Dungeons and Dragons (and other tabletop RPGs)

[clockworkmonk]

So there was recently some big news in the development of the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Monte Cook has left Wizards of the Coast and is no longer involved with the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons.


that is all.

[halbarad]

Anyone had any experience running the updated Tomb Of Horrors for 3.5? Is the suggestion of 9th level characters enough or should they be a little higher (or does that remove a lot of the challenge?)

I'm considering running it as a short run game for my party between games using other systems. We'll likely be building characters specifically for it, which might give them an advantage but they won't know much about the adventure so hopefully they'll produce "balanced" characters.

[clockworkmonk]

The Tomb of Horrors is meant to be lethal, so the level 9 suggestion should be taken seriously, though if you are running it with fewer than 4 players you could raise it slightly. The key to the tomb of horrors is that it depends on the players paying attention and solving riddles, carefully thinking before their actions, then getting a bit lucky.

I would also suggest being forgiving for the first part. If they mess up, let them take it back once, let them learn from mistakes. unless they stick their hand into the monster's mouth, they then deserve what they get.

[Chen]

It also depends on the level of optimization you allow in your game. Level 9 is already high enough that you can get some ridiculously broken characters out there. A level 9 cleric with full access to the spell compendium is monstrous when built right. If they have divine metamagic/nightsticks/persistent spell you can get pretty crazy. Even a regular level 9 wizard who has access to all the spells can be pretty damn strong at this level.

[Garm]

Just remembered I'd asked a question in this thread. Thanks for the responses. I'll have to think about them. Should start running my adventure in three weeks so I've got a little time to plan.

[JCinSAV]

Does anyone have any idea where I may be able to find some D&D Die-cast Miniatures (not pre-painted) for a campaign that I am creating? I haven't played in nearly two decades and all of my dice and miniatures have disappeared and I have found a place to get dice near me, but they only had pre-painted miniatures for D&D.

[SecondTalon]

Does anyone have any idea where I may be able to find some D&D Die-cast Miniatures (not pre-painted) for a campaign that I am creating? I haven't played in nearly two decades and all of my dice and miniatures have disappeared and I have found a place to get dice near me, but they only had pre-painted miniatures for D&D.

Reaper Miniatures makes respectable stuff. They've even got a Store Locator, but like most things of this nature, the larger your population center, the more likely you'll find a local place.

And then there's this forum post that lists... like a fuckload of companies. As it was in reference to Games Workshop, those are likely to be a mix of pewter, plastic, and resin models in various combinations thereof.

[Dauric]

Does anyone have any idea where I may be able to find some D&D Die-cast Miniatures (not pre-painted) for a campaign that I am creating? I haven't played in nearly two decades and all of my dice and miniatures have disappeared and I have found a place to get dice near me, but they only had pre-painted miniatures for D&D.

Reaper Miniatures makes respectable stuff. They've even got a Store Locator, but like most things of this nature, the larger your population center, the more likely you'll find a local place.

And then there's this forum post that lists... like a fuckload of companies. As it was in reference to Games Workshop, those are likely to be a mix of pewter, plastic, and resin models in various combinations thereof.

Reaper Miniatures has a lot of good stuff, and for more than just fantasy if you start looking in to other genres. They've got a pretty good website to browse through (as linked in the previous post).

Unfortunately with the recent recession and a growing shift towards e-books it's been really rough on the brick-and-mortar retailers. Reaper's store finder list is out of date (they still list Attactix, which was the store in my area and they went bust a little less than a year ago) so that may be hit-or-miss.

Edit:

Depending on the kind of store you find dice at (and how much you have to spend), you may want to look at their board-game selections. There's some higher-end "Dungeon Crawl" board games that have a lot of reasonable and even high quality miniatures. These are typically expensive box sets, (around $90 to $150 or so), but divide that cost among the number of miniatures you get and it's typically pretty reasonable per-miniature (sometimes as low as $1 or $2 per piece), and aside from the "Instant Miniature Collection" you get other stuff that you can repurpose for your D&D games like modular board sections, furniture and door models, and status counters.

