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Preechr
May 19, 2009

Proud member of the Pony-Brony Alliance for Obama as President

Cooked Auto posted:

In the final Wrath & Glory session last weekend my Tempestus Scion almost managed to one shot the boss with a bolt pistol.

The Rogue Trader and her entourage busts into the throne room of the Xenos Emperor who had possessed the body of her father, alongside a Farseer and his Warlocks. But we arrive too late to stop the corrupted Eldar Avatar from being summoned (the xenos race was very big on corrupting Eldar tech in this case) and battle is joined.

After blitzing down a bunch of the bodyguards my character gets held in place and has her main weapon flung out of her hand at the same time so now it's out of reach. But I can still act so my turn comes up and I do the only thing I can think of, pull my sidearm and just start shooting. And manage to roll so well that the GM goes "Well that just happened" and then on Discord mentions that I had been two wounds away from one shotting him with that roll.
Then I finished him off with a roll almost as good as the first one and killed him.
Which also made the Avatar crumble to dust as he was a load bearing miniboss.

Not bad if I have to say myself. :D

The rude craftsmanship and weak faith of the perfidious xeno crumble before the inestimable might of the Imperial Guard and their most holy weapons wrought by the artifice of the Adeptus Mechanicus. :commissar:

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Ichabod Sexbeast
Dec 5, 2011

Giving 'em the old razzle-dazzle

Night10194 posted:

So in Double Cross Biblefight Game, their non-binary gravity wizard overchanneled their powers while destroying a resurrected Fransisco Franco in Barcelona and slipped into darkness. They were seduced by the ease of simply slipping away to raise a powerful wizard tower in Britain and study the cosmos, convinced they had only been using their friends for protection rather than actually being friends because they feared they had no good side. The heroes and a bounty hunter commissions to bring Alex in without too much harm tracked them to the tower and went to climb it, distracting Alex from using their knowledge of the team's abilities by conversing with them as they went through rooms of clockwork, strange gravity voids, empty libraries the wizard intended to fill with their research, etc.

Through it all, they insisted they were coming to get Alex because it was obvious this was an unhealthy existence and they wanted to help, as Alex worried that they had been nothing but an imposition and a burden on the team. Nuala the Fairy Knight eagerly insisted all they'd done together was fair and that Alex was her friend, and Isabella the Werewolf Paladin kept gently saying no-one was free of sin. When they confronted Alex, Alex slipped into a fugue state of gravity power and cosmic calculation rather than face their worries at the moment and attacked. The team fought them, the bounty hunter they'd brought pulling out a crazy laser attack that pierced their defenses and knocked them off axis before Alex tried to crush them all in a black hole, only to realize they were killing Nuala and stop before they hurt their friend too badly (the fluff behind the attack's limited damage) because they were still in control enough to only try to disable the party. When Isabella landed the last blow, though, instead of smashing Alex back to sense or something, the werewolf pounced on them and did her best therapy dog impression, trying to bring Alex back by being cute instead of mighty after tearing through a gravity barrier.

It worked perfectly. It was such a perfect fight ending move and really put a great cap on an arc that did a great job of exploring the relationships of the characters. I wish I'd done better designing the fight (it was too easy) but that tends to happen when I come back to the game after a hiatus, I underestimate what badasses the PCs are. Alex is now going to therapy and taking a break from battle after realizing their anxiety needs treatment while God's secretary, Enoch, the son of Jared (who turned out to be the Bounty Hunter's client) pays her to fill in on the team for awhile. So now they have magitek Samus Aran for a bit.

This is a really good story and I appreciate your game, but I like the idea of the wizard tower just being in the middle of Bristol or Manchester or something

(to see a wizard tower in a city, look up ZARM. It even has a family of falcons living in it!)

