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Dec 5, 2018 00:47
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Malpais Legate posted:
Your taste was exactly what you'd expect of a kid, which is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of unless you're now out of your teens and still trying to convince people that whatever thing you were obsessed with is Actually Really Good, Actually. The first DL novels are somewhat interesting to re-read because they're a representation of what a story-centric D&D game looked like in the 80s, which means you can practically hear the dice rolling as you read. They're very bad novels though.
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Dec 5, 2018 00:47
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Toshimo posted:Ya, make us some more Greyhawk, pls. Nah just do something new instead. Glagha posted:Edit: It's also not Spelljammer give me Spelljammer dammit. Actually wait don't I saw the boat rules they put out recently. Spelljammer but there's no existing settings you can travel to, the boat rules are "yaaaar prepare to be boarded" and everyone's some flavor of magic space swashbuckler. E: also the balls out weird stuff is played up, not played down. You have a sailing ship iiiin spaaaaace but those guys over there have a big ol' spider looking spaceship and these other dudes drive undead space whales and those guys are gun nut hippo men with a stolen hamsterdrive and all this is 100% normal. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Dec 5, 2018 |
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Dec 5, 2018 00:53
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Malpais Legate posted:Yeah, that was poorly phrased. I really mean I just don't want to ruin the rose-colored memories of the original three books. I don't really believe you can ruin memories like that. The '80s Transformers cartoon was objectively garbage but gently caress if watching an episode with my kid retroactively ruins the experience I had when I was 8. The original 3 Dragonlance novels are perfectly serviceable teen-focused game-tie-in fantasy novels. They weren't good at the time, and the world has moved on so much since the mid '80s that they now look bad, but they're not irredeemably awful. Same as the Drizzt stories, kinda. Then the whole thing gets run directly into the ground with 180+ shamelessly bad cash-ins, which are by and for the people who need to know exactly how things turned out for the sister (mentioned once) of the one guy (also mentioned once) who once listened to one of the protagonists wax nostalgic about potatoes. (spoiler alert: It was the most generic and boring possible result). Gentleman Baller posted:Hey so I'm pretty new to D&D and I have some weird questions about how a few things interact. I'm playing a Goliath Fighter and my friend is playing a Gnome Wizard, and I thought of a dumb plan to help protect his character. That's a cool idea. But if you start loving around with cover and reach mechanics like this, it'll be a giant waste of everyone's time and probably give lame, boring results too. Just make it so it means the gnome usually doesn't get targeted by melee, which you're practically guaranteed to be doing anyway in that gentleman's-agreement-not-to-melee-the-wizard way that this game relies on. Narrate riding the huge barbarian around raining acid fire on your enemies and being awesome. Maybe if he gets knocked over you both have to use your move after he stands up to mount up again. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Dec 5, 2018 |
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Dec 5, 2018 04:23
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I'm pretty sure nobody wants to start loving around with the implications of range/reach applied vertically (or worse, diagonally/vertically), and I goddamn guarantee that poo poo is gonna get stupid if you start caring about 3d aoe.
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Dec 5, 2018 05:27
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Conspiratiorist posted:The gentleman's agreement is only there for the "I am barbarian tank hurrr" player to feel useful. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
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Dec 5, 2018 07:29
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clusterfuck posted:Hey hivemind I'd never read much Eberron before and now I'm frankensteining it into my campaign don't dogpile me for my poo poo choices please. What are the best modules or books (any edition) that have something unique to Eberron? What are the definitive Eberron books? I doubt you'll get much hate for eberron here. Both the 3.5 and 4e campaign books are fine to get started on the setting. I played through (didn't DM) one game, probably a module, with a magic train that was cool as hell. Don't know what it was called. Angrymog posted:re: Settings, I liked Basic D&D's known world. It's got the human culture analogue thing going with most of its nations, but it never got the mass popularity so the setting isn't overwhelmed by high level NPCs who're having all the fun. Know World / Hollow World owns for a generic-ish d&d setting.
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Dec 5, 2018 09:27
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Splicer posted:It sounds like the eberron may be diluted by some not eberron content. I was gonna ask "well, does it?" but apparently nah. Because I would have assumed that with ~40 fiction books it might have the exact same problems. But then I went and looked and there's over three hundred loving Forgotten Realms books. 
