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richvalle
March 23rd, 2009, 22:18
I've not been here for a while. Is Griogre up to 10,000 posts yet?


:)

rv

zabulus
March 23rd, 2009, 23:20
Pff, the slacker isn't even up to 3000 yet.

PneumaPilot
March 23rd, 2009, 23:42
How long have you been gone?

Griogre
March 24th, 2009, 02:35
Hey Rich it just wasn't the same without you... - seing how you were no challege anymore I became a sage. ;)

I must admit I am curious what comes after Duke though. Did you finished your WLD game?

richvalle
March 24th, 2009, 13:35
How long have I been gone? 6 month-ish? Somewhere there-abouts.

Still playing the WLD game via Fg on Thursday nights. Party is 17th level now and we're heading down the home stretch working on finishing it up. Many minor battles and 3 major ones left (lich, red dragon, huge demon).

rv

Rienen
March 24th, 2009, 15:40
How long have I been gone? 6 month-ish? Somewhere there-abouts.

Still playing the WLD game via Fg on Thursday nights. Party is 17th level now and we're heading down the home stretch working on finishing it up. Many minor battles and 3 major ones left (lich, red dragon, huge demon).

rv

WOW,... now THERE'S a Campaign Log I'd love to read! How long has it taken you?

PneumaPilot
March 24th, 2009, 16:44
So...what does WLD mean? It sounds from your description like D&D, but I can't think of anything that matches those letters.

Leonal
March 24th, 2009, 16:46
I'm guessing the World's Largest Dungeon adventure. Looks interesting, I should try it one day.

richvalle
March 24th, 2009, 20:05
Yes, Worlds Largest Dungeon. We're on 3.5 years and counting. We've not hit every Thursday night in those 3+ years but a vast majority of them. One day I'll have to figure out our cost per usage for FG. :)

In some ways the WLD is perfect for FG. I can either get or convert each map into a jpg and drop it right into FG. We play the whole game right on the maps by zooming down and dropping each character on. Where ever you are on the map when the fight starts or the trap goes off is where you are. Un-fog the map as needed.

I was trying to write up notes after each nights play but I started to add more and more details and it started taking me way to long. The same with trying to put each critter into FG as a personality. Now I spend about 0 prep time on the game and I just run everything out of the book making whatever hot keys I need for to hit mods and damage.

Its been fun but I'm starting to burn out a bit. I'm looking forward to either someone else running a game or me running something besides 3.5 DnD.

Oh... and I thought about it a bit. I think I stopped coming around here around Gencon time last year as a guess. Its good to see some people are still around.

And how the heck do >I< become a Sage! I was Sagey before Griogre had even heard of Fantasy Grounds!!!

:)

rv

Griogre
March 24th, 2009, 22:18
I burned out hard on running high level D&D 3.5. I think the final staw was a fight when I was running the Istivin Adventure path - where - the dogs died, the party died, the girl died, everyone died. :eek: It was probably in its way one of the most cinematic fights I have ever run in D&D and at the same time, for me, it exposed all of the flaws of D&D version 3.x. :hurt: I knew after that fight I was going to 4E or C&C.

Yeah, WLD + FG = dirt cheap entertainment for a looonnngggg time. ;) For those playing 3.5 here's the Wiki entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Largest_Dungeon). It's a very long adventure path dungeon. It's even longer than normal 1-20 path because they had to slow XP progression so you could fight every monster in the SRD and not level too fast. If your group loves dungeon crawls and thinks fighting pretty much everything in the SRD in one campaign would be cool – this is the dungeon for you. I almost ran it, but ended up running Rappan Athuk Reloaded instead.

Well you see, Duke's who hide in their castle for 6 months - don't get the pretty text. :rv: ;) :p I must admit in about 1,000 posts I might resign as sage just to see the next title, LOL.

mr_h
March 24th, 2009, 22:34
I've always wanted to try the WLD, just to say "I did the WLD!"...plus to see if I could keep a character alive that long :b

PS Nice to see you again Rich.

https://mrh.boxofgeeks.net/DnD/DungeonDirectory-Small.JPG

PneumaPilot
March 24th, 2009, 23:45
The fact that you're just burning out after 3+ years is a testament to your Resolve (oops that's a WoD attribute, sorry ;) ). I would have crapped out of that long ago.

richvalle
March 25th, 2009, 13:38
Thanks Mr. H!

We have one original character from the very beginning still playing. And, he had his first death around level 15 or so. He's a Gnome Bard doing poetry. When he does his Inspire for +'s thing he actually reads a bit of poetry to us. Kinda fun.

