Ok, this thread is closed. Too many dishonest asshole trolls on this site.

I am very bad at interfaces and forums.  I don't know how to edit things. 

Well that was quite the cri de coeur.  Welcome to theRPGSite, DeadVerySoon! 

The way to edit your posts is:
on your own posts (such as these ones) look for a diamond paper with pencil icon. The one towards the upper right will say 'Modify' near it. The other one id the same icon on the bottom right of your post (but above your signature, e.g. the two quotes I have in my post are a signature). Hope that helps!

As for Tollenkar's Layer, never played that. But looking at the link it appears to be a 6 level dungeon running on SJG The Fantasy Trip rpg, and a very lethal and challenging one at that. I am more familiar with D&D myself, but can imagine it being a great game as SJG and The Fantasy Trip both have good reputations!

The secret to friendship I have found is hugging tightly with arms wide open. Yes, a seeming zen koan, a contradiction.  It means to be exposed, care, be interested in their life -- not hold the person against their will or push them away. Everyone's favorite topic is themselves and listening to their story is the key to their hearts.

I'd play or run a game with you.  Unfortunately in an age of Covid it is hard, and I am not too good with modern teleconferencing (remote meeting) tools. And Play by Post really is a very different animal compared to actual in-person play. Discord however is a simpler application younger people have informed me.

Let us explore what you would like to play as and do in a dungeon adventure game in this topic! If you want the full D&D experience, let's use that. We can choose a race and then a class straight out, or we can let the dice & fate decide our class. Which would you prefer? 

Trolls.  A forum full of cunts who want to have their little CLIQUE and drive off any newcomer.  May you all rot in your little fucked up sewer.

Good luck with your game.

I agree.  Gygax ripped off Arneson's ideas.  He also further developed them.  We probably would have never learned about Arneson's ideas, had it not been for Gygax.

I hope you get a game going, and go kill some monsters.

Quote from: DeadVerySoon on January 18, 2022, 06:32:27 AM
Ok, this thread is closed. Too many dishonest asshole trolls on this site.

And you may be one of them!

Quote from: DeadVerySoon on January 18, 2022, 03:44:56 PM
Ireally dislike the type of person who gets into  something because "all my friends are doing it"

I think that this may unfairly characterize the appeal of D&D. There are countless role playing games out there. When a group of people get together to play and Bob knows GURPS, Hero System, and D&D while Jim knows Rune Quest, World of Darkness, and D&D and Mary knows D&D and Savage Worlds - what is the game they should play? D&D would be the most convenient. That isn't blind conformity, it's a nearly universal language of table top gaming.

Did I miss the drama?

What is this clutter?

*shrugs*

I clicked on this because of the quote from Dante's Inferno.

I did a mini-campaign a few years back that was Arthurian Knights take on Dante's Inferno on a quest for the holy grail. Since the players were mostly newbs, I needed to keep the game accessible, so I wanted to go with something popular, like D&D. But I didn't want it to be sledgehammeringly popular, so I used the out of print first edition. I was especially inspired how Gary Gygax stole the idea of Cops & Robbers from Dave Arneson, so I wanted to in turn steal Cops & Robbers from Gary Gygax only the cops were knights and the robbers were demons. Or rather Hell was the "dungeon" and the Devil was the "dragon."

Given how realistic the setting and subject matter were, I felt we needed an escapist element. So rather than allowing things to be wild and random like the boring real world, I wanted to escape into a realm where everything was well-ordered and fair and controlled from the top down. Now I wasn't clever enough to use a point-buy approach to character creation. After all, the game had failed to provide me with an adequate point total. But if it had provided one, I would have wanted to set the point total myself, not have it dictated to me. What I ended up doing is just imposing a minimum number of hit points, regardless of what the dice indicated, and use d10+8 to generate attributes so no one by bad luck would be forced to play a sub-par character. By pure coincidence, this just happened to fit thematically with what I was doing. Come to think of it, it fit exactly with the range given in Deities & Demigods for Arthurian Knights of Renown.

