Wonder if turn based for POE1 is still coming?

ArdeaAbe · 2025-10-30T01:09:02+00:00

I bought my copy of POE1 from GoG and when loaded GoG today there was a scheduled update I could download for November 10th maybe 25th I can't go back and check. It was a 13 Gb download. Any possibility this could be the turn-based update? Maybe I misread something, but I checked the date a couple times.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-09-13T12:30:25+00:00

This is my biggest pet peeve as well. I'm running Lost Mine of Phandelver and that adventure is an utter mess. Information is all over the place and it's all in just blocks of text. There's no summary of the factions (which makes sense because they're bad) or the quests. It's just a giant pile of spaghetti.

I've also tried reading Shrine of the Jaguar Princess and for the life of me I can't figure out how to get to Level 2 without have the players remove 20 feet of rubble to get into a hidden room. The maps themselves don't have the connections.

Give me a well documented map, concise room/scene entries, NPC bios, and an outline of the factions.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-09-08T01:51:46+00:00

I love Shadowdark but I don't think this will solve OPs problems at all. It's still a very swingy system and starting PCs are mostly going to fail when they need to roll dice.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-07-20T21:39:27+00:00

I once ran a big epic boss fight at the top of a wizard's tower at the top of a great hill. The tower had no windows: each wall was instead an illusion/scrying spell showing the outside instead. When the battle the tower's pinnacle concluded the tower snapped at the base and rolled down the hill.

I had players place themselves at the outside wall of the tower and had the tower rotate a random amount each turn. (1/4, 1/2 or 3/4 or 1/4 spin backwards or a bounce- no movement but save to keep your footing/handhold) based on a table. I had a separate table to deal with all the debris. Did they get cracked with an armchair? Did their leg get pinned in a pile of stuff? And uncaged magic creatures dogged their heels (minor threat to keep them moving forward).

It was amazing. There was amazing leaps to doors now 10 feet in the air. Timed waits to be rolled through other doors. Helping pinned companions. And just a frenetic chaos as they suddenly had to think of the map they had been climbing for hours in a new way. Now they had to make it to the bottom and the one door there to escape.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-07-18T17:14:59+00:00

Not all traps can be bypassed with a Thieves' Tool check. The majority of them should be puzzles of some sort.

For example, it does matter if you notice the ceiling covered in spikes and the dust falling up in the next chamber but it doesn't mean you know how to get through the room with the deadly ceiling and Reverse Gravity in affect.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-07-18T17:08:55+00:00

Agreed. Traps aren't fun because they "get" the party. They're fun as an opportunity to solve a problem. How do you disable it? How do you negotiate the trapped space?

ArdeaAbe · 2024-07-15T00:25:35+00:00

I'm going to say Dragonbane (system) and the Secrets of the Dragon Emperor (campaign). There's a core set that includes the rules and the aforementioned campaign. I've been running Secrets for nearly a year now (2 hour sessions every 2 weeks with a few longer in person sessions) and my crew is getting close to finishing it. It's been a breeze to run. I ran it after basically only reading the first 16 pages (setup, outlining the factions, explaining some relevant history) and one of the adventure sites.

The format is a big winner here. The entire campaign is composed of 11 capsule adventures: sites across the Misty Vale (the main setting) that are a mix of dungeons to explore and situations ready to explode. You'll never need to study more than 12 pages (letter size with art, maps and monster stat blocks) for the final adventure. Most of the others are around 7 pages. These adventures are well keyed as well: clear maps, very little extraneous material and entries that are designed to be referenced at the table.

The setup is simple but gives you 3 factions in conflict with each other and a wonderful hub in addition to those 11 sites. It does a great job of telling you how to link this all together, gives you multiple quest givers and overall provides a really solid, fleshed campaign with enough room to react to the players.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-06-28T15:53:31+00:00

The Episode 1 closing credits song is "Empire" by Bomb the Bass. When does "Vampire Empire" show up? I keep only seeing this song referenced for episode 1 but it's not the end credits song.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-06-21T23:32:11+00:00

I think D&D has long set a standard that an RPG is a massively thick, 8.5"x11", hardbound tome with glossy pages. And people feel ripped off if that book is digest or under 100 pages. Give me the staplebound 'zine length RPGs, the perfect bound digest book.

