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Post by Dartanian on Jun 22, 2018 23:45:43 GMT -5
So many have spent so much time and effort trying to convince people that it is really difficult and really hard work to set up a Fantasy campaign. Once they have sold that message, then they offer this pre-made setting for sale. (again this is not directed at robertsconley , I do not see him trying to convince people it cannot be done, you are not in anyway a bad guy for selling things) On this point I have two observations 1) Many (but not all) authors of RPG material don't get that most RPG campaigns are kitbashes. A good supplement/adventures/etc would keep this in mind for it presentation to make it easy to incorporate. 2) Some have a bug up their ass about commercial projects. Back in the day with the writer-publisher-distributor-game store model there definitely room for criticism. But today a author can do their own thing, their own way, presented how they like it, and have a shot of getting it into the hands of gamers. So I don't see the point of this type of criticism. No one is complaining or criticizing people for selling product, but we rightly condemn those who tell people that DIY is too difficult for anyone but a professional as part of their sales strategy. |
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Post by Dartanian on Jun 23, 2018 0:09:24 GMT -5
The difference with the approach I take is that before the first session begins, I ask the players what kind of character they want to play. What their initial goals for the campaign. Then we go back and forth until they are happy with something they want to play. By the time the first session starts they have a rough idea what the area like and what interesting there. I think many of us do what I do and that is here are the dice, roll 3d6 in order and then pick your race and class. If you want to play a non-standard race, let me know so I can work something up for that. Here are classes that are available IMC and here is the thumbnail sketch of my campaign and what I run. I run what I am interested in and often that interests the player too. If it doesn't then I will direct them to some other games that I know of. I don't choose to change my campaign around for a new player now and then. I run what I run. Look at your reply These are all options created by you. Note I am including the ones implied by talking to the patrons. They represent what you think that the players will find interesting. Now it may be that you game only with good friend so you already know what they like. Fine, but that not my situation. In the past and now I referee a different groups with different interests. So what I focus on is finding what the players are interested in doing and incorporate that as well. When I do this, it results in a summary that I write up. I can talk more about this but the assumption so far seems to think this results in a multi-page dissertation, that all my players are bunch of whiny rule lawyers and munchkins. So I will end it there. But if people want more details I am happy to share them and more importantly why I do the things I do. I am the referee, my job is to create a world and a living sandbox world and fill it with interesting things and dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of hooks over time. It is my job to bring the world to life and make it interesting to the players. The players know up front they are coming into an old school world where the name of the game is exploration, staying alive and going on to be successful in a multitude of ways. They are told up front this is not a murderhobo game and making the choice to kill everything that moves is a way to die very quickly IMC. There is no experience for killing things IMC, there are a lot of ways to earn experience, but that is not one of them. This game is not a game for serial killers and it is not a story game, there are no railroads, your decisions and choices always matter and your actions have consequences. While I do get feedback from my players, some ideas just do not fit into my world and those things are not used. My world does not morph from game to game to meet the latest fashion or whim. While your writeups may be quite short, many of us can not imagine players that would want to read and memorize things, our players, my players consider game prep to be my job not theirs. I don't think anyone really intended to say that your players are a bunch of whiny rule lawyers and munchkins, I think it is more that we have never run into players that want to intrude on the ref side of the screen for reasons other than becoming a ref themselves except for in our(my) experience those people who turn out to not be fun to play with. It will not end well for a player trying to hold me to a rule that I threw out 10 years ago and never use. When I tell a player, this is how I run it and I am consistent in that approach, that should be the end of it. |
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Post by simrion on Jun 23, 2018 6:23:54 GMT -5
Instead of giving them a big info dump, I give them smaller bites of info as they need them. They are not as ignorant as babies, they actually know a lot having heard a lot over the years of their lives. But how accurately they remember is the question. So I can say, when it comes up, you have heard this and you think your remember that but you are not sure it is exactly that. And so on and so forth. This seems to keep coming up in different threads and I agree that the characters know a lot about the world they live in and I have always found giving them "smaller bites of info as they need them" to be the way to go. Have an Exalt! Reminiscent of"Library Data" in the original Traveller...bite sized chunks of info the characters might research during the campaign |
