Homebrew styles.

Previously I gave a brief stat write-up of our homebrew cat people race, the Wildkin. In the spirit of being a little more D&D-positive than my previous rants, here are some of the other homebrew creations I've employed:

( Read more... )

One more time to pay for all.

It's 3:30 and I'm awake and not writing... but I have noticed something. The person who'd been messaging me about D&D did it again and this time I recognized them as being an old troll who knows how to push my buttons, who probably isn't even a member of the forum he keeps sending me links to... he must have just gotten the address from when it came up months ago and decided to set me off again.

I'm not proud of having buttons that are so big and obvious and easy to push, but I think I've got more reasons to be proud than the person who pushes them for fun. :P

So, I'm going to make one last venty, ranty post about 4E bashing and then I'm done. Not done talking about D&D, but I'm going to keep it positive after this post. The rest of this post might just seem like more of the same grousing, but it's helpful to me in getting the fuck over it to take a look at and identify the sheer ridiculousness of it all. If you don't want to read it, you don't have to. I'm making it for my own benefit.

( Cut for ranty rant )

Welcome to the Grown Up Game Table.

Pffffffffffffft. My troll made one last ditch attempt to get me to waste more time on the bizarro world forum where people who insist on playing D&D like it's a video game insist 4E isn't immersive because they can't do their video game bullshit in it. I'm sad to say he succeeded, but I'm happy to say that it's because I'm laughing... these guys ignore anything the book says that they don't like and don't agree with, and then make ludicrous statements about the system based on the omissions they introduced to it. That's all I'll say.

Well, one other thing: if it seems like I'm expecting the DM to make the system work, it's only because the system works just fine, given a DM. Who actually does things. Besides nod and tell the player that yes, in accordance with Line C on Table D, they are entitled to E gold pieces and F experience points as a merit reward for figuring out how to exploit Table D, and then line the monsters up for the next encounter's Zerg Rush so that everybody can see whose "Damage Per Second" combat build is good or fail.

Oh, look at that. I did start another rant.

Moving on... I've decided to simultaneously indulge those who want to hear more of my game nerdery (and participate in it) and those who don't want my blog full of it by setting up a website for it. I've registered the domain grownupgametable.com... that text is not a link because there's nothing there yet, obviously, if your DNS server even recognizes it half an hour after I've registered it.

This will be the place where I'll be organizing my online D&D sessions, where I'll be putting the bulk of my rants/rambles about D&D and gaming stuff, and it will also be a place where we can have discussions about roleplaying from a perspective that discourages reducing player characters to the most straightforward calculations of damage given/damage avoided and reducing DMs to people who line up monsters in the most straightforward way to demonstrate the efficacy of those calculations. Not that this isn't a valid way to play the game... it just doesn't work so well with 4E, as some people have learned. :)

And that isn't to say there won't be any discussion of mechanics or optimization... we just won't be pretending that a game with so many possible variations in scenarios and goals has just one "optimal" build or one thing to be optimized for. 4E is a great system because it gives a snappy, fun, and tactically stimulating system for resolving the most sticky point of all Pretendy Fun Time Games... "Bang, bang! You're dead!"/"No, I'm not!"... and then it gets the hell out of the DM and the players' way for the other stuff.

And on the mechanical side, I'll be more than happy to help people optimize the build they want to play for the direction they want to take it. I'm sure my paragon tier bard would be sneered at as being infinitely weak compared to some of the uberfighter builds, but... Psychic Lock on somebody whose at-wills all do psychic damage makes for a nice disruptor, and at level twelve with her next feat Arcane Admixture will let her do fire damage at will... "fire" doesn't add to Damage Per Round and it doesn't inflict any status effects, but there are a lot of things that are vulnerable to it, compared to psychic.

It makes her useful in more situations, in other words... and also, it's neat to play a character who can light people on fire by cussin' at 'em hard enough. See how flavor and mechanics blend together to create something nifty there?

That's the sort of thing we'll be discussing at the Grown Up Game Table. If you read "RPGs" as standing for "Roleplaying Games" and not "Roll! Playing Games", then you'll probably like it there. D&D4E will be the focus because that's what I'm into, but there can be discussions of other systems and topics of cross-system interest. It won't just be a bunch more "these guys say this thing but I think they're wrong for these reasons" posts... there's no sense beating a dead horse. Any more.

First thing I'm going to do once the domain is active across the net is make an article about intelligent approaches to treasure distribution. 4E rules here in a few different ways... but nothing of what it encourages couldn't be used in any other system, so I figure it will make a good general interest post. I've had a lot of thoughts in that area, since my campaign of last week was made entirely on the fly and fitting the treasure into it was often the last thing I thought of... and since reading some frankly bizarre ideas about how "loot" works in 4E.

The Grown Up Game Table is up...

...at least the blog portion of the site is. Right here. And because I am a content generator at heart, it's already got three posts, for people who care to hear more of my thoughts/apologia on 4E. :P Now to write some TOMU. Itch scratched.