drunkonduty

Had a guy build an Eternal character with an EC: Eternal Powers. ALL his powers and stats were put into the elemental control. (IIRC there were 2 or 3 EC's as some of the points costs were too disparate to fit efficiently into 1 EC.)

Same guy worked out that buying back all the figured stats that were improved by STR gained you a net +1point to spend. (This was in the days before buying back more than 1 CHAR was specifically banned.) He then actually built a character doing this and spent hundreds of extra points. He had no idea why I wouldn't allow that character into my campaign.

I haven't watch BBT for a few years either, but I did enjoy it.

Re. the the man babies. Yeah, exaggerated stereotypes. But it's comedy. You get comedy through exaggeration. (and other methods yes.) I don't get how people are offended by it. As gamers we are all of us a bit that way. And probably many of us have been more like Sheldon, Leonard, etc than we like to admit. (In the past I have displayed many characteristics of both Leonard and Raj. And I knew at least one one guy who had a lot of Sheldon-esque qualities.) One has to be able to laugh at oneself.

Darkstar recently did a lot of pro-bono work (in his lawyer civilian ID) for some aliens who were trying to reclaim the IP rights to the technology from the space craft they had crash landed on Earth. (The aliens were basically like the prawns in District 9 in that they had been a servitor race aboard the ship and didn't actually understand the technology. But as the only survivors they claimed that they had the legal rights to the tech.) Anyhoo, Darkstar would approach them about borrowing the spacecraft. Luckily a couple of other members of the team have the tech chops to be able to fly and if need be repair the craft. Whacky space adventures ahoy!

Knight Rider would have to talk to her sister (DNPC and techpsert.) The conversation would go something along the lines of

KN: "Do we have a space ship?"

Sis: "No. But I could build one if you want to throw a few billion dollars at me."

KN: "Ah..."

Let's face it if there's one thing the show has emphasised it's realpolitick. Dany and Greyworm had bucket loads of "realpolitick."

Dany was a pretender to the throne, one with a decent legal claim too. That, an army, and a dragon was enough.

Greyworm has a say in Westerosi justice because he has an army of several thousand Unsullied. That Jon was still alive some weeks after killing Dany goes to show that, despite his personal animosity towards Jon, Greyworm had enough sense not to just kill him and kick off another war. Makes him smarter than most (all?) of the Kings and Queens of Westeros we've seen in the show.

Never got into Family Ties. More a Young Ones sorta guy.

A good ending. Very satisfying. Yes, the last two seasons had all manner of pacing issues and a few characters being out of character. Although Tyrion is the only central character to be guilty of this. But overall things went the way they were pointed toward since day one. And I was pretty happy to be surprised by a couple of the final outcomes.

It also marks the end of an era. The show has been going for 9 years. That's a long time and a lot of investment.

Add to that the end of the first great arc of the MCU (11 years?) only a few weeks ago  and I am feeling full of conflicting emotions. Something like the little death. Fulfilled. Satisfied. But also lost. Ce la vie.

I'll definitely give it a go. I love the books and a series has the potential to do them justice.

5 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

At this point, I'm hoping that the final episode ends with Bob Newhart waking up and saying, "Wow! I just had the weirdest dream." 

 

Experience Points awarded for those of you who get the joke. . . .

Being old enough to get the reference means I already got tonnes of experience. But I'll accept some more. 🙂

The writing in season 7 was flabby, time filling crap. The writing in season 8 is rushed rushed rushed. Highlights reel indeed!

Could have (should have!) finished off one of the villains (Cersei or Night King, your choice) in season 7, leaving 8 for the final baddie, whoever that might have been.

The plot is being moved along by idiot ball and plot holes. <sigh>. But I am highly invested in the soap by this point. I will see it out.

Q: Where does a 4.5m croc swim?

A: Anywhere it wants.

11 hours ago, Toxxus said:

 

What I want to happen, so badly, is for Sandor to win with fire.  It would be so fitting to destroy his brother the same way his brother scarred him mentally & physically for life.

