A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[Ragitsu]

23 minutes ago, L. Marcus said:

You guys still have phonebooks?

 

We no longer receive those tomes. However, they can be purchased through online stores.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/145544503251

 

May the good folk of Syracuse (circa 1986-1987) serve your village well.

 

 

Edited September 1 by Ragitsu

[Cygnia]

We hit the art museum here in Cleveland and I pulled out my phone to jot down the artists and titles' names to use as potential NPCs and locations for later.

[Ninja-Bear]

The other day I asked my youngest what RPG he likes to play. ( I invite every chance I get and he’s hit and miss.) He said he likes Basic Fantasy because he understands it better than the others. The thing that strikes me is that that is how it is with games. People will like systems based on feel and not always on mechanics of a system.

[Rich McGee]

On 9/1/2024 at 1:21 PM, Cygnia said:

We hit the art museum here in Cleveland and I pulled out my phone to jot down the artists and titles' names to use as potential NPCs and locations for later.

I've done that with the public art installations on the Concourse level of the Empire State Plaza in Albany NY.

 

For people names, I've got a beat-up old spiral notebook from when I was working in an insurance company mail room on summer break in 1985.  Wrote down every halfway interesting name that crossed my desk and I've been using and re-using them ever since.  Probably get you fired instantly these days, of course.

 

There's also Tovan Palequire, who's showed up at some point as a shady-but-loveable interstellar trader, smuggler and gun-runner in ever scifi campaign I've run since 1981.  Cookie to anyone who recognizes the game without googling it. 

Edited September 3 by Rich McGee

[Duke Bushido]

Keep you cookie, Sir.

 

I find them... Revolting....

 

 

I enjoyed that one myself, actually,but I didnt own it, so when Gary moved off to chase his doctorate, I never got to play it again.

 

Also:  

 

Damn, I'm old....

 

 

[Rich McGee]

6 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I enjoyed that one myself, actually,but I didnt own it, so when Gary moved off to chase his doctorate, I never got to play it again.

 

Also:  

 

Damn, I'm old....

Nah, lots of graying gamers know that one but I've run in to 30-somethings who recall it from playing with their parents or older siblings.  It's the best remembered of the eight by a pretty fair margin, and inevitably comes up whenever they're discussed.

 

Also features my favorite Erol Otus art ever as the centerpiece, which cements it as a nostalgia bomb for me.

[Ragitsu]

On 9/3/2024 at 4:47 PM, Rich McGee said:

For people names, I've got a beat-up old spiral notebook from when I was working in an insurance company mail room on summer break in 1985.

 

"She was a dame like no other...fire and smoke under a black dress, with eyes like silver daggers in velvet sheaths."

[DentArthurDent]

I ran into a problem with names while setting up a short campaign in Romania. Luckily, I stumbled across a 1925 Address Book (including some phone numbers also) from Bucharest on the Library of Congress website. I downloaded about fifty pages and flipped through them when needed. 
I went back to find the website this past week. Sadly, I found a description and cover image but no working links.

[Ninja-Bear]

10 hours ago, DentArthurDent said:

I ran into a problem with names while setting up a short campaign in Romania. Luckily, I stumbled across a 1925 Address Book (including some phone numbers also) from Bucharest on the Library of Congress website. I downloaded about fifty pages and flipped through them when needed. 
I went back to find the website this past week. Sadly, I found a description and cover image but no working links.

Have you tried using the Wayback machine? You might get lucky and find old saved links that work.

[tkdguy]

 

[Ragitsu]

On 9/1/2024 at 10:21 AM, Cygnia said:

We hit the art museum here in Cleveland and I pulled out my phone to jot down the artists and titles' names to use as potential NPCs and locations for later.

 

"I assure you: the fact that the witch responsible for your deepest suffering shares the name of a loathed ninth-grade Math teacher is purely coincidental."

[Cygnia]

33 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

"I assure you: the fact that the witch responsible for your deepest suffering shares the name of a loathed ninth-grade Math teacher is purely coincidental."

Of course, with this story I'm working on, time to see just how obtuse the hubby is after I base some of the antagonists on his brothers...

[Cygnia]

[tkdguy]

Another idea for terrain crafters

 

 

[Rich McGee]

7 hours ago, tkdguy said:

Another idea for terrain crafters

Yeah, a lot of minis gamers tend to spend time at stores considering whether they could make something interesting enough out of the packaging to justify the purchase of something they don't really need/want.  I must have seen a hundred Bubble Tape containers repurposed as Hoth shield generators over the years.  Hoarding can be a bit of an issue with that branch of the hobby.     

