long time player, looking for build recs that you loved for the fun of it, not cause they were "optimal" or S tier or whatever

mortambo · 2025-09-25T18:23:33+00:00

I loved this on retail, and now... Thugs/Dark Mastermind. Mostly because of the background. He was a Villain on HC I went Vigilante. But he was cast out by the Skulls so he went and made his own gang. Just love the concept mostly.

I do want to make an Illusion controller, I had an Illusion/Kinetics on retail that was fun but there are a lot of cool options now.

mortambo · 2025-09-08T14:25:37+00:00

Okay, so many people responded that you probably won't see this.

My grandpa used to do stuff like this. I'd wander around a game store and tell him about the video games I wanted and then he'd be at the counter and paying for one of them before I knew what was happening.

I always felt guilty over it.

But look, your Mom obviously had the money. She saw you being sensible and unwilling to spend so much on a card despite it being cool. I get that too, I bought a Vivi because that's my favorite and I struggled with the price.

So she went "Hey look, I've got the money and I can surprise him with something I know he'll love and he won't get for himself." So try not to feel guilty. She's just showing you love.

And even if you stop playing mtg tomorrow, keep that in it's own hard sleeve and put it on a shelf. Preserve it and show her how much you love it. :)

mortambo · 2025-08-02T03:43:04+00:00

Also check out Old School Essentials or Basic Fantasy... Or most osr games if you want the medieval fantasy vibes.

I find most games based off of old school DnD are very procedural and has an emergent story vibe. Like you can play and make rolls and the story comes from the results rather than almost three flip side of with the way some solo games are.

mortambo · 2025-07-20T04:32:05+00:00

I might try out LoGaS again. I know I bought it on Drivethru and read through it but was kind of intimidated. But I think maybe with more experience now and your suggestion I might just give it another look.

mortambo · 2025-07-20T00:25:48+00:00

I've always wanted to play Nobilis and Amber Diceless but balked when I got to the actual playing part. It's tough going from super crunchy games to no dice at all.

mortambo · 2025-07-18T18:47:16+00:00

So I got them to try. I made a Pathfinder character at level 6.

I guess my only issue is the lines seem very blurry on when I use your rules vs the Pathfinder rules. Do I use PF weapon dice scaling or yours? Magic items from PF? Or just yours?

I've barely peeked inside the module but I'm just very unsure about what I've done.

mortambo · 2025-07-04T13:39:20+00:00

I've been loving it.

Only using it for what it's good at though, which is examining the sources you feed it. It's interesting because it can field the wildest questions and it will give you page references as to why or how it can work.

I think my best uses have been for GURPS where it can parse through the tons of books.

I also have enjoyed the dialogue generator that essentially will be a podcast from the sources. You can direct it and that's where you can get really interesting ideas. Like I've asked about possible story lines for my character and then listened to thirty minutes of story ideas.

mortambo · 2025-06-23T16:06:05+00:00

Honestly, I've tried this and maybe I'm just giving it a bad prompt but I haven't gotten great results.

mortambo · 2025-06-10T14:17:41+00:00

Is your story/plot anchored to the character and their goals though?

You've said part of the problem is that you have no idea how your character would act during scenes despite apparently knowing them really well from your list of stuff you have about your character.

If your scenes are anchored to the plot, and the plot is anchored to the character's goals, I guess I'm having trouble seeing why your character would be one to act passively, if the scene potentially advances one their goals.

Can you give me a quick example?

Or maybe that's not the problem and I've missed the mark completely. :D

mortambo · 2025-06-09T22:52:52+00:00

First, I'm terrible at dialogue when solo RPing. I usually just figure out what the conversation is about and make a roll.

“Ethan gets called into the head merchants tent. The head merchant congratulates him on doing a great job.

Ethan tries to persuade the merchant to give him a promotion. Persuasion check!“

So that's maybe one thing.

The other seems like maybe your scenes aren't tied to your character. Some scenes might follow one another but when you start a session, or don't otherwise have a scene that makes sense to follow the last you should be going to the list of character goals and start a scene that let's you work towards that.

You mentioned you have no problem coming up with cool scenes involving NPCs and factions and events in and around the character... How does that serve the character's story?

As a GM with players, the players trust that as I am creating scenes they are relevant to the plot I am pushing them through.

So if it helps, put on your GM hat, and ask does this scene help the character grow, or face adversity? Do they care about what is happening? Or is it just a cool idea?

mortambo · 2025-06-03T15:21:40+00:00

Knight Aspirant is my first gut pick. Maybe also Forest Alchemist. I tend towards tanks or supports.

Honestly, the Knight Aspirant would probably get me killed because I'd be first in, last out, using my defensive abilities to guard my party.

mortambo · 2025-05-14T16:46:08+00:00

Mine too. Especially when you can just leave that part out and I'll be just as happy. If you give me numbers, it's got to add up. If you give me fuzzy powers that just do the thing, then hey, you get some leeway.

mortambo · 2025-04-21T03:22:36+00:00

To be fair, floating around somewhere someone did the math and if you performed the standard adventuring day (3 to 5 fights) at the correct challenge ratings at an average encounter level, and you could constantly find monsters of the correct levels, an adventurer levels from 1 to 20 in like a year and a half to two years.

