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 Recent Posts
In the earliest editions there was only lawful, neutral and chaos as alignments. I think that is why there is no good vs evil in this version either. Also for 1 round = 1 minute, that doesn't mean the fighter gets one swing during that minute, it means he has one really good opportunity to hit during that minute. It is assumed there is jabbing, parrying, punching, and all sorts of other mayhem going on behind the scenes. At least this is the assumption behind the earliest versions that I remember.
Grab that PDF I linked earlier and check it out. Make your encounters ties to the PCs failing their Skill Challenge. Then the PCs are "in control" of when and what encounters happen. Think of it as rewards for them doing well, and "punishment" for failing. Though honestly who can think of an encounter as punishment! lol I am not a big fan of just random rolls determining outcomes. I like to tie it all in to skill uses or something the PCs do. I lets the PCs feel like they are in control of their destinies. If the PCs are doing too well to start with, just increase the DC for the challenge to be sure they will get some failures and thus have some encounters. Then just narrate some interesting description of the maze that leads to their encounter. Repeat until they get to the climactic end! Promise it will work, and it can become an adventure that will long be remembered as a great time. Anytime you make the PCs feel in control of their destinies, whether they are or not, players will love it!
Grab that PDF I linked earlier and check it out. Make your encounters ties to the PCs failing their Skill Challenge. Then the PCs are "in control" of when and what encounters happen. Think of it as rewards for them doing well, and "punishment" for failing. Though honestly who can think of an encounter as punishment! lol I am not a big fan of just random rolls determining outcomes. I like to tie it all in to skill uses or something the PCs do. I lets the PCs feel like they are in control of their destinies. If the PCs are doing too well to start with, just increase the DC for the challenge to be sure they will get some failures and thus have some encounters. Then just narrate some interesting description of the maze that leads to their encounter. Repeat until they get to the climactic end! Promise it will work, and it can become an adventure that will long be remembered as a great time. Anytime you make the PCs feel in control of their destinies, whether they are or not, players will love it!
Okay, I know a lot of people find mazes and labyrinths to be boring and they can be a real challenge. But I can give you a sure fire way to make it a hit. No maps. No directions. Mapping out the maze is time consuming and boring. It quickly leads to disinterest. Having the map already made on a big battlemap, just means someone will look at the map and find the path that leads straight to the goal. Also really boring. I would advise using Skill Challenges as a way to get PCs into the feel of the maze. Devise a Skill Challenge based upon those rules, possibly requiring 4-6 successes. Have a variety of encounters prepared and ready to go, and run an encounter for each time they fail the Skill Challenge. You describe the journey through the maze as narrative. Think of it like a story or a movie. You NEVER see a movie or story follow the characters through EVERY twist and turn. It skips the long boring parts and only focuses on when something interesting happens. You will only need a map for specific encounters. And, depending upon some of the encounters, you might not need a map even then. As an example, watch the movie Labyrinth; a movie all about journeying through a maze. It also has a really great soundtrack :)
So for giggles and grins I decided to try a few and see what happened. I am running Mac OS 10.6.5 and using Adobe Reader 9.4.1 I ran a few Paizo PDFs, a few 3PP PDFs and some real old PDFs. No problem with watermarks on the newer PDFs. On the older PDFs, that were essentially just image scans, it "read" the text... sort of. Sometimes it read words, other times it read seemingly random letters. The old stuff was like listening to a story while on acid. Not that I know what THAT would be like... just imagining :)
just as a note, RPGNow has LOTS of Twilight 2000 PDFs, including the two I used to run my merc game back in the 90s. Bangkok: Cesspool of the Orient
grab these and other T2000 supplements and also check out some Cyberpunk resources as well if you want a WAR campaign.
