Verminlord's page

BESM
Much, much easier than Heroes and the 3rd ed. is streamlined. Even if you got Anime on the front, you can play anything, everywhere.

Jadeclaw
Real nice setting, great art, but the mechanics lacked a bit.

Btw 'Morrow' has a lot of online supllements which are great for any postapocalypse game. http://www.thesupplybunker.net/morrow.htm

First things went well. The main tank (Halfogre Crusader) was petrified before even the rest of the group reached the top. The surprise attack went well, but after that things went downhill. The monk, who specialized in grappling, got her pinned. After that she died fast.

Translation. I would like to see Pathfinder in the German language.
Another thing that I would really like to see are Social Combat Rules for OGL. I was deligthed when I found them in Exalted 2ed. and they worked very well.

Now we tried 4e for a second time and thanks to you guys it was much better. The solution was to divide between mechanics and fluff. As the players recognized the rules as pure mechanics and the use of it in combat only, things went smoothly. The greatest problem was to think differently. Interestingly some of the older players, who started in earlier eighties, got sentimental; it reminded them of old RPG’s.

Again thanks to you guys. I think I get the idea. :)

...but that might be something you and your guys either accommodate as seems reasonable, or don't (and maybe play something else)...

I have enough RPG's to play to the end of time, I can always choose something different. I see in 4th ed. a real try to make something better, something different. I like the design ideas, but I can't connect some of the ideas to the final rules. More then once somebody could 'translate' it, so I can understand, how it works. But I think I get it slowly how it is actually working. So please bear with my questions.

I guess it is up to the DM to determine when they get their encounter powers, but what you describe is more-or-less accurate. Arguably, it isn't terribly different from the daily sleep to get yout spells back - when exactly in the night do they "pop back" into the head?

Most of the spells requires some action besides sleeping, like praying, memorizing etc. But the game mechanic is not a problem, it is more about to sell it to the player. If a group catch their breath after a fight and reorganize themselves then this is believable, but if somebody uses a encounter power and rest 5 minutes, use the encounter power and rest, ad infinitum, then it stretches the internal logic. So I like to know how you handle this.

Thanks for your help. One more question, how do you handle encounters? As some powers are tied to encounters, are they avaible everytime or do you say to your players when it is encounter time. It seemed a little bit artificial when we tried it, like go-rest-go-rest-go-rest.

Hope that helps! Sorry if the suggestions are a little vague ... I'm having trouble understanding precisely what is bothering you.

Cheers! :)

Even if I dm'ed dozens of rpg's we started to use a battlemap just a little while ago. (With the start of the Pathfinder campaign)

The problem is that I think that there are really a lot of good ideas, but I can't get a grip on them. My group enjoys a mixture of riddles, combats and social rp. Some of them want to use a battlemap, some of them don't. When we tried KoS it seemed that the characters could only fight and do little else. Everything seemed very secondary. The use of the everpresent battlemap seemed to say the same thing. But I feel that this first impression is wrong, but couldn't tell how it works any other way. So I hope that you enlighten me. (no sarcasm)

That seems reasonable. The original post kind of confused me. I thought that he was asking if he was doing something wrong because the game felt like a boardgame with character sheets, when he really just wanted to know when to break out the battlemat.

Well, yes and no. I appreciate your posts. I helps a lot to hear some ideas which doesn't make things to predictable. The battlemap finds a lot of use already im my gaming, but using it always seems to limit my options somehow. The whole world is now in grids ;) When you design an adventure, are you transfering everything to a grid?

Well it does seem to be largley based on the D&D minis game, so what did you expect? If you are disappointed on the lack of non-combat stuff and the overly gamist feel of combat, you're not alone. You and your group are going to have to work extra hard to get that non-combat stuff in the game. The current modules have a dearth of role-playing opportunities, and the rules do seem to focus heavily on combat. You might like 3.5 or Pathfinder better.

