A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[tkdguy]

14 hours ago, assault said:

Nobody would want to play a game where everyone were human fighters, would they?

 

But that would be the ideal way to play Swords and Sorcery in 5e D&D.

 

I might need to read more Clark Ashton Smith.

 

The pain, the pain.

 

I don't have a problem with that. Even with systems that have fewer game mechanics for customization people can simply roleplay their characters to make them distinct. At least one RPG (Pendragon) only offers human knights as PCs.

 

49 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

tkdguy, when it comes to painting miniatures, do you consider yourself more of a Rembrandt or a Picasso?

 

Neither really, since I have my own style, and and I don't close to either of them. Still, I prefer Rembrandt's style.

[Rich McGee]

17 minutes ago, tkdguy said:

Neither really, since I have my own style, and and I don't close to either of them. Still, I prefer Rembrandt's style.

Kind of a weird question in the first place.  Both of them (assuming he didn't mean Rembrandt Bugatti, the sculptor) were principally known for 2D art and AFAIK never did much in the way of miniature painting even in that format.  The skill set for painting 3D miniatures is radically different from flats and adapting between the two isn't all that easy IME.

 

And in practical terms, one of the foremost elements of painting gaming is the ability to paint fast enough to produce a useful number of figs for whatever you're playing.  That's pretty simple if you just need a single player character for an RPG, but if you're painting for a rank-and-file historical mass combat game and still doing it in 28mm scale you're going to feel the need for speed if you want to play the same year you started the project.  A leisurely one mini a day will not cut it when your army has 400+ figs in it.  There's also a big difference between what works in (say) 6mm scale and what works in 10mm, 15mm, 25mm or 28mm, much less 40mm models.

[Ragitsu]

<The broader joke being that Rembrandt is refined/"high art" and Picasso is abstract.>

 

Still, I'll not deny anyone a bit of overanalyzing .

[Old Man]

18 hours ago, assault said:

Nobody would want to play a game where everyone were human fighters, would they?

 

But that would be the ideal way to play Swords and Sorcery in 5e D&D.

 

I might need to read more Clark Ashton Smith.

 

The pain, the pain.

S&S doesn’t absolutely require human fighterism. Elric is squarely S&S and a powerful warlock in his own right. Gray Mouser is a former wizard’s apprentice who still remembers some of his training. It’s more the style of magic that sets S&S apart—ritual and summoning, rather than balls of fire. 
 

Unfortunately that’s where 5e D&D really falls apart for S&S. You could easily run a game of rogues, fighters, and barbarians, but the only magic D&D really supports is high fantasy video game magic. I’m sure it’s not impossible, but it’d be hard enough to inspire me to look at other game systems. 

 

[Rich McGee]

52 minutes ago, Old Man said:

I’m sure it’s not impossible, but it’d be hard enough to inspire me to look at other game systems. 

Considering that D&D's poor performance at emulating S&S is one major reason Tunnels & Trolls (arguably the second oldest published RPG) is what it is, that is a thought almost as old as the hobby.  

 

Although ironically, T&T's magic system is still way too flashy and reliable for the subgenre.  

[Duke Bushido]

6 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

tkdguy, when it comes to painting miniatures, do you consider yourself more of a Rembrandt or a Picasso?

 

 

I am trying to figure out what _my_ style is.

 

Which one of those guys used spray cans and which one handed them to his wife?

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

7 hours ago, Old Man said:

S&S doesn’t absolutely require human fighterism. Elric is squarely S&S and a powerful warlock in his own right. Gray Mouser is a former wizard’s apprentice who still remembers some of his training. It’s more the style of magic that sets S&S apart—ritual and summoning, rather than balls of fire. 
 

Unfortunately that’s where 5e D&D really falls apart for S&S. You could easily run a game of rogues, fighters, and barbarians, but the only magic D&D really supports is high fantasy video game magic. I’m sure it’s not impossible, but it’d be hard enough to inspire me to look at other game systems. 

 

 

There is no doubt, in these days of multitudes of game systems that it is easier to get a system better suited to the intended game but the problem is often those dammed player preferences.  sometimes you need to put the effort in and compromise on the system. 🙂

 

I reckon I would be OK with providing cantrips to players with the SFX of powders and potions.  I think sorcerors should be mainly NPCs and, in their lair, might be able to almost free cast within a specific school of magic. Outside their lair, they may have one or two pre-prepared spells, at least one of which would be to escape a bad situation.

