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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i don't have the answer to that but i'm pretty sure draconians (the Krynn species made from stolen dragon eggs) and dragonborn are two different things also I think draconians are only made from eggs, no live birth. I have no idea if dray were in 2e or 3.5e dark sun. but in 4e they're a naturally breeding race that were created by one of the dragons way back when.
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Aug 12, 2021 03:28
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StratGoatCom posted:https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/August_10_2021/Freight_An_Extinction_Level_Event Shipping containers that were $2,000 are now closer to $15,000. I have a relative who complained in early May about them reaching $10,000 and the business she worked out was almost at a standstill because it was unprofitable to move goods from the factory. When I saw the prices had gone up from there I asked her about it, now it’s deeply unprofitable to ship those goods so they’re stuck, probably for 6+ months.
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Aug 12, 2021 03:47
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Terrible Opinions posted:Yeah the 4th ed version of Dark Sun is easily the best version. Though I don't remember if they updated some of the weirder alternatives to defiling and preserving present in teh 3rd edition web supplements. I appreciated those to just add some variety. The 2e version had a subsystem to modify the stats for wood, bone, etc. weapons. The new version just said that since everyone's weapons and armor are made from that stuff, it evens out. The 2e rules made becoming an avangion a theoretically possible but absurdly difficult prospect; the new version made it an epic destiny. It wasn't about 4e's rules being better than 2e's rules, it was about throwing out rules you don't need.
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Aug 12, 2021 04:29
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StratGoatCom posted:https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/August_10_2021/Freight_An_Extinction_Level_Event
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Aug 12, 2021 05:19
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Part of the reason WHFRP 2e's published adventures suck, curiously, is that they had an actual mandate from above that no storyline in any published adventure could actually significantly change anything in the setting. Nothing major was allowed to happen and every adventure series had to come back to the status quo. Which made them pretty boring and tended to give them really dull endings.
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Aug 12, 2021 05:36
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Were the WEG Star Wars published adventures bad? I feel like they had the same confines but don't remember ever playing a canned adventure.
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Aug 12, 2021 05:59
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't remember off the top of my head, but I don't think it was really necessary. The 4e version's approach to power sources was "if your favourite class doesn't quite fit in the Dark Sun setting, figure it out with your DM."
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Aug 12, 2021 06:01
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I have a friend who is absolutely crazy about Darkstryder
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Aug 12, 2021 06:01
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moths posted:Were the WEG Star Wars published adventures bad? I feel like they had the same confines but don't remember ever playing a canned adventure. No, they were often pretty good. DarkStryder itself was very unique but requires a buy-in a lot of players would immediately balk at. The adventures could do a lot in their confines since LucasFilms didn't care if you changed up a system or even a sector they were never even bother going to reference, although as WEG had mandates you also weren't going to have an adventure about the secrets of the Clone Wars or something either.
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Aug 12, 2021 13:35
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moths posted:Were the WEG Star Wars published adventures bad? I feel like they had the same confines but don't remember ever playing a canned adventure. Some were good, some were bad. They weren't allowed to change major stuff but a galactic rebellion is a big enough arena that there's lots for PCs to do even if they don't blow up the Death Star. Starfall, where the PCs have to escape from a critically-damaged Star Destroyer, is still one of my most memorable RPG experiences. Strikeforce: Shantipole, where the PCs have to save the B-Wing project and prototypes (B-Wing continuity has recently changed), really felt like you were doing something important. Then there was Graveyard of Alderaan, where there was somehow like a whole secure facility that had survived Alderaan blowing up and you were supposed to beat the Empire to it. So, not all great. Even cases where the licensing limits bit them sometimes worked out good - my understanding is that the adventure Tatooine Manhunt was inspired by a picture of all the bounty hunters from Empire but then after a bunch of work had been done on it they were told they couldn't actually use Boba Fett or IG-88. So, rather than throw the whole thing out, they hastily created not-quite-identical replacements to be in the adventure, which is a pretty fun one, and their not-Boba Fett, Jodo Kast, went on to be picked up in a bunch of SW comics and become a wider part of the setting.
