EileenProphetofIstus's page

This thread is dedicated to all of those gamers out there who MUST go through some sort of ritual-like experience to PROPERLY prepare for their game, be it fantasy, Superheros, sci-fi, or any other genre. This is your opportunity to share with you geekdom moments.

Me?

Desk Washing: I wash my desk off with a damp cloth. This includes removing any books, the light, dice box, miniatures, books, pen, pencil, erasure, calculater, or anything else that is on the desk and wiping underneath.

Dice Sorting: Depending upon the game I play, my dice sorting varies. When I'd play D&D, I would arrange the dice by size, putting each d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 in its own pile and line them up in a row from highest to lowest. Being the DM, these dice were used strictly for gamemastering and were placed directly in front of the DM screen. I'd then put the dice box off to the side.

I would then place my character's dice on their own dice bag off to my right side.

Now when I played Top Secret/S.I., I would select three dice of each size, one of each color and put them in a single pile, leaving the remaining dice in the dice box I bought and put it up by the Administrators Screen.

I would then place my character's dice on their own dice bag off to my right side, just as I did for D&D.

Now that I'm playing Legion (or rather trying), I need to develop new dice habits.

Gaming Clothes: When I played D&D, I would have a specific gaming shirt I wore, in fact everyone in the group would wear the same type of shirt.

With Top Secret/S.I. I would wear a fine silk shirt which portrayed a dragon and tiger on it. My character is half Caucasion and half Japanese but only acknowledges her Japanese heritage. I would also put on a necklace with a green dragon on it, as it matched her codename.

With Legion, I'm wearing my Phantom Girl Girl (t-shirt from Walmart with a iron on picture of her). We made similiar Legion shirts for the other 2 players as well. I have Superman pj's bottoms to wear as well.

Drinks: I have a glass gaming mug I would use for soda pop. It would hold just less than a can of pop. Recently I upgraded to a much larger one. This thing is so big it takes 3 cans of pop. The glass is so heavy that that it requires 2 hands to drink from it.

Gaming Room: I have a room dedicated to gaming, the decor of the room changes depending upon the game I am currently involved in. When I played D&D I filled it with Greyhawk posters. I had two posters of the City of Greyhawk on the wall, a felt scroll hanging of a griffon coat of arms I picked up at the Rennasaince Fair, a few weapons on the wall and desk (2 sais, a ninja-to, and a shuriken), I have several Xena 8x10 pictures framed and put on the wall, as well as a few Xena posters as well.

When I switch to Top Secret/S.I., I take down most of the D&D stuff and put up other things. The posters get replaced with Top Secret/S.I. posters that have come with modules. One is of the island of San Cristobal, one is a blue print of a submarine, another a bluepring of a train. I have another which is the blueprint mansion of a villain and yet another which shows the blueprint of Monte Carlo casino. The weapons remain on the wall and desk. These are the weapons my character uses (she's a modern day ninja). I also have a t-shirt of my character as well which hangs on the wall. I have several Japanese ordainments within the room as well. Two fans, one on top of the sterio another on the wall (its like 4' long). I have portaits up of the characters as well. I have many, many, and even many Jame Bond 8x10 pictures all framed which get strategically placed throughout the gaming room and adjoining bathroom. They are separated by themes of the pictures.

For Legion, I have some Supergirl posters I've found, My Legion books out (the 12 hardcover archive books on the desk), 3 videos from the Legion cartoon, two action figures, a small telephone booth of Clark Kent entering and tearing off his shirt to reveal the "S" on his costume. Flip open the other door and Superman is flying out of the booth fully costumed. I have some Legion hero-clix miniatures as well on the desk. I've printed some Legion pictures and they are framed on the desk as well. On the walls I have a Legion poster. I also have a Superman pillow case mounted on the wall. I've printed several 4x6 pictures from my Legion screensaver and put them in frames which hold several pictures. Finally, I have a picture of planet Earth framed and on top of the electric fireplace.

