Dungeons and Dragons (and other tabletop RPGs)

[Jesse]

That is a shame, and those poeple bug me as well.

My only proper contact with this kind of thing is my dose of NeverWinter Nights 2, on which I play a heavy RP-only PW. I like roleplaying a building a character and a story and that, but I'm enjoying it less lately. I spend so much time writing in an attempt to make money that it seems less like a game and more like hard work.

[ArchangelShrike]

That's why we need to try to organize one online. So all of us that might be interested in playing can get a taste with people that pretty good at it in a safe area.

[Hammer]

Back in the day, my best friend and I used to try to play DnD. Unfortunately, neither of us had the first clue how to do it well. She liked to look around until she found a room full of potions and drink them one after another while I tried to figure out the layers of interactions.

She went and got her PhD in neuro-some-damn-thing-ology. Now she gets to feed the potions to other people.

OTOH, a group of folk recently introduced me to Munchkin, which was a true blast of silliness.

[Mad Giraffe]

Gamers? Meh.

Game Designers, now those the cool people. Because if you are socially inept as a game designer, work isn't going to be easy for you.

As Game Designing heavily revolves about communication between the team members, with the difficulty being that there is a very wide range of different kinds of people involved, with different views, qualities and in where they lack.

But next to all that, they're still nerds and geeks at heart.

edit: I support the idea of organising a game of sorts.

[ccromwell]

How do you guys feel about d20 modern? DnD is all well and good, but the fantasy setting gets old after awhile. I'm looking to start GMing an online d20M campaign before too long. The trouble, however, is finding interested individuals.

[Alisto]

I am reluctant to do any online campaigns. All I can envision is a lot of confusion as people talk over one another (unintentionally, of course).

However, if we can get it to work, I'm in for pretty much anything. I have books for Spycraft, D&D 3rd Edition, Wheel of Time (shut up), and Star Wars (d20).

I'm sure I can find any others on a torrent site.

[ccromwell]

The primary problem with online campaigns is not people talking over each other, as you might imagine, but rather the issue of speed. Everyone has to make a real effort to keep things going at a quick pace or, before you know it, it will be 3 hours since you started and you won't have accomplished anything at all.

[Belial]

urrghhh. 3.5 psionics =/= overpowered. They're LESS POWERFUL than Clerics, Druids, and Wizards. I can almost guarantee. that I can build a Druid or Cleric using only the PHB that can DESTROY 90% of all psionics builds.

The problem with psionics is that there are a lot of rules that *are* unbalanced if you forget part of them.

Like, if you forget the power-point-per-manifestation cap, and just let someone pour all their points into one power. Or you forget that the game is balanced based on having more than one encounter per day. And so forth.

Which is to say, it's all balanced, but the parts that *make* it balanced are the parts that new players are most likely to forget/miss.

Then it can get ridiculous. But that's not the rules' fault, that's the fault of the player and DM for not knowing the rules.

How do you guys feel about d20 modern? DnD is all well and good, but the fantasy setting gets old after awhile. I'm looking to start GMing an online d20M campaign before too long. The trouble, however, is finding interested individuals.

D20 modern depends heavily on what setting it is. The system is sound, I like the way they handle finance and career and such, but some of the prepackaged settings look more interesting than others. Urban Arcana looks tasty.

The primary problem with online campaigns is not people talking over each other, as you might imagine, but rather the issue of speed. Everyone has to make a real effort to keep things going at a quick pace or, before you know it, it will be 3 hours since you started and you won't have accomplished anything at all.

This is extremely true. I can't tell you how many times I had a scheduled adventure in NWN, that ended up taking eight hours longer than expected and had me going to sleep at 7am.

[ArchangelShrike]

Like a FreeCiv game or any other online game - find a group of interested people, get them to clear out a schedule of time, send them/us the rules/books, read beforehand, and then a quick quiz. Otherwise it will be more of a mail style. Maybe a set chatroom, or a forum thread dedicated to it. If you can't actively play, then you watch. Or some such thing. The problem is really the issue of timezones conflicting, I think. A weekend is best for me.

