tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post5115226561359284697..comments2024-03-28T23:14:06.156-04:00Comments on The CRPG Addict: Secret of the Silver Blades: Giant ProblemsCRPG Addicthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-29051662168158127392017-10-06T12:27:07.718-04:002017-10-06T12:27:07.718-04:00Characters I dual-classed (and thus started SotSB ...Characters I dual-classed (and thus started SotSB at 0 XP) are just about maxed out by the time I arrive at the final castle. Not the worst pacing ever, I guess, but it kind of is - there should be a lasting penalty to dual-classing so late in the game, but those guys will still show up in Pools of Darkness maxed out.Keithnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-73289484767564963712017-10-06T12:14:14.493-04:002017-10-06T12:14:14.493-04:00Death Spell is handy against the Medusae and Basil...Death Spell is handy against the Medusae and Basilisks you will encounter many of at one point, and will insta-kill anywhere from 3-5 of them. Helpful when you come across a group in tight quarters you can't/don't want to fireball. I would imagine this also works against some of the smaller dragons you come across as well, and spiders.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-2736150081676991342015-07-06T00:45:50.132-04:002015-07-06T00:45:50.132-04:00Call of Cthulhu has the best levelling system: Whe...Call of Cthulhu has the best levelling system: Whenever you suceed at a skill, check it. At the end of the adventure, roll it. If you fail the roll, add 1d10 to the skill. So if you are really good at something, it is hard to get better at it. Wheras if you actually manage to suceed at a skill you are bad at, almost always goes up. Very organic, and encourages well-rounded characters rather then hyper-specialists, which is a common problem in D&D, GURPS, etc. <br /><br />I'd really like to see Chet play a CRPG with a mechanic like that to see what he thinks. I suspect he wouldn't like the lack of choice.Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-17159067004382726442015-07-05T19:56:05.319-04:002015-07-05T19:56:05.319-04:00Corey: More then my signed 3rd edition PHB. I mean...Corey: More then my signed 3rd edition PHB. I meant to bring one of my old AD&D books, and forgot them, so I had him sign the only book I had on me. Dad also bought a copy of Castle Zagig for me which he got autographed. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-51587006375371604212015-07-05T11:56:43.588-04:002015-07-05T11:56:43.588-04:00Bait Twitch people into playing RPGs, watch them p...Bait Twitch people into playing RPGs, watch them play to find out if it is an RPG. Got it. *Gets his twitch streamer hunting net out*Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-28712616240115947232015-07-05T09:16:11.912-04:002015-07-05T09:16:11.912-04:00Djweish: Verbeeg are some of the smallest giants, ...Djweish: Verbeeg are some of the smallest giants, in fact I'm not even sure they are considered 'true' giants, I think they might be Giant-kin. <br /><br />Daniel: I don't think it is stats math that is the problem. I suspect it is either the strain of drawing that many people (Most likely: people are a lot of polygons, and they are dynamic.) or pathfinding (Also a big strain, but almost all games are GPU bound, so the CPU can take extra strain without slowing the game), not the cost of updating stats. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-74580075927491714622014-10-06T05:53:57.478-04:002014-10-06T05:53:57.478-04:00That's a good one. I thought it was gonna be a...That's a good one. I thought it was gonna be a belt.Tristan Gallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16769219573533545742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-91530815047703771432014-10-05T19:45:56.382-04:002014-10-05T19:45:56.382-04:00Anglo Saxon smutty riddles are the best riddles, a...Anglo Saxon smutty riddles are the best riddles, and remarkably translation proof:<br /><br />Riddle 42:<br />A small miracle hangs near a man's thigh,<br />Full under folds. It is stiff, strong,<br />Bold, brassy, and pierced in front.<br />When a young lord lifts his tunic<br />Over his knees, he wants to greet<br />With the hard head of this hanging creature<br />The hole it has long come to fill. <br /><br />Answer: Xrl. Be, lbh xabj, n cravf.