Even if this thread is, sooner or later, going to die, I think we can all take some comfort and pride in the fact that it will do so a good deal after the mods wanted it to.

True. Though that was a few months ago at this point.

For me, it wasn't about out lasting anything - but I genuinely enjoyed getting to know so many of you (well, getting to know better, anyway) - by some of the random Q&A we did on this thread, and some of the fun conversations that came from it. I thought that was a fantastic aspect of this thread.

Ages ago, in a different place, a creative was feeling frustrated and posted about their struggle under a thread called “feeling out of luck”.

the fools who commiserated are still friends some 16 years later, lol. I think only some have ever met in person.

this is the kind of thread that forums aspire to have, lol. It is the one thing keeping me coming back right now — and I have a lot of things pulling on my time and attention.

Yeah. I’ve noticed this. I think that I’ve gotten to know some people who are very different from myself through this thread. People I’d never have met otherwise. It’s interesting, because it is common for people online to put on a “persona” for their internet interactions. I don’t feel like that happened here. I think this thread was one where a small community built their posts on themselves, not on who the internet demands they be.

Perhaps we will even meet at Gen Con this year. I have not made plans to go, but that could change.

Quote from Wysperra >>

Question of the Day: Do you prefer experience points or milestone leveling?

 
I prefer XP, but i award it for everything, skills, RP, not just combat. Most of the time PCs still level at or around the same time, but I find it incentivizes people to play the way they want to since they know they’ll gain XP for whatever they do, but it doesn’t feel as arbitrary as Milestone leveling, they feel more like they’ve earned it somehow. 🤷‍♂️

Quote from Amnon_Balderk >>

Wow. I was about ready to retire from this thread. I did not expect a wall of text. A few in fact.

 Have you not ever come here before?

tsk tsk tsk

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Ages ago, in a different place, a creative was feeling frustrated and posted about their struggle under a thread called “feeling out of luck”.
the fools who commiserated are still friends some 16 years later, lol. I think only some have ever met in person.
this is the kind of thread that forums aspire to have, lol. It is the one thing keeping me coming back right now — and I have a lot of things pulling on my time and attention.

Absolutely. In many aspects - it's like roleplaying, for me. When I "give" my character some personality through interaction, I learn to care about the character. Otherwise, it's just a mess of stats rolling dice. By getting to know people better in this thread, it was more than just people posting.

Quote from Amnon_Balderk >>

Yeah. I’ve noticed this. I think that I’ve gotten to know some people who are very different from myself through this thread. People I’d never have met otherwise. It’s interesting, because it is common for people online to put on a “persona” for their internet interactions. I don’t feel like that happened here. I think this thread was one where a small community built their posts on themselves, not on who the internet demands they be.Perhaps we will even meet at Gen Con this year. I have not made plans to go, but that could change.

 I'd love to make my way to GenCon one day. But that is going to be impossible in the foreseeable future, due to the medical issues with my wife that I need to be around to take care of.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Quote from Wysperra >>

Question of the Day: Do you prefer experience points or milestone leveling?

 
I prefer XP, but i award it for everything, skills, RP, not just combat. Most of the time PCs still level at or around the same time, but I find it incentivizes people to play the way they want to since they know they’ll gain XP for whatever they do, but it doesn’t feel as arbitrary as Milestone leveling, they feel more like they’ve earned it somehow. 🤷‍♂️

 I grew up on old skewl D&D where it was all XP, this milestone notion never existed.

And back then, in my youth, I didn't have any obligations that life now demands of me these days.

So I was definitely one of those who, "You don't show, you don't get XP!"

But these days, folks have kids, folks have obligations, and my motto is always, "Real life first." My players rarely miss any games, but it does happen. Whether it was family in town, issues with kids, or they worked an 80 hour week, the concept of milestones allows everyone to comfortably miss a game and not feel like their character is going to fall behind in some way.

Usually for great RP (or if someone remembers an aspect of the story that happened awhile ago and crept back into a recent game), I usually award Inspiration.

