I'm currently greatly enjoying the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and came across this inspired character sheet!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/map-based-5e-6889754 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/map-based-5e-6889754)
Thanks for this, I played the original D&D and then AD&D at least once a week for about 10 years then stopped, nearly 30 years later I'm back playing 5th Edition and it's great fun.
If I was in the market for a "new" RPG to start fresh, I'd go for 5e. I was in the playtest stuff and it seemed like a nice blend of old school and new school. Traditional without being crap :D
As one of my groups is deeply wedded to 3.5 still (despite not having read any of the rules :D), and my other are delving far afield in to all sorts (and we have two ongoing 4e campaigns anyway!), it's a bit pointless for me. Shame, as it looks very decent. And nice character sheet, VERY atmospheric :D
Was never really happy with D&D, I found it's character classes and alignments, it's insistence on tying character advancement to exterminating the local wildlife and it's one-shot wizards (at least at low level) irksome.
My favourite system remains SPI's Dragonquest which allowed characters to mix and match abilities (I specialised in erudite psychopaths!) and rewarded active participation in the evening's session.
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic149710_md.jpg)
I actively loathed AD&D/2nd Ed, for much the same reasons. 3rd was a welcome change (especially after a decade of thumping Rolemaster into a workable system), but it's long in the tooth now. It is what it is, and these days it's no longer my cup of meat. 5e has a charm similar to "Basic D&D", IMO and I'd be tempted by it if I started afresh :)
I do fancy 13th Age mind, which on a similar engine but looks very cool - sort of "on the fly", co-op world building as you go which involves the players every session from the ground up.
Yep, 5ed has re-invigorated our group. Streamlined and fast paced beats the drudgery of 3ed or Mathfinder into a cocked hat.
IMO 5ed is essentially what 3ed (and possibly 2ed) should have been; and the world would be a better place if it had been. :D
But we have a couple more sessions of SW to finish before we return to complete one D&D campaign - then maybe a break before completing mine.
Cracking, Zippeee! Also well done to your first time GM in Star Wars - sounds like it's belting along :)
Quote from: toxicpixie on 03 October 2016, 05:38:57 PM
Cracking, Zippeee! Also well done to your first time GM in Star Wars - sounds like it's belting along :)
Yeah, he's doing really well and we're a pretty mixed bag as a group - covering most of the style axis from a roll-play fights only player through to a pure storytelling only one. It makes GMing a middle course quite the challenge.
SW is an odd system though, at once sleek and narrative driven and yet powered by an intrusive dice mechanic. Still he's our resident super-SW nerd so that holds it all together, the rets of us can't tell a bothan from a wookie so it's just cool space opera.
I love D&D 5th!! Really nice adventure in the starter box too!
The starter box is probably the best value RPG product, ever. It's considerably better than the SW ones - which are pretty good.
But Phandelver, despite a slightly ordinary start is a really good sand box region with a load of stuff going on, any of which can be expanded in any number of directions.
Rules, Campaign, PC portfolios, Stats, and dice all in one box sufficient for at least 12 good sessions and expandable. Extremely good value. The only thing missing would be miniatures.
I invested heavily in the "Harn" background books. As to scenarios I had way too many of my own to ever bother with commercial ones.
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1725307_md.jpg)
Ahhhh, Harn - cracking background, dangerously dangerous system. Promoted a lot of not fighting on the grounds fightin was a dangerous game :D
I'd be tempted by the stater set of 5e to plunder if I didn't have so much stuff to plunder I could never get through it. Let alone home brew stuff :D
Star Wars system - my group likes the d20 version. It's quite bad, but an Ewok with a cut down heavy blaster pistol makes mincemeat of the opposition!
