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the dnd game genre(which should have a name that isnt tied to dnd) is just very widely appealing to a lot of people, regardless of what edition it is. dnd has the advantage over every game of its genre in being widely more popular and with far more resources available for it
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Aug 13, 2021 16:53
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So right now, I'm gonna guess Avatar is bigger than all other pbta games put together, yeah?
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Aug 13, 2021 16:54
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What D&D has over anything else is brand recognition, to the point where we've had this same conversation dozens of times. I propose, probably in the spirit of futility, that we talk about virtually anything else instead of spending the next five pages on this. How about this: tell us about the last time someone else at the table truly, genuinely surprised you. For me it was this week when, after literal decades of hanging the fruit of temptation in front of players to make them sell out, I finally got two members of a three-person party to sign on with the sinister megacorp making them an offer too good to pass up. They sold out the Persean Cluster in exchange for wealth, life-extension drugs, and the opportunity to research the alien technology they were fighting for the chance to recover, and have thrown the region into chaos. Oh, and they shot the third party member in the head to make it happen. (He survived, and appeared in the epilogue with a cyber-eyepatch and Monte Cristo-esque plans for vengeance) My GMing style for a lot of games is pretty much a campaign-length series of "if you do this thing that compromises your principles or your long-term best interests, you'll get the thing you really want in the short term." It often works, chipping away at PCs like knapped flint until they're sharp enough to cut anything that tries to touch them, or until they realize they have to actually stand for something. I was playing this game as a short series (four sessions) with the teens I usually run D&D for while another player was out of town, and expected my normal tactics to maybe get them to debate the megacorp's offer internally. But no, once I clarified that the mega was genuinely willing to give them life-changing opportunities in exchange for this priceless advantage, and all it would cost them was their freedom and the stability of the stellar-political order, they just did it. They talked it through out of character while I mostly listened and answered clarifying questions, and they came to the conclusion that this was something none of their characters would pass up: they had thought they were scoundrels with hearts of gold, but no, they were really just scoundrels and this was too much for them to resist. The only reason it didn't get all three of them was that the third had a higher ambition, and double-crossing the megacorp would give them the infamy they craved. It was the final session of a short series and we knew people were probably going to die, so the holdout player cheerfully got into an unwinnable Mexican standoff and told us out of character that he expected to die in this scene, but that it would be the right death.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:06
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DnD is widely appealing because it's popular, which is an advantage for DnD but not for the genre.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:06
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canepazzo posted:You are right, I forgot about Comp/Con, which is amazing. And there's Pathbuilder for PF2. But I still think Beyond is king of the hill in regards to user experience and VTT integration (thanks to third party addons, in fairness); I've had complete newbies be up and running within 15-20 minutes with Beyond, and just have them focus on the character story, description, RP. Danger Patrol character creation is taping two sheers together and filling out 8 numbers, one of which is already decided for you.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:25
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Is there anything that evokes hyperviolent van-wizard fantasy nonsense with a system that's appropriately lightweight and breezy to keep the fun coming? Some real "melt a skeleton's dick off" stuff? Ultraviolet Grasslands has a lightweight system built in, and it is absolutely van-wizard stuff. Free preview: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/241606/The-Ultraviolet-Grasslands--Free-Introduction
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Aug 13, 2021 17:29
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Splicer posted:Where you're getting confused is that there are RPGs where you have this ease of use natively. Yeah. Case in point, for Into the Odd: Absurd Alhazred posted:Kaja Antonina
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Aug 13, 2021 17:31
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I think the restaurant analogy is poor. I think a better analogy is almost any other hobby (because, except for very few people, restaurant-going is not a hobby). When I got into baking, I went to baking communities and said "Hey, I want to bake bread, what's a good bread to try for a newbie", and I got a short list of suggestions. A very short list from a lot of people. I've now baked probably a hundred different bread recipes, but I wasn't given a hundred recipes when I started out. Same when I asked about a good recommendation for a new bike. Short list. I can't get two bike enthusiasts to agree on what the best bike is, but every shop I went into had the same recommendations for an entry level list. Same for gardening. Same for woodworking. Same for golf or disc golf. Somehow, every other hobby seems to have a good consensus of "Hey, you wanna give this hobby a try? Here's a handful of options." I am willing to wager that if you go into half a dozen local gaming shops, you're going to get recommended D&D. Because it's an easy answer. I didn't say it's an easy game, it's just a nice, easy answer. Not a good one, an easy one. When 100 degrees Calcium said they were overwhelmed, I was just surprised that here, in a thread that harps on D&D so much, there wasn't a better on-ramp. "You wanna get into TTRPG? Here's a checklist." It just caught me a little off guard.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:37
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Movies or books would be a good analogy, but people don't go into a book forum like "hey I'm interested in getting into reading, where should I start?"
