Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

The Board Game Thread


Recommended Posts

Staring down what may be my first TPK this Sunday. My players are absolutely strapped on resources and hitpoints, and have a horrible final monster waiting for them. If they test it, 100% characters will die. One option is to quickly climb a 200 foot broken elevator shaft. If anyone fucks up their roll - that's it. Gonna be a stressful night.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I may be back in the pen & paper game if this shit holds true.  The best sci-fi tabletop game that apparently only I played while I was in college may be returning to a store shelf near you.

TSR Games announces a reboot of the sci-fi RPG Star Frontiers (geeknative.com)

If there is a reboot of the module, The Dramune Run, I will lose my shit.  Someone else may have to run the game as I will insist on being a player and return to being the captain of the rogue freighter, SSV Gullwind... 

Gullwind-DRp6-BW-1024x686.png

Edited by J.T.
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow I didn’t think anyone else played Star Frontiers back in the day... I actually still have the original box set and a couple of old modules.  Haven’t pulled them out of the game closet in a couple of years now...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, ctapley said:

Wow I didn’t think anyone else played Star Frontiers back in the day... I actually still have the original box set and a couple of old modules.  Haven’t pulled them out of the game closet in a couple of years now...

We played with some homebrew rules because we knew even back then that handheld or shoulder slung directed energy weapons were scientifically bullshit.  Personal firearms were ballistic weapons and shipboard weapons were railguns of some sort.  Lasers in the game were more for communications and targeting, although some classifications of defensive ship based weapons were lasers.

Yazirians had a thing for flechette weapons, shotguns, and knives because someone had to be the Klingons / Wookies.  I think we made the Vrusk the sword gods of the game since they were naturally ambidextrous.

The Sathar had particle accelerators and advanced tech because BBEGs.

Edited by J.T.
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, jaedmc said:

Yeah we'll see. That TSR Games, the third iteration of the company, is in a stupid amount of hot water.

Is there an article explaining what the hell is going on? Because I've been trying to piece it together from people talking about it on Twitter and having no luck.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

this one kind of covers relatively well: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/wnba/tsr-games-distances-itself-from-ernie-g-gygax-jr-the-owner-of-another-tsr-games/ar-AALFyZY

21 minutes ago, Zimbra said:

Is there an article explaining what the hell is going on? Because I've been trying to piece it together from people talking about it on Twitter and having no luck.

 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unrelated, but 7 of us played Mysterium last night and had a blast. We failed our first time through and immediately played another round of it...where we failed again, but it was still a good time! 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/4/2021 at 2:03 PM, jaedmc said:

And as of July 9th, both companies have rebranded and neither is going by TSR Games.   The EGG V 2.0 / Larry Elmore / James Ward / Stephen Dinart consortium now goes by the name Wonderfilled and Justin LaNasa's TSR now calls itself Solarian Games.

EGG V 2.0 is still looking to move Wonderfilled's HQ to Lake Geneva, WI:  the original home of TSR.  He sounds like he is just as crusty and vile as his old man was.  We were wonderfully oblivious to all of that when we played these games as kids.

On 7/4/2021 at 5:40 PM, Death From Above said:

Gygax Sr was a complete asshole and a plagiarist so I suppose there's no reason to expect any better from his spawn.

Yeah, and for what is is worth, the legacy of the Killer DM with EGG's trademark sadistic glee as the template still lives on.

They even have t-shirts celebrating this attitude now..

when-the-dm-smiles-its-already-too-late-

How this got to be a badge of honor, I have no idea.  The job of the DM is to unfurl the story and enforce the game rules, not to deliberately kill the PCs. 

I'm a big fan of and a former contributor to the blog, The Monsters Know What They're Doing, so I am all about enemy tactics and smart villain play, but there is a big difference between providing the players with challenging opposition that might kill them and making it a point to murder their characters and (maybe) the players' fun.

