@Lord_Gareth I'm not convinced that RHW is worse than FATAL. both are atrocious and awful, but something about the way FATAL's authors insisted it wasn't misogynist and racist just made it worse

... That's like saying taffy is sugar-free.

@MadMAxJr they insisted it was an accurate model of medieval Europe and therefore could not be considered misogynist or racist

Trying to recall if this is the game system that has a certain table for indicating circumference of something that really has no basis being in a rule system.

(even if that were true, which it massively was not, I'd argue it's still very much fair to label it misogynist and racist: medieval Europe, after all, was – but not as much as FATAL's authors)

@MadMAxJr yup, that's the one. Honestly fairly low on the list of FATAL's crimes against humanity

Well hey at least we don't have d20 FATAL.

@MadMAxJr you're making it really hard not to take a shot at Paizo

@KRyan I get it. You don't like them.

@MadMAxJr no, I'm actually referencing a very particular item they published that I previously would have thought would never appear in any non-FATAL RPG

@KRyan Oh, that specific reference. Meant to ask, what product was that published in?

@MadMAxJr Gods and Magic

Under the old Chronicles branding?

@MadMAxJr Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods and Magic appears to be the full title

Yeah, that's the pre PF release stuff, which is spotty to begin with from my view. Most of that should be superseded by Inner Sea Gods, so luckily I shouldn't have to see that at my table.

Wonder which writer is to blame for that entry..

@MadMAxJr SKR's credited as the primary author, with "Paizo Staff" as secondary

Yeah, he's got the designer credit, others are editors.

I could have sworn SKR only joined Paizo after PF was a thing

I believe the formal launch of PF was Gencon '09.

And Gods and Magic is stamped '08.

suppose I was wrong then

He appears to have also written the newer Gods of the Inner Sea, but I haven't found anything particularly offensive in there, aside from some creepy implications under Lamashtu, mother of demons.

ooh, there's also that pregnancy-horror thing

that thing is also pretty offensive

Mmhmm, it's a pretty big theme in Rise of The Runelords.

Lamashtu, at least.

I don't honestly remember, I just remember being linked to a discussion of it

lot of people very offended

A couple of my players started reading up on just what kind of diety and her servants they're chasing after. They're a little disturbed, but so far it's driving them to the end goal that they need to put an end to it.

@MadMAxJr the offense largely came from painting pregnancy as something abhorrent, disgusting, and disturbing

Thinking about blowing some $ on several fantasy rpg rulesets: D&D 5e Players Handbook, Savage Worlds + Fantasy Companion, Advanced Fighting Fantasy, and the new Lone Wolf rpg on Kickstarter. The last two are for nostalgia's sake since in the 1980s I used to read the game books on which the rpgs are based. Has anyone played Savage Worlds? Looks like a great system - fast and simple rules.

@RobertF haven't played, heard both decent and terrible reviews

5e has utterly unimpressed me so far and I'm not familiar with the rest you have there

Savage Worlds, I hear varying things depending on what it's used to play.

5e seems pretty popular with people in this chat, though, so I'm sure someone will counter my opinion with a positive one

all 5e discussion should go in the 5e chat room

it is verbotten to discuss it in detail here

It is? Oookay.

I was pretty much done with my input on it anyway

there was a confluence of events that occurred in the lead up to 5es release which overran the main chat with arguments over it to the lessening of main chats functionality

@KRyan - I think AFF and Lone Wolf are more popular in the UK. They're "old school" systems with their own richly detailed fantasy worlds. Very simple rules (characters only have 2-3 attributes) so easy to get a game up & running, something my daughter might be up for.

Brain Ballsun banned any lenghty 5e discussion from main rpg.se chat and the 5e room was created to house it

So 4E all over again, got it.

sorta maybe

anyeway just tossing that out there

@robertf if you havent played it or bought it yet Id highly recommend Dungeon World

@JoshuaAslanSmith - Is that a d&D retro-clone?

not a clone

Dungeon World captures narrative feel of the idea of D&D, but plays completely differently

All checks are made with 2d6s

the only time you roll another kind of die is when you deal damage and this is based on your class

the check formula is 2d6 + mod = result

on a 10+ its a complete success, on a 9-7 its a partial success, the gm offers you a hard choice about how you go about completeing it, on a 6 or less it fails, you mark 1 xp and continue on.

