Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Kaelik]

In the two times that I played WLD, I never even reached the Ogre.

The first time the game sort of ground to a halt after my level 1 PC was hit by an Acid Arrow Trap. In the other, we went through the secret door and fought the army of Kobolds with the level 3 Wizard who casts Web even though PCs aren't allowed to have Web because it's OP.

In both cases, the game ground to a halt before we ever took the path to the Ogre and Trogs.

I have no intention of ever playing it again.

[hyzmarca]

Are there any good settings for this?



Specifically, I mean, giant Land Battleships in World War II. A Zeerust World of Tomorrow 1940s setting.

[Jason]

So, there's a kickstarter for a new Conan rpg. It uses a "2d20 system," where you roll two d20s, and are trying to roll as low as possible.

Is this as shitty a resolution mechanic as it sounds? There's a video of Conan being played on the linked page, and I guess the John Carter and Mutant Chronicles 3rd ed. use the same system.

Sorry to barge in there so unannounced, usually just lurking. If I recall correctly, it's using almost the same rules as MC3, swithcing "Dark Symmetry pool" for "Threat" and some minor tweaks in the damage and armor rules.

Skill throws are done with 2d20, each scoring individually against a difficulty of attribute (ranigng from 5 to about 16, but can go higher) + skill expertise (ranging from 0 to 3, but can reach 5 for very few so called "signature skills"). Each roll below the target number counts as a success. Critical hits happen on a roll equal or under the skill's respective "focus" rating (ranign from 0 to 3, max of 5 for the signature skills) and count as two successes rather than one.

Players can purchase additional dice for "Threat" up to an additional 3d20. The GM can spend threat for various activations and NPC reinforcements.

Players can also purchase natural 1s by spending a "Chronicle Point", similar to FATE points.

Skill challenge difficulty is monitored via the number of required successes, rangin from 1 (trivial) to 5 (almost impossible).

In my experience with MC3, d20 is neat system to play for both the MC and the players, it has its flaws, however: usually dark symmetry bloat for MC3 and threat bloat for Conan. It basically borrowed the good ideas from FATE, added a more accessible resolution mechanic and kept the rng range rather tight. Not having an absolute hard cap on attributes, however, makes advancement into 100% success rates possible in the long term. Also the abstracted economy system feels unrewarding and cumbersome to use. I prefer a more tradidtional artifical economy with currencies and prices.
I hope that information helps.

Cheers.

[Kaelik]

Wait... So attribute represents the difference between 5-16, and possibly just straight up auto success.

And skill represents 0-3 and sometimes 5?

So.... There is no such thing as a skill person with a low attribute, and people with attributes and no skills are just much better than them by a factor of 3 or more?

That's a shitty system.

[angelfromanotherpin]

That's actually not a bad fit for a Conan game, where your inborn awesome counts for a lot more than your actual training and such. But the actual mechanic makes me think that they didn't have design goals at all, just a conversation that went like this.

"Let's have our game have a resolution mechanic that no other game has."
"Okay."
"How about something based on how many nails you can hammer through your dick?"
"That sounds like a hard sell. What about using dice?"
"Everybody else uses dice, so I'd have to get pretty crazy."
"Well, let's see if it's crazier than the nail thing."
"I'm thinking dice pools... that are tiny... but use lots of sides on the dice."
"Okay, I don't think anyone else does that, and it could work, but-"
"Roll-under, of course."
"That's not super-popular, people enjoy rolling hi-"
"And the target number will vary by more than the number of sides on the dice! Done! What do you think?"
"I think people might prefer the nails."
"You're fired, frontal lobe."

[Tannhäuser]

I remember the Infinity RPG Beta being really, really clunky, like the worst parts of BRP, SR3, and a story game like Fate.

[Prak]

"Let's have our game have a resolution mechanic that no other game has."
"Okay."
"How about something based on how many nails you can hammer through your dick?"

I hear Shadzar is working on a game with this mechanic.

[Jason]

Wait... So attribute represents the difference between 5-16, and possibly just straight up auto success.

And skill represents 0-3 and sometimes 5?

So.... There is no such thing as a skill person with a low attribute, and people with attributes and no skills are just much better than them by a factor of 3 or more?

That's a shitty system.

Pretty much, but it's just half as bad as it sounds in MC3. 5 is your base attribute value, so you can only have a lower rating if you intentionally lower it to 4 during chargen to increase another to 6. Then comes the life path system, which adds attributes based on rolls/choices. You usually end up with attributes ranging between 7 and 12 with the occasional 5 in between. It's not the most brilliant solution but it works well enough. The problem really only comes in once you look at character progression, where you can straight up buy more attributes for xp with no cap on attributes. That's where thesystem completely implodes. That and the still existing possibility to min-max like crazy.

I like many aspects of the rules, like the idea to give variations of outcome, based on success rate, allowing "extra actions" lik disarming your opponent, or hitting additional body parts, on better successes or the idea of a group pool of success overruns to compensate for bad rolls. I also always liek the fate point idea, if not nescessarily its implementation.

