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Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 08:30:40 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on May 12, 2024, 07:11:43 PMIs that a quote from G-troll? (starting with "I was looking...")

Yes.  It's from a topic he started on TBP.

I am sorry to see that. Dark Dungeon X is released under the OGL and Public Domain. I have looted, err, adapted parts of that for my home system. So I plan on separating the artist from the art. To bad. I really enjoyed his earlier work. See https://gurbintrollgames.wordpress.com/2023/10/01/light-fantasy-kickstarter-is-live/ from his website for the full, unvarnished version. So the decent into madness begins.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 12, 2024, 11:29:49 AMYou can mitigate the dice-luck issue a lot by flipping it so that instead of having to make lots of rolls and fail none, you just have to pass most of the rolls in a sequence. That retains an element of randomness while still averaging out to more consistent results. It'd go a long way towards making stealth characters as reliably good at their specialty as combat characters are.

With stealth as with other skills, what I like to do in skill-based systems (as opposed to class-based) is that if you have the skill, you're not rolling to see whether you succeed, but how well and how quickly you perform the skill.

So for example with stealth,

• fail - you move slowly and noisily, you can be mistaken for an animal moving around in the area, or a person friendly to the watcher
• success - you move quickly or quietly. If quickly, you're still noisy, but they can't get a precise bead on you. If quietly, you're quiet but it'll take you a long time to get from A to B
• great success - you move both quickly and quietly

with this in mind, only a great failure is a traditional "fail." Two of the other possible three results give the player a choice - and it may be a difficult choice. Let's say you're doing a prison break and trying to sneak by a guard - you can make noise but move quickly, or be quiet but be slow - but both you and the guard are outside the building, he's on the opposite side, if you choose to be slow he might come across you soon, but if you're noisy while he might ignore you, his mate up on the tower might notice you, and...

Indeed, if the player is willing to have their character do something slowly enough, they can always do it well - without even rolling. Got mechanics? Want to fix an overheated engine? Got a week? No worries, hold your dice, pass the cheetos. Want to do it in ten minutes? Want to do it so it won't burn out again after another hour of driving? Better roll.

Combat skills, by the way, always need to be done well and quickly. That's why you always roll for combat, and why the results are either/or with success/failure. That's combat.

Hi! First of all, I'm going to move this to the main RPG forum; I hope you don't mind but it is more topical there.

Second: in the many L&D campaigns I've ran, there's been plenty of people who play Magisters. At lower levels they are typically quite weak (though if they're lucky with level rolls they might be not that weak), but at higher levels and when they get enough magic, and if they take the time and expenses to do the magic, they can become very powerful in terms of boosting the party's ability.

There is no 'elementalist' class, but in the Old School Companion there is a grimoire that allows you to contact and summon elementals (based, as all the grimoires there are, on a real historical grimoire). Maybe that was what you recalled?
Related to the first topic, if the GM uses the Old School companion and gives a magister access to any of the grimoires in there, it will significantly increase the magister's power level. Of course, grimoires are meant to be rare artifacts, so they shouldn't be handed out too freely.

In BoF I didn't have a straight magister-class because at that time and in that place the only magisters there might be in Poland would probably be monks in monasteries. Though I do include a pagan magician class, which a GM can optionally allow as a PC class depending on how he's running his campaign.

Quote from: Omega on May 12, 2024, 05:22:46 AMWhatever they do. It will be stupid. With wotc failure is the only option.

Sure seems like it, yes.

Quote from: daft on December 30, 2022, 04:58:18 AMI would like to add Final Fantasy XIV to the list as well. It is an MMO, but it is extremely solo friendly and the story is really really good. Unfortunately the first part of it is probably the worst, even if it is still good.

Also, there's an extremely generous free trial letting you play to level 60 with some restrictions.

It's fairly solo friendly but there is a fair amount of group content like dungeons, trails and a few raids that you have to do in order to progress the main story quest.  Some of them can be done solo with NPCs but quite a few can't. 

There's a stretch in between when you defeat the Ultima Weapon and the end of A Realm Reborn that's just a slog to get through.   The rest of ARR is fairly good though not as good as later expansions.

Officially John Dee was the Court Astronomer and an advisor.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on May 13, 2024, 02:43:17 AMInteresting to me is the lore surrounding how magic users are regarded. What is that dividing line between "muh court whyzhard" and "burn her before she turns us all into newts!" I've often wondered?

Historically you had magicians like dee and kelly, who worked for the crown as magicians, known to be engaged with divining contact with angels to learn from them the enochian language, the language of creation, in order to work magic...the whole thing appearing to have the approval of both government and heaven, as opposed the hated reviled witch or sorceror in lore.

I suppose it likely has something to do with the nature of the practices in question; if man is given earthly dominion by god then it would be contradictory to serve or deal with as equals any demons, devils, undead, entities, or spirits...yet it would seem there is an implication i am detecting which says that conjuring an old bitch-devil and beating it into submission with your wand in the name of god and making it teach you featherfall is perfectly ok or something.

Never quite nailed this down but thats the best i came up with.

In Christian tradition, any use of magic is considered a contract with the devil.  There were no officially recognized court mages in Christian European nations.  This is also true in Islamic countries.  There was no distinction between witches and great wizards, they were all sinners in need of burning.  Many western magic users practiced in secret, always afraid of getting caught.

First, thanks for the feedback.  I will definitely get a hold of Wrath & Glory and Darkness Visible.

For more context, I'm making a game where the players are ninjas.  In direct combat, players are going to be a lot more squishy than many of their opponents.  I am aiming at multiple layers of covert play ranging from infiltration to target stalking.

A lot of this can be done with simple skill checks and narrative development but I am trying to develop a tactical stealth action play that is at the center of the game rather than more traditional combat. 

A lot of my thinking is in line with the kind of thing you guys are saying.  A single failed roll should not immediately result in completely blowing the player's cover but a series of mistakes and failed rolls should result in increasing difficulty and increased chances of getting caught.  Getting caught will lead to conditions that are very undesirable from blowing the mission to getting caught in mortal combat at a disadvantage.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 05:00:24 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 04:51:45 PMThat's fine, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. As a general rule, OSR people aren't into Vampire, and aren't interested in recreating Vampire. The people who are into Vampire are still doing Vampire.

If there was going to be a replacement game that didn't use nu-WW's nu-WoD rules, it would probably be fueled by the end times, and you still wouldn't want to play it.

I just want urban fantasy. No end times bullshit, no leftoid bullshit, no failed novelists tricking me into reading their shitty microfiction, no faux-gamer cultists worshiping said shitty microfiction, none of that. Is there really nobody alive who would be interested in an actual game, intended to be played, that features magical creatures living on a modernish Earth?

You want Sigil & Shadow from Osprey Publishing.