Pens and Papers

[KONGO]

I ended up throwing them a double level fight. Need to kick up the difficulty on the fights but every fight is still dangerous just because two guys are really weak fighters and will be killed quickly. Still, went pretty well and has me excited for next week's game.

Think the first step is to start giving enemies feats.

[KONGO]

Trying to figure out a good, quick setup for my next adventure. Been kind of out of it all week so I'm not gonna take them on a story-furthering part this time. I'd do another heist but I've just had them do one.

I like the no magic setting in general but it's horrible for things like this. Without a series of varied monsters, I can't just throw them in basically the same situation and just change the enemies, enemies are always going to be human pretty much. Requires a lot of story work.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Have there be others searching for the same item, using dogs. Catches up to group who smell of it now. They must convince him they don't mean harm, but will his greed at taking what they have earned override their diplomatic reasoning?

Because dogs are fucking scary.

[KONGO]

Does anybody have a good site or anything for adventure design? I really would like to put together a mystery/investigation plotline but the last one I did went really quick, would love some tips about spreading it out further.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

buddy of mines setting for the savage worlds ruleset. Play as the cast offs of a very very VERY post apocalyptic world.

Low life!

Play creamfillians, sentient twinkies! Or croaches, cockroaches that continue to make the human life cycle a minor foot note in history.

Savage worlds is basically the new gurps. You can do pretty much anything with it. Some may know it from Deadlands.

Anyways hes got a kickstarter and its a great way to get the book and pdfs of everything.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1359565526/low-life-the-rise-of-the-lowly-core-rulebook

got about two days left

[Ruki]

I ran my 4th gaming session tonight. It was good! Not much in the way of combat. But good! The party got money, and I got an over powered item away from them!

[Ruki]

Playing two Alternity games today.

First: badass space fighter (shoot down 10 ships), kill 3-4 soldiers, and get robbed for 30k.

Second? I brand an innocent man's face.

[thatblindgeye]

What sort of house rules do people use when they DM? I'm probably going to start DMing my Avatar campaign soon (even if the one player turns me off of the idea at times) and was wondering if there were any I could use.

Also, any tips when it comes to creating combat encounters (will probably be using the monster thing on the DDi site once we get it paid for) would be great as well.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Vitamin E

[GhostMachine]

Regarding combat encounters, keep two things in mind:

1. Don't make encounters so tough for the characters that they'll end up dead without a chance. But don't make them too easy, either, unless its for storyline purposes (ie, you want them to get inside a castle or other fortification, so you make the guards wimps)

2. Keep the rewards (xp and loot) appropriate to the encounter. ie, no equal level Orc Shaman dropping a +5 Vorpal Blade, or the PCs slaying a dragon only to find its treasure is 5 platinum pieces and a box of gold toothpicks.

My rules are simple: For all games, the re-roll thing I mentioned before. For D&D, fuck that re-rolling a critical to make sure its a critical bs they added. I use the old 2nd Edition and earlier rule: if you roll a critical hit, its definitely a critical. AD&D/D&D and Shadowrun are the only games I've ever done as a DM/GM. Someone tried to get me to GM a Legend of the Five Rings game once, and I refused because that game is more or less designed to kill off PCs. And I've never come up with a Call of Cthulhu scenario I cared about enough to run players through.

[thatblindgeye]

I think I'll try that re-roll thing. I just have to make sure it's understood what it can and can't be used for, as it is definitely something that someone will try to find loopholes or technicalities to abuse. Otherwise it could be a rather nice addition to things.

Yeah, with criticals we've always gone with it, never re-rolled to make sure. The only time I re-rolled was when I switch my character over to an Avenger and attacked my Oath of Enmity, getting two natural 20's at the same time. And that was just to see whether I could get it a third time or something.

[OctoberRaven]

There's a psuedo-PNP browser game called Conclave, by the way, which is pretty interesting. One of it's features is you can play co-op with a party that not everyone has to be online all at once to maintain.

If anyone's interested in trying out the co-op let me know. I'm up for playing either archetype, though I think I stumbled on a pretty vicious rogue build with my main character.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

What sort of house rules do people use when they DM? I'm probably going to start DMing my Avatar campaign soon (even if the one player turns me off of the idea at times) and was wondering if there were any I could use.

Also, any tips when it comes to creating combat encounters (will probably be using the monster thing on the DDi site once we get it paid for) would be great as well.

Your say is final is the only rule needed. If you make a ruling, don't have them look it up during their turn to argue it. State that whatever goes for them goes for the other guy as well, so it doesn't matter and if it turns out youre wrong, it can be adjusted NEXT session.

