I kind of want to do something similar to my Command Confusion thing but with Subterfuge.
For reference Command Confusion was people playing a wargame through the forum, mostly blind folded and confused.
For Subterfuge the group would take helm of the great underwater nation of the Coral Republic and guide it through a game, probably with less limits on comma/sight.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Due to an order mix-up with IPR I got an extra copy of The Veil and would love to ship it to someone who wants it. Anyone interested?
If I get more then one hit I'll do a random drawing or somethin'.
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited September 2017
I hadn't actually heard of that before, it sounds really neat, I've been looking at cyberpunk games for awhile
Sprawl is great but the way that it's locked into its own episodic structure kind of chafes at some of the stuff I wanted to do with it it
EDIT: Okay reading more of the description I'm immediately less sure about this weird setting they've constructed
EDIT: Aside from the weird like... "Giri" stuff and the very Samurai Cyberpunk stuff implied in the art, a lot of the mutability of the world makes me think this would be better to run a game in like... a BLAME! style of setting almost
Rogue Trader session 0 is planned for next week. I've got no plot, as I've decided to wait until character creation is complete. The vague inkling I've got is "fight to get your ship back" so that I can introduce regular combat before space combat. This could either be done from within the ship itself, or by getting to a shuttle port from the middle of nowhere.
Rogue Trader session 0 is planned for next week. I've got no plot, as I've decided to wait until character creation is complete. The vague inkling I've got is "fight to get your ship back" so that I can introduce regular combat before space combat. This could either be done from within the ship itself, or by getting to a shuttle port from the middle of nowhere.
How big is the ship?
If it's a good sized ship (by 40k standards), I think I'd go with combat there rather than working to flesh out a city/hive to fight your way through, especially if it's not going to be a city you ever come back to (which seems likely if you're fighting your way out). That also lets you spend some time developing the ship layout and contents, which seems like a setting you'd use fairly often in a Rogue Trader game.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
The Veil is really rad, while distinctly not my thing from what I've seen of it.
All Rogue trader vessels are fucking massive. Like 50.000 people on board, sky cities.
Something like
- Get a plan to get on board, either through stealth or diplomacy
- Once on board, get told the warp drive is rigged to blow, so they have to go there first (And don't use any explosive weapons!)
- Then get to the bridge
Should take a session or two
While making clear that they should win the hearts and mind of the crew as they move through the ship, as only the imposters/thieves/dirty xenos whoever stole their ship have changed, and good crew is hard to replace.
A bonus plot could be that like 10 sessions in there's another attempt, and only then do they find out that there's some kind of spy network / cult on board.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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Halos Nach TariffCan you blame me?I'm too famous.Registered Userregular
I'm still trucking along with my first proper time DMing, I'm doing a sort of adventure zone style episodic arc with multiple smaller settings linked through a meta-arc of trying to find the traditional plot objects before they can be reclaimed by an invading force of mythical immortals from the moon, who are presumably up to bad stuff.
It's going pretty well I think, the last session was a murder mystery, I'm not sure I seeded quite enough clues to make the conclusion totally satisfying, but there was some fun to be had when the real detectives that had been called showed up part way through our protagonists rifling through the silverware for clues.
The next time it's going to be a tropical island getaway adventure, where I'm certain nothing dangerous will happen.
So, just a general session brief for an intro adventure I kinda wanna run by people:
New New York, city of hopes and dreams according to ISA ad drivel. The crowning jewel of humanity's survival in the Drowned World and proof that capitalism is the guiding ideology for the future. It's the largest population center still left in the world that isn't China and there you can find anyone or anything.
Of course, the reality is far less pretty than that. The glistening white towers of the central mother ship which tethers all the others might look fantastic but once you get past the C-Sec patrolled, pristine shopping quarters and leisure areas most every desk jockey's in a cabin that just about fits their bed and some personal effects. Trailing behind the mother ship is the Refuse, floating slums of barely floating ships chained to eachother and the central city. Thousands of people running through areas that are mostly unpoliced unless C-Sec really needs to crack down on crime. In amongst the slums gang lords rule petty fiefdoms fueled by drug trades and enforced by fishing spears that have never speared a fish. On the plus side the rules free nature means there's some nicer bits of the Refuse, kept afloat by affluent Corporate types who come down to get grimy with drink, drugs and the chance to mingle with less professional ship captains to try and get an edge on their competitors in orchestrating the cities needs for the lowest price. It's hardly the nicest place to live but it's an existence.
