cranewings's page

I'm not your bro, friend.

Evil Lincoln wrote:

How many spree killing threads do we need? And why this one, which is actually quite old (though still dreadful) news?

I think the idea is that this is the spree killing thread for politrolls and the other spree killing thread is for politroll-haters.

Pretty much.

Thank god the idiot that shot her used a gun and not a bomb. If he had shown up and used a fertilizer truck bomb instead of the gun, a ton more people would have been hurt or killed.

I don't think taking guns away from people like Loughner will make a dent in killings; it might make them worse, as they are forced to resort to explosives to get their point across.

Furthermore, I don't think it is a good idea to restrict weapons to crazy people, even like Loughner, because the government could use any sign of unhappiness or suspicion as a basis for a decision to deny you your right to have a weapon. I think we need these weapons because we are the kinds of people who are one step away from fascism at any given point and if in the next generation or two, we go all Nazi Germany by throwing all of the Arabs into concentration camps or attempting to deport all of the Mexican Immigrants, they need to make sure that they have enough weapons to fight back. The ability to use an up your butt kind of law, like a no sale to the crazies law, would let the government come through and disarm the most capable fighters ahead of time.

Jerry Wright 307 wrote:

I don't like swarms, either.

Do you run swarms?

I run swarms, I love them. I invent my own variations like "Plague Zombie Bat Swarm."

I don't allow any non-Pathfinder sources. No Golarion-specific sources either. All sources must be published by Paizo. Everything else is a go!

Yeah, me too.

I actually treat NPCs as swarms if the PCs are 5 HD higher. So if you are sixth level and fighting a group of 1st level guys, I run the first level guys as a swarm. Do enough damage and they break morale / scatter.

It lets one dude get in their against 30 and keeps me from having to roll a bunch of dice.

Assuming your players are capable of something like this, you don't need a module. Make up the object to be stolen, it's owner, and then it's game world consistent defenses.

Think of where the object is, how it can be accessed directly, what prevents that, secondary ways of getting to it, and what if anything prevents those.

One complex element is getting a key to bypass a door you couldn't otherwise open, such as a magic scroll from a wizard or a signet ring that keeps the shield golem from chopping your head off.

Knowing what everything is, imagine at least one or two ways, dice permitting, that the party could be successful. Then let them make their own way, without you telling them what to do.

If they fail, there might be some extra precaution taken, like moving it to a safer facility. Perhaps the move gives them a second chance at it.

I go role playing so I can eat pizza drink beer and talk s¤#t with my mates

Why do you play ?

Same here.

And also to build up a feel of immersion with a good idea, so that the memory of what happened in character is crystal clear.

A Man In Black wrote:

I'm sure if you think about it, you'll eventually figure it out. In the meantime, enjoy posting your BUT THE LIBERALS ARE THE REAL RACISTS whitenoise.

To answer the assertions & give my opinion:

Liberals general believe that people should perpetually be dependent on government assistance. How else can they get elected? Specifically in the black community and more recently in the latino community.

Its working out pretty s&&%ty for the tax payers and those on the gov't teet if you ask me. I believe people can make it on their own and aspire to be self sufficient well away from government hand outs. What do you call an ideology that thinks contrary to that? (whitenoise on)

I've never understood why this criticism of liberals is never made by outsiders without pairing with the "equally true" belief that conservatives couldn't get elected if it weren't for all the ignorant poor racists who believe that they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Does your player have Int 18? If not, do you make whomever plays the Barbarian lift up a horse every time they swing their axe?

Anyways, it actually depends on the spirit in which you do it. If you play it off right it can work. Or it can backfire horribly. Do it at your own risk.

That's different. Every gamer on these boards has an IQ at least two standard deviations above normal.

Go ahead. Just ask them.

Side note, this thread is probably going to turn into one of the greatest GM aids out there as a catalog of awesome NPC ideas.

Rahman, the Persian Ranger

The guy was from our setting's version of persia. He was 6'6" with a turban, huge mustache, and a heavy warhorse. Dude never dressed for camouflage. He always wore brightly striped clothing.

A part of his greatness was how lawful good he was. Him and the halfling rogue were both lawful good and were constantly trying to outdo the paladin in acts of goodness (only marred by the fact that we would try to rub our deeds in his face, all in good humor in character).

