Fantasy Immersion and the Things that Ruin it.

[Scott Ruggels]

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

As long as we're being irritated by fantasy races

 

(we are still being irritated by those, right?)

 

Why are there eleven kinds of elf, four kinds of dwarf, and one kind of human?

 

 

Psssst. (I think that’s the other thread). 

[Spence]

2 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

I haven't seen the issue either and didn't think it was one till I read one of the other threads on here.

 

Yea, I've read some of them too, and it is still is not an issue. 

There isn't anything in existence that won't be an issue for someone. 

I choose to reserve my outrage for the real world and not the fictitious one of fantasy RPGs .....

 

[Vanguard]

4 minutes ago, Spence said:

 

Yea, I've read some of them too, and it is still is not an issue. 

There isn't anything in existence that won't be an issue for someone. 

I choose to reserve my outrage for the real world and not the fictitious one of fantasy RPGs .....

 

 

Yup.

 

Out of likes and such but 👍

[Lord Liaden]

Outrage? Absolutely, reserve that for real abuses and atrocities.

 

But annoyance? Irritation? Hey, I paid good money for those games, I have a right to complain about something they do that I don't like.

[Lord Liaden]

49 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

Metal Plated? Aren't those just zombies in armor or do they have actual plates grafted to the bones?

 

 

True to make Highlanders work in Hero was a bit of a mental exercise but even that was fun.

 

It was one exceptional skeleton, Palomon: The Cursed King, an adventure by Aaron Allston in Adventurers Club #16. Paloman was a king in Mythic Greece cursed by Hephaestus, his flesh burned away and his bones changed to living, burning-hot metal. What I used instead in my game was an alchemical process to plate a skeleton's bones with bronze, making them tougher and stronger.

 

Re Highlander, Carlos Ortiz wrote quite a nice PDF mini-book for playing in the Highlander world using Fifth Edition rules, Highlander Hero. It was hosted for free download on Tony Moller's marvelous website, Star Hero Fandom.com. As you can see, while the original website has passed on, the Internet Archive has preserved most of its contents.

[Vanguard]

@Lord Liaden

 

Thanks!!

 

Gave Highlander Hero a quick look over and it looks like we did some of the same things.  One of the few things we changed, off hand, was that Immortals in our game regenerated lost limbs and body parts.  Mainly because during the series, we only saw 1 Immortal that was missing a hand while none of the others were even missing fingers.  And we found it a bit hard to believe that after hundreds of years of fighting with edged weapons, no-one lost a finger.

[tkdguy]

Thanks for the kind words and the link, Lord Liaden!

 

I am that Carlos Ortiz who wrote that years ago. I started in 4th Edition with write-ups of Duncan MacLeod and Methos. Then I converted it to 5th Edition a few years later and posted ii in these forums. Someone was kind enough to turn it into a PDF. I'm glad you enjoyed my work.

[Vanguard]

@tkdguy

 

You did/do good work!  (I don't have any more "reactions" today so 👍

[tkdguy]

Just now, Vanguard said:

@tkdguy

 

You did/do good work!  (I don't have any more "reactions" today so 👍

 

Thank you. I am quite pleased with the way it turned out.

[Duke Bushido]

6 hours ago, tkdguy said:

Thanks for the kind words and the link, Lord Liaden!

 

I am that Carlos Ortiz 

 

Dude, we know that.

 

Some of the pictures of your game stuff that have posted in the past included items with your name on them.   

 

I think it was out of courtesy that we never shouted out at it.  

 

 

Seriously, though:  it was well done.     

 

You, uh...   you got any more of that 4e lying around...   ?       

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

9 hours ago, Vanguard said:

If I remember correctly, he couldn't kill Harry because the his mom sacrificed herself to protect him.  He sacrifice created some kind of magical feedback thingy that made Voldemort's spells rebound back at him and wouldn't allow Volde to touch him without causing pain/damage.  

 

At least that's what I recall from misty memory.  It's been a while since I've watched the movies and haven't really felt the urge to watch them again so could be misremembering.

 

My wife assures me that you are correct (We've had this discussion numerous times, when she wants to tell me why Voldemort is such a great villain (yawn).

 

The problem is he is so evil he decided "I'd rather do this clean and remotely, with my little stick."   You can kill a baby with a well-placed stomp.  Voldemort is inept.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

Well, I do think "wouldn't allow Volde to touch him without causing pain/damage" also covers stomps.

[Duke Bushido]

"I didn't think I needed to spell it out, but I left plenty of hints that Voldemort was suffering from COVID-19"

 

---- J.K. Rowling, any minute now, probably.....

 

[tkdguy]

5 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Dude, we know that.

 

Some of the pictures of your game stuff that have posted in the past included items with your name on them.   

 

I think it was out of courtesy that we never shouted out at it.  

 

 

Seriously, though:  it was well done.     

 

You, uh...   you got any more of that 4e lying around...   ?       