[SpitValve]

I gotta add some lurvin' in for Paranoia. Funnest rpg ever

I'm thinking of starting a Mutants and Masterminds thing too, but d20 looks like a pretty daunting system... I worry that the players are gonna try to correct me all the time... The advantage of Paranoia was that they weren't allowed to read the GM manual

[Belial]

D20 is one of the more simplistic, actually. It's not terribly difficult to learn, but I don't know what changes they made to it for M&M, as I've only played D&D, Star Wars, and BESM, out of the D20 games.

[Alisto]

The only way I'll be interested is if it's done in chat-form. IRC or AIM chat.

As for times, my summer is pretty open. Timezones won't be much of an issue for me.

[ArchangelShrike]

I'd do IRC or AIM chat as well, although I'm in Hawaii, which is GMT -10 right now. Anyone in between there would have to come up with a good time to get together.

[xooll]

mmm, tabletop RPGs.
I'm a white-wolf man myself. Simple (yet thorough) system with enough room to do whatever you want. I'm currently running a Promethean: The Created game.

I can see what people are saying about it being too whiny, but that has more to do with the players/storyteller than the game itself.

I've never been a fan of D&D, but I've only played one campaign. It was just a case of bad DMing: "The NPC tells you to kill the monster." "Now the NPC tells you to go level up for a while." "The NPC kills the bad guy for you. Now you are indebted to him." "No, your character wouldn't do that, he's Chaotic Good."

[Belial]

I'm currently running a Promethean: The Created game.

This is where I would normally boo and hiss about the New World of Darkness being horrible, lame, watered down drivel that replaced a really awesome and intricate world and made it really hard to find the books for the shit I actually cared about.

But Promethean actually looks pretty cool.

Screw Requiem, Forsaken and Ascension, though.

[SpitValve]

D20 is simple? Aren't there like 40 different moves you can do in combat? and like a hundred different feats? that's a lot of stuff to remember, and I'm not fond of looking up the rules in the middle of a game. (For M&M they changed HP into a toughness save, changed character creation a little (basically everyone starts at the equivalent of level 10) as well as all the superpower stuff]

heck, I reckon Warhammer is too complex

My attitude would be for the GM to make up rules that "make sense" for most circumstances, rather than the manual trying to cover every single eventuality... but most people seem to think of it as playing _against_ the GM, and so want to take advantage of rules (which he might have forgotten) to make their dudes better rather than just playing the damn game...

[Belial]

D20 is simple? Aren't there like 40 different moves you can do in combat?

On a base level, not really. In a single combat round you can:

Move & Attack
(Move &) Cast a spell
Move twice
Attack multiple times
Charge (move double-speed in a straight line, and attack at the end)
Bull Rush (basically a tackle move)
Trip
Disarm
Grapple

And those last four rarely come up unless you build your character around them. And once you understand how actions are divided up, it's easier to remember all that, because all the combinations of moving, attacking, and spellcasting are broken up and simplified.

and like a hundred different feats?

Yeah, that's true, especially if you're using extra sourcebooks. But any given character probably only has a handful of them, and they're pretty straightforward. If they even *have* applications beyond changing your stats, the application is usually short enough to write out on the character sheet or memorize for your character.

[Alisto]

One of my favorite games was The Fifth Age. It was card-based instead of dice-based. You only had 8 attributes: Strength, Endurance, Agility, Dexterity, Perception, Reason, Presence, and Spirit. These attributes can go up over time or be modified by magical items, spells, etc.

Each attribute also has a letter associated with it which determines some other characteristics. For instance, an A in Strength will allow you to use up to very heavy weapons. A C in Endurance may restrict you to only medium armor. A B in Reason gives you access to one school of magic.

That's really about it. After that, you can do pretty much whatever you want to. Depending on how difficult the task you want to perform is, different modifiers are added to the skill check. Let's say you want to shoot an arrow at an average bad guy. That's a difficulty of 8. But he's pretty far away, so maybe we have to add 2 to the difficulty. And you want to make it a called shot, which adds 4. So now your difficulty is 14. Your Dexterity is 7. You can play any card from your hand and add its value to your attribute. If the card you play is an agility card, you also add the top card of the deck. If THAT card is an agility card, repeat.

The beauty of this system is that you don't need to keep track of 80 different skills and 100 different spells. What do you want your spell to do? Oh, it's a fireball? How much time are you going to spend casting it. An hour of preparation makes things much easier than an instant cast. How much damage do you want it to do? A few other questions to determine the difficulty, and that's it. You have an immense amount of freedom.

