i think our best bet is to just defeat all his mooks, then leave without fighting him

most of his influence is via his mooks

@0xFFF1 Well, you'll be L10 or so by the time you get to attempt to kill him if the DM wants you to live

@KorvinStarmast I feel like "you paid attention because it was lethal not to" could use some context. @Ladifas: Many homemade dungeons were drawn to fill every square of graph paper (which was hard to come by) and stocked as if someone had thrown dice at the MM ToC (because they did). So there was often zero internal logic, and turning any corner could bring you face-to-face with something ten HD above your "level."

Oh, the good ol' days =)

@0xFFF1 Try to stay in his antimagic cone if you can.

Also, chucking a net on him is a surprisingly good idea.

Though I feel like a sack is more thematic.

yeah get him fired! that will do,.... whatever we are talking about

@NautArch pitch is in your gmail.

I really like the sound of the new D&D5e adventure book, and also am impressed by Matt Colville's soothsaying abilities. (He's responding to a question about what official book he'd most like to see)

@KorvinStarmast @nitsua60 So was the DM studiously keeping track of every 10 minute turn, or was that handwaved at times? And what happened if the group disagreed with the caller? Did the DM have to step in, or did they just wait for the group to sort it out?

@Ladifas In the only large group I played in during the 80s "timekeeper" was another player's job. (So there was a mapper, a caller, a timekeeper, a quartermaster, at least.)

Heck, in my 7-person AL table right now I can name the players who are explicitly timekeeper, mapper, quartermaster.

(And oh, boy, the day the mapper couldn't be there and halfway through the session I realized the player who stepped in had frequent left vs. right trouble...)

hey there @Helwar

Hi!

how're things going?

Good enough, how about yours?

@Helwar doing fine here

:)

now a better time to talk then the last couple of times? :)

@Ladifas You tracked the 10 min thing when it matttered. If the group disagreed with the caller then the players were expected to sort it out. The DM would often simply stand up and say "5 minute break while you sort our your teamwork problems' in the groups I played in. We frequently rotated callers so that everyone got a chance to do it, but some people had zero confidence in that challenge so they rarely did it. It depended on the group.

The groups I played in "got" team play. I guess some groups didn't. We did basically, in college, ban one guy from our games because he was all "I'm so special all the time" so he was told very clearly "no, you are not invited" by numerous DM's and players. (And almost all of us had a dungeon we were running on and off; when a DM needed a break, someone else would DM for a few sessions).

I think I averaged one and a half sessions a week in those days, (and I include the occasional weekend marathons as a double session). And some sessions we played micro armor or sand table miniatures battles.

@nitsua60 Well, traps and rolling for surprise and the imbalacing effect of a surprise round for the monsters made not paying attention lethal.

The other thing is that in OD&D and 1e, there were monster tables. On level I of the dungeon, there was a certain maximum level of lethality. On level II, a bit more. And so on. A Troll was IIRC a monster from monster table III or IV (need to go back and look)

@nitsua60 What did this 'quartermaster' do? Track rations or something?

And surely it would have been in the timekeeper's interests to rule in favour of the players, if unsure, as they were a player?

@KorvinStarmast Somehow I'd never thought of doing a sand table for minis. That's great, as long as you're willing to give up the grid.

@JoelHarmon I think he might be talking about more traditional war-gaming with tape-measures

@Ladifas Even if not, a tape measure would be a good solution to the lack of grid issue.

@JoelHarmon I believe the original version of D&D expected use of a tape measure rather than a grid. It is a bit more fiddly though.

Got the Battlestar Galactica game, the Cylons are no joke :\

@SPavel "Roll to retroactively have been a cyclon this whole time"

@Ladifas Rations, torches, flasks of oil, spikes; treasure, carrying capacity....

hey there @nitsua60 and @SimonH.

heyoo shalvenay

@Shalvenay Hiya.

how're things going?

Oh neato, folks are here

Sometimes I feel bad for how much @V2Blast has to edit my poor grammar. Sorry bro :(

Oh, nevermind, this one was just a spoiler tag. Nonetheless :P

Haha

Hey @nitsua60 (or anyone else that might have an idea, I suppose): I saw your answer on just printing and laminating 1-inch-grid sheets of paper to prepare dungeons ahead of time, and I wanted some more details since I think I want to do something along those lines.

How do you get both reusability and being able to put them in a binder ahead of time? I'd have expected dry erase marker to rub off before I could use the sheets

Does anyone know what happened to the eagles? The camera seems to be angled wrong and I don't see any birds...

Ah okay, apparently eagle mom jumped on the camera and moved it

They're on to us!

Clever girl!

Indeed

Meanwhile my Poland has now taken France, Germany, Italy, the entire USSR, and half of India and China

"Danzig or War" indeed

HOI4 or CK2?

wait, USSR, that's HOI4

@SPavel telephone lines will never run out of holders

Is "How do I stop being a beaver person" on topic for this site?

@WrongOnTheInternet depends on whether "beaver person" is a term in any rpg. If so, tag the question with that rpg and you'll be fine

I uh, mutated myself into a beaver person, and gave someone else hemophilia.

@WrongOnTheInternet in which game? If those are houserules then your likely better off asking your DM but you are always welcome to ask on the site

There might be a solution im not aware of

I think the solution might just be "keep mutating myself and friends until we're out of this situation or brain dead"

@WrongOnTheInternet perhaps, but it might be counterproductive. I don't know any system with mutations like you describe so I'm not much help

We are talking about an RPG, right? You didn't actually turn yourself into a beaver with impressive typing skills?

I sure hope so.

It's a OD&D hack of sorts, but the mutation spell is entirely new. I might just someone more powerful to hit me with a polymorph other so I can at least have hands again.

@WrongOnTheInternet If that were in, say, the ShadowCraft system, it'd be a great question and very easy to answer. As a homebrew element of a custom hack, it's still askable but much harder to answer.

(In ShadowCraft, Sylvans can channel the natural forces of Arcadia to cast spells--but losing control of that power fractures the caster and mixes their essence with the essence of Arcadia. Turning into a beaver person isn't nearly the worst thing a fracture could cause, and so long as it doesn't get too bad you can heal the fracture by taking time to do things which remind you of who you really are.)

@JoelHarmon The sand table battles were napoleonics, civil war, revolutionary war, and stuff like Chainmail and Swords&Spells. We only used it for D&D for two tournament sessions.

And mostly for Micro Armor!

The nice thing we could do with a sand table was shape terrain so that line of site was useful ... in Micro Armor mostly ....

Would it be possible to set up a private room where I can discuss things without the risk of my players seeing it

@MikeQ Private rooms are generally only for moderation purposes, I'm afraid

@MikeQ When I was doing that, I just labelled the room:

If you don't trust your players to stay out of a clearly labelled chat room... you may have more systemic problems.

@BESW That's not a major issue, although I sometimes feel kinda bad about spamming the main chat with my personal campaign discussion

I take a different approach: If I don't plan, I can't spoil the players ;)

(level of truth in that statement open to reader's interpretation)

I definitely enjoy game systems that encourage minimal preparation in favor of collaborative play-to-find-out storytelling.

@ACuriousMind I'm going to run a level 20 game. I need to plan something.

@BESW But dear gods improvisation is exhausting! Minimal prep sessions are my favourite but my brain definitely feels cooked after running these

@ACuriousMind That's why I like systems which mechanize the collaborative part of the concept.

Sharing the improv load with the group makes things easier, and produces more creative and interesting results, and lets me be surprised along with everyone else.

My GMing life hasn't been the same since I read Lady Blackbird's GM advice.