@BESW in doctor who they would be robots

@doppelgreener or plastic monsters

or ghosts

or just aliens that look like that

Truly horrible debauchery

Wait; @Kviiri I was not aware that Finland was "in" on the US thanksgiving thing. colore me confused? 8^D

hey there @KorvinStarmast

Hi Shal! Happy Turkey Leftovers Day!

thx. how was your thanksgiving?

Rich with Triptofan somnolence, last night.

We made turkey tetrazini tonight with leftovers. Mmmm, yummy, we are now having espresso for afters.

The Cowboys really irked me, as I am a lifelong fan. (Since the mid 60's).

On the other hand, I have been a Philip Rivers fan for some years, so I am glad he did well.

mine went alright, seeing some relatives. wound up having to leave food behind on my plate as I overfilled it :P

@doppelgreener I gave it an up vote for the pun. The spirit, not the letter of the law applies here. 8^D

@Shalvenay I'll reply to that

Oh, dear, it's gonna take a few more votes ...

I'm waiting to see if OP responds to any of the many comments, personally.

@nitsua60 Yeah. We'll see. Hope they do, I'd like to be of help as they are in a similar situation to me ....

... three years ago.

Ditto. Though I had played 2e, also.

I played a little, but nowhere near as much as the previous editions.

(For on thing, I detested the bowdlerization of demons, devils, thieves, etc, that was a response to the anti D&D hysteria of the late 70's early 80's. :p

But I did like that Bard was finally a more coherent PC class ...

Leftover day for me features debauchery the likes of which would apparently make kviiri blush. I make about twice as much stuffing as can stuff; the remainder gets cooked in loaf pans liberally greased with the freshly rendered drippings. Today those loaves get sliced like bread and I make a turkey+cranberry sandwich on that "bread" and grill it on the panini press. Drizzle with a little giblet gravy....

@KorvinStarmast I personally like the Thief->Rogue transition. "Thief" pidgeonholes the class too much for my tastes

@nitsua60 Yer makin me drool!

@Shalvenay The Grey Mouser might take umbrage at that. :)

So might Bilbo.

@Shalvenay I read almost all of the Fafhrd and th Grey Mouser books before I ever played D&D. Likewise Elric of Melnibone. .

@KorvinStarmast ah.

one funny thing that went away in newer editions, though, apparently, was Monks getting the ability to do things like pick locks

So maybe I have a Gygaxian bias: that's who he built the class around, more or less, as did Arneson as far as I can tell. They both knew Fritz Lieber personally ....

Yeah, it sucked that they lost that.

Monks were a weird class in early D&D but a blast to play.

Always on the edge of that one die roll you failed when you were using a monk skill ...

Great fun

my Gnoll Monk/Priestess actually got to use that a bit :)

Sweet. Fun is fun, that's what the games all about. trying to come up with new and interesting ways to get the treasure ....

As much fun to steal only a part of the dragon's horde, and get away, than being greedy and trying to take the whole thing. ;)

Why try to kill a dragon when you can just annoy one?

I should find a way to slip a Lawful Good Rogue into a game in the near future

Heck yeah. IMO, the Assassin archetype is perfect for that, as is Mastermind.

Agent 007: thief Assassin lawful good, license to kill .

hahahaha

And chicks dig him. :) (And guys swoon for her ....)

@KorvinStarmast Mostly it isn't, and by my experience any Black Friday sales here aren't really that special... but I guess stores still consider it a sort of marketable opportunity :P

I guess the video shows how big deal it really is...n't

@kviiri Whatever makes a buck. That's retail, which is where I had one of my first jobs ever over 40 years ago. Lots of overtime on Thanksgiving and christmas holidays.

At minimum wage ;P

The video made me laugh, what with the silliness we have to deal with here.

The Missus and I stayed home today. Not interested in the madness.

I should be asleep by now, it's almost 4AM

(The traffic is what bothers me most)

@KorvinStarmast or, you could have the party getting sent to fetch the dragon instead haha

Good night, sweet dreams.

or maybe the dragon's sent to fetch the party? :D

Waiting from my dearest to return from her deparment party ^^

Ah, subduing a dragon. A quest that got two parties I was in TPK's.

G'nite

It's great when it works, but when it doesn't, the subdue a dragon thing means "you are a midnight snack." :)

Ok, momma calls, you all be good! :)

@KorvinStarmast if @NautArch had signed up for tomorrow's game they might have gotten a taste =) </teasing>

@nitsua60 oh? what's tommorrow's game?

A bunch of us who can rarely find the time to play as a group are getting together to do a "full day" of gaming, pretending like we're teenagers again. Starting early afternoon, order pizzas, play into the night... then we're all back to ~real life~.