 

Even more fitting if this involved a flaming sword as Sandor became a chosen one of the Lord of Light.

As Iuz said, that'd be awesome!

8 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Seriously?  

 

No; I'm not laughing-- I'm learning.  As an American, I assumed no Australian could swim because there were forty-seven-thousand deadly life forms just waiting for you to get your toes wet.

 

Aussies LOVE to swim. Seriously. 

There are definitely parts of the country you do NOT go swimming in  a natural body of water (be it river, billabong, or ocean.) Crocs will eat you.  But they're up north, most of the country is fine. Well... there's various stingy jelly fish. They are mostly in the far north too but from roughly October to March they drift south with the currents. They can stop your heart if you get stung badly (it's pretty unusual for that to happen, a fit adult should be fine.) Always have a bottle of vinegar if you're going swimming at the jelly fish time of year, you pour it on the stings. 

Other deadly sea life is very rare. Stone fish, only in coral reefs and only if you're dumb enough to step on one. Coral snakes, also the reef. The blue ringed octopus is really deadly, but also very rare. Found in rock pools in the Sydney region. I have wandered around and through many rock pools in the area, never seen one. Those are the most famous ones. Getting killed by anything else is so rare I don't even know where to start.

Oh and sharks. But hey, sharks are everywhere. They aren't just Australian. We certainly talk about them a bit more than most people, because we as a nation, not me personally, like to spend time in the ocean. Shark attacks happen very very occasionally. But they don't really want to eat you. Seriously. Sharks aren't fond of human. If they mistake you for a seal (surfers in their wetsuits look very seal-like to a shark) they'll take a bite out of you, but spit you making the  sharky equivalent of lemon face. You might bleed out before you got back to land...

Fun statistic: This year in Australia there have been 6 unprovoked & 1 provoked shark attacks. No, I don't know who the hell goes out of their way to provoke a shark. No fatalities.

Fatal croc attacks have averaged about 1 per year since 1958 (no idea about before that.) Here's a link to a news article.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-recent-croc-attacks

and here's a link to an interesting video. A place I would visit, in fact I'd do the swim.

But hey, wasn't this thread about the Broken Kingdoms campaign setting?

Re. Cleganebowl

Well, obviously we want the Hound to win in the end. But I suspect there'll be a couple of heats before the final round.

My predictions are:

Greyworm vs. Mountain. Mountain wins. (We've seen how The Mountain vs. nimble dex based fighter worked out in the past. RIP Oberyn. To make it worse Greyworm won't be using poison and Gregor no longer seems to feel pain. He's basically a flesh golem at this point.)

The Hound vs. several Kingsguard. The Hound wins, he isn't going down  to a bunch of faceless nobodies.

The Final:  Sandor vs. Gregor. Brother to brother. An old family grudge with years of hate to fuel it. It'll be a great sword fight. I look forward to it. I'd love to see The Hound win. But I'm not sure he will...

Who else do we have that could possibly take on the Mountain?

Jon Snow has no personal beef with the guy, so not much dramatic impact. Also, don't think he'd win.

Arya would love to kill him but would leave him to the Hound. Not that I think she could actually kill him. cf. Greyworm above.

Brienne. In Winterfell, I don't think she'll come south. Even if she did, much like Jon, she has no personal stake here, so very unlikely to be the one to take him on. Again, not sure she'd win. I mean she's good. She beat the Hound and Jaime but she takes hits in every battle and a hit from The Mountain...

Jaime. Let's be serious, he couldn't take the Mountain if he still had his good hand.

Bronn. Why would he even try? He ain't stupid.

Drogon (with Dany on his back). Bites Mountain in half with a single snap of his jaws. Anti-climactic but kinda funny.

If I were writing it: Sandor dies but  manages to do enough hurt that the Mountain dies shortly thereafter from wounds.

