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Post by barrataria on Dec 28, 2013 17:06:49 GMT -6
We all had opinions about the rules. Style of reffing, not so much. I didn't encounter the "Waa waa waa mean old referee arbitrary decisions boo hoo poor me" until years later. Getting eaten by a Black Pudding was no different from having your lead tank run over a mine and blow up. It's a wargame, $hit happens, deal with it. Sorry for being late to this thread, but I hope you share this thought frequently. There's a reason characters are so easy to generate! Not at all unlike losing some units and hoping like hell you can make it to Turn 5 when reinforcements appear. Now for a question, sorry if I've asked before but if I did the message board probably died. Did Gronan build a stronghold/get followers?
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Post by barrataria on Dec 28, 2013 17:01:26 GMT -6
I agree that having good players is not a problem! They will make you a better DM.
And hopefully you'll have the same effect. Try designing an NPC party of similar class, level, and abilities to your PCs. Make them the commanders of a brigand gang or some such. Also, be sure that the NPCs have some pets (mountain lion, dogs, etc.) that will help counter the party's stealth abilities.
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Post by barrataria on Dec 16, 2013 23:57:11 GMT -6
I came to the game with MegaTraveller, and I'd use it again if I were to run a game. I've played in a Mongoose Traveller game and that was fine too. I'd probably find it easier to use MgT than Classic if I had to run a game tomorrow. Whichever will be fine; I believe MgT falls down on their extremely high book pricing.
The MT game I ran in high school was more or less what you outlined. My players ended up with a noble and a rogue, of all things, and the noble ended up with a yacht as a mustering-out benefit. So there was a bit of mucking around with smuggling, a hijacking, etc. I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the Imperium, we stayed in a single sector in the Spinward Marches.
It's a great game, no matter what version you play (although isn't there a d20 Traveller? Seems like a version I'd stay away from).
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Post by barrataria on Dec 5, 2013 15:12:35 GMT -6
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Post by barrataria on Nov 16, 2013 12:06:37 GMT -6
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Post by barrataria on Nov 16, 2013 11:50:09 GMT -6
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Post by barrataria on Nov 10, 2013 13:47:36 GMT -6
Thanks krusader, that's really all I need, just enough to leave clues here or there and a bit of flavor in encounters. Perfect!
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Post by barrataria on Nov 9, 2013 18:14:42 GMT -6
Thanks a pile fin! I wish there were a Jane's aircraft-type book for 20s autos!
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Post by barrataria on Nov 8, 2013 23:12:47 GMT -6
Google has been unhelpful, as has wikipedia. I'd love to find a website that lists (preferably with photos) car models by year, specifically for the early 20s. I had hoped to find some sort of wikipedia page like that and haven't. Even the manufacturer wiki entries aren't that helpful, mostly lacking a by-year listing of cars and models.
I don't expect to spend any time/energy statting all possible vehicles out, but it would be nice to use car info as clues during adventures.
Thanks!
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Post by barrataria on Nov 8, 2013 23:08:55 GMT -6
This is interesting, mostly because you could drop it right into d6 Fantasy and give it a nice simple magic system that would dovetail with the rest of the game.
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Post by barrataria on Sept 17, 2013 4:27:30 GMT -6
is it possible to get a copy of your appendix- the weapons list you describe? Fin was just pasting info from that thread on the other board he linked to.
