Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Sayer of the N-Word]

I had a mini-campaign that ripped off some Traveler rules for starship combat and did AD&D in space.

You can't mix systems like that! D&D is a finely tuned machine, and Mr. Gygax himself does countless hours of painstaking research and testing before signing off on the slightest tweak.

 

[JJLiautaud]

ACKS

Is this a KF dogwhistle I can't believe some chud managed to name an RPG ACKS

 

[The Ugly One]

You're projecting the "Weird and Gonzo" shit which admitted a lot of OSR creators do onto the whole enterprise. (And Venger does a lot of stupid "gonzo" shit that isn't directly related to cooming as well, so the coomer/gooner and gonzo overlap is pretty high). Its a lot of weedlords (more 70's obessions) going a little too far into the power of their imagination.

Also "old DND was never about that". Are you serious? My Nigga, there was an entire TSR module about exploring a crashed UFO. The OSR gonzo fags are annoying but they aren't pulling that shit out of no where.

Old D&D was about doing whatever the hell you thought was fun.

 

[AnOminous]

Old D&D was about doing whatever the hell you thought was fun.

This was indeed the shit. Was it fun? You did it.

That was old D&D.

 

[Ghostse]

Although there's a greater point at play here: specifically, that trying to say "old DND" was anything is a bit of a fallacy.

[ ...]

I'd argue a big problem these days comes from both the system becoming too narrow and everybody (publishers and community alike) trying to pretend it can do more than what WotC streamlined it for: a low-stakes power fantasy.

The fact that pretty much through 2e there was no "default setting" helped this as well. Gygax focused on Greyhawk for his modules, but it was hardly deeply baked in. Now the base setting is linked to character creation (spells, feats, select your deity, etc).


I must regreatfully defend WotC the generalities of what WotC did to the combat engine.
You can't even really blame WotC for the system changes. even with 1e AD&D if you activated the full combat rule set there was a sperg-worthy table of exactly how your gear and weapon choice determined your combat speed. 2e had the same. These were optional but it showed even that far back people were wanting autistic combat simulation.
3,4 and 5e have plenty of space for you bolt on more non-combat simulationist stuff. But you really can't overload this with the published rules in any sane way. Bolting on entire separate games to get the simulation you want is in the core of D&D; the original, pre-1e D&D required both Chainmail and Outdoor Survival to play. Even 1e required you use something else (defaulting to outdoor survival) if you wanted to simulate overland travel.

Where WotC sort of fucked the system was by pressing things too far into the "spergy combat simulation". I'll be the first to admit that BX-to-2e abstracts combat out a little too much, and especially for new GMs, gives poor handrails for trying to reign in powergamers. But the fact that provided combat is even entered, or isn't a complete steamroll, its fast. Its still fun to watch a 5e gamer do their first B/X turn, pull out their phone and start to fuck around, and then before they can even pop a boner to their favorite v-tuber realize that its their turn again already.
or tl;dr, its not that WotC really fucked up the system, but they messed up the average game by making 80% of the session be combat. But that seems to be what the average player wants.

I've been looking for a group nearby lately and it seems impossible.

What no that just can't be. Everyone in thread keeps assuring me that based groups that play TTRPG and then go out and pump & dump dangerhairs before curb-stomping trannies are plentiful and everywhere when I mention the poz creeping into the official sources and companies being coopted by trannies.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Its still fun to watch a 5e gamer do their first B/X turn, pull out their phone and start to fuck around, and then before they can even pop a boner to their favorite v-tuber realize that its their turn again already.

I had this happen when running a game of Knave. It was VTT, and we spent half of the game waiting on one guy because he'd take his turn, then disappear. Turned out he was getting up to do things between turns, not realising a go around the table was 20 seconds, not 20 minutes.

I might have ranted before, but I get players that complain about how slow 5e is, then refuse to move to a "faster" system.

Agreed entirely.

