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change my name posted:It would be a great alternate usage for hero points too; characters would get a limited resource per level that could either be used to swing the tide of combat or reveal plot information and would have to decide how to best spend them. Too bad I've only played one D&D game with them and don't use them in my own campaign Failing to succeed at combat -> you're dead lol I mean I know which I'd save them for
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Sep 11, 2021 01:53
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Xiahou Dun posted:Having a fungibility between in-combat and plot-based economies has never worked in D&D because that requires a meaningful, regular exchange between them. And D&D still has the difference between two characters able to be "this character has more of the stat that makes them good". At the point where D&D already has classes that trade combat utility for non combat utility I feel that horse is already out of the stable.
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Sep 11, 2021 02:01
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Coolness Averted posted:At the point where D&D already has classes that trade combat utility for non combat utility And in fact has since the earliest editions lol.
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Sep 11, 2021 02:02
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What if instead of porting this mechanic into D&D one could play Call of Cthulhu, which already has that mechanic implemented? 
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Sep 11, 2021 02:09
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Coolness Averted posted:At the point where D&D already has classes that trade combat utility for non combat utility I feel that horse is already out of the stable. One of the many flaws it has, yes. And I don’t see the point in making it worse. Although I fully admit that someone saying, “Cool mechanic! I should add that to 5E D&D!” just makes my eye twitch by now so I’m primed to be dismissive.
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Sep 11, 2021 02:24
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Absurd Alhazred posted:What if instead of porting this mechanic into D&D one could play Call of Cthulhu, which already has that mechanic implemented? I would, but I'd be scared what someone would try to name their familiar.
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Sep 11, 2021 02:48
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True, better stick to D&D which has never known a racism.
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Sep 11, 2021 03:52
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I wonder if there's an Idea-like die in the latest RuneQuest...
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Sep 11, 2021 03:59
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I wonder if there's an Idea-like die in the latest RuneQuest... An initiate of Lhankor has access to an absurd amount of Divination style Rune Magic, and you can use Divine intervention to ask your deity, but the cost is so huge it's a really bad idea. Vadun fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 04:16
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Vadun posted:An initiate of Lhankor has access to an absurd amount of Divination style Rune Magic, and you can use Divine intervention to ask your deity, but the cast is so huge it's a really bad idea. That's another way of doing it.
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Sep 11, 2021 04:18
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But no there is no real Idea die. If your GM is benevolent they may give you something cryptic on a Rune test or something, but that's not RAW. Since every character has access to Spirit Magic, there's some interesting things you could do with Detect Spells, or Farsight, or dial up your local shaman to ask a spirit.
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Sep 11, 2021 04:26
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moths posted:True, better stick to D&D which has never known a racism. I would definitely stick away from DND if you're trying to avoid racism. Maybe something more wholesome in general, like FATAL.
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Sep 11, 2021 04:33
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There's merit to having tools like "Idea, but for 5e" in your back pocket. Sometimes a game in progress needs a tool you just don't have in the base system, and where the answer is not "play a game better suited to what your table wants," because the table is playing the game it wants to play and has simply encountered a situation where it needs more robust mechanics for a single scene / session. Clocks from PbtA / FitD are eminently stealable for all sorts of systems where you need to jury-rig a quick mechanical scaffold, and Idea rolls are simply taking the principle of "a roll to gather information always generates forward progress" and making it a stat. Example from this week: I'm years in to a 5e campaign, and the players abruptly decided that they needed to gather all of the region's major players into an LotR-style Last Alliance, to give them the fictional positioning to go after the endgame baddies. They get genuinely excited about the prospect of doing diplomacy and repairing the rifts they've caused with the people they've hosed over. There is no satisfying way to do this in 5e: what the game wants you to do is roll Persuasion over and over, but that's a great way to kill the enthusiasm they've spontaneously created, especially in a party where only one or two people have The Social Skill. Instead, my prep between sessions went in to a quick homebrew minigame centered around FitD-style opposing clocks, such that each faction they were courting had: 1) a clock of a given size from 4 to 10 depending on how hard they'd be to win over, filled by successful skill tests: Persuasion, History, whatever you can convincingly justify 2) a clock of equal size counting down toward that faction ending their participation in the summit, filled by failed tests and by making deals with their rivals 3) a set of demands which, if agreed to, would automatically fill in segments of their clock By limiting the number of actions they could take in the summit to two per player (representing the limited amount of time they had before the secret summit broke up), they now had to think strategically about who to give concessions to, who they could try to simply sweet-talk into cooperation, and who would get left on the sidelines. At this point, we weren't playing D&D, we were playing a homebrew game. But everyone enjoyed it, and it gave the appropriate mechanical heft to an important scene. We'll never need those mechanics again, because ultimately we're playing Dungeons & Dragons 5e and it is not a game about diplomacy, but it was nice to have that mechanical scaffolding available as needed.