I'm a experienced gamemaster and I found out that sometimes a game is 'misunderstood'. Some games have certain knacks that only by playing them could be found. Maybe this edition is just gamist and minis, but it seems to me like I have something overlooked.

You can roleplay it all you like; the grid only has to come out when your group actually start hitting monsters with sticks.

Where the scenario assumes that your group will start hitting monsters with sticks, there's a grid. If the sticks come out somewhere else, you need to put your own grid together.

I know what you mean, but that is my problem. How much surprise is there to an ambush if you put an battlegrid on the table? And it seems to me that to start an ambush without grid is nearly impossible.

I like to know if somebody, who has actual played the fourth edition, can help me, with some answers. Last weekend I picked up a copy of ‘World & Monsters’ and like before I found myself agreeing with the thoughts of the designers. It irritated me so much that I checked immediately my copy of the Players Handbook to see where I went wrong. But I couldn’t get my hand on it. Our group tried to Keep of Shadowfell and it was nothing else but a boardgame with charactersheets. It seemed to me that every encounter has to be played on a battlegrid. This divided the game into parts of tactical boardgame and roleplay if there was no grid (like the village). Do I miss an important point?

No. 10,000 years is about the time human civilization dates back. Also, animal breeding goes thousands of years farther back.

Gailbraithe wrote:

One of the funniest/saddest stories I ever read was about German couple from a small village that were both raised in a very repressive, fundamentalist Christian cult.

Fun, in germany the story goes that it was about an american couple. ^^

Like I said that was just a guess. Joseph Campbell puts the time where the mythology changed from female to male mythology after the time of the early planters.

That's right, they did not know that you have to have sex to make a baby.

That is not as seldom as you may think. In the history of humankind this a quite new revelation, just about 10.000 years, if I remember correctly.

Just as sex education (real sex education, not faerie tales involving storks and cabbage patches) should probably be mandatory, should self-defense...

There are some interesting theories from Felix von Cube, a behavior biologist, who says that you have to challenge, not pampering the youth. In his theories he states that violence of the youth is a result of idleness, that they need adventure.

Ya think there's a connection? :)

Sex. Everybody wants it. Nobody wants to *admit* they want it.

Our most breathtaking talent is our endless capacity for self-deception.

I agree with you that self deception is one of the biggest force in humankind. But why shouldn't one not admit the need for sex? It is as natural as craving for food. My wife, my friends and me have no problem of admitting that we need sex and adore beautiful naked men or women. And if we play a game of fantasy then this is a part of it.

The Legal systems of those countries?

Most of the censorship is self censoring, not any laws. Publisher fear that some groups will be offended or 'the kids must be protected' and they press their artists to censor their work. Frank Miller's Sin City comes to my mind immediatley. You will find enough of this 'free' censorship everywhere. So basically a few people decide what is good for you and your children. Again I say, if we realize this artificial reasoning and give a voice that everyone has the right to decide what is good for him-or herself (I'm talking about cheese/beefcake pictures) then the problem will be just a matter of taste.

Saying "it's just in your head" is equivalent to a PC saying, "Thank goodness it's not a evoker; it's just an enchanter. What's the worst that could happen?" It's silly and kind of charmingly innocent.

Personally, I don't have a TV. I don't need one. But I agree with you that the media has a lot of influence in our lives. But that is not the point I tried to make. If a movie get censored in the USA, you find that they don't censor the violence, but every sexscene. In Germany they censor every violencescene and not the sexscene. If you like to look a movie less censored, then you watch the netherland or the japanese version. The country with the largest porn production of the world falls unconscious if they see a nipple on TV. If it is not a problem in the head of the people, what it is then?

Because, of course, the issue of influencing hearts and minds is utterly irrelevant and without power. Ask anyone in Iraq. Or Hollywood.

If I come around, sure.

This discussion amuses me again. I live in Germany and tried once to bring this kind of question to the female gamers around me. 'What do you think, is cheesecake in RPG a problem for the female gamer?' They laughed long and heartily. So I went to a convention and asked there a few female gamers/authors/producers and they looked at me like I came from another planet. Like they say, the problem is just in your head.

