Agamon the Dark's page

Sorry, I think I probably checked just before you last posted and then kinda forgot when nothing was happening and life got a bit busy for me.

Odd, I'd have thought individual attention from a GM would hold one's interest moreso than being one of a group. This kind of thing has never worked for me in a TT game, but the most successful pbp I played in (lasted 6 years) had 2, 3 or more groups or individuals doing their own things much of the time. That's the biggest upside of pbps, in my opinion.

But that's just me, I guess it has been a problem here.

Sorry, it had gone quiet for days, I wasn't sure if we were still going. Is it just the three of us now?

Inherent bonuses variant from DMG 2.

Incidentally, I play and enjoy both games :p. It's not that difficult either. 4e I just stick with DDI which, with the character builder and encounter builder and whatnot, means I don't really need to buy books. Pathfinder comes out with books at a far enough pace behind each other that I never really feel like I'm pounding out a lot of money for it.

Best of both worlds

Bingo on both counts. In fact, I didn't need the advice from DMG 2, 4e is transparent enough that it's pretty easy to figure out. The 3e math is a lot more complex, but the guys that did Trailblazer laid that out, which is pretty cool.

I didn't choose Pathfinder over 4e D&D any more than I chose it over DC Adventures, Eclipse Phase, HackMaster Basic, Dread, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Smallville, or any other games I am currently, have recently, or will soon play. It's just one of the games I play.

Now why I choose it over 3.5 D&D, that's another story, I guess.

I gave my players the option in my most recent game, and all of them chose to roll. A few of us are old skool roleplayers, and our tendancies have rubbed off on the newer folk.

That said, 3d6 in order is good for games like AD&D or HMB, but 3.x, I'm not sure that would fly with my group.

Figured I'd take the ooc talk over here. My thoughts: an operative is in the process of acquiring a person of interest (that would be Savin and Tamahashi). Another needs to be smuggled off of Luna (that would be Taka, he needs to keep a low profile in Luna). Not too sure how Fineal fits in yet.

The vehicle itself is custom, so it is actually not obvious and as you may have noticed, the driver is exactly a friendly fellow. The perception check would have noticed it, but it isn't labeled as such. Don't worry Davi, your drivers are significantly more pleasant.

I want to give the impression that while your mysterious employer is certainly powerful and connected, it isn't some monolithic conspiracy. Some of the people are just like you, for better of worse.

That's kinda what I figured. I had no problem with it, found it kinda funny, actually. :)

Just an FYI, Taka's not so concerned due to his built in oxygen reserve, which gives him an extra 3 hours of breathable air in a vac suit. Not that he thinks the driver knows that, so he is a bit concerned....

Ravingdork wrote:

Ideally, fudging AGAINST players never happens.

If the adventure wasn't tooled for optimized adventurers, retool it. Fudging against players is just mean.

If the results are going to be the same then why should the DM waste the time to build/rebuild NPC's?

Personally, I don't think I'd enjoy it very much, myself. If I'm going to dictate what the dice say after I roll them, I don't really need to roll them. It becomes a narrative exercise, in which case, it'd be easier to just write a book.

That, and the results may not be the same. If you're always fudging, is anyone going to ever die? If so, who do you chose to die? I hate TPKs, and will fudge against one if the party doesn't deserve it, but I don't like fudging just to save one or two PCs.

I generally save the fudging for when the party gets in over their heads through no or little fault of their own. TPKs aren't fun for anyone, and having them happen due to some bad luck or an unintentional mistake makes for a sad ending to a campaign. That said, if they make a crucial error in judgment, the gloves come off, and hopefully they learn their lesson.

I don't fudge for NPCs, if the dice aren't going my way or the players are clever enough to do something unexpected, good for them. Having a close fight is fun, but when kick butt once in a while, that can be fun, too.

Spanky the Leprechaun wrote:

Hadron collider makes one of those miniature black holes; only this one isn't so miniature. It actually lasts about 10 times longer than it's supposed to....on the scale of .00000000000054 seconds instead of .00000000000054 seconds.

When Switzerland is on the dark side of the earth, the minisingularity burps and the earth, though not sucked into the mini black hole, is pulled further away from the sun, when whatever cataclysms that that would cause clear, it's the Ice Age again.

THat would imply the singularity snags on some point in space and the earth is pivoted about that point causing it to alter its orbit...I got overpaid Particle Physicists prepared to reject that possibility as an acceptable risk - apparently God will save us if we F... it all up badly.

The black hole would not only need to last longer, it would need to be much bigger (though those both go hand in hand). And you need a much bigger collider. Much larger and faster collisions than happen at the LHC happen constantly at outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. An exsisting black hole passing (relatively) near the planet would do the same thing.

