[HN Gopher] The Game: A continually-run D&D campaign, since 1982
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The Game: A continually-run D&D campaign, since 1982
Author : gaws
Score : 412 points
Date : 2022-05-02 02:56 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thegamednd.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thegamednd.com)
| madrox wrote:
| As a forever DM, I'm impressed by this guy's fortitude. Coming up
| with an interesting session can take a good deal of time. In my
| experience, the amount of prep time you need is at least half of
| what the length of the session is. Of course, modules can help a
| ton, and there's a lot of tools available these days to
| procedurally generate the hard parts. Still, many of those didn't
| exist until recently, for the most part. This guy had to have
| spent countless hours on his own building out this world. It's an
| inspiration, really.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > In my experience, the amount of prep time you need is at
| least half of what the length of the session is
|
| In my experience, you can run an entire session on basically
| nothing. Half the time I make things up on the spot (and keep
| track of them so they'll still be the same when players
| return), but most of the time the players make the story.
|
| It's especially helpful when they're discussing what they're
| thinking the reason for something is between themselves,
| because one of those is pretty much always a good one (even if
| they settle on a different explanation afterwards xD).
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > A continually-run D&D campaign, since 1982. > Players create
| their characters and if they die, they are out of The Game. There
| is no "reset" button that you can hit when you don't like how
| things are proceeding or you die. > Players are allowed to take
| on the characters of their descendants. > And yes, players have
| had their characters die and they have been ejected from The
| Game.
|
| WILD
|
| Thank you for sharing!
| cthalupa wrote:
| This is sort of the standard for earlier editions of D&D, or
| games that aspire to follow some of the same themes (You might
| see modern RPGs in this vein referred to as OSR/Old School
| Renaissance). Historically, players would take on the role of
| adventurers rather than heroes, and most of the focus was on
| collecting as much treasure as you can (XP was awarded based on
| the gold value of treasure).
|
| If you played smart you could certainly keep a character alive,
| so the idea that older editions of D&D were wantonly fatal
| isn't really correct, but any time you left your character's
| fate up to the roll of the dice, you were taking a risk, so the
| smart play was to rig any such encounter in your favor as best
| you could. If you did manage to live, your characters would
| tend to retire, taking ownership of domains, running wizard's
| towers, etc. - you didn't generally go up ever escalating
| levels of cosmic threat. Rules and modules existed for that,
| but it wasn't the type of play people would generally engage
| in. Instead, your old characters would become NPCs in the game
| setting, and you'd roll up a new group of adventurers to keep
| the story going.
|
| 3E is probably when the focus shifted to be predominantly
| around more Big Damn Hero type storylines, and it's firmly
| cemented as the de facto standard in 5E, but I think the
| success of 5E shows that that's really what more people are
| interested in. Which is great! It's been huge for the hobby,
| and introduced a lot of people into other styles of RPG,
| including old-school D&D.
|
| Which is a long way to say if this style of play sounds
| appealing to you, you might want to check out modern OSR games
| (Mork Borg, Worlds Without Number, Electric Bastionland,
| Troika!, Mothership) or retroclones (Old School Essentials is
| probably the biggest name here currently, and is based off of
| the Basic/Expert ruleset - my personal favorite)
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I find modern players tend to want to be neither of those
| things. They're not adventurers or heroes. They're just some
| dudes with their own characterization that somehow get looped
| into a quest and just sort of become very powerful by
| accident. Self awareness of how ridiculous the typical TTRPG
| power scaling is makes this pretty common imo.
|
| A random dude, can / should canonically go from level 1 to a
| pretty high level over the course of an in game month if
| they're busy doing things. At which point they're basically a
| superhero relative to your average level 0 commoner peasant.
| Power gains are linear, but it's a very steep climb.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The part I was more surprised by was not the character death.
| My group has played both 3.5, PF, and 5, and the DM has been
| more then happy to let us suffer the consequences or
| poor/stupid choices.
|
| It was more so the aspect of "you run out of characters, you
| the player can no longer play with us".
| aeontech wrote:
| I thought "Players are allowed to take on the characters of
| their descendants." meant that the group member could stay
| in the game, just under a new character?
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Yes, but also check out the last line on the page about
| death:
|
| > And yes, players have had their characters die and they
| have been ejected from The Game.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| There are some pretty deadly games out there.
|
| Dungeon Crawl Classics has its own special concept related to
| death for character-development purposes, known as the Funnel.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is pretty cool. I would like to play more D&D. Every group
| I've been apart of has fizzled after a few sessions. But
| hopefully someday I'll be able to join a group that lasts for a
| while.
| lelandfe wrote:
| This must be the best DM in the world. How in the world one
| manages to keep track of 50 people playing multiple multi-hour
| sessions a week...
| eh9 wrote:
| It looked like he was mostly using binders. I'm a lot more
| interested in how he keeps up with the hundreds of sub-quests
| at any given time.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm more into a computer DnD and figured out that just playing
| games such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter nights are good
| enough. I'm not a social person and role play even before closest
| friends feels weird.
| ryneandal wrote:
| I was much the same until I started discussing the idea with
| close friends who had similar interests.
|
| If you have an interest it, you could always try a one-shot[1]
| adventure and test the waters.
|
| I have pretty awful social anxiety, but I find that getting
| into character and being with close friends (whether physically
| or remotely) allows me to ease into the social setting and have
| a ton of fun.
|
| Also note that role-playing is NOT required! If you and/or your
| friends prefer to just discuss the game and setting in the
| third person akin to talking about video games, go for it.
|
| Don't force yourself to do so if there is no interest, but
| certainly at least give it a try if you have any sort of
| interest, there's nothing to lose and love for a new hobby to
| gain!
|
| 1: https://blackcitadelrpg.com/one-shots-dnd-5e/
| reidrac wrote:
| The first thing I thought is "but, what D&D do they play?";
| because D&D has changed over the years.
|
| Turns out the game started as the D&D of the time (AD&D), with
| more or less house rules; and then moved on with some "homebrew"
| rules that are still familiar to D&D players.
|
| I mostly tend to say I _played D &D_ back in the day, but the
| truth is, I only played _actual D &D_ on one short one-afternoon
| session. I played other games instead (LoTR Middle Earth,
| RuneQuest and Vampire), but D&D is what people mostly understand
| I guess.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| I grew up about an hour from Lake Geneva, D&D was everywhere when
| I was a kid. So I played, but I had no real context for it. I was
| more of a Star Trek/Heinlein kid, never had any interest in
| fantasy or made an attempt to read it.
|
| A few years ago I started to try to get into Fantasy. I read
| Vance, Howard's Conan stories [0], Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique
| stories, Tolkien as an adult for the first time, and a bunch of
| other stuff referenced in the old DMG's Appendix N [1]. I like
| Smith's "evil as an aesthetic experience" vibe best but I
| wouldn't say that I'm a fantasy fan. Still, getting the S&S
| context has been neat.
|
| I recently moved back to my hometown from NYC because of the
| pandemic. Being back here and living in a forest again got me
| reading the old AD&D books. And, AD&D is just more interesting
| than the third edition we played in high school. When I talked to
| Gygax about 3rd edition he just kind of sneered and said "It's
| for powergamers." [2]
|
| Reading AD&D 21 years later, I see what he meant. AD&D has
| texture [3], it's bumpy, it's rough, it's great. But, beyond the
| mechanics, what's really grabbing me is that it hints at a style
| of play that I'd heard about from people who used to play with
| Gygax and his kids, but never experienced myself. The old D&D
| campaigns weren't epic, level 1-40, movie trilogies with a
| definite beginning middle and end like we think of them today. A
| D&D "campaign" was something a that could be played with a large
| number of players in a club. It was like the old military
| campaigns wargaming clubs used to organize. People in the
| campaign would have multiple characters of different classes and
| drop into or run individual games that exist in a shared time and
| place. Want to play, stop by. Someone can't make it, who else is
| available? Why does everyone meet in a tavern and then live
| together for the next forty levels? I'd rather play in a world
| that's populated with NPCs that used to be PCs.