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Post by barrataria on Sept 5, 2013 19:51:44 GMT -6
I saw several recommendations of the planet/system generation scheme, but still haven't gotten around to doing anything with it yet.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 26, 2013 19:18:54 GMT -6
What about farcical westerns such as "The Brothers O'Toole," "Duchess and the Dirt water Fox," or "Sam Whiskey"? I always got a kick out of those and they might make a nice departure from an intense campaign. Two of my favorite western films were "Support Your Local Gunfighter" and "Support Your Local Sheriff" with James Garner. And "farcical" is a great description. "Gunfighter" is better, with a good supporting cast including Harry Morgan, Jack Elam, Dub Taylor, and Suzanne Pleshette. Morgan and Elam show up in "Sheriff" too but it's not as much fun.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 20, 2013 16:53:14 GMT -6
But what would be the point? What it would end up being is spiral notebook pages of boring NPC stats, place names swiped from other sources (Greyhawk, Rohan, Rivendell, Aquilonia, and so on) and cheezy hand-drawn maps. What character sheets I still have were hand-written on lined paper or on 3x5 notecards. I did have a lengthy history of the campaign written out, if I can find it, but many of the names were ripped off from history or literature and it would be a lot of work to try to rename everything just to publish. (And then it wouldn't be the "same thing" anyway.) Wait, I'd think you were describing my "Greyhawk" but I used legal pads and file folders. So my world is way totally cooler than yours I think I did much more copying from world cultures/places though, but to be fair GH and the Known World did too, seemed to be what to do. Mostly it's dreck I need to put in the recycling bin but never seem to get to.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 13, 2013 14:23:29 GMT -6
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Post by barrataria on Aug 13, 2013 12:22:38 GMT -6
What rules are you using? What is the makeup of the party? d6 Star Wars. The Order of the Codex Initiate is for now accompanied by an ex-Pirate, an ex-Freedom Warrior (mercs that are the Jedi "military advisors" on planetary operations), and a Twilek technician.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 13, 2013 12:19:18 GMT -6
I wish I could say your hypothetical bar scene is far fetched, Geoffrey, but sadly there are a lot of folks who do it kinda like that. I think I've said before that none of the games I played have been played really by the book, but I think people try to utilize those skill systems when they think of doing so. From what I've seen in my last two groups that I played in (didn't DM), rolling dice for all kinds of things is sort of part of the RPG culture. It's what you do. As a sage once said, "you can't fix stupid". Rolling to mount a horse (for a fantasy or old west character) is indeed stupid. I seem to recall an example in the C&C rulebook about carrying dishes up stairs, which seemed a crazy thing to mention in the rules at all. Rolling to see whether or not the character can run through a hail of gunfire, leap on his mount, and chase after the train? I think that's worth rolling dice for. Nothing wrong with narrative games, but I find that designing mindful of the time between die rolls helps form adventures too. I have found that the dice can sit on the table for a very long time in D&D games that involve anything but straight-up kill them and take their stuff. People do like to roll dice, although d6 can take that to ridiculous extremes in combat IMO. But die rolls bring players' focus back to the table in a different way than simple talk-and-respond gaming. Ultimately, it's probably cooler to just assume most adventurers in a fantasy game know how to order a drink, or ride a horse, or sharpen a sword, or put on armor. Likewise, it's probably cooler to just assume people in the future can operate a ship, or use a computer, or drive a car. I'm not clear on how that helps differentiate between characters (or NPCs) as to their relative skill level. I think Han Solo is probably a better starship pilot than Princess Leia, and he's clearly better than most TIE fighter pilots. For fantasy, is a character from Rohan a better horseman than a sailor who's never done anything but ride slowly into a town to buy provisions? If those things will matter in a momentous way in a game session I find it helpful to know those relative differences.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 13, 2013 8:41:43 GMT -6
I just ran my second session of a game set in the Ancient Republic, safely off the official EU timeline (5,500 years before SW). In this period, there are several lightside force-using orders including Jedi (who eventually subsume the others for various reasons although elements are still visible in the original films). A member of one of these orders, the Order of the Codex, was invited by colonists on the planet Muzara to assist with a dispute with the native race, the equine Muza (which are kind of a primitive version of the K'Kree). There are rumors of dark, alien ruins scattered around the planet, which is being colonized by humans from Brentaal under sponsorship from a league of nobles. Their 1KM-long derelict colony spaceship is in orbit over the planet and functions as their starport; the abandoned portions seem to be plagued with weird mutated creatures created in the mishap that ruined the ship. That's about as far as we've gotten so far
