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Hypnobeard posted:I'm quite sure there was a discussion at WOTC about what was out there that could be quickly incorporated into the existing rules to give a different feel without too much effort. Rolemaster, in that sense, was right there, had been doing it forever. I was playing lots of rm when 3e came out, and I think it was the unified mechanic (roll, add numbers, result) that felt most similar rather than a bunch of bizarre bespoke systems
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Aug 9, 2022 01:38
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sebmojo posted:I was playing lots of rm when 3e came out, and I think it was the unified mechanic (roll, add numbers, result) that felt most similar rather than a bunch of bizarre bespoke systems Unrelated: do you still play RM or HARP?
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Aug 9, 2022 02:32
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Hypnobeard posted:Unrelated: do you still play RM or HARP? We tend to staple its skills and combat into other games, I've played eclipse phase, Warhammer, Mage, and Bushido doing that and they've all worked great (with a little bit of fiddling). I last played rolemaster in the late 90s, I think? World of Darkness games in particular work great, you just turn the number of dice (1-10) into a 10-100 percentile. There's a modernized version of rm called AGAINST THE DARK MASTER that I want to run with my old crew, it looks like a well designed update, keeping the flavor and simplifying it a little.
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Aug 9, 2022 02:58
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I mean, when you convert WoD to any other system, it's not like there's a lot of tight mechanical design to screw up.
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Aug 9, 2022 03:13
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Truth
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Aug 9, 2022 03:28
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I played a poo poo ton of Rolemaster, MERP, and Spacemaster. It really is a very fun playable system, even though it looks kind of daunting at first.
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Aug 9, 2022 06:07
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Halloween Jack posted:I mean, when you convert WoD to any other system, it's not like there's a lot of tight mechanical design to screw up. heh
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Aug 9, 2022 06:11
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My problem with Rolemaster is adding or subtracting so much stuff. Get a crit and now you're at -20 and stunned and bleeding and losing hit points per round and stunned for 2 more rounds with another modifier and etc etc every single round. I needed a spreadsheet created for every single combat and would fill up a page in 2-3 fights. Not much different from keeping track of all the combat statuses in 4E. Something else I did not like. Putting a ring around the figure made them look like tower of hanoi's.
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Aug 9, 2022 08:58
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Comstar posted:My problem with Rolemaster is adding or subtracting so much stuff. Get a crit and now you're at -20 and stunned and bleeding and losing hit points per round and stunned for 2 more rounds with another modifier and etc etc every single round. I needed a spreadsheet created for every single combat and would fill up a page in 2-3 fights. yeah, that's fair, luckily if you have that much stuff wrong with you your status is likely to become a lot simpler very soon. for all its flaws and quirks though, the one thing RM does better than anything is the bingo effect, the I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU JUST ROLLED THAT OMG factor. STORY. i was playing the Bushido game i mentioned, which was an adaptation of the Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign, and my guy was fighting a samurai of great skill (the Stag Lord, if you've played kingmaker). there was a big fight going on around us, and the village was on fire, but obviously noone was dishonourable enough to interrupt the duel. We both had an OB, offensive bonus, of roughly 100. First stroke I parried (used my OB as defense, one for one) and made myself largely unhittable. He still hit me, giving me a shallow wound. Next round I struck him with 70 of my 100, but he was parrying fully, so missed. This went on for a little while, trading careful strikes, and my wounds mounted up - he was better than me. He struck me hard on the third pass, and I was stunned for multiple rounds - able to move and parry clumsily, but not to fight. I rolled my stunned manoeuvre skill, that let me act while stunned, and rolled well enough to have a single round of action. I embraced the death that i knew had already embraced me and made a full attack, 100 OB, no defense, let the dice fall with an open palm. I open ended (rolled 96-100) which meant I could roll again and add the two numbers, then add my OB. The blow was mighty, but he had a lot of hit points, so it was all down to the critical: I rolled a 92 and cut off his leg. At this point I swept the blood off my katana, sheathed it in a single fluid move, then slowly toppled like a half chopped tree.
