Whee!  Lots to answer there, I won't get my "play" posts in before leaving for work if I try to go into detail now.  However: I abandoned D&D when 2nd Ed. came out, because I didn't like the changes and didn't want to spend $100 in 1990 money to replace the AD&D books I already had.  Since then, I've played two sessions of what I think was 3.5 with a rather poor GM.  These days, I'm not inclined to even try -- 3.5, Pathfinder, and 4 are far too complex, and 5 isn't complete even two years or so in.  I doubt it'll ever be "complete".

Shroud, the problem with what you suggest is twofold.  First, a lot of gamers don't have a hobby budget.  If I had money (and time) to spend on hobbies, I'd be doing more with film photography (getting my darkroom set back up, etc.), building/flying model airplanes again, working on and shooting my guns.  When I got into gaming, it was almost free.  Figures and maps were optional, a couple sets of cheap dice would serve a whole table, one set of books (about $20 in the late 1970s) would serve a whole table.

The other side of things is that if we buy stuff we don't like or want to play, we're sending the wrong message.  "I support your company and your effort" is a fine message, but spending money on "GURPS: Podunk Phone Book" is telling SJ Games I want more products like "Podunk Phone Book" -- when what I really want is more products like "Low Tech", "High Tech", "Space", "Martial Arts", etc.  In fact, buying "Podunk Phone Book" may actively prevent products I want, because a small gaming company (and in the grand scheme of things, SJ games is small) can't do both "Ultra Tech" and "Podunk Yellow Pages" -- at least, not in the same year.

Maybe it's just me... but this is something I've never understood.  Why 'abandon D&D' just because a new edition came out?

I know someone who still only runs OD&D (1974).  I played in 1e AD&D games up till... oh, '93ish?  My group still played 3e GURPS up till about '08 (and we only 'switched' because most of the group moved to another state leaving only 2 of us... and the two of us picked up 4e and decided it was better).

Why?  Because the people who ran those games had those books and they ran them.

Now, if none of your friends wanted to keep playing the older system, I get moving on.


What do you mean by "not complete"?


Totes agree.  I never buy products I'm not interested in.

Which is why I haven't bought any D&D since the late 80's* (Immortals book for Mentzer's D&D).


* Which is totes a lie.  I continued picking up the GAZ series, I finally got the last two I was missing in like '05.  I've also picked up the errant module here and there, but haven't paid as close attention since I tended to grab those from bargain bins, yard sales, hand-me-downs, etc and they weren't "significant purchases".  Those last two GAZ (The Atruaghin Clans and The Shadow Elves) were bloody expensive, but I was flush with cash that was on fire and needed spending and they were on ebay just sitting there... all deliciously tempting like and in their pristine conditions.

I... sometimes I'm a weak man.  :sob:




But I get what your saying Ardenas.  About how it was 'cheaper' back then.  A single set of books* and dice and you were golden.  It's still kinda that way**... as long as you're not online.  It's a lot harder to "just pass around the book" on a virtual tabletop and pdfs are harder to pass around***.

But at least the dice are cheap.


* And they don't even need to be owned by one person!  In my old D&D group in the 80's I owned all the GAZ, the DM had the rules books, and we players all chipped in every month or so and bought him a new adventure module.  So the cost was spread around.  The old days were best!  Get off my lawn!  /shakes cane at the young whipersnappers thinking about walking on the lawn

** One of the guys in my current group doesn't own a single roleplaying book.  Not a one.  All his money goes to feeding his Magic The Gathering addiction.

***  Legally anyway.  It's really hard to legally share those pdfs around the table...

Kirpich: alter Chunky's advantage kit to match (DR7 is fine, that is an optional build), and as it is not a familiar, you can go with out that modifier. Making no fine manipulators combined with the striker works too, I would lose the shield; use the cost to upgrade your own armor.

In reply to Narrator (msg # 24):

In order to facilitate play without forcing people to pick up more pdfs, I  will privately present excerpts and approximations of templates.
There is a fairly steady 3e gaming population, and I see them rejoice any time an oop classic book goes to pdf. I personally still get some 3e material for conversion purposes, There are some advantages from 3 e I still like.

