Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 11:17 am

Ok. I want alchemy to be culturally important in the setting, because it sort of figures into the origin story if the world.

I mean, as far as I can tell from perusing what can be found of what was really a medieval eccentric religion, the idea was that there was a hierarchy of metals- lead, iron, copper, tin, mercury, silver, gold- and when you were transmitting lead into gold you went through a lengthy process to move the material up each step.

Of course, alchemy was pseudoscience bullshit so there's no record of how long that took, but it was believed to require specialized equipment, reasonably affordable chemical reagents, and some degree of "knowing what the fuck you're doing."

I could see it requiring less expertise, but taking long enough that most people figure they'd rather just get a real job, leaving the people who are intensely interested in alchemy itself to be the ones who use it as a source of income.

On healing, the idea is that you are "purifying (whatever) to a higher form," so I don't think it's unreasonable for alchemical healing to be capable of curing cancer (in a setting where it wasn't bullshit). Alchemical healing, in D&D terms, should probably work akin to the Restoration spells.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Thu Jan 21, 2016 11:36 am

If you're talking about using alchemy as a pseudo-magical system in that it can produce effects that are centuries ahead of what technology in the setting can otherwise produce, then we can talk about what that would mean. However, unless there's some limitation on the mass deployment of alchemy as effectively industrial chemistry, then the tech level quickly changes to the maximum level of what your alchemy can presumably produce - which is probably some kind of steampunk-esque setting.

If alchemy cannot be industrialized, or it's simply early enough in the progression of alchemy development and there are cultural barriers to its mass deployment, then you've created an esoteric magic system that is only available to members of the upper classes with free time. The precise mechanics will have influence over the role this system will take and how it will alter society, but that's the basic setup.

Nebuchadnezzar · Post by **Nebuchadnezzar** » Fri Jan 29, 2016 6:00 am

What are some older 3rd party d20 subsystems that, while perhaps evocative, produced underpowered or incoherent results?
A couple of examples:
Athas.org 's Life-Shaping Handbook
Dragonmech's mecha
Mongoose's attempts at semi-ritual casters (SlÃ¡ine, Conan)

Hoping to cut a purse from a sow's ear, I'm considering a home campaign with multiple less than level appropriate effect systems in use, primarily so the players can have a large number next to level without it meaning much. The intentionally threadbare broad narrative is that the gameworld is a demiplane created 50 years before as part of a game played by amoral wizard kings. Each picking an alternate dimension with nothing close to traditional spellcasting, they yank city-sized regions from each and smack them a couple hundred km apart, with the intent that after the victims get over the initial shock hijinks may ensue. The PCs are a mixture of leaders of these regions and picaresque adventurers moving between them, themselves unaware of how or to what end they've been abducted. An example of the latter would be if the Gray Mouser had a clockwork arm, pterobackpactyl, and ghost pal.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Fri Jan 29, 2016 11:43 am

Mongoose did a _bunch_ of alternate magic systems in their Encyclopedia Arcane series, most of them were probably at least as good as a Sorcerer but some, like Chaos Magic, might be up your alley.

AcidBlades · Post by **AcidBlades** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 6:14 am

When do you predict that 5e will die? I'm tired of it's existence in roll20. I had a much better time when it was all just pathfinder and 3.5 games that I thought sucked, but I had to actually go in and intereact with them. So it's all a farce.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 3:49 pm

AcidBlades wrote:When do you predict that 5e will die? I'm tired of it's existence in roll20. I had a much better time when it was all just pathfinder and 3.5 games that I thought sucked, but I had to actually go in and intereact with them. So it's all a farce.

Hard to say. By the standards of 3rd or 4th edition, 5e is already dead. 5e's release schedule was down at the point of post-cancellation 3e and 4e within a six months of initial release. 5e was abandonware as soon as it was made.

-Username17

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 4:31 pm

Ok, does anyone have any sales figures to back this up? I mean, sure, 5e is a lazily designed piece of shit, but I've seen no evidence that its being completely destroyed saleswise.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 4:39 pm

Well, there's the fact that they decided to not have splatbooks. That is not a sign that it is selling well.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 4:41 pm

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Ok, does anyone have any sales figures to back this up? I mean, sure, 5e is a lazily designed piece of shit, but I've seen no evidence that its being completely destroyed saleswise.

How about: They haven't released a real book in over a year.

Like, what do you think they made so much money from the Core 3 books that they all retired? The reason you don't make any fucking supplements is because your game sold like shit and paying people to write the books and do that art for a supplement, much less printing, won't get you anywhere.

