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quote:I can remember a fishing trip with my father when I was a young teen into the mountains, a place called Abraham Lake. The lake is really only a wide, deep part of the Athabaska River, the same that flows north through Alberta to join the Peace River, that becomes the Slave river before it flows into Great Slave Lake, and ultimately across the Northwest Territories as the Mackenzie river. But none of that is important right now. I include it only because I’ve always been enamoured with that sort of thing, even when I was very young ... that the water flowing past me at this moment went this far and to this place. But I’ll restrain myself and continue.
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Apr 8, 2013 21:09
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Optional Rule: Gurostrike! Here's an optional rule I've been toying with for the eventual Black Tokyo revision. Try it out at the table, and tell me what you think...... Gurostrike With a single mighty swing, Yamoto lays the skatto witch open from sternum to pussy. A shocked look slowly blossoms on her face as she feels the hot loops of her own intestines slip out of her body. She slumps to her knees in a rapidly expanding pool of blood and poo poo. The hands that were still futility trying to cram her viscera back into her body suddenly twitch once, and go limp. Her knees give way, and the witch slides onto her side. She gives a rattling, wet cough as her ruined heart beats its last. Yamoto flicks the gore and bits of bone from his claymore with a contemptuous twitch of his wrist, and slides the blade back into its huge scabbard. This fight is over. Action and horror hentai, and ero guro manga in general, embraces ultra-violence. Heroes don’t just drive a sword through their foe’s heart. Instead, they disembowel their enemies with a single mighty blow, with the kill stroke lovingly rendered in a full page spread. By allowing the Gurostrike rule in your campaign, you give Black Tokyo’s heroes and villains alike a way to end combat in a single horrific strike, and make combat play out as it does in the pages of blood-stained manga like Blade of the Immortal. Performing Gurostrike Full Round, Provokes Attacks of Opportunity Gurostrike is a melee combat maneuver which any character with a Base Attack Bonus of +1 or higher can attempt. Gurostrike is a full round action which provokes attacks of opportunity. If the attack of opportunity is successful, the Gurostrike cannot be performed and the action is lost. Rather than making a conventional melee attack roll, the attacker makes a Strength Check to kill the defender outright. The Strength Check’s DC is equal to 10 + 1/3 the defender’s current Hit Point Total. Thus, if Bladelord Ichiro attempts to perform a Gurostrike against an uninjured Minotaur (45 HP) the Strength Check DC would be DC 25 (45 divided by 3, or 15 + base DC 10). The attacker receives a +5 circumstance bonus on the STR Check made to inflict Gurostrike against a helpless, unconscious or willing target. To perform a Gurostrike, the attacker must be able to clearly see the target, and must be able to target a vital area. Creatures immune to critical hits are also immune to Gurostrikes. Success: One Hit Kill! If the attacker beats the STR Check DC, the Gurostrike is successful. The attacker narrates exactly how he slays his victim in a single blow. Describe slicing your victim perfectly in half with your katana, knocking their pulped head off their shoulders with a single mighty blow from your war mace, or punching straight through your opponent’s chest, ripping out her heart and showing it to her. The Gurostrike’s victim is slain outright (reduced to -11 HP). Failure: An Ordinary Blow If the attacker fails the STR Check DC, the Gurostrike also fails. Check to see if the attacker’s check result at least equals or exceeds the defender’s Defense Score (Armor Class). Though they have no effect on the Gurostrike attempt itself, if the attacker’s weapon has a magical or masterwork bonus to hit or damage, they are calculated into this ‘secondary’ attack roll. If so failed Gurostrike is treated as an ordinary melee attack roll, which depending on the damage inflicted may kill the defender, just not as spectacularly as a successful Gurostrike would. If the STR Check result fails to exceed the Gurostrike’s DC and the defender’s Defense Score, the Gurostrike is a complete miss, having no effect. Armor and Gurostrike Most lighter forms of body armor offer only minimal protection against a Gurostrike. The attacker can aim for a vulnerable spot, or else simply strikes with such force that the blow shreds the armor at the same time it mutilates the flesh beneath. Heavy Armor adds its equipment bonus to Defense (Armor Class) to the STR Check DC to perform a successful Gurostrike against the wearer. Heavy Armor also adds any enchantment bonus to Defense (AC) provided by magical armor to the STR Check DC. Shields function in the same manner as heavy armor, adding both their equipment bonus to Defense (AC) and any enchantment bonus to the STR Check DC to perform a Gurostrike against the wearer. Bracers only add their enchantment bonus, if any. Light and Medium armor do not add their equipment bonus to Defense (AC) to the STR Check DC to perform a successful Gurostrike against the wearer. Light and Medium Armor add any any enchantment bonus to Defense (AC) provided by magical armor to the STR Check DC. Magic prevails when cloth, leather and chain doesn’t. Behind the Curtain: Armor and Gurostrike I decided that only non-magical heavy armor provides any real protection from a Gurostrike, because this is the way action-hentai art work most commonly depicts things. A knight’s full plate mail or a modern SWAT team member’s heavy ‘breaching armor’ might provide some protection against being disemboweled or decapitated at a single stroke, but chain mail or leathers just aren’t durable enough to stand up to the rigors of ero-guro combat. This means that Black Tokyo’s heroes will probably either be heavily armored or they’ll leave the armor at home, which again, makes sense in a modern context. This rule also allows magical armor (of any ‘weight-class’) to provide effective protection against Gurostrikes. This is in line with comics like Witchblade (which, though an American comic, is a great inspiration for a Black Tokyo campaign). Witchblade’s skimpy, scabrous mystical armor is probably Light Armor, just in terms of its physical mass, but offers enough magical protection to keep her alive against the vicious, hulking demons she battles on a regular basis. Gurostrike in the Campaign Gurostrike changes the way D20 Modern combat works in a pretty major way. A successful Gurostrike can end a fight with a single swordstroke. Gurostrike allows a hero to focus his rage, and end the life of the campaign’s master villain with one blow, or effortlessly mow down a low-HP mook. Gurostrike abstracts combat, and de-emphasizes weapons (even magical weapons), focusing instead on the strength and fury of the warrior wielding them. A hero wielding a +5 vorpal sword has the same chance to perform a Gurostrike as a rogue with a rusty shiv, or some battle-crazed barbarian who prefers to rip his opponents limb from limb barehanded. Since Gurostrike’s difficulty is keyed to the current HP total of the victim, players will have to spend several rounds whittling down a powerful opponent’s Hit Points before going for the kill with Gurostrike. Remember though, that while players can (and should) make liberal use of Gurostrikes to slaughter monsters, both human and otherworldly, so should the game master. Since most monsters have much higher Strength scores than even the most cybered-up or mystically enhanced hero, monsters are at a natural advantage when inflicting a Gurostrike. A tiger or bear can lay a man open with one swipe of its talons, but truly powerful monsters, such as Balors or Dragons or even the fearsome, slumbering Genbu can do even worse. Gurostrike makes closing to melee combat range a dangerous proposition. A hero can kill a monster in one strike, but the reverse is possible. Physically powerful and super-strong, vicious protagonists like combat cyborgs or Freduian Oni might stay on the frontlines, risking Gurostrike from their opponents for a chance to deal some close-ranged pain of their own. Everybody else, though is probably going to hang back from melee, and fight with guns or spells. Gurostrike Traits Hard Guts Starting Role: Combat, CON 13+ It’s not easy to kill you; somehow, you can fight on with horrible wounds. Even with your slippery guts oozing through your fingers, you can still keep fighting. Opponents attempting to Gurostrike you suffer a -2 penalty on their STR check to do so. Vengeful Gurostrike Starting Role: Combat or Special Your hate smolders and it may take you years to find the courage to strike back at your abusers, but when you finally do, your vengeance is sudden and horrific. You receive a +2 trait bonus on STR Checks made to perform Gurostrike against any target who has ever abused or tortured you, either physically, emotionally or sexually. Violent Lover Starting Role: Combat, Social or Special You know how to best hurt your former lovers, especially the beautiful ones. Once per day, when performing a Gurostrike attempt against a target you have previously had a sexual or romantic encounter