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All wizards should be granted one of the following implement category types: - Fruit, spherical in nature. More powerful fruits yield more powerful effects. They must consume part of the fruit in order to harvest its magical essence to cast. However, if they eat the entire fruit... - Guns. - Woven tapestries. Depending on the size and intricacy of the tapestry amplifies the range and effect. A wizard casting a spell using a war banner that can be seen from half a mile away is a powerful force indeed, but also a liability. They need to launder their tapestries if they get dirty or else it will reduce their effectiveness. - Flags. Like tapestries but can be leveraged for all spells in lieu of a verbal component as long as the wizard is capable of semaphore. - Four letter verbs of power. Want to cast a fireball? BUTT poo poo POOP, as it's a level 3 spell. Using the same word multiple times can amplify the effect but may overcharge it and cause the wizard to lose the ability to use that verb, which would be very bad if a wizard could not poop. - Scrabblemancer. Wizard must use a Scrabble board to cast spells. - Bogglemancer. As above, but with Boggle. - Deck of cards. As above, but with a deck of cards. They just need to be some kind of deck of cards, not your classic 52 card deck or tarot cards. - Electropugilist. Input spells into a joystick with buttons with the right timing and sequence. - Ennui. The more listless and dissatisfied the wizard is with a situation, the stronger the spell. - Forum posts. Wizard must cast their spells by posting to Something Awful to a special spellcasting thread. If they get probated or banned as a result then their spell backfires, or backfires terribly. We don't talk about spells that got people permabanned.
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Jan 15, 2021 03:38
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great now I wanna make the wizard fgc and wizard shitpost forum games
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Jan 15, 2021 05:23
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I was just hoping maybe the thread would go like "obviously this one is a wand and that one is a staff, why is there any question?" and settle the argument. Turns out the reason me and my group were unsure is because it's legit ambiguous. Which is fine - that's also an answer I can work with. Consider my question answered.Leraika posted:new players who have a specific concept in mind Leperflesh posted:Coming back to your actual question, if you must assign one set of bonuses/penalties to a flavor of implement, can you lever off of setting elements that aren't the same old tropes? In other words, in your Kazzam setting (is that a setting?) maybe some wizards cast spells via handheld mummified small animals with gems for eyes, and other wizards focus their powers through magic rocks that they have to juggle, while a third set of wizards zap baddies via fragile origami crafts. So I've mentioned this project a couple of times, but haven't yet gone into detail on what it is. So here, I'll go into detail. The game is called either Kazzam or Tailfeathers (not sure which yet). The game is about playing as teenage wizards at a wizarding school, solving mysteries. But also, you play a wizarding sport called kazzam. It's all built on the Strike! chassis. Kazzam works like Strike! combat, but with some extra "sport" elements taken from video games. There is a capture the flag element that lets you score points without having to beat up your opponents and really rewards mobility. There are neutral monsters that are also worth points, so you can "go creeping" like in a MOBA. There is no player elimination - when you get taken out, you go to the dungeon. You can spend a turn leaving the dungeon and rejoining your team, but there's also valuable stuff to do there, so you're really not out of the match even while you're there, and strategically getting yourself sent there could absolutely be a thing to try. Like in Strike!, you choose a Role and a Class, but now you also choose an implement. For some classes, your choice of implement is tied into your choice of class features, while for others it's separate. Implements are wand, staff, and sword. Outside of Kazzam, the mystery plot can be procedurally generated using a plot map like TechNoir's (you don't have to, though - you can bring your own mystery if you prefer). Tailfeathers School is the name of the school the characters attend. You could sum it up as "Harry Potter minus the TERF shitlib BS". But it's not the only school. There is also Fellbarrow Mausoleum, the school of necromancy, and I have plans for more (e.g. Elementalism). Tentatively, the plan is for each school to be a book, and each school/book will have a different set of skills and spells and different Kazzam classes. Tailfeathers teaches students Enchantments and Charms and Divination, but Fellbarrow teaches them Reanimation and Flesh Shaping and Spirit Binding. So the implements at Tailfeathers are tropes because Tailfeathers is the tropes school. "Handheld