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You could just put the lance in his mouth, or maybe mount it in an eye socket.
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May 6, 2024 17:12
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Kwyndig posted:How does a demilich play joust anyway? Telekinesis? with a demilance, obviously
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May 6, 2024 17:42
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Halloween Jack posted:He's a head. Of course you can grab a head. The problem is the “perfect magical flight” thing. That has the implication that he just chooses where he wants to be and the magic applies as much mundane force as needed to move him. So you can grab hold, but can’t move him. If you could then having basically no Strength he could also end up blowing away in a strong wind..
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May 7, 2024 00:00
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hyphz posted:The problem is the “perfect magical flight” thing. That has the implication that he just chooses where he wants to be and the magic applies as much mundane force as needed to move him. So you can grab hold, but can’t move him. If you could then having basically no Strength he could also end up blowing away in a strong wind.. That's a completely unreasonable rules as physics interpretation. Not assigning a skull's magical flight an effective strength score does not imply that it either exerts infinite unstoppable force or is so weak that it would be helplessly restrained by a paper bag, any more than passing an item as a free action implies that you can make a line of peasants into a railgun. The problem here is that whoever told you this is an rear end in a top hat.
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May 7, 2024 00:30
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:The problem here is that whoever told you this is an rear end in a top hat. hyphz has a unique play group
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May 7, 2024 00:42
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:That's a completely unreasonable rules as physics interpretation. Not assigning a skull's magical flight an effective strength score does not imply that it either exerts infinite unstoppable force or is so weak that it would be helplessly restrained by a paper bag, any more than passing an item as a free action implies that you can make a line of peasants into a railgun. The problem here is that whoever told you this is an rear end in a top hat. Besides, his strength score is 13. And what's that measuring if not his resistance to grabs and his lift capacity? Bite force?
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May 7, 2024 00:42
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Strength of character. He's feisty!
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May 7, 2024 00:44
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Sorry guys, campaign is over, Acererak has perfect magical flight and "perfect" is an alarmingly nebulous term, so I defined it as his flying at lightspeed right through every living thing on the planet in a matter of milliseconds, then he just grabbed a rope and dragged the world into the sun, because his strength is perfect, I guess. The end, no moral.
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May 7, 2024 00:49
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Tarnop posted:hyphz has a unique play group Yeah, hyphz is alright but their irl group of multiple years are a gaggle of intractable grognards and the knock on effects are still felt to this day.
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May 7, 2024 00:52
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Hyphyz only has hot takes because he's stuck in the ttrpg equivalent of "Encino Man."
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May 7, 2024 01:00
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Kwyndig posted:How does a demilich play joust anyway? Telekinesis? In the book he’s a bog standard regular skeletal lich, because among all his other literary sins Ernest Cline is a huge loving poser who has never actually read Tomb of Horrors.
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May 7, 2024 01:17
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:In the book he’s a bog standard regular skeletal lich, because among all his other literary sins Ernest Cline is a huge loving poser who has never actually read Tomb of Horrors. I would also accept this as diegetically because the game creator was kind of poo poo at his own level-modeling tools and couldn't figure out how to make a demilich, so he went with a stock crowned skeleton model and called it a day. More MMO-based fantasy fiction needs to have lovely developer jank in it
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May 7, 2024 01:23
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Antivehicular posted:I would also accept this as diegetically because the game creator was kind of poo poo at his own level-modeling tools and couldn't figure out how to make a demilich, so he went with a stock crowned skeleton model and called it a day. More MMO-based fantasy fiction needs to have lovely developer jank in it If anything it should be easier to model a demilich. It's just a skull, it's a near-static object, it doesn't even need a walk cycle or anything, it can just float around. Hell, just take the skeleton model and make the non-skull bits invisible, maybe color the eyes green or whatever.
