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It's not D&D but it is old, and the stats on that character sheet reminded me: is the Fallout RPG actually any good or not? I fukken love Fallout NV and the PnP rules seemed decent but I'd be interested to hear from someone who's played it
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Feb 20, 2015 07:26
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Ratpick posted:Whoops, sorry! Here's the final version! J.E. Sawyer, one of the people who worked on several Fallout projects (including New Vegas) wrote an RPG. I read the PDF somewhere, it seemed neat, googling now shows there's a whole wiki devoted to it now which h probably means it's been hosed up by terrible nerds. Edit: I can't find the loving PDF I was looking at before, drat. Pham Nuwen fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 17:12
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Please please Covok I'm begging you to let us know how it goes. I think the dumbo "Old School Gaming" people don't realize just how hard and lovely Tomb of Horrors is going to be to the average 20 year old who never played Fantasy Vietnam at all, much less the shittiest, most adversarial, most nonsense module of all time. They're going to be pointed at a hill that looks like a skull and told to get to it! It's going to be glorious, because probing for a door is like 8th down the list after goofing off with all the stones, moving the stones, casting Detect Magic on the stones, etc. etc. etc. At this point your players are going to be piss bored and ready for it to stop, but NO! They haven't even scratched the surface. (well, they have, literally, but you know what I meant!) Isn't there a story somewhere about a guy running Tomb of Horrors at a tournament, and the first two groups all charged one after another through a disintegrating door or something like that? Whole tournament finished in like 30 minutes? Wonder if we'll hear the same from Covok's group 
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Mar 27, 2015 21:03
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I've got the 2e rulebooks and most of the Night Below campaign (missing some of the early DM cards)... Just gotta find dudes dorky enough to play.
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Sep 23, 2015 23:10
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Pham Nuwen posted:I've got the 2e rulebooks and most of the Night Below campaign (missing some of the early DM cards)... Just gotta find dudes dorky enough to play. Quoting myself 'cause I'm a dude who sucks, but can anyone recommend a good 2e character sheet? Seems like a lot are kind of disorganized.
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Sep 25, 2015 03:41
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remusclaw posted:I like the Mad Irishman's sheets, and he has a couple for AD&D 2nd edition. They may not be to your liking but they are worth taking a look at. Thanks, I grabbed this and rolled up a human fighter for the hell of it, figured if I try to get people to play it'll help to have some pregenned characters. I also wanted to see how bad a fighter sucks, especially if I go for something "flavorful" like a spear-wielder rather than minmaxing my weapon choice. Anyway, I gave him chainmail and a medium shield for 4 AC. I equipped him with a "long spear" (spears rule, 1d8 damage) and a shortsword (1d6) as backup. Then I read a bit more and got sad at how little your level 1 fighter can actually do, so I added some abilities... they're probably overpowered without similar adjustments for the other classes, but at least it lets you do more than poke the other guy. I wrote these up with the spear+shield user in mind, would appreciate feedback especially on math/balance: Shield Bash: Roll as normal attack. Knocks an enemy back by 5 ft per 3 character levels, up to 25 feet max at level 15. Deals 1d4 + character level in damage. Shield Throw: Throw your shield as a normal attack. Attack roll as normal melee. Range is 10ft * character level. Deal 1d6 + character level in damage. 2-handed Spear: Cannot be using shield (obviously). May attack @ next "tier" of #attack/round (e.g. 1st level fighter can do 3/2 attacks per round). +1 to damage and attack rolls representing greater agility and power when you wield with both hands. You can optionally do non-lethal damage, but you only get your normal # attacks/round and don't get the +1 to attack/damage rolls (you choose to use the spear as a quarterstaff). So you might be fighting normally with spear and shield, but then if you like you could bash the other guy away from you, hurl your shield at him, and start fighting him with two hands on the spear. It may not be "verisimilitudinous" but it's a lot more fun to describe/imagine. Does this totally wreck the balance of combat? I tried to keep the shield maneuvers at lower damage rates than normal attacks, and you can only feasibly use the shield throw move occasionally, generally as a precursor to switching to 2-handed spear style.
