As a GM I hate page-flipping. I hate the systemic distractions and delays that come with PNP RPGs. I have found a distinct correlation between the sheer labor that comes with playing RPGs, and my players becoming distracted and disengaged (followed by the tippy-tappy of texting).
Experienced players and dedicated GMs can stream-line these problems by memorizing dozens of pages of rules and tables, but this takes hundreds of hours of preperation and play time. That is a lot of work just to play a game fairly and efficiently. Worse, many players will carve out comfort zones--a personal bubble of rules knowledge--that they will rarely stray from because to do so would mean more memorization. More notes. More work. This limits experimentation and creativity.
I love VTTs and other digital aids for gaming. The point of roleplaying is not to crunch numbers, memorize tables and spells, or look up rules. The point is to have fun. I have found that using digital aids actually helps my players stay engaged. Less time spent digesting rules and numbers means more time for role-playing, tactics, and experimentation.
Digital character sheets, automated dice rolls for NPCs and monsters (and some times PCs), automated loot, quick and easy shopping, beautiful high resolation maps with fog of war, etc. All of these features can free up precious time and brain power.
If we want the hobby to grow we must adapt and improve.
As some one who was skeptical of the OWS movement when it began, I'm impressed by how it has shifted the economic narrative in the US from national debt to income equality. The movement has its problems (the attraction of "professional activists," hipsters, anarchists, and other social piranha), but raising awareness about our country's third-world income disparity is a great achievement.
Israel spends a greater percentage of its GDP on its military than the US does.
I fully believe in peace through military superiority. There hasn't been a period in history where a military power vacuum has gone unfilled. The choice then is between a military hegemony administered by a sometimes malevolent, sometimes benevolent constitutional republic where "we" (American citizens) can still influence policy--or we can choose to end the US military status quo, and leave the void to be filled by totalitarian regional powers with their own bloody track records.
If there is a third alternative, I'd love to hear it.
Certainly, there are a handful of poor "professional" reviewers out there, but by and large they do their jobs.
The reviewers aren't the problem. The major game publishers (like EA) provide the advertising revenue that keeps the gaming magazines and websites afloat. There is an obvious conflict of interest when a gaming journalist submits a review on a website that is covered in ads for the game he just reviewed. As a result, review scores for heavily marketed games (like DA 2) are artificially inflated. If you don't believe me read this.
The Escapist website was dominated by Dragon Age 2 ads leading up to the game's launch. No surprise that they gave the game a perfect 5/5.
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On the other hand, an aggregate fan review system just tends to cause the score to settle near a 50/5.0. As the hundreds of laughably low reviews are balanced out by the hundreds of laughably high reviews, it becomes the actually decent fan reviews that get smoothed over, because those are the outliers.
This is simply not true. Mass Effect 2's aggregate user review score is 88 compared to an average critic review of 94. When a game is genuinely good the user score will also be good. When a game fails to live up to its own hype it gets hammered. This is a good thing.
This is the first time I felt like I've been in Athkatla since Baldur's Gate II.
Oh, c'mon now. It's one thing to like the game, but DA 2 is nothing like BG II. They are very different animals. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, though. I wish I could say the same.
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In any case, the action is there to keep the rhythm between brilliant dialogue and meaningful choices.
I agree that DA 2 is best viewed as an interactive novel, rather than as a game that you play and explore.
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Besides how could I hate a game that lets me sarcastic and snarky in EVERY conversation? I am GIDDY - finally a PC that gets to be the funny one.
Yes, but even here they failed to import the best feature of Mass Effect 2:
Maybe you didn't get my reply to your first post...read up, the thread is not too long, I will not post it again. There is a list of important information revealed by the leaks, a list which is only a small subset of valuable information which should be public.
I replied to your post. The link you provided did not specify what ground breaking information--if any--came from Manning's documents. What exactly did this man accomplish?
Or (the more parsimonious alternative) people with primed expectations are unable to reasonably judge something on its own merits.