Personally, I believe the rule by law is preferable to rule by altruistic personality. It is a rare in our culture, but valid way of seeing morality and politics, that law and justice are what keep people honest and fair, and that only justice carried out according to the law is valid, and different than revenge. Law allows justice without succumbing to the evils of vigilantism.

I enjoy characters that follow the law.

Taken to extreme, sometimes I enjoy characters like Judge Dread who are the most brutal versions of LN.

More than all that though, a lot of gamers think that a person who behaves the same way all the time deserves the lawful descriptor, even if they don't follow the law, even if they cheat, lie to or rob other people, just because they do it the same way all the time or for the same reasons. "My lawful character lies to dishonorable characters." "My lawful character only steals on fridays." "My lawful character blah blah blah."

The preference to call it "ordered" instead of "lawful" in my opinion is tied up in anti-authoritarian attitudes and a personal (player) lack of appreciation for rule by law. I wouldn't abide by the change.

STAND BACK! NO ONE FEED THE TROLL!

GrenMeera wrote:

I am a game designer, and before ciretose cuts in with "Yeah, so is everybody here", my genre is not tabletop at all. I design and program video games.

If a large enough number of people pay you that you can afford to live on it, you are a game designer.

If you make side money on it that is enough to buy expensive things you wouldn't ordinary be able to afford, you can call yourself a game designer on the side.

If you live in your parents basement and write things...well...yeah...I'll let everyone else decide what to call that, but I wouldn't call it a game designer.

I don't have any idea what anyone falls into, although it sounds like GrenMeera get's paid on the legit so in my book GrenMeera deserves some extra credibility.

Ciretose says, "What you do with your time is only valid if people give you money."

That was the most beautiful example of western culture I've ever encountered. Happy 4th of July man.

If a large enough number of people pay you that you can afford to live on it, you are a game designer.

That's Professional Game Designer.

If you make side money on it that is enough to buy expensive things you wouldn't ordinary be able to afford, you can call yourself a game designer on the side.

Again, that's Professional Game Designer

If you live in your parents basement and write things...well...yeah...I'll let everyone else decide what to call that, but I wouldn't call it a game designer.

Just like people who build model boats or trains are model builders, even if they don't get paid for it, the term you are looking for here is, "Amerature Game Designer."

Fundamentally all these suggestions, even mine, miss the real point and violate a basic rule of gaming: Don't try in-game solutions for out-of-game problems.

If your players are trying to rest between every encounter, ask them why.
Suggest they not do so. Deal with it from that end first, before imposing in-game solutions.

I can't do it that way. Making artificial decisions for the sake of story wrecks my sense of immersion. Ultimately you have to accept that the game system and world are going to merge together, which is why I hate rules that break natural decision making so much.

For me, the best solutions are the ones that get people to act naturally and still do the right things.

Without passing judgement on any of them or on GM's who have a problem with this, I just wanted to brain storm some ways to keep the party moving, despite having burned through some resources or being afraid of failure against a BBEG. Adding to the list would be helpful.

1) The Literal Timer.

If the party doesn't finish their task in a certain amount of time, the window for succeeding in it will close. Variations include: Hostage Crisis, Magic Doorway Closing, Ingredient Needed Before Whatever Bad Thing Happens (magic stops working, person dies, buyer leaves), Ritual Completion at X Hour

2) The Threat of Increasing Difficulty

Once the party starts doing damage to the enemy, word will travel that they are coming. If a minion fails to check in, the enemy will go on alert. Therefore, once contact with the enemy is made, the party has invested interest in hurrying. This requires a balance on the GM's part: that the increase in difficulty for not getting the job done quickly is significantly worse than doing the job with limited resources.

3) Pointless Attrition

The trail to the enemy is so fraught with peril, including intelligent and bothersome wondering monsters, that staying in the campaign area longer than necessary is unacceptable. The players may believe that each day will be equally difficult and that no advantage will be gained for waiting.

4) Looming Death

Similar to the counter, there is a random daily chance of encountering a superbeing unrelated to the adventure at hand. For example, the goblin dungeon is next to a red dragon the party can't kill, and there is a 10% daily chance of meeting the dragon. Be prepared to wipe the party with the dragon if they drag their feet.

