PsychoticWarrior's page

PsychoticWarrior wrote:

Hmmm maybe that means CON is my highest as I've been 'written off' so many times yet am still here...

Not necessarily. Your initial assessment may be correct and you just keep rolling 20s on the really important FORT saves.

:D lol! I must be using my lucky die then (otherwise known as the Orange Die of DOOM! - it has some kind of weird half-spin down numbering then random placement for the bottom half of the numbers)

Every time I've seen this kind of thread on RPG boards the vast majority choose INT or WIS as their highest stat and CHA or STR as their lowest. It's almost a universal law or something.

I'd probably pick CHA as my highest as I seem to get along with others fairly well even when teasing them (and I have been able to convince people I'm really smart when I most certainly am not).

CON is definitely my dump stat though - I have had multiple major illnesses (i.e. life threatening to the point that I once literally had about 6 months to live) and while I am stable today a year ago I was in the hospital for over a week with a variety of problems.

Hmmm maybe that means CON is my highest as I've been 'written off' so many times yet am still here...

Quark Blast wrote:

thenovalord wrote:

Parts of Silmarillion may make good tv series. Focus on relationships etc.

C'mon HBO!

Not happening.

..until the money is right.

My third worst book in the series in my opinion, after Fool Moon and Ghost Story.

It'll likely be in my top 5 then - those were two of my favourite books.

M.H. (cop) - This guys' killed your people, now mine. I think you know who he is.

K.W. (vicious drug lord) - Hahahahhaa! I don't know *who* he is but I know *where* he is. The Other Side.

M.H. - What? Talk sense man!

K.W. The Spirit World! I can feel him all around me.

As one of those who complained about the price...which more has to do with my own personal finances at this point in my life than anything else...I don't want a Basic Game.

Correction - a FREE Basic Game (plus the extras that will be added, FOR FREE, when the PHB, MM and DMG come out).

Did they have to start throwing in free puppies too?

I don't. I just find that people can't stop fiddling with their crap if it's within easy reach. So a phone basket is a must. It's near the table, and if it starts ringing, the owner can get up, answer and we stop playing till he gets back to the table.

I actually had to ask a player not to bring his laptop any longer because he kept watching Heartstone streams on it. Then I had to ask him not to come to the game any more when he refused, first not to watch heartstone, than not to bring the laptop.

Ah - you game with 12 year-olds then! (seriously who does that? Refuses to not watch videos while the game is running? That is a lot over 'the line' even by my lack standards around cell phones).

Yeah, not responding to you specifically.

It was someone else I think who had mentioned basically having everyone ditch their phones at the door, which is pretty much the same as confiscating your property.

I think Hama has his home wrapped within a Faraday Cage anyways O.o

Black people exist. That's how I deal with it.

I roll to disbelieve!

Time's Memory wrote:

I did a poll a couple weeks ago -- no one in my group has ever read any Lovecraft. It might be hard to drum up enthusiasm for Cthulu.

CoC is better if the players don't know Lovecraft.

CoC is best when the players don't even know their playing in it.

So what did people do before cell phones? I mean I was just a teenager in the 80s and we would play D&D for hours on end and no one needed to be constantly calling home or being called from home we just 'hung out'.

Is this really just an artificial need (having to be constantly in contact with everyone we know) recently created? Any oldsters who can tell us what it was like to be an adult with responsibilities back before cell phones were as common as sand on a beach?

Anyways I joke a lot about banning every electronic device within a 50 radius of the gaming table but to be honest none of my players are intrusive about cell phone use. I can only recall 1 phone call being made (and that was an actual, genuine 'people in danger' emergency the required the player to leave immediately) and if a player, who isn't involved in the action right at that moment wants to check her email or play an app game I really don't care. just be ready when you are needed (and everyone always is).

Maybe there just needs to be a happy middle between 'I will throw you bodily from my house for using Satan's Device' and 'I will use my phone however and whereever I like - now pass the toilet paper!'. Cell phones aren't going to disappear and can be extremely useful at the game table (2 of my players have their PCs on a tablet and another uses his phone to look any rules we might need to reference while I, as DM, can continue with the game).

Why yes, yes I do.

I still want to go to the moon and establish colonies as a precursor to colonies at the Lagrange points around earth.

As long as the people living in the colonies don't rebel....

I hear you can get a chance to begin again on the Off World Colonies.

Just watch our for those glittering C-Beams in the darkness near Tanhouser Gate.

I always wnated to ask if every college is so expensive in the us, there is no public college or soemthing?

That would be socialism and it is always evil.

In the USA at least.

we saw the old controlled master stuff when it was force vs force. I wanted to see a younger yoda kick ass, and thats what I got.

