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Thia Halmades

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Everything posted by Thia Halmades

  1. Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO Yeah, it does feel pretty good. Monday I can actually discuss rules I've read in their proper format. Oh, susano, meant to thank you for your excellent post in this thread that led me to a breakdown of the revisions from 4 to 5. Some of the stuff went right past me, but I caught the gist of a lot it. The author seemed generally pleased with the material, with some gripes. Huge, huge help, really. Thanks again.
  2. Re: Chronicles of Gor Like I said, that's their schtick. With all the verve that 'schtick' implies. Again, I'm in accord here. The ones who know what they're about are really, really awesome folk; I've had plenty of biker friends who are utterly cool. And then there're the ones who take themselves a little too seriously, and that's when it gets ugly.
  3. Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO I haven't gotten that far yet, I'm still on Class Package Deals. However... (wait for it) MY COPY OF FREd CAME TODAY! I WILL HAVE IT FOR THANKSGIVING!! HUZZAH! (And the men cheered, the women swooned, the children waved multi-colored banners and the band played appropriate music)
  4. Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO Steve - that's pretty much exactly where I hope to go; start here. Go wherever you want. I want them to have the option of saving up so if they want to tack on additional packet, they can do that. It also allows me to build "PrC" type structures that work within the confines of the campaign without, as someone else had said earlier, trying to play d20. As I said, i3ullseye has an excellent point; classes aren't all bad, but I want to use them as a spring board for a beginning, not the entire road map. Can someone tell me exactly how powerful (or not) 30 points of magic actually is? Is there a huge difference between 30 & 40? I have no point of reference.
  5. Re: Morwold: So how does a Fantasy World Come to Be? Good morning, zippercomics! Glad to hear that some of what the collective chatted over yesterday helped out. Leaving world religion and creation myths behind for a moment, I'll attempt to assist in your new question: One of the things I've discovered about HERO is in its insane flexibility. So let's say you want to include both 'Dog Men' and 'Fox Men' as you say. Hey, canines come in breeds. People come in breeds (White, Black, Asian, Jewish, Indian, AmerIndian, etc. etc.) Why not build in a variation on a theme with minor mechanical changes? Foxes tend to be more sly, and a little faster. Wolves are hardier & tougher, but are more even tempered. A little research into breeds & types will give you ideas as to how they hunt, live, socialize, etc. Also, AmerIndian Shamanist mythos will give you a lot of ideas as to the roles the Spirits of these creatures play in their creation myths. Bottom line of point one: it's very easy to justify what you want to do, the only decision you need to make is whether you truly want to do it that way. So you develop a city, and instead of loading it up with different races of people, you load it up with one 'race' - Canids, and multiple breeds within that race. If anything that becomes more believable in an open ended world than a strictly defined group, such as all Wolves or all Chihuahas.
  6. Re: Chronicles of Gor I'm with Michael. They're... frightening. And, exactly as I say, they're a loud, violent speed bump when the rattan starts flying. And exactly as he says; skanky. However, that's their schtick. If you're into that sort of thing... I'll be over there. Mr. Lucius: This is what I mean when I say 360. I have one of the original launch devices. My wife is a rare creature in that she supports my gaming 100%. And a lucky man am I. Although there was a great deal of screaming during the set-up process. The monkeys don't tell you there's a switch on the AV cable to tell the unit to transmit in HD. Rowr. I'll have to take Steve's advice and get UMA I think, as well as Ninja Hero. Curses!
