TRPG General Chat

12:28 AM

@BESW The module itself didn't dictate Orcus's success or failure; however, the shift to 3.5 declared a 'canonical' ending to the events.

BESW

I find that choice of ending dissatisfying.

On a different note, Ursula Vernon made Valentine's Day cards.

With honey badgers.

Alex P

1:01 AM

Hey folks.

BESW

Hay.

Alex P

RPGnet is having a big meta-discussion about board culture, if anyone cares. Mainly devoted to catching what's fallen through the cracks of the current inclusion-focused policies. Good time to sound off if you lurk but don't post.

BESW

I'm not even sure what that means, but it makes me tentatively glad I'm not paying a lot of attention to RPGnet.

Zachiel

1:20 AM

I'm way more busy engeneering my incantatrix character now

How is it, knowing a small room and an anti-magic field are your doom? T_T

Alex P

1:32 AM

@BESW Well, RPGnet is a big site that's trying to be useful to a wide variety of gamers. Part of that is moderation policies. One thing that sets them apart from a lot of the other big gaming sites (as well as from, say, themselves ten years ago) is a set of policies focused on making sure marginalized folks like trans people have a place in the conversation. So, there's a discussion right now about board culture and moderation and where inclusion falls short.

That's everything from "Is this a good space for trans men, too?" to "Do we need to take a sharper eye against potential group attacks on religious groups?"

Because people debate and they argue and they make off-hand comments while they talk. And also there's several bustling sections for off-topic conversations.

BESW

1:46 AM

Huh.

Zachiel

1:59 AM

So, in the end?

BESW

2:40 AM

Alex P

"Adventure Fractal" for Fate. This is one of those things that makes me feel like I just don't get the point of Fate, really.

BESW

I think many of the Fate implementations we see are more along the lines of experiments or explorations of the system's potential or limits, than being actually necessary (or even good) as end products themselves.

As the shiny New System smell wears off, we'll see a shift in the nature of these homebrew hacks.

But I think you may also be suffering from a dissonance in how you use the ruleset tools at your disposal, compared to how people like that poster approach rulesets.

I do find the idea that a dungeon can be a character in its own right a fascinating one, but it seems unnecessary in most cases.

Alex P

2:58 AM

It's not the same kind of character as everything else, I think, is the point.

BESW

There's a Fate Worlds setting which does it much better, more like the way the world of the Matrix felt like an active antagonist in the first film.

And... well, I do think that this looks like an inappropriate application of the fractal.

It creates mechanical emphasis without much reason to do so.

I'm going to read the guy's first article to see if he gives a "Why?"

[squint] Okay, so it's abstracting the setting and its components into a single multi-tentacled fractal in the name of simplifying the GM's bookkeeping. (I love that word. Three double letters in a row!)

That... is an excellent example of missing the point of the fractal.

You make something into a character when the alternative is creating a new ruleset. Replacing an existing ruleset with the character rules is not what the fractal was made for.

If you want to abstract a conflict, you can just make it a contest.

That's a great little thought exercise, but I don't see it being very useful or interesting in practice (boring, more like).

A rule of thumb I've been discovering for myself is that stress tracks should be treated with great respect. The simple addition or subtraction of a stress track changes the entire landscape of a game.

@Problematic Opinions?

Problematic

5:05 AM

@BESW Seems really handwavy where it doesn't need to be.

I disagree with replacing... basically all the rules with one piece of the rules, so there's that, but he makes a few interesting observations, like his dependency-based planning thing.

But, the fun thing about Fate is that his way will work, and still be fun.

Magician

D&D Next design column on XP and awarding levels wholesale. These things haven't really had much substance lately.

Problematic

@Magician Heh, speaking of handwaving.

Magician

He mentions 2 playstyles: story-based and, for lack of better term, xp-based. In which you kill a dragon because that gets you XP and loot. I can't think such pure murderhoboing would be fun for many people for long, but sure, I guess someone does it.