Regardless of which game I'm playing, I have my gaming table for my two battle mats, along with miniatures spread out nearby. With Top Secret/S.I. I also use toy cars, helicopters, boats, and the like to assist in game play.

So what do you do to celebrate your gaming geekdom?

Yih. Swattin water's fun.

You do that too? I like water...I shower, bathe, brush my teeth, wash dishes, wash clothes, go swimming, drink it occasionally, I don't bat at it though. Perhaps I should try this sometime. Any particular technqiue I should use?

EileenProphetofIstus wrote:

Heathansson wrote:

Can you honk a boat horn at it when it effs up?

No, I'm pretty much land locked where I live. I'd have a better chance of finding a semi-horn or a tractor reving up. But how is a boat horn suppose to help clean my house?

It's like a can that you press and it honks real loud, and the cat learns that when it does stupid stuff, it gets honked at.

I've been squirting them with a water bottle (called the naughty bottle), funny thing is though, they don't like the spray bottle but they otherwise like water. After I shower they climb into the tub, they curl up into the sink after its been used, and yesterday one of them let her tail fall into the dishwater, she just sat there like nothing had happened. They also like to go to the sink and look for a drippy faucet, then bat at the water drops coming out.

Hero 5th is a great game with great support. The Galactic Champions sourcebook is a good place to look if you want to run a Legion game.

Christian

What's this you say, what's this Galactic Champions sourcebook you speak of?

You should have taken pics of it! :D Sorry about that... kitties are just that, curious little creatures

Wish I had.

The Heroes/Champions revised 5th edition was just what I needed. I've already made worthy ground on how powers should work. Thanks for the suggestions all, greatly appreciated.

Masking tape. Or one of those cat roller thingies. That should help pick up the little bittie bits that won't come off even in the wash.

(Not that I've done this before or anything./sarcasm. What is it about cats that they are automatically drawn to destroy anything that is filled with those godawful styrofoam bits? Even though I really like them we can't have beanbag anything in the house anymore.)

Good suggestions, I'll try that on the mattress as well as the blankets. You know, if the situation wasn't so darn funny, I might actually be mad about it. I'm not though, I love my cats.

Can you honk a boat horn at it when it effs up?

No, I'm pretty much land locked where I live. I'd have a better chance of finding a semi-horn or a tractor reving up. But how is a boat horn suppose to help clean my house?

The time has come to unveil my Legion soundtrack. I purchased my first i tunes card and downloaded some Legiony music.

Theme from Superman
Theme from Star Wars
It's not Easy (Superman) by Five for Fighting
After All by Cher and Peter Cetera
Hero by Enrique Iglasias
Hero by Mariah Carey
Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler
Space Oddity by David Bowie
Battle of the Heroes (Star Wars)
Flash's Theme by Queen
Against all Odds by Phil Collins
Take my Breath Away by Berlin
Up Where we belong by Joe Crocker
I Believe I can Fly by R. Kelly
Across the Stars (Star Wars)

An excellent mixture of space, heroes, and love songs if I do say so myself; traits all of which the finicky Legion fan requires.

Today I came home to discover that one of the three cats tore open one of my daughters pillows. This particular pillow was filled with some sort of styrofoam-like material, with each piece being smaller than a pinhead. There are literally hundreds of thousands of pillow stuffings all over the house. The cat responsible was given a bath as she was covered from head to tail in the stuff. The other cats received baths as well because they picked up the stuff all over them just by wandering around the house. My daughters bed was completly covered in white pillow stuffings, most of which were vacuumed up. All of her pillows, blankets, stuff animals, everything needs to be washed. Most of it comes off in the washer/dryer but not all of it. This stuff is going to linger forever in the house. It's all over my clothes, my furniture, the bathroom towels, the carpet, the cats, its in my hair, absolutely everywhere. I'll have to wash everything at least twice.