Okay, picked up the PDF and have been reading it. see review. Now, I ran a Merc campaign back around 1990 based in Thailand, using sourcebooks for Twilight 200, and other games. If you are resourceful you can create a MUCH more interesting campaign environment than what is presented. I'd really like to see Shadowrun drop the sourcebook format they have used for 21 years now. Also with the resources available to the average player and GM today with the net, I expect a higher quality product. I want better maps, more culture and local flavor. More importantly I want some kind of campaign adventures I can run. The Twilight 2000 sourcebook I used provided little vignette adventures, raid a warehouse (map included along with adversaries), defend a temple (complete with map), the PCs safe house is attacked (a high rise apartment complex), their mercenary base is attacked (complete with a merc base map) and my favorite was a merc raid on an offshore oil rig being used as a gambling den and brothel (made a 3d multi level game board based upon the map that was included). I tied all of these elements together with raids in the countryside and more to create a comprehensive campaign. Any of these could have been stand alone one shot adventures, but tied together they were a violent high octane adventure that was unique to anything I have seen since. But with the current format that Shadowrun uses, 21 years old now, War! is a good product. I think GMs who want to take the players to a warzone in South America will find the War! to be quite useful. If your group does not get outside Seattle or Denver, then there is not a great deal of use for War!
From what I understand there book hasn't even been released yet, so I have no idea how the reviewer is able to review a book he doesn't have yet... interesting. And Catalyst did release the first few pages, and there was an introduction there that explained some of what is going on... obviously the reviewer did not bother to read the intro... [edit] available through PDF at the moment]
FREAKING A what a cool picture! Okay the pic alone has hooked me.
In the Epic level Age of Worms game I DM'd, the party's half-silver dragon kobold paladin/fighter/pious templar/vassal of bahamut (*sigh*) had to have a friggin' spreadsheet to figure his attacks. Divine Favor, Power Attack, Smite Evil, Inspire Courage from the bard... there were several things to take into account. (If that game hadn't been an absolute blast because of the players, it might have put me off high level gaming forever.)(Or annoy your caster players if you're a 3.5 Fighter who switches up Power Attack amounts every round, necessitating a total recalculation of their attack matrix.)That's an interesting point. In 3.5 games I played if the Power Attackers wanted a wide range of options they ended up making a chart, but I can understand not everyone would play it that way. mmm I think you just struck the cord on the problem with high level play... too many options... too much math... too much crunching and not enough playing...
I tried reading piranha a few times but they kept biting me in the face. obviously you were using the wrong kind of bait! I bet if LPJ would run some kind of sale some day it would help. Alas alas I can only dream :)
You say that like there is something wrong with being incoherent and thick as well as being dirty and perverse... personally I emphasize the dirty and perverse... Oh, look a barmaid and beer!
mmm the "feel" of the 1st edition is what I liked so much about it. I do NOT like that magic is made more common and accessible to humans. This was such a great book for creating amazing horror filled adventures. It seems to me that one of the hard parts of writing a real horror fantasy adventure is that the PCs have access to supernatural magics to begin with, so the supernatural is just common and nothing to worry about. I think I might just have to buckle down and hit the storage room and dig through and find that 1st edition book I had... If I don't come out in a few days... well... a cleric with resurrection would be nice :)
I will be moving into the layout/formatting process soon for KD's premier adventure The Forsaken Tomb. The first question for you is: Do you prefer NPCs and monsters be collected in one location as an appendix, or do you prefer to have the NPCs and monsters scattered through the book where they first appear? The second question for you is: In a strictly PDF format, would you prefer a very brief NPC or monster line at each appearance in the game and have it linked to an appendix where the stat block is actually located?
What edition you after? Probably the third edition. I had 1st edition and it MIGHT be somewhere in storage. I think I saw it a few yeas back lol do they have a PDF yet? That would be ideal.
Honestly I don't think I would push them to the city yet. In fact what I might do is offer up a side trek, something seemingly random that pulls them along for more than just a single encounter. Tie it in some how to the main story. Maybe after a few levels they encounter something that might tie back to that side trek. Or just let it be entirely unrelated. The idea is to get them some more power and prepare them for the challenges to come. You might let this side trek do some foreshadowing of the city in some way.
I'm trying to find a horror game that was published... probably about 10 years ago or in that area. The game is set in a dark contemporary setting where the veil between what people see and the horrific world is thinning. The human mind is normally incapable of perceiving the true reality of the world and has created our perceived reality. The reality, however, is that we live in a world spanning mega city that encompasses the entirety of the world and is filled with horrific beings. The world was created by a Demiurge, as well. Please please please help me find this game!
