This episode: The cast answers emails from around the world, on topics as diverse as online vs. hardbound, dealing with problem players, and how do you get to play with the Critical Hit cast?
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6 Comments
A few things:
First, I’d like to say that Stephen teaching his little one to play Munchkin gives me hope for the future of our nation. Second, on the subject of getting kids into roleplaying games, I think Wushu is worth looking into. It’s a d6 pool, “count the successes” mechanic where your relevant skill determines your target number and how awesomely you describe your actions determines your die pool. From my experience, it’s very easy for a young child to pick up and have a blast with.
As for D&D Next: When Adriana says the fighters were bored, I’m assuming she was playing the May playtest before fighters got their Expertise gimmick. You may want to look into some of the new stuff that fighters and rogues got to help give them a bit of tactical flavor, if you haven’t since this was recorded.
I’d also like to say that I agree with Rodrigo that World of Darkness is an excellent system for doing Lovecraftian horror. However, I have to say that I’ve had a lot of fun with good ol’ Call of Cthulhu. The BRP system is surprisingly intuitive once you get into gameplay, and character creation can be made a lot less headachey with a little house ruling. (encouraged within the text of the game itself, complete with some examples) There’s also a point-buy variant for stats available, which is the default system for Cthulhu Dark Ages.
First, thanks for the show today, complete with Skype craziness. I personally enjoy the Q&A episodes, although they drive my 12-year-old crazy: he wants to listen to you guys role-play.
For what it’s worth, I wanted to second Rodrigo’s and Adriana’s approach to alignment. Alignment was one pet peeve I had with original AD&D (from my first RPG days in high school…30 or so years ago). Not only did it limit role-playing in classes like the paladin, but there were all sorts of weird mechanics that never made much sense to me, like alignment languages (“I speak Common, Elvish, and Chaotic Good.”) I was happy when I got back into D&D with 4e and found that alignment had become essentially a role-play shorthand for how one pictured one’s character behaving. When I’m working on character creation in my home campaign, I don’t even bother with alignment. Divine characters choose a deity whose precepts–open to interpretation, of course–they should follow. Other characters might follow a deity, so same rules apply, or they might be unaffiliated, in which case I ask them to answer some basic questions just to get some nuance into a character’s moral code before play.
* How does your character feel about harming or killing innocents?
* Why would he or she cooperate with other party members? When might he or she betray them?
* Under what sort of circumstances would your character take another creature’s property?
After that, it’s the character’s behavior that really highlights their ethics.
Thanks for a great podcast.
That was eerie. Like peeking ‘behind the curtain’ to see that they are just like us regular people!
LMAO I felt the same way!
Nothing has pushed me closer to a subscription than hearing the frustration in Stephen’s voice during this episode.
Matthew, please don’t act like such a bigot; of course there are girls on the internet. The whole Guy In Real Life joke is like ten years old, and is actually super offensive if you think about how commonly women are harassed online and told they shouldn’t be allowed on the internet. Yes, I know it’s just a stupid joke, and really you know better, but there are neanderthals out there who see that kind of joke as encouragement, and we don’t want them thinking we like them.
As always, thanks for the show.
Matthew, please don’t act like such a bigot; of course there are girls on the internet. The whole Guy In Real Life joke is like ten years old, and is actually super offensive if you think about how commonly women are harassed online and told they shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.
Sorry that it bothers you, but I see a pretty large divide between “there are no girls on the internet” and “there shouldn’t be any girls on the internet.” Mileage varies, and all that, but I’ll try to be more sensitive in the future.