PithyKoan
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 22
Preferred Game Systems: D&D, Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: D&D 5e (Dark Sun)
Currently Running: One-Shots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Pygmy Marmoset
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Post by PithyKoan on Oct 21, 2013 7:23:02 GMT -8
That is unless you want that level of competitive gaming. I would liken it to games like monopoly and risk where you build up some momentum and then spend the rest of the game grinding your oponent mercilessly. It's great online but in person it just makes people want to stab each other. Just ask my family if they want to play monopoly with me. Depends on the people involved. Some of us realize that it's a game, and that is the nature of that particular game, and don't hold grudges... Past the end of said game, at least. ^.^ During the game, it's perfectly acceptable to make em bleed for every inch of ground. My friend has learned that the old adage "Don't wound what you can not kill" is good advice. ^.^ And I'm speaking as a long time Diplomacy player. The game that has ended relationships. ^.^ In that spirit of competition, I could see someone using the mechanics of 4e and its monster creation guidelines to make "equally"-powered iterations of the various champions or heroes or what have you of the MOBAs and then make at least a PvP game session out of it. I've been spending some free time making those conversions as thought exercises and many of the ones from League of Legends have an almost direct corollary if you set some generic assumptions as to how certain attributes would convert. It's a more customizable fashion for making those classic monster vs. classic monster games you may want to run around a particular holiday or event, allowing that you suspend most of the classic tropes in terms of disadvantages and just go with what the game's mechanics give you.
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PithyKoan
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 22
Preferred Game Systems: D&D, Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: D&D 5e (Dark Sun)
Currently Running: One-Shots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Pygmy Marmoset
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Post by PithyKoan on Oct 21, 2013 7:12:39 GMT -8
Did you incorporate the fast leveling and gear aspects? I did not, though I could have easily just applied some of the flavor and said, "Hey archer character, your bow is this same bow as an item from the game" and gotten a little more immersion out of it. I think I could include "fast leveling" as a game or session quirk to make it memorable, but it would have to be something with a lot of prep work done to accomplish easily. I recall the pregens from Keep on the Shadowfell having small sections with pre-determined leveling choices that could fit a similar role, but I doubt I could get a lot of use out of it for just a one-shot; it'd likely be lost with what all the players would have access to even at first or second level. As for the gear aspects, I'll be honest and admit to being terrible at giving out magic items in a regular game. I'm a big fan of the inherent bonuses found in either the Dark Sun Campaign Guide or the DMG 2. I think that you could implement some aspects of gear improvement outside of the magic item system, but in order to be close to the source material the power creep would need to skyrocket, which is great if it's only for a one-shot and everyone's on board. If it's a group of more experienced 4e players, I'd say it'd be an interesting method for giving that heroic / power gaming feeling within a single game that you'd normally need to stretch out or start higher level for. For the newer players I was dealing with, the PCs as written had plenty of powers to feel awesome.
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PithyKoan
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 22
Preferred Game Systems: D&D, Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: D&D 5e (Dark Sun)
Currently Running: One-Shots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Pygmy Marmoset
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Post by PithyKoan on Oct 20, 2013 4:30:35 GMT -8
EDIT: How did you handle the fact that everyone could see everything all the time? I ran it as a rather typical fantasy game scenario first and foremost, with the trappings of League of Legends where I could put them. The players had to make their way through a forest, fighting some neutral monsters, to find a teleportation circle so they could breach a temple's defenses and stop a cultist's ritual in progress. It played as a League match only in that we started in a forest setting and I gave them 3 options of paths to follow which would lead to different monsters as a starting encounter. Once they reached the teleportation circle, the game went elsewhere. In full disclosure, all of their big bad enemies were the "Void" champions, such as Malzahar, Kassadin, several Kog'Maw, all trying to summon "the Terror of the Void" Cho'Gath into the material plane to commence the buffet. I had a list of in-game quotes on hand for a few of the non-gibberish speaking monsters, which helped in the encounter to build the creep factor and the tension. I think I also had a soundboard of in-game voices, so randomly hearing an aberrant monstrosity saying "Om nom nom nom nom nom!" lent well to the situation.