Like in last night's game, the party who helped an Eladrin (who is now trapped on the same island the party has been trapped on) - I talked about how, from her previous wounds, she'd bee recovering but was using a gnarled staff to lean and walk with. The druid in the party did some plant shaping stuff to make it a fancy staff. So I was like, "That's a great idea!"
And then when the Eladrin started talking about a Satyr, that same player was like, "We ran into him. He lives in the cave by the waterfall and Lord Brenmoon has done something vile and made him vampiric."
And that was from like over a year ago, she'd remembered.
And I was like, "Fine. Double Inspiration."

LOL

Quote from Amnon_Balderk >>

Wow. I was about ready to retire from this thread. I did not expect a wall of text. A few in fact.

 
Never write this thread off, it lingers and resurfaces like a bad virus. 🤣😂🤣

Question of the day: What currency do you use besides your standard silver and gold?

One of my campaigns uses glass beads. The primary city is a mine so silver and gold don't hold much value.

Another uses enchanted wooden sticks. You can literally burn your money.

For me, it depend son the campaign when it comes to Xp versus milestone.

The new campaign is a milestone focused set up because it relies on a structured story more than in general.  But I have a fondness for XP, lol. 

However...

There is nothing that says you can't set it up as both.  Rather than "a milestone that moves you one level" you can set up milestone points that the player then spends to move up a level, which gives a similar structure to P and allows you to do "side adventures" that are still canon but not necessarily part of the main storyline -- or allows the PCs to hie off into the wilderness to get something for some weird spell that a mage wants to create because he has to make a name for himself.

This is the set up I am going to use as my milestone approach -- the campaign has a set storyline and series of events on a timeline, but I don't plan to railroad players at all and so if they don't go for it I can do little side jobs.

Quote from Wysperra >>

Question of the day: What currency do you use besides your standard silver and gold?

One of my campaigns uses glass beads. The primary city is a mine so silver and gold don't hold much value.

Another uses enchanted wooden sticks. You can literally burn your money.

I have a Bit, then I have the regular coins. However...

outside the Empire, the coins don't have as strong a set up, and barter is pretty common from the NPC side.  Want a tent for your crew in Hyboria?  Going to take you a couple hours to hunt up a bear skin. Or maybe a half dozen chicks.

stumble into Bermuda, and well, the Kobolds have a very different value system -- even if they are trying to set up trading ties with the Empire.

Then I have Ancient Coins which are in out of the way places but can be found randomly anywhere.

I am supposed to create a system like in the Horizon series, using parts of critters.  But  am awfully lazy of late.

Quote from Wysperra >>

Question of the day: What currency do you use besides your standard silver and gold?

One of my campaigns uses glass beads. The primary city is a mine so silver and gold don't hold much value.

Another uses enchanted wooden sticks. You can literally burn your money.

 I am thinking about introducing a NPC who is probably seen as slightly mad. He has the loony idea to get rid of the gold standard and start using paper money instead. Not many people are willing to listen to him.

Quote from Wysperra >>

Question of the day: What currency do you use besides your standard silver and gold?

 

In the main game I run, it's just standard gold and silver.

However, in the Off Week game (where there's a metric ton of RP for the majority of the game) - they've helped establish trade routes (for example the Kobolds gather Whistling Leaf, which is used for healing potions in my world - and trade it with a nearby town - in exchange for leathers and such). This was because the party was able to befriend the Kobolds (again, the insane amount of RP in the game) - and helped make that happen. So sometimes the party will trade in skins, or whistling leaf, etc., depending on what they have handy and what the island town they're at is in need of. There's is also standard gold and silver in the larger towns of this small island.

I’ve had a variety of alternate money systems for my games, but in the end I use the base stuff most of the time. It makes the game simple. The only time I deviate is when I have a big world-specific, lore heavy game (like the one coming up this summer).

I am currently working on a world based on Bloodborne and the artwork of Zdzislaw Beksinski (copy-paste the name into the search bar if you want to see his art, it's great).

It falls into the relatively new genre of hopepunk, a punk genre not defined by its aesthetic or technology but instead by its emphasis on the idea that you must actively fight to make the world better.

The concept is that the world takes place in the Nightmare, a "surreal dystopia" where it is both horrifying and somewhat nonsensical. Humanity was sent here, to a world without gods, to battle their own inner (now outer) demons and earn salvation. The scars of the war that destroyed Earth's ecosystems still stand as a grim reminder of what was lost, even as the Nightmare itself has no awareness of the world before. Towering oil refineries, eternally burning cities, battlefields littered with bodies that belong to no one who ever existed... and that doesn't even mention the demons.