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Aug 13, 2021 17:42
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pog boyfriend posted:the dnd game genre(which should have a name that isnt tied to dnd) is just very widely appealing to a lot of people, regardless of what edition it is. dnd has the advantage over every game of its genre in being widely more popular and with far more resources available for it It also has the second advantage in that it has cross-pollinated the CRPG genre and computer games in general both itself and from direct descendents so many times from Colossal Cave Adventure and Rogue onwards that you don't even have to have heard of D&D to understand what you are supposed to do.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:43
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CitizenKeen posted:I think the restaurant analogy is poor. I think a better analogy is almost any other hobby (because, except for very few people, restaurant-going is not a hobby). You're comparing TTRPGs, which have been around for about 50 years, to hobbies most of which have best practices that go back thousands of years. Even early bikes were all over the place. Remember penny-farthings? You need to adjust your expectations.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:43
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LordOrcus posted:I'm so mad that there's a new edition of The Better Joy Cookbook out. Thanks for making my old copy obsolete, you greedy hacks! For five years now, my friends have been coming over for my eggplant Parmesan, and now I'm never going to be able serve it again unless I shell out 35 bucks for the latest version. Kathraxis posted:Hey, I have a question! When you preheat the oven, can you start it before you measure out the ingredients, or do you have to do it afterward? Please answer quickly, my friends and I have been arguing about it for four hours and we're getting pretty hungry. Goku1440 posted:I found an awesome loophole! On page 242 it says "Add oregano to taste!" It doesn't say how much oregano, or what sort of taste! You can add as much oregano as you want! I'm going to make my friends eat infinite oregano and they'll have to do it because the recipe says so! barrybarrybarry posted:I can't believe I spent 35 dollars on a cookbook that doesn't have a recipe for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When I buy a cookbook, I expect it to tell me how to cook. And don't tell me to just make a PBJ myself, I'm not some sort of hippy artist pretentious "freeform cook." jvmkanelly posted:Where are the recipes for chatting with friends while cooking? Where are the recipes for conversation over the meal? When I throw a dinner party, I want it to be a PARTY. I guess the idiots who use the Better Joy Cookbook just cook and eat in stony silence, never saying a word or even looking each other in the eye. LordOrcus posted:Hey, guess what? They're coming out with The Better Joy Book of Hors D'oeuvres. It just goes to show that the publishers are a bunch of corporate greedheads who care more about money than they do about cooking. Is it too much to ask for a single cookbook that contains all possible recipes? specsheet posted:Hey, everyone. I can tell just by reading the recipe that if you prepare eggs benedict as written, the sauce will separate. My mom always said the other kids made fun of me because they were jealous of my intelligence, so I must be right. Everyone who's saying that they followed the recipe and it came out perfect is either lying, or loves greasy separated hollandaise sauce. IAmEd posted:As I have pointed out MANY TIMES, several of these recipes contain raisins, and I, like most people, am ALLERGIC to raisins! And before you tell me to substitute dried cranberries, I will reiterate that I am discussing the recipes AS WRITTEN. I do not appreciate your ATTACKING ME with helpful suggestions! Herodotus posted:I just have to laugh at the recipe for Beef Wellington. In Wellington's day, ovens didn't have temperature settings! And pate de foie gras certainly didn't come in cans. It's like the authors didn't even care about replicating authentic early 19th century cooking techniques! LordOrcus posted:I have read the new Better Joy Cookbook and I am devastated to my very core. Their macaroni and cheese recipe, the very macaroni and cheese I've been making since I was in college, has been ravaged and disfigured and left bleeding on the page. Where once it contained only cheddar cheese, now the recipe calls for a mix of cheddar and Colby. It may contain macaroni, and it may contain cheese, but it is not macaroni and cheese. This is a slap in the face and a knife in the gut. You have lost me, Better Joy Cookbook. I would bid you goodbye, but I wish you nothing but the pain and rage you have delivered unto me.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:48