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Sep 11, 2021 06:39
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Kestral posted:Instead, my prep between sessions went in to a quick homebrew minigame centered around FitD-style opposing clocks, such that each faction they were courting had: This... kinda sounds like a skill challenge from 4e, just with multiple success tracks, a limited number of actions per PC, and an emphasis on doing more than just rolling the same skill each time? Which, in fairness, were all things that 4e's skill challenges really needed.
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Sep 11, 2021 08:25
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Coolness Averted posted:At the point where D&D already has classes that trade combat utility for non combat utility I feel that horse is already out of the stable. e: though I suppose in this scenario the barn is already on fire and the stable is a charnel house Splicer fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 12:36
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Vadun posted:But no there is no real Idea die. CoC is an investigative RPG, it assumes that the player characters are primarily going to be solving mysteries and therefore the Idea roll makes sense as a means to keep the mystery-solving breakthroughs coming from the PCs. This is particularly appropriate since it is also a horror game, and so a) having a bad Idea roll result in getting the information via a dangerous jump scare moment supports that and b) you'll tend to want the PCs to be isolated, the only people who can tackle the horrors they are facing because everyone given theoretical responsibility for public safety either doesn't believe them or is already corrupted. RuneQuest can do investigation, but it's far from the only thing it does, and the latest edition has a strong focus on the idea that the PCs are part of an extended community., so if the party run into something they can't figure out then saying "Hm, we better go find someone with better divinatory capabilities than us to help us figure this out" is a perfectly legitimate course of action, and indeed can lead naturally into other adventures. ("I can do that, but I need you to do this one thing for me...") Putting in an Idea roll would short-circuit that.
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Sep 11, 2021 15:51
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Splicer posted:Failing to get plot info -> you'll get the plot info at some point unless your GM really wants to watch you kill rats for dozens of sessions Hero points are an optional inclusion and can already be used to bolster ability checks outside of comabt; the whole point is that your character is superhuman and can pull off rule-of-cool-style moves at critical moments and surpass even other "normal" adventurers/heroes. If a character's been rolling well and has a bunch left over, why not provide them with another way to spend them? I don't think anyone would choose to hold back and fail a critical saving throw because they're conserving points to move the plot along anyways.
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Sep 11, 2021 16:48
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Whybird posted:This... kinda sounds like a skill challenge from 4e, just with multiple success tracks, a limited number of actions per PC, and an emphasis on doing more than just rolling the same skill each time? Which, in fairness, were all things that 4e's skill challenges really needed. It’s pretty similar, although skill challenges and clocks have some meaningful differences. 4e is not an edition I enjoy, but it has some useful tech that can be stolen. Skill challenge-like structures are the best way d20 has to interact with FitD-style clocks whose states change the fiction and are changed by the fiction. All of which is to say, homebrewing stuff to fill a one-time / infrequent need is good and useful, provided you’ve examined and ruled out the options the game you’re playing has provided (if any). Doing it all the time, though, is indeed a sign that you’re playing the wrong game.