  7. Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO Good morning. Chris: Excellent point, I hadn't thought of it that way. I consider it a factor of 'survivability' and never actually ascribed it as "health." That's why PCs discuss their health in terms of percentages as opposed to raw numbers; "I'm down 10" not only breaks continuity, but doesn't really mean much for the 10th level Paladin. i3ullseye: I've got two separate opinions to your post, because as usual, your local moderate looks at a thing and tries to find a balance for it. Classes are not, as you say, a totally bad idea. They started off as a decent premise and were then taken to their logical conclusion; i.e., pure structure, no manueverability. This is why I had to institute a rule in my d20 campaign; in the event a Splat book is released that actually has something that fits or works with your character, or introduces a PrC that makes perfect sense, we will revise your character to accomodate it. Why? Because I don't feel like penalizing people for something they couldn't have known about. I think classes, as a tool, and I want to reinforce that idea, are fantastic. I've been reading Steve's Fantasy Hero and I'm really getting my brain wrapped around how the system works, although I'm totally lost on what "30 pts. of Magic" means for anyone yet, but I still haven't a) finished the book and don't have FREd yet. Within FH he covers two basic concepts; Race, and Class, and he tackles both of them in such a way that makes absolute and total sense to me. Further, I know that I have the capacity, with an eraser and a little brain power, to do the math and come up with something different. Unlike d20, I'm not beholden to any core race that he designed; I can take the ideas he set up, and using them (and the rules, which are consistent, thank G-d) as a guidepost, create whatever I please. The section right after that is, you guessed it, Class package deals. The difference between HERO & d20 becomes immediately apparant; here are a half dozen ways to interpret "Wizard." Go nuts. The only thing the package really dictated was a point buy for pre-built abilities and pre-deducted disads, all built in to itself, which saves the player points. Add to that the leftover points after selecting a base race and class, and possibly a local packet (Academy Graduate, City Dweller, etc.) and all of a sudden you've taken giant leaps towards defining your experience, all within the boundaries of HERO, and - here's the kicker - with the ability to deviate at any time. d20 doesn't let you do that. If you want to improve at something in HERO, you burn points. You want your Wizard to start tanking? Get the right protect spells and buy up CVs in staff combat. I actually have an NPC who follows a build that I can't get quite right in d20 because of the class system, and she works in spite of it. But I keep having to make these wacked out sacrifices, while front-loading her with abilities she doesn't need because they were granted by one of her base classes (I can't go into too much detail, I have players who read the board, those gits). But to you see where I'm going here? Classes, properly used, are a wonderful guide, but shouldn't define your entire experience. That's why when people complain about players who plan out 20 levels, I get aggravated, because the PC has simply glommed onto the very mechanic that d20 provides; these things will happen in this order so long as you gain levels. Therefore, planning is the only way to truly break through. And while PrCs may have originally been 'specializations' that required all sorts of DM permissions, these days it's as much an outgrowth of what the player wants to do. PrCs are almost (note: almost) an extension of a HERO concept; you have the prereqs, go this way. Who am I to stop them unless the choice is just unbalancing? Now there was one other thing you said that I take issue with: Two things, really. First, if you've never seen someone build a useless d20 character, I'm stunned. I've seen it more times than I've seen a clean build. A poor feat selection here, a bad skill choice there, it's astonishing how badly someone can screw up a fail safe system. And that's as much the fault of the DM (me!) as it is the player. I can't rightly blame the system, but then you get all the hard core screaming "Hey, you're power gaming!" Are they power gaming, or are they just building a character that isn't useless? mayapuppies said something about HERO that's stuck with me - it may even be on this thread. Simply, they can build out a really, really interesting 150 pt. character that can't do diddly in combat; and I can build a 50 pt. Combat Monster that can mop the floor with them. You can dig the same grave in d20; it's on the DM to make sure that the glint in a player's eye isn't permanently dimmed by distress looking at the mess their sheet has become. If that means sticking them with more packages early on and letting them get their feet wet before saying "Here's 125 points, go nuts!" Again, a class package acts as a wonderful tool (and a way to save some points if it has disads). But in both cases, the DM needs to know the system well enough (or have a member of Rules Lawyer Union 858 available) to guide those players through the creation process. My morning thoughts on the matter.
  8. Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO Why I oughta... It's not that I haven't done diceless; I spent years working on a diceless system with my best friend, that we used purely for solo campaigns, which was an awesome way to burn through an evening. Smoke, tell stories. Very old school, when you think about it. Awesome times, and where I cut my teeth on telling persistent stories in persistent worlds, which was what a lot of that was about. There's an inherent simplicity that comes from a system that was based purely on trust & drama that you can't replicate around a gaming table; too many disparate personalities all trying to get something different out of the experience, and struggling to make their voice heard above the din. What I need to do (and from my understanding, what HERO allows me to do) is cinematic combat, as the players see the scene acted out. Not only is D&D a board game cum RPG, it's a board game that encourages the use of miniatures. Now I'm all for minis when the fight calls for it, but as a matter of course it just gets frustrating. I realize that puts me in the minority, but hey. More storytelling, less pewter pushing.
  9. Re: Chronicles of Gor I'll get them both, but it'll take me some time, because my 360 & my mortgage have pretty much tapped me out. That, and I'm forbidden to buy Any New Things until after the holidays. Which is great for my wallet, but poor for my me-centric, buy it now sensibilities. See it? BUY IT NOW! It's a reflex. Like the word Paladin. I just jump when I hear it. However, you're both correct. I want distinctive fighting styles which employ cinematic combat. Tragically, tgrandjean, I can't abide PDFs. Partially because I stare at a screen all day long as is. Partially because I like books, and coffee. And if she weren't asthmatic, cigarettes. But I make due with what I can, which leaves me with books, coffee and a strong addiction to chocolate.