Quote from: toxicpixie on 03 October 2016, 10:27:59 PM
Ahhhh, Harn - cracking background, dangerously dangerous system. Promoted a lot of not fighting on the grounds fightin was a dangerous game :D
I'd be tempted by the stater set of 5e to plunder if I didn't have so much stuff to plunder I could never get through it. Let alone home brew stuff :D
Star Wars system - my group likes the d20 version. It's quite bad, but an Ewok with a cut down heavy blaster pistol makes mincemeat of the opposition!
Yeah tried a couple of sessions of "Harnmaster" and went back to Headdenquest (my home grown version of SPI's Dragonquest), when characters die from infected wounds more often than fatal sword thrusts or deadly arrow fire the pendulum has swung way too far to the "realism" side for my tastes.
My brief foray into the Star Wars RPG, as a character, saw a group of characters so amoral that the GM eventually caved and let us be Imperials rather than Rebels. :)
Quote from: Zippee on 03 October 2016, 09:13:46 PM
The starter box is probably the best value RPG product, ever. It's considerably better than the SW ones - which are pretty good.
But Phandelver, despite a slightly ordinary start is a really good sand box region with a load of stuff going on, any of which can be expanded in any number of directions.
Rules, Campaign, PC portfolios, Stats, and dice all in one box sufficient for at least 12 good sessions and expandable. Extremely good value. The only thing missing would be miniatures.
Indeed, quality product there! I don't mind they didn't include the minis though. Makes it a super cheap entry point! Cost me only 17€ !!
Yes 5th ed is very good. The Tyranny of Dragons campaign is well worth it and just for sheer content and options, i recommend Storm Kings Thunder.
I missed everything from AD&D to 5th so don't know how bad they were. As so much in RPGs it depends on the DM & Players; we're very lucky in having a set of long standing friends non of whom are power gamers.
After 18 months of play we've got to 5th level; personally I think D&D is best between 5th and 9th level, lower than that party members can be killed by relatively low level incidents or unlikely dice combinations, higher than that the party becomes too powerful.
Also the DM is keeping magic in very short supply which helps prevent it dominating the campaign.
No voices raised for RuneQuest? I always thought that looked pretty good.
Runequest was excellent though it did fall apart a bit when Runelord were fighting runelords as everyones attack and defence were so high it was almost impossible to kill anyone
One of my favourites was MERP/Rolemaster ..Excellent system that could be used for anything...Nice set of modules and campaign settings released as well covering all of middle earth
I havent played Harn in about 30 years but remembering it being good
Quote from: Ithoriel on 03 October 2016, 10:42:57 PM
Yeah tried a couple of sessions of "Harnmaster" and went back to Headdenquest (my home grown version of SPI's Dragonquest), when characters die from infected wounds more often than fatal sword thrusts or deadly arrow fire the pendulum has swung way too far to the "realism" side for my tastes.
My brief foray into the Star Wars RPG, as a character, saw a group of characters so amoral that the GM eventually caved and let us be Imperials rather than Rebels. :)
Yeah, Harn was a really nice idea but not great fun to play long term. "I am the heroic hero of heroicness, and, nope, wait, put the pen knife down, aaahhhhh a splinter! Get it away!" :D And this is coming from a man who played Rolemaster. Ahhh the heady days of stumbling over imaginary unseen deceased invisible turtles and breaking your hip. So many decapitations or bleed outs. Happy times.
"Amoral" - I once ran a mini-campaign in Basic D&D where the characters turned out to be... well, not only did they get the authorities after them, but they murdered the Thieves Guild agent who was carrying them out the city in a wagon. One of them just popped up AS THEY LEFT THE GATES and sliced his throat open, then beheaded him, then tossed it to the stunned militia on the gates before they rode off. They then managed to pillage and murder all the local humanoids and brigands, so were on the run from literally EVERYONE I could think off. This all occurred in about three sessions. I called it quits after that and juts described gruesome deaths for each of them :D
Quote from: DanJ on 04 October 2016, 08:55:15 AM
I missed everything from AD&D to 5th so don't know how bad they were. As so much in RPGs it depends on the DM & Players; we're very lucky in having a set of long standing friends non of whom are power gamers.
