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On 2/24/2019 at 8:50 AM, Oyaji said:

I just played D&D for the first time a few weeks back and I'm starting to get sucked into it.

Which edition?

Paper minis are perfectly fine. Go to your local $1 store or craft store and you'll be surprised what you could find as replacement minis (example: The Good Dinosaur had some cool mini-figs that are perfect scale for monsters) . Even discount stores like Ross sometimes have great options in their toy isles (there was a couple board game expansion stuff that had great minis a couple times I checked).

Theatre of the mind is fine and all but so much of base D&D combat requires precise measurement, i.e. control classes. Those area effects spells and powers are a pain in the arse to setup but when they hit... it's like shots of endorphin. (4E had a crazy fun fighter class that was basically damage soak berserker with an AOE aggro magnet that literally pulled enemies to him... fun times until they nerfed him.)

And of course the most important thing: don't be that passive player in the corner being a dice rolling machine. It doesn't matter how good a DM you have, he won't be able to force a player to actually participate if they don't want to. And if you see that certain passive player in your party?  Be the instigator, force them to participate even if you have to kite them along.

Edited by turk128
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Got the new Star Trek RPG and sweet crap the first 100 pages are pretty much a comprehensive history of Starfleet. They cite specific episodes and incidents in ridiculous detail. Its a new game system (2D20 for success/failure and D6 to determine damage). I'm already planning a Star Fleet Academy scenario. I've played way too many Star Ttek RPGs in my life

James

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5 hours ago, turk128 said:

Which edition?

Paper minis are perfectly fine. Go to your local $1 store or craft store and you'll be surprised what you could find as replacement minis (example: The Good Dinosaur had some cool mini-figs that are perfect scale for monsters) . Even discount stores like Ross sometimes have great options in their toy isles (there was a couple board game expansion stuff that had great minis a couple times I checked).

Theatre of the mind is fine and all but so much of base D&D combat requires precise measurement, i.e. control classes. Those area effects spells and powers are a pain in the arse to setup but when they hit... it's like shots of endorphin. (4E had a crazy fun fighter class that was basically damage soak berserker with an AOE aggro magnet that literally pulled enemies to him... fun times until they nerfed him.)

And of course the most important thing: don't be that passive player in the corner being a dice rolling machine. It doesn't matter how good a DM you have, he won't be able to force a player to actually participate if they don't want to. And if you see that certain passive player in your party?  Be the instigator, force them to participate even if you have to kite them along.

5e. I'm in deep now. Printed off a good 100 or so characters to cut out. It's so time consuming but it's also strangely calming. I thought about getting one of those cutting machines but I'd never use it other than for this, there's no rush, and at that point I'd be better off just buying a 3d printer. The next move is looking towards terrains. Fat dragon has some cool ideas for paper 3d but I'll probably go with the 2.5d option. 

Haven't had a chance to get into the actual game itself in a couple of weeks due to friend availability but I'm psyched for it. 

Edited by Oyaji
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8 hours ago, J.H. said:

Got the new Star Trek RPG and sweet crap the first 100 pages are pretty much a comprehensive history of Starfleet. They cite specific episodes and incidents in ridiculous detail. Its a new game system (2D20 for success/failure and D6 to determine damage). I'm already planning a Star Fleet Academy scenario. I've played way too many Star Ttek RPGs in my life

James

I am actually curious if someone has finally cracked making a good Star Trek game. I love Stars Without Number revised edition for sci fi, but even though it's a pretty versatile system it's really a different kind of system in tone from what you'd probably want for Star Trek.

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Any of you mess with the Magic the Gathering stuff for 5e yet? Few of my friends were talking about it and none of us knew anyone else who has tried it yet. 

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I like it a lot. The book is more of a "here are guidelines for a world" as opposed to a full laid out adventure module like Tomb of Annihilation or Dragon Heist etc. though there is a small level 1 adventure included as a possible kick off. All the 10 guilds come with their own new background, and a unique spell list that you can add on top of existing spells you class might know. Spoiler: Rakdos bards are crazy strong. There's a super-useful reference section starting on page 183 that is basically "here's a recommended list of monsters in a CR list, by guild" that you can use as a great guideline for encounter building. There's also sections that provide a lot of suggestions for what kind of adventures/NPC's fit per guild, but of course a lot of people are just going to do what they want. It's a really good setting if you're looking for a sandbox/open world kind of thing, because there's enough guilds you are pretty much never short of a potential rival or idea. If you are looking for a pre-made adventure that will tell the GM to go from exactly point A to point B to point C, it's not what you want. 

