GeekNights 061205 - The Return to D&D

Rym

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss our triumphant return to regular roleplaying with our new Dungeons & Dragons campaign, including some changes we've made to make 3rd Edition more palatable. In the news, the Wii-mote is slowly approaching computer usefulness, and Natural Selection 2 introduces dynamic infestation.


Scott's Thing - Dance With The King
Rym's Thing - Metroid Level Data Explained

Brineshrimp

How would you like audio feedback sent?

Andrew

How would you like audio feedback sent?

Send an Odeo (I'm just guessing though). The link is on the front page.

HMTKSteve

Ya know...

When you talked about your DM giving you rewards for proper role playing I could not help but think of the "Honor" system used in HackMaster!

The way it works is very simple. You gain points of honor, that can be spent or accumulated, for doing things that your character would/should do. These rewards are not just based on your character's back story but are keyed to their class and alignment.

For example:

A Paladin who saves babies from an orphanage would gain honor for this act.
An evil Assassin who sets the fire that kills the babies in the orphanage would gain gain honor for this act. This same character could also double his honor gain by helping the Paladin save those same babies if it helped the Assassin further is cause or maintain his disguise.

This causes players to better role play because they know there is a direct reward/punishment attached to role playing!

Yes, the DM can also deduct honor due to occurrences in the game.

One of the rewards of honor is having a "high honor." This small window provides a +1 to all die rolls (yes, a 6HD fireball would be 6d6+6) and allows one mulligan per game session.

There is also a point where you fall into "dishonor" and there is a high end where you can have "too much honor." Both of these extremes result in bad things. Think of "kicking a man when he is down" and "knocking some sense into that uppity bitch to put him back in his place."

Also, if you are in high honor you can "purge" your honor. This results in a loss of almost all of your honor but it also results in a guaranteed success in what you are doing! There is one requirement though, the action must be possible.

So, you could say, "I'm going to purge my honor to hit the dragon with this arrow of dragon slaying" but you could not say, "I'm going to purge my honor to make myself the new ruler of the Abyss!"

Kiey

My friends and I started playing a DnD variant called Iron Heroes in June I think... we've played at least once a week since then. We aren't big RP people, we are generally more focused on fighting. For us RP is merely that which comes between fighting, but I wouldn't mind it the other way around I just don't think our group is up for that kind of game.

We've only had one character die and that was are magic user who go friendly fired by our Berserker after he was made huge. In our game there really isn't anyway to rez people, but we were in sort of a magic realm and dunked him in a river of magic which brought him back, but he was possessed by a Lich.

I actually kind of want my character to get killed so I can make a new one, since I really didn't know what I was doing when we started, and now that I have a better understanding of the game, and how everything works, I could make a much better character.