@JoshuaAslanSmith where do I find the latest version of the dwarf, do I have to combine the PHB and the errata or is there a complete write up somewhere?

all a player need to play the game are 2 back-to-back sheets of moves. 1 are general moves anyone can make, basic and advanced, on 1 two-sided sheet. The other is their character class (if they use spells there is one extra sheet to keep track of them).

@kryan PHB errata should contain any and all changes

@kryan a complete writeup would be on the compendium

honestly if you guys are going to be playing 4e for awhile you should buy 1 sub and split the cost

@JoshuaAslanSmith - This looks interesting - bet I could get my wife in on a game. You gain 1 xp when failing the roll?

most of your xp is gained through rolling fails

So your life is shaped by your failures? That hits a little close to home.

you also get xp for at the end of each session (once for each of these) if you learned something important about the world, found notable treasure, fought a notable aversary

you also get xp for resolving bonds between PCs

you level up when your XP total is equal or greater than 7 + current level

So it's bare bones rules for a quick dungeon crawl pick-up game

any extra XP rolls over

Dungeon world lets you dive right in

especially as a player

but most of the rules and mechanics occur on the GM side

and most of that happens in prep, not during the session

Dungeon world is a narrative driven game

@KRyan if you don't have compendium access, but do have access to HOTFL/HOTFK it should be in there as well

so the moves players roll are rolled because it is the closest matching move to the action the player is describing and assigned by the GM

@waxeagle ah, OK

@JoshuaAslanSmith if this campaign seems successful, we probably will

right now, very experimental

@kryan gotcha, all the tools, for both making characters, and making encounters are super useful

the compendium has pretty much every bit of rules or content ever published with errata already made

nice

the only things not in the compendium are some DM guidelines and tables from teh DMG

@JoshuaAslanSmith - No initiative rolls or grids in Dungeon World combat?

how much is a sub, anyway?

@KRyan 75/yr I think?

@robertf yeah no init rolls, its not turn based officially, but a player does things until it seems right (GMs decision) to move to anothe rplayer

@kryan different sub levels based on how much you buy at once

they also offer monthly/quarterly subs

15 a month

29ish for 3 months

or the 75 a year as waxeagle has noted

Ive been on a 3 month sub for 3 years

Comparable to MMO subscriptions, heh.

eminently reasonable then

archive.wizards.com/DnD/Subscription.aspx (actual prices here)

since none of the 3 prices we mentioned were accurate :) (though all in ballpark)

heh

yeah I think all the prices dropped a bit

Yeah

wish they'd lower them some more...

but not going to complain too much since they still exist at all

Wouldn't surprise me if it price dropped or became a freemium service with the newer product out.

I thought Josh meant "Buy 1 sub and split the cost" when playing 4e because of the time it takes to work thru combat sessions - you need to plan your meals ahead of time. :)

@RobertF that too though :)

(though I recommend 2-6 subs depending on your group size and appetite

So long as your sub shop isn't located in a metropolitan nightmare of alarmingly fast moving steel constructs.

@RobertF haha

Right the only reason to have more than 1 sub is only 1 person can access non-compendium resources at a time

and because you can only have 20 characters saved online to the account (but you can always export/import character files so you could keep an archive off of WOTC's servers that is unlimited)

the files are basic XML text

you can even run the virtual table top (that never left beta) through 1 paying account because you can give free access to players who have forum accounts via the paying account to the tabletop application

its not as powerful as roll20 but it lets you import PCs and Monster statblocks directly and understands a lot of the mechanics

Did they ever implement dynamic lighting?

@MadMAxJr roll20?

