|
Howdy TG, question for y’all: anyone make it to Free RPG Day this year? I had to miss it, was able to grab some stuff from my LGS after the fact, but missed out grabbing some of the more limited items or getting to play anything. Specifically wondering if anyone got to try out Steamforged Games’ The Hills Have Legs.
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2021 16:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 21:23 |
|
|
Nessus posted:Brancalonia.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2021 05:00
|
|
|
theironjef posted:3.x Oriental Adventures had a samurai class that started with a katana and could take it to a shrine every level or so to pour money on it, which would then upgrade it to correct for whatever level the samurai was.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2022 15:02
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:Vow of Poverty is a pretty infamously underpowered trap option compared to just getting normal loot. Thinking back to 3.X design, I LOVED what 3.5’s Regional feats for FR/OA represented, thought it was a cool design space, and also knew instantly the implementation was pure trash. Feats that help bring out the flavor of where your character’s from (like every adult in X region being in the militia, so even a wizard can use 2-3 good weapons and gets +2 spot), while being intentionally “stronger” than a normal feat, that’s cool. Can only take at 1st level, uhhh your options are already real low, isn’t this de-incentivizing taking one…? Oh good, there’s no balance at all, delightful. One gives you 5 fire resistance, another gives a bonus to spell save DC & spell penetration. A lot are those “+2 to two specific skills”, but instead it’s THREE skills!!! One is “Toughness, but +5 hp instead” oooh game breaking! Should have just been a bonus feat in whatever campaign world, and stuck closer to flavorful that being another way to min max. 
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2022 17:52
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:I would be surprised if any online reseller paid more than 10-20% of what they intend to sell something for, for a book. They must get shipped so much damaged crap, and just because they're pricing something at $110 doesn't mean they're selling out their inventory at that price.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2022 22:23
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:Dunno where else to post this but recently my body was been wrecked by a surge of Covid-19 and during one of the fever dreams I had while my body surged with heavenly fire to banish the disease, I was overtaken with an amazing vision, that Fantasy Flight Games had announced the creation of "Rokugan High", an AU retelling of the Legend of the Five Rings universe, set in an anime high school. From what I could remember:
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2022 17:56
|
|
|
Found it. Same guy, not quite the same idea. Didn’t read it again, but I think this is the “ninjas are little kids afraid of nap time” one. https://lowfierce.com/kazenoshiro/rokugani90210/bukgawk.html
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2022 19:05
|
|
|
Leraika posted:I feel like 'you're not supposed to identify with the protagonist' makes it a poor choice for a role-playing game, but I am not a corporate executive so what do I know thx John Wick
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2022 02:11
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:As someone who hasn't read that subsetting, mind sharing the core details of it? Chainmail’s Sundered Empire was a sub setting in the classic “we made this independently, but uhh it’s to the west of Greyhawk” manner, where the god of war had been killed and his panoply of weapons scattered across the land; the different factions were fighting in a classic “whoever unites them all becomes the new god” reasoning for everyone to fight each other. The factions themselves were fun, though - while there were standard Necromancy Faction and Human Faction (they maybe had guns?), we also had Abyssal Gnoll Faction that introduced some weird demons which were later backported to 3e, and a United Goblinoid Army led by a hobgoblin general (which got the most attention in D&D proper iirc). The more fun ones came from embracing 3e, though: the Elf Empire embraced the “sorcery comes from dragons” aspect of the new books, and was heavily themed with dragon mounts and half-dragon commanders. The Dwarves, though. They’d recently deposed the tyrannical dwarf queen, invented and embraced Communism, united the clans, and were planning an invasion of the Elemental Plane of Fire to free the Azers. That rules, more like that. Also drow didn’t exist in setting, until the expansion that introduced them as a super secret new faction. Ominous Jazz posted:Does 5e even have psionics or what? *with the exception of one monster-summoning power that was wildly OP for when I got it but would be quickly outclassed if we kept playing, which is about business as usual for summoning
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2023 20:45
|
|
|
