|
How do people here feel about doing some kind of a TTRPG equivalent of the Creative Convention's Thunderdome? An Adventuredome, if you will? For those unfamiliar with TD and hates clicking links, it's a weekly flash fiction contest where a Judge or Judges (usually the last week's winner and one or two thread regulars) issue some kind of a prompt ('limericks about capitalism!', 'superheroes with rock band inspired superpowers!', 'stories that actually have some kind of rudimentary characterization!' and other wacky stuff like that), specify any restrictions like story length, give out personal sub-prompts for anyone who asks for one, and at the end of the week after the deadline, a winner is chosen from the stories that actually got written and posted, the Judges give the entries some crits and the winner becomes this week's Judge and picks a new prompt. A couple of weeks ago TD did a week where you had to create a short D&D-ish dungeon/adventure/hex, inviting people from this forum over to the thread, and it seems to have been quite popular, which led me to think that people here might enjoy this sort of thing on a regular basis. What are your thoughts on this? I personally think it would be fun, at least for a few rounds. If I were to set this whole thing up by myself, I'd probably make it a triweekly thing, to give everyone a bit more time to make it good - one week to brainstorm, one week to write it up, one week to playtest it (and then frantically rewrite it from scratch while sobbing from terror). As for what a good entry would look like, I was thinking aiming at something One Page Dungeon or Trilemma Adventures-sized for D&D-ish content (but, obviously, not as polished) or for something like the short adventures in Fear's Sharp Little Needles for CoC for more investigative or social scenarios - 2k-3k words and a simple map of some kind, if necessary. The judge would specify what system/genre they want the entries to be for that given week.
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2021 19:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 06:09 |
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:people who are extremely demotivated by losing to the point where they'd rather quit than improve and get revenge should just go ahead and play something else. When the disparity is big enough, the room to improve start to evaporate. it just becomes "spawn, get immediately skullfucked, spawn, eat poo poo, spawn, get teabagged to death, uninstall" You need to be able to actually put up some fight to improve.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2021 16:53
|
|
|
FirstAidKite posted:Anyone read any interesting new rpg books lately Not *quite*, but I've read The CRPG Book.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2021 11:24
|
|
|
Admiral Joeslop posted:I've had the entirely stupid idea to run 3.5's version of Sunless Citadel in D20 Modern as a joke "one" shot, for my pre-covid regular group. Their only real experience is 5e D&D with a smattering of other systems I've ran over the years. It took me like two months to run Sunless Citadel. It's a bit longer than a one-shot. As for system stuff, I dunno. Does the system have any advice on using D&D material?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2021 16:21
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:Anybody have any experience with the Age of Sigmar RPG? Do we have a thread for it? I've played a few sessions. It seemed pretty loving dope.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 09:43
|
|
|
Gort posted:So how does the Age of Sigmar RPG compare to say, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay? Or is that a bad comparison WFRP started off as pretty much OSR D&D meets Call of Cthulhu. There's this Holy Roman Empire expy that's not only surrounded by hordes of hosed up enemies, but is also ravaged on the inside by the plague of bandits, ratmen, mutants, Chaos cultists and so forth. Most players will start off in careers like Rat Catcher, Charlatan, Bailiff and Grave Robber and will be doing jobs that might eventually leave them mutilated and insane. Age of Sigmar is more like D&D meets Exalted. The starting characters are like level 10 D&D character-strong. AoS takes place after Chaos won and blew the whole world. Sigmar, the king-god of humans managed to retreat into a safe space with some forces of Order and now finally has built up enough strength to strike back. Your party of Fantasy Space Marine, Iron Man But Dwarf, Also Dwarf But Slathers Himself In Magic Gold While Only Wearing Underpants, Murder Treeent and Kinda Evil But Very Hot Goth She-Elf go out into the eight interconnected Planescape-esque planes, one for each of trad WFRP's Winds of Magic, which comprise the new world and fight the forces of Chaos, Death and Destruction to carve out some lebensraum for the mortals in your care. Let's drunkenly brawl in a bunch of sewage!  Okay, so you dismantle the left army and I'll make a skull pyramid out of the right one. 