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Aug 12, 2021 13:52
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Regarding metaplot: is it just me completely missing something as a GM, or do people actually give a poo poo/pay attention to metaplot? Even when I GM something like Star Wars, with a very specific and very well-known "metaplot" happening, I will always just throw it out the window and tell the story of my party and my adventurers in that setting. Specifically I like to just assume the heroes from the movies literally don't exist in my game's canon. Do people not do that often? moths posted:Were the WEG Star Wars published adventures bad? I feel like they had the same confines but don't remember ever playing a canned adventure. My first time GM'ing anything was running Mission to Lianna that I ported to the FFG Star Wars without knowing anything about it (or any other d6 adventures besides the mythical DarkStryder). I'd say it was on the good side of decent? Not super memorable, but also not bad. Drone fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Aug 12, 2021 |
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Aug 12, 2021 13:53
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Good GMs will ignore metaplot, but if players have to ignore a sizable of your product's advice then you've released a sucky product regardless of how many players correctly pick and choose the good bits.
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Aug 12, 2021 13:58
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So, recently, my friends and I decided to run a What We Do in the Shadows fandom one-shot; we chose to run it in Vampire 5e and trying to excise the system from the metaplot was an exercise in absolute tedium. We had a fun time lampooning the poo poo out of it, but my friends and I promised each other to never play V5e again.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:02
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Terrible Opinions posted:The solution is also so simple. Just make the PCs the people who challenge and best the sorcerer kings. Be like "here are some example people who could have toppled the order, but we assume that if you play in the post sorc mercing setting you probably had an old game in the pre mercing setting". Could even take the weird special magic types that only NPCs got and give them to PCs and remark that a given adventure assumes at least one player is X class.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:12
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StratGoatCom posted:https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/August_10_2021/Freight_An_Extinction_Level_Event They said they're going to be okay for the holiday season but six months from now there's going to be issues if shipping doesn't stop going up. FLGSes are going to have a tough time too, hmm.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:18
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I like metaplot when it serves a player facing game. Like was mentioned before, technically 4E Dark Sun opens with a sorcerer king being killed by not the players, but it's in service to there now being a free city to serve as a good setting hub and to create a power vacuum that creates interesting opportunities for the players. Rather than sitting back while more important people do things, it happens off screen and lets the players, as well as the people in general know that sorcerer kings bleed, so we CAN kill them. Metaplot is probably best when it gets out of the way and sets up "and now you come in". Maybe introducing new plot elements for supplementary material but always in service to giving players hooks.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:20
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but when a Kickstarter defers shipping until a later date that they collect via Backerkit, that's just the shipping from [hub] to backer, right? Obviously they can always ask for more money, but the cost of shipping from China via crate is usually budgeted into the initial Kickstarter.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:22
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I wonder if the shipping costs will drive printing/physical production back to the US/Canada.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:27
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Cessna posted:True, but - well, shouldn't this be the sort of thing the PCs are doing? Edit: I should point out that both of those lines have improved and I'm not talking about their current iterations. Tibalt fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Aug 12, 2021 |
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Aug 12, 2021 14:31
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Hypnobeard posted:I wonder if the shipping costs will drive printing/physical production back to the US/Canada. I don't see it happening. Getting that kind of infrastructure takes time, and while I think it will probably happen to some degree or other, I think what we would really see is some companies going all digital or shutting down all together. If this shipping stuff doesn't calm down soon there are going to be some much bigger waves in every industry.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:33
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Shipping won’t calm down while COVID is going on. Sailors are at major risk for infection and death - they’re in enclosed spaces together for a long time with little to no medical attention available.