Captain Walker
Apr 7, 2009

Mother knows best
Listen to your mother
It's a scary world out there

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

This is a really good story and I appreciate your game, but I like the idea of the wizard tower just being in the middle of Bristol or Manchester or something

Ever ask yourself why you never see anyone actually riding the London Eye? It's obviously a glamor obscuring a wizard's tower from casual observation

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Captain Walker posted:

Ever ask yourself why you never see anyone actually riding the London Eye? It's obviously a glamor obscuring a wizard's tower from casual observation

I rode the London Eye when I was a teenager, it was nice. :saddowns:

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

This is a really good story and I appreciate your game, but I like the idea of the wizard tower just being in the middle of Bristol or Manchester or something

(to see a wizard tower in a city, look up ZARM. It even has a family of falcons living in it!)

When the adventure was over the fairy used the seeds she'd planted in an evil sorcerer's back yard to teleport the tower from where it was hovering above Whitby to there (one of the Enemy Only Balor powers is to raise your own flying sky castle/tower, so of course Temporarily Enemy Alex would do that). After all, he had said it was his tower. It was only polite to return it to his London estate!

He pretended he actually wanted it that way so as not to let on they'd ruined his lawn. He was trying not to give them the satisfaction. It didn't work.

Lord Raymond Burrows is a fun character because he's both an evil warlock and also not that malignant all the time and actually likes and respects Alex, he just doesn't think people who don't have cool magic powers are people. And so they enjoy annoying him and one-upping him in various ways since he's mostly content to sit around and study his sun sorcery and thus doesn't merit actually defeating, just annoying.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Captain Walker posted:

Ever ask yourself why you never see anyone actually riding the London Eye? It's obviously a glamor obscuring a wizard's tower from casual observation

Which actually reminds of a campaign set in the Harry Dresden setting where we blew up the Shard to stop something important and magical from getting stolen. Can't remember why sadly and the IRC logs of the event doesn't cover the reasons why.

But as I recall the campaign ended with us rescuing the queen by teleporting a Land Rover into the Royal Palace.

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
Anywhere Nuala's flowers grow, she has authority and power as a knight of the fairy court. She'd originally scattered seeds in Burrows's back yard for surveillance purposes, but when choosing between 'keep spying on this guy' and 'colony drop a tower into his back yard, the repair from which will absolutely lead to your flowers being discovered and destroyed', she went with the option that amused her more.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Kavak posted:

I rode the London Eye when I was a teenager, it was nice. :saddowns:

Sure, that's what you remember.

Ichabod Sexbeast
Dec 5, 2011

Giving 'em the old razzle-dazzle

PLEASE tell me the goth weekend is the world's most pre-eminent gathering of necromancers

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

PLEASE tell me the goth weekend is the world's most pre-eminent gathering of necromancers

Probably? Half of how I develop the Urban Fantasy side of the setting is just listening to whatever players suggest and then going along with it some, which is how the Fairy Realm got fleshed out some.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Night10194 posted:

Half of how I develop […] the setting is just listening to whatever players suggest and then going along with it some,

This is correct and good.

Player [excitedly]: “oh man! This guy knows that other guy, meaning that he probably knows bigboss and can tell us [the thing that conveniently moves the plot along]. Is that right, Agrikk?”

Me: “…Yes. GREAT deduction there! I can’t believe you picked up on that!”

Agrikk fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Oct 21, 2021

HiKaizer
Feb 2, 2012

Yes!
I finally understand everything there is to know about axes!
Plus it makes your players feel good got figuring stuff out which means everyone wins.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
My friends and I started a Rolemaster campaign via roll20/discord and due to time zone differences our sessions can only last about 3-4 hours. We just finished our seventh session, so just over twenty hours of play.

The arc of the campaign is that there is an Outsider or a Stranger that was accidently summoned into this world and hates being here, but the only way back is to destroy all of creation so that the walls keeping the inside from the Outside dissolve away and it can go free. It's going to be a high-powered, high-level campaign with world-shattering decisions, characters slaying and becoming gods, the works. Think Feanor/Melkor/Ancalagon the Black levels of creation and destruction.

But tonight one of my players got knocked out by an orc.



I may need to accelerate the pacing of things.

Agrikk fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Oct 22, 2021

echopapa
Jun 2, 2005

El Presidente smiles upon this thread.

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

This is a really good story and I appreciate your game, but I like the idea of the wizard tower just being in the middle of Bristol or Manchester or something

(to see a wizard tower in a city, look up ZARM. It even has a family of falcons living in it!)