Yeah - the sprightly highs of 870 is so much better than the senile decrepitude of 900.

Yoda fight ftw.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore

*enters spaceship and 'blasts' off only to have the ship make weird WWII prop-plane bomber noises*

And your gripe with the chase scene in the streets of Corruscant?

I wasn't intending to go through them point by point but the fact you want details and reasons (for whatever purpose I have no idea) here;

(I'm guessing it's the part where Anakin jumps out of the speeder, missing all other speeders in the lanes below, and lands unerringly on Zam Wesell's speeder, but I shouldn't put words into your mouth.)

No not that part - although it would have been nice to see Anakin using the Force to direct his freefall a little I can accept superhuman feats of dexterity (and luck) from Jedi

What annoyed me with that one was the fact that they had to fly through the ridiculous 'lightning wall of death that does nothing' simply because they likely felt the scene just didn't have enough s#~# in it already. And it really didn't do anything - they didn't crash, blow up or even get their hair mussed up (how does the Force keep a coif in place in an open air vehicle doing 100+kph?). Just random silliness where it wasn't needed.

No, it wasn't random. That was truly my favorite scene.

I'll admit that the factory seemed a little Charlie-Chaplinesque, so I could understand someone else cringing at it.

But surely you can't accuse me of choosing the Yoda scene at random. Whether you love it or hate it, you must admit that it got a lot of hype.

No once in any ad I saw was there a clip of Yoda jumping around like an idiot. After the movie came - oh yes there was 'hype' in that it pretty much the stupidest scene from any Star Wars movie to that point (we hadn't yet been given the lovely overacting of Palpatine in Revenge yet)

I only hoped the scenes you chose were random - now I have to live on a planet where someone actually thinks that was 'clever' movie making that other movie makers should emulate. *sigh*

Does anyone else get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing Freehold DM have Joss Whelon fandom levels of love for JJ Abrams?

You're more alike than you realize. ^.^

I don't get the rabid, mindless hatred for the Star Wars prequels either. And I thought that "Attack of the Clones" was WAY better than "mediocre". The chase scene on Corruscant was not only awesome, I think it was indispensable. I mean, we've seen high-speed flying-car chases before, but this time, we see one in a fully urbanized city filled with thousands of other flying cars. I don't know why science fiction movies don't do that sort of thing more often.

The action in the droid factory was cleverly made, too.

And who can forget Yoda flying into action?

It's amazing how you randomly picked out 3 of the worse, most cring-worthy scenes from AotC. I mean really - Yoda hopping around like a mad frog? The hackneyed cliched tripe in the droid factory? Yeesh!

Rynjin wrote:

I generally try to reserve the word "fiasco" for something a bit more significant than "Movies I didn't enjoy".

Would you consider the prequel trilogy for Star Wars to be a fiasco?

After raking 3 billion dollars worldwide I would love to have a fiasco like the prequels.

Rabid Fanboy "You make movies we hate!"

George Lucas "What? I can't hear you from the top of this mountain of money you gave me!"

And to think I didn't like the prequels on the basis that they were poorly made movies in their own right completely outside of being attached to a much beloved movie series.

Is that...a giant head of something incredibly massive floating in space?

Maybe the source of Ultron? I really looked like his head (just much, much bigger). I know canon has him being built by Henry Pym but that could be changed and there was rumor GotG was supposed to help set up Avengers 2: Age of Ultron.

Enderrin wrote:

Strange, I was just looking at the cover dress and think how little it made me think D&D.

I am not sure what you are looking for if this is not D&D.

A reason to threadcrap?

Rogue/Sorcerer - spells and high charisma (the good dex you should have won't hurt either) will make you the 'faceman' of the party. You'll also get access to all of those spells that, by 5th level, make the sinle classed Rogue a sad, third stringer. Go Rogue for first level to train up all the stealth & disable skills you like - just remember that no matter how good your stealth is someone who is Invisible is much, much better. Leave the damage dealing to the damage dealing party members (Fighter & Ranger) - concentrate on buff/de-power spells once you start to get Sorcerer levels.

Alternatively you could go Wizard/Rogue but I have always liked the flavour and spontaneous casting of the Sorcerer myself.

I've already dumped Pathfinder. Gone back to 4E D&D.

Freehold DM wrote:

Microsoft is coming for you, sissyl....

No, it isn't. I won't buy a kinect. Problem solved.

It's adorable that you think you have to actually *buy* a kinect for it to be able to track your every movement.

I mean that is just the cutest little thing I've ever heard!

So I can have an Xbone without installing a surveillance camera into my living room? Cool.

But they will still bust into your internets and have you cyber-hanged for calling it the XBone!