  10. Re: Paladin help I would assume (not having FREd in my possession) that the two are separate; that Continuous isn't the same as Cumulative. Then you'd need to tack on a mechanic for it dealing additional damage (every day? Every time they break the oath? Every X period before making repairs in regards to the oath itself, which they broke?)
  11. Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO I'm not about to flip from one system to another system to a third system just because the third system has two hundred charts which I need to use as wall paper in the living room to resolve a single sword swing. We've covered the whole "Goblin hit you in the foot and you somehow die" thing from Rolemaster. Ick. No. I want cinema, which means making the mechanics less visible, not more visible.
  12. Re: Chronicles of Gor Grr. Argh.
  13. Re: Chronicles of Gor Kata: they are more practice exercises, but they're exercises which are built to teach you to (as you say) mow down squads of mooks by handling multiple enemies at once, flowing from target to target. By High Style melee I mean cinematic fight sequences with special moves. I want the players in my campaign to be able to build a martial art for themselves that goes beyond the basic swing/block. Rolling dodges, complex fighting manuevers, the whole nine. The problem with my fight scenes isn't the fight scenes themselves; it's the engine being used to explain the fight scene. And that's a fatal flaw. If I have players who are talking their way through the fight, instead of me working out each 'miss' roll in dramatic fashion, combat scenes will improve. People will be inheretntly more involved, and that's what I'm actually looking to do. Er... UMA? Ultimate Martial Artist?
  14. Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO taxboy4: Welcome to my dilemma. This, among many other things, is why I'm in the process of flipping to HERO. I finally got a copy of Fantasy HERO last night, and that's going very well for me. I can say with some matter of satisfaction that it's the best supplement book I've read in ages, despite not having a hard cover and high-profile artwork. I read books for the actual content; I don't give a whit about artwork. Even though it's gone, I have difficulty missing it. If anything, some of the more basic black & white stuff is more interesting to look at, since it isn't the same old, same old. Combat is something else entirely. In d20, the Hydra was built - get this - to reward players for taking Improved Sunder, which is odd, since Sunder specifically says you have to be holding an item, but you can Sunder a creature's neck. Does that mean I found the rules decaptitation? I doubt it. Because there are no such creatures. The bulk of your combat does revolve around swing, hit, deal damage, next. I want cinema in my fighting, and I want the players to add to the cinema. HERO does that. d20 does not.
  15. Re: Chronicles of Gor You mean Two-Chucks as they're generally referred to. Yeah, they've been around for aeons. Generally reviled, except by other Tuchucks. They have the rep you'd expect while still being able to attend events; the women are handled rough, the men drink to excess, and no one actually wants them on their team during War. If you draw the Tuchuck Straw, odds are you got a very loud, brief, violent speed bump.
  16. Re: Chronicles of Gor That's about the reaction I was expecting. Actually, since I have the horse here, may as well ask the question: does your book cover high style melee combat as well? If I want my FH swordsman Hero to 'break' from standard Fantasy fare and bust out a kata on someone, does your book cover that?
  17. Re: Chronicles of Gor GRUNTS. Thank you. I think. Should I thank you? I'm not certain. Now I know, and I may have preferred ignorance. Ne'er the less, I know. Oh, Susano, my apologies. I had your book in my hands last night, and I actually need it, and plan on getting it, but my Xbox 360 beat your book to the punch. I'll likely get my copy next month, hopefully as a holiday gift. You may curse out my 360, if you like.
  18. Re: Paladin help I'd add: Requires Words (May (deity) bear witness!), Gestures (clasping hands over the two primary pact makers), Only When in Service to the God. Add an additional d6 to the base. What's that come out too?
  19. Re: Chronicles of Gor Out of my train wreck curiosity: would this be the series with Elven psychos and orcs who shag halflings and split them in half by 'the act', if you will? It would answer an ancient question that's been kicking around my mind, because a former associate of mine referenced the events, but never the books. Heaven help me if there's more than one series that's this distinctive.
  20. Re: Campaign idea! This explains why I have limited memory of it; all I remember of that game is snoozing while drawing gobs of spells from specific MOBs in a specific zone. Right now I'm playing Dragon Quest VIII, but that'll get shelved while I give my shiny new Xbox 360 sweet, sweet lovin'.