To be true I have much more problems if the female gamer wear clothing that her character could wear, but she cannot. A lot are heavily overweighted and not all large breasts are beautiful.

I would rather play a loin-cloth clad, muscles rippling barbarian than a Plate armored fight if I could get a decent AC out of it. If I could get a hold of a loincloth +5 AC and ditch the shield for a codpiece +2 I would!

[threadjack] why are northern barbarians so often depicted as clad in loincloths -such as Conan- it's COLD up there! [/threadjack]

One of my female players liked her fighter very much, who wear a thong+5 with cold resistance. It was one of the few characters who drove her character alignment from chaotic good to lawful evil and had much fun to do this. The campagne was around a succubbus who was on the way to become a major freedom goddess and the characters were her priests, apostles and so on. I only say - watch out for the girls. Everyone had fun, but especially the highpriestes Eisenader

Sunshine the orphan, Half-Ogre Crusader of Iomedae from the Windsong Abbey
Taheb, Forsaken Elf Truenamer in search of his lost live
Gladius Glowmail, Duergar Ardent/Psychic Warrior searches the honor of the royal guards of Janderheim
Baroness Xiarra, Zenythri Monk/Ninja, chelaxian bodyguard of the high houses
Lexavo, Catfolk Rogue, Raider of lost tombs

Changeling Ranger/Bard

When I hear stuff like this, I wonder what people expect combat to be like. Also, looking over almost all of the classes in 3rd Edition, I think the only class with a "social special" is the bard with fascinate. I guess.

I was in high hopes, because some of the developer said, that there would be something like a social combat system in the 4.0. I missed this dearly in the 3.5 and other games (like Exalted) showed how it worked. In 3.5 you could choose if like to play with a battlegrid or not, that decison was taken away, you need it now. In our campaign we use characters like the crusader, the truenamer and cross-class, so we are used to have a lot of possibilities in combat, so it seemed that the changes were not really so different, at least not enough to inspire the gamers.

It s a great miniature game with fantasy elements, but not a RPG anymore. After the first ten minutes of slashing Kobolds I heard the first 'Do not take my candle',after twenty minutes people talked only in metagaming speak. We agreed on the following:
You need a battle grid - you can't translate the shifting powers to simple 5-feet steps. Which took a lot of 'surprise' aka imaging from the group.
The only powers you have are combat powers, there are no social specials. Which made the village a simple 'Where do I get the Quest for Kobold slaying?' A encounter took as exactly the same time as it did in 3.5
After the second encounter my player's and me were bored to death.

WoW has 6 feet elves, Paizo has 6 feet elves - now D&D has them, so what? They are just trying to be not the lamest RPG anymore. Elves must be cool again. ;-)

What bugs me is: whats new? The Wilderlands Campaign, who are old as stone, had exactly that kind of setting. So back to the roots?

"While gnomes are generally no more evil than the
other races, their alien thought processes and adherence to an
unconventional moral code tend to make other races uneasy."

Could somebody me please explain, what that means? What kind of unconventional moral code do they have? Why are the alien thoughts of the gnome are mistaken for evil, as the context indicates?

I don't play D&D anymore. I buy Paizo's products and convert them. My Savage Tide is BESM.
This is because some of my gamers don't like D&D anymore...too complicated. WotC says that it will be easier with the 4th, at least I will read it. So I say, if the quality is right, the system does not matter too much.

For those who don't know. When D&D arrived in Japan, they had their own ideas about designs. So they made elves with extremly long ears, as you can see in anime classics (Record of the Lodoss War-Deedo 1990). Later on, you found them in independent comics like Poison Elves. Long time after that WoW adapted to their game (and notice that the WoW Elves nearly 2,20m tall and second largest players race in the game). So you can say, after the Japanese borrowed it for their D&D, Paizo borrowed it back. :-)

No 149/150/Pathfinder here, too.