Havoc, players run their characters by the book in my game. That is there job. My job is to run everything else how I want. I'm gentle with changing pc abilities because I don't want to jar them, but cry-face players who try to do the gms job for him, them I will walk over and think nothing of it.

I have a suggestion:

Play your character and let the GM run the game. If he is anything like me, he doesn't care, at all, what you, the forum, the errata, or the book have to say about how a power works. I read the power (or sometimes just the name of the power), I think of how I would like the NPC to use it, and then I run the game. If there is any difference between the book and how I explain it, assume that it is because I don't care what the book says and am rewriting it, right now, in real time.

Divine casters have to forgo the usual hatred of authority most players have and conform to a church and or god in game. Failure to live up the the GM's standards results in being forced to post a "paladin fail" thread here.

Wizards can just laugh about it all.

Good stuff.

So here is a practical simulation problem. How do you convey the level of a threat while avoiding metagaming? Something that gets PCs killed in PF Sandbox is not being able to tell how high level an NPC is.

In the real world, a US Navy Seal has at least a fair crack at being able to kill any human being on earth. They aren't going to come at a terrorist and have a WTF moment when he turns out to be 5 levels higher. Unfortunately, this happens easily in PF. You can confront a rogue about his treasure and find out, maybe he is 2nd level, maybe he is 10th level? You don't know. It is whatever the GM picked.

I solve that problem by allowing a Gather Information roll to find out what the baddest dude or monster was killed by the person. I also allow a contest BAB + Wisdom or Sense Motive roll vs. Bluff to determine an NPCs level. This is penalized if the majority of a character's power comes from magic, and given a bonus if initiative has been rolled. In real life, I can usually tell how good someone is at fighting as soon as they put their hands up, and am REALLY GOOD at picking winners in UFC fights. I don't think determining CR with a roll is unrealistic.

This problem is worse when you talk about dungeons though. What the hell is the CR of the stuff in a dungeon? How can the party tell by just looking.

Of course they can do a Gather Information roll to see if they can discover what lived there or who died there, but what about when there isn't any information? How does the party know? Do you really want them to know? If they know they will steadily level up over time, you risk them always picking easy stuff to do. So you can arbitrarily put hard or easy CR monsters and traps in a dungeon, but if the party went through the trouble to investigate it and you do this all the time, it is kind of a prickish move.

You could just stagger them out - farther from civilization or deeper in the ground = higher CR, but that is so predictable.

Any insight?

baal, you don't need an unoptimized character to RP. The ONLY hindrance to RP from a character op standpoint is the low CHA score, and the role of CHA is highly contested.

People find it aggravating that you are mixing these ideas up.

Having a well rounded character is its own form of optimization. I usually kill all the overspecialized PCs I GM for, leaving the moderate ones that look after their own defense a little alive. If you are finding min/maxed characters are blasting through a game and your own added skills and survivability are not coming into play, then the game is too easy for what you built and the optimized character is just looking good compared to you.

Cast animate dead on deceased party members before they can be raised. Bonus points for Paladins.

Nice.

This is a pretty liberal board. Believe me, there are conservative boards out there that are itching for a fight on this. They've got hard core studies on how solar wind is the biggest influence and isn't accounted for in any main stream models. I'm not preaching for them, just letting you know that their are boards looking for a fight Bruunwald.

I like how bad players confuse a problem with a logical solution and failure = death a railroad. "I'm the hero. Anything I do should be good enough so let me win."

So boring.

TPK should happen. It's the stories that players remember the most and brag about.

What should happen is the TPK should be a fair, very hard, memorable, struggle that the players still had a chance for a last minute win.

What should NOT happen is a PK where the player dies from no fault of their own but due to a bad die roll or two.

To help prevent TPK, you should always try and leave a escape path open for the players. It should be up to them if they want to risk a TPK or not. If they want to stay and fight it out, even when the fight is going badly for them, then they need to expect a TPK. You could even make it part of the story or plot hook if this fight is that important to the characters.

If the party can't lose without gross stupidity adults should be incapable of, why even bother with dice? Why not just say they win every fight unless they were really, really stupid?

If the party can't suffer a TPK on any given day, there is no point in rolling dice. Just say they win and move on.