mummified small animals with gems for eyes" sounds like a great implement for a Fellbarrow student! But like I said, it's totally reskinnable, so if you want to be the goth kid using a mummified parakeet as a wand at Tailfeathers and freaking out the normies, that's awesome and is absolutely encouraged. The schools will be mixable too, so you could be a foreign exchange necromancer from Fellbarrow at Tailfeathers for the year, showing them how your ability to talk to dead things is just as good as any crystal ball. I'm planning that most of the stuff here will be backwards compatible with Strike! Right now, you could take any of the Kazzam classes and reskin them into Strike! and it would be reasonably balanced. It's going great so far. In our last playtest, we managed to get the kazzam rounds moving snappily, and a bunch of fun emergent stuff happened from the sport's rules. The opposing team member the players were most afraid of was the specialist runner who rarely bothered attacking and mostly used her speed to zip around trying to score points. The players pushed a swarm of bats into the opposing team, using creeps as a weapon to great effect. The defender did defendery things (making the GM hate them, somehow not dying), the teleportation wizard used a bunch of forced movement to mess interfere with the enemy's plans, and the hexer/leader hit stuff and did good damage while keeping the team healthy. It's still early playtesting - I don't have levelups for any of the classes yet, but it's really very promising and I'm so excited about it. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Jan 15, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2021 06:21
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Jimbozig posted:I was just hoping maybe the thread would go like "obviously this one is a wand and that one is a staff, why is there any question?" and settle the argument My dude  If you really wanted to split hairs on it then a wand is a highly accessible thing that most people can use but it still requires skill to use properly, whereas a staff is a big stick you pick up and carry around with you when you're going for a hike For a fine example of a wand, you can always go watch Bright, which features wands and no staves, or like, I dunno, what other popular culture thing uses wands? Harry Potter? Didn't they use their wands in WW2 or whatever? A wand being able to be used for magical implements while also being lightweight and portable to carry yet still maintain a high degree of efficiency makes it what you want it to be Staves and their ilk command a certain level of majesty and people will leap in front of that majesty to die for it, and to wield it is a great and terrible power or one raised of great sagacity. Lord of the Rings does this rather appropriately since in the movies the only people who used wands are great and powerful magic users that are also superhumans Anyway, wand is a wand. Y is a wand, and not a staff, unless you want to argue with more parameters otherwise! --- Anyway, who wants to help me organize and/or run a West Marches game in PDQ?
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Jan 15, 2021 07:02
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Jimbozig I'll just add that, are the adults at wizard school really giving kids swords to use in their wizard sports? Like sharpened ones? If someone had given us swords when I was in 7th grade, a kid would definitely have died within a week. Maybe they're like, kendo practice bamboo swords? Actually hey, maybe they use like boffer LARP versions for the sport. OK we're teaching you Proper Wand Safety in class, under tight supervision, but out in the sports arena, you get like a foam wand that makes a cartoon ZAP that knocks into your enemy kid and they get a giant -8 HP in Comic Sans floating above their head for five seconds? Sorry, you're designing a game and you're way more experienced at that than I am, so I'll shut up with my idiot ideas now. Teen wizard interscholastic sports drama game sounds dope.
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Jan 15, 2021 08:22
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Leperflesh posted:Jimbozig I'll just add that, are the adults at wizard school really giving kids swords to use in their wizard sports? Like sharpened ones? At my wizard school, everybody gets a gun at Grade 5.
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Jan 15, 2021 08:30
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Real swords transmuted to have the consistency of rubber. It hurts, but it won't kill.
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Jan 15, 2021 08:30
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Leperflesh posted:Jimbozig I'll just add that, are the adults at wizard school really giving kids swords to use in their wizard sports? Like sharpened ones? If someone had given us swords when I was in 7th grade, a kid would definitely have died within a week. Given the genre thing it's riffing off, I imagine 'wait isn't this sport incredibly, incredibly unsafe' is more of a positive than a negative.
