Pen & Paper Role Playing Games
- Thread starter Dei
- Start date
Does anyone do any online RPGing (roll20 or whatever)? My gaming group has pretty much stopped (we tried to get a game started in December but that pretty much ended up not going anywhere) and I don't really know any other people that game in the area. There are a couple of gaming stores that I've thought about going and visiting to see if there's something to join, but there's something to be said about sitting in a comfy chair for several hours to game (what I'm used to) vs sitting in a hard chair at a gaming store.
I'd be up for some online dice rolling too. I know there are SEVERAL programs to do it with, all of them with their own advantages, but generally the best of them cost actual money (or worse, a sub fee) and it's hard to get people to buy into them. But I can't exactly blame them ether when guys like Fantasy Grounds want upwards of 3-400 dollars for ALL of the 5E stuff in their program.
It's generally cheaper to just buy digital books from RPGNow or like sites, then use a free program and just do your best.
It's generally cheaper to just buy digital books from RPGNow or like sites, then use a free program and just do your best.
Ditto on being interested, though I usually prefer play-by-post to remote sessions (or a mixture, with combat handled using the latter), since it can fit into people's schedules much easier.
I'd be very down with this.
The one thing I do like about roll20.net is that you can play for free and have a centralized section for doing maps and dice rolls.
If someone would be willing to be the DM, I'd love to play 5E with people on weekends (maybe once a month or twice a month as weekly just isn't something I'd have much available time to be able to commit to).
Found a relatively nice 5E Excel generation sheet (but looks like it's Excel) at http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1234 and a nice JavaScript/PDF one at (looks lke actual sheets - and is pay what you want) https://www.dmsguild.com/product/193053 if anyone'd be interested in them.
If someone would be willing to be the DM, I'd love to play 5E with people on weekends (maybe once a month or twice a month as weekly just isn't something I'd have much available time to be able to commit to).
Found a relatively nice 5E Excel generation sheet (but looks like it's Excel) at http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1234 and a nice JavaScript/PDF one at (looks lke actual sheets - and is pay what you want) https://www.dmsguild.com/product/193053 if anyone'd be interested in them.
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What? I've got a piggybank full of them. I'm hoarding them for when (if) they become a collector's item.
Here's 10lbs of them for about 70 moose napkins.
I saw that underneath the most recent OOTS comic. I was intrigued. @Dirona, do you already have access to this? You kickstarted his thing. Was this in the rewards?
And IMO this type of thing is even MORE useful in "theatre of the mind" because then you can visually represent monsters. Minis are often "imprecise" on the table, and thus work best to show the "general" relationship between where things are in a fight, and thus are great for theatre of the mind, and actually I'd say "less great" for super-precise map-lawyering.
Starting a new D&D 5e game tomorrow with a bunch of people me and my SO met while boardgaming. I'm playing a half-orc War Cleric (with the concept of all-out Survival as his deity and a blood-covered fist as his holy symbol). His lowest stat is a 14, so that'll be nice.
We're supposed to bring some kinda token to represent the character, so I spent this evening learning how to use Inkscape, and riffing off of Rich Burlew's tokens. It's not amazing, but considering none of it is traced (except for the cut-out+coin template), I'm pretty happy. Lineart only because my printer is B&W.
We're supposed to bring some kinda token to represent the character, so I spent this evening learning how to use Inkscape, and riffing off of Rich Burlew's tokens. It's not amazing, but considering none of it is traced (except for the cut-out+coin template), I'm pretty happy. Lineart only because my printer is B&W.
14 Charisma, and brought up by a human mother who saw any sign of orc-like behavior as a reminder of her rape.
Edit: He did end up raised by an orc from puberty onwards though (tl;dr; got lost in the Underdark), but old habits die hard, and was betrayed by said orc eventually--cementing the idea of his orcish side being more of a taint than anything else.
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If it's not a one-shot or murder-hobo game, I usually prepare a birth-til-now report and character goals. Helps the DM by giving them ready-to-go adventure hooks and NPCs for when the party finishes/derails/pauses whatever story was planned.
This guy wants to 0. survive, 1. reunite with his mom, 2. gather enough strength/gold/allies to 3. raze the family estate and execute the family for exiling his mom after the orcs attacked.
4d6-drop-lowest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ STR 15 (17 due to h-orc), DEX 14, CON 15 (16 due to h-orc), INT 14, WIS 16, CHA 14.
Monty Haul refers to loot, not stats, as far as I know.
Dave
Staff member
Even using that metric your rolls are curiously high. Were I the GM I'd be suspicious.
http://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/
http://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/
I'm assuming you've never witnessed multiple 18's on 3d6-in-order generation? Dunno what to tell you, I rolled what I rolled, in person at the session 0. FWIW the dice came from a local store, and are the ones used to generate all (N)PCs for D&D games I GM. No noticeable high/low stat trends over the 8-ish years they've been in use.