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Sep 25, 2015 05:58
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FRINGE posted:You dont need to guess if you dont want. Theres a shield bash as part of the "Weapon and Shield" style specialization. (I dont remember the damage.) Theres also a 2H, 2weap, and 1weap styles with their own rules. Hah, I had downloaded the Fighter's Handbook PDF last night but didn't get around to reading it... glanced at it today and sure enough there's weapon-and-shield style, 2-handed style, and shield-punch. Looks like they even allow you to shield-punch AND attack normally in the same round, and if you take enough slots of weapon-and-shield and a slot of Ambidextrous, you can do that with no penalty to either roll. (Once you hit level 13 and can attack twice per round, does that mean you can shield-punch twice and attack normally twice in each round? EDIT: just found this in the PHB, you attack normally 2x per round, but only get one shield-punch per round) I had decided not to do proficiencies, not even weapon proficiencies, but after looking at the Fighter's Handbook I'm liking some of the weapon proficiencies in there. As for throwing the shield scaling with level, I think I went overboard at 10ft x level, but I was basically imagining it as a fundamental style of this shield-and-spear-style fighter, so as he levels his ability to throw the shield should grow with him until he's throwing that poo poo Captain America style from one end of the battlefield to the other to whack the enemy wizard. Same with shield bash increasing the distance shoved with character level--by the time you hit 15th level, you should be able to whack a goblin so hard he's flying through doors and poo poo. (Just realized I didn't write anything in about big creatures, you probably can't shield-bash a Storm Giant across the room) I agree that on retrospect "+character level" is probably excessive... I was trying to figure out how to make the skills remain useful throughout the levels, give a reason to keep using them. Thanks for the feedback! Edit: also, I never really noticed this before but the 2e PHB doesn't seem to acknowledge that at some point you'll actually have to roll a character, it just throws detailed explanations of stats, races, and classes at you in some rough order, accompanied by charts. Rules Cyclopedia has a section right at the front with step-by-step instructions for making a character and it's p. cool Pham Nuwen fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 15:39
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I've got six interested players for an RC game on roll20! A co-worker and two friends, one of whom is bringing his wife in and both have a co-worker who wants to try it. We're gonna do Palace of the Silver Princess because it's free. Found some nice re-drawn maps online too.
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Oct 2, 2015 00:35
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I ran the first session of a Rules Cyclopedia game last night and I'd say it went OK! We used roll20 since everyone was in different cities. I was using the original Palace of the Silver Princess module. Everybody was first level, which kept things simple but also meant people pretty much did their basic attack and left it at that. We had a fighter, an elf, a cleric, a thief, and a mystic who kept loving poo poo up with a pike. The annoying thing about the original Palace of the Silver Princess module is that they have a lot of rooms that just say "you decide what goes here" and the players managed to hit mostly those and other rooms that had descriptions but nothing of interest or value. Still, they fought 3 orcs, 5 skeletons, and 3 bandits (all random encounters, like I said they didn't find a single "scripted" encounter). The cleric got knocked to zero HP at one point but they found a healing potion earlier, which revived him.
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Nov 6, 2015 15:28
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DalaranJ posted:That's what I get for posting before reading it. I found a really nice map online, but the guy just drew in secret doors like regular doors so I had to put it on the GM layer. As the characters moved, I'd draw in the next 30 feet or so of hallways--I used a Surface Pro 3 for the game, so I could just grab the stylus and sketch. It worked reasonably well. I have a good bit of homework for the next week, such as: figure out what that scroll they found was, figure out how "read magic" works for an elf, figure out how exactly thief skills work, make sure I'm doing combat right, populate the empty rooms in this stupid module, and try to figure out how to make the players do more than "I attack with my sword!". We have a cleric but he didn't even try to turn undead when they fought skeletons... but then, nobody's a very experienced player.
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Nov 7, 2015 01:48
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Start using weapon mastery now. It wasn't in the master set because it is for high level characters, it's for players who have mastered basic D&D and can handle the more complicated weapon system. People won't be using their basic attack, they will be pulling out nets and throwing bastard swords and using blow guns and poo poo. We're actually using weapon mastery, and I even allowed the fighter to go "skilled" on something at level 1 despite that being against RAW... which may come back to bite him when he finds he sucks at everything else. I think I just need to remind them what else they can do, maybe make up a little list for everyone with all their possible actions, like so the elf remembers she can cast a spell (can an elf cast a spell at level 1? I forget). Is it easy to convert over to Dark Dungeons? We're working from PDFs anyway so it's not like it would change the flow much. Are there attacks of opportunity in RC? Can two characters occupy the same 5-foot square? I was allowing them to move through each other's square at no penalty, but didn't let them share a square.
