Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Away for a bit

I won't be able to post for a week or so . . . see you guys next week!

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

James Ward - thanks for the games

I just heard from Tenkar that Jim Ward passed away.


My second post here, back in August 2011, was a repost from my non-gaming blog, talking about Jim Ward and his games. I never got to play with him, but things he wrote and games he helped develop gave me a lot of joy.

I've posted about him enough that he had his own label - in case you want to traipse through the posts I put up with his name on them.

Monday, March 18, 2024

The frustrations of spells vs. effects in Pathfinder: Kingmaker

One real frustration I have with Pathfinder: Kingmaker is when descriptions and effects don't really match.

Many, many debuffs have very specific counters. You can get stats drained, paralyzed, petrified, frightened, stunned, level drained, blinded, sickened, exhausted . . . all good. But then how do you fix it? It depends. You have spells like Lesser Restoration, Restoration, Greater Restoration, Remove Curse, Inspiring Recovery, Heal . . . which one fixes what? It's not always clear.

It's not always clear what effects are countered by what countermeasure. I've had plenty of my companions made to flee by a fae's Frightful Moan . . . despite being accompanied by a Paladin who cast a spell to render them immune to fear effects. Cast Delay Poison, Communal to be immune to spider's venom . . . but not the stat-drain poison of other monsters or the save-or-die poison effect from a Prismatic Spray.

Countermeasures seem very idiosyncratic, specific, and arbitrary. From a person versed in the game Pathfinder only from the video game, it's tough. I often struggle to figure out what exactly would help me counter foes who spam Slay Living or Prismatic Spray. I have to dig, dig, and dig in the rules to figure out what does what.

It's really annoying. Mostly I deal with my issues with Mass Heal, rest, and lots of healing spells. But even several playthroughs through the game, and late in the game, I just have a vague idea of how to deal with certain issues. It's not really ideal.

When it comes to magic, I really like when effect-based counters just work based on the effect. If you are immune to fire, fire damage should just fail. Poison immunity? Then "save vs. poison or die" should just be something that garners a chuckle from you. And so on. It's useful food for thought as I continually revise my version of GURPS Magic for Felltower . . . I want it to seem clear why something works or does not work; strange exceptions should be rare and should allow for an "ah-hah!" moment as you figure out why. I'm not getting it from this game, but it is making me think about how not to do things the way Pathfinder seems to do them.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

No Felltower today

Nothing for Felltower today - we're pretty much unable to schedule a game at least until April. Admittedly that's only 3 weeks away . . . but we don't anything like a firm commitment from anyone, just a few firm "no"s from players.

I'm more than a bit disappointed . . . I like to run the game, I write more and better when I play more, and I also rent the server so it's painful to rent it for nothing.

But here we are - no game until April at least. Let's hope we get a game in then!

Friday, March 15, 2024

Friday 3/15/24 Roundup

Friday means links and thoughts!

- Still no sign of game. Some of the core players are busy and I haven't heard from the rest. I may just have to put the whole thing on hold so I can open up my Sundays for something else until I see some light at the end of the tunnel.

- Very old Blackmoor memories - thanks Havard's Blackmoor Blog.

- Erol Otus book cover for Playing at the World 2.

- Still messing around with my Paladin playthrough of Pathfinder: Kingmaker. As always, it's the puzzle-like endgame that is slowing me down.

- I don't know that I ever explicitly connected Traveller: 2300 with Twilight: 2000. It fits, but I didn't really think of them as a sequel and a prequel. But there it is.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Another shot at Saethor's Bane for DFRPG

Doug is beginning the "smoke test" of surveys for DFRPG . . . and is accepting late pledges. If you want to play some solo DFRPG this is for you.

Saethor's Bane Update

Monday, March 11, 2024

Felltower: Fun Should Drive the Game

I mentioned yesterday that Felltower is just a dumb game designed to give the players a chance to have fun.

But the XP system doesn't reward meta-fun, but in-game loot. Treasure, followed by exploration (which largely is intended to lead to treasure) drive XP. XP drives PC improvement. But PC improvement is not intended to drive the game.

PC improvement is just there to provide an in-game reward for in-game actions. It's meant to drive what decisions people generally make in game. The players know they need loot to gain XP, so they tend to aim for loot. But if we have a session where people laughed, and chatted about stupid non-game things during break, and made silly jokes and had fun comments . . . I'm sure I don't care if their was a lot of looting and experience.

The actual doing of the thing is the fun part. The rules just drive what thing we generally do. I don't care if success or failure in the game occurs so long as we enjoy ourselves. Generally it's more fun to succeed, but not always. And we've had sessions where PCs got lots of loot but it wasn't an especially fun session. Still good, but not, "THIS is why I game!" fun.

It's all subjective, which is fine with me. I only want objective measures for in-game objective rewards. But they're not why I game.
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