TG Chat Thread 2017

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Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Evil Mastermind posted:

What's the general consensus about the best version of Shadowrun, not counting Anarchy? 5th Edition or the 20th Anniversary Edition?

20th anniversary. Fifth edition is just random fiddling without any sort of cohesive plan, so some things are better and others are worse, but the overall whole is worse than a good set of house rules for 4th. Like grenades were really weird and kinda awful in 4th edition but in 5th edition a stun grenade is often a no-save instagib and it's not easy to spot fix.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 03:26

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 18:28

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Robot Style posted:

Does anyone have any experience with the fanmade Mass Effect D20 system? I'm currently playing a campaign with some friends, and our hacker party member seems way too OP. At level 2, he was able to open all the holding cells on a military flagship through an air conditioner control inside his cell, which seems a little ridiculous.
It wouldn't be too much of a problem if he wasn't also the group's medic. In our last session he refused to help another player's severely wounded character after a sudden ship crash until the rest of the group agreed to go along with a "Master Plan" he spent two weeks coming up with. The plan was just him using a future-ipad to hack a neutral military frigate in orbit (from the ground, through a signal-jamming sandstorm) and commanding it to fire on a hostile ship, also in orbit. He's currently level 4, and routinely makes rolls in the mid-30's.

Is this guy just taking advantage of a poorly QC'ed fanmade game, or is there active bullshit going on?

This is a poorly QC'd fanmade game. First red flag was the number of classes; six normal classes + 13 race specific classes and those classes are poorly templated.
"Tech Points: A Salarian Scientist starts the game with a number of tech points equal to his Intelligence modifier times Salarian Scientist level (minimum of 1)."
"Tech Points: The Volus Protector�s tech points are equal to his Intelligence modifier times Volus Protector level (minimum of 1)."
First version wasn't clear whether you kept gaining points every level or not, but most of the classes use the Volus Protector's language.

Presumable he's either an Engineer or Infiltrator. At Level 4: 18 int base, +2 from being Quarian, 7 skill points in all relevant skills, +2 for White Hat feat (+2 to damping/decryption/electronics/hacking), and +5 for Skill Focus (level 3 feat). If your GM is a complete doormat, he took the Savant achievement feat (pg 315) at level 1 and got +3 electronics/repair and +2 damping/decryption/hacking. That gets us to +21 and it already doesn't matter. The highest DC for a hacking check (Hack a military-grade defensive IFF and alter it) is 30 and he can just take 10 to autosucceed on that. He can choose to do things in half the time if he takes +5.

...unless he just wants free money. To hack a bank terminal to transfer you money is DC (15+[amount of money desired/500]) and takes a number of rounds equal to the DC divided by 3 (round down). Let's say he wanted to withdraw 5500 credits and wanted to do it fast, that would DC 26+5 = 31, 10 rounds base divided by 2 is 5. So 30 seconds with a bank terminal and he can withdraw 5500 credits from any bank terminal he runs into. The rules note he can only do this once per terminal. He might spend that money on:

Quarian service vest: Light armor, 2700 credits, +2 to damping, decryption, electronics, hacking, and repair checks (not typed, stacks with everything)
Omnitool upgrades: +1/2/5 to any given skill for 100/800/2500 credits. So +5 to damping, decryption, electronics, and hacking would be 10k credits (again, not typed, so it stacks with everything)
Neural amplifier: 300 credits+4k or 16k credits for +2 or +4 to int
Skill implant: +3 competence bonus to a skill for 5250.

So if you guys spent some time robbing banks with the explicit one-roll Rob Bank rules, he could have up to a +33 to hacking at level 4.

edit: You need an Omnitool for any damping, decryption, electronics, first aid, hacking, and repair checks so he should not have been able to do any hacking in the holding cell unless they inexplicably let him hang onto his tools.

Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Jan 12, 2017

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 05:19

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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LongDarkNight posted:

Not sure if it's better or worse than the other Juggalo game.

I was sure you were going to link the d20 Insane Clown Posse game

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=223

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 22:39

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Kai Tave posted:

The Harebrained Shadowrun games have their flaws but they're still some of the better CRPGs to come out in recent days and they go on sale all the time, if you haven't picked them up I'd recommend them.

They're currently on sale in the Humble Mobile bundle for $6 along with kotor.

https://www.humblebundle.com/mobile/rpgs-mobile-bundle

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 09:56

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Ratpick posted:

I want to write the ultimate bad adventure with all the elements of a bad pre-made adventure just to see if all the bad elements together would make it sort of so bad it's actually kinda good.

What am I missing?

