Skill systems aren't a mechanism for the referee to let player-characters do stuff. Player characters were always doing stuff. Skills are a way to prevent player characters from doing stuff. by discriminating among them in different ways.
Hmmm. I'm not sure I agree with this. Skills are merely those abilities characters are assumed to have used often enough to have a level of proficiency using, but it doesn't mean they're restricted or prevented from using skills they have no proficiency in. Of course, in the official 2e system, a character can't just bolt on any old skill they desire; unfortunately, they have restricted access by level. I think it best to allow characters to try anything they wish within common sense and reason. Characters that say they would like to try and learn lumberjacking without an axe or saw, well, good luck hacking at that 120' alder with your shortsword. You will be there awhile, and you won't gain a single point in it.
As for the original question, yes I play and run 2e with house rules. It's the system I've always preferred.
I don't think that WizKids releases that info, and I don't know what it is, with one exception: a case should give you very nearly one of each rare.
For $275 per case, I would hope I'd get every one of them in a case, not "very nearly" all of them. I'm not about to spend that much money on a hope, not in today's economy and job uncertainty.
That's the part of the random model I refuse to buy into. DDM broke me of that. Even if it is the best model from which to sell prepainted minis, find alternatives. Don't prepaint them then or at least offer the option of (cheaper?) unpainted minis. How much money would that save Paizo and WizKids, and could (would) you pass that along?
Let those that enjoy painting (or repainting painted) minis do so, and those that can't or don't want to paint miniatures can use their imaginations. I don't know. It might make the most business sense to sell minis that way, but from a consumer's perspective, it's an expensive model only the well-off can afford to perpetuate.
That'd take up your 40 hours I bet. I have a small side group that has been working their way through this series and they've been having a blast. With ample roleplaying opportunities in Falcons Hollow they made D0 take about 14 hours.
Good choices. We had a lot of fun running through these as well. Jekkajak! Hold still, you little b*****d!
Im a DM about to start a new campain and I was wondering what has made games you've played in fun?
The unexpected. As an example, in our last AD&D game session, we had a demon lord and his pet "dogs" attack the city we were staying in. The alarms were rung, the battlements readied, and the guards placed. Then, as expected, they charged, but what caught all of us completely by surprised was these "dogs" this demon lord had under his command phased right through the town walls as they charged! We expected them to have some kind of incredible, unearthly springing ability, but they didn't. They passed right through the walls instead.
These kinds of things are what keep the game fresh, fun, and exciting for me.
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What styles of games do you enjoy? Hack and slash or role playing focus?
I would like to make a plea for 'styles' or 'types' not 'schools'.
It would probably be neater if Ultimate Combat had lots of combat styles but had zero real-world combat styles as they come with so much cultural baggage and create too many opportunities for "you're doing it wrong" conflict.
I would like to see more of this, for example
roper style (grappler)
bulette style (charges/headbutts)
Whirlwind style (flurry-master)
Scuttleback style (tripper/grappler)
etc. etc.
Of course, real world martial arts can make great inspiration for this but I don't want to feel (or be told) I'm playing my 'boxing-style' wrong: if I'm playing 'Brutal Fist' style then I will feel less constrained.
Yes! Great post. Not only would this make Ultimate Combat more suited to non-d20 games, but it would also add a fantasy feel to combat styles. I don't want my dwarf warrior to know a dash of Tae Kwan Do; I'd much prefer it if he knew a dash of the "Earth Shatter" style, whatever that amounts to whether it mimics a real world martial style or not, but preferably not.
Not to undermine the importance that I place on having an English degree, but we're also happy to consider applicants with educations in related fields. We have developers with degrees in history and film rather then English, after all. That being said, they have their jobs here largely because we knew and were impressed by their work and offered them jobs based on that.
As a gamer, who wouldn't be interested in this position, and considering I live about 50 miles north of Redmond, I qualify as far as location goes, but I have no degrees in anything other than on my thermometer, which currently is reading very cold this morning. I do have 28 consecutive years of dedication to the industry I currently work for to my credit, though. I don't know if company loyalty matters at all, but I do once I find a good job I enjoy, I tend to treat it like family.
