> Record of Lodoss War was created in 1986 [...] as a Dungeons & Dragons "replay" [...] Replays are not novels, but transcripts of RPG sessions, meant to both hold the interest of readers and convey the events that took place. (from wikipedia)
they found a medium to actually show more or less what happened in a D&D game to an audience that, at least hopefully, didn't completely change the details
@nitsua60 I don't think it was. My impression of the first trilogy is that Salvatore was living out some kind of personal fantasy through Driz'zt. It got pretty money-grabby as the series(es?) went on.
Word up on the Hat - All the Fate of Cthulhu playtest applicants have been selected! If you applied and haven't rec… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/837454173687824384
@Karelzarath First chronological or first published series? My impression of the (first published) Icewind Dale trilogy is that Drizzt is oddly flat and not the centre of attention.
@Adeptus Yeah, as noted by others RoLW was a D&D campaign… and IIRC, it was the first real entry of D&D-style fantasy into Japan, and the genesis (or at least one major source) of what became Japanese-style fantasy fiction/games. I haven't seen it, but my understanding(?) is that it's more true to its D&D origins than the kinds of JRPG genre that developed from it and has been re-exported to the West.
@SevenSidedDie I read the books mumble years ago, so just going off (admitedly fuzzy) memory, he seemed to scene-steal with his "not evil like all my kin" snowflakeness.
I mean, it wouldn't stop referencing things that had already happened in parallel with what was currently happening. I don't know if I either would have liked it better if I had read earlier books, or if that just wouldn't have helped
@SevenSidedDie Record of Lodoss War is another D&D-ish anime. I haven't finished watching it - the DVDs are not well organised. They have several episodes as one "title" (in DVD technical terms), and don't even have a "chapter" at the start of the individual episodes
We have two tags that appear to me to be synonyms, and both have been around for a while:
status-effects × 37 questions†
(created Apr 23, 2014)
Status effects are game keywords which affect a creature's status, e.g. unconscious, weakened, on fire, poisoned.
conditions × 61 questions†
(crea...
@SevenSidedDie my first (confusing) reading only came into play because I've been helping some international students study/review English grammar today. The way the infinitive and its behavior bleeds across language-boundaries is remarkably persistent. (In my limited experience.)
@Adeptus I thought of mentioning Record of Lodoss War, but I haven't actually seen it, so I didn't have much to say about it. I'd say it's one of the major fantasy anime, though, alongside Slayers. Come to think of it, I've seen very few of these shows...
Magic Knight Rayearth might be of interest too -- it's fantasy-magical girl-mech fusion, and I can at least vouch that it's very good. :P
wait, why would I not want to be looking at the screen while playing Skullgirls? am I magic now? I can win without seeing where I am, where I am facing, or where the opponent is, or when or how they are attacking me?
I mean, it depends between games of course, and personal preferance, but you don't have to pay too much attention to what you do until you get to some puzzle element or a boss
or story
but anyway, my exact point was that I spend a bit of time on Skullgirls, and to be fair, I left out the other things I do all day, like work, and eat, and sleep, and watch things other than anime XD
@Miniman I forget, are you in Australia? If that's the case, I think GL was on Madman's free streaming service at some point, though it looks like it might not be anymore. Maybe it'll be back someday though. They have the license.
I mean, I don't of course know if it fits your taste, it could be that it doesn't. but if you like mech fights in anime, and the spirits of the combatants counting for more than the actual mechs (as I mentioned before) you will probably like it
and I personally thought many of the characters were compelling, but that in itself might also differ depending on taste
I still have a man-crush on Viral XD
his whole character arch made the show twice as good
@Miniman Glad I could help! A lot of people aren't aware of how much legally streaming anime there is out there. I came across Madman's streaming initially because for a while they had Cardcaptor Sakura up, which I was jealous of because Crunchyroll only has 6 episodes of a subpar dub for free. :P
For US folks, Crunchyroll and Yahoo View (Hulu's free streaming service rebranded) are the way to go, plus a couple other little ones. Other companies may have similar. Actually, you might be able to access some of Crunchyroll's catalog in Australia too. I think their selection is just not as good outside the US.
In my experience, it's useful to remember that RPGs are basically a game with friends like any other. So long as everyone's safe and having fun, there's no wrong way to play.
@Yuuki best way to start GMing is to start GMing, and tell your players that you're starting and are happy for all the feedback and advice they want to offer. GMing is like teaching: no amount of theory, reading, preparation, can beat the experience of your first day actually doing it.
And of course the Three Laws of Gaming: 1 - A gamer must not harm others, or through inaction allow others to come to harm. 2 - A gamer must ensure the enjoyment of others, unless doing so would violate the First Law. 3 - A gamer must work within the group's accepted rules and practices, except when doing so would violate either the First or Second Laws.