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 23, 2018 12:23:42 GMT -5
On this point I have two observations 1) Many (but not all) authors of RPG material don't get that most RPG campaigns are kitbashes. A good supplement/adventures/etc would keep this in mind for it presentation to make it easy to incorporate. 2) Some have a bug up their ass about commercial projects. Back in the day with the writer-publisher-distributor-game store model there definitely room for criticism. But today a author can do their own thing, their own way, presented how they like it, and have a shot of getting it into the hands of gamers. So I don't see the point of this type of criticism. No one is complaining or criticizing people for selling product, but we rightly condemn those who tell people that DIY is too difficult for anyone but a professional as part of their sales strategy. I want to make it clear that I and this site strongly support people publishing their own products, it makes no difference to me whether it is for free or commercial, I support you doing so. I and this site strongly support the DIY/MIY ethic and believe that anyone that refs can create their own setting and that their should not be any roadblocks put in the way of doing that nor should people be discouraged from doing that. I and this site strongly support people who go beyond imitation and do things that are original, unique and innovative. All of those things derivative, original and DIY are important to the hobby and the community. By hobby I mean all current and past players of any RPG and by community I mean the whole world which would include but not be limited to all potential players of any RPG. |
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 23, 2018 12:24:01 GMT -5
New school gaming and modern society at all levels loves the murderhobo amoral trope (see nearly all video games as another reference point), old school gaming loves the exploration moral teamwork trope and that is what society used to favor. If you read history, there was a lot of teamwork that made exploration of the world possible and yes while those teams had individuals that were in essence murderhobo's, those teams also had very moral self-sacrificing people that were part of a team that just wanted to find out what was over the horizon and come back and tell people about it. The fact that they hoped to make a profit so they could do more of it, does not negate the sacrifices and teamwork. Go read the story of the men who died reaching the South Pole. That is inspiring to me.
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 23, 2018 12:39:55 GMT -5
Note I never refereed these folks before. I will dig up the packet I sent them beforehand tomorrow. I would be interested in seeing that robertsconley. On the topic of immersion, when I started up my new campaign in July of 2009 and it ran through early 2017 when I had to shut it down due to my wife's health which I talk about in another thread, it was a combination of friends and complete strangers. Over that entire time period as players came and went over roughly eight years about half of my players came to me as strangers and at no point did the lack of handouts seem to interfere in anyway with immersion. A number of those strangers played for two or more years. Some became close friends and one became my boss in a new job. My refereeing was my interview. I had two main reasons that players left, one was the time commitment and two was some people did not want to play with kids and about half the time my game did have kids in it. The game was doing well and had to be shutdown only because I could not commit the time and focus to keep it going. |
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Post by robkuntz on Jun 23, 2018 12:59:32 GMT -5
Note I never refereed these folks before. I will dig up the packet I sent them beforehand tomorrow. I would be interested in seeing that robertsconley . On the topic of immersion, when I started up my new campaign in July of 2009 and it ran through early 2017 when I had to shut it down due to my wife's health which I talk about in another thread, it was a combination of friends and complete strangers. Over that entire time period as players came and went over roughly eight years about half of my players came to me as strangers and at no point did the lack of handouts seem to interfere in anyway with immersion. A number of those strangers played for two or more years. Some became close friends and one became my boss in a new job. My refereeing was my interview. I had two main reasons that players left, one was the time commitment and two was some people did not want to play with kids and about half the time my game did have kids in it. The game was doing well and had to be shutdown only because I could not commit the time and focus to keep it going. In the thousands of games that I've DMed for hundreds of participants I never gave any player a hand out, unless I were to count chips and dip, that is... Now Gary and I used rumor sheets, but those were intermittent and the players were not always enticed by these, it depended. Local news was best gathered at taverns; news about the world was general and for the most part, unconfirmed, just as it was in Medieval Europe. You knew that Berlin was X miles (leagues) in such n such direction and that it was BIG and had lots of sites and people, maybe some sausage makers and merchants, but specific details? Good luck with that in Medieval times if you'd never been there. Even after Marco Polo returned from the East and attempted to impress upon people (with his diaries and "hand outs") what he'd experienced, people were befuddled in reaction. Same went for the reactions to the discovery of the Americas and the Aztecs, etc, even when many of the latter were brought as slaves before King Phillip of Spain. 'You just had to be there' runs throughout history and so did it in Greyhawk+/+Kalibruhn with Gary and I. It was even worse with Dave's Blackmoor, it being so frontier-like and isolated. |