Handwaving XP is fine and all, and if that's an option they want to give in published adventures that's cool. But he basically says murder-xp is not enough if you're doing things other than murdering, except instead of providing some guidelines for handing out goal-xp or story-xp or whatever, as previous editions did, the suggestion is to ignore it entirely.

"We have a system that encourages a murderhobo behavior, if you don't want to do that - don't use it." Um. How about a system that encourages other kinds of behaviors?..

BESW

5:22 AM

@Magician That's hippie Forge talk, you free-form Commie.

Magician

...and because these columns lack substance, I find myself dissecting them for whatever insights they might imply, and feel like a nit-picking bastard as the result. Ah well.

@BESW Free-form Mutant, d6-loving Traitor and a character-empowered Commie.

BESW

Heheh.

BESW

5:45 AM

@Magician You know, this does reflect the long-standing implication in DM advice screeds, that the less a game style is D&D-like the less it needs rules to support the style.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I think this statement could use a little bit of refining. After all, 100% of Dread's mechanics are there to support the style.

Alex P

@Magician So, from Eero's SG thread on old-school character motivations: just change XP to be whatever is compatible with the theme of the game. Sometimes that's treasure hunting, sometimes that's saving civilians, sometimes that's... the point is to "gamify" the characters' story goals a bit in a way that promotes the gamist "How well can you accomplish this?" goal.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth I used "DM" instead of "GM" very deliberately, to indicate that I'm talking only about advice for D&D game masters and not generalising.

To unpack: the advice D&D guides give to dungeon masters on running games which deviate from the "normal" D&D style (heavy social/political content, for example) consistently implies that these styles require fewer rules than the "baseline experience" of D&D.

I don't think Dread's approach to rules or its advice to GMs is relephant to what I was trying to say.

Lord_Gareth

Very well. Carry on

BESW

It's a good rebuttal to the implicit D&D philosophy I'm talking about, though.

Alex P

5:50 AM

@BESW D&D3.5 DMG, "Deep-Immersion Storytelling."

Magician

@AlexP Yup, and that's what past DMGs have suggested, to some extent. 4e definitely had "quest XP". Likely 3e as well, I just can't remember. For all we know, it'll be in Next as well, Mearls just talks of murder-xp as the main one.

Alex P

I wish I still had that book around so I could open it and hate on that section.

BESW

@AlexP I can hold it up to the screen for a minute and you can shout at it over the Internet.

Alex P

Deep-Immersion Storytelling is:

1. Not using the rules, pretty much at all.

2. Talking to shopkeepers for an hour.

That reminds me.

Lord_Gareth

@AlexP My players sometimes do this all on their own.

Admittedly the last time they kept doing this there were duels over the right to court her

Awesome interpersonal drama

And she married a PC

BESW

5:53 AM

@Lord_Gareth Finally realising that this was one of my favorite parts of the RPG experience is what ultimately led to my abandoning D&D altogether.

Alex P

Something that amuses me about a lot of "roleplaying" advice. I go shopping all the time! Sometimes I go to bars. You know what I've never done in my boring do-everyday-things-every-day life? Spend more than, like, five minutes talking to a shopkeeper or bartender.

Lord_Gareth

@AlexP You're missing out.

BESW

@AlexP Among other things, that's very cultural.

Around here, knowing how you're connected to others is extremely important and is considered worthwhile in even casual contact.

Magician

I suspect chatting up shopkeepers and bartenders is the direct result of computer RPGs in which you interact with the town that way, and get lore/quests.

BESW

@Magician Very likely.

(The owner of the Thai restaurant down the street was good friends with the woman who was my art teacher when I was eight, I learned by talking with her while waiting for my food.)

Lord_Gareth

5:57 AM

I got my players to stop obsessing over every unusual NPC by giving them all quirks. Sometimes a personality they meet seems attractive.

