Devil-Mish
Site Supporter
First gameplay video from the LE distribution:
Be prepared for lots of owlbear.
Be prepared for lots of owlbear.
Pinball info
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Dungeons & Dragons by Stern
- Thread starter Replay
- Start date
They managed to make that look as exciting as a rain drenched walk to the cashpoint at the **** end of January.
The game was a bit quiet but even so I’m still struggling with the sleepy soundtrack and the call-outs / narration …. can’t put my finger on it exactly but they just irk me.
Devil-Mish
Site Supporter
Hah! We've all been there unfortunately.
I'm looking forward to some proper gameplay. I am worried that the call-outs could be tiresome. "You go through the door and see... Two Skellingtons", it just doesn't feel very cohesive.
I'm very curious to see the character and story progression. Do the characters feel unique in any way? (At least in Venom with the changing of the ramp, and shots, they feel somewhat different. 'Longer shield time' and 'better against dragons' doesn't feel you'd play the game in any unique way per character). Do the towns feel uniquely different except having different story missions that you complete once and then have no real reason to visit again? How does the 3 different endings tie into the decisions you've made and how does that progress? Because at the moment every quest footage appears to be it's own self-contained thing that doesn't have much bearing on the overall story progression.
These are all of the worries I have for now, Flip N Out are hoping to have a stream next week and I think that'll do a good job showing all of that over a 2 hour session.
In D&D generally, you have the whole thing of if your character has a certain amount of a specific stat (+ dice roll) you get different outcomes... It'd be nice to see the stats used in that way but at the moment the leveling up seems to mean absolutely nothing, we don't even know what the level cap is either.
Isn't that how DnD is played though, Dungeomaster reads out "You go through the door and see..." then he roles a dice to select what the players see and then reads out the result "Two Skellingtons", so the pause is part of the DnD experience which they've tried to recreate.
Devil-Mish
Site Supporter
Yeah you could be right.
I've seen a fair few hours of Critical Role and have no doubt Matthew Mercer can deliver on the DM lines and deliver them as they were directed.
Rolling random monsters/encounters would probably be the worse way to ever play any RPG. It’s meant to tell a story with your GM as a guide responding to different factors. Very little should be random but a reaction to earlier events.
Oh God. I’ve just out nerded myself
Oh God. I’ve just out nerded myself
There are a bunch of board games that have random monster tables and, to be honest, a pinball machine is always going to play more like a (simpl-ish) tabletop strategy game with a dexterity element than an actual RPG.Rolling random monsters/encounters would probably be the worse way to ever play any RPG. It’s meant to tell a story with your GM as a guide responding to different factors. Very little should be random but a reaction to earlier events.
Oh God. I’ve just out nerded myself
There's a whole series of D&D Adventure Board Games that are all 'explore random tile, draw random event, find random monster'...
And, with that, I think I've out-nerded even you
Yeah. I’ve got the Ravenloft board game here.
Inevitably the pin is always going to rely on the “random encounter” table type concept and becomes very hack and slay as an approach.
On the other hand I’ve never been a huge fan of people lawyering through rules. Technically you can level up by setting fire to a forest and killing loads of very low level creatures. Doing so though should result in a lynch mob tracking the character down.
There’s a lot of quirks and exploits in the game. For example “mud to stone” was a very low level spell. Cast it in reverse first and then cast back and a puny magic user can pretty much stop anything in its tracks. Fun if it happens once but a boring way to play if it happens a lot.
Inevitably the pin is always going to rely on the “random encounter” table type concept and becomes very hack and slay as an approach.
On the other hand I’ve never been a huge fan of people lawyering through rules. Technically you can level up by setting fire to a forest and killing loads of very low level creatures. Doing so though should result in a lynch mob tracking the character down.
There’s a lot of quirks and exploits in the game. For example “mud to stone” was a very low level spell. Cast it in reverse first and then cast back and a puny magic user can pretty much stop anything in its tracks. Fun if it happens once but a boring way to play if it happens a lot.
Yay!
I owned about three or four of those games for years. Eventually, we got rid of them because the earlier ones we just 'kited' (rules hack) away from the monsters, and the later ones weren't as interesting as newer coops like Jaws of the Lion or Arkham Horror: LCG.I'd thought we might play them with the Flipper Beast, but - late last year - he spontaneously started his board gaming journey by learning the rules of Primal: The Awakening (while looking over our shoulder...)!!
He's subsequently learned, and played, Jaws of the Lion, Dwellings of Eldervale, and Slay the Spire: The Board Game!!So, I think the 'simple D&D coop' ship has well and truly sailed...
I still miss those D&D games, though. They were kinda cool...
I'm not sure how you'd make a pinball machine *less* hack and slash, though. It is mostly smacking stuff with a small metal ball moving at high speeds - games that are themed around racing about hitting things kinda come with the territory.
This is why I love Minecraft's survival mode. I've not played Minecraft until recently, but - despite being a game that can be (mostly) understood by a four year old - it does the whole "act evil and see consequences" RPG schtick remarkably well.
Sorry for the off-topic, folks, but - if you ever want a great family board game - I'm always happy to recommend something
