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I'm gonna throw in with the Savage Worlds crowd. The reason being how versatile the little book is. I was torn between that and World of Darkness, except that the latter is almost inherantly depressing and I don't think a bunch of castaways really need that. Not good for morale. At least with Savage Worlds you can be a bit optimistic and distracting with the campaigns. Though the reason given above for RIFTS makes it a pretty good choice too...
I had decided I wanted to get into fantasy RPGs 6 years ago as a way of expressing creativity and being free from programming limitation of video games. It just so happened that my brother's friend had the 3e box and wanted to find some people to play with, so him, my brother and I went to his basement (It was winter i think, there was a fire going). We ran through the sample adventure it came with, with me being stuck as DM (we rolled for it). It was also the introduction of a couple of running gags that have stuck with us, like the whip-o-flame (an oil covered rope lit on fire) and craft (MacGuyver). It was also the start of a gaming group that lasted until last year when said friend moved half an hour away. I knwo it's not far, but it's inconveniant and inconvenaint things tend not to last. On the upside, It's also the time that I discovered how much I love GM-ing games. I've tried playing and I don't mind it too much, but I'm never happier then when I'm behind the screen. Ah, nostalgia...
I had the exact same problem with one of my players and I solved it by just writing my own adventures. IT's not that hard. At first, just combine a few of them. maybe you want a particular encounter from one, but you want to change the race from kobolds to zombies. then change the starting village to one from a completely differant adventure. and add a randome dungeon crawl through soem tunnels from a map you found online (This is a good place for that) and the know it all player will be so confused he soon won't bother trying to remember where secret doors are. (hint, change where the secret doors are). After a while, you won't even need the prewritten ones, your own adventures will just come naturally. (And I've heard it before, but it really doesn't take up any more free time then preparing a prewritten one would. At least, it never did for me...) Though if you're comfotable with re-statting some things, then you can find some short (and free) adventures here under adventures or here under downloads. They aren't bad really. Just create a central hub town as a base to lead naturally to the adventure.
Does this collect all 12 of the first series? because if so, then 2.99 times 12 does not 20$ make... Which leaves me confused as to what this is in relation to the other 12. The same question actually goes for the other saga too. Is it a collection of the individual sidetreks, or is it something else entirely? Also, why are there 12 in this one but only 6 in the other?
"35. I prefer my gaming life to my actual life." I was okay with it up to this point. Is it assuming we all live distinct double lives or have multiple personalities or something? I agree with the above. that survey could not have possibly told them anything relevent about gaming and social impact. On the upside, I appreciate the ones at the psych office a little more now in terms of quality of survey. and for the how much have you spent question? I put 15000$ and I think I was underestimating somewhat. over the 15 or so years i've been playing? I've spent at least 1000 on just magic over the last year, at least that much again on warhammer...ya, 15 seems about right.
I'd bet on another seizure until we're told otherwise. Man...I only just read he was hospitolized an hour ago, wondering if he'd be the next star to die...eerie. Such a shame.
Finished King Rat, and true to my hopes China did not disappoint. It was a fantastic read. Has anyone read "The City & The City"? Is it as good? Worth buying?THE CITY AND THE CITY is very, very good, but it's a bit of a departure for China's writing style. It's pared back and his more whimsical crazy stuff is mostly missing. As a more serious book that takes the fantastical premise more seriously, it's excellent. KRAKEN, his newest book, brings back the crazy in full force (he probably overdoes it, actually, but recovers and ends up delivering a good book). Oooh, I was going to ask about Kraken too actually, so thank's for clearing that up. Looks like I'd probably enjoy both of them (and I'll end up buying both), but I'll most likely end up saving The City and The City for a later date when I don't have anyhting else in my lineup. (While I can appreciate a more serious book, I am rather fond of the whimsy and outrageously fantastical.) So far, Fragile things is amazing. It's taking a surprisingly long time, given that it's all short stories, but that's Gaiman for you. I'm always amazed at how deceptively long his stuff is. Just means you get more for the mony, imo.
Right you are. Well, in that case, I'm hoping they make her fade into the background or something..I don't think that was a requirement for that part, as proven by Ms. Fox.Rosie Huntington Whiteley has been cast as the replacement for Megan Fox.Sure, she looks hot. But can she act? You wouldn't think it'd be that hard, what with all the giant transforming robots running around...but apparently it is.
Eurovision 2009 entries on Youtube. Norway's was definately my favorite, but I can see why it was so close between them and iceland. I much prefer this to the stupid singing shows we have on this side of the ocean. and hey, since it's happeneing this week (the 2010 competition), I'm gonig to mosey on over and check ut the entries so far this year.
