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theironjef posted:It's one of those things that's easily sorted out by remembering that your character isn't just you. They would remember poo poo. I personally take the concept a bit further and also never require players to RP more than they absolutely want to for any social rolls or scene or whatever because their character's charisma and intelligence scores aren't their actual life skill. But the memory one, that one sucks. 90% of the time in books it comes across as that specific tone of DM condescension that makes a lot of old games poo poo to read. One variation I've seen is where the DM is a bit too enamoured with their homebrew setting and takes great offence when the party fails to commit every detail to memory, and vindictively punishes them for it. The DM turned a failed novel script into an adventure and demanding you remember which GMPC has grey eyes speckled with amber and which has grey eyes speckled with gold would also fall under this category. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Jan 12, 2024 |
# ? Jan 12, 2024 09:44 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 06:43 |
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hyphz posted:You'll probably have to. The major problem is that skills your Kingdom didn't specialise in never increase, but the Control DC does, and it's used for everything. So as you gain territory you'll quickly find it's nearly impossible to succeed at anything but the narrow skills you chose. And while I guess it's correct that a kingdom would realistically need to expand carefully, in practice the main goal of playing the hexcrawl is to expand and gain territory for your kingdom as quickly as possible... Thankfully we've already headed that off partially by letting the characters in leadership positions use their own skills to do Kingdom rolls, because otherwise it doesn't actually matter at all who is doing what.
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# ? Jan 12, 2024 13:43 |
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Zurai posted:Except literally no one but you is saying that. No one's suggesting doing it as a pre-incentive. No one's suggesting having the DM say "theironjef, you bring cookies next session and I'll pay you 50 XP." ...unless you're playing HoL, in which case the rulebook explicitly encourages players to do just that.
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# ? Jan 12, 2024 16:32 |
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:One variation I've seen is where the DM is a bit too enamoured with their homebrew setting and takes great offence when the party fails to commit every detail to memory, and vindictively punishes them for it.
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# ? Jan 12, 2024 16:42 |
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Gynovore posted:...unless you're playing HoL, in which case the rulebook explicitly encourages players to do just that. If you're actually playing HoL you already hosed up unrecoverably.
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# ? Jan 12, 2024 23:03 |
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Midjack posted:If you're actually playing HoL you already hosed up unrecoverably. Yeeeeeah, I kinda got the feeling that actually playing it was not what the authors intended.
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# ? Jan 13, 2024 01:50 |
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The idea of having individual player XP is still the original sin here.
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# ? Jan 13, 2024 02:51 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The idea of having individual player XP is still the original sin here. Agreed. As a GM, you know what's a pain? Having a party of a few level 2s, a few level 5s and a level 13s. If I design encounters by the average the monsters will be too easy for the 13, and likely on hit knock out the 2s. I know this from experience GMing a west-marshes style campaign. When I GM regular campaigns I just do incremental leveling with all players at the same time.
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# ? Jan 13, 2024 05:32 |
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I think there's a good case to be made to use traditional XP in discrete amounts under certain scenarios of play, but I do agree that the party should just level together regardless of attendance. Even computer RPGs do this.
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# ? Jan 13, 2024 05:44 |
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so what I'm hearing is I should write a heartbreaker with a feat that allows players to gain XP while absent, that will fix everything
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# ? Jan 13, 2024 07:31 |
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I don't have anything to add to this except to say thank you for the anecdotes. Always interesting to see what other people have experienced.
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# ? Jan 13, 2024 16:16 |
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:so what I'm hearing is I should write a heartbreaker with a feat that allows players to gain XP while absent, that will fix everything The only way to get XP is not to play.
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# ? Jan 14, 2024 04:26 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think there's a good case to be made to use traditional XP in discrete amounts under certain scenarios of play, but I do agree that the party should just level together regardless of attendance. Even computer RPGs do this. And to add to this point, everybody hates the thing that happens in computer RPGs where if you have more characters than can fit in your party, the ones on the sidelines don't gain XP.
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# ? Jan 14, 2024 05:19 |
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Kai Tave posted:And to add to this point, everybody hates the thing that happens in computer RPGs where if you have more characters than can fit in your party, the ones on the sidelines don't gain XP. I just hate when they give me more characters than I can fit in my party.
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# ? Jan 14, 2024 09:34 |
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I'm running a megadungeon in the West Marches style and the way I'm handling levelling up is that in the dungeon there are statues that, once you activate them by paying them gold, can level up a specific class. You only need to pay the ranger statue once and then any ranger can gain a level there, so it's a kind of rising-tide-lifts-all-boats scenario.