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Aug 12, 2021 14:36
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Hypnobeard posted:I wonder if the shipping costs will drive printing/physical production back to the US/Canada. certainly POD is going to pick up just from a lack of options, but offset print runs require machinery that likely isn't available, and die-cutting cardboard and plastic mold injection for boardgame widgets is even less likely to re-onshore
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Aug 12, 2021 14:49
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It's as if the idea that having stuff manufactured on the other side of the planet was "cheaper" was just a legal fiction propped up by a ruling class that wanted to destroy labour power. Uh anyway like I was saying Dark Sun 4e was very good
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Aug 12, 2021 16:04
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Cessna posted:Yeah, there were a lot of things going on there. This is a little inaccurate. The metaplot does not kick off in the original boxed set. The adventure in that, "A Little Knowledge", is just about the PCs escaping an ambushed slave caravan and wandering through the wastes before helping out a dwarf village. The metaplot kicks off in "Freedom", the first module, where the PCs do have to sit through a passage from The Verdant Passage that describes how Rikus throws the Heartwood Spear into Kalak's chest, kicking off the revolution. (Yes, the module literally includes a passage from the novel that the DM is asked to read to the players.) But "Freedom" still gives the PCs a lot of important and interesting stuff to do leading up that moment and following it. The main bulk of the module is about the PCs making allies and enemies among different factions as they try to survive in the slave pens. Then, when the revolution kicks off, Kalak's ritual is still going on, sucking the life force out of everyone in the arena. The gates are blocked, and the PCs are the only people who can get them open and save what is basically the city's entire population because the metaplot characters are busy hunting down and finishing off Kalak. Then "The Road to Urik" works as sort of a prequel to the second novel, The Crimson Legion. In it, the PCs are tasked with working with all those factions they built relationships with in "Freedom" to recruit a free army to fight off the army coming down from Urik to conquer newly-freed Tyr. Once that army is recruited, the PCs are put in charge of its vanguard, and the rest of the module is about them scouting the army's path along the titular road and defeating Urik's vanguard before it can ambush and possibly destroy the free army. And after that, the modules and metaplot basically split. "Arcane Shadows" assumes the party ended up in Urik, presumably by following the events of The Crimson Legion, but otherwise has nothing to do with the Prism Pentad. In it, the PCs are tasked with helping a dude transforming into an avangion escape the city, flee across the wastes, and make it to a sacred grove where he can complete his transformation. None of this has anything to do with the Prism Pentad. Indeed, the Pentad novels never even mention avangions. "Asticlian Gambit"'s title may suggest close links to metaplot character Agis of Asticles, but it's really about going to Gulg and getting in trouble with Gulg's sorcerer queen. Then, "Dragon's Crown", the mega adventure that closes out the original series is all about the PCs stopping a worldwide threat caused by a sinister cabal of psionicists. It's epic and has nothing to do with anything in the Pentad novels. It's important to note that the metaplot in those novels stretches over the course of 10 years, so your own campaign may be long finished before any of the major changes from the novels take place. Now the revised boxed set does present the history revealed in those novels, but I don't think it's fair to say that it and subsequent supplements focused more on history than the world. The revised boxed set expanded the world massively, introducing two new city states, each with its own neat gimmick (one is actually a front for a secret city state created by its sorcerer king who had a change of heart and became an avangion), and a bunch of new regions to explore, including an entire Kreen empire threatening the Tyr region from the northeast. "Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs" and "Mind Lords of the Last Sea" focused on areas strongly linked to the history, but they detailed those parts of the world very well. I don't think your Pendragon analogy is too far off because the revised boxed set did move DS away from being a sort of "sword and sandals" setting to something more weird. I'd say it's like picking up a pulp adventure game thinking you're gonna get Hyboria, but instead you get Barsoom or Pelucidar. Splicer posted:IIRC the 4e setting starts with that one sorcerer king having just been killed offscreen and contained epic destinies including "become a new sorcerer king" Yeah, the 4E box is set right after Tyr is freed from Kalak. KingKalamari posted:2e era Dark Sun's incredible aversion to allowing PCs to influence the setting in any way cannot be overstated. I know I've ranted about this on the forum before, but the module "Valley of Dust and Fire" basically existed for the sole purpose