  21. Re: Paladin help Some words to consider for your more militant version: Advocate (one who protects the interests of others) Keeper, Oath-Keeper Steward Warden Watchman Some synonyms I pulled from Capt. Thesauras, my favorite super hero. Your collection agents/contract police would (my view, YMMV) behave in a manner which supports the conclusion of trade; again, I'm with you on this, it doesn't occur to me that the Paladin of a Trade Deity is concerned if someone's getting a raw deal; they want to concern themselves that they're getting the deal they signed on for. If you want to buy Gummi Worms for a bag of gold dust, and their only worth a thimble full of the stuff, hey. By all means, we can do business. The Paladin has no interest or emotion here; just that both sides adhere to the agreement. Somewhere in Exalted there's an ability to create a pact with Higher/Lower powers; said Pact redoubles its penalty on an Oath-Breaker. Giving the Paladin that ability, a ... lessee if I can stumble my way through my limited knowledge here... Your Word is Your Bond. Drain (Stat). Trigger, breaking an oath set before a Paladin. The Paladin may, once per day (Charge, refreshes at prayer time, usually dawn) oversee a deal (pact) set between two parties. The Pact covers all people involved at the time the pact is made; it cannot cover promises made by a man about another man; it holds the oath-maker accountable. One who fails to complete their oath, within the oath's set limits, suffers the consequences of an EGO drain/PRE drain and will be marked (obvious physical deformity, a scar, a Scarlet Letter) for all to see. The mark can be covered (-10 on Disguise attempts) but a Paladin can always suss out the mark, no matter whether its concealed or not. Some Paladins may take direct action as soon as they realize that there is an oath-breaker among them, others may choose to sit back and watch and determine what action needs to be taken. Sorry I can't do the math on the fly, but I think you get the gist. Also, the Paladin would be able to purchase additional charges as they saw fit (again, I have no clue how to cost this). Is that something along what you're thinking of?
  22. Re: Paladin help Good then, just wanted to be sure. My g/f would make with the pummeling.
  23. Re: Campaign idea! *blank stare* I'm willing to bet you're right, because my memory is ****e for this sort of thing, but for the life of me I don't recall in the slightest. Are you sure you mean 8? Squall, Seifer, crazy lady with the headress? The big dance scene?
  24. Re: GM's "Notebook" *knocks twice, quietly sits down* Sorry, I'm an FH guy. I'm just thread surfing and thought "Hey, all I do is DM, I'm qualified to answer this!" So. I used to not write anything down. Then I forgot it all, because my imagination takes up way too much time creating new things that current things get lost more easily than a cat with a canary. Now I keep everything in difficult to use ruled notebooks. I've learned to number each page, put icons next to important things, and in the next one (I'm going on the 4th since I started doing this) I'll leave page one blank for a Table of Contents. You can sidestep some of this mess and simply go with a standard three ring, but I don't like the rings, they get in my way, so I have a genuine preference for being a little archaic in this case. In so far as plot generation and control: - Draft basic plot. Determine which events are 'musts' to drive the world, and which are controllable by the PCs. On average I have two or three "must happen" events which are outside the PCs control per campaign. These are the hinges that change the direction of the primary story arc (losing Gandalf, Luke getting his hand chopped off, the capture of Morpheus, etc.) and force the PCs to draft a new response to get towards their Epiphany/Finale stage of the adventure. Because I work in segemented minor arcs, which tie into an over-arc, this is very easy for me to do, and works directly with how I think. - Then I draft a brief series of minor arcs, rattle off some NPC names, races/class combinations that sound interesting, and go with a standard stat point buy assuming NCM. A pair of 18s, 16s, 14s, 12s. Straight down. That actively ignores HERO point buy, but I'm not terribly concerned about point balancing all my NPCs; I worry about that later. In d20 you can do it with impunity; in HERO I have to rework my math a bit, but you get the rough idea. I need them to be able to walk & talk; any combatants get much more careful treatment. - Draft major NPCs (up to 4hrs each). This is a nightmare, and the bulk of the "work." The plot is easy; the characters are a pain. Most of this material exists in Gmail and is exchanged between myself and my co-GM who lives a couple of states away. Because he's the mathematician, I let him handle the mechanics and the creature drafts and balancing, while I focus on dramatic situations. So I have all of that stored safely on my mail server. - Then, lastly, I usually post a post-game thread (when I both think about AND have time) to either of my campaign boards. I also tend to ask things like "What were you doing last game, anyway? Oh yeah..." Hope that gives you some insight!
  25. Re: Thank you ... Sorry, I'm running away from the Fantasy Boards for the moment. I've had a similar experience with those folks as you have, Tenzil Kim, and your thread has prompted one question in my mind: Why aren't you running a game? Leave the mechanics to the local Rules Lawyer Union 858, plop your plot down and run y'sef a game. It'll make you feel good... "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." - G.B. Shaw
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