After 18 months of play we've got to 5th level; personally I think D&D is best between 5th and 9th level, lower than that party members can be killed by relatively low level incidents or unlikely dice combinations, higher than that the party becomes too powerful.
Also the DM is keeping magic in very short supply which helps prevent it dominating the campaign.
AD&D is the worst of them, IMO :D
3rd ed (and all the 3.XX off shoots) was good - real breath of fresh air, quite innovative and relatively open system but had glaringly horrible assumptions at the roots which eventually killed it (and was also buried under a ton of power creep in attempts to "balance" things. and sell more books.). 4th suffered from terrible marketing angles initially and never quite recovered, which is a shame as the actual system is very robust (especially as you can effectively ignore the "tactical wargame" aspect if you want and run a very open and fluid game), and there's some superb campaign support for it - WotC really hit their stride with Gardemoore and the revamped Keep on the Borderlands/Chaos Scar series.
But Fifth is a nice step sideways - it's got more of the "charm" of old school early RPGs whilst (thus far) appearing to have decent mechanics that don't tempt to fiddling about or inconsistency :) I do like a good low magic game as well, but that's VERY hard to do in AD&D/3.XX, as characters are essentially their equipment list for the most part :(
FK - Runequest was awesome, but it's twenty five years since I really played it, as no one I knew wanted to! So I missed all the Heroquest stuff etc. We might be starting a full on Orlanthi under the Lunars game soon though. Sadly by soon, that's likely a year away... if you enjoyed it, have you seen Prince of Sartar?
http://www.princeofsartar.com/comic/introduction-chapter-1/ (http://www.princeofsartar.com/comic/introduction-chapter-1/)
I ran Rolemaster for several years - a mega campaign that finally saw the heroes slay their nemesis (it was all about an heirloom sword he'd nicked of a PC back in their early days) in front of his orc horde, deep under the Misty Mountains, as he was summoning a balrog - all very dramatic, unfortunately the dramatic, long leap and roll of 346 to kill the nemesis happened just that fraction of a round too late. The balrog had been summoned but not yet bound, oops major upset :) But really one of the most memorable scenes was the party larking around after a bit too much pipe weed, playing with casting light on moonlit lakes to see what happened as the water molecules drifted apart - or playing invisible snowball fights in the camp. It was an odd campaign :)
Loved Harn for the background - best stuff available in the 80s but the system was a non-starter, just too realistic, heroic fantasy needs a little bit of heroics. The background wasn't as gritty as the rules.
Never really fell for Runequest, probably because the local advocates were a little too vocal. And MERP/RM filled that D100 niche anyway without the bl**dy ducks!
I'm running Tyranny of Dragons now - well once we finish the SW and what not we'll get back to it. I ran it as a direct follow on to Phandelver, the green dragon and cult provide a nice link. One of the nice things we've found about 5ed is that mixing PC levels in the party isn't a game breaker. Two 5th level PCs connected the Phandelver group to the TOD group and by chapter 4 everyone's pretty much the same level without anything getting out of kilter. it's a very robust, sleek system.
Too many RPGs over too many years, and we haven't even touched on most of the systems, we had a great Traveller campaign with rotating GMs - the goal was really to leave the party on some kind of crisis cliff-hanger at the end of your session, the wackier the better. So the next GM had to come up with an explanation and a way out, great stuff :o
If anyone wants the old MERP modules you can find them here
http://merp1.free.fr
And here
http://merp2.free.fr
We played Rolemaster for nearly a decade and a half, I think, before we switched to D&D 3.XX which did what we'd bashed RM into but out the box, and a lot more simply... That said, my RM campaign world is s till going strong, now for another group in another era - this time about five hundred years prior to the first time it was run, and a thousand years before the furthest advanced period I ran :D I use it to dip in and out of "history" depending what I feel like - so it's been "classic" Medieval high fantasy, a bit of Arabian Knights (sic), some pseudo-Fall of Rome, Pirates (yaaaar!) and some "Monkey Magic meets Zero and Apaches" :D
If you & Peter keep on I'll have to ask for the 5e starter set for Xmas to plunder :D
Quote from: toxicpixie on 04 October 2016, 12:23:09 PM
If you & Peter keep on I'll have to ask for the 5e starter set for Xmas to plunder :D
You could do far worse - you know like the usual stuff from last year: socks (dull but practical); a garden rake (interesting wrapping challenge though so credit for that), alcohol free whiskey (that one really sucked!) and an handy vacuum for the car (so basically an extra Sunday chore then).
