Gwardinen

Tabletop RPGs

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I've already drafted three characters and only one of them is a spellcaster (though yes he is a motherfuckin' wizaaaaaaaard).

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PS: If a D&D group is gonna work properly, everyone can't be Wizards.

...or COULD we?

I just started playing a Pathfinder game that's all wizards. It's interesting so far.

I'd be up for whatever if a group needs an extra person, as long as it doesn't require time on Sunday evenings (when my real-life game is).

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Just to try to keep momentum, where is everyone at? Who is DMing the second group? Where is the second group going to be set?

I think once we have these questions answered we can split up the groups based on setting and start making characters.

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I might have to bow out as DM. I'm not really sure what the deal is currently, but it sounds like I may be limiting my enjoyment time on the PC very soon here. Still writing the campaign, because I'm not sure where it's all going to lead, but I can't promise I can do it, at this moment.

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Actually, who are the players for each group?

I'll make a list of people who said they are interested in participation:

Gwardinen

Squid Division

Toblix

PiratePoo

Orvidos -- maybe possibly a DM, maybe

Wubbles

Illeria

Hermie

brkl

Ossk -- Possibly a DM too

Snooglebum -- Possible DM

DanJW -- Possible DM, when he gets his internet back

Erkki

Lord Korax

Sombre

So that's 15 people! (I can count, woo!) 512th post! 1024, here I come!

Edited by PiratePooAndHisBattleship

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Yeah the list of interested parties has grown since I last counted it. As I've said we're probably best off deciding on the broad setting/theme for each DM, if they're able, and then have players divvy off into groups for that. The larger number of people wanting to participate may be made up for by the larger number of potential DMs, though.

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Me as a DM and maybe even as player may have to change it's status to "er", because I've been surprisingly busy recently. I'd love to DM if I could, and I actually already have a campaign setting in the works for a separate group in real life, but time may not allow.

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If you have a lot of people, you could consider co-DMs. In some ways it might even be better for online play.

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I just watched the Robot Chicken stuff, and was highly embarrassed when the DM did his fire breathing ballista voice.

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Just wondering what the status is of those of you who might be DMs, I know a few of you aren't sure whether you'll even have the time to participate. I'd really love to get something off the ground, whether it be play by post or at a specified time (I don't know which actually would work better for our potentially struggling DMs) so any news is good news. Except the bad news.

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Hey folks how are these games going?

I'm finally online in my new flat. I'm still busy a lot of evenings, but I think I can find time now to do something - maybe play-by-post, with a realtime session most weeks.

I'm happy to play or DM if other folks are interested. Here's some D&D (or similar system) settings that I like best:

-Telecanter's 'Strange New World' setting. It's an awesome pulp mashup set mainly in an alternate 1915 U.S. It has some fantastic twists on traditional fantasy game stock monsters and added forteana.

-My own campaign setting, Infinite Isles. It's an archepelago setting, although there are larger islands if you prefer to stay on dry land. Major Influences are The Voyages of Sinbad, and other Tales of the Arabian Nights; the Earthsea novels by Ursula Le'Guin; the Irish Book of Invasions, the Mabinogion and faerie folkore of the British Isles in general; Pratchett's Nation, classical civilizations; plus a dash of Lovecraft and the economics of sea-trade. I started a blog of general info for players a couple of years ago, here. I've developed it a bit more since then.

-A nascent idea for a campaign based on Peter Pan and Neverland, but crossed with darker fairy tales and Celtic horror stories (yeah I have a thing about the underbelly of North European folklore). Players could be either lost boys or, even better, the Pirates. The choice will change the feel of the campaign quite a bit. I think this could be pretty awesome and/or disturbing, playing as it does with what it really means when a child is 'taken by the faeries'.

I have other nascent RPG ideas, some more developed than others. Taking those on would require developing and playtesting a lot of the rules as we go, but they are much further from D&D and fantasy and so might present something a bit different and fresher. In short they are:

-Cold War ESP-enabled spies. ESP powers are limited to the kind of things in 'real world' clairvoyance claims. Additional inspiration: Spielberg's Munich and similar gritty heist movies.

