Monday, March 14, 2011

J/B Blackrazor's PC Relationship Table & OD&D "Seems" More "Realistic"

I'm posting from my phone on my lunch break, so this post is going to be deficient in links, tags and the like.

- Firstly JB Blackrazor's "How the adventurers know each other/previous relationships" table EDIT: http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2010/08/give-me-reasonor-hundred.html is pure gold; it a great device for helping define new PCs and their relationships with other PCs, and is a lot of fun as well. Dude needs to write more random tables!

- Secondly, I DM'ed OD&D for the first time yesterday, and both the players and I really enjoyed it. Our experience seems for bolster the theory that the less rules there are, the more "realistic" and "immersive" the experience is, and it seemed really conductive to creating an emergent adventure story.

- We used the Empire of the Petal Throne beginning/background skills system and I think it may be one of my favorite skill systems and certainly my favorite for D&D-ish systems. When I was young vague skill systems frustrated me into nerdrage; nowadays I could care less for having defined mechanics for basket weaving.

15 comments:

  1. the less rules there are, the more "realistic" and "immersive" the experience is, and it seemed really conductive to creating an emergent adventure story

    Yes!

    When I was young vague skill systems frustrated me into nerdrage; nowadays I could care less for having defined mechanics for basket weaving.

    Hells Yes! :D

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  2. Between 1998 and 2003 I thought that the best game rules is... no rules at all :D
    But now, with different players, I play mainly new-school games :-(

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  3. A couple times in Red Box Vancouver games, the question of skill knowledge has come up. Each time, I've figured that if the PC has skills, the player should make an ability check (d20 roll-under whichever stat), and if not, half the stat, round down.

    Then I ask the player if his character has skills, and the player always says something like "no, my character is a scoundrel adventurer with no education."

    But if we had a skill system, damn would they get pissed if they took all the wrong skills!

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  4. Is Blackrazor's table how you got the half-brothers and romantic rivals in the Sea of Spice game? That stuff is hilarious!

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  5. The two word verifications I just got were Scuric and Flecone, a pair of dastardly Italianate adventurers and ne'er-do-wells. They are planning on looting an abandoned temple that goes by the name of [insert your verification word here].

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  6. @ Johnstone: Yep! It is hilarious!

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  7. Okay, now I do need a link, cuz I can't find Blackrazor's previous relationship chart for anything.

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  8. http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2011/02/character-exploration-part-two.html

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  9. Can you elaborate on "the Empire of the Petal Throne beginning/background skills system" for those of us in the dark without the resources to hunt down a copy on eBay?

    BTW, I'm enjoying reading the write-ups of the new campaign immensely

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  10. Not seeing any relationship table over there... maybe he took it down?

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  11. @Dave R. and @knobgobbler: The URL you want is http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2010/08/give-me-reasonor-hundred.html (which links to Blackrazor's table at MediaFire: http://www.mediafire.com/?34ma1t3pr66r33s).

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  12. Thanks for posting the links Chris & Michael; Humanspace Empires also uses a similar skill schema.

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  13. Thanks for that link.
    It's a fun chart... I think I'll make a revised version for my homebrew setting.

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