TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Just ask yourself "What would League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1950 would like"

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Oh yeah Black Dossier forgot about it

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Everyone who reads western comics should be executed with .50 machinegun rounds

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

P-Pretend I said American!!!

Ningyou posted:

Disturb you? No, nononono, dear friend, you misunderstand. You see....my terrible posting is my gift to you, sweet Effectronica, a gift from the bottom of my heart, a gift only one of refined tastes -- one such as yourself -- would be able to properly appreciate.

*licks the screen, tongue lingering and tracing swirls over a Good Post* De~li~cious.

FactsAreUseless posted:

What is everyone's favorite edition of Dungeons and Dragons? Mine is 3.5th Edition because it has a lot of transhumanism, because you can be many transhumanist races such as Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Wizard, Gnome, and Half-Orc.

Harrow posted:

I'm tempted to create a tabletop gaming music thread.

Evil Mastermind posted:

The Escalation Die is a d6 that starts at 1 on the second round of combat, and increases by one each round. It's added to the PC's attack rolls (to represent the spinning-up in combat), and some abilities trigger when the die hits a certain point. Barbarians can rage for free when the Escalation Die is 3+, instead of it coming out of their daily allotment, for instance.

Icons are the major setting NPCs, who the characters have relationships with due to working for or against them. It's a way of having powerful important NPCs that don't make the PCs irrelevant, because the Icons are generally busy doing things like running the world to deal with smaller-level threats, which is what they need PCs for. They're also sources of gear, information, and threats for the characters.

It's a way of solving the Elminster problem; if Elminster is the most powerful wizard in the world and can snap his fingers and solve any problem, then why does he risk having the PCs do it? In 13th Age, it's because the Archmage (the Elminster equivalent) is too busy researching and casting spells that hold reality together or stop mad gods from steamrollering the world to deal with that poo poo.

FactsAreUseless posted:

Zarick posted:

D&D is (and always has been) what you make of it. I mean, your game is 13th Age, which is pretty much just fancied up D&D. Mostly the base assumptions of D&D are about What D&D Should Be, which is probably fine for its own thing. I've just never understood the animosity towards it just as I've never understood the animosity within of people who don't want to try new systems. Neither really makes sense. Is it fun? Good. Play it. Is it not fun? Play something else, or mix it up, change things to be fun for your group. Easy.

Davin Valkri posted:

Some of us don't have that option, you realize.

FactsAreUseless posted:

Because you're afraid to talk to people like an adult?

FactsAreUseless posted:

Davin if you're being bullied into playing a game you don't like, you can tell us. It's okay. If someone makes you feel pressured into doing something you don't want to do, that person is not really your friend.

Queen Fiona posted:

It feels like they made a game specifically to make me happy, because Tara Platt always makes me happy (eeeeeeeeee Mitsuru), as does holy poo poo tons of other stuff, but then the gameplay happens.

I feel like I'd enjoy it more than Ningyou, but I wanna play Nier first and ehhhhhhhhhhhhh


All games are defined by their core assumptions, whether one breaks them or not. It's not unhelpful to discuss these assumptions, and where they might cause problems either at the individual game level, or the broader cultural level. It's easy to say 'change things up', and it is indeed a thing people do. But there are people who don't do this, and the framework you create has an effect on every change you make. My own 13th Age campaign, for instance, is seeing characters of substantially higher 'power level' (in terms of uniqueness, flashiness, etc rather than 'they're not dirt farmers ugh') than I originally imagined. Now, it's not bad or anything, and I'm working with it because it's producing a lot of interesting and brilliant apps, but the choice of 13th Age shaped the game's characters in a different way as compared to the other systems I was considering, even when my specific changes are taken into account.

This becomes extremely important when the entire hobby is defined by a single game's brand, so, y'know. Your argument is fine in a context-free vacuum, but we live in a world where things have meanings and connotations past their stated intent. It's an especially poor argument when it's been a go-to answer to shut down any kind of criticism or higher-level analysis of a system, which, surprise surprise, is usually D&D.


Please do not insult my good friends. If your friends don't want to play the games you like, that can be an issue - and people can still be your friends even if you're annoyed that all they play is X system. Confrontation can be difficult, and getting together a game and teaching a new system isn't particularly easy. (I should know!)

Also, don't insult my friends.


Don't insult my friends. This is like the argument of avoiding harassment on Twitter by not using Twitter. I mean, sure, you could probably find a new group in the area, but getting to know new people is hard and full of pitfalls, and those pitfalls only increase with the matter of gender and queerness. The fact that I had a lasting RL group from a pickup game was a loving miracle, and people shouldn't be expected to not be unhappy that their friends don't play the games they want. New friends are hard to make.

I suppose if you treat a game as something completely disposable and interchangeable, that attitude makes more sense, but some of us like to make friends and interact with the people we game with besides Other People Who Play This Game. RPGs aren't like card games or miniature games where the other player doesn't matter so much, or at least I would hope they aren't. Investment in the story is investment in the group, end of line.

FactsAreUseless posted:

You want to see insulting? Well, okay.