A wizard who wanted an urban tower would probably purchase a disused telephone exchange building.

FreshFeesh
Jun 3, 2007

Drum Solo
The druid in my 5e game just acquired an onyx mastiff statue, which can become an actual dog for several hours if given the command word. Once the duration runs out, or the animal is killed, it reverts back into a small statue and can’t be called upon again for a week.

Having acquired and identified this wondrous item in the middle of a dungeon crawl, she immediately activated it… within range of a hidden otyugh’s grasping tentacles.

Druid: “I’m going to have a new friend!” *summon*
*surprise attack, auto-grapple, slam against floor*
Me (DM): “A small dog statue bounces and rolls to a stop at your feet. You can try using it again in seven days.”

The rest of the party thought the scenario far more hilarious than she did. I will readily admit to laughing when she pointed out on the battle map exactly where she was summoning her new friend.

It was just like that video of the person releasing an animal back into the wild, only to have a hawk come down and snatch it away immediately.

RiotGearEpsilon
Jun 26, 2005
SHAVE ME FROM MY SHELF
when you next summon that poor dog you best have delicious apology treats handy

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

So yesterday the Star Wars campaign I've posted about before came to an end. And for once the dice was actually on our side from beginning to end. One of the final rolls from one character ending up a double triumph, and one of the most characters with the worst luck in past constantly kept rolling triumphs as well.

The finale involved the Czerka CEO (or CZEO) dropping down, on top of his own massive droid army, on top of his Giant SOlid Gold Crab Mech to kill us in order to get the Eternal Fleet that would let him reconstruct the galaxy in his own image.

What followed was a frantic fight where we ripped the crab droid (Or CZ-rab) a new one with lucky shots and crits thanks to the dice running hot. And almost got killed in turn. Including one part where my character (The Cathar himbo mechanic) manages to survive the crab droid landing on top of him as it was finally taken out of action. Managing to hold it aloft (with parts of it offering support) just long enough to walk out from underneath it before it came crashing down.

In the end the CZEO got blasted and chopped to tiny bits and the galaxy was saved from evil mega corporation influence.

To which the GM dropped the final reveal that the whole thing was a tale spun by the Cathar Jedi that we met and possibly not real in the first place.
Which, after having talked to the GM previously might've been the best option because at least one player was getting some very weird ideas once the Eternal Fleet twist had come up. So it spared us from an awkward epilogue.

Still, great fun was had and I'm sad to see it over.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
According to my DM, Tiamat always gets to be on top.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.
My group is playing Mage, set in present day Hawaii. My character is a big teddy bear, a retired MMA fighter and family man. It was Halloween in tonight's game, so my character's costume was for going trick-or-treating with his wife and kid. The kid was Spongebob Squarepants, the wife was Squidward, and my mage was Patrick the Starfish. He's super into family stuff, so doing a coordinated family costume was totally his jam.

So he drops off the wife and kids at home, and goes to the PC-shared chantry. Everyone else is looking like cool wizards, having festooned themselves in the necessary mystical adornments to ward off spirits during this night of potentially strange occurrences. My dude walks in wearing a big, unwieldy, goofy Patrick costume. I described him not being able to sit down or lower his arms properly due to the puffiness of the costume. We had a good, sensible chuckle at this, but I decide to go as long in the session as I can whilst wearing the costume.

We drew up plans to infiltrate a Hermetic observatory built atop a sacred mountain that is pissing off the indigenous Kopa Loei mages. It's a whole thing, and some serial killings have brought our investigations to this. So we scope out the area, park a mile out, and hike up under the cover of darkness.

My beefy Muay Thai fighter is still dressed as Patrick the Starfish.

We use mundane investigation and magic to sneak through the outside and hack into the keypad at the door.

My dude is still dressed at Patrick the Starfish.

My character has to sit in meditation in order to use mind magic to put to sleep the lone person that we find inside. After that, we quietly sneak into the observatory's main chamber. We all start investigating everything from the computer systems to the sacred geometry of the room. One of us cooks up a more potent sleep aid and I carefully, gingerly feed it to the sleeping scientist.