It's called the SAGA system, and it was also used to make a Marvel Superheroes game.

I don't think it's still used, but it was great for hassle-free games.

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

Screw Requiem, Forsaken and Ascension, though.

Ascension is Old World of Darkness.

[Belial]

One of my favorite games was The Fifth Age

I have the boxed set for that...I sure did like Dragonlance a lot.

That said, it seemed like SAGA, especially in the Fifth Age application, gave you simplicity of character creation by making gameplay really, really complicated.

For example, I actually thought the spellcasting was a bit slow and complicated. You had to assign numbers to a bunch of different variables, add them up, set the difficulty, and then draw cards for it. As compared to just picking the spell you want and using it.

Which is not to say it wasn't awesome, and the spell system was really, really versatile, just saying the system wasn't simpler, so much as the complexity hit at a different stage.

[Yakk]

I recently played and enjoyed a fantasy derivative game:
http://www.epicrpg.com

It isn't ground-breaking, but it gives you a bit better "scale" of game than D&D does. 5 man-at-arms aiming crossbows at anyone is life-threatening.

Plus, the magic is neater than D&D. :)

[WhiteRabbit]

Back in the day I was heavily into D&D, of course, back then it was AD&D 2nd edition, having just made the 1st to second switchover. The brown books were a nice expansion to it, but I pretty much despise the 2.5 (player's options) books.

From the few times I have played D&D3.X it seems like a really nice small scale tactical miniatures games, but I feel that the systems tends to focus too much on combat feats to the detriment of story.

My favorite game is Shadowrun, though the rule sets can be very intimidating. Fourth edition tried to clean up and simplify the rules, but it feels very rushed. Perhaps they have patched it since then, but I haven't look at it in a year.


I miss gaming. I just don't have the time now.

[xooll]

My favorite game is Shadowrun, though the rule sets can be very intimidating. Fourth edition tried to clean up and simplify the rules, but it feels very rushed. Perhaps they have patched it since then, but I haven't look at it in a year.

Shadowrun is great, but they need a vicious editor. The fourth-edition book is laid out so poorly it's impossible to find what you want unless you just memorize page numbers.

[Belial]

From the few times I have played D&D3.X it seems like a really nice small scale tactical miniatures games, but I feel that the systems tends to focus too much on combat feats to the detriment of story.

Eh...I think a lot of game systems "seem to focus on combat" overmuch, because combat is complicated and needs a lot of rules to arbitrate it, whereas social interaction and story are just roleplayed...which is to say, too many systems for those things just makes them stupid...the systems actually get in the way.

So if combat rules get more page-space, I usually don't see that as the designers saying that combat should have a huge role in your game, just that when it does, it needs more stuff.

Which is a long way of saying: It's the players' and DM's responsibility to add story, D&D just gives you the rules.

That said, it should also be noted that D&D corebooks are made to be really generic, since they're supposed to be applicable to any of the various settings (Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance). So they're *just* rules. The setting-specific books have a *lot* more flavour, background, and character text than the generic D&D books, because there's actually a setting to go into. I think the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book only even had game system information in the first 1/4 of the book, and after that it was all information about geography, politics, culture, and notable characters.

[Yakk]

D&D is rules-crunchy because it is a game that descended pretty much directly from a crunchy miniatures wargame. :)

There are combat conflict-resolution systems that are not nearly as crunchy, and you can have social conflict-resolution systems that are more crunchy than D&D physical combat.

[Belial]

There are combat conflict-resolution systems that are not nearly as crunchy

True, though I find a lot of attempts at this result in systems that aren't as well orchestrated, and result in combat taking twice as long when it *does* happen.

See also: Old WoD combat system. One of the flaws I'll admit in that system is that combat takes forever, because they "didn't want to focus on combat" so didn't put as much effort into their combat system.

Edit: Actually, I lied, there are plenty of flaws in that system, I just really, really liked the setting

and you can have social conflict-resolution systems that are more crunchy than D&D physical combat.

Yeah, but it's tricky to do in a way that doesn't obstruct or obviate roleplaying. I agree that it *can* be done, though.