As far as "Plastic Vs. Metal", if you've been out of gaming for two decades you may recall a preference for metal-cast miniatures, but give plastics another look. About the time you got out of gaming there were some lawsuits over lead poisoning that effectively forced the industry to cast in pewter alloys, and those alloys have gotten expensive so a lot of miniatures are going with high-quality plastic rather than casting in metal. Reaper is still pretty much all metal, but by contrast Games Workshop (who officially absorbed Citadel Miniatures some time ago) has in the last few years stopped casting in metal at all, instead using plastic molds that are modeled from 3D autocad files.

[Yakk]

... so about that D&D next playtest.

I think they saw how Diablo IIIs launch went so well for Blizzard, and decided that error messages when people try to use your service are a way to ensure your product is successful.

[Enokh]

Heh, yeah, been struggling all day, off and on. Read through the forums and it doesn't seem hopeful, but then again a game's forums are the fastest ways to get depressed about the state of a game (see: WoW forums, or EVE forums).

[Yakk]

I'm guessing it is their login servers. Namely, they are trying to authenticate you are logged in, and failing.

The "search the customer service database for playtest download, restricted to D&D" solution seems to be one that distinguishes between the login server problem, and the download problem, maybe?

[Ixtellor]

Just curious of any old time players are like me and feel that D&D was best at 2nd edition.

I thought it was the perfect balance of freedom and rules which made it easier for a DM to run a game and not be caught unexpected with some bizarre ability or spell that basically nullifies an entire encounter. Also didn't have to fret over min/maxing as much and its ability to tip the balance of an adventure or quickly make less number crunched characters feel useless.

I think it might just be nostalgia, but I feel like later editions got out of hand, and also removed a lot of imagination as the game makers did all the work for you. (Want to be a hardcore tank dwarf... got you covered with the Dwarven Defender!)

[pseudoidiot]

You're not alone, in the general sense -- can't say anything to people's favorite edition. But, anyhow, I think those thoughts are a big part of what's fueling the current old school revival (OSR) in rpg's.

[Enokh]

Got the 5th edition playtest. Few things I noticed off the bat:

1) Casters have at-will abilities. wizards can at-will 0th level spells, and all of them can at-will some sort of damage spell (Wizards get Magic Missile).
2) A good number of weapons automatically add dexterity to hit and damage instead of strength
3) Wizards use Int to attack with spells, Clerics use Wis, etc.
4) Not sure sure on this -- healing appears to take up hit dice? So, say, a third level fighter has 3 hit dice at d10. If he drinks a potion, he rolls a d10 and adds numbers based on the potion and his con (I think), but can only do that three times a day.
5) Rogues get sneak attack ever level, holy crap. Not sure if you can dual wield, though, so that could balance it out
6) You get daily abilities as martial character -- fighters can make an extra attack twice a day (or maybe once per day for each level), stuff like that.
7) You can gain Advantage and Disadvantage. In either case, you roll 2 d20s and take the highest or the lowest depending on which state you are in. The rogue, for instance, gets Advantage on the first attack in a round in which he attacks a flanked target. This is neat, and I like it.


All-in-all, it seems like a good system. Really hard to tell, though, since it's all pre-made characters, so you don't know how certain things actually work. It looks like there are four main choices to make in character creation, though: Race, Class, Background, and Theme, all of which grant you powers and abilities.

[pseudoidiot]

A friend is doing a Kickstarter for a D&D 4ed supplement with a bunch of monsters. D&D isn't really my thing, but I've seen some of the other stuff she's done (http://willowrants.wordpress.com/my-games/) -- I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to play a game called "Escape from Tentacle City"?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/176 ... ic-threats

[Vaniver]

Just curious of any old time players are like me and feel that D&D was best at 2nd edition.

So, I grew up on 2nd edition, though I mostly DMed it and only remember playing in a few games of it.

