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So How Am I Doing Call 1-800-ARC-HNGA

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Kolson
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Post by Archengeia Mon Mar 04, 2013 1:16 am

So yeah the title kind of summarizes it. I want to know what you guys think so far. I know we're only two adventures in but I am admittedly quite curious. Specifically I have three things I wouldn't mind commentary upon:

1: The custom ruleset. I know it's not that different from 3.5 (by design) but I am curious how it's working out and what people think of it.

2: The setting. Dereth itself. I try to add flavor and I know I don't always succeed but I wonder what you guys think of the tiny slice of the world you've seen so far.

3: My style and approach to GMing. This one I believe is fairly self explanatory.
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Post by Permeus (tabran) Mon Mar 04, 2013 1:48 am

funny i was kind of wondering how you thought we were doing but haded gotten around to asking yet?

ill work backwards
03: its so nice to have a campaign that's not a dungeon crawler, and i havnt seen a bad call from you yet.

02: while we haven't seen much of it. its still early but what we have seen has been well fleshed out and it feels like there is a shed ton of stuff happening that were not seeing.

01: i like the 3.5 rule set and the changes you made to it seam to be working fine it will be interesting what there like when we hit higher levels.
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Post by Zeiss Mon Mar 04, 2013 4:33 am

We will cast jugment on your Arch! Twisted Evil

1- I'm not a D&D player. Really, I'm a noob. But I love how we can upgrade our skills with weaving and buying equipment. I love the abilities of my rogue, what can I say.

2-The world is so full and alive I don't really know what to do. Expecially since we're many players and have to find an objective that we can share and stay together. But in short : I love it. I'm quite curious about the mysteries of this world and want to explore it.

3.-Nothing to say againts it. The Tusker and waterskin thing was shockingly well thought. I think the problem is that we, the players (or just me?) are gonna have to step up and be more "creative".
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Post by Kolson Mon Mar 04, 2013 6:46 am

1. Seems to be holding up well so far.

2. I like what we are doing so far. We aren't really familiar with what is out there and I like exploring it at our own pace trying to do what good we can.

3. I enjoy it. I like the fact we could say screw it at any point and take the train to the other side of the continent if we wanted to for some reason.
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Post by Snarg of Wildpaw Mon Mar 04, 2013 11:10 pm

1.) Overall thumbs up on the changes. I'll try to hit a few points that I consider major on it:
Magic Changes
Overall in favor of this one. It makes it a lot easier to track and use than having 101 spells that each do different things and are varying levels of scaling of each other. It does mean that there's a lot of unique spells that are not included, but a lot of that became pretty convoluted anyway. Just having a static mana pool makes things a lot easier too.

Skill Changes
Overall in favor of these. I've never been a really big fan of how many skills there were compared to how many you could actually skill up in. I hate the fact that a lot of times, unless you specifically pump points in to a specific skill, you have no idea how to perform that skill. e.g. not putting points in to diplomacy, bluff, and/or sense motive makes you a social derp no matter what you say or do. The classes also have more class skills, which is good (although I'm truthfully not a fan of the class skills system for the reason mentioned above).

Martial To-Hit
This seems like it could make martial classes some pretty hard hitters. Obviously we're not high enough level to see this yet, but I'm wondering if this will make martial classes spring out beyond mages as damage dealers. We'll see I suppose.

Burden
Never was a fan of all the meticulous weight tracking that went on. Good change in my book.

Bows
Reading through the rules again I just realized I haven't been adding my +4 DEX to my longbowbow damage; I'm a derp. Anyway, I do like how DEX damage is baked in to longbow damage now. That's something that was kind of a pain to get as a ranged character.

Weaving
I like the concept, although this seems like one of those skills that's almost a little too cheap for what you can do with it. What I've seen so far is that it's essentially a free whatever-you-want magic item generator.

Intuit
This seems like a pretty good idea for doing the "you don't want to do that/spider sense" rolls, although I'm actually not in favor of this addition in the way it's being used. The reason being is that I think players should be able to carry through with something; even if it's a bad idea in the GM's eyes. What I've mainly seen this being used for is not to have one player go off in a different direction or to ruin the "quest". I'll get in to this a bit later in question #3.

Materia
Good idea for giving controlled stat bumps and granting the ability to give unique things to players.

Living Weapons
Haven't seen one yet so I don't really have any in-game experience with these.

Downed
Good thematic status condition that you can use for fiats. We've already seen it in use at least once and it seemed to work out then.

Damage Types
I'm not entirely convinced that having typeless damage is a good idea, because that can become an arms race. However, since I haven't really seen it in action, I just going to wait and watch.

Crafting Experience
Good thing to do. Spending actual experience for crafting has always been one of the worst parts of the game and just having a separate pool to do this makes it a lot easier to be a crafter.

Weaving
I'm a bit on the fence on this skill. On one hand, it makes crafting a lot easier to do. On the other hand, it trivializes any other crafting challenges you might face because you can essentially create magic items out of thin air. It does make it a lot easier to make what you want, but it also seems to make it one of those "why NOT take this" skills.

Spell Failure Chance
Yes. This never made sense to me that anyone who cast spells essentially couldn't wear armor without being a specialized class or stacking feats. Compared to the damage martial classes can potentially dish out in this setting, mages need some sort of armor beyond bathrobes.