@nitsua60 nice :)

@nitsua60 Envious, that sounds like a blast. I'll be painting the kitchen tomorrow. (which is good in its own way, I suppose).

hey again @KorvinStarmast, how're things going?

@doppelgreener fair enough :P

@Magician Thanks for asking an Apocalypse World question :)

Always fun to see a bit of a change on the site

@kviiri The question came up in play this week :)

@Magician It's a good question.

AW harm isn't exactly the most intuitive model, esp. for those used to relative simulationism (eg. Savage Worlds).

Aye. Your answer matches my intuition, but doesn't make it any more intuitive. Ah well.

Man, did it take me long to parse SW's autofire rules... especially with the weird "fanning the hammer" additions in Deadlands: Reloaded.

In other news, to actually threaten our Gunlugguer I'd need a gang armed with bazookas...

I know the feeling :D

Try to get them with their pants down. Something out-of-combat. Poisons, bombs, anything.

Yup. Anything that's not a straight-up fight would be much more of a challenge

In the first session, I threw a pack of wolves at him, just to see how it plays out. They died in one volley of machine gun fire. So in the secon session I threw a welded-together Frankenstein Cerberus made out of those wolves at him. It died in one volley of machine gun fire. Armor piercing bullets, man.

AP does that, yep :)

@kviiri That's very modern of you =)

I'm a man of modern sensibilities

Q: what rulesets work well for doing exploration adventures? The set up in mind is a central base, recently captured, surrounded by unknown wilderness, mostly forest.

So the bulk of the game should be navigating the wilderness?

Navigating, and mapping

Along the way overcoming obstacles, discovering paths, etc

Some encounters, friendly and not. Some diplomacy, or hasher methods.

I'm tempted to suggest Fate

But he main goal is to have at the end of multiple sessions a large region mapped out, a sense of accomplishment, and a few stories for the campfire

Or maybe heavily houseruled DnD 5e

Fun comes from challenges, challenges come from interesting choices with consequences. So, simply rolling on random tables for encounters and terrain would seem insufficient.

Well, yep

That's true

But I'm not quite picturing what sort of gameplay you actually expect, because well... mapping a wilderness is pretty boring.

Will probably be in some version of DnD.

You can throw in encounters with beasts, wanderers etc but I'm not sure what'd be the best way to highlight the untamed aspects of the wilds

Mapping most anything is pretty boring. Mapping a dungeon is boring .. apart from the interruptions.

Having done orienteering etc in younger days, the idea that outdoor areas are featureless and flat and open to free movement in every direction .. is false.

So part of the design puzzle would be to make the wilderness a maze. Some ways would be blocked by impenetrable foliage or impassable terrain. The discovery of a path would be a boon, if only they knew which way it wound.

Do they follow it, or continue the original way?

@Erics I agree, being an outdoorsperson myself (probably not as good at that as you)

However, that's an idea that might be harder to convey in an RPG.

Fog of war might help, and looking up the rules about getting lost too

@Erics What should they base this decision on?

(sorry, I don't want to sound like someone who tries to debase your idea, I'm just trying to get an idea on how to work with it)

One way is slow but certain to get them where they are heading, the other way might be faster or might be a total loss of time. Risk vs reward.

(all good, insightful crit is better than empty praise)

Maybe the path is faster, maybe the path leads into an area they know has other latent hazards (e.g. wolves)

So .. some hazards need to be detected/discovered/known before the moment. Warnings, signs, etc

Do you want to make it a challenge for the players or their characters?

Good question

The mechanics of encounters would be for PCs, but the puzzles aspect would be on the players.

Could also say it's relatively safe during the day, but the night is dark and full of terrors .. and so getting lost would be dangerous. Even getting temporarily lost could pose a risk, as they might end up further away from home base than they have time available to return in.

@Erics At the risk of self-promotion I'll suggest you take a look at my best worst worst-written answer ever.

I've used that approach for through-city travel before and I feel like it might hit some of the notes you're looking for, and which are hard to get elsewise.

("elsewise?" Otherwise? Sorry, it's early where I am.)

@Erics Hmm, I guess my first step would be to formalize the exploration thing somehow in a way that makes it clear to the players how their choices (eg. short rest now or only back at the camp) affect their chances of survival

There's plenty of fun to be had with a party that's convinced they'll be eaten by night thingies if they aren't back at camp by eight in the evening.

yup

@nitsua60 Oh boy, that fractal maze...

@kviiri It... deserves a better explanation than I give it there. But I'm neither clever nor smart enough to get it across better.

Frankly, I think I may have to write a module that uses/teaches it. (It's on my list of "things to write when I'm procrastinating work.")