 

Edited by J.T.
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/2/2019 at 6:46 PM, Jiji said:

I just did the pledge manager and it was over $600. I need to narrow it down.

edit: those update emails were out of control near the end, with almost hourly messages about unlocks.

@Jiji and anyone else who backed this Reaper Bones KS, have yours arrived?  I didn’t add the pirate ship and now want it so going to add with the Pledge Manager re-opening.... otherwise,  my miniatures arrived this week.  Now gonna take weeks to assemble them all lol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/9/2021 at 8:23 AM, J.T. said:

 

How this got to be a badge of honor, I have no idea.  The job of the DM is to unfurl the story and enforce the game rules, not to deliberately kill the PCs. 

I'm a big fan of and a former contributor to the blog, The Monsters Know What They're Doing, so I am all about enemy tactics and smart villain play, but there is a big difference between providing the players with challenging opposition that might kill them and making it a point to murder their characters and (maybe) the players' fun.

 

I imagine it stems from the roots of the game being in war gaming. Also, as much as it is the DM's job to facilitate the story and making rulings over the game, it usually revolves around obstacles they've created that are meant to hurt, maim and kill players. So some DMs might get caught up in it. I know I get really jazzed when I create a deadly scenario for my players. I guess where I defer is that it doesn't exactly give me joy when the deadly scenario actually kills the players. If that's how it goes, that's how it goes, but I probably get more excitement watching the players dramatically succeed than getting melted by lava. I do get excited when a dastardly plan or a trap goes off, not because I "outsmarted" the players, but because now I get to watch them figure out how to overcome it. It just doesn't feel impressive to fuck over the players as a DM. That doesn't make me feel particularly smart or special. I have all the rules and info. I could just make up whatever I wanted to make sure they die. Who cares.

I hate killing characters. I try to plan and create cool shit for my player's PCs, so that when the adventure ends they don't feel like every other Wizard build or Mastermind Rogue build or whatever. I want them to feel like their character is unique with special abilities and gifts. I get so excited about rolling those plans out as the game progresses, so it bugs me almost as much as it does the players when those plans go up in flames because of a character death.

But I have killed a good share of characters. I don't hide from it, and all my players know it's on the table. I think they like that I'll go for it if it's there.  I don't run games that are super balanced so not everything they encounter is meant to be beaten to death. Sometimes retreat is the best option.

I just try to make sure that when they die they can look back at a moment or two and go "Yeah, I shouldn't have done that" or "If the dice went the other way it would've turned out differently." What I absolutely don't want is for their character to die and they go "you just dicked me over." 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I killed a character today. Although to be fair, it was a one-shot character where the player left the group already (he was invited to stay, but never replied), and we were light on PCs. So I had him come along as a DMPC, and he got chewed up by a Giant Snake.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Dunno to ask here or elsewhere but figured to try here 1st as there were some AWESOME recommendations last time 

 

For tabletop players that have minis and terrain setups, what are some of the best 3d printers out there for complete newbs starting from scratch, please?

There's so many great designs out there and such a rich choice of artists to support that are producing some awesome miniatures. And while I like buying some 3d printed minis/terrain off of ebay or Amazon I'm thinking it may be worth it to get a 3d printer for home and support the artists directly y'know ?

So if you all have any recommendations, guides or tutorials it would be helpful, appreciated and awesome!

And as a follow-up of sorts, does anyone have recommendations for airbrushes for a complete newbie? Priming with a brush feels soooooooo slow compared to the speedy results some seem to get airbrushing their minis. Any pointers are appreciated ? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some people swear by the Ender 3 for filament/fdm printers. I couldn't get it to work well and then returned it. I ended up with the prusa i3 and after initial success I just realized I fucking hate fdm printers with a passion. When they fail they fail terribly. Broken parts, etc. They're not very precise, they take a long time, need constant fidgeting and tuning, and they're loud. I can't stand it and that fucking thing is the biggest waste of money in my life. 

