So what happened to 5e anyway?

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Miryafa
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Post by Miryafa »

Chamomile wrote:
fectin wrote:I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.
Hard mode: Those Denners must also be willing to work with you.
Any 5 I could meet in person for that period.

It seems to me that visiting this forum gives everyone some perspective on what mechanics work well and which don't from each edition from 3.0 up. With that perspective, we could cherry pick what we like from the current games, or even lay down ground rules for an entirely new one, like Frank's new skill system. Then we could use the time together for playtesting. If I understand correctly, everyone here likes playing games, so getting a bunch of people here together to playtest games seems like a winning combination.

The other difficult part would be writing fluff. I'm not sure anyone on the forum is good at that, but that's okay, because I understand there are plenty of would-be writers out there with some talent looking for work. After the mechanics are hammered out, then we could hire someone who can write great hooks and a solid setting, explain the background to him/her, and set them loose.

If the only thing stopping us is disorganization, we could organize. I think meeting in person is conducive to that.
Last edited by Miryafa on Tue Mar 26, 2013 3:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Aryxbez
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Post by Aryxbez »

fectin wrote:
Lord Mistborn wrote:The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?
I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.
FrankTrollman, Caedrus, LagoPARANOIA, Koumei, and...Ancient History (has shown to sound like a rather rad DM with cool ideas, so is fitting), Otherwise I'd be willing to place Seerow instead.

As infected slut princess has mentioned, people could very well find the time to work on such a project, just an issue of incentive/priority (people find plenty of time to spend hours making posts on here after all). Not getting paid is quite a buzzkill to keeping someone on schedule, since a designer can't be fueled purely on the concept of creating a game greater than what most/any designer from Wizards of the Coast could come up with. So, if there was a plausible way to sell this project after being made, then there would be some incentive there. In an odd way, maybe it would take the Gaming Den to have its own forum wide funded "kickstarter" to get a five man band to make "super D&D/fantasy RPG/Chickens & Castles"?
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Post by Koumei »

Aryxbez wrote:to get a five man band to make "super D&D/fantasy RPG/Chickens & Castles"?
Are you sure your five choices would all work together? I mean, I know I work well together, just not with anyone else :p

Besides, I want any company I'm a major part of to be able to shorten its name to nWo. I'm not sure how we can shoehorn "we make awesome games" into that.
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Post by hogarth »

Whatever wrote:That said, giving the druid shapeshifting of any kind at level one is a giant "fuck you" to the idea of balancing noncombat utility across the classes. That, alone, suggests that they're outright ignoring the problem, if they're even aware of it (after 4th, they might not be). And no, that's not a problem you can fix by resorting to magic tea party. If you are "a dude" and I am "a dude who can also turn into an animal" then it sucks to be you.
The Shapeshift druid variant from the 3.5E PHB2 didn't exactly blow every other class out of the water.
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Post by Juton »

Whatever wrote:
Juton wrote:
Lord Mistborn wrote:The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?
I think Bulmahn has done and will do a better job than Mearls. Considering my generally low opinion of Bulhman your argument that no one on here could do better than Mearls rings pretty hollow to me.

EDIT:Spelling
You took the time to edit for spelling, but still didn't bother to notice that you completely misread his post? That's actually kind of impressive.
OK, I'm intrigued, what do you think I'm missing? To me it seems like LM is saying that we don't have any right to criticize Mearls because we don't have his bonafides.
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Post by Guyr Adamantine »

Quite the opposite I'm reading, really.
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Juton
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Post by Juton »

I read the 'why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?' as sarcastic. Which makes the first preposition sarcastic too.
Last edited by Juton on Tue Mar 26, 2013 4:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Wrathzog »

Aryxbez wrote:Let's make C&C, with the Dream Team of The Gaming Den
You were there the last time we had this conversation. Nothing has changed; we still hate each other way too much to actually be productive as a community.
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Post by Kaelik »