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Aug 9, 2022 10:11
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Did a massive pressurized spray of blood come out as is samurai movie tradition? I admit 'This produced a genuine Kurosawa moment' is an argument for a mechanic even if it's not one I'd enjoy myself.
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Aug 9, 2022 12:40
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There is a reason the Arms Law crit tables are legendary. This is the Slashing Crits table from 1e (1984)
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Aug 9, 2022 16:42
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Regarding the THAC0 thing, would this have perhaps not been meant for backwards compatibility with how 1E did AC, so that you could just grab a 1E adventure and everything would be mostly like you expect it to be, leaving aside a couple of the weirder classes like assassin? I cut my gizzard on people who used a mix of 1E and 2E and even as a juvenile it was clear to me that 1E would have the "magic-user" and the "illusionist" spell list, and that these lists had a lot of overlap, and that in 2E, the two were combined (largely at the expense of the illusionist). Similar with the cleric and druid spell lists. This occurred to me because I know it's clearly been a concern with Call of Cthulhu: that the modern rule sets need to be able to use the old content, with at most a couple of adjustments. And Call of Cthulhu is about as old as AD&D!
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Aug 9, 2022 18:10
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Nessus posted:Regarding the THAC0 thing, would this have perhaps not been meant for backwards compatibility with how 1E did AC, so that you could just grab a 1E adventure and everything would be mostly like you expect it to be, leaving aside a couple of the weirder classes like assassin? 2e actually pretty strongly says “play with this new stuff only” for the core rules at least, because a big impetus to the edition change was getting out from under the Satanic Panic. For each of TSR’s three AD&D settings there’s a hardcover “Setting Name Adventures” book that tells you exactly what your character is now, with the most infamous example being all assassins dying in the Forgotten Realms. And adventure design had changed so much during 1e that I don’t think TSR was so interested in backwards compatibility, they wanted you buying new-style hotness from the FR or DL lines. However, there were still some 1e products that stuck around for a long while, particularly the campaign setting box sets taking years to get updates. e: I think it’s quite feasible people mixed and matched like you say, and that TSR staffers tacitly supported it even if they couldn’t actually promote it. Arivia fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 18:19
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:There is a reason the Arms Law crit tables are legendary. That's an annoying font.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:21
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Nessus posted:Regarding the THAC0 thing, would this have perhaps not been meant for backwards compatibility with how 1E did AC, so that you could just grab a 1E adventure and everything would be mostly like you expect it to be, leaving aside a couple of the weirder classes like assassin? In the late-70s/early-80s, I was in a gaming club (DMA Madison Wisconsin) that mainly used a mix of 1e and Arduin Grimoire. Multiple different DMs all using that same-ish mix in a series of open worlds. It was pretty amazing and fun.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:25
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I'm kinda in favor of how GURPS does melee combat but playing a character with a high skill and taking advantage of it requires a lot of system mastery because having high weapon skill means you can comfortably spend it for the myriad attack options on offer, many of which are actually useful in one situation or another. It doesn't do a great job of signposting what the advantages and disadvantages of many of its mechanics are.
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Aug 9, 2022 20:36
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We absolutely mixed and matched 1st and 2nd ed back in the 90s.
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Aug 9, 2022 20:43
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Aug 9, 2022 22:00
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Gospel of Judas?
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Aug 9, 2022 22:52
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Judas biased
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Aug 9, 2022 22:53
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GM, why hast thou forsaken me?
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Aug 9, 2022 22:54
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Thanks to random youtube videos I'm thinking about LOST again. I'd kind of like to try and run an rpg campaign inspired by it one of these days, with PCs being stranded on a weird island full of mysteries.
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Aug 9, 2022 23:49
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Avoid having any answers to those mysteries, then chide the players when they're disappointed.
