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It's depressing to hear the garbage-eaters win the edition war. All of the untrue, stupid crap that Pathfinder mouthbreathers were vomiting out in 2011 about 4e is now mainstream "wisdom". This just popped up on a podcast that I listened to and it makes me realize that the people on this forum are a huge anomaly, that 90% of people have an extremely limited breadth of experience with their hobby and like it that way, they have zero ability to analyze anything and just want to engage the same paradigms over and over again.
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Mar 3, 2015 00:26
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palecur posted:Cold City is the best setting with the worst rules, specifically the idiotic national-stereotype rules. I'd love to run a game with the core setting/premise, but with the system gutted and replaced with something that doesn't make me grind my teeth. Mash it up with Night's Black Agents, use the rules from that, should work pretty well.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:05
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What's really interesting is that I've been listening to the "Adventure Zone", the McElroy D&D 5e podcast, and even though I'm only on episode 3 it's really funny how the Wizard basically gets to do everything cool (freeze the monster, shoot magic missile and do damage with no attack roll, charm a monster into helping them, use prestidigitation to illuminate a hidden monster) and the Warrior gets to say "I attack" and roll a bunch of dice every time he tries to do anything vaguely interesting. D&D is back, baby!
Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 18:58
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Sorry to make this my "Personal Reactions to the Adventure Zone" thread, but the following exchange just happened on the pudcast: Fighter: Alright, I want to leap upon the spider's back! DM: Hmm, ok, well, he'll take an attack of opportunity against you then. Fighter: Nevermind... Bringing back all the hits, baby! Mmmmm To be fair, the DM was nice to the Fighter earlier and let him one-shot a monster by smart application of an environmental feature. But it's just killing me, the Fighter player clearly wants to do rad stuff and the DM is just making him roll dice and take penalties to do piddling effects. Meanwhile the Wizard casts a spell, gets what he wants. Painful to listen to.
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Mar 4, 2015 00:09
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It's true, it's still entertaining but the system sucks. Update: PC Wizard one-shotted by an NPC Wizard with no attack roll (Magic Missile). Fun!
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Mar 4, 2015 00:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:Spells in D&D aren't really magic so much as they're "make an absolute declaration of truth" tokens. Hell, if the Wizard yells "I damage the monster!" and shoots a Fireball, and the monster makes its save, the Wizard still deals (half) damage! Yes, I once had an argument with a 2e DM that Knock was the equivalent of burning a 2nd level spell slot and saying "these dummies left the door unlocked". "And that's ok, because it's MAGIC" was his response. And that's why I don't play any D&D other than 4e, which definitely ain't perfect but isn't a completely garbage Magic Show. Yawgmoth posted:I don't think I have ever seen a game with grappling rules that weren't awful. 4e.
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Mar 4, 2015 16:33
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My Lovely Horse posted:It occurs to me that 4E practically reversed the setup: used to be that the wizard cast Knock before the rogue could even get her lockpicks out, now Knock is a ritual and before the wizard even opens the book the fighter's probably kicked the door in. You are 100% right. As an aside, Fighters have had it bad but Rogues/Thief players were even worse. Even back when I was in my teens playing lovely 2e I realized that Wizards totally made Rogue players redundant by like level 4. You didn't need Hide in Shadows when you could become Invisible, you didn't need Move Silently when you could Levitate, you didn't need lockpicking when you had Knock, and it was easy to pile the loot on a Tenser's Floating Disk before gently sending it out the second story window. Eventually even the climbing skills got assed out by Fly and Thiefs were basically lovely fighters that could read scrolls (LOL) and argue with the DM for backstab bonuses. And get killed by traps, of course. True story: I got roped back into a 2e campaign around 2010 and I played as a Thief. Pre-campaign, I begged the DM to specifically omit all the magical poo poo that stomped Thiefing flat. I also pointed out that Thief characters would die to traps easily. He assured me that everything was cool and that he was taking what I said to heart. 3 sessions in, our Magic User already had Invisibility, somebody else had Boots of Elvenkind, blah blah blah. Of course I bailed. Later I found out that the character died to a trap. There's just no winning with some people.