I like that kind of statistical analysis on dice rolling.
In the game I'm running now, I did the normal 4d6 drop, but if something was WAY too low (somebody rolled up a 5 on a stat) I told them to just re-roll it. One person got insane stats (lowest was 12 or something, and a lot of 15+ after race added), and another got middling, but they're going with it.
@Denbrought I can't imagine playing with in-order generation. /shudder
Hah, I have fond memories of spending an hour generating my Baldurs Gate characters like that. I've never won anything on the lottery (that's @Tinwhistler 's job).
You should look up DCC (Dungeon Crawl Classics), the entire system is balanced around it. You make PCs by generating 2-6 3d6-i-o 1d4HP level 0 peasants, throwing them at a deadly situation, and graduating the survivors to level 1
Overall, 3d6 in order is great when you don't come in with a character set in stone, and when the campaign's theme/tone is not heroics.[DOUBLEPOST=1500564793,1500564686][/DOUBLEPOST]
I was able to roll a Paladin one time in 2e, juuust squeaked by the minimums. That was a fun game, until the DM decided to Ravenloft us... So much level drain...I had a friend in college (back during 2e) roll such ridiculous stats that he just made a paladin.
Kinda almost have to with those kind of stats...
Dave
Staff member
I have to apologize to @Denbrought. I set up an Excel sheet that rolled 4d6 and removed the lowest just to check. I had 9 sets of stats showing and it only took me 5 refreshes to get a stat block that the lowest was a 13. And then two refreshes later it happened again. Now, I never once saw one that had a lowest stat of 14, but it's not out of the realm of possibility to have 1 die land differently to make that difference.
I apologize for besmirching your good name.[DOUBLEPOST=1500651053,1500650692][/DOUBLEPOST]Spoke too soon.
I apologize for besmirching your good name.[DOUBLEPOST=1500651053,1500650692][/DOUBLEPOST]Spoke too soon.
Understandable. I'd be suspicious if a player brought that from home. Hence why I like doing randomized char gen in person. My favorite system (Unisystem) is point-based, though, which gets around those issues.
First session went well, DM is a novice (as is half the party) but he's keeping up really well.
First session went well, DM is a novice (as is half the party) but he's keeping up really well.
So I downloaded the PDF for Starfinder (have the book pre-ordered from Amazon, but won't see it for a couple of weeks). What a monster.
I'm 9000% a sci-fi guy and I really Paizo's work but man, this stuff is like MAJORLY complex, especially after getting used to 5e. The rules are THICC. The corebook weighs in at 500+ pages. As much as I'd like to play this, I REALLY don't want to GM it and I doubt I'll be able to find someone to take up the monumental task of learning all the ins and outs of vehicle combat, space combat, vast, vast class options and such. I still really want to play it though.
Each player has stamina points that you exhaust before getting to your hit points. You have an energy AC and a kinetic AC. There are tier after tier of weapons, armor, power armor and all the weapon classes and armor types have levels in addition to everything else on top of a massive, massive modding list for them. There's a huge cybernetics ruleset, huge starship ruleset, small vehicle ruleset, combat, skills etc. It's all based on Pathfinder's 3.75 approach. The setting is the future of the Pathfinder Golarion setting, so it's got magic to boot on top of everything else.
Shit is dense.
I'm 9000% a sci-fi guy and I really Paizo's work but man, this stuff is like MAJORLY complex, especially after getting used to 5e. The rules are THICC. The corebook weighs in at 500+ pages. As much as I'd like to play this, I REALLY don't want to GM it and I doubt I'll be able to find someone to take up the monumental task of learning all the ins and outs of vehicle combat, space combat, vast, vast class options and such. I still really want to play it though.
Each player has stamina points that you exhaust before getting to your hit points. You have an energy AC and a kinetic AC. There are tier after tier of weapons, armor, power armor and all the weapon classes and armor types have levels in addition to everything else on top of a massive, massive modding list for them. There's a huge cybernetics ruleset, huge starship ruleset, small vehicle ruleset, combat, skills etc. It's all based on Pathfinder's 3.75 approach. The setting is the future of the Pathfinder Golarion setting, so it's got magic to boot on top of everything else.
Shit is dense.
Obvious Reply is Obvious, but GM'ing a completely new; complex system really is easiest if you can take it one step at a time. A short campaign of 4 sessions with an end goal of "get off the planet" so you can avoid all starship/vehicle combat, a strict no-magic-this-time house rule to limt another whole system, perhaps a plain pre-made mini campaign,...
Start small and work up to the whole world and system, or you'll just get hopelessly lost.
Start small and work up to the whole world and system, or you'll just get hopelessly lost.