Still, the one major disqualification for me is I'm an old school gamer, and I never have been able to get into d20 D&D other than little bits now and then I can take from it and edit for usability in my AD&D game. I have plenty of those types of editing skills. Heh. I suppose I could attempt to learn d20 for the position, but I'll pass. Good luck to all the applicants!
Taking things back is definitely the way to go. However, it would be difficult to determine what goes back.
I also think it would be nice to finally tone down wizards by removing key spells that have been in their arsenal for decades.
I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of returning psionicist-defining spells back to the psionicist exclusively as powers, particularly if it helps define the psionicist better.
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The difficulty does lie in where should the separation be. For example, planar travel should be wizard or psion (only as an example, not saying it couldn't be both)? Wizards can open travel ways to other planes. Psion can transport his mind there, but no the body?
I think certain abilities, such as teleportation, should remain available to both psionicists and mages. A little crossover for effects considered to be fundamental in defining a mage (such as translocational magics) shouldn't cause them to be excluded from mages just to make psionicists feel more unique. Telepathic spells? Sure. Divinational magic? Okay. But I'm going to let the mage continue to access translocational magics, and if psionicists absolutely must have their mode of travel psionics too, they'll have dream travel or something similar to use.
Distinctiveness doesn't have to come at a severe price for either the psionicist or the mage imo.
Great idea, very much like the 2nd ed system, where a psionicist had a huge array of powers to choose from, and the powers were not arranged in power levels like the 3.x system.
While the array of powers in 2e is a positive, the fact that they weren't (aren't, I still play 2e) arranged in power levels is what made me feel psionics in 2e was (is) horribly broken. Nothing says unbalanced more than a 2e psionicist having the power equivalents of all 9 mage spell level lists at his disposal for the mere expenditure and maintenance of PSPs. This was (is) the primary reason I do not and will not use the 2e psionics system as written. The powers themselves are fine if they have scaled access and classified them in a similar manner as 3e did. It's one of the few things about 3e I truly enjoyed seeing produced.
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Another thing I would like to see it attack and defense modes, brought back in a interesting way.
The system I'm creating still uses those as any other power accessible to a psionicist.
If you're talking about that thing where you have to spend PSP to create a mind link, then additional PSP to generate an effect along with the link, with additional PSP to maintain that effect each round/minute... I'm not so sure it was overpowered if it was actually played RAW.
It's not, and it becomes much less overpowered when edited to make more sense than the RAW did. PSPs get spent very quickly if you decide to fire off or maintain a lot of powers at one time ('nova' as some are calling it). One of my players was always complaining about how quickly PSPs were spent. PSP recovery isn't easy either, nor should it be. PSPs might not be recoverable at all except through rest like everyone else (remove Rejuvenation). It all depends on how you structure it.
It sounds like the King of Misfit Monsters missed the cut: the Tirapheg! It's either hermaphroditic or asexual, part-tripod, triple-headed, and tri-limbed all in one. Strangely, it only has one mouth that we know of, but they even placed it in an armpit. It even has part-Fachan genetic material mixed in (that one could test some loremasters). If the two authors of these two beasts weren't the same person, they had to have had a secret rendezvous to gene splice their mad creations together sans TSR knowledge. I can't in my wildest Cthulhu nightmares imagine how the conversation went for inclusion.
I read MST back in the day when my copy of Dungeon arrived in the mail (*sob*), but I never got around to running it. Yet. From what I recall, I did like the feel of the adventure and the high level of danger within it. The traps felt particularly Tomb-like insidious.
Besides an Int of 8 isn't imbecile range. I would suggest most of us regularly work with someone with an Int of 8 probably without it causing any untoward problems. It's not until you get down in the 5~7 range you really start seeing the lack.
This I agree with. At 8, he's not exactly an idiot, but he will find himself saying "Why I didn't know that!" or "Learn something new every day" to things most people take for granted. And with a 17 wisdom, he just might be able to see any flaws in someone else's plans or ideas long before you do, even if he doesn't quite understand what you're after.