with, you may add the target’s CHA modifier as an insight bonus on the STR Check DC made to perform the Gurostrike. Gurostrike Feats Dexterous Gurostrike (Combat) Prerequisite: Weapon Finesse, DEX 13+ When making a Gurostrike while wielding any weapon usable with Weapon Finesse, you add your DEX modifier to the STR Check made to perform the Gurostrike rather than your STR modifier. Environmental Gurostrike (Combat) Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +3 You like nothing better than an Ironclub Oni Yakuza off the rooftop and impaling him on an AC vent three stories below, pushing an Akaname assassin into a crematorium furnace and holding him in there face first until he stops twitching, or otherwise using the environment to kill your opponents. If there is a dangerous environmental feature (spiky wall decorations, an open electrical main, pipes containing caustic chemicals, a roaring fireplace, ect) adjacent to your target, you can utilize such a feature to your advantage when making a Gurostrike. If your description of the Gurostrike attempt includes the environmental hazard, you receive a +1d6 circumstance bonus on the STR Check to perform the Gurostrike. Improved Gurostrike (Combat) Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +5 Your opponent takes his eyes off you for only a split second, and in that time, you can sever his head from his body. You do not provoke attacks of opportunity when using the Gurostrike combat maneuver. Guarded Body (Combat) Prerequisite: Combat Reflexes You fight viciously to save your life, knowing full well what the enemy has in mind for you should your focus waver. You receive a +2 insight bonus on attacks of opportunity provoked by an enemy attempting a Gurostrike. Gurospell (Combat) Prerequisites: ability to cast 3rd level spells You are a spell-using murderer, able to use magic as lethally as any sword or axe. As a full round action, you can cast a Gurospell. You must sacrifice a direct-damaging dealing spell of 3rd level or higher to power the Gurospell. When casting a Gurospell, you add your primary casting ability modifier rather than your STR modifier on the STR check to Gurostrike. You receive a bonus on the STR check to Gurostrike equal to the level of the sacrificed spell -2. Thus, a 3rd level spell provides a +1 bonus on the check, a 5th level spell provides a +3 bonus, and a 9th level spell would provide a +7 bonus. Your description of the Gurospell should include some especially gory signature elements from the original spell. An Ice Storm spell might freeze the target from the inside out, then shatter them explosively, a Fireball might roast their heart within their chest, before flash-incinerating the remains, and so on. Guroshot (Combat) Prerequisites: Personal Firearms Proficiency, Point Blank Shot You can kill with a gunshot to the face just as efficiently as any long ago ronin could kill with his sword. You gain the ability to make a Gurostrike with a firearm or other ranged attack (including natural ranged attacks) so long as the Gurostrike is made within the weapon’s first range increment. Militaristic Brutality (Combat) Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +4, Power Attack Your combat training and years of battle experience have given you the skill and fury necessary to kill in a single blow. For every 4 full points of your Base Attack Bonus, you receive a cumulative +1 bonus on STR Checks made to perform a Gurostrike (maximum +5 bonus at +20 BAB).
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Apr 10, 2013 03:20
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ALIGNMENT FIGHT!zyanitevp posted:
Little Snuzzles posted:
JohnnyCanuck fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 10, 2013 03:36
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A Gamer's Manifesto I reject the fallacy that holding to a “One True Way” in gaming is an evil. Not all methods are equal, and we should strive not for the mediocrity that ‘everything is just taste’- but instead reach for and only accept the best. I reject that assertion that all game designs are broken. They may not be a perfect one, but it's not difficult to get close enough for practical purposes I reject the assertion that realism and simulation is impossible in game design. Again, it’s not difficult to get close enough to meet one’s needs. I reject the assertion that the GM owes the players anything other than an impartial campaign that offers mysteries and excitement. Success and Failure is dependent entirely upon their skill in play, or its lack. I reject the idea that GMs or RPG Design should seek to tell stories, they are games and should in themselves be fun and exciting enough that stories naturally result from play. I reject rules that make decisions for the characters. Players should make decisions for their characters. I reject the idea that RPGs cannot be played completely by the rules (or at worse the rules plus a reasonable amount of house rules) as written. I reject the idea that playing by the Rules as Written is not role-playing. Rules are physics, Role-playing is decisions and expressions. I reject the idea that GM judgment is the equal or superior of objective resolution in key areas such as combat and skill resolution. The GM powers are restricted to creating the world, and ends both at the mind of the player character and the boundary of the physics engines presented by rules. I reject the concept of play without the equal of a map and miniatures together with solid rules covering the elements of range, line of sight, and terrain. Any other style of play is lazy and nothing more than dependence upon GM handouts. I reject the concept of 'rules getting out of the way'. RPGs are games, and the rules should engage and interest the players.
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Apr 10, 2013 03:41
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I'm pretty sure this is free verse. Can somebody put it to a beat?SmilingJack posted:I think this is very much at the heart of what is role playing JohnnyCanuck fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 10, 2013 03:43
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Class Skills The Lightning Warrior’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowledge (all skills, taken individually) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Search (Int), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), and Use Rope (Dex). Skill Points at 1st Level (6 + Int modifier) ×4. Skill Points at Each Additional Level 6 + Int modifier. Lightning Warrior Level BAB Fort Ref Will Special 1st +1 +2 +2 +2 Bonus feat, Two-Weapon Mastery 2nd +2 +3 +3 +3 3rd +3 +3 +3 +3 4th +4 +4 +4 +4 5th +5 +4 +4 +4 Bonus feat 6th +6/+1 +5 +5 +5 Improved Two-Weapon Mastery 7th +7/+2 +5 +5 +5 8th +8/+3 +6 +6 +6 9th +9/+4 +6 +6 +6 10th +10/+5 +7 +7 +7 Bonus feat 11th +11/+6/+1 +7 +7 +7 Greater Two-Weapon Mastery 12th +12/+7/+2 +8 +8 +8 13th +13/+8/+3 +8 +8 +8 14th +14/+9/+4 +9 +9 +9 15th +15/+10/+5 +9 +9 +9 Bonus feat 16th +16/+11/+6/+1 +10 +10 +10 Perfect Two-Weapon Mastery 17th +17/+12/+7/+2 +10 +10 +10 18th +18/+13/+8/+3 +11 +11 +11 19th +19/+14/+9/+4 +11 +11 +11 20th +20/+15/+10/+5 +12 +12 +12 Bonus feat Spells Per Day Level 0 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 1st 5 3 — — — — — — — — 2nd 6 4 — — — — — — — — 3rd 6 4 3 — — — — — — — 4th 6 5 4 — — — — — — — 5th 6 5 4 3 — — — — — — 6th 6 5 5 4 — — — — — — 7th 6 6 5 4 3 — — — — — 8th 6 6 5 5 4 — — — — — 9th 6 6 6 5 4 3 — — — — 10th 6 6 6 5 5 4 — — — — 11th 6 6 6 6 5 4 3 — — — 12th 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 — — — 13th 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 3 — — 14th 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 — — 15th 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 3 — 16th 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 — 17th 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 3 18th 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 19th 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 20th 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 Class Features All of the following are class features of the Lightning Warrior. Weapon and Armor Proficiency Lightning Warriors are proficient with all simple and martial weapons, and with light armor. A Lightning Warrior can cast spells while wearing light armor without incurring the normal arcane spell failure chance. However, like any other arcane spellcaster, a Lightning Warrior wearing medium or heavy armor or using a shield incurs a chance of arcane spell failure if the spell in question has a somatic component (most do). A Lightning Warrior still incurs the normal arcane spell failure chance for arcane spells received from other classes. In addition, the Lightning Warrior may perform a spell with a somatic and/or material component even while holding a weapon in each hand. Casting a spell in this way still provokes an attack of opportunity. The Lightning Warrior can deliver a touch spell through a weapon attack (either a melee touch attack or a normal melee attack). Spells A lightning warrior casts arcane spells which are drawn from the sorcerer/wizard spell list. A lightning warrior must choose and prepare her spells ahead of time (see below). To learn, prepare, or cast a spell, the lightning warrior must have an Intelligence score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a lightning