To name drop some systems I know / have used personally that are relevant to at least one of the discussions of the past few pages: Dragon Ball Z: The Anime Adventure Game Yes, I know the system is literally broken! It completely falls apart down at even slight variations in stats, the authors admitted by book two that basic sections of the rules were written wrong, and combat is capable of an honest-to-god softlock. I’m bringing it up because it did one thing “correctly” as far as this discussion goes, and that’s XP - it assumed that everyone was training to boost their power level, which will increase yours by X per year, multiply X based on the type of wacky training thing you’re doing. If you want faster than that, you have to fight someone, and you power up based on how much stronger than you they are. That’s correct, that’s how DBZ works. Tenra Bansho Zero This is a wild game but I only want to mention that there is a wound track, the “failure spiral” system of many games. It is inverted, and it is player buy-in. I know other systems do one or the other (such as the Dogs in the Vineyard or the new version of Trinity / Storypath) but it’s the best example because it does both. Taking damage, you fill in the boxes in the order of your choice, with escalating in-combat bonuses based on how “big” a box you’re willing to check off. The example of play has a character take a major wound as his first hit, describing a big action-movie “knife goes through the hand but instead of nerve damage our hero gets mad” result. This includes options in both directions, “I’m willing to risk dying to kill this guy” (Death is a box to check off), and “I go down like a sack of potatoes but I’m fine by the next scene, no lasting consequences” (concede immediately / once you run out of free boxes) AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Mar 26, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2023 02:57
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:I think somewhere with this post I'm honing in on what kind of mechanic I'm looking for that captures the gameplay fantasy I'm interested in. Like you can't just literally reset to level 1 because there's still the possibility or revisiting your old haunts just to show how far you've come; but somehow your level 5 Xianxia character is basically barely untouchable to your past level 20 5e self while feeling like you had a continuous progression from that point to now. My mind jumps straight past what you’re actually asking towards JTTRPGs, something akin to a Double Cross, where gameplay is a series of one-shots that might carry over characters but the system is largely designed to “reset” after the end of the scenario, maybe your character knows a new move maybe you start next scenario playing “Felf” instead of “Melf”, w/e. I don’t know that would provide the level of scale you want, though, apart from liberally using “minion/boss” templates to model how strong you want certain foes to be. Honestly, 5e might be more fitting than I started this post believing; the xianxia stuff I read had a lot of magic item porn to it, and what is D&D if not a game broken by equipment?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2023 05:06
|
|
|
AmiYumi posted:Dragon Ball Z: The Anime Adventure Game *if I get started I will go off-topic but ugghhh at taking a thing introduced to the narrative to show that ascribing numerical values to strength is pointless as gospel,   kill me
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2023 05:21
|
|
|
I saw the D&D movie last night, and I have to say the thread sold it short - I know y'all were mostly favorable on it as a fantasy heist (which it's great at) and more critical of it as a reflection of Dungeons and Dragons, but I disagree. Let me break it down: Good: As a standalone movie, this was drat good - the fantasy heist and action was great, and it was legit piss-your-pants funny in several sections. If you know D&D (especially Forgotten Realms), it's even better - I was consistently exactly one step ahead of the plot, which is right where you want to be for a heist. Minor spoiler examples: whether it's mechanical things, like "Time Stop? That's 9th level, what is she doing with these jagoffs-OH" or lore things like "Ooh I think that's Szass Tam, he...oh, it is, they're introducing him in this scene" I know the thread was discussing the game-ability of the scenes, and to that I say "D&D has never done that, recognize the pattern." Early 3e was being purpose-built to have Fighters and Rangers do the exact cool stunts Legolas did in the Lord of the Rings movies, and it sucked poo poo at emulating any of them, let alone all of them in a single character. Mixed/Neutral: This was a very Dungeons & Dragons™ movie, and I'm putting this squarely into the "mixed" category. When you compare this to past D&D movies (or even most media tie-ins), this is great! That's not a generic evil wizard, it's a Red Wizard of Thay. Our party doesn't have a warrior, it has an Elk Tribe Barbarian. As a moviegoing experience, I love that - it's just the sort of thing I reflect on afterwards, tied in with the history of WotC and IP, and go "hmm" on. Another point I feel is important to note, I think this did capture what it feels like to play D&D. Mostly. There were so many moments in the movie that made me think "yep, that's what playing a game is like" - we had the Session Zero character introduction (including the IC equivalent of the guy playing the Barbarian looking up from Smash Bros to say "yeah, all that sounds good, nothing to add"), we saw the group beeline straight past the plot to focus on a random NPC (forcing the DM to ad-lib a sidequest), and the party was a rolling farce disaster troupe like every group I've played with. Which leads directly into.. Bad: THIS WAS THE STRAIGHTEST D&D I'VE EVER SEEN. In a time when gaming is an increasingly queer activity (thank gently caress), this film managed to surgically remove the "gay" part of the now-standard "disaster gay party" that is a D&D group. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that behind-the-scenes they used the Blizzard Diversity Calculator™; "Okay, we'll give the male lead a black wife (don't worry though we won't give her any lines) and have the female lead stan a short king, that should hit quota without us needing to include any scary gays that could hurt sales in China & Russia." gently caress, throw me a bone at least, if nothing else at the end the sorcerer hitting on the druid could have ended in a lean, whisper, "..ohhhhh" and I would have been happy (and probably laughed).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2023 21:25
|
|
|
BattleMaster posted:I guess I never really thought about it before but because the western fantasy aesthetic and tropes are so divergent between the west and japan, even D&D and especially generic Forgotten Realms is probably reasonably fresh over there. *big enough to get an anime adaptation which brought together literally every big name I like in the industry and produced three good episodes, that were then followed up by nine insults to the very idea of television
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2023 04:19
|
|
|
The Bee posted:As someone who fell off the RWBY train pretty hard, I'm curious. What went right with the first three that then went so, so wrong with the next nine? Demonstrating that you can make a snappy fast-paced action show, and you chose to make a dragged-out filler arc on purpose, is a helluva choice for your first season as a full-budget anime. neonchameleon posted:Monty Oum, the creator and director (and possibly most importantly the animation director), died in February 2015 part way through writing season 3.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2023 16:13
|
|
|
Countblanc posted:This is a hosed up thing to say lol Countblanc posted:That's not really what I meant, but yes part of it is that rwby was really just shonen told by a western studio. It wasn't really original or novel in that way at all Nuns with Guns posted:Yeah it's a bit rich to say that the production where the main writers only watched anime after Monty had them mainline all his favorite 90s and 2000s shonen stuff + Cowboy Bebop + Avatar: The Last Airbender & Korra is somehow different from the average anime out there. Like every bit of the show is a pretty open composite of what they watched. I guess if you really want to get a random pedophilia jab in though... It’s animated in 3D and has references to Western fairy tales instead of Japanese ones, you aggro weirdos Gatto Grigio posted:You can save yourself some time by skipping RWBY and just watching the excellent video by hbomberguy where he unpacks everything that sucks about it 90s Cringe Rock posted:I assume not that much time. AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Apr 2, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2023 22:15
|
|
|
senrath posted:It's been a few years since I last played, but I remember Hackmaster 5e being mostly playable but with a lot of choices I felt were really dumb, many in the name of "realism": I had bought Hackmaster 5e and some other stuff roughly around the time of a move, and it got “return to sender”-ed. Luckily, my new place was close enough to one of the KenzerCo bigwigs that, when I emailed my new address, they asked if I wanted to come pick it up instead of paying for shipping again. I agreed, drove to a house that was doubling as a warehouse (like a modern Kickstarter fulfillment situation), and proceeded to get “game store guy”d for like an hour, being anti-sold while I just wanted to pick up my stuff and go. “You know how characters in D&D are bullshit superheroes?” ‘Uh…sure?’ “Well, Hackmaster is nothing like that! Characters are shitfarmers, and have to fight for every scrap of power, … ”‘Okay’ “ …and as GM, your job is to make them suffer…”‘please my family is waiting’ “ ”‘*desperately texting people to call me so I can escape*’ I remember reading through the core books and thinking it looked dated but okay, but even for the time full of enough fiddly bullshit I didn’t see myself ever playing or running it. Must’ve blocked out the monster manual, though. *weirdest by far was picking up Cooking Mama during the stage of the pandemic where stores actually took things seriously, after it had been pulled from the e-shop and partially recalled; a man clad head to toe in black, wearing a ski mask and gloves came out of a locked GameStop with a double-bagged game explaining that it shouldn’t exist AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Apr 6, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2023 21:35
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:Poison'd
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2023 00:15
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:The inverse is kind of my point: all space operas have an apocalypse somewhere in their background. Once you get into space, you've left "post-post-apocalypse" and are squarely in "space opera".