As a classic edition fan (and by classic, I mean that crusty AD&D thing), I was curious what the approximate percentage of truly new, never-before-seen monsters will be in FF. I'm a avid monster collector, they're one of the things in the game I love collecting regardless of system, but I'm not that into rehashes no matter how variable one makes them (I can do that on my own, you know, one hit die less here, one extra attack there), so any info on this would greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Rules like fear shouldn't be nerfed in such a way so that it becomes a tactical choice for a character to make any more than gravity should be a tactical choice on whether the character should fall. Certain creatures rely on fear as a weapon (dragons) as a means to thin the opposition into manageable, bite-sized pieces, and to help avoid the full barrage that would come if characters could mitigate their fear.
Fear is an autonomic response by the mind to something terrifying. It's something that should be completely out of the character's (and player's) control, insofar as being able to consciously make a decision to try and resist the fear. If a mechanic is needed to determine if and when a character gets over their initial shock (which I think is needed, lest they run and keep on running until the DM says they can stop), it should be done through a character stat imo, such as wisdom, on a round by round basis. The more terrifying the creature or effect, the greater the penalty to their checks. That's how I run fear.
This is a question to those DMs used to using combat maneuvers alongside the hundreds, if not thousands, of feats available online and officially.
How do you keep it all straight? I'm a 2nd edition DM, but I've recently been considering implementing some kind of maneuver type system to my game, and using the d20 system as a very primal prototype on which to base things off of, but I look at a document I have acquired online of approximately 100-200 feats and maneuvers, and I'm intimidated. Big time. How much is too much, and how many is to many where they all start to blur together, or worse, duplicate?
I've considered narrowing them down greatly to like 10 per category or less, but then it feels like a lot of potential character options are denied. What do DMs here feel is a good number of feats/maneuvers to have in your game where you can manage them, keep them all straight, and find that sweet spot where all are useful (and used by the players)? Thanks.
They're a third form of "magic" without being magical. They're a fundamental part of the game to me. I've never been able to accept some alternative ideas of an Illithid casting magic spells as some kind of replacement psionics therapy.
Erik Mona wrote:
How can I get you to buy a psionics book and use it in your campaign?
First, I rarely buy anything anymore except minis and modules (Paizo primarily) because I prefer my 1e/2e/.003e hybrid and have to do enough content gymnastics as it is to make most d20 products I do buy hybrid-friendly. Second, even if I were to buy some new d20 psionics book, it'd have to be far superior to the system I've created for myself. Third, point 2 would be considerably tempered, and might cause reconsideration for purchasing, by the inclusion of lots of new powers, psionic items, and creatures that I could augment and/or add to my system.
"It would add three extra weeks to the season," Obama said in a "60 Minutes" interview just after his election. "You could trim back on the regular season. I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I'm going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it's the right thing to do."
Actually, Mr. President, they could trim back on the rust-inducing lethargy the 4 week layoff they all get from the end of November to the end of December, and have their national champion around the same time 1-AA determines theirs. Imagine that. The "concerns" by those "in the know" of an extended season and lost class time are completely unfounded and blinded by green.
Receiving the 2008 Paizo products was one of the few highlights of a rather bleak 2008. I won't miss it. Good riddance 2008, and welcome to 2009. Here's to a better year and even better 2009 Paizo products!
Utah will not get a chance at the National Championship for two reasons.
1) Their conference is not part of the BCS, and
2) They don't get the television coverage that the BCS teams do.
...and that's why the Biggest Crock of S*** is a stupid system. Since when should television, opinions, computers, and voting determine a national championship? Imagine if CBB had no March Madness, and people and computers voted for the champion. Every year, it'd either be Dooook or North Carolina because of their overexposure.
BTW, huzzah to the Richmond Spiders for not being the best team in 1-AA and yet still winning it all. That's the way championships should be determined imo.
Utah, just like Boise State two years ago, deserves a chance to win it all, but under this idiotic system, won't get one.