As I mentioned above, they fell absolutely in love with Ami, the owner and manager of Adventuring Solutions

BESW

@Lord_Gareth See, that just makes my players want to meet everyone whether they think the NPC has plot elephants or not.

...which leads to everyone acquiring unintended plot elephants.

Lord_Gareth

To be fair @BESW, my players still haven't figured out that I make crap up as I go.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Seriously? About fifteen minutes into my first session I decided the best I could do was make them unsure which bits I was making up on the spot.

Magician

Plotlephants. Like MacGuffins, but more relephant.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I have this gigantic advantage in the form of one guy who takes more notes than an OCD prophetess. I read up while they're doing their pre-session bickering, allowing me to remain consistent and fire off previous elements as spontaneous Chekov's Guns

BESW

6:01 AM

@Lord_Gareth That's convenient.

...man. Flipping through the 3.5 DMG, I remember how much of the flavour concepts I liked, but never felt like I got satisfaction from them in use.

@AlexP Let me present a single parenthetical sentence from "Deep-Immersion Storytelling" for you to heave bile at.

> (And don't expect the PCs to fight the orcs at all unless their characters are motivated to do so.)

Alex P

I don't know that I feel particular bile about that. Or at least I'm too busy hating on "let's fight orcs" to notice the rest.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW - This was the same game that felt, "Should I murder baby orcs?" was a difficult moral question requiring an entire supplement to address.

Why are you surprised?

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Not surprised. Survivor's guilt, maybe.

Is almost always having at least one bountied question, and often having multiples at once, a good or bad sign for the site's health?

Alex P

Mxy actually wrote a big ol' blog post about this whole "no XP, just level whenever" thing: geek-related.com/2014/02/02/…

I think part of the core problem is the way that content has to be targeted to a particular level in the first place.

Lord_Gareth

Not...sure...if...can...read...objectively.

BESW

6:16 AM

> So even though our judge said we rocked the adventure and did it better/faster/cheaper (no character loss) than everyone else, you know, we didn’t harvest enough souls. Lesson learned, we’ll shout our battle cry of “No Witnesses!” in the future.

This is a good battlecry, but I think I'll keep "Someone keeps moving my silliness benchmark!"

It's appropriate more often in my games.

Alex P

I think a big part of the problem is the "adventure path" concept that's taken over D&D.

This isn't a recent thing, of course.

It is older than I am!

But it then creates a set of, like, little gates. "You must be this level to play the next part of this plot" kind of stuff.

BESW

I hate XP gates.

Alex P

So (as M. mentioned) there's all this doddering around just trying to get players to be the level they're "supposed to be" at any given time.

BESW

I threw them out entirely in 3.5, only to be subjected to them again in 4e for the first half of my campaign because I wasn't confident in my ability to rip them out without compromising something.

I found that an approximation of Mxy's real-time XP variant was best in my own games.

@Lord_Gareth I think it's a good article. I'd like more citations, but the only online personality I've ever found who gave enough citations to satisfy me was Sydney Padua.

Alex P

6:33 AM

Fun things on Wikipedia:

> The reverse of a 20 Belarusian ruble silver commemorative coin issued in 2005 with Vseslav ("Usiaslau") of Polotsk and a depiction of him as a werewolf in the background

Yes, ahem, "AS A WEREWOLF"

BESW

Did he fight Satan's witches to protect the crops?

Alex P

Nope. He races at night like a wolf from Kiev to Tmutarakan.

And other places.

BESW

That's good too.

BESW

6:53 AM

Hey, @trogdor, I'm feeling nostalgic about D&D today. What are some things you'd want to see in a D&D-inspired Fate game?

trogdor

hard to say

BESW

For me, I'm thinking of things like mustevals and shadow dancers where I really liked the concept but never felt satisfied about how they wound up in my games.