I've clearly stated every major problem I have with the game. Repetitive combat, an over-abundance of fetch quests, launch day DLC, and bland environments are generally regarded as negative points for a game.
Scott Betts wrote:
User reviews are terrible.
If you ignore the raving lunatics (on both sides) then user reviews are the best source for unbiased info on a game. If the major publications give a game 90% reviews, and the average user review is 50-60%, that's a good indication something is wrong. Personally I'd rate the game a 7/10.
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Don't I feel like a complete goober. Here I was, having an absolute BLAST playing the game and enjoying it greatly.
I enjoyed the first 10 hours or so, and then it slowly dawned on me how shallow the combat is, how bland and repetitive the environments are, and how some of the best aspects of the first game have been completely abandoned for no apparent reason.
If you're getting your $60 worth, then more power to you.
DA2 has received favorable reviews. I'm pretty sure it's going to be far from the most disappointing game of the year. Most nerdrage-inducing game? Perhaps.
What constitutes disappointing? Expecting greatness and getting much less? Because all those favorable reviews are what contributed to my disappointment.
Check user reviews for DA 2 on Metacritic and you will find they are much less favorable. Gaming journalism is nothing but a hype machine for the big publishers.
I said it wasn't a bad game. It just doesn't measure up to Bioware's standards and it certainly doesn't measure up to the $60 dollar price tag. Also who ever came up with this "day 0 premium DLC" crap needs to die in a fire. There is no way to justify charging players more money for something that should be included in the full game (in this case an "extra" character). It's pure f$@@ing greed.
Here's my beef with the game itself:
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--Character creation is a direct transplant from Mass Effect. Gone is the first game's incredibly diverse character creation system. Instead, you are Shepard--er, I mean Hawke--the human refuge from Lothering. period. You can be nothing else.
--The environments are nothing but dull, copy-pasted corridors. I can't think of a single interesting set piece in the entire game. As a result exploration is non-existent as your party is rail-roaded from one bland corridor to the next. You spend 80% of the game in the same city with the same beige and off-white textures, the same boring architecture, and the same generic NPCs.
--Combat is visually impressive but ultimately unsatisfying and repetitive. The game throws wave after wave of trash mobs at you with no regard for tactics. Enemies will literally materialize out of thin air behind your party. This renders tactics even more redundant because no matter how carefully you position your party its all for nothing if enemies can just spawn from out of a SOLID WALL next to your casters. And they will.
--The story arc lacks focus, or any real purpose for that matter. Most of the missions are nothing but simplistic fetch quests padded for time by repetitive combats with a very limited range of enemies. One quest has you fighting an entire dungeon full of nothing but dragon whelps whose only tactic is to charge in and melee. This is the sort of poorly planned tripe you'd get from a novice GM.
--The soundtrack is a forgettable rehash of the first game.
This is a terrible film. It could have been a decent popcorn action flick if the f~@%ing camera WOULD HOLD STILL FOR 2 G#& D+!NED SECONDS! The editing is so fast and choppy the audience never has a clue what exactly is going on. Who's shooting at who? Where are the bad dudes in relation to the good dudes? Who just died? Don't ask me, man, I'm just watching the bloody thing.
The only entertaining part in the whole movie is when Michelle Rodriguez gets blasted in the face with alien fluids and the locker-room joke that follows. Yeah, they went there.
This will go down as the most disappointing game of 2011. Bioware intentionally set the bar low for themselves, and then put forth just enough time and effort to make their chin-up. This was done so that the game could be finished within a ridiculously short development cycle (12 months between the release of Awakening and Dragon Age 2). The game is such a blatant, cynical cash-grab on the part of Bioware and EA that I actually feel betrayed. I will never purchase another Bioware product on launch day.
The game itself isn't bad, but it's not good enough or long enough to warrant the premium price ($60 on PC). It should have been a full-blown expansion to the original Dragon Age like Throne of Bhaal was to Baldur's Gate II.