But it'd make a good sci-fi reason for a mass extinction event.

Some things a little more realistic if you don't want to go fantasy/sci-fi:

Asteroid/comet hits the earth. Earthquakes/tsunamis rock nearby continents. Ash/smoke blot out the sun for months, killing much of the food base and ushering in a mini ice age. 50% of all life on the earth dies.

Gamma ray burst hits the solar system. A giant star within a few thousand light years of us goes ultranova before becoming a black hole and it's poles point in our general direction. When the gamma radiation hits us, it completely wipes out all electronic devices and electrical power on the side of the earth facing it. The radiation poisons most living things on that side of the planet. A third of the earth's ozone layer is fried and our sun does the rest. Solar ultraviolet radiation kills the food base in the oceans, leading to 95% of all life dying on the planet. It takes over a decade for the ozone layer to replenish itself.

Same as above can happen from our own sun. A focused coronal mass ejection that hits us could have nearly the same effect, though likely lesser.

Not sure if you missed it, Ellipsis, but we posted at almost the same time on Tuesday.

I know. Sheesh. Just house rule it. I swear, the d20 generation wants everything spoon-fed to them. Just because there's rules for everything, including removing the kitchen sink, doesn't mean you can't change them up to your liking...

Fnipernackle wrote:

I have a friend who litterally eats, poops, breathes 4E. Not to say that 4E is bad, i just think that is World of Warcraft on paper, and i think that game is a brainwashing tool.

No, you're not saying 4E is bad at all. *rolls eyes*

LOL. Reminds me of a Jim Rome rant, where he says that every time someone begins a statement with the qualifier "Not to..." it pretty much guarantees that the statement that follows is going to be exactly what they said it wasn't going to be.

Not to say the comment sounded a bit partisan, but...oh wait, I won't finish that. :p

Hmmmm. I dunno. I have a similar player, and I haven't had to do anything differently with her than I do with any other new players. Are you anticipating any problems?

This is odd. It's like asking me why I don't like asperagus. Then a bunch of people telling me that I should because I like other vegetables...

I've never liked psionics in my D&D, probably stemming from earlier editions, and I just don't want to use them. I'm not sure why anyone cares. If some people like 'em, make a book, whatever.

Not sure why psionics need to be argued like politcs and religion (I'm right, you are both wrong and very stupid). Pretty silly, really.

Can't say I get all hung up on labels. Everyone calls it both, and we know what is meant.

No kidding. And only a couple dozen posts in, too.

this will probably be the last thing i post on here since it seems no one agrees with me and is all (DM Pride), my reasons for feeling this way is completely based on a pet peeve and is therefor not necessarily rational.

i understand why you all feel the way you do i just had wished you all could have understood where i was coming from.

Hey, I get what you mean. You want to play a certain build, DM says no. The build is not illegal, so what's the problem? That can be frustrating, for sure.

I think your DM might be handling it wrong. I do my best to not have to tell my players "no". I do this with some foresight by stating up front before the game starts what house rules will be in effect. And very rarely is it "no x or y," it's usually more, "tinker with this rule and now x and y are allowed because they aren't a problem anymore."

To be fair, and I know I am nitpicking so I apologize if that rubs the wrong way -- but if you decide via consensus, you cannot be "outvoted." :) The whole point of consensus decision making is that it rules out voting. If your group truly agrees to come to consensus, then you have every right to not consent if it doesn't sit right with you; if you gave in to majority bullying, that's a different issue.

NOW: The art of consensus is...

LOL, poor wording again. There was no voting. It was a "We should play this." "Yeah, let's play this." "Sigh, okay fine, as long as we get to game." So, yeah, we all came to an agreement; I'm GM, I'm not running something I truly don't want to, that would be silly.

Agamon the Dark wrote:

Hmmm. Rule changes by committee works about as well as anything else by committee (iow, not well at all).

Note the distinction between "committee" and "consensus," which is where a good DM sits.

Yeah, good point, poor wording on my part. I, of course, allow input on changes. And admitedly, we had to reach a consensus as to what we were going to play next, and I was outvoted! When they gang up on ya, sometimes the players get what the players want....

Dunno, rule changes by committe work ok in my group. Mostly because we have rotating dms. With 4-6 people in the group actively running a game at the same time, it would be a nightmare to keep track of houserules if there wasnt some kind of concensus.

I do however strongly agree that houserules need to be explained prior to the game and not dropped in the middle of it.

Fair enough, rotating DMs would require that everyone want to run the same set of rules.

Hmmm. Rule changes by committee works about as well as anything else by committee (iow, not well at all).

The GM runs the game. How he chooses to run it is really up to him. If he does so badly, he'll have no players. If he does so well, people will line up.