of preventing PCs from ever possibly attempting to kill The Dragon of Athas. It outlines a hidden city deep within the Silt Sea where The Dragon lives that's surrounded by miles and miles of terrain so mechanically hostile that even a high level party of PCs are likely to die before getting within 100 miles of the city, outlines the city as being filled with gently caress-you murder traps and contingency measures set up by The Dragon and then in the last few paragraphs it straight up tells teh DM that if their players have somehow managed to bypass all of this bullshit and are in a position to legitimately kill The Dragon they should just pull a Deus Ex Machina out of their rear end to keep The Dragon alive. It's that mixed messaging Cessna mentioned again. "Valley of Dust and Fire" is a sourcebook that came out after the "Dragon Kings" rulebook introduced rules for "epic level" PCs. It's clearly written as a challenge for PCs who've become avangions, dragons, elemental lords, and the like, but then yeah, if those PCs actually do make it through all the insane challenges, it chickens out and asks the DM to keep the Dragon alive to preserve precious canon. I don't think it's fair to say Dark Sun possessed an "incredible aversion" to PCs influencing the setting. There are 3 epic adventures entirely divorced from the metaplot that have major consequences for the setting. The previously mentioned "Dragon's Crown" involves a plot to basically destroy psionics and drive all kreen insane as a side effect. "Black Spine" is all about stopping a Githyanki invasion. And "City by the Silt Sea" introduces Dregoth, a "main villain" who can take the Dragon's place in a campaign set after the Prism Pentad novels. And "Dragon Kings" is about PCs gaining incredible power to influence the setting. Halloween Jack posted:Uh anyway like I was saying Dark Sun 4e was very good It really is, but the best version of the setting is still that presented in the original boxed set. "The Wanderer's Journal" is maybe the best setting guide TSR ever produced (maybe even better than "A Grand Tour of the Realms", which I still think is the best FR primer). It's just oozing with atmosphere and style. It contains very little in the way of specific location details like maps and demographic numbers, but it sets the mood so well, and it really takes its time to describe the peoples and cultures of Dark Sun.
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Aug 12, 2021 16:18
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Drone posted:Regarding metaplot: is it just me completely missing something as a GM, or do people actually give a poo poo/pay attention to metaplot? I tend not to do metaplot games, but this post does make me want to run a Star Wars campaign of "here's what really happened" where the cannon heros are bumbling idiots stumbling into credit for all the awesome things the PCs are doing. Would take a group that's on board with the idea, but could be a fun re-telling
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Aug 12, 2021 16:38
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The conversation has moved on but as a lurker I want to thank everyone for the 7th Sea metaplot discussion because thisOctavo posted:I got a notification that one of the supplements got added to my backerkit. Unfortunately 7th Sea 2e is so fundamentally broken that even though first edition was my first TTRPG, I don't even have enough curiosity to download the new book. could have been written by me verbatim, and I really enjoyed the trip down memory lane. 
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Aug 12, 2021 16:53
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Dawgstar posted:This is - and it does feel odd defending Wick - another thing that happened way after his time. Sophia's Daughters wasn't even originally about women's rights per se but instead getting the not-Italian Fate Witches (Vodacce?) who were essentially from the moment their magic was found out about forced to marry some nobleman to use their scrying and cursing and whatever magic for them out of the country. Wick found the idea of them being a blanket women's right movement odd because everywhere else in Thea women could already be anything they wanted - pirate captains, generals, explorers (maybe not the Not Pope, I can't remember) - but instead it became a weird matriarchal secret society that was the best at everything and had super magic. They had a very specific purview that just grew and grew because the only thing with metaplot you can do is dig up. Hell, I was playing a Fate Witch who was with Sophia's Daughters at the time of the book's release. My character had already been working with small-a alchemy because that had been established as the thing they do, but when the book came out, it turned out to be another blooded sorcery and me and the gamemaster were both "the hell?" Nuns with Guns posted:The whole origin of 7th Sea was Wick wanting to make a scheme-y court intrigue game, wasn't it? So the baseline of Vodacce was sketched out, but then it kind of rapidly escalated to a whole cartoon setting quite rapidly after that? Don't know, though it sounds feasible, at least. By the time it hit at GenCon, Wick was walking around singing shanties with a gaggle of duders, and he was the author behind the original Pirate Nations. So if the pirate angle didn't excite him, he hid it well.