[Pedanthood]

I was kicked out of DnD when the dungeon master realised that my Bard's base bluff was higher than the book's maximum given difficulty (patently unbelievable lie that puts the believer in grave danger).
Then someone pointed me to Nobilis, where I played Pedanthood itself(myself?). That was nice.

[WhiteRabbit]

Shadowrun is great, but they need a vicious editor. The fourth-edition book is laid out so poorly it's impossible to find what you want unless you just memorize page numbers.

*sigh* So true, so true. They were rushing to put it out by GenCon so it could be demoed there. Unfortunately, the game needed a further six months of playtesting and editing before a real release, as well as a couple of expansion books. I think they were thinking that a GenCon demo would do great things for sales, forgetting that a game has to be well polished in order to be good for the long term.

I really like a lot of the big ideas behind 4th ed, but the details are horrible.

[Nyarlathotep]

urrghhh. 3.5 psionics =/= overpowered. They're LESS POWERFUL than Clerics, Druids, and Wizards. I can almost guarantee. that I can build a Druid or Cleric using only the PHB that can DESTROY 90% of all psionics builds.

The problem with psionics is that there are a lot of rules that *are* unbalanced if you forget part of them.

Like, if you forget the power-point-per-manifestation cap, and just let someone pour all their points into one power. Or you forget that the game is balanced based on having more than one encounter per day. And so forth.

Which is to say, it's all balanced, but the parts that *make* it balanced are the parts that new players are most likely to forget/miss.

Then it can get ridiculous. But that's not the rules' fault, that's the fault of the player and DM for not knowing the rules.

Really, you can say the same thing of the Vancian system. I think the real difference is more that since the Vancian system is in the core rulebooks and has been around in some form since 1e, more people know what it is, whilst the 3.5 iteration of Psionics is, well, 3.5 (and don't even ask me about the 3.0 psionics ystem. it's horrific. x.X )

And yes, it is mostly stupid players and stupid GMs. If you can remember it, I really think the whole system is more fun than the standard magic - it makes more sense to me to just dump more power into whatever I'm "casting" to get it to be better than this whole slot-casting nonsense.


Re: d20 Modern, I haven't had a chance to play a Modern game yet, but Urban Arcana looks superfantastic. My friends were in a game of such and it seemed quite entertaining (I'd rolled a character - think Indiana Jones meets Daniel Jackson meets MacGuyver. Only as a cute red haired chick) but due to having a large Art History essay I was unable to participate.

Screw Requiem, Forsaken and Ascension, though.

I would hug you if you were not a raptor. though you mean Awakening.

I am not a huge White Wolf fan, as I said, due to having a rotten storyteller, but I have indeed looked at the new books... Re: Requiem, WHERE ARE MY LASOMBRA?! MY TZIMIZIE?! WHY DID YOU MERGE THE MALKAVIANS AND THE VENTRUE?! *BANGS HEAD AGAINST WALL*

The only good thing to come out of Requiem is how, afik, your characters -aren't- locked into being 13th generation their whole lives. They -can- become more powerful and don't have to play lap-dog to some damn 4th generation guy all their lives (though this may have just been my storyteller. We -really- felt shackled into this caste-system type of thing in his games, where we could NOT become more powerful no matter how hard we tried. we always had to suck up to some guy more powerful than us.)

And yes. WoD's combat system was... heh. >>;



Making social interaction the province of dice is something that I've always hated about certain games. In some cases I can see its advantage - particularly when you yourself aren't very good at socially interacting, or when you don't know much about a situation but your CHARACTER would. But I still prefer to force players to actually talk to NPCs rather than rely on their diplomacy (or in WoD, charisma / manipulation dice pools). In a lot of cases, a very good argument on the part of a player will win over a poor dice roll for me. Sadly, my fellow DMs do not seem to agree. the number of times I've been screwed by rolling badly...


Re: DnD campaign settings, I've fallen completely in love with Eberron. I mean... part of me wants to do a Spelljammer or Planescape game in 3.5, but Eberron is def one of the best things to come out of 3.5 ed. I'm a sucker for pulp action and anything involving gears and steam, so it's just an amazing setting for me. Backstabbing intruige gnomes and dinousar riding halflings? yesplz! A world where orcs are the tree-hugging hippies and elves are the bloodthirsty horde? Even more yesplz! Where alignment is more like guidelines than hard-and-fast rules, where the cleric of the good deity may be more dangerous than that weird cultist with the skull tattoos? Duuuude! I think it's nice becuase it's a break away from the "traditional Tolkien-inspired fantasy setting".

