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jedipotter
2014-11-13, 08:37 PM
Okay, I'm going to go through and review the 'jediverse' from the point of view of someone who has GMed Dark Heresy, D&D 3.5 and Shadowrun, and also played All Flesh Must be Eaten, Mutants and Masterminds, Pathfinder, Basic D&D (the original red box), AD&D 2e, and Unknown Armies.. In addition, within the year I plan to run a short game of Call of Cthulhu, and shortish campaigns of Vampire: the Requiem and a space opera GURPS game. But this is all just an opinion.

Ok, go ahead. I've never even heard of most of them games.




This depends entirely on how complex the character creation is. This is how I plan to run my Call of Cthulhu game, because it has simple and fast character creation, but something like Shadowrun, Vampire (less so here), Unisystem, or D&D 3.5 where you have so much more to deal with, and having to spend an hour outside of the game to create a new character can lead to getting fed up with the game (I expect my players to wise up to the social aspect not being useless when the first combat monster gets left out to meet the sun). I can see why a GM might want to run his style, but it just isn't feasible in a lot of games. I like squishy characters though, because they make the players have to actually think before getting into a fight, and I'll happily kill them off even if that means the payer has to spend the rest of a session rolling up a new character. All in all, this is the part of the style I like the most (although more people in my games end up lightly damaged, but because they get lucky or decide to cut it and run. I've discovered that squishy characters tend to result in them surviving longer, because they rush in less.

I disagree. Character creation should have nothing to do with how lethal a game is....the two are just not related. I'm opposed to the very idea that someone would make a throw-a-way character that they did not care about and just tossed them in a game to die. To me, that is not playing the game. You just kinda shadowing the game. A player should always care about a character, not matter how complex a character is or is not.

Does it take some players hours to make a D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder character? Yes. But that does not have any effect on the game setting. Though it does have it's intended effect of making the players a bit more cautious and think a little more. It does take some players a couple character deaths to get the hang of not having plot armor or buddy rolls. And if you spend hours making a character, and then you just 'go nova' at the first hint of a fight, then that is on how the character is played.



I don't agree with these in principle, but considering I've been in a lot of games where players don't learn the rules I don't think it's disruptive in practice. I believe that all players should have access to the rules if they ask, but they don't have to be given freely. For example, in my game of Vampire there are no more true mages (as in Mage the Ascension or Mage the Awakening), but both humans and vampires can use 'mortal hedge magic', which is a series of merits that represent minor spells,. The players will first encounter it when a priest uses his true faith to give them a holy symbol bane, and then any player who expresses interest in learning magic will be provided with the rules for it. But I don't believe in creating house rules for something and then not letting the players use them.

It sounds a lot worse then it is. It's not like the basics are touched much, so highest on the D20 still wins. It's not like ''Haha Will Saves are reversed, you you gotta roll low to make the save! Haha!''. It's more like i have lots of rules for portals. But for plenty of players will never have a character that encounters one, so the rules don't apply.

And even more so with 3.5 D&D or Pathfinder, it's not like most players know every single rule anyway. Not all players have every book or access to everything.



I'm not sure how I feel about his. On the one hand, I don't like magic that just straight up replaces technology, and like more Occult-style magic, but I also like magic to be used in a way that makes sense. So this 'practical magic' should lead to large projects to effectively create modern society or an equivalent, but POWERED BY MAGIC! To work around this you need a drawback, such as magic taking hours to cast, to avoid this problem. I'd say more here, but I'm sleepy, just that it sounds like the 'jediverse' should become a tippyverse.

My magic has way too many fixes to ever be a tippyverse. And my game have very, very, very active gods....so that takes out one of the pillars of the tippyverse right there. Plus my magic has lot of drawbacks too. I like magic tech, up to a point. But also like magic being strange, unknown and dangerous. And most of all i don't like the base D&D rules of ''magic always works 100% all the time exactly like the page says''. I don't do that.

I love the flavor of things like: the cleaning bucket. This small bucket, when filled with food summons small fet workers. They will clean up the area and eat the food and move on. If the bucket is filled with fruits and vegetables, that is what happens. Fill it with meat....you get hostile fey, fill it with alcohol you get mysterious fey.




I have nothing wrong with this, as long as PCs have a chance to be movers and shakers. Not that it should be easy, but that if a character works at it then they should be able to become the most powerful swordsman in the world.

They are then blown up by a high level mage, who is then assassinated by a mid-level rogue who managed to bypass their abjurations through guile.

The characters have little problem finding a spot to fit in...if they want too. This is something that really works to get the more casual player more involved.