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Post by barrataria on Aug 13, 2013 8:14:34 GMT -6
+2! (B/X D&D). a 13-15 is common enough by the book. In B/X 13-15 is only a +1 bonus, 16-17 is +2, 18 is +3. There isn't any weapon specialization or anything else. Halflings (which are technically halfling fighters) get a +1 bonus for missile weapons. For my games +1 is the most common modifier you'd see for NPC brigand leaders or town watch serjeants and whatnot. Using 4d6 drop low/arrange as you like, players usually end up with a fighter with +2 STR. 18s are pretty rare even with 4d6 drop low. I had my current group of 4 roll up 2 characters each when we started and no one had an 18.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 13, 2013 7:58:20 GMT -6
Simple means you can fake it with classes if you like. I guess it's all in your perception, I think it's easier to fake with SWD6 style default attributes. Luke probably has a 4D rating in MECH, so whether or not he has a particular skill in speeder op or starfighter pilot doesn't matter so much... he's better at that than Greedo, for instance, whether or not he's had special training. And what kind of a class is Luke (at least in Ep. IV)? A fighter? A pilot? One nice thing about the skill system is that one character can be crap at an attribute (say TECH) but well-trained in a skill (say First Aid). You can have a noble doctor that's really incompetent with tech other than medicine but very socially skilled, if that's what you want to play. With the skill bundle/class thing you end up with all doctors being good at all the same things. Are they all terrible shots? Incompetent pilots? I guess this is just a turnaround of the irritating "I want my magic-user to be good with a sword" discussions, but I appreciate being able to give characters and important NPCs texture in that way in sci-fi games which are going to cover so many tech levels and alien races and so on. I also find it a lot easier to speculate which attribute something falls under a d6 attribute than which "class", especially since classes in D&D tend to overlap somewhat. Detect a snare on a trail... druid? Ranger? Thief? Fighter? Barbarian? At some point some of these things make all the characters look like the others too, a la C&C and the fighter flavors. And if they're just "background skills" everyone knows, like riding in an Old West or fantasy game, it's easy enough to make a short list of those things. I'm not seriously going to argue skills over class, especially to this board, since I like D&D and run it happily. Maybe what I'm really saying is I'm usually bored/underwhelmed with sci-fi "classes" as implemented. Oh, and as to Kaylee I thought several hints in the show implied that she had some kind of psychic/empathic connection with machines (and maybe a part of her early connection with River). And it's certainly clear that other than Wash and maybe the Shepherd no one knows much about how to make the thing work. Which makes sense to me, as I don't think the Firefly universe assumes those things are all automated/magical. If you're handwaving that or playing Conan-in-space then such differences probably don't matter.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 12, 2013 18:28:27 GMT -6
Think of it this way.... (leaving the brand name aside) why does fantasy gaming need to be class-based? I've been working a lot with d6 lately and I just think I like skill systems better. Of course, it also assumes the game to be run will make use of all skills. I find that thinking that the attributes and skills make me think of including tasks that use them during design. Also, to crib a thought from gnombient, there's any number of shared tropes/world assumptions that lend themselves to expression in class terms. There's the knight in shining armor, the wily wizard, the cunning thief. Even if you play a gonzo game there are assumptions most players come to the table with not least of which is that you'll have SOME of these elements in your fantasy game. I think that's less true for sci fi. ST is sort of a quasi-military setup, so classes would look like that. But Star Wars has different archetypes, and you wouldn't assume there would be a ship's doctor or brash smuggler in ST any more than there are even engineers on the Millenium Falcon. So, sci-fi rulesets with skills (SWN being a good example) make it simpler to build characters to fit the setting and the game, which will probably look a lot different depending on what the design says about things like FTL travel, or the size of the Empire/Imperium/Federation, and so on. I can run any of those sorts of games with not too much trouble with d6 or Traveller or what have you. But if I change the setting, I need all (or mostly) new classes. Picking locks or detecting new construction are not really going to be too helpful in a sci-fi campaign, but if those are just two entries on a list of lots of skills they're easily ignored for other things more applicable, without re-inventing the wheel. I'm less enamored with class as the answer to all ills these days anyway, but in sci-fi I think it works well. And TBH I like the design flexibility in using a skill-based system to handle fantasy. I even got out my DragonQuest books
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Post by barrataria on Aug 7, 2013 7:57:02 GMT -6
Fin, I think about this too and have noticed the same dynamics. I don't know if I have the stamina to run 16 hour marathons any more, but mostly I wouldnt want to.