It's small wonder I have to buy mystery Santa gifts for myself :D
I'm horrified to realise how many different game systems I've GM'd or played.
In roughly chronological order and allowing for the vagaries of memory - Empire of the Petal Throne, D&D, Dragonquest, Tunnels and Trolls, Powers & Perils, Heroquest, GURPS, Paranoia, Amber Diceless, Everway, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Star Wars, MERP, Rolemaster, Harnmaster, Firefly
I've probably forgotten several!
Had several superb GURPS adventures at Sixth Form, never too powerful, always a challenge, with great players.
Quote from: Zippee on 04 October 2016, 04:49:29 PM
You could do far worse - you know like the usual stuff from last year: socks (dull but practical); a garden rake (interesting wrapping challenge though so credit for that), alcohol free whiskey (that one really sucked!) and an handy vacuum for the car (so basically an extra Sunday chore then).
It's small wonder I have to buy mystery Santa gifts for myself :D
Wow, that's great stuff! For Fathers Day Ms. Pixie got me a car clean, as she was fed up of the mess in my motor. Which I then had to pay for as she had no money when he arrived!
For Xmas we have a Snowman after dinner who brings presents. The traditional one has a hole in his bum they come out of, the one I made for us delivers them via c-section - who says Xmas isn't fun?! Last year he got me some Austrian Napoleonic generals and grenzer. He knows me well :)
Quote from: Ithoriel on 04 October 2016, 05:20:18 PM
I'm horrified to realise how many different game systems I've GM'd or played.
In roughly chronological order and allowing for the vagaries of memory - Empire of the Petal Throne, D&D, Dragonquest, Tunnels and Trolls, Powers & Perils, Heroquest, GURPS, Paranoia, Amber Diceless, Everway, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Star Wars, MERP, Rolemaster, Harnmaster, Firefly
I've probably forgotten several!
My running & playing of games dropped off rather post house buying and then toddler wrangling, but yeah. It's a very silly list...
I always wanted to try GURPS, but no one I gamed with ever ran or even owned it (though I do have several interesting supplements, mainly Car Wars and alt-earth ones).
Quote from: toxicpixie on 05 October 2016, 08:24:29 AM
I always wanted to try GURPS, but no one I gamed with ever ran or even owned it.
Yes, oddly it's the one I've never played. A great friend, always spoke highly of it and wanted to play it - so I have a copy, sadly he never volunteered to run a game, so it has languished on the shelf ever since.
These days we just seem to rotate through D&D and Cthulhu - now with added SW.
There's a chap at the club runs it, but sadly the games he runs haven't appealed. Doubly so as it usually crosses with me running D&D :D At the club it's d20 D&D and d20 Star Wars, with a dash of Golden Heroes thrown in. I fancy running a bit of Traveller (old school Cepheus Engine, basically "LBB 1-3 with a couple of extra bits") next though, so I might put D&D on hiatus post current campaign arc.
And toy soldiers when I can actually inveigle people into it :D
Ooh! Traveller! Said I'd probably forgotten some!
I preferred HeroQuest (the rpg not the boardgame) to GURPS though there are lots of similarities.