Tests of the players knowledge rather than the characters. Bonus points for it being real world knowledge such as "ACTUALLY those chemicals react violently".

Irresistible forces such as the entire party being arbitrarily captured without any rolls.

Immovable objects such as magic doesn't work or enemy is immune to magic, unbreakable walls, etc.

Handouts, but the players and GMs versions are different enough to cause arguments (the GM needs to be in on this joke).

For badly balanced, boss fights but they are actually a ton of setup for a pushover, ideally because of an obvious flaw. A real example I encountered was a 3e lvl 20 charging fighter who was riding a bog-standard heavy horse from the PHB. So we killed his horse and kited him to death.

Rooms carefully described in terms terms of 5' increments.

Written with an axe to grind. Conflict is an obvious allegory for a real world conflict, enemies espouse straw man versions of real world beliefs the author doesn't like, NPCs are stand-ins for real world people like Trump.

Racist. Group of NPCs embodying a racist belief, such as a group of wealthy people with big noses who wear simple clothes and use the blood another God's worshippers to bake bread, all enemies are swarthy, etc

Increasingly blatant hints of the writers unusual sexual proclivities. For example, an adventure where people are forced to roll or vomit because of poison, environmental hazards, and magic spells, enemies vomit as an attack, etc.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 23:26

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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slap me and kiss me posted:

A thing I'm working on has three different combat power types - attack, counter, and interrupt. The skill system has three analogous power types that I've been calling 'skill attack,' 'skill counter,' and 'skill interrupt.' This has proven to be confusing to some people; anyone have suggestions for better terminology for the skill powers?

What is confusing them? Do combat counters and skill counters work essentially the same or differently?

If the problem is that players have "attacks" and "counters" which are combat power types but "skill attacks" and "skill counters" which are skill power types, then you should just have "combat attacks" and "combat counters".

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 19:39

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Haystack posted:

And I didn't. I said that (lots of) D&D 5 consumers are peripheral, not Zak. I'm all too keenly aware of how established he is.

It's totally inaccurate to ever describe 5e as having "lots of" consumers when there are actually only six and five live in Alaska.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2017 06:04

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Kwyndig posted:

How would a Bolshevik heartbreaker even work? Do dragons control the means of production?

poo poo, that's actually a decent writing prompt.

Reminds me of this passage from Trollman's 3e house rules.

quote:

Bringing the World out of the Dark Ages

It is historical fact that you can take a ridiculous and crumbling imperium with serfs and horse-drawn carts managed by a tyrannical and squabbling aristocracy and boot strap it into being a technologically sophisticated global power that can win the space race and such in a single generation even while being invaded by an evil and genocidal empire. The people at the top don't even need to be nice or sane, they just have to understand that economics is an entirely voodoo science, and the limits of production can be broken by thousands of percentage points by getting everyone to buy on credit, work on projects that people looking at the big picture tell them to work on, continuously invest in productive capital, and believe in the future.

Right. That's called Communism, and it ends the dark ages immediately even if it isn't run well. Presumably if it was being run by Paladins who actually radiate goodness and Wizards who are inhumanly intelligent and can cast powerful divinations to determine projected needs and goods could be distributed to the masses with teleportals � it would work substantially better. That sort of thing is not outside the capabilities of your characters in D&D. It's not outside the capabilities of the people in the village your characters are saving from gnollish invasion. It's not even technically complicated. But it isn't done.

Partly it isn't done because we're playing Dungeons & Dragons, not Logistics & Dragons. While it is true that you can fix the world's ills in a much more tangible fashion by industrializing the production of grain and arranging a non-gold based distribution system such that staple food stuffs are available to all, thereby freeing up potential productive labor for use in blah blah blah� the fact is that to a very real degree we play this game because telling stories about slaying evil necromancers and swinging on chandeliers is awesome. But the other reason is that the society in D&D really isn't ready for a modern or futuristic social setup. Noone is going to understand how they are supposed to interact with Socialism, Capitalism, or Fascism, things are Feudal and people understand that. Wealth is exchanged for goods and services on the grounds that people on both sides of the exchange aren't sure that they would win the resulting combat if they tried to take the goods or wealth by force of arms.

Rome had steam engines. Actual difference engines that propelled a metal device with the power of a combustion reaction through the medium of the expansion of heated water. Really. They never built rail roads because slaves were cheaper than donkeys and the concept of investing in labor saving devices was preposterous. In D&D, the idea of having an economy based around trust in the government and labor/wealth equivalencies is similarly preposterous. It's not that the idea wouldn't work, it's that every man, woman, and child in society would simply laugh you out of the room if you tried to explain it to them.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2017 19:15

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Kwyndig posted:

Rocket tag combat is one of the things I hate about the new Alternity Kickstarter. Any game that uses extremely limited health and damage spirals is just not something I'm interested in. It could work in like a wargame or a boardgame where you don't have any serious connection to your 'character' but it seems really counterproductive in an RPG.

