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Post by vladtolenkov on Feb 16, 2011 13:55:49 GMT -6
Kesher--
Robin Laws wrote those sections on collaborative play in the DMG2 if that provides any insight.
We played 4E through most of last year, and we had fun. I dig the monsters quite a bit in 4E. They're doing an increasingly good job of the monsters having a certain "feel" that makes them distinct. Combat with Kobolds doesn't feel like combat with Orcs.
My favorite moment of the campaign was when they stumbled into the lair of a Gelatinous Cube which was a total classic D&D moment.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 23, 2010 15:06:33 GMT -6
Thinking on it maybe I should swap "mystified" for "put off in such a way that I don't want to post on their boards".
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Post by vladtolenkov on Dec 23, 2010 15:02:52 GMT -6
I'm a bit mystified by much of the negativity myself. I mean I love rpgs. All sorts of rpgs. Old ones. New ones.
I've played 4E quite a bit, and I thinks it's a great game.
My first loves are OD&D and AD&D and Basic (and the muddy lines that separate them).
I own and like a bunch of those hippie indie games.
I've been exploring Rolemaster and Talislanta and Runequest (the Chaosium 2nd edition).
And I'm currently prepping an epic fantasy campaign using the Legends of Anglerre rules.
When I look at other boards I feel like a man without a country, but I really appreciate the fact that the folks here are generally imaginative and positive.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Nov 10, 2010 16:06:28 GMT -6
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is the high water mark of the genre as far as I'm concerned. The four books have been republished in two volumes as Shadow & Claw and Sword & Citadel.
I'll also third the recommendation for Hawkmoon. Tor is in the process of republishing the Hawkmoon books with great illustrations.
Actually, I'll say that you can't go far wrong with ANY of the books that have been mentioned so far. I've got the first seven Dray Prescot books waiting to be read. . .
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 14, 2010 13:57:25 GMT -6
Yeah, I was thinking of ordering a few bags of those plastic knight figures for kids and using them for a more historically based Chainmail game.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 14, 2010 1:01:35 GMT -6
I'm still considering using Chainmail as a possible combat system for a D&D campaign I've been thinking about, but I'm increasingly enamored of Chainmail on its own merits, and I've recently been curious to try a game of it without using it as an add-on to OD&D. This is at least partly due to the fact that my current group is pretty commited to 4E, but sometimes we play one-shots of other games when we can't get together as a full group.
Just curious if anybody out there is playing Chainmail as a straight wargame? Please share your stories!
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 9, 2010 10:09:35 GMT -6
And don't we all just want to fight giant chess pieces?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 8, 2010 10:07:34 GMT -6
The new Red Box's old schoolness exists primarily in its box design and cover art. Other than that it is 4E newness through and through. I've followed the info about the Red Box pretty closely, and I looked at a copy yesterday at Barnes & Noble.
Its supposedly got everything you need to start playing in one box: dice, character creation rules via a tutorial, cardboard counters for PCs and monsters, a dungeon adventure, a postermap of the dungeon, advice for the DM, and rules for leveling up to second level. The nice thing is it's only twenty bucks.
It also peels things back to the four iconic classes who are new "builds" tweaked from those in the Player's Handbook.
According to Wizard's Red Box store locator its going to be available at every Target in my area. When was the last time you saw D&D available at Target?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 8, 2010 0:26:37 GMT -6
Alex, Thorulfr: That's very helpful guys. One of my players was dubious about the combat because he couldn't imagine how it everyone would be involved. That gives me a much better idea.
When I get some money I'll probably pick up a copy of the basic game on ebay as my curiosity is sufficiently piqued.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 7, 2010 10:48:40 GMT -6
Encounters take a looong time. We play for about three hours and we often only finish one or two encounters in an evening. Just keep this in mind as you progress.
Sounds like you got things pretty well covered!
Having your players take some of the burden off is a great idea.
For example:
Several of my players know the combat rules at least as well as I do. I let them deal with the blast and burst stuff.
I have one of the players track initiative order (and this really helps).
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Post by vladtolenkov on Sept 2, 2010 14:03:58 GMT -6
I'm still curious about starship combat. What sort of system do they include in the basic game? Or is it left out entirely?
The starship combat game that comes with deluxe version (and which was sold seperately)--how good is it? Does it come off feeling like a seperate starship miniatures game? Or is it more narrative? Does it feel like the sort of starship combat we see in the original series and Wrath of Khan?
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Post by vladtolenkov on Aug 31, 2010 12:50:56 GMT -6
I've got the FASA Doctor Who roleplaying game, and it has a similar system for combat involving a grid, action points, and lots of modifiers. The Doctor Who game uses an "Interaction Matrix" to resolve all of the Skill and Combat checks in the game (it was the mid-eighties so that universal chart fever was in full bloom).
The Star Trek game just uses percentiles doesn't it? I suppose you could do away with the grid and run it something like Basic Roleplaying.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Aug 31, 2010 9:45:13 GMT -6
Thanks!
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Post by vladtolenkov on Aug 31, 2010 9:12:31 GMT -6
Fin, Please move this to the Science Fiction section! I'm not sure what happened as I thought that's where I was posting this!
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Post by vladtolenkov on Aug 31, 2010 9:10:42 GMT -6
I've been curious about the old FASA Star Trek game as I've been toying with the idea of picking one up. I've fond memories of playing the game in the early nineties in a short campaign run by a friend of mine (we went to that 20th century Roman planet among other things).