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04469864318997313802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-14690819180064293072014-10-02T09:27:18.444-04:002014-10-02T09:27:18.444-04:00There's a giant called the "Verbeeg Giant...There's a giant called the "Verbeeg Giant?" That's even worse than Magic the Gathering's Two-Headed Giant of Foriys...Djweishnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-34344267409108523782014-10-02T06:54:57.852-04:002014-10-02T06:54:57.852-04:00One strong foe would just need loads of HD for a h...One strong foe would just need loads of HD for a high attack and hitpoints. With powerful abilities, dishing out lots of damage against single opponents on top of maybe a beholder like ability to hit all the characters with it necessarily being AoE. Would probably have to be immune to death or hold spells, or just a decent magic resistance comparative to the party, so that it's unlikely for the spell to go through and fail the saving throw. Enemies in AD&D 1st edition tend to be glass cannons by high levels (giants, dragons, etc.). 2nd edition attempted to mitigate this by making dragons and giants stronger, but this led to less of a balance power curve, one could argue whether this is good or not. The only creatures that may hold up to a large, high leveled party would be the demon princes and arch devils such as Demogorgon, Asmodeus, or Baalzebul.Devinbatterynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-18245912053770337842014-10-02T06:40:56.188-04:002014-10-02T06:40:56.188-04:00It is only one creature, looking at the Player'...It is only one creature, looking at the Player's Handbook description, but it can affect any creature with 90hp or less. Devinbatterynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-15785338259839422482014-10-02T06:39:29.091-04:002014-10-02T06:39:29.091-04:00In AD&D 1st edition there are no damage caps f...In AD&D 1st edition there are no damage caps for fireballs or lightning bolts. The plus to using Power Word Stun is that it automatically stuns 70hp worth of creatures, with no saving throw. Overall, Delayed Blast Fireball is a lot more useful, but Power Word Stun can be useful if your mage is trapped by an enemy or something. I do believe it can effect more than one creature as long as they're adjacent, I remember it working on two creatures once. Devinbatterynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-2648371132592189252014-09-30T04:13:33.797-04:002014-09-30T04:13:33.797-04:00There's the reverse situation too, like the sk...There's the reverse situation too, like the skeleton's riddle in Torment. Nameless needs an INT of like 19 to help solve it and I'm pulling my hair out because I know the answer with a score that is no doubt quite a bit lower than whatever superhuman smarts that 19 represented.Natehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08098875250377735658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-29975447253271249482014-09-30T03:46:08.481-04:002014-09-30T03:46:08.481-04:00Obviously the idea of obvious riddles is to put th...Obviously the idea of obvious riddles is to put the hero at ease. He'll think he can survive by his wits alone, never suspecting the iocane powder is really in *both* goblets.Natehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08098875250377735658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-79071308289220276042014-09-28T17:34:40.875-04:002014-09-28T17:34:40.875-04:00@Gaguum,
My point was made in reference to the or...@Gaguum,<br /><br />My point was made in reference to the original D&D, not AD&D 1st ed., but I think the point stands either way - amassed wealth is intended to be a measure of how successful PCs have been. Read the book "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures" and you'll see what I'm talking about.Danielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08236674968994362673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-43409171199636540332014-09-28T11:01:07.102-04:002014-09-28T11:01:07.102-04:00When I said that I was agreeing with Daniel about ...When I said that I was agreeing with Daniel about AD&D being poorly organized and full of rules that nobody bothered with, I was actually agreeing with MOZA on that score. Oh well.Gaguumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-40284342718920533802014-09-28T10:37:49.744-04:002014-09-28T10:37:49.744-04:00@OWB:
"Again, if you were getting that much ...@OWB:<br /><br />"Again, if you were getting that much loot, without somewhere to spend it, it was due to a faulty implementation of the game."<br /><br />I made that dumpster comment to satirize the kind of "Monty Haul" D&D-ing that many people (and Secret of the Silver Blades) actually engaged in. MY own games back in the day didn't feature that kind of problem, because I gave out rather little in the way of cash. On the bright side, I made training cheap and leveling free, hirelings weren't involved because of the accountancy was prohibitive, and I didn't use ANY material components, because -- come on, seriously, that stuff was insane. Every spell worth casting required a freshly-killed bald eagle and a Faberge egg, or something like that (certain potions required demon's brains or invisible stalker's blood; nice work finding those). You may think that I was tinkering with a well-engineered machine, but I agree with Daniel that AD&D as written was no such thing. It was a sloppy jalopy held together with duct tape and full of unnecessary gears, kludges, and workarounds. So I thought it was better to strip it down to the chassis and build up from there. (Nowadays, of course, I'd just write everything from scratch.)