petrol blue posted:

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

I like the cut of your jib, sir.

Poison Mushroom posted:

I'm just imagining Harry Dresden deadpanning his way through a Quentin Tarantino movie, and it is amazing.

Ilor posted:

And by literally, you mean figuratively, because according to their spots those are totally sea leopards.

Anticheese posted:

What kind of shows would you get to see on networks like Necromancers' Broadcasting Circle?

quote:

I've travelled up the mountain
Through sun and storm and wind
But even when the doors lay open
They will not let me in

No Luck Needed posted:

I found a copy of Oriental Adventures AD&D first edition used at my local card shop and picked it up. I showed it off to my friend Zach and he said he wanted to be a Wu-Jen Ninja. Not knowing what that was I read up a bit on in in the book that I just acquired. I liked the different classes, each got a Ki-ability, and the honor system. I thought I would just pick up those ideas and drop it into a AD&D 2nd edition frame work and just go from there.

Was going to have three players, Zach as Wu-jen Ninja, Elizabeth as a Yakuza, and Alex I told could be a basic 2nd edition fighter. Alex did not think that was funny. After having dealt with my buddy in several previous games and his habit of railroading I did not feel he deserved to be a special class and if he wanted to play he could just be a fighter.

We got together and made Zach and Elizabeth’s characters. Alex as still fuming about being a samurai or bushi or anything but “just a fighter.” After a couple of hours we had Zach and Elizabeth good to go and Alex talked me into borrowing the Oriental Adventures book. He made up a bushi that I was pretty ok with, he did go all in on having mouth needles and figured I could DM fiat that he couldn’t talk with the needles in his mouth, so a win-win.

But when we actually got together to play, Alex had his own ideas of how the game world was going to work. Alex had read up all about martial arts in the Oriental Adventures book and wanted fighting modes. That was asking me to take a 1st edition rules set and apply it to 2nd and that was just too much work for me so I said no, we are just using the classes and weapons. The story was supposed to be the PCs looking for a runaway Yakuza and I asked them how they wanted to start. Alex had this whole plan how he was going to apprentice a sword smith and make himself a master work katana. I told him that was not possible and we get into a big argument about what his character can do and what his character cannot do. I just picked up my books and we never played that game again.

I did get my revenge on Alex. Alex was DMing and I just turned level 5 as a Halfling rogue. The big loot I had acquired was a 1000gp gem. I went back to town and started to craft “Hell on Wheels.” Zach the paladin had picked carpentry and engineering as proficiencies. We drafted plans for a battle wagon that instead of having fixed axles, each wheel would have it’s own axel and brake. We figured out lock brakes. Cars advertise anti-lock brakes that wont stick. We made lock brakes that would lock our wheels in places. We also were rigging up a system to unhook the horses and then use the lock brakes to stop the battle wagon when needed. Between the 4 PCs we had like 3000+ copper pieces and I talked them into melting it down to reinforce the wheels and create plating for the sides. We made gun ports on the side to shoot crossbows from cover and were working on a system to drop caltrops on approaching foes. All 4 PCs were super engaged and we were all ready to take “Hell on Wheels” out for a spin when Alex was like, “I can’t DM that!” What a tosser, he stopped that game there.

We both give each other poo poo over it still. He will say something like, X+Y would be a cool class combination, to which I say, “that is cool but not Wu-Jen Ninja cool.”

Carrasco posted:

Oh man, can you elaborate more? I want to hear some stories of this in action.

Xenophon posted:

After accomplishing the ascent the Greeks took up quarters in numerous villages, which contained provisions in abundance. Now for the most part there was nothing here which they really found strange; but the swarms of bees in the neighbourhood were numerous, and the soldiers who ate of the honey all went off their heads, and suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea, and not one of them could stand up, but those who had eaten a little were like people exceedingly drunk, while those who had eaten a great deal seemed like crazy, or even, in some cases, dying men. So they lay there in great numbers as though the army had suffered a defeat, and great despondency prevailed. On the next day, however, no one had died, and at approximately the same hour as they had eaten the honey they began to come to their senses; and on the third or fourth day they got up, as if from a drugging.

CobiWann posted:

We had to fight this Grell Queen and her minions on Sunday.

IT WAS FREAKIN' PREGNANT.

Arivia posted:

That story can't be true anyway, since half-orcs weren't a thing in Baldur's Gate (and there's no mines in the sequels.)

Doodmons posted:

This was a while back, but just chiming in as an actual scientist to say that this is horseshit. If one study contradicts another then 99% of the time it means that one or both of those studies is flawed and more work needs to be done. This is a good thing! It's not always obvious that a particular methodology isn't working out. Good studies are retracted all the time, this is a normal part of our developing understanding of the world. The other 1% of the time it means something really interesting is probably about to be discovered and that's even better! Good studies are not biased - this is difficult to do, but very possible and well worth it.