More people keep coming, and we don't have enough habitable space. Players will face their failures, drenched in the blood of the beyond, fighting a torrential downpour of fear to help carve out a place for humanity in this world and make it a better place. The world is sick and broken, but it can be fixed.

Quote from Amnon_Balderk >>

I’ve had a variety of alternate money systems for my games, but in the end I use the base stuff most of the time. It makes the game simple. The only time I deviate is when I have a big world-specific, lore heavy game (like the one coming up this summer).

 We have this problem right now in the Dragonlance campaign. Those not familiar with the Dragonlance setting keep saying "Gold" ("I give him 3 gold for the dagger") and me (and the other player familiar with Dragonlance will mutter) "Steel." (It's mostly a joke now because it's happened so often).

Quote from SirTawmis >>

Quote from Amnon_Balderk >>

I’ve had a variety of alternate money systems for my games, but in the end I use the base stuff most of the time. It makes the game simple. The only time I deviate is when I have a big world-specific, lore heavy game (like the one coming up this summer).

 We have this problem right now in the Dragonlance campaign. Those not familiar with the Dragonlance setting keep saying "Gold" ("I give him 3 gold for the dagger") and me (and the other player familiar with Dragonlance will mutter) "Steel." (It's mostly a joke now because it's happened so often).

 I’m a huge fan of Dragonlance, but none of my good friends have read it, so we haven’t played it yet. I want them to get into some of the lore before starting.

Quote from Amnon_Balderk >>

Quote from SirTawmis >>

Quote from Amnon_Balderk >>

I’ve had a variety of alternate money systems for my games, but in the end I use the base stuff most of the time. It makes the game simple. The only time I deviate is when I have a big world-specific, lore heavy game (like the one coming up this summer).

 We have this problem right now in the Dragonlance campaign. Those not familiar with the Dragonlance setting keep saying "Gold" ("I give him 3 gold for the dagger") and me (and the other player familiar with Dragonlance will mutter) "Steel." (It's mostly a joke now because it's happened so often).

 I’m a huge fan of Dragonlance, but none of my good friends have read it, so we haven’t played it yet. I want them to get into some of the lore before starting.

 So, as an avid fan - there's stuff I am familiar with.

However, most of the players in the game (let's see - there me (familiar), Mark (familiar), Leah (unfamiliar), Steve (unfamiliar), Colin (unfamiliar) and Andy (unfamiliar)) - and the way the module works (so far, might be some stuff the DM is doing) - but it does a brilliant way of handling the adventure story and really makes it inclusive and understanding even for those who are not familiar - as long as the DM reads to the player the current state of the world and the significance of some things, which the book provides.

I haven't been able to keep up with + follow this thread for a while, but I will say that I'm not too surprised to see it still going. There have been a couple of interesting posts lately that I've wanted to respond to:

Quote from Wysperra >>

The story is/has been awesome. Congratulations, you level up and gain inspiration.

Question of the Day: Do you prefer experience points or milestone leveling?

Milestone. Leveling people up when the story and campaign asks for it is typically better than just telling them they get stronger after they kill a bunch of stuff. Using the former method is also makes building adventures a lot easier, since you don't have to worry about people leveling up at weird times.

Quote from Wysperra >>

Question of the day: What currency do you use besides your standard silver and gold?

One of my campaigns uses glass beads. The primary city is a mine so silver and gold don't hold much value.

Another uses enchanted wooden sticks. You can literally burn your money.

I just use gold, silver and copper lol.

Quote from Baalzeboop >>

<Snipped cool setting stuff to save space>

 

Nice. That sounds like a cool setting that could also work as a Domain of Dread of Ravenloft if you wanted.

Quote from SirTawmis >>

For me, it wasn't about out lasting anything - but I genuinely enjoyed getting to know so many of you (well, getting to know better, anyway) - by some of the random Q&A we did on this thread, and some of the fun conversations that came from it. I thought that was a fantastic aspect of this thread. 

Same thing here, though I wasn't nearly as involved in this thread as you and a number of other people.