*watches old Triumph the Insult Comic Dog sketches and tries to think of something good*

FactsAreUseless posted:

Totally without irony here, 13th Age isn't very good. Tries to do a lot of things and doesn't really manage them. I don't play enough lately to say what's a good tactical combat RPG ala 13th age or D&D, but that's not it.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Dark Sun with Eberron Lightning Rails and magical chariots so you can do a Fury Road game

Evil Mastermind posted:

I'm not any kind of expert on sandbox play, but doesn't the book explain how it's expected to be run?

Speaking of which, I know a lot of people around here enjoy Crawford's games; why aren't there any PbPs of them going on?

drrockso20 posted:

well luckily outside of combat(and somewhat character creation) Gamma World isn't that complicated, and the crunch isn't that bad, especially since Gamma World simplifies D&D 4E quite a bit, just gotta keep in mind that it has a somewhat high lethality built into it

Len posted:

But how does that relate to a card game?

Len posted:

They're cool with a guy who did time for drugs though?

Gazetteer posted:

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that that's probably less of a big deal than being a rapist. Like, I'm pretty sure that the "went to jail for sexual assault" part is kind of more important here than the "went to jail" part.

Len posted:

Don't get me wrong I wouldn't want to play a card game with a rapist either. But the articles I'd read made it sound like he got busted, did his time, and moved on with his life. They didn't say he was "unrepentant" or make it sound like he was gonna rape again at any time. If he's really still a shitheel then sure kick him from the hobby for 100 years.

Serf posted:

Whoa, can Trail of Cthulhu support an action-adventure pulp kinda game? It looked like it was more about investigation and dying horribly rather than busting down the doors and spraying the shoggoth with a Thompson.

Rand Brittain posted:

I'm okay with the assumption that maybe we shouldn't treat people who did their time and possibly even learned why what they did was wrong as human garbage who must be tormented for the rest of their natural lives. That kind of approach seems like it's going to lead to more crime and not less.

Can't really say the same for people who used family money to force their victims into silence, though.

Rand Brittain posted:

No, but the attitude behind it is "it's okay to treat this guy as subhuman garbage for the rest of his life."

I don't think that attitude does anything to reduce sex crime.

EDIT: And at this point, we start to move into the territory where we replace this terrible guy with some hypothetical repentant and less-terrible guy for the sake of argument, and you know what, I'm not going to do that today.

paradoxGentleman posted:

I am pretty sure there is no such thing as an evil halfling.

Arivia posted:

Jumping in on this if its not too late. Canonically, Amn DID get their rear end kicked, basically. Maztica was a failure that destabilized the government and lead to Amn's shattering in the 1360s-1370s and the rise of the Sothilissian Empire. If you want more details, look at Lands of Intrigue for 2e.

If you're just playing in the North, keep Maztica as a failure. It sets up strife among the Waterdhavian noble houses, and Amn's issues open up new trade opportunities for the northern ports. Luskan, Neverwinter, and Waterdeep can all benefit from filling gaps the Amnish trade opens up beyond Velen. In other words, Maztica as failure is the perfect opening for new intrigues, like your pirate group.

frest posted:

This may be a weird place to ask this, but what are the odds that a game store could function as a tax mitigation scheme situation? Like I look at the revolving door of opening/closing stores in my area, and it seems like they're a surefire way to lose money. If I could be like, modestly unprofitable and lose enough to offset my earnings elsewhere, while also having a decent place to play games on weeknights, that wouldn't be that bad I guess?

I dunno, something I've been kicking around. I know you can't have a business lose money forever or the IRS reclassifies it as a hobby, but I feel like as long as you sell Magic cards and snacks/sodas you could probably make enough money to avoid that? I'd probably have to draw up an actual business plan here.

As a way to make a living, it seems suicidal. As a way to almost-break-even most of the time while also paying for a place to play and store a ton of loving wargames, that makes more sense to me. Does this make any sense?

Guilty Spork posted:

With all the horrible, inexcusable stuff that happened to Mikan (not that there weren't entirely too many people willing to make excuses for it), the part about people actually griping that Last Stand has a black woman on the cover is almost funny.

ProfessorCirno posted:

Morrus isn't a ttg guy, he's a D&D guy (for specific values of D&D). He owns ENWorld. Also making a real sad looking heartbreaker.

unseenlibrarian posted:

Not to temper the TORG excitement but remember that technically _Masterbook_ is a streamlined version of the TORG rules, so...

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

The Totalbiscuit recommended tabletop game sale would be dope.

an overdue owl posted:

Hey! I was redirected here from another thread and this thread might be equally unsuitable but maybe someone can give me some advice?

Me, my dad and my brother have no real experience with DnD or any other role-playing game. We're going on holiday together next month and all three of us were thinking we might want to try a game out in the evenings. Is three people too small a group to do anything with? If it is, do you guys have any recommendations for board games or card games? If three *isn't* too small, do you have any recommendations for people who are pretty much completely new to this stuff? We are experienced players of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! and that's about it.