|
| Reading these old stories and the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide for
| the first time really makes me want to run a shared world with a
| group of 10-20 people.
|
| [0]: No one tells you this but Conan stories are basically
| Lovecraft Mythos stories. But with Howard's version of the Mythos
| you can just punch the cosmic horrors until they crawl back down
| their mystery wells.
|
| [1]: https://goodman-games.com/blog/2018/03/26/what-is-
| appendix-n...
|
| [2]: I met Dave Arneson too. I was digging through a bin of old
| miniatures at Gen Con in 2004. I turned to the old guy dressed as
| a wizard rummaging next to me and said something like "I really
| love these old miniatures." He said: "Me too" and we go to
| talking. About 10 minutes in I looked at his badge. He just
| smiled.
|
| [3]: Look at the AD&D version of the "Animal Friendship" spell
| and then compare it to the 5th edition version:
|
| Animal Friendship (AD&D):
| https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Animal_friendship
|
| Animal Friendship (5th Edition):
| https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/animal-friendship
|
| Ask yourself, do you want to play the game where animal
| companions "follow you about" while you teach them tricks over
| the course of a month or the game where "Animal Friendship" just
| means "Bear go away now."? And no, I don't care about "balance".
| That's what a DM is for.
| Steko wrote:
| The idea that AD&D didn't have powergamers sounds like Gygax
| propaganda. This is the edition that put out a book of diety
| statblocks like it was another monster manual. Your linked
| Animal Friendship, allows 2xHD of companions so a L3 druid
| could have a Cave Bear. That's as bad as it sounds.
|
| Every edition has many issues but imho 1e is pretty terrible by
| modern standards.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| He didn't say AD&D didn't have powergamers, he said that 3rd
| was FOR powergamers.
|
| On Animal Friendship, see my comment about balance: Who
| cares. The bear is taught three tricks and kinda hangs
| around, the druid doesn't get to control it. How many
| "friends" would you take a bullet for?
|
| Still a problem? Get rid of the bear and see if the player
| wants to skip leveling their druid for three weeks and play a
| different character while their druid trains a new one. Time
| passes in real-time when not playing in AD&D and the bear
| will wander off after three days if the druid leaves before
| it's fully trained. If the druid wants to try taking a half-
| trained bear along on a hike, make it more trouble than it's
| worth. Playing AF like this is really fun.
|
| Every edition has issues but AD&D is pretty fun by modern
| standards.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > No one tells you this but Conan stories are basically
| Lovecraft Mythos stories.
|
| Never thought of this, but it makes a certain sense. Now I want
| a Conan at the Mountains of Madness crossover book.
| ScarletEmerald wrote:
| I was recently catching up on Dark Horse's _Conan the
| Avenger_ , and sure enough, Conan and his companions of
| circumstance end up facing a monstrous beast from the outer
| dark. Conan's plan?
|
| "Hit whatever attacks us, man or beast, repeatedly, until it
| dies."
| miiiiiike wrote:
| And did it work? It sounds like it would work. It probably
| worked.
| Biganon wrote:
| As someone who's always lived next to the "original" (Swiss)
| Lake Geneva, I was confused as to why I'd never experienced
| this D&D enthusiasm you've mentioned
| luan_l wrote:
| >The game
|
| Dammit - haven't lost it in a while.
| pjerem wrote:
| Damn I also lost it. I'll take the downvotes with you.
| falcrist wrote:
| I just lost the game.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I didn't, until I saw your comment...
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I lost The Game reading the title. Dammit.
| wccrawford wrote:
| My family and my friends each have something else they also
| call "The Game". I haven't had a chance to not-lose for a
| very long time.
| Grustaf wrote:
| What does this mean?
| smcl wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)
| Hedepig wrote:
| The Game cannot be won, it can only be lost
|
| When one thinks about The Game, one loses.
|
| When one loses, they must declare they have lost.
|
| "I lost The Game"
| dhosek wrote:
| Damn you. I just lost.
| cryptoz wrote:
| My first loss in years. Been 'playing' ~20 years, last time I
| lost was maybe 5 years ago. Oh well, restart the counter!
| Playing for life I guess, there's no way out.
| tenryuu wrote:
| >"What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An
| intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious.
| Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost
| impossible to eradicate."
| felipemnoa wrote:
| Fortunately dementia is quite the antidote to ideas.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| Wow, same. Haven't lost since the 2009 Time poll.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I found D&D to be really popular in the Canadian North lately,
| like people you'd never expect to be into it who aren't really a
| huge part of wider culture around fantasy games and stuff like
| that until around when Game of Thrones came out, super into the
| game because it's pretty much a great thing to do when you're
| stuck inside for most of the year.
|
| It's fun. I play maybe like once a year though I look forward to
| that all the time.
| simonh wrote:
| The latest 5th edition deserves a lot of credit for this. They
| did a fantastic job. It's easy to learn, easy to run and you
| can do a lot with it. I've been a tabletop RPG player since the
| early 80s and never really got on with D&D, but 5th edition is
| a lot of fun. It not my favourite game by far, but it deserves
| its success.
| black_knight wrote:
| Stranger Things and Critical Role also played a part in
| growing the player base, I think. At least in my current
| group Stranger Things helped motivate people to start
| playing.
| stwr wrote:
| Dungeons and Daddies should probably be in that list too!
| :)
| henriquecm8 wrote:
| > Stranger Things and Critical Role
|
| I was taking to a friend about this, Stranger Things and
| Critical Role, bought a lot of new players to D&D,
| meanwhile WoTC isn't doing half as much, they could be
| doing an animated series, to explore the settings. They are
| making a live-action movie, it isn't the first, but this
| one has a bigger budget.
| ryneandal wrote:
| I really think an animated series with some of their more
| popular novelized campaigns and characters is the way to
| go to seek out mass appeal. I'd love if they followed
| Critical Role's lead and signed with a streaming service
| for an easy-to-pitch series like Drizzt's life or (my
| preference) the Companions of the Hall.
|
| Live action can be great, but often times fantasy
| settings can completely fail in how they're translated to
| the big screen (See: the WarCraft movie).
| Kinrany wrote:
| Critical Role is doing an animated series too:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11247158/
| alickz wrote:
| CRPG video games are also having a bit of a renaissance
| right now.
|
| Between Obsidian (Pillars of Eternity), Larian (Divinity
| Original Sin, Baldurs Gate 3), and Owlcat (Pathfinder WOTR)
| it's a good time to be a CRPG fan and the genre seems quite
| popular.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| It's cool to see this here, thanks for posting op. I was just
| deepening a solo campaign in Palladium Books' Recon [0] today and
| getting a space trucker team together in FrontierSpace [1].
|
| Epics and long-form narratives are really important in TTRPG
| culture. While originally pretty overwhelming, I learned a lot by
| running long-form campaigns myself. I find that the session-level
| complexity is usually best when kept very low, compared to what
| people think. The scope of events is also kept low in terms of
| things like "what happened today".
|
| Personally I find that there's something about dialing the
| dopamine down (contrary to what people would expect) that helps
| the game feel easier for everybody to play in the long term.