The only possible answer I can think of is Catti-brie, and I don't remember her fainting.
It's been well over a decade since I read the Crystal Shard (and I skimmed it) but I'm pretty sure that's the character. I recall a BBEG took her prisoner and kept using some sort of fear ability to get her to shutup.
I often found myself rooting for the villains when reading Salvatore.
I remember Salvatore emphasizing in an interview that his novels were NOT in accordance with the game system. He said that this approach would not make for a good novel. He cited, as an example, a high-level character that got felled in one blow in one of his novels, which he said would be quite impossible in a game.
This may be true of his later novels, but his earlier work is obviously transcribed from gaming sessions. I remember a scene in the Crystal Shard that went something like:
[strong-willed, brave female protagonist]: Who are you? Watch yourself or I'll blah blah blah typical 80s empowered female character posturing.
[BBEG with a really scary looking face]: OOGA-BOOGA!
[strong-willed, brave female protagonist]: *fails will save and faints*
later...
[strong-willed, brave female protagonist]: You'll never get away with this! I'm not afraid of you. The forces of G will always triumph over E!
[BBEG with a really scary looking face]: OOGA-BOOGA!
[strong-willed, brave female protagonist]: *fails will save and faints*
Yeah...nothing at all of importance. A bigger list with links to the articles is on
Unless I missed something, none of what you listed there came from Manning. I didn't attack Wikileaks. I said that Manning got himself thrown in jail for nothing (assuming he is found guilty).
The novels did not start getting good until they made the decision to scrap the game system when it got in the way, which they did to the point where they virtually ditched it entirely for the Twins novels.
Too bad Salvitore never got this. You can practically see the characters rolling for saves and skill checks in his novels. Awful.
Manning leaked thousands of classified documents that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that in war civilians often die.
His leak exposed nothing. We expect collateral damage in Afghanistan because that is an integral part of the Taliban's tactics. If you fight in or near populated centres you will have civilian casualties. period.
We're supposed to be shocked that war is terrible? Manning got himself life in prison for nothing.
Spells in my home game are very powerful -- but they're so hard to get off reliably in combat that martial characters end up doing all the heavy lifting.
That kind of game suits me and my players, but I'll be the first to acknowledge that it isn't for everyone.
Fair enough, but why would anyone actually play a spell-casting class in this system?
All the non-combat spells. ;)
See, this aspect of magic is much harder to plan for and balance than combat spells. I can usually balance combat for high power casters without punishing the rest of the party. On the other hand, to have a caster PC actively working to bypass story, RP, and puzzle sections with "spells" can be very frustrating.
I hope so. Our very strong opinion is that 3.X is so drastically imbalanced in favor of casters that only an equally large tilt in the playing field could right it.
Wait, I'm sorry, is this a thread about 3.X or Pathfinder? Honest question.
Kirth Gersen wrote:
And, seriously, skill rolls are no match for find the path and wind walk.
I agree. Spells like those present real balance problems to the GM (at least for me). In combat I can easily shatter the glass cannon, especially if he is assigning slots to non-combat spells. Out of combat, dealing with all the wizard's built-in game breakers is a real head-ache. Though it can be fun. Some times. Rarely.
You could ask my players. The thing is to keep a large mix of combat, exploration, and investigation going on. Casters are indispensable for the latter two. In combat, they can turn the tide if and only if the martials buy them some breathing room.
A player accustomed to playing a caster because they dominate everything in combat and out of it would certainly be very unhappy playing my game.
If your players enjoy themselves then more power to you, but I get the feeling that at higher levels your system will become increasingly imbalanced as fighters gain additional iterative attacks and feats.
Exploration and investigation are things which almost any class can be good at with a combination of good RP, skill rolls, and items.
Spells in my home game are very powerful -- but they're so hard to get off reliably in combat that martial characters end up doing all the heavy lifting.