Aryxbez wrote:FrankTrollman, Caedrus, LagoPARANOIA, Koumei, and...Ancient History (has shown to sound like a rather rad DM with cool ideas, so is fitting), Otherwise I'd be willing to place Seerow instead.
As I recall, Frank and Caedrus have a longstanding hatred of each other in general, and I'm sure with about an hours effort I could go back through LAGO threads and find some issue on which he and Frank are completely opposite and refuse to budge because the other one is bad for games.
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Post by Chamomile »

I can't tell if these lists are hypothetical dream teams or if people actually think these could actually work. K is basically off the table because he doesn't do anything past the conceptual stage anymore, having moved on to a career that can actually exist. Lago never did anything that wasn't conceptual, so I don't know why he's even showing up on anybody's list. Koumei works alone and typically only on projects which match her interests, which are fairly niche. Frank Trollman has more history working with other people, but usually only on projects which he has final creative say over and always for projects which match his interests which, admittedly, are rather more mainstream and thus more likely to overlap with the interests of the rest of the team.

I don't really know the others really well (I mean, I know hyzmarca's stuff for Sentai Fhtagn has been cool, but that's one datapoint), but I imagine a lot of them might also have this, that, or the third that rules them out from actually being an effective member of a team.

Also, I'm surprised no one's mentioned Red Rob. I can't even remember who Caedrus is and meanwhile Red Rob has basically finished the Book of Gears.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

fectin wrote:I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.
I'll take ANY five - even those fuckers on my ignore list. However, that's only with the stipulation that such "work" must exceed the total compensation per time spent that my current day job offers - and that's flat out not happening.
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Post by Prak »

fectin wrote:I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.
Koumei (good with ideas and statting stuff), FrankTrollman (delivers more than pretty much everyone else here), Hyzmarca (some good conceptual stuff), JigokuBosetsu (being published shows an ability to turn out pages, and he doesn't have his head up his ass), and...actually Kaelik, because I'd wager the swaggering cock monger persona is just an affectation he takes when he's here on leisure time. He's good with rules, and I'm betting professional when the time calls for it.
Last edited by Prak on Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

TGDMB has already been tremendously helpful to me in my solo game design projects though.

It's... basically like asking demons for help in a fantasy story. I ask a question, it floats into hell (the den), and eventually somebody replies, and sometimes the demons begin bickering with each other in a cock gurgling frenzy. But I get the advice I was asking for.
Image
'the answer is more cocks!'


There's also a wealth of design ideas to work with, here is the list I keep handy:

After Sundown
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52316
Rules for:
-die pool resolution
-combat distances
-magic systems
-car chases

Warp Cult/Fallout
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49189
Rules for:
-miniatures combat
-demons coming out of people's heads

4 Attribute system (SAME)
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=39645
Rules for:
-a unified elemental weakness/resistance system with 7 elements

TOMES, has more usable content than Pathfinder
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48453
Rules for:
-Cockmaster
-Cock Hurler
-Fighters throwing sand into a beholder's eye from 60ft away



And general advice like...

Math that Just Works
FrankTrollman wrote:So when 4e came down the pipe, one of the things they promised that the math would "just work". And of course, we now know that was a lie, but it was a good lie, because it turned out to be what a lot of people wanted to hear. Because frankly, doing the math to check to see whether a particular giant spider is going to eat the party or get taken down is hard. And it's also time consuming, and not really what most DMs want to do. What they really want is to be able to grab a monster from the monster book and use it as-is according to the level guidelines and know that the PCs are going to have a kind of tough time and still come out on top. And that in turn gives Mister Cavern more time to worry about shit like NPC personalities, maps, backstory, clues, and world interaction. And that's good, because that other stuff is really important and the game can't necessarily help Mister Cavern deal with it, save by freeing up their time spent on other stuff.