I always wanted to play the post-RuneQuest, HeroQuest stuff, always sounded really good. That's another I missed, but it's a maybe in a year or so unless we go with 13th Age for Gloranthan ramblings.
I can recommend The One Ring, as well - really neat system for Tolkein, simple and really, really atmospheric. Get the second edition though, the first has "shotgun editing" and is virtually impossible to piece together!
Tried a new RPG last night at the club, 'One for All, System Diabolique' sort of Musketeers with the possibility of unnatural things.
The character generation is quite complex and like nothing I've ever played but the overall feel was for a very enjoyable swashbuckling evening's gaming.
What was most amusing was the mission and its reward...
King "Ah my Brave Musketeers, go to the border of the Spanish Netherlands [with whom France is currently at war] and meet my agent who is brining me a most valuable treasure."
Musketeers "Yes Sire!!!"
So one very long ride later we ended up in an enjoyable skirmish which resulted in eight dead Spaniards (hooray), one crippled courier (boo), the loss of a very valuable horse (oops) one wounded Musketeer recruit (ouch) and the box of treasure.
Returning to the Palace we tripped over a couple of future plot lines and avoided the Cardinal's Guards to deliver the box to the King
King: 'Well done my Brave Musketeers, only men as brave as you could have managed such a heroic task! Now let us look on what you have brought me...'
King opens the box in front of whole court to display..... Eight tulip bulbs!
King, "Marvelous, Priceless, a treasure worth more than their weight in gold! And for your reward my bold Musketeers, you shall be the guests of honour at this evenings masked ball!"
Needless to say we'd created our characters with an eye to adventuring and heroic swashbuckling, not leading some sort of seventeenth century square dance.... to say it didn't go well would be an understatement, my attempt was particularly poor.
Overall though the rules and background were excellent with a good heroic feel to the weapons and fencing and we'll definitely be going back for more. Now all I've got to do is decide if it's worth investing some hard earned experience in dancing lessons and if I can possibly start the revolution 150 years early!
Sounds cracking, Dan!
Always like a bit of swashbuckling musketeering :)
Although reviews for AFO suggest character creation should be quick?!
Sounds like a great game.
Tulip bulbs were treasure!
When tulip bulbs cost the equivalent of several years worth of a craftsman's pay! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania)
There WA a great d&d adventure in one old Dungeon issue - "The trouble with tulips". It was a corker, and the macgiffin was totally useless to the PCs - it was much the same reveal if memory serves :)
Awesome idea!
QuoteAlthough reviews for AFO suggest character creation should be quick
If you know what you're doing and what sort of character you want to create, then yes; if you're starting from scratch with just the PDF players guide it takes several tries and a few hours.
But then that's probably true for most systems.
Yes 5th ed is very good. The Tyranny of Dragons campaign is well worth it and just for sheer content and options, i recommend Storm Kings Thunder.
I enjoyed the simplicity of the original books (two if I remember) that we played at school. It allowed our imginations ample room to creat stories etc. We moved onto the next edition fiarly quickly, but can't remember if it was any better or not. I think with all of these sorts of games, an awful lot depends upon the DM and the group you play with.
Never got into D&D but started off playing Empire of the Petal Throne in 1976 then moved on to Chivalry and Sorcery 1st Ed in 1978 and never looked back. While C&S was complex it suited our group down to the ground, and with extensive "house rules" we played on and off for some 20 years till about 2007 when various members moved on or stopped playing.
Pann, Cra and Glorfindel (very original name - yes he was an elf :o 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) ) were our three core characters for many years and they lived through many adventures, while eventually becoming quite high level.