I don't really remember much about the rules or the particulars of the boxed set we played. We did get into some starship combat, but it was very narrative-oriented and we didn't break out a hex-grid or anything like that. Excepting Mekton Zeta it is the best space combat thing I've ever done in an rpg. However, I'm not sure we were using the starship combat rules from the game or was it something our GM just put together??
Thoughts, opinions, and stories about the game would be great.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Aug 20, 2010 10:54:58 GMT -6
I've been thinking about Chainmail's Man to Man table recently, and (taking a cue from Raggi's game) it occured to me that you could use the Man to Man table to resolve all combat with only Fighters getting a bonus to hit at set intervals. Clerics and Magic-Users would acquire new abilities and spells but in melee their abilities would remain constant.
Fighters would make 1 attack per round (except for situations of weapon class differences as per Chainmail), but they would get a +1 to hit at 4th, 7th, and 10th level or something.
I'm unsure what to do about monsters in this scenario though. I suppose they should get bonuses to hit based on their hit dice similar to the fighter.
Also: I'm not a giant fan of weapon restrictions in D&D and this might also level the playing field a bit for magic-users to use swords etc. I'd still keep magic-user's armor restrictions though as I feel like that's important to maintaining the feel of the class.
Any thoughts on this would be welcome especially if anybody's tried something similar.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 30, 2010 15:35:32 GMT -6
Kesher said: And apparently Raven's planning a new edition:
Synnibarr on Facebook I wait for the Old School Synnibarr movement to begin. I'm sure there will a flood of people who like the old edition better "Because you can play Biogladite Sorcerer Bikers" which have been left out of the new edition or somesuch. [Tongue firmly in cheek here.]
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 28, 2010 11:55:12 GMT -6
I never realized there was a supplement!
BTW: I remember looking at a copy of Synnibarr at the Compleat Strategist in downtown NYC in 1993. I knew nothing about the game except I remember thinking: that's just some weird Rifts rip-off that's way too expensive.
I think I bought a copy of Stormbringer 4th Edition instead.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 28, 2010 11:49:45 GMT -6
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 5, 2010 1:03:21 GMT -6
About seven years ago we played a BRP fantasy game that was partially based off Stormbringer 5th edition. We dropped the Dex based initiative and instituted an initiative roll which was a d20 roll+1 for every point of DEX over 10.
The system worked really well for us and is both intuitive and SUPER easy to houserule. Strike ranks don't work for you? Drop them!
The Stormbringer 5th also nicely does away with hit locations which also simplifies things a bit. The critical hit table is also nifty, but it can also be totally avoided.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 3, 2010 11:24:44 GMT -6
Your wisdom has been missed, good sir!
Welcome back!
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 1, 2010 9:26:17 GMT -6
The Grey Book isn't perfect by any means, but it is essentially a restatement of the LBBs+Supplements with the Holmes initiative system and an equipment list pulled from 3rd edition. How is this not just a "houseruled" version of OD&D? The paladin isn't even a full "class": they follow the fighter's progression as in Greyhawk. The book is far more OD&D than it is AD&D.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jun 25, 2010 10:41:18 GMT -6
I like the Gray Book enough to have had it printed out and coil bound at my local Kinkos. In the last year or two I've tended toward the OD&D-as-almost-AD&D approach so this works for me.
The book mostly draws on the LBBs+supplements, but it does include the Holmes Dex based initiative system. The money and equipment section it seems are for some reason drawn from 3E.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Jun 14, 2010 22:39:42 GMT -6
Here's an old discussion where I had a similar notion: odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=othereditions&action=display&thread=1671Fin and some of the others made some great suggestions in the above thread. Oddly, I've now come around to a place where I'm more comfortable with AD&D, but the Player's Handbook is still a pretty amazing book, and I totally get the desire to use it with OD&D or Holmes.
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Post by vladtolenkov on May 12, 2010 10:17:24 GMT -6
He was the most talented artist of his generation, and he's as much responsible for the popularity of modern fantasy as Tolkien or Howard or Moorcock. The man could PAINT. I'm going to go watch Fire & Ice for the hundreth time now.
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Post by vladtolenkov on May 4, 2010 11:54:53 GMT -6
I just recently got a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia and it goes all the way to 36th level. I'm not sure if it would help, but you could take a look at that for ideas.
That might not be what you're looking for though as it may not fit the "illusion" you're trying to create here.
BTW I remember the old Throne of Bloodstone AD&D adventure had lvl 100 characters like Perseus etc.
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Post by vladtolenkov on May 1, 2010 18:15:13 GMT -6
That cover has got be one of my favorite game covers ever.
It occurs to me that a camaign where the PCs were "last humans" in a freaky mutant wilderness sounds like it could be fun. I'm a big fan of Jack Kirby's Kamandi so that idea resonates with me. Whether the humans came from a crashed spaceship or out some bunker doesn't really matter I guess.
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Post by vladtolenkov on May 1, 2010 10:34:46 GMT -6
I'm a big fan of all three of those, but hadn't thought of it in exactly that way!
We were initially considering having the PCs be explorers from Earth who crash land on the planet (they'd all be Pure Strain Humans) , but I think the standard assumption for GW starting characters might be what I go with now.
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Post by vladtolenkov on Apr 28, 2010 12:22:49 GMT -6
Noble Knight is great company. I ordered a copy of The Traveller Book from them on a Friday, and I had it in my hands the following Tuesday.
So that's great news!
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Post by vladtolenkov on Apr 28, 2010 9:14:02 GMT -6
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