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Dec 5, 2018 10:10
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Someone freely gave me that book about 10 years ago. Still haven't made kender muffins or whatever. It's simultaneously cool and insanely uncool for being that all-in. Yeah a friend gave it to me because I was running a DL campaign that he was enjoying. I kinda wish I'd kept it. But the spiced potatoes aren't all that. xiw posted:I think you could write a kender race no problem by just taking advantage of narrative features. Yeah, that's good stuff. Also, a society without the concept of personal property would probably be really weird and I think the concept is worth exploring. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Dec 5, 2018 |
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Dec 5, 2018 23:36
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Aniodia posted:I'd love for a setting to not only realize there is powerful magic around in the world, but take it to it's natural conclusion. Honestly, I'd settle for one that acknowledges that the existence of low level spells and cantrips utterly changes what warfare looks like. Oh poo poo, what about a setting where this poo poo reached its natural conclusion and
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Dec 6, 2018 06:20
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MonsterEnvy posted:Elementals are not sentient. Well some are, but not the type that are bound to objects. A basic fire elemental has no feelings or emotions other than burning whatever is in front of it, as it is basically semi living fire. Maybe. Or maybe they're sentient but are also weird multiplanar aliens who can't notice that an aspect of them is bound to an object on the prime material plane. Or maybe they really do really fuckin hate it and that's why they go berserk when they get unbound. Or maybe bound to an object is like a cushy job to them and that's why they go berserk when they get unbound. Eberron's cool like that.
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Dec 6, 2018 09:10
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Son of a Vondruke! posted:I played a Kender in a Dragonlance game when I was a teenager and this is exactly how I played it. You may not have any respect for personal property, but you realize your friends do and leave their stuff alone. Anyone else was fair game. I think the whole constantly loving your friends over is just another symptom of the way a lot of people seem to play D&D. Character traits like kender theft, and evil alignments often override common sense. How many times have you seen people playing evil characters attempt to gently caress over their own party, or endanger them with blatant criminal behavior? Evil people can still be loyal to their allies because it's in their best interest to do so. The Kender situation is just particularly notable because it's an entire race of senseless idiots. Kender are a mediocre concept badly executed, but there is nothing that can't be made significantly worse by someone who uses but I'm just playing my character as an excuse to be a dickhead. E: the amazing thing about the evil traitor pc is that they expect to be able to pull off their "ahahaha i betrayed you because i was evil all along" thing more than once. Like, ok, it could even theoretically have been good and cool roleplay and story telling (lol) but your time with that guy as a PC is over. He's joined the baddies. Roll a new character. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 09:23
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Aniodia posted:Where magic exists, and not just as something spoken of in hushed whispers by dirt farmers, but something real, and tangible, and ubiquitous. There's a disconnect here. If magic is ubiquitous, then what's "martial"? Go the other way! Everyone can use magic, everyone is magical, some Cast Spells ans some do other things. There's the flying elemental weird beard, and the guy who can jump up there and punch him through a wall. The girl who turns into bears and the dude who commands his own shadow and the woman who can walk between the rain and (etc). Zarick posted:Fighters may be a bit boring but martials as I understand it are still the prime killing machines at pretty much all levels. Now do the one where they can swing their swords all day! Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 21:11
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That's cool but it sounds like a nightmare to actually run. Maybe it could be abstracted by not having an exception based magic system in the first place. Narratively, armor and combat gear in general has these defenses built it (be kinda useless if it didn't - like forgetting to account for sword fights) and any kind of combat training necessarily includes attacks and defences against magic. Magician training ditto against sword fighters. Mechanically, spells require attack rolls against defense numbers, the same as any other attack. No "it just hits you, save for half" unless swordfighting can also do that. No "lol make an int save or you lose" either, combat is about reducing hp to zero for everyone. Also, someone with common gear and the right skills can defeat spells (eg, your set of lockpicks includes ones that can be used on wizard-locked doors. Your mundane armor gloves can grasp and lift a wall of fire if you're strong enough and don't mind getting singed). Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 00:52