-Pre-classical gods, who puppeteer the fates of mortals in a kind of deconstruction of fantasy RPGs.

-A game system based on manipulation of probabilities, where that is the PCs main power.

-A game system based on free running and le parkour. Least developed and more of a thought experiment - could running even work as a replacement for combat in a tabletop RPG?

Edited by DanJW

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As I sort of feared, nothing ever really got off the ground. Many of your ideas sound awesome, particularly the one involving pre-classical gods - I absolutely adore that concept, but I have no idea how difficult it would end up being to put into practice.

As for those that are more fully formed, I would probably cast my vote for the Infinite Isles over Strange New World, because I really know nothing about 1915 US.

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That's a shame that nothing got going.

You don't need to know anything at all about early 20th century USA, since it's actually a completely fictional world that just has some similarities to our own and pulp adventure/hard boiled fiction overtones. Read some of the Telecanter's blog articles or the PDF on that page (which is just a collection of his articles anyway). I absolutely love them.

Yeah the gods game might be very hard to play online, The rules I wrote for it are based on a combination of playing cards and liar dice.

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It would be helpful if a DM took charge, I think. I mean, I'll get my shit in order and all that, but we need a campaign first, don't we?

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Well that's really the trouble with a game like this, it needs a DM to come in and set shit up. Actually the weight of work and responsibility that rests with the DM is one of the most unstable things about tabletop RPGs, it seems.

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OK, I'll step up then.

Things to agree upon:

System; D&D? 4E or an AD&D clone like OSRIC (which is free to all)? There are OD&D and 3E/D20 clones too.

Method of Play: I've been looking into play-by-post sites. Myth-weavers looks like a good choice and has recommendations. It has built-in tools like dice-rolling BBcode commands that cannot be tampered with. It could be combined with Obsidian Portal for long-term stuff.

There are real-time apps available too. Personally I think play-by-post with occasional realtime chat sessions. It may take a while before we settle on the best use of the tools for us.

Timing: set deadlines for Play-by-post. Realtime nights would be Wednesdays or Thursdays for me, say between 8pm and 11pm GMT - possibly some Sundays earlier evening. Even so some weeks I will be busy every evening.

Tone of the game - what kind of stuff does everyone want to do? Dungeon crawls, political roleplay, horror, swashbuckling, deadly survival, goofing around, story-based set pieces or wide open sandbox? As long as we all understand what we are each looking for, adventures can be tailored towards those tastes.

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My favourite is having the DM prepare a highly scripted story and then always walk in the opposite direction of all the things.

Seriously, though, how many players would you be able to support? If I remember correctly, there are quite a few willing players – would there have to be a lottery of some sort?

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Probably about 6 players. Lets see who wants in and who can do what times - it might be that logistics does the lottery for us.

I could take on an assistant DM as well, which would make my workload easier, provide me with someone to scheme collaborate with and provide cover for when I can't make it.

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My thoughts:

System: I don't know much about the systems you posted other than D&D4, which I suggested primarily because it's (comparatively) easy to learn and play. It has very similar rules to video games as many games took their basic rule ideas from D&D to start off with and D&D4 has now gone the other way and streamlined itself in some modern video game ways. I like it and think it works well for basic adventures, but I'm willing to learn other systems.

Method of Play: I've actually started playing play-by-post campaigns on the Penny Arcade forums, and it works surprisingly well. For fairly internet-active people like we are, it moves along at a regular, if not incredible, pace. It also allows the players to describe what their characters are doing with more depth than real-time games which tend to devolve into "I attack that guy!" That said, the actual roleplay sections could possibly work well in real-time because sometimes you just want to have a quick conversation back and forth, not wait for lengthy posts.

Myth-Weavers is pretty good, I have a character sheet up on there myself, but Orokos is also great if you can get hold of an old copy of the D&D4 character creator. It only accepts files from that program, but once uploaded you can use it to automatically roll your abilities and that sort of thing. Basically it's ease over customisability - this would only work if we were playing straight D&D4. Invisible Castle is also a lightweight dice rolling tool. I think all of these were in my post on tools earlier in the thread, maybe some others too.