An existence that has being much busier lately. Three days ago New New York's central docking harbour was rocked by a huge explosion. News on the ComNet ranged from calling it an act of anti corporate terror, a Chinese attack, corporate sabotage gone wrong or simply an unfortunate mishandling of dangerous goods depending on how paranoid an outlet you liked to browse. Regardless the downside was fifty people dead, over one hundred in the much worse state of sudden medical debt and a city whose main way of processing goods for the wealthy in ruins. The upside is that the Refuse is getting a heck of a lot more business, everyone with a functioning ship is being contracted out to haul goods into the smaller loading bays and every dealer or smuggling ring in the city is suddenly up to their eyeballs in requests for both the mundane and the illicit due to shortages on the main deck. Heck some gang wars even stopped to focus on the cash at hand.
For you however the upside is going to take a bit more work. BountyHub, C-Secs subscription based bounty issuing app issued a new trial version available for everyone's Personal Devices. Which is cute corporate talk for the authorities being so desperate to get ahold of someone so bad they're willing to forgo skimming cash off of being the middle men. The trial version gave everyone access to one Bounty profile: Monica Sanders, a gaunt, long haired and subtly modded woman wanted alive and in C-Sec custody for more money than you've being paid in your life and last seen fleeing from the accident site and into the Refuse.
In addition to that each player goes around the table and answers some questions:
1) Who are you?
2) What were you doing when the explosion happened?
3) How do you know the character who answered before you?
The next time it's going to be a tropical island getaway adventure, where I'm certain nothing dangerous will happen.
I don't know if this will help but there's a really neat new (system agnostic) tropical island hexcrawl/setting out called Hot Springs Island that has a cool gimmick: it comes with its own guidebook written in an in-world style that is fully of mostly-but-not-completely accurate info about the local plants and animals that you can give players.
It has no built-in plot so you can overlay other stuff onto it.
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
Having a hard time picking what flavor of melee would be the most fun though, Fighter, Barbarian and Paladin all seem interesting in different ways.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Fighter is probably my favorite in Dungeon World, but those are all pretty good
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
Having a hard time picking what flavor of melee would be the most fun though, Fighter, Barbarian and Paladin all seem interesting in different ways.
One of the things that is great about Dungeon World versus D&D is that it makes sure to provide all classes with fun things to do both in and out of combat.
Yeah, I'm trying to deciding based on which I think will be the most interesting from a narrative perspective, which is something I typically don't get to do in D&D.
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
What Dungeon World isn't great at is protector-type classes. Since defend is an active thing you need to do, but enemies don't actually attack they only react to bad rolls. So a defender just sits there waiting and doing nothing.
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited September 2017
Yea, 4E and the battlemaster subclass in 5E are probably the best in D&D for giving things for the fighter to do besides "Swing Sword, roll damage". At least as far as RAW is concerned.
I loved being a battlemaster, even specc'd as a polearm great weapon master. It was fun tripping an enemy wizard using a superiority dice then letting the rogue go to town with advantage.
Yea, 4E and the battlemaster subclass in 5E are probably the best in D&D for giving things for the fighter to do besides "Swing Sword, roll damage". At least as far as RAW is concerned.
I loved being a battlemaster, even specc'd as a polearm great weapon master. It was fun tripping an enemy wizard using a superiority dice then letting the rogue go to town with advantage.
It looks like the book coming out in November is going to be adding some new options for fighters that'll open up some new options with Superiority Dice.
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
In my experience, fighters are interesting because the outcome of any social situation is affected by the presence of a guy who can beat you up. Playing a fighter means you can intimidate people, you can step in to protect people, you can force your way in through guarded doors, etc. They also tend to be fairly noisy classes - you can solve a lot of problems more easily, but at the price of attracting attention and escalating the situation.