All the art in the book is, as it should be for the first D&D/Magic crossover, incredible. Shit, even the District 10 maps look really nice, though I don't think we really use them much (we're more of a narrative focus group than a "you move from street A to street B taking one hour" kinda game).  The new monsters they've added are a pretty decent balance of challenge, it's not like Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes where like 80% of it you'll never see because a lot of it is ultra-high level. Niv-Mizzet is probably the new entry in the discussion for "strongest official monster that isn't the Terrarasque".

The only real complaint I have is that it would be nice if the book had some added specific "urban encounters/adventure" table stuff, but clearly D&D is doubling down on leaving that shit as flimsy as it already is in the Dungeon Master's Guide. 

The new official races are nice (Centaur, Minotaur, Vedalken, Simic Hybrids, and I guess a new version of Goblins). I'm really into the idea that Goblins have moved from level 1-3 cannon fodder enemies into the possibility of "whoops, you just poked a level 14 rogue there, buddy". There's a new subclass for Clerics that better suits the idea of something like an Azorius Lawmage who is focused on the ideas of order and law, instead of your traditional god-worshippers, and it's pretty good.

So far the game I've done it in has been doing a two-party thing. We rolled up four good guys from the Selesnya Conclave, Azorius Senate, Boros Legion, and Izzet League, and we ran the starter adventure from the book then sidetracked into the Golgari undercity tracking down some low-level necromancer. The undercity seems like a really good opportunity to just get super-weird and alien, and I'd like to go back there at some point. Also doing a party of bad guys that are all Cult of Rakdos, and have spent a lot of time trying to unravel some kind of plot led by some bullshit evil wizard/possible Dimir agent that's probably gonna end in a multi-guild conspiracy to cut all the other guilds out of the deal. Also, we may have murdered a few cops.

I'm having a good time. This is really the first time I've played something that was longer than a short-term game and it seems like a wild setting that you can really expand as far as you want.

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13 hours ago, Oyaji said:

5e. I'm in deep now. Printed off a good 100 or so characters to cut out. It's so time consuming but it's also strangely calming. I thought about getting one of those cutting machines but I'd never use it other than for this, there's no rush, and at that point I'd be better off just buying a 3d printer. The next move is looking towards terrains. Fat dragon has some cool ideas for paper 3d but I'll probably go with the 2.5d option. 

Haven't had a chance to get into the actual game itself in a couple of weeks due to friend availability but I'm psyched for it. 

5e is like the "best of" album of D&D, good one to start in.

Terrain is awesome and can help in the immersion immensely... but it's a huge hassle to work with. We stopped bothering with the overtly elaborate stuff and went with the really great cardboard tiles they had. We starting forgoing even that and used a blank grid map and old scrabble tiles to indicate stuff, then encouraged the players to fill in any details they want... a lil bit of hippie gaming to get everyone to participate.

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15 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I think I had the manual for the 80s Trek RPG (made by Mayfair?).

I think I bought all the books for the licensed stuff like Trek, Bond, Marvel and DC, ...

FASA did the 80s Trek RPG.  I still have a bunch of the books in a tote somewhere.

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On 3/3/2019 at 11:04 AM, Oyaji said:

5e. I'm in deep now. Printed off a good 100 or so characters to cut out. It's so time consuming but it's also strangely calming. I thought about getting one of those cutting machines but I'd never use it other than for this, there's no rush, and at that point I'd be better off just buying a 3d printer. The next move is looking towards terrains. Fat dragon has some cool ideas for paper 3d but I'll probably go with the 2.5d option. 

Haven't had a chance to get into the actual game itself in a couple of weeks due to friend availability but I'm psyched for it. 

Fat Dragon Games also makes paper terrain, some of which is collapsible. They sell the PDFs, and you print them off, and make 'em. Some of the PDFs have variant layers. They have a free Baba Yaga's hut to try out which I made a while back: 

 

They're having a 14th Anniversary sale right now if you dig it:  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/346/Fat-Dragon-Games

They also to files for 3D Printers for anyone who has one of those.

