03-27-2018, 12:54 AM | #11 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
Quote:
I have grown to hate old school gaming... buuuuut that's more an issue I have than the adventure has. |
|
03-27-2018, 01:22 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: May 2015
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
Quote:
and maybe even lead to a replacement for the thief... ;-> |
|
03-27-2018, 04:36 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Jan 2011
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
True, that did get the barbarian one good shot at the Peshkali :)
The thief was just knocked out, though, around -1HP, iirc.
__________________
A Literate Programmer's Blog: My blog about whatever comes to mind, including GURPS. |
03-27-2018, 05:55 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
That's not a genre convention that I'm really familiar with, particularly with starting characters.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
03-27-2018, 07:07 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Jan 2011
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
Let me rephrase it to "everyone is useful in a fight".
That's been the case since D&D 3rd, which is as far back as my experience goes - that is not very far, I'm aware^^ At low levels, where no one has a lot of special abilities, everyone can contribute by using an appropriate weapon, and bows or crossbows aren't any worse than melee weapons. Once you get to higher levels, things start to diverge, but in my experience, combat skills are still very much everyone's focus. Sure, Rogues do better out of combat than others, Bards are more charming than most, but everyone can fight. One can quibble about linear fighters and quadratic wizards - but still. If that's not a genre convention, but just how D&D handles things then I'm sorry I got it wrong, but maintain that in a dungeon bash game every class should be able to contribute to a fight and that not providing for that expectation is a trap that feels bad. Does that fit better, Bruno?
__________________
A Literate Programmer's Blog: My blog about whatever comes to mind, including GURPS. |
03-27-2018, 08:58 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Northeast Kansas
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
4 suboptimal characters need help. That's spelled out in the adventure itself. I ran it with three optimal characters, and I gave them a boost in points to start because I knew the peshkali was going to eat their lunch otherwise, and I'd always rather front-load my cheating.
When it seemed like my players might not figure out the Peshkali's secret because they were considering not bringing a cleric. I considered adding even more armor to the rest of her, so they'd have a big hint. We found it to be one of the most satisfying nights of GURPS in a long time. But yeah, like all adventures it requires some planning and adjustment for the party you bring. |
03-27-2018, 09:18 AM | #17 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
Quote:
I am not just a game designer but a 50-year-old game designer. My gaming life began in 1979, when AD&D First Edition was still being released (the Dungeon Master's Guide was published that year). For me, "starting magic-user" means "someone who will cast one spell and run away for the rest of the session and possibly adventure, because between low HP and weapons that rarely hit or do significant damage, there's no way to contribute to a fight." Somewhere in there I played a lot of Rogue-like games, in which warrior roles are played straight but non-warrior roles are almost always start scummed. So yeah, I do actually think of non-warriors as needing warriors to survive! When I designed I Smell a Rat, I had "a well-rounded party of six 250-point adventurers" in mind, which is why I wrote Advice: Scaling Encounters (p. 3). I'd consider a party of four including a bard and a thief to be half-strength. A "typical" group would be something like a high-damage barbarian meat shield, a warrior-healer cleric with decent arms and armor, a heavily armored holy warrior or knight, the inevitable skirmisher with absurd Move and active defenses (a scout arrow machine gun, or a martial artist or swashbuckler harasser), a "thief" who's more of a backstabbing and crossbow-shooting assassin, and a wizard with a dozen ways to blow people up and set them on fire. In the GenCon runs I did, that's pretty much what people opted for without much encouragement from me.
__________________
Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
|
03-27-2018, 12:30 PM | #18 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
That is not an Old School convention. That is very much the New School.... and it's not even really a 3e D&D thing (see low level Wizards) but was fully embraced by 4e and on.
Old School (see Kromm's "I'm older than dirt and rolled bones with dinosaurs now get off my lawn kid!" post above) was all about absurd dungeons, bizarrely scaled challenges, abusive traps, sudden death, fabulous treasures, and rolling 3d6 in order for your next character 16 minutes into the first game (exaggeration for effect). Quote:
In fact Im'a stealing that idea from Stripe for my next DFRPG game. Quote:
* Okay, it's easy to go amiss with Wizard and Martial Artist. Absurdly easy... but... if one is importing over from D&D 3e (or older) then those two 'classes' are already known worries for those Players. |
||
03-27-2018, 11:56 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Jan 2011
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
I read Advice: Scaling Encounters, but coming at it with my New School assumptions, it didn't read like hard requirements, without which you'll simply fail horribly. It's a bunch of suggestions, which I tried to follow, but I didn't want to force a group of newbies to play characters they didn't want (because that'd be a great intro to RPGs) nor force them to hire followers and care for those too. So I tried to compensate a little, and ended up having to do so on the fly, more than I expected.
Of course, that's at least in part on me. I have trouble reading monsters and judging how much of a challenge they'll be, always have. I trusted the adventure to be written more forgivingly and those were bad assumptions, it turns out. I also noticed that I misread the example of a "half-delver", as it says unarmored not unarmed. Wouldn't have made much of a difference. I feel like your experiences at GenCon are not a good match to most other situations, though, Kromm. You played with high-level kickstarter backers, who most likely all had good system mastery in GURPS, possibly DF, and years of experience with RPGs in general. That such a group goes for an optimal setup with little prodding is not exactly surprising. Plus, they will likely have had the same assumptions as you. Evileeyore, I feel that D&D 3e was at least partly there already, but that's a discussion for another time :) You may be exaggerating, but not by much, I suspect ;) I'll look into subbing in the Rogue, and make sure that my most experienced player will take the wizard.
__________________
A Literate Programmer's Blog: My blog about whatever comes to mind, including GURPS. |
03-28-2018, 12:30 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
|
Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
Any role playing game that relies on niche characters does just that... it relies on niche characters.
If you don’t fill the niches you’re going to have problems. Reading the posts it seems that the problems aren’t with the adventure or the game. Frankly, nobody really knew the game including the guy running the show. Quote:
Like Kromm I’m a 47 year old RPG player. Bought the D&D Basic boxed set in 1980. A low level wizard being more than one and done didn’t come along for a long time. You took an adventure designed for a balanced 6 character party and ran it with 4 unbalanced, suboptimal characters played by newbs... What did you THINK was going to happen? I mean, did you expect that any possible combination and number of characters could be successful? Last edited by tanksoldier; 03-28-2018 at 12:44 AM. |
|
Tags |
i smell a rat, isar, party composition |
|
|