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 23, 2018 13:21:47 GMT -5
I have always found it as you noted robkuntz. During the four years in college the guy that brought the game with him his freshman year recruited 12 strangers and just told us about the game (the 30 sec elevator pitch) and we played and all came back every week. There was never a handout. After a short time he let me read the rules and I started reffing and he mostly switched to playing. After that I reffed and rarely played and he played and rarely reffed. The group varied from the ref of the week and 12 players up to the ref of the week and 30 players. We never had less than 12 and after the first few months usually had about 16-20 players every game. Only two of us ever saw the rules, the two refs. None of the other players showed any interest in or asked to see the rule book aside from short glances at the spell descriptions and the reference sheets from the game box were passed around for the buying of equipment. You could buy stuff that was not on the reference sheet. That was it, no other handouts were ever given to the players. We all started as total strangers. Outside of classes and study the time available was for fun so no prep work went into the game. Every week on Friday night and Saturday afternoon and night, we would set down and start playing and for about 20-24 hours total over those two days I created everything on the fly and when the other guy reffed that is what he did, created everything on the fly. We regularly had people that did not play that just hung out to watch the game, immersion was never an issue. While we were all the same age and all college students we came from widely different backgrounds and socio-economic upbringing. The other main thing we had in common was that we all were voracious readers of fantasy, science fiction, fairy tales, fables, and lots of other topics fiction non-fiction. Most of us were into history and geography as well. If we had not had class and the need to study, we would have played every day. |
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Jun 23, 2018 14:17:08 GMT -5
New school gaming and modern society at all levels loves the murderhobo amoral trope (see nearly all video games as another reference point), old school gaming loves the exploration moral teamwork trope and that is what society used to favor. If you read history, there was a lot of teamwork that made exploration of the world possible and yes while those teams had individuals that were in essence murderhobo's, those teams also had very moral self-sacrificing people that were part of a team that just wanted to find out what was over the horizon and come back and tell people about it. The fact that they hoped to make a profit so they could do more of it, does not negate the sacrifices and teamwork. Go read the story of the men who died reaching the South Pole. That is inspiring to me. This is what i want to get back to - where PCs are heroic not dastardly villains as many in my old games ended up as. Have an exalt. |
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Post by robertsconley on Jun 23, 2018 14:50:10 GMT -5
Here you go drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1Ih5ggeK1X3Xj0VemboNI_Y0050uoaO3jWhen it is face to face. It is a bunch of letter sized cards. If when the player pick a class I give them a class card. Like this one for the magic user. drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=11jjCsuaeCOrmdTUuU8fn1n1ZAcvDNgqXKeep in mind, those cards are designed so that the players don't need to refer to the rulebook during character creation. Start with the first and work your way through and 15 to 20 minutes later you have a complete character with all equipment ready to run. That with the additions I made to reflect my Majestic Wilderlands. If was running just with the stuff in OD&D it would be shorter still. The class and race information could be made to fit on one card. After trying it ten years ago I do for every system I run. I done this for Traveller, D&D 5th edition, GURPS, Fantasy Age, etc. Makes things go a lot faster, and issues are straightforward to fix. For example I didn't have equipment packs. Then D&D 5th edition came along and notice for many players it greatly sped things up. So I incorporated the idea for my own rules. If folks think they don't need it fine. But if the players are using the rulebooks for character generation making condensed and concise reference cards makes go faster particularly for novices. Sometimes for experienced players as well particularly for stuff that are in lists like spells and equipment. It a way of handling character generation. I used it to handle groups as large as 12. On the topic of immersion, when I started up my new campaign in July of 2009 and it ran through early 2017 when I had to shut it down due to my wife's health which I talk about in another thread, it was a combination of friends and complete strangers. Over that entire time period as players came and went over roughly eight years about half of my players came to me as strangers and at no point did the lack of handouts seem to interfere in anyway with immersion. A number of those strangers played for two or more years. Some became close friends and one became my boss in a new job. My refereeing was my interview. I had two main reasons that players left, one was the time commitment and two was some people did not want to play with kids and about half the time my game did have kids in it. The game was doing well and had to be shutdown only because I could not commit the time