As a computer scientist I think I get recursion really well but still... ow :D

@Erics I haven't got any experience with Fate personally, but by my understanding of the rules, it should handle some aspects of lacking the basic amenities of civilization quite well compared to DnD

For example, sliding off a twenty-foot cliff can mean something like 3d6 hp damage (I can't remember the exact specifics) but it might be more interesting if it was represented by something like Painfully twisted ankle consequence that keeps reminding of itself in future scenes.

Of course, nothing stops you from homebrewing an injury system in DnD.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer: What are good options for a frontline melee with very limited source material? by wilsonmeoor on rpg.SE

@PaŭloEbermann Hey, fyi -- that post with the weird link you edited out a few hours ago was spam. If you ever see what looks like a well-written post but with a spam link in it, try googling a sentence or two from the post, and you'll probably find they copied and pasted a whole post from a forum somewhere. In this case it was this post.

@Zachiel hey there :) let me check what the schedule for today will be and get back to you re: our dungeon run

@Shalvenay heh, I didn't say today

@Zachiel haha -- figured I'd do what I can to take things off the list :)

and yeah, I should have time today to make more progress on that

@Zachiel You have a neat backlog

@Zachiel would today be a good time to continue, btw?

hey there @kviiri

@Shalvenay Hiya

@kviiri how're things going?

@Shalvenay Trying to write my thesis and not panic :)

I'd want to play RPGs though...

@kviiri heheheh

@Zachiel not full, not even into planning stages. If you like I'll put you on my scratch-pad for "ping them when you finally get around to pulling together an 'okay, we're probably going to start in few weeks, let's pre-hash some logistics...' message."

Wouldn't the games be, like, 2am-5am Saturday mornings for you?

@nitsua60 Maybe I did my math wrong, I currently believe it falls on 2pm-5pm Saturday afternoons. What's your time slot your local time, and which local time is it?

(It's not whitestarred anymore)

@Shalvenay Today is not, I'm currently distracted and I will be heading out after dinner

@Zachiel ah. we'll see what comes up in the near future then

@Shalvenay Just as yesterday, I'll call if I happen to have some free time. Unfortunately I never know until the same day.

Has anyone here played 7th Sea, btw? Good experiences?

hey there @CliffordDurousseau

@Zachiel 9pm-midnight on Saturday evenings, Eastern US. (Which puts me off a day, I believe--super-early Sunday morning for you?)

Time zones are hard. On Sundays doubly so.

@nitsua60 Sunday morning, yes. Well, one less thing to do.

@Zachiel So I shouldn't put you on the list? (Just double-checking.)

@shalvenay - Hi

@CliffordDurousseau what brings you to our lair today? :)

I am an American in Yalıkavak, Turkey. I am just browsing the sites.

What do you people discuss here?

Role-playing games, mostly

I'm just here for the spider pictures

And Jeff. Of course for Jeff.

Are there any females?

:)

Do you mean women? "Females" is an oddly impersonal choice of words.

Yes, women. Where are the Lois Lanes?

Odd pause.

I think it would be more odd if anyone decided to speak up, given the rather unusual nature of the inquiry

So then this is an all men site?

@nitsua60 Don't put me on the list. I won't be awake past 3am on Sundays.

@CliffordDurousseau I wouldn't make that assumption either.

@CliffordDurousseau You're missing the point. It's a chat about RPGs on the internet. Why is your first question "Where are the females?" and not, I dunno, "so what games do you play?"

@CliffordDurousseau Not as far as I know, and seems statistically unlikely too. But we don't usually pry each other's genders because that's largely irrelevant here...

Point taken. -- Have fun. I think I will move on.

I should have asked what RPG stands for.

My oversight.

Pop back in if you're curious about RPGs :)

Thank you kindly.

O, I get it. RPG=role-playing games.

Specifically of the tabletop manner, in this case.

Got you. -- Have fun.

@Zachiel no worries. It's a sensible thing to be, asleep, at 3am =)

@BESW @trogdor @doppelgreener If there's anything on this list you think we should acquire, let me know!

@BESW oh good, i was hoping you were not referring to the rituals tweet, and then i saw the bendy arrow

@doppelgreener I dunno, "Enlil-Bani, the gardener King" sounds promising.

Also OMG what if the Egyptian politics campaign has an envoy representing a substitute king, and all the other nations aren't sure how to deal with it because they don't know if the king-in-hiding will honor agreements made in the name of the substitute king?

@BESW i checked and i think we're ok -- the only one that i might be interested in is the swashbucklers of the 7 skies, but that has 323 (three hundred+) pages to it...... that's the size of atomic robo rpg, and i am not sure i am that invested in Random Skyship Pirate Game

And there's always The Three Rocketeers.

@BESW fantastic. :D

what if one of them decides to try to kill the real king to make sure they get to keep the bargain they made?

[snerk]