I can see the rules working in the "larger than life" concept of Conan and other more cinematic themed settings. IT will never be a realistic system, though. It never intended to be either.

Its biggest flaw seems to be ressource bloat, however. IT either leads to auto successes or group wipes. In out last gaming session, it reached the point where I accumulated so many dark symmety points (as the MC), that instead of working as a "tension enhancer" players just stopped giving a shit and bought additional dice like they were going out of style and my only solution would have been to actually spend my points, resulting in a very likely party wipe. Not exactly the ideal outcome for any participant.

It is, as it is so often the case of an idea that sounded great at the start but then got somehow lost along the way and ended up with a lot of holes to plug. It didn't help to close the beta to backers, either. We had a very good alpha team with a lot of ideas and feedback and then it vanished behind a paywall.

EDIT: Quickstart rules for Conan are now available here for free.

[RedstoneOrc]

I was wondering if there was any tome expansions to tried to bring back racial classes as an option? If so I ask for a link.

If not I'd like to nominate someone more talented than me get on that, for elves and dwarves.

You really have to explain what you would want from such classes. The classic Elf racial class would just be an Eldritch Knight, but nowadays expectations could be for a wire-fu badass like movie Legolas or a telepathic tree-shaper like Redlance. Similarly, the classic Dwarf class is just a Fighter with the Dwarf racial abilities, but expectations for a Dwarf class could be all over the place: axe savant, magic miner, beardomancer, etc.

Yes to bolded. I basically want to emulate the nostalgia feel of the old 1E D&D. Maybe not whole twenty level classes maybe just paragon classes that aren't shit, and extended to 4-5 levels instead of 3.

Now are there any Golem monster classes to salvage the crap that is warforged? I'm also going to try and recreate the old triple classed fight-mage-thief from Baldur's gate for 3.5, gonna post it in IMOI tomorrow.

TimeSkip-- IT'S UP NOW!!

If your interested in this.

[Koumei]

Golem monster classes? Not that I'm aware of.

As for the F/M/T, by this stage you're basically looking at "Bard". They have "nearly as many skills as a Rogue" and get basically the same class skills (including Abuse Magic Device), so there's your Rogue. They have a 3/4 BAB and proficiency with Light Armour and certain weapons (and can CAST in light armour, unlike the F/M/T), and can boost their fighting ability appropriately, so there's your Fighter. They cast like 2/3 of a Sorcerer, more or less, so there's your Mage.

I suppose you could trade out the Bardic Music for some minor adjustment like "a limited amount of Sneak Attack" or "All Martial Weapons and a small number of bonus Fighter Feats" or something. But you're basically looking at that for your basic chassis, and you're basically looking at a class that doesn't have much in the "Class Features" column due to everything going on in the general by-level increases.

[Red Archon]

D&D 3.5: Does Transdimensional Spell work from the Ethereal to the Material by RAW?

[Kaelik]

D&D 3.5: Does Transdimensional Spell work from the Ethereal to the Material by RAW?

No.

"A transdimensional spell has full, normal effect upon incorporeal creatures, creatures on the Ethereal Plane or Plane of Shadow, and creatures within an extradimensional space in the area of effect. Such creatures include ethereal creatures, creatures that are blinking or shadow walking, manifested ghosts, and creatures within the extradimensional space of a rope trick or portable hole."

It's just like Astral Projection, in that it was written by idiots who couldn't conceive of someone not being on the material plane, even though the rules expressly allow for people to do that with a level 5 spell.

Casting a Transdimensional Fireball while on the Ethereal is a lot like casting a Fireball that you prepared in a level 4 slot.

EDIT: Also, i love how it name checks Manifested ghosts, the incorporeal ones, but implies not unmanifested ghosts, the ethereal ones, even though it totally hits them too.

[Red Archon]

What I was thinking. Figured there might've been some obscure errata or somesuch hidden somewhere.

[Zaranthan]

Actually, on reading the wording there, it's not totally useless. It doesn't hit the Material Plane, sure, but if you're standing on the Ethereal, it still hits the Shadow Plane and people hiding in rope tricks. Heck, the simple fact that it beats "I cast rope trick and pull the rope into the space with me" makes it worth the page it's written on.

[Judging__Eagle]

In the two times that I played WLD, I never even reached the Ogre.

The first time the game sort of ground to a halt after my level 1 PC was hit by an Acid Arrow Trap. In the other, we went through the secret door and fought the army of Kobolds with the level 3 Wizard who casts Web even though PCs aren't allowed to have Web because it's OP.

In both cases, the game ground to a halt before we ever took the path to the Ogre and Trogs.

I have no intention of ever playing it again.

We didn't actually get that "far" into Region A either. The Kobolds and Acid Arrow trap that your two play groups found? None of the groups I was in encountered those. More likely, our respective groups were exploring in different directions before quitting the 1st of... the 20... or 21 regions (I know it's A-O... but the Undead area is a double-page region iirc).

The only purpose I might have for the WLD would be its maps; or if I wanted to run any form of d20 wargame ever again. I'm not sure if I regret buying it, I mean it has a stack of 20-ish giant maps; but it's full of so much dumb and bad premises and foundations.

