jeudi 2 octobre 2014

"So what DO you like, you old asshole?" (for Spinachcat)

I've stated often I'll play almost anything, but it's hard to get me to buy. SC asked me to start a separate thread.



I like lots of different settings and genres; my love for OD&D did not influence my decision to buy WEG Star Wars d20, frex, because they're different games.



Also, I got into this in the pre D&D years of "Tell me what you want to do, I'll tell you what dice to roll and what happens." That's still how I like to play.



OD&D continues to be my go to "generic fantasy" game. I'd use Pendragon for an Arthurian game, because, well, Pendragon; I love Malory almost as much as Greg Stafford does, and the whole "traits and passions" thing is genius for that.



A friend refs The Fantasy Trip and I have fun, but I'd never buy it even if it were available, and I'd never run it.



I bought Fantasy Hero in the mid 80s and both ran it and played it a while. It has one really huge thing I like in that you can use skill points in so many different ways; combat is a lot of fun in that game.



However, making characters is a fucking nightmare, and designing shit for your world is too; rather than just saying "AC 3 5+2 HD 1-8 dam plus blah blah blah special attack" it takes a lot of work. And magic makes it even worse.



Mostly, though, I grew disenchanted because I reached the point where combat took TOO long. I don't want to spend half an hour, or even fifteen minutes, killing a dozen goblins. FH is great for one on one fights with major opponents, but doesn't work for other kinds. Since I want to play an exploration game where you can encounter things randomly, this is a problem



Fantasy Trip suffers from much the same problem, with the addition of the maps and counters.



I have reached the point where I don't WANT the combat to be the most important part of the game. OD&D gets most combats over in a matter of a few minutes... even pretty big opponents don't take that long. And that's what I want these days. When the Fantasy Trip combat map comes out and the counters start getting put down, I just groan any more.



I bought Champions because it was the first superhero game that really worked well, and somebody locally was very enthusiastic about running it. We played for over ten years. Again, I've reached the point of feeling like it's too complicated. I'll play if somebody creates a character for me, but frankly I can't be arsed to do all that work.



I bought Atlantis: The Second Age because I love the idea of Atlantis. If I'd realized it was just another sword & sorcery setting I wouldn't have bothered. I wanted lost cities beneath the waves an' shit.



I bought "High Medieval," but found the tone of the writing so annoying I gave up after five or six pages.



Setting matters to me a lot more than ruleset, which is why I haven't bought any newer editions of D&D since AD&D 1st ed. I didn't even buy the Fiend Folio because I figured "if I need more monsters I can just make them up."



I'm a huge Star Wars fan so I bought WEG's SW d 6. I loved the first edition and think the second edition revised was full of bad ideas.



I bought SW d 20 because again, somebody was running it, and you really can't play that game without the rules, unless you have a really good referee. I bought a bunch of shit for it and finally got tired of the rules bloat. I bought SW SAGA because it looked like another game was going to start up again, but never did.



I bought pretty much everything FASA ever did for Star Trek. I loved that game.



I'm a firm believer in "This game is fun for me, why should I give you money for your version of Star Trek/Star Wars/Generic Fantasy/Superheroes/etc." And frankly, most game companies do a really really shit job of selling their products. "It's New! And it's a Game!" really doesn't do it for me.





"So what DO you like, you old asshole?" (for Spinachcat)

mercredi 1 octobre 2014

Dode spelsituaties

Even een apart topic voor de dode spelsituaties, zodat we elkaar wat tips kunnen geven.



Ik merk dat ik veel meer moeite heb gekregen met scoren uit corners. Met FIFA14 scoorde ik aan de lopende band uit corners door ze strak voor te geven en vervolgens met R2/L2 positie te kiezen. Met FIFA15 heb ik echter nog niet op de 'normale' manier kunnen scoren. De bal komt niet meer zo strak voor de goal, ik win het kopduel zelden, en als ik het kopduel win is het een slappe kopbal. Ik ben daarom de corners op een andere manier gaan nemen, heb nu drie tactieken die wel aardig lukken.



