Keldoclock's page

This thread moves so fast...

Allow me to present a few quick links, to enrich your life with objectively awesome things!

One of ensiferum's songs- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyvPe0uqjjY

McNinja's Top 10 moments- http://drmcninja.com/newreaders.php

Project Zomboid is a Java-based game currently in pre-alpha, which has a minecraft-like business model, a demo, and is totally bleak and zombie-y and awesome. From having to manage food and water, to building a fort and rallying survivors, to fighting through zombies with a hammer just to get a single can of soup for your paralyzed wife, it's one of the most fun experiences I've ever had with a game and it's got tons of potential whenever it's done.

I don't see why everyone says the fourth dimension is time.

H.G. Wells was not a scientist. Time is (like space) a mental construct created by humans to more easily understand and navigate the universe. It is a measure, just as any other thing may be a measure, and there are indeed properties to time, but a unilateral axis of "time" does not exist as we think it does. The closest things to such would be casualty and contiguity.

The relativistic principle of causality says that the cause must precede its effect according to all inertial observers. This is equivalent to the statement that the cause and its effect are separated by a timelike interval, and the effect belongs to the future of its cause. If a timelike interval separates the two events, this means that a signal could be sent between them at less than the speed of light. On the other hand, if signals could move faster than the speed of light, this would violate causality because it would allow a signal to be sent across spacelike intervals, which means that at least to some inertial observers the signal would travel backward in time. For this reason, special relativity does not allow communication faster than the speed of light.

In the theory of general relativity, the concept of causality is generalized in the most straightforward way: the effect must belong to the future light cone of its cause, even if the spacetime is curved.

tl;dr
Time is not a dimension, causality and contiguity are important and you should go read about them more when you have the time, you lazy, lazy internet person.

All of this is a pretty hefty pile of science, and has little to do with the possibility of additional spacial dimensions. It's fully possible that there are more dimensions than those that we perceive, although I cannot think of any outstanding examples that would suggest such a thing, most likely because I cannot perceive them.

I have 3 Quaker Oats containers, what terrain should I build with them?

IANJ, but- WICKED AWESOME SKATE PARK! DO EET!

@JJ

Do you like-

The original X-Com game
The Witcher 2
The totally awesome finnish viking metal band Ensiferum

Are you looking forward to-

The 2012 X-Com remake (not the FPS)
Project Zomboid
The next installment of the Dr. McNinja webcomic?

trouble finding places in raids...

That one, my good man, is less due to the abundance of DPS and more due to the... er, unique reputation of night elf hunters.

@Kelsey regarding vehicle DCs: I like the high DCs myself, it means you have to get a lot of competent dudes and have them all aid another.

@JJ

I have recently began a most devious plan- one of the groups that I GM are playing Serpent's Skull, and a new player has joined, taking the role of Sasha. I have secretly made plans with the player to have her betray the party just before the conclusion of the AP, which the

The idea is for this to happen just prior to the last few hours of the AP, to shock and weaken the players just before the final fight.

What do I do if she somehow succeeds?

Is there anything in particular that would help in foreshadowing and executing the betrayal?

(This particular group, I am certain, will not mind it, and in fact will likely greatly enjoy the surprise)

Just fudge it. Draw a roughly 2" circle around the caster and there you go, magic circle. Something sits on the edge of the circle, just say they are literally on the edge of the circle and they cannot go any further.

Huh.I don't know if I'll ever be grabbing this one, to be honest. I've got Pathfinder(for when I ache with grognardia) and Legends(for when I am running a low-prep game[or one with really, really high-op players that love breaking systems]) for all my D&D needs, so unless this new edition is something really dazzling, I think I'll skip it.

Under the cheating rogue Bard archetype-

The plural of "die" is "dice".

For shame, gamer, for shame.

Wizard,Wizard,Wizard, Wizard.

Wizard?

Wizard.

@Void Munchkin

You could get a job testing CRPGs, but man, would it suck. At best, poor job security and poor pay. At worst, 24 hour workdays. Seriously.

