If you played 5e you'll have no trouble with Numenera, it's a fair bit simpler. The main difference is spending stat pool points, and how skills work.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Tabletop RPG |OT| I cast a spell
- Thread starter Nairume
- Start date
If you played 5e you'll have no trouble with Numenera, it's a fair bit simpler. The main difference is spending stat pool points, and how skills work.
Look what showed up at my door this morning:
And next to the 1996 edition:
I'm so excited! My absolute favorite RPG experience I had as a teenager was to play The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign towards the end of the 90s. If I remember correctly, it took us a little bit more than a year to go through.
I don't have a regular group right now, but I would really like to DM this campaign at some point. Maybe someday soon.
And next to the 1996 edition:
I'm so excited! My absolute favorite RPG experience I had as a teenager was to play The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign towards the end of the 90s. If I remember correctly, it took us a little bit more than a year to go through.
I don't have a regular group right now, but I would really like to DM this campaign at some point. Maybe someday soon.
Last edited:
Question for those who are DMs and play online.
Is there a solution you would recommend for background music?
At the moment we are using Google Hangouts for voice chat and everything else is theater of the mind. I've been thinking about using background music but our current setup does not have that functionality besides telling my players to click on that YouTube link for music. And I really don't want YT ads ruining our immersion lol.
Any suggestions?
Static_Void that looks so cool!
Is there a solution you would recommend for background music?
At the moment we are using Google Hangouts for voice chat and everything else is theater of the mind. I've been thinking about using background music but our current setup does not have that functionality besides telling my players to click on that YouTube link for music. And I really don't want YT ads ruining our immersion lol.
Any suggestions?
Static_Void that looks so cool!
I've had to do several things over the years. The ideal setup involves a separate machine; in my case I use a small dilapidated Vista laptop that I set up for streaming music when it probably should've been recycled ten years ago. Since you're presumably also running chat, doing it all on one machine requires solving all sorts of problems to avoid the music getting directly fed into the chat channel and causing hellacious feedback issues. A second machine ("air-gapping") for the music is the most straightforward solution. The hardware of my streaming machine isn't savvy, to put it mildly, so I literally connect the speaker out to the mic in with a short 3.5mm male-to-male cable. The degradation is noticeable but not distracting.
From there you can use any number of live streaming services, or even its own separate chat account on the same channel (it'll basically be another "voice" except it's just playing music instead). Both have significant limitations, however. Live streams typically use a buffer of about 15-30 seconds, which is an eternity in conversations, so the BGM will have to be more ambient than reactive no matter how hard you try to anticipate. Streaming services can have other requirements that make them tricky for such a specialized use case. Chat is much faster so you can be much more situational, at the cost of degraded audio quality -- it's compressed in a way to transmit voices economically, and the occasional clipping or distortion is considered acceptable.
From there you can use any number of live streaming services, or even its own separate chat account on the same channel (it'll basically be another "voice" except it's just playing music instead). Both have significant limitations, however. Live streams typically use a buffer of about 15-30 seconds, which is an eternity in conversations, so the BGM will have to be more ambient than reactive no matter how hard you try to anticipate. Streaming services can have other requirements that make them tricky for such a specialized use case. Chat is much faster so you can be much more situational, at the cost of degraded audio quality -- it's compressed in a way to transmit voices economically, and the occasional clipping or distortion is considered acceptable.
Thanks for the advice!
dragonchild I appriciate the McGyverness on your setup.
ParityBit I installed Syrinscape once, but seems like it would only play stuff locally, so I would need to go through the same hoops dragonchild told about, no?
Guess I'll need to look into this more. I'm pretty sure just having a ambient background would be enough for now, but I only have one computer to use, and it is one I cannot install anything, so whatever I pick has to be web based unfortunately.
dragonchild I appriciate the McGyverness on your setup.
ParityBit I installed Syrinscape once, but seems like it would only play stuff locally, so I would need to go through the same hoops dragonchild told about, no?
Guess I'll need to look into this more. I'm pretty sure just having a ambient background would be enough for now, but I only have one computer to use, and it is one I cannot install anything, so whatever I pick has to be web based unfortunately.
Remember google hangouts shuts down in October. Maybe Fantasy Grounds or Roll20?
I am just learning about it, so I am not sure yet. I do however use Fantasy Ground and it aw some (DnD 5E and PF2)
Oh, I didn't realize Hangouts is shutting down.
Better have a talk with the group then. We're only using voice, so there should be options thankfully.
Better have a talk with the group then. We're only using voice, so there should be options thankfully.
If you like Altered Carbon, the Expanse, and Starfinder and wished there was a table top equivalent, check out the second edition of Eclipse Phase.
Backerkit has pre-orders up for those that missed the Kickstarter. https://eclipse-phase-second-edition.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
They've streamlined a bunch of stuff and the lore is super fun to read. Can't wait to get a campaign up and running.
