Designing the Perfect D&D

[the Jester]

Is he related in any way to Drelvin?

Hahahaha, no, but as soon as it happened those of us who know Drelvin's player burst into the "Drelvin- he ate a sandwich/Drelvin- he lost a leg" song.

It's actually our newest player that lost the leg; so he's never even met Craig (Drelvin's player) at this point (alas, I moved, so most of my old group is too far away to game with us now).

 

[the Jester]

I've attached the current ruleset to the first post.

I know several people had expressed interest in seeing it in a more coherent format; there ya go. If anyone runs anything with it, please let me know how it goes!

I've also got a megadungeon in process; it comes with a packet of additional monster conversions as big as the palette in the base document, but I'm still working on it- each level is (at least) four pieces of graph paper, and I'm only on level 5.

[MENTION=65375]C_M2008[/MENTION], [MENTION=83768]P1NBACK[/MENTION]

 

[the Jester]

We played some of this over the last weekend. The pcs were very stupid and nearly had a tpk.

They met a fiendish manticore, walked brazenly in to rifle through his treasure hoard and got torn to pieces. One pc escaped; a couple of others were asleep in another room. The escapee actually reached a safe place in the dungeon, a goblin-run tavern with both orcs and dwarves hanging out in an uneasy peace. It's called the Unbroken Leg.

 

[the Jester]

We played another session of this last night.

The party was still trapped in a dungeon, deeper than is healthy for 1st level pcs. Previously, one pc had fled the fiendish manticore and made it up a level, past some monsters that she outran, and to a goblin tavern (the Unbroken Leg). That player missed this game, so she sat in the corner of the bar the rest of the time.

The other survivors (who'd slept through the deadly manticore encounter) woke up, met up with a couple of replacement pcs (who had been scattered through the dungeon in an earlier encounter with a crypt thing- hurray for me having an easy justification for new pcs in the dungeon!) and tried to find their missing compadres. There was a bunch of exploration before they found a room dominated by a huge statue of an ax-wielding troll. The wizard went in and poked around; after a few moments, the statue boomed out "DAR!"

The wizard hemmed and hawed, and after frittering away a round, the axe swung and cut the wizard cleanly in half. Whoops!

One of the other pcs ran in, grabbed the wizard's upper half and dragged it towards the entry. "DAR!" the statue boomed, and the living pc dropped the half-body and bailed.

After a moment, the statue swung its axe.

After a few wary minutes, the pc went back in and finished retrieving the head-and-torso. It only took a few seconds; this time, the statue didn't attack. Meanwhile another of the pcs had recognized that the statue seemed to always swing horizontally, so he "did the centipede" across the room to where there were two more doors.

The other pcs hesitantly followed, staying against the wall but upright. After a moment, the statue did its thing again and demonstrated that the guy doing the centipede was the smart one; the other two got attacked (but survived) while the axe whistled over the centipede-doing guy's head.

The two doors out proved to lead to the fiendish manticore, who was eating a dead pc's face, and to a mostly empty room, where the party escaped to, closed the door, healed and rested again.

Then they moved on, unwittingly retracing the steps of the last session's survivor. They didn't get as far as she did without an encounter, but when they did stop for a fight, they cleaned up quickly while taking minimal damage.

We ended as they spied their companion in the Unbroken Leg (the tavern).

Notes: The pcs haven't gotten jack for xp yet; they have consistently forgotten to search after combats, so they also haven't gotten much treasure. D'oh! The statue is intended to be easily avoided but fairly lethal if you don't avoid it; it worked just about as intended. There are several clues to the statue's deal in the room containing it as well as the room before it, but the pcs missed them. There was a lot of beer involved, which may have degraded the party's normal level of wariness and level of play just a bit.

 

[Dannager]

I haven't read the entirety of the thread, but I get the impression that this game is designed almost entirely from the perspective of, "As a DM, what do I want from a game?" without a whole lot of consideration as to what players tend to enjoy in a game. I'm not sure that this is a good thing.

 

[the Jester]

I haven't read the entirety of the thread, but I get the impression that this game is designed almost entirely from the perspective of, "As a DM, what do I want from a game?" without a whole lot of consideration as to what players tend to enjoy in a game. I'm not sure that this is a good thing.

While there is something to this, my hope is that an excited and involved dm can make the system shine.

That said, I'm going to start a playtest-by-post before too long, once I make a few tweaks and updates to a thing or two. (One thing I discovered vastly improves the game is cutting the xp-to-gain-a-level in half, for instance; the game works better when the pcs advance a bit more quickly.)

EDIT: I'll link to the planning thread when I start it, my guess by the start of next week (maybe even tonight).

 

[Asha'man]

I take it that never materialized?

 

[the Jester]

I take it that never materialized?

Not yet!

After some discussion with the playtesters, I've decided there are a couple of minor revisions I need to make to 1st level pcs; specifically, nobody but a fighter has a choice between two styles or stances in combat. Also, spellcasters need more attractive choices for style and stance (possibly, at least for wizards, linked to specific implements).