Re: Current play?
 

Had MA 8 and picked up a gold bar, so yes, encumbered.

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Simple, elegant. I like the lose the next action on 17-18 for tooth and claw.

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I am completely new to TFT so that's why we do a lot of tactical skirmishing: to get used to the system.

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This evening's short-game amusement: A 'rumble'! This is my name for an all vs. all fight to the last one standing. They are surprisingly fun because tactical decision making changes quite a bit over time: one turn you will do best to effectively cooperate with someone in a nearby engagement, the next you'll do better to just avoid everyone, the next you will stab your former 'friend' in the back. It's all pretty exciting. I'll post later to let you know how it goes!

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[QUOTE=Original_Carl;2262942]
3. What happens when a bear (or giant snake, or a slime, etc.) rolls an 18? Does it break a claw? How does an animal/monster drop and/or break its weapon if it's not carrying a weapon?

"A roll of 17 or 18 is an automatic miss for an animal or a bare-handed fighter. Furthermore, he hurts himself in the attack, and takes 1 die damage (regardless of armor or magical protection)." ITL p. 108

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Earlier in the thread maps and potential adventures were discussed.

I noticed that hex maps are hard to find online, so I made a few. This is one of them. It's intended to be claustrophobic, where 1 hex is one space, but if you want large caverns, make one hex = 1 megahex. It's unstocked so you can load it up as you wish, and no explanation is provided as to how to get to rooms 13 and 14. That's your mystery to solve.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen..._01_BW_640.jpg

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That's fun! Who made it?

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I'm pretty sure that's HIS work... ;-)

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Yes, I meant to say that. I designed the map so that people searching online for hex maps could finally find one! If your latest adventure is in this map (I think of it as a cave), post the details here. I'd love to hear about it.

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I'll contribute. I actually bought TFT to introduce my youngest child to RPGs. My wife and two oldest play GURPS already, but I wanted something simpler for my youngest (who is 8) to start out on. (Plus, you know, I did play Melee and Wizard back in the day, so there is some nostalgia there....)

So, we ran a bunch of starter games to get a good feel for it. Started with Melee, first with the pre-gen characters and then making our own. Then added Wizard. Couple of head-to-head, couple of groups ganging up on the big creatures. Then we went into Death Test a couple of times. By then I think we had the hang of it.

For a campaign, I actually didn't go with Cidri. I love the old TSR Greyhawk setting and adventures, so I decided to just adapt those on the fly. For the first campaign I chose The Temple of Elemental Evil. It's been going really well so far, they're almost at the end of Village of Hommlet.

Two things of note:

1. It's very easy for wizards to get in a rut summoning or making illusions of bears. They're highly effective. I've been working on ways to wean our two wizards off of that crutch without being too obvious about it.

2. Throughout our learning phase, my two oldest always seemed to have a problem underestimating their DX requirements. They always seemed to wind up with hulking fighters with big scary weapons that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. When we got to the campaign, my middle learned his lesson. He wound up with a fighter with a moderate ST and a high DX who, after armor adjustment, winds up hitting on a fairly regular basis. (Who also happens to be dumb as a post. Hilarity has ensued.) My oldest just couldn't resist the thrall of all those shiny talents. His IQ is as high as the wizards. His ST and DX are not the greatest. So he's always clamoring for more XP so he can up his fighting prowess.

It has been loads of fun. So glad we picked it up.

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Sounds great!

I've found a pie chart or bell graphs that illustrates the 3d6 probabilities helpful in getting TFT (and GURPS) newbies to understand the big difference between having roll-under target of 9 and that of 12.

Illusions: Disbelieving to nullify the 2-point ST spend. Or shoot the wizard with arrows to make them pay for not being more defensive before casting an illusion.

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Awesome! Greyhawk (in my not-so-humble opinion) is the second best D&D campaign world for use with TFT (Wilderlands of High Fantasy is #1).

Hommlet is fun (I didn't care for the actual Temple, but the Moathouse was good)- Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and Cult of the Reptile God are two early adventures that would also convert pretty easily.

Great to hear how you introduced your family to TFT, and your kids experiences figuring out the "right" starting stats!

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I've used tons of pre 2E D+D materials for TFT adventures. You need to have your head screwed on straight as a DM, making sure to adapt things that are just slog-fests of endless fights with gangs of humanoids. TFT characters can't really stand up to that kind of punishment. But often that just amounts to making sure the party knows what they are getting into and understand a plan might be in order.

Re. over use of illusions of bears and gargoyles and such: I think the best solution is to play the opposing side like they know the rules of the game and are trying to win. Your players wouldn't hesitate to attempt to disbelieve an illusion, and neither should their foes. Illusion is the correct spell choice for lots of situations, but people won't over use it if half the time they find they've spent 2 ST points for absolutely nothing.

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I concur with this in every respect!

(Fun fact: Did you know that legend has it that Cult of the Reptile God actually started out it's design life as a TFT scenario that was scrubbed for some reason (possibly due to the collapse of Metagaming) and then converted by the author to D&D?)

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I did not know that. Keen!

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As an example of how true that is; I thought I'd create a little mini-dungeon. I chose 4 of the pre-gens from the LE box. First room had 2 Giant Snakes. Man, I'd forgotten how tough these suckers were. My two survivors were forced to retreat after killing one Snake. Sigurd was heavily wounded. Only Ylva, with 5 armour was unharmed, but it didn't look like they'd be able to take out the snake. The -3 to hit on these creatures and the fact that you can't flank them is really punishing.

So, an adventure which is just a series of Melee combats is not going to work in TFT, unless the opponents are ridiculously weak.

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When you are designing or adapting a TFT dungeon it is good to ruminate over things like the Indiana Jones movies and original Conan stories. A lot of the obstacles don't involve violence, and a lot of the violence would translate into relatively survivable TFT fights