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8 hours ago, ctapley said:

It is far from cheap, but I am soooooo close to backing this thing...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/room17games/tenfold-dungeon-modular-dungeon-crawling-terrain

Looks awesome IMO

 I already basically back just about every dungeon crawler or miniatures game on KS anyway; then they sit in boxes for months before getting any use usually  ?

I would not hate it, in fact quite the opposite, if you clued a brother in on these.

@jaedmc I downloaded the Baba Yaga hut and will put it together when I have a minute or 120. They have some really dope stuff.

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This book on crafting in your 5e Dungeons and Dragons game just launched and I totally support the company: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/astrolago/witch-craft-a-5e-supplemental

I've fiddled around with the playtest rules for this latest book and it's so much fun, giving players a lot more opportunity to be creative with their down time. From the looks of it it's shaping up to be just as beautiful as their last book. 

The publisher did a book last year called Faerie Fire that is so fucking creative, fun and beautiful to look at. It's a bestiary of the Feywild but with this wild hyper color 80's aesthetic. I've been utilizing a lot of ideas from it in the campaign I'm running. It also included what has become one of my player's favorite items - Door Jam. A jelly that when smeared on a door jam's it shut OR when you break the whole jar of jelly on a LOCKED door it becomes ajar.

 

 

 

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That one is open for late pledges right now... 

 

 

 

i think they have closed pledges but are taking pre-orders...

 

this one can now be purchased from CMON’s site and has like 150 miniatures total...

 

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You would think that with my background as a pro writer/editor of the fantasy/horror stuff that I would be a bigtime D & D player or perhaps Magic: The Gathering; you might think that and you couldn't possibly be more wrong... My D & D experience was limited to this: Back in 1986-1987 somewhere prior to 1988 as we were still drinking and we quit in '88, some friends suggested that we play D & D. Okay, it has warriors, monsters, and all sorts of critters, so what's not to like? Let's give it a go... Well, the next several hours was devoted to rolling up characters (with a couple of dashes across the street to the Storeroom Tav to get more beer.) After what seemed like decades (it was in reality only about three hours), but we were seemingly no closer to actually PLAYING the game than we had been when all this roll up characters bit started. Now I'm a patient man, but enough was fucking enough, in this amount of time we could likely have completed a game of RISK, made considerable headway in an Avalon Hill battle like Gettysburg or just gotten a good buzz on, (which truth to tell I was getting anyway, which may have contributed to my patience wearing thin), we mentioned it was getting very close to dinner time and perhaps we should resume this activity the next day. We made it point to avoid going to either of the local watering holes and not answering the door or telephone. As I told the Mrs. anytime I put in that much time and effort creating a world and/or characters it will be in prose form and I expect to get a big bag of money for it. So much for D & D. 

Now, Magic: The Gathering... As many of you know, for a couple three years I owned one-half of a sportscard store. The only downside to this is that I had a partner. I'm a purist, left to my own devices we would have sold nothing but baseball cards as I have little love for football and consider basketball a game for tall, gangling freaks that can't hit a curveball. I don't really consider hockey a sport, but I will admit that the inaugural set from Upper Deck looked pretty spiffy even if I had no idea who any of these people were. However, when my partner showed up with three boxes of Magic cards, the explosion of outrage could be heard for several blocks. When he told me that we owed the local supplier (this Asian kid named George whose parents set him up in business as a supplier on a small scale to cardshops who didn't have the funds to buy cases upon cases of stuff, but (like us) would buy three/four boxes at a time flip 'em in a couple of days and re-up), anyway much to my surprise, we sold all three boxes by the pack in two days and bought six more boxes and so I held my nose and became a dealer in Magic cards. As long as I didn't have to play the stupid game and thankfully our shop was too small to have people play on the premises, all was good. Until people started trying to sell us cards. Fuck that shit. I don't know how rare the Eye of Whatshisfuckface is, nor do I care. Take that shit to Lake City Card Exchange, do you see the big sign outside that says "Magic Cards Purchased Here?" "No, you don't?" Perhaps that's because there isn't any such sign here now nor will there ever be!

