The Unseen Servant forums

rredmond wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:55 pm Only you can say "smackers" Gary! I'm just surprised it wasn't smackeroos!

Ron, us old-timers are full of...erm...sayings. It's hard to tell what all is rolling around in my whiskey-addled brain

hedgeknight wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:38 pm

GreyWolfVT wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:03 pm I've recently dove into Pathfinder 2e and just with what is in the beginner box set. I like the system, I'd be interested in playing Pathfinder on here though I don't wish to GM it. Oddly I actually like this over some other editions of D&D.

"Stole" the Core Rulebook off a guy for 20 smackers. And I downloaded the Paizo bundle the other day. When I finish my 5E game, I'm going back to Pathfinder. I know it has a lot of crunch and munch, but I can regulate that easier than all the shit in 5E.

Good to know. I will keep my eye out for when you do that Gary!

Me too, maybe a chance for me to learn Pathfinder and see how it is.

GreyWolfVT wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 6:15 pm

hedgeknight wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:38 pm

GreyWolfVT wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:03 pm I've recently dove into Pathfinder 2e and just with what is in the beginner box set. I like the system, I'd be interested in playing Pathfinder on here though I don't wish to GM it. Oddly I actually like this over some other editions of D&D.

"Stole" the Core Rulebook off a guy for 20 smackers. And I downloaded the Paizo bundle the other day. When I finish my 5E game, I'm going back to Pathfinder. I know it has a lot of crunch and munch, but I can regulate that easier than all the shit in 5E.

Good to know. I will keep my eye out for when you do that Gary!

I'll keep my eye out on this as well. I passed on Pathfinder 2e when I looked over the playtest and thought it looked too much like 4e. I'm still a P1e fan over DnD3.5 but I am willing to see how P2e plays.

I ran a Fate Core game based on the Scenario Simulator (ScenSim). I am pretty sure I didn't follow all the rules well, but I did love the player enablement that Fate provides. There were two mechanics that I want to take into other games, somehow.

The first is mandated player agency in world creation. In Fate, if the player states that they have a blood feud with the "Knights of the Long Days", then said Knights exist, and in some way conflict with the PC. This is similar to the Hero systems Disadvantages, where a PC can have a rival, or a person/group they protect. I've seldom seen it in other systems, though. In the Fate game, one character had a middle eastern military background, and that added a lot of personality in the major NPC fight.

The second mechanic can be loosely labelled "Hero Bonus". Fate uses Fate Points and 7th Sea uses Drama Dice. Not sure what other systems have it, but it boils down to a small reserve of positive random chance per game. Maybe a +4 on one d20 roll, or some equivalent. In both Fate and 7th Sea, the player gets more of these for deeply role-playing their character, so it becomes a virtuous cycle. One of the Fate characters had the Aspect "Impulsive Lady's Man", and climbed into a burning building to get her hope chest.

Actually, there's a third mechanic, "Style". I've been in too many games where I couldn't tell if the fighter was a High Elf or a drunk half-orc. The character creation in Fate really inspired player's creativity! We had a Hungarian Hussar, a banished French nobleman, and an exiled Druze general. Each one played in character, and the French musketeer really made me work! While I enjoy the flamboyant combat scenes of Musketeers and Wuxia movies, I had not really gamed it. Fun, but a creativity learning curve!

Fate may play better at the table than at the keyboard. Because we were all learning, I would post NPC rolls at the start of each combat round, so the PC's could see what they were up against. There's too much back and forth discussion to keep a PbP combat going quickly, especially in more critical fights.

Fate is an interesting system and we have used it a few times for one offs. Like most systems though nothing is truly new anymore. Top Secret SI had advantages and disadvantages for example and your example is right out of the book, Enemies allows the player with DM approval to create an individual or organization and a reason why they were enemies. It also had Luck points which in many ways worked like Fate points. In fact several systems had some sort of luck/fate point system and I have even seen it tacked on to D&D with house rules before. The group world building is really more a style of play then a rule, see the WWN game that just started for example. The DM supplies the big overview and the players are helping fill in the details.

I'm about to start a new Bushido game, and the two posts above inspired me to get the players involved in setting up the scenario.

Conan: An Age Undreamed Of has bonus points similar to Fate points that can be pooled. But from the Fate game experience, I think the system is a little to complicated for PBP. The GM would probably have to stay really on top of it and remind players about the current points balance.

Yeah, the Modiphius 2d20 stuff all (at least the ones I have played) have ways to earn/ spend bonus dice, which the GM gets to tap into as well. I know when we played John Carter, a few of us were doing whatever we could to roll as many dice as possible each combat round.

I'm trying lazily to get a 24XX game going, I started a thread for it. It will be a slow and casual game!

dmw71 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 26, 2022 9:58 pm

hedgeknight wrote: ↑Wed Jan 26, 2022 2:12 pm ...I've found is I need to severely narrow my field of vision...I don't need to read everything to get started; I need to pick a hex or a small town, and let it roll.

I agree with this 100%.

I was in the exact same situation. In Greyhawk. I finally stopped feeling completely overwhelmed after picking a specific location and starting to focus specifically on that region.

So, this started and stopped in a fit:


Some news -- both good and bad.

First, the good.

The above is going to be revived!

The bad, the following still very much rings true:
Except, I will most likely be using World Anvil instead of OneNote.



I am so determined to finally make this happen that I can almost guarantee it will be the very next thing I participate in here in the forums, as a player or DM.

In fact, I just picked this up this morning:

I know it's written for 5e, but this will absolutely be an invaluable resource for my preparations. My early impression is that this is a very impressive product!

