A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[Ninja-Bear]

@Rich McGee, I saw on Amazon Battletech Movement Dice. I think Santa might have to bring me some. Btw we were using a D20 to mark the Hexes moved later last night.

[Cygnia]

 

[tkdguy]

 

[tkdguy]

I have an idea for a Middle-earth game. I have the miniatures of the Fellowship. I also have their AD&D stats via White Dwarf #38. What if I went off script and run some one-shot adventures using the Fellowship? Forget canon and  continuity. Anyone who gets "killed" will be out of the fight for the rest of the adventure and will come back in the next game. Maybe some Tolkien fans would balk at the idea, but it sounds like fun.

[Rich McGee]

My ideal MERP game never gets near any of the characters in the books and just uses the setting (much like my ideal Star Wars RPG session), but I could see this working for one-shots that throw canon in a wood chipper.  The question is what they'd actually be doing in those one-shots.  The Fellowship's a weird mix of people outside of the story (and doesn't stick together long even there) and even if you just treated them like a D&D adventuring party where would they be hunting for treasure and fighting monsters?  Moria, the Misty Mountains and the Mirkwood suggest themselves, but the opposition feels like it get pretty same-y pretty fast.

 

[tkdguy]

I haven't thought about which types of adventures they'd go on just yet, but fighting orcs would be included. Gaining treasure would be ideal but optional, as they won't get to keep it anyway. I also won't have to worry about levelling them up. I can place them anywhere since I'm not following the actual story. White Dwarf #38 has a scenario about the Fellowship trying to escape Moria, and also has stats for the Balrog. I may use only some of the characters instead of the whole gang.

 

I thought about using the names from the Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings parody, but that may be going a bit too far.

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, tkdguy said:

I have an idea for a Middle-earth game. I have the miniatures of the Fellowship. I also have their AD&D stats via White Dwarf #38. What if I went off script and run some one-shot adventures using the Fellowship? Forget canon and  continuity. Anyone who gets "killed" will be out of the fight for the rest of the adventure and will come back in the next game. Maybe some Tolkien fans would balk at the idea, but it sounds like fun.

 

The "killed" mechanic actually tracks with the canon--Frodo got envenomated, attacked by a kraken, and stabbed twice, once by a Nazgul.  Not to mention Gandalf's fatal Balrog brawl.  Wait--is LOTR actually a Marvel comic?

[Ninja-Bear]

12 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

My ideal MERP game never gets near any of the characters in the books and just uses the setting (much like my ideal Star Wars RPG session), but I could see this working for one-shots that throw canon in a wood chipper.  The question is what they'd actually be doing in those one-shots.  The Fellowship's a weird mix of people outside of the story (and doesn't stick together long even there) and even if you just treated them like a D&D adventuring party where would they be hunting for treasure and fighting monsters?  Moria, the Misty Mountains and the Mirkwood suggest themselves, but the opposition feels like it get pretty same-y pretty fast.

 

I would suggest fighting the machinations of the Witch-King! The Witch-king could be doing some political stuff like assassinations. 

[Rich McGee]

9 hours ago, Old Man said:

The "killed" mechanic actually tracks with the canon--Frodo got envenomated, attacked by a kraken, and stabbed twice, once by a Nazgul.  Not to mention Gandalf's fatal Balrog brawl.  Wait--is LOTR actually a Marvel comic?

Let's ask Boromir about that. 

[tkdguy]

7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I would suggest fighting the machinations of the Witch-King! The Witch-king could be doing some political stuff like assassinations. 

 

The default MERP setting is just after the Great Plague. Angmar is very much an active participant in the scene, although there won't be another major war for a couple more centuries. 

 

6 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Let's ask Boromir about that. 

 

Boromir's PC had to drop out of the campaign due to real-life issues. When he was able to rejoin the game, he decided to retire his old character and create a new one: Faramir.

[tkdguy]

 

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, tkdguy said:

 

Boromir's PC had to drop out of the campaign due to real-life issues. When he was able to rejoin the game, he decided to retire his old character and create a new one: Faramir.

 

Faramir who spent most of ROTK dead, IIRC.

[tkdguy]

7 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Faramir who spent most of ROTK dead, IIRC.

 

Perhaps real life reared its ugly head again.