warrior’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the lightning warrior’s Intelligence modifier. Like other spellcasters, a lightning warrior can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. Her base daily spell allotment is given on Table: The Lightning warrior. In addition, he receives bonus spells per day if he has a high Intelligence score. Unlike a bard or sorcerer, a lightning warrior may know any number of spells. He must choose and prepare her spells ahead of time by getting a good night’s sleep and spending 1 hour studying. While studying, the lightning warrior decides which spells to prepare. A lightning warrior begins play with all 0-level lightning warrior spells plus six 1st-level spells of your choice. For each point of Intelligence bonus the Lightning warrior has, he receives two additional 1st-level spells of your choice. At each new lightning warrior level, he gains four new spells of any spell level or levels that he can cast. Unlike the wizard, the Lightning Warrior does not need to use a spellbook, he simply memorizes his spells. The Lightning Warrior can learn spells from scrolls in the same manner wizards do, but do not need to spend money copying the scroll, as he simply looks at it and memorizes it. Bonus Feats At 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level, a Lightning Warrior gains a bonus feat. At each such opportunity, he can choose a metamagic feat, an item creation feat, or a fighter feat. The lightning warrior must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat, including caster level minimums. These bonus feats are in addition to the feat that a character of any class gets from advancing levels. The lightning warrior is not limited to the categories of item creation feats, metamagic feats, or fighter feats when choosing these feats. Two-Weapon Mastery A Lightning Warrior receives the Two-Weapon Fighting and Two-Weapon Defense feats as bonus feats at 1st level, even if he doesn’t meet the prerequisites for them. Improved Two-Weapon Mastery A Lightning Warrior receives the Improved Two-Weapon Fighting and Improved Two-Weapon Defense (Complete Warrior) feats as bonus feats 6th level, even if he doesn’t meet the prerequisites for them. Greater Two-Weapon Mastery A Lightning Warrior receives the Greater Two-Weapon Fighting and Greater Two-Weapon Defense (Complete Warrior) feats as bonus feats at 11th level, even if he doesn’t meet the prerequisites for it. Perfect Two-Weapon Mastery A Lightning Warrior receives the Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting feat (complete warrior) as a bonus feat at 16th level, even if he doesn’t meet the prerequisites for it. At first glance, the lightning warrior looks like a weaker version of the wizard, due to the fact that it lacks a familiar and can’t specialize in a school like most wizards can. However, the special abilities and increased stats of the class help it catch up to the wizard somewhat, though it will probably continue to lag behind it. Trained in the arts of war, the Lightning Warrior has a bit more hp than a normal wizard, and can fight with two swords in order to offset his loss of his familiar. He gets a couple more spells to offset his lack of ability to specialize in a school of magic. This is a class which truly sacrifices power for flavor.
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Apr 10, 2013 04:03
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Having a conversation with a regular last night, who spent most of the time trying to convince me of something and very nearly succeeding. It's only that it's so absurd to me that I find my old cynicism gripping me like grim death, and I have to throw it out into the void in order to corroborate the claim. If this fellow wishes to declare himself, he may, but I won't give names. The proposal runs thusly: that there is a strong contingent in the community of people who play D&D, especially those who play 4e and who are closely associated with WOTC, who believe that the most important ideal of the game is 'balance,' the idea that every player, regardless of class or any other distinction, must be equal and the same where it comes to combat ... and moreover, or more to the point, WOTC's moves regarding the game in the last decade has been a strong effort to service this contingent of people. This all warps in some manner to a gaming mindset that says that if I am playing at the table with A, B and C, then not only must I be as effective as A, B, and C in combat, but I must be exactly as effective, and the more exactly as effective I am, in every combat we have, the "better" the game system, because it doesn't play favorites. Added to this is the concept that if I, as DM, offer the party a large gem, but only one, then I am being unfair to all the members of the party who did not receive that gem. In short, by virtue of this balanced ideal, I am a "bad DM." Now, I can believe someone as stupid as Mearls buys into this crap. There's quite a few bloggers out there that I can believe might buy into this crap. But I've never met anyone who felt this way, not personally, and I certainly haven't had any conversations before where anyone tried to pitch this at me as an "ideal game system." The whole concept is laughable. But then I am told, if a party is encouraged to play together and pit themselves as a group against monsters, without feeling the need to compete and win against each other, then that's a lot of kumbayah bullshit that many 'hardcore and serious players' don't buy into. I can't imagine what sort of nitwitted, panty-bunched stick-in-their-rear end bastards these sorts of hardcore players are, but I know for certain you'd never find them at one of my tables. If D&D has descended down to the level where it is so boring now that the individual players have stopped taking enjoyment from the pursuit of monsters, treasure and glory, and can only see it in terms of "who has the most experience this week," then no loving wonder that many of you reading this blog cringe at any reference to that game, and not S&W or some other acronym that hasn't been soiled, rubbed over with turpentine, shat on, pressed into a small cube and shoved up a monkey's butt. It's a real shame. D&D used to be such a pleasant game. I supposed I shall have to start calling my game Brains & Brigands. (note how the letters of the word 'brain' all exist in 'brigands') WOTC's involvement in all this, apparently from a money stand point, goes like this: 1) The Owners of the Franchise involve themselves in market research in the late 1980s, and learn from crawling convention cretins that what they really want in the game is more "balance" ... vaguely conceived as the sort of thing noted above. More to the point, they are looking for a game where they can "invent their own characters." 2) TOOTF game tests a lot of crap and comes up with the build system that is 2.0. But it's crap, so they sit down and make a better build system, 3.0. Which is still crap, even though they try to balance it further with 3.5. 3) Each system that's advanced fails because the players, who are still saying they want a balanced system, make thorough efforts to break every system that's balanced. 4) However, TOOTF realizes that by loving around with the balance endlessly in book after book, guide after guide, 'patch' after 'patch,' they are making money. 5) So ultimately the TOOTF are not building systems to produce better games, but systems which are in fact harder to break, encouraging a generation of stupid people to forget what the game was originally about, and concentrate instead on finding the best way to break whatever is the latest bullshit balanced system. This is the real reason for 5e, because the players of 4e have grown bored with breaking a system that's too clumsy or impractical to 'break.' And amidst all this, the OSR springs up. True dat?
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Apr 10, 2013 15:34
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Ok seriously I'm tired of this " people today couldn't figure out how to play B/X" bullshit. Assumptions and tropes? You mean like apprpoaching D&D as NOT D&D, as some kind of heroic fantasy story hour? D&D is pretty straightforward and consistent. Trying to turn it into every desired type of fantasy game just fucks it up. PCs explore damgerous places. PCs die fairly regularly. New PCs join. Thats D&D. This idea of the generic fantasy "party" that adventures together remaining in leveled lockstep, supported by rules ensuring that one little wanker doesn't get to have an ounce more fun than some other guy is just fine as a premise for a fantasy game. But.... That isn't D&D. So with regard to the whole wandering monster thing, if the playstyle it supports is storywank hour with PCs adventuring in thier little level appropriate comfy zones ensuring thier daily resources refresh enough so that they don't get home late for supper then its all for naught.
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Apr 10, 2013 22:59
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"RPG companies's big problem is that they cannot sell you a system for telling a story, well I suppose they could make one, but who would buy it? Take away the combat systems and they are reduced to trying to sell source books and with very subject in world having a wiki on the net only people with money and no time would invest in source books these days".