|
| My kids allow me to GM a couple of ongoing long-term campaigns
| for them, one that went from dungeon crawl to space adventure
| within 2 sessions and continued into space opera territory, and
| another long-form high fantasy campaign that's been going for 4
| years now. The former uses Supers! RED [2] and the latter is
| based on GURPS [3]. Both are kind of gear-and-pet-fests for them
| so it's part of our job together to manage all that. :-)
|
| (Including links in case others are interested in the publishing
| culture or games themselves)
|
| 0. https://www.palladiumbooks.com/modern/recon
|
| 1. https://www.dwdstudios.com/frontierspace
|
| 2. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/130108/SUPERS-
| Revised-E...
|
| 3. http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/
| MrJohz wrote:
| What's interesting is that long-form narratives seem to less
| popular in newer systems (and particularly outside the
| traditional D&D camp), which tend to aim instead for a
| reasonably short, self-contained arc in maybe half a dozen or
| so sessions. Particularly with the PbtA/FitD genre that's come
| out of Apocalypse World and its derivatives, there's a lot of
| emphasis on telling the one story that the system makes sense
| for, and then moving on to another story.
|
| Even in more traditional games, I feel like I also see that
| tendency in certain parts of the Old School Renaissance scene,
| which makes me wonder if it's got something to do with the
| plethora of different systems that are out now. If I'm only
| going to have time for one game a week, I might not want to end
| up stuck to one setting and one system, but rather try deadly
| space horror in Mothership, surreal British fantasy in Troika!,
| steampunk metropolis Victoriana in Electric Bastionland, etc.
|
| I'm intrigued to see if this sort of style, where one jumps
| from game to game relatively easily, but doesn't invest so much
| in a single character or world, will be as long lasting. I
| think the danger is that eventually you run out of new things
| (although that honestly seems hard at the rate that new games
| are being punished), but a lot of these games are fairly
| replayable, and my impression is that people keep on coming
| back to their favourites.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Funny, I noticed that too, it's a bit strange to me TBH, also
| with e.g. Itch becoming this neo-idea-topia just chock full
| of PDFs. (The charity bundles are an absolute travesty of
| making really cool stuff look like shovel-ware in some ways,
| too.)
|
| It makes less sense to me as someone with a lot of TTRPG
| baggage, like back when I was a kid there was going to be a
| campaign to justify the character one wanted to become. But I
| do love to see the energy that goes into the newer games.
|
| Socially I guess I can also see why it may help to switch
| things up for a lot of reasons. Maybe treating TTRPG night
| more like a mutable board game night allows some groups to
| keep on going. Or maybe we're really on the verge of some new
| industry discoveries that could explode into gaming we
| couldn't imagine before, without this new world of different
| gaming perspectives.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| > The charity bundles are an absolute travesty of making
| really cool stuff look like shovel-ware in some ways, too.
|
| Could you point out the cool stuff? As someone not staying
| up to date, all those PDFs do look alike.
| spencerflem wrote:
| The big-name ones are Wanderhome, Troika, and Blades in
| the Dark all of which are fantastic full featured systems
| that outside of the bundle go for a decent bit.
|
| Pigsmoke and Damn the Man Save the Music are smaller but
| also very good.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Or maybe we're really on the verge of some new industry
| discoveries that could explode into gaming we couldn't
| imagine before, without this new world of different gaming
| perspectives.
|
| You mean like what happenned to wargames back in the day,
| when D&D came out? Nobody makes or plays those anymore, far
| as I can tell (and from what I gather, the majority were
| solo-played anyway, which sounds a little sad).
|
| This might be a little morbid, but I often wonder what
| Gygax and Arneson, and the other people involved in early
| D&D, thought about the genre they had started up, as they
| went to their graves. "I left something worthwhile behind",
| or "Why are all those people messing up my game"?
| Beldin wrote:
| Back in the days, my students gaming group organised "one-
| shot" weekends. One session, 4hrs or so, story finished.
| Repeat 4 times, weekend done.
|
| It was great fun and a great way to get exposure to new (to
| us) systems. I can't imagine the wacky hijinks of Toon in
| another way now. Or starting a session of Munchausen at 2
| in the morning - with a whisky, because, you know,
| Munchausen. There was also serious stuff: Star Wars d6, of
| course the Empire knew about the trench run and had taken
| precautions! So while Han & Luke were freeing Leia, we were
| out to sabotage those countermeasures. I even got Kenobi's
| light saber out of it.
|
| Highly recommended to those who can afford a while weekend
| like that.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> What's interesting is that long-form narratives seem to
| less popular in newer systems (and particularly outside the
| traditional D&D camp), which tend to aim instead for a
| reasonably short, self-contained arc in maybe half a dozen or
| so sessions. Particularly with the PbtA/FitD genre that's
| come out of Apocalypse World and its derivatives, there's a
| lot of emphasis on telling the one story that the system
| makes sense for, and then moving on to another story.
|
| That's right, but I wonder whether this is more of an effort
| to find and occupy a niche in a market where D&D still sucks
| all the air out of the room. D&D and some other big-name
| games like Pathfinder, or Vampire I think. I'm not even sure
| anymore.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| A question for people who play more traditional dnd. The original
| content seemed to be a lot less... narrative? That is, resting in
| the open wild you might be encouraged to roll for a random
| encounter and do a fight that has no particular meaning.
|
| That always struck me as a lot of tedium. Combat is pretty slow
| and older versions' combat was more involved if anything. Was
| that boring?
| lupire wrote:
| It was before computer games were well developed, so much of
| what is a computer game today was done manually. See also "war
| gaming".
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I don't follow what this is saying. TTRPGs are still manual.
| Maybe you have a spreadsheet or an online tool to facilitate
| but it doesn't change that much.
|
| More so I don't see how this relates to my question
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| No, it makes sense to me (and I'm by no means a grognard!).
| As far as I understand it, D&D evolved from earlier board-
| wargames and it was essentially a sort of free-form wargame
| with rules for fantasy skirmishes with a theme cribbed off
| its authors' favourite Sword and Sorcery fiction (which was
| not, famously, Lord of the Rings, but more Jack Vance's
| Dying Earth).
|
| If I understand correctly, the original D&D had rules for
| Combat and then for things that weren't directly Combat,
| but were still about fighting battles, like attracting or
| hiring henchmen, building a stronghold, controlling a
| territory and ultimately fighting battles with large
| armies.
|
| Importantly, D&D predates Computer RPGs so all this
| wargmaing had to be managed by hand, and the rules involved
| a significant amount of crunch- what you call "a lot of
| tedium".
|
| But then Computer RPGs (CRPGs) started to appear,
| invariably influenced by D&D, or other CRPGs influenced by
| D&D. So if you enjoyed crunchy, wargame-y, combat-oriented
| gaming, and didn't particularly need "narrative", then
| CRPGs were now your friend, and you didn't need to play D&D
| for that. For instance, I remember spending weeks and
| months playing Neverwinter Nights, which was pretty much
| just 3d ed. D&D with an automated GM.
|
| That's how I understand OP's comment. And I kind of agree.
|
| Interestingly, there seems to be a return to the original
| D&D mode of play with the "OSR" (Old School R... something)
| genre, that is discussed everywhere in this thread. Perhaps
| because OSR's rallying cry is "rulings, not rules" and
| maybe after a couple of generations of games with detailed
| mechanics designed to promote "narrative", players who just
| wanted to play a game without too many restrictions got
| bored with all the rules and wanted to go back to just
| telling the DM what they want to do, and then rolling the
| dice to see what happens. Which is the one thing that CRPGs
| can still. not. do.
|
| Incidentally, one of the earliest RPGs of the 1980's was
| Call of Cthulhu which was very much designed to be "not
| about combat", but about experiencing a horror story, in H.