Alternately, what wouldn't you want to see?

trogdor

I think most of the things I don't want to see would likely not show up in fate

like the fact that several hundred or so people kept making new stuff without knowing there was something in the game that broke it already

or was broken by it, either way really

save or die is obvious

that is both stupid and already cut out by Fate as a default

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I'd love to see an emphasis on the relationship between the Prime Material Plane and the Outer Planes

BESW

@Lord_Gareth I'm inclined, at least as a default, to focus on just the Prime.

Lord_Gareth

7:03 AM

@BESW And on this note, drag 100% of the gods out back and shoot them. Their Good gods read like full-blown Old Testament wrath. A personal favorite is Kord slaughtering a guy's entire bloodline because he displayed cowardice in battle. Kord is supposed to be CG.

BESW

Heh.

I think I'd like to revisit Wee Jas.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW I'd love to see her themes done more maturely.

I ran in a game where all three players (myself and two others) came from the Witcholm family, ancient supporters of the Ruby Lady known for their stalwart dedication to Her.

BESW

One of my last 3.5 games I did some research into her history through the editions and came up with some good stuff.

Lord_Gareth

And together we sorta created a vision of a more mature, refined version of her church that paid respect to her LN alignment instead of using it as a cover for a bunch of LE crap.

Alex P

@BESW Wee Jas is the best but you could seriously make her not a god and nothing would be lost, I think.

Lord_Gareth

7:06 AM

@BESW Ah, but that's the wonderful thing. The Outer are dependent on the Prime; emphasizing that relationship is about exploring the feedback loop of belief -> creation -> shaping -> visitation -> belief

But I must sleep nao

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Yeah, that's not part of D&D for me.

Lord_Gareth

On a more fanboy note, Illurien of the Myriad Glimpses would be an amazing villain, especially freed of the constraints D&D places on her.

BESW

D&D is not, for me, a venue for explorations of cosmogony and eschatology, or anything metaphysical.

(I am not of the Planescape generation.)

Lord_Gareth

(Neither am I)

Alex P

I love me some Planescape but I feel like D&D holds it back at every turn.

Lord_Gareth

7:09 AM

Illurien's a unique Outsider of a decidedly evil bent; she's composed of water droplets that are the physical embodiments of the things she's learned or stolen. Illurien is obsessed with secrets and believes that all knowledge rightfully belongs to her.

BESW

I want to look at the contact points between the insane number of factions, races, and groups, the politics and the violence, the tension and the slipping points.

Lord_Gareth

Among her tricks are precognition, mind-training strikes, telepathy, learning your secrets and life story by existing near you, encyclopedic knowledge of Almost Freaking Everything, and vivisection

She enjoys long walks on the beach and dissecting you after devouring your mind so that she can memorize your particular physical anatomy and flaws

BESW

Dungeon crawling is about the people who make the dungeons, the people who live in them, the people who loot them, and the people who have vested interests in all of that.

Lord_Gareth

But now bed

BESW

Questions about the Meaning of Creation and the Source of Being are only important to the extent that they influence motive and action--which means, usually, that the absolute truth of the answers is rarely significant--and these ideas are not themselves to be the centerpiece of a story.

(In another setting, sure, but not in my D&D.)

Alex P

7:14 AM

To me, the core thing that I think of as "very D&D" that I'd actually want to play sometimes is that sense of the dungeon as, like, a place.

The history and discovery, like @BESW said.

Which isn't a thing that I always want, necessarily. Like right now our BW game is rather light on anything resembling dungeons. Despite its tendency towards the quest narrative (as opposed to the battle narrative or the intrigue narrative, for instance).

But, like, I'll see a pitch like this and I'll think, "Oh! Cool!" even though it's not really the kind of character-driven gaming I consider to be my bread-and-butter.

A truly weird place. An important place. In many ways, a place that matters more than these heroes we're sending into it.

BESW

Hmm.

Alex P

I'm not sure how I'd do a sustained campaign of that, though. Once you've got to the magical place once, it kinda stops being the same.