I feel like 2nd edition was missing a lot of things that made the game playable. This could be patched- and so players patched it. But different players patched it in different ways, and so the 2nd edition that I played was probably different from the 2nd edition that you played. (The example that comes to mind was the idiotic rule that sought to make racial balance by giving different races different max levels. The human would shoot up past the elf's max level, but then the human would die of old age and the elf would still be high level. That's balanced, right? I don't know of anyone who looked at that rule and thought it was a good idea.)

And so a lot of the warmth people have towards 2nd edition is warmth towards an edition that they had customized for themselves, I think- if they spent as much time tweaking 3rd or 4th edition, they would enjoy it as much.

But 3rd and 4th are designed to be complete products (4th more successfully than 3rd)- and so it's not obvious which tweaks are sensible or desirable. (Most of the successful 4th tweaks that I saw had to do with altering monster pacing, not changing basic rules or character abilities) They also put the books much more on the side of the player than the DM- I remember in 2nd having the Player's Handbook and possibly one or two splatbooks which the players would use to look up stuff for their character, and then having the DMG and multiple monster manuals to build dungeons with (and possibly premade dungeons). In 4th, each class type has its own splatbook, and reading every power in the Player's Handbook is a chore that I still haven't gotten around to, 5 years after the game came out. There's about the same amount of DM material, but now it's much easier for both sides of the table to pull out something that the other didn't even know could exist.

(Though the 4th edition online character builder makes this a bit easier on the DM, as you can read through your player's character sheets at your leisure.)

[Adacore]

I think there are positive aspects of all the editions. From what little I've heard of D&D Next, I'm fairly encouraged that they seem to be pulling some of the best stuff from 3rd and 4th together, at the very least. I was introduced to D&D with 3rd ed, and that seems like the 'best' system to me, but probably just because I'm so much more familiar with it. 2nd was more streamlined and had more creative space, but was also still based somewhat on the philosophy of original D&D, where player characters were much more disposable and weren't expected to last more than a session or two, for the most part; the more recent thing of having a character surviving being the norm and making a PC death some big event makes the game much more involving.

[ShortChelsea]

Hi, everyone. I was just wondering if anyone had a story about the best buy they've ever had for D&D was. Like rope that you oftenhandedly bought that ended up saving your life or a magical item that turned the game for you.

[Garm]

I agree with Vaniver that 2E was lacking in regards to being a complete system. Homebrew rules were sort of required to make things tick. My problem with 3.xE was that it was too much a wargame. Almost every combat had to be mapped out. There were also a ridiculous number of combinations and it's a real headache to DM. 4E is a little better because it dispenses with the notion that combat can be anything other than tactical. It clarified a lot of the annoying rules from 3E (grapple and attacks of opportunity) but again, suffers from options bloat. The problem with offering a million-billion options is that it's hard for a DM to account for all the combinations. Having your recurring villain get owned during a fight where he's supposed to get away is depressing.

[BoomFrog]

Having your recurring villain get owned during a fight where he's supposed to get away is depressing.

Simple solution: Don't plan who will be a reoccurring villain before hand, just have lots of bad guys try to escape if they logically would, and then have the one's who get away recur.

I guess it depends on your DMing style, but it helps your players not feel railroaded. And it can be awesome, my players sincerely hated this one wizard who started out as an NPC working with my PCs but felt betrayed by them when one "accidentally" killed her familiar, and she came back to attempt revenge later and escaped by teleporting away (she almost got silenced and thus killed but the bard failed his arcane spell-failure chance for wearing armor). Anyway, my point is if they had killed her they feel awesome, if she legitly* gets away they feel rage, so just try and make the plot robust to key NPCs dying. Conspiracies or Boss Parfait work well for that.

*That's a word now.

[SecondTalon]

A bard wearing more than light armor? Crazy.

[Menacing Spike]

At worst you still have the "It was a clone all along" method.

[Dauric]

At worst you still have the "It was a clone all along" method.

