A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[Duke Bushido]

Regarding top-down tokens and transparent borders:

 

I cannot remember who it was, but many years ago, on this forum, some absolute genius mentioned having made minis / tokens using Shrinky Dinks.

 

I sobt know if they still exist (I really thought that was a seventies thing), what sort of plastic it was, or what sort of inks paint them, but it might be worth checking out.

 

 

[tkdguy]

26 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Regarding top-down tokens and transparent borders:

 

I cannot remember who it was, but many years ago, on this forum, some absolute genius mentioned having made minis / tokens using Shrinky Dinks.

 

I sobt know if they still exist (I really thought that was a seventies thing), what sort of plastic it was, or what sort of inks paint them, but it might be worth checking out.

 

 

 

I found this on YouTube

 

 

[tkdguy]

If you GM more than one group (I unfortunately never had that experience), how about putting them in different areas of the same game world? For example, while one party has adventures in Waterdeep, another explores Sembia at the same time.

 

One way to restart a campaign is to fast forward the timeline. Perhaps the new characters are the children of the old ones. I did that in my solo MERP games, although I haven't done as much with the new cast of characters.

[tkdguy]

Basic D&D written by Tom Moldvay is still the edition that is near and dear to my heart, probably because it was my first foray into the game. It still is a great game, but don't just take my word for it. This video explains it all.

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

I remember in my youth seeing the Moldvay but I can’t remember rightly if I played it. However one reason probably why D&D is so popular is the ease in which you can start a game up. 

[tkdguy]

Moldvay Basic + Cook/Marsh Expert (aka B/X) = my favorite system. Nowadays Basic Fantasy RPG, which was based mainly on B/X, is the game I usually play.

 

Edit: While by the book all weapon damage was d6, the books had a table for variable weapon damage as an option.

[Ninja-Bear]

@tkdguy I keep meaning to write a basic first level dungeon for Basic Fantasy.

[tkdguy]

LEGO is not a cheap option for miniatures, but if you already have a collection, why not use it?

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

I am happily surprised that slowly but surely I’m getting my gaming stuff organized. 

[Ninja-Bear]

@tkdguy, how much have you reskinned monsters or abilities in BFRPG? Have you created your own magical items? How do you gauge it? I have a cool kobold mini that has him holding a brazier and it forms a fire ball. Not sure how to adapt it for BFRPG.

[tkdguy]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@tkdguy, how much have you reskinned monsters or abilities in BFRPG? Have you created your own magical items? How do you gauge it? I have a cool kobold mini that has him holding a brazier and it forms a fire ball. Not sure how to adapt it for BFRPG.

 

I haven't done much on those, but offhand you can treat it as a special ability. Maybe double or triple the xp bonus if the fireball does a lot of damage. 

 

I can reread the section on magical items and give you a better answer. But if the item exists in D&D you can adapt it as is or with minor changes. Most changes are quite negligible, so porting the items as they are is usually the easiest option.

 

Maybe treat the brazier as a necklace of missiles from AD&D.

[Ninja-Bear]

@tkdguy thanks, I was thinking the brazier would work more like a wand of magic missiles.

[tkdguy]

That works too!

[Ragitsu]

 

^ At first blush, the depicted scene is slightly amusing; once you learn the deadly nature of even the youngest dragons, you recognize the difficulty of such an achievement. Does anyone here know of any other TTRPG art that looks markedly different with an experienced perspective?

[Duke Bushido]

My wife is currently sitting behind me charting (she's a home healthcare nurse).  When she works (I have recently discovered, as she didn't used to work from home) she has the unbelievably irritating habit of _loudly_ playing books on tape  (Yea; I like them, too, but not at death metal concert volumes, and our taste in books is criminally polar).

 

Making it far, far worse is that, for whatever reason, she prefers books that are read by a speaker with a british accent.  I know that like any other nation, there is more than one accent.  I don't know how many british accents there are, but I know it's more than two simply because I am aware of the one that "sounds rather pleasant" and the one that is "get this man to a speech therapist and seriously, check his teeth and upper pallet for horrible deformities" severe speech impediment, and I have heard several other speakers sound "british, but neither  especially pleasant nor obviously impaired" (John Cleese is a great example of this: it's not the 'well that sounds cultured' or the 'those noises are an absolute war crime;' it is not unpleasant, and is still distinctly british), so I figure the total is "more than two."  They probably have names for the accents; I don't know, and it's not the point.

 

The point is that my wife seems to be completely incapable of knowing that there are differences in these accents, and while one is pleasant and the other (or others) are inoffensive, there is one that, for humanitarian reasons, absolutely demands a mercy killing.  (it's the one with all the "oi" sounds and where "th" is pronounced "f."  Actually, damned near _everything_ is pronounced 'f' on the rare occasion that it isn't just omitted from the word completely).