I mean, we went over all the dumb sales shit that will ever be released (they were in the top X of Amazon TTRPG books for a couple days during the month that no one bought the book except through amazon, because it was literally 20 dollars cheaper). But they aren't ever going to release the sales numbers, they didn't release any numbers for 4e, we just figured it out based on a court case where they sued people and had to prove damages.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 9:52 pm

Ok, true, there are no splatbooks.

I'd be interested if people knew how many groups are playing 5e. Granted, I know none, but does anyone have any stats/experiences? I seem to remember roll20 having similar amounts of games for 5e and 3e.

vagrant · Post by **vagrant** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 9:57 pm

Anecdotally, I was talking to a friend back in Virginia, who says that he was more or less forced to buy the 5e books because no one plays anything else anymore. (At least not in W&M, Harrisonburg, or VCU.)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 10:14 pm

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Ok, true, there are no splatbooks.

I'd be interested if people knew how many groups are playing 5e. Granted, I know none, but does anyone have any stats/experiences? I seem to remember roll20 having similar amounts of games for 5e and 3e.

It's hard to say. Online meetup sites are weirdly skewed towards weird stuff. After all, people don't bother to play online when they can reliably get together and play with live friends. So there are certain weird peaks where a game being less popular sends the number of online games up. And that's discounting the whole online component of demographics. For example, we know that the total number of Onyx Path nWoD v2 players is somewhere south of 3000 people globally. But Onyx Path games are weirdly omnipresent on online discussion boards and game hosting sites because the games are only sold online.

Anyway, while we don't actually have any hard data about how many people give a shit about 5th edition and it's difficult to imagine us getting any in the near future, the corporation that makes the damn thing is treating it like a corpse. They are treating it more like a corpse than 4th edition was treated because they aren't even throwing out revised half editions or essentials products or fucking anything. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide came out in early November of last year, and there is only one more product on the schedule for this entire year (Curse of Strahd is scheduled for March, cross your fingers!).

Let that sink in: Dungeons & Dragons had zero releases for Christmas this year.

-Username17

AcidBlades · Post by **AcidBlades** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 11:18 pm

Also the 4chan's 5e thread is not very active compared to the pathfinder's one.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 11:31 pm

Mechanically, what would it take to make an Old World of Darkness mixed game work? Obviously there's fluff to contend with, but if I were to run OWoD, what would I need to do so that "I want to play a mage!" "I want to play a vampire!" "I want to play a werewolf!" is at least feasible from a dice-standpoint?

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 12:43 am

AcidBlades wrote:Also the 4chan's 5e thread is not very active compared to the pathfinder's one.

The same it true of giantitp, where the 5e subforum gets less traffic than the general d20 one. It does get a fair amount of traffic though.

I suspect a lot of people bought 5e. I mean, it's the new D&D, people buy that. There's plenty of gamers out there who have never bought any non-D&D material. And people try to play things they buy. Also, 5e intuitively appears to be closer to the genuine D&D experience than 4e ever did, just based on a cursory glance, so there's that. At the relatively low level of mechanical fidelity a lot of groups actually utilize at the table 5e is probably fairly workable, or at least no less workable than anything else.

The abandonware aspect is just weird. Actually producing gaming books in the 21st century is not particularly expensive. Making good gaming books probably is, because that requires a real staff and actual creative direction and a lot of conceptual foundation and playtesting, but just churning out material , slapping together pdf layouts, and shoving in some art isn't that hard (heck, the art is probably the most expensive part if you're willing to freelance the writing). You'd think churning out books with the words Dungeons & Dragons on the front would be a least marginally profitable.

This move seems to indicate WotC's belief that the D&D IP has effectively no value, which is absurd. Even if it doesn't have value as a TTRPG, continued existence as such helps support the value of things like novels and video games that manifestly are valuable.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:19 am

Mechalich wrote:I mean, it's the new D&D, people buy that.

I wonder how well D&D 6e would sell if it was literally just the 3.5 SRD in a new cover.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:25 am

AcidBlades wrote:Also the 4chan's 5e thread is not very active compared to the pathfinder's one.

A lot of 3E forum traffic tends to be about character builds and opimization. Other sources of traffic are the mechanics questions and clarifications you get in a heavy-rules system. Judging from what this board has said about 5E, there is much less of an opportunity/necessity for either of those things in 5E.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:49 am

Prak wrote:Mechanically, what would it take to make an Old World of Darkness mixed game work? Obviously there's fluff to contend with, but if I were to run OWoD, what would I need to do so that "I want to play a mage!" "I want to play a vampire!" "I want to play a werewolf!" is at least feasible from a dice-standpoint?