That kind of game suits me and my players, but I'll be the first to acknowledge that it isn't for everyone.
Fair enough, but why would anyone actually play a spell-casting class in this system?
@Gnome- If you read some of cranewings other threads, you may notice a pattern. Don't think of it as class balance. Think more in the lines of a low magic/martial class encouraged game. Like alot of fantasy fiction, casters will be rare, and a fighter can often shrug off their mind effects if he just wills it. Casters will be greatly dependent on martial classes for protection, but can offer versatile noncombat or buffing uses and the occasional situational lucky blast vs bad guys.
This can all be handled from the GM side without making potentially imbalanced house rules for every contingency. If cranewings wants a low magic campaign then he can lower the number and level of NPC wizards and build their spell lists with fewer save or suck spells. Problem solved.
If, however, he has beef with PC wizards then he should just ban them from his game, or ban the most abused save or suck spells. No player likes having their character nerfed. In cranewings case I can imagine some poor schmuck taking the time to roll a wizard before being handed a laundry list of nerfs and do-nots and can-nots.
So you make the wizard into a low AC, low BAB, low HP buff-bot that gets an occasional, situational lucky blast vs. bad guys while the super-powered fighters charge in killing everything. That's supposed to be fun?
It won't be. Not for the wizard, and ironically not for the Fighters either.
Don't fall into the trap of giving your wife a support class to play. I've seen this mistake repeated again and again with a new female player. The group hands her the support class because she's the woman and as we all know women are naturally inclined to tracking complex spell, religious, and alignment systems why channeling holy energy to turn or dominate the undead--all with no prior experience.
Make sure she gets a simple class with a simple build so that she can learn the basics and still feel like she's contributing.
I've sparred with someone using a spear in my kung-fu class. Geeting near enough to strike at my parter wasn't easy.
Keep in mind that to close the distance with you an opponent must take an attack of opportunity from your spear. Once he is adjacent to your square he can stay inside your reach with a 5-foot step, but actually penetrating your 10-foot bubble will provoke an AoO.
Ah, it's been a while since this issue came up in one of my games, so I just scanned a SRD real quick and misinterpreted any movement as move action. My bad.
To clarify: the SRD I'm reading classifies standing up as a move-equivalent action.
Trip them at 10 feet. Standing up is a move action that provokes an attack of opportunity. If they stand up they can't take a 5 foot step that round. Their best option (assuming this is high level play with iterative attacks) is to take another move action to get inside your reach. This provokes another AoO. You have combat reflexes, right? ;)
The point, yes Japanese men are generally short so I have to agree that the majority were 2-handed katana wielders.
That isn't why they held the Katana with both hands. Wielding a cutting weapon with both hands gives more power, more speed, and more control no matter how tall or short you are.
Giving the Katana the stats of a curved blade is OP assuming the Samurai gets Exotic Prof: Katana for free. Add Keen or Improved Critical and the DPR is better than a Greatsword on top of a bonus CMD against Sunder and it's finesse-able. Why should a Katana be finesse-able?
She got her start as a standard Aguilera pop mimic, realized that wouldn't get her very far (not pretty enough), so she tried the b!*@~!+ crazy approach and it paid off.
The video is gross by mass media standards. I wonder what the casual fans think of it?
If you'd like an extra bit of realism, allow players to treat the Buckler as a 1d3 light martial bludgeoning weapon if wielded (held) in the off-hand. If you attack with the Buckler you lose the AC bonus for that round.
Really? there is no other way the katana can be used?
I didn't say that. I said that a cutting weapon with a handle long enough to be gripped with both hands is probably intended to be used with both hands.
If samurai don't use shields, what is the point of wielding a Katana with only one hand?
Katana not so much, alot of the older paintings and pictures depicting the samurai using a sword two handed, were probably from (the art looks it) an earlier age and so was not likely the katana but a bigger weapon (the tachi) but for us to look at a picture, it just looks like the popular katana.