It will almost certainly be a hybrid 1e/2e game, with 1e being the core supplemented by 2e.


I had zero intentions of sharing any of this (I was content to privately just keep plugging away on it in the background), but the site (hopefully temporarily!) lost a good one today and I figured some positive old-school AD&D news was in order.

So, there it is. My commitment to making this happen.

Excellent news Dave. Looking forward to it.

Can't wait, my gaming brother!

hedgeknight wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 4:06 pm Can't wait, my gaming brother!

Excellent!

Considering I'm between jobs at the moment, I do find myself with an abundance of free time so hopefully the wait won't be too, too long.

dmw71 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 5:05 pm

hedgeknight wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 4:06 pm Can't wait, my gaming brother!

Excellent!

Considering I'm between jobs at the moment, I do find myself with an abundance of free time so hopefully the wait won't be too, too long.

I gotcha on the jobs thing, pardner. Not sure that I've ever gamed under you before. I'll have to give this a look, when you're ready.

Still thinking about what to run when I get time to pick up a game, hopefully this summer. Right now it's balanced more or less evenly between:

My bonkers-crazy BX/BECMI idea of overloading such obscene amounts of treasure just to see how close someone can get to the vaunted level 36 immortality quest. I already have a campaign name: "The Maunty Halls of Bec-Mi."

A "Let's Learn" of TMNT & Other Strangeness — been rereading the old comics off and on, we'll see if the urge continues after I've put the comics down for a while. We'd probably roll up animals in the core book, do a real quick starter adventure based on those generated backgrounds, maybe fall into an transdimensional portal or two.

A "Let's Learn" of SPI's Universe. I've done this before long ago, it was fun. It's mostly turns into an emotional support group for learning character creation together, then there's a fun little sample adventure that usually ends in a TPK worthy of a bleak cerebral sci-fi movie from the 70s. Not sure if the impetus for this will last, either. It may fizzle once it comes to actually pulling the book off the shelf and refamiliarizing myself.

A classic, Imagi-Nations style, roleplayed historical wargame/Kriegspiel. The theme would either be ancient Roman Republic or Sengoku Japan. No real ruleset would be used, but battle action results would be determined behind the screen using GURPS Mass Combat and common sense. To test it out in PBP format, I'd probably want to try just a very short campaign with only 1-2 players, both on the same side.

An RPG wargame sounds really fun to me. I've always wanted to play or run one, but didn't know of any rules sets.

Starbeard wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 4:47 pmMy bonkers-crazy BX/BECMI idea of overloading such obscene amounts of treasure just to see how close someone can get to the vaunted level 36 immortality quest. I already have a campaign name: "The Maunty Halls of Bec-Mi."

This still sounds so cool I cant help but vote for it.

jemmus wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 6:08 pm An RPG wargame sounds really fun to me. I've always wanted to play or run one, but didn't know of any rules sets.

On another board, scarik ran a Three Kingdoms China game where we did a lot of battles. I really enjoyed being the general, and another PC was an awesome strategist. The third PC was a huge guy who would just wade into battle and destroy buildings...

I enjoyed Starbeard's L5R game, and have a soft spot for Republican Rome. Played them a lot in DBA and Armati. Not sure that I ever won, but I did play.

Leitz wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 8:11 pm

jemmus wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 6:08 pm An RPG wargame sounds really fun to me. I've always wanted to play or run one, but didn't know of any rules sets.

On another board, scarik ran a Three Kingdoms China game where we did a lot of battles. I really enjoyed being the general, and another PC was an awesome strategist. The third PC was a huge guy who would just wade into battle and destroy buildings...

I enjoyed Starbeard's L5R game, and have a soft spot for Republican Rome. Played them a lot in DBA and Armati. Not sure that I ever won, but I did play.

Thanks for that link, it's a fun read and pretty close to the sort of thing I envision doing. Either scenario would be based on tabletop wargame campaigns I've done (not in DBA or Armati, but I appreciate those shoutouts, I love both rulesets)—but with the players taking on the role of individual important characters and playing from their point of view. Ultimately I'd like to have some dynamic fog of war map we could consult freely instead of constantly have to upload images, so maybe I would create a Roll20 game that players could load whenever they want to see where they are on the island (both campaigns are set on small fictitious islands that resemble the empire in question, so everyone is assumed to have an accurate lay of the land).

GURPS Mass Combat doesn't seem perfect, but it has the benefit of being a clean & straightforward ruleset for abstract battles of any setting, is pretty cheap, and doesn't require any overriding RPG ruleset to use (not even GURPS).

OGRE MAGE wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 6:14 pm

Starbeard wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 4:47 pmMy bonkers-crazy BX/BECMI idea of overloading such obscene amounts of treasure just to see how close someone can get to the vaunted level 36 immortality quest. I already have a campaign name: "The Maunty Halls of Bec-Mi."

This still sounds so cool I cant help but vote for it.

The scales are tipping the more I think it over.

I think we'd start on a tiny island, home to a few seriously dire hazards, and the Maunty Halls of course. Not sure which campaign map I'd create or use, but assuming the game gets off the ground it's bound to move into world hopping, so it might not matter as much.

In my head, all of my games have existed within a loosely defined metacampaign where every map is either part of the same huge world or somehow connected through planar travel—you know, just in case. So eventually, player activity would be what helps decide whether we play in the Flanaess, Known World, Middle-earth, Wilderlands, Fantasyland, Blackmoor, or a homebrewed place.