So this particular game, the "Boss Monster" that the GM came up with was actually just a series of curses, and it ended up in a PvP situation. It was very tense, and very exciting :D
It was me vs 4 other players - the Barbarian vs a Wizard, another Barb, a Rogue/Warlock, and a Cleric
They nearly knocked me down, until someone managed to shake off the curses that were affecting me. Got me down to 11 health from 265
We have one politician, Bob Katter whom I am a strong believer is actually just a drone, and his hat is the one that is the "intelligence". You very rarely see him without his hat. Lol
Also speaking of PvP, I heard a story where a bunch of new players got together, and after a few sessions, the DM turned the Barbarian PC on the other 4 players. After incapacitating 2 of them, and nearly doing so to the other PCs, the DM reversed the situation - allowing everyone to get back up again.
The party was only level 2, but the moral of the story was that the rest of the players were complaining about the Barbarian always running into combat "We always need to save you, or heal you, or revive you - stop running into combat!"
The DM used this to show the rest of the party this is what the barbarian does - and he does a damn good job of it!
I’m curious to read any opinions on the Al-Qadim #dnd setting from people of Middle Eastern descent. If you know of any such accounts, could you point me to them? I’ve had limited success.
I'm not asking anyone to do homework, just if the thoughts are already out there. Thanks!
I have recently been awarded with a new weapon - a Greastword of the Gods. Asked the GM for the stats and he said it deals 4d6 damage, but can only be wielded by large creatures.
So I do need to use a Potion of Growth in order to actually use it, meaning that I don't deal an additional d4 damage with it.
However, I'm a Barb/Fighter (champion) meaning that if I hit on a 19 or 20, I'm dealing 9d6 damage.
@MikeQ Or on the other hand I could use a potion of growth (which I do regularly), so I can pull off stuff like "Angry Mooing" escalates to "ANGRY MOOING"
And more importantly, "Oh no... oh no!"
"ANGRY MOOING"
[14ft tall Minotaur burst through the brick wall]
Ok so I just clarified with the GM. Since my strength is currently at 25, and I am over 7ft tall, he's "Ok with calling the Minotaur 'Large', since it mainly refers to grappling and carry weight"
@ColinGross Thanks to your suggestion, I looked up the Ars Magica 4e book and read it over the weekend. I'm kinda impressed by a lot of things in there, but I don't think I'd enjoy playing it. The concept's quite wild though!
It made me want to write my own game about the life of a ridiculously power gothic wizard lörd.
Also @V2Blast I assume you likely picked up on it, but the weapon itself is too big to be wielded by a medium creature, so I would (normally) have to use a potion of growth to actually wield it properly. Hence no additional d4 damage :)
We once played this playtest-limbo'd system, Here be Dragons, where the players take the roles of different kinds of dragons who reign --- subtly or otherwise --- over a large swathe of land that evolves over time
So it has a Microscopey feeling to it, with the world evolving
The dragons themselves are nigh-omnipotent, even when doing things that aren't their particular strength. The game does quite strongly push the point that you don't roll to see if you can do something because you're a fricken dragon. Only gods have a chance against you and even they can't take it easy with you.
Instead, you roll to see if you get something done before losing your patience and deciding it's not worth the effort. Or throwing a hissy-fit that destroys a civilization or three or whatevs :)
Anyway, I feel like merging concepts from that game with Ars Magica to make a game about wizards conducting their research and exercising their nigh-unbounded power on constantly fluctuating world of muggles
@trogdor I recommend you to check it out :) It's not the most fine-tuned system in existence (eternal playtest limbo...) but I think you can use it for inspiration for other game concept planning
@kviiri we just played "Triasic Park" and it was great in concept, but when we played it we found it was weighted towards failure,... like really heavily
It attributes Honey Heist, but it's like somewhere between Honey Heist and Lasers and Feelings and Cthulhu Dark, but with the least interesting interpretation of each.
It's got the Lasers & Feelings skill set but without the Laser Feelings tie mechanic. It borrows Honey Heist's narrative-driven skill control but without a hook for player agency to use it. And it uses Cthulhu Dark's sanity escalation but removes the slow build and the endgame tension.
So, Escape from Triassic Park, building on that conversation BESW shared from our group:
The Panic mechanic just needs to go away. It does nothing for the game, and it's not even clear what should happen when it makes you freak out.
The system needs fail-forward mechanics built in OR, more preferably, a resolution mechanic that has you always succeed but only roll to see how well you did, like Cthulhu Dark.
we all three spoke to each other hitting I believe these same points
makes sense to share it here
so. Greener doesn't mention details it looks like
I only skimmed it, but Greener was playing a Galimimus, who has low dino and high escape, I ended up playing a T-Rex, who has the lowest possible escape and the highest possible dino
what ended up happening: Greener gets way more panic than me, then Greener can't get rid of it easily and ends up panicking a lot (it doesn't help that Galimimus has extra panic to begin with)
meanwhile my T-Rex is getting at least a little less panic to begin with, and about 5 out of every 6 rolls or so in which I am trying to reduce panic I manage it
so that' where Greener is coming from with the whole panic thing, keep in mind here, T-Rex is the best you can get, and I still was failing at least a few rolls
meanwhile everyone who doesn't get T-Rex is going to be stuck with a lot of useless panic that just robs agency
So yeah just to be clear I fully agree with everything @doppelgreener said about Triasic Park, I just wanted to provide a little context
As the T-REX in the game I still found some of the mechanics problematic, including every once in a while wanting to use escape for something and always failing those rolls
But it only gets worse from there for the other Dinosaurs
I suppose I should mention the situation I'm wanting to use is using escalation dice. So it would require rolling successive 6s,in order to roll the next dice
So, effectively 6 successive 6s, as opposed to 3 successive 10s followed by a 6
The obvious cases to adjust my intuition are (1) a really huge dice, which rolls higher than a low number nearly always, (2) a d35, which has a 1/35 chance to hit that mark, clearly much better than 1/2000, and (3) a d2, which has a high escalation chance, but does not add much, so still needs 18 escalations, and 2¹⁸ is a quarter of a million, so even worse than 46656.