That is true ... I still have a shelf full of 3e stuff ...  less 4e as it tends to be more expensive...

I'd be willing to share pdf too, except that it is illegal and short changes the author and publisher who had significant expenses.

In reply to Narrator (msg # 25):

Other than the loss of several odd races, there really aren't a lot of changes to the templates.  The races are the same although some abilities are labelled differently.  The Professions have a few little changes to most of them.
So if you build a character complying with the old professions and only selecting one of the new races, you're likely 95% done.
Just expect armor to not cost or weigh the same and, if you're using Fortify/Lighten/Deflect enchantments, they're more expensive and broken down differently than how they are in Magic.


As for the PDF sharing, I completely agree we shouldn't be freely sharing the work with those that should be buying them.
However, if a screenshot of a given template or the armor chart is sent to a player, I don't think that's an issue.

Players in my DFRPG don't have to have the books, but they can come to me to make characters.  Northport doesn't have that luxury.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:16, Thu 21 Sept 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JNuqEz_GCQ

In reply to Chye Isuel (msg # 28):

I would absolutely prefer for all players to have what they need to play, and as I am friends with some of the authors, I  want them to get paid.
This has not stopped me from printing single use hardcopy, or sharing a screenshot of a rule clarification.

And that's why.  My DM and the rest of my group were switching, I didn't want to switch, so I left the group.  Based on what I've read since about 2nd, I made the right decision; it was a completely different game, and not an improvement.



I keep up with rpg.stackexchange.com.  It appears that D&D 5 doesn't yet have a sufficiently complete published ruleset to fully resolve a lot of different questions about how it's supposed to work -- which is worrisome for a game that has made a big move back toward the "game" side of the RPG continuum.



The problem is that that "one set of books," depending on the kind of game you want to play, may exceed $100 or even approach $200.  I can't picture getting together with three or four friends and discussing whether each of us should chip in $50 to buy the books that, with a couple months of intensive study, might let us play a cool game of a kind we've only read about or seen in cheesy movies or good TV (but set 30+ years ago, so a completely different game).

Okay, so we try one of the free or cheap RPGs -- and when we don't have as much fun as we thought we would, we aren't sure if we're just not approaching it right (likely the case with a game based on FATE), we weren't playing in the right genre or picked the wrong base mechanic (too much roll playing, or too much role playing?), or just aren't cut out to spend three to six hours in each other's company, cooperating in order to have fun (as opposed to setting up yet another WoW raid or going pirating in EVE -- or getting virtually laid in Second Life).

So we drop the following disadvantages:

Doesn’t Eat or Drink          [10]#
Doesn’t Sleep                 [20]#
Pressure Support 2            [10]#
Vacuum Support                [5]#

Given he is very much a non-combatant who does not fight, a shield, even if adapted, seems appropriate. It is a cheap one, so the cost will not go far on my armour!

This does reduce his point cost...am I allowed to increase it to compensate? If so, what are my options?

What does a Talus eat?

Actually, the Earth Elemental from Summoners with Walking Wall template would be 125 points, and looks much more similar to what he was, including the same Lifting strength. We could just reduce the SM to -1 to keep it consistent, adding in the Wealth level to compensate for the increased cost of ST.

In reply to Kirpich Rockson (msg # 31):

If you build as the walking wall thats fine, but stick to the earth elemental build. They eat rocks, like Gorons from Legend of Zelda.

I have three milk crates of 3e stuff.  And a disk of the pdfs I've bought so far (I've been picking them up as they've been released to pdf).

For 4e, I have the hardback basics and pdfs of pretty much everything else.  But then, when I have a group, GURPS is my hobby of choice.  After that is video games. Oh, and probably above both is reading, but that's so inexpensive comparatively it's hard to count it.

I'd be willing to share pdf too, except that it is illegal and short changes the author and publisher who had significant expenses.
Around the table, face to face, sure.  But yeah, otherwise I'll just copy small discrete sections for someone's use in an online game.  Like a Template, or the new Mnauevers from martial Arts.  That sort of stuff.