I like my games to be fair, but whoever said that fair had to mean easy. Probably the fairest session I've ever run is when the elf got taken down in two hits due to the players not understanding how much PC/NPC transparency the system had. In the final session next week they'll be fighting people using the squirt guns they laughed off in character creation, which they've had the opportunity to get protection from them during downtime. But this is the first time they're fighting professionals with a reason to go all out, and so they'll have to change their tactics to succeed.

I've seen 'fairness' take to such extremes as to make the game pointless. And there are DM's that just roll over and make the game easy, as they want the players to have fun. And it is always fun to win....sort off. A character in my game goes through a meat grinder...they have no doubt they won the hard way.



As long as it's established up front and not 'LOL, god McSun has decided you can't cast firebolt right now, and have given you light instead' the example should be fine. Pass me a Fighter please, at least I know what to expect when I use my abilities.

If it's more along the lines of a check to see if your deity gives you the requested aid or not, I'll play a Cleric every time.

This address two problems: players that just pick gods for spells/abilities and player that just act however they want and have the character ignore the god.

Some players just pick mechanisms to make whatever build they want. So if they want a domain they just pick a god that has the domain and make the character. And you quickly get a cleric that is very much not following the god they picked.

But even more importunately, a lot of players don't really 'know' what their character's god wants. Even with a god hand out. So this provides a great way to do that. As the character uses spells, they learn what their god likes, does not like and what they don't care about. Good players make little notes and even come up with little guide books as to how things are for their god. It adds tons of flavor and role playing during the game.

And it is really only a problem with radical characters. If you pick a character type and a god that matches, you won't even notice the bad sides of the rule (but you will notice lots of good).

TheTeaMustFlow
2014-11-13, 09:08 PM
Um, shouldn't this be in the `D&D: The Problem With Magic` thread?

SiuiS
2014-11-13, 10:18 PM
This is a sufficiently different topic from the problems with magic in general as to warrant it's own thread.

I find myself in complete agreement with Jedi potter.

lytokk
2014-11-14, 12:15 PM
I've actually wondered something about your games Jedi, and I figure this is a good time to ask.

You've said yourself you've got a bunch of houserules, ones that you don't tell the players. From a certain standpoint, I can understand this, as most of them are more than likely to never come up. But if someone tells your their character concept (this is just an example) to be the jumping type of fighter made famous by the dragoon class from the final fantasy series, and you've got a houserule because jump is too easy of a skill to buff to the heavens, you'll tell them this at creation right? Not wait til mid-session to tell them their roll of 20 only nets them a 10 foot horizontal jump (with a running start).

In essence, if you have a houserule that would directly affect the build of a character, you would let the player know about it at creation, so that the player knows and can adjust for it, or come up with a different concept?

jedipotter
2014-11-14, 05:15 PM
In essence, if you have a houserule that would directly affect the build of a character, you would let the player know about it at creation, so that the player knows and can adjust for it, or come up with a different concept?


Yes, and no.

A lot of House Rules are known. For example, I use Rich's Diplomacy Fix. And it's listed in the House Rules under Skills. So if a player made a diplomacy using character I'd point it out and make sure they knew not to go by the Core rules.

And I don't have that many secret mundane house rules, most of them are known. they are things like Creatures with a "slam" attack listed in their entry are not considered to be specifically bound to use a particular limb or body part for that slam attack. Rendering a particular limb unavailable does not deny them their slam attack.

Now there are a lot of Secret House Rules about magic. And no, just as someone makes a spellcaster character does not give them access to all the rules. Most of the more widely applied rules, like No form of metamagic reduction may reduce the spell's level below its original level is known before character creation. But a lot of them are known only in a vague sense like Aligned spells have an aligned effect on the caster and area, but no details are known. And others are just completely unknown.

I've never had a character ''ruined'' by Secret House Rules mid game. Most of the obvious abuse magic things are covered in the known house rules, like teleporting and polymorphing. So it's not like a character can get to like 10th level and ignore the rules or anything...and then have them suddenly effect them.

Milo v3
2014-11-14, 06:28 PM
Why is this in the 5e forum? Why do you think this information about your personal campaign is so important that you have to share it with people?

If it pertains to a campaign you're running in D&D 5e, it sounds like your responses should be in the thread you quote in your first post, not a separate topic.

Firstly, this isn't the 5e forum :smallconfused:

Second, because giant thread wars have happened in discussions about jedipotters games. Seriously, that happened, just search orcus on the forum search I'm sure you find the trillion of hyperbole jokes about it.

McBars
2014-11-14, 06:31 PM
Firstly, this isn't the 5e forum :smallconfused:

Second, because giant thread wars have happened in discussions about jedipotters games. Seriously, that happened, just search orcus on the forum search I'm sure you find the trillion of hyperbole jokes about it.

well kind of feel sheepish now.

That said I can see why it's a laughing stock.