Backerkit has pre-orders up for those that missed the Kickstarter. https://eclipse-phase-second-edition.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
They've streamlined a bunch of stuff and the lore is super fun to read. Can't wait to get a campaign up and running.
Look what showed up at my door this morning:
And next to the 1996 edition:
I'm so excited! My absolute favorite RPG experience I had as a teenager was to play The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign towards the end of the 90s. If I remember correctly, it took us a little bit more than a year to go through.
I don't have a regular group right now, but I would really like to DM this campaign at some point. Maybe someday soon.
That's awesome! I'd love to run/play some of the huge Call of Cthulhu adventures someday.
Wow gratz! They look like they came into the world with love.Look what showed up at my door this morning:
And next to the 1996 edition:
I'm so excited! My absolute favorite RPG experience I had as a teenager was to play The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign towards the end of the 90s. If I remember correctly, it took us a little bit more than a year to go through.
I don't have a regular group right now, but I would really like to DM this campaign at some point. Maybe someday soon.
I really need to play Cthulhu once with a great Keeper. Love the genre and have some of the books but never got to play.
So, my kids (9 and 11) played a D&D session with my friend's kids and they've been itching to play ever since. We were finally able to track down the Target exclusive (til September) D&D Essentials Kit. These were going for a small premium online, but they seemed to have been restocked at some Targets. Seems to be quite a deal at $25.
I did my best to DM the included adventure (Dragon of Icespire Peak) and I feel like I did relatively well, but they almost got their butts handed to them against the lone monster (a Mimic) in their first quest. I kind of guided them into a circle strafe around the enemy but the encounter took about 2 hours... I feel like we were doing something wrong (or at least I was). I am watching a YT vid and the guy is mentioning that many pre-made adventures aren't exactly balanced for smaller parties, so I think maybe I'll just do a percentage cut on the monster stats of the next encounters so they have a better time.
Any other online resources suggested for first time DMs? Even a suggested YT channel might help. I hope this hasn't been asked on every other page, I'll scrounge around the previous pages...
I did my best to DM the included adventure (Dragon of Icespire Peak) and I feel like I did relatively well, but they almost got their butts handed to them against the lone monster (a Mimic) in their first quest. I kind of guided them into a circle strafe around the enemy but the encounter took about 2 hours... I feel like we were doing something wrong (or at least I was). I am watching a YT vid and the guy is mentioning that many pre-made adventures aren't exactly balanced for smaller parties, so I think maybe I'll just do a percentage cut on the monster stats of the next encounters so they have a better time.
Any other online resources suggested for first time DMs? Even a suggested YT channel might help. I hope this hasn't been asked on every other page, I'll scrounge around the previous pages...
If you switch over to Discord, I've been using Rythm bot for my music needs since Roll20 lost Fanburst support. It's not perfect, and you'll want to tell your players to turn the volume down to 1-3% before playing anything, but it works well enough for a free product.
Thanks! I'll give this one a go!
How does the bot manage with YT ads?
bypasses it all in my experience. It has options for playlists or looping and I haven't had any interruptions
Rythm is what I use, too. I usually just have a hidden channel that I type commands in so people won't know what song is about to be playing, but I believe the web interface is pretty nice too.
I've only ever used it as a player, but roll20.net has a music player that our DM used. Seemed to work well, but I'm guessing you have to use your own music and it's probably limited.
I think this might be misinformation?
They used to have soundcloud and then switched to fanburst, but both options are now gone. They have a selection of music from Tabletop Audio and Incompetech which is handy, and they just allowed users to upload their own music, but it is still under the file size limitations of before, so pretty unrealistic for a free user to use it along with any maps/tokens they have. One day I'll subscribe as Pro user and get everything I want!
Just wanted to post this here as it looks pretty exciting, the guys behind Dungeonfog.com have a new Kickstarter for a world building application that combines the dungeon / battle map creator functionality of Dungeonfog with a world building tool called Project Deios
As someone who has followed the development of both LegendKeeper and Wonderdraft from the beginning, this seems to offer the functionality of both of those plus more.
The only problem I have with it is that gamergater shitheel and all around trash human being Denis Dyack seems to have wormed it's way into this project ...
Still, I wanted to let everyone here know, as it still seems pretty interesting and I haven't seen it posted.
As someone who has followed the development of both LegendKeeper and Wonderdraft from the beginning, this seems to offer the functionality of both of those plus more.
The only problem I have with it is that gamergater shitheel and all around trash human being Denis Dyack seems to have wormed it's way into this project ...
Still, I wanted to let everyone here know, as it still seems pretty interesting and I haven't seen it posted.
Yeah, I was trying to find some solid information on it, but it seemed fuzzy.
Best I can find is that Hangouts will migrate to Chat/Meet?
Humble Dark Heresy Bundle https://www.humblebundle.com/books/...ex_2_c_warhammerdarkheresycubicle7_bookbundle
Also, anyone know any good free mapmaking tools ?