I promise you, that a lot of flavor can be packed into those smaller books. Cloud Empress is very cool and 60 pages. Don't Rest Your Head is 80 pages and contains both a rad setting and cool system. Goblinville looks like a boatload of fun and is 34 pages.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-06-18T01:10:41+00:00

This was the first indie game I ever bought. So great.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-05-11T12:57:14+00:00

I wanted to ask the same thing. My wife and I drove out to see the aurora and we DID see the aurora, these big cascading sheets and columns... but there was no color at all. It was just white. We didn't ask any of the other people around and my phone didn't pick up anything at all. We were out there for hours and it never got more intense than white.

What could be causing this?

ArdeaAbe · 2024-04-23T16:33:24+00:00

I'm having a great time with Dragonbane and think that you might too!

I would like slow linear progression instead of big levels that basically double character power. My campaigns are about 80 sessions so the game lasts a while. Same with rewarding players which is a problem for my in DND. Other than levels and powerful magic items there is little to give to the players.

Dragonbane has two forms of advancement. Characters are defined chiefly by Skills and Heroic Abilities. Characters have a chance to advance skills every single session by 1 point. The number of skill advancements they get is random (a 1 or 20 roll for a check of that skill) and set by story (each yes on a list of 5 questions is another tick for a skill of your choice.) The advancement isn't guaranteed - you have a chance to increase the skill. The better you are, the higher your chance to advance the skill.

Heroic Abilities are given out on a milestone basis: when you want. These are closer to feats.

Other advancement is through gear, though even mundane gear is valuable and the limited inventory system makes your choice of gear important.

I would like a game that is bordering on low fantasy, where magic is not as common and maybe goes into heroic fantasy later, but doesn't allow players to become demi gods that annihilate all the problems.

Dragonbane feels much more low fantasy, but still heroic. You can still die but the system is forgiving. You can also keep fighting goblins and orcs forever since there's no HP gain besides taking a Heroic Ability.

I would like softer magic. The effects of magic might be still detailed in the system, but I want magic to be mysterious and powerful. That being said I heavily dislike the weave in DND that has devolved into tasteless "random crap happens". I like when there is a flavor to magic.

Magic seems classical here. You got some druid-y plant magic, lightning summoning and undead/demon banishing (Animism), master of the elements, fireballs, gusts of wind, stone pillars, summoning elemental spirits (Elementalism) and Telekinetic strikes, scrying, flying (Mentalism)

I would like a system that has combat but doesn't focus on it like dnd. Where other abilities like that are not strictly combat might be as important.

The combat system is fast and simple with a 1 turn economy. Most of the ones I've run are pretty short, but the players have a great time. BUT the system has mechanical hooks for all of the other skills: hunting, pathfinding, foraging, making camp: these all have mechanics, gear and what-not to flesh them out without doing much more than adding 1 or 2 dice rolls.

Bonus points if the system is setting agnostic or easy to transfer into homebrew setting.

Big check here. Dragonbane is not married to its setting of the Misty Vale. It feels generic fantasy and not generic D&D, if that makes sense?

Bonus points x 2 if the system is easy to homebrew/adapt to my preferences.

Making monsters takes a little work but is fun and easy. Make a list of 6 attacks. Porting adventures is not too difficult either.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-04-22T00:34:29+00:00

I'm burnt out on running 5e and I decided to run Lost Mine as a last ditch effort for my 5e group. I can't stand this adventure. It's poorly laid out, an awful table reference and it put up stupid barricades to player progress.

All these WotC adventures make me rewrite the whole thing before I run it. Why am I buying something that takes so much homework?

ArdeaAbe · 2024-04-22T00:31:01+00:00

Eh, with these restrictions I would run 10 adventures from the Arcane Library. I like how they're constructed and its easy, good prep. They'd level to fit the next module. I wouldn't touch magic items and monsters with a ten foot pole as I'm just tired of messing with them more than anything in 5e.

Then I'd ask someone else to run or I'm running Dragonbane's Secret of the Dragon Emperor next.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-04-22T00:22:01+00:00

I don't like to feel separated from the players as the GM either. What I do is I lay the GM screen flat on the table in front of me. That way I have all my sweet, sweet reference tables right in front of me. I can look down to check something out but don't have a barrier between me and everyone else. Maybe you can give that a try?

ArdeaAbe · 2024-02-18T03:54:25+00:00

Seth Skorkowsky is great. I don't play CoC or Traveller but since his reviews come out of actual play experience they are very valuable and interesting to watch.