 

 

 

I can check around. I converted some of the MERP races into HERO 4E package deals at one point, but I can't find my original work. I also did the Castle Falkenstein package deals at Surbrook's Stuff, but I don't remember if those were 4E or 5E.

[Grailknight]

7 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Well, I do think "wouldn't allow Volde to touch him without causing pain/damage" also covers stomps.

 

It doesn't cover dropping rocks or starting a fire  or having the pet giant snake eat him though.  But I 'll give it a pass because ultimately it's a kids book with little to no graphic violence until the audience ages up for the movies.

 

[DShomshak]

As far as Voldemort trying to zap baby Harry with his Big Kill-o-Matic Spell instead of just having his sname eat him or something, I think Rowling did okay in presenting the psychological reasons. Mainly, that he started out a homicidal sociopath and got steadily worse as he broke off parts of his soul to make himself immortal. (Add that to the Evil Overlord Rules: Damaging your soul for power never ends well.) And he really, really liked using his Kill-o-Matic Spell. So why wait, like, 30 seconds to arrange some other death? Just wave the wand and do it now!

 

And for all that he's brilliant and erudite in some ways, Voldemort is sloppy on the basics of magic -- the stuff that doesn't seem to have an immediate payoff in power. It's why he didn't know that willing sacrifice could create a magical shield powerful enough to bounce the Kill-o-Matic Spell. Or that a bit of his own soul would break off and lodge in Harry. Or correctly parsing the TOS for the Super Powerful Wand.

 

In Harry's world, evil seems to involve a degree of stupid, or at least blindness. I'm okay with that.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

As for Things I'm Tired Of Seeing, I'm a bit irritated with the concept of the "professional adventurer." I suppose it's useful for getting PCs into adventures: Village/Kingdom/Whatever has problem, hires "adventurers" to solve it. PCs take the job, aadventure begins. B ut the term is a little meta for my tastes.

 

Like, James Bond isn't an "adventurer." He's a spy. This results in him having adventures, but that's not his goal as such. Mike Hammer isn't an "adventurer": He's a private detective. The Fellowship of the Ring weren't "adventurers," either. They were on a specific quest and when it was over they went home and did other things. Though that's not very good for an ongoing game.

 

I like when there can be some frame to explain why the PCs keep getting into trouble. Our last FH game had a good one: The PCs are the neighborhood watch. Looking for trouble, in a sense, as we stop drunken bar fights and such... but this is a Fantasy city where small events can entangle one in larger conflicts such as the power struggle between the Duke, the nobles and the merchants, or the stolen McGuffin that people are chasing is magical, or there's stuff buried beneath the city that could reveal the world Isn't What You Thought It Was. Worked out really well. The GM had to end the campaign for personal reasons, but I've lifted the concept for my own use.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

I can certainly appreciate and respect why you would feel that way. Just to consider the issue from a different angle, fantasy game settings represent a heightened reality. They feature circumstances, complications, threats, opportunities that would never have existed in the corresponding historical eras of the real world. The "professional adventurer" can be viewed as a heightened response to that reality, in some ways analogous to the costumed heroes (and villains) of a supers world.

[tkdguy]

Professional adventurers probably wouldn't be known as such. They'd be referred to as a mercenary group, a band of wandering heroes, or a pack of troublemakers. My experiences lead me to believe most folks would use the last term the most often.

[Lord Liaden]

That sounds reasonable. But ultimately, "professional adventurer" is a fantasy genre convention, like "free trader" is in sci-fi games. It's been around so long that people just accept it, even expect it.

[tkdguy]

"Murder Hobo" is another widely accepted term.

 

I once thought of creating a guild for professional adventurers. "Murder Hobos Inc." would have been the guild's name.

[Spence]

1 hour ago, tkdguy said:

Professional adventurers probably wouldn't be known as such. They'd be referred to as a mercenary group, a band of wandering heroes, or a pack of troublemakers. My experiences lead me to believe most folks would use the last term the most often.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

That sounds reasonable. But ultimately, "professional adventurer" is a fantasy genre convention, like "free trader" is in sci-fi games. It's been around so long that people just accept it, even expect it.

 

In a fantasy game I'd call them Explorers or Border Scouts.  The people that guard or expand the frontiers.

[assault]

Presumably if murder hobos were a real threat, there would be people assigned to deal with them.

People who might resemble them in many ways, but with ties to the communities they protect. They might be a little less powerful, but could potentially have backup.

[Spence]

8 minutes ago, assault said:

Presumably if murder hobos were a real threat, there would be people assigned to deal with them.

People who might resemble them in many ways, but with ties to the communities they protect. They might be a little less powerful, but could potentially have backup.

 

There are people assigned to contain them. 

Especially at Cons where they are forced to use soap and water before they are allowed in......

[Scott Ruggels]

11 hours ago, Spence said:

 

There are people assigned to contain them. 

Especially at Cons where they are forced to use soap and water before they are allowed in......

I wish...