Now, unfortunately your system has to be used by actual humans, and humans kind of suck at arithmetic and risk assessment. The average human simply stalls out when asked to do repeated math functions - even if they are simple addition. And players will be straight up confused when their character doesn't live through something that they had a 90% chance of living through... even after attempting it ten times in a row. So with that in mind, here are some math don'ts:
  • Don't use fractions. I once had this alternate save system where people added 2/5 or 3/5 to their saves each level so that good and bad save progressions would add up - it was mathematically kind of pretty but it was a complete cluster fuck. As Mister Cavern I had to redo everyone's save bonuses every level. People just couldn't wrap their heads around adding .4s to things at all. So I don't give a fuck how nice the math comes out adding some kind of fraction to things, just don't do it. Whole numbers only unless you want players to look at you like lost lambs every time they have to interact with the numbers.
  • Always use linear addition. For various reasons it is sometimes necessary to have a big bonus at the beginning of a progression and then a more measured bonus after that. It may be tempting to add these bonuses in some kind of logarithmic fashion or to have bonuses add up to arbitrary values that are then cross referenced to a table or to add half of subsequent bonuses or whatever. Do not succumb to this temptation, because that kind of shit paralyzes people. Players have enough problems adding 4 and 3, the moment you ask them to add 5 and half of 4 they are drooling vegetables.
  • Don't let numbers get too large. It is a fact of mathematics that numbers raised to an exponent have the same relation as numbers that are lowered by the same exponent. That you could have perfectly identical mathematical relationships between levels by constantly raising things to the same exponent. And that shit works just fine in a computer game. But humans lose track of numbers when they get big. Dong repeated subtraction from a 3 digit number is hard for people, and doing repeated subtraction from a 4 digit number might as well be pushing Sisyphus's rock. Sometime try watching a Mister Cavern deal with an epic level Solo against a group of PCs, it's hilarious, yet also faintly sad.
But while that is fascinating in its way, it merely shaves an infinite number of possible numeric progressions off of an even larger infinite number of possible numeric progressions. To get farther, one has to make positive assertions as well as negative one. Here are some:
  • The numbers have to start large enough that they can get smaller. Player characters can't really start in the AD&D "single hit die" crowd, because it is sometimes game mechanically relevant for there to be children or cats. Basically this means that a first level character who begins life with less than 10 hit points or so feels ridiculous in the face of potential hazards that are supposed to be substantially weaker than they are (like familiars or poisonous snakes).
  • Numbers actually shouldn't diverge very much as levels continue to rise. This is not to say that an 8th level character has to take shit from a 4th level character, but that two 8th level rogues need to have fairly similar abilities with lock opening for an "8th level lock" to have much meaning.
  • Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.
  • Any ability gained at any level needs to be competitive at the level they have it. Which in turn means that abilities need to either go obsolete or stay numerically competitive in a predictable fashion.
  • And finally, characters need to be different one from another. Despite the fact that them diverging much is what makes the game fall apart and the math stop "just working" - it is precisely the existence of the difference at all that makes one character feel different from another. Players seriously do want their characters to have a different Sneaking bonus than another character.
That's something of a tall order actually, although there are still infinite numbers of potential things that could fit that.

But there's another thing about level appropriate challenges that is only tangentially about the math. People fucking hate it when you tell them that a Level 8 character should be climbing a DC 23 wall. They have no problem at all being told that an Ice Wall is DC 23 Wall and is appropriate for an 8th level character. The 4e difficulty system would have offended people even if it had provided usable DCs, simply because the presentation of those DCs was offensive. Difficulties need to be task oriented rather than level oriented or no tasks you compete will ever feel at all meaningful.