@James Jacobs

I've read the Bestiary 3 and now I'm inspired to create a ratfolk alchemist who will hopefully end up with armies of clockwork soldiers (the shiniest army!), but I've ran into one stumbling block-
Every single ratfolk or wererat miniature I've managed to find is naked! That won't do for a civilized rodent like mine! Do you know of any ratfolk that are a little less... exposed, or will I just have to perform amateur surgery on my miniatures?

I also vaguely remember something being said about Asmodeus once having a counterpart, but no longer?

But yeah, the basic idea is that every campaign setting is a planet or solar system on the Material Plane, except the big space-sprawling ones like 40k. You could possibly reconcile even those, by claiming alternate timelines, futures, and identical but very distant galaxies.

From time to time I slip in a bit of stuff from other settings around magical anomalies and such in my own games. A revolver, some ceramic coins from Athas, Elminister's old staff, a lasgun, and a hubcap (being used as a goblin's shield, of course!).

Name: Ye Olde Goone Squade
Alignment Axis: CE
OOC Structure:Dictatorship
RP Level: Nonexistant
IC Structure:Dictatorship
Purpose: Break the game.

It is at this point that you would be well reminded that sarcasm, is in fact, a thing.

I think that there is a *very* crucial distinction between a difficult game and a mind numbingly monotonous difficult one. The entire genre of roguelikes is proof of this. I, for one, would very much like it if when a player dies, they are dead unless they possess a certain magic item or can have another player resurrect them. Perhaps there can be an option to display some sort of beacon around dead players? It would encourage cooperation and allow the less-heroic folks to extort some gold out of the dead player.

To that end, character creation should be fast and simple.

You, sir, have insulted the mighty Goone Squade.

They will find you.

I played WoW from August 2008 to June 2011, the game was pretty good but I ended up quitting after the new Cataclysm expansion. One of the big draws to WoW(for me at least) was the promise of continuing the plot of Warcraft III, and once that was done and I got my Shadowmourne, I felt a sense of closure and being "done" with the game that was immensely satisfying, and had no interest in Cataclysm beyond a day or two being a Worgen named Wolf with a wolf pet named Wolf.

Thou shalt not use hookers as fishing nets.

Thou shalt not assault party members

Thou shalt use Channel when two party members are at negative HP.

Thou shalt who Desna is when you make a Cleric of Desna.

Thou shalt not try to invent firearms. Especially with only one rank in Knowledge(engineering).

Thou shalt not use your cell phone at the table.

Thou shalt not use your cell phone at the table to look up the stats of monsters we are fighting.

Thou shalt not hit on the female players.

I've not yet read all the way through Advanced Player's Guide, and I've barely even looked in Ultimate Combat and Ultimate Magic beyond looking at the specific concepts that I need for building things like the Jade Regent Adventure Path.

*looks at (Creative Director)*

On the occasions that I play (and with all the important NPCs in my homebrew stuff) I start with a cool rules mechanic in combat and build a character around it, regardless of the efficiency. Being a GM, of course, I have a bit more freedom to toss absurd foes at my players.

From trip fighters to melee sorcs (Arcane Strike!) to a cavalier's mount pulling a gnome-operated ballista, some of the most awesome fights are inspired by the shiny new mechanics you guys crank out!

Invoke the magic words:

"Are you sure you want to do that?"

I've had one player find a dead ...er, escort, in a lake, skin her, and use her skin as a fishing net.

The rest of the party killed him.

As for things like
"The king comes up on the podium to address the city and --"
"I SHOOT THE KING WITH MY CROSSBOW!"
"Err, why?"
"BECAUSE LOL!"
Then the player dies to two hundred Royal Guards.

If something is going to kill the players if they engage it, they should be warned ahead of time.

My games are semi-lethal- I'm not going to go out of my way to kill the players (no NPC parties built to counter them in every way), but I let the dice fall where they will and build my scenarios based on logic, not game balance or CRs(Generally this ends up favoring the party, but not always).

Step 1. Make sure they really deserve it.
Step 2. Take your biggest miniature. (In my case, heavy metal Cthulhu)
Step 3. Place on table with satisfying thud, commence TPK.

EDIT: Hastur Hastur Hastur is also acceptable.

I would Nethack it up in here.