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Sep 11, 2021 17:59
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I was at the Vietnamese grocery store this morning and picked this up as an impulse buy because, come on, $5.99 for NOVEL GAYLY EXCITE?  There aren't any rules in the box in any language, and as "horse race chess" it was surprisingly difficult to find rules online. From what I gather it's a variant of Ludo / Pachisi / Trouble.  My kid is still young enough to enjoy just rolling some dice, but even still I can't see us actually playing this more than the once unless we have a week without power or something lol. "Oh sorry you can't even start playing until you manage to roll doubles, kid." Some interesting cheap shelf candy though.
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Sep 11, 2021 19:06
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You have some really dope salt and pepper shakers.
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Sep 11, 2021 19:09
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Imagined posted:I was at the Vietnamese grocery store this morning and picked this up as an impulse buy because, come on, $5.99 for NOVEL GAYLY EXCITE? I feel like I've seen that playfield arrangement before...
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Sep 11, 2021 19:23
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Dumb idea I just had during my DnD game: what would a Kender Dark Lord look like?
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Sep 11, 2021 22:42
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MonsieurChoc posted:Dumb idea I just had during my DnD game: what would a Kender Dark Lord look like? Probably the least-stupid interpretation of Kender quirks is that they have a completely inadequate sense of boundaries, with no respect for other people's norms. So probably some kind of arch-cultist trying to reshape the world for its own good / just to see what would happen, and blithely unconcerned with other people not wanting to be a part of their vision.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:05
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Probably the least-stupid interpretation of Kender quirks is that they have a completely inadequate sense of boundaries, with no respect for other people's norms. This brings to mind the idea that Kenders not only are kleptomaniacs but also likely to commit sex crimes.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:12
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Teela Brown from the Ringworld books as Dark Lord suddenly came to mind. Not that kender have been bred for supernatural luck, but that kind of person who could bring unholy terror to absolutely everyone in the universe just as an utterly innocent and naive side effect of being who they are with absolutely the best intentions the whole time. Edit: Also Lily Weatherwax, the fairy godmother gone bad in the Pratchett novel Witches Abroad, who's so obsessed with everything being like a proper fairy tale that she has a toymaker arrested for not being jolly, etc. Imagined fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 01:09
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change my name posted:I don't think anyone would choose to hold back and fail a critical saving throw because they're conserving points to move the plot along anyways. So then why have that be an option? The best case is it's ignored and you made a rule for no reason, more likely it exists as a dumb kludge for a GM who should learn to not randomly gate-keep the plot with the add-on that it's a tax/trap for someone who uses it.
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Sep 12, 2021 02:39
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change my name posted:Hero points are an optional inclusion and can already be used to bolster ability checks outside of comabt; the whole point is that your character is superhuman and can pull off rule-of-cool-style moves at critical moments and surpass even other "normal" adventurers/heroes. If a character's been rolling well and has a bunch left over, why not provide them with another way to spend them? I don't think anyone would choose to hold back and fail a critical saving throw because they're conserving points to move the plot along anyways. Spending points on non-combat stuff that you could have spent in combat but didn't need to: That's fine. Spending points on non-combat stuff that you could potentially have instead spent in a later combat: The act of a fool, an idiot, a prospective corpse, a new player who doesn't know any better and has been let down by the system.
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Sep 12, 2021 03:39
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I feel like I've seen that playfield arrangement before... It's almost identical to a ludo board.
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Sep 12, 2021 07:21
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Plutonis posted:This brings to mind the idea that Kenders not only are kleptomaniacs but also likely to commit sex crimes. i think you will find all the smart people think kenders are really cool and the world would be worse off without them. the writers actually want to really make sure you know you are supposed to like them which is weird because who doesnt like kenders?