- De eerste is een spelers kort laten komen. Die legt het vervolgens op de dichtstbijzijnde speler op de rand van de zestien (staan er altijd twee). Hij heeft meestal genoeg tijd om uit te halen. Mocht het niet lukken, zoekt die de combinatie met iemand in de zestien of legt hij de bal naar de andere speler buiten de zestien. Die heeft dan meestal genoeg ruimte omdat de tegenstander zich op de eerste speler richt.

- In een keer passen naar de dichtstbijzijnde speler buiten de zestien. Doe ik meestal als de tegenstander mijn eerste tactiek doorheeft. Vervolgens schieten/combinatie zoeken.

- Hoge bal naar de achterste speler buiten de zestien. Dan schieten/combinatie zoeken. Op deze manier maakte ik vandaag één van mijn mooiste goals tot nu toe. Hoge bal --> In 1 keer afleggen op andere speler buiten de zestien --> in de kruising.



Met de directe vrije trappen merk ik juist dat ik makkelijker scoor dan bij FIFA14. In FUT al een aantal vrije trappen erin geschoten met Ziyech, in Seizoenen met Suarez en vooral Messi. Heb er nu een stuk of 10-15 gemaakt gok ik. Weinig kracht is voldoende, linkerstick naar boven met een beetje effect naar de binnenkant.



Ben benieuwd naar jullie tactieken.





Dode spelsituaties

Settings: Home brew or published?

In general do you prefer home brew settings or published settings? I prefer to make my own settings and even when I do use a published on I usually make extensive changes to customize it.





Settings: Home brew or published?

Barrowmaze hardcopy maps?

I recently got Barrowmaze and am barrow-mazed at the coolness of the setting, critters, bad guys, etc. But the chopped up maps in the backs of the books are giving me a massive case of the shits. I just can't stand the notion of running a dungeon in which a large fraction of the rooms are bisected and spread across two non-facing pages. Argh!! I understand one can buy and print pdfs of the full maps, but I'm a lazy fuck and can't be bothered to spend half a day messing around at Staples. I also know some of these were printed for the kickstarter. Does anyone know if more hard copy maps are available anywhere?





Barrowmaze hardcopy maps?

High Strung

Princess Doodad and Barf Dribble Review High Strung (Podcast Transcript)



(Barf Dribble) Tonight we are doing a playtest review of High Strung by Flying Mice Games.

(Princess Doodad) Right Barf! We ran a game with Chicken Eatza, Macho Pizza, and Earthworm Jim - and me of course - taking the parts of the various characters. Barf was the Game Master, and came up with the scenario.

(BD) Yeah... they guy who wrote this piece of crap didn't bother writing an adventure.

(PD) So I made this awesome character, Stephie Dildo, who is like 17 and really cute. She plays like this guitar shaped like an axe, and made of steel. Her costume is this awesome black leather armor with lots of spikes. Her Race is Jail Bait, Jail Baits get +2 to Cute, and her Class is Headbanger.

(BD) Chick made a Beatnik Soulman named Bob Chick, Machie made a Elderly Funkmaster! named Fred, and Jim made a Hippy Blues Brother named Sunshine Moon, cause he's this hippy. The Races and Classes in this game are totally stupid! Like who wants to be Elderly? But you randomly Roll your Race, so we played it RAW.

(PD) (Giggles) I liked MY character! Stephie was ultra awesome!

(BD) So anyway, Bob Chick's weapon was a bass guitar shaped like a sword, Fred had two drumstick wands that he used to cast his songs, and Jim played a tabla, which is some kind of Hippy drum.

In this game, the idiot who designed it makes you draw Hit Points and Magic Points from the same pool, called Hope...

(PD) Yeah, like they have anything to do with each other!

(BD)... which is another thing that bothered me, along with the no module thing. The designer keeps naming stuff wierdly. Like the Race names are weird, the Class names are weird, and the stat names are just fucked! Like VOIS for casting Songs, or FNGR for fighting. Just stupid!

(PD) I liked CUTE for, y'know, being cute!

(BD) Well, one outa... a lot isn't too good, Princess! Why do designers always gotta change names for stuff that already has perfectly good names? I just don't get it, and it irritated me.

(PD) I think I liked the game more than you, Barf!

