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My first game was Microlite20 a little over a year ago. I had literally just picked up some dice sets that same afternoon and invited my dad and brother over for a quick game. I think my biggest mistake was falling into that "there's only one solution to this puzzle" pitfall: they had already picked up a key from one of the bandits they slew earlier, but when they came to a locked door they kind of forgot about it, so I turned down three different approaches they tried to open the door until they suggested "well the mad scientist's going to have to come out sometime, let's just camp out here" and realized they were never going to remember the key, so I let it stand.
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Jun 1, 2015 11:50
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Oh man, playing a game over chat/IRC. That was my second game. Do people still do that in the age of Skype/Hangouts/roll20?
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Jun 1, 2015 16:06
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Can anydice evaluate success probabilities of opposed rolls? If not, can a different tool do it?
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Jun 4, 2015 17:17
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My Lovely Horse posted:If you're talking on a d20, someone's done the work for you: https://klubkev.org/~ksulliva/ralph/dnd-stats.html This was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
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Jun 4, 2015 18:15
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bunnielab posted:There were women in Die Hard? Just the fax, ma'am. Just the fax.
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Jun 4, 2015 21:30
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P.d0t posted:So sometimes we're idling in IRC waiting for the DM or someone else to post. I'd love to play me some games over IRC
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Jun 6, 2015 08:09
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Evil Mastermind posted:Legit question: why are none of the retroclones out there like that? I feel like hey're always so focused on recreating the core rules they forget all the awesomely nutbag stuff that came out to support the games. There's such a focus on stuff like Tomb of Horrors or the Giants series everyone ignores stuff like Barrier Peaks. Because the people invested in the OSR are really only looking for some platonic ideal of old-school D&D that didn't actually match up to what was found in D&D during the actual time it was out there, to the point where some retroclones deliberately go out of their way to excise Gygaxian Androids and pulp sci-fi elements during their translation. We've gotten to the point where OD&D, BECMI, AD&D 1e and AD&D 2e all have straight ports now ... and then progress is slowing because "all the awesomely nutbag stuff" is actually kinda still fringe past to swathes of the OSR demographic.
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Jun 10, 2015 02:59
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The first two episodes of Wil Wheaton's Titansgrave TRPG show have been released: http://geekandsundry.com/titansgrave-chapter-0/ http://geekandsundry.com/titansgrave-chapter-1/ Evil Mastermind posted:Did you know that in BECMI/RC D&D, Lawful fighters became paladins, and Chaotic fighters could convince monsters to join them as followers? Or that it had a whole weapon mastery system that let fighters pull all sorts of awesome moves that supported the golf-bag-full-of-weapons idea? You wouldn't based on the majority of OSR/retroclone stuff out there! To be fair, Dark(er) Dungeons, the retroclone of RC does cover the Weapon Mastery rules, and then Labyrinth Lord as the retroclone of B/X has them as a supplement. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 05:59
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3rd/3.5E question: from what I gather, it was really hard for the Wizard to actually get enough spells in AD&D to really become the powerhouse that they're generally regarded as, so the Sorcerer was supposed to be a sort of deal-with-the-devil: you could have a lot of freedom with what spells you learned, because you learned them naturally and you could pick and choose from the book, and you could spent your slots on any given spell you knew, but in exchange, you'd never be able to learn as many spells as a Wizard Except it never actually turned out this way when the Sorcerer was finally introduced because 3E was also the edition that made it much easier for Wizards to obtain spells, since they'd learn a spell just by leveling up, and they were no longer at the mercy of the DM for scroll drops nor the dice for succeeding at scribing spells. Is that accurate? Were there any other factors that made Sorcerers so much worse than Wizards and make them not worth it? Evil Mastermind posted:At the risk of sounding whinily un-satisfy-able, LL and Dark* Dungeons are good retroclones and recreate one of my favorite versions of D&D (hell, it's the edition I started with), but the problem I always end up having is that they're so dry. They're not trying to do anything new, or present an expected playstyle, or draw inspiration from anything but the old core rules. They're just rules that, admittedly, I already own. Hey I know what that feels like - it's really only OSRIC that I really appreciate out of the bog-standard retroclones because while you can run a game of B/X or RC straight from the original books, gently caress trying to do that with AD&D 1e.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:42
