Bundle o' questions

[Chainsaw Mage]

Three questions; please feel free to answer any or all.

1. Sword & Sorcery's Ravenloft. There are one hundred friggin' books. A campaign book, a player's handbook, a dungeon master's guide, gazetteers, tons of softcovers...argh. What's a chap to do? I want to pick up just what I need for Ravenloft 3.5. What do I need? What do I not need, but would be nice to get? What should I avoid?

2. Do you PBP? I would be interested in hearing people's experiences with this medium. Is it tedious, slow, and unreliable, or fast, fun, and furious?

3. "3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel." So they tell us at Necromancer Games. Does this actually mean anything, or is it just a marketing tagline? I'm considering picking up some of NG's adventures, but I want to know if there's any substance to the "1st edition feel" thing first.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Re: Necromancer. "1st Edition Feel" tends to mean nonstandard mechanics and overly deadly adventures. IMHO, of course.

e.g. on mechanics, a percentage chance of success instead of a DC -- this is definitely a 1st edition "feel", but it's not "3rd edition RULES"

 

[Mouseferatu]

Three questions; please feel free to answer any or all.

1. Sword & Sorcery's Ravenloft. There are one hundred friggin' books. A campaign book, a player's handbook, a dungeon master's guide, gazetteers, tons of softcovers...argh. What's a chap to do? I want to pick up just what I need for Ravenloft 3.5. What do I need? What do I not need, but would be nice to get? What should I avoid?

The relatively new Ravenloft Player's Handbook is the only core book you truly need. It updates the campaign setting to 3.5, and adds new material as well. However, it does not cover the darklords, or many of the secrets of the various domains. I'd recommend the DM's Guide and Denizens of Dread (the Monster Manual) as well. The softcovers are cool to have, but they aren't essential.

2. Do you PBP? I would be interested in hearing people's experiences with this medium. Is it tedious, slow, and unreliable, or fast, fun, and furious?

No.

3. "3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel." So they tell us at Necromancer Games. Does this actually mean anything, or is it just a marketing tagline? I'm considering picking up some of NG's adventures, but I want to know if there's any substance to the "1st edition feel" thing first.

Necromancer's modules do often feel more like 1st edition stuff than other companies' stuff. I don't know that I'd say they all feel just like playing 1E, but you could do far worse than to look into them. The only other company that has modules that really feel old-school is Goodman Game's Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I feel that Necromancer, on average, has a higher standard of quality on its modules.

 

[DM_Jeff]

-DM Jeff

 

[DM_Jeff]

>>"3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel." So they tell us at Necromancer Games. Does this actually mean anything, or is it just a marketing tagline?

A tagline, but one they live up to more often than not. Back "in the day" modules frequently had a base of operations, dark specific villians (sometimes demons and devil's mechinitions), dark rituals, exotic dungeons, lots of dangerous monsters, and memorable NPC's. So do Necromancer Games' modules.

It's just that they accent some of the older themes. Back in the 80's you might get one or two good NPCs, in NG books there are dozens. You might get one or two levels of 'dungeon' in the 80's, in NG books the dungeons are larger and more logically stocked.

Maybe it should read "Best of 1st Edition flavor retained, 3rd edition rules."

-DM Jeff

 

[MerakSpielman]

2. Do you PBP? I would be interested in hearing people's experiences with this medium. Is it tedious, slow, and unreliable, or fast, fun, and furious?

I had a PbP game going for over a year. My players were pretty reliable, and our posting level waxed and waned a bit.

But when we finally called it quits, the characters had succeeded in finishing what took 3 sessions to complete when I ran people through the same adventure in person.

So fun? Yes. Fast? No, very slow. Furious? no. Unreliable? it's only as reliable as your players.

 

[GM Iago]

I can't answer much about the books, but I can toss at least one cent in about the PbP medium.

As Merak spoke, it is much much slower then real-life or even CBG (chat-based gaming). It takes months to do what can be done in hours. If you like games to move quickly, don't try this one out.

That said, if you and your players like to write and flesh out characters, this can certainly be the way to go. You can find a lot of people will put up a one or two post sentence in which only half of the words are spelled correctly. Others will reply to the same situation/post with a five paragraph reply which really makes you not only see the character but get to here what he/she is thinking and feeling. It allows for a game that is very vivid and character oriented.

That isn't to say that PbP's can't be plot oriented, but the plot takes a long longer to unfold unless you're practically dragging your characters through it. You've gotta be patient and let the PC's move at their own pace, even if that means sitting back and letting them talk out a plan amongst themselves for 3-4 days.

It can be great or it can be a pain in the arse. It depends on what you like and who you get as players (of course, the same is said about every gaming medium out there).