Whether a game favors rocket tag or padded sumo isn't as important as the margin of death. D&D 3e is very high lethality because the amount of negative HP you have doesn't scale like your HP and opposition damage does, so the chance of you going from fighting unimpaired to 100% dead in one hit grows over time. This contrasts with e.g. world of darkness or shadowrun where the progression from bashing -> lethal -> aggravated (or nonlethal -> lethal -> overflow) means people don't die unless someone gets very lucky, the attacker is dead set on killing them, or a TPK occurs.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2017 01:53

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Evil Mastermind posted:

General question: how badly does it break Shadowrun 4e if I ignore the recoil rules?

Badly? Everything that isn't a full-auto weapon will become 100% garbage and combat would be pure rocket tag with people using automatic weapons to one-shot each other.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2017 20:02

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Mr.Misfit posted:

This sounds like a bad joke that I�m suprisingly happy for not getting.

4/20 is the :420:

day. It is also Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2017 17:49

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Has Slack solved their atrocious performance issues?

yes it's a goddamn messenger service that was/is notorious for -performance issues-.

# ¿ May 2, 2017 00:56

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Zurui posted:

I love that even in this tiny, incestuous hobby we can't help but factionalize further.

Leftist splits! SA has two movie forums possibly solely because of one CineD poster.

# ¿ May 21, 2017 06:36

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Zurui posted:

...what? Really?

Yes. SuperMechaGodzilla is a very prolific CineD poster who haunts nerd movie threads. Blockbuster Video basically exists so people can discuss Star Wars without him and those who engage with him. Here are a few examples; I promise I am not cherry picking.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

That's nothing more than the Hedgehog/Prower phenomenon of ostensibly adult characters engaged in prolonged and intense bouts of presexual intimacy.

FN and Poe - despite being twenty- and thirty-somethings, respectively - are several steps behind Matthew Broderick's teen hacker in Wargames, who tentatively explores how it feels to take his shirt off in front of a girl.

For fans, the actual erotic appeal comes from the fact that Sonic The Hedgehog does not gently caress. Ever. He achieves full satisfaction just by staring at you with his massive hypersensitive eyes, and passionately filling his rounded belly with chilidogs. Poe and FN, likewise, will never move beyond hugging and trying on eachothers' clothes. They have no need to.

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SuperMechagodzilla posted:

That's the opposite of what I said. The exact problem is that Aliens is 'iconic', and nobody actually reads it. It's the Superman problem. It's Mickey Mouse. It's an institutional film, only spoken of through adulation. It's the kind of film where the first thing you hear about it is its Academy Award.

The problem is the reduction of a film to 'good pacing' and 'likeable characters', as if movies are a chore to be dispensed with quickly and painlessly. It's this skewed prioritization that gave us borderline-incomprehensible hits like Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens. It's part of the trend of viewing films as therapy - a source of role models in empowerment narratives, and evaluated in those terms.

80s kids see Optimus Prime as a father figure.

That you can slot Vasquez or whoever into any film should be a harsh criticism. Cliched characters are one thing - but without a context you have a concept, not a character. Even the protagonist is a jot-note. (Underlined on the pad: "Trauma/Motherhood?")

I don't have huge problems with the film itself, mind, but nobody likes the film itself. And then, both the culture and the dialogue surrounding it are garbage. RIP Bill Paxton.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Edit: I want to emphasize that the first post is from the Star Wars thread and is about Star Wars.

Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 07:36 on May 21, 2017

# ¿ May 21, 2017 07:29

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Was this related to the Steve Jackson games fiasco?

https://mobile.twitter.com/cjciaramella/status/875366992458461184
https://mobile.twitter.com/cjciaramella/status/875359656075546626

# ¿ Jun 15, 2017 16:46

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Helical Nightmares posted:

No loving way.

How the hell does Gygax fit in to the unabomber? Did he visit Berkeley often or something?

There's another eight pages of FBI files on TSR.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3866268-TSR-Pt-4.html

# ¿ Jun 15, 2017 17:00

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Darth Various posted:

I'm just imagining the poor sods homebrewing a Vampire campaign and having to decide on the effect of blood from every single NPC.

You know what the answer is, don't you? It's right in front of you.