<br /><br />"I'd agree with your Palladium statement, but...man they get so much else wrong (combat, skills, magic, tuning) that it's hard to give KS and team any brownie points."<br /><br />Heh, don't forget the redundant and indistinguishable abbreviations that are impossible to remember ("Let's see, what does P.P. do again?")! The one thing that I would give Siembieda some credit for is that his alignment system, while imperfect, definitely beat D&D's. If you had to have alignments at all, theirs made somewhat more sense and were better explained. (Aberrant was an interesting one.)<br /><br />@Daniel:<br /><br />"The idea behind D&D originally was that amassing money was how you succeeded or failed as a player."<br /><br />Well, if you really wanted to get into the AD&D 1e DMG's nitty-gritty stuff, XP was NOT awarded on a strictly 1:1 basis for GP. There were rules concerning reductions if you outclassed the enemy, rules concerning reductions if you'd been a "bad" roleplayer during the battle (which includes things like being cautious), rules concerning XP bonuses when you died and got resurrected (seriously?), etc. Regardless, since DMs could make any random cave the equal of Fort Knox, having piles of treasure proved nothing about your own competence. There are in fact tables at the end of the DMG where they assign monsters specific XP values, which is what they should've done to begin with.<br /><br />Gygax lampshades the nonsensicality of the whole XP/GP thing on p. 85:<br /><br />"Players who balk at equating gold pieces to experience points should be gently but firmly reminded that in a game certain compromises must be made. While it is more 'realistic' for clerics to study holy writings, pray, chant, practice self-discipline, etc. to gain experience, it would not make a playable game roll along. Similarly, fighters should be exercising, riding, smiting pelts [sic], tilting at the lists, and engaging in weapons practice of various sorts to gain real expertise (experience); magic-users should be deciphering old scrolls, searching ancient tomes, experimenting alchemically, and so forth; while thieves should spend their off-hours honing their skills, 'casing' various buildings, watching potential victims, and carefully planning their next 'job'. All very realistic but conducive to non-game boredom!"<br /><br />I don't want to get into how stupid this is at serious length, but I'll just say that RuneQuest and Ars Magica proved him desperately wrong. And if he didn't want "non-game boredom", he should've changed the magic-item creation and leveling rules.Gaguumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-79805871487377431412014-09-26T09:53:47.653-04:002014-09-26T09:53:47.653-04:00Well, it's not that obscure. The Aquarius is f...Well, it's not <i>that</i> obscure. The Aquarius is fairly well known to Intellivision fans, since a bunch of the console's games were ported to it, and a few Intellivision homebrewers have recently taken an interest in it. It's actually very similar to the Sharp MZ-700, another computer that uses character graphics like the Aquarius, and that one had a bit of traction in Japan.<br /><br />The Aquarius itself bombed in the US (I love the engineers' quote about "the system for the seventies"), but IIRC it had modest sales in certain parts of Europe. BTW there were more than 21 titles for the system -- those are just the first-party cartridges, and there was a fair bit of third-party software on cassette.PK Thunderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14416777230563913195noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-40661192690156380272014-09-26T01:51:22.197-04:002014-09-26T01:51:22.197-04:00I think Mass Effect is close to the most immersive...I think Mass Effect is close to the most immersive world/story ever created for an RPG.Tristan Gallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16769219573533545742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-83266512549664022132014-09-25T23:41:54.721-04:002014-09-25T23:41:54.721-04:00@Vonotar, IMO few mods enhance a game like SCS doe...@Vonotar, IMO few mods enhance a game like SCS does for BG1.<br />With SCS and The BG1 NPC Project BG1 goes from a rather mediocre game to a brilliant one that I never get tired of replaying.Brutusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-54770344506308763012014-09-25T22:51:50.629-04:002014-09-25T22:51:50.629-04:00@Kenny
