Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

The damage output on spells is generally higher. The real champion is magic missile at 3d4+3 +1d4+1 / level. It never misses and can't be saved.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

The damage output on spells is generally higher. The real champion is magic missile at 3d4+3 +1d4+1 / level. It never misses and can't be saved.

That the scheme for all D&D 5e, more hit dice or hgher levels means you can deal more damage, faster, in more ways. Hit points are somewhat increased as well. However Armor Class and the to hit bonus has been tamped down. So it possible for a low level character or creature to contribute. This opposed what 3e did which made it all but impossible to punch out of one's HD/Level range by ever increasing AC and to hit bonuses.

Originally Posted by Neshm hiKumala

Agreed on all these points, but in the end, I don't have issues with the manner in which people want to run their games. Doing crazy, impossible stunts like the ones you see in, say, "Wonder Woman", or fighting enemies as they do in the Lord of the Rings films or most fantasy adventures (D&D stuff, etc.), that is, with no discussion of tactics at all ("Just charge!"), or actually trying to avoid fights until the moment you can't anymore which is when you come up with a way to improve your tactical position: all these approaches are fine with me (i.e. with the right group of players and the right game referee).
But because my time is limited and because of the old been-there-done-that thing, I sure will gravitate towards games where the referee and players are interested in making each game specific, filled with good, well thought-out details, in the narration, the tactics, etc.

Details: that's where most games fail I think. Details. Not as a way to overwhelm your players with information, to show them how knowledgeable you are or whatever, but as a way to make your world feel more real, more thought-through and therefore less generic.

Thinking about the moments. Thinking about narrative beats. Thinking about what's evocative (which can totally be about how to think tactically, like how to use a two-handed spear). This approach helps create a tone or a mood too, which, in my experience goes a long way towards making the games you play memorable.
A decent narrator and decent players interested in details will be able to make almost any generic adventure feel special and unique, whether the game session is tactically oriented, or not, etc.

Agreed. What I seem to be seeing is game mechanics, not world setting And it's made more difficult because I've played in Blackmoor with Dave.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

That sucks! Hopefully, it gets better, but judging from this post and your previous one on the subject it doesn't seem likely. Too bad really.
I wonder, is this a "game mechanics" issue, or a DM issue? What's to prevent him from house-ruling in order to deal with any "game deficiencies?" I mean this was what we did back in the day. If we didn't like something about AD&D or EPT we "fixed it," and brought it in line with our campaign needs.

I am not sure. Since I have so very little game play experience in D&D - maybe three-four hours in Gronan's Ram's Horn campaign, decades ago - I don't have much to compare what I'm seeing to. Yes, I've done RPGs, but that was Blackmoor with Dave, Greyhawk with Gary, and Tekumel with Phil.

I am, I will admit, completely lost by the sheer mass of the rules. The stack of books being regularly consulted is about eight inches high, and even with my reading speed I'm having difficulty absorbing everything while sitting at the game table. Yes, I could buy the rule books, but I'm not keen on spending most of the annual gaming budget on something I'll use at a five-hour game session once every couple of months. Three of the players have tablets and smart phones with apps on them that seem to do most of the number-crunching for them, but I am not so equipped nor is the GM.

He doesn't seem to 'house rule', as it seems to be discouraged. He seems to run 'by the book', and I have to say that the books get consulted quite a lot during the game sessions. It's very much the opposite and different from the way I gamed and game, and I'm not sure if I want to play in this style. It's just not grabbing and holding my attention or interest.

Originally Posted by Horu hiFa'asu

Excuse me Uncle, but 5th Edition does - it's the weapon property called 'Reach'. Normal melee attacks must be within 5 feet, 'reach' weapons can attack from 10 feet away. In the bog-standard rules there are no 'long spears' but there are both pikes and halberds with the 'reach' property that would well for a 2nd rank of warriors.

5th edition has a very different (but logical) layout for rules. For those of us used to the older rules - finding things can be tricky. I couldn't figure out base movement speed until Shemek pointed it out to me...

Oh, all right; that makes sense to me. I think that this does highlight my problem - I am getting the feeling that I need to sit down and memorize the entire rules set. One of the players, who also GMs, has done this and is very much able to run things.

Originally Posted by estar

I don't if these will help but here is play accounts I wrote up on my blog.

Where is Glassstaff?
The Great Escape of 5e

Additional comments. First off, 5th edition is not better than any classic edition. It virtue is that it works well as a 2nd best D&D for somebody who likes another edition. Despite running two campaign in 5e, I opted to return using my housed ruled variant for my Majestic Wilderlands. While the conversion to 5e was straightforward it would be just repeating what I did earlier in a slightly different form.