| P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos universe. There has been a
| clear split between games that are, on some level "about
| telling a story", or "about roleplaying" (so "narrative"),
| and games that are about killing monsters and nicking their
| stuff (so "Combat"), since the very early days of the
| hobby.
|
| But, you know there's nothing stopping you from running a
| narrative-driven game in the D&D world, if that's more your
| thing (Ron Edward's "System Matters" nonwithstanding). Or,
| conversely, you can pick up a ruleset designed to "tell a
| story" and run it like a classic hack-and-slash dungeon
| crawl. To paraphrase the old joke about Fortran
| programmers, "The determined Real D&D Player can run a D&D
| session with any ruleset" [1].
|
| ________________
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20856747
| oneoff786 wrote:
| That does make sense. But I suppose what I'm asking is
| that at a more abstract level, encounters can be analyzed
| at the very beginning. Some are hard. Some are easy.
| Playing the easy encounters is pretty boring in my
| opinion. This is balanced in a lot of TTRPGs somewhat by
| making resource conservation a thing so maybe you can't
| just use your big powers to blow up some simple goblins.
| But I have always found it very difficult to get people
| interested in following this curve. Nobody wants to spend
| 30 minutes on a goblin encounter.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I think I see what you mean. You're talking about
| balance, yes? If so, I think it's easy to do balance
| wrong and hard to do it right, and there's a lot of
| people trying at the same time, in any game: the game
| designer, the GM, the players even, at some level. So
| there's lots of moving parts to combine and it doesn't
| always work.
|
| To be honest, I don't have a good answer to that. I've
| read (but not played) games that had special rules for
| "mooks" or "mobs". For example, Wushu, a game of
| cinematic Kung-Fu action, was like that, because I guess
| it's very in the spirit of the setting. I've played
| computer games that throw hordes of enemies at you, also.
| Invariably there's a progression from mooks, to mini-
| bosses, to bosses to big bads. Then there's games like
| Call of Cthulhu (CoC) were there are no goblins and even
| the weakest enemies can drive your character insane
| (well, ish. I think Ghouls are relatively safe...).
|
| I have no clue what's the right way to achieve balance.
| It seems to me that the only way to avoid what you
| describe is to have no weakling enemies and make every
| encounter a matter of life-and-death, with a substantial
| risk for at least one character to die (like CoC). But
| not for a Total Party Kill probably.
|
| I kind of have Nethack in mind, here, and other
| roguelikes (I think a lot about them lately). In Nethack
| you fight some weak enemies at first, like slime molds,
| but you can at least eat them, so they're a resource.
| Then as you progress down the dungeon, the chance of
| dying increases very steeply. And then your character
| dies. And the next one. And the next one too. And the one
| after that. So there's no boring encounters, but I
| personally want to throw the keyboard after a while and I
| end up savescumming because I just want to get a bit
| deeper in the dungeon and see what's there.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Balance yeah. Specifically when a fight is going to be
| easy and everyone knows they will win, but running the
| battle will take a half hour because it's pretty
| involved. And nobody has any particular investment in
| that battle because it's some dumbass random goblins that
| attacked you in the night because... they're stupid.
| cl42 wrote:
| I believe this would depend on your DM. I've been playing since
| the mid-90s (not sure if that's far back enough for you! :) ),
| and we rarely rolled for random encounters like that.
|
| In general the DM has a lot of say over the rules and their
| interpretation. A good DM will make a huge difference.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Different strokes. A lot of old school gaming resembles modern
| adventure video games. There is an overall narrative arc, but
| then there are fairly random encounters along the way.
|
| I agree that a purely mechanically-generated game would be
| tedious, it's all about balance. But I don't know... ever since
| "Critical Role" came out, it feels like the dominant strain of
| role-playing games is people trying to be theatre majors, or
| produce something worthy of a live-play podcast. I find that
| likewise out of sync with what I'm looking for in a game.
|
| I just want a classic dungeon-crawl, with limited "acting"
| ability required. And therefore limited code of conduct
| debates, because the creepy theatre major wants to act out his
| rape fantasies while the super progressive theatre major wants
| a race and gender studies class. Like, huh? Dude, I just want
| to join a gang of murder-hobos, so we can kill some goblins and
| take some gold.
| brolumir wrote:
| Great story, but I wonder about the logistics of effectively
| DM'ing 25 players. I'm assuming not everyone plays in the same
| session? Otherwise - how do you handle battles with a party of 25
| PCs?
| RyanShook wrote:
| Mini doc on this guy: https://youtu.be/nJ-ehbVQYxI
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| I love that this exists, and that there are people just
| relatively quietly making these things happen. Contrast this to
| how we as developer feel pressure to monetize, or to grow, or to
| _something short term_.
|
| It's a bit of a shock to me that this is the first time I've
| heard of this. This sensation always makes me wonder "What else
| like this is out there" ... in other pursuits, other fields?
| People just toiling away and gradually producing something
| extraordinary.
| fho wrote:
| I recently achieved two milestones that I am somewhat proud of:
| (a) finishing a role-playing campaign, to be fair that was in
| LancerRPG that by default has a 12 level skill ceiling after
| which it does not make sense to play anymore. (b) finishing a
| legacy game, Charterstone that is. Again that has a manageable 12
| game limit.
|
| Still, there are so many people that have not finished Gloomhaven
| or whose RPG campaign has come to nothing after some years. So
| finishing both feels like a small achievement :-)
| spc476 wrote:
| A friend of mine has run a continuous D&D game since 1993:
| <http://www.dragonslayers-society.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php>.
| dhosek wrote:
| I was obsessed with D&D in junior high and high school despite
| never actually playing for more than a few hours. I had binders
| full of NPC character sheets, a multiple continent world designed
| (which included, among other things, Middle Earth and Prydain
| plus many modules, both the letter-number'd ones and modules from
| Dragon magazine.
|
| In college, there was a group who played in the dorm lounge and
| hearing them play, I ended up losing interest in the game. My
| imagination of how the world I'd designed would come out and the
| reality of a game just didn't conform to each other.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You might have liked the white wolf games better. A bit more
| slack in world building and what happens :)
| rectang wrote:
| I played back in the day. I was terrible, insisting on
| omnipotent characters and unable to accept misfortune.
|
| If I were ever to return to play, I would aspire to have
| disposable characters die glorious deaths and weave an epic
| tragic tale instead.
|
| My brother was much better than me. He was a Dungeon Master.
| Now he writes fantasy novels.
| User23 wrote:
| Any that I can buy? One of my favorite novel series is based
| off a gaming session: the Malazan Book of the Fallen.
| rectang wrote:
| He's written a few. _Damnation Kane_ , the story of a time-
| traveling pirate, is my favorite:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Damnation-
| Kane-I/dp/138779...
|
| > _Damnation Kane: Irish pirate captain, born in 1650 to an
| English Puritan and an Irish druidess. Through means
| mystical and mysterious, somehow Damnation finds himself,
| with his ship The Grace of Ireland and his crew of
| scalawags, in strange seas. His ship damaged by battle and
| by storm 's fury, Captain Kane and his men seek a safe
| harbor; in the process they make dangerous new enemies, and
| tensions among the crew worsen. Because they do not know
| where they are, nor how they came to be there. Is it Hell?
| An undiscovered country? The land of the Fae? No: it is
| Florida. In the year 2011._
|
| The novel isn't D&D swords and sorcery, but my second
| favorite scene is fantasy-like, where Kane's druidess
| mother casts an elaborate spell in a desperate attempt to
| contact him across the sea and centuries. (My favorite
| scene is where the pirates invade a Home Depot, and the guy
| with no thumbs swinging chains attacks a table saw...)
|
| D&D definitely played a role in developing his narrative
| talents. Amazing game.