The first time, there's this sense that the dungeon is more than you. It has a history. It has magic. You, in comparison, are short-lived and mundane. Going in and then coming out means actually transcending yourself on some level.

BESW

It's weird, but I don't think my ideal DND game has much dungeon in it.

Alex P

No, the D&D games I played largely didn't.

BESW

It's easier to meet the really interesting setting elements in town: doppelgangers and wizard academies, thieves' guilds and corrupt mayors begging to be taken down a notch.

Memo for a campaign starting point: having acquired an object through the usual dungeony methods, the story opens with the party arriving in a town to meet a buyer.

Alex P

7:26 AM

@BESW There's a BW demo scenario that's kinda like that. "The Sword." It's basically, "So, you all got through the dungeon to get the thing you wanted. The thing that each of you wanted for important personal reasons. Time to bicker about it."

BESW

....or perhaps the party is the buyer.

First order of business in creating BESW D&D: scrub the pantheon. Gods are invented as appropriate. Gods may have many portfolios or just one. Symmetry and balance in the pantheon is irrelephant, even undesirable.

Alex P

It's useful to remember that the old pantheons are overloaded because they're actually pantheons plural. Like Greyhawk has Suel gods and Oerdian gods and Baklunish gods and &c.

BESW

Direct divine intervention in the world is usually obscure and minimal.

I'll reduce both the frequency and power of all casters, even the field a bit and make magic more fantastic.

You won't run into a wizard on the street unless you're in one of the few cities with a wizard's tower.

Alex P

8:25 AM

@BESW Beware the typical quagmire that is "Let's make D&D magic more fantastical!"

I think the solution is generally not to base it on D&D magic at all.

BESW

Yeah, I think the Fate solution is to not standardise it.

D&D magic is mundane partly because it's everpresent, but also because it is formulaic and homogenised.

Alex P

Really, though, I think the second you move into the city, it's best to let go of D&D and just ask how your favorite fiction does stuff.

I don't think "What the PCs do in town" has ever been D&D's strong suit.

(And I say this as someone who mainly played D&D in town because meh to dungeons.)

BESW

Yeah.

I'm looking more at setting elements and themes. D&D mechanics can get eaten by flaming weasels.

I started a list of things that I liked in D&D but didn't feel like I ever got to see used satisfactorily in a game.

Alex P

So, how much do you want "classes" reflected in your setting?

BESW

So far I've got five races and a (prestige) class mechanic.

@AlexP Very little.

I want.... D&D flavour. D&D "discover, explore, distress the NPCs and upset their plans!"

The Points of Light "unknown dangers" ethos in a more urbanised setting that lies to itself that it's civilised so it can sleep at night.

Alex P

8:35 AM

The undercity "dungeon" would be a pretty good inclusion to that, maybe.

BESW

The major city in my setting is built on the ruins of an older city--a city of solid stone which melted and ran like wax in some terrible forgotten war which wiped out that entire society.

The catacombs are fun!

And when I say "forgotten" I don't mean "lost in the mists of time," I mean "this happened less than a hundred years ago but nobody survived to tell what happened."

The sewers and catacombs seemed relatively 'safe' --if non-OSHA-compliant-- until very recently, when Weird Mutants started appearing.

Alex P

People just forget the weirdest stuff, too.

Also, obligatory ossuary picture:

Hmm. I should sleep.

Have fun saving D&D!

BESW

11:17 AM

I'm looking to design the look of a cross between a sewer, a catacomb, and... maybe a subway? I'm missing that je ne sais quoi to tie it all together.

doppelgreener

11:35 AM

@AlexP That's a little creepy lookin'.

@BESW nobody would build a catacomb in a live sewer, nor a subway.

It's likely it was one, then another, then another.

It could be some ancient catacombs which just happened to offer convenient sewage passages. Later, after a more modern sewer system had been brought in, they might've cleaned up the tunnels and used them for a subway.

Or it was a sewer, then a subway, then it became abandoned and people started using it for catacombs.

