Re: RPG Talk
It's been over nine months since I started my D&D 3.5 campaign, using the excellent Ptolus setting. Some players wanted me to run it with Pathfinder or allow stuff from non-core books, but I find the 3.5 core rules to be about as much as I can handle. The last time I ran a D&D adventure was in 1987, and then I swore it off for better rpgs. But Ptolus is such an amazing setting that I just had to run it.
And I figured if I'm going to run a D&D game, I'm going to run it right. That's means following the rules as closely as I can, but feeling free to make a quick judgment call instead of stalling the game for 10 minutes while I look something up. I prep like crazy for every session, making extensive notes about rules and tactics that are relevant for each encounter. I found a lot of maps for Ptolus online, both professional ones for sale and high-quality non-pro ones for free, and I printed off a copier box worth of those maps in miniature scale.
As for miniatures, I skipped that nonsense. I figured out in advance that I was going to need at least 1,200 figures for the adventures and campaign that I was going to run. With my miniature painting skills, that would take me a decade to paint those minis, so fuck that. Instead, I bought 1,200 wooden nickels for $60, in 1" and 2" sizes. I print off sheets of pictures of npcs and monsters and punch them out with hole punches, then use mod podge craft glue to stick them to the wooden nickels. Those are my minis, and I've already done about 1,000 of them.
The campaign has gone well. I over-recruited, knowing that there would probably be a couple of dropouts. So we now have a solid group of six players, with a seventh player about to start. Attendance has been solid as well, so we have only skipped two bi-weekly games: once for a major blizzard and once when I was very sick with that norovirus.
Right now, most of the party is 7th level. The fights have been getting complex lately, due to spellcasting by both sides. The party consists of 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 druid, 1 sorcerer/aristocrat, 1 rogue/sorcerer, 1 cleric/rogue, and 1 barbarian/rogue. It's an interesting group in fights because they lack a traditional fighter in full plate to stand in front, so the spellcasters often find themselves in direct danger. The social rogue/sorcerer is being role-played badly by a shy player. And neither cleric is competent at turning undead. Two of the players are very experienced at 3.5, three other players are experienced at rpgs in general, and two of the players are very inexperienced. Half of the group is fairly into the role-playing aspect, and 2/3 of the group is very interested in the tactical aspect of combat.
This group likes to buff themselves magically just before going into danger, and then charge through recklessly before their spells wear off. And when they think everything is safe, they scatter all over the place, looking for loot and secret doors. This is fun, because their lack of discipline often leads to more danger once the group has split up. Every single character has had at least one close brush with death (negative hit points), and three characters have died and been brought back with Raise Dead, at the cost of a level.
