A little handy gaming advice #2: How to hold a group together.

[Luna]

Do you know, I sometimes get ideas from you just listening to your strategies and such?

I'm getting a bit inspired, myself.  All I've got is my 4th Edition books (the rest is subject to the my books/his books argument that we're going to be having), so I may sit down and start setting something up for 4E.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Do you know, I sometimes get ideas from you just listening to your strategies and such?

I'm getting a bit inspired, myself.  All I've got is my 4th Edition books (the rest is subject to the my books/his books argument that we're going to be having), so I may sit down and start setting something up for 4E.

4E is an abomination unto the eyes of Gygax.

Pathfinder is far superior, IMO, as it rewards DMs and players who put a little effort into their game, and isn't WoW on table-top.

 

[Luna]

Do you know, I sometimes get ideas from you just listening to your strategies and such?

I'm getting a bit inspired, myself.  All I've got is my 4th Edition books (the rest is subject to the my books/his books argument that we're going to be having), so I may sit down and start setting something up for 4E.

4E is an abomination unto the eyes of Gygax.

Pathfinder is far superior, IMO, as it rewards DMs and players who put a little effort into their game, and isn't WoW on table-top.

 

Ah, 4E's survivable.  And, sadly, it's the only system I have possession of.  Unless I can bum the books, I won't be running Pathfinder anytime soon.  (I am setting up a new apartment, and hemorrhaging cash at a distressing rate.  Once things stabilize, I'll be fine, but January was brutal.)

[Cramulus]

blah blah blah my game is better than your game

[Luna]

blah blah blah my game is better than your game

Nah, I'm liking Pathfinder just fine (though I've only played a couple sessions so far).  It's just that 4th is all I've got at the moment.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

blah blah blah my game is better than your game

I'd have thought the icon and reference to Gygax as a deific figure might have been an indication that I was joking.

[Cramulus]

ah hopefully the "man jerking off a horse" emote signifies that I wasn't really offended.  I just get a little sick of repeatedly being told I'm running a tabletop version of WoW (not by you, just 3.5 fanboys in general). Normally I'd reciprocate with some over-the-top trash talk but I really do like 3.5 and I haven't played pathfinder yet.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

ah hopefully the "man jerking off a horse" emote signifies that I wasn't really offended.  I just get a little sick of repeatedly being told I'm running a tabletop version of WoW (not by you, just 3.5 fanboys in general). Normally I'd reciprocate with some over-the-top trash talk but I really do like 3.5 and I haven't played pathfinder yet.

Pathfinder is 3.5 cleaned up for munchkins.  Not just player munchkins, but DM munchkins.  It lends itself STRONGLY to customized monsters, and even managed to take the suck and fail out of bards.

[Requia ☣]

blah blah blah my game is better than your game

Nah, I'm liking Pathfinder just fine (though I've only played a couple sessions so far).  It's just that 4th is all I've got at the moment.

The PDFs dropped to 10$.  (Paizo.com) I don't generally recommend that unless there's at least two core books in the group (hard to pass a computer around the table), but if you're already playing this'll get you the stuff you need to make characters and encounters and so forth during prep time.

There's a few SRDs out there if your group is *really* stingy and don't want to buy PDFs, but the formatting is horrible and you miss some of the best stuff as a DM (the beasties in Bestiary 2 are awesome).

ah hopefully the "man jerking off a horse" emote signifies that I wasn't really offended.  I just get a little sick of repeatedly being told I'm running a tabletop version of WoW (not by you, just 3.5 fanboys in general). Normally I'd reciprocate with some over-the-top trash talk but I really do like 3.5 and I haven't played pathfinder yet.

Pathfinder is 3.5 cleaned up for munchkins.  Not just player munchkins, but DM munchkins.  It lends itself STRONGLY to customized monsters, and even managed to take the suck and fail out of bards.

I still don't believe this.  I mean I've read the new bard, and it looks good.  But I still suspect this is a trick and they really fail when actually played.

[Sister Fracture]

Nope. We had a bard in some campaign I played, and it was pretty good.

[Cainad (dec.)]

#4 (nerfing core class abilities) and ESPECIALLY #6 (starting up new campaigns all the goddamn time) have been major hangups to our gaming sessions.

With just one single DM, I can think of at least six roleplaying campaigns (D&D or otherwise) that have been started and never finished with this guy.

And you were one lucky bastard if you even got a reflex save at all against the Fireball, much less got to use Evasion. "The entire area is filled with fire, it doesn't make any sense that you can mitigate that damage if you're out in the open." BITCH THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GETTING BURNED IN THE FACE AND GETTING BURNED ON YOUR BACKSIDE. ALSO FUCK YOU, WAY TO MAKE AREA OF EFFECT SPELLS EVEN MORE STUPIDLY POWERFUL.

As you might imagine, there's been a sort of unofficial falling out with this guy and we haven't played any of his campaigns in months. Plus he apparently started being a douche whenever his new girlfriend played.

[Cramulus]

sounds like you could use a round-robin style game. Switch DMs after every adventure. Make sure it takes place in a setting wacky enough to include everybody's ideas.

[Sister Fracture]

:/ That'll happen. Sucks, but perhaps not too much in your case, since he doesn't sound like that great a DM.

The only on the spot ruling I've had and stuck with about AOE spells is that Fireball, when it goes off above water, does not affect creatures completely submerged, and it does NOT do concussion damage (because it would say so in the spell description, and it only says "fire" damage.)

[Cainad (dec.)]

sounds like you could use a round-robin style game. Switch DMs after every adventure. Make sure it takes place in a setting wacky enough to include everybody's ideas.

We've given this some consideration... with the idea of bringing in the abandoned characters from some of our games that got put on permanent backburner status.

[Luna]

One of the very few bits I did salvage of my 2nd Ed stuff was the two boxed sets of Ruins of Undermountain.

I'm considering updating it, seeing who else in the groups likes to DM, an running it as a round robin.  (I figure swap off every "X" number of sessions, levels, whatever, I'm flexible.)  Everybody has a character, if you're DMing, your character is still active (to keep levels even), gets an even share of cash treasure, but no dibs on magic items while you're running the game.  Placing items only useful to your character is punishable by flogging.

This is something that could run for frippin' ever.