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Post by Thanin on Apr 22, 2005 16:25:59 GMT -5
Mike, that only shows your humility.
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Post by Guest Justin on Apr 22, 2005 17:23:49 GMT -5
I also don't think we're any better, and alas!, we now have the stats prove it.
Mandy rolled an 11... (hee, hee!)
8, 11, 13, 9, 8 and 11.
Okay. That's not awesome. It's just 60 points. I really needed it in the 66 range. So unless everyone just goes ape, I'm going to add 1 point to each.
9, 12, 14, 10, 9, 12.
Still not awesome. I'm so freakin' amped about this game, guys. So freakin' amped.
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Post by Thanin on Apr 22, 2005 17:38:21 GMT -5
These are perhaps the most gloryless stats I've ever had to use. I love it! ;D
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Post by amanda on Apr 22, 2005 17:56:45 GMT -5
Fun with dictation...
Justin has the following to say:
Now that we have the stats, bear in mind that we won't necessarily ALL have the same scores. Basic and expert rules provide for the option of adjusting stats. For example, you can trade in 2 points of wisdom, intelligence, or strength to increase your prime requisite by 1 point so long as you don't drop anything below 9.
If you guys want, I can still come up with random characters for you as individuals. But otherwise, I think I'm just going to make those be your stats. Assign them as you wish. Unless three or more of you have a problem with that.
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Post by Thanin on Apr 22, 2005 18:09:01 GMT -5
I'd rather you assign random characters. I just think that, if we're going to go this far, we need to go all the way.
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Post by Jeff on Apr 22, 2005 18:17:22 GMT -5
9, 12, 14, 10, 9, 12
Grr! Well, you broke my demonstration. And I was so proud. Now I just look like an oaf who can't anticipate eventualities. Egad! Maybe I am!
Here is the formula you need. 6!/[2! x 2!]=180 distinct sets of stats for your characters.
Now this excludes the cases where your players (unwisely) trade 2 valuable points of one ability for 1 in their PR.
BTW: The old point system that I used in D&D 1.0 was 72 points and no ability could be less than an 8. And you guys called me "draconian"!
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Post by Thanin on Apr 22, 2005 18:24:59 GMT -5
We were much more simpleminded back then.
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Post by rick on Apr 22, 2005 21:27:05 GMT -5
I'd rather you assign random characters. I just think that, if we're going to go this far, we need to go all the way. I agree Justin! Go to town on it. AND DON"T LISTEN TO TYLER! He's such a cry baby! Love ya Ty, but you know it's true!
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Post by mike on Apr 23, 2005 10:01:58 GMT -5
Justin is extremely generous in letting his players discuss the mechanics of what is and must be his campaign. I like the poll question's "yes, but I want to co-dm." I've never been allowed to discuss such central questions with a DM before, like what edition to run, and how shall that edition be modified. There's danger in giving players powers they're not entitled to in the rules. It can disturb things, so what follows is really offered for academic purposes and not for practical purposes. Justin authentically and totally needs to do what he's going to do without interference.
Speaking academically now, this reminds me of a big debate that's been going for forty years in the field of opera production and raging for the last twenty. Some stage designers like to strip away the surface trappings of operas and reach a minimalist purity by dropping the sets, costumes, and accoutrements nearly to none. All that remains is the pure communicative power of the music and words should the opera possess any. That opera has always enjoyed these so-called trappings, these reformers feel is irrelevant, like the trappings themselves. Some of these and some others even more radical also like to re-think the opera by presenting non-traditional stagings that challenge the audience to re-think the classic operas and their relationship to them by presenting them in unexpected places or transforming them into commentaries on themselves. Call these directors non-traditional or post-modern. For them, the work is often a means to a larger ends and not the crucial product of their craft. Then there are still a slender majority who like things done traditionally, more or less. They claim the reformers are jaded and bored with the thing itself and have lost faith by transforming it into something other than what it is. The traditionalists are satisfied with how it was before the reformers showed up and how they imagine it has always been.
