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This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07
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Jim Skach
Site Admin
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:16 pm
Posts: 2028
Location: Crystal Lake, IL
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 This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 Only a day late!
We will have a new player this week! As of this writing, she'll be joining our group as we continue our campaign to discover what the hell is going on with Dis cultists and evil masked men in message crystal exhorting followers to spread chaos in and around Fallcrest.
On the non-Wednesday-Night-Music-Group front...very little. Work and computer administration at home (have I mentioned how much I hate Vista?) are draining me.
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The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer
I'm reaching out for something, touching nothing's all I ever do.
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| Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:56 pm |
 
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Jim Skach
Site Admin
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:16 pm
Posts: 2028
Location: Crystal Lake, IL
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 Trev continues to impress as DM - great session and I have to say 4e shown it's strength (as well as the DDI Character Builder) when our new player, because of the snow and circumstances, arrived without any of her material. So I gave her a couple of sets of dice and my computer and she made up her character on the spot. Had a great time!
_________________
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer
I'm reaching out for something, touching nothing's all I ever do.
If you're interested in GaryCon
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| Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:11 am |
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Trevalon Moonleirion
Joined: Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:56 am
Posts: 134
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 I have to say, that was the best skill challenge I've run. I've started to run skill challenges almost entirely explicitly--that is, the players have a sheet basically detailing everything they need to do to succeed in front of them. They're of course not limited to ONLY doing what's on the sheet, but they're the most common things that you could do and they provide a good skeleton to add roleplaying and rich descriptions onto. With the right group, and the right DM, you could have a super fast group skill challenge that feels incredibly cinematic using this method. Here's the challenge if you're interested: Quote: Is He Really Walking On Water?
That son of a bitch is getting away! Lander is fast, and more importantly, looks like he knows the swamp like the back of his hand, even through the damp fog. Not to mention the fact you’re pretty sure you just saw him walk across the surface of the swamp like it was solid ground. Can you keep up with him as he plows through the warm waters of the swamp, or will you lose your quarry--and your sense of direction? One would hope that those rumors of the Swamp Witch are just that--rumors.
You must complete a type five skill challenge as a group to catch up to Lander: 12 successes before 3 failures. If you fail the challenge, you’ve lost Lander in the fog, and you’re lost, cold, sore, and really wondering what keeps on brushing your leg underneath the water. Lose one healing surge.
Primary Skills:
Athletics (DC 10): Muscle through water of varying depths to chase that fast little bastard.
Acrobatics (DC 10): Carefully timed and placed footsteps are the key to the chase—can you make the leaps from dry land to dry land and recover from falling into chest deep water gracefully?
Insight: (DC 15) Based on what little you’ve observed of this guy, and his body language during the chase, you try to guess your opponents next move to gain an advantage over him.
Nature (DC 15): You know enough about swamps to help you navigate successfully, avoiding deep water, tangling undergrowth, and angry snakes, helping you pursue your quarry more effectively.
Secondary Skills:
Perception (DC 5, +2 for each extra use): You spot a patch of deep water that would’ve otherwise slowed you or a friend down, or a bit of dry land on which you can really get a good burst of speed. The further into the deep, misty swamp you get, the harder this will get. Using this skill doesn’t count as a success or failure for the challenge, but instead provides a +2 bonus or a –2 penalty to the next character’s skill check If I could do it over again, I'd like to figure out a way to make it more favorable to use different skills in the challenge, rather than purely concentrating on your best skill and rolling nothing but it. Under different circumstances, I think it's easier to limit that, but for a straight chase like that...not entirely sure how to do it. One thing I didn't list on the sheet was the initial distracting attack of some snakes--PCs had the option to kill those before pursuing. They didn't know that the snakes would probably follow them through the swamp, making their lives--and their skill checks--much more difficult.
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| Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:06 pm |
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SeriousPaul
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:50 pm
Posts: 317
Location: Michigan
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 Jim Skach wrote: Trev continues to impress as DM - great session and I have to say 4e shown it's strength (as well as the DDI Character Builder) when our new player, because of the snow and circumstances, arrived without any of her material. So I gave her a couple of sets of dice and my computer and she made up her character on the spot. Had a great time! Okay tell me more. Why is 4e cool?