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May 7, 2024 01:39
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theironjef posted:Besides, his strength score is 13. And what's that measuring if not his resistance to grabs and his lift capacity? Bite force? Huh. Maybe it’s another adventure that had a demilich with “Strength —“. Rappan Athuk perhaps? FWIW I have like 3 groups now and only one of them grognards that hard 
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May 7, 2024 02:02
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Antivehicular posted:More MMO-based fantasy fiction needs to have lovely developer jank in it Hard agree! And weird poo poo should just suddenly get fixed, cuz there was an update, and now new things are janky.
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May 7, 2024 03:00
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Bucnasti posted:Hard agree! Isekai where the protagonist's stupid cheat ability gets patched out so he has to stop being such a loser and actually develop real life skills
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May 7, 2024 04:27
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Digimon occasionally has bits like that, where a lot of weird poo poo in the Digital World is supposedly because it was pieced together from random data and there's a lot of bugs and glitches, as well as stuff that feels like it's imitating things from the real world without understanding or caring about the context. Digimon Adventure played it up the most where there's random infrastructure that exists more as video game setpieces, like the factory that does nothing but assemble and disassemble useless widgets, a full on functioning cruise liner that sails through the desert, and there's even eventually a callback where the dismounted cable car the kids use as shelter in one of the first episodes is fixed when the Digital World reassembles in the finale, and the kids use it to travel back home.
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May 7, 2024 08:12
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hyphz posted:The original version was a response to players bragging they could easily beat convention scenarios. It even had a false ending so that groups could figure they’d won, leave the table, and be marked as having failed. But all the modern versions, including the “classic style” prints, are toned down. Nah. It was Gygax' own players (Ernie Gygax and IIRC Rob Kuntz) complaining that things were too easy in Gygax' own game. So he invented the hardest dungeon he could - but to beat the dungeon you beat the designer, and they already had. Robbed the place blind with no casualties (and teleported out when Acecerak started to wake up). I'm currently running my players through a bullshit dungeon. They know one of the main big bads has hidden one of the few weapons capable of hurting it down in this dungeon, but otherwise Did Not Do Their Research on what would be there beyond the sword. And big bad is not playing remotely fair. After they went in there was a fall of rocks followed by quick drying cement behind them down the entrance passageway and no one twigged that the entire place is meant to be a deathtrap even if the sword is there (and has multiple deathtraps and a couple of decoys on it of course). Unfortunately for the big bad he's unaware the PCs do have an emergency exit.
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May 7, 2024 12:56
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neonchameleon posted:Nah. It was Gygax' own players (Ernie Gygax and IIRC Rob Kuntz) complaining that things were too easy in Gygax' own game. So he invented the hardest dungeon he could - but to beat the dungeon you beat the designer, and they already had. Robbed the place blind with no casualties (and teleported out when Acecerak started to wake up). I have a few real-life-in-their-50s grogs in my social circle who started playing D&D when it was less than 5 years old and it's incredible how many of them revere Gygax. Look, the guy created an entirely new permutation of gaming and deserves recognition and respect but that doesn't mean he was an actual good game designer! In fact I would argue that he was not, and consistently failed to emulate through mechanics the swords-and-sorcery books that he lovingly references, instead making an expedition game about being a cowardly (by necessity) dungeoneering murderhobo. I've never read a single "classic" fantasy narrative pre-1976 that plays out anything like AD&D/BECMI did, unless you reduce those stories to their absolutely broadest strokes.
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May 7, 2024 19:54
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I have a few real-life-in-their-50s grogs in my social circle who started playing D&D when it was less than 5 years old and it's incredible how many of them revere Gygax. Look, the guy created an entirely new permutation of gaming and deserves recognition and respect but that doesn't mean he was an actual good game designer! In fact I would argue that he was not, and consistently failed to emulate through mechanics the swords-and-sorcery books that he lovingly references, instead making an expedition game about being a cowardly (by necessity) dungeoneering murderhobo. I've never read a single "classic" fantasy narrative pre-1976 that plays out anything like AD&D/BECMI did, unless you reduce those stories to their absolutely broadest strokes. His modules are pretty drat good though. Like Vault of the Drow and Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. He had a real knack for modules. All weren't great but a lot were.