Actually clones can be an effective way to improve your major bad guy. Say the players have defeated your "Big Bad" through some fluke, have some minor annoyance of a minion come in hours, days, weeks later and gather up the remains and take it back to their laboratory where it turns out that minor annoyance of an antagonist was just dwebishy nerdy, and in his lab he's a fucking god... at least in his own mind. The flunky resurrects is former leader (either because of adoration, or a desire to pull the chains behind the scenes) but it doesn't work out -quite- right. The heroes in the meantime have a few cakewalk missions cleaning up the remnants of Big Bad's organization then suddenly one of these missions isn't a cakewalk any more, these guys have someone organizing them again....

The evil mastermind gets a concealing change of uniform to hide some deformity and some increased abilities (to match the players increased levels), some of those abilities may be completely new from the cloning process just to throw a curve at your players. Then when your players defeat the Big Bad again and it's corpse is lying there, have them make rolls against their perception that the body is twitching and swelling as it goes all "Second Boss Form" on them (Final Fantasy bigger-badder boss, or Resident Evil horror with implications of tougher clone-zombies depending on your game).

[clockworkmonk]

So it looks like I'll be running a game of Legend of the Five Rings game in the near future. I'm currently working on when I want to set it, and I'm thinking during the events of the People's Legion.

Quick Primer on L5R, it is essentially a setting where Japanese and Chinese History were smooshed together, with magic added. It equally emphasis combat and social activities. going into the full history could take a while, as there is a history book supplement for the RPG currently.

The People's Legion is an event that was officially scoured from history. During the events of it there was a massive peasant revolt that led to large portions of several lands to no longer being in line with the culture of the land. In the end it was violently and brutally put down.

I plan on using this period to have adventures in very morally grey actions and choices presented to the characters. Do they keep with tradition and their place in the Celestial Order? Or do they help the peasants in their doomed cause. Knowing the players, I have a pretty good idea where they will probably head.

Does this seem like a good idea?

[Vaniver]

I plan on using this period to have adventures in very morally grey actions and choices presented to the characters. Do they keep with tradition and their place in the Celestial Order? Or do they help the peasants in their doomed cause. Knowing the players, I have a pretty good idea where they will probably head.

Does this seem like a good idea?

Party conflict should be treated very carefully. If you don't think that everyone will be on the same page, then dealing with one player who wants to help the peasants and another player who wants to put down the peasants can get dicey. But, if everyone will choose the same side at the same time, then go ahead.

Similarly, the trouble with grey campaigns is that they're recipes for dissatisfaction. If the peasants are violent uncultured brutes, and the nobles are violent cultured brutes, then players who don't want to affiliate themselves with violent brutes won't have many friends.

[clockworkmonk]

I think I can handle those problems by showing that both sides have large grandiose ideals that sometimes get lost in the details. The nobles are defending an ancient tradition that has maintained order for 600 years. The People's Legion is led by people who see the constant demand placed on the peasants, particularly during a great famine, as unacceptable.

One of the big things in this particular era of play is the detachment of the Emperor from the needs of Rokugan, and siding with the nobility would emphasize that aspect, though I honestly don't expect the players to pick that path, it seems much more likely that they will pick to fight to their deaths for an ultimately doomed cause that feels right. I am banking on my players being ultimately romantics, and think I can count on from the players I've played with before.

If there are people who disagree with the majority of the party, I think I might try to convince them to work as spies for their chosen factions. The only reason I am considering that possibility is that L5R is a game of intrigue more than most other aspects.

[halbarad]

Grey areas are always fun to work with in L5R as the setting is often very black and white. It would be interesting to hear how it works out for you.

[clockworkmonk]

It is one of the very few settings where publishing a history book seemed like a good idea.

[Ralith The Third]

I want to start playing Shadowrun.

I'm completely lost, however - I have no grounding in it (unlike DnD, which was going excellently until my group stopped being able to make it)

[Dauric]

I want to start playing Shadowrun.

I'm completely lost, however - I have no grounding in it (unlike DnD, which was going excellently until my group stopped being able to make it)

Okay, first question is how far -have- you gotten? (ie: have you bought the basic book yet, or are you bookless in a new group?) If you don't have the books you can get Quick Start rules from http://www.shadowrun4.com/ (left side of the page).

[torontoraptor]

I want to start playing Shadowrun.