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Jan 15, 2021 08:31
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A wand to me is an instrument that requires some finesse. You twirl it around in intricate patterns, use it to draw runes and symbols in the air or to lightly touch whatever you cast a spell on. Easy to store, to conceal and to draw. It feels defensive and mobile. A staff says I'm here and I'm a wizard come at me, it's completely unsubtle. You hold it in the air and the end glows or you slam it into the ground. You can also hit someome with it. Maybe a staff user would also know some melee spells, similar to the sword guy. You're gonna carry it visibly at all times, it's cumbersome, you have to find a place to store it if you ever don't need it. Wand is a dagger, staff is a broadsword, whatever those two imply for you for a fighter type should probably carry over to magic types. Other associations: young casters use wands, old casters use staffs. Both are phallic to a degree so there's merit to the thought of both being the same type implement mechanically, and something else altogether is the other type (orb?). Also there are languages where both translate to the same word and it's near impossible to draw a distinction without some verbal acrobatics, if that's a concern for you 
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Jan 15, 2021 08:35
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Joe Slowboat posted:Given the genre thing it's riffing off, I imagine 'wait isn't this sport incredibly, incredibly unsafe' is more of a positive than a negative. that's probably why I've never gotten on board the harry potter train, from day one I'm like "why aren't all these adults in jail by now"
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Jan 15, 2021 08:38
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aldantefax posted:My dude Lol, yeah, you gave a quick answer, which I appreciate! (and your answer agreed with my own gut feeling, which I also appreciate.) But everyone else came down somewhere between "it's neither here nor there" and "we need more info". Joe Slowboat posted:Given the genre thing it's riffing off, I imagine 'wait isn't this sport incredibly, incredibly unsafe' is more of a positive than a negative. In the setting, the sport is kind of an emulation of real wizard battles. It's like paintball. Paintball is not perfectly safe, but it's safe enough for kids to play with proper eye protection. And if there's an accident, well, they have healing magic anyway. But if the question is whether naughty children could raid the equipment locker and get in real trouble? Yeah, that's absolutely thematic for this sort of thing. Wizard teens get in way over their head. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Jan 15, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2021 08:49
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aldantefax posted:At my wizard school, everybody gets a gun at Grade 5. See, this is the problem with American wizard schools.
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Jan 15, 2021 09:55
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Leperflesh posted:that's probably why I've never gotten on board the harry potter train, from day one I'm like "why aren't all these adults in jail by now" you only go to prison if you say trans people have rights or something
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Jan 15, 2021 10:05
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By request, the GURPS thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3955634
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Jan 15, 2021 10:11
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Lemon-Lime posted:See, this is the problem with American wizard schools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-2ZxldMO-M
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Jan 15, 2021 10:12
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aldantefax posted:I have tried (semi-unsuccessfully) to get people to send me theme songs for their characters for one shots and the like and they can choose to play their theme song to get bonuses and/or automatically succeed at stuff. If I wanted to operationalize it into a core gameplay mechanic, I would probably use it as something that anybody can trigger when anybody else is doing something cool or recovering from a setback to go on to do something cooler. Cool as! I've been doing theme songs for my characters for a couple of years now. It helps me figure them out, and I've found that it really helps certain other people visualise and relate to them, but I'd never really thought about it as a gameplay device and it's such a good idea.
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Jan 15, 2021 10:21
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I've made an entire GURPS game that was fueled by Blue Oyster Cult's "Fire of Unknown Origin", and very specifically, "Soldier of the Psychic Wars". Music has played a larger role in the inspiration and formation of games but I have found it lacking in terms of being leveraged in a game that I feel like there has to be some better opportunities out there than purely "niche". I also feel the same way about other multimedia pursuits such as literary things like various forms of poetry being put into game mechanics, which I probably would want to do as some kind of social combat in a Modiphius game or something like that. I'm picturing a Romance of the Three Kingdoms (video game) or Legend of the Five Rings debate scenario where people generate haiku against one another on a timer that has to stay on theme, and whoever drops the ball is out (using haiku for L5R would also very much be on theme since Rokugan takes its primary inspiration from East Asian stuff and the development of haiku, hokku, and its expanded exploration with kigo and poo poo is actually super interesting). See also: a GM-less game where you do rakugo, or maybe some other hand ear coordination thing, or just DJ'ing in general.
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Jan 15, 2021 10:29
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I need a good PDF reader for my new tablet, anyone got any good recommendations?
