost a metal number!
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Feb 25, 2021 15:59
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I know people were waiting for this: the Sentinel Comics RPG is finally up on DriveThru.
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Feb 25, 2021 16:40
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Evil Mastermind posted:I know people were waiting for this: the Sentinel Comics RPG is finally up on DriveThru. I genuinely super like this game and where it falls on the narrative-to-cromch scale, you should check it out if you want a good Supers game that's decently mechanical but not bloated.
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Feb 25, 2021 17:55
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:I genuinely super like this game and where it falls on the narrative-to-cromch scale, you should check it out if you want a good Supers game that's decently mechanical but not bloated. Haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I've been reading the hell out of it the last 2 days and can confirm.
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Feb 25, 2021 18:42
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Just placing the request here to plant a seed: If you've got a Sentinel Comics' campaign that's running into 15+ sessions, please report back! I baled on two campaigns as GM because I couldn't make it work for me, and I want to hear about successes. The character generation is some "best in class" business, and I love its pacing, so I'd love to chat with someone who has run it a lot. (If there are already people out there who have run a long campaign with it, I am ready to talk now.)
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Feb 25, 2021 19:43
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Quotin' myself here; I asked this over in A/T's Stupid/Small Questions and got referred here.JacquelineDempsey posted:I have a small/stupid question about D&D. I don't play, but as a kid in the 80's, my library had all the books, which I checked out because DRAGONS ARE COOL, so I have an absurd amount of useless knowledge about a game I never played. I'm curious if anyone's DM'ed a totally underwater campaign, and if so, how'd you do it?
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Feb 25, 2021 20:53
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There’s the famous trap in Return to the Tomb of Horrors where the PCs explore a cold, dark, underwater cave. At the end of a deep one way tunnel, there’s an inscription that, if read, dispels all magic nearby..
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Feb 25, 2021 20:55
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There was a 3-part adventure chain for AD&D 2E that was entirely about fighting Sahuagin. And yeah, it basically boiled down to giving the players not only permanent water-breathing, but for a good portion of the campaign you're using magic potions (or something like that, it's been a while) that transform you into Sahuagin lookalikes.
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Feb 25, 2021 21:03
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Quotin' myself here; I asked this over in A/T's Stupid/Small Questions and got referred here.
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Feb 25, 2021 23:24
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Nessus posted:I don't know about a fully underwater campaign because if you got to the point where everyone was always underwater it would just, in a sense, be a regular campaign. Other than the breathing, the two largest changes are usually, first, that you have to deal with the fact that you're moving through water, which as you have likely noticed is a little thicker than air; and second, that even if you can breathe, fire is going to not work very well, while electrical attacks will work differently. Not to mention that everyone has full freedom of movement by swimming. Imagine a big fight where all combatants can move in three dimensions.
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Feb 25, 2021 23:37
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Nessus posted:I don't know about a fully underwater campaign because if you got to the point where everyone was always underwater it would just, in a sense, be a regular campaign. Other than the breathing, the two largest changes are usually, first, that you have to deal with the fact that you're moving through water, which as you have likely noticed is a little thicker than air; and second, that even if you can breathe, fire is going to not work very well, while electrical attacks will work differently. Fair 'nough; I don't know the distinction between a campaign vs an... encounter, I guess? (As I said, I've never actually been in a D&D game, just liked to pore over the Monster Manuals, Deities and Demigods, etc. as a kid) I just never could figure out how you'd have a story with an armor-plated knight fighting anything other than, say, a triton or sea lion while they were on a ship or close to land. Y'know, fending off some beastie that occasionally rises to the surface. Before posting this question, I did do a lil' Googling, and one DM mentioned that the biggest hassle for a DM was accounting for movement/positioning, since aquatic encounters aren't on a flat plane like on land. (Their solution was to treat it like flying monsters, except you had to deal with "flying" above and below.) Thanks for all the replies to my dumbass question! edit on preview: ^^^ yeah, what this person just said
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Feb 25, 2021 23:49
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Fair 'nough; I don't know the distinction between a campaign vs an... encounter, I guess? (As I said, I've never actually been in a D&D game, just liked to pore over the Monster Manuals, Deities and Demigods, etc. as a kid) I just never could figure out how you'd have a story with an armor-plated knight fighting anything other than, say, a triton or sea lion while they were on a ship or close to land. Y'know, fending off some beastie that occasionally rises to the surface. If you like reading lots of D&D rules and ideas, there's a dedicated Pathfinder book about underwater adventures and campaigns: https://paizo.com/products/btpy9q00?Pathfinder-Campaign-Setting-Aquatic-Adventures That's bringing you down another rabbit hole of a pile of rules and ideas, but if you like reading that stuff Pathfinder will keep you busy for a long, long while.