I don't get it. Seeing how they clearly state that it's a WIP as a 3rd or 4th edition product, why would anyone contribute 1e/2e material only to be rejected and get a refund? o-O
I actually feel bad for Bryan Fuller. He's going to waste the next 1-2 years of his life trying to save a show that is well beyond saving. Unless, of course, they're willing to dump season 3 entirely and retcon it completely out of continuity.
There are some game systems that could benefit from this phenomenon. ;-)
I like to think of the producers of Heroes as DMs that have lost all control over the PCs in their games. They're not quite sure how it happened, how they could allow these characters to gain a ridiculous amount of power in such a short period of time when everything was clicking along fine at 1st level. They know they can't deux ex machina the storyline back, so their only outlet is to nuke the entire site from orbit just so they can be sure.
In a strange way, Heroes mirrors gaming. All the little perks and powerups without any leashes, and then a failed surprise roll when things get out of control.
The past 4 episodes I haven't been able to make it to the end without falling asleep. The characters are all fine, but the storyline is a wreck. They've moved so far from the original coolness of Season 1 that it's become farfetched. The last thing I remember was Hiro hugging his mom as she died. Zzz.
Ahh, those people were a bunch of old schoolers anyway....
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....and we know what happens to old school games and gamers.....they shrug it off and keep playing what they enjoy anyway. Still, the timing by Wotcee is impeccable as always.
There was (still is? I don't know) a regional myth going around where I grew up that the entire eastern half of Washington state was going to shoot for statehood and consider taking the northern half of North Idaho with it, and reform into a new state with SpokAlene or Coeur d' Kane being the capitol. I always thought that wasn't a bad idea myself, seeing how Spokane is so isolated from the west side of the state and how Boise feels like it might as well be in Florida to most North Idahoans.
That's about as radical a state restructuring plan as I've heard, much less, having the USA break up into regional countries.
I don't care who they have in it as long as they hire writers capable of creating character names better than "Snails" for a rogue...talk about a dichotomy.
You don't need to explain to me that magic of Obad-Hai is divine, blah, blah - just make me care about the people in the movie, the way I cared about what happened to Frodo and Sam.
Precisely. Characters first, and the story will reveal itself and make for a decent movie, if not great. LotR set the fantasy bar so high that it's not required to try and top them. Just tell a good story. That's D&D. We'll go see them and buy them on DVD if they're good.
Not to argue, but I think part of the point (and WotC's big problem here) is that they can't maintain both the previous quality and economic viability.
It sounds like subpar miniatures are the way of the future then. Cheap miniatures at a higher price. Gee, why does that sound like the way a LOT of things are going these days?
Tatterdemalion wrote:
I'll take inferior minis over none any day -- especially when they are no longer randomized.
I wouldn't. I'm as avid a collector as anyone, but I won't lower my own personal bar just so I can buy inferior minis because that's all they're able to manufacture. That's, well, stupid and a waste of money. I'd much rather see the line die a deserving death so I could move on to something else worthy of my money. I'm not that brand loyal.
In the end, the line failed for a simple reason: There simply wasn't enough of an audience for the D&D Minis game. There seems to be enough interest in D&D Minis in general - and specifically, fans were mostly interested in higher quality, less randomized minis, with the ability to choose whether they wanted player packs or monster packs. So, that is what they plan to offer, at a higher price per mini.
I've never played the game, so it's failure doesn't impact me at all, and yet my support for DDMs has always carried the same criteria you mention (highest quality possible and less randomization). The failure of the game itself doesn't seem to have had an impact on their decision to continue selling DDMs, though.
Matthew Koelbl wrote:
That seems to be about the best plan they can offer - and yet people are still complaining.
I could care less about the loss of the game. I'm more concerned about the loss of quality, and if they raise prices like you suggest without bringing the minis back up to the quality standards they had from the WotDQ to DoD eras or so, they'll lose more than just a game.
Granted, some of the minis in the latest sets aren't bad, but to me, the overall quality of the latest sets leaves something to be desired.
Matthew Koelbl wrote:
Yes, it would be nice to get all these things for free. But that simply isn't viable for the company, and expecting that WotC should be losing money to benefit the fans is downright absurd.