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Sep 13, 2021 22:56
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Kender are really a case study in why basing an entire fictional species off the characteristics of a single person is generally a poor idea. I'm sure the guy who played Tasslehoff Burrfoot was a real hoot at the gaming table, but "Comically naïve kleptomaniacs with no sense of personal property or self preservation" just doesn't make any goddamned sense when applied to an entire species.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:06
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If I remember Kender were created by Tracy Hickman because his Mormon faith meant he couldn’t philosophically accept the existence of thieves in any heroic or positive portrayal at all.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:16
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Arivia posted:If I remember Kender were created by Tracy Hickman because his Mormon faith meant he couldn’t philosophically accept the existence of thieves in any heroic or positive portrayal at all. the mormons are kender? That certainly makes a lot of sense, and 100% feeds into Plutonis's dark kender interpretation
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Sep 13, 2021 23:44
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Arivia posted:If I remember Kender were created by Tracy Hickman because his Mormon faith meant he couldn’t philosophically accept the existence of thieves in any heroic or positive portrayal at all. My understanding was the Kender's characterization was a combination of that and the people in Hickman's original campaign-that-begat-Dragonlance were all really taken by the one person who played a proto-Kender and ended up incorporating a bunch of that into the fluff for the race.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:55
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KingKalamari posted:Kender are really a case study in why basing an entire fictional species off the characteristics of a single person is generally a poor idea. I'm sure the guy who played Tasslehoff Burrfoot was a real hoot at the gaming table, but "Comically naïve kleptomaniacs with no sense of personal property or self preservation" just doesn't make any goddamned sense when applied to an entire species. Warhammer Fantasy handles this pretty well as something that can work but isn't too far away. Halflings are raised as a village rather than as nuclear families, which means most halflings have 28 brothers or sisters and as many again aunts and uncles. And while personal property is a thing, borrowing another halfling's stuff is like borrowing your sibling's toys or clothes (and if your own goes missing it's a question as to which of your siblings to hunt down). They also do have self preservation instincts - but also get on really well with ogres for lore reasons and are pretty resistant to Chaos. Of course they are also (like everything in Warhammer) dangerous and not that naive.
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Sep 14, 2021 03:05
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neonchameleon posted:Warhammer Fantasy handles this pretty well as something that can work but isn't too far away. Halflings are raised as a village rather than as nuclear families, which means most halflings have 28 brothers or sisters and as many again aunts and uncles. And while personal property is a thing, borrowing another halfling's stuff is like borrowing your sibling's toys or clothes (and if your own goes missing it's a question as to which of your siblings to hunt down). They also do have self preservation instincts - but also get on really well with ogres for lore reasons and are pretty resistant to Chaos. Of course they are also (like everything in Warhammer) dangerous and not that naive.
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Sep 14, 2021 04:07
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this came up in a facebook memory, anyone able to identify the source?
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Sep 16, 2021 01:07
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Len posted:this came up in a facebook memory, anyone able to identify the source? My guess would be Rifts.
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Sep 16, 2021 01:13
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Len posted:this came up in a facebook memory, anyone able to identify the source? e: I have my copy nearby, here's a few more pictures from the game. It's... not very good? But I have a nostalgic soft spot for it. I played it way more than it deserved when I was a kid, because it has a funny sense of humor, some cute setting stuff, and a lot of cardboard chits. It also very much encouraged players to turtle up and do nothing much of note, iirc, but that may have been us playing it wrong. There was even a comic book for a while, I think.    
dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Sep 16, 2021 |
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Sep 16, 2021 01:18
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drat, the Blackbirds Kickstarter blew past its goal in an hour and hit double the ask in 4: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewsmcmeel/blackbirds-rpg I like the setting a lot, but has anyone played Zweihander? (they're using the same system) My only experience with it is RPGhorrorstory posts about plot-critical NPCs dying by accident
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Sep 16, 2021 01:19
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change my name posted:drat, the Blackbirds Kickstarter blew past its goal in an hour and hit double the ask in 4: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewsmcmeel/blackbirds-rpg Zweihander is just Warhammer Fantasy RP with the serial numbers filed off, iirc. So look into reviews of that. WFRP I remember was very lethal but flowed decently. Though I played more 3rd edition (the custom dice one).
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Sep 16, 2021 02:35
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