and focus to keep it going. To be clear my original point was about hiding the rules leads to more immersion. I point I disputed. As for having handouts, what I strongly dispute that incorporating handouts as part of refereeing leads to 1000 page essays. As for your point the objective is for the players to have the information to decide what to do at the beginning of a campaign. There are multiple ways of doing other than handouts, I seen what you described work. So it doesn't surprise me that you had good results. But consider this what if there is a deaf person in your group like myself? What if a person doesn't think of things or assume things like you do? What if a person has a issues with speech which describe me as well? Does one say "Well I guess this isn't going to out and they leave?" Or figure out how to adapt one's technique like using written material like handouts? Now to be clear accommodating disability isn't the point of me saying this. The point is that there is NEVER a one size fit all solution to communicating what going on in a campaign. For example I had a player whose background was "a halfling knight from Limerick Shire looking for adventure". Our conversation before the the campaign told him everything he needed to know and he was happy with that. As far as he was concerned it was sufficient to know he was starting in a big ass fantasy city that was run by merchants and was a port with numerous rumors and opportunities to be had. Needless to say, he didn't get a handout. The other players wanted more information so I gave them handouts. The most detailed was the player playing a merchant. He got a paragraph of background that we worked out together and a page listing basic info about trade around the Trident Gulf. Stuff his character knew before the campaign started. [/quote] |
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Post by ripx187 on Jun 23, 2018 14:58:19 GMT -5
I would like to add that I have a lot of respect and admiration for robertsconley. I have a few guys that I enjoy talking to, like Robert, who just so happen to also be publishers. If they can make it work, awesome! I'm not in the market but, but like I said, a smart guy who is fun and interesting to talk to is its own reward. I do enjoy running and playing the games which Robert talks about; a small group of us refer to it as "literary gaming", and the goal of this game is to go deep. Like any gaming style, it isn't one set in stone nor is it properly defined. I am sure that elements of literary gaming are going to spill into my Original Dungeons & Dragons game, it is just something that I developed over the years. It isn't bad fun, and I know that the players are going to struggle with it as well, they too like doing it. Please forgive me, Robert, I wasn't digging at you, I was venting frustrations that I have had within the community for years, as well as still trying to unlearn a ton of systems thinking that I consumed and no longer want; something which is never easy to do. I want to play a specific game; an older game. One that requires me to throw away much that I know and start from scratch, which is incredibly exciting! I want to play the game as it was first envisioned. This is the closest that I can get to travelling back in time and BEING THERE. |
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Post by robertsconley on Jun 23, 2018 15:54:39 GMT -5
Please forgive me, Robert, I wasn't digging at you, I was venting frustrations that I have had within the community for years, as well as still trying to unlearn a ton of systems thinking that I consumed and no longer want; something which is never easy to do. I want to play a specific game; an older game. One that requires me to throw away much that I know and start from scratch, which is incredibly exciting! I want to play the game as it was first envisioned. This is the closest that I can get to travelling back in time and BEING THERE. Sounds good to me. Where I am come from is that I started out as the referee who let players trash his campaign. Conquer a kingdom no problem, become head of the thieves guild, excellent! I didn't make it easy for the players but they appreciated the fact that I didn't get bent when they did something to alter the setting like many of my contemporary referees in my neck of the woods in rural northwest PA. What I quickly found it not fun if I think there is only one narrow way to knock of the king, become head of the thieves guild. The players were coming up with all kinds of ideas and after some thought I realize that there are more ways of making what they want to accomplish work than what I thought of. So I keep on reading about all the way things worked in our history to better handle the schemes the players were coming up. And they still adventured in dungeon, dealt with dark lords and all that stuff because often that gave them the gold to fund what they had planned. Armies cost gold! The next step was using the result of what happened in the previous campaign as the part of the background of the next. So the PCs were successful and now ruled the Kingdom of Nome. The next campaign the PCs now had to deal with their prior character as the king of Nome. Now this didn't happen directly because the next campaign started out at 1st level. The biggest effect is that they respected the now NPC King because when he was a PC the player had defenses created and made allies so the player new that the NPC would be a tough nut to crack even if they reached their level. Another fact the PCs generally look for different challenges, rather than try to become king, they try to become a master merchant, head of a great trading family and wealthy as Midas. Now 35 years later many areas of my campaign have multiple changes from completely different groups of PCs doing there thing. Sometime it significant as change of kings othertimes is as simple as a new Inn. So anyway trying to make that fun, interesting and understandable is what fuels what I do as a referee. And it not literary in the sense there is some master plot or plots the players need to deal with. Specific NPCs have plans of their own that may or may not be important to the PCs. But my campaign are driven solely by what the PC do or don't do. I create a situation at the start of the campaign that the player are interested in exploring by talking with them. What happens after that nobody knows. Often they decide to change gears and do something different. Where my creativity comes in is figuring out the NPCs and creatures do or don't do as result of the PC's actions. |