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Aug 9, 2022 23:57
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moths posted:Avoid having any answers to those mysteries, then chide the players when they're disappointed. Hey, in retrospect only the final season let me down imho. The answers to ther side mysteries up till then worked well enough. And if I do run it I'md efinitely use my players wild theories to mix them with my original idea to make the final answer satisfying. But also I'm probably never gonna get a chance to run this lol.
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Aug 10, 2022 00:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:We absolutely mixed and matched 1st and 2nd ed back in the 90s. poo poo i tried my best to mix and match basic and AD&D
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Aug 10, 2022 02:35
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What tools do folks like to use for relationship maps these days? It's been a few years since I needed to make one, and frankly the tools were never that great. It seems like the landscape for tools of this type has changed quite a bit over the pandemic, so I'm curious what people use now.
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Aug 10, 2022 03:43
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I still use Graphviz. It takes some trial and error to find the syntax that will give me the result I want. Once I have it, though, all the hard work is done.
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Aug 10, 2022 05:05
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Poking around at this tonight, I discovered sketchboard.me and I am quite pleased! If I could have this as a program on my computer instead of on a site it would be perfect, but even so, it works very, very well: not anywhere near as clunky as the stuff I'm used to, and it automates away so many minor UI irritations. Still curious what the rest of the field looks like, but I can at least give this one a thumbs-up.
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Aug 10, 2022 05:31
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Plutonis posted:That's an annoying font. It has powerful middle school blotter energy
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Aug 10, 2022 08:23
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:poo poo i tried my best to mix and match basic and AD&D Nobody could figure out how AD&D was supposed to be played, so just used its content with basic rules.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:00
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The Edition Wars taught me that you can't argue the merits of AD&D with AD&D fans, because no one actually plays AD&D.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:13
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Yeah it wasn't until 3.0 that my gaming groups had a sort of inarguable correct way to play. I'd go back and browse the 2E books years later and find that we didn't use half of the rules. Initiative in particular looked interesting as written.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:36
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Halloween Jack posted:The Edition Wars taught me that you can't argue the merits of AD&D with AD&D fans, because no one actually plays AD&D. I assume this was when OSRIC came out? I had the perception there was a group of people that grabbed OSRIC and immediately checked out to play only that, perhaps I was mistaken.
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Aug 10, 2022 15:10
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Halloween Jack posted:The Edition Wars taught me that you can't argue the merits of AD&D with AD&D fans, because no one actually plays AD&D. I'm actually running a 2e AD&D game these days. 
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Aug 10, 2022 15:29
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My experiences with Rolemaster have shown me that it is a nightmare of kafkaesque propotions.
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Aug 10, 2022 15:41
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2e took out some of the rules that barely anyone used, so I can believe people who say they're actually playing AD&D2e.DalaranJ posted:I assume this was when OSRIC came out? I had the perception there was a group of people that grabbed OSRIC and immediately checked out to play only that, perhaps I was mistaken. You can't really argue with these people because you're talking about the text, and they're talking about the corrected, house-ruled version of the text that only exists in their heads and spiral-bound notebooks. It's like arguing about the Bible with a fundamentalist.
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Aug 10, 2022 15:56
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Halloween Jack posted:You can't really argue with these people because you're talking about the text, and they're talking about the corrected, house-ruled version of the text that only exists in their heads and spiral-bound notebooks. It's like arguing about the Bible with a fundamentalist. Well except the apocrypha, of course you leave that out, and we say kjv 1611 only but actually use a slightly later version and just say 1611, and
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Aug 10, 2022 16:00
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90s Cringe Rock posted:In that they also insist they're just using the literal plain meaning of the original text?
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Aug 10, 2022 16:05
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Thank you all for indirectly clearing up my confusion. This will be branded in my brain forever more.
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Aug 11, 2022 05:48
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Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Aug 11, 2022 |
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Aug 11, 2022 16:49
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