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Mar 4, 2015 18:02
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Yawgmoth posted:In theory, wasn't the rogue/thief/sneaky class supposed to be like level 20 by the time the wizard was level ~6 or some crazy poo poo like that, by getting double xp for stealing things and making spot/listen/hide/MS checks and so on? My memory is hazy because 2e was awful in so many ways (and my DM only made them all 10x worse) but I recall this being a thing. No, because you're dead. You died to a trap that went off on a chest that you lockpicked successfully but didn't detect the trap. Or you did detect the trap and didn't remove it. Or you failed the lockpick check and the trap went off in response. 2e had thieves make 3 die rolls to unlock, detect, and defuse a trapped chest and frankly didn't give out enough skill points to be good enough to pull this off with any regularity until level 10. But you never made level 10, because you died when you failed your move silently check and got pinioned by 3 gobbos with crossbows or you failed your climb check and fell off a 40 foot ledge and smashed your head open or the scroll you decided to read was cursed and now you're a statue. Being a Thief in 2e is like watching the end credits to a Jackie Chan movie where he tries to do dangerous stuff and ends up falling on his face or hurting his hand or if he's really unlucky breaking a bone and everyone winces in pain. Except in this case it's some poor bastard being splashed with acid or being turned into a pile of ash or falling off a mountainside or having his soul stolen by the gem. Basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l464ZF5jK3Y
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Mar 4, 2015 18:26
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When I say "made rogues redundant" I'm saying that Wizards could do whatever they could do, with no chance of failure, with the big fat zero mechanical penalty of having to rest after 8 hours. There's specific rules in 2e that says a Thief may NOT attempt to repick a lock immediately, so if he failed (and there was a decent chance that he would) that was it. You're hosed until the Wizard steps in. This is the dynamic of so much of 2e. "Get hosed or get a Wizard." I also want to say that if you want to understand how lovely D&D used to be, go download a Sierra game from the 1980s. They are garbage pixel-bitching "you're suddenly dead" turdfests and that's the kind of stuff that professional designers influenced by D&D were puking out. These were adults that were incredibly negatively influenced by the badness of D&D. The typical teenage DM had absolutely zero chance of doing anything of value at all with the system. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 19:29
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Glorified Scrivener posted:Yes, people throwing out rules does rather undermine any sort of balance those rules might have achieved, however limited it might have been. And I won't argue that the chances of success for low level thieves in AD&D/2nd aren't atrocious. The rules for Magic User spell components and spell acquisition were so incredibly bad and campaign-dominating that people were forced to throw them out. They didn't work for conventions because LOL what the gently caress, nobody was going to spend 3 hours on a side adventure to get spider web and crushed amethyst or whatever. They didn't work for campaigns unless you wanted the subject matter of the campaign to be Barry the Wizard and his Entourage of Gem-Collecting Statue-Sculpting Henchmen Who Feed Him All Their Loot So He Can Contribute. I played D&D 1e and 2e for like 12 years in a variety of environments and playgroups and nobody, literally nobody, at any time used those rules as written. Nobody.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:23
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Another thing that D&D worldbuilding just totally ignores: Every second-rate magic user has access to Charm Person. This would radically, radically change society, down to the core. Just start thinking about this. Think about commerce, diplomacy, hell even courtship.Evil Mastermind posted:Oh man I remember one of the King's Quests games had a bit where you had to stop a cat from killing a mouse (an event that happens within seconds of your first entering a screen, and with no indication that you can or should do anything about it), and if you didn't, you couldn't complete the game because you needed the mouse hours later. King's Quest 5: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder. That was in the 1990s btw.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:47
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The Wizard could silence it, though. That's not funny or  . That's a thing that the Wizard can do (and yet again, fucks the guy with the Move Silently skill. Who would that be, I wonder?)
