eternal_sage

Re: First role playing memory my first game was 2nd ed DnD. i was an elven ranger by the name of Malhavoc, and the rest of the party was also fairly generic. i remember the halfling rogue was named Norbert the Naughty or something of that nature. we entered the first dungeon after meeting in the prerequisite barroom and hearing the required call for adventurers. the first room of our first dungeon, and we fight out first enemy, the mighty rat. *que dramatic music* after the paladin and i stopped laughing, we rolled initiative and battle was begun. Norbert closed the distance for attack: a 1! miss, and his dagger goes flying. the rat goes: 20! critical hit, max damage! the rogue is down to -3 health (he only had 3 to begin with, because of a low Con). the rest of us roll horribly, and the Cleric had forgotten to prepare healing spells, so Norbert was down like a clown, and the rest of the party never looked at a rat the same way.

Re: Believe it or not! either way its a win!

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: Order of the Stick ok.... this is really getting annoying. death is only dramatic if its for good. while it seems like Roy MIGHT be dead forever at this rate, we all know he will be back, as will anyone else who may or may not die, and that pretty much makes the whole thing moot. its a revolving door. ho hum. if Rich doesn't get it together soon, i'm out. whatever great ideas he may have started with, killing Roy has pretty much been the nail in the coffin of this series, it just wasn't obvious for the first... what 200 strips he derailed on.

Re: fantasy hero archtypes i'll bite here. i'll agree that Boromir and Gimli are fighters, but Legolas is a Ranger, as is Aragorn. Legolas routinely demonstrated knowledge of the natural world and the keen senses one would expect from a Ranger. he also did not have the pure martial prowess of Boromir and Gimli, either (although i'd possibly argue that Legolas had a few levels of Rogue, while Aragorn had a few levels of Fighter.. eh, whatever). that is, however, quite useless in this context. your list of archetypes generally needs to include something from my list to be able to be built as an RPG character. sure you have a lucky fool character. that tell me nothing of how to build the character. how does he actually interact with the world? is he physical or mental? he could be 7 feet tall and built like a fortress wall. or he could be a small lanky fellow. he could pound things to submission, or he could be dexterous and skillful. i have no idea how to build said character in HERO system, except i would expect to have a few abilities that would have a luck SFX, and possibly (but not necessarily) a low intelligence. now, if you said lucky foolish warrior, i would have something i can hang my hat on. in other words, what i was talking about are physical archetypes, and what you are talking about are mental/personality archetypes. you can play a game (or even write a story, albeit a boring one) without yours, but without mine you have no verbs, because you cannot understand how they interface with the environment. thus, i think my concept is actually more "core" to the character, and likely to be what he was looking for. even if its not, then between the two of us, he likely got a good idea of what he/she wanted to know. no need to get out of shape over it .

Re: fantasy hero archtypes i like this. i think that fantasy, more than many other genres, lends itself to the profession break down (even before i played DnD), as many fantasy stories tend to have fairly well defined skill set differences between major characters, and there happen to be a lot of handy words to describe those.

Re: fantasy hero archtypes i look at it thusly you have 3 "pure types" which are as boiled down and and simple as you can get Fighter(Barbarian), Rogue, Mage (Wizard, Cleric or Druid, doesn't matter) then you have 6 "mixed types" which basically mix and match elements of the above Swashbuckler, Assassin, Bard, Ranger, Paladin, Spellsword i think that really covers you on all types of western fantasy. there may be some others, and you can further mix and match the mixed types (my fav being the nightblade, as its called in the Elder Scrolls video games, which are Spellsword Assassins, basically).

Re: Sell my friends on DCV glad to be of service!

Re: STR vs STR for entangles/grabs?? very true points... maybe for grabs, but not for entangles. any other possible hiccups?

ok, while my wife and i were working on some racial packages for our oriental fantasy game, i had a sudden brainstorm. one of the combat actions that has always been a real pain for me and my group is grappling/entangles (since the mechanics are very similar), mostly because of the complexity of rolling up the BODY/Defense then attacking that number, etc, etc, etc. would it not be simpler to just have a STR vs STR contest, ala clinging? a die of entangle would equal 5 STR, btw. the question here is what kind of problems/issues can you see coming up here. i'm seeing all roses, but i often miss stuff like drawbacks and disadvantages . one thing my wife had pointed out was that it would be hard to break someone out of an entangle made this way (cutting away the webbing/vines/ice/etc). thanks guys!

Re: Order of the Stick "i thought you said this would be hard for you" "yea, that was before i remembered all the people i grew up with were ***holes! that's George at the top of the stairs, he beats his wife. FULL ATTACK!" /\ | thats probably the best quote in at least 30 pages. edit: whoops. forgot to edit the quote! my bad. sorry if that upset anyone!

