General Discussion

[The Heretic]

Uh yeah, that's grind-based MMOs for you. Literally the same thing over and over. I was into a couple over the years, but see them for what they are these days: flashing lights, crazy noises, hollow XP. Basically the same approach to every slot machine, CandyCrush-clone, and toddler's toy ever made.

Sometimes TTRPGs are not much better. My group made a choice that I didn't expect them to take (it involved rescuing orc children; I am a heretic, after all), and now they need to re-start the journey. I'm trying to think of encounters for the trek to the ruined steam resort city and it's...meh. Ooh, bandits again?!?

With WoW the main thing I was complaining about was the meta-plotting formula they've come up with each expansion.
Part One: Something bad happens! NPCs are in trouble! You're their only hope. Go to new place! Some factions don't trust you as outsiders while others do. Grind rep! The instances are extra hard because your gear sucks.
Part Two: A new max level area is opened up, with dailies and bind to account items so you can item up your alts. Dungeons are now easier with the better equipment. The tide is turning, you're starting to beat the new bad guys (that no one spoke about up until the beginning of this expansion)! Now its the, uh, dragon aunts and uncles trying to destroy the dragons! Or something.
Part Three: Oh no! More bad stuff happens, but now you open the last new max level area with even better equipment! Now you can solo most if not all of the instances from the prior expansion. Yay! And if you're into raiding, kill the final boss and find out that the princess is in another castle!

Then there are the themes that seem to get recycled over and over. These earthen, on their griffon mounts and with their thunderbolt hammers, are exactly like the dwarves in Cataclysm (uh, I forget the name). They're suspicious! Their towns look almost exactly like the towns of those dwarves! Is this deja vu or lazy writing!


The Heretic

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I'm trying to think of encounters for the trek to the ruined steam resort city and it's...meh. Ooh, bandits again?!?

I had a few minutes, so I took a stab at a couple encounters for you. Roll 1d6

1 - Rusting Hulks - bipedal steel war machines that resemble a hunched gorilla, with a pilot's seat in the "neck". Problem is, they're all rusted to shit from the persistent fog. One or more of them is a bit wonky too (in a dangerous way).

2 - "The Presence" - something unseen stalks creatures in the mists around the city. Smaller groups band together for protection, under the belief that the creature is deterred by numbers (it is not); the players may just encounter "the presence" feeding on one such group.

3 - Spontaneous Geyer Field - a muddy field of geysers needs crossing; problem is, their pattern is nearly impossible to predict. Also, giant buzzards overhead freaking love a boiled meal, and get real aggressive when they notice nobody dying.

4 - The Sky Tower - a thin and crooked 3-storey tower somehow floats above on a small cloud - and then promptly hits a very tall spire of rock and summarily crashes into the ground. The legless torso of a very angry and embarassed lich crawls around the rubble trying to recover what it can.

5 - Whistle Dogs - a pack of blind, wolf-like creatures that are attracted to sound. Their presence is telegraphed by a persistent 300' aura of dense fog that surrounds them, as well as a "whistling"-type howl they make when they sense prey. All wildlife goes dead quiet too.

6 - Bandits...Again? - Literally the exact party of bandits the players just destroyed. Like, the very same guys, somehow alive and fighting again. Turns out they're being regurgitated en-masse from some kind of fleshy pods nearby.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The legless torso of a very angry and embarassed lich

A demi-lich - get it?

 

[Malrex]

Interesting! What didn't you like about Lich King? The setting or changes to game (or both)?

I played through all of them up to Dragon Isles. I'm an altoholic. I think it's the DM in me, needing to see how each class and/or race does in the game. Shadowlands was probably my favorite. It was a unique setting (the afterlife!) and it seemed to tie things up nicely until the 'your princess is in another castle' reveal with the final boss.

I usually play solo too.



Video games are like movies for me. I go back to the classics I liked in my childhood (ie that's how your supposed to finish Ultima II?!?).

The Heretic

Sorry…I meant to say…I liked Lich King but everything after that I didn’t care for, which isn’t too fair to say since I didn’t spend a lot of time with it. I blame the pandas. And I’m a altoholic too!

 

[grodog]

Speaking of which, I could really use some comfort shopping, but it's been a dogs age since someone's put out some exciting, super deluxe, The Best megadungeon. [snip] Anyway; taking recommendations...

Newest ones off the top of my head that I’m aware of are:

- Khosura, from Gabor
- Palace of the Silver Prince, from Huso
- Gunderholfen bundle, from G. Hawkins

A copy of Dungeon Geomorphs is like having infinite megadungeons!
Just kidding. Nobody uses dungeon geomorphs.

Ha!: we’ve been publishing new geos (including 3D ones!) in The Twisting Stair, and I continue to play with them from time to time:

Allan.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Ha!: we’ve been publishing new geos (including 3D ones!

Ok, now I'm curious to see a 3-D geomorph... I don't recall ever coming across one before.

 

[grodog]

Ok, now I'm curious to see a 3-D geomorph... I don't recall ever coming across one before.