Megazver fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Jul 1, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 08:59
|
|
|
rivetz posted:I didn't see a "recommend me an RPG"-type thread, apologies if I missed it. Wondering if anyone has any suggestions for anything matching the following criteria: Call of Cthulhu should do the trick. Check out the free Quickstart to get a better idea. There's also a modern day spin-off called Delta Green and it has a free Quickstart as well. For specific points: It should work fine with two players for the most part, but CoC benefits from having more bodies to throw at a threat, so I'd suggest either making the PCs stronger as per Pulp Cthulhu guidelines or simply giving each player two PCs. The core of the mechanics in the current edition is relatively simple, but there are some fiddly sub-systems like chases, going insane and , which thankfully can mostly be tackled when necessary and/or ignored. The chargen can be a little laboursome, but thankfully the devs throw piles of pregens at you. There's usually a six-pack of them in every book they've released and in some books there's a set for every specific short adventure. (Because most of them are expected to die and the world to blow up by the end of each one.) You can grab the pre-gens for most of the books from their site. It's very much not trad fantasy. On a different note, if you wanted to run some OSR, Godbound as well as Stars/Worlds Without Number with the Heroic PCs/Legate rules from the Deluxe versions of the rules should work well. EDIT: Oh right, I haven't actually played any of them, but most of the games Gumshoe family of investigative RPgs from what I've seen in their rulebooks explicitly support playing them with two players. If you're into investigative roleplay, there's a lot of different flavors to try out. Megazver fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Jul 4, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2021 10:01
|
|
|
potatocubed posted:As a side note, giving each player two PCs is a pretty good way of handling almost any trad game with two players and a GM. It ups bookkeeping a bit, so it might be tricky if you're playing something crunchy, but it's worth a thought. It depends on a system, I'd say. It'd be too much fuss for some players in the more build and tactically complex D&D-likes like 4e, PF2 and perhaps even 5e, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue for CoC.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2021 11:19
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:I played a Call of Cthulhu one-shot last night at a game shop and enjoyed it a lot. It was seventh edition and it seemed lightweight and easy to run and easy to learn. Am I missing any secret hidden bastard complexity that would make it difficult to teach to a group that only knows D&D? Any extra purchases beyond the Keepers Manual that are worth it? Hidden pitfalls? Any advice on how to make things feel horrible and alien and otherworldly to modern players for whom Cthulhu stuff is already in pop culture? It has some mechanics I find overengineered and annoying, but a GM can shield newbies from most of them and walk them through the rest. I taught a few complete newbies - we're talking to new to TRPGs in general - to play it and they were okay for the most part. I had to walk them through stuff like filling out all the sanity boxes on the sheet, and what to do when you went insane, and what modifiers to apply to shooting someone at any given situation, but they got comfortable with the core mechanic pretty quickly, even with all the bonus/penalty dice and degrees of success and pushing stuff that 7e has complicated it with. Protip: use the auto-fire rules from Delta Green. Also, adorable anecdote - when I taught one of the newbies 5e after first cutting her teeth on CoC, she thought the checkmarks on the pregen 5e sheet I gave her were just skills marked for XP, so she unchecked them all, haha.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2021 20:07
|
|
|
I'm EU as well and people here who run VTT (virtual tabletop, so like playing at the table but online, opposed to play-by-post) games are all Americans who do it at like 2am+ EU time. Play-by-post is cool, but it's kind of it's own thing and a) most games die before playing through what would be a session's worth of content in a VTT game b) really hard to get into. Realistically, your best option is to make a free account on Roll20, which is the most popular VTT, and start applying to games there. You'll also need to install Discord, yes - Roll20 is used for sheets and maps and stuff and Discord is what everyone uses for voice in combination with Roll20. This link is a preconfigured search for all systems, non-paid games, mature content on, starting at 7PM your time +- 3 hours. You can just, like, save it as a bookmark and click it every few days until you find something that looks good. Personally, I have a few of these searches saved as bookmarks, one for 5e, one for all of the less popular systems that are supported on Roll20 that I wouldn't mind play, and a couple more separate ones just for systems that I *really* want to try at the moment. If you're worried about summer, just apply to 'one-shot' games which should last a session or three at most. (Although if someone is recruiting for a longer game and you think you'll be reliably available in that time slot for the duration of the campaign, then apply anyway.) I've run introductory games for absolute newbies and it can be pretty fun. Are there people reading this who've never played before? If there is more interest, I might run a one session intro game on a EU evening/EST afternoon.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 16:14
