All the best
Breygor

Other than that, the results of the survey weren’t really surprising, but interesting none the less. As always, great job guys.

So here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbstkXowlAc

keep up the cracking work.

Simon
Wales

Creating a pared down list of advantages, disadvantages, and skills is a *huge* help for players feeling overwhelmed when making characters. There’s a great tool for this at http://www.sjgames.com/gameaids/gurps/sorter/ , lets you go through the trait master lists and mark each trait’s availability/desirability to make custom lists.

Also, templates. It’s a bit more work for the GM, but having some pre-made templates (Chapters 7 and 15 in the Basic Set) for players to look at can help them see what sorts of things “should” go with certain character types, even if they don’t use the actual templates (and if they do, bam, character’s done, time to get to the game!).

As for GCA and ‘too much info’, if you want to fiddle around a bit, you can make a custom data file for your game, that would include *only* those traits allowed in the current game. No more scrolling through ‘Doesn’t Breathe’ or ‘Extra Limbs’ for Old West characters, they simply wouldn’t be on the list.

The GURPS GM screen is great, but I eventually made my own as well. Took some work, but the results were well worth it! It has nothing on it that I didn’t put there, really speeds things up.

Anyway, hope some of that’s helpful. Looking forward to Part 2!

My suggestion would be the following. Read through the emails you receive for the week. Select a couple to read and discuss as they pertain to the topic at hand. The remainder, you can either post on the forum to answer, or have the sender post on the forum, and the hosts can respond to the questions contained in the email. This will provide feedback for all, keep your show times reasonable, and allow you to store the old emails (on the forum) – allowing you to bring them back if the topic is right for the show.

Just my 2 copppers.

Thanks douches, for your witty banter and dedication to the most entertaining RPG podcast around.

I would suggest you run it as a midnight thing on either Saturday or Sunday night

I could be wrong, but it was my understanding that the way the DDI integration feature worked was such that it allowed people who had DDI accounts to share all of the data within DDI with users that had no DDI account. Essentially, the DDI integreation feature would extract all of the data in DDI and store it locally in a set of XML files. These files could then be shared with other Masterplan users who could import the XML data into Masterplan without ever logging in to DDI.

Of course, I could be wrong. I often am.

Cheers,
DMSamuel

RPGA is awesome, I play a lot of it. I have home games and I love public RPGA. The key is that it is very casual. You can show up and play or not. And really you’ll tend to get the same groups to show up.

There is also the ‘my realms’ adventures where the GM makes up their own RPGA adventure.

Finally it’s really awesome to get exposure to so many different GM’s and players mixing and matching and learning from each other while they run games back to back.

You can absolutely run off the rails… not in rewards… but the game play. I often run away from them. For instance I had a play that was supposed to investigate a drug smuggling ring. He went out and bought a drug factory, he had the money. From that point on the module is out the window.

And I think it’s funny that someone would point out an article telling someone else how they played their own game back in the day. There were a lot of different ways and means and home rules. There wasn’t ONE TRUE WAY.

I would argue that the class Druid wasn’t meant to simulate Shannara’s Druid. There are other in game options if you need the mechanics in combat to fit Shannara’s druid. First I’d consider multiclassing or a hybrid. Or, if your up to this level of role playing, even picking a fighter straight up and re-skinning.

Frankly I think they should replace that with a picture of Bruce’s pic with him leering at the breasticles of that fine chested lady.

Based on the druid example, you’re saying that I cannot play a druid like “Walker Boh” or “Alannon” from Shannara. More than any other writer, I think Terry Brooks has had the largest impact on the modern fantastical definition of “the druid” in his myriad of Shannara novels. They were more than capable of holding their own in combat, going on solo adventures all the time. What about Gandalf? Did he always need a “group” to travel Middle-earth for hundreds of years? Did he need a group to defeat the Balrog? What about Pug from Feist’s “Magician”? Did he need a group or a “role” to do combat at every turn? I could imagine that there are hundreds and hundreds of examples where a specific character did not need a “group” or a “role” to be successful in their class.

See this is the crux of what I’m getting at. 4E is a tactical, “group” game, designed for players to be pigeon-holed into certain niches and roles. Based on these rules, I am being told I cannot necessarily play a character how “I” would like to play him. The point is, is that the spirit of 4E takes us away from over 60 years of Swords & Sorcery tradition (including earlier versions of D&D) and shoves us into a tactical war-game setting.

The other thing I have to say is that so many people love to use the “roll”-play vs “role”-play argument (or gaming vs role-playing), using the former to describe players who do NOT like to role-play (by definition) because they use stats and dice to play. This line from the podcast made me cringe because how wrong it is: “Good role-players don’t necessarily need those mechanical advantages”. No, that’s completely false!!!!