I don't believe NPCs should engage the party, in general, unless they believe they can win.

I think something that would very much help this discussion is if at least one of you defined the terms you are using clearly.

I can clearly see terms like power game, optimize, min/max, munchkin, etc... used for what are actually fairly different concepts. Most (but not all) the posters on these boards see these as different things not interchangeable nicknames for the same thing.

To Baalbamoth,
I think your real problem is a jerk player not a game design problem. If someone decides to be a jerk and ruin everyone elses' fun, the game system does not matter. He will find a way. That leads back to what a lot of us said at the beginning. It requires a conversation with the individual.

Why is it that Baal is the good guy and his friend is the jerk player.

Two guys make characters.

One guy makes a no defense / all attack character and wins.

One guy makes a half attack character and can't contribute.

Both players say, "make your character more like mine."

One guy says, "I'm winning. You change to be like me. I'm having fun and don't want to change."

The other guy says, "my character would be fun if you made a weaker one. you change."

You can probably tell which one I think it being more correct. The person with the problem has a responsibility to fix the problem on his own if he can.

A side note, a long time ago I felt that the best way to control Power Gamers is to assist all of the other players into making characters nearly as strong, and then raising the stats of the NPCs, so that it isn't possible for the Power Gamer to get a statistical advantage.

Sure it changes the nature of the game a little, but I think it is well worth it. Oddly, I've found that it even makes power gamers happy.

Definitely a good strategy to employ (and one I use myself). Still, it is a 'What if?' question more than something likely to occur. I've still had PCs attempt such things a time or two, after all...

During the last game I ran, where half of the players were new to PF, they actually developed a plot behind my back. I was pumped because it never happened before and while I knew there was a plot, I didn't know what it entailed. The player that alerted me to it basically said, "woops, I think I said too much."

When day game arrived and the party was about to perform their ambush on the orcs, the PC with the big plan said, "I fill the canoe with weapons and armor from dead soldiers and drop it off the ledge on the biggest orc."

"ok, 5d6 damage. Good job."

1st Level = Adult Professional Nearly 9 in 10
2nd Level = Experienced Professional 10000 / 100000
3rd Level = Talented Professional 1000 / 100000
4th Level = Talented and Experienced Professional 100 / 100000
5th Level = Rare, Exceptional Professional 10 / 100000
6th Level = Peak Human 1 / 100000

cranewings wrote:

Honestly, as the gm if I misunderstand a rule regarding a spell, I just state that the spell the npc has is one he researched that works the way I am explaining.

That seems unfair and disingenuous to me. I mean a player's expectations of how the game works are predicated on it actually working the way it's outlined in the books (plus any House Rules layed out in advance), and they can't do that if you aren't really playing by the rules or are doing so only when it's convenient. It's the same principle as making up new house rules mid-combat...it's generally bad form, and not fair to the players. It's a violation of the players' trust in the GM to be fair, and the socialcontract that implies.

I've played in games where the GM pulled that kind of thing. They were...unpleasant. Things would either work or not based on the GM's mood and how much he or she liked you, not whether they should or any believable internal logic...and thus there was never any certainty or ability to predict the odds of success of anything.

That's not the kind of GM I want to play with, or be.

cranewings wrote:

It really isn't necessary as gm to contrain yourself to the descriptions in the book.

Of course not. But there's an obligation to do that ahead of time, and intentionally. Not ipso facto because you messed up. Or at least I feel there is.

I don't get what the difference is between the GM mistaking how a spell works for an NPC and playing it that way, and figuring out that the spell doesn't work how he thought and changing it after the fact to meet the expectations in the book.

What is important is the consistency of the GM's train of thought. Take the stupid exploding runes spell. If the players pulled out the rules stating that the spell combo doesn't work, would anything else in the plot happen the way it did? Of course not. Certainly the wizard wouldn't have confronted the PCs. It is much more important that the explosive runes spell be the one the GM intended rather than some rules lawyerish thing from the book.

In my opinion, the spells in the book are example spells for the PC spell book - the end. They have absolutely nothing to do with the powers and abilities I give NPCs. For that matter, character creation has nothing to do with NPC rules. The closest I'll ever give my players is a roll to determine CR within a range, as a mechanical tool to explain their characters' abilities to gauge a threat.