It seems like we're trotting out an antique and rarely performed opera by hauling out the 0th edition books. I can really see how this gesture means different things to different people and can understand the impulses to reform them. I hear from Justin the call of purity in his plan to strip away the surface attractions. He summons the poetry of returning to some origin in his mention of rock and roll, but like many reformers, the return to origins is only part of the story. We aren't returning to origins really, but to aspects of origins. All returns to origins are problematic, of course. We've seen what happens since and can never be in 1973 again no matter how we might try, but to select those rules and then modify them immediately is a really interesting return to origins. The quest for purity came first and was initially conceived for a 3rd edition game. The platform is immaterial. The purity is what matters. That the D&D rules themselves encourage DM-initiated attractions is irrelevant, like the attractions themselves. (He'd like "The Ring" as staged in 1958 on a bare stage where the raw work can lay before us bereft of its distractions). I hear from Dave and it sounds like Rick too the call to rethink character generation toward a reforming revival for the genre of activity as a whole. They have a reforming impulse too, different slightly from Justin's but present. Dave wants to reveal the didactic point that rules are irrelevant, there's something deeper and to reveal this fact, he would gladly throw out all rules save the barest skeleton. Playing the game becomes in part a post-modern commentary on game playing. (He might like "The Ring" from 1985 where it's set in late-nineteenth century Germany and becomes a blistering critique of the moment that gave it birth.) Tyler may represent the traditionalist arguing for strict adherence to published rules. He's like those stage directors who say a good performance always flows from the text itself which can only speak for itself when we get out of its way. He wants to stand on firm ground with the work and play by its rules. Like the original players, he'd like to reveal his cunning and mastery and prefers those platforms that encourage that ideal while wanting to have full access to all of that cunning that lesser, older versions might allow. (He's like the 1993 staging of "The Ring" repleat with all the stage directions scrupulously followed to the extent the budget allows and resulting in a sumptuous performance unlike anything in the past yet conceived in the name of tradition.) I call myself a D&D junkie and am certainly an opera junkie (I liked all three versions of The Ring). When we were talking about 3rd edition, I'd be happy to reform it all you like. That opera doesn't interest me much, so have at it. But when we trotted out 0th edition, and I held my newly acquired yet musty copies of those pamphlets, the traditionalist in me was reborn, and I longed immediately for some impossible to obtain origin. For me, those old rule books aren't objects of boredom or means to reform or ironic commentaries on a genre gone wrong, they are youth reclaimed. It's hard to see your illusions serve other ends no matter how reasonable and cool those ends may sound.
You can stop reading now if you find personal revelations by near or total strangers uninteresting.
I think this discussion, acquiring the old pamphlets, thinking through why it bugged me that we couldn't just roll our own has cured me. My status as a D&D junkie may be over at last. I returned to the game searching for youth and found something weird. That game I dream will happen, the one that feels like the 1970s in Eugene, is never going to happen. This is a happy revelation, like when you attain the answer to a Koan, or discover you've been grinding it out in the archive searching for the answer to the wrong question. I don't have to play D&D any more.
Anybody want to play Bunnies and Burrows, or chain yourself to trees scheduled for being cut down, or light up a fatty, or any of the other things I've been longing to do in an effort to reclaim my youth, because now it's just a matter of doing that and not something else.
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Post by Amanda McBride on Apr 23, 2005 10:34:52 GMT -5
Oh no! You've killed Mike! You bastards!
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Post by Amanda McBride on Apr 23, 2005 10:36:45 GMT -5
So, does that mean you're NOT playing Justin's campaign? Say it ain't so, Mike. Say it ain't so.
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Post by Jeff on Apr 23, 2005 10:43:54 GMT -5
"...What we are aiming at when we are in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that when we fall in love we are seeking to re-find some or all of the people to whom we were attached as children.
On the other hand we also ask our new beloved to correct all the wrongs that these earlier parents and siblings inflicted on us.
So that Love contains in it the contradiction that we attempt to return to the past and (at the same time) we are attempting to undo the past."
Woody Allen
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Post by CaptAdam on Apr 23, 2005 13:17:10 GMT -5
Hello, Mike don't believe I've had the honor of meeting you, but I do believe I've heard Dave and Tyler mention you a time or two.
I agree with you about giving to much power to the players, I am as guilty as anyone of trying to abuse that power to my advantage.
So with that said "WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY."
Remember Justin it's great to except comments and sugestions from the players, but in the end your the final authority. Don't be afraid of makeing that kind of dission these people are your friends they won't grind you to dust.
And if they do I can always give them a spining backfist up side the head or you can use Ja'Gar in all his terrible glory to take them down a notch.
Have fun Guys and remeber me when your in the thick of it. "YOU CAN DO IT..."
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Post by mike on Apr 24, 2005 13:11:56 GMT -5
Adam, when it comes to D&D, don't you mean "with great pretend power, comes great pretend responsibility?"
Amanda, you're funny. Kenny lives. The point of my crazy revelation is that I don't HAVE to play D&D. Not that I won't play D&D. Before it was a compulsion that turned me into a junkie because I was looking for youth. Now I know that I'll never be young again and the things I do should be just for doing them.