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Jan 15, 2021 10:41
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drrockso20 posted:I need a good PDF reader for my new tablet, anyone got any good recommendations? goodreader for ios, w/e for android, i use dropbox
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Jan 15, 2021 10:42
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aldantefax posted:I've made an entire GURPS game that was fueled by Blue Oyster Cult's "Fire of Unknown Origin", and very specifically, "Soldier of the Psychic Wars". Music has played a larger role in the inspiration and formation of games but I have found it lacking in terms of being leveraged in a game that I feel like there has to be some better opportunities out there than purely "niche". I have played a character who was just "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" - that was her entire starting concept. I intend to do so again, because that game fell through. BOC are great, and they're the single most TTRPG-inspiration band I can think of.
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Jan 15, 2021 17:24
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Jimbozig posted:I was just hoping maybe the thread would go like "obviously this one is a wand and that one is a staff, why is there any question?" and settle the argument. Turns out the reason me and my group were unsure is because it's legit ambiguous. Which is fine - that's also an answer I can work with. Consider my question answered. Wow, this sports stuff sounds a lot like the game I'm working on from last year's anime contest. My basis was Panic At The Dojo, but I can totally see how Strike! would fit the concept as well. Good luck, it sounds awesome and I'd love to see it in action.
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Jan 15, 2021 21:38
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aldantefax posted:At my wizard school, everybody gets a gun at Grade 5.
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Jan 15, 2021 21:56
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After being busy since like Christmas I'm finally getting a chance to sit and read the Sentinel Comics RPG Core Book and then I have my backer copy of Deviant and then a couple of Pathifnder 2e books I haven't actually read yet and then Kamigakari and probably more stuff I'm forgetting Anyway! Sentinel Comics! I really want to play it! It seems cool! Also I want to just randomly generate heroes forever.
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Jan 16, 2021 12:44
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I would love to play an RPG about sports (any kind of sports) with the tactical goodness that could allow, while still allowing the stakes to feel real. I've never found that, but it's on my short list of games I'd love to play.Blockhouse posted:After being busy since like Christmas I'm finally getting a chance to sit and read the Sentinel Comics RPG Core Book Sentinel Comics has a lot of cool tech, and its character generation is the best of them. It's so cool. The system didn't end up working for my group, but I still use the character generation to come up with cool outlines for characters and then I port them over.
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Jan 16, 2021 17:05
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Any suggestions for a dm-less game to play online with 3? I'm looking for a backup for when someone misses our roll20 session. I'm considering Fall of Magic or (if my graphic artist friend is there) The Quiet Year, but wondering if there are other good possibilities.
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Jan 16, 2021 17:23
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Going to try and learn the Book of Battle (2nd edition) system for Pendragon today. Trying to have a ridiculous capstone to this Era, before we take a break for other systems. Wish me luck
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Jan 16, 2021 17:30
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CitizenKeen posted:I would love to play an RPG about sports (any kind of sports) with the tactical goodness that could allow, while still allowing the stakes to feel real. I've never found that, but it's on my short list of games I'd love to play. GURPS has combat sports as part of their skills and also technical grappling, so you absolutely could run that as a semi-realistic sports drama about a luchador trying to make it back into the ring after being disgraced by their rivals and now they must do one last moonsault before the shadow organizations have their way to destroy the sport
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Jan 16, 2021 18:04
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The best low-key jokes in that is how they still have the loving stupid wizard names. Also all the fake wizard schools are better named than any of the ones Rowling's come up with.  
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Jan 16, 2021 18:29
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aldantefax posted:GURPS has combat sports as part of their skills and also technical grappling, so you absolutely could run that as a semi-realistic sports drama about a luchador trying to make it back into the ring after being disgraced by their rivals and now they must do one last moonsault before the shadow organizations have their way to destroy the sport Yeah, I don't know what it is, but the few sports games I've come across, the stakes always feel... not there. Even with games like Dream Park. I'd play a GURPS game if a good GM was running it, but I wouldn't run it unless someone paid me.