Other than getting rid of the cat or doing other harmful things to her, does anybody have any worthy suggestions on how to clean my house?

Thraxus wrote:

EileenProphetofIstus wrote:

The book I saw was somewhere around 15-18" in height. Maybe an 1 1/2 inches thick or so, can't recall the cover though. Big print with big pictures?

Different book then. Mine is about 12" high and around an inch thick. It has 23 chapters covering different dinosaur groups (including birds), plus other chapters on biology, extinction, and more.

The breakdown is based on more recent scientific study, such as the term Carnosaur applying to the group that includes Allosaurus and not all theropods. Carnosaurs get one chapter to themselves, as do the spinosauroids and the Tyrannosauroids.

Hmmm....may have to go look for it. Can you give me the title and publisher so I may go into the book store and sound like I know what I'm talking about? Any idea what the cost is? How about page count? How big is the print? Is it mostly text or pictures?

EileenProphetofIstus wrote:

The book I saw was somewhere around 15-18" in height. Maybe an 1 1/2 inches thick or so, can't recall the cover though. Big print with big pictures?

Different book then. Mine is about 12" high and around an inch thick. It has 23 chapters covering different dinosaur groups (including birds), plus other chapters on biology, extinction, and more.

The breakdown is based on more recent scientific study, such as the term Carnosaur applying to the group that includes Allosaurus and not all theropods. Carnosaurs get one chapter to themselves, as do the spinosauroids and the Tyrannosauroids.

Hmmm....may have to go look for it.

.

My personal recommendation would be to visit The Source Comics & Games in St. Anthony (Minneapolis), Minnesota. It is simply the best game store I've ever visited, and I've been to a ton of them. There are lots of others you'll want to check out, but I'll leave other posters to suggest them.

Good luck!

Erik, are you referring to the Source Comics & Games in Falcon Heights? There were several Source Comics and Games outlets in the Twin Cities but the consolidated into one large store. By the way, my previous post was pertaining to this particular store. Bar none, it is the best gaming store for hundreds of miles. Any chance your ever going to be a guest there on D&D day?

We had a store like this in my state. It was the first real gaming store I'd been in back in its glory days. Located in a rouch neighborhood and plagued by poor management, it became a run down store where people socialized more than anything. Eventually after over 2 decades, they closed their doors and opened an internet store.

Now in the same Metro area, we have one of the biggest and best gaming stores in the country as well. This place has staff which is long-lasting, extremely knowledgeable and has to keep re-arranging because they carry so many products (games, comics, related stuff). They keep outgrowing their store. Everyone is always happy, love to talk you leg off, always asking if they can help, recommending products, havign blowout sales a couple of times a year, participates in D&D and get celebrities like Monte Cook, Larry Elmore, Mike Mearls, and Dave Arneson.

Sounds like your store is similiar to the first one described above. As for dollar saving, I would much rather shop at these stores than go online. Things might cost more, but I love to look at all the merchandise, feel the comics in my hand, talk to the staff about how D&D is doing, seening what Legion memorbila I can find, etc.

The fighter would win because they have to much testosterone.

Wizards would win because they can cast appearance enhancing spells on the ladies which would be the same as a makeover.

Wizards would win because they can cast unseen servant. This would eliminate housework.

The fighter would win because the wizard would use it to start performing division mathmatics.

Wizards would get worse auto insurance rates because they would use magic to avoid traffic jams by making it fly. The insurance companies would most likely frown at flying cars.

You're right. Weird Al Yankovic could wup Conan.

You win the internet.

Does this mean after 18 pages, this thread has come to an end?

Weird Al scares me.

If Weird Al scares you, then I would venture to say that Weird Al could also whup Conan as well!

EileenProphetofIstus wrote:

Coffee table size book? I wonder if this is the same book I saw in the store and have been looking at?

Probably. It is about the size of a good reference book.

