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Post by jazzisblues on Aug 13, 2013 14:19:32 GMT -8
My favorite for waterdeep was the City System boxed set. Something like a dozen poster sized maps in there... Yup, those were sweet. I had that set at one point I think the ex arranged for their departure. JiB
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 14, 2013 0:14:10 GMT -8
Kainguru: You're the best! Unless you're also doing it for yourself, you don't have to include the crimes and punishments if it'll save you some work. I had tried looking up AD&D Waterdeep books but it seems like there were a couple. Was it the one by Ed Greenwood? I'm always looking to add to my collection of AD&D paraphernalia. Here's the legal system transferred to digital . . . it's obviously been tailored to it's source material but you can ignore that fluff. It's a basic quick tool to inform the RP. I haven't included crimes and sentences because that's a huge list that needs to be transcribed (another day) Two Ford Crime and Punishment.pdf (160.58 KB) Aaron
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 14, 2013 6:32:54 GMT -8
I had tried looking up AD&D Waterdeep books but it seems like there were a couple. Was it the one by Ed Greenwood? I'm always looking to add to my collection of AD&D paraphernalia. I started with the City System then got a hold of Waterdeep and the North then I finally bought the very excellent Waterdeep boxed set (which contained everything in the City System as a bonus). So go straight for the boxed set and then the Waterdeep and the North as it fleshes out the area around the city (of limited use to me as I never used The Forgotten Realms as presented as a setting - I was/am a GreyHawk fan). If you can get a hold of the original Thieves World Box set it's worth the purchase. Being system agnostic it has a load of very very cool tools/methods to flesh out life in a town/city . . . Aaron
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Aug 14, 2013 14:03:45 GMT -8
Also, I call bullshit on DnD Dad and Stu Venable's claim that Illinois is the sweatiest place on Earth. Come try a Japanese summer on for size. *chuckles softly as steam rises from the road, skin breaks out in cancerous pustules, and small children and the elderly drop dead from heat exhaustion*
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Aug 14, 2013 15:01:39 GMT -8
You described a Japanese summer perfectly, maxinstuff.
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Post by bloodsparrow on Aug 14, 2013 18:02:49 GMT -8
Here around the AUX, at this time of year, the rain comes out of the sky bath water warm and my sun glasses have (on occasion) fogged up the moment I walk outside.
Surely these are the end times.
On the subject of tracking things and time tables... (Also on the subject of stories similar to "They're Bullywugs, aren't they Pat?")
I once played in a 3.5e campaign where we didn't really bother with such things until one session we decided to travel to a kingdom on the other side of some mountains.
The DM demanded we figure out how long it was going to take us and how much we would need in rations for us and our mounts. Of course we would need pack animals to carry supplies and then there would have to be pack animals to carry supplies for the pack animals...
We did some calculations involving lowest common denominators and shit... Next thing you know, we have a pack animal train that would have made Ernest Shackleton blush.
I had an idea, but the DM seemed jazzed about the logistics stuff, so I kept silent.
Cut to five minutes into the session where we are making the trek across the mountains... We're on a narrow ledge pass when, to exactly NOBODY'S surprise, a Wyvern flies overhead.
It wheels around for an attack and buzzes us, grabbing one of the pack animals.
At which point my friend Mike says, "Wait. Which pack animal was that?"
We check the notes and inform him that it's "Food Horse #2".
"Nooooo! Not Food Horse #2!!! He's my favorite!!! DAMN YOU WYVERN!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!"
We abandon the rest of the pack animals to their fates and escape the Wyvern who had eaten the now ironicly named Food Horse. (We didnt feel bad as letting the remaining pack animals act as a distraction... Food Horse #2 was the only worthwhile one of the bunch. The rest were total jerks. Particularly Saddle Blanket Pony.)
The DM, with a huge smile on his face, informs us that we will now be taking penalties because we've lost most of our cold weather gear and food.
At which point I decide he's had his fun and speak up.
"Actually, we're going to go with our first plan. Because I'm a Cleric who can cast Endure Elements on everybody and Create Food/Water a couple times per day... Remember?"
DM looked a little crest fallen.
Mike was still weeping in the corner and softly murmuring "Oh Food Horse #2, we hardly knew ye." to himself.
