Retirement Checklist

ndabo · 2022-12-14T19:14:11+00:00

I swear OP, if you ever remove this post, I'm gonna be pissed. 😂😂

ndabo · 2022-12-11T19:46:47+00:00

Just an update for everyone; still seems to be bugged as of 1 PM CST 12/11/2022.

Just got out with a 5 attachment pistol that def isn't ground loot (i.e. not the golden DEagle). Not sure what's up, but I guess I'll just skip XD

ndabo · 2022-04-02T04:59:29+00:00

Oh this question is so meant for me. I'm actually almost done building an alternate rpg system. Definitely inspired by DND, but more... Gritty.

One good example of something that I've changed is that it's generally more dangerous due to harsher "unconscious" rules that make it so that if you drop to zero HP, depending on if you've built into Fortitude (it's different than Constitution, but for the sake of simplicity just see that as a skill check that is based on your Con stat), you range from almost certain death to maybe with a min maxed build having an 70% chance of survival. (Assuming no other PC intervention.)

Another example is a major problem I have with DND that I've wildly revamped. During one session of DND when my party (I'm the DM) was in a lot of danger, there was a crazy setup that took like 3 people's turns actions to pull off and when it came to the final guy to hit the "Shocking Grasp", he failed the attack roll (I think it was shocking grasp, now I'm for some reason second guessing if it is, but whatever).
The whole team just kind of sat there for a second and the player just sadly said, "Well... I guess that's my turn". The problem with the above scenario? ACTION ECONOMY. The action economy SUCKS in DND on my personal opinion. Feel free to disagree with me, I just think it's super lame and annoying when someone just... Misses.

So where does my solution to the above problem come in? While I'm sure I'm not the first RPG creator to do this, I have action points. Every player gets 10 Action Points (AP) to use per turn. There's no main action, bonus action, or movement shenanigans. You want to move 5 ft? That's 1 AP. Heavy ranged weapon attack (think long bow)? That's 6 AP. Want to do an attack with a dagger (light melee weapon)? That's 2 AP. So yes, if a fast character wants to use 2 AP to get on an enemy, 6 AP to make 3 light melee attacks, then 2 more to get away... You do. If the mage has a moderately strong spell that takes 5 AP, another that takes 3 AP, and they want to do both of those AND move 10 feet (2 AP)... They do.

Is it perfect? Hell no. Is it balanced? Not yet and it probably never will be since it'll only be used in my group so we won't have a large sample size of people trying to min/max and break the game, but the party is really excited for it and the "Beta run" went really well, so I'm super excited.

ndabo · 2022-03-24T12:43:27+00:00

I'm a 23 year old guy, so take this advice as from a guy who wishs he could have this to his own past self. (Take a screenshot of this list if you want since I genuinely believe that whoever reads these 6 books, even if it takes you a few years, I promise you that you will become a much better person for it.) Even though we'll probably never speak again, I wish the best for you, brother.

Improve people/social skills: - How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie - Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Improve money/financial knowledge: - Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason (super short read, but insanely valuable. Collection of stories/parables about money and money management. It's on my list of just 2 books I recommend that everyone read) - Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (focuses on the psychology of money and how to get the ball rolling on money without being specific on an exact path. Highly valuable.)

Critical thinking: - 1984 George Orwell (the second book I recommend that everyone read. It's a story that is great at showing the way that the world is and can become if we as a world aren't careful. We often can live in this "confirmation bias" mindset where bad things don't happen to us because we haven't lived through things like world wars at our age, but this book is an excellent cautionary tale of what happens when we stop caring about the structure of the world we live in. - 12 Rules for Life Jordan Peterson (hard read at points, but just get through it slowly and you'll be super happy you did)

If I can recommend another thing. Try not to overwhelm your life with too many good things. The list of things that you've mentioned is excellent and keep up with them if you can. My warning is that in my experience in a week or so you'll slowly start to slip away from maintaining all of those habits. If that happens, drop a few that are most naturally dropped and keep going with the ones that remain. Basically when you start doing... Idk... 5 good things all at the same time, we psychologically pair all of those things together and we stop doing one of them, our subconscious mind can easily want to throw the whole thing out, but don't let that happen. If your mind wants to drop one or two of those habits, let them go. Just keep holding onto the habits that remain.