2 players joined us around level 5 or 6. They are both still playing. Both have died several times and been raised/reincarnated. The Sorcer has been reincarnated so many times its hard to remember what he started as. He's a goblin right now. :)

(The party's had to do reincarnates due to a lack of diamonds. They have now used up all the special ingredients needed for reincarnates but they do have enough diamonds for 1 more raise at the moment).

Griogre: what did you end up running? 4th or CC?

PneumaPilot: I've only started to get burnt out on the higher level stuff. Trying to run high level bad guys AND keep at least a little track of what your players can do is mentaly draining. Bad guy spell casters are the worst! Not only do they have all their stats and special abilities but then they can buff up and change everything. And then the party will drop a Dispel Magic on him/her and change everything again. Bleh. :)

I am bound and determined to get though this though. So close... so very close...

Oberoten
March 25th, 2009, 13:46
Change of Pace and system for a while maybe? It'll do ya good.

- Obe

PneumaPilot
March 25th, 2009, 14:12
I used to keep a special notebook when we played D&D that we called "The Graveyard". It's where I kept all of the character sheets for dead characters. Whenever a character would die, we would write the time of death on the upper left corner and the immediate cause of death (eg. "10/18/04 Pierced through the right eye by the stinger of a gargantuan scorpion" - 1,000,000 points if you can name that adventure!)

As the campaign wore on, it was a ton of fun to go back through the graveyard and read all of the 'death certificates'.

richvalle
March 25th, 2009, 14:18
Obe!!! How ya doing man?

I go to an Enworld Game Day about 3 times a year. I usually play 1 Dnd game and one thing that is new to me. This past weekend I did 2 new games. One with my 10 year old son who was the first kid I've brought with me to one of these.

I played d20 Starwars and we both got to play Jedi. It was a 5 hour long game and he was getting a bit bored at the end but over all had a good time. His favorit trick was to use Move Object to throw Storm Troopers around.

The 2nd game was Mouse Guard (a game based off the comic by the same name: https://www.amazon.com/Mouse-Guard-Fall-Graphic-Novels/dp/1932386572/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237986822&sr=8-1 ). It uses the Burning Wheel system which I had played once quite a while ago. Its a weird system but it was fun. The highlight was at the end after we had given up on a fight (we had 1 HP left and the bad guys had 8) I rolled 8d6 and got 8 out of 8 rolling 4 or higher to pull victory out of the jaws of Weasel death!

I had also started running a 4th ed game for my 3 kids but I haven't done that for about 2 months now. :( Its hard to fit in a big chunk of time needed to play and for me to be 'up' enough to run it.

rv

Oberoten
March 25th, 2009, 15:45
Mouseguard looks FUN One of my PnP players has bought it and says he will GM it eventually. (( Aka this means he has bought the books and will read them over and over and think how awesome the game is and then eventually forget all about them because he's too lazy to run it. ;) ))

- Obe

richvalle
March 25th, 2009, 15:56
Ahh, one of those. :)

You still playing that Magic game... the one where I had the cool Earth guy trying to save people from being burned. It was fun the one time we ran it. :)

rv

joshuha
March 25th, 2009, 16:17
Welcome back RV. =)

Currently I am doing a large upgrade to FUM so look for that to be back up tonight or tomorrow.

PneumaPilot
March 25th, 2009, 16:32
I've flipped through the Mouse Guard books. The presentation is fantastic, but it seems like the rules are pretty sparse. When you go too far toward the role-playing and away from rolling dice, then it starts to seem like a bunch of thirty-somethings playing pretend like little girls. I dunno, maybe that's just me, and maybe I didn't look closely enough at the Mouse Guard stuff...

mr_h
March 25th, 2009, 17:49
Mouseguard looks FUN One of my PnP players has bought it and says he will GM it eventually. (( Aka this means he has bought the books and will read them over and over and think how awesome the game is and then eventually forget all about them because he's too lazy to run it. ;) ))

- Obe

After someone on FUG pointed out Mouseguard I got a couple of the comic books and a copy of the rules. I haven't gotten all the way through the rules, but it looks pretty interesting so far, could be fun.

richvalle
March 25th, 2009, 18:06
Thanks Joshuha! I'll have to try and jump on fum again after you have time to fix it.

PheumaPilot: I'm not sure if the book expects you to already have the Burning Wheels rules and they just expand on it ala D20 systems expecting you to have the Core PHB.

There was quite a bit of dice rolling. Pretty much anything that can be seen as a 'conflict' can result in dice rolling. This includes getting into arguments with people, trying to convince someone to your point of view, a chase, ect, ect. Depending on what the conflict is you roll dice and get 'hit points' that show your success vs the opponents. We had dice off's where we tried to convince the town to let us use a cart (which belonged to someone that hated a member of our group), trying to find burnable materials, trying to drive off a huge snapping turtle, trying to find out where the turtle came from, tracking a mouse who had gotten lost, sneaking up on nasty weasels, running from one weasel, fighting said weasel, sneaking up on the remaining two and finally fighting those last two weasels. Whew!

