I finally finished Mass Effect. Wow.

[rocketpig]

twesterm said:

rocketpig said:
Which has convinced me that the video game industry is full of Munchkins who don't really know what constitutes a good RPG player.

Last night my friends and I just hashed out the details of our next D&D campaign and I bet huge portions of the "RPG crowd" around here would absolutely hate it. A few details include:

- No combat XP unless trickery and/or ingenious plotting is involved
- Linked weapons to characters (basically making most loot worthless)
- 90%+ of all XP generated by character interaction
- Animals will not attack (they're ANIMALS, for crying out loud)
- If you attack even a nest of Kobolds without thinking it over, you WILL die
- Oh yeah, did I mention virtually no loot?

I would hate that but mainly because I hate being stuck on the same level for more than two sessions.  :-p

In my current 4th edition DnD I actually give them anywhere from 25-75% experience than they're supposed to get.

As for loot, I just like loot and characters like getting loot so I give it to them.  I usually don't give them anything great, but they generally get something.  When they do something big, I give them something big (but they're going to have to work for that).

We role-play dysfunctionally so this system works really well for our crew. It allows me to get experience for playing in character, which is always hilarious because then I can actually level up characters like my Dendrophobic Ranger, which had everyone in hysterics (he was nicely complimented by my friend's Ogre Scout, who liked to stand up and yell "THERE THEY ARE!!!!" every time he spotted a potential enemy).

We actually accomplish very little in our campaigns but we sure manage to keep ourselves amused. I actually view combat as an ugly necessity in between the times when my character gets to do or say funny things. Loot is pretty much the same. We don't really care about it. We get it so we can level up and go harass bigger and better people.

I've actually played for several hours without lifting a finger in combat but had massive XP awarded to me because of the things my character was constantly doing to undermine the enemy or other characters.