This sort of goes back to my main idea about combating rules lawyers. If I give an NPC an ability that isn't legal, and a player wants to complain, I will not fix the NPC by changing it the way they are asking. I will always add levels until the action becomes legal. I've noticed this cuts the whining from players down to zero.

Honestly, as the gm if I misunderstand a rule regarding a spell, I just state that the spell the npc has is one he researched that works the way I am explaining.

It really isn't necessary as gm to contrain yourself to the descriptions in the book.

So the actual result was immediately becoming a CR 5 undead creature with starting resources. I don't recommend it to just anyone. It was fun though. I didn't begin with much else in the way of gear, and was seemingly just a homeless woman, right up until she threw giggles into a pile of fish guts.

This might be the greatest character that I ever heard of.

Iron Man
Magneto
Green Lantern
Nightwing
Superman no doubt.
Wonder Woman
Captain America
Leonardo
Raphael (The only comic I read anymore is TMNT)
Donovan (Dark Stalker)

Trying to kill an orc with a fighter is like banging a square peg into a round hole. It is pointless.

Orcs are a low CR because they basically can't resist Will attacks. Just put them to sleep or something. They don't do well against that.

If you suppose that Pathfinder is a role-playing game that is not supposed to have winners and losers and is about having fun telling great stories, then I think that stripping the Druid of some or all abilities or otherwise punishing him could have the effect of creating a very cool storyline that the Druid's player could really get into. What better storyline can you find than one of failure and redemption.

I do think that making the Druid's player read this thread waste ably punishment enough, however. ;)

I've had players lose their divine powers in maybe 4 different groups.

One group, they converted to worshiping the prince of hell and became evil.

Another group converted to worshiping Shabalba, the wish granting demon that lives under Persepolis, including the druid who said screw it.

Another player threw a fit and had his character kill himself.

There are at least two other cases of this.

It was only the last time, for the first time ever, that a fallen paladin in one of my games actually became a paladin again. That player actually RPed being too prideful to care about what was happening and tried to cover it up, then later repented. It was great RP. Also, it was really rare.

Most gamers have an anti-authority issue, if they don't outright hate god or live as devout atheists in real life. Combine that with the natural lack of conscious displayed in story telling and you can see why this sort of thing almost never, ever turns into anything cool. It always turns the party into a villains group and wrecks the campaign when they die later. It is super predictable.

Unless my player is very mature, I tend to let almost anything go so long as their can be a rational for it. It isn't worth it to fight alignment battles in real games with most gamers.

cranewings wrote:

The mystic pregnancy isn't sexist. It is just treated as sexist because a feminist made a list of things to be angry about and decided to include it. Being offended by it is a personal problem.

PROTIP: When pointing out that there are serious gender issues with something you're doing or defending, telling people that they're overreacting is just going to make them more angry and strident. As a knock-on effect, it makes you look like a jerk. I have no idea what Youtube videos you're talking about, but feminism isn't a thing that's just on Youtube! Shocking, I know.

Here, let me break it down. Persisting when you know you are offending one of the players is going to cause that player (and possibly anyone who likes that player more than you) to leave your game, and possibly tell other people how much of an a#*~%+# you are. (They're right to do so!) If this is something you'd like to avoid, don't be the GM from the comic I posted. It's easy to avoid this by asking people if they are offended and respecting their wishes if they are.

Thanks for the pro tip. Sorry, I'm not at all concerned with how I come across to strangers on the internet. If you don't like it, block my posts. I don't care if I make a stranger on the internet more angry.

You are also projecting crap that isn't there. I didn't tell him how to act or what to do. I was commenting on the nature of the offended person; not giving advice on how to handle them. I do not care how he handles them. I really don't.

I felt like explaining this: people offended by the topic at hand, mystical pregnancies, are offended on purpose because they feel like being that way. They are purposefully being difficult.

sunshadow21 wrote:

The key is that most of those problematic concepts are actually quite effective for bad guys if handled properly, and RPGs aren't the first to utilize most of them. Story tellers have been using them since humans began telling stories. Now it is possible that individuals might have personal reasons to dislike the use of any given concept, and the DM needs to be aware of such things as much as possible, but in general, this concept is pretty light on the offensive meter. It's most certainly discomforting, but any good villain is.