Yea, 4E and the battlemaster subclass in 5E are probably the best in D&D for giving things for the fighter to do besides "Swing Sword, roll damage". At least as far as RAW is concerned.
I loved being a battlemaster, even specc'd as a polearm great weapon master. It was fun tripping an enemy wizard using a superiority dice then letting the rogue go to town with advantage.
It looks like the book coming out in November is going to be adding some new options for fighters that'll open up some new options with Superiority Dice.
I'm real excited for that book, but I kinda fucked myself by putting it on my secret santa list. I'm playing a barbarian right now so itll be interesting to see how the UA paths work out for them.
Hmmm I wonder if my DM will let me take this UA Path of the Ancestral guardian option instead of my next totem option. My whole tribe was wiped out and this would be very thematic, as well as really useful because it's pretty much 4e mark and I'm the only big melee guy in our game.
"Ancestral Protectors
Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level,
spectral warriors appear when you rage. These
warriors distract a foe you designate and hinder
its attempts to evade you. While you’re raging, you
can use a bonus action on your turn to choose one
creature you can see within 5 feet of you. Until the
start of your next turn or until your rage ends, the
chosen creature has disadvantage on any attack
roll that doesn’t target you, and if the creature
takes the Disengage action within 5 feet of you, its
speed is halved until the end of its turn"
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
In my experience, fighters are interesting because the outcome of any social situation is affected by the presence of a guy who can beat you up. Playing a fighter means you can intimidate people, you can step in to protect people, you can force your way in through guarded doors, etc. They also tend to be fairly noisy classes - you can solve a lot of problems more easily, but at the price of attracting attention and escalating the situation.
But I mean, any d&d class can beat you up, intimidate, protect, etc as well as the fighter if not better thanks to magic.
Being forced to be noisy just gives you less choices, unlike a rogue that can go soft or loud.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
In my experience, fighters are interesting because the outcome of any social situation is affected by the presence of a guy who can beat you up. Playing a fighter means you can intimidate people, you can step in to protect people, you can force your way in through guarded doors, etc. They also tend to be fairly noisy classes - you can solve a lot of problems more easily, but at the price of attracting attention and escalating the situation.
But I mean, any d&d class can beat you up, intimidate, protect, etc as well as the fighter if not better thanks to magic.
Being forced to be noisy just gives you less choices, unlike a rogue that can go soft or loud.
The DM has to be into the idea of the strength based character being intimidating and effecting social situations that way, as it isn't codified at all except for strength checks. Though most social interaction stuff is in D&D isn't codified beyond the charisma intimidate/persuade skills.
As stated the magic users have many more codified options to effect the social side of things. (not to say they will be successful!, but at least the options are right in the book).
Hot take: 4e paladins were better "strong man" types than 4e fighters. Fighters were fine, and their utility was solid, but Paladins could actually justify leaning into either/both of Wis/Cha, while Fighters could really only justify it as their off-secondary.
Plus, you wanna talk intimidating? Let me tell you about my mercenary missionary Paladin who followed the god of war...
e: 4e Fighters were best at either being mobile, or denying the enemy's mobility, or both!
Sword Mages were the best at being mobile (as tanks). Fighters basically combined tank and CC, locking enemies down while the rest of the party chipped away at them.
4e was, on the whole, one of the few games where hyperspecialization didn't ruin the game because the system was designed to encourage you to find neat tricks like trip/disarm/trip.
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
In my experience, fighters are interesting because the outcome of any social situation is affected by the presence of a guy who can beat you up. Playing a fighter means you can intimidate people, you can step in to protect people, you can force your way in through guarded doors, etc. They also tend to be fairly noisy classes - you can solve a lot of problems more easily, but at the price of attracting attention and escalating the situation.
But I mean, any d&d class can beat you up, intimidate, protect, etc as well as the fighter if not better thanks to magic.
Being forced to be noisy just gives you less choices, unlike a rogue that can go soft or loud.