I had... something else to say but I can't recall....


Oh. Yes. I think if one were to run an online game 'round here, Paranoia'd be the best way to do it. Mostly because you don't have to explain the rules to n00b players, it's easy to run, and if you've got people who can't make a game or who dont' show up or who mysteriously vanish.. well, easy enough to explain away >D

[Belial]

I would hug you if you were not a raptor. though you mean Awakening.

I am not a huge White Wolf fan, as I said, due to having a rotten storyteller, but I have indeed looked at the new books... Re: Requiem, WHERE ARE MY LASOMBRA?! MY TZIMIZIE?! WHY DID YOU MERGE THE MALKAVIANS AND THE VENTRUE?! *BANGS HEAD AGAINST WALL*

Yeah, it seemed like they oversimplified vampire and cooked most of the good flavour out of it.

But I was particularly pissed off at what they did to Werewolf, as that was always my favorite game. They stripped all spiritual purpose off of the werecreatures, removed all purpose from the spirit world, and basically just turned it into "Let's be Ghostbusters, except with Fur!"

And, as if that wasn't enough to make me completely hate it, they stripped out all my favorite shapechangers. I never liked the garou much, but it was always *all* about the Mokole (were-crocs/dinosaurs) and the Corax (were-ravens). So much love for the Corax. And they're all gone.

Err...and yeah, I did mean Awakening.

[xooll]

Re: Requiem, WHERE ARE MY LASOMBRA?! MY TZIMIZIE?! WHY DID YOU MERGE THE MALKAVIANS AND THE VENTRUE?! *BANGS HEAD AGAINST WALL*

Pretty much all the old clans are now bloodlines, with minor changes. "Carnival" is easier to pronounce than "Tzimisczhe-whateverthefuckitwas" anyway. I dunno why they decided Malkavians (or Malkovians, as they're now called) are a kind of ventrue now, though... that's just weird.

The only good thing to come out of Requiem is how, afik, your characters -aren't- locked into being 13th generation their whole lives. They -can- become more powerful and don't have to play lap-dog to some damn 4th generation guy all their lives (though this may have just been my storyteller. We -really- felt shackled into this caste-system type of thing in his games, where we could NOT become more powerful no matter how hard we tried. we always had to suck up to some guy more powerful than us.)

That's the main reason I like Requiem too; the generation thing was a pain. I played a ventrue and eventually got dominate 5, but I still couldn't use for anything useful because it didn't work on higher generations!

[Belial]

Pretty much all the old clans are now bloodlines, with minor changes. "Carnival" is easier to pronounce than "Tzimisczhe-whateverthefuckitwas" anyway. I dunno why they decided Malkavians (or Malkovians, as they're now called) are a kind of ventrue now, though... that's just weird

It was pronounced "Zih-Mee-Shee" and spelled Tzimisce.

And yeah, I'm aware everything is a bloodline now, but they also killed all the flavor on everything. The Brujah as an embraced biker gang from the 70's? Way to turn the Brujah, with their rich history and nuanced characters, into the stupid caricatures that everyone always played them as.

Which seems to be what happened to the rest of them, too.

[Yakk]

You can have a Roleplaying game where the goal is Story rather than Simulation.

RPG where you describe both your character's actions, and the environment in which they take place, can have some fun in them. Especially if you have resource points. :)

Ie: if your character is an amazing detective, the player can have the character tie together coincidental events and make that actually what happened.

Having mechanics for this helps. :) But you can wing it in most systems.

Ie, someone with high diplomacy might go:
I look at the 3 bandits surrounding me. "Man, those swords look crappy. How much does this gig pay you? You, in the red hat", pointing at the easiest one of them to convince, "what are share do you get?"

"Really? That little? And what is your average hawl?"

With a low diplomacy, you wouldn't have a chance: you couldn't pick the right person to talk to, and your implicit re-writing of the scene "the bandits are underpaid by their boss" wouldn't work, and they would be less likely to sit there listening to you talk.