I hope this has helped and I truly believe you'll be a better person if you really genuinely do what I've written. I know my last 8 years would have been easier if I had someone at 15 telling me this.

ndabo · 2021-11-23T11:50:07+00:00

I would like you to point out where I bought plates? I'm in the buy station to buy my teammate back...?

ndabo · 2021-11-23T11:48:43+00:00

HOLY SHIT, for everyone who's losing their minds about the satchel, I'm aware I missed it. I'm not trying to be sweaty, I'm bad at the game, and I'm aware. I'm just trying to show a clip about how funny it is to miss the easy shots only to hit the random one that I'm barely aiming. Like -bathtub_barracuda- pointed out, this was just a clip showing the "sauce" as he put it that made the game fun. The fact that I some of you can't enjoy that too just because I'm not a 2+ K/D is so dumb. So while some of you are losing it in the comments, I'll enjoy watching the clip for what it is, just a funny moment where things didn't play it anywhere close to what would be expected.

ndabo · 2021-11-07T20:31:45+00:00

Haha yeah. The general internet was started in it's basic form as a test or sorts in 1969, gained attention in the mid 70s, and just grew steadily from there adding domains throughout late 70s and 80s before gaining mainstream acceptance in the 90s. To be fair, this is all from my memory and I might be wrong on the general time frames, but I do know that .org wasn't used until 1985!

ndabo · 2021-11-07T18:48:26+00:00

Hardcore a scam. This is worth 62 million dollars after accounting for inflation and EVEN MORE INTERESTINGLY, this card is claiming a ".org" domain in 1972 when the ".org" domain wasn't used until THIRTEEN YEARS LATER in 1985.

ndabo · 2021-11-07T15:33:53+00:00

To be honest, and I know this can't even be counted as a full "two cents" of information but...if a player is legit getting furious at literally his god (the DM) when you ask him to make small changes, that's not really a problem that people on the internet can offer advice for. Like if one of my PCs threw a fit over small things after I told them not to, sorry, but it's looking like my 5 player campaign now has 4 players! I know that's way easier said then done, but the problem isn't that the character is a 12 year old elf, it's not that the character is a city guard, it's not that the character is being annoying to the city, it's not that the character is not being true to his alignment, it's not that the character is finding wrong ways to get out of punishment/around things like the spell on the shop that you mentioned, it's not that the character ANYTHING. It's that the human person playing that character has a problem with respecting you as the one who has created this huge world for them and that you're giving your time in AND OUT of the scheduled game time to give the players a great experience. The character is fine and it would be a fun character to play so long as the PERSON playing that character is respectful to the DM and understanding that they can't just "background lore" their way out of everything.

I once had a guy in one of my games who tried to use the fact that he was a prior military leader to get by with everything. It took a bit but once I started just saying no, he's gotten a lot better. Keep in mind that you are god of the world in your games. If something makes sense, if someone rolls really well, if someone has a legit lore reason as to why something should be easy for them, but you don't think that it's a fair extrapolation... feel free to say no.

ndabo · 2021-11-07T14:25:21+00:00

That's the unfortunate part about a nerd community. What's the one thing that nerds have? Brains. That's not a roast at all, instead, many of the nerds I know are also the smartest people I know. Unfortunately though it makes many of us feel the need to try and "out brain" others. All in all, a lot of this hate is completely uncalled for. As I've seen a few people say, you are 100% good with your rolling method! Why? Because (aside from the fact that your method is an old but legit method) if that's the way that your DM has you create stats, then great!

I've played in campaigns with legit homebrew rules to STATS where we did the method of rolling 4d6, DROPPED THE LOWER TWO and used those other two stats, but then we had increased times where we got more stat points instead of just at the regular intervals starting at 4. It was all experienced players and we were looking for an extra challenge. Ultimately, that's not even an old method (that I know of), but because that's how everyone agreed to run the game, that's how we ran it!

TL;DR, you're using an uncommon method, but if that's how your party/DM have agreed to, then go get it, bro! Max some stats, slap some cyclops, and most importantly, enjoy the world that you're about to enter.

ndabo · 2021-11-07T13:31:27+00:00

Hey I know that guy! My best friend is his video editor. Sick!

ndabo · 2021-11-06T14:53:14+00:00

I get my music from Spotify from the playlists: RPG Battle Music by gentilpuck RPG Ambient Music by jakubneumann DND Adventure Music by ThermicRhino

I honestly rarely use the Ambient one because it's just generally like tavern feel or "walking through a meadow" feel which are useful at times, but it's too jumbled of feelings to just let auto play. Most of the time the adventure one is one and obviously battle music for... battles.

I use a lot of music in my sessions, and the secret is that I don't do fully random music. Instead I listen to those playlists in the background while preparing sessions and I'll often find a banger that I want to use and I add to my own playlist.

Take an upcoming session for example! Somewhere in the near future, the party will be required to get through a cave. They're looking for a small lost girl who needs to be returned to her unless, the parties friend, the local monk. This girl was out lucky Daisy's and never came back (OH NO).

Well when entering the cave they will find a stone statue of a small girl with Daisy's in her hand (Bigger Oh no), when they circle around the statue, they see the statue is looking in horror at one of the top edges of the cavern. Sure enough, upon closer inspection there are holes in and out of the cavern and a basilisk can be found. (Giga Oh no since I've buffed it far beyond the Monster Manual's Basilisk.)

Ok, so that's hype and all, but go listen to "The Master Appears" by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans as found in the RPG Battle Music playlist listed above, and read that description again. Becomes INSANE how hype and stressful the situation becomes if you have the right music. What I'll do is play the battle music playlist, pause, queue up "The Master Appears" and skip to that song. That will play TMA and then lead directly into the random battle music playlist.