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 23, 2018 16:14:46 GMT -5
Thanks robertsconley, I will have to look at all of this later and give you feedback. I will also do a response to the rest of the post later as well. I did want to add that the game that I ran from mid-2009 through 2017 for character creation, given that we were playing once per month for about 4-5 hours I rolled up and completed character sheets and did all of the up front character creation for all players over that time period. Since I was running just the three base classes and only using the 3LBBs I gave each person several sheets to choose from. Maybe I was just lucky but I never got a complaint or even a momentary frown. I told them up front before the game that was what I was doing and why. My players ran the gamut (9-60) (M-F) (Black, White, Asian, Hispanic) (never played any RPG - B/X - BECMI-1st AD&D - 2nd AD&D - 3E - non-D&D games) and they were all cool with it. Like I said, I never saw a frown, a tightening of the lips or anything that would indicate any displeasure. |
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Post by mormonyoyoman on Jun 23, 2018 16:38:48 GMT -5
Forgive me for deleting (and printing) your actual post, but you deserved an exalt for demonstrating the continuity required to give the impression of a real world. Seems important to me, because -- Well, in the first game I ever played, I fell down a pit in the pitch dark (thus learning to have torches, have a pole or staff of extraordinary length, and to never trust an NPC who offers to guide me to treasures) - and awoke (real life) as if from a dream. It, like many dreams, had seemed real to me and my real life to be the dream. The shock of "waking up" was tangible, and I knew I had learned of a different kind of experience of fiction that computers would never touch in my lifetime, and which even the best of novels had a hard time creating. This had been "created" in my head by a young, inexperienced boy - my first gamemaster, dungeon master, ringmaster, any name he wanted to be called. If that's the sort of experience that rolegaming can offer, even when performed by a less-talented GM...I'm all in favor of experienced rolegamers & rolegamemasters training minds and hearts. Videogames and murderhobo games also train minds, but to believe that violence solves everything. They also corrupt hearts, rather than train them. But I'm just a Grumpy Old Grandpa, who is still a little askance when I realize I've been playing longer than Robert Conley and I aint' half as smart as him am. |
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Jun 23, 2018 18:36:24 GMT -5
Here you go drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1Ih5ggeK1X3Xj0VemboNI_Y0050uoaO3jWhen it is face to face. It is a bunch of letter sized cards. If when the player pick a class I give them a class card. Like this one for the magic user. drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=11jjCsuaeCOrmdTUuU8fn1n1ZAcvDNgqXKeep in mind, those cards are designed so that the players don't need to refer to the rulebook during character creation. Start with the first and work your way through and 15 to 20 minutes later you have a complete character with all equipment ready to run. That with the additions I made to reflect my Majestic Wilderlands. If was running just with the stuff in OD&D it would be shorter still. The class and race information could be made to fit on one card. After trying it ten years ago I do for every system I run. I done this for Traveller, D&D 5th edition, GURPS, Fantasy Age, etc. Makes things go a lot faster, and issues are straightforward to fix. For example I didn't have equipment packs. Then D&D 5th edition came along and notice for many players it greatly sped things up. So I incorporated the idea for my own rules. If folks think they don't need it fine. But if the players are using the rulebooks for character generation making condensed and concise reference cards makes go faster particularly for novices. Sometimes for experienced players as well particularly for stuff that are in lists like spells and equipment. It a way of handling character generation. I used it to handle groups as large as 12. On the topic of immersion, when I started up my new campaign in July of 2009 and it ran through early 2017 when I had to shut it down due to my wife's health which I talk about in another thread, it was a combination of friends and complete strangers. Over that entire time period as players came and went over roughly eight years about half of my players came to me as strangers and at no point did the lack of handouts seem to interfere in anyway with immersion. A number of those strangers played for two or more years. Some became close friends and one became my boss in a new job. My refereeing was my interview. I had two main reasons that players left, one was the time commitment and two was some people did not want to play with kids and about half the time my game did have kids in it. The game was doing well and had to be shutdown only because I