[Rich McGee]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

Faramir who spent most of ROTK dead, IIRC.

You should probably re-read that book then.  Faramir is badly injured fighting to defend the city and gets dragged back unconscious for healing after Gandalf rescues him.  Then his crazy father Denethor decides all hope is lost and drags him off to the family tombs and gets set to burn the poor guy alive on a premature funeral pyre, eventually winding up torching himself instead when Beregond and Pippin intervene.  He meets Eowyn while recovering from the Black Breath and a bunch of sword wounds and the two wind up marrying and living happily ever after in Ithilien. 

 

At worst he was stuck on his phone explaining to his SO where the hell he was for part of the climax.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Rich McGee

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Rich McGee said:

You should probably re-read that book then.  Faramir is badly injured fighting to defend the city and gets dragged back unconscious for healing after Gandalf rescues him.  Then his crazy father Denethor decides all hope is lost and drags him off to the family tombs and gets set to burn the poor guy alive on a premature funeral pyre, eventually winding up torching himself instead when Beregond and Pippin intervene.  He meets Eowyn while recovering from the Black Breath and a bunch of sword wounds and the two wind up marrying and living happily ever after in Ithilien. 

 

At worst he was stuck on his phone explaining to his SO where the hell he was for part of the climax.

 

My bad.  I should have typed "mostly dead".

[Rich McGee]

34 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

My bad.  I should have typed "mostly dead".

Cue Princess Bride references. 

[Old Man]

6 minutes ago, Rich McGee said:

Cue Princess Bride references. 

 

Inigo and Westley versus Legolas: Who wins?

[Cygnia]

[L. Marcus]

How would you stat out a Wild Gazebo?

[assault]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Inigo and Westley versus Legolas: Who wins?

 

Does Gimli count as his True Love?

 

If not, Westley wins.

[assault]

On a different topic, I've been looking at 5e D&D.

 

I think that there's a half decent Sword and Sorcery game in there.

 

The relatively high survivability works with how S&A protagonists work, without cluttering up the place with specialist healers. In most S&S priests are shady characters that you wouldn't want to have in your party. There are exceptions - John Jakes' Brak is one - but they aren't as common as having a specialist Cleric class would imply.

[Cygnia]

11 hours ago, L. Marcus said:

How would you stat out a Wild Gazebo?

[Old Man]

10 hours ago, assault said:

On a different topic, I've been looking at 5e D&D.

 

I think that there's a half decent Sword and Sorcery game in there.

 

The relatively high survivability works with how S&A protagonists work, without cluttering up the place with specialist healers. In most S&S priests are shady characters that you wouldn't want to have in your party. There are exceptions - John Jakes' Brak is one - but they aren't as common as having a specialist Cleric class would imply.

 

The biggest healing change in 5e (for me, having skipped 3e and 4e) that enables this is the short rest healing mechanic.  This approximately doubles a character's hit points for a given session.  Couple that with the fact that damage generally doesn't affect characters until they reach 0HP and you have a pretty cinematic game going.

 

That said you'd still have to tune the adversaries some.  In the 5e campaign I played, my paladin often wound up spending combats running around playing tag with his lay on hands.

[Rich McGee]

15 minutes ago, Old Man said:

The biggest healing change in 5e (for me, having skipped 3e and 4e) that enables this is the short rest healing mechanic.

Actually started in 4e, along with the healing surge mechanics that 5e modified into...was it Hit Dice?  I skipped the edition past playtesting and memory is hazy.  Acted as a soft maximum limit on healing per day/long rest.  13th Age (which is a spinoff of 4e the way Pathfinder was a spinoff of 3.5) uses a similar mechanic, as well as a mechanic called the Escalation Die that would be trivially easy to port over to 5e (or any WotC-era D&D, really) without catastrophically skewing the math.  The ED is very helpful at accelerating combats and preventing a slog at the end of a fight, which makes it a good choice for S&S where fights don't drag out.  You can see it under the combat rules on the 13th Age SRD. 

[Ninja-Bear]

Professor DM has a video and Links GM Scotty’s luck dice. When you miss a roll you get a d6 which goes into a your own pool. You choose when you get to cash them in. What you roll on a d6 is added to the roll you need. It’s not a guarantee that you make the roll.