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PithyKoan
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 22
Preferred Game Systems: D&D, Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: D&D 5e (Dark Sun)
Currently Running: One-Shots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Pygmy Marmoset
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Post by PithyKoan on Oct 17, 2013 18:41:10 GMT -8
My group also does most of its running currently via theater of the mind. The last game of the previous short run I played in merited a very rough sketching of locations of things as we were deep in a science facility we weren't supposed to be in, and it was important to know we were on the side of the room with the MacGuffin, not the cyberzombies.
Blueprints as mentioned above would be, on average, incredibly game-appropriate and awesome. If you come up with something yourself that you'd be willing to share, please do so.
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PithyKoan
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 22
Preferred Game Systems: D&D, Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: D&D 5e (Dark Sun)
Currently Running: One-Shots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Pygmy Marmoset
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Post by PithyKoan on Oct 17, 2013 18:16:20 GMT -8
Honestly, what I'm about to write out can easily just become more fodder for "4e is like an MMO on a table only slower with less loot."
However, I have found that it does a great job at relating, at least on a mechanics by mechanics level, to another style of online gaming: MOBAs, such as League of Legends, Smite, Heroes of Newerth, and Defense of the Ancients.
I've been playing League of Legends on and off for the past few years, and I can't help but appreciate the correlations between it and D&D 4E and the puzzling out how to re-engineer stat from game A into stat from game B and make them fit. That's just something I've always enjoyed doing.
However, I have also discovered how using the LoL champions and their associated mechanics ported into the 4e chassis can make for a game that works as an excellent bridge for a new tabletop player. Consider a 1st or 2nd level PC in 4E with only 4 or 5 powers available to them; that's on average the same number of powers or traits or features for a given League of Legends champion. I can't say if the developers on the various MOBAs are big 4E fans, but I think that there's at least some overlap between them.
I have run a successful one-shot game with the above strategy, as well. I pregenerated characters based on the "iconic" League champions (Ashe as a Seeker, Ryze as a Wizard, Master Yi as an Avenger, and others), then ran it for my friends who had only played maybe one other game of a tabletop with me as their GM previously. They loved it. Taking these champions and then giving their players the option of "Now you can do anything" that playing on the tabletop brings made for a great time. I like to think that because of sessions like this one and others that would follow have led to some even greater games and some players taking up the mantle as GM because if nothing else, they could convert their own favored games into a tabletop chassis and make it their own.
I think the only issues we ran into concerning power-to-power effectiveness is that some of the 4E powers for a 1st or 2nd level character were fancier and did more stuff overall (Go figure.)
Does anyone else have some other similar insights to using the system in non-traditional ways? (which reminds me that I still need to stalk that box of Gamma World at my local store...)
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PithyKoan
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 22
Preferred Game Systems: D&D, Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: D&D 5e (Dark Sun)
Currently Running: One-Shots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Pygmy Marmoset
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Post by PithyKoan on Oct 17, 2013 16:49:13 GMT -8
I saw this before first trying Shadowrun 4e in an attempt to grok what the game / genre was about. I still have no idea.
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PithyKoan
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 22
Preferred Game Systems: D&D, Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: D&D 5e (Dark Sun)
Currently Running: One-Shots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Pygmy Marmoset
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Post by PithyKoan on Oct 17, 2013 13:01:41 GMT -8
Hello all, Keith from Louisiana here.
I found the podcast a month or two ago and immediately fell in love with it, as I am sure happens quite often (and quite irrevocably.) All of the talk done on the show about the great content on the forums eventually intrigued me enough to find this place and register; thus here I am.
As for some background, I picked up the gaming hobby while in college, which is now only about 5 years ago; back when D&D 3.5 was wrapping up and 4E was a rumor turning into a reality. I don't call myself a D&D 4E fanboy, but I do like the system, and it's one I know very well (If there are to be picks and torches brought to bear because of that, that's fine.) It's only been a relatively recent shift in my various playgroups to try newer / non-D&D systems, so I'm still a bit starry-eyed when I hear someone mention a great game they had in Savage Worlds or an Apocalypse-engine game that just released. (It's all so new!)
I'm looking forward to getting involved with and getting to know what I have been told on the Internet are mostly good people; I can't say a fresher face to the gaming hobby will be of great use to some of the old guard, but I'll do what I can.
Cheers!
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