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100 degrees Calcium posted:Ai ai ai this is overwhelming. I'm not even sure what I like about RPGs. Back when I used to play more often, I'd burn out pretty quickly, often because I couldn't keep up the pace of preparing and running a game. This was mostly 3rd edition as a teenager and pathfinder a little later. Mostly I get excited about creating a little fantasy setting to explore and populating it with interesting characters and cool monsters for the players to meet and (attempt to) dispatch. I personally like the "feel" of D&D, but I mean that pretty loosely because again I've never had much luck running them. It's just that playing games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale as a kid pretty heavily informed my aesthetic preferences. If you're feeling overwhelmed by all the suggestions you're getting in the thread, I'd recommend giving this guide (and the pages it links to) a read. It's presented as a list of alternatives to D&D grouped by what the reader wants out of an RPG ("I want to play D&D but...", |I want to roleplay...", I want something that's nothing like D^D...", etc.). Follow the guide based on what choice best suits what you want out of an RPG and it should give you two or three decent games to look into as a starting point. One caveat: One of the recommendations is Torchbearer and just as a heads up one of the guys who created it recently revealed himself to be a big ol' dickhead, so you may want to skip that one if you're concerned about supporting content creators who suck. KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 17:51
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moths posted:Movies or books would be a good analogy, but people don't go into a book forum like "hey I'm interested in getting into reading, where should I start?" I doubt there are even five good books.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:57
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Absurd Alhazred posted:You're comparing TTRPGs, which have been around for about 50 years, to hobbies most of which have best practices that go back thousands of years. Even early bikes were all over the place. Remember penny-farthings? You need to adjust your expectations. That's fair. RPGs are a relatively new hobby. I hadn't thought about that.
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Aug 13, 2021 18:08
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It helps that there's no IP rights for recipes. 
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Aug 13, 2021 18:14
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CitizenKeen posted:That's fair. RPGs are a relatively new hobby. I hadn't thought about that. Probably the best comparison would be hobbyist PC builds, and I dare you to go into the PC building thread and ask what the best motherboard is with no other qualifiers What's really weird is saying D&D when the one thing Calcium was sure of is they kept getting burned out from D&D's high prepwork! Splicer fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 18:40
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100 degrees Calcium posted:Ai ai ai this is overwhelming. I'm not even sure what I like about RPGs. Back when I used to play more often, I'd burn out pretty quickly, often because I couldn't keep up the pace of preparing and running a game. This was mostly 3rd edition as a teenager and pathfinder a little later. Mostly I get excited about creating a little fantasy setting to explore and populating it with interesting characters and cool monsters for the players to meet and (attempt to) dispatch. I personally like the "feel" of D&D, but I mean that pretty loosely because again I've never had much luck running them. It's just that playing games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale as a kid pretty heavily informed my aesthetic preferences. Splicer fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 18:46
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Part of the problem with the D&D discussion is that everyone here is treating it as a single monolithic game when D&D is truthfully at least half a dozen distinct games of varying degrees of relatedness, like would I recommend something like 3.5 or 5e to someone new, obviously not, but recommending BX/BECMI/RC D&D would make a degree of sense as it hits a nice sweet spot of mechanical complexity, has a lot of support(official, 3rd party, and fan made), and once the DM has some experience makes an excellent chassis for homebrewing
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Aug 13, 2021 18:54
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Splicer posted:What's really weird is saying D&D when the one thing Calcium was sure of is they kept getting burned out from D&D's high prepwork! To be clear, I was absolutely not recommending D&D. That's a terrible idea.
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Aug 13, 2021 19:20
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What have I done? 
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Aug 13, 2021 19:29
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Go back 10 pages, this is a regular Friday discussion. Edit: although last time it was because someone asked for AP suggestions. Tibalt fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 19:41
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100 degrees Calcium posted:What have I done?
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Aug 13, 2021 20:18
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100 degrees Calcium posted:What have I done? welcome to tabletop rpg discussion
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Aug 13, 2021 20:19
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100 degrees Calcium posted:What have I done? Nothing we weren't already doing to ourselves. Grab a game which sounds good and run with it -- you can refine your preferences over time. IN OTHER NEWS Ennie nominations are up. I've avoided my usual bitterness through the expedient method of not releasing any games this year and thus rendering myself wholly ineligible for anything, which is kind of freeing -- but also I couldn't help but notice while scrolling through the list that the proportion of names there skews very heavily masculine. And the absence of Wanderhome seems like a weird exclusion, given how much everyone seems to love it.
