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  1. Celebrim

    D&D General Can I use your character for an NPC in my new market?

    Not enough information provided to assist you. I need to know the referent historical time frame (300's, 1200's, 1600's, 1800's ect.) you base your costuming and culture on, overall level of wealth, overall availability of magic, real world cultural influences or what is in the melting pot at...
  2. Celebrim

    Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

    No I hadn't, but his conclusions are really close to the numbers I'm using in my 3e homebrew, albeit I have more range increments. Of course, the real ranged increments probably vary rather than are linear increments, but I'm not actually trying to be realistic just "casually realistic" in as...
  3. Celebrim

    Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

    Well, that was my first proposition, so we don't have a lot to disagree on. My point is does "getting into the weeds" actually model reality in any way given that the modifiers are typically arbitrarily chosen by the designer and not actually tested or drawn from any real experience or data...
  4. Celebrim

    Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

    As someone that used to run GURPS I entirely disagree. I mean, in say 1999 I would have agreed with you. Although, I was at that time using the GULLIVER house rules out of frustration with the lack of realism of GURPS. I also hadn't at the time realized that the GURPS skill system was the...
  5. Celebrim

    Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

    Sigh. It's clear you don't understand what fiction-first means and aren't interested in discussing it but do like swinging jargon around in an attempt to impress others. This is such a generic and meaningless claim as to be pointless and it very much depends on the genre and what we accept...
  6. Celebrim

    OSR Healing tweak - proportionality

    I've looked at it and pursued the ideas you are thinking of here and the problem is that game balance is so negatively impacted that any advances in realism are greatly outweighed by reduced playability. Simply put, if healing scales to the recipient of the heal rather than the power of the...
  7. Celebrim

    Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

    I don't see what problem that solves. It just creates new problems. Never ever approach a question of what should happen here from the standpoint of the ruling being applied to NPCs. Always the question is what results if we apply this ruling to PCs. Is it fair to just tell the player...
  8. Celebrim

    Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

    Explicitly, that has been part of D&D's rules since the beginning. 3E attempted to quantify it somewhat with its "coup de grace" rules, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because it covers edge cases (you can coup de grace a whale, but its a bit harder to do with ordinary weapons) but the...
  9. Celebrim

    Realistic Combat that's Simple(ish)

    There has never been a realistic pen and paper system. What people mistake for realism is process simulation where you go through the mental steps that naturally arise when you imagine combat. But this isn't realism, just something that gives a semi-skeptical person plausible suspension of...
  10. Celebrim

    Which RPGs best model real-world skill development?

    Traveller's inability to distinguish routine (which teaches only slowly) from high stress/high activity environments is one of the many things I hold against what could be a really great system. The way the CharBurner works should not necessarily reflect the most intense possible training...
  11. Celebrim

    Which RPGs best model real-world skill development?

    I have always said that BRP/CoC's core advancement mechanic is the most elegant mechanic in all of table top RPGs. You advance for successfully using a skill, but the chance you advance is inversely proportional to you skill. While the model of advancing isn't "realistic" it does perfectly...
  12. Celebrim

    RPG Archive: Boot Hill Wild West RPG

    Well, that's certainly one reasonable example of revisionism. However, you can also question the history with more accurate history, or question the mythology by exaggerating aspects of the mythology to bring them into focus and ask questions like, "Why should a killer be made a mythical hero?"...
  13. Celebrim

    What do you do when a Player dies?

    It's never happened to me, but I've lost two former players to tragedy after moves had separated us. They still hurt.
  14. Celebrim

    RPG Archive: Boot Hill Wild West RPG

    It's my opinion that no one can truly imagine anything from before about 150 years before they were born without devoting a lifetime of academic study. And that's probably for someone with some awareness of history. A good many people probably can't imagine anything more than about 25 years...
  15. Celebrim

    Describe your last rpg session in 5 words

    Protect Moff from farm machinery
  16. Celebrim

    Congrats To 2025's ENnie Nominees!

    Which is saying the same thing ultimately. And you make that clear even once you get far enough in your explanation. Yes, so in other words rather than buying a cookbook I'm buying a prepared meal, possibly even one that has been cooked for me and not just arriving in one of those...
  17. Celebrim

    Ran my first session of Star Wars D6: Big Damn Heroes

    Not to mention if you show up selling a trunk load of Imperial weaponry with the serial numbers intact, you better be making a heck of a Streetwise check if you want to avoid someone passing information to the Empire with a detailed description of who was selling looted Imperial weapons.
  18. Celebrim

    Congrats To 2025's ENnie Nominees!

    I get it, but I don't think it's my sense of wonder that is the issue. It's that in an RPG I am used to buying game systems and not games. The problem isn't that I'm out of imagination. The problem is that I want to play "my game" and not "your game". Somewhere a generational gap happened...
  19. Celebrim

    Congrats To 2025's ENnie Nominees!

    Definitely not possible to make everyone happy, but it probably isn't the same groups that are upset on the two occasions.
  20. Celebrim

    D&D 3.x Running 3e D&D for the first time in a while, any advice?

    I think it is fair to say that 3e very much makes the assumption that the vast majority of opponents will not be leveled NPCs, because the game advice and guidelines begin to fall apart if you do try to tell a story where most of the foes are humans and not monsters. Making 3e work in a setting...
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