|
|
|
100YrsofAttitude posted:
Yeah, 'system' is the rules and information, basically. Since you're going to be applying to other people's games online, this cuts down the list of options for you to explore quite a bit. 9 out of 10 games that you can apply to on Roll20 at euro hours are D&D 5e games and realistically, that's probably what you'll be playing, at least at first. I'd recommend reading the free Starter Rulebook to learn the basic rules. You don't really need to buy anything else as a player. If you need to consult any specific rules, just go to 5e.tools. Some other systems that you might actually see people recruiting for every once in a while at hours euros can play in, include Call of Cthulhu, various World of Darkness games like Vampire, City of Mist, Pathfinder 2e, Star Wars Edge of the Empire. Impossible Journey is an excellent site made for newbies like you which has descriptions of a lot of the most popular systems as well as links to free 'quickstart' documents for a lot of them, which companies release for you to use to read the basic rules and get a taste of the game in question. Most of the systems I listed have quickstarts available. That said, if you want to actually find an online game to join for most of them, you'll have to spend some time searching and waiting.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 17:14
|
|
|
100YrsofAttitude posted:Being a huge Tolkien geek, fantasy/high fantasy would be a fine place to start with, so D&D's fine. I've always wanted to play a ranger or monk, or both! I see a lot of Cthulhu stuff, what exactly is that? It's based on Lovecraft, so it's usually set in the 1920s and you're usually playing a bunch of paranormal investigators and/or Action Archeologists! investigating a haunted locale, a strange disappearance, a bizarre murder or some creepy cult. Oh, one more useful tip! Another resource that's useful to newbies is Actual Plays. Basically, whatever game you're interested in, there are some good groups recording themselves playing it and posting it either on Youtube or a podcast. For D&D, I'd recommend Dimension 20. It's more of a 'watch paid professionals do the activity you enjoy at a level you won't ever be able to achieve' than 'here's something for you to emulate', but it's very entertaining and you'll get the idea of how to play from it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 18:05
|
|
|
Zurui posted:As apt as the metaphor is, the better comparison would be Pro Wrestling to like, regional MMA. Colonel Cool posted:I've heard Critical Role called the commercial porn of tabletop gaming before and it seems pretty apt. Man, some of you have weird loving ideas about CR. They're still actually playing D&D, they're just trained theater nerds.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 21:54
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:i think the implication is that it spoils you for regular D&D because you expect, uh heaving comedy and gigantic, personalities. People allegedly getting spoiled by CR is a separate issue. They call it 'the Mercer Effect', you can a thousand threads about it online. It's mostly bullshit, IMO. I've played with literally hundreds of randos online and never had it come up.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 22:12
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:It's pretty substantially scripted in advance Well, they claim it's not. Do you have any evidence on the contrary? I'm not a super-huge CR fan myself and I've only watched a couple dozen episodes, but nothing I've watched required following a script by the players. The DM is just a trained improviser whose full-time job is prepping for this game. Megazver fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jul 10, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 22:13
|
|
|
moths posted:I'm not a fan, but I understand that they've been pretty open that it's rehearsed. Well, I googled it I guess: https://twitter.com/matthewmercer/status/1120033252322840576 https://twitter.com/matthewmercer/status/1223001910912811008 https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/la176v/no_spoilers_is_the_show_scripted/ Do you have any sources where they claim otherwise? The only one I've seen is, well, the RPGPundit. Like, it's a lot easier to just play the drat game as opposed to performing a three hour script every week.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 22:40