The book I saw was somewhere around 15-18" in height. Maybe an 1 1/2 inches thick or so, can't recall the cover though. Big print with big pictures?

A couple of shirts, a couple of gift cards, a digital camera, the third DVD for the anime Jinki: Extend, and the book, "Dinosaurs: The most complete, up-to-date encyclopedia for dinosaur lovers of all ages."

For dino fans, I highly recommend the book. the illustrations, family trees, and genus list of all known dinosaurs (with estimated sizes and weights) makes the book a must have.

Coffee table size book? I wonder if this is the same book I saw in the store and have been looking at?

It is now. Conan said so. It's in the Nemedian Chronicles.

You haven't even let me link my Santa video yet, or did you see it in the other thread?

The Night Santa Went Crazy

No way. Conan's immortaler.

Is immortaler even a word?

But Santa is a much great Bad A** than Conan this video proves it.

The Night Santa Went Crazy by Wierd Al.

I hate that kinda deux ex machina crap.

So now your hating on Brainic 5 as well because he made anti-lead serum for Mon-el? Why not just put him back in the phantom zone and throw away the phantom zone projector?

Yea, I have the Marvel game here at home. I like to write a lot of my own gaming material and essentially make my own gaming books. This is what I did with Top Secret/S.I. over the past several years, and now I want to try it with something else. A year ago, I started making some serious effort into designing a Legion of Super-Heroes RPG. After tons of tries, retries, and do overs, I believe I've settled on the basic combat system. I found the powers and various rules of Marvel and DC to be a little more free flowing than I'm use to. I like rule intrusive games (for the most part) and since I was delving into foreign territory (the Super Hero genre) I've found myself at a loss for how to design various mechanics. At this point in time I believe I'll be using the Heroes/Champions book and utilizing it for brainstorming and accomidate many of the ideas using the combat system I've already come up with. After reviewing the book somewhat, I can see how a lot of this information could be transferred or utilized. I'm already seeing tons of ways to improve my thinking in regards to how powers should work and be designed.

No way. Too out of shape.

Yes he could, you see Santa Clause is immortal, Conan isn't. Eventually Conan would get so old that Santa Clause could beat him.

Eileen,

How many players do you have, how attached are they to their current character concepts and mechanics (let's face it, any change in game system changes the list of smart tactical decisions), and how much work do you want to put into the change-over?

I've got 2 players and it most likely won't increase. The daughter has decided that Super-Heroes are not cool enough compared to D&D so she's bowing out (not real surprised here), and in a couple of years she leaves for college anyway.

My primary interests are...

1. Having decent rules to play by that fit my style of play
2. Build the Legion universe (campaign world)

We discussed it briefly this morning and the general concesus is to cherry pick and continue with the current system I've been working on. I've seen a lot of parallels between my ideas and the Heros/Champions game as well as some basic differences. My ideas fall into a mixture of this system and Marvel (the idea of using categories). I'd rather continue with my own and cherry pick because in time I want to have a game that I can call my own.

No one has any strong attachment to characters they have started putting together because we are still operating out of the core Legionnaires from the comics and trying to get comfortable with the basics of the combat system.

Any suggestions you have to offer are well received.

Bought myself a new kitchen table set and some Legion related items....

A few comics

2 action figures

1 Superman shirt

2 Legion Hero clix

The Hero/Champions 5th edition revised game

6 blank dice

Also got a blanket, a giant pillow, and some fragrance emitting things to make the house smell like cinnammon and most likely, some money later today.

Perhaps this has already been mentioned, but here's what I did. The spells in the Players Handbook were a free for all, for the class they are intended for. All clerics have the spells off the cleric spell list, wizards can get everything on the wizard spell list, you know play it the way it was written.

Then I took the splat books and did not make those automatic for the classes. What I did is I took the cleric spells and selected which ones the deity of death would give the rest were tossed out and unavailable for that religion. I did this for every deity. Thus the initial PH spell lists were the same, but the spells from the splat books were very much oriented towards the characters religon.