Etol Otus did some stupidly-rare ones before joining TSR, that I’ve built a level using:

Some info about Erol’s at https://www.afterglow2.com/Product/FAE.htm

Our TTS#3 geos have stairs, trapdoors, chimneys, and other inter-level transit points on them, so that you can modularly stack them within or between levels. Ordering info at https://grodog.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-twisting-stair-3-spring-2018.html if you’re curious (and TTS#4 is in-progress, with a GaryCon 2025 target release date—“that is not dead which can eternal lie…” and all that ).

Allan.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Ah I see now. Yeah, for whatever reason my mind went immediately to "3-d = isometric". Those look pretty spiffy too though.

 

[The1True]

- Khosura, from Gabor
- Palace of the Silver Prince, from Huso
- Gunderholfen bundle, from G. Hawkins

I've got Gunderholfen and a couple of the nearby adventures. Great stuff.
Some day I'll save up enough of my allowance to pick up a bunch of Mr. Huso's gorgeous books. Some day...
I will defo look into Khosura (why have I not seen a review for this?), I LOVED Castle Xyntillan, thanks!

 

[Beoric]

Just dropping this here in case anyone is interested: https://www.medievalists.net/2025/01/medieval-police-chiefs-when-justice-was-for-sale/

 

[Beoric]

I'm having trouble getting this posted; the site seems fine with my second paragraph but doesn't like my first?

Ugh, I give up. Here is a cropped screenshot of it.
View attachment 1423

Apropos this idea (and this was frankly a surprise to me), the latest blog post from Bret Devereaux suggests that this was more or less a big part of ancient and medieval European economies. That is, people who didn't necessarily have access to coinage would pay each other in goods or services, but they way they determined how much a good or service was worth, was to value it according to how much they would have paid if they did have coins. So if I gave you a chicken, you and I had a notional idea of the value of that chicken was in in copper (say, 3 cp per the 1e PHB), so when the harvest came in and you have grain to give, you would give me 3 cp worth of grain.

Apparently this practice significantly predated the minting of coins, and started out by assigning each transaction a particular weight of precious metal. So my "novel" social capital mechanic may actually be 2,700ish years old.

Also, tell me this isn't gameable content:

And assuming this is a setting where coinage has been invented, the Big Man certainly has access to a sufficient amount to pay simply pay in cash for services rendered dealing with that Owlbear his retainers kept failing to track.

But the Big Man would probably rather ‘pay’ your adventurers differently. After all, remember that the Big Man is running a business which converts agricultural surplus (extracted in rents) into military power (men, horses, weapons, armor) and legitimacy (often conferred with extravagant gifts: jewelry and such). So while he could simply transact business and pay you in silver and send you on your way, it would be a lot easier to compensate you with what he has as well: he might gift you a sword or set of armor from his armory, or a horse from his stables.

That gift isn’t just easier for him, it comes with broader social implications which are also better for him and for you. Whereas payment in money might not incur any great obligation, the exchange of gifts here – you have solved a problem, he has given you something in return – creates a social obligation, a bond between you, especially if the value of the gift exceeds the value of the service. You are now obligated to help out again, in the future, should he ask, out of ‘gratitude’ for the ‘gift’ (and for such services, you will receive more ‘gifts’). Meanwhile, remember up top about how much one’s place in the political economy matters for how well one is paid – just being a more important kind of person in these societies21 could radically change how you were compensated and thus your station in life?

Well, unlike a few coins, those gifts can change who you are: a man with a strong arm is a peasant; a man with a strong arm, gifted mail and a weapon is a man-at-arms, whose station entitles them to better treatment. That same man, gifted a horse and a lance, by the Big Man is a knight (or substitute the culturally appropriate moniker for minor mounted military aristocrat). That’s great for you – far better than just a few coins that make you merely a momentarily rich peasant – but also great for the Big Man who just bought himself a minor military aristocrat (remember: you’re obligated to be grateful for his generosity and to respond if he calls), minted out of stores of weapons he was keeping for just such an occasion.

EDIT: Note that this is a good reason to place a monetary value on magic items, even if you don't have magic item shops in your game. You as a DM may want to be able to value the +3 panoply the lord gives to a PC.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Non-judgmental question for you @Beoric - on average, how much prep time (including following rabbit holes about pay-weight and such) would you say you put in for every hour of play time?

 

[Beoric]

Non-judgmental question for you @Beoric - on average, how much prep time (including following rabbit holes about pay-weight and such) would you say you put in for every hour of play time?

Oh, a lot. Scheduling games is difficult (I have free time, but not on anything resembling a predictable schedule, and the people I game with have the same problem), so to some extent the prep is a gaming activity that fills the lack of actual gaming. And when I do get to game, I want to focus on the game, and not on looking stuff up or battling with my VTT, so making the VTT function efficiently is a priority. Plus I actually enjoy prep.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

What would you say a ballpark ratio of time spent prepping vs. time spent playing is for you? 1:1? 2:1? 10:1?