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Aug 12, 2021 16:55
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Drone posted:Even when I GM something like Star Wars, with a very specific and very well-known "metaplot" happening, I will always just throw it out the window and tell the story of my party and my adventurers in that setting. Specifically I like to just assume the heroes from the movies literally don't exist in my game's canon. This would also be a place where you could have ~sith manipulators~ and poo poo without requiring super-baroque poo poo like Palpatine. And - this is the important part - all kinds of fuckin' sick rear end laser sword fights.
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Aug 12, 2021 17:09
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Nessus posted:I've had the idea of a sort of Warring States Star Wars setting a few times, something were you have a range of galactic powers and the resulting interesting fringe/border zones, allowing for more easy borrowing from martial-arts and similar fiction as well. For bonus points, you can have Jedi without having a Unified Singular Jedi Order - there would be Jedi monasteries no doubt, and perhaps doctrinal touchstones, but they would be behaving like conflicting monastic sects, rather than what we have mostly seen in the film. The SWD6 campaign I ran did the familiar "you are other rebels doing other important things while the movies happen in the background" setup, but if I run another one, I'm thinking I'd do something like this. Have the political conflict be more nuanced and divorced from the Light v Dark Manichean morality, but still ask the players to approach the setting with the same moral clarity that they would in a more traditional SWD6 campaign.
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Aug 12, 2021 17:54
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Whybird posted:Good GMs will ignore metaplot, but if players have to ignore a sizable of your product's advice then you've released a sucky product regardless of how many players correctly pick and choose the good bits. In 2021, absolutely. Back in the 90s the metaplot of Dark Sun dictated what would be published. If you wanted info on something that had been superseded by the uber-NPC-driven metaplot, too bad. GMs and gamers are probably more sophisticated today - they'd just make up what they wanted - but in the early 90s this was annoying. PeterWeller posted:This is a little inaccurate. The metaplot does not kick off in the original boxed set. The adventure in that, "A Little Knowledge", is just about the PCs escaping an ambushed slave caravan and wandering through the wastes before helping out a dwarf village. You are correct - sorry, first published adventure, not first boxed set. (Hey, the published adventure was in a box too!) (Hey, it was thirty years ago, my memory slipped.) PeterWeller posted:And after that, the modules and metaplot basically split. "Arcane Shadows" assumes the party ended up in Urik, presumably by following the events of The Crimson Legion, but otherwise has nothing to do with the Prism Pentad. In it, the PCs are tasked with helping a dude transforming into an avangion escape the city, flee across the wastes, and make it to a sacred grove where he can complete his transformation. None of this has anything to do with the Prism Pentad. Indeed, the Pentad novels never even mention avangions. "Asticlian Gambit"'s title may suggest close links to metaplot character Agis of Asticles, but it's really about going to Gulg and getting in trouble with Gulg's sorcerer queen. Then, "Dragon's Crown", the mega adventure that closes out the original series is all about the PCs stopping a worldwide threat caused by a sinister cabal of psionicists. It's epic and has nothing to do with anything in the Pentad novels. Sure, but it assumes that the Pentad novels went down as written, period. You don't get any say or real influence on the events - the uber-NPCs are moving the main events of the world, and you're either along for the ride doing things to support them or you're off in pre-written and railroaded corner.
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Aug 12, 2021 18:05
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The other thing to remember is A: A lot of people will take their cues from the rulebook/manual, which should be a reasonable thing to do with a document that is supposed to be teaching you how to play/run/write with a game and B: A huge amount of a 90s gameline was often tied up in the metaplot. All the material published about an event would just kinda assume you were using it and would take extra work to extract things. If the material you're buying isn't being used and is making you do a ton of work to ignore it, you're wasting your money and your time. Metaplot as it existed makes books into a hindrance rather than a help. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to, say, read a book about a game to get an idea of what kinds of adventures the game system is supposed to support and push you into writing. Metaplot lays traps for that person (while also often being extremely outside of the game system it's written for, etc). It helps turn things from a useful guide or instruction manual into a minefield, while making future supplements or works more work for the GM themselves.