I think most of us in our 40s have lots of other things (whether families or other nerd interests or demanding jobs) that make it hard to meet regularly. So that tends to lead to a fair bit of non-game chit-chat even at the shortened sessions. Which makes me happy, I've made friends through gaming whereas before I only gamed with friends.
I've had to adjust my prep accordingly. I tend to limit "big" dungeons to 30 areas or so, and try to have outdoor exploratory areas with multiple small "dungeons" of a dozen or so areas. I've also learned to cut back on complex plots and motivations somewhat too. It all works well enough as I prefer beer and pretzels (well cider and sub sandwich) gaming anyway. But it did take a while to get over the feeling that we were doing "lesser gaming" than in the good old days, rather than embracing that we are doing different gaming.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 1, 2013 14:57:47 GMT -6
I hope they don't just snag the free stuff - although it's quite ok if they do. PDFs are just an aperitif/gateway drug for the print version! Especially once one does the math on inkjet printouts
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Post by barrataria on Aug 1, 2013 11:41:27 GMT -6
Time Life books books -The Old West, all 27 volumes. (I've got all of them plus the master index which is fairly rare.) My grandma left me her set when she passed, they're indeed super. Oh, and individual volumes can be very cheap in used bookstores or thrift stores.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 1, 2013 11:29:35 GMT -6
Thanks simon, yes I did get the extra class book and I didn't miss GFYG when it first came out. Unfortunately I never got around to running a game with it (but would do before I try to remember how Boot Hill works).
I hope people stumbling on this thread will mosey over to rpgnow/drivethru/lulu and collect the whole set!
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Post by barrataria on Jul 31, 2013 21:41:01 GMT -6
Yes, I totally missed this for the last three or four years or however long it's been.
Yes, it's similar to C&C which is not exactly popular hereabouts.
But man, is it well done! If I ever get around to running 3E adventures again (which is what I always intended with C&C) this is what I'd use.
Thanks so much for making it available for free via pdf. You're a gentleman and a scholar Simon!
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Post by barrataria on Jul 31, 2013 21:37:15 GMT -6
On the off chance that no one has read Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, you should. And then you should see the miniseries adaptation with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. I'm not sure which was better, and I don't think I've ever said that about a book and its filming.
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Post by barrataria on Jul 30, 2013 6:54:12 GMT -6
I've only read SWN and X-Plorers. I'm with falconer on X-P, I think you're working from scratch on a lot of things to put a campaign together. In which case if I were you I'd use d6 SW and make up what you needed.
I think SWN is pretty cool, there's a ton of books for it if you need things, and I think the basic mechanics are close enough to Traveller that you could pretty easily adapt stuff from that too. I like some of the setting stuff, but even if you hate it it's easy enough to ignore. That's one nice side effect of the skill aspect; the class-based games mean you've got to re-invent those to ditch setting (getting back to falconer's point).
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Post by barrataria on Jul 27, 2013 8:09:08 GMT -6
Anyone know how many seasons of the cartoon are out there? I bought one for my son long ago and hadn't realized they had so many more until I happened to see a different one at the video store. Using the Force for thread necromancy I made it through the first two seasons, and they seem to be getting more enjoyable as I go. The Amazon reviews for season three were pretty glowing, and I have to say after 1 disk I'm impressed. I noticed writing credits for some of these to be "Katie Lucas", so I was skeptical but her episodes were very good. The first disk ends with a two episode set on Mandalore and involves government corruption and a kinda dark plot where *see spoiler text below*.... Off to pop in disk 2! *schoolchildren are accidentally/negligently poisoned by black marketeers.
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Post by barrataria on Jul 26, 2013 6:20:47 GMT -6
A hearty thumbs up to Murray Leinster, I ran across the Baen compilation of his "Med Ship" series and it's been very fun. I didn't realize any were in the public domain. I think Baen did two re-prints.
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