When it came to other types of characters, such as wizards, I would do the same. Most every school did teach those available in the PH. After that, they narrowed their focus of teaching to a particular kind of magic (usually broken down by schools). If you went to that school, that is what they taught their students.

The player knew what kind of spells a school taught before enrolling so it isn't like there were any suprises. They knew what that school offered before considering joining. I then spread the schools around the World of Greyhawk. This made wizards from one learning establishment different from another.

This type of arrangement was nice for world building and when multiple clerics or wizards got together, you really would see differences between them. If one chose to they could do the same thing with the spells in the Players Handbook.

I think eliminating the spell lists entirely would dilute the individualism that the game offers or that which could be had as above.

Completed my Timber Wolf mini-series yesterday when I went shopping.

Now have most of the Valor series as well. Anyone know how many issues were published for Valor?

Also found issue #1 and #2 of Secrets of the Legion of Super-heroes. Anyone know how many issues there were of this comic as well?

Found a few others, only a couple of which were a Legion title of some kind. The others were like DC Comics Presents, Brave & Bold, that sort of thing, all of coarse featuring the Legion.

Bought a couple of Hero-clix. I don't like the big bases so I was thinking about removing them and attaching them to smaller bases.

Also found a couple of 6" action figures....Silver age Invisble Kid and Colossal Boy.

Bought a few blank dice for my game. I plan on attaching special symbols on the sides for various combat purposes.

And of coarse the Hero/Champions book I mentioned above.

7 day vacation, only enjoyed 1 of them. Couldn't get anyone to go with me all week to go shopping for gaming stuff, so I finally got P*ssed off and just went on my own. Wish I had done that the first day of my vacation, the remaining 6 days would have been a lot better. Seems like everytime I go on vacation, I actually get less done than on a normal day off. Why is this?

REMEMBER TO DECORATE YOUR CHRISTMAS TREE WITH ORNAMENTS OF ALL THE DIFFERENT PLANETS, JUST LIKE THE LEGIONNAIRES DID ONCE IN AN VERY OLD LEGION STORY. IF MEMORY SERVES CORRECTLY, SUPERGIRL AND SUPERMAN FLEW TO THE 30TH CENTURY TO VISIT AND THE LEGION HAD A CHRISTMAS TREE UP LIKE THIS. SUPERGIRL WAS TRYING TO FIND A WIFE FOR SUPERMAN. HE ENDED UP KISSING SATURN GIRL TWICE AND LIGHTNING LAD DIDN'T LIKE THAT. OF COARSE THE MAN OF STEEL DID NOT KNOW THEY WERE MARRIED AT THE TIME.

HAPPY LEGION HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE.

Just purchased Heroes/Champions revised 5th edition. Nearly 590+ pages. At this point I was very impressed with the game. Contained many of the elements I was pushing for in my Legion game, got the impression (for the moment anyway) that a lot of information/ideas would transfer over well to mine.

The question is....should I do what I did with Top Secret/S.I., which is rewrite the rules from first page to last page using the Top Secret/S.I. system and modifying everything I ever wanted to? Taking this approach means starting over and retaining things I really liked that I had come up with or rewriting the ideas so that they are compatable with the Heroes/Champion game.

The significantly big positive here is that I would probably accomplish things a lot faster and have more to show for my efforts over the next several months/years. The big downside is that I can only play it. I would be unable to seek out any publishing because of this factor.

Or should I continue with my own creation (despite how slow its taking) and use the Heroes/Chamions game as a solid form of ideas and inspiration to consider, adding it to my wealth of RPG knowledge. I would say that between Marvel, DC, and Heroes/Champions, this game is far closer to the rules intensive that I enjoy.

The significantly big positive here is that I would still create the game I think Legion should be and at the same time eventually give me a greater sense of satisfaction (assuming I succeed over the coarse of 5 years or so). As long as they are rules of my creation I can submit them for publishing with DC comics when the day comes (knows this is a dream that most likely will never come true however).

