DevSolar

868 reputation

bio	website	rootdirectory.de
	location	Verl, Germany
	age	40
visits	member for	1 year
	seen	Nov 1 '12 at 17:00
stats	profile views	11

Computer addict since the C64, Software Engineer since 2000.

	868 reputation	bio	website	rootdirectory.de	visits	member for	1 year
13 badges		location	Verl, Germany		seen	Nov 1 '12 at 17:00

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Jul 27	awarded	Nice Answer
Jul 16	comment	How do you administer combat without an Initiative system? @Hand-E-Food: Rolemaster offered such a second-by-second combat tracking system, and believe me, it only works with computers... ;)
Jul 12	comment	Physics of Tengu and Blowguns @TimLymington: I still can't picture it. Then again, I don't have a beak, so who am I to talk? ;-)
Jul 12	comment	Physics of Tengu and Blowguns @SevenSidedDie: Either lips, or nare-fitted. I cannot picture any other way to make a blowgun work (and I've used them myself, though not with poisoned darts on live targets of course).
Jul 12	comment	Physics of Tengu and Blowguns Congrats, you have sealed the blowgun. Now how do you make the air from your lungs go through the blowgun? ;-)
Jul 10	comment	Preparing for Very Long Game Sessions As for longer campaigns... as the characters get familiar with the world, chances are diminishing that they would either a) troup somewhere unexploited on a whim (as they have important things to do in the known part), or b) do something truly destructive (as they formed bonds with various NSCs and the game world overall), which makes "winging it wildly" less and less necessary. At least, with the kind of players I prefer in my groups. ;-)
Jul 10	comment	Preparing for Very Long Game Sessions No I cannot. That would be railroading, wouldn't it? So I put the battles on a shelf and take some other building blocks to satisfy whatever they are looking for. But they did make a mess of everything, didn't they? After some leisurely dungeon crawling, they find a sudden influx of refugees from the country they just left, press gangs rounding up everyone between 15 and 50 because war is imminent. And everyone is damning the names of the guys who caused all this and then left things to stew until they got much worse... ;-)
Jul 10	comment	Preparing for Very Long Game Sessions More generally speaking: Instead of "preparing" a complete game world (and have the characters wander off in the one direction I have not mapped yet), I only flesh out their starting point as "home base". Beyond that, I have "scenes" or "situations" in mind I'd like them to encounter, but instead of putting them somewhere fixed on the map and wait for the PCs to go there, I use those scenes as building blocks on the go, while the PCs explore. They will encounter that savage shaman one day, or that necromancer, or that tomb. I never run out of map, only out of ideas. THAT hasn't happened yet.
Jul 9	comment	Preparing for Very Long Game Sessions Re "DMing long games is tricky", see this answer on how to avoid the "I didn't draw the map" problem. What should have been in the east is now wherever the characters went, or you suspend that story arc and go with whatever the players want to do. Of course, some problems get worse when not attended to...
Jul 6	comment	Why can't a Cleric use a sling? @JonHopkins: Extrapolating from CatLord's answer, a sling (distance weapon) is not appropriate for self-defense or policing, but a hunting / combat weapon. Of course the power-hungry player is looking for the best offensive capability within the rules, but it seems that the reasoning presented by CatLord aims at a much more defensive type of Cleric.
Jul 6	comment	Why can't a Cleric use a sling? @OmarKooheji: A feeling I keep having when reading most D&D related questions here, about how to combine this or that ability to get supersonic pixies, whether small characters fit through the eye of a needle or how many spearmen could poke an opponent simultaneously. ;-) Then again, this sounds like a "ninja looting" episode from World of Warcraft, which was a massively successful business, so perhaps the ones to be laughed about are us "role"players. ;-)
Jul 6	comment	Simulating grenade explosions in a stairwell You say you have used the Shadowrun rules before... but apparently found them inadequate to model this specific scenario. Why? According to Shadowrun rules, the effect would be pretty much lethal (over 3 times normal grenade damage, without going into detailed calculations), as would be realistic. Apparently, that is not what you are looking for. Are you looking for a more "realistic" (probably even more lethal) model, or something "fair" (i.e., letting your PCs get away)?
Jul 6	revised	What stands out about an Iron Age setting? Edited as requested by mxyzplk prior to upcoming comment purge...
Jul 5	revised	“Ray of Frost” Spell + Water = Lock Broken? added 192 characters in body
Jul 5	comment	“Ray of Frost” Spell + Water = Lock Broken? @naliwajek: I wasn't talking about "chaining effects". I was taling about taking a chunk of river and have it dropping on other people. ;-)
Jul 5	comment	“Ray of Frost” Spell + Water = Lock Broken? @naliwajek: I'm not familiar with the D&D system family, but you sound like the type of mage I've been fighting the last twenty-five years. ;-)
Jul 5	answered	“Ray of Frost” Spell + Water = Lock Broken?
Jul 5	comment	“Ray of Frost” Spell + Water = Lock Broken? @naliwajek: Freezing rain will give you sleet, snow, or hail (depending on circumstances), but not an avalanche. ;-)
Jul 5	comment	“Ray of Frost” Spell + Water = Lock Broken? Liquid nitrogen / impact is a completely different physical effect (making the lock brittle, not forcing it apart). I very much agree with the difficulty of keeping the lock filled with water long enough, though.
Jul 5	comment	Could a “Fog of war” prop break a game in any way? @pconcepcion: Hint: When you remove a room from the table, mark it with some code in the corner, and keep a "master map" that shows which room is where. ("You leave to the south, and return to... this room.") It's one thing for the players getting lost, it's another for the GM to inadvertently have rooms change position within the dungeon. Then again, having rooms change position deliberately can put a nice twist into things - can't do that with a pre-made map either. (Ain't magic great? ;-) )