I think this has been brought up before, but what are the chances of seeing you guys put a map tool on the website. I'd love an interactive map with pins representing the various AP locations. I realize it'd be hard to put up, but would be a really great tool (for you and for us) and you could update it as new adventures come out. But if they did that, then they couldn't sell us products like this one and the inevitable update every couple of years with more locations. and we wouldn't have nice huge maps. ...well i supoiose they could at that. and most people would buy them anyway, but the point remains...I think.
No or is not inclusive. Therefore I am covered because I don't like hockey and baseball. (Although I do enjoy watching it when my kids are playing.) Further more I enjoy NASCAR, which we all know is not a sport. :)3. The right to not like football or any other sport.'Or' is not inclusive, is it? As opposed to say, 'nor'. Therefore, I take this to read you can like football and choose some other sport to not like. OH! well then I'm covered on that one due to not liking soccor. I mean, it's just organized running. why don't you all just run laps? It'd be much more efficient and result in less injury!
Huh...I've been living up to my responsibilities just fine, but I havn't been excercising all my rights apparently. So sue me. I like Curling and working out! We can't all be perfect! And if anyone wanted to know, my specialties are 90's sitcoms and Vertigo Comics. Incidently, Happy towel day and Glorious 25th of May! (or do those deserve their own threads?)
Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Blue Oyster Cult and Barenaked Ladies. As usual, it's a medley of all their works, not from any specific album, just what i could load up my iPod with. Pretty nice all around mix for droning out and getting relaxed, while the ladies keep me fairly energized and awake with their upbeats. And I hereby proclaim Adderley a must-listen for anyone who like Jazz. I didn't even know I was such a large fan of the genre until I did. which led to Davis, and now onwards from there. Gotta get prepped for Jazzfest after all. Woo!
That sounds like more than one weekends worth of fun.Or just one really wacky adventure if he does it right. depends what he wants in the end i guess. Sounds like a lot of fun! Be sure to keep us updated! (or me at least. I'm always curious to see how DMs spin their yarns.)
Finished King Rat, and true to my hopes China did not disappoint. It was a fantastic read. Has anyone read "The City & The City"? Is it as good? Worth buying? Anyhow, for now I'm on to "Fragile Things", a short story collection by Neil Gaiman. In all honesty I only bought this for the short story about Susan from the Chronicles of Narnia, but I'm about half way through and so far I've enjoyed almost all of the stuff in it immensely (Just not really a fan of his poetry. It's a little...morose for me, I suppose.)
That sounds like more than one weekends worth of fun. Or just one really wacky adventure if he does it right. depends what he wants in the end i guess.
Dream Sequences. Always hated em, now I hate em even more. I'm guessing it's because it can be an excuse for the DM to throw an abundance of useless imagery at them. see, the dream world (or plane, if you prescribe to that cosmology) can be a ticket for the DM to do whatever they want. rules don't matter anymore. some DMs like that, so they tend to put too much emphasis on the dreams, which can get confusing to the player. i know my players always liked them, but that was because I didn't overuse them (a common problem) and I knew my audience and exactly what was too much. The key to your question lies in the qualifier "if they're not horribly badly done". this tends to happen to things like dream sequences more often then anything else that i know of, but anything "horribly badly done" is going to accrue distaste. I once teleported my high-level group in the stomach of the tarrasque. When they managed to escape, they noticed the tarrasque was in a room with a mirror of opposition :-) I once teleported a terrasque on top of my high-level group...to be fair it was summoned by an equally high-level wizard and most of the group managed to survive. ...Calculating the damage done to a character by a falling terrasque is one of the high points in my DMing career, just fyi. Just above the groan I get now when I say something like "the party is being led by a little girl".