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Jan 16, 2021 18:37
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CitizenKeen posted:Yeah, I don't know what it is, but the few sports games I've come across, the stakes always feel... not there. Even with games like Dream Park. What constitutes the stakes (assuming dramatic tension maybe or some kind of mechanical gain/loss thing) "being there" for you? If you want to deconstruct like a sports story in other media it generally mirrors the Hero's Journey but replaces death and dying with handeggs and a higher degree of relationships. You could use DramaSystem to represent social sparring and then the actual business of the 'sport' you can play a boardgame like Dreadball or Blood Bowl. I think it all depends 'real stakes', 'tactical goodness', and 'sports' though since those are semi-nebulous terms. GURPS is an RPG system with options for tactical grids, positioning, and combat maneuvers with a fairly straightforward conflict resolution system. There is a book, GURPS Martial Arts, which extends play to focus on specialized combat techniques including combat sports. So if you wanted to simulate Karate Kid in a granular way, or replay your favorite season of The Ultimate Fighter, then that gives you a certain framework for it. Stakes, such as they are, are purely narrative in what I would assume your idea of a sports game is. The characters need to overcome their personal challenges and also beat up some kind of rival through the conflict resolution of a sport of some kind (not necessarily combat based); they need some kind of melodramatic hook to put something on the line of worth, maybe? I'm just spitballing but if you're looking for "an RPG about sports" here are some examples: - https://ndpdesign.com/wwwrpg - world wide wrestling rpg - http://www.flyingmice.com/tools.html - baseball - https://storybrewersroleplaying.com/fight-with-spirit-a-high-school-sports-rpg/ - in design now, but DIY anime high school sport drama rpg
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Jan 16, 2021 19:12
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Hmm. Unrelated to the above, but now I'm thinking if I did run a West Marches game, it would have to be in a game engine that allowed for robust creation of a Wizard School where everybody has a gun
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Jan 16, 2021 22:16
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The King’s Dilemma is probably my new favorite board game. Just so much hilarious arguments and backstabbing.
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Jan 16, 2021 22:25
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aldantefax posted:Hmm. Unrelated to the above, but now I'm thinking if I did run a West Marches game, it would have to be in a game engine that allowed for robust creation of a Wizard School where everybody has a gun Use Strike! with the Survival mini-expansion to help with some of the wilds exploration stuff.
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Jan 16, 2021 22:27
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Xiahou Dun posted:The King’s Dilemma is probably my new favorite board game. Just so much hilarious arguments and backstabbing. I bought it right before Covid, and it is taking most of my board game-related self-control to not play it on TTS. I really want to enjoy it with wine and bourbon and dinner, but every day my grip on that dream slips a little.
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Jan 16, 2021 23:05
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I’m lucky and my bubble plays board games, so we just spent the day drinking wine and mead and arguing medieval politics and holy poo poo it owned. My left hand is actually bruised from high-fiving my little sister since we both picked rear end in a top hat evil houses. “gently caress yeah we’re gonna execute a guy!” We also made Rouladen. It was a good day.
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Jan 17, 2021 00:49
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Well, if nothing else, that reinforced my resolve.
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Jan 17, 2021 01:41
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My current games: Playing in Blades Running Spire Both are going pretty well and a friend is also likely to start up a game of World Wide Wrestling.
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Jan 17, 2021 01:47
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Yeah sorry you gotta wait, but I'll tell you that the dream is out there and the dream is good. I played it with my 5 person nuclear family (we're nerds, yeah), and as people who already love to bicker and drink and make dumb jokes and bicker and eat food and also bicker, it did everything it said it would. My dad gave me an IOU that said, "I won't give you a noogie," which I then traded to my older sister so she'd vote with me on how to fund a joust. It's that kind of game. That sentence probably should make you decide exactly how you feel about this game.
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Jan 17, 2021 01:52
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PerniciousKnid posted:Any suggestions for a dm-less game to play online with 3? I'm looking for a backup for when someone misses our roll20 session. I'm considering Fall of Magic or (if my graphic artist friend is there) The Quiet Year, but wondering if there are other good possibilities. If a setting-building type game is ok, there's things like Microscope or Four-Colour Apocrypha you could try.
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Jan 17, 2021 04:25
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dumb idea time: Oath thread, but for reporting in that you had a good tabletop RPG session as a GM
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Jan 17, 2021 06:51
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