No. If the concept offends someone and is genuinely problematic, then no, there really isn't a "proper" way to handle it. Being offended by sexist overtones in a game is not a "personal problem", or, at least, it's not the offended person's problem. If you're going to do something you know is problematic, then you need to talk to the players first, or else you risk becoming this GM.

The mystic pregnancy isn't sexist. It is just treated as sexist because a feminist made a list of things to be angry about and decided to include it. Being offended by it is a personal problem.

An aspect of Pathfinder I'm really not a fan of is how effective you can make a character that spams an attack at an almost universally low defense. Most NPCs - Rogues, Fighters, Warriors and Experts have really low Will saves, but it is cake to make a wizard that just poops all over Will.

The Gunslinger is the same but worse. Touch AC was just a curiosity - a bone thrown to wizards who didn't want to just spam Confusion and Haste every fight, and to explain why 'tag' is easier than 'kill'. Then they turned around and took that same mechanic and applied it to guns and gave them to PCs.

I really hated GMing for the gunslinger in my last game. I let him play it to completion but it earned my ban list forever. Almost everything in the book and every NPC has a low touch AC. Unless I'm going to turn my game into Cowbows vs. Ninjas and attack the group with nothing but acrobats, minutemen and shadow people, I can pretty much kiss any NPC goodbye in 3 rounds. It really sucks. I see where your GM is coming from.

You basically took a gun to a knife fight and you were winning. It is boring. Either the world of the game has to adapt, to make it just as hard on you as it would be without guns or the gunslinger has to go.

Was the neutral bbeg doing something evil? Sounds like cheese.

There is literally nothing more gritty than a group of deep gnomes, see my last game, burrying pickaxes in the heads of their Drow slavers, and then killing all the Drow children. Gnomes are the fantasy underdog and I love rooting for them.

Oddly enough, I've had only great and serious players play Kender. All the Kender I've ever GMed for were thoughtful and interesting characters.

It is the elf and half orc characters that I worry about. I don't know what the deal is with elves, or why obnoxious players I've known go for them.

cranewings wrote:

ciretose wrote:

I don't care how you run your home game.

I do care when you come on the boards and make proclamations about how unbalanced and broken the game is, and then time shows you have added house rules to your home game that skew balance and break the game.

If you are happy in your home game, awesome. But you don't get to complain about it being broken if you are the one who broke it.

The game assumes that a gm will pick monsters that are fair but challenging for the group. The only change you need to wreck / break pathfinder is to pick monsters based on story or taste rather than for how their stats play against the party.

Nope. You go by CR you should be fine, regardless of what monster the GM picks as long as the players create a group rather than individuals who happen to travel together.

This is why I alway challenge people to pick an adventure path or module for comparison, since they can't know the make up of your group.

It is a team game, with everyone working together to fill all gaps.

Personally I think PF is far too easy. A balanced, suboptimal party treats CR appropriate challenges as a walk through. The power of a well built team vs. cr is huge.

cranewings wrote:

Selgard wrote:

I agree with you for all things that are home games.

but.

Pathfinder Society operates under The Rules. Not the rules as altered by your DM or the rules as some dude on the internet say they are but the rules as they are supposed to be as written by the designers.

Yeah but, I don't really think they are even trying. I'm playing in my first PFS game this next week and I've already lost all respect for it. Apparently if I wear a T-Shirt that says "Pathfinder" on it I get to make a free reroll, and apparently my paladin isn't allowed to share gold with other PCs.

Worrying about what the game designers are trying to do when they put crap like this in there after the fact is really pointless. I have a hard enough time dealing with RAW. I can't believe whats in the PFS manual.

I'm neither for or against PFS. Personally, I've played one whole session of it and its relatively unlikely that I'll play another.

But liking it or not liking it doesn't really invalidate the need for those who /do/ play it to have consistent and accurate rulings. Otherwise you sit at the table and DM A says you can do something and then next week DM B says that its illegal or cheesy or whatever and you can't.

Sometimes you need /the rule/ not "well just decide for yourself what it means.".

-S

You really don't need /the rule/ at all.

I agree with you for all things that are home games.

but.