We discovered Harn in the mid 90's and like others here moved to that background world with new characters though we kept using C&S for all our game mechanics. Luke and Auric fought against the Order of the Copper Hook (IIRC) over several years and we put some serious dents in their evil plans :d
Tim H, Erwin N, Rob C, Phil S and myself spent more than a few hours roleplaying in that time...we had a lot of fun, very few arguements and after one epic episode Glorfindel finally got what he wanted - a vorpal blade, the "ultimate" sword in C&S ;)
Crikey, C&C the RPG that made RM look fast play :D
Well suited to the Harn background though
Kudos on twenty years of that - not many groups with that kind of hardccore endurance :o
C&S took an eternity to resolve combat IIRC. Unsuprisingly we quickly stopped playing, despite it seeming to be a good game.
Quote from: Steve J on 06 October 2016, 10:20:02 AM
C&S took an eternity to resolve combat IIRC. Unsuprisingly we quickly stopped playing, despite it seeming to be a good game.
We quickly found that while we liked the rules we needed to modify aspects of them to play how we liked. In the end our rules didn't look much like the original C&S rules
Quote from: Zippee on 06 October 2016, 09:49:30 AM
Crikey, C&C the RPG that made RM look fast play :D
Well suited to the Harn background though
Kudos on twenty years of that - not many groups with that kind of hardccore endurance :o
Yes we found our rules worked very well in Harn. While our gaming spanned 20 odd years there were long periods where we didn't play.
Of course the real importance is not the rules one used but the stories that remain in the memory.
As GM
Knight and land-holder Sir Bohuslav, who's successful prevention of the forces of Chaos attempted takeover of the Kingdom of Kaldor left him with bat-wing ears and x-ray vision (requiring lead wrap-around glasses to allow him to see the world around him) and a face so hideous several npcs had heart attacks and died on seeing him.
The hobbit thief who's skill at avoiding traps regularly lead to the party member following suffering serious injury and who's uncanny speed, ambidexterity and skill with a shuriken lead to the combat technique known to the party as "The Hobbit Snowstorm"
The complete failure of the male members of the group's attempt to browbeat the information required from those who had it contrasted with the success of the two female member's serial seduction of those who provided all of the clues required in pillow talk!
Dropping a giant granite block from the sky into the middle of the road with the words "You're going the wrong way!" chiselled on it. The players promptly announced that since none of their characters could read they were carrying on!!!
As player
My Cyberpunk character ( a "named solo" for Amnesty International, an organisation which now took rather more robust action to free those unjustly imprisoned) being hit by an anti-tank round and finding he was so borged up it bounced off!!
Playing Dragonquest, adding one to my Endurance (basically hit points) at the end of every session and surviving each successive session with one Endurance ... for almost two months of weekly sessions.
QuoteThe complete failure of the male members of the group's attempt to browbeat the information required from those who had it contrasted with the success of the two female member's serial seduction of those who provided all of the clues required in pillow talk!
Our 5th level female warlock does the same thing, a couple of weeks ago we finally caught up with the main baddy but were so low on spells and hit points we let her talk to him. She rolled a natural 20, which combined with a 20 charisma was enough for him to had over the loot and leave us alone, the fighters we not impressed.
Going to be seeing 5th Ed in action soon at the club. I'm a big fan of 3.5 (and AD&D 1st & 2nd I guess..nostalgia?)
Latterly, though, I've really got into Numenera, The Strange, The Cypher System (all Monte Cook) and Dragon Age / Fantasy Age - top-notch simple, streamlined, flavourful systems. I picked up the FFG The End of the World RPG line - they're *very* cool too...
Just bought the 5th Edition Starter set 'on impulse' from Waterstones after you lot were all on about it. (I got very bored waiting for hours for wife and daughters to finish shopping). So far, very impressed with lots of free on line back up material too.
Quote from: Bodvoc on 22 October 2016, 01:53:00 PM
Just bought the 5th Edition Starter set 'on impulse' from Waterstones after you lot were all on about it. (I got very bored waiting for hours for wife and daughters to finish shopping). So far, very impressed with lots of free on line back up material too.
Good job!
Nicely illustrated starter too, love some of the monster drawings. Even makes the owlbear look 'disturbingly cute'
The starter characters are good fun to play too!