Please don't peddle this 'you can prove anything with a study' line. Education on the importance of good research and an interest in humanity as a whole doing good work to find out the truth is much more important than dismissing the whole thing as a lost cause because a lot of people do bad science. If you don't believe in studies and research, please educate yourself so you can recognise good research and bad research - it makes filtering out the truth from the lies in the mountain of "New Study Proves X" headlines possible and will improve your life immeasurably because you will be less susceptible to the media's attempts to deliberately deceive you. Remember: people who want to sell you things have a vested interest in making sure you dismiss the facts because 'you can prove anything with a study.'

For the record, I haven't read the studies Yawgmoth is talking about so they might be hot garbage for all I know. But what's important is that it's possible to go and check!

gradenko_2000 posted:

I think even a call to your standard RNG API is going to be good enough for government work.

the_steve posted:

Wait, Intimidate check for Echolocation?
How does that work?

Railing Kill posted:

The con man bargains for the ability to be the greatest thief in the world, and for a magic knife. He gets both, for the same price.

Ilor posted:

Back when I was GMing Shadowrun, I just let the dice fall where they may. Once stupid people lost enough characters, they wised up. SR, especially in 2nd and 3rd Edition was pretty rough on people who tried to go the munchkin route. I remember people going balls-deep on Wired Reflexes and what not, only to discover that when the shooting started, all it meant was that they wasted ammo faster.

GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:

My favorite use of the Deck was when we found one in a dragon's treasure hoard and the rogue was the only one of the party willing to pull from it. He chose to pull 3 times, for the first draw he got the one that gives you wishes, then used one wish to wish that every card in the deck was the one that gave you a ridiculous amount of XP, then wished to draw every card from the deck. I don't even remember what the DM did to salvage that.

quote:

they would be the Ferengi if they were more grognardy and misogynistic.

JustJeff88 posted:

I see your point, but I think that I wrongly sold the "Seriously, not a vampire" Malkavian. From what I remember, he did know enough to be afraid of werewolves, but he just didn't think that he was a vampire personally. If another vampire revealed himself to him, he would panic and Obfuscate without realising it, then flee and justify it somehow later.

It was a bit like that episode of Forever Knight where Nick takes a bad head wound. He heals, because he's a vampire, but he has amnesia and literally forgets that he is a vampire for some days and goes about eating & drinking, which he normally never does. Natalie doesn't want to disabuse him of this, but of course LaCroix does.

Yawgmoth posted:

the cult has been busy spreading a symbol among the populace, saying it's a sign of good fortune, luck, protection, etc. Asking where one such person got their symbol-necklace leads them to a magic item shop run by a man that claims he can make magic items in a couple of hours and is selling them for way cheaper than he should be; cheaper than the base materials cost in fact!

rumble in the bunghole posted:

Nobody batted an eye at the manipulative bdsmy lesbian teen vampire relationship from my Monsterhearts story. Maybe it's just a context thing.

Bieeardo posted:

That's something that the DM I mentioned last page was into too, for whatever idiotic reason. New character? Level 1. Everyone else in double digits? Level 1. It was 3.5, which meant that standing around with a thumb up your rear end for a few encounters would rocket you through the early levels, but you'd never fuckin' reach parity with the rest of the party, and you'd still have half a dozen levels worth of math to do after the first session.

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

The nice thing about the Lambda-class shuttles is that they only need a crew of one pilot (though a copilot makes things easier), and as far as I can tell the controls should be fairly standardized, so if any of the group can fly... anything, basically, then they'll be able to manage. They're designed at least partly to be troop transports; the Empire doesn't want them to be too fiddly.

If none of your PCs have any piloting skill at all, then A) suggest that one of them learn soon because dudes you're in fuckin' outer space, and B) have the shuttle in question be flown by a trainee pilot, with his instructor in the copilot's seat; the trainee has conveniently made sure that all the controls are properly labeled and has left his flight manual open on the dashboard, so that an unskilled pilot should be able to figure out the procedure sharpish as long as he has a few moments to study. Use this as a dramatic tension device, so that the relevant PC almost has the controls figured out just as the Imperials recover from all the explosions and start wondering why the supply shuttle is moving into a takeoff position.

Other neat things about the Lambda: 1. To quote Wookiepedia, "Additionally, in order to prove that the shuttle crew was working for the Empire, Lambda-class T-4a shuttles utilized special transponders to transmit secret codes to Star Destroyers.[4]" Keep in mind that the PCs may not know of the existence of this transponder or how to shut it off, meaning you can get a chase scene or two in before the slicer figures it out, and 2. the Lambda has a retractable rear-mounted double laser cannon, meaning you actually get some applicable armament to throw in to those chase scenes. Let the PCs shoot down a pursuing TIE or two on their way out the door, they will feel awesome about it.

Kwyndig posted:

TIE fighters certainly had low speed VTOL capability or else they'd never be able to launch and recover from Star Destroyers without the latter having a TIE-sized railgun since the former lacks landing gear.

Even so, landing directly on the wings in rough terrain would be difficult at best and severely damaging if not downright suicidal at worst. That's assuming the standard TIE, an interceptor, bomber, or advanced model it would prove impossible without landing gear as there's no way to passively balance the weight of those designs except under the lightest of gravity (unless for some reason they had really insane weight distribution).