*slow clap*@Kenny<br /><br />*slow clap*Danielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08236674968994362673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-16587762605216471332014-09-25T22:39:07.906-04:002014-09-25T22:39:07.906-04:00Raping gynosphinxes? How does that work? Do they h...Raping gynosphinxes? How does that work? Do they have to answer riddles to 'enter'?Kenny McCormickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01553499727945099493noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-72461008476579475032014-09-25T22:37:42.886-04:002014-09-25T22:37:42.886-04:00That's actually pretty realistic. It's a h...That's actually pretty realistic. It's a huge blow to morale to see a bunch of lumbering, screaming allies who are clutching their exposed insides. If they had died, the rage they feel for the fallen might incite them to fight more fiercely instead.Kenny McCormickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01553499727945099493noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-39400416672185570712014-09-25T20:09:27.091-04:002014-09-25T20:09:27.091-04:00TBH I *think* they capped characters at 15 so that...TBH I *think* they capped characters at 15 so that Mages would only gain 6th and 7th level spells in this particular entry in the series. <br /><br />Not sure why; maybe they wanted to leave 2 full levels of spells for the last entry in the series.<br /><br />As-is spell progression works like this for mages:<br /><br />PoR = 1-3rd leve spells<br />CoAB = 4 - 5th level spells<br />SotSB = 6-7th level spells<br />PoD = 8-9th level spells<br /><br />I don't agree with it, but that's the likely reason.old wow bastardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13219195579845781590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-9236256546360391512014-09-25T20:05:52.052-04:002014-09-25T20:05:52.052-04:00@Moza "Oh, right, training costs. Training co...@Moza "Oh, right, training costs. Training costs and time are one of those rules, like attack vs. armor type, that I'm convinced no one in the history of the game has actually used. But if we did - it's still pointless. You pick up money to get XP, and then spend the money to get to the level the XP allows. Why not skip the middleman and get the XP and level without the surplus of money? It's not like there's any interesting decision-making happening there, since the only worthwhile thing you can spend your gorillion gold on is training."<br /><br />It really seems like your grasp of the AD&D 1st edition rules is minimal at best, and is wholly based on experiences where you played with under-prepared DMs.<br /><br />Gygax built a pretty well rounded system, when you take it as a whole. <br /><br />When you remove specific pieces, like training costs, or strongholds which cost money and require upkeep, or hirelings which are a key part of the 1st edition game, but are generally ignored, YES the system breaks down. <br /><br />This similar to any machine or system; if you take the tires off of your car it will not drive the same way.<br /><br />From what I see in your post there, honestly, you drove in a car that was missing it's tires for years. <br /><br />Yes the handling is terrible; put the tires back on, drive a while, then let me know how you feel. It's a different experience when the system is being run properly.<br /><br />"People in the OSR crowd tell me the classic moneysink was hirelings. Dozens of hirelings, hordes of hirelings. That's a thing I suppose, but it paints a picture of a group of "adventurers" being fanned in a recliner while their army of henchmen does the actual adventuring. It's a mode of play alien to any mainstream depiction of D&D I know of, and one that doesn't sound appealing to me. If I roleplay an adventurer, I want to be the one that gets his hands dirty and risks his own neck, not a colonial era "gentleman explorer" directing his servants to tie down the ogre so that he can shoot it."<br /><br />If you want to understand why things worked that way, instead of just making fun of that play style, I'd recommend reading Gygax's and Metzner's posts on the Dragonsfoot Forums. It's actually pretty interesting.<br /><br />Essentially, when D&D was first invented Gygax would have anywhere from 1 - 20 or so players. Since folks would still want to play, even when there weren't a lot of other players to play with, they started the hireling/henchman system.<br /><br />In those older games it was normal to have 2--5 hirelings and henchman, per player, as bag carriers, animal tenders, and cannon fodder. <br /><br />If you want to actually live through a module like S1 Tomb of Horrors you need hirelings to set off the "insta-kill" traps. <br /><br />I agree, that isn't how a modern game it played. You do need to remember though that this was the original and was written when that play style was dominant. old wow bastardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13219195579845781590noreply@blogger.com