The 4E virtual tabletop.

if so yes, but its a backer/subscriber feature

ah not sure about the 4e table top

probably not

They teased a bunch of things at launch. Shame it never got to completion.

WOTC outsourced a lot of that stuff and it got pretty half baked not that they could do it in house

And then I remember the 3.0 character generator demo packaged in the back of the book. Sigh.

Why didn't WotC complete the 4e virtual tabletop? Did they run out of $?

@RobertF by the time it finally hit beta, they were about a yearish from shifting focus to a new edition.

Wow, what a waste of time & money when a co. invests in a product then pulls the plug. There's a small company working on a 5e virtual tabletop, think they were at GenCon this year.

@RobertF something other than dungeonscape?

(IIRC dungeonscape isnt planning a vtt at this time)

Yep that's it.

looks like its going to be a cool app, though waiting (impatiently) for them to release their pricing model

yep

their latest reveal hinted at in-app content pack purchases

so the basic app with basic rules content is probably fre

and then youd buy an adventure

or buy a class

I'll probably buy most/all of the content depending on the prices...I don't want to feel like I'm rebuying a book I already bought

exactly

that just made me think of those galeforce9 spell power cards that were teased

I have converted my RPG friends to the understanding that 5es action economy is basically 4e

@JoshuaAslanSmith @waxeagle does Bludgeon Expertise apply the slide bonus to the secondary effects of attack powers, e.g. gale strike is a primal weapon encounter power that makes a Strength-based attack vs. AC and deals damage to a single target, but then also slides marked enemies

@KRyan yes, that's a rider on the hit, and as such it would be affected

if I miss, does that mean I don't get to zap/pull everyone?

@KRyan yep

@waxeagle 4e seems very binary on the hit/miss thing

(in general riders happen during the line on which they are immediately below)

missing with an encounter or daily power seems like it would suck

Usually that's the case.

@KRyan dailies almost always have something else even if you miss, half damage, an ongoing effect etc

@waxeagle yeah, I'd seen those Miss lines before, hadn't paid enough attention to see if it was on all dailies or whatever

my dailies are all self-buffs plus granting me an encounter power

encounters usually either do a ton of damage and give half, Or, normal damage plus give something really cool on a hit, OR have mediocre damage, do something cool and do something on a miss

@KRyan yeah, and the self buff is usually really awesome

@waxeagle how do you feel about multiclassing fighter?

on a storm warden looking to push people around

/make their lives miserable

@KRyan if you're going to MC fighter, drop hammers, go polearms and plan to pick up PM

So a dwarven mosh-pit veteran.

@waxeagle that's kind of what I had been considering

but I think hammers might be the better way forward

MC fighter is still not a bad plan eventually, lots of good PPs and tons of feat support

@kran so Miss lines are important as are Effect lines which occur regardless of a hit or miss

(my 4e PC I've played for years is Fighter MC warden)

so heavy shields seem to have a lot of drawbacks

is +1 AC really worth it?

also, does the check penalty of a heavy shield stack or overlap with that of armor?

@kryan heavy shields are totally worth it

@JoshuaAslanSmith does the check penalty stack with my armor's?

@PipperChip [wave]

@BESW [wave]

Hahaha

Yes, it would seem to be the case.

It's just one of my many pet peeves, I guess.

Mmm. At the end of the day, systems which provide unique mechanical solutions (rather than generic ones) have to choose a limited number of solutions to provide. D&D has reached the point where it's invoking and subverting its own tropes, and racial interbreeding is low on its priority list.

@BESW I actually played in a campaign as a half-elf/half-dwarf shaman character

(Which is perhaps a good thing, given that it's a short hop-skip-jump from interspecies stats to rolling on interspecies fertility tables and consulting interspecies gestational period charts.)

(I'm not wildly speculating about this, I personally know a guy whose 2e group felt it necessary to write such tables and charts themselves when a character had an unusual pregnancy in their game.)

