Troll Lord Games

I'm happy to report that after the above Christmas session, the two newbies returned home and set up their own gaming group, with one of them GMing. Sadly, they're playing D&D, but hey, hobby expanded. Round two, Thanksgiving. The youngest half-orc lost his soul in a game of chance. Mom fetched ...

We had a couple of guests this week, both board gamers and video gamers, but they'd never played a pen-n-paper RPG and wanted to give it a try. In order for me to have some time to plan the adventure, they and my wife discussed via Skype what kind of characters they wanted to play. It quickly got si...

We got in some board games every day the week of Thanksgiving. Carcassonne Bazaar Bohnanza Ticket to Ride Elfenland, Resistance (new to me) Dixit (new to everyone) Runebound There's a problem with Dixit that I had anticipated but found more annoying than I'd expected. Bystanders were so enthralled b...

I'm disappointed with this thread. I thought body of the OP would open with "hilarity will ensue."

In an AD&D game I once used a passwall spell to put a big hole in a ship's hull. Cleverly, the DM had me sucked into a ship. A high level cleric on the ship then used a lower water followed by a warp wood (I think) to fix the problem, leaving me trapped. Had to dimension door out of there to avo...

I made the mistake of including an NPC illusionist in the game I'm currently running, and I'm still getting a feel for how to handle illusions. I do have a problem with Silent Image causing damage via illusionary sword or fire or what have you. Even when giving illusions the power to cause real dam...

I made the mistake of including an NPC illusionist in the game I'm currently running, and I'm still getting a feel for how to handle illusions. I do have a problem with Silent Image causing damage via illusionary sword or fire or what have you. Even when giving illusions the power to cause real dama...

Our old D&D game devolved into a pseudo-classless system without levels, and a similar approach might work for C&C. Basically, as their characters' levels got higher, some of the players got frustrated with the long wait for a new level and then--poof!--everything goes up. So they broke down...

Which reminds me, in an old D&D game, instead of XP for treasure, it was XP for money spent on training. That 1,000 GP in your extra-dimensional pocket didn't make you more experienced, but handing it over to a master swordsman for some lessons would. We stayed pretty poor in that game. ;) I've...

With my C&C Conan, which was very episodic and wealth came and went like water Which reminds me, in an old D&D game, instead of XP for treasure, it was XP for money spent on training. That 1,000 GP in your extra-dimensional pocket didn't make you more experienced, but handing it over to a m...

I hand out a nice round number of XP at the end of a session based on, well, everything at that happened and the pace that's needed to keep the characters progressing for what I have in mind down the road. I use the one week/level for training to advance, which may or may not require seeking out an ...

As long as you're clean, bare floors can help a lot with air quality. On the con side, they don't go well with gravel. We bought a house with cherry wood floors. There was a gravel 10' from the front door (plus our dogs and a cat). Despite our shoes-off-at-the-door policy, we had to refinish the flo...

This sort of runs counter to my experience. While it may be true that the drama-driven gamer is more likely to embrace failure, it seems it usually has to be a failure of their own design and not outside agency or complaints of destroying their carefully plotted character arc arise. Among those I k...

Thats precisely why I have plane travel come into play at higher levels, when the monsters simply aren't tough enough to challenge the PC's anymore. I never liked extra-planar adventures, although we had several with that group. Too weird for my taste. But it wasn't necessary for monsters to be abl...

I've played a couple of dice less games and I've played way more regular rpg's. So,I don't know why you'd asngle out dice less games as the sessions I ran wasn't a whole lot of difference. Because all of the gamers I've known who said failure is the most interesting part of a game were advocates of...

Yes that is the sign of an incompetent GM. Inability to create an even somewhat believable setting. Incompetence is a funny thing. I had a GM who was brilliant at bringing NPCs and monsters to life. I've never seen his equal. (I'll never forget the battle against three trolls, but I wish I had vide...

I've been rewatching some of the old Troll Lord vidoes. This one has always been my favorite due to the gaming stories (and also put Monsters & Treasure of Aihrde at the top of my to-be-acquired list): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZEEtUno7A The fun, which relates to higher-level characters f...

I am actually chatting with that blogs author. His point was really that failure is uninteresting because of people not coming up with good descriptions for those failures. That was my guess, given his use of "you fail." But to your response, I don't find success in a game interesting wit...

A 75 mile causeway through a swamp? So Davis has driven from Blackduck to International Falls?

If the archer is shooting four arrows a round for two rounds, does the penalty cycle start over at the beginning of the second round, or is she pegged at -8 until she takes a breather?

Lord Dynel wrote:(being able to mow down many low-level foes...that again, you never encountered after the first few levels).

I have a hard time immersing in game worlds where the population is a function of PC levels. Consequently, I don't have a problem with rules like Combat Dominance.

We use mason jars for our non-hot beverages, and one is squared off with a handle.

I've gone the other route, selling off all my physical copies. My CK screens are all the remain.

No coffee, and only chai latte unless I'm drinking tea for caffeine purposes. I use any one of a number of chipped mugs from our wedding stoneware. Their 10 oz size keeps me from imbibing too much chai latte in a day while "only having one."

There's a small zipped pocket my gaming notebook / shoulder bag thingy that holds all my dice. My original d20 and d12 went to our dorm cat in college. She loved to clatter them along the baseboards. A player in one of my old gaming groups gave us all Crown Royal bags for Christmas. He'd spent all y...

Thinking about it this morning, perhaps the GM in question should show his players what railroading really is.

I know railroading, and Treebore, that's no railroading. There's a classic example I was looking for but couldn't find. The PCs talk to the townfolk, who complain about a dragon. "That's too tough for us." But no matter which direction they travel when leaving town, they run into the dragon.

Treebore wrote:I also actually use the 1E applications for lead, etc... to foil certain spells. Non spell casters need to be able to protect themselves as well.

I always excepted that one in theory, but balked when it came time to smear lead in my character's home. He had a toddler.

People who genuinely want to keep someone dead, must go out of their way to counter the possibility of resurrection. Using strong magics to destroy the body/prevent the body from being found in time/etc. Head shot and you're done, no? I recall Vlad was just getting attached to one of his minions wh...