Pathfinder Society operates under The Rules. Not the rules as altered by your DM or the rules as some dude on the internet say they are but the rules as they are supposed to be as written by the designers.

Yeah but, I don't really think they are even trying. I'm playing in my first PFS game this next week and I've already lost all respect for it. Apparently if I wear a T-Shirt that says "Pathfinder" on it I get to make a free reroll, and apparently my paladin isn't allowed to share gold with other PCs.

Worrying about what the game designers are trying to do when they put crap like this in there after the fact is really pointless. I have a hard enough time dealing with RAW. I can't believe whats in the PFS manual.

If you're asking yourself who you really are and you question the force fed religions of man and you just can't see... so clear your mind. Fear is god's pillar and it has made you blind. Can't you wake up and see that the world is blind and trying to see. The architects left us many signs but the answers lie in death.

Cursing around people who are offended by it is a sign that you don't care about respecting those people. Cursing around people you don't know is a sign that you don't respect them because it isn't worth your time to find out how they feel.

Not knowing or getting what I just wrote is ignorant. Not caring is shameful.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Josh M. wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Even then, how much do you really care about imaginary people?

<.<

EDIT: I care enough to help create an interesting story with the players. A story with dynamic range and depth, if possible.

EDIT 2: Seriously, what kind of response is that? Of COURSE they're imaginary. What a joykill.

You missed the point. Be it death or 'worse', it's not really happening. So whybe tense over it?

Because the engagement is part of the enjoyment.

It is kind of boring if they are just toons you don't care about.

Furries only have a bad name because they let some lawn crappers into their hobby who messed it up with the pedophilia art. The furries lost because they didn't realize they should have stopped it when it started.

I love anthro-animal stuff. Gargoyles, TMNT, Bucky O'Hair, Dark Stalkers, and so on and on. My childhood was made out of anthropromorphic animals. It is only natural to want to express the portion of my creativity that grew out of that. I like the animal races. Always have.

Next char: gnomish monk/bard.

If your game has a lot of interaction, social checks, politics, bards are extremely powerful. I played a high charisma high diplomacy war mage once, and I was a one-trick pony compared to a bard.

Absolutely. This is why I get scared of the boards sometimes. I'm afraid that one day the tyranny of the masses is going to confuse the game designers and make them think that every campaign is a 4 APL +1 encounters per day, PCs can't die, DPR race, RAW, where the only thing that matters is killing things and that what we want is for every PC to be equal in every way. Classes like the bard, rogue and monk are beautiful and perfect just the way they are. I would HATE to see them crap them up by turning them into DPS machines with half a dozen x / day win button abilities.

People get better at D&D over time. Now they know to carry silver. As players, you start to think about how to adventure more over time. Some of my players make a point of getting special materials, garlic, stakes, cold iron, Greek fire, silver and so on as soon as possible. That stuff goes right along with the crow bar and 50' of rope.

Next time the newbs wont be blind sided. This is how you stop being n00bs and gain experience as players. There is nothing wrong with unprepared players taking a butt kicking and getting better.

Best Things a GM Can Do

- Have a complete picture of the world in mind so that he can answer questions without making anything up.

- Design a world that conforms both to historical and genre expectations so that the players can rely on their intuition to guide them.

- Avoid rules changes during a game that cause players to have WTF moments.

- When there isn't a clear answer and you don't have a serious stake in the fight, side with the players. More simply - pick your battles wisely.

- While adhering to genre convention, avoid SPECIFIC items from the genre that would remind the players of the source material. Really avoid specific items from other genre. Don't put Afro Samurai in your Historical Fiction game.

- Try your best to keep the world in motion and have NPCs behave as much like real people as possible.

Best Things for a Player to Do

- Avoid being specifically disruptive by arguing about rules, derailing the game by making constant jokes, or pointing out the GM's source material.

- Talk to the GM and gain a clear understanding of your character's level of power relative to the world, and then play that rather than attempting to make the game something it isn't.

- Take actions in character, in relation to your character's personality, rather than just playing yourself and trying to win. If the battle mat interferes with your pure mental image, ask to get rid of it. Only you know if it is a problem for you or not.

- Paint as clear a mental image of the character as you can. Detail his skills, history AND his equipment so that you can make clear decisions, rather than having to step out into the metagame and ask the GM for favors.