I agree. They don't have to lose money. They simply have to keep DDMs at an acceptable level of detail and quality, and they'll have my money. If they don't, they won't.
Of course it's a business. The typical response to product criticism is that it's a business, and that it's in business to make money, as if that were some kind of epiphany. When all is said and done, the last few lines have been significantly below the standard they established themselves, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that collectors notice subtle things like declining quality over time and question a company's commitment to staff or procedures that have clearly changed somewhere down the line.
In hindsight, these decisions can seem profoundly stupid. What WotC did was replace an ailing product line with crappier products. How, exactly, did they think that would increase customer demand?
I have no idea, but one has to wonder about the motives of any company that replaces someone who has proven to be a valuable asset to the company in favor of someone they *hope* improves the company for less money. Isn't that a bit like spending less on the lottery but expecting your odds of winning to go up?
As with many, many things in life, you truly do get what you pay for.
I think I know what happened: The guy in charge was replaced. That happened between Underdark and Wardrums. Underdark was the best set they did, but after that, Schubert was put in control of the line, and the line went downhill, starting in the very next set when the quality of the paint jobs was reduced trastically - but not in the figures they showed us: Those still were nice enough. But the stuff you actually got was almost monochrome. Seriously: some promo pics had minis with 6 colours or so, and the actual product had 2 or 3.
Only after a general outrage did they admit that something went wrong there - and started showing the crappier pics, because they said they couldn't deliver the better quality in the final products any more.
Wow. Talk about deceptive marketing. Carrot dangling at its finest, only the carrot is plastic.
I've always wondered what makes a company replace a guy that's proven to deliver quality for the guy that doesn't when you know it will have to have an effect on the line, which hurts the entire company. Shortsightedness.
So sales dropped? Figures. They followed the quality of the product line.
I stopped buying a year ago or so, and I was a heavy buyer. I'm sure they chased off other customers, too. You reap what you sow and all that.
I also stopped buying when it was clear the quality of the miniatures had declined from previous sets. I'm two sets behind. I'm an avid miniature collector of both plastics and metals, but there's a certain standard of quality I will not lower myself to. With some of the better earlier sets, I had thought plastics were approaching the LOD that metals achieve, but then something happened and they went back to being blobs. Someone in QA needs to have a larger voice and pull with the company.
I'm still thinking of buying into the newer sets, but only for the monsters. Most of the character models are crap, and don't hold a candle to the LOD that metals provide character minis other than you can throw them at people and they won't hurt as much.
I loved how Cameron turned the other T into a pretzel. Special effects, or was that the superlimber contortionist on the internet they got for a cameo?
That scene where the little girl is talking to the psychiatrist, and she shows him the afraid card, and gives him that look.....creepy! I got chills from that one. LOL! This show is awesome!!
That article nailed a LOT of issues I've been having with Heroes lately, particularly the enough with the time hopping and new heroes every week trends. Whether NBC actually listens to its fans over those issues or not remains to be seen. The show is still good, but I think it's teetering on breaking my suspension of disbelief window.
In a strange way, it's starting to feel like a bad game of D&D where there's no risk to any main characters because everyone at the table knows the DM will always find a way for them to come back.
QUests created in an MMORPG by high-level players for lower level players. I'm not even sure how mechanically that would work, but I think it's an idea that could breathe new life into MMORPGs - at least for me.
That's the thing with today's MMOGs is they're still linear. One doesn't have to hardcode in predetermined outcomes for quests that are preconstructed. Players can make their own quests given the game itself allows for enough versatility and diversity in choices that can be made.
The sad part is that game already exists. Problem is, it's a game on paper and in development, and without the required financial stimulus it needs to be created (you know, so people can actually get paid for the work they do....), it never will be. We even have a prototype we've all ran around in and flew around in.
Equinox wrote:
For clarity's sake here's an example of one way I think it would play out: a player - at the highest level attainable, or close to it would have access to some task & reward mechanic that would permit her to offer a quest to a player below a certain level.