It was no doubt retrofitted between each stage, and possibly expanded.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

crowd

doppelgreener

@LiarLiarPantsonFire Hi!

BESW

@JonathanHobbs Yes, the idea is that one city is built on the ruins of another, and is repurposing the old underground infrastructures.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

@JonathanHobbs after 1 hour is my exam

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

11:51 AM

OUCH

MY PANTS ON FIRE

doppelgreener

12:24 PM

Wait a minute: @BESW, can you move posts to other chat rooms?

Ah! Hi @Madara.

Madara Uchiha

Yo

BESW

@MadaraUchiha Hi!

Madara Uchiha

You guys don't have a chat room owner?

doppelgreener

I just realised we do and that @BESW here might be able to move the conversation.

Madara Uchiha

;)

RhysW

12:25 PM

@MadaraUchiha I didn't think owners could move messages across rooms?

BESW

I just have to remember how.

doppelgreener

Discussion with Andras over Dragon co…

Madara Uchiha

@RhysW They can, they can't delete other messages though

BESW

But it got flagged before I was asked to.

doppelgreener

^ it probably needs to be moved here

Yeah, I completely forgot you might be able to do it.

Madara Uchiha

12:26 PM

@BESW Via the room▼ menu, hit move messages and follow the directions.

RhysW

@MadaraUchiha ahh my mistake then, I thought they wouldnt be able to without being owner of both rooms, a permissions conflict if a room owner could move messages between rooms they werent part of, perhaps not

BESW

→ 1 message moved to Discussion with Andras over Dragon content

...wat.

Madara Uchiha

I think you moved the wrong message :D

RhysW

I still screw up the move process sometimes too :L

BESW

→ 36 messages moved to Discussion with Andras over Dragon content

Shift-click! I contain competence!

RhysW

12:27 PM

applause

BESW

I'm not proud. Or tired.

doppelgreener

← 12 messages moved from Discussion with Andras over Dragon content

RhysW

its like a ping pong match

doppelgreener

There we go, I think that's everything

Madara Uchiha

Cheers

BESW

12:29 PM

Thanks!

Madara Uchiha

You're welcome :)

doppelgreener

@Madara Thanks. :)

BESW

12:55 PM

Netflix says: Because I watched Red Dwarf, I would like Jekyll. And because I watched Luther, I would like... Jekyll.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW - Hey, had a thunk regarding your FATE D&D thing

BESW

@Lord_Gareth ooer?

Lord_Gareth

One thing that was a very ancient and honored part of D&D, and which fell partially out of the vogue in 3.PF, is the idea of dungeons as ecosystems.

You can still see the Grand Shining Example if you check out Undermountain, though

Undermountain is so mind-bogglingly large that it's not just its own ecosystem, but practically a collection of city-states - all of them built inside a mad wizard's deathtrap

Undermountain hates you, wants you to die, and accepts all standard currencies

BESW

I think 4e tried to capture a little of that with Thunderspire.

(It largely failed, of course.)

But yeah, I think that kind of ethos is something I want to keep around.

I want to bring it into the fresh air and the sunlight, and slap a pleasant facade on parts of it, but yes--factions grinding away at each other with agendas and plans, many of them unaware of the larger forces at work, and with the PCs positioned to throw a spanner in the whole thing.

By their very nature, PCs get caught up in the works, and either get chewed up or walk away without looking back at the explosion.

If that makes any sense. I'm not sure. I have an awful headache.

One thing I do know about the game: this guy runs a bar.

Goodnight, y'all.

Lord_Gareth

1:28 PM

@BESW Random fun fact - there's a forest in Undermountain, with a fresh river provided by portals, leaves and fresh air the same way, and a miniature 'sun' in the form of a permanent gate to the Positive Energy Plane. One of Halaster's apprentices built it for his wife, a druid named Wyllow that he loved very much.