[Ragitsu]

While reading the AD&D 2e Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide (circa 1990), I came across the following excerpt ->

 

Quote

Demihurnans

 

Nearly every DM has elves, dwarves, and halfings in his campaign, or similar races that fulfill the same function---elder, exotic peoples who are both more and less than human. Unfortunately, these same DMs (and their players) tend to role-play demihuman races as humans with odd physical characteristics. They overlook the fact that these beings are cultural aliens-they are not human. They do not think or react to situations like humans.

 

There is more on the subject, but you get the gist. It is both comforting (and discouraging) to know that this hiccup towards achieving immersion isn't anything new.

[tkdguy]

I have heard of crafters using dental stone for crafting. It's supposed to be lighter and stronger than Plaster of Paris.

[Ragitsu]

4 hours ago, tkdguy said:

I have heard of crafters using dental stone for crafting. It's supposed to be lighter and stronger than Plaster of Paris.

 

I wonder what one would use for Elemental miniatures? Earth is easiest. Water might require some sort of gelatin base. Air is tricky, but it has got nothing on Fire.

[Rich McGee]

On 9/13/2024 at 8:31 PM, tkdguy said:

I have heard of crafters using dental stone for crafting. It's supposed to be lighter and stronger than Plaster of Paris.

It definitely is, although it's been decades since I've compared prices between it and epoxy craft resins or putties like Milliput or Magic-Sculpt.  I suspect all of them are extremely cost-inefficient compared to 3D printing STL files these days, but that's a very different skill set.

 

On 9/14/2024 at 12:52 AM, Ragitsu said:

 

I wonder what one would use for Elemental miniatures? Earth is easiest. Water might require some sort of gelatin base. Air is tricky, but it has got nothing on Fire.

Really depends on whether you want the figure to be translucent/transparent or not.  Molding with clear resin is a fairly easy way to make transparent stuff, although getting a good translucent effect by mixing in small amounts of pigment is a skill I never mastered (or even attempted much of).  Avoiding bubbles is the tricky part (and may not be an issue for water elementals anyway).  You can also play around with embedding things - bones, leaves, magical scrolls, fish, seaweed, etc. - is another possibility, but obviously they need to be prepainted and my couple of attempts at it weren't worth the effort - even clear resin distorts the image too much to see detail clearly.  

 

Painting solid fire effects is actually quite easy with a little practice - something Reapers cheap Bones stuff is ideal for, as you can see in this old blog post.  If I were doing them again today I'd probably sculpt on some thick smoke plumes on some of them - I've seen people use painted cotton for the same purpose but it doesn't seem very convincing to me.

 

Opaque water isn't to hard either as long as you remember that water generally isn't really blue.  Seawater is going have a lot greens in there, something conjured up out of a marsh or other standing water may have browns and greens from sediment and algae, and any moving water (like an elemental that's trying to kill you) will have white foam mixed in, which make for good highlights.

 

Opaque air is something of an oxymoron, but if your elemental has a lot of smoke or fog in its makeup you can get away with whites and grays and you can play around with source lighting effects.  Just look at various types of clouds for ideas.  Invisible stalkers are just an empty base, maybe with a previous victim being dragged around as a trophy - style points if it's hanging in mid-air until teh critter drops it to fight.    

Edited September 15 by Rich McGee

[Ragitsu]

3 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Invisible stalkers are just an empty base, maybe with a previous victim being dragged around as a trophy - style points if it's hanging in mid-air until teh critter drops it to fight.    

 

Shameless repost ->

 

Spoiler

 

[Rich McGee]

2 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Shameless repost ->

Grenadier sold an "invisible stalker figure" that was a lead base with clawed footprints sculpted in, although IIRC it was part of a set of comedy figures like a dead wererat in giant mousetrap and a "half elf" that had been bisected vertically, leaving just one side of the poor guy standing there on his one remaining leg. 

 

Many years later GW cribbed the same trick for Frodo with the Ring on, although they also did him as a clear resin fig.

[Cygnia]

 

[Ninja-Bear]

On 9/13/2024 at 6:05 PM, Ragitsu said:

While reading the AD&D 2e Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide (circa 1990), I came across the following excerpt ->

 

 

There is more on the subject, but you get the gist. It is both comforting (and discouraging) to know that this hiccup towards achieving immersion isn't anything new.

Well to be fair when you have DM that can’t seem to understand that the character usually know more than the player knows about game world, what do you expect? 

[Rich McGee]

Re: Seth's video, the term "rules lawyer" goes all the way back to pre-D&D wargamer communities, and it's almost certainly derived from military expressions like "barrack-room lawyer" or "wardroom lawyer" or "guardhouse lawyer" among others.  There's reliable evidence of variations on the term going back to the 1800s in print, and I suspect the oral history extends much farther than that.  The Roman army almost certainly understood the concept just fine even if the phrasing was different in Latin.   

[Ragitsu]

3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Well to be fair when you have DM that can’t seem to understand that the character usually know more than the player knows about game world, what do you expect? 

 

How do you mean?