I agree, that this situation is not our fault and you received already our money. If you can't deliver, refund me, please.

Well, differentiating between player knowledge and character knowledge is difficult at best and in my experience never perfect, even with the best of intentions, so I will restrain myself and decline your offer - even if I would love to do otherwise. The temptation with the magazines resting just a few feet away from my computer at home could prove to be just too great. I don´t want to be a killjoy for others.

Stefan

As you wish :-)

Ich würd ja gerne, aber da ich die Abenteuer eh schon gelesen habe...

(and for the rest of the world: I´d love to, but since I´ve already read the adventures...)

Stefan

Wenn du Spieler von Charakterwissen trennen kannst bis du herzlich willkommen.

If you can differ between the knowledge of your character and yourself you are welcome.

Hello!
I’m searching for players, who like to play by Email the Savage Tide Campaign. The langauge will be German.

Ahoi!

Es werden mutige Abenteurer gesucht die den „Wilden Fluten“ trotzen wollen!

Dies ist ein D&D Play-by-Email Abenteuer mit Piraten, geheimnisvollen Inseln, verborgenen Schätzen und grässlichen Dämonen. Die Kampagne "Savage Tide" ist aus dem Magazin Dungeon und umfasst die Entwicklung von der 1.Stufe bis über die 20.Stufe der Charaktere. Der Endkampf wird gegen den Dämonenfürsten Demorgorgon sein, soviel sei schon einmal verraten. Ein Teil des Abenteuers wird auf der Insel des Schreckens stattfinden und ein späterer Teil im Abgrund. Wem die Begriffe jetzt nichts sagen, der sei nicht abgeschreckt, es ist kein Vorwissen nötig um mitspielen zu können. Es ist reichlich Hintergrundmaterial vorhanden. Es reicht das Spielerhandbuch aus, aber mehr Hintergrundwissen schadet natürlich nicht. Englisch lesen zu können ist von Vorteil, da einige Artikel, wie der 'Savage TidePlayer's Guide' in englisch sind.
Sobald eine Gruppe von Abenteurern sich gemeldet hat, geht es los!

Wer Interesse hat meldet sich unter: http://de.groups.yahoo.com/group/WildeFluten/

What is it about Feder & Schwert you hint at ?

Stefan

I don't have to hint at anything. Their 'we are above any criticism, we are god' attitude have made them to outsiders in the whole RPG scene. They have forgotten that if you like to sell something you need customers. And the customer are already reacting to that, as you can see the response to the WoD products.

Here are some pictures from the Spiel:
http://www.drosi.de/stadtinfo/spiel2006/

My conclusion for this year of the Spiel is that the German RPG scene is in the offensive. Lots of independent games and designs. I could say a lot about 'Feder & Schwert', but there is not much positive. Again D&D is a problemchild and has a bad reputation as only dungeoncrawling that it not deserve. I really miss a magazine like Dungeon. At the moment there is no german Rpg Magazine, that has such a high standard in design.

I've got my whole books scanned as .pdf if somethings happen and they are more easily transported.
Nevertheless I feel your loss, I once lost my whole RPG Set (more then 300+books) to mold.

It's a kind of fashion statement. In history full plate was often not made for combat, but for showing off. Remember that certain kind of weapons that could easily destroy a plate were restricted or socially banned, like the crossbow, warhammer and warpicks. Basically it rounds down to, the guys with the heavy armor shall live and the mob should die and damned if they use weapons that can hurt them.

My experience with gamers in LARP, which dressed up in full plate and were chased through a wood, showed me how valuable is movement over heavy armor. It was funny when some of them rested and couldn't stand up own there own. :-) There was a Lady Colonel and the only thing you recognized that she was a woman was the long braid of hair, all other features vanished under the armor. So in a fantasy game like D&D it is back to fantasy. How many cool pictures of women in armor, that does make sense, are out there? I mean, what sense makes a belly free breastplate (I've seen a lot in the last time)? Or those kind of steel latex armor, that fits skintight on our heroine?