@BESW pretty sure Book of Erotic Fantasy does similar; it's actually one of the closest-to-useful things in the book (since it also comes with a lot of discussion about family, marriage, sex, reproduction, and child-rearing among different races, and also talks about how bastards and half-breeds are treated)

@KRyan Let's be honest, though; that book, in many circles, would be considered "taking it too far." I'd just be happy with a little sidebar that clarifies this.

I think the BoEF is generally considered a tacky punchline more than a legit resource.

@BESW in addition to the above-mentioned items, which are actually kinda useful, there's also a hilarious sidebar entitled "Love Life of an Ooze:" "1. One ooze. 2. Idiot hits ooze with a sword. 3. Two oozes."

but yes, the rest is pretty much childish garbage that's often game-breaking

Heh.

I remember Ooze Stuck In A Pit vs Guy With A Scythe Standing Topside.

the conclusion of a Let's Read BoEF thread I read was "Mature, Appropriate, Balanced. Pick one."

though a lot of things are none of those, while a select few things (already mentioned) are more-or-less ok

It's up there with Book of Vile Darkness for things I glare at with unusable content.

If they just had a little more foresight, and used "species" instead of "race..."

@MadMAxJr yeah, BoVD is often as immature, if not more, than BoEF

The feat Lichloved was enough for me to put it down.

Or structured the races section as species and then subspecies or races

@PipperChip by 'species' you're implying inability to breed? because that definition of species doesn't really work out

@Emrakul be hard to play with no base classes

oh, supplements

yeah

figured that out a bit late

that would make for a pretty poor game, I suspect

@KRyan why not species? Ligers and mules exist, yet horses, cows, tigers, and lions are all separate species. It would imply half-elves and half-orcs are sterile, but it would work.

No Book of Exalted Deeds for some hilarious Vow of Poverty antics?

@Lord_Gareth Wait, the Elements of Harmony are a thing? [amused]

@PipperChip Kord's gonna be ticked.

@PipperChip no, I mean that there are separate species that can produce fertile offspring; the definition that separate species cannot produce fertile offspring is outdated and doesn't work

The outdated definition of species would certainly work better than races in most cases. Sure, using such a scientific term may not give the feel they want, but it would clear up a lot of other issues.

Half-Tarrasque.

@PipperChip except you'd have to define the scientific term if you want that implication to be wrought, since that's not the current standard definition (though, to be fair, there is no current standard definition since it's a contentious issue)

@MadMAxJr Doppelgreener has an Innsmouth-like plot along those lines in his campaign notes somewhere.

Princess Celestia Hates Tea is now also a comic!

I wonder if this is one of the reasons why they went to the "living rules" for 5e.

@PipperChip I still don't feel like I get that whole living rules thing.

Night of the living rules!

Zombies shambling and muttering "Attack of Opportunity.", "Wealth beyond first levelllll" and such.

If anyone can explain living rules to me, the 5e Discussion room would be delighted to see it.

There, hopefully that question will get proper attention now.

Which question?>

@PipperChip Presumably the one he just bountied.

Didn't see that. Thanks

So, I'm very tentatively thinking about running an online-only playtest for Dresden Files Accelerated. But coordinating over time zones is a pain even if I didn't have my own schedule challenges, and before I even start looking at how feasible running two games a week would be for me, I need to know if there's enough interest to make it worthwhile.

If you're genuinely interested in participating in an online DFA playtest game, please register your interest in the Fate chat, where I've asked @Emrakul to help collate the data.

interested but sadly not available, @BESW

The Fairy Nuff sadly acknowledges your utter failure to prioritise.

@MadMAxJr Ponyfinder is eh.

@MadMAxJr The notes BESW mentioned: docs.google.com/document/d/… Page 2, "The city built around the Tarrasque, and its consequences". Has a picture, can't miss it.

I can't be the only one amused by the juxtaposition of this and this.

@BESW Hehehehehe. Now you are definitely not.

Last night in Adventures In Explaining Fate To A Person With Exclusive D&D 3.5 Experience, she couldn't wrap her head around the notion that I could run a Doctor Who adventure without any franchise-specific material I hadn't made up.