My dude does all this dressed as Patrick the Starfish.

We discover that the observatory is using magical energy from the sacred mountain to fuel some sort of mini Dyson Sphere that is hidden in a synchronous orbit with Earth on the far side of the sun. We also open a portal to the spirit world, through which we can travel to said Dyson Sphere. We then have to have a serious conversation as to whether we make that trek, or if we destroy the facility right then and there. Doing so might bring heat onto us, or onto the Kopa Loei, so the plot is at a major tipping point.

My dude is having this conversation still dressed as Patrick the Starfish. Because :spooky:it's loving Halloween:spooky:, damnit. :colbert:

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
According to my DM, blue dragons are the Hufflepuffs of chromatic dragons.

Ichabod Sexbeast
Dec 5, 2011

Giving 'em the old razzle-dazzle

CobiWann posted:

According to my DM, blue dragons are the Hufflepuffs of chromatic dragons.

Honestly I always pictured Tiamat as a kind of Hiram McDaniels, and assigned chromatic personalities accordingly

BTW, what's your avatar from?

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.
Update:

Our Mage cabal stepped through the portal at the observatory and ended up in a Spirit World shadow of some abandoned hermetic space station. Unfortunately, it was a one-way portal, and the station is enormous. Worse yet, the Spirit World version of the station that we ended up in is, instead of being simply abandoned as in the physical world, is populated by the spirits of sci fi horror imago from people's imaginations. We ran into Mike Meyers and, when my MMA guy beat his rear end into the ground and pried his mask off, he became Captain Kirk (as the Meyers mask is originally a William Shatner mask). So then we had a spirit copy of Captain Kirk tagging along with us. for the rest of the adventure.

We found a technocratic team exploring the station, and struck a détente with them enough to at least not get in each other's way in order to get off the station. We also started finding doodads left by mages more like us, breadcrumbs left behind as SOS beacons. We diverted trying to find a way out in order to find them. WE found them, but unfortunately they had already been on the station too long and succumbed to "going native" to the spirit world, thereby losing their material forms and existing purely as spirits (this occurs to humans who travel into The Shadow for more than a few weeks at a time). Nevertheless, we took them with us to resume finding an exit, now with a ticking plot clock over our own heads.

We ran into an ED-109 serving as the station's security. One of the other mages described being wounded by what sounded like a T-1000 stalking around the station somewhere else. So we had that to look out for, but managed to avoid (probably by chance). What we failed to avoid shortly before finally finding the exit was a Xenomorph. It hit one of us with acid and dug into another for quite a bit of damage, but I was able to supernaturally slow it down and Agent Smith its rear end and punch it about twenty times in a second. Two of us held it back with fire effects, but in the piece de résistance our resident modern day Green Man/Merlin type wizard used his mastery of Spirit Magic to change his spiritual form to that of Ellen Ripley in power armor.

"Get away from her, you bitch," our wizard spat before they slammed the xenomorph into a bulkhead, killing it.

In the next room, we found a way out, a platform not unlike a Star Trek transporter. Then we were faced with a Sophie's Choice: Captain Kirk told us that the transporter only has enough juice left to send six people back to material Earth. There are four PCs, plus four more mages that we helped rescue earlier, so two people are simply not going home. The other mages agree that it's right for the PC cabal to all get tickets home, since it is much less risky for us. Having been in the spirit world too long, the other mages might not even rematerialize in the physical world. Per GM fiat, the only reason this might work is because it is still Halloween, so the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. So we have a discussion about who should go, and why, and I hold my tongue about the ethics and logic of such decision making because my MMA teddy bear doesn't know or care about any of that. We end up taking the two NPC mages with the least abilities in the spirit world with us, leaving the other two to their fate to, essentially, haunt this place forever until they find enlightenment somehow. The rest of us say goodbye to them and to Captain Kirk, and we beam back to Earth.