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Mar 4, 2015 23:32
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Famethrowa posted:Based on what I'm reading it looks like the case. We are really enjoying a more plot driven mystery right now so that would be right up our alley. You should be using GUMSHOE. Use GUMSHOE, please.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:59
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Famethrowa posted:Could I reasonably adapt this to my campaign without losing out on hacky slashy fun? Can you! http://paizo.com/products/btpy8pf3?Lorefinder It's for Pathfinder and I haven't personally used it but I'm sure it's fine.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:37
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Evil Mastermind posted:In related news, and online buddy has invited me to his PF game. As somebody who has a group of friends who only play D&D 2e, I've had a similar experience. Just don't talk any other games with them and try to go in with an open mind. Regarding my situation I did just that, it was about as terrible as a bunch of 40 year old aping lovely mechanics and mindsets from the 1980s could be, but at least I gave it a shot and I'm glad I did. They were also very gracious when I said it wasn't for me.
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Mar 9, 2015 17:31
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Evil Sagan posted:I'm not sure how you get ahead in the world of MMORPGs. Going by the state of the genre, it is not by making good games. Going by Star Citizen, it's by not making a game at all.
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Mar 9, 2015 18:37
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Len posted:Is this about 5e? Can you explain for people like me that didn't follow it? Pretty sure it's just that Pathfinder/D&D 3.5e people literally death-threated and harassed people out of the hobby who had any kind of public presence and dared to say "4e is pretty good and should be considered when designing new D&D".
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Mar 10, 2015 15:52
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I sometimes wonder what would have happened if WoTC had responded to the backlash with a new D&D Classic revision and just manage that as a product line. It works for Coke and Pepsi. I'm really curious to see how 5e continues. The brand seems like it's on shaky ground on the tabletop as it drove out guys like me who actively disliked old D&D and, judging by Roll20, failed to recapture a lot of Pathfinder's market share. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Mar 10, 2015 |
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Mar 10, 2015 16:00
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bunnielab posted:Oh lord so many choices. It looks like most of the games here are an even split between 4ed and 5ed ( which is also called Next, correct?). It sounds like 4th is the way to go if I want ease of use. It looks like both editions have online chargen programs, is one of them massively better then the other? Same question, but about PDF rule books? I have not played 5th edition but I can tell you that a very real problem with pre-4e Dungeons and Dragons is that if the characters attempt to act like heroes from fantasy fiction at any level pre-5ish or so they will, most likely, die. Also there are a bunch of ways for characters to just die outright at later levels, which encourages them to maintain their ambushing, sneaky, scaredy-cat ways.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:52
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LongDarkNight posted:There's also another Player's Guide coming out soon; it's mostly spells as well. Yes, 5e has that D&D Feel(tm) edit: btw just want to come back to this: Evil Mastermind posted:I don't think (5e is) that shaky; I know at my game store they're filling up three tables on Organized Play night every week. It's still pretty new. On my side I'm not seeing anyone enthusiastic about it. Mostly curiosity. Friends of mine who have played it describe it as "pretty good" while raving about Pathfinder. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Mar 10, 2015 |
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Mar 10, 2015 19:25
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Kai Tave posted:I am somehow doubtful that Paizo has found the magic elfgame formula that will allow them to completely avoid the same slow but inexorable decline in sales that pretty much every other RPG publisher experiences over time which necessitates some sort of new edition or similar big release to get things moving again every so often. Yeah, they're screwed and I can't wait to see what happens.
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Mar 10, 2015 20:35
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Hey what was the fantasy game from the 1980s/90s that had the critical hit tables, pages and pages of them, based on where and what kind of attack hit the player? Like a table for getting hit in the limb by an electrical attack, or the torso with a slicing attack? I remember half of the head shots being "you're dead" but getting progressively more gruesome and horrible. I can't remember and it's eating at me.