-Username17
Scaling bonuses in a level based system:
FrankTrollman wrote:
Koumei wrote:I'm still surprised no-one was dumb enough to make some kind of "Make a (skill) check instead of an attack roll!" (bonus points for Diplomancy) Feat/feature. I mean, we already have skills for saves (Samurai getting Concentration for Ref saves), though the impact of that tends to not be too bad, skills as spellcasting power (True Naming/Epic Spellcasting, precisely as bad as anyone should be able to predict) and the occasional weird thing like Perform checks for damage (no-one actually gives a shit in this instance).
Oh, crap like True20 and E20 work like that.
Awesome. Because to quote the girl in that comic, Math is haaaaaard.

Besides, it involves showing up Mearls and those other useless twats. And spite is basically the driving force for 70% of all stuff produced on the Den.
True. In fact, let's make this math needlessly complicated so as to demonstrate how not that hard this actually is.

OK, the first thing you have to do is figure out what stats do to your skill numbers. The obvious answer of course, is "nothing". And indeed to just jettison stats altogether as a bad job. A character who is skilled in sneaking can have the level of that skill determine what level they sneak at, and there is no compelling reason why being good at archery should change the value of your skill level. Attributes could be quite profitably dropped completely from the system to b replaced by feat-like things or they could be left only as defaults, that are completely replaced by larger skill modifiers for trained characters.

But let's say for the moment that we're going with an AD&Desque model, where attributes exist, but the bonuses they provide are in fact quite small. Maybe +1 or +2 to various tests, like the old days and disregarding great strength. Maybe this is done with attribute tags (where you would either have "strong" or you would not, but you wouldn't have an actual strength score). But you could also do it seriously old school, where having a Dexterity of 15+ gave you a +1 modifier. These days I'm honestly leaning towards the tag system because it better incorporates access to Herculean and Hulk strength levels - for fuck's sake a genuine strong man has a strength of like thirty something according to the lift rules in Essentials.

Anyway, it's not super important. Because one way or the other you're basically either getting a +1 or +2 bonus or you aren't for being strong or fast of some shit. Thereafter, you have proficiencies that negate a -4 penalty, and you have focuses, that provide a +3 bonus. Other than that, it's all your level bonus. And yes, that means that the difference between someone who is untrained and someone who is fully tweaked out in training will be nine points. And that's most of the RNG. But more importantly, it since Proficiencies are very easy to get and people will usually consider something they lack proficiency in to be something they "can't do" the real difference between someone who invested heavily in doing something and someone who is doing something because their main schticks are inoperable for whatever reason is going to be "only" 5 points. And yeah, that's still a lot. And it's going to get even worse because players are going to get their grubby hands on +2 equipment bonuses eventually, but hopefully by that time characters should have enough focused abilities to be usually doing something that their character "does" and the numbers are going to narrow to +4 for a character with super strength and a magic sword vs. a character with neither.

So anyway, mostly to show that we can, we're going to split level progressions into three categories:
  • Highly level dependent stuff rises at +2/level. Athletics and Macguyvering advance like this.
  • Moderately level dependent stuff rises at +1/level. Attacks and Perception advance like this.
  • Minimally level dependent stuff rises at +1/ 2 levels. Diplomancy and Craft advance like this.
This is because there is some stuff that you really want to be able to say "I'm too high level for this shit, I win" and other stuff that you want to be to some degree able to interact with lower level types as if they were the same species as you.

So we're starting with default assumptions of Defenses in the 10 range, modified for level and possibly with those stat bonuses. Meaning that at first level you swing a sword and your bonus is going to be between +1 and +6, and your target has a defense DC between 11 and 13. At 10th level, you'll likely have magic weapons and protection, and your attack bonus will be between +15 and +17, while your defense DC will be between 22 and 24. So you can't quite tell 1st level enemies to completely fuck off until the double digits of level.

So here are some Athletics DCs:
ChallengeDCIs Easy For LevelIs Hard For Level
Climb Tree81-
Climb Stone Wall1861
Climb Smooth Stone2072
Climb Doom Tree30127
Climb Blood Fountain35149
Climb Rain401611

Meanwhile, Diplomancy is almost completely situation dependent at all levels. Being a silver tongued character with a Dipomancy Focus has you walk in with a +5, and by level 10 you have a +10. DCs basically don't really need to move, you just encounter things with the -5 to talking "Hellspawn" trait now and then at 10th level and call it a day.