What would you do?

Thanks for all the recommendations everyone.

Just purchased Heroes/Champions revised 5th edition. Nearly 590+ pages. At this point I was very impressed with the game. Contained many of the elements I was pushing for in my Legion game, got the impression (for the moment anyway) that a lot of information/ideas would transfer over well to mine.

The question is....should I do what I did with Top Secret/S.I., which is rewrite the rules from first page to last page using the Top Secret/S.I. system and modifying everything I ever wanted to? Taking this approach means starting over and retaining things I really liked that I had come up with or rewriting the ideas so that they are compatable with the Heroes/Champion game.

The significantly big positive here is that I would probably accomplish things a lot faster and have more to show for my efforts over the next several months/years. The big downside is that I can only play it. I would be unable to seek out any publishing because of this factor.

Or should I continue with my own creation (despite how slow its taking) and use the Heroes/Chamions game as a solid form of ideas and inspiration to consider, adding it to my wealth of RPG knowledge. I would say that between Marvel, DC, and Heroes/Champions, this game is far closer to the rules intensive that I enjoy.

The significantly big positive here is that I would still create the game I think Legion should be and at the same time eventually give me a greater sense of satisfaction (assuming I succeed over the coarse of 5 years or so). As long as they are rules of my creation I can submit them for publishing with DC comics when the day comes (knows this is a dream that most likely will never come true however).

What would you do?

Thanks for all the recommendations everyone.

I still like

Grandma got ran over by a raindeer; hehe I absolutely loathe the damn dogs barking jinglebells.

Did you ever see the cartoon on tv?

A good classic villain implies one individual. Me, personally, I'm a huge fan of the Fatal Five. They are a good mixture of people who formed one group. Validus and Emerald Empress might need to be scaled down in power for your game though, but that's easy enough to do.

Another group you could hand pick is the Legion of Super villains. Some are matches to Legionnaires in power while others have unique powers. You could pick the ones that work best.

As for any single villain....

Computo

Soljer from Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes issue #210 opens up excellent possibilites. If your adventure is taking place in the 21st century, he and his comrades could have easily travelled to the 21st century and attacked Metropolis (or whatever city of importance you use) and as a result, changed the time stream. The Legion realizes the differance and goes back to correct it. After that, simply read the story and you could easily use it as the basic plot. Time Trapper could ultimately be behind Soljer's army having invaded.

I like Pulsar Stargrave and his lackeys, Quicksand and Holdur. Stargrave is really powerful so you'd have to work with it though. Perhaps come up with a reason why he's weakened and what he's up to is restoring his full powers, thus he must be stopped before he becomes too powerful.

I like Grimbor the Chainsman and his lover Charma.

Prince Evillo was a Legion villain.

Please tell me they are going to take a time bubble back to the 21st century? Time bubbles are so cool and not threatening like a spacecraft.

The first three must be the founders, which were Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad. These are your first three which are a must. They will give you good power diversity as well as being the absolute best representation of the Legion itself.

After that....Brainac 5 has always been very popular but I don't think he will translate well when it comes to battle, so despite his popularity, I'd eliminate him.

Phantom Girl was the 5th member to join and my personal favorite. She's always maintained a strong and steady presence in the Legion.

For your 5th character, I'd select Chameleon Boy. He should be a lot of fun to use and very versatile, not to mention give an alien presence to your small group which helps translate into "This is the future, things are different here."

So I would go...
Cosmic Boy
Saturn Girl
Lightning Lad
Phantom Girl
Chameleon Boy

and a question while I am at it, who would you consider to be the "core" group? I mean if you had to have chosen just a handful of characters to list who would they be and why?

Now when you ask about the core Legion group are you talking about any of the Legion series (such as perhaps the original) or do you want to stick with hearing about the Legion where the codenames were changed? I can help you out with the former as well as the current rendition but my knowledge is limted on the first re-boot which is what you've referred to thus far. Not sure how open you are on the issue.