The DM has to be into the idea of the strength based character being intimidating and effecting social situations that way, as it isn't codified at all except for strength checks. Though most social interaction stuff is in D&D isn't codified beyond the charisma intimidate/persuade skills.
As stated the magic users have many more codified options to effect the social side of things. (not to say they will be successful!, but at least the options are right in the book).
To be fair though, in a world where the little guy reading a big book might be able to summon a swarm of meteors or an ice storm or even just a good old fashioned fireball, having the big guy with a sword threaten to break your nose if you don't give them the password seems almost friendly by comparison.
Sword Mages were the best at being mobile (as tanks). Fighters basically combined tank and CC, locking enemies down while the rest of the party chipped away at them.
4e was, on the whole, one of the few games where hyperspecialization didn't ruin the game because the system was designed to encourage you to find neat tricks like trip/disarm/trip.
I absolutely loved playing a Swordmage / Artificer hybrid in 4e. Tons of damage prevention, power & feat driven catch-22s for monsters, and just enough healing that we didn't need a full leader in our party. Only the Chaladin / Feylock combo in another campaign was as much fun for ruining our DMs' best-laid plans
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
4E Swordmages are motherfuckers.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited September 2017
I miss 4e. Yes the way the action economy was standardized between classes made them samey, but what you could do with those actions was so hugely varied. Just looking at the fighter the sub classes played so differently from each other, or the fucking warlord. Goddamn do I miss a proper warlord.
I loved working with the party when we leveled up... "Ok if you take this feat, and I take this one, then when I use this ability on you, you'll be able to do this awesome thing".
What Dungeon World isn't great at is protector-type classes. Since defend is an active thing you need to do, but enemies don't actually attack they only react to bad rolls. So a defender just sits there waiting and doing nothing.
No, not really.
I mean, if the GM is new or unsure, maybe combat shakes out like that, with Team Monster being a bunch of time-frozen pinatas with pointy ends until someone makes a move on them.
But in most situations, a combat is a chaotic, unpredictable thing that can put anyone in danger at any time, and it's a completely legitimate thing to put characters in danger and ask other characters what they're doing about it. Not even as the result of a move, necessarily, though sometimes that, too.
The one time Defend sees use in the extended example of play in the book (starting at page 42) it's done proactively, to save somebody else from the consequences of exposing themselves to danger on a 7-9.
Captain Ultralow resolution pictures of birdsRegistered Userregular
I remember back when 5e was still being like, teased, there was a podcast where they talked about the Fighter's new expertise dice, that seemed like a good way to give the Fighter an interesting thing to do. But I do not remember seeing that option at all when I was going through the Player's Handbook. Did it just not work out in play testing or something?
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Oh hey, is it time to lament the fact that we never got a turn based tactical 4e video game?
Yes, but only because that time is all the time forever.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I remember back when 5e was still being like, teased, there was a podcast where they talked about the Fighter's new expertise dice, that seemed like a good way to give the Fighter an interesting thing to do. But I do not remember seeing that option at all when I was going through the Player's Handbook. Did it just not work out in play testing or something?
One of the sub-classes, the Battle-Master, has superiority dice which they can use to improve their attack/damage and utilize combat maneuvers.
So, maybe that is what it became?
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I remember back when 5e was still being like, teased, there was a podcast where they talked about the Fighter's new expertise dice, that seemed like a good way to give the Fighter an interesting thing to do. But I do not remember seeing that option at all when I was going through the Player's Handbook. Did it just not work out in play testing or something?
One of the sub-classes, the Battle-Master, has superiority dice which they can use to improve their attack/damage and utilize combat maneuvers.
I had a player play a dwarven shielding axemage in a 4E campaign I ran.
Between the no-int-bonus and the lower proficiency bonus of axes, his accuracy and thus damage weren't great, but he was pretty much invulnerable and his shield was essentially 'nah, you didn't actually hit them'.
I remember back when 5e was still being like, teased, there was a podcast where they talked about the Fighter's new expertise dice, that seemed like a good way to give the Fighter an interesting thing to do. But I do not remember seeing that option at all when I was going through the Player's Handbook. Did it just not work out in play testing or something?