Let me explain why this is so backwords: By stepping outside of the stats and dice that your character was assigned upon creation, you are stepping outside of your character’s role and into the “Out-Of-Character” role of you as a player. In other words, you are role-playing less by not using the stats and mechanics your character was given and interjecting your OWN real-world instinct and experience to overcome game encounters.

Every time you use your character’s skills to overcome encounters, you are role-playing. Every time you use the player’s brain to overcome encounters, you are not role-playing, you are meta-gaming. Roll-playing = Role-playing, it’s as simple as that.

Now I’m not saying that letting the player think some things out on his own is a bad thing, but let’s not call it “role-playing” because we are doing precisely the opposite.

Finally, I had to chuckle at those players referenced in the podcast who say that in the “old-school” game, they used persuasion rolls instead of their own player skill to persuade an NPC. I would direct you to Matthew Finch’s, “A Quick Primer For Old School Gaming”, as he would argue the complete opposite was true in the old school game.

However, your podcast is among the list of blogs and podcasts on our blogroll in the sidebar and has been for a while. I suspect that readers had been clicking on that link to your site either because of an interesting episode title at the time or because they mistook it for Smiling Jack’s Bar and Grill.

In any case, I’m glad you got the traffic; you deserve it. Keep the fun going, gang. I’m definitely enjoying your show, and I look forward to more episodes.

He (Aron) heard your comments and responded: http://ideologyofmadness.spookyouthouse.com//archives/11764.

It seems odd to me that he starts out saying that he wanted to roll to get the DM to advocate for him. “You make a good argument.” style. But then at the follow up post, his solution (in a Savage Worlds game) Would be to make the persuadee spend a bennie to not get persuaded, or get a bennie to be persuaded. This is a clear case of the carrot and the stick for the persuadee. I don’t know what I think about it. I think the target number for that would have to be the max(4, persuadee’s applicable attribute/skill of choice) examples: their persuade, intimidate, smarts, spirit – pretty much whatever they can make a case for that’s just short of physical force. And I think that should only be if the persuadee agrees to the contest.

Actually, I think that is better, the persuader and persuadee can agree to terms. If I win => this, if you win => that. If neither of them succeed, tough, it’s back to player land not character land. If they don’t agree to terms, then no rolls. Having an undefined result hingeing on this “persuade” roll is too loose. You know what happens if you hit someone with your katana of douchebaggery, you need to decide (ahead of time) what happens if you win your ‘contested’ persuasion roll. And don’t be surprised if you ‘persuade’ the big brawny guy to go and do X, that he then ‘intimidates’ you into doing Y.

But you really shouldn’t be surprised if that player just wants nothing to do with your douchebaggy self.

What do my players want and how do I have fun giving it to them?

Keep on with the show, guys, it’s getting better and better!

Cheers from Brazil! “You are all in a brazilian tavern…”

Get better, cant wait on the next installment.

Thank you guys for mentioning my blog on the podcast! It was a great surprise! I sent a proper message on your email! Keep on with the great content!

Can’t wait for the next episode.

See, my name is David Nett, and I’m the creator of GOLD (I also play Jon, the injured American team captain). We’re hard at work on more content for the series, and the support of the gaming community is paramount for us. I really appreciate you taking the time to mention us.

For reference, you can find us at : http://goldtheseries.com &
facebook: http://facebook.com/goldtheseries

(the longer URL you mentioned in the ‘cast is because we’re piggybacking on another generous site to save $$

PS: There Will Be Brawl is brilliant. Just that opening scene of the first episode with Luigi walking the gritty streets of the mushroom kingdom with his noir voiceover – genius.

I’m wondering how the initiative tracker on the DungeonMastering Tools site would work together with this.

I’ve got two comments about what you discussed this episode:

1) If you are looking for cheaper D&D minis, take a look at eBay. You can sometimes get some great deals from people selling off big lots of figs – they may not be exactly what you want, and you may get some extra crap included, but you will be getting more for your money. There are some figs which go for a premium, but you can avoid those.

2) One thing to always remember while running complex games is that sometimes the players come up with plans that are way better than what you’ve got… don’t be afraid to jettison parts of your plans if they come up with a great idea during one of their brainstorming sessions on what to do next. You don’t want to use exactly what they give you, but take it and give it a little tweak… you can always claim that it was part of your plans the entire time.

Keep up the good work.

R-

So a monster listing might be:

Goblin Thug 1:
OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO|
OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO
Head Bash O (encounter)
Anger Strike O (recharge 5)
Goblin Thug 2:
….

Might have to try the color-coding next time.

Love the show.

Thanks,
Charlie

Now I gotta go find my +4 cloak of warming….