For me, this episode reminded me that I really ought to reacquire old favorites: Rolemaster 2nd Ed./MERP 2nd Ed. (because I use them together), Palladium Fantasy and Twilight 2000.  (Also, my old Classic Traveller stuff is falling apart; time for buying the reprints.)

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;573880For me, this episode reminded me that I really ought to reacquire old favorites: Rolemaster 2nd Ed./MERP 2nd Ed. (because I use them together), Palladium Fantasy and Twilight 2000.  (Also, my old Classic Traveller stuff is falling apart; time for buying the reprints.)

So...got any ideas for using things from Rolemaster/MERP with Palladium?
Dodgy Rifts/Shadow World conversions maybe?

(I know that's not what you said you were doing in your post, but the two do strike me as going together somehow).

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;573885So...got any ideas for using things from Rolemaster/MERP with Palladium?
Dodgy Rifts/Shadow World conversions maybe?

(I know that's not what you said you were doing in your post, but the two do strike me as going together somehow).

Not offhand, but worthy of a spin-off thread.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;573888Not offhand, but worthy of a spin-off thread.

OK split off....

Quote from: Benoist;573796The day you are willing to have a discussion in good faith, I'll listen to you.
All you have to do is try me. But you can't fake it. I'll know.

That's fact, try him, you may be pleasantly surprised.  That's just my serious casual gamer girl experience. Take it as you will at your own risk. He is very open but opinionated and suffers no fools. Much like myself in fact.  But he is smarter than me. So fair warning.

Continuing with my OP, perhaps a bit less verbose this time:

Having at last drawn a couple of Denners into Thunderdomes a curious observation struck me: A key portion of the Den philosophy of gaming appears to be the Sniper.

Observe: In any reasonably realistic modern or futuristic RPG (let's say: Shadowrun), you can build a relatively simple, not to terribly dangerous character and give him a sniper rifle. If you put this NPC (PCs can do this to, but the GM usually fucks with them and makes it less effective) on a high building some distance from where the characters will be... in other words a reasonably optimal position, the Sniper can easily kill at least one Player Character, and if they don't respond properly, might even kill the group.

Obviously: SNipers are broken, yes? They break the game.

Of course, if you disallow snipers, then the game suddenly feels a lot less realistic, like its grounded in an entirely different, slightly sillier universe than our own.

In real life there are any number of factors that prevent everyone from lugging around sniper rifles and just setting up shop, not least of which is that quite often the intended target won't actually co-operate by showing up where you want him to be.  

And of course, proportional responses. Sure you just killed Joe Snuffy without a fight, but the forces of law and order really don't like feeling under the crosshairs, and they got shit like helicopters and... get this... more snipers.


In fantasy, of course, there are more options than just sniper rifles.

By way of illustration: Kaelik recently challenged me to a series of battles against his choice of monsters. What were they? Four devils and an earth elemental.

Why four devils? Why no demons? Why no undead?

Ah. You see, now I know: See in Darkness.  

This (su) power is unique to devils, and in what appears to be a common interpretation of the power, it utterly negates the fact that Devils have darkvision... they simply don't experience darkness at all!

Well: that's a perfectly good interpretation, when I think about it. Sure. It does mean that the writers/editors of the Monster Manual were a bit... lacking in that department, but its something reasonable for fantasy devils to do.

But in the Den hands, its a sniper rifle.  See, other than Drow (which no one sensible plays because their LA is fucking gimp-tastic.. even a noob player will quickly realize that having black skin and sexy artwork to look at isn't worth playing a five hit point geek in a fifty hit point game!), there is no practical way to exceed 60' of dark vision. And even in teh case of Drow, it hardly matters, because the Devil can simply wait 200 feet away and still see what the drow can't.

Of course, unlike a sniper rifle Seeing in the Dark isn't quite that powerful.  But its obviously Kaelik's favorite tactic to prove his point.