Now the part where things go apeshit is damage and hit points. This shit is hard, because it's not just a level treadmill with DCs and bonuses chasing each other Red Queen style at some rate or another. Instead, you're trying to keep the damage roll relevant (rolling a d8 +25 is lame sauce, and even 2d4+1 the roll scarcely matters at all if your enemies have 10 hit points). And you're trying to keep the number of attacks per target manageable. And you're trying to keep the numbers getting bigger, and you're putting more enemies on the table and dumping bigger area attacks, and so on.

So while it's tempting to just give everyone a static pile of hit points and add your level to attack damage and subtract it from incoming damage, that's probably not what people want. It is actually desirable for the relative amount of damage that a monster "of your level" inflicts on you drops as you go up in level. Not nearly as much as in 4e of course, because we'll eventually have to go to bed and eat food and just don't have time to wait for 4e fights to finish.

So here is an example of a projection of potential PC toughness against the damage output from a level appropriate minion, skirmisher, or elite. The idea is that Skirmishers have a high damage output relative to their toughness, so players would be encouraged to engage skirmishers first. Elites would be doing the most damage, but since they would be the toughest by more, you'd still be encouraged to attack them after you took out the Minions.
LevelHit Points (Min/Max)DR (Min/Max)MinionSkirmisherElite
111/130/41-61-104-11
213/171/72-72-115-12
316/221/72-93-136-16
420/282/83-104-148-18
525/352/84-104-189-23
631/433/95-115-1911-25
738/523/94-136-2113-27
846/624/105-147-2215-29
955/736/105-148-2817-32
1065/857/116-159-2919-34
1176/987/117-1710-3521-41
1288/1128/128-1811-3624-44
13101/1278/128-2014-3927-47
14115/1439/139-2115-4028-54
15130/1609/1310-2516-4631-57
16146/17810/1411-2617-4734-60
17163/19710/1411-2618-5336-67
18181/21711/1512-2720-5539-70
19200/23811/1513-3321-6144-75
20220/26012/1614-3425-6550-81

Now, clearly you're looking at a progression where the number of enemies on the table has to increase over time, because their damage output falls comparatively to PC defenses. A 1st level cloth wearer could seriously drop in two lucky hits from minions, but the same character could take max damage from minions nine times in a row and not fall at 20th level. So the unit of threat stops being counted in individual minions and even ends up in 10 minion packages that you might be clearing out with firestorm attacks or whatever at 20th.

All the numeric inputs are essentially arbitrary and require regression, and dare I say it - playtesting. But that's the kind of place you'd start.

-Username17

Steps of game development
FrankTrollman wrote:Well first you need an action resolution system, then you need challenges, and then you need PCs. I'd say it's roughly that order. Sections of the PCs may be part of your writeup for action resolution (resource management, skills, action declaration, etc.), so there are definitely parts of the PC end that you can be productively working on before you get into the monsters. And many of the monster abilities are going to be PC abilities as well, which means you can get a two-for-one there.

But yeah, I think the constant consideration about whether a Barbarian should have +3 attack or +4 in the absence of minotaurs for them to be attacking is rather pointless and leads to poor decisions. This sort of methodology is what leads us to 20 level Monk classes that give all kinds of weird abilities every level but never actually get the ability to contribute meaningfully in a single level appropriate challenge at any level at all.

-Username17

and so on and so on. I don't need to work with any of you face to face, you have already helped me greatly by being the bickering cockfiends you normally are.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Red_Rob »

Miryafa wrote:The other difficult part would be writing fluff. I'm not sure anyone on the forum is good at that, but that's okay, because I understand there are plenty of would-be writers out there with some talent looking for work. After the mechanics are hammered out, then we could hire someone who can write great hooks and a solid setting, explain the background to him/her, and set them loose.
That seems rather harsh given the fact there are several published authors active on the Den that are obviously capable of writing stories that people want to read.

