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GURPS Derogatory was one of the best collections of historical epithets and slurs for when you really wanted period-accurate slang, but hasn't been updated for the 4th edition
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May 6, 2023 17:58
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| # ? May 25, 2024 03:41 |
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GURPS derogatory the only gurps book in the warehouse loot box full of munchkin garbage you bought.
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May 6, 2023 19:15
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I think it's good when a game is honest about what it's trying to do, to the point you won't bother buying it if it's not a good fit. That saves everyone time. That being said, if you wanted a Buffy game that's PbtA I thought you'd want Monster of the Week rather than Monsterhearts.
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May 6, 2023 20:25
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Buffy had some Monsterhearts aspects to it, mostly in the early seasons.
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May 6, 2023 20:26
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Servetus posted:Personally I would have settled for the capacity to play Spike in a game of Buffy; instead of having The Vampire be specifically Edward Cullen. The MH Vampire makes a good S1-3 Angel (with Angelus being Darkest Self). Spike, however, whether pre-chip or post-chip is not at all about the same things Angel(us) is. This means that if you're writing for emotional connection putting Angel and Spike in the same class is a challenge (to give another example I don't think representations of Angel and Spike would belong in the same V:tM clan for all one sired the other). quote:So , from what I gather from responses I got switching Playbooks is supposed to be a lot more casual than I got from reading Apocalypse World, Monster Hearts, Impulse Drive, or Masks. It seemed like it would involve major character shifts because so many details of personality and appearance are controlled by the Playbooks. Switching playbooks in AW is always a big thing because your playbook reflects your place in the world. If you want to change who you are then that's a big change. But if something does fit who you see your character as but you don't want to take other moves from that playbook you don't have to at all.
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May 7, 2023 00:41
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Also, you can rewrite your Darkest Self as an advance, if I remember correctly. So if it's no longer appropriate, you can mix it up.
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May 7, 2023 14:34
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So, I accidentally did some historical research for Oath of Light, things spiralled out of control, and now I've scheduled a trip to London and Paris this summer in the name of further research and also because I can't remember the last time I travelled somewhere. Anybody have any gaming-related recommendations? It would be neat to find some bookstores in London where I could potentially find something for my second-hand RPG collection. Failing that someone could just tell me where the best pasties can be found.
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May 8, 2023 06:04
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Is Frostgrave any good? I took a look at the minis and find them extremely charming.
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May 9, 2023 01:37
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:Is Frostgrave any good? I took a look at the minis and find them extremely charming. The game itself has a lot of support, scenarios and poo poo. Some people find the mechanics a bit swingy and simple with a lot of d20+x vs d20+y, others don't like that only the warband leader really has character development and everyone else is a fixed statline that you might replace with a more expensive fixed statline and attach the same character name to. And if you don't like the rules, you've got a solid base for a lot of other games that are also cool as hell.
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May 9, 2023 07:41
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There's a fresh new RPG homebrew thread, and everyone should go have fun making games. It's been ages since the game-making threads on TG were active, we've all gotten out of the habit I think, but this is a longstanding part of what makes this community so good. Even if you're not actively working on new games you can provide other folks feedback on their projects, or just read along and post words of encouragement.
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May 9, 2023 18:32
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Rand Brittain posted:Anybody have any gaming-related recommendations? It would be neat to find some bookstores in London where I could potentially find something for my second-hand RPG collection. I don't know about second hand bookstores but it seems that COVID,. gentrification and The Flood (as in the Jenna Moran game) have done a number on London gaming. The standard recommendation is Orc's Nest on Earlham Street which has managed to be there for 30+ years. It's a small retail-only space though, although it is close to where one of the wargaming clubs has events.
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May 10, 2023 11:29
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hyphz posted:I don't know about second hand bookstores but it seems that COVID,. gentrification and The Flood (as in the Jenna Moran game) have done a number on London gaming. The standard recommendation is Orc's Nest on Earlham Street which has managed to be there for 30+ years. It's a small retail-only space though, although it is close to where one of the wargaming clubs has events.
