ultron87 said:
Slevin140 said:
krypt0nian said:Browser based online character builder due September 16th - http://community.wizards.com/go/thr..._16th_Release_for_Web-based_Character_Builder
FAQ mentions a iPhone/iPad version in the works as well.
Chorazin said:
hoverX said:
hoverX said:
Ganhyun said:
hoverX said:
Count Dookkake said:
teiresias said:So I was out to dinner with a group of friends and somehow D&D came up in the conversation. My best friend's brother (a little older than us - we're all about 31) was big into playing it when he was in high school. I had been listening to Critical Hits and the Penny Arcade podcasts out of curiosity, and mentioned how I'd bought WoD books in college just to read (but never played), and I still own the old blue West End Games Star Wars 2nd Edition rulebook (again, never played).
Surprisingly, they all seemed to be open to trying to play it, and I said I'd think about picking up the books and learning the rules and basically saying I'd DM. Fast forward to last weekend, and my boyfriend presents me with the following as an early anniversary present:
So now I suppose I'm obligated. I have some campaign ideas (actually thinking of basing something on some Witcher material storyline-wise), but figure I'll run some pre-made modules first.
I think I'll just stick to exclusive "Essentials" play since that's what I've got. From reading around, it seems the main difference with going with Essentials is the character generation, since the HotFL and HotFK player guides seem to follow a different build philosophy from the original PHB series. Apparently, it's simpler, which is probably not a bad thing given who I'd be playing with (and myself honestly).
The Red Box, honestly, feels kind of worthless since I'd rather have everyone learn to make characters from the two Essentials player manuals, and Red Box characters aren't strictly compatible anyway since there's a conversion to make them compatible with the actual errata-updated 4E rules as found in Essentials. I'm thinking of having my group make regular characters from HotFL and HotFK and play them through the Red Box scenario as practice, I'm just not sure whether the experience would really be balanced or not though, I'm not familiar enough with the mechanics to be able to read the monster stats and just know such a thing!
Anyway, this should be interesting. If I decide to home-write a campaign I guess I'll pick up the Essentials Monster Vault too.
teiresias said:So I was out to dinner with a group of friends and somehow D&D came up in the conversation. My best friend's brother (a little older than us - we're all about 31) was big into playing it when he was in high school. I had been listening to Critical Hits and the Penny Arcade podcasts out of curiosity, and mentioned how I'd bought WoD books in college just to read (but never played), and I still own the old blue West End Games Star Wars 2nd Edition rulebook (again, never played).
Surprisingly, they all seemed to be open to trying to play it, and I said I'd think about picking up the books and learning the rules and basically saying I'd DM. Fast forward to last weekend, and my boyfriend presents me with the following as an early anniversary present:
So now I suppose I'm obligated. I have some campaign ideas (actually thinking of basing something on some Witcher material storyline-wise), but figure I'll run some pre-made modules first.
I think I'll just stick to exclusive "Essentials" play since that's what I've got. From reading around, it seems the main difference with going with Essentials is the character generation, since the HotFL and HotFK player guides seem to follow a different build philosophy from the original PHB series. Apparently, it's simpler, which is probably not a bad thing given who I'd be playing with (and myself honestly).
The Red Box, honestly, feels kind of worthless since I'd rather have everyone learn to make characters from the two Essentials player manuals, and Red Box characters aren't strictly compatible anyway since there's a conversion to make them compatible with the actual errata-updated 4E rules as found in Essentials. I'm thinking of having my group make regular characters from HotFL and HotFK and play them through the Red Box scenario as practice, I'm just not sure whether the experience would really be balanced or not though, I'm not familiar enough with the mechanics to be able to read the monster stats and just know such a thing!.
JayDubya said:
dude said:
Pathfinder has some horrible classl abilities and spells, and multi-classing is still as broken as in 3E. So we had to change those.bloodydrake said:
teiresias said:
dude said:
With cards, we have 7 people sitting in beanbags, laying down, sitting up, standing and explaining their moves, whatever, with the cards allowing for instant rolls and no need for surfaces. and didn't want to move on. But it's benefits are many and so far, its weaknesses seem to be...none other than the players going from playing 1 time a month to 3.Thanks for the suggestionKarak said:If you need some ideas for free form hit me up on PM and I can try to send you some of the stuff we use. For some of our games (our main game in fact) we use poker decks and a 1d10 or 1d100 based system of skills and power with players using playing cards instead of dice.
One of the best parts is if I don't want the players to know their own rolls on something (figuring out a trap or understanding a riddle, finding a clue) they show me the card face forward. This alleviates me rolling for them, and also keeps them subtly guessing on if they truly succeeded or not. It added a level of player interaction that is missing in many games, or has to be planned in advance or even require a place to roll
There is never the certainty of something unless they succeed by a great deal or they critical pass a test (joker or whatever face card you decide pregame). However, due to them not seeing it some rolls, they then can use skills that they have to ascertain or understand if what they THINK is going on really is. We found this also allowed us to add skills to our skills list that frankly get lost in some games due to them not seeming to have a connection to the game style at that time. As I said its a bit hard to describe and you do have to spend a couple hours trying to decide how you want the rules to flow and how deep you want to go, but due to the very nature of the card system it is so fast that even if you want to make a good deal of complexity it doesn't matter because its so fast and there is so much more flexibility that you can do that if you want.
In addition it fucking makes battle amazing. In our games, some player classes can learn combos or special moves, spells, skills that are a set move 1 2 3 kind of thing like jab jab cross lets say. For this They draw say...3 cards and lay them out, that is their three parts of an attack combo. Then I draw mine without them seeing. And I go on to explain what happens with no needed breaks and embellishing and running easy numbers in my head all in one seamless narrative, even if, for example, they have a failure on their second jab but their cross card was high. This seems to have created a very real heroic, strangely satisfying removal of the tit for tat that a good deal of games have in battle. We can still do that kind of thing if we want, but when we don't players have explained to me that it finally feels like the way roleplaying should, with free flowing combat that is very fast, really cinematic and still is pretty safe from being abused and when you do finally get a special move, or create your own(after training), you feel like it is yours, but there is still the chance that it may not go perfectly but still succeed. It is that gray area that we were finding was missing in many rules systems.
Basically it seemed to increase the roleplaying aspect of the game back to something far more interactive, the ease of using the play area itself increased tremendously, it returned some of the mystery to the game, and also made the battle sequences far far more enjoyable than any of the 15+ systems we had used in the past 21 years.
It is the rule system we use in our long term Fading Suns+Warhamer 40,000 game as well and has stood the test of time and...I think maybe 14 total players. And even those that have left our group, moved away and such, all use it now. Its been a pretty fantastic discovery for us.
Obviously this isn't for everyone. Even my players at first, really enjoyed their dice
Advanced Fighting Fantasy I did not like to much after moving on to games that, being honest, took some of its strength and then made the other parts better. I think its a pretty big step back.dude said:Thanks for the suggestion
Right now, we've found two game we're interested in
- Advanced Fighting Fantasy (Yes, the 31 years old game. It's old, but it's pretty damn simple and seems to have a nice flow to it. This is actually one of the first RPGs some of us played, so it's pretty nice to go back to it.)
- Altus Adventum (another simple game that seems nice.)
Both games are classless, which is a huge plus, simply to learn, and seem balanced enough to not be horrible.
Altus Adventum is not a very well known game, so it's very hard to find testimonials from people who played it... If anyone here played it and can offer an opinion it'll be great.
Karak said:
ultron87 said:
ultron87 said:
ultron87 said: