Octopus Overlords

We've used miniatures at times just to help visualize some of the fights, but I play pretty fast and loose with movement rules. There have been a few situations in the starter set adventure module where setting up some miniatures helped explain what was going on tremendously. I consciously tried to keep it from turning into a brief foray into "D&D Descent".

I use miniatures with Paranoia, so I expect they could be used in even the fastest combat system. Miniatures can be representational, not just tactical.

I'm also going to be doing D&D 5thEd with my kids and some friends. I read the new PHB, and I'm impressed. It adds a lot more interest to the "engine" than we had back in 1stEd, but it's not as rule-bloated as Pathfinder. Good balance.

Yeah I have used minis (in some form or another - checkerboard and stratego pieces to battle map /tiles with appropriate minis) in every edition I have played. They technically aren't needed but they help visualize.

Heck, even the new star wars system is all about the narrative and they give you maps and tokens with their starter sets

Planning my traditional day after thanksgiving D&D game with my old gaming buddies and a couple of our kids. Only problem...now that my younger kids are playing, I feel bad excluding them. But D&D with a party of 8 is no fun.

IceBear wrote:Yeah I have used minis (in some form or another - checkerboard and stratego pieces to battle map /tiles with appropriate minis) in every edition I have played. They technically aren't needed but they help visualize.

Oh, so have I. I bought my first pack of miniatures just weeks after my first copy of the PHB and DMG back in the 80s. Miniatures for marching order, general positioning and so forth are a given. I was looking more at how the the rules interacted with them during combat.

I have certainly run enough miniature-free games over the years to appreciate them, and would still rather run it that way then deal with hours-long combats due to complex tactical movement and positioning rules.

Given that things still have set ranges (as opposed to just abstracted ranges) and you need to know if you are in reach of certain larger creatures (or if you are in melee with someone), it's probably easier to use minis and to not use them (at least for me). For example, opportunity attacks still exist:

If you leave a hostile creature’s reach during your
move, you provoke an opportunity attack, as explained
later in the chapter.

So while you can decide whether someone's movement provokes an opportunity attack without using minis, I foresee minis as a way to make it easier and to avoid arguments

I finally got my 5th edition Player's Handbook in the mail. On page 73 is a piece of art with an inscription in runes. They used the Elder Futhark, which I'm fairly familiar with, and I had a laugh when I saw it. Their ancient inscription reads,

"This is Photoshop’s version of Lorem Ipsum. Proin gravida nibh vel velit auctor aliquet. Aenean sollicitudin, lorem quis bibendum auctor, nisi elit consequat ipsum, nec sagitti"

Blackhawk wrote:I finally got my 5th edition Player's Handbook in the mail. On page 73 is a piece of art with an inscription in runes. They used the Elder Futhark, which I'm fairly familiar with, and I had a laugh when I saw it. Their ancient inscription reads,

"This is Photoshop’s version of Lorem Ipsum. Proin gravida nibh vel velit auctor aliquet. Aenean sollicitudin, lorem quis bibendum auctor, nisi elit consequat ipsum, nec sagitti"

I have the new PHB and MM. Check out the small-print disclaimers on the copyright pages.

Played 9 hours of D&D with my old gaming group and some of our kids on Friday. Had a great time running them through the first two sections of the starter pack adventure. I still think this starter pack is one of the best introductory adventures I've ever come across. Does a good job of ramping up, gives the players plenty of choices to make, and can actually be pretty brutal if the players aren't on their toes. Players all had a great time (although my brother had to leave halfway through the adventure and that game my younger daughter a chance to take over) and we are planning on trying to finish up the adventure during my Christmas break down there.

Oh, to have friends and family that are gamers. I miss those days. I have a brand-new set of 4th Ed. books I bought just before I found out we were moving sitting in my office closet, and every time I open it up to get something, I have that gaming twinge that can only be scratched by playing the same old D&D PC games I have played a dozen times over. I don't know anyone well enough down in San Antonio to try to get one going with my current group of friends, and never tried gaming with a group of "unknowns" in a hobby shop/comic store.

Woe is me...

Hyena wrote:Oh, to have friends and family that are gamers. I miss those days. I have a brand-new set of 4th Ed. books I bought just before I found out we were moving sitting in my office closet, and every time I open it up to get something, I have that gaming twinge that can only be scratched by playing the same old D&D PC games I have played a dozen times over. I don't know anyone well enough down in San Antonio to try to get one going with my current group of friends, and never tried gaming with a group of "unknowns" in a hobby shop/comic store.

Woe is me...

Have you tried that meet-up site? I have gone to some board game events on that site and had good experiences.

The Dungeon Master's Guide came out today. I got it as my Christmas gift for myself. With good deal timing and discount codes, I picked it up for $22 shipped.

I'm starting up a game with two friends and my kids (11 and 13.) The kids are finally old enough to really play an RPG, so I'm looking forward to it.

My regular bi-weekly game (still D&D 3.5) has been getting on my nerves. Of the five other people, one is routinely drunk, and two others sit there smoking pot all night - the DM included. The last couple of sessions they've been so stoned that they sit there staring off into space when you ask them questions. The last session saw us searching an empty tower, talking to a merchant, and getting into a single fight.

It took 8 1/2 hours.

In the spring I'll be starting up a game with my two boys and two to four of their friends. All the parents involved are thrilled that I have an RPG background and that I'm willing to share this valuable dramatic/creative experience with their kids.

Flashback to 1981: all the parents think we're sociopaths.

My old college D&D group ended after a back to back drinking binge by the DM. It's no good when your first encounter is interrupted by the DM running for the bathroom and projectile vomiting.

But when I run Paranoia, the drunk bastards get to burn through 12 clones and everyone has a great time. Friend Computer has been known to confiscate alcohol and demand field sobriety tests -- in the name of happiness.

I love editing errors. Reading the Dungeon Master's Guide pertaining to the construction of strongholds (or other structures) by the players:

"Work can continue while the character is away, but every day the character is away adds three days to the construction time."

So, the players decide to build a trading post. That takes 60 days. They get it halfway done (30 days left), then wander off for 15 days on their adventure. When they get back, it will have 60 days remaining for completion (30 days, minus 15 for work done while away, plus 45 for the away penalty.)

So... apparently, as soon as their back is turned, the workmen begin disassembling the inn and get some druids to turn the lumber back into trees.

If they players start a tower (100 days from scratch), work for five days, then leave for a month, they will return to find that the tower will now take 155 days to complete. Not only have those no-good peasants disassembled the tower, they've put up a mountain on the plot of land that will now have to be cleared before the tower can be finished.

And everyone that's been involved in a long-term development project sees absolutely nothing wrong with the math.

The first eighty percent of the project take the first eighty percent of the time available. The second twenty percent of the project take the second eighty percent of the time.

There was a review on io9 earlier this week that was absolutely gushing about the book. I've read all the various DM guides and with my recent trip (still ongoing, btw) down nostalgia lane with Designers and Dragons I figured this would be a good gift from Santa. Of course there's no way I'll ever actually play the 5th edition version of D&D, but I am pretty curious to read it.

The book is on its way to me via mail right now, but since it's Christmas, it's going to take a few days extra to get here. I did peek at the treasure section in a PDF of the book though (after buying it), and I liked what I saw, even if it was quite a bit different from what I had expected. This isn't the Diablo-like treasure generation from 3E, nor is it the rigidly distributed and exactly planned loot from 4E. Instead, it's something in between the two, but in a way that should feel natural and which keeps the wonder and excitement of finding treasure going.

Of of the writers on Geek Dad is using the random tables and die rolling to create an adventure -- that's a link to Part 1, but part 2 came out last week and includes the random map creation. Seems nifty.

Smoove_B wrote:There was a review on io9 earlier this week that was absolutely gushing about the book. I've read all the various DM guides and with my recent trip (still ongoing, btw) down nostalgia lane with Designers and Dragons I figured this would be a good gift from Santa. Of course there's no way I'll ever actually play the 5th edition version of D&D, but I am pretty curious to read it.

You can always try playing on Roll20. The D&D community on Google+ is a good place to find games

So when last I played D&D I was in college '90-'91, all 2nd edition. I have a couple boxes of that material in storage but never got around to selling it.

A couple of weeks ago my friend and former roommate asked if I'd like to try again and get our kids (daughters, each 12 who play Terraria together) involved.

After some research we decided on 5th Ed. instead of Pathfinder, mainly because I've heard the rules for 5th are streamlined and this is a big plus given the time we've been gone and the kids having to learn from scratch.