One of my groups decided to be fashion slaves and had designer dungeon suits, with sponsored crystalball watchergroups and a special group pose. For this group was armor so passé. Ok, it was the only group that invested over 2000GP for clothing (per person) in one shopping session. Still, the AC was enormous, there are several prestigeclasses where the attributeboni add to AC. So anything they did was pushing the attributes.

My actual group uses the Vitality point system and armor protects only wound points. This works fine. Those with heavy armor live longer and better protected against critical strikes.

I have an place for my honored 'old' dice from the 1.edition of a game. So if there is the need for something special I use the D20 from the red D&D box, which is orange and where the numbers had to been put on with a crayon. All the edges are round. Somehow dice are like wine, the older they get the better they are.

dito. Aber es ist nicht höflich auf einen amerikanischen Board in Deutsch zu posten.
see ya!

Not to forget the conventions ;-)
(http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorktower/archive.asp?nextform=viewcomic &id=1087)

I liked the Damage/Wound points system from Alternity. There were 4 kinds of damage stun/wound/kill/fatigue and every category had some points derived from constitution. On one side there was the overflow, so after enough stun damage you got wound damage and so on. On the other side, different weapons started from different positions making already wound or kill damage.

Just an amusing fact about 'Wagnerism'. King Ludwig's most knewn castle Neuschwanstein (http://www.neuschwanstein.de/) was built after his wish to built a perfect setting for Wagners (fantasy) opera. He even let built a cave with lakes to be in his 'fantasy' world (http://www.linderhof.de/).
Speaking of an early fantasy fan.

Nevertheless, the issue of cultural backgrounds is absolutely a real one, which for better and for worse I have to live with every day.

I would really like to know more about it. I watch a lot of Anime, read Manga and few books about Japan. My picture is of course very distant from the reality, but I would be deligthed to hear about some typical differences, so that I can better understand.

I've been interested in how people from different cultures take something and add their own unique flavor to it, if you will.

I can speak only for myself. Of course the standard fiction is a 'standard' and interwined with the rpg's. The one of the differences I noticed, is the sense of history. I live in a heavy urbanized area, called Ruhr area, yet I have just a stroll of 10 minutes to the original wall of the city, which is about a 1000 years old. Everywhere around us is a legacy of the history and if I like to know how something medieval worked, it just takes a short trip and I find some of the original things.

That's basically what a dungeon crawl is - entry-level D&D. New players enjoy the game enough for what it is and don't care for story or roleplaying - in fact, some players may be too embarrassed to roleplay seriously unless with a regular group.

My experience is that especially young players enjoy role-playing. But I got more girls then boys at the table, so maybe it is a gender thing.

Verminlord wrote:

After rereading the thread I found out what really bugs my players (and me as DM) in Dungeoncrawls.

Hah Ha! The verminlord said bugs!!

It is not fitting for my handle?

Thanks for the feedback, Stebehil.

Any other German subscriber out there? I can't believe there is just one who surf these Boards? ;-)

Stéphane

Well, there are more...

After rereading the thread I found out what really bugs my players (and me as DM) in Dungeoncrawls. I have more then a yard of 3.5 Rulebooks with dozens of characterclasses and there are thousands of prestigeclasses, but if I go on a dungeoncrawl there is just the fighter, the trap detecter, the healer and the use-magic-to-kill-things-quickly characters. It is like showing all the possibilities and then tell to go back to the standard. Frustrating is right word.
I understand that a lot of people like it that way and the majority pays the bill. But maybe like we got in any dungeon 3 adventures for the low, middle and high levels, we may get one of the adventures with a special interest theme, like Challenge of the Champions, Ill made Graves, Honor & Eta etc.

Hello Koga,
Paranoia is a satire. Not to be prepared is the best preparation. If you like to be in control it will be a nightmare. Try to relax and have fun, nothing else works on Paranoia. There was a comic based on Paranoia, which was very funny, if you can find it, maybe this helps.