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 15, 2013 1:06:20 GMT -8
Meaningful timekeeping: ahhh guys when did it become about resource management? I'm all for taking a conversation into new territory but the actual question wasn't answered. Like a politician we've been asked a question and decided to answer it with the one we'd rather discuss. The 'meaningful time' statement in the DMG relates to TIME not resources . . . what the OP was asking about were things like: keeping track of how long ones been in the dungeon, how long it takes to go from point a to point b, how long a spell effect lasts, when certain things happen, when seasons pass, when events occur - in fact the example given in the DMG relates specifically to handling a split party and concurrent events and how they can impact on each other thus accurate time keeping should be done. Stu's mention of the chronology he was using for his traveller campaign and his counting down days actually answered the question - YES FFS . . . *mumbling walks off to kick some children off his lawn* resource management . . . *grumble* time, iron rations and time? . . . *boots children hard and returns to porch* Fucking tangents . . . Aaron
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 15, 2013 4:33:04 GMT -8
I love the idea of timekeeping. I just grapple with making it interesting.
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Post by Stu Venable on Aug 15, 2013 4:56:46 GMT -8
The Traveller game was for me an exception. It was an established setting in a specific time period with historic events I intended to use as plot elements.
It was also a pain in the neck and wholly unnecessary to the story. In hindsight it wouldn't have mattered if the war started in 200-1107 or 300-1107. It would have been better from my perspective to have the war start at a dramatically appropriate moment.
In the L5R game, it's now winter because I need it to be winter, not because I ticked off X number of days on some chart.
The resource management thing was more about where detailed time keeping leads. We skipped ahead without explaining ourselves.
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D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on Aug 15, 2013 8:16:03 GMT -8
I had ranted many a moon ago (or 9 months 23 days 15 hours 30 minutes and 28 seconds ago... DYSWIDT?How's that for keeping track of time!) on the subject of a system dodging resource management in Pathfinder: Am I Playing the Wrong Game?Ah back in the early days of my involvement with the Harsh Wasteland of the Proboard forums, when the roving band of mad, cannibalistic aussies was only numbering one...ANYWAY to summarize that rather helpful, informative thread: My main gripe was that I wanted a flavor of harsh desert environment existence and really play up the man vs nature theme, while Pathfinder allowed Create Water as a zero level spell (think cantrips i.e. 0 levels never run out). I house ruled this spell into a higher level stating that water being scarce in the environment made it more difficult to 'magically gather' as well. We didn't calculate water to the milliliter per day per person but definitely had a sense of GOOD, BAD, UGLY water status and when things got ugly they got AMAZING! Suddenly the paladin is starting to take dehydration damage and penalties so that others may have enough to drink, wilderness survival skills are coming into play trying to scrounge water from cactus pulp, some lovely PvP moments ensue over the last flask of water..this band of merry dungeon crawling heroes has suddenly become SEAL team 6 lost in the wilds. But that was levels 2-4. Now that their 6th level characters the environment poses no where as much a threat. Now the moral choices of 'do we use our water creating powers to help the dried out masses' or 'fuck 'em' is more of what the games about. I just believe it is a disservice to not allow the potentially incredible drama of simple resource management to occasionally become the center theme of games. But, if its just Food Horse #2 (NOOOO!!! I will always love you Food Horse # 2...) and no one is getting all sweaty over the last bottle of water than yeah fuck that shit. By the way the site that I used to calculate the time elapsed since that post is rather entertaining: Elapsed Time CalculatorTime since HJRP Episode 0000: 4 years, 0 months, 17 days. Time since combat in L5R actual play: hmmmm...I just keep getting a "cannot calculate before year 1582" error...
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Post by Stu Venable on Aug 15, 2013 9:47:03 GMT -8
I agree. *IF* you're going for a game where simple survival is one of the challenges -- and it can make an awesome story -- then it's necessary, as it's relevant to the story.
I've run this kind of game in the past (and will in the future). In that old game, there was a mage who (to save money) used to pay a few pennies to sleep in the stable with his horse, rather than spring for a room in the inn. He wouldn't even pay to go havsies with another PC.
We used to keep track of rations (we hand-waived water), and, yes, I kept track of time pretty closely. We knew how long of a walk it was from City A to City B. Time in town tended to be brief, since it was more costly than sleeping under the stars (you'd get arrested for vagrancy for that in the city). We kept track of time spent studying, as mages could learn new spells with a certain number of hours of study.