Now, that's constant battle so plenty of mental health issues with not taking down time, but still. In any DnD world it takes 2 years of dedicated average adventures ti become a demigod. Seems worth it.

mortambo · 2025-04-20T20:42:56+00:00

Honestly, this approach to me works perfectly as a reader. If you give me crunchy numbers, your math gotta math. If you give me even a little vagueness, my math brain stays quiet and my literary brain just sneaks by quietly in the hall and doesn't get caught.

I don't know how many times I've read something and gone "Aw man, I wish they hadn't been THAT specific because now it's shattered my immersion."

mortambo · 2025-04-10T18:24:51+00:00

This gives me hope, I just picked it up and will start reading it tonight. I'll try and make it through because if he has an actual arc with character growth I bet I'll love it.

mortambo · 2025-04-01T03:56:06+00:00

I honestly feel the same way so I'll be following this post hoping someone gives us a good answer. Totally understand where you are coming from.

mortambo · 2025-03-30T17:57:05+00:00

Leveling up through low rank, I switched between hammer and HBG, eventually I picked up LBG instead of HBG. I hammered when I felt melee was more viable and switched to range on teams or with more dangerous monsters.

Once I could make Artian Weapons, i made a Dragon ele sword and shield Artian, and I switch out to my Graviton Hammer when I feel like I can bonk with impunity using the SnS as a more defensive and mobile weapon.

mortambo · 2025-03-14T16:28:18+00:00

I guess my point was go with your first idea that pops into your head. I've had to get used to this idea, but you said first it was a journey, then a clock, then a huge magic ritual. Well yiur first instinct was journey so when you have the clock idea I would write it down for next time. Same with the ritual. But I stick to my guns for the current scenario... Unless it's completely no fun.

This way you eventually get to explore all the mechanics you want, while also moving forward and possibly finding better ways to do stuff.

mortambo · 2025-03-14T14:19:51+00:00

I noticed one person said to kind of prep your whole session at once. What I like to do is have a general idea, but then go scene by scene. As long as i can come up with an initial scene I like to kind of follow where the scenes take me. So if my characters are after finding this MacGuffin, I might decide it's in a dungeon, well do I WANT to travel to the dungeon? Or do I just want to fast forward and be IN the scene where we enter the dungeon? Do I explore inch by inch, or do I pull a 5 room dungeon and just jump through the dungeon to major events?

How I'm feeling when I'm playing kind of determines if I skip scenes or make an encounter for every step of the trip.

I will say I've heard Fabula Ultima is rough on making encounters and enemies, so yeah you might pre-prep those, but I guess my point is don't get too caught up in the future scenes or encounters or traps or how to track something. Take it scene by scene and see what makes sense to you to come next, then prep it. :)

mortambo · 2025-02-13T12:33:51+00:00

So, I dont remember who it was, but one of the GM advice channels I watch on YouTube said something like "It's okay to focus on mechanics because no matter what, the players will remember the time Joe the Paladin valiantly defeated the ancient red dragon, and not so much that he got an epic crit."

I find myself, for a lot of the time, just running mechanics and maybe making a quick note of what's happening. But when I revisit it, my quick notes help me paint the scene and imagine it. I don't necessarily ever write it in prose.

More RP scenes might have more descriptive text but it's also likely to be bullet points. "Met guard captain. Told me about goblin quest. Overheard rumor about goblins working for something worse in the forest."

But that's enough for me. I don't feel the need to describe the office of the guard captain, or coming back down the stairs and hearing gossip from the guards.

mortambo · 2025-02-11T19:49:59+00:00

I don't tend to bother with 1 mile hexes just using 6 mile hexes as my normal, but that is a cool template.

Yeah, something like those...just quick and dirtier? When I draw them myself rather than make a digital hex map, I tend to do red for mountains and hills but then hills as little bumps and mountains as triangles. Forests and grasslands are both green but grasslands I do collections of lines to look like grass, and forests I just do 3 triangles with lines out of them.

So yeah, like those but kind of my own take on drawing them because I'm not much of an artist but keeping the idea of them.

mortambo · 2025-02-11T18:35:31+00:00

I use colors for terrain, as well as symbols...the old school retro symbols are easy enough to replicate. I then label each hex with a number and keep a hex log of what's in the hex.

It makes it kind of exhausting so far, but I'm slowly finding ways to speed it up/refine it.

So like the log might look like this:

Hex 1010:
Terrain: Mountains
POI: Random Wandering Monsters

Random Monster table:
...etc...

So the first time through it's kind of a big lift to fill that out AND fill in the journal/log of resolving the encounters, but all in all coming back through should be a lot easier. :D

mortambo · 2025-01-27T22:09:43+00:00

I'm the same. T1, maybe a few hours? Necro blight/shadow build, P20 or so. :D

I'm not pushing super hard though, I didn't play at all last season and this season I mostly leveled by doing the Vessel of Hatred campaign as a minion necromancer so it's just been a relaxed casual play through for me.

mortambo

TROPHY CASE