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[Chrispy]

I might be interested as well, as term ends here in a week or so.  Over this summer, I'm going to be DMing a DF themed dungeon, so I can't wait to see what you have in mind! 

heh heh

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I imagine the party would consist of dwarves =P

Also We wont be dealing with XP, i don't really want to deal with it. SO you will level up after a number of story points, or if you pull off something particularly awesome or dwarfy, or for RPing really well, like say you make an epic speech after an important battle.

This is what I thought of

[Interus]

Wait, your doing DF AND D&D? Online?


How?

I live in the bible belt, I've been without d&d in real life for eight years. Eight YEARS. I must be informed. I mean, I knew of Open RPG, but all the campaigns I saw there lasted like, a week.

Hehe, I live in Kansas and I've just started playing D&D(4) with a few people.  It was kind of weird because I met them, and then a few weeks later one of them was like "You know, I'd really like to try playing D&D sometime."  And now we've got a group although only one of us has ever played.  Completely random occurrence, but definitely cool to me.


I might be into this, but I'm not sure how it would work.  I've never completely understood online RP, especially over the long term, because I'd be worried about missing a few things and then coming back after a delay and not having a clue what's going on.  Plus, I don't think I'm great at roleplaying.  I like writing and all that, but I tend to second guess myself and be generally slow to come up with what I think are good responses.  Plus, I tend to revert to a slightly more adventurous me even if that's not what I want my character to be like because it's easiest.

Still, I might like to try this out too.  I don't care about how much actual story there is, but I like a lot of detail in roleplaying when possible because it's more fun to read.  I don't have an opinion on the ratio of combat to other events.  I don't think it should be multiplanar though.  DF already has above ground, underground, and way underground.  Plus the different levels of good and evil, glaciers, and all that.  I suppose extraplanar might be interesting but it might be fun to just play with what's in the dwarfy world.

Just to make this slightly longer, what would be acceptable races?  Dwarves and humans seem obvious, because they're both more adventurous, but would other things like Elves or goblins be acceptable?  They seem somewhat popular in adventure mode.

[Squirrelloid]

Interest, but want a clearer statement of game rules and campaign structure

Regarding campaign structure: forum posting? IRC/chat program? something else?  Also - frequency of sessions if we're digitally meeting and time of day?  (Despite the scheduling hassle, vastly prefer real time digital meeting to forum posts).

Game rules: SRD is pretty broken if you know what you're doing - in fact, certain SRD materials are more broken than anything ever released in a splat (with the possible exception of some FR stuff).  What sort of level of crazy are we going for here?  I'm certainly willing to discipline myself, but I need to know what's expected.  I can also help define some clear power guidelines if people are interested.

Will races be custom tailored to DF world?  I'm sort of interested in playing an elf... (blasphemy, i know, but the DF elves are so different from standard fantasy tropes, it makes them more interesting from an RP perspective).

[warhammer651]

I would love to join in in for this. Low-magic suits my needs just fine.
probably gonna be a rogue

[LeoLeonardoIII]

One good rule of thumb is that a Fighter of double your level, with no feats, should be at least an even threat.

That is, you are not completely immune to him, and you can't just blast him in one round.

This breaks down at higher levels with spellcasters who have no-save spells. But it's a good guideline up to 10th level or so.

This isn't just a 3E problem. In 2E with the "Complete X Handbook" stuff you could make an Elf Fighter (Archer Kit) who could machine-gun everything and fought as if he were a basic 7th level Fighter at chargen. You could also play a Fighter/Thief, putting all your weapon proficiencies into Unarmed Specialization, and be from Teziir. You'd get the attacks per round of a 7th level specialized Fighter at chargen, and deal roughly enough damage to kill a 4HD Ogre automatically every round (no real chance to miss). An unlucky DM would let you play a 1st Edition Monk (or, to shudder, a Fighter/Monk) from Teziir.

This ignores the potential for anyone to blow a ton of Nonweapon proficiencies to get martial art stuff from the Ninja's Handbook, with the potential for +5 AC, +1 attack / round, and damage one die type higher.