One of the sub-classes, the Battle-Master, has superiority dice which they can use to improve their attack/damage and utilize combat maneuvers.
So, maybe that is what it became?
Yeah, it can be difficult to recognize them if you only saw the expertise dice or heard about them; expertise dice were, if I recall correctly, playtested as both a per-round resource and a per-encounter resource, and both ended up being crazy overpowered. So they both lost some of the effectiveness and became per-short-rest.
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
In my experience, fighters are interesting because the outcome of any social situation is affected by the presence of a guy who can beat you up. Playing a fighter means you can intimidate people, you can step in to protect people, you can force your way in through guarded doors, etc. They also tend to be fairly noisy classes - you can solve a lot of problems more easily, but at the price of attracting attention and escalating the situation.
But I mean, any d&d class can beat you up, intimidate, protect, etc as well as the fighter if not better thanks to magic.
Being forced to be noisy just gives you less choices, unlike a rogue that can go soft or loud.
you have to balance the game so that this is not true
like, the rogue should be significantly worse at openly fighting people than the fighter is
I'm going to be playing my first session of Dungeon World today.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
I'm curious about this idea:
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
In my experience, fighters are interesting because the outcome of any social situation is affected by the presence of a guy who can beat you up. Playing a fighter means you can intimidate people, you can step in to protect people, you can force your way in through guarded doors, etc. They also tend to be fairly noisy classes - you can solve a lot of problems more easily, but at the price of attracting attention and escalating the situation.
But I mean, any d&d class can beat you up, intimidate, protect, etc as well as the fighter if not better thanks to magic.
Being forced to be noisy just gives you less choices, unlike a rogue that can go soft or loud.
you have to balance the game so that this is not true
like, the rogue should be significantly worse at openly fighting people than the fighter is
I mean, sure, I could house rule D&D to fix the issues inherent in its class balance, but I'd rather just try out other systems than try to fix a system, personally.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
"The Fighter is bigger and more intimidating" feels a lot like the argument that popped up before that Fighters are somehow a better class for improvised actions
That might be true in your mind, but it's not supported even a little bit by the system
Posts
For reference Command Confusion was people playing a wargame through the forum, mostly blind folded and confused.
For Subterfuge the group would take helm of the great underwater nation of the Coral Republic and guide it through a game, probably with less limits on comma/sight.
If I get more then one hit I'll do a random drawing or somethin'.
Sprawl is great but the way that it's locked into its own episodic structure kind of chafes at some of the stuff I wanted to do with it it
EDIT: Okay reading more of the description I'm immediately less sure about this weird setting they've constructed
EDIT: Aside from the weird like... "Giri" stuff and the very Samurai Cyberpunk stuff implied in the art, a lot of the mutability of the world makes me think this would be better to run a game in like... a BLAME! style of setting almost
How big is the ship?
If it's a good sized ship (by 40k standards), I think I'd go with combat there rather than working to flesh out a city/hive to fight your way through, especially if it's not going to be a city you ever come back to (which seems likely if you're fighting your way out). That also lets you spend some time developing the ship layout and contents, which seems like a setting you'd use fairly often in a Rogue Trader game.
Something like
- Get a plan to get on board, either through stealth or diplomacy
- Once on board, get told the warp drive is rigged to blow, so they have to go there first (And don't use any explosive weapons!)
- Then get to the bridge
Should take a session or two
While making clear that they should win the hearts and mind of the crew as they move through the ship, as only the imposters/thieves/dirty xenos whoever stole their ship have changed, and good crew is hard to replace.
A bonus plot could be that like 10 sessions in there's another attempt, and only then do they find out that there's some kind of spy network / cult on board.
It's going pretty well I think, the last session was a murder mystery, I'm not sure I seeded quite enough clues to make the conclusion totally satisfying, but there was some fun to be had when the real detectives that had been called showed up part way through our protagonists rifling through the silverware for clues.
The next time it's going to be a tropical island getaway adventure, where I'm certain nothing dangerous will happen.