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Mar 10, 2015 22:14
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Covok posted:Rolemaster This was it, thank you so much. It was right on the tip of my tongue and driving me crazy. Edit: I remember it being absolute garbage, too. Just outrageously deadly. Edit2: Yup. From Wikipedia: quote:For combat each character has an Offensive Bonus (OB), which takes into account one's natural physical adeptness, weapon skill, and other factors, and a Defensive Bonus (DB), which takes into account natural agility, the use of shields and "Adrenal Defense", the ability of martial artists to avoid blows seemingly without effort. In addition various modifiers for position, wounds, and other factors are present. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Mar 10, 2015 |
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Mar 10, 2015 22:41
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A friend of mine bought the Monte Cook "City by the Spire" book which was this 640 page omnibus of this gigantic city for adventuring and it was just horrendous. Just pages and pages of minutae about where shops are located, who the shopkeeper is, what they look like, street names, etc. At least 75% of what I saw skimming it was just totally banal stuff that wouldn't even make a guidebook for the average city. Something is very wrong with Monte Cook.
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Mar 10, 2015 23:29
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ProfessorCirno posted:Thing is, this is exactly what most 3.x fans want in my experience. For far too many people, minutia and metagaming is what constitutes as "immersion." You know I'm starting to wonder if a lot of hate for 4e comes from a lot more of the page count being given over to being a rule-book with stats and such and not a fantasy Almanac/Travelogue with some occasional easily-ignored statblocks in it. In other words, how many people defending 3.5 don't actually intend to play it and just treat it as fantasy literature?
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Mar 11, 2015 03:39
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PurpleXVI posted:Honestly, that's the case for all D&D editions, the whole thing peaked, fluff-wise in 2E. Planescape, Birthright, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft. Any versions of them after that point seem to have taken a few crippling blows to the head and some weird changes for no good reason, or just never get revived. I'm personally really sad we never got a Birthright for 4E, the two seem like they'd have fit together pretty well. You forgot Al-Qadim. HOW COULD YOU?!??!? 
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Mar 11, 2015 16:03
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You guys are kinda designing Cutthroat Caverns here. Not completely and there's plenty of design space left but you should all check it out. There's building a character through draft (w/expansions), drawing initiative cards at the start of a fight and hard-locking it, playing cards to hit and do damage, etc.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:43
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My favorite Fyxt image. Also this IS the craziest thing quote:The Fyxt RPG is designed to be infinitely flexible, manageable, balanced, and more fun than any other RPG system. Edit: the player videos are all dudes in their late 30s/early 40s. This is exactly the kind of thing that the group I know that still plays AD&D 2e would produce if they were industrious. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 21:04
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Oh god. From the Kickstarter:quote:I have already spent my savings and 401K to establish the Fyxt RPG. Now that I know that it works and people want to play it, it is time to take the next step. As the Fyxt RPG grows, it needs to be moved to a large and powerful dedicated managed server. Since the Fyxt RPG does all the calculations and storing of game data, it is very important to utilize a server that can handle a lot of traffic and backend calculations. This is the primary reason for the Kickstarter. FyxtRPG.com needs to move from servers that cost hundreds of dollars a year to servers that cost thousands of dollars a year. We also need to ensure the website is up and available 24/7, so we need technical support to troubleshoot any server issues and bring the site back online as soon as possible. It is a heartbreaker.
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Mar 17, 2015 21:12
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Spoiler: Fyxt is two years of this guy's life. Ugh fuuuuuck his little girls aren't going to college because daddy lived in a epistemic bubble. So depressing.
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Mar 18, 2015 00:24
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Evil Mastermind posted:Triple post! According to Forum Gamemaster Ettin you have to talk about it in the industry chat thread.