| asicsp wrote:
| Sounds interesting. Time shenanigans is one of the bingo
| square prompts this year on /r/fantasy, so I wanted to
| check this one. Any reason why Kindle edition is not
| available?
| rectang wrote:
| > _Any reason why Kindle edition is not available?_
|
| Dunno why it's not on Amazon, but it's available as an
| eBook on SmashWords in several different formats
| including mobi (Kindle).
|
| https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/33132
|
| The first 8 chapters can be read for free on the
| SmashWords web reader:
|
| https://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/823124/1/the-
| adven...
|
| > _Time shenanigans is one of the bingo square prompts
| this year on /r/fantasy_
|
| Oho?
|
| The full title is "The Adventures of Damnation Kane Book
| I: Out of Place and Out of Time".
|
| Here's a teaser (the story is mostly told from the
| perspective of Kane as a ship's log):
|
| > But that _thing_ that I saw when we came in sight of
| the shore! I thought it was a part of the land: the White
| Cliffs of Dover on the shore of the New World. Until it
| _moved_. Until it blew smoke from its back, like the
| spume of a whale, and sounded a horn that could have
| drowned out Gabriel's trumpet, and then it sailed across
| the bay before us. _Against_ the wind. _Against_ the
| tide.
|
| > It was a hundred feet high, two hundred. Pure white,
| shining like the clouds in a summer sky. It would have
| stretched from one end of the village where my mother
| raised me to the other, and beyond. It was smoking -
| there was _fire_ on it - fire, the curse of ships, the
| terror of all sailors. And it sailed through the waves,
| without sail, without oars.
|
| > I looked through my glass and I saw the faces of the
| men and women aboard. I saw children. They smiled.
|
| > I looked at its bow and I saw written there in letters
| as tall as a man, "GRAND PRINCESS."
|
| > It was a ship. A ship the size of a mountain.
|
| > We are in Hell.
| asicsp wrote:
| Thanks for the links and teaser. I'll check it out :)
|
| Here's the /r/fantasy bingo: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fan
| tasy/comments/ttrev1/official_rf...
| rectang wrote:
| "Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey", LOL. Any other D&D-adjacent
| novels on your bingo board?
| asicsp wrote:
| Yeah, I read "Morcster Chef"
| (https://www.goodreads.com/series/341256-morcster-chef)
| for non-human main character square. A light hearted fun
| series about an orc who loves cooking.
| RobertoG wrote:
| I think that's the case too for 'The Expanse'. It seems it
| followed the path role game -> books -> tv show.
|
| At the moment of watching the show I didn't realized but,
| after learning the fact, it was obvious that I had been
| watching a role campaign.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| There is a new animated series on Amazon Prime Video
| based on a role playing session too: _The Legend of Vox
| Machina_
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Vox_Machina
|
| I'd loosely describe it as Final Space set in Middle
| Earth. Though I found the humour far less forced than in
| Final Space.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And very well written one at that!
| saxelsen wrote:
| Malazan fan here too! Coincidentally, Erikson and Esslemont
| are also Canadians like the OP :)
| sbergot wrote:
| Today D&D 5e is made for powerful fantasy heroes that rarely
| die and earn XP by killing things. If you aren't aware there
| is a whole movement called "osr" which put more emphasis on
| finding treasure in very dangerous situations. There is even
| a game called Dungeon Crawl Classic that suggest doing a
| "funnel" to create new characters: each player starts with
| 3/4 weak characters. At the end of the dungeon you pick your
| official character among the survivor.
|
| Osr authors have produced many wonderful books. Definitely
| worth checking out. So games like OSE are carbon copies of
| older games. Other like knave try to modernise and streamline
| things while keeping the spirit.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| It's a bit complicated what OSR is about and to be honest
| I'm very confused about it.
|
| There seem to be two categories of OSR games, as far as I
| can tell.
|
| One is a category of games that are more or less faithful
| reproductions of some pre-3.0 edition of D&D rules, without
| any setting information. This is possible apparently
| because of an (untested?) understanding that rules cannot
| be copyrighted.
|
| Most of those games are free downloads. Just the ones I
| have on my drive: OSRIC (Old School
| Reference and Index Compilation) Dark Dungeon (2nd
| ed. D&D?) Labyrinth Lord (1st ed) Old School
| Essentials Swords and Wizzardry Neon Lords of
| the Toxic Wasteland (1st ed. BX) Lamentations of the
| Flame Princess Lightmaster Dungeon Crawl
| Classics
|
| Some or all of those games are referred to as "retro-
| clones".
|
| As far as I've read up, DCC and Lightmaster seem to be the
| ones that depart the farthest from the original rulesets.
|
| The other category is a category of rules-light, low-effort
| games that are often no more than a commentary on D&D and
| TT-RPGs in general, sometimes in zine format.
|
| I don't want to give too many examples of those because my
| description probably sounds disparaging enough, but see
| this link for some such games (or "games"):
|
| https://liberludorum.com/2021/03/29/sword-satire/
|
| And I'm probably missing a few categories of OSR games. For
| instance, The Black Hack, Rogue, Troika and Into the
| Electric Bastionland seem to be OSR, but I haven't had the
| chance to read them and figure out what they're about.
| Anycase, the OSR movement seems to have started around the
| time of this essay:
|
| "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming"
|
| https://archive.org/details/a-quick-primer-for-old-school-
| ga...
|
| If anyone understands what OSR is, or means, better than I
| do, please help because I'm just confused. I don't even
| know what the comonly accepted definition of the "OSR"
| acronym is supposed to be (or if one exists even).
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's not just a kookie idea they've come up with though
| it's coming from Baker v Selden and the Copyright Act of
| 1976 which says:
|
| > In no case does copyright protection for an original
| work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure,
| process, system, method of operation, concept, principle,
| or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is
| described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such
| work
|
| The core rules have no copyright protection and it's
| "untested?" because the language of the law and the
| interpretation of it is pretty clear and consistent.
|
| https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_
| law...
| uxp100 wrote:
| To speak to Troika just a bit as someone who read the
| rule book and played like one session:
|
| A lot of the Troika book is character
| profiles/archetypes/etc. if you tell someone this is a
| wild game, make up your craziest character, they will
| probably not be as "out there" as the provided
| archetypes. You roll 2d6, and get a refined alien
| cannibal (well, not exactly a cannibal, I guess, someone
| who wants to eat other characters) or a character that
| has become "enlightened" (chemically, surgically? I can't
| remember) to the point they have very little thought. So
| anyway, between wacky characters and wacky skills, that's
| what in the troika book. Some simple rules, No setting
| aside from a one session adventure, but flavorful skills
| and character ideas.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thanks! I kind of got that sort of vibe from descriptions
| of Troika I found online, but I looked for a quickstart
| and couldn't locate it, so I wasn't sure.
|
| What I don't understand is what common elements Troika
| and Electric Bastionland, for example, share with Dungeon
| Crawl Classics or Old School Essentials. They seem to me
| like completely different kinds of game, in tone, mood,
| rules, and everything else besides.
|
| Not that this is a bad thing, I just get confused about
| what's OSR and a bit frustrated that it seems a bit
| cliquey in the end. Like you gotta be an insider to get
| it and if you don't get it then you don't need it
| explained.
| uxp100 wrote:
| I think the troika connection to OSR is somewhat tenuous,
| but the game system is inspired by the Fighting Fantasy
| series of "interactive" novels that were popular in the
| UK in the 80s. But I think it is essentially a cliquey
| thing. It is general approach or attitude, plus just who
| is friends with a game designer that makes something OSR.
| It's a scene.
| simonh wrote:
| That's pretty much it, they're for the most part strongly
| D&D flavoured RPGs with relatively simple mechanics.