Where the game gets weird (in my eyes) is that even if you fail you can still succeed at what you are trying to do but with a cost. Also, even if you win you might still have to give up 'something'. Depending on how much you lost during the dice off. Examples: our goal with the turtle was to drive it back into the water. Its goal was to eat mice. We won but had lost most our points so we had to give up something. It ended up being that the mouse that was helping us was eaten (leaving only his tail). With the weasel fight where we only had 1 point left we were left for dead on the field of battle in a heap of bodies.

The game tries to be more narrative where you need to describe what you are doing besides just saying 'I do this'.

And here is where it gets really weird and we had a hard time with it. One 'session' is broken up into two parts. The first part is where the dm runs the game. In the 2nd part the players take over and say 'I want to do "this" ' where this is whatever they want to do. You always get 1 thing to do during your session but can have more. In order to get more you have to give up things during the dm's session. Like, if you and someone else are tied in a dice off you can say 'I lose' and get an extra 'this' in your session. Or, use some other skill besides your best one during a dice off (I think this works...).

The problem we had with this is when were fighting a freaking GIANT snapping turtle who was rolling 8 dice every time and we were lucky to get 4 or 5 we felt like we has to throw everything we could into it in order to win. Same with the weasel fight. And once it was our turn we were at a bit of a lose as to what to do (the guy that was eaten was the one that hated our party member and much of the plot went down with him). Its hard to get into the mentality of 'I lose here so I can do something later'. It might be easier with practice and maybe in a different scenario.

But, over all it was fun and I'd be willing to try it again or play it more. Then again I'd play just about anything. :)

rv

PneumaPilot
March 25th, 2009, 18:11
Ahh, I didn't know about it being based on another rule system. That makes sense then.

Sounds like a pretty crazy system that is trying to do some creative stuff.

Griogre
March 25th, 2009, 19:59
Griogre: what did you end up running? 4th or CC?
I was kinda leery about 4E, was reading about it and not being very happy but trying to keep an open mind before release. You know how it is with each release of D&D - the new version is always going to ruin the game (actually except for the AD&D release) - and 90% of the players convert within a year.

I was completely sold after Xorne ran a pre-release adventure. For some reason the game runs much better than it reads - all the things I was worried about either didn't matter or in actual play worked better - plus it was fun.

I'd say about the only ones who did their job at Wizards for the 4E release were the play testers and designers, though. Management, QA, and Marketing (third party support in particular) were all botched - I'm in awe - I've never seen a successful product lanch done so poorly, its like a case study of how not to launch a product. :p

Despite all that I'm happly running a few weekly 4E games. It's such a joy to run and not fiddly and you don't need a program to make high level NPCs who die in a round anyway. :)

Tokuriku
March 28th, 2009, 01:06
Hey Richvalle, welcome back.

For my part I also tried Mouse Guard and it is THE game for me.
I mean, I have tried a large amount of systems but this is the one that works best for me for a number of reasons. But I best not get into those or you'll be here all night.

One things I advise people is try the system first before making yourself an opinion. While I read trough the rules, I was like: "What the heck, this will never work" or "How am I supposed to use that". But once you actually use it, everything just clicks. And the rolls are very closely intertwined with the roleplay. You cannot "roleplay" without having to roll sooner or later. This is a game kids can grasp and play but VERY deep for adults. If you don't like mouse, play in a Dune setting or something and it will work ;)

My players where at a loss also when they got to the Player Turn. But after running a session once, they got the hints and now games are smooth and MUCH greater then any I have ran so far in my 20 some years of game mastering.

As a last note, here are 2 advices.

First, if you have questions, go on the forums at Burning Wheel. People are friendly and will help you understand rules that seem unclear. Even Luke Crain himself replies to most questions.

Second, (this is for richvalle) conflicts are not the best place to try and get checks for the Player Turn. Conclicts are the end of the line in a lot of twists so you should fight with all you have. The best place is to use your traits to hinder you in standard obstacles (the start of twists). Doing that, you get your check for the Player Turn but more then that, you have a chance to fail :) which means that the gamemaster should have to come up with a new twist/obstacle to keep the game rolling. You get a failure point to help raise your skill later and the story evolves and gets interesting... all good things!

20 some years in the hobby and I thought I saw it all, boy was I wrong. This game flipped my gaming world upside down and for the better. Burning Wheel is IMHO not easy to start with if you have nobody to show you the ropes. Mouse Guard could be a very viable introduction to it.