MGuy, in his Thunderdome, loves him some solid fog, and in the WvF thread. Why not? Its pretty much cut and dried, a spell that can't be resisted (well, except by freedom of movement which is another of those insanely expensive effects to buy for what it actually does).  So he can now pin down a character and annoy it to death for x number of rounds.

Now, I wouldn't actually mention it, except that they use this handful of untoppable tactics like a hammer to 'prove' that an entire game is broken.  

Well, really?  I mean, if in my Shadowrun game I put a bunch of two-bit hoods on every rooftop with sniper rifles, it obviously makes the game unplayable. Simply saying that 'I'm playing the NPC's smart' is a cop out.

If you only pull monsters that have an impossible to beat trick and you design your encounters to hammer that trick home (such as having dungeons with 100-200 foot straight corridors and no light...) every time that doesn't make the game broken, it means you are a shitty DM.  

I go back to the comment from Listen up you Primative Screwheads. Its about misbehaving players, but it shows why this sort of attitude from DMs is wrongheaded.

Quote from: LuYPSHHe doesn't scare me. He makes a power character, I drop an elephant on it.  He makes a bigger and meaner character, I use a heavier elephant. I got lots o' elephants

This corresponds to my second observation.  Both Kaelik and MGuy want to demonstrate how much better their perspective is, which is an understandable trait, so both agreed to a Thunderdome arena fight, where they could strut their stuff.

Both insist, however, in hiding every single thing they do: Assymetrical information.  Neither of their opponents (Myself and Panzerkraken) have... to the best of my knowledge hidden anything.

Kaelik, certainly, is on record for stating he is afraid I'll metagame and somehow throw off his TPK monster. He's as much as accused me of already doing so openly.

Allow me to suggest that if your concept only works with absolute control of the battlefield and information, then maybe its not as overpowered as you think.  In MGuy's case, its even less excuseable: At least Kaelik can claim that GM's do this all the time. MGuy is, essentially, in a PvP fight where only one player is openly announcing his actions.

Aside from the obsessive need to stack the deck in their favor, when by their own arguments the deck is pre-stacked anyway, it shows a fundamental lack of comprehension of the PURPOSE of the challenges.  If my party wanders around aimlessly for a few more days worth of posts before his Devil finally attacks, and all anyone sees is DeadDM announcing that a surprise round had occured and the wizard was dead... it is impossible for me, or for that matter the members of this site to actually tell what happened.

Posting 'after the fact' justifications is a poor sop for this obfuscation.


Personally? I'm amused. I am about 90% sure of what Kaelic is planning, and I don't care.

I'm imagining this powerful devil hiding from these hapless fools in his new lair while he spends an hour or more (seriously, have you READ how slowly I'm progressing?) teleporting everywhere they are not and blocking off escape routes with walls of ice for, essentially, no real advantage.

At some point he still has to engage the party. At some point there will be a check to see if anyone is surprised, and another for initiative, and then there will be a fight. Then, I presume, he'll teleport some more.

At this point I'm reasonably certain that Kaelik has given up on actually winning his TPK challenge and is trying to bore me to death. Two real time days I've been tromping through that dungeon.  I've made three or four real offers to speed up to the point where he ambushes me, just to get it over with.  I think, at this point, he'd rather I quit so he can declare victory without actually having to produce anything.


But I've already gone on longer than I'd like. Since I've tried to make it a point to highlight things I've actually learned from The Invasion, there is this:

When the game designers of 3E sat down and made up monsters they presumably had ideas of how those monsters worked.  Bone Devils have a lot of melee capabilities and some good 'horror monster' special abilities (Invisibility, poison, etc).

What they didn't consider was that some people would read things like 'Teleport at will' and assume that implied a different sort of monster, one that fights, I'm guessing, like nightcrawler from the X-men, or uses invisibility constantly (there are monsters for that called Invisible Stalkers) and that by NOT using those "At Will" powers every single round they were somehow 'doing it wrong'.

Of course, we already knew they sorta failed in thinking things through when they put in the CR system but let monsters keep the ability to summon other monsters.... since we were on the topic of Devils anyway.  