could not commit the time and focus to keep it going. To be clear my original point was about hiding the rules leads to more immersion. I point I disputed. As for having handouts, what I strongly dispute that incorporating handouts as part of refereeing leads to 1000 page essays. As for your point the objective is for the players to have the information to decide what to do at the beginning of a campaign. There are multiple ways of doing other than handouts, I seen what you described work. So it doesn't surprise me that you had good results. But consider this what if there is a deaf person in your group like myself? What if a person doesn't think of things or assume things like you do? What if a person has a issues with speech which describe me as well? Does one say "Well I guess this isn't going to out and they leave?" Or figure out how to adapt one's technique like using written material like handouts? Now to be clear accommodating disability isn't the point of me saying this. The point is that there is NEVER a one size fit all solution to communicating what going on in a campaign. For example I had a player whose background was "a halfling knight from Limerick Shire looking for adventure". Our conversation before the the campaign told him everything he needed to know and he was happy with that. As far as he was concerned it was sufficient to know he was starting in a big ass fantasy city that was run by merchants and was a port with numerous rumors and opportunities to be had. Needless to say, he didn't get a handout. The other players wanted more information so I gave them handouts. The most detailed was the player playing a merchant. He got a paragraph of background that we worked out together and a page listing basic info about trade around the Trident Gulf. Stuff his character knew before the campaign started. Looks pretty interesting Robert- I have zero problem with rules documents like these, if only to ease character creation, especially if a sizable group is at the table. What i won't do is post multiple page setting documents that my players will likely ignore and do what they want as what happened in both my past longer campaigns. But my documents will be short step by step affairs with just enough info to create a character, choose equipment & spells if they have them; plus the basic dice mechanic and what roll players will & won't make. |
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Post by Q Man on Jun 24, 2018 13:08:26 GMT -5
Where I am come from is that I started out as the referee who let players trash his campaign. Conquer a kingdom no problem, become head of the thieves guild, excellent! I didn't make it easy for the players but they appreciated the fact that I didn't get bent when they did something to alter the setting like many of my contemporary referees in my neck of the woods in rural northwest PA. I didn't know there was any other way to play, why would there be untouchable things in a campaign. Pillaging the Taj Mahal of your world might not be conducive to long life and have assassins on your trail, but if you really want to, go for it. |
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Post by hedgehobbit on Jun 25, 2018 10:19:03 GMT -5
No thanks. Not only do kids get into the game more easily and are much easier to surprise, but they aren't constantly telling me that I'm running the game wrong because I'm not using the official rules. My daughter refers to D&D as "the game where you make up all the rules". Playing with kids has really informed my opinion on many things, including the idea about players knowing the rules. While I can understand that players will eventually learn some the rules, and, in the case of things like magic, must be told the exact rules to play. I try to keep as much hidden as possible. The main way I do this is to not use hard and fast rules for things but, instead, treat my role as DM as more of a "Die Roll Interpreter" than "Rules Administrator". I use a bunch of "close enough" ruling to replace things like die roll modifiers. The players can't know the rules because I don't know them myself. |
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Post by El Borak on Jun 25, 2018 14:16:44 GMT -5
No thanks. Not only do kids get into the game more easily and are much easier to surprise, but they aren't constantly telling me that I'm running the game wrong because I'm not using the official rules. My daughter refers to D&D as "the game where you make up all the rules". Playing with kids has really informed my opinion on many things, including the idea about players knowing the rules. While I can understand that players will eventually learn some the rules, and, in the case of things like magic, must be told the exact rules to play. I try to keep as much hidden as possible. The main way I do this is to not use hard and fast rules for things but, instead, treat my role as DM as more of a "Die Roll Interpreter" than "Rules Administrator". I use a bunch of "close enough" ruling to replace things like die roll modifiers. The players can't know the rules because I don't know them myself. Have an exalt!! Some people are so hung up on consistency and that everything has to be exactly the same every time that they forget to have fun. I think even for combat the fact that a 14 hit this time and the next time it didn't but a 15 would and then the next time a 13 would hit is preferable in many ways to a 14 will hit every time in this particular set of opponents. There are lots of reasons that an opponent would get harder or easier to hit during a fight, than to think it would be exactly the same every round. |
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Post by mormonyoyoman on Jun 25, 2018 15:04:40 GMT -5
If one is to play only with adults, that means I would have to grow up to be included.