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Aug 12, 2021 18:14
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PharmerBoy posted:I tend not to do metaplot games, but this post does make me want to run a Star Wars campaign of "here's what really happened" where the cannon heros are bumbling idiots stumbling into credit for all the awesome things the PCs are doing. Would take a group that's on board with the idea, but could be a fun re-telling If I ever do a Star Wars campaign, Robot Chicken Star Wars will be required knowledge and will be canon. It just makes so much more sense than the films itself.
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Aug 12, 2021 18:19
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Drone posted:Regarding metaplot: is it just me completely missing something as a GM, or do people actually give a poo poo/pay attention to metaplot? I think we've reached a point where everyone realized multi-act metaplots are pretty toxic to bringing the game to the table, and consumers are suspicious enough for it to be a turn-off to all this fresh new player base. They were a hot item in the 90s because they served the dual purpose of 1. Exciting toilet reading/writing work for the frustrated novelists who never used the books in play and 2. A way to sell more supplements because this is a major shakeup to the status quo!!! You need to buy this so you have the most complete setting guide for your game!!!!! But a supplement treadmill business model is not sustainable in this day and age for most game publishers. Alien Rope Burn posted:Don't know, though it sounds feasible, at least. By the time it hit at GenCon, Wick was walking around singing shanties with a gaggle of duders, and he was the author behind the original Pirate Nations. So if the pirate angle didn't excite him, he hid it well. I assume he was probably into it if he let other people contribute stuff and build up the whole setting. Vodacce on its own feels like Peak Wickism in either case.
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Aug 12, 2021 18:27
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PharmerBoy posted:I tend not to do metaplot games, but this post does make me want to run a Star Wars campaign of "here's what really happened" where the cannon heros are bumbling idiots stumbling into credit for all the awesome things the PCs are doing. Would take a group that's on board with the idea, but could be a fun re-telling There was a PS2 Lord of the Rings game with this premise. Your party (who get to use elemental magic for some reason) follow the fellowship around solving problems so that they can get on with the plot. The only actual examples I remember are weakening the balrog so that Gandalf can take it on, and the ending where you stand on top of the black tower and punch Sauron in the eye to distract him from Frodo. It's a plot point that you can't let the main characters know that you're there although I don't remember why.
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Aug 12, 2021 18:29
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Cessna posted:Back in the 90s the metaplot of Dark Sun dictated what would be published. If you wanted info on something that had been superseded by the uber-NPC-driven metaplot, too bad. I think if that were the case, we would not have got the Dragon Kings sourcebook. quote:You are correct - sorry, first published adventure, not first boxed set. (Hey, the published adventure was in a box too!) I'll have you know that was a slipcase, not a box!  quote:Sure, but it assumes that the Pentad novels went down as written, period. You don't get any say or real influence on the events - the uber-NPCs are moving the main events of the world, and you're either along for the ride doing things to support them or you're off in pre-written and railroaded corner. Sure, the overall setting does. It's metaplot after all. But like I said, after the first two novels and first two modules, the two lines proceed entirely independently of each other. The remaining three novels don't even take place in the overall metaplot until after the events of the remaining three adventures. The second series of adventures are even more disconnected from the novels. Really, aside from having to watch Rikus throw the Heartwood Spear into Kalak in "Freedom" and maybe leading the vanguard of Tyr's army in "The Road to Urik" there aren't any places where the PCs will feel like second fiddles to the important NPCs because they're only going to know what those important NPCs go on to do if they read the novels. And while that moment in "Freedom" where the DM is told to read some paragraphs from The Verdant Passage to the players is maybe the best example of metaplot turning PCs into spectators outside the WoD, I think focusing on it really discounts how much important poo poo the PCs do in that module. There would be no free city of Tyr if not for the actions of the PCs. Literally the entire population of the city is in that arena having their souls sucked out to power Kalak's ritual (that doesn't end when he gets speared). The PCs are the characters who unblock the entrances to the arena and help the population escape and survive. Without them, it'd just be the dead city of Tyr. I can't argue that the modules aren't "pre-written and railroaded" (although aside from ensuring the PCs get enslaved and the arena sequence, "Freedom" is mostly open RP encounters that can be approached in any order), but I think that's an entirely different problem with published adventures that is only tangentially related to metaplot. I'd also note that the metaplot ends with the Prism Pentad and release of the second boxed set. The metaplot drastically affects the setting and kills off 4 of the SKs and the Dragon, but the second boxed set introduces all sorts of new threats along with a few new SKs. There is tons of poo poo for PCs to do and feel rightfully important for doing.
