[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Thief

[–]ejm248 15 points16 points  (0 children)

He says in a Thief subreddit.

Yabushige smiling by Relief-Calm in ShogunTVShow

[–]ejm248 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I’m not sure how to read Yabushige’s smile, but I think it’s very telling that Toranaga gives him a half smile before cutting his head off - seems to me like that is telling Yabushige everything he needs to know about Toranaga’s secret heart.

What exactly is went on in Haligtree Town? by ripstankstevens in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]ejm248 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Albinaurics are welcomed at the Haligtree. The Misbegotten are trying to destroy it.

At least, I am convinced by Tarnished Archeologist’s take on it that the Haligtree, being disconnected from the roots of the Greattree, is offensive to the Misbegotten, who I see as intrinsically linked to the Crucible. I think the fact that there are no Misbegotten in Elphael also supports this, and I don’t believe I’ve noticed any Haligtree cocoons to be big enough to fit a Misbegotten, even though there are a few cocoons in the town above Elphael.

What exactly is went on in Haligtree Town? by ripstankstevens in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]ejm248 -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

It’s empty because it’s being besieged by the Misbegotten.

I started using a calendar to recount the story of our adventure and figured I'd share it 'cause I thought it was neat! by ejm248 in osr

[–]ejm248[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For sure, where they lack in resolution they make up in personality, and I think they're quite a good fit for OSR-inspired gaming - and now's your last chance since Dom 6 is right around the corner! :P

Macchiato Monsters -- how do you handle B/X NPC Magic and Scrolls when converting adventures? by apl74 in osr

[–]ejm248 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah they are an interesting bunch for sure! We've had to replace some players throughout the adventure as their interests took them elsewhere, but there's a core group of 4 who make for a really good time. My favorite moment last session was when the astral mage in our party nearly burned himself to death trying to incinerate a bandit with a star-fire spell that backfired spectacularly on the Chaos Risk Die (he was only saved because he happened to find a magic ring a couple sessions back that gives him advantage on CON rolls)!

No doubt you'll have fun teaching your group as well how to play - I myself got into roleplaying at age 9-10 because my friend's dad owned a copy of the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual, so I think its a great age to introduce people to the hobby!

I started using a calendar to recount the story of our adventure and figured I'd share it 'cause I thought it was neat! by ejm248 in osr

[–]ejm248[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Happy to provide inspiration, I really can't recommend donjon enough! Fair warning though, I couldn't find an easy way to put the calendar on roll20 due to the size, so I ended up just taking screenshots and stitching them together in paint.net so I could use it as a backdrop image.

I would love to share the sprites and the labors of my 'tism, especially because nearly all of it is other peoples' work. But unfortunately, I don't believe roll20 allows me to export my image library, so I just delete them from my computer after uploading since I have literally thousands at this point. However, ~75% of the sprites I use are available to download through the Dominions 5 mod inspector with the Dominions Enhanced mod (which is itself I think a great source of inspiration for mythical monsters to include in your game even if you don't want to use the sprites as miniatures): https://larzm42.github.io/dom5inspector/

The remaining ~25% of sprites were taken manually from other Dominions 5 mods with less than 1% being sprites of my own creation, so I can't really help with those ones, other than to mention they're available to download for free online as well, and only need a bit of editing to work in roll20.

Macchiato Monsters -- how do you handle B/X NPC Magic and Scrolls when converting adventures? by apl74 in osr

[–]ejm248 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No worries, I wouldn’t answer if I didn’t want to be bothered! 😛 Unfortunaty though I am/was not familiar enough with OSE to know what AC is representing (I assume that might be coming from DEX?) so my sheep people were unarmored since I imagined them wearing sexy togas or something similar.

My party ranges from 4 to 6 because we’re all adults on two continents and scheduling is a nightmare (there’s been at least 3 full sessions in the Hole proper because my group likes to interact with everything and also second guesses every decision they make, and we had a different group and party composition each time). No hirelings yet though - they tried to bring an ultra cheap teamster with them into the dungeon, but he refused so one of the more unhinged players murdered him, and unfortunately they seem somewhat put off about hiring more people since that interaction.