 

It boggles my mind that she really cannot hear the difference in these accents.

 

At any rate, she's currently listening to a murder mystery (scratch that: she is damned near _always_ listening to a murder mystery.  I have tried to explain to here that other genres exist, but.... ).  The reader is clearly extremely comfortable switching accents to represent different character (and, unfortunately, is also completely comfortable with multiple voice-cracking falsettos for female characters).

 

The short version is that I have never before heard anyone with the "bad accent" say "Madame Tousard's" before (forgive the highly-likely spelling errors) before.

 

I am now trying to work up a likely reason that the fantasy campaign-- if corona ever ends-- needs an injection of the NPC "Madame Two-Swords."

 

 

 

[Cygnia]

[tkdguy]

On 1/22/2022 at 1:15 AM, Ragitsu said:

 

^ At first blush, the depicted scene is slightly amusing; once you learn the deadly nature of even the youngest dragons, you recognize the difficulty of such an achievement. Does anyone here know of any other TTRPG art that looks markedly different with an experienced perspective?

 

Young dragons could do bit of damage in 1e, but they was pretty vulnerable in terms of hit dice. Their breath weapons also became less effective as they took damage. Dragons were beefed up in 2e, so they became much more challenging.

 

This picture comes from the 2e Players Handbook, which came out before the Monstrous Compendium. I think people were still thinking about 1e dragon statistics. Someone wrote to Dragon Magazine, stating disapproval about the depiction of killing baby dragons. The editor responded with something similar to your point.

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, tkdguy said:

Someone wrote to Dragon Magazine, stating disapproval about the depiction of killing baby dragons. The editor responded with something similar to your point.

 

Even back then, people had difficulties separating reality from fiction. The Chromatic Dragons are about as Evil as you can get before moving on to Fiends (i.e., Demons and Devils). Barring the White Dragon, all of the "Core" baby dragons ("Hatchlings", then, later, "Wyrmlings") are equally as if not more intelligent than the average adult human. Now, my eyesight may be failing, but that dragon hung by the neck looks like an off-model Green Dragon.

 

Let's see...

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180818074938/http://www.lomion.de/cmm/dragcgre.php

 

A Hatchling Green Dragon ranges from four to twelve feet in length, possesses 7d8 Hit Dice (equivalent to a seventh-level Priest), sports an AC of 3 (comparable to Plate Mail), is immune to gases (which arguably includes smoke), easily outpaces most horses while it is in flight, belches a cloud of 50 feet long by 40 feet wide by 30 feet high poison gas that deals an average of 8 damage, is equipped with claws as sharp as a longsword and a bite two-and-a-half times more damaging than that. "baby" dragon indeed.

[Ninja-Bear]

Ever since I picked up Savage Worlds, I’ve been mucking about that system to find the right genre to understand it’s rules. Well I think I’ve found it. I’ve been writing up some Public Domain Super Heroes. Though list under the banner of Super style ones I’ve chosen are still normal. 

[Duke Bushido]

If we can revisit the minis / tokens thing for just a moment, I would love to share this absolutely delightful thing I stumbled across this evening:

 

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

On 1/23/2022 at 10:21 AM, Duke Bushido said:

My wife is currently sitting behind me charting (she's a home healthcare nurse).  When she works (I have recently discovered, as she didn't used to work from home) she has the unbelievably irritating habit of _loudly_ playing books on tape  (Yea; I like them, too, but not at death metal concert volumes, and our taste in books is criminally polar).

 

Making it far, far worse is that, for whatever reason, she prefers books that are read by a speaker with a british accent.  I know that like any other nation, there is more than one accent.  I don't know how many british accents there are, but I know it's more than two simply because I am aware of the one that "sounds rather pleasant" and the one that is "get this man to a speech therapist and seriously, check his teeth and upper pallet for horrible deformities" severe speech impediment, and I have heard several other speakers sound "british, but neither  especially pleasant nor obviously impaired" (John Cleese is a great example of this: it's not the 'well that sounds cultured' or the 'those noises are an absolute war crime;' it is not unpleasant, and is still distinctly british), so I figure the total is "more than two."  They probably have names for the accents; I don't know, and it's not the point.

 

The point is that my wife seems to be completely incapable of knowing that there are differences in these accents, and while one is pleasant and the other (or others) are inoffensive, there is one that, for humanitarian reasons, absolutely demands a mercy killing.  (it's the one with all the "oi" sounds and where "th" is pronounced "f."  Actually, damned near _everything_ is pronounced 'f' on the rare occasion that it isn't just omitted from the word completely).