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Aug 13, 2021 20:47
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Will I like Old School Essentials if I kinda bounced off DCC? I enjoyed the creativity of a lot of the published adventures for it, but the (seeming) emphasis on the Character Funnel, combined with the accursed Zocchi dice weirdness, and lack of any real guidance on resolving many actions kind of let me down. (I've never played any actual old school D&D so I don't really have a point of comparison.)
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Aug 13, 2021 21:32
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GetDunked posted:Will I like Old School Essentials if I kinda bounced off DCC? I enjoyed the creativity of a lot of the published adventures for it, but the (seeming) emphasis on the Character Funnel, combined with the accursed Zocchi dice weirdness, and lack of any real guidance on resolving many actions kind of let me down. (I've never played any actual old school D&D so I don't really have a point of comparison.) Yeah, OSE has no formal funnel (low levels are still pretty deadly), no weird dice, and very clear, well-formatted, very good procedures for most game events, including anything common in dungeons and wilderness exploration.
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Aug 13, 2021 21:39
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Arivia posted:Yeah, OSE has no formal funnel (low levels are still pretty deadly), no weird dice, and very clear, well-formatted, very good procedures for most game events, including anything common in dungeons and wilderness exploration. This sounds good. I think I'll try running it in a week or two.
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Aug 13, 2021 21:42
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moths posted:Movies or books would be a good analogy, but people don't go into a book forum like "hey I'm interested in getting into reading, where should I start?" The local dungeons and dragons is the wheel of time (2e ad&d) or brando sando (3e, 5e?), with the occasional cry of malazan (gurps)
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Aug 13, 2021 21:56
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Arivia posted:Yeah, OSE has no formal funnel (low levels are still pretty deadly), no weird dice, and very clear, well-formatted, very good procedures for most game events, including anything common in dungeons and wilderness exploration. OSE as far as presentation, layout, and clarity goes is probably my favourite rpg ever. the book is so well made and it is so impressive. one day i might even convince one of my groups to play it
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Aug 13, 2021 21:59
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100 degrees Calcium posted:This sounds good. I think I'll try running it in a week or two. I win! 
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Aug 13, 2021 22:05
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hyphz posted:The sad thing is that Costume Fairy Adventures would be the ideal game for one shot light sandbox games if only it wasn’t about costume fairy adventures. I wish he’d come up with a slightly less creepy sounding theme. If a bunch of mischevious faeries with magic costumes goofing around pings as creepy, that is entirely you and not the game.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:16
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I have no interest in the OSE rules, but the online SRD and generators have been invaluable for populating the world of my own special snowflake homebrew.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:19
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Tsilkani posted:If a bunch of mischevious faeries with magic costumes goofing around pings as creepy, that is entirely you and not the game. It doesn’t intrinsically, but an adult trying to sell it to groups of adults is.. challenging.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:35
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What are WoD games but Costume Fairy Adventures? C'mon now.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:39
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Halloween Jack posted:What are WoD games but Costume Fairy Adventures? C'mon now. Changeling: The Dreaming scarred a generation
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Aug 13, 2021 23:36
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hyphz posted:It doesn’t intrinsically, but an adult trying to sell it to groups of adults is.. challenging. This is why god invented beer.
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Aug 14, 2021 00:33
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hyphz posted:It doesn’t intrinsically, but an adult trying to sell it to groups of adults is.. challenging. "You know how every one of the party's plans degenerates into madness and fire? In this game, you start with that and go from there. Gender is optional." Halloween Jack posted:What are WoD games but Costume Fairy Adventures? C'mon now. 
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Aug 14, 2021 01:05
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dwarf74 posted:So right now, I'm gonna guess Avatar is bigger than all other pbta games put together, yeah? I think so based on the number of conscious backers, but it's worth remembering that everyone who got the BLM bundle from itch.io owns Blades in the Dark now. They also own Lancer, Troika, and (as I was surprised to find out recently) Costume Fairy Adventures.
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Aug 14, 2021 02:49
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bewilderment posted:They also own Lancer, Troika, and (as I was surprised to find out recently) Costume Fairy Adventures. The only unfortunate bit there is that it didn't include The Big Pie Caper, CFA's standard sample sandbox playset, which is a shame because it showcases a bunch of the design features that make it work so well as a sandbox. In particular the fact that it has the absolute opposite of the "this is a sandbox but the only thing you actually gain anything for doing is searching for the Golden Chicken" in that it'll throw so many valid progress opportunities at the player that they need a seperate sheet to keep track of them all, and let them do whichever combination they like.
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Aug 14, 2021 03:50
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