Recent content by Koloth

GURPS - for most things, including Traveller PF1 - for the high fantasy fix Rollmaster Pretty well covers the 3d6, d100 and polyhedral type game systems. If you can't figure something out with these three, time to quit gaming and start looking for Mary Ann. I hear her coconut cream pies are...

My first RPG games mostly didn't use minis or maps. We were poor college students who had to choose between buying weekend food or PHB or dice or minis or maps. Minis and maps generally lost. If a scenario was complicated, we sometimes would layout change, spare dice, bits of paper, etc...

I find this hilarious. 1e ghouls were always one of those monsters that low to mid level characters hated fighting just for the paralysis reason. Especially in close quarters where the party had trouble with ranged attacks. More then once we ran from them and a couple times had to launch a...

Nothing wrong with the GM pre-rolling the NPC's initiatives as part of prep. One less thing you have to do 'in the moment'. Allow use of a hero point to allow a character to go NOW! Handy for that wizard that sees the perfect setup for a fireball but somehow managed to roll last in the...

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #34: War is good for business. Related: #35: Peace is good for business. Blockade running. Smuggling(supplies, information, people). Supplying the army. Supplying the other side's army. Privateer - normally ocean based but could be land based. Prize money...

One side's pirates are another side's privateers. If your heroes are working for a government entity, grant them a Letter of Marque and Reprisal to make their activities legal and define rules of engagement for the party. Of course, there is no guarantee that other governments will honer a...

Reminds me a lot of the 3rd party frenzy during the 3.x era. Piles of stuff labeled d20 and/or OGL compatible. Some good. A lot not so good. Much of it was published using the then relatively new concept of 'pdf publishing'. Gave rise to sites like drivethrurpg. And for that matter, this...

Rule 1 of gaming: If you are not having fun, don't do it. Gaming out of a sense of duty to your gaming group rarely ends well for anyone. Continuing to game without fun risks a hard burnout. Let your group(s) know you are taking a break. Decide if you want to stay in the communications loop...

Luger summoning 101. An old trick his mom taught him, IRC. Bored Flack from Fineous Fingers fame. The metal minis had Bored Flack wielding something like a bazooka.

A variation on the 'smells' theme is the smell might just replicate the musk of something in heat. Might make for a humorous camp tale if the critter is a lustful raccoon. Not so humorous if the sex crazed critter is something the size of a rhinoceros. Or the critter might think your smell...

Green Ronin's Freeport City of Adventure is a good pirate resource.

Things that many folks consider modern appeared in early games. Fantasy Trip has a decent list of non combat Talents(skills). Its unofficial successor GURPS, has a long list of skills, advantages and disadvantages. Both have a 4 levels of success on most rolls. Critical Fail, Fail, Success...

No D&D brand since 3.5 was shut down. PF1, PF2, Traveller, GURPS and Fantasy Trip.

Sample size of one and all. My into to D&D was when I started college. Started with OD&D boxed set + supplements. Then on to AD&D. Our small by most standards college town was lucky enough to have a Game Store(actual name) that carried RPG, Board games, War games, dice, minis, etc. I don't...

I know I played 1E. But mostly played some variation of fighter and/or thief. Maybe because of the magic spells are limited and easy to interrupt thing. Backstabbing the enemy mage was always an objective. No good memories of what house rules we used vs RAW. We did migrate to 2e fairly...