Eh... I've played them both and I'm not sure I could tell you of any differences?  Sure... one had some horrid to-hit chart (1e) and the other THAC0 (2e), but that's the only difference that springs to mind.  Both were D&D.



Uhhhh.... okay.  I'm chalking this up to "different defintion of complete".  The Alpha build for 5e was complete enough for me to run Caves of Chaos, the published rules are more than enough to run a longer term game if I liked D&D enough to run it.


What do you mean by "game" side of RPG?



Sure... but when I was a kid $30 was an insane amount of money, about equal in 'feeling' to $100 these days (I just checked and based on inflation $30 back in 85 is about $70 now).


Ah, see I solve that by finding someone who is running the game and joining them for w while.  But while I agree change is bad, I can easily adapt to changes so it's not nearly as bad for me.  So just finding a new group of guys to game with for a few months (on off days) is usually not a problem.

Also, I've never spent more than a like two weeks learnign a new game before sitting down and playing it.  So there isn't the same level of investment for me.





Are these super sweet rocks that cost $42 a week?  If not there's an Advantage for that.  And do Talus' need to drink water?  There's an advantage for that as well...   ;)

I'm talking about the dichotomy in RPGs between "gamism" -- a game that plays like a wargame or otherwise with a bunch of arbitrary rules, optimizations, etc. -- and "role playing", which depends much more on GM rulings and where the "game" aspect is there in support of the cooperative storytelling aspect.  IMO, GURPS 3rd and 4th are pretty well balanced on this point.




And yet, when I was in high school and on into college (1978-1982, specifically), living on a budget where I often had to choose between food and gas for my car, I didn't have any problem owning the Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, and DMG -- even had Unearthed Arcana and MMII, as I recall.  Those large hardbacks were $10 each then.  So, if a group wanted to chip in and try this new kind of game, it'd be no more than $50 if they went all in, or as little as $30 to start (plus a couple bucks for a set of funky dice).  Yes, that's a bit more than doubled by inflation for comparison, but still not beyond the realm of four or five players chipping in.

Now, the minimum to play a GURPS fantasy campaign -- Characters, Campaigns, and Magic -- will set you back $120 in hardback.  Plus a bag of d6.  And $20 for GCA, if you don't know about the free GCS before you send your SJ Games order, because who wants to spend hours adding up skill points before you even get to the fun part of the game?



Finding a new group isn't as easy as all that.  If I were a D&D player, it'd be easier, but with my work schedule, even that is difficult.  I've lived in this area for thirteen years, and in that time I've gamed with two different groups.  One was the group that more or less forced me into GURPS 4th (I was happy with 3rd, and had a lot of sourcebooks, they wanted the latest and greatest -- and several years later, I have the three basics, and Low Tech), the other is a group who alternate between Hero System (which feels like GURPS, if you're somewhat inebriated) and whatever new game the GM hasn't played before.  I'm back with this latter group now, every other Sunday, currently playing Mutant Future -- like OD&D warped to play like Gamma World -- and session after next we'll likely be building heroes for a Champions campaign.

My problem is, as I've noted before, I don't like change much.  I'd just as soon stick with one game for a couple years at a time; I don't like jumping around.  And I'm apparently the only one in that group who feels that way.

Two weeks?  To play GURPS without spending more time looking up a mechanic than actually playing?  My hat's off to you.  Gone are the days when I could read through a rule book once and be ready to play, and I don't have the reading time I did in the early '80s, either.

I think I will...it is much closer to the original build. Just to clarify, that suggests no change in SM for the walking wall?

By GNS theory D&D is pretty much pure gamist.  GURPS is a good mix of gamist and simulationist.

Neither are good at narrativism (granted GURPS has optional rules that can put it more into the narrativist corner, but it's still not really a narrative setting).


Inversely I have waaaay more money now than I had when I was kid for my hobbies.

I've probably spent waaay more in GURPS 4e than I have in Mentzer D&D, even accounting for the overinflated price I paid to finish the Gazateer run (not that they are "Mentzer D&D", but I strongly associate the BECMI D&D set with the GAZ series).  If I counted all the modules and 1st ed D&D?  Maybe I'd come close?

But yeah, I get what you're saying... but I disagree that gaming is more expensive now.  It's just with everything at our fingertips, we want more and are satisfied with less than when we were kids.