Sadly for them both, when Wyllow learned the extent of his evil she tried to stop him from hurting the innocent. He lost his life; Wyllow lost her mind. She now lives in self-imposed exile within her woods

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth [DO NOT ENTER THE SUN YOU WILL EXPLODE]

4

@Lord_Gareth :'( poor Wyllow

Lord_Gareth

@JonathanHobbs Yeah. Halaster's apprentices have a habit of coming to horrible fates, and those they care about are drawn into the hideous gravity of their demise.

His one good-aligned apprentice escaped him, only to get kidnapped, have her soul blasted to rags, and then get forcibly transformed into a living spell and forced to slave away for him.

His death freed her

doppelgreener

Oh dear. :(

I take it that Halaster himself is the one that set up Undermountain as this... mad wizard's deathtrap, as you put it?

(I presume it's not actually a trap, just a place you are probably going to die as a result of all the stuff he and his associates have put there.)

Lord_Gareth

@JonathanHobbs Yes and at the same time noooo. Undermountain began as a dwarf hold, beneath what would much later become the City of Waterdeep.

The dwarves were slaughtered by Drow, who made a token effort to move into the joint only to realize that they had better prospects elsewhere. They abandoned miles of complex at the drop of a hat.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth those're some smart Drow.

Lord_Gareth

1:41 PM

Halaster moved in eventually. He was...saner, then. He and his then-three apprentices set about turning the place into their home, weaving enchantment after enchantment into the walls. This is about the point at which things began to go wrong.

Undermountain is one of the most enchanted places on Faerun

Which unfortunately drove Halaster completely mad

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth What, just the mere presence of all that magic?

Lord_Gareth

The background radiation of his mighty spellweaving - the world's largest anti-teleport and anti-scrying defenses, portals to other worlds, enchanted traps, ongoing effects, magical creatures - started affecting his mind.

His near-absolute power within his domain did not help matters

Eventually he succumbed to the twin onslaughts of absolute authority and maddening magical radiation

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth the only thing missing is aberrations like illithids

Lord_Gareth

@JonathanHobbs They can be found on the lower levels.

As Halaster got more and more insane, Undermountain started becoming a literal death trap. At first it was paranoia, and then it was insane cruelty; he started designing traps and sadistic puzzles even on the levels he didn't use.

Other factions and creatures moved in, which created traps and defenses of their own to protect their homes.

The modern Undermountain is hideously deadly and marked by both its population of exotic & deadly sapients, and the traps and spells they create

Or leave behind.

Zachiel

1:56 PM

@BESW must remind to ask you why since I want to DM that

But now I have some more pressing issues with 3.5e character building :)

Lord_Gareth

@JonathanHobbs Undermountain remains the only cool thing that Ed Greenwood ever wrote. It's not enough for me to forgive the guy but it is pretty freakin' awesome.

Zachiel

@Lord_Gareth: which bonus wizardly feat would you get for abjurer/incantatrix? I got like 5 of them and two are gonna be persistent and its prerequisite. (I want to gish, extra spell: divine power)

Also: I want to get Power Attack but I only have a 18 and a 14 (and then a 12), should I sacrifice a +1Int at level 12 to get +1Str?
(I asked Lord because I know he's good at 3.5 but anyone can give me ideas)

Lord_Gareth

Hrm.

Zachiel

@Lord_Gareth also: what did he do to be that unforgivable?

Lord_Gareth

You can always get more Strength later.

Gish Powah comes from using spells to augment your melee

Zachiel

2:04 PM

I can, I'm worried about prereqs. I personally don't like getting those from things I could lose

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth It sure sounds like it's pretty awesome!

Lord_Gareth

How many feats/bonus feats do you have available?

Actually I gotta go

Ask me later

doppelgreener

Bye!