Much of it stemming from the creators total inability to form a coherent reason for why the WLD was created in the first place. I was talking about this exact issue last night after meeting with for an After Sundown session. One of the other people who had tried to DM a WLD game said that the entire narrative premise of the WLD is erased by the fact that "imprisoning evil =/= good", coupled with the fact that it is Solars, and not some sort of fiend who has "Arrows of Slaying [#AnyTarget]". If the original angel architects had wanted to "deal" with evil; they should have just slain it instead.

At that point; there's no reason to ever use the WLD as-is, because it wouldn't have been made outside of a homebrew D&D setting. Specifically a setting where "Good is Dumb". Which is just so interesting; and not cliche.

[Eikre]

I played a take on the WLD called the 'world's largest meatgrinder'. The DM rolled you a random but hyperbolic character; gestalt, with 5d6 drop two for stats. If you died, you rolled a new character and dropped them right on top of the corpse.

The game format was super sweet and the dungeon was an abject failure. I got one of those copper dragonkin elves, and Swordsage//Dread Necromacer. Played her as an crypto-Egyptian temple officer, the 'copper dragon' being the green serpent Wadjet. She owned, and I was extremely excited about playing her, and I suspected I might have taken her extremely far by inflicting Fell Animate Chill Touch with swordsage maneuvers. Other players were, I think, similarly enthused. But then we had to actually play the WLD and our willpower did not hold up even long enough to finish the fight with that fucking kobold.

[Kaelik]

I played a take on the WLD called the 'world's largest meatgrinder'. The DM rolled you a random but hyperbolic character; gestalt, with 5d6 drop two for stats. If you died, you rolled a new character and dropped them right on top of the corpse.

The game format was super sweet

Yeah... No.

"Hey you know what makes D&D Great? When you have absolutely no input over your character at all, and you could even end with an 8 in your casting stat" is not what I would describe as "super sweet."

[Eikre]

You got one stat switch. But who fucking cares? It was a roguelike with a referee and dialogue. I love me some fucking roguelikes.

[Kaelik]

You got one stat switch. But who fucking cares? It was a roguelike with a referee and dialogue. I love me some fucking roguelikes.

Last I checked, when I play Rogue I choose my own fucking character.

[Zaranthan]

Kaelik, take your meds. The point is that making a new character in Rogue takes thirty seconds, much like the old school D&D that meatgrinder dungeons harken from. Cobbling together such a system for 3.X is a neat element.

[Eikre]

Last I checked, when I play Rogue I choose my own fucking character.

Yeah, don't fucking lie. This is, in its entirety, the character creation stage of Rogue (1984, DOS):




That is it. All further developments are entirely the result of the RNG. But can you believe that that's still twice as many choices as the 1983 release?

One of the three great philosophical successors to Rogue (the others being Angband and Nethack), is Brogue.



It is highly more sophisticated. Yet, still, you click the 'new game' button, and-



The door immediately slams shut, with even less interest in introductions than its predecessor.

In Rogue Legacy, you do get a substantive choice...



From among three randomly generated characters.

Now, obviously, there are plenty of race-and-class roguelikes that put a lot of choices right up front. Yet, it is rare that "roll the fucking dice and let it ride, asshole" is not among those choices.



Here's Dungeon's of Dredmor's principal creation screen, which incidentally includes the work of our very own Essence. The random-selection button is pictured bottom-right.

Don't be such a dipshit about it.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik, take your meds. The point is that making a new character in Rogue takes thirty seconds, much like the old school D&D that meatgrinder dungeons harken from. Cobbling together such a system for 3.X is a neat element.

Except for the part where it totally doesn't do that. At all. You don't end up with a gestalt character that includes a Dread Necro and a random copper elf without a metric that takes longer to roll on than just picking what you want, and then, after you rolled shit, you still have to make the character.

It's just a shitty unfun dumb way to play D&D that adds literally nothing to the game other than the joy of watching other people who rolled shitty suffer.

[Prak]

To be fair, there is a segment of the gaming populace who do enjoy playing one shot beer and pretzels games with crap characters meant to die horrible and ignominious deaths.

I believe that is roughly the entire source of Call of Cthulhu rpg players.

[Eikre]

You don't end up with a magic deck that includes a Kozilek and a random colorless magic trinket without a metric that takes longer to execute than just picking what you want, and then, after you drafted shit, you still have to make the deck.

It's just a shitty unfun dumb way to play MTG that adds literally nothing to the game other than the joy of watching other people who drafted shitty suffer.

[Kaelik]

You don't end up with a magic deck that includes a Kozilek and a random colorless magic trinket without a metric that takes longer to execute than just picking what you want, and then, after you drafted shit, you still have to make the deck.

It's just a shitty unfun dumb way to play MTG that adds literally nothing to the game other than the joy of watching other people who drafted shitty suffer.

Uh...

1) Did anyone ever claim that making magic decks is fast?
2) The reason that formats are all either "pick what you want from X cards" where X is all the cards, all the cards past a certain set, or all the cards specifically pre selected to not produce crap...

Yeah, I don't understand what you think you are proving.