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Aug 12, 2021 19:05
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Not sure how relevant this is to /tg/ as a whole, but the Battletech community seems to have exploded while I was asleep, as Arch Warhammer did an interview with the biggest Battletech lore guy, and people are fighting all over the various groups on facebook about it. There...are a lot of people in the Battletech community that feel like Arch "True Facism leads to a utopian state" Warhammer is a harmless jokester, so, that's fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax-IqrQEJHc
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Aug 12, 2021 19:06
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Hollow Talk posted:If I ever do a Star Wars campaign, Robot Chicken Star Wars will be required knowledge and will be canon. It just makes so much more sense than the films itself. Not Auralnauts?
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Aug 12, 2021 19:09
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PeterWeller posted:I think if that were the case, we would not have got the Dragon Kings sourcebook. That's true. 100% of all Dark Sun adventures and supplements weren't entirely predicated on the PCs supporting the NPCs only, but there's no denying that the NPCs were the major movers and shakers of the world. PeterWeller posted:I'll have you know that was a slipcase, not a box! Heh, yeah. At one point I owned everything in the line, but I sold it all off years ago. PeterWeller posted:Really, aside from having to watch Rikus throw the Heartwood Spear into Kalak in "Freedom" and maybe leading the vanguard of Tyr's army in "The Road to Urik" there aren't any places where the PCs will feel like second fiddles to the important NPCs because they're only going to know what those important NPCs go on to do if they read the novels. In Beyond the Prism Pentad the PC's mission is to guard Sadira's stuff while she goes off to fight Rajaat. That's not second fiddle; they aren't even part of the orchestra. PeterWeller posted:And while that moment in "Freedom" where the DM is told to read some paragraphs from The Verdant Passage to the players is maybe the best example of metaplot turning PCs into spectators outside the WoD, I think focusing on it really discounts how much important poo poo the PCs do in that module. There would be no free city of Tyr if not for the actions of the PCs. Literally the entire population of the city is in that arena having their souls sucked out to power Kalak's ritual (that doesn't end when he gets speared). The PCs are the characters who unblock the entrances to the arena and help the population escape and survive. Without them, it'd just be the dead city of Tyr. Bolding mine. Well, no. See, that's the problem with metaplot - it goes on no matter what the PCs do. Say the PCs completely botch the adventure. They slip and fall and get trampled to death by the crowd in the adventure and accomplish nothing. Kalak completes the ritual, becomes a Dragon, and so on. None of that matters to TSR. They aren't going to phone you and ask "so did your group help kill Kalak and free Tyr or not?" Your group's performance is entirely irrelevant to TSR's metaplot. The next adventure they publish assumes that Kalak failed and was killed, and Tyr was freed, period. And that's the problem. The metaplot continues, the NPCs drive events, and nothing your PCs do changes that if you're following the published metaplot, leaving you to either throw up your hands and say "welp, I guess someone else must've helped the NPCs win" or ditch the metaplot entirely. Cessna fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Aug 12, 2021 |
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Aug 12, 2021 19:19
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Hollow Talk posted:If I ever do a Star Wars campaign, Robot Chicken Star Wars will be required knowledge and will be canon. It just makes so much more sense than the films itself. What the gently caress is an aluminum falcon?
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Aug 12, 2021 19:27
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D&D 4e had the best meta plot, if I remember it correctly. You're all big heroes and all the little lovely towns you're in are mostly safe havens and the wilderness is packed full of bad things. Have at it! Edit: OK so I looked it up. quote:The overall idea of the setting is that the world is populated by a variety of intelligent races, strange monsters lurk on other planes, ancient empires have left ruins across the face of the world, and so on. But one of the key conceits about this world is simply this: Civilized folk live in small, isolated "points of light" scattered across a big, dark, dangerous world.
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Aug 12, 2021 19:29
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