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May 11, 2023 01:18
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Nessus posted:What's the story with the last one? Was there an incident? The Flood is a game about property financialization, and there’s no shortage of that in London.
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May 11, 2023 01:30
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hyphz posted:The Flood is a game about property financialization, and there’s no shortage of that in London.
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May 11, 2023 02:09
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Nessus posted:That's way less exciting than some kind of Jenna Moran mythos cult incident that blew up seven gaming stores. After what she did to that poor Tyger, anything is possible.
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May 11, 2023 06:53
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I mean, if there's not a Jenna Moran mythos cult in London, what's your excuse?
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May 11, 2023 07:52
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There's Leisure Games too,but iirc they're way out at the end of one of the tube lines. Orcs Nest is pretty unfriendly as a shop.
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May 11, 2023 07:59
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orcs nest is near a big forbidden planet which should still have a vestigial gaming products area downstairs leisure games is worth the tube ride and the bit of a walk from the station
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May 11, 2023 09:19
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Orc’s Nest is literally where I bought my copy of the Great White Book while I was on vacation actually.
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May 11, 2023 11:24
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Oh yeah now that I look at it I'm almost positive that's where I bought an OotS book once.
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May 11, 2023 11:28
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Anybody know what the deal with the Alchemy VTT is? Why it's the new hotness?
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May 11, 2023 15:29
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CitizenKeen posted:Anybody know what the deal with the Alchemy VTT is? Why it's the new hotness? https://twitter.com/dril/status/1656115033338974210
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May 11, 2023 15:32
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CitizenKeen posted:Anybody know what the deal with the Alchemy VTT is? Why it's the new hotness? It’s expressly built for Theater of the Mind. Picture an animated image center screen for scenes (or a battle map if you prefer) complete with dice roller log, AV chat, and built-in music control with a well-supported 3rd-party marketplace. Hit Point Press and Free League are building all of their digital supplements to work natively with Alchemy now and the VTT also supports a “streamer mode” for capturing all of the action in a single window for OBS. The UX is intuitive and straightforward to boot; it’s probably precipitated singlehandedly all the UI updates Roll20 is supposed to be rolling out soon I absolutely love it. Gray Ghost fucked around with this message at 15:39 on May 11, 2023 |
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May 11, 2023 15:36
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It came to my attention because so many of my recent Kickstarters have announced Alchemy support: Outgunned, Wildsea: Storm and Root, and CBR + PNK. And then I see that it's getting Modiphius 2d20 support, and Year Zero, and Call of Cthulhu, and Pathfinder, and I was like "Wut". How gated is it? Able to add your own art assets? Can you add new abilities / feats / magic items? Can you craft your own homebrew system?
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May 11, 2023 15:51
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CitizenKeen posted:How gated is it? Able to add your own art assets? Can you add new abilities / feats / magic items? Can you craft your own homebrew system? There’s definitely support for all of that. It’s limited I think (i.e. you may not be able to create a push-button action for an ability or item), but their roadmap implies that will become more robust over time.
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May 11, 2023 16:22
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Have they got a better place to go with it, though? I tried it and it seems like it just lets you pay for art and then display it or pay for music and then play it, plus a simple talker with a dicebot. It just doesn't seem to be doing anything that other things don't already do. Which is a shame, as a ToTM VTT would be a great idea, but it runs into the same upstairs/downstairs problem that other VTTs have with assets. Also on London gaming stores, the one I really miss is Playin' Games opposite the British Museum (and next to a restaurant called Munchkins which was always a laugh) which not only had nice surroundings but a lot of obscure stock. I bought the full run of 1e UA supplements there and still regret it less than most, but when I did, they also had a copy of no poo poo Dragonraid. (I didn't buy that.) Sadly last time I went to London and went out there it had been replaced with a tourist shop. hyphz fucked around with this message at 16:35 on May 11, 2023 |
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May 11, 2023 16:28
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hyphz posted:Have they got a better place to go with it, though? I tried it and it seems like it just lets you pay for art and then display it or pay for music and then play it, plus a simple talker with a dicebot. It just doesn't seem to be doing anything that other things don't already do. Which is a shame, as a ToTM VTT would be a great idea, but it runs into the same upstairs/downstairs problem that other VTTs have with assets. I don’t know. To be honest, probably anything you can do with this you can also do in Foundry, albeit with a bunch more legwork — but that will be true for every VTT except One More Multiverse and the Wizards one coming with oD&D. I’d like to see a lot more flexibility and usability with homebrew for sure, but there does seem to be support for game prep and world building with Alchemy that’s missing from Roll20 and Role.