Why have a mechanic to do that? For example, one quest could be the high level character telling a lower level character in game that he needs 5 sprigs of Andulusian honeycomb, and it only grows up in the Andulusian mountains 15 miles to the south, and I'm too busy to go get it myself. Would you mind going to get it for me? I'll pay you X, or I have X trinket I'm willing to part with if you go and get it for me. Simple. It's simple task, errand, and mission objective assignment by the players. Those are quests. The journey to the location and everything that happens going there, the acquisition of the honeycomb and anything that occurs while doing so, and the return trip.
Do you think you're not strong enough to survive a trip to the Andulusian mountains? Hire guides or hirelings to help you get it done, be they players or NPCs. Instant adventure. No code was written by the dev team, no prompting by the game, and no carrot-dangling going on by the game or the dev team going on. All this is very simple to implement, and requires very little to no overhead on part of the dev team.
Players today are so brainwashed into being told their character's options that they've forgotten that they can have their own options, tons of options available to them that doesn't require a single line of code. Someday, we hope to provide proof.
Well, at least they didn't lose me any further than they already have by not having 6 or more more new heroes show up. Now, if they can continue that trend and stick to the people and the stories they have right now, I'll continue to tune in.
Spoiler:
The future jumps are starting to annoy me. It'd be one thing if they showed us 1 or 2 future events that could transpire, such as the Sylar explosion, and led us to hope they could prevent that through the present timeline, but they keep jumping around time and it's starting to be ridiculous to try and keep things straight. Just give us the cause for the explosion like they did last night (which was very cool btw that Sylar's son's death was the cause of the disaster), and then stick to the current time and all the events that lead up to that day. Now THAT would be worth tuning in for because we'd know the end result, but not any of the potential changes in the current timeline that might stop Sylar's son from being killed, and the subsequent explosion.
Also, so much for 'Save the Cheerleader, Save the World' premise from season one. An evil Claire? I'm not into that at all. Her character is so much better when she can confront people and know she can't be hurt than being a villain. She should be one of the primary catalysts in somehow stopping Sylar's explosion, not running around trying to kill both Peter Petrelli's.
I do like Nicki's new "Iceman" abilities. She's become a much more interesting character now than in season one.
Parkman's African safari/vision quest seems rather redundant to me. I mean, they're already showing us all we need to see in the future via all the 4 year future jumps. This is different than when Isaac was painting the future because we didn't have 4 year time jumps in season one.
All in all, I still tune in because the show still has be intrigued, but the more future jumping they do, the less interested I become. I think what they've shown us thus far in the future is MORE than enough. Now let's get back to the current timeline and tell all the stories that lead up to what we and they saw. I think that would make for a far more enjoyable Heroes than their current Time Machine version, but that's me. *shrug*
No doubt. Combine the Speedster Blonde with all the time travel paradox-ing going on, and I'm starting to get doubly dizzy. The blonde is a total distraction, and so many heroes are being discovered, it's quickly losing its allure. Heck, even D&D knows not to give every street sweeper in town a +3 sword.... :-/
Get back to the core 6-8 heroes and tell the story of saving the world. Enough with the hero munchkinism overpopulation.
As an example, someone upthread mentioned Dr. Zimmerman. Who's that? LOL.
Last night's episode just added a new layer of complexity onto Cameron.
Spoiler:
Real emotion from a Terminator, not the mocking emotion used to get what they want. Very nice! If the writers remember that and use it, there's the possibility way down the road that Cameron could be the catalyst to some level of empathy towards humanity, and as long as episode disconnects don't become widespread.
Hopefully, the next edition of D&D will take the training wheels off and encourage players to think for themselves. Hopefully, 5E will combine the openness of 1E with the streamlined mathematics of 4E, and what a system that would be!
Excellent post! You've very accurately described precisely each edition and how they're perceived. You've effectively written what I've felt about 3e and 4e since they were released.
I think you miss the point - it's not about pity or comfort. Folks that choose to play 4e simply want to talk about their game of choice without the antagonistic 3e fans throwing rocks and flames.
This is the cyclical nature of editions. 1e fans let us 2e fans have it back in the day, we laid into 3e fans, and now they're firing both barrels at 4e fans. Don't worry. They'll get their chance too. ;-)