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Jimbozig posted:So some people a while back mentioned movement in 2e D&D being different from what came after, and being able to spend your movement out-of-turn in particular. Can anyone tell me how that worked? Could you just follow someone around and always be next to them no matter what? The combat resolution in the PHB sounds bog-standard, at least relative to pre-3E D&D. What you're describing is in the Player's Option - Combat and Tactics book: You choose between a No-Move Action, a Half-Move Action and a Full-Move Action. If it's a No-Move Action, you can do all of the traditional combat actions such as attacking, casting spells, etc., but you don't move, except you also get a free "one square adjustment" that doesn't draw Attacks of Opportunity (hey! that's where 3E's five-foot-step comes from!). If it's a Half-Move Action, you can move up to half your speed, but you cannot cast spells, firing ranged weapons is at half the rate of fire, and you cannot parry nor use magical items. If it's a Full-Move Action, you can move your entire speed, but you can only Charge (which is movement ending in an attack), or Move, or Run, or Sprint. Finally, you can still change your declared action after everyone else has declared theirs, but it will be last at the initiative count. And then when it's time to execute all of the declared actions, they're done in two Half-Move phases each, in order of initiative, such that movement is staggered and the state of the battlefield can change half-way through your turn (hence the ability to declare a new action, provided you're willing to go last) I'm probably mangling it a bit, because I'm just reading through it now and the execution is rather complex, but suffice it to say that the temporal mechanics described in the book are far more stutter-step than 3E and later. EDIT: Cirno probably explained it better, and what he said is in the raw PHB gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 07:54
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From a video game perspective it reminds me of WoW's Holy Priests having the Lightwell ability for years and years and years because one of the devs' main characters played one. People always suspected that it was their baby.
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Jun 11, 2015 08:41
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Len posted:Welp I know what I want to try and find at Gencon then. A gumshoe game. Because I want to be the loose cannon cop who demands someone enhances that video some more. It's worth noting that that's kind of the sort of thing that GUMSHOE wants to discourage: making a check to see if you discover the clue, or making a check to see if you can make the connection, because if you fail the check, the game grinds to a halt. If your character has "an esoteric knowledge of shoes", they don't even need to roll for it - perhaps the in-universe narrative is that they check it on the computer, but they're always supposed to figure out that it belongs to the perp. Lenny Briscoe does not fail Investigation rolls during an episode of L&O. The "game" part is Lenny's player figuring out what in Lenny's character sheet is applicable to the situation and how it's going to lead them to the next  interlude.Or to put it another way, the CSI team always finds the key clue when they're at the crime scene: the question is what clue it is, and which of the techs back at the lab can do something with it. Is it a small bit of fiber to an obscure fashion line? Is it an insect larva to establish a timeline of the murder? Is it a polaroid selfie of the victim that contains the face of her murderer as a reflection on her iris when zoomed in enough?
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Jun 14, 2015 03:34
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paradoxGentleman posted:To bring this back to tabletop games, is there a game that allows you to play monster adventurers better than D&D does? In that game picking a race with a level modifier has a tendency of leaving you behind the curve compared to your human and dwarven companions. I'm doing a 4e design retrospective in the F&F thread, and one of their stated design goals with regards to player races was to use balanced attribute bonuses, racial feats, and staggered access to racial abilities precisely so that you could play the odder races without having to apply a racial level adjustment because the designers observed that things like a Human Wizard getting the next level of spells ahead of, say, a Medusa Wizard, made monster races never really worth it. And now that I think about it, that 3rd Edition approach is actually the inverse of how it used to be done in AD&D. Where 3E frontloaded the penalty, older editions capped your maximum level as a trade-off for being that much more powerful early on.
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Jun 14, 2015 15:11
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Halloween Jack posted:I hear DCC is actually pretty good, but I seriously cannot get past that "Halt! If thou desireth not for Erol Otus to cum on thine face, this horseshit is nuncupatory!" thing in the prologue. It took TG's OSR thread years to get over that and finally look at DCC seriously. I still find the system too light on DM support for my taste, but it actually is quite good, with class design that's significantly more innovative than a lot of other D&D-likes
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Jun 21, 2015 04:22
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http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/bestow-weapon-proficiencyquote:You bestow the subject with the ability to use a single type of weapon he is not proficient in as if he were proficient with that weapon. The weapon can be of any type, including an exotic weapon, but the subject of the spell must be holding the weapon. This is a spell?! They're just giving away weapon proficiencies now as temporary buffs? I have no words.