@DukeBushido, I'm interested that you use the phrase "Alaskan bush" to refer to the country side. I thought that was a uniquely Australian thing.

I also can't swim for <expletive.> In Australia, especially the sunny northern climes from which I hale, this is tantamount to treason.

For a game I recently had to come up with magical defences for the palace of the RajadiRaja of a country that bordered a realm ruled by rakshasa. So the palace needed to be rakshasa proof. It's a Pathfinder game, so rakshasa are masters of shape changing, illusion and deception. Some can teleport. Coincidentally, there was also possibility of the heroes breaking into the palace and stealing a very valuable artifact; the Idol of the Dawn, which was the matching piece to the Idol of the Dusk that they had acquired (cough, cough) earlier.

The main thing  to consider would counter the effectiveness of these abilities is that, since everyone can do this magic, everyone is aware of it and has a heightened awareness of the trouble that can be caused. No one is fooled for a moment when an invisible or tiny  person tries a prank or someone teleports through their door.. No one is taken aback when an enemy suddenly grows to 4m tall, they simply grow 4m tall too and attack.

For castles/homes:

Walls built with the advantage Cannot Be Escaped With Teleport. This is admittedly my own house rule interpretation. Technically it's an advantage for Entangles but I see no reason not to use it for barriers if that's what you want. It stops people teleporting through them. Can be countered with Armour Piercing teleport.

Rats in the sewers. Magically enhanced guard rats. With lasers. Or similar beasties of your own fiendish design. Also, your human(ish?) guards can shrink and patrol the sewers too. Clearly this is punishment duty.

Guard dogs (or whatever) trained to react to the scent of things that they can't see.

Invisibility and/or Shrinking suppression/dispel/detection fields at important junctions. (expensive on points.) And guards there too.

All sorts of alarm and trap spells on valuable items. The traps should be of the non-explosive sort, no sense destroying that priceless painting with your own fireball trap. Or setting fire to the castle/house for that matter. I had mental domination spells that would instruct the target to behave normally until all their friends were asleep then to return to the palace and tell the guards everything about the theft. Again, expensive on points.

Guards (maybe only patrol leaders) with helmets of See Invisible and/or True Seeing (a high level spell that sees through all illusions and shape changes.)

Fake mouse holes (or similar) that are actually traps. Spikey traps.

For the country at large there's not much to be done to prevent incursions.

Choke points can be by-passed by tiny, invisible, or teleporting enemies. Bridges and can be ignored as people cross rivers at other points. Unless there is a massive population density someone can just keep moving along as a tiny person without ever being seen by anyone. They move relatively slowly (or not, reduced movement may or may not be a side effect of shrinking) but they get there eventually. Even armies can move relatively quietly through enemy territory.

Aerial patrols, only a few metres above the ground, could help spot large bodies of troops. Think shrunken soldiers on trained hawks.

Other than that, awareness, awareness, awareness. Of course how much time people bother spending being paranoid depends on the setting.

11 hours ago, Starlord said:

Cavalry is an offensive weapon, Dothraki cavalry in particular.  You can't perform complicated 'held cavalry charges' or flanking strikes in the dark against an enemy you can't see with unknown numbers.  The only option you are left with is an opening charge.

If I was the PC in charge I'd go with the option to dismount and fight from the walls. I'd rather insist upon it.

But the real reason they charged off into the darkness to die was extra-diagetic. It made for a great shot and helped set the scene for a very desperate, very bleak battle.

Agreed it was a great episode. For all my bitching about poor generalship, the shot with the Dothraki lights going out, one by one, was frickin chilling. It gave me goosebumps.

All the following comes with a YMMV.  

(I love a good discussion about story, the how's and why's. But I happily accept that everyone has their own POV on these things and certainly don't take differing opinions as personal affronts. I hope I'm not causing any.)

@Trencher - I agree with your friend; Cersei is the main villain and the climactic conflict needs to be with her. As far as characters go she is just much, much more interesting.

