D&D and Indigo
I rolled two natural 20s in a row tonight for Twin Strike, laying some heavy crits on the bad guy. I'm playing a Warforged Ranger in our 4e game. That kicks ass.
The Warforged article in Dragon has a nonsensical, badly edited racial encounter power and positively drips with excuses for why you cannot pick a Warforged to play anything like the guy people would pick a Warforged to be. So I'm stuck with the encouter power in the MM, which is weak, but at least makes some kind of sense. I think I may write a proposed redesign.
(The article isn't all bad, since it made my character's implanted hand crossbow official. But still . . . not an auspicious experience with DDI material for me.)
Once you have the minis and a full selection of PCs going 4e runs quite well and I'm pretty pleased with it, but it is occasionally chafing. There need to be more effective things you can do with skills, for instance (I wanted to Crocodile Dundee a dire boar but we discovered that by default, this was a time consuming skill challengey thing, not something I could do to avoid just whaling on the monster in mid-encounter).
Indigo is going marvelously. The characters decided that to reconcile the land and aquatic civilizations they would just kill the leaders of both (psychohistorical projections listed this as a workable option), but the characters started to have doubts. So they argued alternatives before the ship's collective (they're brain-linked via Auntie, the ship's expert), making social rolls to determine who was the most persuasive, and reached a compromise to merely kidnap key figures from both governments. They asked for help from a Protection-focused ship called the Vengeance of Spartacus, who agreed to perform the snatch on land.
On their end, the PCs mounted an underwater assualt of the aquatic legislature using two wire-guided shuttles, two mecha and a few hardsuited characters. There was a brief tussle with several genetically engineered armored battle squid that had poisonous antipersonnel spines. Once character got hit and was on the fun end of poison and the bends, but they still accomplished their objectives.
The system is gradually drifting away from its Adventure! origins. I've used ideas from an upcoming WoD book to streamline combat and get rid of initiative, as well as institute a system where I can smoothly run person-scale and vehicle scale action. On the setting end, the combination of Trek tropes, transhumanism and anarchism works great. It's a sandbox (they picked this tecton out of five choices) and with the anarchy I don't have to worry about the strictures of military SF. Strangely, this makes leadership matter *more*, since the crew really can tell the PCs to fuck off if they express a plan badly. The artificial nature of the world (which owes a lot fo Stross Missile Gap lets me indulge Trek-y contrivances. They decided on this situation, but they could have visited the Neandertal tecton, or one where the Second Crusade was in full swing.
So gaming's been going great. That's it, really.
The Warforged article in Dragon has a nonsensical, badly edited racial encounter power and positively drips with excuses for why you cannot pick a Warforged to play anything like the guy people would pick a Warforged to be. So I'm stuck with the encouter power in the MM, which is weak, but at least makes some kind of sense. I think I may write a proposed redesign.
(The article isn't all bad, since it made my character's implanted hand crossbow official. But still . . . not an auspicious experience with DDI material for me.)
Once you have the minis and a full selection of PCs going 4e runs quite well and I'm pretty pleased with it, but it is occasionally chafing. There need to be more effective things you can do with skills, for instance (I wanted to Crocodile Dundee a dire boar but we discovered that by default, this was a time consuming skill challengey thing, not something I could do to avoid just whaling on the monster in mid-encounter).
Indigo is going marvelously. The characters decided that to reconcile the land and aquatic civilizations they would just kill the leaders of both (psychohistorical projections listed this as a workable option), but the characters started to have doubts. So they argued alternatives before the ship's collective (they're brain-linked via Auntie, the ship's expert), making social rolls to determine who was the most persuasive, and reached a compromise to merely kidnap key figures from both governments. They asked for help from a Protection-focused ship called the Vengeance of Spartacus, who agreed to perform the snatch on land.
On their end, the PCs mounted an underwater assualt of the aquatic legislature using two wire-guided shuttles, two mecha and a few hardsuited characters. There was a brief tussle with several genetically engineered armored battle squid that had poisonous antipersonnel spines. Once character got hit and was on the fun end of poison and the bends, but they still accomplished their objectives.
The system is gradually drifting away from its Adventure! origins. I've used ideas from an upcoming WoD book to streamline combat and get rid of initiative, as well as institute a system where I can smoothly run person-scale and vehicle scale action. On the setting end, the combination of Trek tropes, transhumanism and anarchism works great. It's a sandbox (they picked this tecton out of five choices) and with the anarchy I don't have to worry about the strictures of military SF. Strangely, this makes leadership matter *more*, since the crew really can tell the PCs to fuck off if they express a plan badly. The artificial nature of the world (which owes a lot fo Stross Missile Gap lets me indulge Trek-y contrivances. They decided on this situation, but they could have visited the Neandertal tecton, or one where the Second Crusade was in full swing.
So gaming's been going great. That's it, really.