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May 11, 2023 16:34
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hyphz posted:Have they got a better place to go with it, though? I tried it and it seems like it just lets you pay for art and then display it or pay for music and then play it, plus a simple talker with a dicebot. It just doesn't seem to be doing anything that other things don't already do. Which is a shame, as a ToTM VTT would be a great idea, but it runs into the same upstairs/downstairs problem that other VTTs have with assets. A while back someone on twitter posted a picture of a copy of Dragonraid they found in their like dead uncle's house or something, all like "Look at this weird poo poo I found! I bet it's super rare!" It turned into a little twitter bidding war thing where fans of various RPG shows were encouraging the guy to send it to their faves, including us at System Mastery. We saw it happening, got briefly excited, then googled the thing and realized it's still in print and is sold for like 20-25 bucks with free shipping. It's basically a Sunday School tool for a certain sort of horrible set of people, so it's to their grody interest to get a copy into any hands that want one. Holy cow is it ever bad though. I've read a lot of bad RPGs, but that still stands as the only one I've seen that has codified brainwashing and cult tactics in as general game rules.
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May 11, 2023 16:53
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Did your copy of Fantasy Imperium include all the weird Bush-era Islamophobia? I only have a PDF copy that they were giving away for free for a while.
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May 11, 2023 17:00
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Halloween Jack posted:Did your copy of Fantasy Imperium include all the weird Bush-era Islamophobia? I only have a PDF copy that they were giving away for free for a while. Me? Yeah, my copy is one of the hardcover ones he was giving away for free at cons.
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May 11, 2023 17:09
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Gray Ghost posted:I don’t know. To be honest, probably anything you can do with this you can also do in Foundry, albeit with a bunch more legwork — but that will be true for every VTT except One More Multiverse and the Wizards one coming with oD&D. I’d like to see a lot more flexibility and usability with homebrew for sure, but there does seem to be support for game prep and world building with Alchemy that’s missing from Roll20 and Role. I guess the real issue is that one of the big benefits of Theatre of the Mind is that you can make large settings the players can freely explore without having to run into the wall where one area has a beautiful grid map that's professionally drawn and in the resources pack provided by the publisher and the area next door has nothing at all other than the GM doodling with the pen tool on a bare grid. It's still amazing that no VTT so far has provided procedural rigging along the lines of Dungeondraft. Sadly it would be a textbook case for AI art but since that would screw every marketplace contributor it's understandable no-one wants to do that unless we could somehow have a system where the AI can only be used to fill in for art not otherwise available, and that'd be exploitable.
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May 11, 2023 17:19
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I don't think the upstairs downstairs issue is all that it's cracked up to be. I have run various games from Delta Green to old school essentials and players have gone from detailed handmade maps to things that I have sketched out using the in-game drawing tools to things that were generated on the fly. They all had fun and enjoyed themselves and there was no disconnect between what they thought was prepared and what wasn't. It's kind of a given that if you are running an open or more sandbox game that you realistically can't have everything prepared up to that highest level of detail. I have even done something where if players go to an area that I just have loosely detailed out in between sessions I will generate or make a more refined map. I think that it's easy to get in your own head when it comes to VTT stuff because there is such a wide berth of ways to use it.