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Apr 11, 2013 04:08
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Sorry, but like Brian from The Breakfast Club, I'm going to go ahead and pat myself on the back now. I've said before that I am always getting new ideas. Last night, laying in the bathtub (like Archimedes, my electrons fire when wet), I came up with a doozy. And I think it's slashing brilliant. A little history, first. Last week I posted about breaking camp, where Zzarchov produced the astounding idea of travel causing damage. He did not post his system, but on Sunday Anthony posted a fair effort at stealing it (Anthony's words, not mine). Once upon a time, that would have been good enough for me, too ... but nowadays I find myself looking at traditional tables and seeing them for the stale systems they are. This is not to disparage Anthony. I was thinking, as he posted his format, of drawing up something exactly like it. Not now, however. I have something that I am certain goes one step better. I am hoping even Anthony and Zzarchov will think so. The two problems I see with the traditional format are these. 1) the very same argument I made about things with one hit point dying in the wilderness; and 2) that very tough, high-level characters are not going to be upset by 1 to 6 hit points damage per day. Yes, if there are a lot of followers and so on, that could mount up, but the party I run presently can easily heal 60-80 hit points a day. So as long as they take care to protect the lower levels with vardo and so on, they can mount up for weeks at a time with little trouble. Now, James said something that got stuck in my head, the finally latched onto my watered skull last night: "Damage could be a % of max hit points with a ceiling instead of an objective value ..." And suddenly I knew what was needed. Consider, then, the following table, conjured just a few minutes ago: Days equals the total number of days the party is travelling. The Base Damage adds 0.1 damage per day of travel. The Weather Description can be entered as pleasant, unpleasant, severe or harsh, and each particular description provides a modifier. The Route can be a road, a carttrack, a trail or none at all. Again, each sort of route provides a modifier. Finally, the base damage is multiplied by the Weather Modifier and the Route Modifier, producing a final result. This result is rounded down, giving the total damage for the journey. Now, I haven't sat down to calculate out the specifics of what kind of weather applies to what modifier. Pleasant weather would be fair and clear, 5 degrees (celsius) near body temperature, with a minimum of wind. A mixed rainy day, or a day colder or warmer, or a stiff wind might be unpleasant. A steady drizzle or falling rain, a very cold day or a hot day, and a slashing wind, these might be severe. And a combination of the above, with any of them being pronounced, would be harsh. Of course, the DM might just use what feels best, or might get definitive. At the moment, it doesn't matter. To get a feel for this, let's describe an 8-day journey. Let's presume a party starts on a road, turns onto a carttrack, then onto a trail, and finally jumps off into the wilderness for a day. At that point, they turn back and head to town: Now, here is where things get interesting. On the first day, its a bit chilly and the party feels stiff and uncomfortable ... but they're on a road, and overall they feel no special effect from the environment. The second day, the base damage climbs to 0.2 (I'm rounding the figures off, the exact number is actually 0.196), but the weather is pleasant and the carttrack is easygoing. Again, no appreciable effects. With the third day, as the party slips off the carttrack and onto the trail, the sky spatters rain and the day is a bit worse. The trail is slippery and by the end of the day people feel the going has been harder. But still, there have been no appreciable effects. So they cut right into the wilderness. Now here it gets interesting. It doesn't matter if its a forest, a mountain or brushland. Some consideration might be made for the plains, treating them as a kind of endless trail. What's important is that the distance covered per day determines how hard it is to cross a particular hex, not what's in that hex. A jungle may allow for 2 miles of travel per day. A mountain highland, 3 miles per day. A forest, 5 miles per day. In any case, take note how multiple days can add up. The fourth day, the weather is pleasant, so even though the route is hard, they don't mount up any appreciable effects. And let us say they plunder a goblin camp at the end of the day and start back. The fifth day, things turn sour. Working their way back through the same trackless environment they fought the day before, the weather turns severe and they begin to feel the effects of five continuous days of journeying. They all suffer a point of damage, which they deal with fairly quickly. Things will get better, they think, as soon as we get out of this wilderness. Unfortunately, the sixth day a major storm grips the land and the weather gets positively icy. The base damage climbs only a little bit, but the effects of the harsh weather and the trail take their toll. Everyone takes three damage. Thankfully, the next day the weather clears and they get onto the carttrack. But the previous days effects do not magically go away. The party is exhausted, beaten down from the trip and the weather (it's the seventh day of trekking, after all), so even though now they are getting back into civilization, their bones hurt and its troublesome even to move. They might even be suffering from mild ailments and sinus symptoms. They all take another three damage. Finally, the eighth day, they get back on the road. The weather is pleasant again, and the road lowers the amount of damage back down to two. Thank god that night the party will be back in town. I see a lot of ways this could be mitigated. Certain characters could be immune to certain weather effects, or the modifiers for them (kept separately, which is easy to do on excel) reduced very slightly. A particular spell or strategy could reduce the increase in base damage, or the reverse - if the DM really wanted to emphasize how tough the journey was. By noodling around with the numbers, all sorts of mitigating circumstances could be accounted for. Most of all - and here is the true genius of the system - the amount of time the party was away from civilization would be critical. Moreover, since the climb in the system is steady, higher level characters would really feel the effects after three weeks, even if the weather was wonderful. Mungo Park eventually losing all his men in the African interior, indeed. And yet, at the same time, any zero level with 1 hit point could safely wander away from home for two or three days, and expect to come back safely. This is the best idea I've had in ages.
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Apr 11, 2013 04:39
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A GM "scales up" an encounter with a dragon and kills the rogue on his birthday as a result of "getting cocky". So how do people feel about negative levels as a penalty for ressurection? Not lovely enough. quote:I don't like the idea of negative levels. Mechanically it's a chore to deal with and frankly I don't think it's fun. It's a generic penalty for dying that doesn't build on the character. Personally if you end up allowing resurrection I would suggest you drop the negative level aspect but replace it with a permanent wound the PCs suffer. You can make up a special wound based on how they died or you can make a few and have them randomly distributed. Don't give him negative levels, that's stupid and un-fun. Give him permanent, crippling penalties that do nothing but hinder his future progress! quote:Roll new characters! Why would anyone bother resurrecting some no-name adventurers in a low magic campaign? Make your NPCs refuse to ressurect people! quote:I agree that just straight penalties like negative levels are boring. He should come back cursed. Nah, punishing is really the way to go. Death and the cost/hassle of resurrection just isn't REAL enough. quote:I don't allow resurrection in my campaigns. If you die, you die. This makes it very 'real', and means that deaths are serious business.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:10
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Party wipe is another term for gently caress this guy we will find a new dm. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 11, 2013 17:26
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Sean K Reynolds posted:New house rule: all casters automatically can cast all 0-level spells for their class. Prepared casters don't even need to prepare them. Which means you don't have to write them out for a stat block... because knowing what cantrips the enemy wiz10 can cast today almost never matters.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:54
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The Glory Days of D&D Let's face it. The glory days of heroic tabletop gaming never exactly qualified as mainstream entertainment. Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D as the players call it, is the mother of RPG's, or Role-Playing Games. Tom Hanks' debut in Mazes and Monsters doomed kids to parental griping for years. My mom threw away my books at least once. The currently predominant view in the media is basically that RPG'ers are all ubergeeks like Jason Fox from Bill Amend's foxtrot.com, a perpetual eight-year-old who likes math and chess and computers and who designs his games around alphabetical walkthroughs of the monsters in the supplied manual. For those of us who owned the original Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set in the blue box edited by J. Eric Holmes (and I still own the crumbling remains of some of those crappy, cheap blue plasic dice), who then went on to purchase thousands of dollars in AD&D rulebooks over the years, the rolling eyes and shrugs of the uninitiated are just background noise. By now we've played every system we could afford to buy or bum from a friend. We've used every combination of polyhedra dice, sets of three six-siders or enormous handfuls, just percentiles in a dozen configurations. There have been cards with no dice, even games with no dice OR cards... We've seen the poor old tired monkey lie down next to the well-worn proverbial football with no prurient interest left, and still we never find the perfect game. We always come back to D&D. What's worse? Almost any game system could be ok; the problem is that there are so few players out there who *aren't* Jason Fox. Still, in its day under TSR, E. Gary Gygax and company made AD&D the Acme of its domain. They pioneered the role-playing market the way J.R.R. Tolkien forged the Fantasy genre with Lord of the Rings. There had practically never been anything like it. We flocked to the new game like lemmings to a cliff, and endlessly informed the Dungeon Master "I ready a flask of oil, and listen at the door." The Beginning of the End Then along came Wizards of the Coast with Magic: The Gathering. This was another bold new idea that nestled itself into a niche of Tolkien's legacy. It appealed to gear-headed geeks who enjoyed the tactical challenges of stacking a deck. They had no interest in wading through eight levels of orcs and flesh-dissolving mobile slimes before getting to the "good loot" they had wanted at level three. Can you feel the terminology swamping your synapses, glazing your eyes and turning your grey matter to puddings and jellies, oozes and slimes? Magic was and is a good game. Wizards was and is a business. The purpose of business is profit. They continually publish newer and cooler cards, which people must continue to buy to have the best possible combos. Never mind that they also have an online subscription version of the game for which you must buy an entirely separate set of cards; that's a topic for another ranting article. The point is that Wizards is run by businessmen/gamers who apparently have no real clue where the two spheres intersect. They have left millions of dollars on the table as they walked away to do things their own way. Unfortunately, they made millions of dollars in the meantime, whereas TSR was run by even less savvy businessmen and tanked. Wizards bought them. Now they own the D&D system. Many people thought it was a good thing for D&D when Wizards bought TSR and opted to continue publishing the D&D series. They even came out with a 3rd edition, which simplified away much of the old table-driven kludginess of the 1st and 2nd editions and revived the D&D world. Alas, such salvation was the beginning of the end. While D&D as a market will likely never die, the Game That Was is lost. It's forward evolution to something truly Good has been derailed into the Wizards downward spiral. What Might Have Been, and Almost Was The AD&D 1st edition was actually a great leap forward from the old D&D Basic Set, adding the ability to multiclass among many other innovations. Wow - you mean I can be a fighter AND a thief? Great! 