That whole time, my character was wearing a Patrick Starfish costume from going trick-or-treating with his family earlier on Halloween. I never did take it off. Faced down technocrats, ED-109, and a Xenomorph like that. The technocrats, Captain Kirk, and the other mages all commented on it along the way. My answer was always the same: it's Halloween, you nerd. I'm the cool one here. :colbert:

:spooky: :spooky: :spooky: :spooky: :spooky:

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.
Oh, and after getting XP at the end of the session, I told the GM I would be buying the next point of my magic trait (the mechanical cornerstone of the game). Doing this is a big XP investment, but also requires a personal quest called a Seeking.

So when the group beamed back to Hawaii, everyone else ended up in the ocean just offshore of Oahu.

I ended up much further out to sea, bobbing off the coast of a tiny atoll that I have only seen in my dreams. My hosed up magical avatar is drawing me to that place for a vision quest, and I am still dressed as a cartoon starfish (although I'll probably, finally, shed the costume here).

Everything Counts
Oct 10, 2012

Don't "shhh!" me, you rich bastard!
You will shed the costume in your Seeking; but you will remain dressed as Patrick Star.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.

Everything Counts posted:

You will shed the costume in your Seeking; but you will remain dressed as Patrick Star.

:aaaaa:

Canuck-Errant
Oct 28, 2003

MOOD: BURNING - MUSIC: DISCO INFERNO BY THE TRAMMPS
Grimey Drawer
Just be concerned if it turns out to be Bikini Atoll...

D34THROW
Jan 29, 2012

RETAIL RETAIL LISTEN TO ME BITCH ABOUT RETAIL
:rant:
This was 12 years ago, but it was fun at the time and soured me on DnD for years.

I used to play this online game called Combat Arms, F2P FPS, and was part of a clan called the Gaggle of Noobs. A few of the guys wanted to put together a DnD campaign and I had always wanted to try, so I went and bought a pack of dice, created a character, the whole shebang.

I forget his name, but I played a half-orc monk with a penchant for slings and speech. With no clue what I was doing, we set off on our adventure, playing over Ventrilo :bahgawd: and ran across some kobolds or goblins or some drat little creature.

True to my luck in life, the dice hated me. I made several attacks, all of which were crit fails or close to crit fails, and the DM was the best kind of dick. My first or second sling shot went wide, knocked a party member in the back of the skull, and knocked them unconscious.

I then proceeded to pick up their body and use it as a blunt weapon; I think I managed to take out one or two of the creatures before the encounter ended. Then in retaliation, after waking up, they stabbed me in the leg.

:allears:

Coolness Averted
Feb 20, 2007

oh don't worry, I can't smell asparagus piss, it's in my DNA

GO HOGG WILD!
🐗🐗🐗🐗🐗
Got roped into trying D&D again with friends because the DM is a cool dude and had a neat pitch: An Eberron game where you play as a Suicide Squad from one of the factions usually encountered strictly as antagonists. So players needed to build a concept around why their character was both useful and utterly expendable.

:): Can I play a 'Sanctioned Shifter' so the whole concept being they're a penitent lycanthrope, who genuinely believes in the dogmatic church and that they need to martyr themselves?
:eng101:: Actually in my version of Eberron there aren't shifters in this nation.
:): Oh, ok. Hmm, well can I play a warforged? They're not really a person, so could be viewed as expendable.
:eng101: Gah! Sorry, in my version of Eberron warforged are practically extinct, so that's not really viable either. Also the first mission is gonna be infiltration and covert so not a good fit.

At this point the DM also clearly felt bad about immediately shooting down two of my concepts in a row. Eventually as people settle into their concepts I come up with a hexblade inquisitor with the gimmick of they have a demeanor as just a sort of friendly priest, but meanwhile they've been a grisly interrogator and they're devote to the silver flame and just sorta view their terrible actions as the ends justifying the means. They're expendable because while they think they're channeling an aspect of the Silver Flame they're obviously tainted by something else. Cool, the DM loves that concept too.
Oh except everyone has made sort of squishy characters and the DM strongly suggests we need a meatshield. Fine, since other players actually expect to have fun in the game I bite the bullet and opt for the boring class that doesn't get to do anything outside combat. A zealot barbarian could be funny skinned as a kindly old priest that is a 'holy roller' and when the spirit enters him he fucks poo poo up. Reskin his greataxe as a an ornate staff with a holy symbol on it.

