A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[Cygnia]

[Ragitsu]

[Rich McGee]

Shades of the old TSR days where people would remove class level caps on demihumans and then complain about how unbalanced they were.  "Humans are boring because we removed all their uniqueness with house rules" is an old, old refrain. 

[Ragitsu]

I must admit, as a 3.5e to 2e convert, I am not firmly opposed to opening up classes and easing level limits for demihumans if the DM has a clear idea of how things fit together, but I completely understand why folks choose to abide by those restrictions. When it comes to D&D, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings and the like are not human (in their thinking, their communities, their physical essence, et cetera); the more you force these fantasy races into the role of "humans with funny suits", the less magical they become.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Ragitsu

[Cygnia]

[Rich McGee]

On 11/28/2023 at 8:30 AM, Ragitsu said:

I must admit, as a 3.5e to 2e convert, I am not firmly opposed to opening up classes and easing level limits for demihumans if the DM has a clear idea of how things fit together, but I completely understand why folks choose to abide by those restrictions.

As someone who started from the very beginning, I'm still vaguely baffled that people (self included) ever accepted all the TSR class/level cap nonsense.  The moment 3.0 dropped and they were gone almost everyone I gamed with breathed a huge sigh of relief and thought "Finally!" instead of feeling any sense of loss.  The edition wasn't perfect by any means, but it was incredibly popular after a long period of watching D&D fade into near-irrelevance, especially with younger gamers.  

 

It's not like the game was particularly balanced at any point in TSR's run, level caps and class restrictions or no.  Taking them away did make humans even less attractive, but even with them in place I remember way too many parties composed largely or purely of demihumans, particularly in AD&D.  I knew a DM who used humans as the sword-fodder (as in, people-shaped foes that were supposedly guilt-free to kill because they were innately hostile others - which was its own type of problem, but common thinking in the 80s and 90s) in their games.  Why use the usual orcs, goblins, etc. when they had no human PCs to object?  And elves!  Dear Gygax, elves and half-elves were everywhere in multiple flavors.  There was a reason the old ads for the Talislanta RPG had "No elves!" as a major selling point.    

 

Spot on about "losing the magic" when there are too many nonhumans.  Greatly prefer (say) Glorantha  where the nonhumans are truly strange and alien and it's rare to see even one as a PC with a human party.  When the trolls are easier to understand (and roleplay as) than Dwarves or elves you're doing something right to maintain the wonder - and then there's the stranger stuff like newtlings and baboons and morokanth.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Rich McGee

[tkdguy]

 

[tkdguy]

This setting details the interactions between humans and the elder races:

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

I understand that with 5e introduction of the Good berry which allows humans to see in the dark, there is a complaint that it takes away from Demi humans.

[Rich McGee]

Shows how much I know about the details of 5e, the first edition I balked on during playtest.  To me Goodberry is a low-level druid spell from the early TSR days that provided some minor but very useful healing, bit like cut-rate healing potions that you could pass around between players.  The idea of them being de facto night vision goggles is certainly different.  Please tell me you have to squash a pair of them into your eyes to make them work, leaving you with a stained raccoon mask of goodberry juice.

 

I'd totally make that setting lore if I were running...   

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Rich McGee said:

Shows how much I know about the details of 5e, the first edition I balked on during playtest.  To me Goodberry is a low-level druid spell from the early TSR days that provided some minor but very useful healing, bit like cut-rate healing potions that you could pass around between players.  The idea of them being de facto night vision goggles is certainly different.  Please tell me you have to squash a pair of them into your eyes to make them work, leaving you with a stained raccoon mask of goodberry juice.

 

I'd totally make that setting lore if I were running...   

honestly I don’t know. It’s what I picked up on the ‘net.

[Duke Bushido]

They probably added the berry because all the non-demis were tired of doing this:

 

[assault]

I'm not sure about the night vision stuff.

The Goodberry spell text just mentions healing.