| They're in many ways more inspired by pre-AD&D editions
| of the game and partly a reaction to the complication of
| the game and move away towards general skill mechanics in
| 3rd Edition. The designers of the 5th edition of D&D
| consciously took on board some of the attitude and game
| design culture of OSR.
| BryantD wrote:
| There's a trend for the latter category to be renamed
| Free Kriegsspiel Revolution (see
| https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2500148/ancient-
| roleplaying... for a writeup). Kriegsspiel is a Prussian
| term for refereed war games, developed to enable better
| training for their army; the original free kriegsspiel
| movement arose because the rules felt too constrained.
|
| These are not really all satires, although I like that
| post about satirical games a lot.
|
| The Quick Primer is about as good a general definition of
| OSR as you're going to get.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The principle of having disposable characters is something I
| like about the new Alien RPG. It definitely helps that the
| adventures / campaigns are well-written.
| curuinor wrote:
| the OG disposable-characters RPG is Paranoia. Friend
| Computer has 6 clones of you in reserve for your messy
| demise!
| EnKopVand wrote:
| Before I went back to software development I found myself in
| some national task forces for enterprise architecture in the
| public sector, and as such got to do a lot of speeches on it at
| different conventions. For around the first year I literally
| had to do the presentation for myself. In the beginning I spent
| an entire day talking to the mirror, otherwise my presentation
| would be terrible. After a couple of years of it, I can now
| pull a presentation out my ass on the spot about basically any
| subject of which I have a solid foundation of knowledge.
|
| I imagine game mastering to be a lot like that. Except when
| playing a game or D&D you also have a bunch of people
| participate in your presentation. I think you may have skipped
| the practice part a little too much, but I'd encourage you to
| get into to it as a player because it can be really fun with
| the right group.
|
| I personally play AD&D with a bunch of other 35-40+ year olds,
| and the primary reason is to spend a few Saturdays each year
| drinking beer. Basically the reason for which I play blood
| bowl. The stories we go through are better than playing Baldurs
| Gate was though, largely thanks to our game master and the fact
| that nobody is too serious, and maybe because AD&D wasn't
| designed to be as forgiving or "your character is now a God" as
| the modern systems. Anyway, we found our group through
| Facebook, and while there are two sets of "friends" in it half
| of it are solo players who joined us, so it's certainly
| possible for you to find something if you look!
| jasondigitized wrote:
| I've always thought there was an opportunity for professional
| dungeon masters. If you live in a large city, or think you
| can pull it off in Zoom, I am sure there is a market for a
| very curated and polished experience for players. I'd imagine
| there are hundreds of people out there that are really really
| good at this, just as there are really good speakers,
| narrators, and voice actors.
| ninju wrote:
| Yep..that's happening already
|
| https://www.polygon.com/22525941/how-to-hire-a-dungeon-
| maste...
|
| Then she saw the section for pay to play games, hosted by
| professional Dungeon Masters (DMs), that typically cost
| between $5 and $25 per session.
| black_knight wrote:
| I started lecturing at the university at the same time as I
| picked up D&D again. I think both activities helped each
| other out. But I felt a bit like a living circus, pulling
| elaborate acts out of my head almost every day.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Sounds like you want to DM rather than play. Build that world!
| Get some friends together who might have an interest.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| That was pretty much how I was. Played a little in middle
| school, but picked up an obsession with RPGs. I'd buy pretty
| much any RPG I could get my hands on and read through the
| rules, roll up characters, think about a campaign, but do
| nothing. Later this would translate into playing virtually
| every MMPORG that came out but only for the first few levels.
| At some point I realized I just liked understanding the
| systems, but didn't enjoy the games, particularly the social
| element. The upshot though was mastering all those rule systems
| prepared my brain for a career in programming. I now play
| around with programming languages the way I used to play around
| with MMPROGs and I enjoy digging around in cloud deployments
| the way I used to enjoy reading RPG lore.
| brightball wrote:
| In junior high I was absolutely obsessed with character
| creation for some reason. I just built characters all the time
| to the point that I was creating my own classes too.
|
| I have no idea why. Just a weird phase I experienced.
| lupire wrote:
| Looks like you were more into worldbuilding and maybe the
| bookkeeping/accounting. Those are their own kind of fun.
| uncletaco wrote:
| This was me except with Vampire: The Masquerade. I had binders
| full of characters, _all_ of the clan novels and trilogies, and
| held a repository of V:tM lore knowledge in my head. Used to
| doodle shadow tentacles onto little characters I made in
| notebook margins. I would argue on forums about what clan
| characters would be that borrowed liberally from the game's
| aesthetics and settings (Blade and Underworld being the most
| egregious)
|
| This was when I was in middle and high school. I'm 34 now and
| I've _still_ not played a single game lol.
| count wrote:
| Having played the game (and the other White Wolf games), I
| think you maximized the possible enjoyment there. I really
| didn't care for the 'game' part of it, but the world building
| was amazing!
| themodelplumber wrote:
| There are so many different ways to run games. It can be
| disheartening to see people play very energetically to what is
| essentially one's own point of least interest.
|
| Maybe it's similar to seeing someone speed run a video game
| where you mainly go for the sensory thrill of taking it slow.
| And you feel some pressure to get "better" but it doesn't
| exactly sound fun. Maybe something like that, anyway...
|
| Personally I like to house-rule away just about everything that
| bugs me about any given game, if I like the setting for
| example. (And I also appreciate games with optional rules like
| "here are some ideas for making this game more heroic and less
| depressing for your PCs")
|
| For example I was using one system and realized the writer
| didn't care very much about how one weapon differed from
| another, except in terms of raw damage. So I found a way to
| take the game in the complete opposite direction and I called
| my rules framework PaG, for "Play as Gun." (As opposed to
| playing as a character)
|
| Every rule that the original game used for creating baroque
| characterizations was applied across to weaponry, and then
| ammunition. I started getting into all kinds of crazy smart
| ammo and it was a lot of fun.
|
| This got me thinking of the idea of Ammo As Character in which
| you could effectively write up your ammunition as an archetype
| and play it as a character in the game.
|
| That world got really cool fast, IMO. And mostly just to me.
| But that own-world, own-prefs stuff is a huge part of TTRPG
| culture.
| Jensson wrote:
| Weapons functioning the same is mostly about playability. A
| player can learn their character class and then be set, if
| they find a new weapon they don't have to learn a new class.
| But if the complexity lies in the weapon it means that every
| time a characters weapon breaks or they have to use something
| new, their entire playstyle now changes and they have to
| learn new rules, that really slows things down and most
| players aren't that interested in reading about the rules of
| new things. Even the basic character rules in dnd are said to
| be too much for newbies.
|
| Having more complex weapon behavior like that works much
| better in computer games where players can just play without
| having to understand what things does.
| Erwin wrote:
| There are roleplaying systems that do embrace the
| complexity (and well beyond CPRG).
|
| Here's an "attack table" for one specific weapon in
| Rolemaster: you roll a 1-100, add and subtract a whole lot
| of offensive and defensive bonuses and end up with a result
| like "15DK" -- 15 hit points of damage and a severity D
| critical hit on the K (Crushing) table. The broadsword can
| give both Crushing and Slashing criticals. That again has
| 20 random outcomes such as "Strike lower level; tear
| tendons. Foe is at -25%. +3 hits. Foe is stunned and unable
| to parry next round"
|
| https://i.stack.imgur.com/SPCmu.png
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Rolemaster? That's rules light. Try Harnmaster:
|
| https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/hulk-
| smash/hrnmaster...
| ninju wrote:
| https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/images/14470f5952
| 9fa...