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:When we debate whether the show is "scripted" are we asking if the story beats are planned ahead of time, or if they actually memorize lines? I dunno. I'm guessing people think they discuss, like, "oh I'll do this, then you'll do this, then this will happen", because memorizing actual lines would be insane. But I'm sure the DM has a whole bunch of potential scenes prepared for every session. That's kind of what prep is. Like, is a game where someone is running a published Call of Cthulhu adventure 'scripted'? Because I suspect that's way more on rails than any CR episode.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 22:46
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:I can imagine a bit of " there could be a cool scene in a tavern basement, with the thing, and the guy??" "Yeah that will be fun," but its nuts how good improv can be. I mean, that's just regular roleplay technique, IMO. And yeah, they do that all the time. For example, start of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BUBe1aYpbY
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 23:46
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So my question as someone who has not seen CR, is how much do they edit? I know the McElroys edited a lot for their podcast when I listened. They cut out people looking poo poo up, asking about mechanics, misspeaking, dropping dice on the floor, etc. It's a live Twitch stream.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2021 09:05
|
|
|
Boba Pearl posted:It's also garbage, and they ousted an AIDS victim right when he caught AIDS because he was harmful to their brand right when they were going to make it big, and the dude legally can't talk about. Nah, he's a colossal rear end in a top hat. He was cut, because he's a colossal rear end in a top hat. quote:There's also no LGBTQ, no minorities, just straight cis-het yts on the main cast. The characters are always the same conservative power fantasy. Nothing interesting happens, the worlds are dull, and he's just straight garbage. Man, you must be fun to be around.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2021 10:39
|
|
|
Boba Pearl posted:Was he a colossal before or after his friends abandoned him and financially knee capped him while he was dealing with one of the most harrowing things a human can go through? Thanks to the wonders of video recording technology, there are literally recordings of him being a colossal rear end in a top hat. The last episodes he was in are uncomfortable to watch.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2021 11:04
|
|
|
Alright, buddy.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2021 11:12
|
|
|
I mean, they just got three new people, all of whom are POC and who the cast hasn't been friends with before (I think) as the GM and players in their new campaign. It's a silly logic, I agree.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2021 20:30
|
|
|
Well, either way, it's not a productive line of discussion.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2021 21:08
|
|
|
Mr_Schmoo posted:Fun challenge, can y'all help me weaponize Pokémon? I suspect you'd be better off posting this somewhere in a dedicated Pokemon thread/community instead of a TTRPG chat thread. I think this idea sounds very cool, but I don't actually know that much about specific Pokemen and I suspect this will be the case for majority of posters here.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2021 13:55
|
|
|
Epi Lepi posted:I have an unrelated to CR question: Boy, have I got a game for yo- quote:and you didn't want to do it in PbtA, what system would you use? Ah. If it was a one-shot I'd probably use something super rules-light like Freeform Universal.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2021 18:51
|
|
|
Personally, I enjoy running the published CoC one-shots and I usually either listen to someone good play through one I recently played to see how someone else interpreted it, or if the scenario is a little confusing, I listen to it first to see how to actually run it. I think I've improved as a GM somewhat through this.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2021 21:26
|
|
|
What's the deal with Wendy's, btw? I thought it was a burger chain or something.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2021 22:54
|
|
|
Recent discussion on RPG.net that might help: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/sentinel-comics-or-prowlers-paragons.878236/
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2021 17:51
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:I need more weird and cool rpgs to impulse purchase and then enver manage to play. https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/m0i174/ive_made_a_list_of_notable_tabletop_rpg_releases/
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2021 19:36
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:Are there any fun RPGs themed around heavy metal or really deep into its aesthetics? Like campy over-the-top brutality, wild psychedelia, heavy occult influence, beer and drugs, etc? I borrowed a copy of Mork Borg but haven't really got to reading it yet. Like I know Dying Earth is kind of in that vibe, but is there something that really aims at going over the top? Something that feels like a real love letter to the genre? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/huntersbooks/gods-of-metal-ragnarock https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/swen/metal-heroes-and-the-fate-of-rock-a-rock-comedy-gamebook