(BD) Aaaanyways, The party was, like, totally poor. A total Zero to Hero trip! We had Crap Jobs, Crap Clothes, and Crap weapons... I mean Instruments. See? Why change the name? I had to ask them all these stupid questions about their families and shit. Nothing at all about fighting. I suggested everyone just be orphans who just quit their crap jobs, and everyone was cool with that.

(PD) Remember, the Hippie and the Elderly guy had decent stuff!

(BD) Yeah, but the Hippie sold his stuff for weed, and the Elderly dude was old so he forgot he was rich or something. What kinda stuff you got was tied into your age for some reason, so the guys who couldn't do anything got all the decent swag!

(PD) Yeah, right! I made Stephie's costume, though, so that was cool!

(BD) Yeah - she had the most useful skill there, making costumes!

(PD) She made +2 Costumes!

(BD) Pretty swank for a Jail Bait!

(PD) Thanks, Barf!

(BD) So anyway, you gotta get a gig. A gig is like an adventure...

(PD) And you lose HP between adventures, and gain HP from doing them.

(BD) Totally numb! Why? It doesn't say. I just said you guys all have wounds that didn't heal good.

(PD) Which made sense. That was some sweet GMing there, Barf!

(BD) Ya gotta know when to improvise, Princess! The designer just forgot to explain it, so I had ta improvise.

(PD) So Barf came up with an aawesome gig!

(BD) (Laughs) Yeah! Totally! They went to the tavern and were like dicking around with their weapons, and I had this old geezer...

(PD) ...He had the most awesome songs!

(BD) ... come in and say WHO HERE DARETH TO CHALLENGETH THE MIGHTETH OF GORTHAR?

(PD) Then when the Party jumped to their feet, the bottom of the tavern like opened up and we slid into a pit! Us and all our groupies too!

(BD) Groupies are what this dickhead calls henchmen.

(PD) Stephie had like the most hen... groupies...

(BD) See what I mean?

(PD) ... cause she was so ultra cute!

(BD) And she had the Groupies skill too!

(PD) So we fight the orcs in the pit, and found a door that openend into the dungeon! Oh! There was treasure too! New +1 instruments and armo... I mean costumes.

(BD) Yeah - there was no treasure even mentioned anywhere! I just made it all up!

(PD) So we fought these undead, and like we were wailing with our weapons, and Fred cast a Song. We all had to sacrifice HP to power the song, which was awesomely dark! I was imagining Steffie cutting open a vein to let out the blood! Cool idea!

(BD) But there was no actual songs! We looked through the book and found squat! It's like they dicked around with the formatting and lost like half the rules, and didn't notice! So I made shit up again! Gotta keep the game moving! We all rolled our skill dice, like the RAW says...

(PD) And we rolled AWESOME! We all almost maxed out!

(BD) So I looked up the result on the charts - I'm doing this completely RAW, like I said before - and the party gets some treasure deal with multi albums and creative control. I was like what the fuck? Then it says game over. GAME OVER? REALLY? Totally LAME! LAME OVER I say!

(PD) Yeah! That was weird!

(BD) I figured multi-albums was like the games gold pieces, and creative control meant something like controlling other people like zombies, but why was the game over? We had just STARTED!

(PD) I really liked Steffie too!

(BD) What's the use of getting treasure when you can't use it because the FREAKING GAME'S OVER? That was just NUMB! So I just had the gang make characters for D&D 5, and we started that. So, my verdict? PIECE OF CRAP! Stay away from this insane dogpile of a game! It was incomplete, confusing, and just pretentious as shit!

(PD) I liked it better than Barf, but I still don't know why it ended!

(BD) Talk to you next week, when we'll review another new game!

(PD) See ya!





High Strung

What is the definition of an "Outrage Brigade?"

Edit: Nevermind, read the original post.





What is the definition of an "Outrage Brigade?"

California launches pilot program to replace gasoline tax

In a surprisingly under-the-radar development, Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law a program which will set up the infrastructure to charge California motorists by the mile. Brown signed SB-1077 into law September 29th. Officially titled 'Vehicles: road usage charge pilot program,' the law will create a system to address all the aspects of a 'charge-drivers-by-the-mile' program in the state, which would replace the purportedly 'ineffective' and 'inadequate' gasoline tax.



http://ift.tt/1qWzZvf





California launches pilot program to replace gasoline tax