Considering the Katana is designed to deliver powerful cuts using a torquing technique that requires both hands, it's safe to assume the weapon was normally wielded with two hands and OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE?
Using the argument "well people will still crack it" in this case is pretty much meaningless. They aren't trying to STOP it, as I've said thats impossible, they are trying to slow it and discourage it as much as possible. Which certainly IS possible.
If they can't stop it then what exactly are they "slowing and discouraging" with the security locks?
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Wanting to get rid of this because it means some extra work to organize your personal documents is a fairly weak argument. I can and do everything the OP is wanting to do with one note and the snipping tool in Win7.
There are PC game companies that sell their products DRM-free. Again, I don't think its a relevant comparison because the needs and expectations of a PC gamer are different from those of a PnP GM trying to build an easy reference guide for his campaign.
Buying a ticket to see a movie does not give you the right to take the movie and recut it from the master tapes/files "for your own use."
Purchasing an airline ticket does not endenture the airline to furnish you with your own plane to customize "for your own use."
If you buy an orange the super market doesn't have to give you free oranges for life.
The problem with using analogies to make an argument is that they usually fail when put in context. Buying an orange doesn't grant me free oranges for life (no one demanded free stuff in this thread, btw). However, if I pay for an orange I am free to do what ever I want with that orange. I can cut it up, juice it, smash it, use it to satisfy some devious fruit fetish, plant an orchard--whatever, it's my orange.
If Vic sells his house with the locks in place, the buyer would expect to be handed the keys.
See the problem?
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There comes a point at which the customer is not entitled to further service/product than that which is rendered.
No one here is arguing against that.
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Paizo providing PDF content of all of their material is already atypically accommodating of them. Just go out and purchase a WotC pdf..oh wait.
It's safe to say Paizo provides PDF content because its good for business.
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Take that alongside their nod to print a copy of the pdf legitimately, or extract images for handouts, player maps, etc "for your own use." To then get all red faced and "omg gaiz omg" because retooling, recombining, re-editing and reworking their content is "too time consuming?" Seems a tad wankish.
First, no one in this thread is being unreasonable or wankish. Second, for a hobby company to thrive in the age of competing media it had better take customer feedback seriously. Paizo does this, which is why we love them and give them money (mostly it's about the money). Finally, DRM doesn't make things "hard" for pirates. As soon as the DRM is broken the files will be uploaded to the internet. When that happens your DRM officially becomes good for nothing except annoying the honest customers that are paying for your product.
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It's also a bit exasperating to rehash the "yeah but pirates do it so it shouldn't matter" debate. Step 1: Don't be a D word. Step 2: Remember step 1.
If this is a serious question, I will give you one scenario that I have actually seen happen more than once in LG.
It's a very serious question. I hear stories like this coming out of conventions all the time. It doesn't matter if its Pathfinder or Pokemon. A player should never put themselves in a position to squander several days and several hundred dollars if they lose a game.
-- You should begin play with the expectation that you will lose
-- If your character is killed, you should have a back-up plan of things to do in the local area
-- Attending a CON should never be a self-imposed financial hardship; stay home
With that said, I find it shocking that any GM would boast about killing off a player character considering how much money is involved. That sort of behavior should get the GM banned.
If you manage to write a complete, unsolicited novel based on D&D that's actually good, then the first thing you'll want to do is edit out any reference or likeness to D&D.
For those of us not familiar with PFS (or CON gaming in general), what are the consequences of a PK besides putting away your character sheet? Fresh air and sunshine?
Why not simply rule that any character that is too decrepit or physically unfit to move quickly is denied the 5-foot step? This would be a situational ruling by the GM, not a blanket set of numbers to drape over an already complicated rules set.
I mean it's already your job as GM to do things like that.
Thanks for you work, Perram! The idea of using index cards to print the spells on is interesting, but I've never done something like that before. Would I need to go to a Kinkos to get this done?
