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Post by vladtolenkov on Apr 19, 2012 11:22:03 GMT -6
I was just listening to the D&D Podcast Wizards put out. When asked what the Core rules for D&D Next would look like Mike Mearls made a comparison to the 1981 Basic D&D Boxed set with the acknowledgement that the classes would be more like revised versions of the classic AD&D classes. The idea is to keep the core rules very straightforward and simple so you can then add on whatever fiddly bits you like.
Those fiddly bits will likely be a melange of things from across all the various editions.
Also, miniatures are once again totally optional.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Mar 12, 2012 14:11:22 GMT -6
Unfortunately, ERB was not exactly mining unpaved territory either: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Gullivar_Jones:_His_VacationEdwin Arnold beats ERB as his was published in 1905. There's a long and complicated history to this genre although Burrough's work remains the quintessential version in fiction.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Feb 29, 2012 12:45:13 GMT -6
I suppose its probably wishful thinking on my part, but what Mearls actually says in the quote from the OP isn't just about 5E. I'm much more interested in the fact that they may reprint earlier material (even if it is just for the game store market).
Although. . .if 5E is really the tookit edition as they've been saying--reprinting stuff becomes much more understandable especially if that material is useable with the new edition. And I mean useable as is--not a 5E "conversion" or whatever.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Feb 27, 2012 13:06:34 GMT -6
DungeonDevil wrote:
I think reprinting the modules would be a great move on their part.
It might seem unlikely, but who would have guessed they'd be reprinting the 1E corebooks in 2012 ?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Feb 20, 2012 14:51:20 GMT -6
I hope this quote in my OP isn't just marketing talk for D&D 5 or whatever. I'm hoping its a fundamental recognition that D&D's identity and history can't be entirely forgotten in the face of whatever new thing they're trying to sell. The endless editions of the game were simple going to destroy the ability of the company to have any fan base at all.
They hopefully have seen that going down the road they were on with 4th edition was going to take them into a place that by the next edition or two they were going to have nobody left who cared as their customers had clearly decided they weren't moving on when the company decided they were done with the current edition. The popularity of both Pathfinder and the clone games makes this painfully clear. They couldn't just hope to put the D&D name on some new iteration of rules and hope that everyone got on board.
So embracing the actual history of the IP they own seems like a good idea for WOTC. We've all been embracing that early history, and it does seem increasingly bizarre that the company that owns the game would try to ignore that history.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Feb 18, 2012 17:00:35 GMT -6
The company spent ten years pretending that D&D didn't have a history, and now that the fan community has taken LONG steps toward reclaiming that history they've woken up at what a gigantic blunder it is to pretend otherwise.
Well, that's something anyway.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Feb 18, 2012 13:32:56 GMT -6
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jan 25, 2012 1:07:22 GMT -6
My OD&D game has really taken off. We've played six sessions, and things are really getting interesting now. We started at sixth level because they wanted to be slightly more formidable characters. I let them each have ONE magic item as well to start with.
Here are some highlights of the stuff my players have done:
I used the maps from Crypt of the Sorcerer and Caverns of Doom as the initial dungeon, and it worked very well. They fought some Gnolls, some White Apes (who were pretty tough), and they managed to charm the Evil High Priest who ran the place! In the lower level they ran into what ended up being a trio of Wraiths who scared them pretty bad but who were eventually dispatched (thank you, magic war hammer).
The players also managed to get a bunch of Gnolls to help them fight a sleeping black dragon by telling the charmed Evil High Priest, who was the Gnoll's leader, that the PCs had managed to cast a magical Sleep spell on the Dragon so it wouldn't wake up. . . of course they hadn't and two of the Gnolls died from claw and bite attacks as soon as the dragon woke up. They managed to kill the dragon by doing a crapload of damage to it in just a few rounds. Missile weapons are very useful sometimes!
Now they're thinking of going to look for a reliquary piece of the evil god who the Evil High Priest worshiped. . . This god is known by the title of "The Prince in the Ebon Room" (which, yes, is a homage to a certain other god in a Blue Room--if you know your Tekumel lore).
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jan 19, 2012 11:30:51 GMT -6
A mass combat add-on for 5E would be great, and it might restore some of the old school wargameyness to D&D.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jan 3, 2012 19:52:45 GMT -6
Definite Moebius influence going on with that crazy cover.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jan 3, 2012 19:48:02 GMT -6
I've been wanting to get a copy of the moon design Griffin Mountain. I'll probably just have to settle for the PDF from RPGNow. . .