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Feb 25, 2021 23:53
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It sounds like the first question is logistics for landlubbers being underwater. It depends on how much effort you want to put into it because you could just have a potion of gill-growing or some kind of water breathing pearl you uncomfortably swallow or plain ol' magic stuff, or you can make fantasy SCUBA. Fighting in 3 dimensions could be done but with the weight most adventurers will be carrying they will either need to figure out buoyancy or just fight on a normal 2D battle map for small encounters, and then roll out height levels like flying and such for 'big' encounters. You could also add underwater terrain instead of fighting while swimming and be fighting in a coral reef or beach floor, something like that. The alternative is everybody is underwater because they are from underwater. Merpeople and such. If you want to handle the narrative portion without worrying about actual logistics, this is probably the easiest option, I think!
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Feb 25, 2021 23:59
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Quotin' myself here; I asked this over in A/T's Stupid/Small Questions and got referred here. There was a supplement for the Basic D&D line centered around doing fully underwater adventures, complete with adding a bunch of weird aquatic races one could play as
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Feb 26, 2021 00:29
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JacquelineDempsey posted:I'm curious if anyone's DM'ed a totally underwater campaign, and if so, how'd you do it? I haven't been in a totally underwater campaign, but I've been in games with extended underwater sequences and usually it's a matter of having a spellcaster or two with the Water Breathing spell, since that has multi-hour duration long enough after a point to last a day on a cast or two. Or yeah, water-breathing rings, or turning into water-breathing creatures. If you're doing a fully underwater campaign, you'd probably be playing merfolk or tritons or awakened dolphins whatever at that point so there's no problem.
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Feb 26, 2021 04:11
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Nessus posted:even if you can breathe, fire is going to not work very well, while electrical attacks will work differently. *in the absence of the game system providing special rules, obviously
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Feb 26, 2021 08:23
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Fair 'nough; I don't know the distinction between a campaign vs an... encounter, I guess? (As I said, I've never actually been in a D&D game, just liked to pore over the Monster Manuals, Deities and Demigods, etc. as a kid) I just never could figure out how you'd have a story with an armor-plated knight fighting anything other than, say, a triton or sea lion while they were on a ship or close to land. Y'know, fending off some beastie that occasionally rises to the surface. If it helps, a campaign is something that stretches over multiple game sessions. Think of it as season in your favorite show and you've got the basic idea. An encounter is just a single fight, something that takes only a couple minutes from a character's perspective (even if it takes multiple hours from a player's perspective).
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Feb 26, 2021 11:47
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The first D&D game I ever ran was fully underwater, because I really wanted to do a story where players explored a makeshift town built in the body of a colossal zombified whale. I think the first thing I did was tell the players that enemies in the water tended to line up on a plane and fight on it because I don't want to use the 3d fight rules, and also the magic items that gave them water breathing also gave them spells that work like normal, because I didn't want to have a long argument about lightning bolts in the water. So sadly while I did run like a six session underwater D&D game, the first thing I did was toss all the hard to mess with underwater stuff.
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Feb 26, 2021 16:57
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Everybody moving on a 3D plane in a water scenario is true but would also probably be less of a factor than you might imagine, because the PCs' goal is (presumably) not to hunt the enemy fishmen for food, but rather to reach or otherwise obtain some location. It would certainly be similar to everyone having Flight, of course.
