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osirisisdead posted:That's something to be proud of? Did I say it proudly? No? Oh, it's just you assuming poo poo about people and posting about the poo poo you assumed instead of what people are actually saying again. Watching you shadowbox with the strawman posters you're creating in your head must be fascinating to someone, but not to me.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 11:52 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:03 |
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Yes, you did. It was clearly a boast. I'll paraphrase, "I know so much more than you about D&D because I hung out at charop boards" Bitch, I used to have the rulebooks memorized and I've consistently thrown poo poo at GM's that they never imagined. You have no idea if you are stuck at the level of maximizing your plusses.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 11:55 |
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Dear poster, From your posts I have received divine knowledge that I actually know better than you what you're talking about. This is obvious. I know better than you what you meant with what you said. Bitch, I'm so much better than you. Your friend, osirisisdead.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 11:59 |
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Rulebook Heavily posted:a shitpost
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 12:01 |
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osirisisdead posted:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3495106&userid=38399 literally my post history in this thread showing all the things I contribute to discussion
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 12:04 |
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osirisisdead posted:and I've consistently thrown poo poo at GM's that they never imagined. The last page of this thread, for instance.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 12:11 |
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And this used to be such a nice, laid-back thread.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 12:16 |
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Someone asked me this elsewhere: 4e isn't in here yet because there's a really active 4e thread still going, so it's not like it needs a signal boost or something! But I think we're adult enough to allow it if someone wants to steal 4e elements they like and port them to something, or get some older things into their 4e, whatever man. e: MalcolmSheppard posted:I ported 4e's action economy into my 2e game first thing because it really is the best. Minors have been great to adjudicate switching weapons and grabbing material components for spells. Like this. S'fine. Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Jan 30, 2015 |
# ? Jan 30, 2015 12:23 |
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Rulebook Heavily posted:If someone does want to post an angry rant about how multiclassing destroys the game despite having been in D&D games since '81 I'm not going to stop it, mind. I'm just not going to stop people from pointing and laughing either. Here's my copy for DCC: DCC is a d20 system with some strong relation to 1ed/2ed, despite referencing 3ed by its creator. Stats are rolled - Character creation is fast, simple and random. Impossible to “power-game!” 7 classic classes - Warrior, Thief, Cleric, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, & Wizard. And the whole thing just gets really down right weird most of the time: Feed a mysterious box blood every hour or unleash an awful demon! An ancient Reindeer Wizard is stealing children’s souls for Christmas! If using your brains and testing your luck appeal more than having every magic item under the sun, this is the game for you. Survival is a real feat, as death can come swift and brutal. But it’s a bit like a horror movie where seeing how people die is part of the fun. Magic is unpredictable and often hilarious in its ability for overkill. Gods can actually be called upon for real favors, foes smote and needs fulfilled. For you old-school gamers, this is a very Appendix-N inspired game. Creatures are strange, magic is rare & dangerous, NPCs are dodgy and everything wants you dead. There’s no inve$tment for new players, as all that’s needed to play is for the Judge(GM) to have a core rule book.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 14:16 |
Rulebook Heavily posted:Here's a "increasing ability scores" houserule I've tried for B/X: on every level, you may choose one of your Prime Requisites and roll 3d6. If it's equal to or higher than your current stat, raise your stat by one. If your current level is higher than your chosen Prime Requisite, raise the stat by one automatically. If your Prime Requisites are at their maximum level, choose any other stat, but those stats do not increase without a roll. That's a really cool rule! Simple and elegant - and it allows characters to gradually improve over time if you are using the old "roll under Ability" mechanic for attempting skill type things instead of your stats just being this thing that you are born with that can only improve through divine intervention or powerful magic. New coat of arms for my next Fighter found.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 14:18 |
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osirisisdead posted:"totally broken at it's core by designers who don't know what they're even trying for" then maybe the entire idea of a class-based system can be left behind
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 15:58 |
