It's all about the galleons, baby.

Lets talk about Assassins Creed 3. Specially the ship to ship combat sections.

How did Ubisoft manage to make the most engaging pre-industrial naval combat simulation ever as a throw away minigame in a game about jumping out of trees to kill rabbits?

Everything from the cannon arcs to the rigging speeds to reinforcement is insanely fun. It's making me want to run a privateer campaign in Fate Core in a few months.

Speaking of Fate Core, go kickstarter it if you already haven't. It's that good.

Meanwhile, I'm currently running the anniversary edition of Rise of the Runelords for my casual group. We've got a horrifically unbalanced party, but that makes things seem more dangerous.

So I've stolen a rule from D&D4:

Second Wind. Once per encounter, use a standard action to recover one half your maximum hit points.

This may seem a bit overpowered, but in a group of six with no healer it's almost necessary.

Also, next week I'm starting another diversion project; this one for one of my favorite adventure paths of all time: The Key of Destiny.

Stay tuned for more awesome.

-J

But, I wear long pants...

Taking a break from my normal nonsense related to gaming to talk about my actual life nonsense. If you're only here for the gaming, this update may not be all that interesting for you. Then again, it might be, maybe you'll learn smethng about yourself. Maybe you'll not. Only the Shadow knows.

As I discussed in a previous post, this year has been frought with ridiculousness. I've traveled to the other side of the planet, bought a house, got married, and started a new job. I've also watched my mom and stepdad get divorced, lost dozens of friends due to me being an insufferable assshole, and lost my brother due to.... well, mostly due to his lifelong battle with depression. The depression thing wasn't exactly a perfect unknown, but not something you can ever prepare for.

I've always taken suicide far more seriously than I thought I should. Now that I've been confronted by it face to face, I can see that I didn't treat it seriously enough. If anyone reading this ever, ever, ever even remotely considers taking their own life: don't. Email me. Text me. Call me. Whatever you need to do. I can't watch another family go through the hellscape that my family has endured over the past six months. I promise you that whatever you're going through will pass. You can make it through, even if I have to drag you through against your will.

My family takes solace in the fact that my brother is "with G-d now". I have no such comfort. The days of my belief in an almighty grandpa in the clouds are as gone as my days of belief in a magical sleighriding madman from the North Pole who distributes presents. I don't discount the possibility of their being an omnipotent overbeing who watches over all, but I also don't discount the possibility of their being an indestructible teakettle orbiting the third moon of Jupiter. Just because I can't disprove it doesn't mean it exists. My brother held similar beliefs. He wore the guise of Christendom, but from our many long discussions on the topic over the years, it was clear that his faith had dried up entirely.

They tell me that he's in a better place, but I cannot fathom nonexistence being superior to existence.  That ideology is so alien to me that I cannot even begin to comprehend it.

This life is all we have. That's why there's generally such a low incidence of Atheists and Agnostics killing themselves; if this is all we have, why would we ever voluntarily give that up? That's also why most spree killers profess some sort of religious faith; they believe that their faith will either protect them or reward them for their actions. They think that they can be forgiven by G-d for their transessions, so they have no mortal law or repurcussions to fear. That is the true danger of zealots.

I know this has been rambling and only semi sensible, but it's just a bunch of words that were clogging up my head. Thanks for reading this far.

Oh, and I meant that bit earlier about the contacting me in the event of thinking about considering suicide. Seriously. I'm right here.

-J

Snowmapocalypsageddonclysm

It's all sorts of fun out on the streets today. Slip, slidin' away like I'm Mario vs some Pengins.

Today, a new Pathfinder feat for your usage in coldness themed campaigns.

Fires of Permafrost [General]
Requirements: Ability to cast spells with the Cold descriptor OR the Cold subtype.
Benefit: As a swift action, you may choose to ignore Cold resistance or immunity when you cast a Cold spell or spell-like ablity. Targets effected by this ability may are immune to its effects for 24 hours.


-J

The Colors of Magic and Specializations

Anyone who's played MtG knows that certain colors are better at certain schools/specializations of magic than others. White provides the best Protection, Blue provides the best Counterspells, Black provides the best Curses, Green provides the best Enhancement, and Red provides the best Elemental Damage. In that vein, which Affinity you choose to add to your dice pool can have an effect on your Specialization dice.

If you use a Specialization which is one of the Linked Specializations with the Affinity you use in your die pool, step up that Specialization die. There's no penalty for out-of-color magic, because that makes things less Epic and that's the whole point, right? (Editor's Note: I may make it so that if you're using one of the enemy colors of a specific effect [using Red or Green for Counterspell], it'll step-down the Specialization die. We'll see how each plays during the next playtest.)