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Staying with exactly D&D, you can do a bunch of different stuff with magic in your setting just by changing how you think about it. Here's 3 off the top of my head. 1) Where old stuff is generally better than current stuff, which must mean that we're not as advanced as the ancients who built it (and old stuff that's still not obsolete means we've stagnated at best). Heavily implies a fairly narrow set of settings which are generally oldschool as gently caress with the best gear in the oldest, remotest, least accessible places etc. 2) Where it's just this inherent thing that people do, and running is always running and jumping is always jumping no matter if you're doing it now or a thousand years ago, and ditto casting fireball or making a sword +1. Just this thing that's always been like that and will always be like that. If you don't go at least eberron levels of weird, you're gonna be doing a bunch of intentionally not thinking about stuff (eg, defensive architecture has been stupid literally forever), or you have to have magic be actually rare and weird, which also heavily implies a fairly narrow set of settings which either don't look much like existing D&D settings or look not totally dissimilar to the oldschool settings from (1). 3) Where magic is under development all the time but old stuff isn't inherently better or worse than new stuff, just different and has different context and maybe different types of situational applicability or usefulness (ie, an ancient spell to make the local crocodiles form a footbridge across the nile is goddamn useless in 1989 Los Angeles, but that doesn't mean the spell is wronger, or worse than the (now) incredibly useful one that "parts" freeway traffic, and recently someone's figured out that they're actually about 95% the same because they're both about ensorcelling a hostile environment for faster, safer travel*). Magic Missile was developed 2 years ago in Silicon Valley. Sleep is from ancient Greece. Burning Hands barely pre-dates gunpowder in Europe. Friends is from the 1850s. Combat Cantrips were the product of an arms race after a recent (ie, your dad or graddad fought in it) world war. All are very useful to the modern broke-rear end tomb robber. Which I don't think I've ever seen but might be a lot more fun with in-game worldbuilding groups than the previous two things. * e: And if they can isolate the important core part of that spell (the Thaumon) - in this case the bit that just says "totally safe travel from here to there" without any fuckery then a) someone will be able to actually Teleport real soon now and b) we're a step closer to a Universal Thaum Theory (colloquially, the "wish", which is probably just a pipe dream but still) e2: Unless it was always monads*** all along and we've been barking up the wrong tree for 300 years... ** The tiny little modrons of which everything is made, if you believe idiots who were clearly wrong. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 02:13
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The swordfighting aspect of Jedi is what I had in mind with "guy who can jump up there and punch him through a wall".
Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 22:53
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Fender Anarchist posted:Cousin 1's excuse was "i didn't know if i'd get to do social stuff so I tried it out loving with people while I could!!!". You need to talk to everyone about expectations and spotlight sharing. This guy is that guy. He will not "shape up", he'll try to spend the whole game in the tavern, loving with people. If everyone's on board with that (and it's very very likely they're bored while that guy does his thing but are being polite about it) then you still need to have that talk because a) otherwise you won't know either way and b) you need to find a way to share the spotlight so everyone gets a turn being that guy, and c) if they're going to monkey cheese i hit on the barmaid and cast magic missile at the darkness, then you don't need to actually plan anywhere near as much adventuring. Seriously. Just give them a situation and wing it and watch one guy steal the ale from the basement and the other guy push the apple cart in the river and the other guy talk about teleporting a donkey into the count's bedroom while he frantically passes you notes about how he'a actually really stealing the other character's shoes, then you don't need to plan anything. But I bet what would happen is that one guy would do that poo poo while everyone else hung around waiting for him to wear himself out so the game could start. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Dec 9, 2018 |
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Dec 9, 2018 21:20
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I'm seeing this same "he's being eeeviiiiil" talk in like 3 different places just today. The proffered solutions everywhere else are all abject poo poo to the point where I've said "lol a god turns him into a bukcet and than an ogre poops in teh bucket" to mock them and now people are loving agreeing with me and going "ooooh creative and evil I like it!" and just 
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Dec 10, 2018 05:30
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Frank discussion about why they'd expect that, with a focus on expected # of encounters per day, the resource management game, and fairness towards other players who are supposed to refresh worse/fewer abilities more often. E: this is one of the parts of the game that is always gonna look at least a little bit like a game. You can dress it up with time pressure or whatever, but the crux of it is "You get more and bigger shots, but they recharge slower" and really nobody should have a problem with that. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 13:05
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Numlock posted:The TLDR is that the players had rotten luck in their first session and one character died. I started pulling my punches because I suspect if I played it straight a TPK would of resulted. Now they are spooked and asking for long rests after every fight even when it doesn’t make sense, much to my annoyance. Are you rewriting the entire rest/refresh system to avoid talking to your players about their expectations?
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Dec 12, 2018 01:52
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Gharbad the Weak posted:
Owns.
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Dec 20, 2018 02:01
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Sodomy Hussein posted:I got into technical writing partially because I wanted to one day work in the games industry and that seemed like the best way. Then over time, in addition to the harsh financial realities of the games industry, I discovered that the industry's most banal minds were working on D&D and that you're better off self-publishing than attempting to climb the mountain at WotC only to inevitably go out like poo poo through a goose and publish somewhere else anyway. This sounds like an exact description of someone I used to work with in like 2006-2007 or so. You're not Australian, right?
