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Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
2:01 pm

ru_doragon 		Could someone help me figure out where this symbol is from, for some reason my friends and my own's memory is drawing a blank but we both know we know it. I believe its Egyptian, if i remember that much right, but I can't remember much more than that.


(13 comments | comment on this)

Monday, May 12th, 2008
10:56 am - Hi, wow, and steampunk setting design

djymm 		First, hello! I just stumbled across this community.
Second, wow! It looks impressively lively.

Third, by way of introduction, my current gaming project is a steampunk setting starting with the premise that global warming strikes hard in the early industrial era, with dramatic ocean level rise in the mid 1850's. The premise is, I realize, purely fantasy, but I'm working out the historical implications in a reasonable fashion (though taking the cooler option wherever it presents itself). Thus far London is a canal city, the Netherlands are sunk, unrest in India limits Britain's involvement in the Crimean war, Russia's thawing interior provides a destination for flooded-out refugees, Japan accepts Alaska in return for ceasing warfare against Russia in China. I'm still considering North America, where the American Civil War seems less likely to have occurred. Weird new twists on the technology of the era are likewise being considered.

Anyone else working on similar settings? I'd love to hear about them.

(7 comments | comment on this)

8:01 am - yet another D&D 3.5 question

casiel 		Are there any Lizardfolk indigenous to the Silver Marches area?

I realize that cold climate is anathema to most reptiles, but was wondering if there's an existing exception to this rule for northern Faerun... other than the Ice Serpent (or other quasi- air elemental)?

(3 comments | comment on this)

Sunday, May 11th, 2008
9:50 pm - Pendragon?

paka 		Okay, in the realm of games I've been fantasizing about running, I recently inherited some old "Pendragon" stuff. It looks like a cool game and I kinda want to run it, though I'm not really that interested in the whole James-Michener-follow-the-family-through-Arthurian-history angle.

I'd also kind of want to play with the setting within the limits of it being genero-early-Medieval-Britain, anywhere from 500 to 1000 CE. This makes Arthur's Britain an urbane country of the Carolingian Renaissance, a place where people travel from as far afield as the Ummayad/Abbasid empire and pagan Scandinavia. I figure the game could also tolerate a few more anachronisms, like books on veterinary medicine, or a Danelaw in northeastern England, that sort of thing.

Would anyone have any thoughts about Pendragon, and running the system? Up to and including the most important one, "do you find that gamers are actually interested in, and willing to play in, the fairly limited scope of Pendragon?

(10 comments | comment on this)

4:01 pm - the perfect recipe for a bad role-playing game

tacohunter
  • 4 to 5 characters starting at very high level (20th+ level for D&D, 150+ starting xp for any White Wolf game)
  • give 1 million gp to each character for starting equipment and magic items
  • add 1 GM who insists on creating his own NPC to travel with the party

    oh! and two of the players are ex'es who can't really tolerate each other in large doses

    what am I missing?

    • (50 comments | comment on this)

    Saturday, May 10th, 2008
    9:03 pm - Total Noob-ish Question

    gatorclix



    I have two sons (11&9) who are very much interested in fantasy. We actually have (and have played) the introductory, prepackaged D&D set that is out there. Now, however, we need some new adventures to play. Can anyone help me out by pointing me to some low level, fun and pre made adventures I can find to take the boys through?

    (22 comments | comment on this)

    3:34 pm - Session-Starting Rituals

    phasmaphobic         		What little rituals do you use to start your game sessions? A table prayer? A sequence of lights, microphone, action? Do you fade the music out as you recap the last game? Do you hit the play button and let the opening theme of the Star Wars movies play?

    How do you kick off your game sessions?

    (22 comments | comment on this)

    Friday, May 9th, 2008
    10:57 am - A dungeon crawl of a different nature

    phasmaphobic         		I've got a hankering for a different kind of Dungeon Crawl. I've got a hankering to play one in which the characters are not warrior-robbers trying to kill everything and take their stuff, but instead scholars, explorers, archaeologists, and cave-crawling experts seeking information and relics from ancient cultures. Maybe they have one or two weapons among the lot of them, but mostly be pretty non-combat. A game where the characters get extremely excited about discovering intact flower pots and eating utensils from a bygone era. There would be a lot of game focus on history and culture, and a lot of time spent surveying areas, studying the flora and fauna, etc.

    Have any of you run or played in games like this? Are there any published adventures or modules which specifically focus on this?