Not that this is any indication they'd be willing to write for free for a fan project, but dismissing their ability out of hand seems rather gauche.
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Post by fbmf »

Josh_Kablack wrote:
fectin wrote:I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.
I'll take ANY five - even those fuckers on my ignore list. However, that's only with the stipulation that such "work" must exceed the total compensation per time spent that my current day job offers - and that's flat out not happening.
Because your day job is that awesome, the finished product will never sell, or both?

Game On,
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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Because the pay in gaming is that low.

There are several reasons my name only appears in one Exalted book - but far and away the biggest one is that standing over a grill cooking Rothleisburgers paid me twice as much per hour spent as the best-case pay rate for writing splatbook material. And that was back when White Wolf was the #2 company in gaming and was generally better about actually paying their freelancers than the entire rest of the industry.

Now that I have a better (although still not "good") paying job, that calculation looks even more horrible.

I'm literally able to produce more by working overtime at a manual / menial job and doing volunteer pieces when and where they interest me than I would be able to crank out if I had to live on the pay scale within gaming. If you'll let me boast a little, this approach has resulted in my first actual publication and a Penny Arcade link to an article I did within the past year - but, as expected zero payment for anything. This is for fun, and being able to pick and choose and quit anytime and leave stuff unfinished because something shiny distracted me keeps it fun.

The instant I have to put up with the sort of assholes and institutionalized stupidity and grinding through unpleasant tasks that I encounter constantly in my day job, it ceases being fun and there's no reason for me to put up with it if the compensation for aggravation doesn't match my hourly wage.
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Post by Mistborn »

Juton wrote:
Whatever wrote:You took the time to edit for spelling, but still didn't bother to notice that you completely misread his post? That's actually kind of impressive.
OK, I'm intrigued, what do you think I'm missing? To me it seems like LM is saying that we don't have any right to criticize Mearls because we don't have his bonafides.
Guyr Adamantine wrote:Quite the opposite I'm reading, really.
Well I do endeavor to be an impenetrable riddle of sarcasm and self parody.

Writing a better version of D&D/Pathfinder is within the grasp of basically every regular poster on TGD. Since the version of D&D we want is never going to be produced we may as well make it ourselves. Fuck when I'm done OSSRing the ELH I may as well start work on Castles and Cocks myself. It be the best game ever write without commas.
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Post by fbmf »

I started writing my own heavily Tome influenced 3.x game in 2009 in my spare time. Progress slowed to a crawl during grad school, but now that I've graduated I've got the player's guide in a fourth draft and Mr. Cavern's Handbook in a second draft. The Bestiaur is being built as I need monster's for my two playtest campaigns.

It is heavily influenced by Tomes, TGD Community Material, and "the kind of game my group likes to play".

Ripped off artwork and d20 gaming concepts (as well as my own apathy and ignorance of the publishing process) will keep it from ever being published, but its there for my group to use.

Game On,
fbmf
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Ice9
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Post by Ice9 »

I've started work on my own system(s) several times, but always* get stuck in decision paralysis about how much I should change and what basic mechanics to go with before it gets very far. I think a fair number of people on here can identify what are good and bad mechanics, but actually picking a set and fleshing it out takes some commitment.

There's also the player factor. I know that it's a lot easier - at least IME - to get players for modified Pathfinder than for a completely homebrew system, or even a published but obscure system.

* Well, ok, I did finish a system to simulate things for my own entertainment / background info, but it's pretty MTP.
Last edited by Ice9 on Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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hogarth
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Post by hogarth »

Lord Mistborn wrote: Writing a better version of D&D/Pathfinder is within the grasp of basically every regular poster on TGD.
Writing a more popular version of D&D/Pathfinder is the tricky part.
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Dean
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Post by Dean »

Lord Mistborn wrote:It be the best game ever write without commas.
That was great.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
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Post by ishy »

fbmf wrote:Ripped off artwork and d20 gaming concepts (as well as my own apathy and ignorance of the publishing process) will keep it from ever being published, but its there for my group to use.