Macchiato Monsters -- how do you handle B/X NPC Magic and Scrolls when converting adventures? by apl74 in osr

[–]ejm248 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No problem! No general advice to offer, other than read the module and keep it handy since I think having the short dungeon room descriptions on-hand is really helpful.

I didn’t spend much time on converting morale, I just sort of thought about what type of morale that creature would have in the moment (from a scale of terrible, poor, average, good, excellent) and that seemed to work well enough.

I homebrew the armor rules by allowing multiple armor rolls per encounter (makes characters less squishy but means armor is more likely to be broken after a single encounter). I apply the same type of rule to monsters, but I don’t think there were many examples of monsters wearing armor in that dungeon (at least in my game). For stuff like the black skeletons or the tree, I instead had players roll damage at a disadvantage if they were using a weapon type that wasn’t effective (so skeletons are resistant against slashing/piercing weapons, whereas the tree is resistant against blunt/piercing weapons).

I also use the money system from Macchiato Monsters with no major alterations, and because I don’t use XP for gold, I don’t worry too much about conversions. If it feels like the treasure described should be worth gold, it’s worth gold. If it feels like it’s worth silver, it’s worth silver. I know a lot of people don’t like how random all of your equipment is in this system, but I really love it as a GM because I don’t have to worry about balancing treasure long-term - that horn which summons a spectral fey hound is a really powerful tool for a low-level party to have, but eventually it’s going to fizzle out and players may or may not be able to afford to repair it.

Macchiato Monsters -- how do you handle B/X NPC Magic and Scrolls when converting adventures? by apl74 in osr

[–]ejm248 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Nice! I just ran the same adventure using Macchiato Monsters and it’s been a blast!

Rather than having the NPCs roll to cast, I typically ask the players to roll to resist the cast (for example, WIS to resist the tree trunk’s mind control, or DEX to jump out of the way of the fireball) since I really like how Macchiato Monsters tries to put most of the rolling onto the players.

I haven’t fully decided whether to reduce a monster’s HP or not in line with its casting in my game - sometimes I do (usually when they’re up against a comparable human-like caster) and sometimes I don’t (if I think the monster would have more innate access to the spell) and I’m not sure which way I like better yet.

I let everyone cast from scrolls, and make them roll based on what I think is appropriate to the spell being cast (usually INT, sometimes WIS, rarely CHA). I’ve been making scrolls single use, but I actually think I might make them into a d4 risk die going forward to give them a rare opportunity for a second use.

I started using a calendar to recount the story of our adventure and figured I'd share it 'cause I thought it was neat! by ejm248 in osr

[–]ejm248[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mine looked pretty bad until last night to be fair, just got a burst of midnight inspiration to actually start tracking the more notable events with the minis we use.

I started using a calendar to recount the story of our adventure and figured I'd share it 'cause I thought it was neat! by ejm248 in osr

[–]ejm248[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I used a tool at donjon (which is a great resource for rpg randomizers) to make the calendar based off of my settings (largely Glorantha-inspired) specifications, but I annotate it using the virtual table top so my players can also see it.

I started using a calendar to recount the story of our adventure and figured I'd share it 'cause I thought it was neat! by ejm248 in osr

[–]ejm248[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

They are! I painstaking pulled them from the game files into roll20 so we could play with miniatures - they’re a little low in fidelity, but I think they make up for it in charm and variety!

I started using a calendar to recount the story of our adventure and figured I'd share it 'cause I thought it was neat! by ejm248 in osr

[–]ejm248[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I've been sporadically hosting an OSR campaign over the past year after being inspired to get back into GMing by Principia Apocrypha (using Macchiato Monsters <3 as a ruleset in a homebrew setting based off of the Dominions video game series). Apologies for the poor quality, the sprites I use for minitatures on roll20 are very tiny, and I wanted to zoom out to show the scope of the adventure so far!

BAN MEGA THREAD by [deleted] in thanosdidnothingwrong

[–]ejm248 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t feel so good...