    EDIT: Jesus Harold Christ on an effing rubber crutch. Some really obnoxious trolls have somehow implied from this post that I hate conflict, puzzles, and traps. I am merely asking you fellas if you have run and enjoyed games focused much more heavily on exploration and discovery and ancient secrets than killing the denizens of the dungeon and taking their stuff. Do you know of any modules that might have a heavy focus on non-combat, archaeologist-type characters?

    This thread here does a better job of explaining the game I'm talking about that I have apparently done here.

    (122 comments | comment on this)

    3:37 pm - MegaTraveller Digest Community

    fiat_knox         		Looks like I've been made maintainer of the MegaTraveller Digest community here on Livejournal.

    I feel somewhat thrilled, were it not for the fact that I would appear to be the only person to have posted on that site so far.

    You can join [info]mtdigest at the community's page.

    current mood: chuffed
    current music: nowt

    (comment on this)

    7:42 am - Hunter at Flames Rising

    flamesrising         		The first Hunter: the Vigil post is up on the Flames Rising website:

    Light in Shadows

    Expect to see more teasers and other goodies as I get permission to post them.

    (6 comments | comment on this)

    11:15 am - Traveller Question

    fiat_knox         		What are the rules for internal collapsible fuel tanks in Traveller? These are fuel tanks designed to fit into a cargo hold and supply an extra boost to a starship's performance for when it needs to make a long range jump, and the crew don't care much about cutting into the cargo hold for an outward journey.

    I've wanted to design a ship optimised for collapsible fuel tanks, and an overpowered power plant and J-drive for the ship's size. The sort of thing where, if they don't mind having very little space for cargo, they can fill the tanks with the fuel and make their long-range jump-4, -5 or -6 and take the long way round at jump-2 with cargo in the belly of their ship afterwards.

    I can't seem to find the rules for collapsible and rigid cargo fuel pods anywhere in the new Traveller core book. What's the displaced mass of a collapsed (empty) collapsible fuel tank?

    current mood: curious
    current music: nowt

    (2 comments | comment on this)

    Thursday, May 8th, 2008
    10:07 pm - Tell me something cool that happened in your last game.

    cartoonlad         		A while back, I asked this community to tell me something cool that happened in their last game and got some neat answers. So. Gimmie something cool that happened in your last game. Not something cool that happened in a game a few sessions ago, but something cool that happened in that very last game session you were in, even if the game session sucked overall.

    For us, we were doing a session zero for Deadlands Classic: character creation. Man, this was completely old school -- spending a full game session coming up with character concepts and the basis for our short run game. We're going to try to run it completely by the book, so we're going to have cards, dice, poker chips, and colored paper clips flying through the game. It's totally insane.

    It was also totally cool.

    Several cool moments just going through the book, explaining how combat rounds work and all that. But the coolest thing? Probably how everyone was trying to grab all those horrible random disadvantages to see how messed up their character was going to be out of the box. The best one was when my wife drew "Jinxed" in one of those random draws. Turns out that anyone that associates with her gets the Bad Luck disadvantage. Seeing as how she's an alchemist, that has the potential to be very bad. Everyone thought that was funny. Then Matt drew "Marked for Death". We're all cracking up -- I have the feeling this game is going to have a higher rate of comical PC death than your average game of Paranoia.

    Your turn.

    (26 comments | comment on this)

    10:43 am - Archetypes - The DM's Favourite Tool

    fiat_knox         		I got this link from [info]writers_lair, and it's very useful in plotting effective and memorably wicked NPC villains and antiheroes for your game:-

    A Primer on Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious


    Use the Jungian model of archetypes as your guide to create rivals and villains that are effectively mirror images of your player characters. The Shadow is the archetype of each of our own boogeyman: analyse your player characters and develop, with this useful guide, enemies whose motivations and actions are effectively dark reflections of the players' own twisted ambitions and dreams.

    The players will never forgive you. But they'll never forget your NPCs, either.

    X-posted to [info]fiat_knox.

    current mood: accomplished
    current music: nowt

    (2 comments | comment on this)

    Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
    1:39 pm - new game suggestions

    man_found         		I need suggestions for new table top RPGs to get into. I've been playing D&D almost exclusively for 10 years and am currently DMing a D&D game for a small group. Frankly I just want something new to play. My players are open to getting into new systems, but I really don't know where to start...and certainly don't want to drop $40+ for a game without more recommendations. My players seem to be open to almost anything except sci/fi or superhero type games.

    A coworker told me about Scion and made it sound pretty interesting. I've also scoured RPG.net and found a few games that look really interesting: Unknown Armies, Nobilis, Talislanta, and Society of the Century.

    Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

    (43 comments | comment on this)

    9:53 am - Running Games of Courtly Intrigue

    phasmaphobic         		I'm soon to be running a game of heavy courtly intrigue, and I admit, I'm a bit intimidated by the idea, being my first major stab at going all the way with the idea. The system is Burning Wheel, primarily using the Blossoms are Falling sourcebook, and the setting is home-brew fantasy with a Russo-Chinese cultural feel to it. The premise: "In a week, the entire Imperial family will be assassinated and the Empire brought to kneel before the might of the Conjoined Guilds. In this game, you will tell the story of the last days of the high court, the Final Days of the Dawn Empire." The players are aware that the family will be assassinated - this is actually an event set in the past of our previous campaign in the same setting.

    I intend for it to be a mini-campaign, four-to-six sessions. I want a heavy focus on courtly schemes, family politics, shifting alliances, and bloody murders in the dead of night. My only hold-back is that I've never really run a game like this before, where the players weren't as much a Party as a group of unaligned acquaintances, each doing their own thing. What advice do you have for running games like this? When trying to play up the Court Intrigue theme, what nuances should I keep in mind, and what kinds of Scenes would be typical? What are some good goals and conflicts that can be played out with role-playing and dice-rolling?

    And of course, my players, please don't read the comments of this thread.

    (10 comments | comment on this)

    11:55 am - This Plot has been pre-empted on account of PCs.

    tashiro         		So, I'm running Exalted online, and have a pretty decent group of players for it. They're after a nice sword which has been forged into a number of other swords, and when the weapon is combined, the group will have a weapon which can deal with the First and Forsaken Lion. This sub-plot has been going along nicely, and the group has four of the six parts, needing only two more to have everything.

    ( Cut For Length )

    Here's the leader's take on it.

    current mood: amused

    (12 comments | comment on this)

    Monday, May 5th, 2008
    5:03 pm - Map Generation

    betadynamic         		 We started playing D&D for the first time in a long time and I've been inspired to break out my DM's Manual and try my hands at this RPGing. One of the biggest problems I've had with running games is the dreaded map. I can visualize a map of epic scale and detail with all sorts of information and notations for my players. Then I pick up a pencil to make that map a reality...and it looks like a 3 year old scribbled on some notebook paper. Any tips on creating maps or maybe some software to help in that department?

    (12 comments | comment on this)

    Thursday, May 1st, 2008
    12:24 pm - another D&D 3.5 question

    casiel         		Are undead immune to petrification?

    (14 comments | comment on this)

    Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
    3:42 pm - Clueless: The Game

    kurosau         		I used to frequent the Shadowrun Archive just to read the Clueless Files. Compiled from stories submitted by visitors to the archive, the Clueless files were reports of the most idiotic situations encountered in a game, as perpetrated by people labeled 'clueless'.

    There's the one about a team that's just escaped from some bad guys by boat, their boat having sustained enough damage that it is taking on water, soon to sink. Their next choice? Everyone on the team decides it's a nice time to take a nap. Naturally, they all wake up floating as the boat sinks around them. Or maybe my favorite are the ones with the kill-crazy psychos. Wait, no, it was the one where someone thought it prudent to light off a flare in the middle of a natural gas pipeline.

    You get the point. They were funny. And I'm wondering if you could re-create the funny intentionally.

    Basically, gather people together for a normal game...obviously a throwaway, as you wouldn't want to waste a good solid campaign session on this idea. Everyone is told the premise of the game: One of you is a plant, meant to stir up as much ridiculous trouble as you can, in as subversive of a way as you can. By subversive, I mean that the plant shouldn't tip their hand until they get a good situation to blow to hell...like when the team stops for gas on the way to the run, and the plant decides that he absolutely must rob that gas station.

    Yes, intentional anything doesn't breed humor, usually. But turning it into a game of 'react to the burning monkey' might be fun. Not as much fun as watching a truly stupid player self destruct, but fun none the less.

    (9 comments | comment on this)

    Monday, April 28th, 2008
    8:36 pm - Custom D&D 3.5 character sheet

    kenshiro2k         		Don't know if you guys will be able to help me out, but is there a D&D 3.5 character sheet that replaces the "Armor Class" heading with "Defense", and includes a space for the Class Defense Bonus?

    Or at least, something akin to it. I've been poring over a lot of homemade sheets, even in the RPG Sheets site, and can't find one. Maybe you guys know of one? Thank you.

    (7 comments | comment on this)

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