 

You never WANT to deal with a sorcerer, it should be seen as almost suicidal, unless you have learned a weakness, or you simply intend to steal from them, not to confront. 

 

for a PC sorcerer, I would be looking at extending casting times, probably into multiple minutes and hours.  I would be looking for the player to be mortgaging their soul for power, like the bad guys do, creating the weaknesses that random adventurers ight discover and exploit.  A powerful sorcerer should be like an over-extended private equity firm where one bad investment might start a failure cascade.  There will be rituals to keep up, debts to be maintained, objects to be found and places to be visited or the PC will have to repay in ways he never wanted to consider when getting the power to summon that huge earth Elemental...

 

Doc

[Rich McGee]

11 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Which one of those guys used spray cans and which one handed them to his wife?

If it's an either/or choice, I'm going to have to say Rembrandt was passing his minis off to his wife, while Picasso was the rattle-can artiste.  I base that on the fact that canned spray paint didn't exist until about 1949, and it was almost another ten years before a more economical and practical version (using "pressure filling" - very similar to what we use today) came along, so Picasso (who lived till 1973) is the only one of the two who had the opportunity to use them.   

[Rich McGee]

6 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

You never WANT to deal with a sorcerer, it should be seen as almost suicidal, unless you have learned a weakness, or you simply intend to steal from them, not to confront. 

Fortunately for countless S&S heroes over the years, those sorcerers generally required significant prep time for magic, and often relied more on other products of their arcane knowledge for self-defense - drugs, poisons, traps, tamed animals, etc.  The "blowpipe full of black lotus powder" works great - right up until Conan pulls a Bugs Bunny on you and blows the poison into your own face with his mighty barbarian lung capacity. 

 

And in an emergency, just running some steel through a wizard usually did the job too.  You don't want to fight them with prep time on their side, but catching them off guard seemed pretty effective.

Edited December 27, 2023 by Rich McGee

[Cygnia]

12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

I am trying to figure out what _my_ style is.

 

Which one of those guys used spray cans and which one handed them to his wife?

 

 

Banksy and Pollock

[Hugh Neilson]

On 12/25/2023 at 11:32 PM, assault said:

Nobody would want to play a game where everyone were human fighters, would they?

 

But that would be the ideal way to play Swords and Sorcery in 5e D&D.

 

I might need to read more Clark Ashton Smith.

 

The pain, the pain.

 

Rogues should also be very common, even before delving into the arcane knowledge suggested above.

[Ragitsu]

22 hours ago, Old Man said:

the only magic D&D really supports is high fantasy video game magic.

 

 

That "video game-y" magic is mostly a Wizards of the Coast development (about the time D&D started taking a page from "regular" video game RPGs and then full-on MMORPGS); in TSR D&D, magic was pretty much the domain of the mages and priests instead of something sprinkled onto every class in varying amounts. There was none of that "ignore spell components" rubbish designed to give players an easier time by obviating the need to obtain specific consumable resources. A "Concentrate" Skill (or similar mechanic) able to be improved as character levels grew did not exist; exceptions aside, if you got hit while spellcasting, you lost the spell...so you don't get hit. Certain spells weren't as efficient or convenient as later versions (e.g., Identify). Spell durations - overall - were longer; in this respect, spells were more evocative of enduring enchantments from the fairy tales instead of overly "balanced" video game powers that are ephemeral by comparison (c.f. 1e Charm Person to 5e Charm Person). There was no "Warlock" firing off mojo like confetti or blast-happy Sorcerers. Magical items were rare and you couldn't buy them from a shop like nowadays (barring the least potent of restorative potions, maybe).

 

Anyhow, if a DM wants to run a Fighter-only campaign in D&D, he has to account for many things (not the least of which is monsters effectively immune to weapon damage/susceptible to magic) lest they court disaster.

 

 

Edited December 27, 2023 by Ragitsu

[Rich McGee]

That is very definitely not the TSR-era D&D I saw played around here, not even in the Seventies.  In twenty years of playing before the WotC buyout I knew exactly two GMs who were rigorous about spell components (both of who had house rules for breaking weapons and armor, amusingly enough).  Loads of DMs offered saves to avoid having spells spoiled by damage, with predictable effects on game balance, and later versions of AD&D introduced skills that helped as well.  If anything, house rules were more common with TSR's editions than today's RAW-obsessed 5e nonsense.  AD&D gave spellcasting to paladins, druids and rangers (plus the rare bard) and hypothetically everyone had a shot at psionics.  Magic items were far from rare when using either the suggested random charts or the published modules, which made all DMs in Monty Haul if followed to the letter.  And while it took a bit for them to come along, specialist wizards were a precursor to spell-slot-heavy classes that came along in WotC's days - and with extra slots for high casting stats they've been a factor for a very long time now, including most of TSR's run.