:eng101: Ok we're rolling for stats and HP because that's fun, I've also house ruled in penalties for low int, we'll ignore encumbrance and penalties for low str. Also combat is entirely theatre of the mind. Oh and actually for my story an old guy doesn't work, and you're big and use a regular greataxe
a 6 hour session 0 that was largely spent on looking up reference materials, rolling stats, and explaining d&d-isms to someone new to RPGs.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA why is D&D such a bad game that even does poo poo like this to otherwise smart people who are fun to play games with?
Like I'm giving this a shot as a way of shooting the poo poo with friends, but it's just so weird that these people have good taste in other things, how is it RPGs are this bad with them?

Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Nov 15, 2021

Captain Walker
Apr 7, 2009

Mother knows best
Listen to your mother
It's a scary world out there
if there aren't warforged it isn't Eberron

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
I am currently running a campaign using the Rolemaster second edition. While it isn’t without its flaws one of the things I like about it is “everything is a d100 roll plus modifiers and basically if you break a hundred you succeed”.

There. You understand rolemaster. Now let’s play.

Coolness Averted
Feb 20, 2007

oh don't worry, I can't smell asparagus piss, it's in my DNA

GO HOGG WILD!
🐗🐗🐗🐗🐗

Agrikk posted:

I am currently running a campaign using the Rolemaster second edition. While it isn’t without its flaws one of the things I like about it is “everything is a d100 roll plus modifiers and basically if you break a hundred you succeed”.

There. You understand rolemaster. Now let’s play.

The game of Heart I've been running for a few weeks managed to fit the following into an equivalent amount of "tabletime" as this d&d session 0 which only mostly finished character generation:
Talked about what we wanted, made characters, explained all of the rules, 2 delves, 2 combat scenes, and 4 scenes in landmarks scrounging for work and swapping resources.

HiKaizer
Feb 2, 2012

Yes!
I finally understand everything there is to know about axes!
That sounds more like your friend and GM had an idea about what they wanted that they didn't communicate well, and possibly did not fit with what people wanted to play. Rolling for stats is always a bad idea in a game where players only have a single character because it creates inherent imbalances between what players are capable of. In a game where you play expendable PCs then it makes a lot more sense. All of that is before knowing what edition you are playing in as well.

People try to make DnD a toolkit to apply to any situation, so it's critical that everyone talks about what they want and understands the game expectations. Sometimes this is hard and even when you try to talk about it the communication doesn't work out. I had a rough game experience recently when we were talking about what some of a DnD5E game we wanted to play. We talked a bunch about Final Fantasy 14, and guilds got mentioned later, so I thought they meant more like economic and political guilds. A friend actually thought more about guilds from an MMO or Animes where the protagonists are kind of just literal forces of nature and can do what they want without real political consequence. Then there were issues later between that player and another player who talked a lot to fill dead air, and eventually the whole thing ended up with the player getting very frustrated and blowing up and leaving the chat and session. It kind of killed the game sadly but this was something I and other players had tried to talk about our expectations and what we wanted a lot.

I appreciate my relaxed homebrew setting NWoD 2e game with other friends. Mostly it's a low conflict game and half the time I get to invent NPCs like a Treant that grows fruit on its branches, or a dolphin barista in a bar with a top dry area and a bottom wet area. Also we talk about Centaur fashion a lot.