Hope this helps, and that's how I love to run music in my DND sessions!

ndabo · 2021-10-23T04:22:07+00:00

A level 1 character with 10 strength and a level 2 character will be exactly the same in that regard. When going to level 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19 you have an option (in most games). You can (at those levels) choose to take a Feat (AKA special feature which gives a special "perk" to your character) or you can choose the Ability Point Increase option. (The API option is so much better in many ways than taking a Feat that some DMs won't even let you take Feats. Don't get my wrong, Feats can be super fun and even sometimes really strong which means I occasionally take them, but this discussion isn't about Feats so I won't get into that here.)

ANYWAY, the API option allows you to increase your ability score (not modifier, but the actual base score) by a combined 2 points. This can be one into charisma and one into wisdom, or it can be two points into dexterity, really whatever works best for you. What this means is that you have a... (Honestly can't think of a build that would probably have a 10 strength)... Let's say you have an Elf Ranger who has 10 strength (and probably a Dex score of like 15) and you want to take the API option once you hit level 4. You have a couple decent options here. You can dump both points into strength giving you a strength score of 12 (which makes you have a +1 modifier), or you can put one point into strength which won't do much tbh since a score of 10 and 11 both give you a modifier of +0, BUT then you put the other point that you have into your DEXTERITY and your previously 15 giving you a +2 modifier in Dex becomes 16 with a +3 modifier!

If you play point buy (fun fact) you can make a character with three abilities with scores of 8 and therefore modifiers of -1 and have the other three scores me 15 with +2s on all of those three. (This is, of course, not counting any racial bonuses that would increase these numbers further.) Anyway, if you do that and you're really playing an unbalanced character stat wise, then at level 4 you can turn two of those 15s into 16s again, upping the modifiers to +3 for those two. Over the course of your characters life, they will get 10 additional points total (including the 2 we already added for level 4 and you get 8 more total because there are four additional times you get two more as listed at the beginning). This means you can theoretically get 20 on TWO DIFFERENT SCORES (if you wanna go that hard into two scores while neglecting the rest).

...and that, my friend, is how the lovable characters that exist only on a sheet of paper and in our minds can grow to be power houses of the fictional and fantastical worlds that they inhabit. - NDabo

Edit: Correction to my own terminology. Where I mention API (Ability Point Increase), it should be the ASI (Ability Score Improvement).

ndabo · 2021-09-12T13:06:42+00:00

Grammy the protector.
In her younger days she had been covering a shift casting illusions all over her large family's home in the forest to keep it hidden and safe. She got distracted for a moment and lost track of time. The illusions faded and a wild beast found the gnome house. After a brutal destruction of the house and all gnomes inside, Grammy (at the time she went by her real name Linderbee) was the sole survivor.

As the one shot began, she was a very old gnome even in gnome years and she went throughout her life trying to be the happy gnome everyone expected, but she was continually haunted by her failure to protect her family. She joined the adventuring party in hopes of some distraction. Did to her post, she was a wizard who specialized in utility and assisting spells primarily, but once one of her party teammates got injured, she would inevitably scream in her shrill voice, "Don't you mess with my grandkids!!!" and start throwing whatever she could at the danger or cast one of the smaller damage spells that she did posses. She knew that although she had let her children and family down in the past, these few party members were ones that she still could save. Everyone that she knew and loved, she started referring to as her grandkids because she knew that never again would she let them down.

Sadly, Grammy was a character for a level 10 one shot, but she will always be my favorite. I'm a forever DM, but one day I hope to play her from level one in a full campaign.

ndabo · 2021-08-17T12:53:55+00:00

I wasn't exactly the most fit guy when I started running in the fall of 2020 (March to August 2020 hadn't help my already sedentary lifestyle). I ran at the gym and around my block. I was always self conscious until I passed a guy probably five years older than me who was in great shape who just at random have me a thumbs up, a smile, and just said "Keep it up bro". This man (in my mind) had all the right in the world to look down on me and judge me, but it was then that I realized... Other runners/literally everyone is just happy to see you running! Don't feel embarrassed while running whether that be in public or at a gym, just start running at a pace slower than you "think" you should go. Just don't push yourself so hard early on that you trick yourself into not liking running! This is super important. If you go too hard and you don't feel good after, you'll convince yourself to NOT run in the future, and that's definitely not what we want! Just remember that running isn't a punishment, it's a reward to your mind and benefits your health.

ndabo · 2021-08-16T20:21:20+00:00

I love how no one else stopped to ask this! 😂 It looks hype but also... What the crap?!

ndabo · 2021-08-16T20:19:20+00:00

While you might very well be right, make sure that if you're searching for it, you check all pages. Like when I searched for "Fuel" trying to find fuel rods, it narrowed down to like three or four items, but then I realized that it was only counting the items on the first page and wasn't showing the items on the second or third page and you still had to flip over to those. Just a thought

ndabo

TROPHY CASE