Of course, it still presented a lot of problems. For example, among the players in the group, we had a lesbian couple. So obviously the circle of hell in Dante's Inferno where homosexuals were punished was problematic. I can't help but feel this could have been avoided if we had just the right game system/mechanics. A good system allows the GM to create whatever kind of game he desires while at the same time shackling the GM for his own good so he doesn't include such offensive material.

In the end we somehow all had a great time. But it still bothers me to this day. That if only I had doubled down harder on my own personal opinion and preferences, the game would have been much closer to the average game I typically run. I think by running too fun a game, I might have given the players a false impression of what I think gaming is all about. Live and learn. Still waiting to find the perfect game system.

Hmm, point buy, more niche than popular bandwagoning, high level heroics, arena practice before dungeon crawl... Yeah some form of GURPS like The Fantasy Trip would fit the bill.

Arena battling would be useful for people to build system familiarity. However, it tends to miss a lot of the lateral skills like situational awareness and creative environmental exploitation that become more important in high level dungeoning. It's good to warm up with, but you'd have to adjust expectations as its applicable knowledge will pale to the options available in a greater dungeon.

Which gets to another important point: RPGs are a fantastic game to "ride the lightning," if you will. Technically the GM is 'in control' of the world, and the players are 'in control' of their character, and the dice are 'in control' of unknown answers, but in reality each rubs up against each other that "control" as a sense of surety, of security, is an illusion. GMs constantly lament players not doing what seemed obvious to them, or excited when players do unexpected things -- and players vice versa. And everyone blames (or celebrates!) the dice.

It is a performance art where control is defined among a trio, and yet each agitates the other so that it feels like at any moment it can all fall apart. And it often does all fall apart. But those moments when you all can ride that glory... magic! RPGs are wonderous games in riding the imagination before it grounds; relinquishing tight control (expectations) is part of the sacrifice to hop on. 

Quote from: Trinculoisdead on January 19, 2022, 12:47:04 AM
What is this clutter?

Dude proclaimed himself to be highly opinionated, thin-skinned, quick-to-anger, and generally socially maladjusted (with a long history of why that is the case), and wanted to talk about the gaming he wanted to do. Also proclaimed that the gaming he desired would probably never happen (due to all of the above, I suppose). Sorta a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'd say, and discussions doomed to implode. That's about it.

FWIW, DeadVerySoon, I wish you well. Good luck with your gaming; I hope you find some other people to share it with and have fun.

Is this dude gone yet?

Quote from: Opaopajr on January 18, 2022, 02:50:02 PM
As for Tollenkar's Layer, never played that. But looking at the link it appears to be a 6 level dungeon running on SJG The Fantasy Trip rpg, and a very lethal and challenging one at that. I am more familiar with D&D myself, but can imagine it being a great game as SJG and The Fantasy Trip both have good reputations!

I have Tollenkars Lair, it is indeed a Metagaming TFT or more aptly ITL adventure with a suggested point spread of 40. It is not a solo module so it does require a GM and can indeed be fairly rough.

Quote from: Omega on January 20, 2022, 01:10:00 AM

Quote from: Opaopajr on January 18, 2022, 02:50:02 PM
As for Tollenkar's Layer, never played that. But looking at the link it appears to be a 6 level dungeon running on SJG The Fantasy Trip rpg, and a very lethal and challenging one at that. I am more familiar with D&D myself, but can imagine it being a great game as SJG and The Fantasy Trip both have good reputations!

I have Tollenkars Lair, it is indeed a Metagaming TFT or more aptly ITL adventure with a suggested point spread of 40. It is not a solo module so it does require a GM and can indeed be fairly rough.

Thanks for the info, Omega! So it's like one of those killer dungeons where creative thinking is rewarded and reasonable levels of optimization is expected. Or is it more like Tournament Dungeons like jwhere Tomb of Horrors originated from?