I'm still interested depending on timing, in fact, I'm leaning toward playing a magic user. His name is Guy (pronounced "gee" as in "glee" without the "l"). I'm going to apply one of the lower stats to intelligence though, for reasons that make sense to me. I've long wanted to play a person drawn toward and impressed by magic, but ill-suited to it as a calling. Someone whose mentor is too nice to point out that he probably ought to listen to some other calling. I'm also hoping his first level spell is Dancing Lights. He'll be very impressed with his power to summon 1-6 lantern-like lights. His best score will go toward charisma. He grew up on a farm near some mediocre wizard. He used to do chores and odd jobs for the guy, like fetching water and chopping wood. When he showed up at the door asking to be taken as an apprentice, his winsome good nature prompted the mage unwisely to take him on despite his being, well, a little slow. The kind old mage didn't have the heart to break it to him that he sucks as a magic user and finally, in frustration, declared his course of training finished and bestowed upon him the undeserved title of "medium." Now a first level magic user, Guy will be anxious to please and thirsty for knowledge as he makes his way armed with at best tepid powers and limited ability to gather more.
Anyway, my story (not my back story) was about a midlife crisis ending with the end of my D&D addiction, not bailing on the game itself. I'll play or not for my own reasons rather than compulsively playing like a junkie. I no longer need Justin's or David's or Ken's or anyone else's game to restore my youth anymore. It's like being liberated. And as midlife crises go, it cost me much less than a sports car and wasn't nearly so emotionally costly as a divorce. When you young people are in your forties, I hope the fates treat you as kindly as they did me.
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Post by CaptAdam on Apr 24, 2005 18:26:38 GMT -5
I'm sorry Mr. Mike, but Dave and Tyler said the first game was free. Now I'm hooked and can't wait for my next fix. I'm so bad I embarrass Real Geeks. Come on you can still get one more free fix for the road, once it's in your blood you just can't say no.
I'm going to be young until the day I die, even if I'm going to be 38 June 25th, have a wife of 8 yrs and 2 kids.
I WANT MY DnD!!!!!!!!
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Post by rickus on May 2, 2005 11:24:39 GMT -5
Well it's been 8 days since anyone's posted here. I feel there are a couple of questions left to be answered.
1. Is Justin supplying the characters and the players the back story? Or are the players using the group rolls and providing the characters and the back story?
2. Do we know when we will hold an inaugural gaming session? I know Justin said that we would probably need to wait until after they're settled into their new abode. The basic gist was sometime in June. Is this still true?
3. Do we know where? I remember Mike was gracious enough to offer his place. But I'm not sure if he's still playing? And are we still planning a rotating game place. I liked this idea. And I think it would ensure that the hospitality of an individual isn't taken advantage of.
Anyway, I know everyone is currently in the throws of B&B but I didn't want everyone to forget about this game. I'm really looking forward to it.
Thanks for your time. rickus
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Post by Betterout on May 2, 2005 14:08:56 GMT -5
Rickus and crew,
1) I've received some mixed messages about the use of assigned characters. I'd still like to try it, and if so, here's how I'll do it. I'll take the stats we've generated, arrange them in several different orders, and then assign each a class/race and gender. There are several human classes to each demi-human class, so the odds are that humans will win out. Then, I'll just assign each 'character' a number, and randomly assign them to the six players (Amanda, Dave, Katie, Mike, Rick, Tyler... in abc order). I'll make a few more characters than I need, and keep them as NPCs and/or backup PCs. If I don't hear anything back about this in the next few days, then I'm going to go ahead and do it. Then I'll send you guys your characters and you can do the backstories.
2. I'd like to see the first session take place either the last weekend in May or the first weekend in June. I know everybody's probably got plans that last week in May, but either would be fine with me.
3. If you guys don't mind, I'd like to do the first one at our new place in P-Town, sorta like a DnD housewarming. I realize that's asking five people to accommodate two, but I'd still like to do that if you don't mind. Beyond that, I agree that the rotation thing is best. We can set up a schedule. Who knows, maybe it'll peter out after one or two sessions and it won't matter... Hope not.
Am I leaving too much stuff up in the air? Would you guys rather me just make demands on this matter, or put my 2¢ out there for group consideration? I don't want to come across as a bad guy, but then again, I don't want to come across as an unmotivated slacker, even if it's completely true.
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Post by Tyler on May 2, 2005 15:10:42 GMT -5
Is there any way we could just make our own characters according to the rules?
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Post by rickus on May 2, 2005 16:11:59 GMT -5
I know Katie and I would like to be given our charicters. I'm not speaking for him but, I think David eluded to the same.
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Post by Thanin on May 2, 2005 18:12:52 GMT -5
Rick is correct. The assigned characters are the way to go. And yes Justin, you should just go ahead and make demands on this matter. As your friends we'll do as you want. This is just as much about friendship as it is a game.
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