 

[Beoric]

What would you say a ballpark ratio of time spent prepping vs. time spent playing is for you? 1:1? 2:1? 10:1?

I dunno man, its pretty shitty. I'm a single parent of three, one of which has serious health problems, with mom pretty much out of the picture, and I'm trying to run a small business in an unpredictable industry, where there are a ton of people counting on me, and I don't have full control of my time. And my players live out of town, and also have crazy schedules, and are luddites who can't figure out how to connect to a server.*

Which is why I'm trying to get a new group going. Which is why before we start I want to have enough content ready to go that there will be no delay between the first several sessions.

But also, unlike work, prepping and thinking about gaming is something I can do between the cracks. So I can get, say, 12 minutes in while the oven is preheating, and 10 minutes before I have to flip whatever I'm cooking, and another ten minutes until it's ready to serve. And sometimes I can get nearly an hour in between laundry loads, even though I should probably be cleaning the floors instead.

*Like seriously, you try to walk them through it over the phone, and they just click things randomly so I don't even have any idea what window they end up looking at. "DON'T touch anything before I tell you to. There should be a window come up, what does it say?" "I dunno, I just clicked OK." <sigh> "Okay, open that window again," "How to I do that?" "Start by clicking the "File" menu." "Where is that?" "Ok, you play hundreds of hours of WoW, how do you not know this?" "Oh, ok, I've got it now." "Great, now click "connect to server". " I don't see that." "It should be on the file menu." "The what?" "At the top left corner of the screen, you can see the word "File", can you press that?" "Ok, I did that, it just disappeared." "What do you mean it disappeared? What are you looking at now?" "It looks like a list of folders." "Ok, did you maximize the Maptools window?" "What do you mean?" "Never mind, do you still see the Maptools icon in the ribbon at the bottom of your screen? It should look like a gear with green in the middle. Click that." "Ok, it's back again." "Good. It is filling the whole screen?" "No, just part of it." "Great, now do you see the little box at the top right of the window? Not the very top right, the top right of the Maptools window." "Where?" "It's beside the X, click that." "Ok, a window came up." "What does the window say?" "I don't know, I jsut clicked OK. Now it disappeared again." "Are you sure you clicked the box in the top right?" "The box? You told me to click the X."

 

[The1True]

Like seriously

Are your players your aging parents? This is like troubleshooting with my dad.
Seriously though, it sounds a bit like your players are being deliberately obtuse because they don't really want to do it. This is distinctly what my fairly bright children do when they don't want help with their homework (because they're tired of doing it).

I totally get doing extra ground work for the shear joy of the hobby. I think every DM does it to some degree. There's been some hate here towards the player-centric later editions with their build communities, but I think all they did was let the players into the in-between-sessions, hobby side of the game that DM's have been enjoying for so long.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I'm noticing a shift in myself as I age - I too am unfortunately becoming averse to new technology, something I'd consider unthinkable in my youth. I always saw it in elders, and never thought it would happen to me, but here we are... my wife would call me down-right luddite by her standards, even though I work in tech and was very much an early adopter in my younger days.

I think its an actual recordable medical phenomenon at this point. My guts says it has something to do with neuroplasticity, comfort-seeking in the familiar (and the opposite - aversion of the unfamiliar), and an ongoing drive to de-complexify a busy life. I'm sure there are books about it I should probably read.

 

[Beoric]

Are your players your aging parents? This is like troubleshooting with my dad.
Seriously though, it sounds a bit like your players are being deliberately obtuse because they don't really want to do it. This is distinctly what my fairly bright children do when they don't want help with their homework (because they're tired of doing it).

No, that particular one has been like this for 40+ years. You should see them try to navigate a TV remote, or try to connect their phone to a bluetooth speaker.

 

[squeen]

I'm noticing a shift in myself as I age - I too am unfortunately becoming averse to new technology, something I'd consider unthinkable in my youth. I always saw it in elders, and never thought it would happen to me, but here we are... my wife would call me down-right luddite by her standards, even though I work in tech and was very much an early adopter in my younger days.

I think its an actual recordable medical phenomenon at this point. My guts says it has something to do with neuroplasticity, comfort-seeking in the familiar (and the opposite - aversion of the unfamiliar), and an ongoing drive to de-complexify a busy life. I'm sure there are books about it I should probably read.

Too much that you really like (in tech) gets changed out from underneath you. I saw my 20 year old daughter complain when they changed MS Word. It's not age, but it is experience. At some point you realize the pointlessness of all the gadgetry and start to appreciate simplicity in design. e.g. Roku remote.

 

[The1True]

I saw my 20 year old daughter complain when they changed MS Word.

Seriously. Photoshop hasn't done anything new in 10 years other than turn into a shitty piece of subscriptionware with an entire global community dedicated to outpacing its anti-piracy measures. Don't even get me started on the evil boondoggle that is Windows 11. Like MS got jealous of all the negative attention Alphabet and Amazon were getting and wanted back in.