" ... no amount of theory, reading, preparation, can beat the experience of your first day actually doing it ..."
This is what I got from all the reading I have been doing until now. Hence threw caution to the wind and asked my wifey and her sis, if they wanted to run a RPG.
I'm a big fan of one-shots. Even my long-form campaigns tend to be episodic, and I like using systems which are simple enough people can pick them up and play without reading hundreds of pages and spending hours making a character.
I started with D&D, though, back in 3.5, and the shortest campaigns I ran were about four months each.
Taking on the burden of system mastery is a traditional GM role, but one I found over time separates the GM from the players in ways I didn't like. Other groups enjoy that separation, or don't experience it.
Tonight I marinated fresh tuna steaks in soy sauce and lemon juice with ginger, garlic and honey, chopped them up and sautéed them. Served with onions and bell peppers sautéed in chili and cayenne pepper, on a bed of whole wheat rigatoni.
Yes.
Mike Mearls and others on the WOTC RPG team, have said on several occasions that Realms is the default setting for 5e.
When I was working on third and fourth there was this dialogue of "Should we just embrace The Realms as the core setting?" And we were always very wary of a big backla...
Oh - so no maps of FR are out yet for 5e from whatever small part has been given in Starter Set - the Sword Coast around Neverwinter from Crags to Sword Mountains.
Ah too bad, I sorta miss the exchange. Well nvm, I am getting the DM seat of our 4th edition campaign for a few levels and was hoping to find some stories of amazing sessions on here and accounts on what made them memorable :)
This isn't a science, it's an art. You'll get better with practice, and nobody's process will work for you except your own. That said, here's some of my precepts and guidelines.
Please keep in mind the order I'm presenting them has no bearing on importance or chronology: it's all a big jumble of...
For 4e specifically, my campaign in 4e was about setpieces. Awesome places to have combat, with reasons more complex than "the other guys want us dead." Features of the landscape which started out good for the enemies, but could be turned to PC advantage. Landscapes that changed partway through the conflict.
4e's strength is tactical combat, and so I played to that as much as I could.
A good simple example is from the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure: A shallow stream running through a light forest, with a magic circle on one side of the stream which lets someone standing on it use a move action to teleport ten squares in any direction.
It opens with the enemies using the teleport circle to bypass the difficult terrain of the stream and use the cover of the trees to do skirmish attacks. By the end of the conflict, it's likely the PCs are using the teleport circle to run down stragglers.
I also liked using minions whose death changed the nature of the square they died in, like making it slippery.
2
Or, once, a boss was healed by minions that died near him. That changed the strategy significantly.
Throw in a ritual that needs to be completed, or stopped, and if it's completed the nature of the fight changes somehow.
@dot_Sp0T I used Stalker0's simplified skill challenges.
Not his completely revised version, just the hack.
The original 4e skill challenge mechanics are both boring and totally broken. The math just doesn't do what they say it does.
I used skill challenges for rituals and similar things mid-combat, so you'd have to make tactical choices about what to use your actions on.
Focus your action-denial abilities on the guy trying to open a portal to bring reinforcements, or keep your rogue safe to unlock the door while an unbeatable monster who will eventually wear you all down is trying to chew his face off.
You can also have Fun With Monster Actions.
Like, I had a pre-made combat scene with a mind flayer boss, but I could tell the mind flayer was going to be underwhelming: he stayed in the back and sniped at you while his underlings did all kinds of cool in-your-face stuff that really controlled the room.
One of his underlings had a ten-square aura (enough to fill almost the entire battlefield no matter where he was) that dealt psychic damage to any enemy who started their turn in the aura.
So I gave the mind flayer a reactionary ability: whenever someone within line of sight was dealt psychic damage, he could use his opportunity attack (an action which refreshes every turn rather than every round) to teleport to a square adjacent to that creature.
This meant that the mind flayer was up in the face of every PC, every time their turn started.
He wasn't very effective mechanically, but he was durn tootin' the star of that fight.
They used their defensive abilities to prevent psychic damage to stop the teleporting, and focused fire on the underling with the aura, to get the mind flayer to stop going "BOO!" every turn.
Actually making encounters interesting and about other things than "smash them!" is still really hard for me... I love the ideas you posted, though. Thanks for that.
Yea, I once did something similar. Was my favourite setting I did and I would still be doing it if two of my 4 players had not mentioned that they absolutely hate Savage Worlds (which we used for rules)
I did not find a suitable replacement as of yet :(
I've played in and run evil campaigns of various sorts in both 3.5 and 4e (though not 5e, I think my learning will transfer), and run into a lot of problems: My Guy Syndrome comes up a lot, as does a tendency to default to a regular D&D storyline only with more stealing of spoons and kicking of p...