Based on the topic title as given, I would have to disagree -- it is quite possible for a very nice person to be completely incompetent as a DM.

Of the things cited in the first post, only the blatant favoritism is necessarily a sign of a moral problem in the DM. Railroading and powerful DMPCs could be an effect of ignorance -- maybe he learned how to DM from a bad BM and does not know any better. It does not help that there are many published adventures that seem to focus on keeping the players literally "on track".

Am I bad person for reading BM as Bowel Movement?

Of course I am.

Quite excited to see what Butcher has in store for us in a few weeks. :)

Oh yes - got my copy on pre-order through amazon right now. I'm much more excited about this one than I was about Cold Days. Not that Cold Days was bad or anything it just seemed a little stale and formulaic compared to the 3 books prior.

I'm thinking a combo of those two.... Make basic human character and literally call him Red Shirt 1 Red Shirt 2 etc..... then at the very least i get a personal laugh.... i should start showing up wearing a red shirt as well lol.... ok you guys are giving me deliciously evil ideas now....

While I can't condone passive aggressive behaviour (having been on the receiving end of it far too many times) this had me laughing out loud.

It would seem people feel strongly about comic books.

The less something matters in real life the more seriously many take it.

PsychoticWarrior wrote:

There's a penis joke here somewhere...

Back you hungry warhawk, back.

Man, you just can't stop, can you? :p

There's a penis joke here somewhere...

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

But hey, it beats the Kobold Cleaver file.

Australia's not even a real country. It's, like, part of Germany, isn't it?

Ahh I miss the glory days of the Australian-Hungarian empire.

I don't care how Hungry you are allying with Australia is always a bad idea - they're all criminals (at least their grandparents are!)

I played a cleric of Kord who was way into physical fitness. SO much so he started a jogging club in the city of Cauldron. Every morning - 25 laps around the lake! He did have excellent physical stats but was only an OK cleric (16 Wis 12 Cha vs. 18 Str and 16 Con - all rolled 4d6 in order). He was a lot of fun.

Build a border to keep the snowbirds out

Do that and we unleash the most horrible thing ever conceived by man (or in this case Canadians) - the Justin Beiber/Celene Dion hybrid - Juslene Diber!

I have had good luck selling the harder to find items like boxed set (sold the Return to the Tomb of Horrors campaign box for something like $150 6-7 years ago) but things like the PHB, DMG, even Wilderness Survival Guides never seem to get much money. Magazines are even worse the best I've ever done on Dragon mags is about $1 per and that was really, really old issues in near mint condition. :(

so what's happened in the last 6 months? That article is from Sept of last year.

edit

Here is an update. Hours long wait to get inside and people seem to be enjoying themselves. Even the protesters have smiles on their faces - must have gotten a McHappy Meal themselves!

The possibility it was shot down to prevent a secret cargo from reaching china is the alteration on the theme. So we have a tie in with the theft of nasa secrets by an Iranian engineer working with nasa. While most of the documents were discovered in a storage facility in the USA accidentaly, more were shipped on to Iran. This ties in with the Iranians on the plane under stolen passports. They are shipping the documents to a Chinese buyer. The USA shoots down the plane to prevent the documents from going to China.

Until I know how this all fits into the Reverse Vampires' diabolical plot to eliminate dinner I cannot believe this is true.

Most of the 'All-New X-Men' as introduced in Giant-Sized XMen annual #1

Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Marvel Girl/Phoenix and Cyclops. Years later Kitty Pryde was a welcome addition to the team but we lost Phoenix and Cyclops to get her :(

Lee: <roll> 15! plus....mmm
Me: Hit
Lee: No, let me work it out...
Me: Hit
Lee: I think I broke 40, but what did I actually get?
Me: Hit
Lee: 45, but did I get a +2 from your blessing...?
Me: Hit
Lee: What bonus type was it? Does it stack or not, with what I cast?
Me: Hit
Lee: You know, I think I might have actually broken 50 with that roll...
Freyja: ****in ell! Are you not listenin'? YOU. HIT.
Me: <eyeroll>

Years ago i had a player who did this nonsense all the time. Eventually I would, after he had totaled everything up (and being told right at the start that his nat 19 was a hit), declare it to be a miss as his PC was obviously so distracted that he couldn't possibly be swinging his sword right.

The best part the first few times the player believed me and just looked sad. The rest of the table gave him a few 'damn that's too bad!'. Eventually he got with the program and combats sped up remarkably.

If I am not going to go away for some personal time, because I made a commitment to my friends, neither shall they. Or they can not come that day.

Gaming before sex Hama? Seriously? You must just be a joy to hang around with. :D

Here unspoken rule refers to something that is not outright banned in the table, but everyone or at least most people have voiced a distaste to something and it's usually frowned upon. People might want to do it, but they usually don't to respect the rest of the table.

