RPG Talk

Savage Worlds doesn't add any HP either. Everyone has three at pretty much all times. There may be an Edge that adds one, but I don't recall.

When we first started playing D&D in the seventies the DM did and had everything. No character sheets for the players, no hit points, they didn't even witness die rolls. Players were all about the story and the character and the DM abstracted 100% of the technicalities away from behind his box lids stood on-end to block what he was doing. That was storytelling.

The early books never described who did what, and since the one guy was the storyteller it just seemed to make sense to us that he did everything, especially since he's the one who knew the rules the best. The players kept some notes on a piece of paper about what spells they had memorized or what they thought of the magic sword they had just picked up. We were very surprised when we played with other people and the players got to actually do things.

I personally love the rising HP totals and attack capabilities. In my opinion that growing level of ruggedness was the one thing that D&D had that none of its competitors at the time (Gamma World, Traveler, etc.,) did that seemed critically important to retaining interest in the character. Those extra HPs mattered. They were this heavenly manna that let you go after bigger more dangerous critters, take bigger risks.

S.

Obligatory Disclaimer: Do whatever your group thinks is fun. If that involves people fudging rules, die rolls, stats, etc., then go for it.

The responses here seem to revolve around a few assumptions. One is that I'm playing an RPG that is combat-heavy and, in theory, a balanced skirmish simulator. Another is that failure is not fun, or only occasionally fun. There seems to be a factor of "the GM knows what is best for the group and is responsible for making it happen."

For the first, I'd rather just play a board game. But if we're playing D&D, and everyone at the table looks like they're getting bored, then I'll ask if we want to cut the combat short. Maybe assume that everyone loses a certain percentage of their HP; whatever we work out.

For the second, that is a little more group dependent. I like games where either outcome is fun for me, even if it's not fun for the characters. If only one outcome is fun then I'd rather we decide that's the thing that happens, rather than pretend that rolling dice matters because we're only going to allow one outcome.

And for the third, well, I reject that entirely. The main reason why I play RPGs is to participate in an improvised group story. The whole GM-as-auteur thing, where he present his amazing world/story and leads the others through it, is not anything interesting to me. I don't think the GM knows best what's fun for me. If I GM, I don't think I know best what is fun for the others.

Sag asks, if I drop the ball, do I let it stay dropped and let other people not have fun? Loter and Chapel make similar overtures, saying that sometimes you have to break rules in order to tell the best story. I agree, but this isn't relevant.

For you guys, it seems that fun in an RPG is primarily about telling a good story, hopefully one that has a lot of improvisation and unpredictable outcomes. But if the unpredictable outcome is not a "good story" (by the GM's definition) then the improvisation is chucked out.

For me, the priority is reversed. I would rather participate in an improvised story that is mostly good, than a good story that is mostly improvised. I am happy to accept that the story might not be as good as possible, in return for nobody at the table really knowing what is going to happen.

If my main goal is to experience a good story, I'd rather read a book or watch a movie. Even an average book or movie is probably going to have a better story than anything created at your typical table of RPGers.

It's not so much about telling a good story as it is about weaving a good story with the contribution of the players. This isn't exclusionary, in fact quite the opposite. The players need to be empowered by their actions, either to their benefit or detriment. The DM's job is to react. If the characters decide to shelve their swords and become farmers the storyline is going to be pretty drab, but so be it.

Originally the subject I was speaking to was more about adjusting monster stats to match the party prior to encounter. If you were anticipating five 8th level characters and there's four 5th level you're going to nuke the party if you run the material as printed. That doesn't give the players the opportunity to contribute to the narrative.

S.

I think you're looking at it in a far more binary sense than I meant it (generally). I'm all for "bad" and unexpected outcomes, and I won't fudge stuff to prevent someone from failing specifically to just prevent them from failing (or for that matter, succeeding).

However, the instances I'm talking about are more in the cases where something really cool or fun has the potential to happen and I'd like to see how it plays out. The example I gave was someone trying an exciting combat idea; swing from a vine to knock a bad guy over a cliff lets say. You roll and miss by a point off of what I had decided the roll ought to be. It's not off enough for me to say oh, well you got em but you also fucked yourself and go tumbling after (an exciting result), but it's also really kind of anti climactic to just miss so I either give them a little stated bonus (if I told them the DC before hand) or I just pretend they hit what I was looking for.

I certainly don't do it every time, but if the PCs are trying fun out of the box stuff, I want to generate a decent amount of fun out of the box results, not just a bunch of minor failures. This is all a direct result of what the players are creating and in fact is empowering them to tell the story they want even more. If they just naturally failed a shit ton of weirdo stuff due to a string of bad luck with the dice, it'd end up MORE railroad-y and DMs master plan in action if I didn't fudge a little.

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.