Random encounter tables! Roll to determine your hunting victim's stats and blood benefits.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2017 18:45

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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inklesspen posted:

Honestly they've mostly stopped publishing anything.

Here's what their website says for "recent" tabletop releases:

April 2017: Tales from the Yawning Portal, a dungeon collection
November 2016: Volo's guide to monsters, which looks like a Monster Manual with an even lower information density and Ed Greenwood characters.
November 2016: Dungeonology, a mechanic-free guide to FR (???).
September 2016: Storm King's Thunder, a 1-10 adventure.
March 2016: Curse of Strahd, a 1-10 adventure.
November 2015: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.
April 2015: Elemental Evil Player's Companion. Is 25 pages.
April 2015: Princes of the Apocalypse, Elemental Evil but in FR.

They're not even trying to publish books.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2017 02:11

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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drrockso20 posted:

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if for 6e WOTC just licenses it out to another company

They're inching closer to this. At least one of the 5e books -published by wotc- credits Green Ronin and their staff separately from Wizards staff.

kingcom posted:

Most successful D&D ever is a really nonsense claim when nothing is coming out the pipeline and the team is tiny. They're not even trying to pump out other material to capitalise on it.

Stephen King published 1,680 hardback pages of original material over the past two years. So the D&D output of the entire Wizards staff is equivalent to one full time writer. I don't know what everyone else they're paying does all day.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2017 06:35

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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LuiCypher posted:

I think I picked this up on the forums, but my basic understanding of character generation in Shadowrun is 'you want to be rolling at least 10 die for something you're supposed to be good at'.

So yeah, get ready for combat to slog like hell because everything requires a fistful of d6s. Either that or force your group to use a digital die roller which takes all of the busywork out of it (meaning that it is good). I think it's very telling when the computer adaptations of Shadowrun, which would be perfectly suited to that kind of number crunching, abandon the system entirely.

Combat in Shadowrun involves a lot of dice, but it's counterbalanced by most people going down in two hits.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2017 15:50

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Elfgames posted:

to be fair card games will destroy your life almost as fast as crack and it's a lot harder to get crack digitally

You can now use bitcoins to have crack delivered to your door. The future is weird.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2017 19:08

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Xarbala posted:

What was the "Rolling Thunder" distribution system?

And why was it given such a silly name

CCG's traditionally have a new release every 3-4 months. Rolling Thunder was monthly CCG releases. Interview with Dancey (9 page PDF) on Rolling Thunder.

edit: ^^ this interview is the source of the comment about stores ordering one of every SKU.

quote:

In the summer of '96, we released Forbidden Knowledge, the second L5R expansion. It consisted solely of boosters - no decks. To our surprise, initial orders for FK were half of what the orders had been for Shadowlands, despite the fact that the game was clearly doing far better than it had been when Shadowlands was released. After a few minutes of digging, we released that orders for boosters were actually up slightly from the Shadowlands release - the gap was derived almost completely from the lack of deck product!

We decided that what we were seeing was an extended effect of the buying patterns of the retailers. Unsure as to how much product they could sell, and having been repeatedly and expensively burned by unsold TCG product, many (if not most) of the primary adventure game retailers had simply taken to ordering "1" of any TCG release. When presented as two different SKUs, one for decks and one for boosters, the stores would order one of each - thus doubling the preorder sizes!

We got some confirmation of this effect when we talked to the folks at Chaosium. Due to production problems and cash flow issues, they had been forced to release one of the Mythos TCG releases in three separate shipments - and they received preorders that were about triple the normal size.

Therein lies the genesis of the Rolling Thunder approach; get the retailers to order product sequentially, rather than in one large order, and present them with as many SKUs as reasonable to increase the total number of items ordered.

Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Aug 10, 2017

# ¿ Aug 10, 2017 17:48

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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gradenko_2000 posted:

did Cook ever try to fix Rogues in 3e? I'm rather familiar with his attempts to improve martials and rein in casters

Rogues are the most balanced 3e class. Casters should have been nerfed to their level and martials buffed to their level. What do you think needed fixing?

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 17:05

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 18:28

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

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Yawgmoth posted:

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha what a lie this is

Rogues are great in 3.5 until you face any of the third of the creature types that are immune to crits and/or any of the ton of random jackholes that have uncanny dodge/all-around vision/some other way of neutralizing sneak attack on top of that. Then you're just a dumbass with a lovely bab and no class features.

Look at this scrub that doesn't know about Penetrating Strike from Dungeonscape :smuggo:

edit: and very few things have improved uncanny dodge so you can still flank them.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 17:32

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