Messages

16

RPGs / Re: Monsters question

« on: October 03, 2010, 12:46:15 PM »

I believe what the quote meant is that Monsters can be pretty easily broken.  Ben Baugh just didn't care too much because combat is only a small part of the game.  I guess the only thing that happens as a result of a broken monster is quicker and more fearsome battles because I throw a ton more guys at the broken monster.

I always interpreted it as Ben's acknowledgement that any game can be broken, his included. Really not much easier to break than DnD or WoD (i.e. Play a cleric, or take Celerity 5)

17

General Chaos / Re: Tech Bullshit (Or general, real life anecdotes)

« on: October 02, 2010, 02:00:22 PM »

Oh god, disgusting computers. I used to work as Best Buy and we had our own roach infested computer. Opened it up and they just poured out. Official company policy is to wrap it in two trash bags and make them take it back. Sometimes I loved their company policy.

We also got one in where the guy's videocard had started overheating suddenly and without any explanation. Assuming that it was a dead fan, we cracked the case open to take a look. Turns out it wasn't that. He had left one of the card slots on the back of the computer open, and some mice had built a nest on top of the fan on his $400 video card. I guess it was a nice warm location, and they packed it with shreds of paper conveniently ripped from the documentation he kept in the bottom of the case. (Which I usually support, so I can't fault him for that decision)

Also, dear god people find the internet and learn to learn. This needs to be included in every single computer manual: http://xkcd.com/627/

18

General Chaos / Re: Civilization V Sucks Ass!

« on: September 28, 2010, 11:10:10 PM »

I actually quite enjoyed the combat. Granted, I went tech mastery so every fight I was in was horrifically one-sided. Cannons don't do much damage to stealth bombers.

Although the management was dumbed down a bit from previous versions I thought it really helped late-game play. Older versions slowed to a crawl when it came to managing citizens at the later stages of play, whereas this only requires a strategy shift at the right time with maybe a little manual tinkering.

19

RPGs / Re: Iphone/Ipod RPG tools

« on: September 21, 2010, 02:34:36 AM »

Personally I am a big fan of MachDice. It's a $0.99 dice rolling app that supports complex dice pools, holding/rerolling individual dice as needed, and has a One Roll Engine mode which is unique among dice rolling apps to my knowledge. The only thing I notice that is lacking is a success-counting mode for things like WoD and Shadowrun, but that's not hard to do visually.

The other thing I've done is to bookmark relevant pages from the d20PFSRD.com site and put them on the dashboard for my ipod. Quick and easy way to look up relevant info for free.

20

RPGs / Re: Character Bad Ideas

« on: September 09, 2010, 10:01:49 AM »

Call of Cthulhu characters, both by the same guy, for a Masks of Nyarlethotep game. The rest of the group included a Starlett with an interest in the occult, a wealthly playboy who fancied himself an adventurer, and a professor of archaeology at Indiana Jones University. (No, it's not really where he taught. You get the point, right?)

Firstly, after hearing that it really was an investigative-heavy game where fighting would not be a frequent occurrence, he created a gun toting russian/irish mobster with nothing but combat skills. He spoke very little english, was barely literate, and for some reason had a number of "chivalrous" character traits tacked on for interest I suppose. He was the star of several sub-plots, including the "Mystery of Why the Fuck did you Dynamite that Apartment Building?" and "The Case of Why Did you Shoot A Bunch of British Houses With a Thompson?". His final moment was in the middle of thousands of evil cultists when he decided to toss a stick of burning dynamite onto the main stage. He was in disguise, but I pointed out that throwing something while surrounded would instantly give him away, no matter how ridiculous his stealth roll was. He did it anyways.