ComicJam wrote:

There are a number of the more famous peeps that play 4e.

Felicia Day plays it too (but that's not really a surprise...!)

Cheers! :D

While this might be true, I have no idea who Felicia Day is. I don't think she qualifies as more famous than Wil Wheaton. If she does, then that qualifies as making me feel old.

I've never heard of her either, so who is she?

I used very little downtime in my D&D games. It came up when someone would want to research something, wait for a magic item to be created, make something themselves (armor or weapons for example), or just for realism purposes, spend a week in Greyhawk City to spend time with family (as was the case with my character). I never did it to intentionally advance the timeline. If I recall correctly, the characters reached 11th level in 2 1/2 years of adventuring. The amount of real years that passed playing the game more than made up for any suspension of disbelief one might have for characters achieving 11th level in 2 1/2 years of their lives.

A word of caution about altering XP. If you use modules (regardless of what edition they are from) and you alter the XP system (either speed it up or slow it down), you'll need alter the module in order to put it in compliance with the altered character level xp.

Example, a couple of years ago I ran the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil module. If your familiar with it, you know it is very long. It took us 75 game sessions to complete it. Yes, I actually kept track because I was curious. I had never ran such a lengthy adventure before and I wanted to see how long it would take. Most of our playing sessions were 6 hours (average).

Anyway, I used the XP system I showed above, so when we went into the module we were (I believe 7th level). The module starts out at 4th level and rises to 14th. Obviously the first part of the adventure was very easy for the characters (a lot of non-humans to fight). I left that part of the module the same. It gave the players a false sense of security even though they knew what the levels were listed on the modules. Eventually part way through, things started to get harder and we reached 7th level encounters. Suddenly things were spot on. Then as the module difficulty increased the characters didn't progress at the same rate. Slowly the module became more and more difficult. If memory serves correctly, we were 11th level when we fought Imix. I don't baby characters and I let the chips fall where they may. I did scout out the module for encounters that I felt would be overly difficult, but in the end changed very little. The players were highly experienced, big on roleplaying, would happily spend 2 hours preparing for a huge fight if they foresaw it coming. They were not the bluster in and get shmucked type of group.

To offest the adventure difficulty, I made exiting the dungeon easier than I normally would have via teleport. The players expended most of their treasure earned to accomidate the ability to teleport when things got to hairy.

In the end, they slew Imix but did spend 2 hours preparing for the fight (figuring out what defensive and offensive spells to cast mostly, what stacked with what, that sort of thing.

As a result of the adventure they used up most of the treasure earned for healing and teleporting because it was such a challenge. They trusted me as a DM to run fair encounters as well. To this day, they brag about their exploits, levels they truly earned. As rewards for good play and loss of treasure to continue, I did throw in something nice for everyone and granted them a signficant story award XP bonus.

The moral of the story is if you alter the XP system and you use modules, you need to spend extra time and care to make sure all works well for you, be it alter encounters, treasure acquired, give out story award XP, that sort of thing. The reward you get in return is the advancement you want for your style of play and that of your players.

The entire adventure was one of the best D&D moments I've every had.

As a side note, this is one of the areas Pathfinder is adjusting (at least last time I checked, which was quite some time ago). I'm sure someone else can give a more informed pathfinder response. I know they originally had three different degrees of XP tables one could choose from. Their slow chart was still a fair amount faster than my system. I have no idea if this has changed since their first PDF file rule release.

EileenProphetofIstus wrote:

Wow, this just blows me away. You hit on the #1 thing I hate about 3.0, 3.5, and 4th edition, the advancement rate. Coming from 1st edition I appreciate the crawl speed advancement.