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

Re: Order of the Stick i love breaking the 4th wall. its so inherently funny! here's hoping that Roy gets rez'ed before issue 700!

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting if you are going for something every similar to DnD, then what John Desmarais said would probably be a good indicator, with the ability for the DM to up or down certain costs to suit them for some items that may not seem "balanced for actually usability value". however, if they were feeling disenchanted (pun intended) with DnD, you may want to freshen things up with a new take on things. any of the low magic/few magic items concepts could do that, as well as making use of the resources (i think its called Wealth in HERO, but i forget, been playing nWoD to much recently) perk to simulate it, and then push all of that stuff under the table to reduce paperwork, etc. or use the resource pools from Dark Champions (can't remember the pages of hand) to keep some of the feel of economy and paperwork, but reduce it somewhat. the reason i'm suggesting this is that i know the economics of DnD was a major breaking point for me. it may not be the same for your players (and thats FINE! ) but you may want to talk about it with them, so you can know how they want to proceed. i am right now getting ready to run a low fantasy game in which money is going to be abstracted into the a resources perk of some kind (exact mechanics to be determined).

Re: [Mythos Supers] having actually had the chance to read the linked post now and not just some input on single power source campaigns, i must say it looks pretty awesome!

Re: Order of the Stick who didn't see that coming?

Re: [Mythos Supers] CoC at its finest! very nice!

Re: Sell my friends on DCV pointing a gun at someone and actually hitting them is difficult. while bullets are fast, a target only moving a small amount becomes very difficult to hit because lead time is required to actually connect. this process takes considerable skill and practice (+3 OCV with handguns, for example) which negates this, but that is what DCV actually is. if the target is sitting perfectly still (as in doesn't know you have a gun), and you are within really close range, then DCV might get halved (or OCV gets a bonus, its all the same in essence). and that really is the point here. a high DCV is just as much a lack of aim on the part of the shooter as it is great dodge skills on the part of the targer, and vice versa, a high OCV is a lack of dodging enough on the part of the target as it is high skill on the part of the attacker. no attack is in a vaccum, and both attacker and defender go into whether the attack hits or misses. one big psychological hurdle for playing a game of any kind, not just an RPG or even just HERO, is the fact that the real world must be boiled down into mechanics that make the game fun. this reduction makes some aspects of the game seem counter to logic without examining them. for example, combat in reality is not a nice orderly procession of swings where everyone waits their turn, thus it makes no sense for everyone to just stand and look at each other. however, what you are missing is the fact that combat is constantly moving, and no one is ever just standing still. if you move in, swing, then on your next turn move back, you didn't stand for 6 seconds wondering when you get to go again, you ran in, pivoted on your front foot as you followed through, then retreated, all without pause. the round merely abbreviates this into discrete snap shots that are easily digested. the derivatives of the formula of combat, if you will.

Re: [Mythos Supers] could be really cool. i am a BIG fan of singular power sources in campaigns, as it tends to take some of the goofy out of supers (a big problem i perceive, but not all will agree on). for instance, i have 2 supers universes, one is mutants only games (martial arts is also viable, but they would be low powered, non super type stuff... just saying) that tends towards 70s-80s style (i guess that would be late silver to early iron? whatever, i don't really care) and the other is set in the 20s and 30s, low power level dark champions type stuff, in which all powers come from ancient deities (Thor and the like) that either gift the heroes powers, or the powers are children of these beings. gods themselves need not apply, btw. this games tends to be more 90s in tone (violent and edgey, basically, like a whole world full of Punishers, and Frank Miller era Daredevils and Batmen) both settings are really fun, because you automatically know what is up with other characters, and trying to make a concept fit into those parameters can be fun. YMMV, of course.

Re: Big Request: Photomanipulation Help (Trek) excellent! have a wonderful time! and happy new year!

Re: Big Request: Photomanipulation Help (Trek) ah, of course... rashashanon or something similar, right? the new year? totally understandable. hope that it goes as it is supposed to for you (since i unfortunately do not know much about it, so i'm not sure if its supposed to be happy or fun )

Re: Order of the Stick has anyone else noticed that Roy is about 15 strips from being dead longer than he's been alive?

Re: Big Request: Photomanipulation Help (Trek) sure, i'll do it, if you have the images to be spliced together. zip them up and shoot me an e-mail (jason@sonicsilence.net). higher resolution is better, obviously.

Re: A good low fantasy game votes for L. Marcus!! its way better than Palin!!

Re: A good low fantasy game thanks for the info Markdoc. thats why i like having you around. you know lots of stuff i don't . glad you lived! lol.