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Nov 10, 2015 00:41
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I'd really appreciate links to any free dungeon generators out there, ideally intended for RC. Edit: also, Palace of the Silver Princess is a really weird module. Free, but still weird.
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Mar 31, 2016 22:09
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Evil Mastermind posted:Just a heads-up: confirmed Good Retroclone Beyond the Wall is 50% off on DriveThru today. Bought it, just gotta convince some people to play it with me.
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Jun 18, 2016 17:54
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Dre2Dee2 posted:I'm looking for an OSR system suggestion for my game group. I need something easy enough where we can make characters pretty quickly and get to playing, but not so simple that it will get boring to serious board gamers. We're probably only going to play once every couple of months, 4-5 PCs + a DM. There are so many systems, it's kind of nutty... any ideas on what I should start looking at? I haven't played it yet but reading Beyond the Wall... the character creation seems pretty sweet, and then the character creation feeds into generating a plot. Serious Board Gamers may even find the semi-random generation part neat / board-gamey. It's also intended to be a one-shot that can extend to multiple sessions if you like... and if you're only thinking you'll play every couple of months, a one-shot might be exactly what you need.
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Jun 24, 2016 16:41
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Quick question. I'm playing Beyond the Wall with my friends tonight. I'm not DMing, it's my friend's first time and we've been talking over some basic stuff. He brought up a scenario where e.g. a player wants to set a trap. I said I'd probably ask for a Dex check to see if the PC can actually make the trap, then roll a check to see if the monster notices the trap or not before triggering it. If I was running it, I'd probably just pick some number for the NPC to roll under to check if he sees it. I can't seem to find any rules that codify it more than that--the monsters in the bestiary don't have stats, so I can't really go off that. Rule of thumb regarding hit dice -> skill check mappings?
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Jul 22, 2016 16:39
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That seems sensible, thanks. It would kinda suck to spend the time making the trap only to have the target notice it and avoid it... even "rolled a natural 20, dodges the rolling boulder completely" is more fun than "the goblin sees your tripwire and carefully steps over it."
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Jul 22, 2016 19:00
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remusclaw posted:If it's anything like the numbers in actual D&D, the saves are better for being the old five rather than tying it to stats. Tying them to stats means the guy who rolled the best has the best saves. With the old save setup, your saves are based on class, and as such, the Fighter, who needs to tank, also coincidentally has the best saves, meaning he can tank, rather than how it is in 3rd edition up where they are supposed to be able to tank but can't because their saves are poo poo. In our level 1 BTW game, the fighter was a loving combat monster, dealing huge damage while the rest of us tended to get one-shotted by orcs who, in retrospect, probably shouldn't have had 1d8 damage swords when everyone but the fighter had 8 hp or fewer.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:50
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hectorgrey posted:To be fair, the fact that combat in old school D&D is so lethal at low levels should probably be taken as a hint that maybe you should try to avoid fights that you're not sure you can win... Tried repeatedly to hint to my fellow players that we don't necessarily have to slaughter every single creature but they didn't get it, so we spent multiple 8 hour rest periods in random rooms of the goblin caverns. 
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Aug 10, 2016 02:18
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Man, what do you do when you're partway through a dungeon and one character is way down on HP, and they all think they can just set up camp right there and sleep for 8 hours? These are my fellow players and the DM doesn't seem to have a problem with it but it feels weird. This is Beyond the Wall btw.
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Sep 11, 2016 00:24
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Comrade Koba posted:Aw yeah, seconding this. Night Below is awesome. I bought Night Below from a guy on Craigslist years back but never ran it. Maybe someday, but we're currently having fun with our Beyond the Wall game and planning a Fallout game of some sort.
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Sep 24, 2016 20:38
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One of my gaming friends is trying to put together a Fallout game, but http://falloutpnp.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page is kind of lovely because any idiot can go in and make changes and they obviously have been. I also found http://www.fallout.ru/projects/pnp/fallout_pnp_2.0.pdf but when I look at the combat section, where your to-hit consists of: Base - Range - Lighting condition - Enemy's Armor Class - Enemy's Cover +/- Extra bonus' (or minus penalties) - Targeted Shot (if applicable) and I just start laughing. Anyone recommend a decent ruleset for Fallout? Free is nice but not required. I'm considering taking that PDF version and starting with a very stripped-down version of the combat, but if there's a good rule set somewhere else that I'm missing I'd like to take a look.