2nd edition went far beyond that, adding nonweapon proficiencies - skills. The game was evolving. TSR began to publish additional material in appendiary books that altered the rules with new options. PLAYER'S OPTION: Skills & Powers was the apex of an ideological arc that let the player redefine what a "character class" meant. The system was only one step away from releasing itself from the hidebound concept of level once and for all and joining the growing number of competing systems that gave a player some real control over a character's development. That one next step would have brought D&D all the flexibility and playability of 9 out of 10 systems on the market. Rather than waste time counting how many orcs or goblins a player character could claim kills for and pumping it all through a complex formula to decide how many experience points ("xp" in the vernacular) that character should receive, the game could have converted to a pure Character point system. Why do thousands of these arbitrarily awarded xp grant a character not one single benefit for the hump-teen thousand nine-hundred and ninety-ninth, but the next single point award new stats, new health, new skills, new proficiencies, new spells? It's absurd. On top of that, the advancement at any given class/level was largely predetermined. Each class got a known range of randomness added to "hit points", a known increase in odds to succeed on a hit, a known range of points to distribute among a known set of skills. Even 3rd edition's feats came from a predictable bag. Spells were always from given lists. While the permutations are significant, they are learnable. 3rd edition added a lot, but prestige classes only increased the size of the playing field. The class and level system is still little better than a glorified version of paper/scissors/rock. Yet when Wizards bought TSR, all development of the character point system was scrapped. Advancement was reverted to a pure xp system again. While GURPS, Shadowrun, and the Hero system let players customize a little after every single session, D&D requires more math for less control. Other systems let you role-play. D&D under Wizards has tended decidedly towards roll-play, making any actual characterization the province of only the hardcore player, who tended to drift away to other systems. Now D&D have devolved to the truest table-top version; a glorified board game. It has a place -- give the devil his due -- but Wizards might as easily have offered a separate branch of development and made a whole other killing in the market. Money on the table, and they won't even let anyone else farm it as a sharecropper. Ladies and gentlemen, we are left to roll our own.
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Apr 11, 2013 18:09
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Apr 11, 2013 18:43
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Cthulhu: Mysteries in Darkness posted:The purpose of this Playtest Demo is to introduce you to the world of the Cthulhian "vampires." Creatures which exist beyond our own understanding, which disprove the existence of all "evidence" given to us by science or religion. This Playtest Demo sheds new light on the mythos of Damnation, the game this Playtest Demo was created for. As you read this material it is our hope to create a world beyond science and religion. A world where archeologists find strange contraptions and mysterious organizations appear to "investigate" them. One where strange demons come to walk the earth and where creatures who share similarities are quickly proven to be something else. Although no one really knows where these creatures come from, the most given answer is "The Deep." Even their counterparts know nothing of what they speak of and often those who investigate are mysteriously murdered, go missing or are driven insane by their findings. Cthulhu: Mysteries in Darkness posted:The Similarities I was running Vampire: the Undeath, and a PC vampire staked an NPC vampire, and I said "A clown comes out of him!" and they were like "What?", and I added "Tons of clowns come out!" and they're like "What?" and go on "The vampire folds open like a switchblade and thousands of clowns all the clowns big clowns little clowns skinny clowns fat clowns-" and they say in unison "What?!" and I'm like "BAM!" with my fingerguns and I say "You just got Lovecrafted!" I look forward to more stories of unstoppable mermedusa vampires in Black Secrets of the Dirty Hand or whatever. Time out for expert sockpuppetry. Dark Phoenix Publishing posted:If you guys need anything, feel free to let us know! Vermontville Vampire: Undeath LARP posted:Welcome to the dark family!
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Apr 11, 2013 20:04
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IT'S ACTION TEENZ THE GAME! SIX TEENAGE HEROES TRYING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE ARE SUDDENLY FORCED INTO FIGHTING ONE ANNOTHER IN A TOURNAMENT OF DOOM. PLAY AS YOUR FAVORITE ACTION TEEN AND BATTLE AGAINST YOUR COMRADES IN A DESPERATE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE. The free demo is the entire game, but I'll just put the rules here. quote:A GAMMA RAY BURST MUTATES THE HUMAN GENOME AND GRANTS "Action Teenz" has two issues of its comic, so I don't think this is a troll game...
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Apr 11, 2013 20:20
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Anyone who would even argue that torture isn't inherently evil, is ipso facto evil, IMO, (since we're talking about whether alignments are important in D&D), alignments, if they are optional, mean that paladins just don't make sense. I don't want a paladin who's taken a vow to his god, would accept an order of slaughtering his opponent's villagers. A true paladin would rather lose his powers and his status as a paladin, than commit an atrocity like that. It would surely be a test, by a tricky old-testament style god, to see where his true character lies. At some point, you need to take responsibility for your own actions and live with the consequences. Removing alignment restrictions and all its baggage seems like a roundabout way of calling whether it's moral or not to slaughter innocents merely campaign fluff on your way to get to higher levels, because hey, why not. Everything is relative, right? Again, not my idea of the point of having a paladin in this game. Saying one can be unaligned because the alignment system is too rough an approximation for real morality is not the same as saying there is no such thing as evil, and that's a very contentious issue right there which I doubt many people would really sign onto if they've, you know, looked at the world we live in and gave it 2 seconds of thought before delving back into their Counterstrike match.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:13
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If you're you're not using alignments at all, it still works, but the default Oaths should include alignment in their descriptor, because that's the classic archetype and I don't want D&D default to be this hard-to-understand, cerebral nonsense where your actions are fluff. I saw in too many 4e games the results of having no alignment : everyone is unrestricted to be lizards and rogues. Some might act decently, but e.g. we had a rogue who's make masks of the faces of our enemies, and as a paladin, it made my skin crawl, but what can you do? Police them? That's an issue about what's a "dealbreaker" to be in someone's company, fine, but because alignment was complete and utter fluff, there was never any consequence of my being allied to such an individual, nor was the DM even allowed to remove my powers, by RAW there is no way to do that, no mention of it at all. The end result of playing in an alignment-less ruleset, or one in which there are virtually no drawbacks for not following said alignment that's written on your sheet, is that nothing really matters. Nothing really matters, at all. Except combat. All you need is kill.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:16
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I have played a paladins and have seen many paladins played, in 1st ed, AD&D, 3.0, and 4.0. As soon as the ability to lose your paladin status is removed, the behavior of the player is changed. There is no disincentive to acting a certain way. Yes, I do blame the system for removing this constraint. 4e reduced paladins to just another set of bland power cards where their alignment was mere fluff, and much weaker than, e.g. rangers even in an undead-only campaign. Without it, the class is little different than a fighter/cleric. I find it tiresome that so many people are anti-alignment, and yes, I do think it's in Dark Sun one can run alignment-free campaigns easier, since there are no gods. And yes, I stand by my assertion that humanity is largely reptilian (selfish and amoral) in nature, all one has to do is turn on the news or read a little history. The evidence to support this assertion is overwhelming. Try playing a paladin in Dark Sun. oh wait, there aren't any. QED
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Apr 12, 2013 02:17
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Can one of the posters who is against paladins having a code that is enforced by the loss of their abilities, please tell me how a paladin (without the alignment/code/etc. restrictions) is conceptually different from a fighter who decides to fight for a specfic deity's cause? In other words without the alignment restrictions/code of conduct/deity power over abilities... what makes the paladin archetype any different than a mercenary for a particular religion? Even in 4e his combat role occupies the same space as the fighter's .... that of defender. This is one of the reasons I find the claims of him having to fight valiantly and throw himself into danger (like many other defenders in 4e who aren't based around a valiant or noble archetype) kind of hollow as far as it being the differentiating factor for a paladin, so my question is what differentiates him in a narrative sense?