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May 7, 2024 19:57
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I have a few real-life-in-their-50s grogs in my social circle who started playing D&D when it was less than 5 years old and it's incredible how many of them revere Gygax. Look, the guy created an entirely new permutation of gaming and deserves recognition and respect but that doesn't mean he was an actual good game designer! In fact I would argue that he was not, and consistently failed to emulate through mechanics the swords-and-sorcery books that he lovingly references, instead making an expedition game about being a cowardly (by necessity) dungeoneering murderhobo. I've never read a single "classic" fantasy narrative pre-1976 that plays out anything like AD&D/BECMI did, unless you reduce those stories to their absolutely broadest strokes. Fafhd and the Gray Mouser is sometimes sort of like old-school D&D. Don't split the party, or your promising low-level Thief and Ranger might die! But part of it is that old D&D was sort of a mashup of various fantasy literature with the wargaming tradition, rather than purely being based on the literature.
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May 7, 2024 20:01
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Hollismason posted:His modules are pretty drat good though. Like Vault of the Drow and Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. The whole Against the Giants/Vault of the Drow was amazing.
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May 7, 2024 20:20
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The whole Against the Giants/Vault of the Drow was amazing. I'm not a huge fan of Descent into the Depths of the Earth because it's one long dungeon crawl.
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May 7, 2024 20:32
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Hollismason posted:His modules are pretty drat good though. Like Vault of the Drow and Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. it's commonplace to sneer at tomb of horrors because blah blah killer dungeon, but I really recommend reading it and thinking through what it entails to solve it as a player - it's a lot more clever and fair than it appears on first glance, and the whole thing is like 12 pages long, it's incredibly tightly written.
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May 7, 2024 20:55
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sebmojo posted:it's commonplace to sneer at tomb of horrors because blah blah killer dungeon, but I really recommend reading it and thinking through what it entails to solve it as a player - it's a lot more clever and fair than it appears on first glance, and the whole thing is like 12 pages long, it's incredibly tightly written. Yeah it's not particularly unfair unless.you approach it from sheer stupidity.
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May 7, 2024 20:58
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truly the dark souls of rpgs
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May 7, 2024 20:59
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Just the knowledge that his real life friends said "I'm tired of all this fuckin' around, give us the real poo poo Gary!" completely changes what always seemed like a mean spirited module.
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May 7, 2024 21:00
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Ominous Jazz posted:truly the dark souls of rpgs lol it actually is, it even has a 'the real tomb of horrors starts here moment, with the false lich...
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May 7, 2024 21:03
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The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is particularly loving great because the player characters basically become indoctrinated into thr cult and perform cult rituals to get treasure It's the one module where it's like drat why isn't there a follow up to this and there wasn't because he'd left TSR by that point
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May 7, 2024 21:04
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Hollismason posted:The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is particularly loving great because the player characters basically become indoctrinated into thr cult and perform cult rituals to get treasure I really recommend running some 1e modules, either with 1e (it's quite rules light in a funny kind of way, since most of the rules are so bad you're best advised to disregard them) or with an OSR replacement. They're very fun and it's a nice 'exploring the history of the hobby' activity. I've done tamoachan, saltMarsh, the slavers series, tomb of horrors... all absolute bangers.
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May 7, 2024 21:12
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sebmojo posted:I really recommend running some 1e modules, either with 1e (it's quite rules light in a funny kind of way, since most of the rules are so bad you're best advised to disregard them) or with an OSR replacement. They're very fun and it's a nice 'exploring the history of the hobby' activity. I've done tamoachan, saltMarsh, the slavers series, tomb of horrors... all absolute bangers. Yeah my group that I got just wants to play fifth so I'm running old school stuff in fifth. Fortunately Dmsguild has a Classic Modules Today series where people convert older modules to fifth. Also there's people who have went through and redid the maps for VTT for a ton of the old modules. Basically my campaign so far is Ghosts of Salt Marsh , Tales from Yawning Portal, Isle of Dread ( I'm using goodman games ) , Hidden Shrine. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 21:22 on May 7, 2024 |
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May 7, 2024 21:17
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The old-school module I haven’t run but dearly want to is Caverns of Thracia. Hugely influential on some of my favorite designers, but I’ve never gotten around to running it.