I wouldn't be shocked if there wasn't some weird extension to it somewhere.

[Rich McGee]

9 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

They probably added the berry because all the non-demis were tired of doing this:

Curse you, Duke, there's coffee everywhere now. 

 

It's the look on the cat's face more than anything.  Presumably the monocle on the guy's left eye is cold.

2 hours ago, assault said:

I'm not sure about the night vision stuff.

Don't ruin this for me, I'm really enjoying the absurdist vision of legions of 5e PCs squashing berries into their eyes before delving. 

[Duke Bushido]

For what it's worth- and I think Chris Goodwin might remember this- I have a spell that grants night vision that requires taking an ember from a fire and pushing it into your eye.  That eye has _only_ night vision until it is healed.

 

 

4 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Curse you, Duke, there's coffee everywhere now. 

 

Glad I could help, Sir (presumed; apologies if I am in error). 

 

 

4 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

It's the look on the cat's face more than anything.  

 

 

Yeah; I am pretty sure it isnt too far removed from what you would see if your proctologist stood you in front of a mirror.... 

 

 

[tkdguy]

I've been watching some solo games on YouTube, and I've noticed some folks use real world calendars for their games. I hadn't considered that before. Has anyone done this?

 

On a very different note:

 

 

[Rich McGee]

9 hours ago, tkdguy said:

I've been watching some solo games on YouTube, and I've noticed some folks use real world calendars for their games. I hadn't considered that before. Has anyone done this?

Sure, that trick's been around since before roleplaying as we know it even existed.  There were all sorts of play-by-mail military/diplomatic campaign games in the 70s that used real calendars, and some that invented their own fictional calendars for alien planets or fantasy/alt-history settings.  If Gygax and his circle weren't aware of such things when designing D&D I'd be surprised, although I don't recall ever hearing it mentioned. 

 

Hmm...did TSR ever publish actual Greyhawk/Krynn/Toril/etc. calendars for sale?  I don't recall seeing them - just art calendars that used real-world months, etc. - but they seem like the kind of thing Gygax would try to milk some extra sales.    

 

One of my more recent DMs used an online tool for generating your own fictional calendar, which could produce some pretty fancy output if you had the printer to handle it.  That was over ten years ago, and I'm sure the tools have gotten even better since then what with all the competing "worldbuilder" software out there. 

[Ragitsu]

Goodberry is broken in the Baldur's Gate CRPG, because you can generate massive amounts and store them for later; in actual tabletop (A)D&D, the healing effect is a nice bonus, but these divinely-infused morsels of natural goodness are handy because they obviate the need for bulky rations...as long as berries can be procured.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Ragitsu

[Duke Bushido]

Ah.

 

Like Roddenberries for a space opera game, without the hat tip.

 

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

16 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Goodberry is broken in the Baldur's Gate CRPG, because you can generate massive amounts and store them for later; in actual tabletop (A)D&D, the healing effect is a nice bonus, but these divinely-infused morsels of natural goodness are handy because they obviate the need for bulky rations...as long berries can be procured.

Then what am I thinking of that grants Nightvision to mere mortals that wasn’t a spell?

[Ninja-Bear]

I just got together with an old friend and played a short game of Battletech. Man, I know my wife jokes that I’m old, but my attention span was short. I was remembering rules 30 years ago but could remember how far I moved in the Turn and kept constantly looking up modifiers on movement. Even though I moved roughly the same each time. We both were counting on fingers to hit numbers.  I was a blast for sure and can’t wait to play again. I did happen to pull the luck shot of the night. My Stinger fell because it lost a leg so from Prone I rolled a Head shot on his Commando. Now it was only a MG but still. We both had some wild rolls.

[Duke Bushido]

On 11/30/2023 at 10:24 PM, tkdguy said:

I've been watching some solo games on YouTube, and I've noticed some folks use real world calendars for their games. I hadn't considered that before. Has anyone done this?