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# ? Jan 14, 2024 10:13 |
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leveling at different times in pre-3e D&D made more sense when every class had its own XP track; meant to be a balancing factor between martials and casters. Casters generally had higher XP requirements, so fighters and rogues would already be around levels 4-5 when the magic-users hit level 2.
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# ? Jan 14, 2024 13:09 |
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Angrymog posted:I just hate when they give me more characters than I can fit in my party.
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# ? Jan 14, 2024 13:45 |
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Gatto Grigio posted:leveling at different times in pre-3e D&D made more sense when every class had its own XP track; meant to be a balancing factor between martials and casters. Casters generally had higher XP requirements, so fighters and rogues would already be around levels 4-5 when the magic-users hit level 2. Which was really cool for dual-class humans. You could take 3 levels of fighter and then switch to your real class with extra HP and weapon proficiencies and hardly be behind the curve at all vs. a pure caster. Worked great for Baulder's Gate 1, because with infinite rerolls you could ensure you got weird fighter-only strength levels between 18 and 19, so your guy could carry around several loving ankheg shells (very heavy but worth big money). #lifehack
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# ? Jan 15, 2024 06:00 |
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there are games where XP is a resource you spend for character upgrades rather than a number that just goes up forever, and also games where the power curve is a lot flatter than D&D so a level 3 guy doesn't have a third more hit points than a level two guy
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# ? Jan 15, 2024 07:17 |
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Facebook Aunt posted:Worked great for Baulder's Gate 1, because with infinite rerolls you could ensure you got weird fighter-only strength levels between 18 and 19, so your guy could carry around several loving ankheg shells (very heavy but worth big money). #lifehack Baldur's Gate 1 greatly misled me as a kid about how much the average D&D campaign would revolve around ankhegs and their shells.
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# ? Jan 15, 2024 10:38 |
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:One variation I've seen is where the DM is a bit too enamoured with their homebrew setting and takes great offence when the party fails to commit every detail to memory, and vindictively punishes them for it. Which always seemed silly to me, a DM obsessed with the worldbuilding aspects of designing a campaign, because every time a player forgets something about the setting it's another excuse for me to exposit at length about it
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# ? Jan 15, 2024 17:56 |
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Fundamentally, XP exists like all other advancement resources: another carrot for the players to pursue to make their characters stronger. There's lots of alternatives, but it all ultimately should tie together.
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# ? Jan 15, 2024 20:26 |
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Drakyn posted:Pouring one out for the neverwinter nights 2 expansion Mask of the Betrayer, with a combined party-joinable-NPC + player count of 5 and a maximum party size of 4. At least there's a mod to fix that though I don't know how it handles the fifth party member taking part in conversations.
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# ? Jan 15, 2024 23:40 |
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CitizenKeen posted:RIP Jennell Jaquays. So this interesting post is going around today: https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2024/01/xandering-is-slandering.html?m=1 The Alexandrian's old blog post titled "Jaquaying the Dungeon" has come up here before, an essay post praising the nonlinear structure of the dungeons Jennell Jaquays created. There were couple controversies around it: first, after the publication Jennell had transitioned and her name was changed. Justin initially refused to edit his blog post and made a big essay defending his deadnaming of Jennell, until she posted on his blog specifically telling him to change her first name and correct the typo in her last name, which is Jaquays so it should be "Jaquaysing." Justin changed her first name in the essay, but never adjusted anything about her last name. The blog post above has a recap of the whole timeline if anyone needs a refresher, but apparently Justin Alexander's decided instead to just rename the whole concept to "Xandering the Dungeon," deleting the old blog posts, and reposting it ahead of publishing the essay in his book. quote:In the process of shepherding this project to completion, it appears that Justin also decided to do some reputational management. At some point, the "Thought of the Day - Deadnames" post disappears from his blog. The Wayback Machine's most recent capture is from January 2020; Roger SG Sorrolla references it in an essay written in December 2021 that was published in Knock 3. I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done. quote:First, note that he falsely declaims his own responsibility for this decision. "In 2023, for better or for worse, this term was changed to xandering." It was changed by him; he changed it. But he doesn't say that. He uses the passive voice. Not that he did it, but that it was done. By whom? Unstated. And look, he seems to empathize, maybe it wasn't even a good change. Of course he thinks it was good, or he wouldn't have done it. But twice in one sentence he minimizes his responsibility for doing it. I will note that the author doesn't want anyone to go after Justin Alexander. She just wants to make sure people know who to properly recognize for the nonlinear dungeon design Jennell Jaquays did: quote:Justin, if you are reading this, you did a basically good thing in 2010 when you drew people's attention to something that someone else had done well. And then you've progressively poo poo all over that one kind action over the years. I wish you'd stop. Right now you're behaving like an actual grave robber. I hope you'll have a change of heart. And if your book is fortunate enough to have a second printing, I hope you'll go back to talking about Jaquaysing. And that you'll spell it correctly from now on.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:27 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:So this interesting post is going around today: I wouldn't call that interesting. It reads like someone stirring up poo poo for clicks in the wake of a tragic death. people gotta stop falling for clout sharks
