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LOL that hasbro/wotc can't stop shooting themselves in the dick. Worked out okay for me, it turns out I like pathfinder better and I never would have tried it if it weren't for wotc being so dumb.
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Dec 13, 2023 18:14
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Pvt.Scott posted:No you're not wrong, I am. lol It makes sense for online games or drop in games where your group isn't necessarily long term friends and people may be bringing premade characters. You have provably fair stats rather than everybody giving side eye to the guy who claims he rolled 18, 18, 17, 18, 15, 12.
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Dec 21, 2023 09:54
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Comstar posted:The utter incompetence and arrogance of Hasbro in this debacle shows how weak D&D and WotC is if there was a new challenger. Blockbuster and Netflix, Yahoo and Google (twice!), Kodak etc. Hell, D&D with TSR, and Pathfinder and WoTC once already. Paizo is right there with a similar (possibly higher quality) product, but don't seem able to siphon off much of the customer base.
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Jan 8, 2024 17:22
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w00tmonger posted:Magic is definitely on my death watchlist, but I'm really not psychic enough to know if it's going to be a year, or 10. People are emotionally invested, it is hard to give that up even when you know management is awful. It feels like loss. Remember when Lowtax was getting sketchier every year and we didn't all move enmasse to a different discussion forum?
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Jan 8, 2024 18:00
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hyphz posted:That’s the other side of the problem - the D&D3.5 style feat creep where the GM now has to remember that any PC without that feat can’t accurately estimate numbers. The Lost Omens books are terrible for this, technically making you take a feat to be allowed to ask the GM to remind you about in game facts you’ve forgotten. It doesn't let you accurately estimate numbers, it just lets you do it poorly very fast. The feat/spell is quote:Eye for Numbers quote:Approximate The "power fantasy" behind this would be Rain Man, I guess? But this doesn't make you Rain Man. Or the kind of vampire that has to stop and count if someone throws seeds might think it would be handy, but it's not. It won't even help you win the "guess how many jelly beans are in the jar" contests. It rounds to one digit, which is near useless at higher amounts. Suppose there is a pile of 1495 coins. The master approximator comes along and proclaims: "It is about 1000 coins." Somebody tosses another 10 on the pile. "It is about 2000 coins." Divide the treasure into 4 roughly equal looking piles, the counting sage confirms "They are each about 400 coins, it is equal" but any give pile could could have dozens of coins more than the one next to it. So what does the cantrip/feat do? It very roughly estimates almost instantly. People can still have "guess how many jelly beans are in the jar" contests but manual estimation takes more than 6 seconds. You can either make a random rear end guess instantly, or spend a minute being a try hard nerd who counts that the jar is x jelly beans tall by y jellybeans in circumference and therefor the volume must be near z -- and if you do it right your guess will be closer than the feat/cantrip guy. Unless the GM is kind and goes as written this is dumb, you can estimate to within the nearest 10.
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Jan 10, 2024 21:29
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Reddit had a good story about this cantrip "Years at wizard school have led to this moment. Walking down the dirt road, fresh from battle. Covered in blood and gore, you and your party just want to make camp and tend to their wounds. You're on fire duty; the barbarian said you had to find enough kindling to get a good blaze going. You've never been outside before, you barely know what a stick is. What did they think you did at wizard school? See the sun? Look at trees? Touch grass? Preposterous, you spent your time doing things that mattered, like transcribing all 17 volumes of Mongothor's Study of Elemental Magicks or cross-referencing the entire catalogue of the late 10th century output of the Arch-Wizard Caelian into one succinct treatise. But, the barbarian told you that if you didn't find enough, about 10 sticks, you'd end up like the bandits about a half mile back. So when you see a pile of 7 sticks, you breathe a sigh of relief. You've prepared for this moment. You dedicated weeks of your first year at wizard school perfecting this spell, knowing it would come in handy one day. Exhale, center your spirit, form the gestures, and make reality bend to your will. You tap into the knowledge gleaned from ancient tomes. You wield the power of creation, delving into the fabric of the universe to glean meaning unknown to the common person. You learn: There are about 10 sticks. Thank the gods, you'll live another day."
