Timewaster's Guide Archive

Differing opinions are good. They help me get a more accurate perspective on things.

Well, I agree that the skills and feats thing could be an unbalancing factor. Some of the players are like me, and don't care if their character is up to par with everyone elses. But for some players that is a prime concern.

I've toyed with the idea of giving each player the responsibility of informing me, via email, about where they think they're character fits in to the campaign and what goals they would like their character to accomplish after each session. This, annoyingly feels like giving out homework, which I do enough at work as is. Yet it is a quick way that I can check to see if I'm meeting the hopes and desires of the players. Perhaps this is just taking the whole DMing thing to too much of a professional level?

So, making the campaign player-focused seems like a good idea. I may have to twist some arms of some of the players to get them to break out of their video-game mentallity and start cooperating, but I'm sure it will be good for them.

I keep coming back to the rules part of my first post. I understand that changing the rules can provide some balancing problems. Here are some of the rules I'm thinking about changing:
1. Switching Bards, Sorcerers and Wizards to a spell point system.
2. Having a monotheistic religion, where Clerics and Paladins worship Saints instead of gods.
3. Placing time restrictions on purchasing magic items, players can only buy or sell so much per day.
4. Incorporating saving throws to account for mental or physical health.
5. Using skill points and feats as rewards in addition to those gained at levels.
6. Axing psionics, I just don't like having the 3rd magic system.
7. Having orcs as a player race and geting rid of the half-breeds.

So what problems am I creating?

So the voices in my head have given me permission to return to the board for a while.

So I'm thinking of starting a campaign in the next few months. I've already decided some of th basic setting and story outline, but here are some of my questoins.

1. System rules: I've decided that there isn't a system out there that I completely like. So I think I will just take the DnD 3E system (since I'm familiar wiht it) and get rid of half hte rules and make it the way I want it. Is this a good idea? Does it take away too much control from the players?

2. Players: I'm the kind of player that I like to think can have fun with any character given to me. When make a character I try to think of things that might be challenging. (hmm.. let's a hafling fighter with only a sling sounds like fun). Course, I realize not every one is this way. (One person I currently play with is one of the most blood-thirsty min/max-ers I've ever met and she makes no apologies for it.) So should I limit what kind of players I let into the campaign? Not something I'm very fond of over all.

3. Characters: So I think it is a lot of fun to focus on characters. The dilema here is that, I still want to tell my story. Sometime my story-line and the player story lines don't always come together. This also happens more often when the party is in the GMs custom campaign, but the player is thinking in the world of the premods (Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, ect...). So I've been think of staggering the sessions a little so that I can take time to focus on both. Solution or Problem? I've also thought about asking the players to provide short outlines of where they see their characters heading.

4. Reality: Just how "real" should I try to make the campaign feel? Personally, reality sucks. If you can't pretend in an RPG to be a super-being who can jump off cliff without suffering a scratch or be a lone warrior who can take down a whole orc army then where can you? Despite this I understand that some people want "realistic" feel to the campaign (maybe they just haven't experienced enough trauma to know otherwise). So how much "realism" should I try to include?

Hmm...let me think. No, I did not.

Okay, Spirited Away is a very cool movie. I seriously hope it gets an oscar nod.

So I here that a Lord of the Rings version of Risk is coming out. Has anyone else heard about this and what's different about the game?