One of the saddest things I've ever seen was one of our customers show up at a big card show at the Seattle Center. He had a little box with him of some cards that he hoped to trade or sell. I would've liked to have made an offer, but he wanted to sell as a lot. Nothing was less than a very high EX-Mint, among the cards were a 1957 Ted Williams, 1962 Musial, 1966 Mantle, 1970 Mays, 1960 McCovey (RC), 1959 Banks and Cepeda, few others of similar stature. In short, some very nice stuff and I couldn't have touched it for less than a grand. He stopped by our table a couple of hours later to show us what he'd picked up in exchange... Damned if it wasn't Magic cards (in fewer number, I might add), yeah, this doofus traded away what would form the centerpiece of a very solid 1950s/1960s collection of star cards for fucking Magic cards. I could have wept.

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So Gloomhaven...It's been awhile since I bought it, I read through the manual, I watched an hour long playthrough of an early scenario on YouTube, I watched a 25 minute how to play Gloomhaven video on YouTube, and I even spent another $100 buying the Broken Token organizer for it basically making this board game a $200 purchase.

Last night was the first time I sat down with three other friends to play it. Despite all of that prep work, I had no fucking idea what I was doing. The game is so deep and has so many rules that it's hard to know how everything works. It basically took me nearly an hour to setup the first scenario and then it took us 2 to 3 hours to fumble through the first room of the first scenario. That first scenario has three rooms total to get through!

Now, even though it took us forever to figure everything out, we decided that next week we would just re-do the scenario because I think we have a good handle on playing the game now. Even though it took me an hour to set things up, I think I have a better idea how to cut things down from an hour of setup to maybe 15 to 20 minutes. Part of that is buying an accordion file to store all of the the larger floor tiles and labeling each file one of the letters for each tile grouping. I think I'll also make sure card decks and enemy decks are all set to go the night before.

All in all, even though I wasted my friends time, we actually wound up having a lot of fun once we started figuring shit out. The game is really fucking cool and I think it will be well worth the investment.

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RE: Gloomhaven = Everyone i know loves it with one exception.  It can turn into a math exercise if players let it...

From all accounts, that seems to make it less enjoyable for players... otherwise, keep that from happening too frequently and it is a blast.

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For sure. I had already read the instruction manual and watched the 25 minute video about how to play Gloomhaven and thought I was ready and wasn't. I should have taken the steps to set everything up to go through those paces and tried playing it solo to just familiarize myself.

That said, we fumbled around enough to get a good handle on things and over the last few days I've gone through the manual again now I think I have a good grasp on playing. So much can happen with this game though that something is bound to come up that we'll need to refer to the manual to, but now it's one of those things where I feel much more confident that I can lead a Gloomhaven campaign whereas last week I wasn't confident at all. I was so unconfident I brought Pandemic with to bail on Gloomhaven in the middle of playing it because I was so worried about not knowing what to do. I doubt that happens again.

I'm so confident now that I've taken the leap and bought a set of paints for miniatures and I'm going to paint our characters. I've never painted minis before and haven't even painted since college, but I have enough artistic ability to do it. Then the next step from there will be to use a friend's 3d printer to make more stuff, paint that too, and use everything for Gloomhaven and D&D campaigns.

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Finally broke down and grabbed Betrayal Legacy yesterday.  Soooooooooooo looking forward to this one...

I'd love to know how your game goes. By the time it was over with we tore up a shit ton of cards that will not be in the final replayable version. So I'd love to know what branches you end up going down and if it's waaaaaaay different than ours.

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Night 2 of Gloomhaven is tonight. I'm stoked. Been reading through the manual again and I'm fully ready to lead this party.

Unless a 5th or even 6th person shows up and we wind up playing Terraforming Mars instead.

That's the annoying thing about going over to another host's house. We know our group of four wanted to play Gloomhaven again and yet the host winds up inviting 6 or more people. All I'm thinking is that you KNOW we want to keep our Gloomhaven campaign going, you kNOW it's only four players, so why did you invite all of these extra people?!

I'm going to be really pissed if I bring over this huge, 20 lbs. game, spend the time getting set up, and then more people show up causing me to have to tear everything down.

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