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Rulebook Heavily posted:For the class discussion, I've sometimes considered what would happen if "multiclassing" was the norm for the game. No such thing as a single class fighter: if you want to play a Paladin, you get the Cleric and the Fighter, if you want to be the swordmage you're Fighter/Mage and so on. I used to think you'd need two classes for each "theme" so people could double up if you wanted, like a Sorcerer and Wizard class that you could "double up" on if all you wanted was to do spellcasting. I've become less sure of that over time. It sounds cool and reminds me of the variant class rules from the 3rd edition Unearthed Arcana, particularly the Gesalt and Generic Expert/Spellcaster/Warrior variants - not exactly what you're going for, but similar. Combining the structure of the two variants with a little tweaking based on the rules of the edition you're using might come close to what you're after.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 17:14 |
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obeyasia posted:Here's my copy for DCC: Yep, this is good. If anything I'd add; NPC's and Player Characters explicitly do not use the same mechanics. Pretty much requries the GM and Players to use in-game rationales for things like gaining new spells, strongholds, etc. Is probably not a great 1st RPG for a new GM.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 17:33 |
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Glorified Scrivener posted:Is probably not a great 1st RPG for a new GM. I see a lot, a lot to like about DCC, but the lack of "encounter design" or even just random encounter tables really sticks in my craw. I guess it's good that it has so many pre-written adventures/modules.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 18:15 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:I see a lot, a lot to like about DCC, but the lack of "encounter design" or even just random encounter tables really sticks in my craw. I guess it's good that it has so many pre-written adventures/modules. Yeah, it honestly doesn't bother me, but I don't know that I'd call it a game that is ready to use off the shelf, as it does require the GM to pull from different external sources to build their own setting and adventures. For me that's not an issue and is actually refreshing and makes me want to tinker with the system and see how it works with stuff I already own. By way of an example though why I think it'd be a poor choice of a game to give to a newer GM. Joseph Goodman posted:DCC RPG carries forth a legacy of magic item creation that stretches back to 1974. The author does not feel it necessary to include a list of magic items which, in all candor, will in many cases resemble the encyclopedic compilations of such items which have been published regularly in the preceding decades. These prior works are ample inspiration for magic items to be used within your DCC RPG adventures. Now I own a shitload of RPG books and am happy to raid them for magic item ideas, but that's not be everybody's idea of a good time. The DCC magic item chapter does give some guidelines for some types of items, including a whole custom system for magic swords, but it doesn't make an attempt to create a balanced, rigorous system for handling magic item creation, use and relative value. I actually favor this approach at the current stage I'm at as a GM, since I house rule and experiment with stuff all the time.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 19:32 |
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Glorified Scrivener posted:
DCC was my first game to ever GM *BECAUSE* of its lack of set rules in lots of places. I found other games I'd played too rigid. Yeah everything can be house ruled, but the rules were still there to begin with. I liked being able to fly by the seat of my pants with no preconceived notions of how something should go.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 21:34 |
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I used 2e's grappling rules and they were super-smooth, at least in the way I eyeballed them (may differ from actual rules!). You roll to hit, check them number and if a asterisk appears beside it you can maintain the grapple and keep upping your damage. The other guy must either grapple you to throw you off or just take the damage and presume immobility. Running Slave Lords this reduced the enemy cleric to using Command a couple of times and whacking at the grappler, so the bad guy was still busy but due to the grappler's tenacity (a PC druid who was mostly a pacifist!) eventually passed out. So I'm thinking of systems that use the number from the die roll to squeeze out more info. In a classic to hit roll I think I'd give better results at the top and bottom, and moderate results in the middle. That's because rolling high indicates a good hit, and rolling low and hitting indicates the opponent was easy to hit. While there's no curve on the d20, the fact that a number to hit indicates a threshold works well enough for me, since the actual number range will be constrained to those linked to possible successes. I might use this for weapon special effects, for instance.
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# ? Jan 30, 2015 21:59 |
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obeyasia posted:DCC was my first game to ever GM *BECAUSE* of its lack of set rules in lots of places. I found other games I'd played too rigid. Yeah everything can be house ruled, but the rules were still there to begin with. I liked being able to fly by the seat of my pants with no preconceived notions of how something should go. The 2 big reasons I find DCC a easier system to run is because 1) The high-lethality tone is baked into the start of most campaigns; and 2) Most players will end up with more than one character (or at least one on backup). This means I get less paralyzed with worry about a unbalanced encounter or a less-than-optimal ruling killing a given player's special snowflake, so I feel more comfortable playing a bit more improvisationally. To be fair, I haven't had much experience with high-level play, which would lessen the impact of those two factors. Happily, PCs generally have more potential escape routes at that point; i.e. the Cleric can always attempt to pray to have their god save their butts.