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Feb 26, 2021 20:29
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Fair 'nough; I don't know the distinction between a campaign vs an... encounter, I guess? An encounter is a scene. It might be a combat or noncombat scene. In D&D, the phrase usually implies the party has met some kind of antagonist or maybe the king or something, e.g. one might not call a scene where the party just tries to get past a locked door an "encounter", but more broadly in RPGs we might use the term scene and the term encounter loosly/interchangeably. An adventure is a story, typically with one party of player characters following some kind of self-contained arc of beginning-middle-end. Sometimes an adventure might take multiple game sessions to get through. A campaign is a string of stories taking place with usually the same or mostly the same protagonists, usually in the same or a linked set of settings. A campaign would usually have several "adventure" type chunks strung together. The exact distinction between a long adventure and a short campaign isn't well defined. Sometimes some characters might go on multiple "campaigns" and people might could argue about whether this was really just one long campaign. In terms of publication supplements, an adventure module might give the gamemaster a plot for one Adventure along with a selection of encounters to play with, including some key/mandatory/critical encounters and then maybe some optional or randomized ones for filler. A campaign module usually is a much thicker affair, perhaps a whole hardback book, perhaps a series of modules in the same setting, with the expectation being that the players and the GM will collaborate in some way to string together some adventures using these materials. Game supplements often also include campaign settings which are really just worldbooks/gazeteers/atlases with loads of adventure hooks, maybe a bunch of custom rules (in this setting we have magic flying ships, here's how those works; in this settings the gods are all dead, here's how to deal with your clerics; in this setting everything is underground). The distinction between such a setting and a "campaign" supplement may be somewhat blurred in the common parlance.
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Feb 26, 2021 21:01
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Important news, everyone:
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Feb 26, 2021 23:37
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I dunno, Trader Joes has a classy title font where the first letter is the word is larger. Carrots > D&D.
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Feb 27, 2021 00:26
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I dunno, I feel like the fact that you can take a one-level dip into Shredded Carrots for a salad/sandwich multiclass that isn't MAD is a little OP.
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Feb 27, 2021 00:44
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gonna hand these out to my players next time so they finally start digesting my story
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Feb 27, 2021 07:35
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Glutes Are Great posted:gonna hand these out to my players next time so they finally start digesting my story  My posting batteries should be getting to a higher charge level soon after all the insanity from the winter stuff here in Austin. Lost water (which also means losing heat) in sub-freeze temperatures for a whole week was not good, though we kept power. Back on that "furniture that will likely be used predominantly for gaming" tip, I'm looking for any/all recommendations for wooden or upholstered chairs that you can sit in for a full game of Twilight Imperium comfortably. I was looking at places like West Elm and they have "contract grade" furniture which is meant for a more commercial setting and what not but I just want a comfy and long lasting dining chair so I can start slowly cycling out the kinda crappy and uncomfortable ones I have right now. Any suggestions for places to shop, specific chairs, or just styles to look at would be good if anybody had any suggestions. Price is probably not really a huge deal at the moment but availability would be - I looked at Wyrmwood's setup as an example and I was like "yeah that's cool" and then realized the lead time on it is probably more than 6 months for even just one chair.
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Feb 27, 2021 08:39
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Leraika posted:Some of them are - Charizard, of course, still pulls in the big bucks - but most individual cards don't go for much these days (checking ebay puts holo Venusaur at about $30, though I'm not familiar with other places people sell cards). If you have any sealed product, though, you could probably make a nice profit off it. By the way, I'm not sure why ebay works the way it does, but anyway I did end up selling a handful and got about $2,500 selling about five cards (including a Charizard) so I would recommend it. People will put in BIN prices above what they're bidding at. Bitcoinsmans or something maybe.