Houchou(Minor Artifact)
This is a small +1 Axiomatic platinum spoon. It is thrown at a target, and if it hits, it instakills the victim. There is no defense against Houchou, but if it hits a target, the tool itself is always destroyed in the process.

For the bard, a microphone cord necklace. Maybe be nice and have it enchanted to give him a +2 on Perform(Oratory) checks.

You shouldn't be too evil with your wishes unless the wish-giver is clearly evil. Give them what they want, try to make it awesome but not overpowered. Even better, just don't give em wishes at level 5!

Of course that's for a major event. What about small things like simple bandit bosses and such? Well, then you hit an even bigger problem: you're now devoting time, money, and manpower to a one-shot event that one player or one small group of players gets to experience. And that's it. That's all the bang you get for your buck. One to five players in a massively multiplayer game gets to experience something sorta cool I guess.

You could generate named mobs and dialogue/quests for them from some sort of library, that way you would have things be unique but not too hard to implement.

Also, you're just jealous of my sweet black scarab mount.

Dexther wrote:

All of us want a game that can: Thievery anyone (skill challenge: target versus thief)

I don't. The ability to steal from anyone, in my mind, is just too abusable as a method to torture weaker characters.

The other parts just seem more boring than immersive. Eating is a enjoyable experience, but watching a digital character eat isn't really. I like sleeping, but I am not drawn into a game by waiting for my character to rest.

Actually, here's a good place to steal an idea from WoW- Rogues in that game could pickpocket any player or NPC and would gain a small amount of money/items that didn't correlate to the actual inventory- this allowed for silly items(porno mags, pet rocks, shiny coins) and was both fun and useful.

Y'all are just jealous my elf can do flips.

I try to mess around with the rules enough to let my players have whatever character they want, seeing as they're helpless when it comes to mechanics. I suppose the key thing is to offer up corollaries to their particularly outlandish ideas- Sure, your barbarian can have wings made of lightning, but only while raging and only for 2x rage rounds per flying round, etc.

I have a small stack of character sheets lying around that I make occasionally in my spare time, these are for people to pick up who are just sitting in for a session/new to RPGs/just died. They're all pretty silly, most of them are characters from movies, tv shows, Unforgotten Realms (of course Roamin is a lvl 11 Paladin!), a bear bard with max Disguise and Bluff to pretend to look human and speak Common, so on.

Seeing as I am still in high school, pizza and Dr Pepper is the typical fare on the occasions we can get together in-person - lazy teenagers means that most of our games are via Infrno.

Do remember that the NPC guide stats are just there as examples for a surprised GM to pull out of his ass when the players begin to start brawls in taverns and kill the kind old farmer that they were supposed to help.

Not all farmers are Expert 1/Commoner 1, although I can't really see how even the toughest old farmer could be more than level four or five.

TIIIIIME THEIIIF!

Oh god I love confusing the crap out of GMs with wacky classes like that.

Thanks to the Open Gaming Licence, you don't even need to buy the Core Rulebook to start adding exiting things to the Beginner Box, although you'll probably still want to pick up the Core (and eventually other supplements too!).

D20pfsrd.com is an enormous and excellent resource for these sorts of things, containing rules and stats for more or less anything you might encounter, and is great for when your players do things you weren't expecting.

Scrolls are a way to store magic for later use- particularly handy for clerics and wizards, who cannot change their prepared spells once they've chosen them. In the full game, Wizards even start with the ability to scribe their own scrolls!

You know, I'm pretty convinced that one day some alien civilization will find internet stuff like this and decide that elves were one of our ethnic groups.

Paizo flip mats with wet erase at home, and borrowed dry erase whilst gaming in school. 3D terrain with painted on 1" square grid when appropriate.

Lego tabletop gaming is really more the domain of Brikwars, which is the awesomest thing ever for incredibly silly WH40k style battles.

I once ran a Elf Time Thief, it worked well with the flavor, the extra INT gave me the needed skills to be a decent monkey, and I managed to compensate for my low combat damage with an Elven Curve blade and Weapon Finesse.

Also, every single girl gamer I know plays an elf. The more elves, the better!

Must carry big heavy books, make you strong.

Also broke.

I saw a very interesting article in the Dungeonomicon detailing how D&D is really more of a Iron Ages setting then a medieval one.