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# ? Jan 31, 2015 00:08 |
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I just want to remind everyone that Night Howler's is one of the best player's-option supplements in the entire history of Dungeons and Dragons. I decided to re-read some of it this morning and besides the obvious fun bits (WINNIE THE POOH) I had forgotten how much of the book is explicitly laid out to help DM's customize lycanthropy. Almost every section that introduces a new rule also gives a list of optional rules to replace it. Because it doesn't use the 9-point alignment grid and instead uses "Chaotic" and "Lawful" they get to go into fun detail about exactly what a "chaotic" lycanthrope is (not a cackling villain, but easily distracted by the chance to do things an animal would do - chase a rabbit, etc). The setting included is pretty fun, too. A secret Principality in Glantri that is struggling to acceptance while also secretly aiding dwarfs, clerics, and halflings who are all persecuted in the country? The secret tribunal that enforces Wolf Law on everyone, and whose fines are used to support the victims of werewolf attacks? The secret not-Roman wererat city that riots when the bread from "Bread and Circuses" sucks?
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# ? Jan 31, 2015 01:47 |
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Are/were there any guidelines on granting the weapon mastery levels from RC based solely on character level?
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 00:02 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:Are/were there any guidelines on granting the weapon mastery levels from RC based solely on character level? No there weren't; it's pretty much all "you get X proficiency slots every Y levels".
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 06:48 |
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Would there be a reason to not give the slot (and choice) to the player?
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 06:59 |
I'd been thinking more on that level-less spell list idea and was worried that I was making it too complex. The whole reason I had wanted to do it in the first place was to simplify the Magic-User as a class in terms of book keeping and general mechanics, but I ended up going through and putting way too many level based specifics for how the spells change in function. My latest idea is that many spells have a secondary effect which the player can use them for, but to use it they must succeed on a Saving Throw when casting the spell (rather than having different "tiers" of spell effect based on the caster level). Since the probability of making a save increases as the character levels up this means that a higher level character is much more likely to be able to reliably use these other effects. Something like: my goofy fantasy heartbreaker posted:Cure Wounds or my goofy fantasy heartbreaker posted:Tongues Thoughts?
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 07:01 |
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Maybe give everyone access to the base levels of the spells, and then magic items or instructional scrolls let you upgrade or replace the effects of those basic spells? Complexity is much easier to manage if it's fed to you piece by piece as you find treasure.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 07:20 |
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FRINGE posted:Would there be a reason to not give the slot (and choice) to the player? The RC says something along the lines of "the player needs to find an instructor to teach them, then it'll cost this much per week and take this many weeks, and then you have a percentage chance to learn the next level of mastery". I suppose I could just handwave away the time as being in between sessions and the limiting factor is whether or not the player can afford the training. It just felt a little too open ended at first compared to something like "you gain a +1 to hit and damage with clubs at level x, and then at level y you can stun with clubs" or something similarly structured.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 07:40 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:The RC says something along the lines of "the player needs to find an instructor to teach them, then it'll cost this much per week and take this many weeks, and then you have a percentage chance to learn the next level of mastery". If it doesnt suit your game, yeah just say "it happened".
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 07:42 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:No there weren't; it's pretty much all "you get X proficiency slots every Y levels".
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 07:44 |
OtspIII posted:Maybe give everyone access to the base levels of the spells, and then magic items or instructional scrolls let you upgrade or replace the effects of those basic spells? Complexity is much easier to manage if it's fed to you piece by piece as you find treasure. That could work also - though my worry is that it would still end up producing a very similar situation as the normal level based spell list since you'd have to keep track of which spells you've Improved and which were still at base level. EDIT Though the idea of making higher level spell effects as something that only exists inside of certain magical treasures is one that I really like and think would fit in well - like a weird slightly malfunctioning crystal-powered raygun that shoots out Prismatic Spray or a huge cauldron of pitted green-blue metal that allows you to Control Weather. EDIT EDIT After looking around some more online I found a game called Beyond the Wall which actually has a magic system which has a lot in common to the one I had in mind. Mage characters in this game have Cantrips (minor effects that they have to succeed at an ability check to cast), Spells (cast 1/level a day, spells have no associated level to them and all seem to be equivalent to low to mid level D&D spell effects) & Rituals (major spell effects which are ranked by level that take 1 hour/ ritual level to cast. mages can only cast rituals that are equal to or less than their character level). I think the major difference for me was that Rituals were going to be class agnostic in my game - they were more of a summon/invocation/religious type deal, so you could have a Fighter doing a ritual in honor of a war god to bless his weapon for an upcoming battle, or a ritual where the party try to ransom the soul of a fallen companion back from death by offering up things they value. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 07:49 |
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Played into the odd this Friday. It basically played exactly the way I was expecting, extremely focused on crawling decisions, nice strange flavor. One of my players remarked that the hexcrawl part was like, "We just walked through 4 different Lovecraft short stories." I will definitely be keeping this game in my back pocket for quick dungeon crawling sessions. Thanks for pointing it out!
