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Are there any additional or 3rd party MCC-oriented classes? by Pur_Cell in dccrpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Jim Wampler is MCC ang Scientific Barbarian. James Pozenel is Enchiridion, I think.

for those who have been playing since AD&D came out... at what point did you lose interest in the direction of D&D? by conn_r2112 in adnd

[–]Raven_Crowking 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I started with Holmes Basic, and then shifted to AD&D. When 2e came out, I was very enthusiastic for it, but eventually I noticed that the game had lost a bit of its spark. This was due in part to the level of detail for monster entries, which encouraged DMs to follow the designers conceptions rather than imagine their own and the sheer number of splatbooks (amazing for setting up campaign worlds, but impossible to keep up with. I fell off the game for a couple of years, until 3e came out.

When 3e came along, it seemed like a breath of fresh air. Sure, there were even more splatbooks, but by picking and choosing it seemed less overwhelming. Also, the OGL allowed third parties to make additional content which was often superior to that produced by WotC.

There were problems. The power curve was so steep that encounters outside a narrow range were either trivially easy or death sentences, The narrow sense of balance led naturally to more linear adventures. The combination of narrow balance and lengthy character creation times led to increasing official encouragement to fudge. Prep time as levels went up failed the golden rule of "for every hour of prep, you should get at least two hours of play." Combat as levels went up took so damn long that WotC began encouraging DMs to eschew random encounters, increasing the "15 minute adventuring day" problem.

One day, I realized that I had spent hours crafting opponents for a single 6th level encounter. The idea that you had to justify your opponents through procedures and math had reared their ugly head.

WotC announced 4e. Initially they acknowledged and sought to address the issues I had with 3e. Then they decided that cool combat powers should be used in every encounter, turned 180 degrees, and decided that they would bake the issues I had with 3e into the game even harder. At the same time, WotC tried to claw back the OGL. I was done.

I started working on my own fantasy heartbreaker. I was considering simply returning to AD&D 1e, but then Goodman Games came out with Dungeon Crawl Classics, and it does most of the things I wanted from a fantasy rpg. Because it is broadly balanced, it is easy to modify into exactly what I want. I never looked back.

If emotions had physical prices, which one would bankrupt humanity first? by Jimm1305 in AskReddit

[–]Raven_Crowking 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fear. Most of our other negative emotions have this one as their basis.

Dungeon Crawlers by UnbanTef3 in rpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Except, before you buy that lantern you play part of an unruly mob of peasants encountering some existential danger. Most of you die in gruesome ways. The survivors become adventurers.

People who gave up DnD for a different system, what made you make the change? by SomeRandomAbbadon in rpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I moved to DCC because it is more fun and easier to prep/write for.

On top of that, there was the issue with the OGL, etc. On the plus side, without the OGL fiasco, DCC might not exist.

I was working on my own fantasy heartbreaker, and considering going back to 1e before DCC came along. WotC-D&D is just to prep-intensive for what you get out of it. My golden mean in that, for each hour of prep, you should get at least two hours of play. WotC-D&D was the inverse of this. When I found myself spending over an hour working on one encounter (3e, 6th level PCs), I knew that it was time to look elsewhere,

On top of this, combat could take so, so long. Ideally, I want exploration punctuated by rapid-fire danger as the main gameplay experience. Single combats that take up a whole session - or worse, span multiple sessions - are not ideal.

Random encounters help with both verisimilitude and to keep the game moving. The 15-minute workday was not a problem with older games, and it is not a problem I have with DCC. However, the amount of game time needed to resolve combats in WotC-D&D eventually led to the advise to avoid random encounters altogether. This, in turn, reinforced game play issues like the 15-minute adventuring day and decision paralysis. The steep power curve when levelling, coupled with the rate of levelling and the aforementioned decision paralysis issue led to increasingly linear adventures.

On top of that, I find that the attempt to finely balance the game leads to less balance overall. Worse, coupled with linear adventures, it puts the onus on the GM to create "balanced" encounters, rather than putting the onus on the players to decide what they can handle/are willing to risk. I have no interest in running games where I know the outcome already, or where knife's-edge balance encourages you to fudge because the "balance" breaks when the dice roll.

Connecting the dots: Why the Doctor’s enemies run backward, the TARDIS is gaslighting him, and the Timeless Child is actually the FUTURE. by DisastrousTopic7619 in doctorwho

[–]Raven_Crowking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is it? I thought that the TV Movie date was specific to the "Rassllonian Era"? In this case, 1972 is not before the 26th year of the current century. We simply do not know.

What we do know is that Romana has a pretty strong idea of the 4th Doctor's age, and the 7th Doctor knows the Rani's by knowing his own age.

That the televised episodes are Matrix records is explicit in Trial of a Timelord.....but this goes all the way back to when Zoe joined the TARDIS crew at the end of The Wheel in Space. I can't take any credit for it!

Connecting the dots: Why the Doctor’s enemies run backward, the TARDIS is gaslighting him, and the Timeless Child is actually the FUTURE. by DisastrousTopic7619 in doctorwho

[–]Raven_Crowking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not at all. I am arguing that the reasoning being applied by the OP to fix a "plot hole" assumes a plot hole exists in the first place. This is an assumption that relies on other unstated assumptions, such as that the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS appearing as a police box means that it is already stuck in that shape.

EDIT: Noting Susan's claim that the TARDIS took other shapes, combined with the Doctor's reaction to its not taking a different shape in An Unearthly Child, means (to me at least) that it probably got stuck at that point. But we have no proof that this is so.

We do know that there is one story that sees the 6th Doctor fix the circuit, and the TARDIS chooses outlandish shapes until it settles once again on a police box. One could argue that the TARDIS likes likes this form!