However I did resume using D&D 5e for a campaign involving Middle Earth because of Cublicle 7's outstanding Adventures in Middle Earth book. In part because while AiME is D&D the reworking of the stuff (class, monsters, magic) make it feel completely different than what I was running before.

If you have question about specific tactics and stuff about D&D 5e from the perspective of a guy who ran campaigns in both OD&D and 5th edition I will be happy to answer them.

Thank you for your wonderful links and comments! A couple of points in reply, if I may, to help you see where I am at...

I have never played any of the classic editions, as I've noted. All four game campaigns that I played in were, effectively, 'house rules'.

Thank you for your offer, but my question is if I want to play this game at all. I am not a big fan of it, based on what I've seen so far, and the investment in time, energy, and money is really putting me off; 'return on investment', if I may put it that way. For comparison's sake, I dropped $75 this past weekend on 40 plastic Romans, and already I've gotten a considerable return on my investment - got the command groups and artillery built tonight.

This game does not seem to offer me any of the things I like in my games; no spectacle, as it were, the same reason why I stopped playing board games back in the late '70s. There's no interest in my building anything, painting anything, or drawing anything like we did back in the day as we explored the worlds we adventured in. It's 'by the book', with - literally - readings of the "GM: read this to the players" sort of the material in the book. I freely admit that I prefer Braunsteins, Free Kriegspeil, 'open table' and 'open sandbox play'. I think I'm just not in step with modern games and gamers.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

I believe it was 3rd edition that eliminated "flanking" as we know it and redefined "flanking" as being "envelopment." It also completed the shift in combat away from "small unit tactics" to "individual heroics."

Mileage, vary, yours, et cetera, but it doesn't float my boat.

Understood; never read that edition, or any of the others. I am using the reflexes hones in the campaigns I played in, and they seem to be all wrong. It seems to be all about 'optimizing the build', and having the right numbers to crunch in the right sequence. It all feels a little too 'mechanistic', if I may use that term in this context.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I have never played any of the classic editions, as I've noted. All four game campaigns that I played in were, effectively, 'house rules'.

Gotcha, while I started with OD&D in the form of Sword & Wizardry as a foundation, what I use for my campaign is heavily house rules into it own thing.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Thank you for your offer, but my question is if I want to play this game at all. I am not a big fan of it, based on what I've seen so far, and the investment in time, energy, and money is really putting me off; 'return on investment', if I may put it that way. For comparison's sake, I dropped $75 this past weekend on 40 plastic Romans, and already I've gotten a considerable return on my investment - got the command groups and artillery built tonight.

There are the basic rules which are the full rules just not with all the stuff. Then there is more in the 5e SRD But that is a reference while the Basic rules are a regular set of RPG rules.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

This game does not seem to offer me any of the things I like in my games; no spectacle, as it were, the same reason why I stopped playing board games back in the late '70s. There's no interest in my building anything, painting anything, or drawing anything like we did back in the day as we explored the worlds we adventured in. It's 'by the book', with - literally - readings of the "GM: read this to the players" sort of the material in the book. I freely admit that I prefer Braunsteins, Free Kriegspeil, 'open table' and 'open sandbox play'. I think I'm just not in step with modern games and gamers.

Sound more like a referee problem which amounts to the same thing. As for spectacle it is there but it depends on the referee. I happened to fall on the miniatures side of the equation myself.

All three 5th edition campaigns were on-line but I use the virtual tabletop equivalent of miniatures by using the whiteboard feature. The one thing that has over face to face is something called dynamic lighting. I can set up a map and assign light sources to PCs and they see only what they would actually see in the dungeon.

For my OD&D/Majestic Wilderlands campaigns i use miniatures and Dwarven Forge.

Where should all the Dwarven Forge go.

The beginnings of a riot in the City State of the Invincible Overlord
IMG_2304.jpg

The party has a frog problem

RSC 007.jpg

Orcs in a ruined castle
2014_CobCon_2.jpg

Now I don't make dioramas like in Blackmoor and Tekumel. I favor interchangeable pieces that I can throw together on the fly. That more my one friend, Dwayne, thing.

The old ways aren't dead.

An image I found (from the latest Guardians of the Galaxy movie) - the super hero movies don't generally have much in the way of inspiration for Tekumel, but this 'breeding pod' type thing on the other hand feels a bit more like something that could be hidden away under a temple of Ksarul somewhere or perhaps in the medical bay in an old installation of the ancients.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media...hfswhgghgj.jpg