Game On,
fbmf
Any chance you'll share it with us?
Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game
Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.
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Post by Miryafa »

Red_Rob wrote:
Miryafa wrote:The other difficult part would be writing fluff. I'm not sure anyone on the forum is good at that, but that's okay, because I understand there are plenty of would-be writers out there with some talent looking for work. After the mechanics are hammered out, then we could hire someone who can write great hooks and a solid setting, explain the background to him/her, and set them loose.
That seems rather harsh given the fact there are several published authors active on the Den that are obviously capable of writing stories that people want to read.

Not that this is any indication they'd be willing to write for free for a fan project, but dismissing their ability out of hand seems rather gauche.
I may stand corrected. I wasn't dismissing their ability, I meant I don't know because I haven't seen it.
Last edited by Miryafa on Wed Mar 27, 2013 1:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Aryxbez »

Chamomile wrote:I can't tell if these lists are hypothetical dream teams or if people actually think these could actually work. Lago never did anything that wasn't conceptual, so I don't know why he's even showing up on anybody's list.

I can't even remember who Caedrus is and meanwhile Red Rob has basically finished the Book of Gears.
Admittingly, it is mostly hypothetical, as evidence by what other posters showed already. However, I like people with good ideas, that'll actually advance and move forward with the industry. Thus, likes of Lago, for example, has had good ideas in the past, and could probably be good for the brainstorm, and marketing side of things.

Also, I'll give a shout-out, props for Red Rob's efforts in helping something to fruition (thumbs up).
Koumei wrote:Are you sure your five choices would all work together?

Besides, I want any company I'm a major part of to be able to shorten its name to nWo. I'm not sure how we can shoehorn "we make awesome games" into that.
Well, despite some personal set backs, I like to think, if there's an overall accepted vision, then the parties involved, would all be willing to be professional, on task, and put their personal qualms aside for the greater good of the project.

As for the nWo, I assume is a WCWrestling reference, and a gang intending to "take over", sounds very prime material for the idea of creating a super awesome Fantasy RPG. Like the idea of making a Fantasy RPG that'll take over other Fantasy RPG's out there. Course, problem with that, it's bit far too blunt and pretentious, that it might turn people off, regardless of its merit.
Wrathzog wrote: You were there the last time we had this conversation. Nothing has changed; we still hate each other way too much to actually be productive as a community.
You would be correct, and I do recall that thread, despite that, it still bears to be restated. 5th edition has become trash, making the hope of a current Fantasy RPG, that much more bleak, and longer we have to wait. Personally, I hate waiting, especially when there's obvious skilled and competent individuals before us, in this very forum. Some of these skilled folk, should band together, form a party, and take on this bleak world spanning plot, D&D adventurer style!

I've my doubts that people here, genuinely "hate" one another, even if there are times of great disagreement. Even so, it's bullocks to let something like that, get in the way of design, and seeing to a better future for RPG-kind. If Gaming Den is truly powered on "70% spite", then kicking to incompetence like Paizo, Mike Mearls, Catalyst Labs, White Wolf, and people behind Warhammer 40k etc, should all the more, be that much easier oy.
What I find wrong w/ 4th edition: "I want to stab dragons the size of a small keep with skin like supple adamantine and command over time and space to death with my longsword in head to head combat, but I want to be totally within realistic capabilities of a real human being!" --Caedrus mocking 4rries

"the thing about being Mister Cavern [DM], you don't blame players for how they play. That's like blaming the weather. Weather just is. You adapt to it. -Ancient History
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Post by Chamomile »

Do you have a quota for commas or something?
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