Again, for me, it's become easier.  But that's because I've done a bunch of PbP gaming (because I hate leaving my house for the sole purpose of meeting people).

I've played FATE online.  FFG's Star Wars online.  Ummm.... okay that's it (aside from GURPS and OD&D [1974]) as I haven't want to try anything else.


That's a rough one I agree.  While I 'hate change'* myself, it's not hard for me to adapt, and sometime I even crave a bit of change.


* It's more I hate unexpected things.  So if the group talks about switching up games when the current campaign is done and we all come to an agreement before hand, that's kosher with me.  When the GM calls off one session, then at the next one announces he's not running that game anymore and is running this other game instead because he hated whee that campaign was going?  Yeah... total dislike.  And in my last group, that was one of our GMs with about 1 out of 3 games he ran.


It's because I don't just read them.  I make notes and then refine those notes into 'cheat sheets'.

Hell after 30 years of GURPS I still look stuff up (on my cheat sheet usually because it's faster).

MY "GURPS GM" folder is about 20 pages of cheat sheets.  Maneuvers, tables, almost all the rules, just condensed into shorter more "formula" versions of the rules (with all my house rules mixed in without notation... which mean I should really sit down and fix so I stop making errors when trying to 'talk' RAW on the GURPS forums).

In reply to Kirpich Rockson (msg # 35):

I would say adjust the size, if there is no cost, at DR 7 I would still lose the shield, and they eat created food, which I suspect your god provides as rich, nutritious earth anyway,like the stuff the trees ate during the bachannal scene in Prince Caspian (or whichever of the Narnia Books had thst scene with the dryads)
His food does cost when not created, possibly subsisting on small semiprecious stobes that are worth  $6 a day...
Having neither "doesn't eat or drink" nor "universal digestion" would mean special good that is common and cheap.

In reply to Narrator (msg # 37):

Elementals such as the walking wall have the Do not eat or drink advantage, so that is fine. DR for the walking wall is 9, and will adjust SM to suit.

Important question for the conversion.

Armor costs and weights are different (as are armor enchantments!).  Are we grandfathered in with what we've got, converting to the new equivalent and ignoring the cost difference, or do we need to sell back our armor at full price and buy new armor with that same money?

man.... i hope not. what a drag, that'd be....

And what about those of us who don't (and probably won't) have the DFRPG book?

In reply to Ardenas Barehand (msg # 41):

I am grandfathering in current equipment, and will charge new rates for any new armor. I  don't  have the pdfs, so the new bits may be represented by shoddy phone pucs in private threads.

Armor and weapon costs are taken straight from Low-Tech (AFAIK).  I'll be cross-checking more thoroughly as time goes.

New Enchantments are simply following this rule:  Everything* is Slow and Sure.

So all prices are 20$ per energy point.  This means new Cornucopia quivers are 2,010$.

* Except the Staff spell because Wizard's are cheating bastards.


And Narrator, I can help post weapon and armor costs and weights (and other weapon stat changes if necessary) as well.

Personally I think everyone should switch over* (weapon and armor stats) at the end of whatever adventure they are on (or now if they aren't in the field).  If people can't keep something really important (like the new armor weight puts them past their acceptable encumbrance limits) maybe hand out a few Lighten enchantments?


* I think I'll end up losing 1 DR on Jareth and Ulo as I think I think I used the weights from basic, which is more forgiving (and as both are edged right up against an encumberance level, I'd like to keep them trim).  Jednesa doesn't wear armor (though her axe/mace might get heavier).  I'm sure Stenet will lose some speed, he can't afford to downgrade his armor at all.

yeah, i'll probably never get the new book either. i don't even have any DF stuff. i have a collection of 4e pdf books, that were relevant up to now. xD

In reply to Chye Isuel (msg # 44):

Have most of the Basic set, DF and most Techs, but not the new ones. Be some time before I get that sort of cash...

i mean, i'd invest in books if i were playing with live groups, but for post-by-post gaming (although i love it, and plan on staying on, til the servers crash) i wouldn't go invest in so much, for the sake of it... if that makes any sense.