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George Carlin wrote: By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
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| Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:25 pm |
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Trevalon Moonleirion
Joined: Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:56 am
Posts: 134
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 SeriousPaul wrote:
Okay tell me more. Why is 4e cool?
For me? It's all about the ease of prep and how quickly someone can more or less pick up a character. I can take a look at a monster stat block, and really, reskin it mentally just about any way I want to, with it still being a reasonable and fairly balanced creature on the fly, but with a completely different feel. Got a great idea for a monster that spits fire and has an aura of fire that hurts people who get close for your romp on the elemental plane of fire, but can' find anything similar, except for a spitting drake and some monster with an aura power? pull those powers out and give them the fire attribute, and you're more or less good to go. I think monsters stand up to tinkering away from the table better too. Want a goblin, but want the goblin be a ranger? Instead of whatever you had to do in 3e (something I did so infrequently, I had to look it up every time, and it always took me quite a while), it's a 15 minute affair, tops in 4e.
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| Thu Feb 11, 2010 9:50 pm |
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Trevalon Moonleirion
Joined: Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:56 am
Posts: 134
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 And while yes, I'm sure other systems are super flexible and customizable, much more so than 4e, and would allow me to do any number of things like this, 4e is still D&D, the game I've grown up playing.
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| Thu Feb 11, 2010 9:57 pm |
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Jim Skach
Site Admin
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:16 pm
Posts: 2028
Location: Crystal Lake, IL
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 SeriousPaul wrote: Jim Skach wrote: Trev continues to impress as DM - great session and I have to say 4e shown it's strength (as well as the DDI Character Builder) when our new player, because of the snow and circumstances, arrived without any of her material. So I gave her a couple of sets of dice and my computer and she made up her character on the spot. Had a great time! Okay tell me more. Why is 4e cool? Cool? You're probably asking the wrong person. And I don't think Abyssal Maw is going to show up any time soon  But in this very narrow aspect, 4e is more like old school than 3e - particularly with respect to the basic classes; fighter, thief, cleric. There are only a few choices to make to get off the ground and those choices can have interesting impacts in combat. So, for example, it only took our new addition a few minutes to make her character (most of the time was spent on helping her with other, broader changes from previous editions to this one, rather than character aspect) and her character could then do "cool stuff" in battle. None of this changes my view on other aspects of 4e that I do not like - which is one of the reasons I said, though not as clearly as I could have, that 4e showed it's strength in this case. As I've said before, we're really playing 4e as much like 1e as possible. In some ways it's not easy, or I should say it requires me to set aside some things that are issues to me. But that doesn't change the fact that it has strengths in some areas...
_________________
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer
I'm reaching out for something, touching nothing's all I ever do.
If you're interested in GaryCon
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| Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:59 pm |
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SeriousPaul
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:50 pm
Posts: 317
Location: Michigan
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 It's just that I'm so used to hearing 4e ate my baby, or hooked me on crack. Or 4e gave me Herpes. It's weird to actually hear praise of it.
_________________
George Carlin wrote: By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
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| Fri Feb 12, 2010 4:38 am |
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Jim Skach
Site Admin
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:16 pm
Posts: 2028
Location: Crystal Lake, IL
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 It turned out to have only kidnapped my baby and I've kicked the crack habit.
_________________
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer
I'm reaching out for something, touching nothing's all I ever do.
If you're interested in GaryCon
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| Fri Feb 12, 2010 9:08 am |
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SeriousPaul
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:50 pm
Posts: 317
Location: Michigan
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Re: This Week in Gaming: 2010-02-07 Wow, so 4e won't cheat on my wife with me? Heh. I'm hoping to play it some more someday. We played one? Maybe two sessions. And my bastard players changed their tastes!
_________________
George Carlin wrote: By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
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| Fri Feb 12, 2010 5:42 pm |
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