RPG Talk

Decided to run a little Sword and Sorcery with Savage Worlds in a few months, so doing a little leg work now to see what's out there. Y'all may find these resources helpful.

A mess of Mongoose Conan RPG stuff in pdf. Core rules and supplements.
geek-night.org/conan/
The Road of Kings in particular is a fantastic supplement. Little if any stat blocks, so a great system neutral resource.

Also, when Black Industries was putting out Warhammer 2ed RPG, they put out a lot of fantastic material on their site. From a ton of fan made scenarios to random generators. The site is gone, but here's the old archive link. My particular favorite is the 'How you got your hand weapon' chart. I've used it in every fantasy game since.
web.archive.org/web/20070818182954/http:...WH&content=downloads

Anyway, maybe y'all will find some of this useful.

Played first session of 3rd whfrp two weeks ago. I really like,the dice and the abstracted ranges.

Not so sure yet about character generation and the cards for abilities etc. you still have to record it on your character sheet and the info on the card is not easily available for the players outside the gaming session (unless they also own the set). Since we tried to generate the characters separate from the dm (to speed up the start of the session), this hampered us.

Anybody else here tried it yet? What's your feelings?

One thing I really enjoy is Epic Words, a great site that keeps the necessary stuff for your campaign(s) readily available online. We posted our character descriptions there, and session reports. Dm puts maps and background materials there. Simple interface. All in all a good tool.

Anyone else experience with Epic Words?

I've been running a weekly Pathfinder campaign (Kingmaker) for the past year with 5 young whippersnappers, 3 of whom had never played a tabletop RPG before. I love introducing new people to RPGs, since you get to see them learn the ropes, and watch a love of the game develop right before your eyes. They all are dying to play every week, and it's very satisfying as DM to run a session for them.

However, Pathfinder sucks balls. I hadn't really dipped into D&D since AD&D, and I find myself really aggravated by all of the fiddly details, rules exceptions, and broken shit like the way stealth works. I know I know I can just make up my own way to handle the stuff I don't like, and I do, but some of the underlying rules issues just drive me nuts.

Then Loter mentioned the DCC RPG in the thread about cover art, and I looked into it. I had known about the old school renaissance, and I know some of you here are familiar with the DCC RPG, but it was new to me. And after reading the rules pdf, I FUCKING LOVE IT. I love the tone Goodman sets in his writing, I love the iron man high casualty rate approach, I love the unpredictable magic, I love all the crazy tables.

Now I find myself unconsciously hoping for a TPK in our Pathfinder campaign, so I can show these kids how D&D should really be played. But they love the game too much. We're 2 modules into a 6-module Adventure Path, and everyone is fully invested. I'm desperately trying to figure out how to squeeze a DCC campaign into my life -- maybe I can get it going in parallel on nights when we have no-shows -- but I feel like it would only be worth it if it had the kind of dedicated, consistent play that our Pathfinder campaign has enjoyed.

Now, in the 3 hours between 10pm and 1am, when I'm usually playing video games or working on Thrilling Tales of Adventure. I find myself world-building and writing a module for the first time in 20 years. Fuck you, Loter! I love you, Loter.

It's been over nine months since I started my D&D 3.5 campaign, using the excellent Ptolus setting. Some players wanted me to run it with Pathfinder or allow stuff from non-core books, but I find the 3.5 core rules to be about as much as I can handle. The last time I ran a D&D adventure was in 1987, and then I swore it off for better rpgs. But Ptolus is such an amazing setting that I just had to run it.

And I figured if I'm going to run a D&D game, I'm going to run it right. That's means following the rules as closely as I can, but feeling free to make a quick judgment call instead of stalling the game for 10 minutes while I look something up. I prep like crazy for every session, making extensive notes about rules and tactics that are relevant for each encounter. I found a lot of maps for Ptolus online, both professional ones for sale and high-quality non-pro ones for free, and I printed off a copier box worth of those maps in miniature scale.

As for miniatures, I skipped that nonsense. I figured out in advance that I was going to need at least 1,200 figures for the adventures and campaign that I was going to run. With my miniature painting skills, that would take me a decade to paint those minis, so fuck that. Instead, I bought 1,200 wooden nickels for $60, in 1" and 2" sizes. I print off sheets of pictures of npcs and monsters and punch them out with hole punches, then use mod podge craft glue to stick them to the wooden nickels. Those are my minis, and I've already done about 1,000 of them.

The campaign has gone well. I over-recruited, knowing that there would probably be a couple of dropouts. So we now have a solid group of six players, with a seventh player about to start. Attendance has been solid as well, so we have only skipped two bi-weekly games: once for a major blizzard and once when I was very sick with that norovirus.

Right now, most of the party is 7th level. The fights have been getting complex lately, due to spellcasting by both sides. The party consists of 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 druid, 1 sorcerer/aristocrat, 1 rogue/sorcerer, 1 cleric/rogue, and 1 barbarian/rogue. It's an interesting group in fights because they lack a traditional fighter in full plate to stand in front, so the spellcasters often find themselves in direct danger. The social rogue/sorcerer is being role-played badly by a shy player. And neither cleric is competent at turning undead. Two of the players are very experienced at 3.5, three other players are experienced at rpgs in general, and two of the players are very inexperienced. Half of the group is fairly into the role-playing aspect, and 2/3 of the group is very interested in the tactical aspect of combat.

This group likes to buff themselves magically just before going into danger, and then charge through recklessly before their spells wear off. And when they think everything is safe, they scatter all over the place, looking for loot and secret doors. This is fun, because their lack of discipline often leads to more danger once the group has split up. Every single character has had at least one close brush with death (negative hit points), and three characters have died and been brought back with Raise Dead, at the cost of a level.