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Mar 19, 2015 19:32
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:If you give him advice and it ends up making the guy ruin himself, then it will be your fault. Let him try his own way before showing him a new direction. The problem is he won't be able to try a new direction, because he's going to be flat loving broke.
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Mar 19, 2015 20:07
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Covok posted:My club is planing on two things that I'm wondering if anyone can help me with. I do! You play as normal, add up all GP and XP at the end (including the GP value of any found magical items), subtract the XP of any character who died, and that's your score. You're also going to be giving the prize to the team that cheats and reads the adventure, otherwise flip a coin, because Tomb of Horrors sucks poo poo and is stupid as hell! Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 18:06
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Covok posted:Thanks for the advice. Considering that the event itself is not super well publicized -- the festival it is a part of is --, there are few people in the club who even play D&D, and the guys who do don't want to play out a sense of fairness: we should be good. Probably not. It depends. It is what it is at this point, they are gung-ho on it. Probably because most of the e-board has never run/played D&D before and, those who have, have never done an edition before or after 3rd. I'm just quoting the rules that were quoted to me in the early 90s. I think the point is: don't die and don't throw away characters to advance. If you simply must do an Old School Tournament Play would you consider Against the Giants instead of Tomb of Horrors? Admittedly it's pretty monochromatic in encounter design (first you encounter mostly Hill Giants, then Frost Giants, then Fire Giants) but it was designed for tournament play and comes with pregenned characters oh and also it's not a stupid overrated piece of poo poo. It's a genuinely classic dungeon crawl that introduces the Drow (first appearance ever in these adventures which is pretty cool IMO) and I highly, highly recommend it if you're going for Old School Glory.
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Mar 20, 2015 19:33
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Tomb of Horrors is one of those grog touchstones where a bunch of old shits tell you how hardcore they were to survive it and then you go look at the actual module and start laughing a lot and saying "No, no way, no one could survive this. This is garbage poo poo for idiots." If anyone tells you they survived Tomb of Horrors cold (i.e. never hearing anything about it beforehand beyond "it's hard", never reading it) they are...how to put this? Lying their asses off.
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Mar 20, 2015 20:53
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The adventures are both made for original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by E. Gary Gygax, so that's what you have to run them in.
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Mar 20, 2015 21:47
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Covok posted:Got ya. So, either way, they expect me to learn that in a week. Heard that's one hell of a nightmare. Why did I agree to this? Because somebody in your club got the idea in their head from somewhere that old school Dungeons and Dragoning is a cool fun experience that you're going to have a blast with. And I hope you do! Good luck.
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Mar 20, 2015 21:53
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Well Covok please let me know how it goes, in any event.
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Mar 20, 2015 22:12
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Isn't that funny? That's exactly what the group who beat it told me they did, except with sheep instead of dogs.
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Mar 20, 2015 22:50
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There's also the fact that the players will initially be given a false dungeon to go to (that kills them) and also there's a false ending where the players fight a very very tough monster and get some treasure and return home thinking that they've won (that's not actually the hyper-deadly REAL ENDING monster with the fabulous riches) There's no "algorithm" that you can devise that lets you realize you didn't just face the real boss or actually win a fight against that son of a bitch or whatever. It's complete bullshit and anyone who says that they beat it had some kind of help or just threw characters at it until they beat it because it's loving fatal beyond reason and almost impossible to get the true ending without multiple wipes. Like, if you look at the OG Monster Manual and see the Lurker Below and Rot Grub and Gas Spore and say "oh yeah this is my kind of poo poo" you'll probably love it because you're a power-tripping jerk DM doofus who owns all the Grimtooth's Traps books and wears a novelty T-Shirt with Godzilla on it. You prick. Lemon Curdistan posted:It was specifically written as a tournament module, which is why it's one giant pile of bullshit. It's basically the only possible case where the giant bullshit pile could possibly be justified. Against the Giants is also a tourney module and it is not bad at all, albiet extremely 1980s AD&D.
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Mar 20, 2015 23:14
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