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Apr 12, 2013 02:19
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If you don't see what the difference between a paladin with spells and a fighter/cleric, that's fair, but there are those of us who do. Again, the 4e mindset where all classes have to have the same chassis, no more, no less, is what most people AFAIK missed. Nobody is saying rogues should have to be evil, but certainly any non-lawful is reasonable. Otherwise why have alignments at all? Oh right, because all we are supposed to do is smash monsters in the dungeon and take their stuff, and everything has a modern relativistic morals sheen to it. Sometimes we want to play PCs who are conflicted with many shades of grey, othertimes we like the restrictions placed upon us. What's more of a spectator sport, boxing or a street fight? There are lots of rules in boxing, restrictions you might say, which make it even more fun to watch because once you define the limits you can go from there. If you don't like the rules of boxing you watch UFC or golf or something else, you don't say that restrictions are badwrongfun.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:27
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Icefalcon posted:
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Apr 12, 2013 02:57
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You can run a 4E game like 3E, but there is no point in it. As everyone is good in everything in 4E all challenges must be scaled to their level or they are trivial. A 9th level party comes across a door? If it is a normal door everyone in the party can overcome it. To be really worthy of actually being a challenge it has to be a adamantium door with a clockwork lock. In the end you still just have a scene with a generic obstacle. It doesn't even matter much what the obstacle is as everyone gets better at everything. The level of the PCs decide what door they face. In 3E this is different. Here the exact nature of the obstacle matter much more as PCs are not automatically good at everything. The best lvl 15 lockpicker in the world will still have trouble scaling a moderately challenging cliff if he never bothered to train climbing. And when they face a door it is just a door appropriate for its location. Maybe the rogue int the group is good enough to open it, maybe not. And the broad skills in 4E reinforce this "skills being redundant". You are good with athletics? Congratulations, you are a good swimmer (despite never having seen water deeper than your knee), climber (despite the highest elevation in your home country just being a mild 300 meters), etc. Someone being good in Athletics, Perception and Streetwise tells you nothing about that person as every category is so broad. It works for "hero" characters who are awesome at everything (Climbing, swimming, running, spotting, listening, gossiping, etc.). And that is just three skills. Considering that under the 4E system you get good in everything it means every PC is a walking superhero. But some people still want their characters to be humans with flaws and weak points. Those weak points are denied in 4E as it could result in someone not participating in an skill obstacle scene and that obviously wouldn't work with skill challenges.
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Apr 12, 2013 04:54
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quote:NPCs/Monsters don't have brains, they are intrinsically extensions of the GM's will, thus any judgment being made as to how to proceed is by definition the judgment of the GM, and is at the very least the subject of the GM's biases and subservient to his/her goals. It is the DM's job to not run the monster how he most WANTS then to be run but how they SHOULD be run. Anything else is Metagaming.
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Apr 12, 2013 05:05
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quote:What is a board game? What definite characteristics does a boardgame have that 4e doesn't share? Same question about wargames. Wargames are some kind of boardgame.
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Apr 12, 2013 06:05
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I played the Moldvay rules and loved them. My friends and I had a great time crawling dungeons and RPing. Then AD&D came along. We started playing and it got old fast. Roleplay was replaced by pages of charts and die rolls. Everything that was in the least bit "fantasy" related was crammed into the game. Gygax's beautiful creation was reduced to a bookselling dollarfest. Now my kids have found the Basic Rulebook and want to try it out. Unfortunately, this is all I still have of the original D&D (we won't count the stack of AD&D boat anchors). I've looked at the Beginners Box and it looks like a good gateway - but a gateway into what? Is PF the streamlined system of the original, or is it the overly complicated madhouse of the latter?
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Apr 12, 2013 12:14
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Grognard.txt's Iron Law ("Nerds + Economics = Hilarity, Every Time") spotted on Wikipedia.The Wikipedia article on West End Games posted:Eric Gibson has stated in an interview that he was "perhaps naïvely optimistic" in assuming that distributors would order products produced under his ownership of the company "just because it's West End Games." He further stated that this led him to print more books than he could sell, books which he had to destroy in order to save on storage costs.
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Apr 12, 2013 14:24
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FMguru posted:Grognard.txt's Iron Law ("Nerds + Economics = Hilarity, Every Time") spotted on Wikipedia. Don't forget Necroscope, Species and Tales from the Crypt. Granted, their original settings were pretty good. quote:I'm thinking about a campaign that involves Modrons (MMII), perhaps an invasion of them into the prime material plane, or something along those lines. quote:I'd be tempted to make them come in a range of bright, cheerful colours, if only to make them seem less threatening, even slightly comical, until it's TOO LATE. quote:Nahh...I'm talking realistic modrons. :/
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Apr 12, 2013 14:49
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quote:I knew I loved AD&D. Pre-UA, Gygax AD&D. I love OD&D too. quote:This is really something that gets me every time I get into the AD&D books now. quote:I completely agree with that. And it kind of makes you own the game because you got to make choices and interpretations. Sometimes it doesn't make sense, or it's not straightforward and the point is well hidden somewhere, you read the stuff, try to make sense of it, and whether that fails or not, you grow a set of balls and make your own ruling for yourself. That's how it should be. quote:It kinda is yeah, when I think about it. Not just because of some areas being a mess, mind you, but the tone of the game itself, the way Gary talks to you through the DMG instead of just pasting rules like in a toaster oven manual. It's a journey to be a good DM, and I think this IS a good thing about the game in its own right. Simplicity for the sake of it is overrated, I think. It's an appeal to mediocrity and laziness. AD&D is a game that wants you to rise and reach your potential. It provides guidance for sure, but it doesn't catter to you and holds you by the hand like you are a retard. Other posters: quote:I think this is one of the keys to the lasting appeal of AD&D: Gary wrote it for a college-educated audience. quote:I don't know if I agree with that idea of being written for college educated people. I think it was written with creative people in mind though. People who are able to use both imagination and logic at the same time and that does not fit the largest portion of the people. quote:I like to keep the DMG by my bed for inspirational reading before I fall asleep.