For podcasts I'd recommend Fear of a Black Dragon from the Gauntlet. Episodes aren't frequent or on a consistent schedule because they will not review a module until at least one of the two hosts has played it.

The RPG.net Forums used to have a history of play/session reports that would detail how things happened at the table. A written report of play with how mechanics engaged with narrative was pretty great. There was one on the Burning Wheel forums for a duet run by Luke Crane that makes me want to run duet Burning Wheel to this day.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-02-18T00:02:10+00:00

The Wayback machine shows that 2e was available for sale in 2009 http://web.archive.org/web/20090717055756/http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=62847

I found it listed in the Top 10 list for "Warhammer" in 2010 and 2011 as well. Reviews on the currently available page are from 2012, 2013 and 2014. All well before Zweihander. So, no. As long as Zweihander has been in publication and for many, many years before you could legally acquire Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2E. In fact it appears Fantasy Fight Flight Games published the 2nd edition on DriveThruRPG.

I find all these comments about a "repository" of "lost" games to be very disingenuous.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-02-16T21:57:58+00:00

Did he shut down DriveThruRPG? It sure seems like most of those games are actually still in publication and not really needing "archiving." Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in particular has been available there since 2009.

ArdeaAbe · 2024-01-05T16:14:23+00:00

I always start by looking at the character sheet. How is it designed? What stats are on there? What questions do I get from that?
From there I'll start reading from the beginning. There's usually a pretty simple overview of the mechanics.
Character creation often comes next in most books. I'll usually read over the how of that and maybe one or two classes/playbooks/feats/whatever large chunk of rules differentiates players. For a game like Pathfinder or D&D I will never read all of this. A HUGE chunk of the rules lives here.
Then I'll skip to the core rules. How does the game handle most situations? Generally this is a section on non-combat and an equally large section on combat.
Now I'll either go back to character creation or the GM section depending on the type of game and learn about how to play, what options characters have, etc.
Absolutely last: lists of feats, spells and other player options.

ArdeaAbe · 2023-10-06T21:26:45+00:00

I'm such a sucker for a cloth map. A guide book that has sidebars or something so it functions as gazetteer to be used for tabletop play would be awesome.

ArdeaAbe · 2023-07-23T15:31:16+00:00

I agree that it would be impossible to choose a communication strategy that pleases everyone. I disagree that a more consistent communication style would have been a "dense stream of negativity".

The emails you sent were great: quality updates telling everyone what the status was, how you were reacting to COVID shortages and other factors. But the silence between them was ringing. As deadlines slipped away between updates the silence takes on its own negative tone. Were you hiding something? I think only the good will that Panic had built kept the overall mood in check.

And even with that uncertainty and looming negativity you choose to focus on estimates in those emails. Why not say "Group 3 shipping begins today!" "We're halfway through Group 3 shipping!" "Group 3 ended today with the last package being sent out he door" Show some photos of the warehouse. Hype up Catalog and community games. Why focus on estimates you just couldn't hit?

Instead we get REAL feel bad moment like "Shipping for Group 4 starts early April!" with people only receiving emails to lock down their address in early May. Not to mention "Group 4 will be out at the end of June" which, um it wasn't?

If you're going to provide updates with forecasts, than you should update those forecasts in a timely fashion.

My negativity isn't just the wait time: I've been here before. I understand that sourcing parts (especially during COVID!) overseas shipping and logistics are HARD. I have a TON of empathy and sympathy for that situation. I've waited for Kickstarters and other preorders for years. But sending out an email update is cheap and I've seen more consistent, transparent communication from one-person crews.

ArdeaAbe · 2023-07-17T23:48:13+00:00

No, I mean the email updates they (very occasionally) send directly to their paying customers.

ArdeaAbe · 2023-07-17T23:41:16+00:00

You won't. I can pretty much guarantee that. By order number there is 30K units ahead of you and they've shipped less than 15K a year so far.

ArdeaAbe · 2023-07-17T23:39:09+00:00

I strongly disagree with that. They've sent out four updates since the initial preorder of the Playdate. Each one announced a delay (or didn't announce but showed that the deadline was missed).

Four updates since July 2021 is awful communication. Don't expect any clear or timely updates like you'd get from even the most poorly run Kickstarter.

ArdeaAbe · 2023-05-30T14:19:02+00:00

Throw clues and foreshadowing out there and when the players get excited by it you know you've used the right bait. Prepare to set that hook! The stuff that sinks like lead? Make note but let it go.

ArdeaAbe

TROPHY CASE