I dunno, I didn't say it was a deep thought.

Quote from: Spike;574082Personally? I'm amused. I am about 90% sure of what Kaelic is planning, and I don't care.

Just bring a single character, equip a necklace of adaptation and a few packs of dust of sneezing & choking. Let devils surround you, drop the dust on your position and clean up the mess at your leisure. They will be out of action for 2-20 rounds save or no save.

I too was unaware there was an invasion going on, and just happen to be new here as well.  But, I do want to say...

I have observed some of the very best 'edition warring' in my entire life right here on this site.  It is possible to learn a LOT about the entire game of D&D by watching and participating in these discussions.

So while some of the 'bully club' may not be enjoying it, some of us have benefited from it none the less.

Quote from: Spike;574082By way of illustration: Kaelik recently challenged me to a series of battles against his choice of monsters. What were they? Four devils and an earth elemental.

Why four devils? Why no demons? Why no undead?

Ah. You see, now I know: See in Darkness.

I offered you 2 Demons, 2 Devils, and an Earth Elemental. I'd also offer you the Slaad, but those aren't SRD, only in printed books.

At least if you are going to make long diatribes, get the facts right.

Vrocks don't have See in Darkness, but I bet I could still TPK your party with one.

Spike you cannot be fuckin' serious with this shit right? Are you shitting me? YOU are bitching about the fact that I hid my moves and only will reveal them afterward? What information in my battle was especially necessary for me to reveal? What advantage have I gained by knowing what I knew? You know what you actually missed in those empty turns? Me casting and concentrating on Silent Image. That's all you fuckin' missed me doing. Silent Image, closing in for a few rounds. That sure would've changed things. That sure stacked the deck for me alright.

You know how I could've really stacked the deck? Getting a cohort, Planar Binding, Magic Item shennanigans, Scry + Die, you know typical cheap tactics. Instead I just got a bunch of shit that would be usable in any number of situations (you know the kind of shit that anyone with half a brain would do as a soloing wizard). I didn't CharOp, I didn't just do the typical powergaming wizard. I played a standard conjurer that selected some common sense spells. I find it hilarious that Solid Fog being the second spell I cast means I "lurv" it. It is useful in a lot of situations and doesn't actually kill. What I do lurv is conjuring which is why my fiendish dire bats are going to eat his delicious good aligned mount up.

Quote from: MGuy;573585Stones and glass houses indeed Sacro. However one person returning the favor of what so many other people on this site have done does not make the actual act any better. Though I rather liked my translations. At least they covered what people actually said instead of the regular practice by the posters I translated who would regularly build a strawman and attack it instead of any position I actually held. The only reason I evr stopped is because apparently only team theRPGsite may ever troll a thread (despite my translations actually being on topic and reflective of what the poster actually said).

"Sure, I was an asshole; but everyone else did it first and I was right anyway!"

Quote from: MGuy;573719And this is an example of how theRPGsite feels about anybody that disagrees with them.

Quote from: Benoist;573720No. It's an example of how some of us feel about you, specifically.

Yeah, theRPGsite really is a meritocracy. There is no general bigotry against games or play styles, despite the Cold War against the Swine (that only one person ever pursued with any vigour). It can seem like it at times, because a number of like-minded individuals ended up posting here and finding common ground. But any bile you find on yourself is going to be from your actions alone. No one passes around a note saying 'pick on the new guy'. JHKim plays all kinds of story games, and he isn't universally reviled. Several prominent members primarily play Vintage Games, and they aren't universally worshipped. And more than a few of us disagree with each other over a number of topics, because there simply is no cult of personality like Frank has or iron-fisted moderation like tBP; it is simply impossible for theRPGsite to 'feel' anything about anything, because there is no consensus.

Quote from: Spike;574082Continuing with my OP, perhaps a bit less verbose this time:

You filthy fucking liar.