| count wrote:
| Holy flashback to my 90s gaming days!
| Communitivity wrote:
| Rolemaster is probably my favorite system, to this day.
| Had a devil of a time finding anyone to play it with
| though. Somewhere around here I have a couple boxes full
| of ICE Rolemaster books. I like the complexity, and the
| ability to run either a low power or a high power game.
|
| I still think ShadowWorld (the main Rolemaster campaign
| setting) is the most detailed and well put together
| setting I've ever seen.
|
| Just checked, ICE and Rolemaster are still going.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I think I'd love to play, I just wouldn't want to GM...
| ever!
| rtkwe wrote:
| I know some people like those hyper crunchy systems but
| they're just not for me. It always feels like they're
| better suited for the backend system for a computer rpg
| where all the tables and math can be simplified away.
| autoexec wrote:
| I agree, if you have to consult 50 charts and formulas to
| calculate damage in a single round of combat that's going
| to slow the game down too much. No need to go full
| computer rpg though, I could see a DM pulling out a
| laptop and writing some scripts to handle some of the
| math while keeping the rest of the game tabletop though.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Yeah, that strikes me as much too complex. I like the
| games where you get something like '3 damage points, pick
| any effects you want (optionally limited per weapon type)
| or just pure damage'
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Easiest way to avoid that: don't let weapons break and only
| introduce new weapons when players ask for it.
|
| The rules shouldn't be a straightjacket dooming the players
| to a death spiral of despair and boredom. Especially so if
| they're your own houserules.
|
| Personally I don't even understand why people buy rulebooks
| anymore. Just for the art I presume, or to cannibalise for
| their own systems and settings.
| Jensson wrote:
| Dungeons and dragons groups lies somewhere on the spectrum
| between improvised theatre to strict rules boardgame. If you
| imagined it to be anything other than that you will be
| disappointed. But if you want one of those you can always find
| such a group, just note that most people are really bad at
| improvised theatre, so you need to find bad acting to be funny
| to enjoy it so you might not like it even if you like stories.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > somewhere on the spectrum between improvised theatre to
| strict rules boardgame.
|
| And players can range from mildly disinterested in combat to
| tryhard min-maxers. Similar vein, but finding a group with
| the same overall style is helpful both from a balance and a
| fun perspective.
| fermentation wrote:
| What happens when the characters reach max level? I've played
| campaigns that lasted a little over a year and once we reached
| 16th level or so, combat rounds in 5e became excruciatingly slow.
| I imagine it is very difficult for the DM to balance that, and
| even more so for them to provide the feeling of increasing power
| to folks who have been in the game for some time.
| cperciva wrote:
| First Edition had guidelines for high level characters
| literally becoming gods. IIRC one of the paths involved being
| reincarnated (without memories of past lives) as a level 1
| character in each of the different classes and needing to reach
| high level in each of them in turn -- no easy feat considering
| that the attributes which make for a great fighter will make
| for a lousy wizard, but of course becoming gods shouldn't be
| easy.
| ScarletEmerald wrote:
| That wasn't First Edition, it was the parallel Basic, Expert,
| Companion, Masters, Immortals (aka BECMI) D&D line that had
| 36 levels and came out between about 1980 and wrapped up in
| the mid-90s. AD&D First Edition did have a few paragraphs on
| divine ascension, noting that it was "remotely possible" and
| removed the character from play. BECMI, in contrast, had
| multiple defined pathways to divinity/immortality, along with
| rules for playing immortal characters.
|
| Of the BECMI paths for immortality, the one you mentioned is
| the polymath. There are others. The epic hero quests after
| legendary artifacts of good and evil, accomplishes great
| deeds and leaves behind a successor. The paragon creates a
| unique artifact of power, recruits and train powerful
| minions, reshapes the landscape, and vanquishes any potential
| equals. The dynast founds a mighty empire and ensures it
| withstands the tests of time.
| cperciva wrote:
| Thanks for correcting my memory -- it's been a while!
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> I learned early that following Gary Gygax's advice in the
| opening lines of the DMG was essential: the rules were only a
| rough guide; develop your own system.
|
| One has to wonder then why we already have 5 official versions of
| the rules, and counting.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Rather than a flip "money," I will detail the cycle.
|
| 1) TSR (or WotC) puts out a new version of the rules, a set of
| core rulebooks, typically a Dungeon Masters Guide, a Monster
| Manual, and a Players Handbook.
|
| 2) Some additional content is pushed out, like a module or two.
|
| 3) _Here is the danger part_ : Realizing that there are more
| Players than DMs, well, more money is to be made putting out
| content players want. Splatbooks of unlikely "prestige paths,"
| or if you want to go old school, barbarian and cavalier and
| acrobat. Rather than having rules so flexible you could re-
| enact _Conan the Barbarian_ or _Sword and the Sorceror_ or
| _Beastmaster_ , instead rules are carved out for an archetype
| of exactly that film or book.
|
| 4) The game unbalances due to new rules, and Pun-Pun the Kobold
| is born.
|
| 5) Players proceed to tear through every encounter with min-
| maxed ("munchkined") characters as per the hyper-optimized
| builds laid out in the splat books.
|
| 6) We must rebalance the game.
|
| 7) Go to Step 1.
|
| This is _part_ of the problem, not the whole of it, but ... I
| would not say it is insignificant.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Yes, I think that's on point, particularly point number (3)
| and its consequences.
|
| Well, balance is hard, particularly when you want to sell
| your game to er, well, you said the word munchkin :P
| at_a_remove wrote:
| #3 is more complex than I let on. It needs a few things to
| remedy it:
|
| A) A focus on creating material for the DM, and most
| especially pre-built playable areas. A decent-sized city
| would cover an entire book, for example, as it would have
| several maps, scores of encounter areas, and just as many,
| if not more, fleshed-out NPCs with their own goals, as well
| as areas "just outside of town" to be worked with. Or take
| the Dungeon Dozen, but make it 1) serious, 2) strictly
| fantasy, 3) two hundred entries long.
|
| B) An allowance for players to craft their characters, but
| _not_ along the rails TSR or WotC or some d20 affiliate has
| made. Referring back to my example, Conan (the movie Conan)
| wasn 't a "barbarian" class, he was a lot of fighter, with
| a little thief, a guy whose CON exceeded his STR, and he
| should be buildable by taking a little from this or that,
| some out of this skill tree, a feat or two here and there
| ... this eliminates the need for splat books.
| kibwen wrote:
| Even if you're developing your own house rules based on an
| existing system, it's great to have a variety of systems all
| with fleshed-out rules to draw from. And while it's good to
| retain some similarity between versions for the sake of
| thematic continuity, it's good to make each version distinctly
| different to give people distinctly different jumping-off
| points for their own rulesets. This is why, unlike seemingly
| everybody on the internet, I never begrudged D&D 4E for being
| so different from 3.5; it served its role in having a distinct
| identity from its predecessors to appeal to different people
| and result in different variations.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I've played the one session of D&D 4ed. so I can't really
| disparage it :)
|
| I get what you're saying but it's useful also to remember
| that D&D is a brand and a product and in fact one of the
| flagship products of a game publishing giant, so the
| motivation that directs the changes to the ruleset must be
| profit, first.
|
| Which is fine, I work for profit also. But what I don't see
| the point of is spending a ton of money buying in to every
| new D&D version, of which there are going to be at least
| another 5 before I'm dead, as far as I can tell, when I can
| just roll my own and play it for free with my friends.
|
| Anyway this creative aspect has always been part and parcel
| of the hobby, as evidenced by the -probably thousands- of
| TTRPG rulesets in existence.
| [deleted]
| jdkee wrote:
| AD&D was such a world creation myth to immerse oneself in.
| Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. We fell out of it, my friends
| and I, in our twenties. But it has pulled us back in in our
| forties. Playing the original TSR modules with new characters. So
| much better than computer role playing games as the fun exists in
| the real tabletop experiences of people interacting with each
| other in meatspace. It demonstrates what has been lost in virtual
| space. Similarly to playing boardgames with real players around
| the table.
|
| Humans are social creatures who belong in close physical
| proximity with other people. To interact, to feel free to belong,
| to be humans. Technology is a poor replacement for this.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| Just saw this interesting video[1] from Wired yesterday - "Inside
| the 40 Year-Long Dungeons & Dragons Game", funny timing because
| this seems to be about the same game!