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May 11, 2023 17:19
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What is the upstairs / downstairs issue? Not familiar with that term.
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May 11, 2023 17:23
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It's used to describe the disconnect between the parts of the game that you have prepped a lot for and have nicely detailed maps, maybe with some automation and other fancy bells and whistles versus stuff that you are just scribbling down on the virtual whiteboard that's not as prepared. I think a lot of online GM's let the presentation psych them out for what will be fun and what won't be.
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May 11, 2023 17:25
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Yea, I think I learned it as a general term for where there are things that are nominally the same, but in fact one is clearly much better (by some standard) than the other and it's an elephant in the room. I always believed it comes from stately homes where the gentry lived "upstairs" and the servants' quarters were "downstairs", so both technically can say they live in the stately home but the experience will be very different. Oddly the term seems to have disappeared even now it applies to just regular housing.. 
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May 11, 2023 17:35
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I got my copy of Dragonraid from a Goon TG Secret Santa and it is truly something special.
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May 11, 2023 18:48
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I've never heard of Dragonraid in my life, and boy, even that carefully-phrased Wikipedia article is unnerving
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May 11, 2023 20:35
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I just found a pdf and it's, idk, fine? It's a typically groggy 80s rpg with different names for your d&d stats, rules for cutting hands off on crits and (brilliantly) buffs for accurately reciting bible verses from memory lmao. It's sort of  unless I'm missing something from a quick skim.
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May 11, 2023 20:55
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It's actually like five books that seem to have been written by different people at different times. But if you wanna skip the foreplay and see the big bad stuff look up Sin Enchantment and the treatment of it. Basically dragons and some other very powerful foes can make Sin Enchantment attacks, in which they get in your head and ask questions that non-religious or sinful people might ask you, like "Why shouldn't you take what's not yours? You deserve it!" or "If God truly exists, why does He not simply appear and prove it?" Now obviously you'd think that this is for Sunday School kids, so they should be well versed in just saying like "Because of the Seventh Commandment" or "Because the bible says he does." But that's not how this actually works. Instead, once a Sin Enchantment hits (you have a passive defense against it, based on the armor of God from Ephesians, I think it's the Helmet of Salvation), you as the player are required to act in a foolish manner as described in the Enchantment. Start, at the table, not even in character, saying things like "It's okay for ME to covet oxen because I'm a dragon slaved ding dong!" The treatment? The rest of the table, including the GM, must surround that player and yell at them about Christian living until they submit and agree to be proper again. Also the first sample adventure is about finding a secular (the local term is dragonslave) woman in a castle and telling her she's too fat and gluttonous to get into Heaven and wouldn't she be happy if she was skinny, and then she tells you she's always harbored secret thoughts about worshiping the correct God, and won't you help her with some informative pamphlets? The game also has two origins for the world you play in based on what book you're reading (They're both in the box set, I am not describing editions here), one clearly written as a hasty afterthought to the other. Originally, the story was that the world you play on is God's sanctioned dumping ground for the universe's sinful idiot species. People from all over the galaxy bring their unrepentant here. You also live here, but you're good kids from bible school, and it's morally correct to head outside and kill these orcs and stuff. They cannot be redeemed. In a later book, it's been changed to the monsters being soulless (yet still sentient and thoughtful) creations of stick and mud, so you can kill them without actually taking a life. There's other humans out in the world too, the dragonslaves, and while you're not supposed to kill them, one of the earliest prayer spells you learn is a "Whoops I killed dragonslaves today, can I get a mulligan on that" deal, to prevent XP loss. Oh also just for fun there's a section in one of the DM guides that says the game isn't meant for secular kids, and that if you insist on letting any of them play, you should only let one play in any group, as two or more will reinforce each other in resisting the lessons. True facts. theironjef fucked around with this message at 21:14 on May 11, 2023 |
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May 11, 2023 21:00
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| # ? May 25, 2024 03:41 |
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Ahahaha ok then yeah that is fairly messed up
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May 11, 2023 21:10
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