I bought an anycubic photon shortly thereafter for mini printing and really enjoyed it. I go through phases where I'll print a lot and then when I'm busy with work or, during the pandemic when we gamed online, not print anything for a damn year straight. We are playing in person outdoors now and I've gotten back into it again. I'm also DMing my first big campaign in Strahd next month and have been busy printing for that. Photon failed a few too many times for my liking, wasting resin so I upgraded to the elegoo saturn. It's the first printer I love to bits. Both of these printers are resin-based, so it's smelly and requires post printing treatment (generally, the process is alcohol bath, air dry or fan them off, cure in a variety of ways). Resin is gross but the end product is so worth it imo. I have mine set up in a large garage and the only worry now is the temperature dropping too much. Thinking of doing up some kind of enclosure with a thermostat and mini heater. Elegoo is releasing a new 6k printer called the Jupiter. Sadly it's being done through Kickstarter for some bullshit reason. Early bird, which will be very difficult to get, is $600 USD. The print build volume is close to what you'd get out of the standard FDM printers, so you could do a lot of terrain on that as well as minis and still get the great details for the miniatures. Phrozen is releasing an even bigger printer called the Sonic Mega 8k that is very expensive but incredible. You could print an army in one go, or huge pieces of terrain. Because I have zero desire to ever use the fdm printer again, I am thinking of maaaybe trying to get my greedy hands on either the jupiter or 8k job. 

My setup is a TV in a wooden case with an acrylic cover for maps (use foundry on my laptop), but I'd love to use scatter terrain on the tv too when doing homebrew campaigns in the future. 

I recommend the saturn or mars from elegoo if you feel comfortable going down the resin/sla path. Elegoo sells a wash and cure station that is very neat. Helps streamline the aftermath. There are tonnes of videos but 3d printing pro on YouTube has reviews and guides on all this stuff. He's pretty great. His review of the phrozen 8k got me feeling primal and stupid ready to risk it all for a machine I could absolutely do without. If you have any specific questions I can try to help. Most patreon accounts that make minis thankfully have presupported minis, which is a godsend. Supporting manually was such a fucking pain in the ass but even when you still have to do that, programs like lychee do a pretty good job with autosupports these days. Lychee even has a built in island detector so you shouldn't get too many fails. 

Edit: I'm actually just getting into painting now. I picked up a cheap one step or whatever it's called airbrush last summer but haven't used it yet. I'm going to this week. Iwata seems to be the best in terms of airbrushes but I wanted just a basic one to test waters first. Lots and lots of YouTube accounts with advice on what to get and do's/don'ts for intro airbrushing. Squidmar miniatures seems like one of the more popular ones. 

Edited by Jiji
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you Jiji, you covered so many questions and then some. Genuinely appreciated ?

Subscribed to Squidmar, great reference for tips there ? I'm in the buttcrack of Austin out in the sticks and humidity is a bitch to deal with, used to try and prime my minis with matte spray paint to cover big batches at once but the humidity fucked that up royally enough times that I had to strip the paint off them because they came out chalky and dusty. 

Also going to sub to 3d printing pro next, I don't mind the clean up on resin so long as it has less failures like the fdm you mentioned. If there's some clean up and little extra stuff but it has a high success rate at printing then even better on the resin ones? The 8k sounds like its worth checking out, sounds like what I'd want to do with it ? 

Best of luck on the Strahd campaign. Gaming outside sounds fun, we're using the conference room at work some weekends since no ones there and we're spoiled for delivery options from plenty of nearby restaurants.  Been some Necromunda games lately but with the 3d printed stuff coming in we might get back to 5e very soon I hope ?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually just looked at setting up the airbrush and quickly found out the hose connecting to the compressor needs an adapter that won't arrive for a couple of weeks. Painting by hand until then.

I don't know if I was as clear as I should've been with the resin explanation. It's vile stuff that damages the skin so you gotta wear nitrile gloves and be super cautious. Of course, I've gotten it on my skin and I try to deal with it ASAP. It definitely leaves a mild burn but spills happen. Good luck if you go down that road. Rewards are downright amazing but it's expensive and time consuming. 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...