Also, anyone know any good free mapmaking tools ?
Thanks for the heads up on that bundle. I've heard the books are also great resources for the grim dark side of 40k, even if you don't play and just want to read up.
World map, or like battle maps?
I've used Inkarnate's free version before moving to Wonderdraft, which is a one-time fee. They have similar functions but I like Wonderdraft a lot more and with the ability to freely import assets I can get a lot of community-made assets in for nothing, which is great. Dungeon-wise I've used Dungeon Painter Studio which has a free version and a paid one on steam with workshop support.
I'm done with Roll20 as a DM, still in a few games as a player. Not a fan of the general feel of Roll20 and its creators.
Ran a nice Dungeon World one shot game here in the office using the "One Shot World" hack of it (playbooks here). It streamlines the DW playbooks a bit more, takes out stuff you won't really need outside of a campaign, adds some more actionable character drive stuff to generate XP quickly. Overall was really nice for getting a game going fast. Once we had those characters setup, I ran a one-shot adventure from the Sly Flourish's Fantastic Adventures book, and just converted the monsters on the fly to DW monsters. It worked really well, required not a ton of prep from me, and everyone had a great time.
World map yeah, I'll check those out, thank you!
I personally find the site pretty clunky, though I haven't tried the alternatives. I've done some games just on discord which has been fine (theater of the mind).
I'm about to run a D&D 5e game set in Ravnica and I'm hoping to use TTS instead of Roll20. We've been doing an FFG Star Wars game on Roll20 and using it is horribly clunky.
I've used roll20 enough that it's intuitive to me, but yeah some of the options feel clunky at a first pass. Considered moving to fantasy grounds, but it feels even clunkier than roll20 to me for some reason (possibly because it's mostly visual instead of formulas). Only done D&D 5e and Delta Green though, so maybe other systems have specifics that I don't see.
I second both of these sentiments. Fantasy Grounds is a fantastic application and well worth what I have invested in it.
I like discord, maybe try Fantasy Grounds at some point. There's also Astral and some other virtual website one I can't remember.
Tabletop Simulator is supposed to be decent once you've set it all up.
Tabletop Simulator is supposed to be decent once you've set it all up.
What level are they now? The encounters in the new Essentials Kit are set around Phandelin so you could grab that.
Full adventure included called Dragon of Icespire Peak and tons of infoabout Phadelin including poster map.
I have yet to see people take their characters from one adventure to the next. I know Dungeon of the Mad Mage is a 5-20 adventure.
How do people do it for other adventures and homebrew?
I think it's pretty common, you just continue the story where you left off, write a bit for how one adventure leads to the next.
The game I've been a player in for nearly 2 years has had a great DM that has somehow managed to link the modules together in an interesting manner. We've went from Tyranny of Dragons into Escape from the Abyss, still using the same characters. It is possible, but takes a lot of work cutting and rearranging content from the modules. It has made for a really great 'living' campaign/Sword Coast game.
How has leveling been for you guys? I'll be running Lost Mines for some friends who have no experience at all with ttrpg's but assuming they like it, I'd like to take continue with the same characters. I'm pretty much learning as I go myself.
Played my first game of Monster of the Week on Sunday and it was pretty fun! I played out of the Monstrous Playbook: Thaddeus Rex, a T-Rex who had been experimented on by aliens before the meteor hit. He can shapeshift into a bald human, and is functionally Immortal (both Monstrous Moves). Probably a little zanier than the game intended, but he fit right into the rest of the group and everyone had fun. I think we're going to keep going with the game, so Thaddeus will get a little more normalized as we go on.
New D&D book for Eberron has been announced. I've read about Eberron and Greyhawk. I am loving this description!
This book provides everything players and Dungeon Masters need to play Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron—a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure. Will Eberron enter a prosperous new age or will the shadow of war descend once again?
Alternate cover is awesome.
This book provides everything players and Dungeon Masters need to play Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron—a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure. Will Eberron enter a prosperous new age or will the shadow of war descend once again?
Alternate cover is awesome.
Yeah, I'm not normally big on Eberron, but I'll be grabbing that Alt cover. I just flat out do not like the normal cover. It looks bad.
thankfully it's not the final cover
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1163861437376151552?s=20
Huh, still, the regular version's cover would have to be reeeaaally good to beat that alt cover. Gives me an excuse to finally visit my FLGS in *checks release date* Novem...ber. drat
It has been through milestones, rather than XP. We all knew going in it would be a long term campaign, so leveling would be slower. I wouldn't recommend milestone for a new group, I made that mistake when I first DM'd (my pacing was so off and slow). If you give XP for exploration and social encounters, as well as combat, it should help set a tone that you don't have to kill everything.
Once Lost Mines is finished, you could always create your own progression. Have any of your players created their own quest from in-game events?