Of course, the reality is far less pretty than that. The glistening white towers of the central mother ship which tethers all the others might look fantastic but once you get past the C-Sec patrolled, pristine shopping quarters and leisure areas most every desk jockey's in a cabin that just about fits their bed and some personal effects. Trailing behind the mother ship is the Refuse, floating slums of barely floating ships chained to eachother and the central city. Thousands of people running through areas that are mostly unpoliced unless C-Sec really needs to crack down on crime. In amongst the slums gang lords rule petty fiefdoms fueled by drug trades and enforced by fishing spears that have never speared a fish. On the plus side the rules free nature means there's some nicer bits of the Refuse, kept afloat by affluent Corporate types who come down to get grimy with drink, drugs and the chance to mingle with less professional ship captains to try and get an edge on their competitors in orchestrating the cities needs for the lowest price. It's hardly the nicest place to live but it's an existence.
An existence that has being much busier lately. Three days ago New New York's central docking harbour was rocked by a huge explosion. News on the ComNet ranged from calling it an act of anti corporate terror, a Chinese attack, corporate sabotage gone wrong or simply an unfortunate mishandling of dangerous goods depending on how paranoid an outlet you liked to browse. Regardless the downside was fifty people dead, over one hundred in the much worse state of sudden medical debt and a city whose main way of processing goods for the wealthy in ruins. The upside is that the Refuse is getting a heck of a lot more business, everyone with a functioning ship is being contracted out to haul goods into the smaller loading bays and every dealer or smuggling ring in the city is suddenly up to their eyeballs in requests for both the mundane and the illicit due to shortages on the main deck. Heck some gang wars even stopped to focus on the cash at hand.
For you however the upside is going to take a bit more work. BountyHub, C-Secs subscription based bounty issuing app issued a new trial version available for everyone's Personal Devices. Which is cute corporate talk for the authorities being so desperate to get ahold of someone so bad they're willing to forgo skimming cash off of being the middle men. The trial version gave everyone access to one Bounty profile: Monica Sanders, a gaunt, long haired and subtly modded woman wanted alive and in C-Sec custody for more money than you've being paid in your life and last seen fleeing from the accident site and into the Refuse.
In addition to that each player goes around the table and answers some questions:
1) Who are you?
2) What were you doing when the explosion happened?
3) How do you know the character who answered before you?
I don't know if this will help but there's a really neat new (system agnostic) tropical island hexcrawl/setting out called Hot Springs Island that has a cool gimmick: it comes with its own guidebook written in an in-world style that is fully of mostly-but-not-completely accurate info about the local plants and animals that you can give players.
It has no built-in plot so you can overlay other stuff onto it.
I want to play a melee class because typically D&D does a terrible job of making melee classes interesting to play and I want to see how Dungeon World compares.
Having a hard time picking what flavor of melee would be the most fun though, Fighter, Barbarian and Paladin all seem interesting in different ways.
One of the things that is great about Dungeon World versus D&D is that it makes sure to provide all classes with fun things to do both in and out of combat.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
When you play a fighter in a game does your GM make the game easy enough that "Swing--roll--damage--roll" works, so the fighter literally doesn't have to think about it? Or do you usually do you just constantly die over and over (or do the other PCs)? Or something else?
I mean, it's largely a competitive class mechanically when you min-max it, at least through levels 1-10, which most D&D campaigns never leave.
It's just boring. Move to optimal position if not already in optimal position, do your full attack, or whatever your best version of that is best on your optimized feat chain. Rinse repeat.
I loved being a battlemaster, even specc'd as a polearm great weapon master. It was fun tripping an enemy wizard using a superiority dice then letting the rogue go to town with advantage.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It looks like the book coming out in November is going to be adding some new options for fighters that'll open up some new options with Superiority Dice.
In my experience, fighters are interesting because the outcome of any social situation is affected by the presence of a guy who can beat you up. Playing a fighter means you can intimidate people, you can step in to protect people, you can force your way in through guarded doors, etc. They also tend to be fairly noisy classes - you can solve a lot of problems more easily, but at the price of attracting attention and escalating the situation.
I'm real excited for that book, but I kinda fucked myself by putting it on my secret santa list. I'm playing a barbarian right now so itll be interesting to see how the UA paths work out for them.