I'm at work too and can't check, but doesn't it have an option to input custom spells? That might work for those 3.5 spells. Course you'd have to do all of the copy and paste yourself, and it probably would be lost when you log out... :-) But hey, copying and pasting the same spell a few dozen times just makes you a better gamer right!? lol] I really the changes introduced. Thank you so much for your hard work!
as a twist on the Oracle idea, if ZK curses her with Wasting (or numbness) then she could forced to go to another mystery other than pain, since she can't feel her exquisite agony anymore. It could provide an opportunity to take her in a new direction than just being a masochist. I often think characters that are defined by something, then take it away and send them a new direction while angsting over their loss makes for a great character.
As mentioned, briefly earlier, I am fond of the Oracle idea. I have never been liked the idea of deities picking up stray clerics from other religions. There is an exceptional amount of dedication required from a person to become a cleric and not just a lay follower. That kind of devotion does not lend itself to "swapping out" deities. At least in my opinion anyway. :) The Oracle seems like a perfect fit for a "fallen" cleric. A curse could come from the abandoned god as punishment, the mysteries could come as the fallen cleric gains new insights aroused by the change in belief systems. The Oracle seems like a good choice for other reasons as well. As the sheer volume of posts mentioning and supporting different deities for this wayward soul indicates, there are MANY deities that could support this fallen cleric. And to quote the description from Oracle: Instead of worshiping a single source, oracles tend to venerate all of the gods that share their beliefs. The new oracle could be sponsored by a wide range of divine forces working through her (sometimes at odds with one another even). The Oracle uses the cleric list of spells, just a more limited selection. Perhaps the spells she most used remain familiar enough to her that she retained them... Perhaps the new mysteries that she gains are granted by different deities, or perhaps created by her own self awareness and growth... BTW Curse... great one is Wasting... what better curse for ZK to use than to cause her very body, the source of her identification, to just waste away! The sick bastard! Now, as a GM for a home game I would be more than willing to allow all cleric levels be converted to oracle levels, much the way paladin levels convert to black guard. This particular character I think I would even integrate as a party NPC, or at the very least a recurring contact. In fact the more I think about it the more I think this would be a GREAT character for a set of stories as well! [EDIT- BTW Mikaze, is this set in that city you once described and created some amazing ideas earlier? I'd LOVE to see some notes you have made for that city. I'm slowly developing my own version of it for publication sometime in the next 2 years (my planned schedule is getting too crowded to do alone!)[/EDIT]
What if you have $21? yeah I only have $19...
cool, that easily fixes any confusion. Even *I* should be able to understand it :) BTW great idea. I have long wanted tattoos to be more than just pretty ink. I even tried using some ideas from some WOTC 3.x magic sourcebook for alternate magic items and such (one of which was using tattoos for scrolls). For some reason the idea was met with much antagonism by my group. I look forward to your book!
mmmmm I can see arguments for both side being perfectly valid. Therefore I go with my general guideline for running a game. Is it fun for everyone involved? Does it derail the story? If yes to the first, and no for the second, then I allow it. The point of the game is to have fun. If rules get in the way of having fun, then the rule is wrong and must be corrected with a house rule. Do note that often times this is situational and the GM, AND the players should consider their decisions together and carefully. But in the end, fun trumps everything else.