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Apr 12, 2013 15:33
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quote:I know this sounds crazy but I want to play Sailor Moon. I would love to see how she would play out in pathfinder. I have no idea where to begin I've never done a conversion before. quote:Ironically, magical girls are most like 3.5's warlocks - in that they have a relatively small suite of (usually low-level) powers that they can use at will - more than they are any of the Pathfinder classes. quote:Summoner quote:The only system that does her justice is Big Eyes Small Mouth, created specifically for that anime feel and flow. There was a D20 conversion of that, but it did not do well. quote:Oh the flashbacks... quote:Back when I was making stuff for 3.5 regularly I worked on the rough concept of D&D converting Sailor Moon. Not sure how much of it would work for Pathfinder without revisions but I can C&P the file text for you to reference at your pleasure. quote:Bardess, I'm curious where your metric of them ending the series at 30th level comes from. quote:I used to do that for conversions, but lately I've started to frown on using that as the starting point for translating something into an RPG. Taking "the hero at the end of the saga is at maximum power" to mean that they were as advanced as the RPG's rules allowed usually created a lot of problems.
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Apr 12, 2013 17:58
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Why would you post that in grognards.txt, it owns.quote:The Non Euclidian Dungeon: For whatever reason, the dungeon is unmappable. It could rearrange itself randomly. It could add walls to corral the characters into a killzone. It could be full of those bastard teleport traps that were so popular in the old D&D computer games. The more neurotic the party is about mapping, the better this works, since your not only adding in the unknown, your yaking away the map-monkey's lifeline. The first time you get to explain, with a completely straight face, that there is in fact no door here is priceless. quote:When I was a youngster and hot into AD&D, I had a "random intimidation table" that I'd use to amuse myself when DMing.
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Apr 12, 2013 18:33
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I give you grog in the vein of DM Mask shamefulness, bolded for emphasis: I have never held any shame in explaining that the primary reason behind my current (and at this point lifelong) infatuation with geekery; role-playing games, board games, card games, fandom, etc is because of my brother. My brother had seduced me into running a campaign set in the world of Middle Earth after he bought Iron Crown Enterprises Middle Earth Role Playing. We were both fans of Lord of the Rings, and both thought that Hero Quest was one of the best board games in the entire world. He explained the Middle Earth Role Playing book as being the same thing, but with less restrictions and endless characters and campaign. Role playing was a new and unique experience for me, being no longer just a game—but carefully developed understanding of how people (and other things) think and behave, about their cultures and how that influences them and their society…and about how it influences them personally. After we had completed our Middle Earth campaign, my brother went looking for other role playing games and came across Vampire: the Masquerade. Unsurprisingly, we had both been avidly devouring Anne Rice novels at the time (as had the inventors of Masquerade, which is quite obvious when you read it). The role playing experience expanded from exciting epic fantasy adventures to dark, gritty, emotional, real-world monsters and their nightly struggles. I was so enamored of this game that when I heard that there were others in the same world, I immediately went out and purchased my first copy of Mage: the Ascension (2nd Edition, though at the time I had no idea). This was around 1995, give or take a year. I sat down and consumed this book cover to cover. I have a lot of memories of doing so. I remember the feel of the pages beneath my fingers. I remember the curl and yellow where I had spilled water on them. I remember the smell this book had. I remember where the binding first began to break. I remember the darkly beautiful introduction involving Senex, the Old Man—and how I came to admire this person in his seeming power and wisdom. I devoured the book, and then read it again. Why did Mage: the Ascension grab me the way it did? Why, after going on two decades of enjoying role-playing games is this game still the one that matters most to me, and has the most effect on me? There are a lot of reasons. I could tell you that I was a teenager, first son of four, the youngest autistic. When my mom wasn’t working, she was working with my youngest brother. We did not have much money. The five of us, plus a room mate lived in a three bedroom apartment at this time. There was little in the way of privacy, and at the same time, there was not enough attention. I also suffered from Major Depressive Disorder and Anxiety. I used to be heavily involved in drugs. I used to cut myself. A lot of these things are not extraordinary, but I think, looking back on it and considering it now, that I perceived them on an extraordinary level. I still suffer from Major Depressive Disorder, though I have learned methods of staving off the worst of its effects. Anxiety is still especially difficult for me to deal with, but like with the depression, I have learned a few tricks that make it easier to deal with. What is most important here is that I was very sad, and I was very sad because I knew that something was missing from my life, even if I did not know what it was. This was when I encountered Mage and discovered a revolutionary idea. I had an epiphany. I had…an awakening. The concept behind Mage is that belief is truth, which of course leads to making truth subjective. But more importantly, if you believe in something hard enough—deeply enough—to the point that it shifts your consciousness and your soul and your very being—your belief is true. When you are hopeless, and you feel that you will always be hopeless, this is a real life awakening. I have played Mage almost consistently in one form or another for about half of my life. I have played Revised and I have also played Awakening from the new World of Darkness (in fact, I am currently running an Awakening campaign) but although I enjoyed Revised for being a crisper and cleaner and somewhat easier to understand version of Mage, and although I think when it comes to dealing with gamers who are more focused on the rules than the roles, Awakening surpasses Ascension, the world that was presented to me by Senex, Atropos, Dante, Porthos, Penny Dreadful, Mister Mistoffelees, Voormas, and of course, the repulsive and alluring, Jodi Blake seems to always revolve at the center of my heart. I realize it may sound silly to hold a game so close to one’s heart, and we’ve heard plenty of stories of people who take that too far and get too lost in a false reality and lose sight of the real one…but that’s exactly why Mage is so eye-opening. Mage forces you to question the validity of reality. It breaks open the shell that you are forced to survive and thrive in and invites new philosophies on what matters, on what is important: of what survival actually is. I mentioned above that I was not in a stellar situation when I was growing up. My formative years were a disaster, to say the least. I was failing out of high school in my sophomore year. My life was music, drugs and misery. I understood the concepts they wanted us to master in high school. I never found the work difficult. In fact, when I realized I was failing out I opted to take the CHSPE examination which is a California high school diploma for students who wanted to go to university early. I didn’t take it because I wanted to go to university. I took it because I wanted out of a life that seemed doom to failure. So I got out. I abhorred high school, and I am not using that word because I have a thesaurus handy. There is no word that comes closer to exemplifying my feelings toward the two and a half years I spent in high school. I loved writing and reading and I was fantastic at math, but the teachers I had (with perhaps one exception) were disgusting, limited, selfish individuals. Or maybe it was the system they were forced to work in. I was young enough that I might never have seen the difference. Above all, I detested history. What use, I would argue with my teacher, is memorizing names and dates of dead people who have no effect on my life. He was a particularly unhelpful educator, and was quicker to punish me than answer questions. I think I ended up having Saturday school booked so often by him that I was going to school six days a week. Eventually I decided not to go anymore, and while they were threatening me with suspension, I was studying for my CHSPE. I went to community college when I was 16, not because I wanted to, but because that was essentially the deal I made with my mother upon passing the CHSPE. I was not even remotely ready for it. My antipathy towards education of any type was overwhelming. I passed a piano class and maybe a painting class—I don’t even remember if I managed to do that. But I was learning nothing from the education system. But I was not failing to learn. After my first few months of playing Mage: the Ascension, I found myself running to the library and the bookstore. Who were the Indian Death Cults that had birthed the Euthanatos? I discovered Indian History, I discovered the Thuggee, I discovered Hinduism. From there I fell into comparative religion, and obsessed over learning more about Buddhism and Islam, and I devoured philosophy where I discovered subjectivism, the premise that Mage was based on. I swallowed Incan, Mayan and Aztec culture whole. I dreamt of Loas and Kachinas and Hsien. Mage opened a door which gave me the power to believe. Today, the genre I most typically write is fantasy. I would argue that it could be called urban fantasy, or even magical realism. I dabble in sci-fi and literary fiction. But my fantasy dares to stray from knights and dragons and princesses and castles. My protagonists are rarely Eurocentric, but even when they are, I end up basing them firmly in their cultural history, and leave them surrounded by kachinas and narakas and daevas, because I love them too much to not bring them into the worlds of my invention. Mage opened my eyes to histories and philosophies and beliefs I would never have discovered in the so-called American Melting Pot (so melted that there is nothing left but a black sludge that we scrape at and feast on and call culture). Maybe you won’t ever read or play Mage, that’s okay: but look beyond the whitewashed America when you dare to dream, when you dare to imagine, and most importantly, when you dare to believe. I still suffer from the problems I described above, even if some of them are getting a lot better. I still live a hard life, and that’s not a sob story—we all live a hard life. We all struggle. We are all unhappy sometimes, and for some of us, that’s most of the time. But although Mage is only a game, it is also a work of art and philosophy which taught me one of the most important things I’ve ever learned in my life, my first step toward my personal Ascension: Your belief is your truth. Believe it and make it true.