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Jan 10, 2024 21:38
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Subjunctive posted:Modelling “memory recall capability” is a thing you could do for characters as another attribute/dimension, but having it be “whatever the player has” rather than “whatever is to be expected of a heroic character in this setting”. We don’t make people do a deadlift(*) in order to use their 17 Strength, so I would key it off Intelligence if you wanted characters to have differences here for some reason that’s important to the game experience. A binary feat (especially one that leaves unstated what characters without the feat can do) is a terrible addition to anything. If the player has trouble remembering names or other details (and we all do, since the thing that happened an hour ago in game time might have happened 2 weeks ago IRL) they can write it down. The little notebook becomes your character's memory. I've never seen a GM not let a player refer to their notes. So normally you have 3 chances to remember a fact 1. the player remembers, 2. the notes remember, 3. the GM lets you roll a check to see if your character would have remembered something The feat just lets you succeed on #3 automatically, it doesn't remove anything. The whole issue can be avoided with shared notes rather than a dumb feat. If you play games online some have a journal feature everyone can add to and refer to. A great place to keep all the names and goals. For an in person game you can do the same thing with a shared google docs or whatever. Nobody has to remember a dumb imaginary person's name if you all have access to a common notebook.
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Jan 12, 2024 01:42
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Gatto Grigio posted:leveling at different times in pre-3e D&D made more sense when every class had its own XP track; meant to be a balancing factor between martials and casters. Casters generally had higher XP requirements, so fighters and rogues would already be around levels 4-5 when the magic-users hit level 2. Which was really cool for dual-class humans. You could take 3 levels of fighter and then switch to your real class with extra HP and weapon proficiencies and hardly be behind the curve at all vs. a pure caster. Worked great for Baulder's Gate 1, because with infinite rerolls you could ensure you got weird fighter-only strength levels between 18 and 19, so your guy could carry around several loving ankheg shells (very heavy but worth big money). #lifehack
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Jan 15, 2024 06:00
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Comstar posted:Hasbro Fires D&D Book Team! (Ep 367)]Dungeon Craft. (youtube) Then all the pathfinder fans will be all "You should try Pathfinder. We have books!"
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Feb 7, 2024 08:10
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gradenko_2000 posted:I actually did order a dead-tree copy of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook last month Oh yeah. Pathfinder core can be used as an improvised weapon that does 1d4+str bludgeoning damage.
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Feb 7, 2024 08:26
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When I set down my bag of books I worry that some pickpocket is going to think it's a laptop bag and try to steal it, only to dislocate their shoulder and sue me.
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Feb 7, 2024 08:27
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Dexo posted:https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1758655172992254200 Only so many board games can be turned into movies. Clue? Sure, classic whodunit. But you couldn't make a movie out of a game like battleship, that would be stupid.
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Feb 17, 2024 02:12
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Doc Hawkins posted:ive never heard of this game, it's like among us meets great gatsby? those are popular, they could pull it off. characters moving around different rooms to do the tasks, people caught alone getting killed, the drama of the votes, ejecting the wrong person... No, it's not that cool. Nobody knows who the killer is at the beginning. There are suspect cards, place cards, and weapon cards. At the start of the game one of each is secretly placed in an envelope. The rest of the cards are dealt to the players.  The board looks like Mr. Body's mansion. You take turns rolling dice to move your token around the board. Whenever you enter a room you can ask "Was it [suspect] with [weapon] in [this room]?" If someone knows it wasn't because they have one of those cards in their hand they secretly show it to you and you mark it off. You can bluff by asking about a card you already have.  There is a score card you use to keep track of all the clues you know. When you think you know who it is (or you think someone else is going to win next turn) you say "I Accuse [person place thing]" and if anyone has a card that disproves your accusation you are out of the game. If no one has the card you open the envelope and lay out the cards to show you were right.
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Feb 19, 2024 07:58
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Leperflesh posted:or, potentially, discover only at this moment that one of the game cards got lost or stuck under the card insert in the box or is on the floor Yes, that is the amazing surprise that pops up occasionally and throws the game into disarray.
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Feb 19, 2024 08:11
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Midjack posted:Amazing username / post combo "The name you choose it's like, it's like a promise you make."