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Feb 28, 2021 02:54
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Pulled the plug on my two-year Eyes of the Stone Thief game. I posted a lot about our scheduling difficulties last thread, just reread the stuff to convince myself this was the right move and yeah, loving sucks but it totally was. Plot twist: this time it wasn't scheduling but one player throwing an enormous swearing fit about a fight that he said was completely unfair just like half of the fights they ever had and I'd say went badly for a round but would probably have turned around right away. We had a talk, he apologized and agreed he was out of line, we even agreed to meet again, roll back that entire fight and go a different route, but I mulled it over for a day, and especially night, and figured, nah, not really in the business of taking hours of prepping time out of my days to risk provoking five minute yelling shitfits anymore, if I ever was. I think, on reflection, the basic problem always was that I had players who were dead set against sacrificing anything. Like, not just "it's poo poo if my character dies randomly" or "it's poo poo if a rust monster eats my sword" but also "it's poo poo if we take damage or have to spend daily spells." And it was starting to be like, if I can't sell you on the low stakes and the ebb-and-flow of a regular combat, how can I sell you on the high stakes of the plot?
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Feb 28, 2021 13:20
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My Lovely Horse posted:I think, on reflection, the basic problem always was that I had players who were dead set against sacrificing anything. Like, not just "it's poo poo if my character dies randomly" or "it's poo poo if a rust monster eats my sword" but also "it's poo poo if we take damage or have to spend daily spells." And it was starting to be like, if I can't sell you on the low stakes and the ebb-and-flow of a regular combat, how can I sell you on the high stakes of the plot? ...is as far as I got before I read the part about them getting mad about casting spells
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Feb 28, 2021 14:40
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Yeah, I was sort of thinking along "well, some games only really sing when you've got players who don't mind seeing their characters suffer" and then I read the rest of it.
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Feb 28, 2021 16:23
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If it was just one player I would say "toss out the jackass and keep going" but it sounds like the whole table was just terrified of the idea of expending resources of any type, which makes me wonder how they function in real life. Like do they go around saying "I can't believe you expect me to spend money on food! It could be carrying salmonella!" or whatever?
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Feb 28, 2021 16:27
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Yawgmoth posted:If it was just one player I would say "toss out the jackass and keep going" but it sounds like the whole table was just terrified of the idea of expending resources of any type, which makes me wonder how they function in real life. Like do they go around saying "I can't believe you expect me to spend money on food! It could be carrying salmonella!" or whatever? I don't know about that but I'd be surprised if they aren't cheapskates and pack rats like me.
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Feb 28, 2021 16:29
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Yawgmoth posted:If it was just one player I would say "toss out the jackass and keep going" but it sounds like the whole table was just terrified of the idea of expending resources of any type, which makes me wonder how they function in real life. Like do they go around saying "I can't believe you expect me to spend money on food! It could be carrying salmonella!" or whatever? As a person who tracks how expensive his home cooked meals are down to the penny: yes, though I'm usually way more mad about rent than other stuff. This is also a soft reason why I like AW/DITV so much compared to a lot of the competition - they're not really resource management games.
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Feb 28, 2021 16:39
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I wonder how that group would like torchbearer.
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Feb 28, 2021 17:18
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Yawgmoth posted:If it was just one player I would say "toss out the jackass and keep going" but it sounds like the whole table was just terrified of the idea of expending resources of any type, which makes me wonder how they function in real life. Like do they go around saying "I can't believe you expect me to spend money on food! It could be carrying salmonella!" or whatever?
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Feb 28, 2021 17:21
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I honestly don't even know where the daily spell thing came from this time, the wizard player usually chucks out evoked (maximized) fireballs at the slightest provocation and has completely neutralized more than one fight that way, but apparently when for once you're properly outnumbered 3:1 that's the time for single target at-will spells. Mostly: I can even see their point because I've been having my own issues with how the system is set up. Just, let's talk about it, maybe at one of the opportunities your DM says yo guys we still feelin' this (because you keep cancelling sessions and he's starting to wonder).
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Feb 28, 2021 17:26
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