White: Protection
Green: Summoning
Red: Elemental Damage
Black: Curse
Blue: Counterspell

The other specializations fall in to more than one color, so they've got no specific bonuses.

So, taking from last week's character creation example:

Uriel is stalking the streets of Mercadia, hunting down a criminal. He corner's the poor sod and gives him a chance to surrender. Being a nonsensical criminal scum, he draws a knife. Uriel reaches deep into his magical reserves to Justice the wretch into ashes.

Uriel's die pool is as follows:

Red Magic (d10) - Affinity.
Elemental Damage (d8) - Specialization.
"Burn with me!" (d8) - Characteristic.

Since the Specialization matches the Affinity, it is stepped up to a d10. Uriel's final die pool is two d10s and one d8.

If he had, instead, tried to restrain the criminal, his die pool would look more like:

d10 (Red Magic) + d6 (Domination) + d6 (Heart of Darksteel). Since Domination is a non-color tied effect (being historicall used by White, Blue, Black, and Red), he gets no bonus step-up.

I've got a second playtest this Friday, so I'm sure there'll be more changes coming down the pipe.

Dice and Dice and Dice and Dice.

Today, we look at two ways you can make a Pathfinder game more enjoyable. These houserules/hacks have been shamelessly stolen from other systems. Viewer discretion is advised.

1) The Escalation Die (13th Age). Grab the biggest d6 you can find. Huge novelty ones are the best. At the beginning of each round of combat, the Escalation Die goes up by one. All PCs gain a bonus to hit and damage equal to the number showing on the Escalation Die (to a maximum of 6, obviously) to symbolize the PCs learning the enemy forces' tactics and weaknesses. This makes combat go a lot quicker, especially against a solo enemy. I've had only one player complain about it, because he thought it was unfair that the PCs got bonuses but the enemies didn't. Needless to say, he was ignored.

2) Plot Points (Cortex+). The same basic uses as they have in the Cortex system (add a d8 to your roll, create a resource which can be passed around, change some scene details, etc.), but with the added ability to reroll a die pool. I've found that allowing the PCs to be more heroic and less... shall we say "lame-ass newbies" has the effect of making the players have more fun and be more engaged.

Use these tips. They'll make PFRPG even better, I guarantee it.

-J

Glo.ri.ous.

I should probably get to work on clarifying that MtG:PtC hack from Monday.

The idea behind the hack is rather basic. Everyone who's tried to make a MtG RPG in the past has erred on the side of Look-at-All-My-Rules. I've seen D&D 3.5 hacks that take up hundreds of pages. That's insanity. Sure, I'm sure someone likes things like that, but I'd rather be able to hand my players a sheet of rules and say "make anything in the multiverse".

Character Creation:

- Make up a concept. One would hope that this would be an obvious first step, but you'd be surprised. For the purposes of this example, our concept will be Former Drill Sergeant Turned Pyromancer.

- Choose Three Characteristics. These are the qualities which define your character's mentality. They also provide bonuses or hinderances to your dice pools, as you can choose to roll them as a d6 or as a d4. If you choose d4, you also get a Plot Point. For FDSTP, I've chosen the following: Heart of Darksteel, Military Bearing, and "Burn with me!".

- Choose an Affinity Array. Affinities relate directly to the five colors of magic. You can choose to be Monocolored or Dual Colored. Monocolored Planeswalkers have a single higher die and the rest are lower. Dual Colored Planeswalkers have two higher dice (though not as high as the Monocolored's prime affinity) and the rest are lower. (d10, d6, d6, d4, d4) vs (d8, d8, d6, d4, d4). FDSTP chooses Monocolored, with the following array: White d6, Green d6, Red d10, Black d4, Blue d4.

- Choose one Specialty at a d8. This is the type of spellcasting you're best at. Since we're making a Pyromancer, Elemental Damage is an obvious choice.

- Choose two Specialties at d6. These are your secondary spell types. Since FDSTP was formerly a drill sergeant, we'll pick out Enhancement and Domination.

- Design Limits. For the purposes of this, all Planeswalkers have the following limits.

Limit - Mana Burn: Shut down any one Affinity to gain 1 plot point. Recover on during a transition scene.
Limit - Mental Misstep: Shut down any one Specialization to gain 1 plot point. Recover on an Opportunity.

- Design Milestones: These are personal. Follow the general guidelines in the MHR book.

And now, the finished product.


Uriel Dastar

Heart of Darksteel, Military Bearing, "Burn with me!"