Cersei is just a much better villain than Night King. She is clever (although I always say she's not as clever as she thinks she is) and so utterly ruthless. At the same time we can see how she got to be who she is. We've met her father, her husband, her brothers, and all the other men (not women!) who've shaped her life. She started the whole thing by poisoning someone who was a threat to her children. Despite her best efforts those children are now all dead. She's been horribly abused, she's been a mass murderer, she has hit rock bottom and climbed back up, all the way to the throne. She has earned her place as main villain. She's a great character, well written, well acted.

I wanted the undead finished off last season to be honest. I am so over zombies and all things zombie like. Night King is dull dull dull. All he does is move implacably along killing everything in his path. Toxxus mentioned above wanting a villain monologue before Nighty got knifed. How? The guy's never said a word. And what would he say? "Brains?" Or maybe it'd be a long diatribe about how if he is a bitter and twisted thing, he was made that way by forces that are now extinct, but is exacting a terrible revenge on all living things anyway. You know, the whole long pre-history of Westeros? Tragic, but not very suitable to a climactic battle. Sorry Toxxus, but I gotta disagree with you there.

To put it another way - the two (main) arcs are:

The Iron Throne - a character driven conflict between a bunch of very well drawn characters, all with believable motives, all of whom have a great deal of audience investment.

The Dead - representing forces antithetical to all life. Ominous and terrifying, but ultimately impersonal. A natural disaster.

I plain don't like disaster movies. I find them kinda dull. The only way they work is by showing the stresses they place on the characters. Yes, we have gotten some of that. But it's been the B plot the whole way along. The audience (and I'm going to make a broad sweeping generalisation) is going to invest more in the A plot because that's the one they've had the most opportunity to invest in.

Politics, and all the vicious, backstabbing skullduggery that comes with it, are much more interesting to me. Okay, yes, one can do stories with all the politicking back and forth with zombies (Walking Dead, I assume, does this) but that's not how GoT has unfolded. It could have. But it didn't. So the final, climactic fight needs to be the Starks, Dany, and Cersei. 

Watched it last night.

Loved it.

Surprised by the low body count (of central characters.)

One thing that continues to bug me is the total and utter lack of any sort of tactical sense being displayed by the heroes (or indeed anyone in Westeros.)

They have a big castle. With, like, walls and stuff. They could have sat on the walls with their giant flying flame-throwers breathing fiery destruction down where ever needed.

But nooooooo. Let's all stand outside in the wind and the dark and wait for the hordes and hordes of undead things that'll just charge straight on  down your spear, tangling it, while a buddy of theirs bites your face off. Oh and, that Dothraki cavalry? Let's just let them charge off into the darkness, against impossible odds. They'll be fine.

Seriously, where did they learn to general? Watching WW1 documentaries and thinking "Yeah, attrition, that's the way."

7 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

Exactamundo 

Quoted for Fonziness.

Looking forward to it.

5 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

I thought this was going to be a discussion about contacts from a roleplaying perspective.  A contact can be an old friend, a colleague, an employer, an old lover, a rival or even a sometime enemy.  IMHO if a PC is asking a big favor of a contact, that should be roleplayed out.  Favors are another interesting concept which can tie in old storylines(since the GM can award favors based upon what the PCs did on an adventure).  

Totally agree with this. Contacts are a great opportunity to have a good role play situation. All types of situations.

I DON'T think that all contacts are necessarily great friends of the PC. They can be, if the player pays for "Good Relationship" (and maybe a high level of availability. Better friends make more time to help.) But it's not a necessary condition for contacts. Some contacts are only there for the money. Some feel an obligation but may not actually like the PC. Although this might be better for one-off favours it could still be a contact. Some are casual acquaintances who are happy to help in a small way, if it doesn't put them out or if there's a good reason to help. Some could be good friends who will help if they can, but be unwilling to take risks to do so. "It's more than my job's worth, buddy. But see you at the bar Friday."  The rules also allow for contacts who have been blackmailed, so they only help out because the PC will cause them trouble otherwise. As an example of this latter think of Turk from Daredevil. He could be modeled as a contact, but certainly not one who likes DD. (Yes, Turk could also be modeled as a Streetwise roll.)