A dungeon crawl can pretty much fill that. I'd have a sphinx show up (like in aladin) as an old legend states and the players could investigate. if you want to make it longer, go into adventuring to find out why it shows up. I used this exact basis and had enough fuel for nearly 3 adventures of 5 hours each, even though the tomb itself wa sonly 1.What was the legend that you used? Oh, I started off incredably vague. this was over a year ago, so i'll try to rmeember as near as i can. I think it went like they found a map in a bin of "discount" maps at an antiquities shop or something, and it had a sort of bulge in it, so it stood out. the player bought it and cut ut open to reveal a new map pointing to a spot in the middle of the desert, with a rudimentary calender around the border (gave my player with ranks in Knowledge (astronomy) something to do) and a name on the back. research at the local bar revealed this dude was famous for being exceedingly wealthy, but infamous for being greedy and disappearing randomly one year. or something like that. the players figured out the calender (conveniently that night) and went off to the spot marked. a mesa appeared out of the ground, unfolding like it was made of paper. the players climed it, got inside and then the dungeon crawl, which i basically ripped out of alladin, only it was a cursed sword instead of a magic lamp. the follow up involved some research into the negative energy plane, finding a mysterious library that connected to al other libraries (a la terry pratchett) and returning the bones of one of his crew to their trader parents or something liek that. it was a surprisingly fulfilling adventure. But like I said, you could just cut that off after the dungeon crawl itself. just have no clues leading from it. then you could always return to it later if youre ever stuck again and sprinkle in some "new" clues or something. (and i know i said Sphinx above, but i did some remembering in the meantime. it was a mesa...basically a really wide, flat pillar of rock.)
A dungeon crawl can pretty much fill that. I'd have a sphinx show up (like in aladin) as an old legend states and the players could investigate. if you want to make it longer, go into adventuring to find out why it shows up. I used this exact basis and had enough fuel for nearly 3 adventures of 5 hours each, even though the tomb itself wa sonly 1.
Did something similar before.I apologize. I missed it the first time around. S'all good. We can't all catch everything that goes around. ...which is also my explanation for why I never catch colds or flus when they go around. Not sure it works that way, but eh.
Did something similar before. I allready put my entry there (A boy and his frog), and the entry that also makde me cry (Baby of Mine from Dumbo).
So let me get this straight... Banner aka the real Hulk isn't the hulk anymore, but everyone of his principle characters (Rick Jones, Betty Ross, and General Ross) are Hulks now? WTF?Instead he's become an incredibly manipulative bastard instead in a way that is consistent with his ongoing psychosis. It's like a subversion of the superhero genre. "The tale of an ordinary man, living in a not so ordinary world". ...Actually, I'd read that. It also sounds familiar somehow.
and as for the little girl...well, she almost inevitably either triggers traps or turns into a demon or...well, i've used her to the point where just showing up scares the hell out of them. You ever try to fulfill a hostage rescue mission when you're outright paranoid about the charge you have to rescue? And when i's a room full of them, all turning to stare simultaneously? Paranoia is fun to watch.Out of curiosity, have you run the ghost/dark scion storyline from Heroes of Horror? I know of at least one DM who ran that and ever since, every time a >10-year-old (or racial equivalent) girl shows up his players always immediately drop into high-gear mode. No, I haven't, but now I sure as hell want to look it up! If they're allready this paranoid, it would do well to make them even more so!
I would recommend looking at all of the ones mentioned above, plus a couple more "rules lite" ones like Risus, or Micrlite20, both of which can help with the concept of leaving out or reducing complex systems that cut into the flow of fun (and yes, Minimus, mentioned above, counts in this category, plus it has a really cool character creation mechanism). G.U.R.P.S. Lite is a little longer (a whopping 32 pages), but again it shows how to pare down to the essentials. These all have the added bonus of being free. If you're looking for something that's still d20, but has a different take, then Iron Heroes might be something to look into. you can pick and choose elements for your own game, but it's going to take a bit of balancing if your group cares about that. Last, you might want to look at the World of Darkness books. it's not a d20 system, but a lot that it does have is very interesting and in fact sort of inspired me to chance some of the stuff in my own game. specifically, the take on magic from Mage. Anyhow, I hope that helped some.
almost manga porn? Meh. I already read Xenoscape comics, so this isn't really a new concept to me. Maybe I've just gotten a bit blase... And before anyone thinks to judge, it's because I'm obsessed with anything Wonderland related and not because I was seduced by the covers...the beautiful, bouncy covers...Mmmmm...
You could take a look at Risus. It's about as barebones as I can imagine, it's compact and it applies for any setting at all. The fact that it's free and like 8 pages or something is amazing.
let's see...evil? that's kinda a hard one. As I've posted on other threads: Gelatenous ooze pit traps: players loved it. Turned into a pet.
It seemed impossible to be actually evil to them, then I stumbled across two things that never seem to fail: Shocker Lizards and the ILG (Innocent Little Girl). if they hear scritching on the walls, they avoid the corridor. no questions asked. stacking electricity damage has almost killed them more then anything else. and as for the little girl...well, she almost inevitably either triggers traps or turns into a demon or...well, i've used her to the point where just showing up scares the hell out of them. You ever try to fulfill a hostage rescue mission when you're outright paranoid about the charge you have to rescue? And when i's a room full of them, all turning to stare simultaneously? Paranoia is fun to watch. Oh, and in the evil things DMs can do category: I took their bar away. their first characters retired and opened a tavern, so I took their cavern and shoved it into the multiverse. It shows up now and again, but something usually happens that they can't get in and then it disappears. Sometimes I think the only reason they still play is to try and get it back.