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Apr 12, 2013 18:44
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yaoi prophet posted:Why would you post that in grognards.txt, it owns. Context for "Obviously all characters will follow D&D leveling schemes", recommending BESM, and lengthy 3.5e stats. Anyways, let's bolster that post with: quote:Disclaimer
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Apr 12, 2013 18:47
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Oh god, the Black Tokyo review. The only thing creepier than Black Tokyo itself. Now, here's a slightly different shade of creepy. Prysus posted:[justify] And the thread keeps on giving! SmilingJack posted:
And giving! Giant2005 posted:I exclusively play males. AND GIVING say652 posted:i play female characters and npc's. i play male characters and npc's. i created a race of alien transvestites(The Ten-G) in which all members of the race look female. JohnnyCanuck fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Apr 12, 2013 |
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Apr 12, 2013 19:13
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Re: Street prostitutes and Erotic Artsquote:Medieval street prostitutes wouldn't normally know Erotic Arts would they? Most customers are just interested in a quickie anyway, right? quote:They certainly wouldn't need it, nor roll is as part of their daily job, but I think they'd have a slightly higher chance of picking it up, at least in Dabbler form, over time, as they fulfill the various weird requests they must at least occasionally get. They could also always have it independent of their job. quote:Modern street prostitutes don't normally know Erotic Arts, so I wouldn't expect a lower-tech counterpart in a setting where cruising for hookers is more limited by travel capability to know it, either. Their stock in trade is providing easy access to a raw commodity, not a highly-refined quality product. If they get that good and look okay enough, they generally level up to call girls / courtesans / etc and cease to be street prostitutes. quote:Investment of a single point results in something like a +4 improvement to doing mundane stuff that relies on skill too, so I don't think it's completely out of the question. Probably depends on the character. If a PC wants to take it, I'd certainly let him. quote:Or, indeed, street prostitutes of just about any era. They may have Sex Appeal by way of salesmanship, but mostly what they provide is availability, not special skills. If they had Erotic Art, they wouldn't be working the street. quote:In general, no, they don't.
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Apr 13, 2013 04:17
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Dude, while probably rather dang gothy, that's not really grog. Person had a poo poo life and found meaning in gaming. A little pretentious sure, but don't begrudge a person for their happiness. ~*~ quote:I couldn't agree more. One of the things that I absolutely loved about 4e was that it pushed some of the world altering magic to a higher level or into rituals. This made the game so much more...organic and flexible in how one wanted to approach the world building. Of course, there was plenty of short term/range magical wahoo at the tactical level (what with the nightcrawler-esque bamfs of warlocks and High Elves and whatnot), but that was much easier to deal with most of the time. OTOH not having Fly in the game in any meaningful sense made it not feel very ...exciting. Hey, I can cast "overland flight" using a ritual in real life, it's called Expedia. Siloing good spells and effects like Fly, usable for time periods > 5 minutes per day, into a ritual bucket, made it feel like a cut-scene and the casting time was ridiculous. It was a mechanical hack to avoid having to design powers that worked in 3 dimensions, or balance pillars of play in an organic way. I don't siloing is roganic at all, it's a wall preventing all sorts of neat things from happening in the game. If you need ten minutes to get your party to fly out of the exploding volcano, the DM has no choice but to alter the flow of the lava to suit the game rules, or just kill you. That sucks. 4e Rituals suck donkey juice and ruined the magical feeling of the game for me. If I want to be stuck to the ground, and I can play a game called Warriors and Warriors, not Wizards and Warriors. You cannot balance fly with not flying, except by duration and x/day. 4e nerfed it waaaaay too much, and the rituals were like a slap in the face to proper D&D experience. Not once in any other edition with DMs have I seen the fly spell ruin an adventure. It's called design the game with 3d in mind, accordingly. That's just one example. There are just so many times when we wanted to do something that was only available in a ritual during combat in the heat of the moment, to react to an in-game event, but oh no, the duration silo'ed that possibility out of existence. It was a lazy hack to remove magic from exciting, real-time situations. Ten minute casting times is good for a cut-scene, but personally as a player, whether it's a videogame or an RPG, I hate cutscenes where I can't control my character. While a ritual is being cast, there is no possibility of combat, narratively (imagine a DM being a dick and dropping orcs on you in the midst of your ritual that you just spent 500gp on...wah waaaah, sucks to be you). The problem that siloing solves is not worth killing the entire flavour of the game over. It's just another implicit way they forced combat / non-combat time to be strictly separate. THAT would be a dealbreaker for me. The fact that spells now have ritual versions attached to them as an option, is the best way they could do it. But making stuff ritual only was one of the worst design fails of 4e and an utterly detestable atrocity.
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Apr 13, 2013 04:45
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First, character creation is "during play". If you're sitting with an open rulebook, making decisions and writing things down, you are participating in the game. Still, there is a distinction between a one-time prep and the regular recurring game. But I would say that many games other than D&D rely on that one-time event. If you're playing Civilization, it matters which civilization you choose. If you're playing Madden, it matters how you choose and construct your team. They're not all equal. If you're playing Magic, you have to create a good deck before the game starts. If you're into miniatures wargames, you have to create an army. In any of those examples, actual gameplay is dependent on effective preparation, and a wide range of power levels can be created. So clearly this paradigm can create a satisfying game experience. But there's also the verisimilitude factor. Does your character have to live with the character creation choices you've made? Yes. But so does a person. The genes you have and your early life experiences and social upbringing absolutely affect your level of opportunity in later life. And good fiction grabs those inequalities and runs with them. I also don't see how the first example affects the range of choices later on. AFAICT, even in the second example, people have a pretty full range of choices later on. As far as I can tell, the idea that all these character creation choices should be equal originated with 4e, and I'm hard-pressed to find any other examples, nor do I see why it would be desirable (nor do I like that the term "balance" has been co-opted to mean that").
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Apr 13, 2013 05:01
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Now that the books are hitting the hot little hands of the Kickstarter backers, I suppose it was inevitable that someone mentioned the lack of an apostrophe in the title of the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Players Manual. I can definitively state that this is neither unintentional, nor is it grammatically incorrect. The question of whether or not the book should be more properly titled the Player's Manual or the Players' Manual was actually brought up by both the editor and my wife. As author and publisher, I made the executive decision to leave the title as-is for two reasons. Regarding the first, the nature of the project is such that it does have strong ties to the first edition of the world's most popular RPG. Since the 1E books omitted the apostrophe, I thought it would be appropriate to do so as well. Failing all else, this could fall under artistic license, but there is actually a sturdier reason. As to the second, the apostrophe is used in two cases; singular possessive (Player's) and plural possessive (Players'). In the case of the present work, neither applies. It would apply if the intent of the title were to imply possession of the manual by either a specific player or all players in general. However, that is not the case. The manual is intended for the players. Thus, the term "Players Manual" is the equivalent of saying "Manual for Players". In which case, the word "players" is the object of the (implied) preposition "for", and thus no apostrophe is needed. Hehehehe...
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Apr 13, 2013 07:59
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Benoist posted:4e is a role playing game. It's bad one from my standpoint, it's not D&D, it's a game that steals left and right from MMOs, eurogames, and a whole bunch of other influences for the sake of being "hip" and "edgy" and fails so much it's pointless to reassess the thing all over again, but it's a role playing game nonetheless.
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Apr 13, 2013 16:40
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