One other thing I always do with contacts is to let the players know that the relationship is a 2 way street. Sometimes the contact will ask the PC for help. For reasons of making better drama I'd only ever use a contact that the PCs have interacted with in game. The more interaction the better. It's just better story than someone they've never met rocking up and handing out a quest.

1 minute ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

It's funny....

 

I've never really put it together before, but 4e seems to be about the time the hair-splitting started getting more and more severe....

 

It was also the introduction of character-building software.....

 

 

I have to wonder if there's a connection-- if the spread of the software and the growing reliance on it may have influenced how we began to think about building characters, rather than simply being a tool to help us get our ideas down.

Good point. I think you're right.

Brian, you mentioned other skills above, and were worried about charging for rarely used skills.

My advice:  don't worry. Your judgement on these matters is just fine. You clearly understand the issues. All you have to do is think about what's going to happen in your campaign.

Some skills are genuinely rarely of use to dealing with the plot. You (or someone) mentioned chess above. Unless chess is going to come up in game and you need to know just how good a player a character is, it doesn't need defining. Cool. Someone is a chess grandmaster. It matters not at all. Player paid no points, 99% of the time it makes no difference; it doesn't even much impress the average NPC. (PC walks up to attractive NPC at the bar with intent of seducing them in order to learn where the Master Villain's lair is. PC: "Hey baebe I'm a chess grandmaster." NPC: "Ugh," turns and leaves.) Paid nothing, gets nothing.

Other skills will come up often enough to both need defining and justify their cost. In my pulp game (I don't have a pulp game, I'm just day-dreaming.) Mechanics will be of use every time there's an old car that needs to be fixed in a hurry, or the plane needs to be repaired after a crash landing, or the villain's mechanical servant needs to be disabled. BUT if these are not things that will be an issue in your game, mechanics ain't worth points.

Anything that is part of the core concept of a character IS going to be used regularly. So if a PC wants to be the globe trotter who knows everyone, everywhere you'll need to model it. Your resource pool plan will work just fine for contacts and AK.

Other characters will only develop these contacts as play happens.

Last minute edit: I just read what Duke Bushido said about YOU decide what to pay points for. That.

I always give the players the option of floating contacts. That is, the contact isn't defined until the player needs one. Then they get to say, "Luckily I know someone in Casablanca. He knows everything that's going on there." Or "My old army buddy now works for British Intelligence." You can take it further and allow them to spend spare XP to buy a contact as and when they need them. This alleviates some of the problems you've mentioned. They only spend points on Contacts their going to use at least once.

You can give them more points to spend on contacts and AK.

There's also Skill Enhancers (Well Connected reduces the cost of Contacts, I'm sure there's an equivalent for AK.)

As the GM you can make sure their contacts are worth the points they've spent on them. But it occurs to me that it can be difficult to make it believable with a Globe Trotting campaign... "Buddy! What are doing Kinshasa? Didn't I just see you in Shanghai last week?"

Oh, there's always a VPP (which I guess is how resource points work anyway) for Contacts that represents an ability to make friends wherever you go. You can call it Makes Friends Easily. Say 15 points with limitations like requires a conversation skill roll. Something similar for AK. Call it a Collection of maps and Baedekers, has a bulky focus, takes a little Extra Time.

Not that I mind the players spending their points on these things. I'm pretty generous with the XP (3 pts per session isn't uncommon (1 for showing up, 1 for role play, 1 for danger)) and the XP has gotta be spent on something.

PRE attacks are messy and very open to abuse.

That being said I still like the idea in general. There just needs to be some more limits on their use. Like  only once per encounter or something.