 August 30, 2011 - 11:25am | Mearls put together a short article on old school style play vs modern RPG styles. Good read. Last night I re-read the back few pages of the Alpha Dawn book, a good reminder course for Referee's and perhaps something all new DM/GM should read before running a game. :-) |
September 4, 2011 - 1:09am | I remember poking at a troll with everything until I was left with the #$%^&*() torch I was carrying since I did not have Infravision. It almost scared me when Jeff (the DM) said you notice it ain't regenerating this time. There is too much emphasis on the "Rules" anymore. Which is why I miss the good old days of Yes, you have a 4 Charisma, but the princess is impressed with your sincerity. :) -LZ |
 September 4, 2011 - 1:02pm | I miss the good old days of Yes, you have a 4 Charisma, but the princess is impressed with your sincerity. :)-LZ Thats because with a 4 charisma you're damn near so homely as to be sort of cute. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 6, 2011 - 4:22pm | Sort of like ET! I always wondered how something that looked like a desiccated bit of flesh convinced so many females to cuddle with it. Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. Edwin Louis Cole |
 September 7, 2011 - 5:46pm | I wouldn't follow a 4 Charisma character into the wench-house if he had a bag of holding filled with gems. |
September 8, 2011 - 2:28am | I wouldn't follow a 4 Charisma character into the wench-house if he had a bag of holding filled with gems. Why not? Unless you have a 3 charisma and would come off looking poor in comparison. It rarely hurts to shade your "chances" using the fat/ugly friend technique. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 8, 2011 - 4:34pm | Ah, but you're still dependant upon said money holding 4-charisma character's CHOICE in wench-houses... |
September 8, 2011 - 4:54pm | Ah, but you're still dependant upon said money holding 4-charisma character's CHOICE in wench-houses... "Damn the torpedoes...err I mean money, full steam ahead." I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 10, 2011 - 12:04am | I'd rather play a Wiz with a 4-Int, a Rog with a 4-Dex, a Clr with a 4-Wis, Ftr with a 4-Str, or Met with a 4-Con, than a Brd with a 21-Chr ... inverted-priority based character-stacking is awesome ... XD sometimes making the WORST character the rules will allow, and finding every opportunity (short of intentional maiming tactics, and other obvious self-preservation oversights) to reduce "character effectiveness" within the rules, can result in an extremely entertaining and rewarding character ... O_O old school rules (and many old school GM's) were (and still are) very rules heavy ... in my experience ... O_O PS: don't jump me >_< , a dryad and any "play-the-monster" players-book makes it a rules-legal bard... I still would rather play one of the others... and they are NOT (technically) legal (prime requisite too low) in most editions... esp. old school... in some interpretations the stat itself is too low no mater the class, and 6 is a technical minimum outside of curses and other external reduction effects... 6_9 PSS: why did I mention the minimums? because I tried to make a dumb weak clumsy barbarian, and had to argue with the GM... who killed the character by buffing him magically in game, and I reduced slowly back to concept, and he did it again, so I reduced again ... and made a dumb, gullible, ugly wizard that insisted he was a cleric and had to pray before he could cast, memorise, or learn, spells... increasing times with unnecessary ritual... yes, I remember the good'ol'days XD Final Rant: Nowadays I find few people ever care for the rules  , twisting and warping and tossing-out any rule on a whim,  no mater how it effects other rules or the setting as a whole ... often upsetting the whole idea of "game" by getting the books just for the pictures and flavor text, and never even using dice or paper, just turning the whole thing into some freakish theatrical performance were nobody ever really dies and rarely will anyone get hurt ... and talk at length about the finer points of characterization, and artificially created emotional attachments to imaginary objects, people, and places  or very strange concepts like Player Consent and GM Intent...I mean you can't even expect to get raped by a Bugbear without some disembodied voice asking if it's "...ok or too offensive...", or even kill an Orc in the road without running the risk of being sued by it's family anymore!!!  so whats a Bugbear or an Orc for?!?Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
September 11, 2011 - 1:35pm | While low-PR D&D (and when I say D&D I refer to the various incarnations of the basic-expert-etc boxed sets) characters can be fun to portray, you simply won't be advancing as much with them. The XP penalties for low PR are often more severe than the rewards for higher PR. But yeah, a campaign of "hopeless characters" is good clean and fun play. One o fmy more memorable D&D games was when I portrayed a low-DEX thief (I think it was 6) that was offset by above average CON & CHR scores. He didn't make it past level 3 but somehow he managed to roll most of his thieving ability scores...and with the XP penalty he was progressing at about the same rate as the just below average-PR fighter w/high DEX in the group. That fighter really kicked some butt too, standing near the rear flanks with chainmail plinking away with his bow. And that's pretty much it, ignore the weaknesses and concentrate on the high points instead...thanks to his charisma my thief always managed to get hirelings to do most the dirty work. |
 September 16, 2011 - 8:37am | And that's pretty much it, ignore the weaknesses and concentrate on the high points instead...thanks to his charisma my thief always managed to get hirelings to do most the dirty work. and that is how you get through life concentrate on the good points and get hirelings to cover the weak ones (and take the blame when things go wrong) Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