Ours is the use of "save or die" effects, both for players and GM. Only once can I remember them being used. Even then no one expected it to work when our Magus won initiative and used Phantasmal Killer on one of the bosses. The saves weren't too bad and this boss had good saves on both fort and will. And he rolled incredibly bad for both of them, dying instantly. That was the most anticlimactic fight we had, which really got us all to laugh.

I'd also say summoners are banned, but at least 2 GMs have outright banned them from their games (we tend to rotate who is the GM).

All of our rules are unspoken.

We communicate solely by smoke signal and interpretive dance.

PsychoticWarrior wrote:

Clearly he's a fan of The Forever War!

The Forever War did use collapsars as FTL jump points.

But the time dilation was pretty extreme with centuries passing while one was using an FTL jump point.

I didnt like the enterprise series because it had a spaceship that was too advanced. I liked the 'realistic' feel of the phoenix in first contact.

We need that. No gravity deckplating. Rather gravity is purely a thing that happens when the ship accelerates. That means the back wall should be the floor and the front window should be the ceiling. I want to see a crew who spend their time in ironman armor protecting them from gforces. If it takes four light years to get to the next starsystem then that is the basis for the next four years of the series. Not making it is what happens to them on the trip. Encountering a human colony in interstellar space who are doing a seventy five thousand year trip to proxima a year in would be awesome.
Crew going nuts with isolation in the long arc, even better.

So you want Big Brother in Space? Would the home audience get to vote on who gets to be Captain for the week? This is already being done with reality shows and the results are annoying and unwatchable. Having it more scripted isn't going to help much at all.

PsychoticWarrior wrote:

Exactly my feelings. It may be cheaper to bundle the PHB and DNG into a single volume but the unwieldiness of that 500 page monstrosity (with its weak binding and easy separating cover!)

This is why gygax gave us ducttape.

And if I was talking about a WotC product you would likely not be nearly so flippant (or forgiving, apparently). Paizo, of course, gets the free pass on shoddy products because...well I don't really know why in this case.

Clearly he's a fan of The Forever War!

pres man wrote:

Paint the dwarf grey and use him as a dwarven statue.

That is a really good idea. To bad I've thrown all of mine away.

I sold mine for 9 cents each.

I made a killing off of the 27 of them I had ;-)

What I don't know

• How to discuss the family/extras issue while making clear that it's not the player's families I mind and without completely shutting the player off (the guy with the largest number of non-players at the sessions has an awesome family and I enjoy them all when I'm not gaming. His boys are hilarious.)

Just tell him that. Flat out - 'Your family is awesome and I enjoy spending time with them but game night just isn't the right setting.' Maybe you could work out some kind of 'family day' outside of game night for everyone to visit (if that becomes important)

• How to get a bunch of introverts to be honest and forthcoming with their desires for the game

Your game hater will likely try to talk over most of them. Don't let her. If she interrupts stop her cold and say "I'm sorry [name] but [other name] was speaking/had a point to make/wanted to add something. Thanks." Then look away from her and towards the person she interrupted.

• How to reach a compromise with the player who wants to play but despises everything my game represents

You likely can't and she will be a constant irritant. Just a prediction based on previous experience but one I would stand by.

Good luck Shining One - I don't envy this group you've found they seem like a lot more work than I would be willing to put in (especially for having just joined and they want you to DM). Please let us know how things work out tomorrow.

Healer class was weak at healing. A better choice, favored soul with healing/curing/removing spell selections and one level of dragon shaman for healing aura.

Exactly my experience when I wanted to make a party 'super buffer' and healer. Favoured Soul was awesome (never did the Dragon Shaman level but that was only b/c we already had a full on Dragon Shaman in the party!).

As for the OP - DMPCs aren't really something I've used long term. An NPC here and there that last a half dozen sessions before leaving or getting killed is about the most. I use that 'space' to try out character concepts of my own but they are almost always a couple of levels behind the party and they do what they are told (mostly) by the PCs.

Good advice all around. But ohhhhh....the ridicule I'll be subject to! LOL

Rocks fall, everybody dies is still a valid option if it gets too bad!

I'm kind of the opposite side of this. While the DDM line did contain some really questionable miniatures I think the majority of the sculpts are quite good.

Oh come on! You didn't like Moe the Caravan Guard and Sgt Giantfist Bighead of the Dwarven Halls (of Huge Freaking Melons!)??!

I do agree with you in that there are a number of DDM sculpts that left a lot to be desired - and others that were just awesome (the Beholder from the Deathknell set, the Efreeti from Angelfire and the Behir from Giants of Legend were always favourites of mine)