Timing: Requiring the ability to post once per day seems to work for the PA threads. Chances are not everyone will need to post every day, but the concept that on any given day you'll probably have 15 minutes at some point to whip up a post isn't a bad one. Obviously things may slow down for some and speed up for others at different times of the week (such as weekend) and there may be special circumstances occasionally, but it's not a bad guideline. For real-time, it's easy for me because I'm also in the UK, and it so happens that Wednesday and Sunday are good nights for me. Thursday is less so, but there may be times I can do that.

Tone: Personally I've been engaged in campaigns that go roughly like a video game RPG, combat and roleplay and choices all regularly interspersed. It works pretty well, and I would definitely be inclined not to do a straight dungeon crawl (combat vs roleplay is a delicate balance and that seems too far on the combat side) or an open sandbox (seems like a bad idea for beginning players to just be told - go do whatever you want, figure it out!). The other concepts all have merit.

Finally, I would love to play but since I've been the one pushing this and since I'd like to learn how to do it at some point, I'd be willing to be an assistant DM if the party shakes out in such a way that it seems beneficial. I'm a decent writer and a bit of a bastard so I'd probably be good at it. :grin:

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The various editions of D&D (and clones thereof) have different things going for them.

Original D&D basic - nice and fast. Restricted options (race and class are the same thing). Can be deadly.

Original D&D advanced - wide range of expression, since it relied much more on players describing their actions rather than simply choosing "attack B". Emphasizes imaginative approach to problems. Utterly deadly - expect to reroll at least one character each. Combat should often be avoided. Lots of support and analysis and variations online, and popular once again.

OD&D gives a hyborian age, gritty swords and sorcery feel by default.

The rules appear abstract but in the long term line up to reality suprisingly well.

D20, or 3rd edition - massive range of choice. A bit overly complex and exploitable. Pathfinder is a third party rewrite of this ruleset that aims to rebalance it, and is now close to outselling D&D.

3E gives a detailed, epic fantasy novel kind of feel by default.

The rules attempt to be simulationist, but artifacts appear in the long term.

4E. Very well balanced, throws out a lot of baggage. Combat is more tactical, requires a combat board (although some people are working on house rules to allow it to be played "all in the mind" like in older editions). Dying is rare. Some of the noncombat rules are squiffy. Has a tendency to steer everything back towards combat - and combats can sometimes become slow and grinding - but this can be consciously compensated for if you are watching out for it.

4E gives a cinematic, action movie feel by default.

The rules run on hollywood logic, but they are consistent in this.

Edited by DanJW

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I've played some 3.5 and Pathfinder, though not much. I found it more or less as you described it, overly complex and exploitable. What was weird about it was that while it was overly complex, it was also incredibly generic for anyone that wasn't a spellcaster. Obviously as characters go on they always accrue more options, but certainly at lower levels it felt like if you were a physical class your "option" was basically to run at people and perform "melee attack". One of the reasons I prefer D&D4 is that everyone has powers, everyone gets to do cool shit, like in video games.

OD&D Advanced sounds like it's the ultimate ideal, but it also sounds like it takes a good (and probably experienced) group and DM to actually get the system to do what you want it to.

All of this said, ultimately the great thing about tabletop RPGs is you only allow the ruleset to control you as much as you want it to. We can probably make it work whichever we go for.

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Oh totally. I'm happy to run 4E as long as everyone has access to the materials they need. WotC have made the character generator an online-only thing, although the demo for the old downloadable one will likely still be around and has a decent number of options.

I know the things that bug me about 4E (like skill challenges) and can houserule or compensate for them.

I prefer more exploration and roleplay-based adventures - combat is a significant event and not just par for the course. Unless the PCs just like starting fights; but killing has consequences.

I also try to write situations rather than linear quests. So not a total sandbox - events are transpiring and agendas are being carried out and there are plenty of story hooks. But it's up to the players to decide what their own part in the events will be, what their own goals are and how to achieve them. Some NPCs will ask for help or present quests; that doesn't mean you have to accept them and there is no 'right' way to go.

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Sounds absolutely awesome, Dan. They haven't gone all web-only, have they? There's a 4E player's handbook and equipment guide and whatnot?

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