 

 

Not in a few years, since in recent years, the crush to get gaming time means some of the background details that seemed,oh-so-importsnt once became a bit less so, but back in the day--

 

I would hit up bookstores in late February, when calendars were as cheap as they would ever get, and buy a handful.

 

The trick to "add flavor" was more than just renaming the months.

 

First roll a d6 to see how many months were going to be added or removed (up to three either way), then hit the remaining (well, all the months) with a D6 to see how many days would be added or subtracted (again: up to 3 either way).  Then decide what unique environmental or celestial phenomenon marked the start of the year, and then scatter a few holidays here and there.

 

Then decide how the seasons broke across the calendar, and finally- _last thing_ rename the months and the days of the week (which often resulted in more or less than 7 days in a week; a d4 or a d6 is helpful here).  Pro tip: a 7-day week is _much_ easier, as the calendars are built that way anyway).

 

I also found that if I went through and numbered each day of the year, not only did I know how long a year was, but I was able to create multiple calendars for the same world, as one might find in other lands, etc.  Culture X starts their year d100 days after this calendar; design their calendar accordingly and number the days of the year _in accordance to your original calendar (dirst day us day 100, etc), and you have "travellers knowledge" for well-travelled characters: convert from the home calendar to the local one, know the regional holidays, etc.

 

And in Traveller itself, we just adooted "Metric Time," known more colloquially as "Ship's Time" or "Service Time" and way out in the wilderness as "Scout's Time."  As Traveller stipulates that Regina has a day and a year identical to earth (close enough), and there is need for ships to be able to easily coordinate even as the meet a thousand light years away, Ship's Time is based on days of 10 hours, divided into 100 minutes, divided into 100 seconds (weirdly, this has very little effect on the length of a second).  These days are slotted into ten-day weeks, which are spread across the 1p months.  An 11th month, called "Festival" exists and is composed of the few remaining days of Regina's year (alternatively, change the length if Regina' year) which is essentially treated as a massive holiday across the Empire, with lots of celebrating, street fairs, and on certain worlds, voting for certain officials and policies.

 

 

[Ragitsu]

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Then what am I thinking of that grants Nightvision to mere mortals that wasn’t a spell?

 

Darkvision/Infravision? Hm...it may be a magical item. Did you have a consumable resource in mind?

[Rich McGee]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I just got together with an old friend and played a short game of Battletech.

BT is one of those games (like HERO) where remembering the rules from first edition means you're about 90% of the way to knowing the rules to the most current edition 40 years later.  Not unchanging at all, but skeletal framework of the game stays the same.

 

Veteran BT gamer tip - when you finish moving a unit, take a few seconds to write down both their offensive shooting mod (based on whether you walked/ran/jumped) and the defensive target mod (based on actual hexes moved with a bonus for jumping) on the unit record sheet somewhere.  You'll want two columns (or rows) and enough vertical (or horizontal) room to do that every turn, and it's usually a good idea to cross out the last activation's mods when you add the new ones just for clarity.  Saves a lot of time figuring mods later.  Some folks mark the mods next to the minis with specially colored dice instead or as well (which is easier on everyone since your opponent can just look at them rather than having to ask you) but they do add to the "crap on the map" problem and can easily get knocked around to the wrong face by accident during play.

[Rich McGee]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Then what am I thinking of that grants Nightvision to mere mortals that wasn’t a spell?

I'm no 5e pro, but a quick google search suggests there are both the Goggles of Night and pragmatically-named Potion of Darkvision in that edition.  There must be dozens of other items (consumable or otherwise) as well over all the editions, sometimes as a primary function and sometimes as a side benefit (eg pretty sure the Belt of Dwarvenkind - meant for Dwarf-friends, not Dwarves - granted 60' darkvision among other things).

 

None of them are anywhere near as amusing as watching delvers squashing berry into their eyes, though.