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2021 23:01
|
|
|
A good comedy RPG provides you with a premise that is inherently absurd, then lets you play it dead serious, because for these characters this is just their life. Dimension 20's Brennan Lee Mulligan discussed it a few times in interviews. For example: quote:In the beginnings of Dimension 20, we saw that there were two ways to tackle doing D&D comedically. One way is to kind of like do it tongue in cheek or glibly and kind of like make fun of D&D while you’re playing it, which I think ends up getting really stale really fast. Megazver fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Jul 27, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2021 11:07
|
|
|
As for some comedy games: Cats of Catthulhu - you're cats fighting elder gods! Goblin Quest - you're cute and utterly incompetent goblins! You will probably all die! GURPS Goblins - it's Dickensian London, but everyone's a grotesque mutant goblin so it's even worse somehow. Honey Heist - you're bears trying to pull off a heist for honey. Low Life - it's post-post-post-post-post-post-post apocalypse and the sentient life on Oith is stuff like Cremefillians who evolved from Twinkies, Oofos who descend from intergalactic visitors unfortunate enough to remain and Horcs who are just, like, snotgoblins. Pugmire - humans are gone from Earth and they left behind uplifted dogs and cats and other animals, not to mention all the detritus of their civilizations and the owners of Earth have IDEAS about their creators.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2021 13:41
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:The tone of most good published paranoia stuff is somewhere in the vacinity of Brazil: it's a horror story with a surreal, absurdist tone. Most people who talk about it act like it's monkeycheese simulator 2000. See also the difference in how Warhammer Fastasy role play actually plays and how internet commentators think it plays. Horror games are hilarious, though! Every game of Call of Cthulhu I've been in (and watched other people play in Actual Plays, in fact) has been pretty chucklesome OOC, for example.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2021 19:39
|
|
|
100YrsofAttitude posted:So how many games do people participate in at a time? Is it kosher to do more than one or is that just trying to spin too many plates at a time? I play online via VTT + voice. I can comfortably do two a week for an indefinite amount of time. Three games a week is fine for a while, but I usually feel relieved when one of them wraps up, so I try to only sign up for a third game if it's, say, a short game in a system that I really want to try out. I've done four before, usually when it was a rare opportunity to play that system and I was certain one or more of the other games were going to die soon, and I start to feel tired and antsy after a couple of weeks.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2021 20:44
|
|
|
I understand why people aren't happy, but he did deliver what was advertised. I think he probably shot himself in the foot in terms of fan goodwill, but I don't think you can call this a scam. Would have probably gone over better if this was, like, a $5 PDF though.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2021 09:35
|
|
|
drrockso20 posted:Honestly this just screams pretentious douche *fights hard to not make any statements about journaling RPGs*
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2021 09:55
|
|
|
Drone posted:Isnt this thematically just Delta Green Different mythos.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2021 11:59
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Zweihander just seems like a totally unnecessary product, and his 40k ripoff even moreso. I don't care much about either WFRP, ZH or Fox, but: ZH is a retroclone of WFRP2e and it was developed and released at the time when the only WFRP in print and available for purchase was the custom dice FFG version. It received quite a nice chunk of money when it Kickstarted, so evidently the demand was there. There is less need for it now that WFRP 4e uses a variant of the original system, but there are enough differences that someone might still prefer ZH.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2021 18:22
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 06:09 |
|
|
100 degrees Calcium posted:Hey folks. It's been a long time since I've dabbled in RPGs but I'm getting in the mood to play one or, more realistically, run one for other players. But I don't know which RPGs are good and which are bad. Which RPG should I run? Please only post good RPGs. Thank you. There are hundreds. At least give us a genre or a campaign premise or something.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2021 23:30
|
|