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Sep 30, 2016 17:29
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We found Beyond the Wall reasonably rookie-friendly although one guy still ended up writing down an AC of 30, among other problems. I thought the little playbooks that walk you through character creation were pretty straightforward but the odd problem popped up from time to time. People also seemed to have a really hard time differentiating between "You can cast cantrips whenever but you have to roll for success" and "You can only cast N spells per day, but they'll always succeed"
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Oct 14, 2016 20:57
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Halloween Jack posted:IIRC Barbarians of Lemuria assumes that the PCs blow all their money between adventures, giving them impetus to adventure again. I don't think it's the only such game. That's basically the barbarian MO in fiction: make a big haul, drink and party and live it up for a few months, then get back out there again once you go broke. Pretty sure that's how Conan operated when he wasn't playing king.
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May 29, 2017 04:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:Friends: Sounds like the PDF is a bad scan, so I'd wait until somebody in the reviews gets their print-on-demand copy to see how it looks.
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Mar 16, 2018 18:36
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Halloween Jack posted:For me, old-school gaming is not about rejecting balance per se, just rejecting that the game will be built around set-piece challenges. Bypassing encounters entirely is encouraged, and it's not on the DM to put a big neon sign reading "This is not intended as an encounter" on the dragon or the lava field. Years of video games means that I, and the people I play with, tend to want to "clear" dungeons. We get used to the idea that each dead orc is worth 10 XP, and completing the quest is worth 500 XP, so if we kill all N orcs along the way to completing the quest, we'll get 500 + 10*N XP. Gold-as-XP almost fixes that, as long as you make it clear that regular monsters have basically nothing of value on them (my high school friends would have still hauled out 50 iron daggers plus the skins of all defeated enemies). Maybe next time I do a game, I'll refrain from stating where XP comes from, just "Bob gets 800 XP this session". There's a new game store within walking distance of my house, and they apparently do game nights Tuesday and Thursday of every week. If I wanted to try running a one-off OSR thing there, what would you guys recommend? RC with pre-rolled characters? Beyond The Wall's character generation is pretty neat, but I've only got the PDFs and wouldn't want to share watermarked PDFs with randos.
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Mar 16, 2018 19:57
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Xotl posted:I wouldn't recommend the RC because it's only a one-shot. It's going to be harder claiming that this is a slimmed-down, quick and dirty system if you're slinging a fatass tome with you for one game, and 75% of the stuff in it won't be relevant anyways, unless you're starting at higher level. I'd recommend just bringing the Basic book if you have a copy. That also has the bonus of the nostalgia factor: that screaming red will instantly bring back memories for a lot of people, perhaps making it easier to draw people to the table. Is there a good place to buy printed copies of the Basic book? PDFs are fine and all but it's nice to flip back and forth in a pamphlet.
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Mar 16, 2018 20:45
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Halloween Jack posted:I thought I was the only DM with this weird problem of players wanting to skin everything to make a hat out of it. Owlbears? Wolves? No man I'm talking orcs, drow, EVERYTHING.
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Mar 16, 2018 21:31
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Impermanent posted:Got my physical BECMI today, it's nice. Not really seeing an issue with the scan quality but I'm not a big publishing quality person so I wouldn't know what to look for. Just noticed that it explicitly says you can't haste yourself to cast extra spells a turn, game continues to own. BECMI, or Rules Cyclopedia? I'd love to be able to buy a physical copy of the individual BECMI booklets but didn't think there was a source. If it's the Drivethru RC... which is no longer POD but $25 for a softcover book... I'd be interested to hear when you ordered it, if it was POD or not, how much it cost, and maybe some pics of the individual pages if you have time!
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Mar 23, 2018 01:38
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Halloween Jack posted:I never cared for the layout and organization of the individual BECMI books. They're probably good for teaching the game to kids, but as a reference I'd much rather have the Cyclopedia. Post so nice, he made it twice. Edit: is this SA loving up? The two posts are like 10 minutes apart
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Mar 23, 2018 19:14
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Payndz posted:My recent posts have inspired me to crack on and actually try to loving finish writing You All Meet In A Tavern, my designed-for-one-shot-games B/X-compatible retroclone! I'd love to try some one-shots with friends, eagerly looking forward to this!
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Apr 6, 2018 23:45
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I keep dreaming of getting enough people together to run Night Below. If I already have the 2e core books (DMG, MM, 2xPHB) is there a compelling reason to look at retroclones, or would I be best off just just running with regular 2e? The biggest thing I can think of is that I seem to remember fighters being kind of dull RAW.
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May 22, 2018 16:00
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