It is a cute varient on standard simulation-based D&D or other RPGs, where the GM or DM runs the world that your players experience. :)

[Mighty Jalapeno]

Don't suppose there's any RIFTS fans on here, eh?

I don't mean "I have 80,000 MDC!" "I have 90,000 MDC!" "I'm a Cosmo-Knight!" "I'm a Splugorth!" "I'm a boy!" RIFTS.... I mean, fans of the game, fans of the setting (which is surprisingly awesome) and fans of the system. I never got into the power-twinking games, and actually the all-time favorite RIFTS games I had were either SDC, or were limited to 1000 MDC (allowing for some fun stuff, like Demon Quellers). The art was, in a lot of cases, top-notch, but it very quickly, with my friends, went the way of Magic: the Gathering.... whoever had the biggest cards won, and there was no fun left in the game.

[Jesse]

I have discovered that trying to write for a living takes all the fun out of playing these games now. Writing all the time means that writing characters in my spare time is no longer fun. What I need is some form of D&D Lite.

[Nyarlathotep]

Pretty much all the old clans are now bloodlines, with minor changes. "Carnival" is easier to pronounce than "Tzimisczhe-whateverthefuckitwas" anyway. I dunno why they decided Malkavians (or Malkovians, as they're now called) are a kind of ventrue now, though... that's just weird

It was pronounced "Zih-Mee-Shee" and spelled Tzimisce.

And yeah, I'm aware everything is a bloodline now, but they also killed all the flavor on everything. The Brujah as an embraced biker gang from the 70's? Way to turn the Brujah, with their rich history and nuanced characters, into the stupid caricatures that everyone always played them as.

Which seems to be what happened to the rest of them, too.

I never had a problem with the pronunciation. I can pronounce all those words fine. I just can't spell

WARNING. VtM RANT.

Urgh, is THAT what they did with the Brujah?! The Brujah had an INCREDIBLE backstory, particularly with the True Brujah vs the everyday Brujah. They're not a freaking biker gang, they're all about passion, about devoting oneself fully and completely to a concept or an ideal. The one I played, for instance, was fanatically devoted to helping the unfortunate - which... in our game meant she ended up an angstmuffin. Guess it's what I get for playing an unusual character.

And that doesn't even BEGIN to get into the REALLY obscure clans. Anyone recall the Salubri (both the seven standard and the Antitribu?) Bet not. Since they don't even have a bloodline in Requiem as far as I know. And they had one of the best stories... Tremere diablirized their founder to gain his vamprism and then wiped most of them out. the Warrior caste went and became Sabbat since it gave them a chance to HAET the Tremere (they often work with Gangrel Anti's and with Tzimisce, solely because of the Tremere HAET.) The Healer caste is reduced to seven, and if they ever Embrace their childe has to diablirize the sire, so that there remain only seven and the blood does not become diluted.

grmmmhhhhh. *fume* hah, the Werewolf group even met Salout in the Umbra at one point. That was pretty cool. But another story...

The only thing good to come out of New World of Darkness is Promethean, which I have heard nothing but praise for.

[Belial]

grmmmhhhhh. *fume* hah, the Werewolf group even met Salout in the Umbra at one point. That was pretty cool. But another story...

That's a neat trick, since Saulot is still in the real world...

He's just sleeping in a coffin.

Labelled "Tremere."

Diablerizing Antediluvians is a bad idea. Their soul is stronger than yours. Generally, you're just giving them a new body and a headache.

[Nyarlathotep]

grmmmhhhhh. *fume* hah, the Werewolf group even met Salout in the Umbra at one point. That was pretty cool. But another story...

That's a neat trick, since Saulot is still in the real world...

He's just sleeping in a coffin.

Labelled "Tremere."

Diablerizing Antediluvians is a bad idea. Their soul is stronger than yours. Generally, you're just giving them a new body and a headache.

Yes, I know. I'm not certain how that storyteller explained it. Something to do with the fact that he's sleeping...?
...
Again, this guy was... yeh. XD

[Belial]

I could see it if Saulot was astrally projecting, actually.

But anyway.

They nixed the Corax, and I will never forgive them.

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

I agree that the new Mage and Werewolf games are crap compared to the originals, but I actually prefer the ambiguity of Requiem.

On the other hand, the Book of Nod was just so damn cool.