And I have vowed to not grow up until my parents do!
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 26, 2018 12:49:08 GMT -5
No thanks. Not only do kids get into the game more easily and are much easier to surprise, but they aren't constantly telling me that I'm running the game wrong because I'm not using the official rules. My daughter refers to D&D as "the game where you make up all the rules". Playing with kids has really informed my opinion on many things, including the idea about players knowing the rules. While I can understand that players will eventually learn some the rules, and, in the case of things like magic, must be told the exact rules to play. I try to keep as much hidden as possible. The main way I do this is to not use hard and fast rules for things but, instead, treat my role as DM as more of a "Die Roll Interpreter" than "Rules Administrator". I use a bunch of "close enough" ruling to replace things like die roll modifiers. The players can't know the rules because I don't know them myself. I have always found the best games to be those with kids in them, they have a greater ability to just have fun. |
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Post by Bartholmew Quarrels on Jun 28, 2018 8:43:26 GMT -5
I keep as much hidden as possible, why should I deprive the players of the fun of finding things. For me, playing in a game where two much is just handed to the players is not fun at all.
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Post by Q Man on Jul 20, 2018 9:13:40 GMT -5
See the Disclaimer added to the OP.
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Post by True Black Raven on Jul 21, 2018 23:13:00 GMT -5
See the Disclaimer added to the OP. Thank you for adding the link. |
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Post by Q Man on Jul 25, 2018 18:36:32 GMT -5
See the Disclaimer added to the OP. Thank you for adding the link. You are welcome. |
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Post by Jakob Grimm on Aug 2, 2018 15:04:36 GMT -5
Hey Q Man, I know you have quite a few irons in the fire right now, but I have you get back to these threads too. |
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Post by Q Man on Aug 6, 2018 10:15:25 GMT -5
Hey Q Man , I know you have quite a few irons in the fire right now, but I have you get back to these threads too. I will eventually, I have more to say in both threads. |
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Post by Jakob Grimm on Aug 18, 2018 15:10:34 GMT -5
Hey Q Man , I know you have quite a few irons in the fire right now, but I have you get back to these threads too. I will eventually, I have more to say in both threads. You are like me, it has turned into a really busy summer. |
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Post by Q Man on Aug 31, 2018 15:24:51 GMT -5
11.)
Ritual Magic
IMO this is another completely unnecessary complication. First of all Ritual Magic immediately introduces the Occult into the game which is something that I don't ever want to do. Ritual immediately, at least for me, calls the Occult to mind and evokes the thought of Satantic Cult, given the persecution D&D has had due to those unfair associations I choose to avoid terminology that might revive such associations. Then you have the over part of this 1 turn to cast, that makes the spell worthless in a emergency situation. Taking a turn to cast a Sleep spell makes it worthless, especially at low levels you are casting a sleep spell so you can stay alive. Then there is the 100 GP per spell level. That again makes it tough on low levels where the money is tight and is just a nit picky way to relieve higher levels of extra gold, maybe give at less gold or be more creative in ways they will want to spend it. Then on top of that they have limitations on how often ritual magic can be used. This just sounds to me like someone doesn't like and/or understand magic-users.