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:34 |
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aw frig aw dang it posted:I wouldn't call that interesting. It reads like someone stirring up poo poo for clicks in the wake of a tragic death. I don't think it's clout chasing? It's someone pointing out how Justin Alexander's appropriating a concept he credited to someone else. "Interesting" is a bad word to use, though, so sorry about that. I default to it when I look at something that seems like a complete mess and I'm not fully sure how to articulate why it's a mess.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:39 |
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The deadnaming because historical archiving poo poo was pretty bad, but attempting to name it after himself is a new low for Justin Alexander.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:39 |
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The Alexandrian has always been a piece of poo poo so it's nice to see him reminding everyone who'd forgotten that fact since his brush with legitimacy via Atlas Games.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:40 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:I don't think it's clout chasing? It's someone pointing out how Justin Alexander's appropriating a concept he credited to someone else. "Interesting" is a bad word to use, though, so sorry about that. I default to it when I look at something that seems like a complete mess and I'm not fully sure how to articulate why it's a mess. It's someone rehashing poo poo that was already very well-known and understood in the relevant communities to generate posts like CitizenKeen's below yours. edit: and the one after that post lol
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:41 |
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aw frig aw dang it posted:It's someone rehashing poo poo that was already very well-known and understood in the relevant communities to generate posts like CitizenKeen's below yours. I didn't know about the recent history of it, and I appreciated reading about it in this here relevant community, so jog on?
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:54 |
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Destrado posted:I didn't know about the recent history of it, and I appreciated reading about it in this here relevant community, so jog on?
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:57 |
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aw frig aw dang it posted:It's someone rehashing poo poo that was already very well-known and understood in the relevant communities to generate posts like CitizenKeen's below yours. We get it, you're mad that people are pointing out that Justin Alexander sucks
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 19:59 |
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I remember all this stuff, and so do many goons, but I think it's very wrong to assume everyone else does, too. Also I'll never not think of him as the Seinfeld guy. (Yes I know they're not the same person. Doesn't help. That's what he looks like in my head forever.) Seriously, the dude sucks. From his pseudo-intellectual approach to edition warring to his defense of deadnaming, he sucks.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:01 |
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Gentlemen, please! You can't post about messy TTRPG drama here. This is the Industry thread!
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:03 |
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aw frig aw dang it posted:It's someone rehashing poo poo that was already very well-known and understood in the relevant communities to generate posts like CitizenKeen's below yours. I don't want to post something that's empty ragebait, is there a better or more updated place this discussion happened? The most recent things, like Justin's justification for why he changed the dungeon design term are from November 2023, so it's still pretty recent, right? The republication and deletion of old blogs all feels really scummy upfront unless some important information's been omitted.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:04 |
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Destrado posted:I didn't know about the recent history of it, and I appreciated reading about it in this here relevant community, so jog on?
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:12 |
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Destrado posted:I didn't know about the recent history of it, and I appreciated reading about it in this here relevant community, so jog on? my only knowledge of him is something about a really stupid argument against D&D 4e, i think?
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:13 |
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weast posted:my only knowledge of him is something about a really stupid argument against D&D 4e, i think? Yeah, a lot of people here dislike him for disliking 4e for reasons other than the handful of reasons it's considered OK to dislike 4e. Other than that, he's probably best known for his "remixes" of various published adventures, especially for 5e. (I don't think he likes 5e much either, especially not the published adventures for it, though I suppose he does see enough merit in some 5e and 4e adventures to consider them worth trying to "fix.") It seems like he's genuinely being an rear end in a top hat about the Jacquays thing, though.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:21 |
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weast posted:my only knowledge of him is something about a really stupid argument against D&D 4e, i think?
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:23 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 06:43 |
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Is he "disassociated mechanics" guy? So like basically he doesn't like 4e because he's invented a system by which anything he doesn't like for any reason "reminds him that it's a game and takes him out of the game" and stuff he does like doesn't do that, even if it's the same thing between the two games? Like he doesn't like skills in 4e because they're disassociated, unlike in 3e, where they are apparently not.
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# ? Jan 22, 2024 20:25 |