White d6, Green d6, Red d10, Black d4, Blue d4

Elemental Damage d8, Enhancement d6, Domination d6
 Limit - Mana Burn: Shut down any one Affinity to gain 1 plot point. Recover on during a transition scene.
Limit - Mental Misstep: Shut down any one Specialization to gain 1 plot point. Recover on an Opportunity.




-J

MtG: Planeswalking the Cortex

I bashed out a really rough Magic the Gathering hack for Cortex+ at lunch today, based on some ideas that Cam Banks and some of his followers were having on Google+.

Here's the link. Remember, this is a work in progress and it's really really basic. Feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

-J

New Year's Failings

I promised myself I'd write something on this blog every week. I have failed miserably. So, in the spirit of the world being a dark and monster-filled place, I've decided to make it three times every week. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Starting today. It may not be a lot of content, but it's content none-the-less.

Without further rambling of the waxing or whatever you hep cats are saying these days, here's a quick trait for Pathfinder.

Mineral Blooded
Prerequisite: Gnome, Svirfneblin, Duergar, Drow, or (those Earth elemental humanoid blokes whose names I cannot for the life of me remember).
Benefit: Your blood is extremely thick, due to higher-than-normal concentrations of heavy minerals. You only take bleed damage every other round, instead of ever round. You also receive a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saves against bleed effects.

Well, that was terrible. I'll do better next time, promise.

-J

The Black Swordsman

So yeah... it's been a while. Between the last update and this one, a lot of major stuff has happened in my life which has caused me to take a protracted break. Positives: I got married in early June, bought a house in September, traveled Japan for two and a half weeks in October. Negatives: My brother took his own life in late June. Needless to say, lots of stressing stuff took away my will to write. I'm dragging myself back into it, though. I will persevere.

On to my new project. I'd talked about doing an Avatar: The Legend of Aang/Korra hack at one point, but it hasn't really jumped out at me as a thing that I need to do at this point. I'm not really feeling it, as it were. What has my attention lately is an anime series called Sword Art Online. It's amazing, seriously. It's got my friend Chris (who, incidentally, has hated all things related to anime for over 20 years now) interested, so it must be amazing. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. Most of the first season is available on Crunchyroll right now for streaming.

With that in mind, I've got basic stats for the protagonist, Kirito. The only real departure from standard MHR is the adjusted Solo/Party/Guild in place of Solo/Buddy/Team. Solo works as normal. Party is for any group of 4 or less, and Guild is for groups of 5 or more. In a world where the majority of groups are 5+, it made sense to change the divisions a bit.

Here's Kirito, just after his first duel with the leader of the Knights of the Blood Oath. As always, I welcome your commentary.

Kirito, The Black Swordsman

Solo d10, Party d8, Guild d6
Legendary Beater, Heart of Gold, Guildless

Black Swordsman’s Arsenal
Elucidator (Weapon d10), Dark Repulsor (Weapon d10), Swordsman’s Coat (Armor d8), Red Potion (Healing d8), Teleport Crystal (Teleportation d6).
SFX: Dual-wielding. You may use Elucidator and Dark Repulsor in the same die pool by stepping down both weapons -1 step.
SFX: Disarm. Step your effect die when you attack an opponent’s Weapon trait.
Limit: Gear. Shutdown a Black Swordsman’s Arsenal power and gain 1 PP. Take an action vs. the Doom pool to recover that power.

Virtual Kendo
Superhuman Reflexes d10, Superhuman Speed d10, Enhanced Stamina d8, Enhanced Durability d8.
SFX: “You’re Level 16, I’m Level 86.”  Spend 1 PP to step back physical trauma by -1 and remove all physical stress.
SFX: Versatility. Replace any Virtual Kendo power’s die with two stepped down dice.
SFX: Whirlwind Attack. Target multiple opponents. For each additional target, add a d6 to your die pool and keep +1 effect die.
Limit: Exhausted. Shutdown any Virtual Kendo power to gain 1 PP. Recover by activating an opportunity or during a transition scene.

Specialties
Combat Master d10, Psych Expert d8, Acrobatic Expert d8, Menace Expert d8, Tech Expert d8

Milestones
Alone Against the World
1xp: When you defend a weaker character against a non-minion opponent.
3xp: When you aid a stressed-out character in recovery.
10xp: When you lose a friend by refusing a guild invitation OR join a guild and accept a position of leadership.

Clueless Teenager
1xp: When another character expresses romantic interest in you, but you are oblivious.
3xp: When you take emotional stress from someone who’s expressed romantic interest in you.
10xp: When you declare your mutual affection to someone who’s expressed romantic interest in you, despite the risks OR when you sever all ties to save them.
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-J