As a general rule, I don't like extra add on mechanics that slow and complicate the game. I also don't like things that limit player options mechanically because then it also limits my options as a ref. If I use extra mechanics to limit the players, then I have to water things down. I don't want to do either of those things. In this case the handling of spells is fine the way it is.
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 31, 2018 17:45:47 GMT -5
11.)
Ritual Magic
IMO this is another completely unnecessary complication. First of all Ritual Magic immediately introduces the Occult into the game which is something that I don't ever want to do. Ritual immediately, at least for me, calls the Occult to mind. Then you have the over part of this 1 turn to cast, that makes the spell worthless in a emergency situation. Taking a turn to cast a Sleep spell makes it worthless, especially at low levels you are casting a sleep spell so you can stay alive. Then there is the 100 GP per spell level. That again makes it tough on low levels where the money is tight and is just a nit picky way to relieve higher levels of extra gold, maybe give at less gold or be more creative in ways they will want to spend it. Then on top of that they have limitations on how often ritual magic can be used. This just sounds to me like someone doesn't like and/or understand magic-users. As a general rule, I don't like extra add on mechanics that slow and complicate the game. I also don't like things that limit player options mechanically because then it also limits my options as a ref. If I use extra mechanics to limit the players, then I have to water things down. I don't want to do either of those things. In this case the handling of spells is fine the way it is. I come from more of a horror background with my influences, and, depending on the setting, I prefer a system which makes magic rare and more difficult to cast. I also want magic to be scary. This isn't a traditional science, this is meddling. I DO want an occult feel, and I want consequences. Dabbling in magical fields is dangerous, and corruptive. Wizards are prone to madness, particularly if they become seekers of power. These influences are in fantasy, from the evil nutsticks who tormented Conan, to Lady Galadriel in Lord of the Rings. This is, however, a game, and the wizard needs to function as a PC. There are spells which are mastered, fast combat spells. These have to be designed into the game. In the world of Harry Potter (stay with me), Harry was told never to use anything which he isn't sure how it works, or what is powering it. That isn't a direct quote, but it is close and it says something important as it relates to D&D. There is the magic which we produce, that comes from within us; and there is the magic which we don't. Figuring out which spells are which can be challenging, but not impossible. Spells which allow a person to know something that is impossible for them to know suggests an external source, but we can also identify some spells which are permanent at lower levels or even spells which have longer durations without the wizard's concentration being taxed. The problem with the system's use in OD&D is that the three booklets only give you a couple of casting times, we are either on our own or we can just look them up in the AD&D handbooks or just make them up yourself. (I haven't read many OD&D supplements, they're probably in one of those too). Anything that takes longer than 1 round is probably a ritual, and if it takes a turn to cast, it is definitely a ritual! That is only ten minutes. This spell is not something that you can use in combat. They are Strategic in nature, vs. tactical. They also speed along different aspects or make things easier during turn-based stages of play. The OP only gave a tiny example of them, and I don't think that Light should be on there, as the duration and the power of the spell is too low, but Continual Light should be! Something is there which must be dismissed. What happens if it isn't? What is causing this light to be where it cannot be? This is a magic item that any lowly 3rd level wizard can cast, why haven't they replaced torches and lanterns? You'd think that if this spell was without risk, that you'd find them everywhere! It can also be weaponized by casting it directly at the eyes which is akin to torture and qualify as an evil act in my book. This is all personal interpretation, of course. A way of placing limits on spells which can be abused or ones which we believe are flawed and would mess up the world. As far as enemy mages are concerned, they cast what I want them to cast. I might turn to the books for inspiration, but I'm not going to stop the game to look up a spell effect that comes to me during play either. Is it fair? Considering the mental state of the enemy mage and his approaching death, yeah. I think that it is fair. I kind of think that that rule that says that the DM must always be fair is new school. There are way too many rules, if I want a slimy little weasel of a mage to run from the party into a cemetery, and cause all sorts of chaos while the players are powerless to stop him until the stage is set, that is what I'm gonna do. |
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Aug 31, 2018 19:41:17 GMT -5
Rituals are okay in my book for the same reason ripx187 mentioned but I'd limit them to stuff like summoning spells, wishes or spells that rituals would make sense, not stuff like sleep, fireball and the like. |
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