@trogdor You also mentioned the dinosaurs like the Velociraptor (who have 3 escape and 3 dino) also seem like they'd be quite unfortunate to play: you absolutely always have to roll only 3 dice for everything. (If my math is right, that's a 5/6 * 5/6 * 5/6 = 57% chance of failure; you will fail more than half your attempts to do anything.)
The problems in Escape from Triassic Park are so great, I suspect it had minimal playtesting, and none that didn't involve the designers present in the group.
I think we're dissecting it not to trash a game that's obviously made as a silly bit of fun, but because it's a great lens into game design choices and we're all interested in getting better at understanding that.
(to be fair to Triassic, I've no idea how long it has been out. For all I know it could still be in the works and we see a revision within a few weeks or somesuch!)
@BESW And yeah I don't want to trash the game, but it is a heck of a learning opportunity to dismantle and analyse.
It's also an example of ludonarrative dissonance that is very clear to see and feel: both its presented story and the context of the films it's riffing off are not served by the mechanics, which instead explore an entirely different story.
Which makes it a good case study for learning about ludonarrative dissonance.
(hence why I go into how the game needs to be restructured with mechanisms like always succeeding to serve that narrative)
If I had to compare White Wolf and Chaosium, I'd say the "bigger" publisher would be the one that didn't shut down in all but name for half a decade. Twice.
So we're throwing around ideas for an Ars Magica of our own. I'd like to maintain some sense of wizards having a special knack for some sort of magic, but not massive skill blocks nor strict definitions. My first idea was color, since that's flexible, gives a good rough picture of the mage's nature and is already used in a variety of fiction
So each wizard'd have a specific color, and be stronger with spells that invoke their color somehow. A red mage could have an easier time conjuring fire or enchanting blood to clot, while a blue mage would be good with things of the sky or the sea. A black mage could harness darkness, death, fear or somesuch (the association can be conceptual)
I think that's quite close to the intended effect already, but I'm a bit uneasy having the main defining factor of the wizard's speciality be reliant on just a single sense. The abstractness pleases me, but it comes to bite me in the butt if I want it to be understandable to someone who can't see or perceive color.
Well, DFAE itself is actually kinda... complex and messy... for this, so I'll talk about an interesting thing the playtest did which they dropped for the final text.
@kviiri "Rats, it's a peaceful lagoon." "But you're a blue mage right? You should have no trouble with this." "Yeah, but this water's just really clear."
You take a stunt that says "I'm specializing in [magical theme, like fire or foresight or telekinesis] and I use it [approach, like Hastily or with Guile or with Flair]."
So you can use fire magic, but only Hastily. If you want to use it with Focus, you're out of luck.
@BESW yeah I mean, they weren't trying to make a game that they were making people pay for or thinking too hard about the mechanics, I don't want to just trash on the game for having flaws, but we've been pointing those flaws out so I wanted to put my two cents in
The last character of the story mode moves normally but suffers damage when missing a beat. And has only one hit point, and can't find weapons. They do get a free Potion (essentially a single-use extra life) as a small compensation for their other disabilities
However,... Not reloading guns in-between missions is annoying
And I wish I knew it worked that way before picking two guys with guns I thought would synergize with each other and wasting all their ammo on the first mission
@kviiri first run I got all the way to the final mission with 4 operatives not including Monster
I still died big time
My one complaint there is, I think I got a really bad map at the end with tight corridors with lots of guards
Later in the game you can often salvage those situations with stealth gear
The most important trick in Invisible to know is that you want to leave guards undisturbed as often as you can. A guard stunned will start hunting for your agents when they wake up, and they won't stop.
@kviiri I think that would be great too, maybe limit the number of times you could do it per mission or something like that so it doesn't get out of hand, but it would really fix those stages that do make things way harder than they should be
I mean,... I'm playing on the easiest difficulty still and it's definitely hard enough without the,... anomalous maps
@trogdor You can actually spend keys in two different types of missions: in vaults, where you get some extra credits, and in cybernetics labs, where you can access a special implant drill
@MikeQ how's the metaphysics of your table top? Any recent changes in aura you want to address? dice rolling the wrong way? water running uphill?... yes... yes... I see. Your table top might be haunted.
It is always surprising to me when a really interesting question comes up and I wonder how it hadn't come up before. It is a testament to the amount of details and interactions in the game that weird and confusing things are constantly getting churned up.
@ColinGross Well those I can certainly do without lol
@ColinGross Currently in self-imposed DM exile, and on a spirit quest to learn better DM skills via observation and example. Meanwhile still brainstorming possible one-shot / short campaign ideas.
Yeah. I think if someone had dupehammered it it would actually change the close reason.
Hopefully OP will come back sometime and explain what they are actually asking
@Xirema oh btw I might consider dropping your answer reaction answer into the old reaction question possibly. I think it is very good so it might be worth it if you think it is.
@Rubiksmoose I think only the part about the Ready Action is new information, based on what's already in the old question. I have no problem though if you think it's good enough to move over. My answer might need to be updated to consider Bonus Actions though, even though I don't think there's much to that part.
@Xirema Hmmm yeah I think SSDs answer is pretty good and says pretty much what you do. I think I might like yours oh so slightly better though. I think it is borderline honestly. I would certainly give it an up vote personally.