Zachiel

I could just use my lvl17 free stat-boosting wish (a thing all the characters in my group will get) to boost that 12 and take power attack at level 18, which is next level

bye

I'm pinging you so I can write it now and you can answer later.
I get 1 human bonus feat (provided I want to be human), 6 feats for being a lvl 17 character, scribe scroll (I think there's a way to swap it with something else) and 5 wizardly feats (wiz7, incantatrix10).
One of the feats must be Iron Will (stupid prereq) but my DM is ok with giving us some stupid prereq feats or iconic but useless feats for some money, as if we paid someone for training, so that might be one "free" feat.
DM likes people to have skill points spent in fancy places, like archers getting points in craft bows and…

Julix

2:29 PM

hey

Zachiel

hey

Julix

I just spent all night taking in crazy amounts of deviant art pics

now I'm buzzing with ideas - and they're so incompatible... limits increase creativity :D

@Zachiel I see you're working on a wizard of sorts? pathfinder is it?

Zachiel

D&D 3.5e incantatrix. I'm reading guides right now.

Julix

Just looked it up. Had never heard of an incantatrix before...

Zachiel

@Julix One thing I hate about deviantart is how I can't find many D&D-fantasy male avatars that are not effeminate, buff or otherwise not akin to my idea of D&D wizard

Julix

2:40 PM

I saw some scrawny wizards!

What's the earliest access to planar travel in pathfinder?

@Zachiel artastrophe.deviantart.com/art/Edwin-BG-concept-385376321

Zachiel

4:29 PM

awghhhh so much research to do

Shiester

4:55 PM

Don't mind me, just posting a link to my question because I'm selfish and want to try to get as much attention to it as possible.

lisardggY

6:46 PM

You know what could be useful? A "Follow this question" option on an interesting question that will pop up a notification on the top bar when an answer is posted to it.

2

Alex P

7:01 PM

Quick write-my-answer-for-me poll: would this answer benefit from a short discussion of "metagaming" in the context of different creative agendas (e.g. purposeful use of "metagame" knowledge for shared dramatic tension)?

Zachiel

7:22 PM

@AlexP I don't think it's needed

You could mention how metagaming isn't bad per se, as I did on my most upvoted answer to date

Zachiel

9:35 PM

hello @AngeloNeuschitzer. What brings you here?

Angelo Neuschitzer

10:53 PM

@Zachiel Nothing special. Gonna linger around looking at the type of discussions that go on here.

Alex P

@AngeloNeuschitzer The starred stuff is mostly indicative of what people talk about. It's generally vaguely on-topic (mostly RPG stuff). But it's very easy for "RPG stuff" to become, like, a general conversation about geek media or social stuff.

We're kinda quiet today.

::checks:: Ah, okay, you've posted on RPG SE before.

BESW

11:10 PM

@Zachiel Thunderspire wasn't a bad module, it just didn't manage to feel like a living, breathing, dynamic community.

Alex P

@BESW For reference: do you have benchmarks for a "living, breathing, dynamic community" that is also a dungeon? That is to say, examples of doing it right?

BESW

Not really, no. I didn't touch modules until 4e.

However, thinking about it.... even something like Keep on the Shadowfell, for all its logical and motivational failings, did feel like it contained actual people with motives independent of the PCs' quests, and that left to their own devices they would interact with each other in meaningful ways that would change the environment.

Whereas Thunderspire's version of that was "if you don't stop the trogs, they'll blow up the mountain."

Oh! The Skull City portion of the Tomb of Horrors Superadventure.

Alex P

Keep on the Borderlands is considered a classic (that Shadowfell is loosely inspired by).

Ditto Castle Ravenloft, although less is going on there in some ways.

BESW

@AlexP And I suspect Thunderspire is loosely inspired by Undermountain, although I don't know enough about Undermountain to say for sure.

Ah, here: Thunderspire didn't have a good sense of its own momentum.

Everything significant was framed in terms of "triggered by the PCs."

Alex P

11:43 PM

@BESW I think Undermountain is kinda like that just because it doesn't really, like, make sense as a place.

Discussion with Andras over Dragon co…

Transcript for