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ-ehbVQYxI
| siavosh wrote:
| Watched the video interview with him -- never thought of games as
| a purposeful mechanism to help keep friends together as they get
| older. Need to look into this.
| sshagent wrote:
| My setting is live from the mid 90s. I've stayed in the same
| town, so hasn't had the same complications of his moves. We've
| got nearly 400 years of in campaign history. We've migrated
| through a lot of systems (currently PF2E). Its something I'm
| proud of, and its always pleasant when non RP nights end up with
| others talking of epic moments in our games from over the years.
| Friends who've sadly past are immortalised through the deeds of
| their characters as well, obviously not to take anything from
| their RL activities but its nice to speak of those who've moved
| on from the real world, whose exist as NPCs
| ExtraE wrote:
| How do you feel about PF2E? I've heard it's... complicated.
| seanclayton wrote:
| As a GM, PF2e is quite easy and simple. There's great tables
| for DCs. It's pretty easy to determine what skill to roll.
| Calculating your roll is super simple. Scaling monsters is
| easy and simple. Creating encounters of any level is easy.
|
| As a player, I think it has a higher learning curve because
| of the new action rules and the vast amount of actions one
| can do, but personally I think it's a good thing :)
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Not OP, but I can say that PF2e is complicated only in
| comparison to something like D&D5e. Compared to D&D3.5e
| (which is what PF forked from) it's more streamlined.
|
| I think streamlined vs complexity is a topic that should be
| discussed here. Complexity isn't a bad thing- Street Fighter
| is more complex than Mario 1. But that doesn't mean it's
| _bad_ , obviously. PF2e vs D&D5e are similar. Both are great
| games depending on what sort of complexity you're looking
| for, and that's personal taste. For me, 5e isn't complex
| enough.
| causi wrote:
| Right. 5e is much easier to learn to play and DM but it
| also has less room for interesting things to emerge
| dynamically from events. 5e is arguably as fun to play but
| it is _far_ less fun to watch, at least in my opinion.
| sshagent wrote:
| Its a little crunchier. However from the GM perspective its a
| lot better to run. The math behind the system is real strong,
| which isn't something you get from RP systems. Its not like
| PF or 3.5 where there can be massive power differences
| between characters.
|
| Combat is a lot more interesting, its not just roll d20's
| burning down the HP of whatever you fighting. I tend to find
| that 5e battles seem very same-ish.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| My campaign world covers about 2000 years. Most campaigns start
| towards the latter end of previous game's longer lived
| characters' lives but the exact setting usually isn't made
| clear to the players up front. Sometimes it's a prequel. No
| characters are immortal except one vampire, some zombies, and
| some gods but there's some non linear temporal locations which
| occasionally feature. Most campaigns start with new characters
| who have little to no knowledge of the previous games
| characters and go through the process of meeting them and
| filling in what's happened in the past few hundred years.
| Characters come and go, but CURSED ITEMS are eternal which is
| fun.
|
| Most important is that everything is canon. Sometimes a
| campaign fizzles out. Still canon. The end of that adventure is
| free for the next DM to write out as they wish. Often these
| campaigns are considered to have had the party fail their
| quest.
| sshagent wrote:
| Oh yeah, my setting has 2000 years of history... Its just 400
| or so is player influenced and made.
| rightbyte wrote:
| How many characters have died in such a time spann? Like is any
| of the original characters alive?
| sshagent wrote:
| Sorry i missed your second question. Plenty of characters are
| still alive. Characters retire into NPC formats, generally
| once they are lords and such. There is only so many
| apocalypses you can have to challenge high level characters.
| They can come on "screen" in other campaigns. They generally
| have their own faction that they operate off camera. New
| characters sometimes opt to be sons of earlier characters of
| their own, or of other players characters. It works quite
| well.
|
| I have had to add a magical plant, which when processed,
| slows the aging process. I felt a bit harsh killing retired
| characters, so the rich and powerful tend to not age too
| much. Some players are fine with their characters to die off,
| but thats there choice.
|
| Lastly we sometimes dust off old characters to deal with
| major problems or just for mainly RP type sessions.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Interesting read. I think the longest game I played was
| maybe 20 sessions over a year (it ended in a wipe). There
| is a fine balance between "feeling of danger" and losing
| interest due to deaths of characters that you have got
| attached to.
|
| It requires some investment to keep it up but it is really
| nice to meet ppl on a regular basis for other things than
| food or alcohol.
| sshagent wrote:
| Plenty. Early days, from a GM perspective my mindset was the
| risk of death had to be genuine and meant victories we're
| more to enjoy. Over the years I've relaxed a lot away from
| that. Its not often nowadays that players die. I don't run
| published adventures, and don't always keep things within the
| appropriate difficulty range. However i will always give
| opportunities to withdraw or escape if its something a little
| too tough. Some systems are a lot more flexible on what each
| party can handle but things like PF2E the math behind the
| system is strong and you can easily gauge what they can't
| handle.
| gedy wrote:
| Amazing timeframe! I first played D&D in 1983 for a couple years,
| then picked up again 2 years ago with my sons. It feels like the
| campaign has had so much happen in 2 years, can't imagine how
| rich a 40 year campaign would be.
| vjk800 wrote:
| I really wanted to get into pen&paper RPGs when I was a teenager,
| but was too socially awkward to break into the only group of
| people I knew that played them. Can you believe that; too
| socially inept to have the nerdiest hobby ever? The D&D players
| were the cool kids compared to me.
| dkarl wrote:
| I was similar, not that I wasn't invited, but I couldn't handle
| something where the point was entirely social. I wanted a game
| where I could know if I was good or not (and preferably be
| better than other people.) It also drove me crazy that we were
| playing a high fantasy game where we were fantasizing about
| having all kinds of great powers and doing amazing things but
| nobody was doing anything cool outside the game. Not that I was
| doing any better; I just liked to hate myself for it. I
| probably could have made some friends if I had gone back.
| ragebol wrote:
| And the group maybe too socially inept to see that and to
| comfort you out of the awkwardness :-)
| bythreads wrote:
| Some of my best games have been the ones without weapons, powers
| and shenannigans -
|
| Playing kids, playing people with delusions of grandeur, playing
| deaf/mute, playing madly in love etc.
|
| After years we just ditched the rules and only threw dice to keep
| things random.
| User23 wrote:
| I ran a pretty great, if I say so myself, AD&D campaign. I
| started with a campaign that was find the pieces to reforge the
| sword of ages to beat the big bad (I know right?) that eventually
| ended up with psionics and spelljamming. Obviously I'm nostalgic,
| but the AD&D 2e era was marvelous. It's fun to look at those old
| notebooks.
|
| It reminds me of the charming MUDs of that era. There was a total
| focus on fun, with no concern about irrelevancies like
| "intellectual property." That's of course the spirit of D&D.
| Appendix N literally encouraged lifting ideas from published
| works.
|
| The hardest part was organizational. I had a half dozen
| enthusiastic players, but arranging a time where everyone could
| be there was a real challenge.
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