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Feb 19, 2024 08:18
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Free Gratis posted:Stories of mistreatment/underpayment of freelancers by OPP have come up several times over the years and it can't all be laid at Paradox's feet. One story that sticks in my mind was one writer saying how peeved they were that they were expected to run a game for Kickstarter backers who pledged at a significantly more expensive reward tier, but saw none of that money in compensation. LOL, what an idiot. Yeah it's lousy the company did that, but on the other hand he was getting to build personal connections to whales with poor impulse control. Flip those goobers into supporting your own patreon where you write whatever. There are also people paying $20-$30 dollars a session (times 6 players) for a "professional" game master to run online games for them. https://startplaying.games/search?gameSystems=world-of-darkness If you're a writer with your name actually in the books you can probably leverage that into making more running games a few nights a week than you make writing the game. When someone offers you whales you take them.
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Mar 16, 2024 19:15
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Bottom Liner posted:What? When has another studio ever made official expansions for a video game? Not counting things like Activision that has many different devs all working on the same stuff, obviously. Literally Balder's Gate. BG1 and BG2 were made by Bioware. A decade later the Enhanced Editions were made by Overhaul games. And then Beamdog did the Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear expansion pack.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:12
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Mr.Misfit posted:According to some numbers though, DnD didn't really get to convert those numbers into kept players and considering how they killed off BG3 DLC/Expansions and BG4 despite the absurd success the game had just shows how bad these companies are with looking at their customer base and divergent commercial trends. There is still the problem with DnD that people think they need a good experienced dungeon master. And new players may be reluctant to be the dungeon master if their only experience is a videogame. Maybe even worse if they've watched one of the professional voice actors series. Of course you don't. Some of the great DMs started playing and DMing as 12 year olds. People can learn the game together. But that doesn't overcome that problem that nobody wants to be in the hot seat. Heck, some people play for years and are still afraid to DM. So even if you have the ideal situation of 5 people who know each other, have compatible schedules, and all want to play the same kind of game it still might not happen because nobody feels competent to take the referee role. It's a serious barrier to entry. e: So a game without the DM problem might be better at converting computer game players to source game players. Of course other games have their own barriers to entry. Facebook Aunt fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Mar 29, 2024 |
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Mar 29, 2024 05:49
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Or just make a game that people actually want to DM. Common criticism of 5e is that it's basically unfinished and makes the DM do half the work of the designers as well as everything else. Yeah. Last year I decided I wanted to play pathfinder not DnD, but couldn't find a pathfinder game. So I started a pathfinder table at a local community center game night. I had played a total of 20 hours of pathfinder before becoming a GM. The pathfinder Beginner Box acts as a tutorial level for both the players and GM. Everything you need to play to level 2 is there including maps and tokens, with all the rules you need to take those characters to level 4. Pretty easy even with no pathfinder experience. I haven't tried it but I've heard the DnD starter set is not so useful.  A module, a mini rulebook, a set of dice, and a set of character sheets. Everything you need to start, as long as you are happy with theatre of the mind.   A module, mini players guide and mini GM guide, a set of multi-color dice (so you can tell a confused player "no that's the d8, the d10 is the green one", a set of character sheets (which also have a helpful dice guide on them telling you the d10 is the green one), a laminated set of quick reference cards that tell you what you can do on a turn and what the effects of common conditions like grabbed do, a big double sided map, and 108 cardboard player and monster tokens. (Some of the monster tokens are not used in the adventure, they are there to help new GMs make their own adventures.) Somehow the pathfinder box costs twice as much but still seems like a better value.
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Mar 29, 2024 09:50
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Eastmabl posted:Additionally, the pregens are kind of trash. How do you make a cleric with no ranged attack and ask a new player to enjoy the game? I've noticed that with some of their other stuff. The Sundered Waves oneshot is okay, but the cleric's spell selection is total garbage. Cantrips: detect magic, forbidding ward, message, shield, stabilize No attack cantrip at all. She has no armor proficiency because she's a cloistered cleric, and she has a magic trident which can be used as a range weapon but after she throws it she doesn't have a weapon. One of her prepared spells is "Air Bubble" which is thematically appropriate for an undine/halfling cleric that lives on ships, but this adventure mostly takes place in a cave. Being held without air is never a threat so that slot is locked into a useless spell. Basically telling that player "You are a healbot support cleric, please stand in the back and wait to be needed." Because the most useful thing you could do with these spells is cast forbidding ward on your first and second turns, and then just Sustain them until someone needs heals. Death to caster supremacy and all. But drat.
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Mar 31, 2024 03:35
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mellonbread posted:What are some RPGs that tell you NOT to change the rules? I bet terrible things might happen if you change the rules to Call of Cthulhu.
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May 1, 2024 05:00
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