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Dec 20, 2018 03:35
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MonsterEnvy posted:There is a difference between some classes preforming better and the other class needing to be built well. I absolutely can't understand what you're trying to get at here. 1) There is a difference between a better-performing class, and a class that needs to be built well? I mean yeah, but also... no poo poo? 2) Paladins are better than fighters (no poo poo) and this is true even if both are unoptimised (again, no poo poo), but fighters can still do their job (but... not as well as paladins?) 3) 4) Therefore no problem.
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Dec 20, 2018 04:47
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MonsterEnvy posted:Ok going to explain it better now that I am no longer burdened. OK allow me to present my rebuttal now that I am not beset by bees. If you compare them on a paladness scale instead of a fightyness scale, (this one goes from 1 to 10000000000) then paladins are 9999999947 to 10000000000 but fighters are only 8447 to 9062. This is obviously very far from the ideal equality situation, therefore fighters need both optimisation and better design. There is a problem and it is very very large indeed!
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Dec 20, 2018 05:49
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MonsterEnvy posted:Thanks for this super poor faith argument. Making up some numbers and declaring victory is exactly what you tried to pull.
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Dec 20, 2018 05:56
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ritorix posted:3) Releasing an imprisoned demilich in the vicinity of an angry dragon, hoping they will occupy each other while you steal the loot, will never end well. Tell us what happened!
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Dec 20, 2018 07:50
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Anyone got good resources on dming overworld exploration? My experience is entirely in one shots and an urban campaign so the idea of spending weeks in the wilds (when the wilds have stuff that matters) is new to me. Are you doing a quest chain, or a sandbox/hexcrawl, and are you gonna map and detail the whole thing, or fake it? If it's quest/detailed then you do it like anything else linear and planned. If not I can do an effortpost for you later today.
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Dec 20, 2018 23:28
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Quest chain, but one where the journey should matter. Like the early story goal is they're charged with getting to the Feywild from point A and travel to point B to open a gate back to the prime from their end. It's gritty dangerous work for people who don't have a lot waiting for them back home, other than an interest bearing account. There are two ways I'd think about doing this. As a series of vignettes consisting of single adventuring days, as in actual days where something interesting happens, each of which is a plot-linked mini-adventure that showcases some feywild stuff, followed by "you travel for another two weeks without anything much happening, and then come to a town/river/mountain/forest where adventure happens..." or As an abstracted series of adventuring "days" where you're using short-rests to signal "you camped and it was actually slightly restful for once" and long rests are the rare safe, 100% peaceful night. So encounters are happening every few days, and short rests maybe once a week, with 2 or 3 long rests spread out. That'll make it look and feel like you're playing through every day of the trip. In either case, string your encounters together in a meaningful way, because you're drat right crossing a continent should be a story worth telling.
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Dec 20, 2018 23:57
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Is a hex crawl a bad fit for this? Probably? Let me think a bit about how my free exploration hexcrawl stuff could work with an a-b journey. I know it wouldn't work as usual, and I suspect it'd feel a bit railroady to have a "get to this hex and you win" and also have them interact with stuff along the way, but I'm sure I can come up with something. Unless you want to make up a map with detailed stuff per hex and let them wander through it trying to get to B and see what stories emerge? But that's frankly a shitload of work and they probably won't see 9/10ths of it.