I played an awakened monkey monk/sorcerer in my last groups campaign. Any chance to see a sketch or computer rendering of it? I wouldn't mind doing it if you're still interested. I know I'm not as talented or practised as some others here, but I've never really gotten any complaints. (I'm also overly modest sometimes, so you be the judge) I would need to know more details though. like mostly if he's wearing clothes and what kind, and equipment and such.
Man...it's been forever since I posted here. Lets's see...what have I read recently. I'm now up to Theif of Time by pratchett, so I read all of the ones between souol music and that one since my last post. I've read the entirety of Preacher and 100 Bullets, The Castle by Kafka, Shrodinger's Cat trilogy by Robert A. Wilson , The Orb of Xoriat by Edward Bolme, Thousand Sons by Graham McNeill and The Lost (Third Gaunt's Ghosts omnibus) by Dan Abnett (though I also reread both previous omnibii as well). Is it just me, or does it seem like I slowed down somewhat?
Ok, it's been awhile since I was last here, and I plan to go back through the thread to see what i missed in the last 1000 or so posts, but for now, why not bring me up to speed. I want to get started again, so if Montalve would be so kind as to remind me of any commission I have ongoing...for like the last year...I can try to get those out of the way. In the meantime, if anyone has any particular items they want done (ie. weapons, rings, rods, wondrous items etc. you all know what i mean) I would be happy to start trying to do those again. The last year was a difficult and busy one, but it seems like i'm out if it now so I got some time to start this again for a while. And for anyone new to the thread or just needing a reminder of what my work looked like, here is my page.
You could even make it as simple as her having a known high level mage she controls do a whole lot of voodoo over a bell or something and then give ti to the PCs and tel them that it'll ring by itself if the village is destroyed or whatever. it'll never do that, so they'll think she's always keeping her word. and the mage could give it whatever aura you want so if the players check then "whoa, serious magic item. she probably wasn't lying". it's the approach I'd take anyhow.
Just in case anyone wants to know, I got to the last boss in the Slime Hole if anyone far stronger then me with some kinda slime resistance wants to take him on, and I opened up Hobopolis again. Didn't know it had closed up. I plan to work on that now until someone tells me to do otherwise. By "open", i mean I fought my way there. I don't know if that means that anyone else can just skip the sewers or if everyone has to fight their way there on their own. And I'm a pastamancer, so I might just consider ascending, if only to give me a new class to explore. On the other hand, if you have need of a high level pastamancer with a bunch of time, money and adventures on his hands, then I might wait. I'll explore hobopolis in the meantime, or maybe the sea.
Yup! I love Back to the Future, and typically I will stop and watch whenever I find it on the air (particularly if it's near the end - I absolutely love the climax).I'm confused. What do you have against such a great movie?Back to the Future. *Facepalm* Ya, I remember now. Don't know how I forgot in the first place. Time to borrow my brother's box set again. Also, that make much more sense then you disliking the movie.
I've done this for both Blazing Saddles (Once watched that 3 times in a row in one sitting. Kinda proud of that) and Hunt for Red October (Actually did stay awake until 4am when I had work 3 hours later). Either of these two movies will make me immediately stop channel surfing. Not really sure why.
Hey, so turns out that if you play something regularly for 6 months, then stop for like 9 or 10, then start again? Ya, you get really lost. I've totally forgotten what I was in the middle of. I mean, I wrapped up the two outstanding guild quests I had, but other then that the only thing I could think of to do was meat farming at the Castle in the sky. If anyone has any recommendation on where I should head (like, do we still need hobo adventuring under the clan hall?), I'd welcome it. Any newcomers want some help? Just ask. But please give me some direction or I'm just gonna keep farming. And what's the story with this slime hole thing? Is it something I should be considering?
Sadly, no I havn't. I found the site last year off these forums, but I can't convince my players to give it a try. They prefer a slightly more structured game. From what I gather though, you don't translate classes since everything is based on skills. and if you read the rules, it tells you what combat's like (again, that's if i recall correctly.)
You know that you can get 5 by 8 index card holders that will hold all the map cardsHere's a link If you`re getting the same message I am, where it asks for a postal code in the US, then just do what I do and use 90210. Like from the TV show. so long as you don`t plan to order off the site, it seems to grant access to every site that`s asked me for one so far.
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