Coolness Averted
Feb 20, 2007

oh don't worry, I can't smell asparagus piss, it's in my DNA

GO HOGG WILD!
🐗🐗🐗🐗🐗
Yeah, my take is my GM here has a story they want to tell,with some shocking reveals. They probably really want there to be story twist like "oh no, you're trapped in the mournlands, that leaves you in mortal peril!" So they houseruled out Warforged so the beat can still be a surprise and have the impact they want rather than just saying up front "Look, I can't have you play a warforged, because I want you to be worried when I drop you off in an area hostile to life."
I also think only having 1 game system as a touchpoint for modern rpgs has left them forgetting there's a lot of stuff that's d&d specific -heck for that matter 5e specific- and doesn't quite flow as natural and common sense like to players who haven't been immersed in d&d for years.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.
It is weird that D&D is the first and default game for most players. I like it, but it isn't that flexible and is meant to do one specific thing (i.e. sword and sorcery with tactical bits). It would be like if every woodworker first learned to use a lathe instead of, like, a hand saw, or a hammer. It only occupies that position to players because of historical precedent. It sounds like that DM has some specific ideas that D&D can accommodate, but there are a ton of other games better suited to theatrical, theatre-of-the-mind combat, as opposed to tactical combat. But that gets back to D&D being the default game for so many groups. I know a few groups that only play 3.5 and 5E just kind of out of habit.

That said, the DM also needs to be more flexible. If the dictates of the setting or plot twists are leaving them to say no to a player that many times, then the setting and plot twists need to change, not the player's concepts. Players should always* win a toss-up between them and the setting (or the plot, or the game mechanics). It's not like any of your concepts were broken or inappropriate in any other context. Hell, if Warforged are almost extinct in that version, then that's all the more reason to play one. :colbert:

It's not any player's responsibility to figure out how a plot point is going to interact with their concept. That's up to the DM, who can do literally anything within the narrative so if they can't figure out a way around reasonable PC concepts then they should hang up the ol' DM shoes.

*Within reason, of course. There are players who argue to do stupid or toxic stuff. See also: some of my posts from a couple years back.

D34THROW
Jan 29, 2012

RETAIL RETAIL LISTEN TO ME BITCH ABOUT RETAIL
:rant:
I've tried DnD but in writing my LitRPG webseries using a solo GURPS sort of thing (never mind the Film Reroll podcast and their use of GURPS for such fare as "Back to the Future", "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Jurassic Park", et al), I have come to greatly appreciate GURPS's flexibility and the fact that you have sourcebooks for so many different things.

I could use it to write both the post-apocalyptic thing I'm doing now, or a sword-and-shield medieval conflict, or something legitimately hex based. I could even use it to write a romance novel. One of the things I love about RPGs is crafting an unpredictable story, and GURPS is the most flexible platform for that.

I've even taken DnD Goblin Dogs and turned them into radwolves for my postapoc project, Giant Flies translated directly, etc. There's a ton of resources for converting DnD to GURPS.

Anyways, my point is that GURPS is great and DnD isn't the only system out there, just the most well known. I didn't even know GURPS was a thing until I learned that Interplay was originally going to use it before developing SPECIAL.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
He’s not playing D&D. Playing a tank in theatre of the mind? That’s a horror story on its own.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

D34THROW posted:

I've even taken DnD Goblin Dogs and turned them into radwolves for my postapoc project, Giant Flies translated directly, etc. There's a ton of resources for converting DnD to GURPS.

Funny you mention porting a thing from one system/genre to another because in my current city campaign with MoanHowlMoan in Thalos, I’m using a bunch of Mack Bolan books for plot installments. For those of you who don’t know, the Mack Bolan novels are a serialized series of stories featuring Mack Bolan as an outside-the-law vigilante killer who slaughters mafia, terrorists, communists and any other Enemy of the State with an arsenal that would appeal to any gun fetishist’s fantasies.

(I read these books as a naive young Republican in my early teens in the early eighties at the peak of Regan-era Cold War. No I won’t apologize. Well, maybe I will for being a Republican back then.)

I simply reskin the mafia as the evil assassin’s guild, the communists as the corrupt merchants guild, and let my 14-year old players murderhobo their way around.

Cobalt-60
Oct 11, 2016

by Azathoth
Reading Mack Bolan is punishment enough.

MelvinBison
Nov 17, 2012

"Is this the ideal world that you envisioned?"
"I guess you could say that."

Pillbug
Stealing CobiWann's bit long enough to say my GM ruled a Sanctuary spell can double as a VPN.

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Captain Walker
Apr 7, 2009

Mother knows best
Listen to your mother
It's a scary world out there
The Something Awful Forums › Discussion > Games > Traditional Games › Notable Gaming Experiences: The Gospel According to CobiWann's DM

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