Then, to fix things, he created a navy seaman who was for some reason being held captive in cairo by the cultists. Since he was an officer, he decided his skills should be focused on leadership and ordering people around, but that he "gives orders, he doesn't actually do stuff. So he won't have any kinds of useful skills, just Leadership and Inspiration and such." He walked immediately into the group and said, pretty much verbatim, "I'm a great leader, so you need to listen to me." They tolerate him because of his player halo, but his (again) complete lack of any investigative skills has made him very few friends, and "I try to inspire X with my inspiration skill" (where X is some sort of inanimate object or inappropriate situation) has become a running joke in game. Because you have to laugh to keep from crying.

21

General Chaos / Re: DragonCon anyone???

« on: August 24, 2010, 01:43:07 PM »

I gotta say that doesn't sound like my idea of a good time. Free roaming parties aren't my style.

I went before and have to say that I was a bit underwhelmed. Go to PAX Prime instead, I say. It's a bit closer to home and still has a strong gaming component.

22

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Content and Specials Question

« on: August 24, 2010, 01:42:21 PM »

I disagree. Years ago I bought a pencil bag with a zipper. It's the most function dice bag I've owned. I put the dice I need (plus an extra set) and a bunch of pencils in it. I do this because NONE OF THE RPPR CAST EVER BRINGS THEIR OWN WRITING UTENSILS!!! /rant

Fuck, isn't that always the way? I've got 5 players in my current CoC game, and between them they somehow manage to forget to bring 8 pencils a game. As in, that's how many I seem to need so everyone can have a pencil. It's like they brought Nega-Pencils.

23

RPGs / Re: Superhero RPG

« on: August 23, 2010, 02:01:50 AM »

System Mastery is a much bigger deal in M&M than in WT in my opinion.

I will wholeheartedly agree with this. My experience with WT is that more experienced players tend to end up with more powers that are cheaper but they do so by stacking tons of restrictions onto how their powers may be used that create opportunities to fuck them over and let other people shine.

There is still room for munchkin-y minmaxing, as with any game, but I feel there is a less humongous advantage to be gained by knowing the system better.

24

RPGs / Re: Superhero RPG

« on: August 20, 2010, 06:07:12 PM »

I found with wild talents after you read the rules twice you can understand what is going on and then can easily explained to other players.  If you know the rules character creations is fairly simple and there is room for alot of fluff and back story.  Like said before you may want to house rule hd and maybe wiggle dice.  They lend themselves to power gaming and hd are inexpensive compared to the benefit.

Personally, I turned Hard Dice into what I call "Auto Dice". They can be set to any number before a roll, but no two can be the same number. If you have multiple Auto Dice they can, instead of being rolled, count as a single Set that has a height of 0.

Thus, if they are used for a useful ability like "flight" the matched set can be used to auto-activate it so you can fly around at will. It has a similar effect with abilities like regeneration, multiple actions, and generally anything else where the power activating is all that really matters. They still have to be rolled when used for a defends or attacks action, since in those cases rolls must have a height to be effective, and they essentially count as Expert Dice. If you want to auto-hit someone in the head every round, or have a perfect defense that can't be avoided, you'll have to purchase two or more Wiggle Dice, or a Wiggle Die and an Auto Die.

25

RPGs / Re: Team Fortress 1862

« on: August 20, 2010, 03:33:57 PM »

Yeah, I think I'll do a Google Doc for it.  It's how I've been doing my other campaign notes.  Anyone who wants in on it can PM or email me (I need an email address to send an invite).

Another nifty way to do it is to create a link-accessible doc. Put the link generated into this thread and anyone who clicks it can edit the document.

26

General Chaos / Re: DORF FORT

« on: August 18, 2010, 12:11:21 AM »

What I like to do is make a single square my dump usuly in my masons area, then select all the stones you want to be moved there for dumping. they will put them all in that one single square and it never grows bigger. you can go back to that square and unmark them from dumping and the masons will now be able to walk 3 feet and grab any stone that you have dug up. early in the game it will take a while if you dig alot like me but later once you have enough dwarfs to do shit any new area of stone you mark for dumping gets picked up realy quick.

This is what I do.

27

General Chaos / Re: Alter Ego: Life simulation Browser game

« on: August 18, 2010, 12:09:58 AM »

Played the whole game, ended up very wealthy and owning my own business, died from a heart attack playing baseball.