But it works great for Atomic Robo, Monster of the Week, all kinds of stuff.
The key to making encounters more than just "smash 'em up" is tying the PCs to the world somehow.
Like, my 4e campaign was set in the middle of a world-spanning war between two massively powerful nations.
When we designed our PCs, I asked the players to create characters who'd have a stake in the war and a reason to fight on one side.
That's really the successful trick, for me: ask the players to collaborate with me in making situations that matter and characters who care about them.
And I still need to learn how to combine that effectively with an open world campaign (we are playing one atm in Splittermond, complete with our own unique world, based on the original setting, and everything)
But well, I don't really know why I'm even complaining :D It works, we are having fun (which was a problem in the beginning) and I am beginning to grasp the concept of the open world campaign more. So, I'm basically just complaining that it could be even better :D
Definitely. I would love to find something like Stars Without Numbers Faction system that is more suited for a smaller fantasy world/continent. Atm all I do is "after every bigger quest the players complete, look over all my notes and advance them a bit"
13th Age has an interesting plot-pushing mechanic, where there are a number of super-important world-shaping NPCs and every PC has a positive/negative/complicated relationship with at least one or two. And whenever the GM wants a prompt for what happens next, he can ask players to roll for things related to their NPC relationships.
Fate, of course, has solid guidelines for a collaborative "who are the major NPCs/factions and what is our major story arc about?" kind of worldbuilding before the game starts.
Bubblegumshoe is amazing at creating a complex, well-populated local environment for PCs to live in.
Yea, the worldbuilding went great, and the system with just "looking through my notes" works. But I will need something more once we reach the "empires start to shift, wars start to break out" stage
Which will happen, with 3 out of 4 PCs beeing interested in bringing down the biggest empire :D
One thing I like about BGS is that it's got a mechanic for relationships to get strained when you lean on them too hard, and recover when you spend time with them.
Push relationships too hard and they can turn sour, work on them enough and they can change positively.
Fate's great for supporting games that groups are determined to play; not so good for pushing games that groups are struggling to play.
If you're determined to have relationships in a game, the Fate toolkit can support it nicely.
But if you're having trouble keeping relationships front and center (as we have been) then something like Bubblegumshoe is gonna be more useful because it forces that element.
I've had similar challenges, both with getting group buy-in to try new systems and with getting people to feel comfortable GMing anything at all.
My solution was a long-game process of changing the "landscape" of how people at the table viewed their role in the game. I didn't set out to delibera...
It wasn't quick or easy for me to get to this point.
Yea, I have, but it has been some time since I read it :D
The thing is that they are generally not really interested in anything that is not a campaign, they are the kind of player's that really enjoy exploring every bit they can about their character and such... I saw that in vairous oneshots I did with them in the past. combine that with some of them really really really enjoying leveling up their character and gaining xp, which means that multiple sessions in a game like Fate or similar would not offer them enough character advancement...
I had one player looking like he might throw up when I told him how advancement in Dogs in the Vineyard works...
:D
"What do you mean, I don't just get 'better'?"
Which is not exactly true, I know, you can simply increase the dice, but still....
I guess they just have problems grasping the concept of "my stats are not what my character can do, but what he actually IS"
but anyway, enough rambling, I should return to work :D
actually there was three of us, one who knew the game very well and just commented (He sometimes gave us clues for very hard to find stuff such as Robo's sidequest), another one who liked the weird combat system, and me. We took turns on the game and took the important decisions together.
Of course! And when it does happen it means we get more users to come here, and maybe they'll check it out and start contributing their own questions and answers.
Then they'll share more links with others, and the circle is complete.
As of a few minutes ago, if you have a gold tag-badge for a tag associated with a question that's been closed as a duplicate, you can edit the duplicate links to replace, add, remove or re-arrange them:
These changes are tracked in PostHistory to allow anyone to detect abuse, while the res...
We have two tags that appear to me to be synonyms, and both have been around for a while:
status-effects × 37 questions†
(created Apr 23, 2014)
Status effects are game keywords which affect a creature's status, e.g. unconscious, weakened, on fire, poisoned.
conditions × 61 questions†
(crea...
Yes.
Mike Mearls and others on the WOTC RPG team, have said on several occasions that Realms is the default setting for 5e.
When I was working on third and fourth there was this dialogue of "Should we just embrace The Realms as the core setting?" And we were always very wary of a big backla...
As of a few minutes ago, if you have a gold tag-badge for a tag associated with a question that's been closed as a duplicate, you can edit the duplicate links to replace, add, remove or re-arrange them:
These changes are tracked in PostHistory to allow anyone to detect abuse, while the res...