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Dec 21, 2018 00:21
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AlphaDog posted:Let me think a bit about how my free exploration hexcrawl stuff could work with an a-b journey. I know it wouldn't work as usual, and I suspect it'd feel a bit railroady to have a "get to this hex and you win" and also have them interact with stuff along the way, but I'm sure I can come up with something. OK, so what I'd usually do is make up a map and a bunch of monster/baddie encounters, a bunch of locations, and a bunch of clues towards other related encounters, then as the characters wander around, I'd check for "random" encounters and when one came up, I'd randomly select from those, and they'd find the <opponents> in the <location> who would yield the <information/clue/item> when defeated. "Information" is varying forms of "<distance> to the <direction> from <here/feature> you will find <clue/item> in a <location> guarded by <monsters>". One or more of the thing/place/guard categories might be missing from the info or the encounter. "Item" is something that you need to collect to do GOAL. "Clue" is information about how to achieve GOAL. Importantly, you place none of these things before you start play, it's entirely dependent on the PCs wandering into things at the start, which they definitely will because you're reducing the "no encounter" part of the random encounter check every time there's no encounter. So for example, after the first encounter they have the information "Five miles to the north of the rock spire, there's a treasure behind a waterfall, watch out for the goblins!" So I place the waterfall, treasure, goblins five miles to the north of the rock spire. Where's that? gently caress knows, I haven't placed it yet. They can't find the treasure/waterfall/goblins until they find the spire, so they're gonna have to wander around a bit more. Four encounters later, I random pull a fight with Wolves at the Rock Spire yielding an Item, but because I know that ROCK SPIRE is already linked to GOBLINS, I use a goblin encounter instead, and decide to switch out "item" for nothing because this is the first time they've been able to follow gathered information so it already feels special. Thus they gradually build towards having enough locational clues, enough items, and enough other information to find the goal location, which is usually a dungeon to be looted. The fun for the players is in exploring an unknown wilderness, lots of the fun for me is in playing to find out what happens, because the story that we're going to end up with is emergent even though lots of the significant the pieces might be pre-made (a lot of that in terms of "we're too far out and oops poo poo we can't eat gps and gems". It also ties in really well with doing a base level of planning, then keeping on top of it by only developing ideas that the players are interested in. Like, if they don't give a poo poo about bandits, I'll stop including those and half the time they'll remember that as "we got rid of all the bandits!" and the other half they won't notice or care. -- I'm really not sure that'd work in what's supposed to be an A-B journey, but I guess you could do the same thing and have each clue/info piece move them further along toward the end? It just won't look or feel random that way even if you're pulling random location/monster/loot combos, because everything obviously progresses along toward the goal location. I think you might be better served planning it out as a sequence, sorry. e: Wait, nope, I've got it! The Feywild's loving weird, right? Who's to say space is constant there? A journey for a mortal there might not be "walk the quickest route from A to B" but "Walk into the primordial forest. You will have an Adventure. If you are worthy, you will walk back out again at your destination", with the quickest route and the adventuriest adventure being equivalent. E2: and the residents have trouble explaining it because to them it's 100% normal, like you'd expect some low level Red Riding Hood vs Big Bad Wolf shenanigans at minimum every time you move between non-primordial-forest areas. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Dec 21, 2018 |
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Dec 21, 2018 03:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:because when you do get to play 3e with a party composed of a Psion, a Warlock, a Crusader, and a Druid, and when you're going up against higher-CR enemies, almost all of which have their own spells or spell-like abilities, the amount of time combat takes isn't that much less. Ditto second ed. I mean, yeah, it's very quick rounds with a party that's a fighter who's attacking because they're a fighter, a thief who's attacking because as if they're gonna get to backstab, a cleric who's used their cure light wounds and is thus attacking, and a wizard who might cast their magic missile next round but is currently attacking. But go play the kobold fights in Dragon Mountain with a 6 player group that knows what they're doing. Limit them to just core books and complete splats and no 2.5 stuff to keep it "simple". >60 minute rounds, easy. A bit less once the DM produces a macro'd spreadsheet that automates his side of the accounting and rolling. Very very much more once the casters realise that the surest (if slowest) way to deal with a horde isn't to chuck fireballs and cloudkills, but to summon their own horde.
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Dec 21, 2018 10:04
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Combat length in D&D is roughly where it's been for 20+ years unless a) you're in the first few levels and not comparing to the first few levels of the other version, b) you're ignoring rules and not ignoring similar amounts of rules in the other version, or c) you're being intentionally disingenuous (eg, by comparing your 20-hours-a-week-for-a-year tool-assisted online game group with someone who's trying to run another version for the first time with a group of newbies using pen, paper, and dice). This was noticable in the playtest when people starting at level 1 were going "woooooooooah this is soooo fast!" but they were coming off high level 4th ed play or infinite ladders 3e charop games and half the class abilities and nearly all the movement/action rules weren't in yet. No poo poo it's going fast, you're used to going through 30 different books looking for edge cases to exploit and now you're looking at something that's only as complex as mentzer basic (and plays about as quick!) Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Dec 21, 2018 |
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Dec 21, 2018 12:39
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Proud Rat Mom posted:One minor Gripe I have with d&d 5e is how loving ugly the dumb black with red splash book spines look on my shelf. Probably I'd go 1st>4th>5th>2nd>3rd for how much I like the look of the books on the shelf. 1st was neat with plain colors and looks unique. 4th looked nice and matched, but a bit bland. 5th is kinda ugly but not bland and mostly matches. 2nd ed was somewhat mismatched fonts/placement/logos on somewhat ugly black gloss. 3rd looks like pls puut JrafFIC DEisNG iS MY PasShUN in nice font luyk Papprtpus. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Dec 22, 2018 |
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Dec 22, 2018 03:50
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