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jan 3, 2012 15:36:09 GMT -6
Okay, a few months ago I was pouring through the RQ 2nd edition rulebook, and I was trying to work out how setting up a RQ campaign differs from setting up a classic D&D campaign. There is some really good advice floating around about old school D&D sandbox style campaigns, but I wanted to work out what type of campaign the RQ rulebook seemed to suggest and what ways it differed from a sandbox D&D campaign. I started a thread on story games which you can find here: story-games.com/forums/discussion/15014/gm-stance-in-old-school-sim-games-aka-how-would-you-run-runequestI framed the discussion as being connected to the issue of GM stance/role which is something that has been an active topic over there in the last year or so. In that thread, one of the commenters, epweissengruber, had some really wonderful advice about setting up a RQ campaign which I'm going to quote from here: You don't have to know all of Stafford's fictional world to play the game. Look at the text: there are 2 cults and models and a description of 1 or 2 guilds. All you need is to do as Johnstone suggests: make a map with neat spots. Now come up with 2 positive cults, 2 weird cults, and 2 evil cults for your bad guys to worship. Make up details about initiation and Rune Lord/Priest status as needed for your characters. Put their temples on your map and bang! Your players can choose to react with those however they wish. Let them set goals in this fictional space. Do NOT have the temple of truth COMMAND them what to do. Religion and magic are ways to advance characters and have fun NOT for the GM to railroad.
"That fits with many of the other things included in the game--especially a cool two page map of the Kingdoms of Sartar and Prax which, although not on a hex grid, is exactly right for exploration style adventures. "
Exactly. This is all you need. Look at that 2 Page History of Glorantha! That is all you need to set up a little campaign space and make an adventure area as Johnstone suggests. Look at the runes. All you have to do is look at the rune as say "humh, what rune-related stuff is there?" or "what opposing rune would want to mess around there" or "what would this guy way over here find of interest in this opposing rune way over here?"
1. Look over the character sheets and make note of their skills. - set challenges high to make advancement hard - set challenges low to speed up skill advancement - given them communities there to help them advance their favoured skills IF they do such and such or IF they will join up. But give choices.
2. Treasure. So maybe there's loot hoards in monster-infested dungeons, or maybe there's just financial rewards for being a judicial champion or recovering falcons. - financial rewards are all you need for the game mechanics - to reinforce the fiction have communities approach them for their good deeds OR have opposing communities take them to task - at least have the characters see the responses to their actions -- you don't always have to present them with drama every time they take an action
3. "The chance to die," of course means danger. - Or crippling! Beginning characters in Runequest are fragile. Limbs get chomped all of the time. - That means that characters need help from communities/organizations/temples/guilds. You want healing spells, you have to make nice with the healer cults, and make big contributions if you want resurrections. You need to get relics that contain healing spells and into which you can devote your personal power. (The idea that you project your own personal drives into magical items is very close to the psycho-anthropology of magic). - To have real heroes there has to be real danger. Keep death meaningful in Runequest.
4. This usually goes without saying, but I like that it's called out in the text. Put in fun stuff! Try to make exploring this map and pursuing treasures and other opportunities as fun and exciting as possible. - And meaningful. - And hooked to reward and advancement. - Advancement: skill use possibilities, items of special interest to temples and guilds that could get you skills and spells, COIN - Reward: seeing your character get to use specialized skills successfully, interacting with allied magical powers (followers of the god of principles that the character follows), interacting with enemy magical/mythical forces, and CHANGING Glorantha. That can include participating in initiation ceremonies, undertaking the great challenges that one must pass in order to rise to higher levels like devotee, Rune Lord, and Priest.
Do all of this on your own. Do NOT try to wade through Gloranthaphilia to get your answers. Make stuff that will engage players. And provide POSSIBLE routes of progress, not railroads.
Thoughts and expansions on this would be welcome. Edit: Updated the link above.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jan 3, 2012 15:21:49 GMT -6
This has all got me thinking about the differences between running a classic D&D sandbox and running a Runequest sandbox or semi-sandbox.
I had an intensive discussion about how to set up a RQ campaign over at Story Games a few months ago, but I think I'll start a new thread about these other RQ related topics, and we can keep this one about Skyrim-ES-RQ stuff.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jan 2, 2012 15:59:03 GMT -6
ckutalik wrote:
From what I know of Skyrim (again I haven't yet played it)--this may no longer be the case. I've heard multiple people warn players against taking on the giants too soon as you will end up a bloody corpse flying into the upper atmosphere (that's how hard they hit people with their clubs).
Can anybody who has played Skyrim tell us whether the encounters scale as was mentioned above?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 30, 2011 12:25:21 GMT -6
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 24, 2011 10:57:02 GMT -6
ckutalik--I'm looking at my Chaosium 2nd edition Runequest and I don't see Ken's name. You're talking about the Avalon Hill edition, correct?
Foxroe--that's a nifty idea! I was thinking of using Skyrim as a way to sell the RQ idea to my players, but I think that using the ES as inspiration for a RQ campaign is a really intriguing approach. I'll post if something comes of that.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 23, 2011 9:47:53 GMT -6
Do you know what RQ supplements Ken worked on?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 23, 2011 9:46:35 GMT -6
The leveling system in Skyrim/ES sounds almost like a vestigial limb rather than something that meaningfully drives play. They could easily drop it and fully Runequestify the system if they wanted. I imagine they've kept it as it reflects what console gamers are expecting to see--A leveling system. The skills are clearly the important thing though (as in RQ).
Your right the archetypes sound very similar to the "previous experience" packages from Runequest (2nd edition), the Class Backgrounds in Stormbringer, or the Occupations in Call of Cthulhu.