 

It boggles my mind that she really cannot hear the difference in these accents.

 

At any rate, she's currently listening to a murder mystery (scratch that: she is damned near _always_ listening to a murder mystery.  I have tried to explain to here that other genres exist, but.... ).  The reader is clearly extremely comfortable switching accents to represent different character (and, unfortunately, is also completely comfortable with multiple voice-cracking falsettos for female characters).

 

The short version is that I have never before heard anyone with the "bad accent" say "Madame Tousard's" before (forgive the highly-likely spelling errors) before.

 

I am now trying to work up a likely reason that the fantasy campaign-- if corona ever ends-- needs an injection of the NPC "Madame Two-Swords."

 

 

 

My aunt, (Dad’s. Sister) has the opposite problem. She and my mother trade mystery paperbacks, mostly by English authors, but my Aunt cannot understand spoken English accents at all no matter what region, so she can’t understand the BBC productions of the various Anne Cleves mysteries that they show on television.  (Cable and PBS). 

[assault]

On 1/26/2022 at 3:34 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

my Aunt cannot understand spoken English accents at all no matter what region, 

Hmm. I wonder how she would go with Australian accents. The thought that she couldn't understand my accent is fascinating.

My accent isn't especially "Strayan", but I mumble if I'm not paying attention, so I wouldn't be entirely shocked if she couldn't understand me talking.

Huh. Odd things.

[assault]

Back to game stuff: GURPS doesn't really seem to be a thing anymore. Yes, it's still in print, and SJGames has even republished The Fantasy Trip (its kind of spiritual predecessor), but Munchkin seems to be their big thing. It's even on sale in the not-so-bustling metropolis where I live.

An interesting thought: both TFT and GURPS began with what were essentially stand alone combat modules - Melee and Man to Man respectively. Both were rather easy introductions to their systems - Melee was only about a couple of dozen pages long. But once you had played them, expanding to the full systems was fairly easy. (Actually, from reviews, Man to Man wasn't especially well done - but the idea is sound.)

It wouldn't be impossible to create a Hero System equivalent in a comparably short package. You'd have to drop Magic (Powers), but you could teach people to create simple characters, use skills and fight combats, hopefully in a way that would intrigue them enough to look for more options.

Of course that would be something of a step backwards from 5e D&D, mess though it is, so it mightn't be a good idea.

[Scott Ruggels]

5 hours ago, assault said:

Hmm. I wonder how she would go with Australian accents. The thought that she couldn't understand my accent is fascinating.

My accent isn't especially "Strayan", but I mumble if I'm not paying attention, so I wouldn't be entirely shocked if she couldn't understand me talking.

Huh. Odd things.

 She is originally from the center of the continent (Kansas), and has problems with American regional accents, but not enough to impair her too much for the enjoyment of television made here.  I would expect she does have a problem with Australian Accents as she could not get into the "Miss Fisher Mysteries", that my mother dearly loves. (She also loves Brokenwood). My mother on the other hand speaks I think five languages, and has no problem with accents. Me? I have no problem with accents, but I speak only English, and a smattering of Spanish, because California.

4 hours ago, assault said:

Back to game stuff: GURPS doesn't really seem to be a thing anymore. Yes, it's still in print, and SJGames has even republished The Fantasy Trip (its kind of spiritual predecessor), but Munchkin seems to be their big thing. It's even on sale in the not-so-bustling metropolis where I live.

An interesting thought: both TFT and GURPS began with what were essentially stand alone combat modules - Melee and Man to Man respectively. Both were rather easy introductions to their systems - Melee was only about a couple of dozen pages long. But once you had played them, expanding to the full systems was fairly easy. (Actually, from reviews, Man to Man wasn't especially well done - but the idea is sound.)

It wouldn't be impossible to create a Hero System equivalent in a comparably short package. You'd have to drop Magic (Powers), but you could teach people to create simple characters, use skills and fight combats, hopefully in a way that would intrigue them enough to look for more options.

Of course that would be something of a step backwards from 5e D&D, mess though it is, so it mightn't be a good idea.

 

This was the idea behind Champions Begins. With the Character Creation and power construction removed, you have pregenerated Heroes and Villains, and a slim version of the base combat rules.  I do remember TFT, and it's predecessors, Melee, and Wizard. That was what we were playing right before Champions was released in 1981. IT was a very quick system, and we played that instead of D&D because of how quick and simple it was.

[Ragitsu]

I've been hankering for GURPS as of late; I still find the system to be ace when it comes to "realistic" unarmed combat and gunplay.