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2023 15:42
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Random thought of the day: Which rpg has the best/most fun Necromancer to play? (I’ve actually played one, even by 3.0 standards it wasn’t very good  )
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2023 19:30
|
|
|
Megazver posted:Here's some fun weird OSR poo poo: That goes double for anything Skerples had a hand in, I’m bummed I missed the Monster Overhaul KS entirely somehow
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2023 01:56
|
|
|
Paranoia remains the one time I have eaten a TTRPG prop which was not meant to be consumed* Best I could think of for evidence disposal, on the spot*which is massive post/avatar dissonance
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2023 22:53
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Kind of surprised we got it. Collecting money before the PDF was out sent out a lot of warning bells. So many projects with 1,000+ comments, but not the good kind like you want.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2023 04:45
|
|
|
Parkreiner posted:You made me double-check whether OVA shipped, since I recalled getting my copy (not that I’ve played it…). Do remember the game itself looking better at what it’s supposed to do than BESM, but that’s not a particularly high bar. Parkreiner posted:I dunno, it’s certainly not good when stretch goals don’t materialize, but I put that as a lesser sin than just straight up not delivering the core product. I have a bunch of RPGs I kickstarted that got the main book out and some to none of the stretch goals, but I think Mountain Witch 2nd ed is the only one that completely fizzled on me. Actually, if we think from a “got at least some of what was promised for the money” perspective, I’ve been let down by fewer Kickstarters in total than I have by orders w/ comic/game stores that shuttered. 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2023 17:53
|
|
|
FATE Accelerated coming up in the F&F thread reminded me of something I’m not sure I shared here A few months ago I was re-reading Breakfast Cult and a serendipitous moment of music on shuffle made me realize: The Flaming Lips’s “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part I” is a full character sheet Her name is Yoshimi She’s a black belt in karate Workin’ for the city She has to discipline her body (Special skills, group affiliation, pressing drive; I’ve come to the table with less than that)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2023 22:54
|
|
|
Antivehicular posted:Oh, huh, so that's why I never heard anything about that game after the initial hype. I had it in "wait and see if people still like it on full release" status, but... that answers that. Had a hell of a time figuring that out; I need to name these files better Ettin posted:It is a little late for me to add new characters to the final expansion but what if... what if I just... 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2023 07:23
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Random question: what's the most unusual adventure structure that's ever come up at your table? (I say "Come up" because it may not have been preplanned but been the result of improvisation) Same player / different game also wanted to start a campaign before I was 100% ready, so the first session I had him co-GM and introduce the other characters - incoming emerald magistrates (fantasy FBI) - to “his” city (former local magistrate, promoted to emerald at the same time) Just let them all RP and dangle plot hooks while I finished up my notes and incorporated the new stuff, like one of the PCs falling in love at first sight with a geisha and another overdosing on opium
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2023 19:12
|
|
|
For whatever reason I feel like spiting the “tabletop WoW” crew years after they ceased to be relevant: stats are MMO archetypes “I have TANK 3, DPS 0, BUFF 2, HEALER 1”
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2023 23:29
|
|
|
So in addition to looking like absolute poo poo and changing all links to 404s, the DTRPG redesign literally breaks checkout I had to find a (explicitly temporary!) workaround on Reddit just to be able to input codes from some Kickstarters It's "reassign the value of cookie 'phnx_test_group_12' to '99999'" in case anyone else is in the same boat
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2023 08:47
|
|
|
The vibes in this thread are so hosed, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop so it can battle the FE8 Reverse Recruitment thread for GOAT
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2023 03:24
|
|
|
Try Golden Sky Stories or Honey Heist - give 'em a chance to play a game that isn't 90% rules for murdering someone and stealing their poo poo
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2023 05:40
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:Is there a reason I'm suddenly getting videos of John Wick reviewing rpgs on my youtube feed?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2023 00:03
|
|
|
Doctor Zaius posted:I also generally prefer the approach of giving martials expendable resources similar to spell slots, but also lmao imagine if martials just straight up picked some magic items to get for free every so often. In practice it ended up being "you have ⅓ casting and a Wand of Detect Secret Doors", because Mearls
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2023 19:49