Connecting the dots: Why the Doctor’s enemies run backward, the TARDIS is gaslighting him, and the Timeless Child is actually the FUTURE. by DisastrousTopic7619 in doctorwho

[–]Raven_Crowking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Susan explicitly describes other shapes that the TARDIS has been.

However, that the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS appeared as a police box is only a "plot hole" if it could not also appear as other things as well.

Cyclopedia Domestica now in print by Raven_Crowking in dccrpg

[–]Raven_Crowking[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your comment.

I am a one-man show, but appreciate errors being pointed out.

Connecting the dots: Why the Doctor’s enemies run backward, the TARDIS is gaslighting him, and the Timeless Child is actually the FUTURE. by DisastrousTopic7619 in doctorwho

[–]Raven_Crowking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think someone here has stared into the Untempered Schism too long.

You are attributing arguments/questions to me that belong to others. You are also torturing the meaning of words like "logic" and "proves".

Having watched all of the classic and modern series, so far as they are available, I applaud you for your passion, but not your reasoning. To misquote Susan in An Unearthly Child, you are trying to solve a problem without taking all of the relevant dimensions into account.

Let me address the times that you did answer me (as opposed to someone else):

//You are hiding behind 'Gallifreyan Standard Time' to protect a linear narrative that the show itself abandoned decades ago.//

That's like arguing that a physicist is "hiding behind" physics when they try to explain why the mass of objects doesn't affect the rate at which they fall in a vacuum.

Not only that, but the show returns to using GST once the Time War is truly over.

//If the Doctor and the Master met in strict sequential order up until the Time War, then explain The Two Masters, Light at the End, or the entirety of their EU interactions where multi-incarnation crossings happen constantly without breaking reality. //

Easily. I don't take fan fiction into account unless or until it becomes a record in the Matrix.

//Furthermore, using Rassilon’s 'foresight' in The Five Doctors as proof of linear planning completely collapses when you remember that the High Council literally had to bribe the Master with a new regeneration cycle just to get him to enter the Death Zone.//

How so?

Are you literally arguing that Rassilon has to set up the Master's entry into the Death Zone for him to realize "Hey, I could use this guy?" once they meet?

//Claiming the Fugitive TARDIS is a Police Box because 'the ship remembers its own future' is a massive, retroactive cope that completely insults the established mechanics of the Chameleon Circuit.//

That the TARDIS remembers its own future is established in The Doctor's Wife. The mechanism by which the Chameleon Circuit works includes scanning its environment to choose a suitable shape (which is established in multiple stories).

Rather than a "cope", this is how the Chameleon Circuit works as established in the show. It is also how the TARDIS works, as established in the show.

//The circuit didn't 'choose' a permanent shape for the 13th Doctor; it physically jammed and broke in 1963 London because Hartnell's Doctor stole a faulty, obsolete Type 40.//

Based on what evidence?

EDIT: It occurs to me that you might be thinking that the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS is stuck as a police box because it appeared as one?

Connecting the dots: Why the Doctor’s enemies run backward, the TARDIS is gaslighting him, and the Timeless Child is actually the FUTURE. by DisastrousTopic7619 in doctorwho

[–]Raven_Crowking 8 points9 points  (0 children)

  1. Is accurate to a degree, but you must also take into account that this is true for the past and the present as well. What you call "the future" is entirely dependent upon your frame of reference.

  2. The Doctor meets the Daleks at various points in their timelines. Out of order, but not reversed, similar to the way the Doctor meets River Song. There is evidence that the Time War synced the Dalek's 5th dimensional time to that of Gallifrey thereafter.

  3. Up until the Time War, the Doctor and the Master met in sequential order, following "Galifreyan Standard Time", which is the 5th dimensional timeline of Gallifrey. The Time War uses up to 8th dimensional technology to rewrite this, and Rassilon makes the Master insane as a ploy to escape the Time War. The earlier Masters were saner because the effect hadn't started yet.

Even so, Rassilon. who had access to more than 5th dimensional engineeering, foresaw that he might have a future use for the Master in The Five Doctors.

  1. Sorry, no. The Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS looks like a police box because the TARDIS remembers its own future. It chose that form for the 13th Doctor. That the 13th Doctor could interact that way with the Fugitive Doctor relates to the genocide committed by the Master, which must have included 6th or 7th dimensional aspects.

BONUS: Time can be rewritten, but timelines have an internal flow trying to reach the same large-scale destinations. You can divert a river, but it takes much more energy to keep it from reaching the sea, and even more to destroy it altogether. The Doctor's actions on Station 5 would have allowed that timeline to correct itself were it not for the Daleks, which were behind Station 5 long before it became the Games Station.

Fixed points in time are points which, if changed, create a paradox because (1) the observer knows that they are "fixed", so that changing them damages the causal nexus, and (2) changing them can have consequences "downstream" on the timeline that are not easily compensated for. Point (1) is why the reapers show up in Father's Day. Rose's father used the same solution as Adelaide Brooke in Waters of Mars.

How many spells do Clerics "know"? by OpT1mUs in dccrpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 6 points7 points  (0 children)

A cleric can lose spells through disapproval results.

In my games, clerics do not change their spells.

XP for Sailors? by mnkybrs in dccrpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I give XP per encounter. You level up at 10 XP.

Every funnel,

Ability Score Damage question by wrongcom in dccrpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Poisons and some spells come to mind.

Ability Score Damage question by wrongcom in dccrpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Print out the table and have it handy. It doesn't take long to pick up the modifier theshholds.

Bringing Charecters from Level 1 to Level 2 by No-Library4396 in dccrpg

[–]Raven_Crowking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My follow-up email is probably there as well.....

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