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 01:35 |
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I just bought the PDF of Into The Odd, it looks like my kind of thing. I paid, then immediately got two emails from Storenvy ( a receipt and a "payment processed" notice), but not PDF. Does the guy send them manually or something? I'm used to just getting a "click here for your poo poo" link when I buy PDFs.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 04:03 |
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AlphaDog posted:Does the guy send them manually or something? Yes. I bought mine after hours and he sent it the following morning.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 06:15 |
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No worries then, I was gonna give it until Tuesday and then email him anyway. Can you tell me a little about how it actually plays?
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 06:27 |
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AlphaDog posted:No worries then, I was gonna give it until Tuesday and then email him anyway. Mechanically it's super-light. You have roll under saves, damage rolls, random encounter checks, and rolls on random generation tables and that's pretty much it. One of my players showed up not knowing what game we were playing or anything about the game and 3 minutes later had a complete character. Needless to say it plays faster than any other RPG I've ever played. As a GM you have to be prepared to do a lot of descriptive improvisation because my players got touchy-feely with a lot of weird stuff. All I knew about that slime is it's translucent and harmless, so what happens if you try to stick a torch in it? (Turns out the slime unnaturally repels the flame.)
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 08:03 |
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Speaking of new OSR games, does anyone have any insights on Beyond the Wall? http://www.flatlandgames.com/btw/ It's an OSR game heavily inspired by the likes of Ursula LeGuin and others, the key thing being that the characters are all young-ish people who grew up in the same village and went on an adventure together. The mechanics seem to be based on B/X, but the classes have been reduced to Warrior, Rogue and Mage. There's also playbooks, which are basically pre-fab starting character sets, which are used to determine your starting class, equipment, and also contain a life-path system for determining your most important life events as well as important relationships within your village. Spells are divided into cantrips (which you can cast any time), spells (these might be vancian fire and forget spells but I'm not sure) and rituals (essentially spells that require a bigger time investment but have greater effects). It looks really interesting and the art is amazing.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 09:55 |
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Ratpick posted:...but the classes have been reduced to Warrior, Rogue and Mage. Is there a game that reduces classes to Wizard and Warrior? It always seemed like that was the logical end point of keeping classes but reducing the number of them.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 10:27 |
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Searchers of the Unknown takes you down to one generic adventurer class, but I think the retroclone/OSR community is very married to the idea of fight guy + spells guy + skills guy. EDIT: Dagger for Kids uses Knight + Wizard + Dwarf + Elf, the Wizard has both Magic-User and Cleric spells, and skills are just roll d6 to beat a number set by the DM. If you threw out the dwarf and the elf that'd pretty much do it. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 10:39 on Feb 9, 2015 |
# ? Feb 9, 2015 10:35 |
AlphaDog posted:Is there a game that reduces classes to Wizard and Warrior? It always seemed like that was the logical end point of keeping classes but reducing the number of them. Wizard and Warrior is how I am doing mine - the existence of Skills guy doesn't seem to serve much purpose outside of making Fight guy and Magic guy slightly worse at the whole exploration part of the game by default. I'm just throwing in little one-word Background's as a character-creation option that give a good idea about the non-class related things your character would be particularly skilled at and Thief is one of them (as well as Alchemist, Priest, Soldier, Scholar, Woodsman, Merchant, Entertainer, etc.)
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 14:23 |
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AlphaDog posted:Is there a game that reduces classes to Wizard and Warrior? It always seemed like that was the logical end point of keeping classes but reducing the number of them. Carcosa Don't buy Carcosa.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 15:35 |
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DalaranJ posted:Mechanically it's super-light. I read through the free version and am I right that you don't actually roll to attack? You just roll damage or perform some kind of maneuver with a Save?
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 16:02 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:03 |
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Ratpick posted:Speaking of new OSR games, does anyone have any insights on Beyond the Wall? I looked into this a bit and am a little confused. So, is the idea the playbooks give you a narrative role and customizes your class and character to better fit the role based on your responses/rolls on the chart? I was looking over the playbooks and that's the idea I got. Also, anyone know the girl or guy who did the cover? I think it's the same person who did most of the art on The One Ring.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 21:27 |