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May 7, 2024 22:27
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Kestral posted:The old-school module I haven’t run but dearly want to is Caverns of Thracia. Hugely influential on some of my favorite designers, but I’ve never gotten around to running it. I last time I ran Thracia, I used Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved variant 3.5. That module is always awesome, and after reskinning some stuff so it fit into the Diamond Throne, it went over great.
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May 8, 2024 02:52
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Could anyone help me identify a 2nd Edition AD&D module I purchased from my LGS as a kid in the 90s? It involved an NPC named something like Venix the Vermillion, it took place at a frontier timber cutting town and culminated in a cave with some sort of Beholder kin. I've almost never owned any modules as a kid so that adventure left an outsized impression on me: a charlatan mage quest giver that was misleading the party bit wasn't actually an enemy and a small, rough logging town. I'd be curious to see just how far it's changed in my memory.
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May 9, 2024 01:04
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Jack B Nimble posted:Could anyone help me identify a 2nd Edition AD&D module I purchased from my LGS as a kid in the 90s? Maybe Eye of Pain? Based on the preview, there's a mage named Velinax the Vermillion involved.
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May 9, 2024 02:29
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Detective Eyestorm posted:Maybe Eye of Pain? Based on the preview, there's a mage named Velinax the Vermillion involved. My god, that's it! I recognize the cover even though I couldn't have told you what it was beforehand. Thanks!
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May 9, 2024 02:33
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I've gotten interested in Megadungeons as of late. The giant complexes that are supposed to last an entire campaign, etc. There aren't a lot of published ones and the ones that are aren't necessarily good, but it strikes me as a fun potential creative exercise.
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May 9, 2024 09:24
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Maxwell Lord posted:I've gotten interested in Megadungeons as of late. The giant complexes that are supposed to last an entire campaign, etc. There aren't a lot of published ones and the ones that are aren't necessarily good, but it strikes me as a fun potential creative exercise. I've been running a megadungeon under the West Marches model: the premise is that it's a Stone Thief-style roving dungeon that moves from place to place, and a wizard has managed to bind one of its entrances still so that parties of adventurers can go in and try to take it down. Each session is a single expedition in and out before the gates close again, and any players who haven't escaped by the OC end of the session have to make an escape-the-dungeon roll to see just how badly they get injured in the blind scramble to get out. I'm really pleased with the level-up mechanic: instead of tracking xp, there are statues throughout the dungeon that PCs can spend money to activate (there's a complicated metaphysic with modrons and the trapped souls of great adventurers). An activated statue will level up anybody of the right class -- so once the playerbase have paid the money for a level of ranger, anybody playing a ranger can reap the benefits if they know where the statue is.
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May 9, 2024 10:27
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Maxwell Lord posted:I've gotten interested in Megadungeons as of late. The giant complexes that are supposed to last an entire campaign, etc. There aren't a lot of published ones and the ones that are aren't necessarily good, but it strikes me as a fun potential creative exercise. There’s a wild one I wish I could get folks together to run called The Music of the Spheres is Chaos. https://goodman-games.com/store/product/dungeon-crawl-classics-100-the-music-of-the-spheres-is-chaos-print-pdf/ Totally wild map that rotates. I haven’t seen an attempt at 3d maps in a ttrpg in ages, maybe ever?
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May 9, 2024 12:18
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Maxwell Lord posted:I've gotten interested in Megadungeons as of late. The giant complexes that are supposed to last an entire campaign, etc. There aren't a lot of published ones and the ones that are aren't necessarily good, but it strikes me as a fun potential creative exercise. I really wanna run Gradient Descent, the sci-fi mega dungeon for Mothership.
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