I whole-heartedly agree. Having also come via AD&D and 2nd Ed. it amazes me that some players expect to go from 1st to 20th so quickly. I find it hard to sustain suspension of disbelief when a (for example) a 17 year old apprentice is battling demon lords 12 adventures later (one of my few dislikes with the Dungeon advanture paths) and the chharacter has hardly aged.

I've had this conversation with many different people throughout the past 7 years. At the gaming store I've asked around to the employees/owners (guys generally in their 30's and 40's who have been playing since 1st edition) and they also modify the XP system.

I had this conversation on Canonfire when I first got the internet a few years back. Almost everyone there changed the XP as well (though perhaps not as dramatically as I did). Almost no one used it as is, they just had different ways of dealing with the advancement issue.

I've asked people I worked with (a younger adult crowd (early 20's back in 2001) and they tried it when they went from 2nd edition to 3rd. They were very reluctant to use 3rd edition rules. When they finally did they used the advancement as written. A few months later they changed it as they felt it was taking some of the fun out of the game (and they were power gamers as a whole).

My daughter used it as is for her home group and wanted to change it after several games as well. She struggled with the change because she was new to DMing and unsure of her abilities, plus she was playing with kids her own age so she was uncomfortable about making them unhappy. Eventually she instigated the changes she wanted to make and people were happier.

Then she tried playing with some other kids at school (different crowd) and they were really into the power gaming approach. They hated it because they wanted to go up a level every game or two, want +5 magic items by 5th level, this sort of thing.

Cool...he can eat pasta alfredo all day every day no worries.

Or a quart of oil.

Wow, this just blows me away. You hit on the #1 thing I hate about 3.0, 3.5, and 4th edition, the advancement rate. Coming from 1st edition I appreciate the crawl speed advancement.

My suggestion would be to say, I know this person on Paizo, they hated the advancement as well. It was a zillion light years to fast. They modified the XP chart as follows.

Take the current amount listed and multiply it by its level. Thus......

2nd level: 2,000
3rd level: 9,000
4th level: 24,000
5th level: 50,000
6th level: 90,000
7th level: 147,000
8th level: 224,000
9th level: 324,000
10th level: 450,000
11th level: 605,000
12th level: 792,000
13th level: 1,014,000
14th level: 1,274,000
15th level: 1,575,000
16th level: 1,920,000
17th level: 2,312,000
18th level: 2,754,000
19th level: 3,249,000
20th level: 3,800,000

Check out advancement for 1st and 2nd edition, show them this, and all the sudden they will think your being generous. In my opinion this was the worst mechanic change they made when 3rd edition came out. It did nothing but teach people lack of patience and appreciation for overcoming challenges, thus the instant gratification syndrome. But then I want to play the same character for 10+ years of real time, but that's just me. When we ended our campaign, my character was 12th level with 682,676 XP. If we ever go back to D&D, we will stil play these characters, picking up where we left off. I would estimate that it took 4-5 years of actual playing to reach this level, which we were perfectly happy with. Different strokes for different folks.

Glad its working for you. WOTC could learn something from your efforts. Looks really good.

EileenProphetofIstus wrote:

Snorter wrote:

It didn't take much checking; it was only five feet away.

'Dumple' just sounded too much like a halfling name, like 'dumpling'...

Given the names, I thought it was the best one. I agree, it makes a better halfing name. Perhaps the dwarf was really a cross dresser.

NO WAIT! NO SUCH CONTAMINATION OF GREYHAWK.

Ok, maybe his parents just hated him.

You call that contamination?

Huh huh.
Huh.
Hahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!!!

Nothing to see here...

So are you saying you have cross dressing dwarves in your Greyhawk?

Don't know. I never did dissect an efreeti.

How do we know they actually reproduce then? I think we need to know.

They can do the E freak without a prostate.

I'm sure there are other glands in the body that produce a E freak. Aren't there?

Why don't you wish for something good?

I thought I was. You don't want the Efreeti getting lucky once in awhile?

Ok, I wish my stomach would settle down, its doing the flip flops right now.