And 1E was pretty crazy in places too. The Oriental Adventures characters were all better than the standard ones, in fact about thrice as powerful. Using stuff out of the Unearthed Arcana your character could easily have incredible stats and high starting HP. And both books features better nonmagical weapons and armor, for no real reason.

Pretty much, unless you use the most basic texts available, your game could easily be hosed. The SRD includes a lot of stuff. But you should be fairly safe sticking with the PHB1, DMG, and MM1.

Boring? Too limited? There are other games than these, but you generally lose stability when you introduce more content.

Oh, and consider that R6 d20 variant. Basically, you are limited to 6 character levels. After that, every 5k XP you choose a new feat that you qualify for. If you have a race with a level adjustment, your maximum character level is lower. So a PC with LA+2 can have only 4 character class levels because that puts him at 6.

This means there are simply no 7th level characters. Monsters remain unchanged. Treasure with CL over 6 cannot be created except through the same processes that produce artifacts and relics. So the DM can still put those in, but they're outside the PCs' power to create.

Hirelings and fighting dogs retain their value far longer. The Paladin's Warhorse and the Wizard's Familiar are pretty awesome because the PC never has to deal with a 10d6 Fireball or a 20d6 Horrid Wilting.

[dwarfguy2]

obligatory munchkin moment for humor: I GET TO BE A BRONZE COLOSSUS!
but seriously, i'd like to play.

[Peasant]

Hell yeah i'd like to play! I call dibs on the blind cave-fish man!

[lastofthelight]

I completly disagree with LeoLeonardoIII. Anyone who spends that much time worrying about things is just missing the point. I don't mean him specifically, but the sort of issues he's talking about. The SRD is essentially the most basic version of d&d you can get, and is pretty well balanced. But anyone messing with -any- aspect of d&d can munchkin it.

In general, the final arbiter of whats reasonable has to be the DM. The players, by extension, have to not be douchebags and try to get one over on him. The minute the focus becomes awesome stats instead of adventure, the game is over in spirit if not in fact. Stats are there to facilitate the adventure, the adventure is not here to facilitate the stats.

I am, therefore, in favor of 'standard 3.5', with the DM rejecting anything that seems absurd. I am against that insane R6 d20 variant or whatever it is that he was talking about.

In terms of what venue is used, I'm not sure if forums could work well. I've tried forum roleplay, I am very unconvinced of its usefulness. Actually, online rp in general seems to be hard.

I would suspect that we'd have to go with irc roleplaying, or Open Rpg, the free, open-source, online virtual tabletop. http://www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?c=orpg

Whatever works, though.

P.S. As a note, I think the thing earlier about just leveling with story accomplishments rather then XP is a fine idea.

P.P.S. The 'bible belt', to respond to the DM, is any region of the country where the vast majority of people are insane fundamentalist Christians who believe D&D and Harry Potter are equivalent to Satanism, so you have a hard time getting d&d players. Its a horrid, horrid place to be.

[Ilmoran]

While anyone can munchkin rules, it's very often easier to do with the splat books, as they are tacked on to the original system.  Pretty much happens in any system of any type:  If you don't have the whole thing planned in advance, things get strange when you add things on.

For example:  I cringed when I saw Expanded Psionics in the SRD.  I was part of a group that had 2 psionic characters, a warlock, and a cleric/artificer~ish person.  The psionic characters were absolutely brutal, and the warlock wasn't far behind.  Around 13th level, we decided to decorate our manor house/base by teleporting to a dragon lair every morning, killing the dragon and taking its horde, and going home.  Then we did normal adventuring the rest of the day.  Our outtings generally took less than 3 rounds of combat.  The elder red took 4 rounds.

Later, at 18th level, we killed an Elder Brain (an extremely powerful head of illithid society), a CR 28 creature.  It was a moderately challenging fight, and took about 6 rounds.

Although we wouldn't be able to recreate that party (the psion took the Constructor PrC, which was of the WotC website), that would probably only have reduced the party to "Incredibly powerful" vs even CR encounters, rather than "Overpowered"

Edit:  And the most basic version of D&D is the PHB, MM, and DMG.  That's all.  It's not like people waited to play D&D until the splat books came out, they played the game when it was released, i.e., its basic form.