Pick a system, let people free buy stuff with whatever the fuck schema that system has, flavor them as whatever supernatural they want to be.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 2:53 am

Mask De H wrote:Pick a system, let people free buy stuff with whatever the fuck schema that system has, flavor them as whatever supernatural they want to be.

You can't really do that though. Vampire and Werewolf can kinda sorta work together if you squint really hard, in that you can use disciplines to represent gifts and gifts to represent disciplines, but neither of those systems can be used to represent sphere magic (in fairness sphere magic can barely be used to represent sphere magic) at all. This is a problem because while vampires and werewolves nominally hate each other, there are actual scenarios where mages can work with either grouping (ghoul mages, kinfolk mages).

If you choose to give everyone sphere magic then you're playing Mage, even if some of the characters are calling themselves Vampires or Werewolves - they've just been turned into mages with really, really, long lists of merits and flaws.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:12 am

Mechalich wrote:
Mask De H wrote:Pick a system, let people free buy stuff with whatever the fuck schema that system has, flavor them as whatever supernatural they want to be.
You can't really do that though. Vampire and Werewolf can kinda sorta work together if you squint really hard, in that you can use disciplines to represent gifts and gifts to represent disciplines, but neither of those systems can be used to represent sphere magic (in fairness sphere magic can barely be used to represent sphere magic) at all. This is a problem because while vampires and werewolves nominally hate each other, there are actual scenarios where mages can work with either grouping (ghoul mages, kinfolk mages).

Your conclusions make no sense, especially since in the back of Vampire and Werewolf there are explicit expies for the other group and Mages as antagonistic NPCs. Having a ghoul or kinfolk mage just means they buy whatever the fuck powers you use to represent a ghoul or kinfolk, then letting the players go nuts with Thaumaturgy or whatever. Sphere Magic is so bullshit and incoherent the designers took a mulligan to make mages more like the other splats at least three times (DA:M, Sorcerer, Sorcerer Revised).

If you choose to give everyone sphere magic then you're playing Mage, even if some of the characters are calling themselves Vampires or Werewolves - they've just been turned into mages with really, really, long lists of merits and flaws.

Yes, that's the point you profoundly stupid person. You get everyone mechanically on the same page and stylistically on the same page so you can actually fucking play a crossover oWoD game.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 9:21 pm

Assuming I was making a PC sorcerer in Call of Cthulhu, which spells should I take and why?

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:40 am

Mask De H wrote:Yes, that's the point you profoundly stupid person. You get everyone mechanically on the same page and stylistically on the same page so you can actually fucking play a crossover oWoD game.

But it won't really be a crossover game, it will be whichever game you picked with some funny labels attached. Now maybe that's what Prak wants, but it probably doesn't deliver what I imagine most players want from a oWoD crossover.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:46 am

No, generally players are going to complain about being told to "play this thing, call it this other thing."

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:00 am

AcidBlades wrote:Also the 4chan's 5e thread is not very active compared to the pathfinder's one.

I like how they provide a link to a collection of ALL THE RELEASES AND SPLATS for it that you can download. And they all appear to be 2-3 page pdfs of "Oh hey, here's an idea for something you can do. Extrapolate from here to do your own thing, I'm off to the pub."

Of note, this is what we have:

That one Prestige Class
A Nonmagical Ranger variant
The Favoured Soul as a Warlock Archetype (or maybe Sorcerer, I forget)
A couple of AD&D kits turned into class archetypes - the Blade (Bard), one of the other Bards, the Cavalier (Paladin) and I think a Ranger one.
Some guidelines on creating your own archetypes, such as what is okay to fuck with.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:23 am

Prak wrote:No, generally players are going to complain about being told to "play this thing, call it this other thing."

Basically, you'll have to houserule inconsistencies in the basic rules, like different target numbers for the same actions. The best way to do this is to pick one splat for the base rules and stick to it (though you could let each splat use their own target numbers, but that requires your players or you to keep track of all the differences).

Second, you'll have to resign yourself to the fact that your PC are not going to be balanced at all. Like, not remotely.

We're talking Justice League levels of imbalanced. Superman and Martian Manhunter are on the same team as Batman and Green Arrow. And one of your PCs will be Aquaman, who completely dominates any scene that involves fish and is completely useless in any scene that doesn't.

You and your players must be willing to accept this, because it is unavoidable when mixing splats. There is, however, a way to mitigate this. Every PC needs a role, and that role needs to be relevant and unique.

If your players build a fight guy, a talk guy, and a hacker guy, respectively, then it doesn't matter if they're not balanced because they don't do the same things. Everyone specializes in their role and the threats can be tailored to them, specifically.

So long as Batman is the detective, you're golden. As soon as he tries to punch Darkseid, you're game is fucked.