|
|
|
Angrymog posted:Does anyone know if it's possible to switch Drivethru RPG back to the old layout? AmiYumi posted:So in addition to looking like absolute poo poo and changing all links to 404s, the DTRPG redesign literally breaks checkout AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Dec 31, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2023 06:02
|
|
|
This discussion reminds me of a  post I remember forwarding to people, oh, a decade ago? from Actual Racist Hellhole Stormfront, in which a chinless wonder explained that playing D&D helped reconcile the doubts he was having about White Supremacy after lived experiences in the real world; it's not that the racist swill he'd been raised on was wrong, it's just the natural variations between people that outweigh a +2 here and a -1 there.Thanks, D&D! Nessus posted:The point people are making is that the aggregate construction we refer to as 'intelligence' is actually like a dozen things rolled into one and measuring this with a single statistical number is an arbitrary decision, likely rooted in constructs connected to hierarchal/prejudiced/racist thinking Like all things measurable, it was immediately consumed by capital into Myers-Briggs astrology poo poo and used to "justify" managerial tummyfeel bullshit, like promotions and project distributions and "culture fits", because that is what capital does Runa posted:You know this all also tracks and just reminded me that Kara-Tur 'exists'  Note that this is from a supplement released after multiple other Kara-Tur books, including many art pieces showing signs and language that looked nothing like that
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2024 16:48
|
|
|
Covok posted:Thus, it makes me wonder if I did something that I have personally never heard of before: a creative commons RPG setting. 1) They were group projects from SA or 4chan's TG boards, and thus never remotely reached a "finished" state as the groups squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded 2) Content availability was a slapdash mix of wiki stubs, drafts put up on free file sharing sites that limited downloads or deleted over time, and warring "releases" only available from IRC/Discord/etc bots None of which particularly mattered, because 3) The ones I saw were all meant as All of which is I guess a long winded way to say "I've seen it tried, but never seen it tried well"
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2024 18:10
|
|
|
Going off of memory (and as a player, not ST), the 1e rules for Panty Explosion (later Tokyo Brain Pop) represented all of your stats via Blood Type and the Godai, making literally every roll into an exercise in bullshitting that what you were doing made sense for your character to do astrologically. We also managed to lock the system at one point by killing enough of the cast, Carrie-style, that "during the recurring popularity votes to determine the [whatever terms were most/meh/least] pecking order, the creepy psychic girl must always lose even if the ST has to cheat" was impossible to make true, at which point we quit [Edit: the "your ingame BFF dictates how successes happen, your ingame rival dictates failures" system was inspired, admittedly. Also probably a group ruiner in certain dynamics.] AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Mar 16, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2024 21:10
|
|
|
AmiYumi posted:squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2024 20:49
|
|
|
Nessus posted:GBS: Anything that doesn't fit elsewhere; making GBS threads your pants On the one hand, it's neat to be able to point to your character sheet and say definitively "my character has Hobby: Gamer, he'd be able to fit right in with this crowd" or establish connections between characters because they're all on the agency softball team or what have you. This is something D&D5e did quite well, in my opinion - the Backgrounds system makes it hard to assemble a party without any hooks, in my experience you always get something like "Ricky and Priya can play instruments, I'm good with dice and cards, and Zeke can drive a wagon; I guess we were traveling street performers or part of a circus" On the other hand, while it theoretically keeps down skill bloat, it can still result in the "feels bad" situation where your concept demands spending character resources on something that will most likely never come up in game. Hell, even without that, I'm reminded of a L5R character who was highly skilled in math, finance, stewardship, and various Clan histories and etiquette, literally none of which ever came up in the murder mystery Bottle Episode that was the adventure.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2024 21:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 21:23 |
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:So is my Monk actually cutting people with the dagger, or just holding a dagger while killing people with psychic energy? I hate weaplements Even your free powers were "weaplement" attacks, waving around a bigger sword makes your magic missiles stronger, all that I remember there was an achievement for hitting Diablo with a basic attack; you were supposed to unbind one of your power hotkeys to get it (which you would never do on purpose except to get that trophy), but I did it the natural way via a horribly unoptimized Necromancer build that constantly ran out of mana 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2024 03:25
|
|