Mystic Knights
I put this point here so I could post this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGQY9ZJPnsg

2.) It's obviously been extensively thought out and you can see where stuff is happening in the background. Being able to know what the general relations of different factions, nations, and races are is a good thing. It's also a lot less dark than a lot of games time to be, which I think is a refreshing break from the "dark and gritty" world that I see a lot of times. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but the high fantasy; high magic thing doesn't seem to be a prevalent any longer. I don't think I've really seen enough of the world at this point to comment any further on this.

3.) Your GMing style is somewhat similar to what I'm used to at the moment: not a dungeon crawling adventure, but rather a sandbox-ish type world where the party decides what to do next. As a matter of fact, I would say your style is actually less sandbox-ish than what I'm used to, although I know that was agreed upon at the start to keep things at least somewhat under control so that may not be representative of your face-to-face style.

The characters and locations are well fleshed out and have flavor within them. I've seen some games where everyone is either a saint or an evil overlord. It's good that some people you meet aren't part of some grand conspiracy (or ARE they) and just want to go about their lives or aren't any more than petty crooks/honest citizens. I don't feel the tactic "throw a fireball in the tavern and see who's still standing" would work in this setting, if you know what I mean by that.

Also, the GM is law rule isn't invoked a lot and you're not "against" the players. It's terrible when that happens in games and I'm glad it doesn't happen in this one.

One of the impressions I've received from the various adventures so far is that there seems to be a "right way" to do things for that particular adventure. Let me explain what I mean more with an example: during the first adventure, it was explicitly stated that the adventure was over when we failed to keep Harkun alive. That was a bit of a "wait ... what?" moment. If I had to compare it to something like a video game RPG, it would be like doing a quest, advancing to the next town, and then suddenly I receive a quest failed notification because I failed to keep a guy who I met yesterday alive. It's not that I have a problem with failing some objective or causing bad events to happen because of stuff like that, but I don't think that directly telling players that they failed some hidden objective and their quest is over is a really great way to go about things. I know there's a really thin line between behind-the-scenes stuff and just telling people what actually happened, but... I suppose the best way to put it was that it made it feel a lot more like a linear video game rather than a free world; there's seemingly "wrong" and "right" choices. I apologize if I got the wrong impression, but that's that.

----------

I may add to this as time goes on since I've only been with this group for several weeks. However, there's my thoughts.


Last edited by Snarg of Wildpaw on Mon Mar 11, 2013 10:23 am; edited 1 time in total
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Post by Rory Fri Mar 08, 2013 9:13 pm

1. I like it. For the most part, I can dig through a website about the 3.5 version and assume most of the stuff I look up for my end is the same. Other than that, I tend to ask instead of assume when it comes to something I can't find, and so far you've been very patient.

2. This would be the first setting and campaign of D&D that I've joined, so I don't have anything to compare it to. Desert isn't really my cup of tea, and hopefully we'll move out of the region sometime soon. Starting out in the desert isn't so bad when you compare it to the typical, idyllic setting. Hopefully the change of pace will find me much more appreciative of the far green country when we come across it. The description of these settings is important because everything needs to stand up on the legs of the players' imaginations, which brings me to flavor. Flavor is a good element to have. Had you not described the wine I bought as sweet and explained why, I would never have particularly cared about it; although, I was kind of hoping for "liquor" in the literal sense that it was a distilled beverage, but I think the wine is fine(if you get that reference, take a shot).

3. Just as before, this is the first campaign. I don't have other GMs to compare you to, but I since you didn't flat out refuse to allow me to play as a human when I linked you my character sheet, I think it's safe to say that you are fairly lenient within reason. I don't really mind the sandbox approach, as long as the other members can pick up on the things that just go right past me. I get the feeling that each time we pick up a quest, we miss one little thing and the intrigue slips away from us(waiting Harkun directly, failing to catch the orc mage). And nobody's at fault for failing at intuition outside the 4th wall. I'm only saying this because at some point before the second quest started, I wrongfully blamed Th3Third(Whis Kor/Snarg) for the unfavorable conditions of the outcome to the first quest. I was actually upset that I wasn't there before the decision was made to go to Harkun's lunch spot to add my input and/or simply go off to his home by myself if indeed I was the only one with that idea.

Sometimes it may seem like I'm not having fun. Trust me, I'm having fun. Some of my personal frustration bleeds into my character, but I'm channeling it through my character's behavior to keep it checked, which is kind of fun by itself. Sometimes things come to my attention that don't agree with me, but I work around them because I want to play, and I want to make this fun.
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Post by Essoje Mon Mar 11, 2013 9:57 am

1. To be fair, the custom ruleset is fine, and I like most additions, but being based in D&D 3.5 is actually a bit of a downside in my opinion. Just a bit. Mostly because Pathfinder exists and it's hard to not make a comparison. Also, like it was pointed out, weaving is a skill that I feel that I should have taken, because the pros outweighed any cons since the first adventure.
2. Up to now, this world feels damn fine, man. Great work.
3. You are doing a great job. Compared with the "tactical D&D campaign" that I played before, this is so much more fun.
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Post by Hanuel and Dara(Toilarin) Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:54 am

I do have to post this because reading up on the thread I literally shouted out loud "Against Stonehold?!"
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