In other words, you're the authority, and if theres another "expert" they need to defer to your judgement call.

secondly, stress that people should be thinking of their actions during other peoples turns. It speeds things up. Give them six seconds to decide once its their turn, then move on to the next person, swinging the undecided persons action down a spot. They don't MISS an action, just delay it slightly.

[GhostMachine]

What sort of house rules do people use when they DM? I'm probably going to start DMing my Avatar campaign soon (even if the one player turns me off of the idea at times) and was wondering if there were any I could use.

Also, any tips when it comes to creating combat encounters (will probably be using the monster thing on the DDi site once we get it paid for) would be great as well.

Your say is final is the only rule needed. If you make a ruling, don't have them look it up during their turn to argue it. State that whatever goes for them goes for the other guy as well, so it doesn't matter and if it turns out youre wrong, it can be adjusted NEXT session.

In other words, you're the authority, and if theres another "expert" they need to defer to your judgement call.

secondly, stress that people should be thinking of their actions during other peoples turns. It speeds things up. Give them six seconds to decide once its their turn, then move on to the next person, swinging the undecided persons action down a spot. They don't MISS an action, just delay it slightly.

Amen to all of that.

I'll also add to this: if you end up with a Rules Lawyer type player, put the kibosh on them asap, or they will drive you nuts. Rules Lawyers are type who know the rulebooks backwards and forwards and will try to exploit them at every turn.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Yeah, hats what I am referring to. It isn't bad to have someone who knows the rules. It's bad when he thinks his opinion supersedes yours. It doesn't.

Stay firm, and like I said, just let them know that if you are wrong, you'll read up on it and change for next session on, or house rule your own thoughts instead. But you can't be bogged down in having him interrupt you. stay on target, you'll save headaches and he will fall in line.

[thatblindgeye]

Yeah, the person who tends to be a problem player tried doing that when I DMed the Abbey campaign. He would constantly try to sneak around not having to make bluff checks, would always mention how he knows X about Y monster, etc. For some reason he tried acting like me tying against his defense meant that it wasn't a hit, even though every other time that's happened it was always tie = hit. It felt like he was trying to get away with stuff just because it was my first time DMing. It didn't help that he was one of two people I had to actually cover my rolls from due to peaking over the DM screen at them.

I'm hesitant to DM solely because of him, but I also want to shoot him down if he tries pulling any crap again. He's tried arguing over rules to be in his favor in our Shadowrun campaign going on right now, trying to use the term "subject" in a power description loosely so that he could use a Mask power or something on an ID card. Despite our GM saying the power was meant for disguising yourself as someone else, he still pressed on how the power didn't say that and only said "subject." Luckily, I doubt that will arise in an Avatar campaign using the D&D system, but I still await for him to try twisting something in his favor. Luckily he's actually a good DM; it's when he becomes a player where he can become aggravatingly annoying.

[Chris the Human]

I've been playing D&D since 1996. Started in 2nd Edition, 'grew up' on 3rd/3.5, loathed 4th Edition, and have since migrated to Pathfinder. The new D&D (Next) looks good from the playtest material I've looked over.so far.

Really keen to get a new game going here in China in a few weeks' time. I've got Beeker00Zero and a bunch of other geeks here, so planning to run Rappan Athuk for Pathfinder. I shelled out $200 for the Limited Edition a few years ago and haven't had a chance to play it. Love me some dungeon crawly goodness.

Hoping to do some pen & paper game design with Beeker this year too. Got a few ideas.

[KONGO]

I really want to expand and perhaps publish the setting I'm running for my game group right now. It's a very atypical game setting, lots of house rules to make it work, but I think we've done okay so far with the d20 system in a very social/sneaky game. Main thing I'm having trouble with are armor rules (specifically, whether people are wearing or not wearing armor, and how much attention it draws and how exactly that work) and providing a bit more variation. Right now, the players have two classes to choose from (fighter and rogue, broadly), and even these have been peeled away so that they don't really have class features, just different skill/feat/BAB/save progressions. Can't think of another archetype I'd want to add that would have anything different and this modular version has been playing pretty well, keeping aside the fact that everybody's got to take a bit looking up feats for every advance. Figure I'd mock up a few templates, though, feat/skill choices that would typify certain roles.

[Chris the Human]

Publishing my own setting/RPG rules is a dream of mine. Someday.

[Sousa]

Those of you guys who have played a lot of 4e: how difficult would it be to transfer 3.5e/Pathfinder's alignment system to 4e? I really, really hate that 4e does away with the Law/Chaos and Good/Evil axes in favor of "Good" and "Really Super Awesome Good." The absence of a clear difference between, for example, Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral is just maddening to me.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

It would be exactly no effort at all. There's no real "chaotic" or "axiomatic" powers in the game, so that's why they did away with it, also to streamline it. But adding them back in for the purposes of guidelines for behavior? Ask simple as cut and paste and slight working if dieties.