That said, the quote from Gygax:
"YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT"
is utter bullshit. And he's using the passive voice again.
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 15, 2013 10:23:05 GMT -8
Except on the actual page he makes that quote he is talking more about active character and non active character time. Specifically party A beats party B to looting monster C by a day - alluding to the fact that without some sort of time keeping resolving this situation would become less about the logical consequences of character actions and choices (and ability for players to make meaningful decisions) and more about GM whimsy. By that I mean if something like this isn't at least tracked in some fashion then it's sort of like 'to fudge or not fudge on die rolls' and leaves player agency at the mercy of the GM ie: in the actual DMG example if party B had chosen another course of action they would have arrived at location C earlier and beaten party A to the loot (where both party's A & B are PC's). Again there's tangents and then there's tangents. Aaron
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Post by Stu Venable on Aug 15, 2013 11:25:34 GMT -8
What you're providing is an example where time is relevant. I'm saying there are plenty of examples where it is either less relevant, not relevant, or at least not requiring "STRICT TIME RECORDS."
That all depends on the game, doesn't it?
If there's some moldering stinky dungeon entrance buried beneath the sand in the middle of a desert, it might not matter at all whether I take the time to study up on the Prismatic Ass Flood spell or rush right over with my shovel.
It also depends on whether or not outside events are plot drivers, or if time itself is the plot driver.
In my L5R game, the party's daimyo was going to be deposed, and they weren't going to get word about it until it had happened. The deposing of the daimyo was there to drive the plot. It could have been two days, two weeks or two months.
I could have had them in the nearby city and have them get word that another daimyo's soldiers were seen marching toward the valley. In this case, there would absolutely be a difference in the story if they dropped everything and jetted for home or took their time, had some tea, bought some nice clothes, wrote some war haikus and then sauntered off home. In this case, the TIME is driving the plot.
Time CAN be relevant, I agree.
But by no means is that the same as "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT."
Now to be fair, he's specifically talking about STRICT TIME RECORDS in AD&D. I'm not playing AD&D. But even when I did, I didn't keep track of time the way he described. My games weren't meaningful, though.
Here's the whole paragraph from some guy's blog:
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 15, 2013 12:45:07 GMT -8
I'm not saying don't hand wave etc it's just how it goes from what I see a a method of removing (false) accusations of GM bias in the original example (ie: this has happened because of yours characters actions not because I'm trying to drive the story in a direction I desire) to resource management. They are related but separated by several degrees and only one aspect of the original advice. That's all I was really saying. I've fudged time, especially in the actual dungeon - 'how long have we been down here?' *quick look at the map explored weigh up the encounters and combats, guesstimate heavily* 'several hours'). I've no problem with that or hand waving - the blog though is misquoting the original advice, I imagine to support the bloggers contention because the qualifiers GG uses further down the page put his words in a better context. Again high Gygaxian, the structure of his sections leaves a lot to be desired - he introduces a subject and often ends in entirely different subject altogether Certain events should occur according to time passed whether strict records are kept or not - but then I'm a cunt GM and will merrily restock a dungeon when the PC's leave it for a bit . . . How intensively I restock depends in how long I've got to do it in (ie: what could have reasonably been recruited from the area in the time frame given, what new traps could have reasonably been manufactured and set in that time by the dungeons surviving defenders?). The players have realised this and now plan their assaults for maximum damage - cause they know if they fire a few spells etc then retreat to restock it might be harder second time around, but that's a the game I was after : one where the PC's are challenged and down to their last spells, potions, charges etc and still win thru eveb if it's only to regroup and plan their next move (and they are doing a LOT more planning now, rather than just walk in and kill whatever they see - information is syddenly worth more than hitpoints and living foes talk better than dead ones) Aaron
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D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on Aug 15, 2013 14:08:40 GMT -8
I fondly recall sitting in Hommlet (are you still playing your Temple of Elemental Evil Gritty Reboot ?) trying to squeeze in that bit of training spending every dime on teachers, healing, and dodging the god damn assassin! Only to have that niggling worry "remember all that horror that we defeated back on the earth temple level...it's refilling as we sit here..." Paranoid, frantic, nervous and often terrified...my experience with AD&D. No wonder I love Warhammer Role Play so much...
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