Settlements are secure, but separated and there is no such thing as a "national" army. Utter destruction of, well, anything is extremely rare and abhorrent- raiding is much more common, and socially acceptable. Not quite so strange in a world where the heroes are essentially hitmen.

On the rare occasions I give my players a large force to command, the force is typically "a village gone to war", where there are thirty or so Commoner 1's with longspears, pitchforks, clubs, that sorta thing, 10 or so Warrior 1's with some basic armor and weapons, maybe five Adept 1's, and the leader of the force being a ~ lvl 4 PC classed guy, typically a Fighter or Paladin. Possibly toss in an awesome old dude, Wizard 3 or something like that.

A true army,the sort that would be used in a long lasting military campaign, would probably have ~ 1000 troops in total, with a few nobles combining their own personal armies of ~150 troops. Of these, the vast majority would likely be Warrior 1 "footmen", with a few Commoners, Fighters, and Adepts scattered about.

I suppose the key thing to remember is that the vast majority of the world are level one or two Commoners and Experts, and that PC classes are rare, the domain of adventurers, mercenaries, and Royal Guard.

Back when they were relatively new, they were covered in a smooth, white finish that must have made them look absolutely majestic.

Don't forget the gold caps!

Hopefully I'll be able to reference this if I ever run Kingmaker.

I second James Jacobs, this thing needs to be full of maps, even if they aren't illustrated.

I don't see why people hate the idea of guns in fantasy, exp. when there is historical precedent, even in Western Europe.

One of my players has a clockwork TARDIS. Bring on the hate mail!

Everyone knows Rouges are Overpowdered!

I've actually not been on a windows machine for several years now. Macs are so much nicer! :-)

How does such a great man go so wrong?

Absolutely, it terrifies my players.

Best thing ever is to follow it up with two empty rooms.

I think that Pathfinder should remain in the current edition for perhaps another eight years, I would be fine with a second edition of Pathfinder NOT being backwards-compatible with 3rd edition, but SHOULD keep it's 3rd edition feel.

I would pay serious money for a pleather-bound copy of a revised(Stealth rules, better formatting, easier reference) of the Core Rulebook with all 20 base classes, choice rules & options from supplements, the race creation rules, and like sixteen pages of equipment. Packaged with a Bestiaries+Gamemastery Guide.

While we're at it, have James Jacob's sign it and charge ludicrous sums of dollars for it.

Really, if there was some sort of tangible equivalent to the PFSRD, I would be willing to pay maybe $600-$1000 (and I'm fifteen and don't have an allowance :P ) for it. Just, an enormous tome of tabletop gaming, complete with fake leather and arcane runes and glass/plastic "gems", to really capture the feel of the 3rd edition materials.

Uninvited Ghost wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

uriel222 wrote:

But seriously, what about considering the option for the first Golarion map?

I'd rather that product be a globe.

I'd like a globe too!

+1 to the globe but, only if it opens up to reveal tumblers and fine whiskey nestled within.

Holy shit, I think I need to get new pants now.

The globe should have a dice compartment within. Possibly with some Q-workshop Golarion-y dice!

Does anyone know if there will ever more of this sort of thing coming along? Further developments for Legacy of Fire, or some of the other APs.

I agree with GeraintElberion, something like this for the most climactic dungeons of each AP would be just be absolute show-stoppers for the players.

Hi! I'm a brand-spanking new GM, with a group of 4 players who have never roleplayed before. I'd like to know how to best approach the setup for this AP- I'll be using those conversions, assorted forum fluff things(like the festival games), and wanted to know if I should change character creation in any way. I was thinking of using the SA monk fix, and allowing anything all the splatbook things, with me holding veto power.

I figured that it'd be a good idea to run the Master of the Fallen Fortress first, as a tutorial, and have the players figure out what sort of character they'd like whilst playing that, then me finding the most fitting class and archetype to their concept.

Are the Paper Minis any good, or should I just use book art to make counters?

Do I need to read all 6 modules before I begin? I've read Burn Offerings front to back and a good chunk of the Skinshaw Murders

Any tips for things like handling combat, game-breaking character builds, etc?