I've spent the better part of 2 weeks in the evenings reading the books and figuring out how to use roll20 since I'm the DM. We did kind of a tech. test last weekend, connecting through Google hangouts and running roll20 nested. We managed to get it working and get characters entered into the system ( I'm using a community created 5th edition sheet plugged into roll20) and now I'm busy preparing the starter adventure 'The Lost Mines of Phandelver' so we can play this Saturday.

Anyone run through this one as a DM or Player? It looks pretty good, if a bit difficult for new characters.

Redfive wrote: Anyone run through this one as a DM or Player? It looks pretty good, if a bit difficult for new characters.

I have, and with kids who were 11 and 13 at the time (as well as three adults with RPG experience.) It isn't too bad, except for a couple of caveats:


~5E makes low level characters very, very fragile. It is easy to kill a low level character. I compensated for this by giving each character max HP through third level (after third they have to roll.) I also recommend talking with the players ahead of time (especially the kids) and making sure that they understand that characters will sometimes die, and that it isn't a big deal.

~Beware the goblin ambush. Those archers can eat a low level character alive. If one character goes forward alone, consider repositioning the archers closer to the wagon, or else you may end up having a four-on-one character killer.

~Venomfang will wipe the party. He is not meant to be killed; he is meant to teach new players that some challenges are meant to be run away from or bargained with. Make sure you follow the three-clue-rule when it comes to communicating how dangerous he is (the three clue rule states that any vital piece of information that the PCs must discover should be available three times - not just in a single letter on a single desk.

~Don't worry about characters going down. Down isn't dead. I had a fight in my game last week with four players that had three of the characters down at least once, and two of them were down twice.

If it has been a while since you GMed, here are a couple of general tips:

~When you prep, prep personalities for significant characters and monsters. The nothic (mine was whispery and a little Joker-like), the halfling lady in Phandalin (mine was sort of an Aunt Bea, and nobody ever left without a pie or some muffins.) You get the idea.

~Once I have prepped an area on paper, I like to walk through it in my imagination. I know that sounds corny, but it can be very, very useful. I go one room at a time, read the description, then close my eyes and imagine I'm there. I look around, at the walls, at the floor and ceiling, at the lighting. It only takes a second, but when it comes time for descriptions and answering questions, you are talking about a place you've seen, not just one you've read a blurb about.

~The adventure, as written, is an outline. It is a framework. Feel free to tweak it, alter it, or do something brand new if needed. Party comes into Thundertree from the wrong side and are about to walk into Venomfang's tower with no warning? Hey, it turns out that the druid was out on a constitutional and intercepts them with the warning.

Perhaps your party will do what mine did - be clear over by Conyberry and decide that Thundertree is next, and that the best way to get there is to cut straight through Neverwinter Wood, an area that has zero detail in the adventure. Feel free to make something up. I decided that Neverwinter Wood hid a portal to the Feydark, and they party was intercepted by a group of fey who weren't keen on them marching through, but weren't hostile. It led to a memorable feast, after which they fell asleep and awoke on the opposite side of the forest. Of course, the party could have attacked and it would have gone a different direction.

In Phandalin, my party confronted the proprietor of the Sleeping Giant after the Ruffians fight and ended up running her off. She warned the Red Sashes in the manor. After all was said and done, the party claimed both the manor (as their soon-to-be-rebuilt home base) and the Sleeping Giant, which one party member planned to run as a business.

Short version, the written adventure does not cover all possibilities, and some of the most interesting bits come from the improvisation you do when they go off the rails.

Oh, and Venomfang ate my 11-year-old's first ever D&D character. It happens. Roll with it.

Yeah, you read right into what I was talking about with my difficulty comment. A freaking green dragon (young adult but still!) for a group of 4th level characters?! The book says the party isn't likely to kill it (no kidding) but that's just nuts IMO.

Yes, a couple of arrow hits on that first goblin ambush can wreck someone's day very easily at first level so I'm aware and planning for it.

It took me awhile to finally get a grip on roll20 but I think I'm finally over the hump with the basics. We never used a grid when we played and only had miniatures for fun and painting. I can't think of a time when the miniatures actually had a game play purpose in 2nd edition, for our preferences anyway.

As an aside, I'm somewhat intrigued at how playing D&D again has focused my attention span. For the last 15 years at least I rarely put enough time into a game (mostly PC) to finish and though I really like playing Civ / Moo / RPG type games I just don't have the attention span to finish them any more. I find the games like Battlefield are perfect because I can pick them up for about an hour and when I'm done I'm not leaving something 'unfinished'. Getting back into to D&D however, I'm constantly thinking about the adventure and have been able to sit for hours at a time over several nights without losing focus. It's kind of refreshing.

Redfive wrote:Yeah, you read right into what I was talking about with my difficulty comment. A freaking green dragon (young adult but still!) for a group of 4th level characters?! The book says the party isn't likely to kill it (no kidding) but that's just nuts IMO.

My party could have. There were four players. Three of them were down. One dead, one stable, one bleeding out with one roll left before he died. My oldest son's warlock was the only one left on his feet, and Venomfang was fleeing up the inside of the tower, very close to dead. My son could have finished him off in one more shot - or he could stabilize the dying character.

Minis in 2E did have a purpose in my games - they showed marching order. That's about it. The 12" standard movement range pretty much guaranteed that they were useless for standard tactical stuff.

I love the Lost Mines of Phandelver. My group (meaning, my wife and kids) never finished it...the cleared out the Red Sashes stronghold, but then we dropped the adventure and a few months later I threw them into Princes of the Apocalypse (which I hated running as a GM.) They made it to about 3rd level in PotA, then my daughter went off to college and we stopped. She's coming home for a few days this week, and I've decided to take their characters from PotA (which are all a lot of fun...lots of personality (except for my son, who still isn't quite into the whole "role playing" aspect and just wants to hit stuff with his hammer) and drop them back into Lost Mines.

I really wish that WotC would do more adventures like the Lost Mines. These mega adventures are really hard to digest as a DM (speaking for myself here, of course) and regurgitate back to the players in a meaningful way.

hentzau wrote:...a few months later I threw them into Princes of the Apocalypse (which I hated running as a GM.)

Out of curiosity, what did you hate about running it? I'm running two separate 5-player groups through it myself.

Blackhawk wrote:

hentzau wrote:...a few months later I threw them into Princes of the Apocalypse (which I hated running as a GM.)

Out of curiosity, what did you hate about running it? I'm running two separate 5-player groups through it myself.

We talked about that briefly back over here, but I think the biggest thing was that it is (to my little brain) a big old disorganized mess. I did follow the links you gave me to help a bit, and I looked through the stuff from IceBear and we did make it through Red Larch OK, but when I went into the next segment I just had no...well, oomph. The players had no real purpose other than being there out of the goodness of their hearts (I hadn't figured out an organic way of introducing the Factions yet), the backgrounds they chose didn't tie well enough into the story to help much, on and on.

I think that I would have liked PotA much more if they would have broken it up into better bite sized chunks. Instead of one mega volume maybe 3 or 4 smaller volumes. Follow the Pathfinder Adventure Path model.

(Once again, probably just a personal problem. I found it really hard to run, while I loved Phandelver.)

It really is a pain to run. If I had it to do over, I'd probably go with something different, just to reduce the headaches. My first group has cleared two of the keeps, and is midway through a third. My second group is through on and starting on a second. The problem is, there is nothing as of yet to really push the group toward the temples underneath, and in at least one of them (Feathergale), neither group is even aware it exists despite having been through the encounters at the tower. That's going to be a problem later unless I start throwing in some cheesy 'prophetic dream' nonsense.

You're right, though, there isn't much motivation here for the players. I do think that having the players be low ranking members of the factions right from the start (as character background) was essential, though. It gives some fairly solid hooks and a few straight up 'Go kill this!' letters arriving via courier.

Another thought is that it has done a fairly poor job of communicating the overall plot to the players. They know that cults exist. That's about it. I may have to rewrite something to inspire them a bit.

Yeah...I prefer the old style smaller adventures than these giant adventures in 5E. I am getting the impression that the creative hands at WotC are tied by Hasbro so we're lucky to get what are getting. Just about every adventure ends up with websites dedicated to fixing them so they can be run by typical groups

Slyflorish tends to have some good resources for the various adventures. Here's one of the articles

http://slyflourish.com/princes_chapter_6.html

Old style? Deadly? Friend on mine sent me this and it's a great read: Tomb of Horrors!

MonkeyFinger wrote:Old style? Deadly? Friend on mine sent me this and it's a great read: Tomb of Horrors!

Sorry, been caught up in the kerfufal with the John Wick post that it is the worst adventure ever written to bother with it right now

As I keep reminding people, back in the early days D&D was competitive (read those History of RPG books). The GM being neutral and working with the players to tell an interesting story came later. Also, since ToH was meant for tournament play it's not exactly what one would expect in an ongoing campaign

Edit: And now I click your link When I say old-style, I was more referring to the adventures from 3.x and 4. Not too overwhelming with right amount of story/plot and combat (so old-style, not old-old style ).