28

General Chaos / Re: DORF FORT

« on: August 16, 2010, 11:28:33 PM »

Read a little, then figured just to work my way through and guess.  I read/watch a little on the side every once in a while, but won't really do much until my first society goes belly up.  The main problem I have right now though is that my dwarves don't seem to want to farm.  Anyone know what might be wrong?  I have muddied the soil, have seeds/spawn, and have issued orders (I think), but nothing happens.  According to a few tutorials I have done everything I have to do, but is there something easily missed?

As with many things in dwarf fortress, there are oh so many ways that your dwarfs can decide to stop growing stuff. The learning curve is steep on this game and the tutorials can have some glaring blind spots. I feel like I sound patronizing, but I'm just trying to be thorough:

I'm assuming you already built farm plots, but just to be safe I'll mention that you need to hit "b" then "p" and use the uhkm+arrow controls to define your farm plot. A dwarf with Farming: Fields labor enabled will have to "build" it. Some tutorials think this is so obvious they don't need to mention it; this is a common problem with people so good at a game they feel qualified to write tutorials.

You should make sure that one of your dwarves has "Farming (fields)" enabled in his labor preferences, and that he doesn't have too much else going on to distract him. Try turning off some of the "Hauling" tasks if he seems to busy to grow his ass some dinner.

Make sure your farm is set to grow a seed type you have for the current season. There are four seasons for each field, and you'll want to make sure that you have a seed type selected for each one. "Plump Helmets" is the type you most likely have on hand. This is kinda a more advanced side note, but try to make multiple fields and leave each field fallow for one season a year: this will make your fields last longer.

Set up a stockpile for seeds (custom stockpile settings can let you do this) near the farm plots and remove seeds from your other stockpiles. That way your dwarf plants more seeds between each beer break. It may be that he's trying to farm but can't get very far because of having to haul seeds around.

That's what I can think of right off the top of my head. Did doing any of those things get those lazy dorfs working?

29

General Chaos / Re: Aaaaron. Ohhh Aaaron.

« on: August 16, 2010, 01:17:26 PM »

Beast Machines: Interesting overall plot concerning balance between technology and nature in society.  Suffered from extremely poor pacing, writing staff missing their target demographic by a mile, characters personalities changing in ways that made no sense (see Rattrap) plus transformations that were ehhh, you'll see:

Also, the overuse of Cell-Shaded CGI (personal complaint).

Haha wow. That is some super-lazy animation on those transformations. I imagine there was some sort of discussion in the art department that went about like this:

Animator 1: "Dammit. I love transformers, but I've been animating spinning gear things for like 12 hours. This is way harder than it seemed during my DeVry animation courses!"

Animator 2: "Yeah, I know. And they seem to want us to produce these things really fast. If only there was a way to get these animations done with only a few animation curves and almost no time."

1: "Haha. Yeah right. The only way to do that would be to scale the animal limbs in, scale the robot limbs out, then pose the result. It'd look like crap to any real transformers fan."

2:Yeah, it probably would.

Animator 3: Sorry to butt in, but I'm just curious... do any of the managers strike you as transformers fans?

Animation staff: ....

1: ...you know, I always like G-Force better anyways. Let's wrap these up in the next hour, render them out with bits missing over the next three months and submit them at our "progress report" meetings, and make it look like it took the entire production period.

2: You can't be serious! There's no way they'll fall for that.

Animator 4: Put a lens flare behind it! Managers love lens flares! And make sure to zoom the camera in and out a lot. Makes it more dynamic.

1: Fuck yes, promotions all around.

30

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Future Ransom: The Aaron/CoC Project

« on: August 14, 2010, 12:07:31 PM »

The "best" part is that my death was ultimately meaningless. Not only did it not directly effect anybody else but no one ON MY OWN TEAM wondered where I was!

Yeah, I thought that was weird. I went through all this effort hiding you, and they never even bothered to look. Some team....