If a player doesn't like it, he's not being tied up at the table, he's free to go (at least, I would hope that's the case).

The key, though, is to let any house rules be known before the game starts, and not throw a "oh, sorry, not using that" in the middle of the game. That's not cool.

It's an RPG, not a chess tournament, the rules are guidelines. That distinction is made in most RPG rule books these days.

I rode a triceratops in 1989. That or a Honda Civic, can't remember, getting forgetful in my...what were we talking about?

Man, tough choice, great costumes.

I'll vote Kelly on account of the cool badger.

Odd...I haven't had a problem. It does log me out rather quickly, but a quick submit has worked.

if you use firefox This add on is a must have and will stop that from ever happening again

Awesome, thanks. Thanks for the profile template, too. That speeds things up a lot.

Ouch. Well, my character's pretty much done, I spent the last 2 hours posting it on the profile and it got eaten. *sigh* Try again tomorrow.

A couple threads on ENWorld:

Trailblazer in a nutshell

List of changes in Trailblazer

It's kinda cool, they go through the math of the game and draw some conclusions from it, and then present a set of rules taking those conclusions into account.

What they did with action points and iterative attacks is awesome.

Yeah, I don't mind it as a guide to roleplaying, but as a rules mechanic, it's always rubbed me the wrong way. Definitely going alignment-free with my upcoming game. Might as well get all the house rules on the table before we start. The group will be new to PF (a couple are new to 3e), and I'm adding in some Trailblazer rules and now removing alignment. Getting it all straightened out before we start is a good idea.

And where can I get some of this Smite-All?

I don't... and simply put, you don't deal with the issues at all because they're caused BY the alignment system in the first place. Characters are defined by their role-playing... and I've always thought that the alignment system as a restrictor on character behavior is poor GM'ing... rather it should be a player tool to flesh things out.

As for Paladins, I'm notoriously lenient with them. I see no reason to penalize someone for playing a class they're interested in, and I do my best to work with them, and motivate them to do things that their deity wants them to do.

Alignment spells were easy to do away with. They merely target the enemy. Normally people start griping about game balance now, but whatever its honestly never been an issue... and I've been running it this way, consistently, since the grand old days of 2nd edition.

I was actually considering doing this myself. Just ignore it and don't worry about it. Paladin's can detect maybe someone with malicious intent (at least, what he considers malicious intent) or pure, capital E Evil, like demons.

Also, then you can have paladins of different faiths. One person's righteousness is another's blasphemy.

I've been of the same mind, but I find that a lot of people aren't. That, and I'm not fond of the spells, magic items and abilities that work in conjunction with alignment.

I'd like to know this, too. My biggest gripe with 3.x is alignment. It'd rather use a motivation/faction/personality trait rule, but removing alignment form the game looks like digging dark grains of sand out of cement.

So, yeah, how do people do this?

Cool, I was thinking of some sort of hacker. I'll see what I can come up with.

I'm about to do the same, actually. My deal, though, is that not all 7 will likely be able to make every session, so I have to play it by ear.

I plan on adding enemies. I'll need to, as my game will be a Pathfinder/Trailblazer, so the PCs are going to be pretty tough.

I have a couple different ideas, but it might be a couple days before I post a PC. Looking forward to this, seeker's right, this game is crazy huge on concept.

Dude, at this point I do not care what type of EP game he wants to run. If he wants to step up and run it I am in.

Agreed, but I think Lorm just means we should wait to see what ideas for the game he has before making a PC that might not fit.

over

This novel will come out at the same time as a Tian Xia sourcebook in the Campaign Setting line, which is to say August 2011.

Lots of news dropping at Gen Con!

Cha-ching! Very happy news!

Does this mean we may have a Tian Xia based AP next year, too?

...really...I gotta explain it? I don't play these silly things, but it was still the first thing I thought of when I read the thread title.

Though, on second thought, maybe I should have let the necrophilia responses continue....

Cool! My favorite FR books (not saying much, but I liked these ones) was the Empires Trilogy. Hopefully this will be accompanied by a Chronicles offering on Tian Xia?

I wanna know how plant made it and not zombie!

Who?

Nobody special. Just a hot redhead that is funny, can act, sing, write and direct. Oh, and she's a gamer.

Well, nothing special or the greatest creation in the history of the universe, one of the two.

Sweet. I'm as in as I was yesterday. :)

Add me to someone that would play, but like the OP, I have too much on my plate to run it right now.

Congrats everyone (especially Sarah, lol)!

This thread is this long? LOL.

For real haiku
Involve nature and senses
Go smurf in a tree!

My players really dislike point buy, so I haven't really used it since I played LG back in the day. So in my upcoming RotRL game, it'll be roll 4d6 7 times, drop lowest.