I'm completely lost, however - I have no grounding in it (unlike DnD, which was going excellently until my group stopped being able to make it)

I could've sworn I posted in here saying the exact same thing very recently...apparently I didn't though.

[Yakk]

Anyone enjoying the .next playtest?

[Ralith The Third]

I want to start playing Shadowrun.

I'm completely lost, however - I have no grounding in it (unlike DnD, which was going excellently until my group stopped being able to make it)

Okay, first question is how far -have- you gotten? (ie: have you bought the basic book yet, or are you bookless in a new group?) If you don't have the books you can get Quick Start rules from http://www.shadowrun4.com/ (left side of the page).

Okay, this is awesome and I appreciate this.

[Enokh]

After having several wildly successful sessions with my group (both in Arcana Unearthed and Dresden Files) I've started running a short, 3-session Mage game. Mostly for a friend visiting for the summer but also to teach a player how Mage works so I can play one in his upcoming multi-genre New World of Darkness game.

It's been quite a bit of fun and I find having only three players makes things very easy and on-track.

Also finally going to be running an Eberron game. Will be running a story arc, then we will have an Arcana Unearthed story arc, and we'll keep switching like so.

I'm super-duper excited.

[Garm]

Anyone enjoying the .next playtest?

I haven't had a chance to play DnD next. I hear from my friends that it's okay. Apparently the first module was based on a classic that I just finished running a 3.5E group through so that made me less concerned I had missed the play test.

[Tyndmyr]

Anyone enjoying the .next playtest?

It's aright...but woefully incomplete. For instance, there are many references to skills, but no actual explanation of how skills work, or what class gets what skills. Some good ideas, though, so perhaps when they finish it, it'll be solid.

[halbarad]

D&D 3.5 question:

Who is considered the caster of a spell from a wand or scroll? Not looking for the purposes of caster level but the actual "caster" for the purposes of some abilities.

I'm asking as the Spellwarp Sniper PrC has an ability that lets them change area effect spells they cast into ray spells. Just curious if I can meet that criteria with a wand or scroll, but the books are pretty vague about who the caster is when using them and I've looked online a lot can can't see anything to confirm one way or the other.

[Dauric]

D&D 3.5 question:

Who is considered the caster of a spell from a wand or scroll? Not looking for the purposes of caster level but the actual "caster" for the purposes of some abilities.

I'm asking as the Spellwarp Sniper PrC has an ability that lets them change area effect spells they cast into ray spells. Just curious if I can meet that criteria with a wand or scroll, but the books are pretty vague about who the caster is when using them and I've looked online a lot can can't see anything to confirm one way or the other.

At a guess I'd say the wand is a self-contained object. A thief with a high enough level in "Use Magic Device" can use a wand without any innate wizardly ability. I'd say unless an ability expressly details that it can be used through a wand or a scroll it's limited to a spell cast directly by the character. Of course that is the default assumption, your character could find a wand that casts an area spell that someone of your prestige class can change to a ray spell at will because it was enchanted that way, but that's up to the DM to provide to your character.

It sounds like you're the player, so I'd say bring this discrepancy up with your DM and ask his opinion, if nothing else so that if your character seems to be underpowered in gameplay you can revisit the area > ray ability with wands later on. A conservative approach at first is less likely to break the ruleset, and having the character that breaks the ruleset breaks everyone else's enjoyment of the game.

[Menacing Spike]

At a guess I'd say the wand is a self-contained object. A thief with a high enough level in "Use Magic Device" can use a wand without any innate wizardly ability.

For that and the fact that scrolls and wand have their own caster level, I would rule the same.

But don't forget the DM may bend the rules if that makes the game better. For instance if a chaotic evil warlock/rogue would roleplay pretending real hard to be a paladin, I'd let him take an UMD check on an holy avenger, even if that's against the rules.

[halbarad]

I figured that was the case but it's pretty vague as there aren't many abilities (as far as I'm aware) that specifically care about who the caster is. Would have been nice to have a nice reliable source of area spells to convert to rays, nothing says fun like a ray of fireball with no save.