wow... really??? In my experience, and yes I HAVE played past level 20 into Epic Rules, the game works fine. There are a lot of powers, but in the end, you can usually only use one at a time. Fighters and Rogues can do a LOT of damage, but then again, the bad guys have a LOT of HPs as well (and usually hit back just as freaking hard, if not harder). Teleport without error, also known at low levels as just walking, is no real issue. The PCs move from one place to another. Big deal. If you want to keep the PCs from getting somewhere, then use some creativity to make getting somewhere difficult (a wall? is that the BEST you can do?). And besides, casting the spell uses up resources (it uses a valuable slot that could have been used in combat). What does happen at high levels is that classes MUST focus on their respective roles more. If a player has tried being jack-of-all-trades through the lower levels, he'll be ineffective at high levels. A player that likes to hog the spotlight by doing megadamage will quickly die if someone does not play a tank. The tank is not "glamorous" and few want to play a support caster either. But then, a party full of limelight prima donnas is doomed at high levels. I think groups that are not into power gaming will find high levels quite fun. Power gamers will find it disappointing because everyone must work as a group to achieve results. But simply put, high levels is NOT broken, but it does demand a different attitude than low levels
I use the Applie iPad as well. 9.7 inch diagonal screen. I have a few hundred PDFs, over 2,000 songs, and about 20 some movies loaded. PDFs load fast and are easy to use. Just about every single complaint listed above does not exist with the iPad. Now I know there are some that complain the font problem lies with Apple. Oddly enough no other PDF from ANY other company appears to have this problem except for Paizo. I know they keep throwing their hands up saying its not our fault, and then point the finger at Apple, but I can't quite understand why they are the ONLY company that has this error, and it is Apple's problem. Seems to me that since it is their product that is malfunctioning they should want to fix the problem themselves rather than rely upon someone else fixing it. But I guess not. *shrug*
VERY VERY true. As a rule they hurt the PCs more than help. I think I would try to counter that with a REF save to negate the bad effect of a fumble. If I used the decks or charts now, I think I would also apply them to casters using any kind of attack roll, and heck, I think it could be fun to apply to a Spell Resistance roll as well. Throw in a save somehow to mitigate the frequency, and it becomes something more colorful than anything. However, do keep in mind that IF the NPCs are using crit charts as well (I would only have PCs use them I think) then the NPC could crit and chop off a fighter's leg or inflict an abdominal wound that kills the wizard in 2-12 rounds. That could be some serious NOT FUN! Though using fumbles for NPCs can be quite entertaining at times... [EDIT: Later in the Dragon Mags they said they are against any kind of crit and fumble chart for two reasons. The first being that they are often times too explicit and gruesome for entertaining play. The second being that they allow PCs too easily kill opponents and allows NPCs to too easily kill PCs.]
BTW in the most hilarious use of those charts was a game playing the original Dragonlance modules. We were facing a bunch of skeletons and the Paladin rolled for a crit... The paladin hit the skeleton in the head... The skeleton rolled and fumbled... for a critical hit to a friend in the head... that skeleton rolled and fumbled... for a critical hit to a friend in the head... All of the PCs AND the rest of the skeletons just stopped and stared at the Paladin...
Way back in the day, Dragon Magazine had a cool chart for rolling fumbles and crits. I have seen charts off and on since then all over the place. I'll see if I can find that issue number. [EDIT: FIrst one I found was in Dragon Magazine Issue 39, Good Hits and Bad Misses, pgs 34-35.] [EDIT: In a quick scan of the net I found Crits and Fumbes a PDF that borrows from the Dragon Magazine Issue 39 article, modified slightly to better suit 3.x rules.]
Forget spells to do awesome stuff like that, they are too wimpy. What you want is an INCANTATION. A GREAT new source of incantations is Incantations in Theory and Practice by Zombie Sky Press. These are the earth shattering mega-powerful spells that create great story elements without blowing gaming balance.
LOTS of people use the Critical Hits and the Fumbles decks from Paizo for just this thing. I would really really like to use them but the font is like size 1 or something and ridiculously hard to read with my old eyes. I guess they didn't want to clutter up all the great empty space with useless text! lol
I'm a big fan of poisons and debilitating diseases for in-game use. That means a couple points of Str damage against the burly fighter and all of a sudden they have a heavy load and their movement is reduced. Another few points and they no longer get a 5-ft step as it's a full-round action for them now! (Yes, it really works that way.)Actually... ability damage in Pathfinder does NOT actually reduce the ability score. It's tracked like non-lethal damage, and for every two points of damage, you take a -1 penalty to all affected stats. Once the amount of damage equals or exceeds your ability score, then the appropriate Really Bad Thing happens. The score itself does not reduce however, and thus neither does your carrying capacity. Perhaps this was an unintended oversight of the change from 3.5 to Pathfinder, but that's the RAW. Also note that creatures with an even-numbered ability score are not (immediately) affected by a single point of damage to that score. Again, its only -1 per 2 points of damage. Holy Tuna Fish! You are right! I have just applied it directly to the ability score, but that is not right. It reduces the skills and the modifier but NOT the score itself! funny the things you find in the fine print. Makes you wonder why they have the chart in the character sheet for modifying the ability scores.... maybe you can buff UP the score but can't damage it down???? weirdness.
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