For me, old school is Castle Ravenloft. We took a party of 6 pre generated characters in (at the insistence of our evil GM who wanted to run the module without restraint). We crawled out victorious with 2 severely mangled after the sacrifice of 2 characters and nasty death of 2 others.

It was definitely played with the GM using all his knowledge to undermine us as players. Without a few smart plays and a lucky break of finding the Sword first, we would have not had a few glorious moments in the adventure that led to our narrow victory. Killing the head vampire was delicious revenge, but almost our downfall. Loved it.

Sorry, I didn't mean old-school. Just the old style of adventures. They haven't released many adventures for 5E and most of what they have are really campaign books, not adventures. As such, there are a lot of assumptions about player motivations and a lot of difficulty on DM part to keep everything straight. I understand they don't have the budget from Hasbro to really pump out adventures so now they are basically releasing these hard cover books that happen to contain many adventures and adventure ideas as opposed to what I used to call adventure modules.

The next one of these is actually going to be a return to Ravenloft: http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tableto ... rse-strahd

If you read that, you'll see what I mean. Instead of this being an adventure for characters of a certain level range, it's really a campaign book where they assume your group will be starting at Level 1 and by the time you're done you'll be level 10. That's not what the old style of adventures were like.

Yeah those kind of source books have their place but I wish they had the budget or whatever to release actual modules simultaneously.

Another revelation about coming back to D&D 25 years later..now all of the maps I want have been reproduced on the net so I'm able download decent images to plug into roll20 instead of scanning the source book and editing out the stuff I don't want the players to see.

I miss the level of support they had for 4th edition, where they had tons of free adventures to be found online. It looks like they're trying to let that all be done by the Dungeon Master's Guild right now (and for the most part not free.)

Started Lost Mines of Phandelver last night via Roll20.

Had some technical difficulties to start but once we got going everything was fine. Not especially easy to shake off the rust after not DMing for 25 yrs

Once we got into the first encounter though things began to pick up and I could see that my kid, who was a first timer, was having a great time.

We made it as far as the Cragmaw Hideout and the first couple of rooms before we stopped for the session.

I've identified a few items I need to tighten up on roll20, kind of quality of life things but otherwise a promising session.

Finally got to round 2 last night and only just finished the Cragmaw Hideout. There were less technical difficulties this time around which was to be expected but it still took us 3 hours to handle essentially 3 encounters.

We all had a great time, but I need to work on keeping things focused and moving or we will never finish this boxed set .

One of the things that I really love about D&D is the stories that organically spring up. My daughter's elven mage had become quite the goblin killing machine, so much so that we have casually begun to refer to her as the elven mage assassin.

I think we're going to try to get one more session in tonight so the party can finally reach Phandalin.

MonkeyFinger wrote:Old style? Deadly? Friend on mine sent me this and it's a great read: Tomb of Horrors!

Made it to the part where he and his friends reconciled and played again, only this time he cheated to keep them alive.

Icebear is right, many of the old school modules were originally tournament adventures, with scoring and everything. While no one can rationalize the randomness of Tomb of Horrors at this point, I'm sure it made sense at the time to make it easy to mark progress and to prevent most players from finishing, so you had a clear idea of how each party did.

The entire thing was one big death trap, designed to be played in a couple of hours (if I recall correctly) by many parties with a "winner" at the end.

The Slave Pits was another tournament module that I remember, but no where near as randomly deadly.

Tomb of Horrors is one of my favourite adventures of all time, not because it was good, but because it was cool. I loved traps and gizmos and things like that when I started playing D&D, and the Tomb had that in spades. There's a reason it appears in Ready Player One novel. It's iconic.

In any case, I can't imagine punching someone in the face because they killed my character (even as a child) or ostracizing that person for a year for the same reason. Weak.

On a personal note, I was always DM because I was always the prime motivator for playing and if I didn't do it, no one would. And because of that, I had a very hard time letting anything really bad happen to my players. I had to coddle them and keep them interested, otherwise we'd be playing tag or some other boring crap like that. That's true, but I also had a hard time letting bad things happen in general. I just couldn't bring myself to hurt their characters, which is silly, because as an adult I understand that bad things are a necessary part of having good things be meaningful.