Quote from: MGuy;573773Tried to engage with Benoist and Storm. Benoist straight up doesn't care and Storm... I could write an essay on how he's fucked up. Take your pick logic, math, reading comprehension, game design, etc.

Uh huh. Maybe you could have taken just one or two lines from that essay and used them here instead of fumbling around and shitting yourself.

Much easier just to claim the 'victory' without having to actually go through the messy parts of proving it, I guess. For example, I offered you an opportunity some time ago to whip up a 15th level Wizard spell list that would remove the need for a Thief in the party; I even stipulated that said Wizard has 18 Intelligence for the bonus spells. Your response?



So, before you start shining up your 'Awesome Debater' trophy, you might want to actually present a point or two. At least have something resembling evidence to support your contentions. Because what you did, parroting TGD talking points without understanding them? Not engaging. Additionally, blanket refusal to consider anything before 3.x? Auto-fail. It's like claiming cars have always been capable of 150mph, but you have never driven any car manufactured before 2011.

Quote from: Planet Algol;573776Maybe the culture change between old-guard and new-guard is from embracing chaos to embracing predictability?

That sounds a lot like the difference between playing a character and playing a character sheet. I was pondering that myself recently. That used to be known as 'challenging the player' or 'testing the player's skill'.

Quote from: Kaelik;573813So just to be clear, you believe that you are responsible for the actions of Stormbringer and it is perfectly fair for me to say "rpgsiters do X" where X is anything Storm does ever, and you have to accept that all rpgsiters do that because every person on a forum is responsible for the arguments made by one person?

It's nice having a fan club. Even when they are whiny twats.

(Sorry about condensing things late, I didn't realize I was the only one active on the thread!    )

Quote from: MGuy;573719And this is an example of how theRPGsite feels about anybody that disagrees with them.

Quote from: Benoist;573720No. It's an example of how some of us feel about you, specifically.

Yeah, theRPGsite really is a meritocracy.  There is no general bigotry against games or play styles, despite the Cold War against the Swine (that only one person ever pursued with any vigour).  It can seem like it at times, because a number of like-minded individuals ended up posting here and finding common ground.  But any bile you find on yourself is going to be from your actions alone.  No one passes around a note saying 'pick on the new guy'.  JHKim plays all kinds of story games, and he isn't universally reviled.  Several prominent members primarily play Vintage Games, and they aren't universally worshipped.  And more than a few of us disagree with each other over a number of topics, because there simply is no cult of personality like Frank has or iron-fisted moderation like tBP; it is simply impossible for theRPGsite to 'feel' anything about anything, because there is no consensus.

Quote from: Spike;574082Continuing with my OP, perhaps a bit less verbose this time:

You filthy fucking liar.

Quote from: MGuy;573773Tried to engage with Benoist and Storm. Benoist straight up doesn't care and Storm... I could write an essay on how he's fucked up. Take your pick logic, math, reading comprehension, game design, etc.

Uh huh.  Maybe you could have taken just one or two lines from that essay and used them here instead of fumbling around and shitting yourself.

Much easier just to claim the 'victory' without having to actually go through the messy parts of proving it, I guess.  For example, I offered you an opportunity some time ago to whip up a 15th level Wizard spell list that would remove the need for a Thief in the party; I even stipulated that said Wizard has 18 Intelligence for the bonus spells.  Your response?



So, before you start shining up your 'Awesome Debater' trophy, you might want to actually present a point or two.  At least have something resembling evidence to support your contentions.  Because what you did, parroting TGD talking points without understanding them?  Not engaging.  Additionally, blanket refusal to consider anything before 3.x?  Auto-fail.  It's like claiming cars have always been capable of 150mph, but you reject any car manufactured before 2011.

Quote from: Planet Algol;573776Maybe the culture change between old-guard and new-guard is from embracing chaos to embracing predictability?

That sounds a lot like the difference between playing a character and playing character sheet.  I was pondering that myself recently.  That used to be known as 'challenging the player' or 'testing the player's skill'.