Hmmm I wonder if my DM will let me take this UA Path of the Ancestral guardian option instead of my next totem option. My whole tribe was wiped out and this would be very thematic, as well as really useful because it's pretty much 4e mark and I'm the only big melee guy in our game.
"Ancestral Protectors
Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level,
spectral warriors appear when you rage. These
warriors distract a foe you designate and hinder
its attempts to evade you. While you’re raging, you
can use a bonus action on your turn to choose one
creature you can see within 5 feet of you. Until the
start of your next turn or until your rage ends, the
chosen creature has disadvantage on any attack
roll that doesn’t target you, and if the creature
takes the Disengage action within 5 feet of you, its
speed is halved until the end of its turn"
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
But I mean, any d&d class can beat you up, intimidate, protect, etc as well as the fighter if not better thanks to magic.
Being forced to be noisy just gives you less choices, unlike a rogue that can go soft or loud.
The DM has to be into the idea of the strength based character being intimidating and effecting social situations that way, as it isn't codified at all except for strength checks. Though most social interaction stuff is in D&D isn't codified beyond the charisma intimidate/persuade skills.
As stated the magic users have many more codified options to effect the social side of things. (not to say they will be successful!, but at least the options are right in the book).
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Plus, you wanna talk intimidating? Let me tell you about my mercenary missionary Paladin who followed the god of war...
e: 4e Fighters were best at either being mobile, or denying the enemy's mobility, or both!
4e was, on the whole, one of the few games where hyperspecialization didn't ruin the game because the system was designed to encourage you to find neat tricks like trip/disarm/trip.
To be fair though, in a world where the little guy reading a big book might be able to summon a swarm of meteors or an ice storm or even just a good old fashioned fireball, having the big guy with a sword threaten to break your nose if you don't give them the password seems almost friendly by comparison.
He's been silly fun to play so far. Number of doors walked through? Zero. Number of windows leaped through? 3.
Haha, yes, spurn society's rules!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I absolutely loved playing a Swordmage / Artificer hybrid in 4e. Tons of damage prevention, power & feat driven catch-22s for monsters, and just enough healing that we didn't need a full leader in our party. Only the Chaladin / Feylock combo in another campaign was as much fun for ruining our DMs' best-laid plans
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
I loved working with the party when we leveled up... "Ok if you take this feat, and I take this one, then when I use this ability on you, you'll be able to do this awesome thing".
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
No, not really.
I mean, if the GM is new or unsure, maybe combat shakes out like that, with Team Monster being a bunch of time-frozen pinatas with pointy ends until someone makes a move on them.
But in most situations, a combat is a chaotic, unpredictable thing that can put anyone in danger at any time, and it's a completely legitimate thing to put characters in danger and ask other characters what they're doing about it. Not even as the result of a move, necessarily, though sometimes that, too.
The one time Defend sees use in the extended example of play in the book (starting at page 42) it's done proactively, to save somebody else from the consequences of exposing themselves to danger on a 7-9.
Yes, but only because that time is all the time forever.
One of the sub-classes, the Battle-Master, has superiority dice which they can use to improve their attack/damage and utilize combat maneuvers.
So, maybe that is what it became?
Yes, that is right.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I had a player play a dwarven shielding axemage in a 4E campaign I ran.
Between the no-int-bonus and the lower proficiency bonus of axes, his accuracy and thus damage weren't great, but he was pretty much invulnerable and his shield was essentially 'nah, you didn't actually hit them'.
Yeah, it can be difficult to recognize them if you only saw the expertise dice or heard about them; expertise dice were, if I recall correctly, playtested as both a per-round resource and a per-encounter resource, and both ended up being crazy overpowered. So they both lost some of the effectiveness and became per-short-rest.
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
you have to balance the game so that this is not true
like, the rogue should be significantly worse at openly fighting people than the fighter is
I mean, sure, I could house rule D&D to fix the issues inherent in its class balance, but I'd rather just try out other systems than try to fix a system, personally.
That might be true in your mind, but it's not supported even a little bit by the system