[Yagrum Bagarn]

I'm not interested in this at the moment because I've got too much else going on.  I thought I could share a story about some DF related roleplaying I did a while back, though.

Spoiler'd, 'cuz paragraphs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We used The Burning Wheel to play an all-dwarf campaign about the return to the great dwarf home a la Khazad-dûm.  The GM got the game together after I directed him to read a certain Let's Play that-shall-not-be-named.  Of course, I played a character named Urist, and the place we were reclaiming was named "Koganusan."  If I remember correctly, my character was a particularly scholarly axedwarf.

We, a band of forward scouts and leaders, wove our way through the wastes, seeking the legendary doors.  We finally stumbled onto scorched earth where nothing but scrub would grow - and knew we were close.  Huge, ancient skeletons still stuck out of the earth.

We rounded a corner in the rocky terrain and found ourselves face to face with the magnificent doors - and a very upset pachyderm.  Our first fight  of the game was with a beast of legend, the Koganusan Tusked Horror.

Things didn't stay so campy.  I had a great GM that blended DF and Tolkien to get a good and Dwarfy vibe going.  It was meant to be a weekend one-shot, but there was some drinking and we progressed more slowly than planned.  As yet, we haven't finished.

TL;DR: I played a Burning Wheel Dorf game that mixed DF and Tolkien.  It was fucking hardcore.

[Squirrelloid]

PHB/DMG/MM is not balanced.  Not even close.  In fact, its the PHB where most of the problems are.

This isn't an issue of 'the DM should decide what's kosher or not', because players need to have an idea of what's kosher before they try to do stuff.  Its as much the DM's fault as the players if players come into the game with drastically different power expectations, because they weren't told what was appropriate beforehand.

For instance: A level 5 druid utterly owns a level 5 fighter.  Its not even close.  His animal companion is better than the fighter, and that's just one class feature.

For instance: there are lots of ways a wizard or cleric can totally abuse PC balance by making use of spells which have longlasting or permanent effects which contribute meaningfully to either wealth or combat.  I can't even begin to give a comprehensive list - its vast.  Stuff like Animate Dead, Fabricate, Planar Binding, etc... can have disproportional effects on player and party power.

None of these things are 'wrong' per se, but they can make the game a lot less fun for people who didn't plan on them, DM or other players included.

If its anything in the SRD goes, the following classes are the clear "winners": Cleric, Druid, Wizard.  Rogue won't feel useless, but he's obviously second string along with the pity spellcasting classes - Bard, Sorceror.  Paladin, Ranger, and Barbarian are pretty bad at third tier, but they're much better than the fighter, who is the single most useless class in the book.  That's just the way things are.

And honestly, SRD only makes this a lot worse for the lower-powered classes, because everything the top classes need is right in the PHB.

I recommend if its low magic you ban Wizard, Cleric, and Druid.  Possibly sorceror also.  Let people play that NPC spellcaster class from the DMG if they want to play a healer type, or a bard.  They'll still be more powerful than everyone else, but it won't be so embarassingly obvious.

[Genoraven]

The limiting factor would be logic. Just because cause you can doesn't mean your character would. Your character wouldn't necessarily know what would make him the most powerful. So |The limiting factor iswhat would make sense.

we'll be using the tangled web for character sheets.
It's really nice, as it auto updates relevant fields.

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/


Character creation details.

Stats will be a off a 28 point, point-buy http://nc-gamers.com/pointbuy.aspx



Normal encumbrance rules

2700 starting gold, no extra dimensional storage.

Races: Any of the main ones. so, dwarves, humans, elves. Any others, just ask me before you use them.

I would be fine using IRC, it would just be tricky with timing, but we'll see.

Also backstories would be nice, but if you don't make one i reserve the right to make stuff up. Though at this stage don't worry about a finalized backstory just yet.

[Genoraven]

Yeah you make a good point, I think I'll consider cleric, druid and wizard or sorcerers PRCs

[warhammer651]

Never seen that site before. Yay new experiences!

Looking around the site, how do I create a new character? can't seem to find it.

also, could someone link me to how I go about filling in the character sheet?