 

WotC's certainly gone down the video game path farther than TSR ever did, but the earliest D&D PC games drew slavishly on TSR's rules and evolved from there, making the WotC shift a closing of the rather parasitic game design loop rather than some wild departure.  Not taking advantage of decades of the e-game industry adapting to changing audience tastes to course-correct your TTRPG would be foolish.  They've done your playtesting for you and frankly have more of an audience that TSR ever did, which is why everything WotC released has done such big numbers by comparison. 

 

And really, TSR is no longer the major influence on D&D.  The game will be 50 years old next year, and 27 of those years are under WotC.  MOre than a generation of players look at the older rules as weird and clunky and old-fashioned, and it's hard to seriously argue they're wholly wrong.  If it weren't for the growth of the OSR community (directly fueled by early WotC's OGL making it possible to earn money reiterating TSR rules to the nostalgic and curious without getting sued all the time) TSR-era rules would be a fading memory with more of us old grognards dying off every year.

[Ragitsu]

If you're talking about the D&D-based/inspired CRPGs, then, yeah...they're different than standard tabletop D&D; concessions had to be made in order to facilitate gameplay. Those concessions typically arose - mind you - because there was no human DM guiding the events or able to make "organic" decisions on-the-fly. When you have to account for a broad number of playstyles, you have to make more available so that the uninitiated player (who is jumping feet first without a supervising DM) is covered no matter what happens. As for actual pencil-and-paper D&D, the difference is night and day. A key example: "absolute" effects effectively went the way of the dodo.

[Hugh Neilson]

2 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 A "Concentrate" Skill (or similar mechanic) able to be improved as character levels grew did not exist; exceptions aside, if you got hit while spellcasting, you lost the spell...so you don't get hit.

 

Of course, we also had no rules for "holding an action" and, although spells had a required casting time, weapons did not have a required "target and strike" time, so outside of 1 round+ casting times, targeting the caster while casting was pretty much house rule territory anyway.

[Cygnia]

[Rich McGee]

Grenades?  Ah yes, that moment in every TSR-era D&D player's life when they first discover flasks of lamp oil on the equipment list.  Good times, good times - only slightly let down by the cruel truth that they're not actually Molotov cocktails.

 

 

[Cygnia]

 

[Cancer]

Independent of whether you are trying to build a horror-type atmosphere or not, if you're a GM, it behooves you to give the players relevant in-game information at something more than millibaud rates, while utterly stonewalling their attempts to pry it out of you.  The pastime is supposed to be a participatory story telling, not the GM's own oral still life with flies the GM gets to pull the wings off of at their leisure.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Cancer

[Rich McGee]

1 hour ago, Cancer said:

...the GM's own oral still life...

Not that I disagree with your overall point, but that evokes an extremely humorous and smutty mental image, all the more so due to a college incident where our drawing class interrupted a couple who'd incorrectly assumed the studio would be empty for...well, another five minutes, at least.

[Old Man]

"Perfect!  Hold that pose!"

[Dr.Device]

On 12/31/2023 at 2:03 PM, Old Man said:

"Perfect!  Hold that pose!"

 

If the pose holds for more than four hours, please consult a physician.

[Cygnia]

[Duke Bushido]

On 12/26/2023 at 1:32 AM, assault said:

Nobody would want to play a game where everyone were human fighters, would they?

 

 

 

I swear I am not doing this to you on purpose, but fantasy, sci-fi, or western?  

 

Yes.  Yes; exactly that.  It is my preferred take in all three of thise genres.

 

[tkdguy]

Yesterday I played a solo session of Basic Fantasy. I had a group of level 1 characters, so I sent them on their first adventure. Unfortunately, it also turned out to be their last. RIP.

 

Today, I found a couple of old calendars from work. 2018 started on a Monday just as this year did (although this year is a leap year), so I decided to use it as my campaign log. The unfortunate band of adventurers are listed on the calendar.

 

While I have a bunch of fantasy maps available, I'm thinking of using old historical maps where California is drawn as an island. I'll have to work on the history, but Emperor Norton I will be part of it.

 

The campaign setting won't be bound by any one game system. I may play HERO one day and Rolemaster another day, but the adventures will take place in the same game world.