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Jun 24, 2015 06:22
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ProfessorCirno posted:I'll always remember Ultimate Combat - it was the book that finally cut me away from being a Paizo fan. Mind elaborating on that? I'm guessing one of the following reasons: 1. the variant rules are a continuation of cheap rip-offs of 3.5 2. it didn't actually add much to martial classes despite the name 3. it had new and more spells, which is rich for a book called Ultimate Combat, especially when said spells continue to tread on martials
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Jun 24, 2015 07:30
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I just finished RPPR's 2-episode 13th Age actual play, and quite enjoyed it. The system played much faster than their Iron Heroes combats and there wasn't nearly as much arcane rulesmanship*. Crits happened fairly often, and the escalation die also prevented a lot of misses, especially in light of one of the players being salty about d20's swinginess pretty much the entire game. The skill checks were also resolved quite quickly, though I did see the issue that's been mentioned a couple of times where some skills are really so broad that they always see use: "Wandering Knight", "Things I Learned at Bard School", and "Inquisitor" That's still a darn sight better though than another Iron Heroes instance where the players engineered an elaborate plan to sneak onto a pirate island by shimmying across two sheer cliffs, only to find that nobody had ranks in Use Rope (which mercifully the DM just handwaved away) * there was this one instance in their Iron Heroes AP which stretched out to what seemed like 10 real-time minutes while the DM and a player discussed what amounted to how to do a Bull Rush maneuver.
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Jun 24, 2015 11:51
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Jason Bulmahn's Introduction to the Pathfinder Alpha Playtest posted:Back in October 2007, I began a small side project. Since 4th Edition had recently been announced, I began to wonder how many people would stick with the 3.5 rules set. Everyone could agree that 3.5 needed some work, but the system itself was mostly sound. I thought that those folks might want some updated rules, since support was beginning to wane. What started out as a simple side project soon turned into an obsession as the rules document got longer every day. When Paizo started looking for alternatives, my side project was a natural fit, leading us to where we are today. I guess he might honestly believe that it's different enough to be its own game, and namely his own game?
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Jun 24, 2015 21:15
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NWN2, much like the Infinity Engine games, papers over the player agency issues of their tabletop equivalents because you're controlling the whole party at a time - it'd suck if you were just the Warlock and the Fighter kept invalidating your turn 1 real-time minute after another. I've often wondered why none of these D&D games ever went fully turn-based and grid-based after the Gold Box series. Would have been a much better fit and probably would have made the system more understandable for people who didn't come from a tabletop background.
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Jun 26, 2015 07:36
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Queen Fiona posted:AGE is the Dragon Age RPG's engine? I don't recall anyone saying anything bad about it, but it's very generic and not really a great representation of its source material. The stat spread isn't nearly as bad as "3d6-in-order": 3 = -2 4 to 5 = -1 6 to 8 = 0 9 to 11 = +1 12 to 14 = +2 15 to 17 = +3 18 = +4 And you get one free swap And you get to bump up any stat by 1 every time you level up And your background can give you another stat increase ProfessorCirno posted:AGE's biggest crime is being exceedingly boring. It's Yet Another Generic Fantasy System. It has close to nothing new and nothing really noteworthy. I don't think it's even possible to be mad about AGE - that would require a level of passion AGE just doesn't inspire. The spell list and system and stunts are pretty much the anti-D&D
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Jun 27, 2015 06:41
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There's also Legend RPG and the Trailblazer supplement for 3.5
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Jun 28, 2015 10:47
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drrockso20 posted:if I recall properly Legend has almost no monsters statted for it, and never included a monster creation system or released a monster manual style supplement either so it's also kinda useless(especially as it isn't compatible with any other RPG), and I've heard Trailblazer has some major issues(can't remember what exactly) and isn't really a proper RPG it's merely a very ambitious supplement You're correct that there's no MM for Legend, but they do have a section for encounter and monster creation, although monster creation is still 3.5E-style "they're built the same as PCs", so it's still more work than, say, 4e.
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Jun 28, 2015 16:02
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http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/06/29/tabletop-rpg-award-nominates-copyright-infringing-game-multiple-awards/quote:Today, one of the few awards in tabletop roleplaying games announced its 2015 award nominees. There are some really good games that are in the running for ENnies awards, but as I went over the list a different story emerged. The judges at the ENnies awards managed to not once, not twice but three times nominate Mass Effect: The Fate RPG. It is up for Best Electronic Book, Best Free Product and Product of The Year.
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Jun 30, 2015 13:33
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