I've been rereading my copy of Runequest and itching to run a game. I could probably sell it to my players as a Skyrim flavored campaign (although we're just into running OD&D right now, and so it would be a few months before we played).
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 23, 2011 4:03:15 GMT -6
That's very interesting.
In what ways does the Elder Scrolls, as a whole, draw from Runequest?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 22, 2011 17:25:05 GMT -6
There was a thread on rpg.net where the question was posed: what tabletop rpg system would work best to give the feel of Skyrim? Many folks thought that Runequest/Basic Roleplaying would work quite well. I have to say that I thought that was a great answer, but I also noticed another connection:
The Empire/Stormcloak rebellion thing in Skyrim is a bit like the tensions between the Lunar Empire and the Heortlings in Dragon Pass isn't it? So does Skyrim=Dragon Pass?
Also, the skill system is based around improving them by using them and that's an essential element of Runequest's system as well. I guess this type of system existed in earlier Elder Scrolls games, but Runequest is one of the progenitors of that kind of advancement.
Am I totally off base here with these connections? Anybody more familiar with Skyrim please feel free to throw in here.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Nov 17, 2011 9:34:17 GMT -6
I'm also interested in doing some larger scale battles/skirmishes using the "normal" system from Chainmail.
One of the reasons we're starting out at 6th level is that I want to engage with the military and kingdom building element of the game at higher levels.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Nov 14, 2011 18:54:08 GMT -6
It is my own campaign world, but I've been toying with incorporating some elements of the AD&D module Dwellers of the Forbidden City.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Nov 14, 2011 11:06:49 GMT -6
We rolled up characters last night and things seem to be going well. We'll be playing next week.
I've been casually working on my campaign for a while, but I'm really going to have to kick up my prep this week!
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Post by vladtolenkov on Nov 13, 2011 17:18:39 GMT -6
Okay. . .I've been on this board since 2007, and I've never gotten to run a real OD&D campaign. We've messed around with it on a few occasions, but nothing substantial or long lasting. So the other week we decided that our regular game night has been interrupted with too many cancellations and absences. As a solution, I proposed a game that could be run no matter who showed up. Old school D&D seemed to fit the bill quite nicely. After making my case, everyone seemed to agree that it sounded like a good idea.
We're still going to run our week sci-fi space pirates game, but when we all can't get together we're going to be running old school D&D.
After flirting with AD&D a bit, I decided on OD&D with selective use of the supplements as I wanted to keep combat and such on the simple side. My group just wasn't interested in AD&D's segments, spell casting times, and more detailed initiative system.
Tonight we're rolling up characters, and we'll be playing for the next two weeks at least as one of my regular players in going on tour with his band.
The players told me what they wanted to run, and I came up with these variant classes according to what they were looking to play. One is a variant Monk with some clerical abilities, and the other is a variant Ranger with a few little tweaks such as poison resistance and such.
I'll try to update as this comes along.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Oct 10, 2011 9:20:36 GMT -6
I think there are a couple important things a well run board has and this board happens to have them:
1. A clear focus for the board. What is it about? (OD&D!!)
2. Admins have a low threshold for BS/Abuse/Trolling/Drama creation etc. (Thanks Marv!!)
3. Intelligent open minded folks actually wanting to share ideas on the internet (That's you guys).
My wife has frequented a few different message boards in her day and there is some terrible terrible stuff that happens on some forums that can make your head explode. All of that stuff is refreshingly absent here.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 3, 2011 9:21:51 GMT -6
I've heard that combat can take a long time. Is this born out in your experience? How does it compare to D&D in term of combat?
I've played in a BRP fantasy game using a mashup of the Stormbinger/Elric rules and Magic World and my memory is that combat ran pretty quickly. However, we weren't using the hit location system or Strike Ranks. How much do they slow things down?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 1, 2011 23:31:32 GMT -6
I'm wanting to run Runequest 2nd edition (NOT Runequest II) if I can convince my group.
So. . .how do you run Runequest? And how is running it different from running D&D?
Any thoughts or advice would be welcome!
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Post by vladtolenkov on May 24, 2011 9:52:35 GMT -6
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Post by vladtolenkov on Apr 15, 2011 11:26:01 GMT -6
The War House This is my local gaming store. They're nice guys and the store has been there forever. There's a listing for them in the Armory Ad in Best of Dragon Vol. 1. They've got a good selection of boardgames, and in the back area of the store there are boxes with quite a lot of RPG stuff. Diligent looking through boxes will yield interesting things. www.thewarhousegames.com/
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Post by vladtolenkov on Feb 17, 2011 10:29:59 GMT -6
Well. . . it was hiding out in the tomb of a dead Orc King. I have no idea what it was doing there other than it felt right to stick it in this room that was otherwise a total dead end (no pun intended). We made characters when 4E first came out and it took us a good 2+ hours but we weren't familiar with the rules as the none of us had owned the books very long. I'm hoping that essentials streamlines the process. Keep us posted if you do this as I'd like to hear how easy it was. (Of course, you can always use the character builder which only takes about fifteen minutes or so--which means you have to buy a subscription to DDI ).
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