Although there's a greater point at play here: specifically, that trying to say "old DND" was anything is a bit of a fallacy. Resources telling you how to play were very scarce back in the day (and the books themselves didn't help much), and not everybody had the resources or the patience to go looking for discussions online (first on places like Usenet and later on forums). Every GM did their own thing out of necessity, and TSR (and for a while WotC) catered to that by being pretty damn broad with the content they offered. So just like today there was no "one way" to play DND, some groups were dungeoncrawling, hexcrawling Gygaxians, others were doing more plot-driven stories playing out the novel bouncing around the frustrated writer GM's head, some were mudfarmers slaying giant rats with clubs from levels 1 through 20 because a single GP is the equivalent to a peasant's entire lifetime earnings, others were speedrunning killing dragons and being showered with wondrous items by their GMs.

Ironically, for how much smaller the audience at the time was, there was a lot more space to do these things simply because people didn't know better and didn't have people online telling them that. I'd argue a big problem these days comes from both the system becoming too narrow and everybody (publishers and community alike) trying to pretend it can do more than what WotC streamlined it for: a low-stakes power fantasy.

This hits the nail on the head. I just didn't know this stuff went so far back.

Internet discourse about TTRPGs differs wildly from the practical reality. Again, I stress that I think some of it is exaggeration for comedic effect. But there a huge disconnect between what I see when I look at old DnD, vs what is said online, vs what is promoted by OSR, vs the hatred for 5e.

Going back to the two points that started this mess. A lot of the crimes blamed on 5e date back earlier. In my ignorance I thought pointing to the super powered characters of 3e was a novel observation. I had no idea it dated back so far and that it was common knowledge. This makes it all the more strange that 5e gets shit on as much as it does, because it shows "DnD was all mud farmers dying if they breathed through the wrong nostril until Critical Roll/5e came along and turned the game into fantasy Avengers" is a lie.

When it comes to comedy/"gonzo" DnD, there's Barrier Peaks, but also Spelljammer. These seem to be treated as outliers in favour of sucking off Dark Sun. Planescape, and Ravenloft for the billionth time. At the same time, there's a disconect in the OSR. On one hand, they preach the lie that old DnD was depowered characters and meat grinders. On the other, the art for their games depicts a goofy, kid friendly cartoon where everything is a joke and the player characters are the punchline. People on the internet complain about "freakshit" characters because that doesn't gell with the gospel acording to Tolkien, and get pissy about female characters and chainmail bikinis because that's not "historically accurate" or "realistic", while lementing that DnD has lost the edge that made the game start a moral panic back in the day.


I don't mind games leaning into one style of play, since it allows them to focus the rules around that, instead of trying to be all things to all people. I'm reminded of a tweet that said trying to make 5e the game that does everything is like saying you want to play Half-Life, but you mod Skyrim to replace the Drauger with Combine.

If it does go that far back, I wonder if the salt is coming from people who want a mudfarmer simulator learning their style of game is not popular?

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

even with 1e AD&D if you activated the full combat rule set there was a sperg-worthy table of exactly how your gear and weapon choice determined your combat speed. 2e had the same. These were optional but it showed even that far back people were wanting autistic combat simulation.

There's really no way to win. It is bullshit that a guy with 249.9 lbs of loot and equipment strapped to his back can run across a cavern, leap over a crevasse, and then stab a giant beetle to death, but everyone sighs and shakes their heads when you start looking up rules for encumberance in combat.

 

[LovisXVI]

There's really no way to win. It is bullshit that a guy with 249.9 lbs of loot and equipment strapped to his back can run across a cavern, leap over a crevasse, and then stab a giant beetle to death, but everyone sighs and shakes their heads when you start looking up rules for encumberance in combat.

I tend to approach it as Shadowrun advises it: "As long as the players are reasonable and don’t perpetually carry around every firearm and toaster in creation (with enough ammo and bread to operate them both continuously), weights and encumbrance aren’t important." I tend to tell players that you should really only carry around what is reasonable and am a stickler for it. While I wouldn't demand a player make a check to move their loot across easy terrain, provided there is no rush, running around and moving it across obstacles I would, after all part of the fun of more old school gaming is the "getting it back to town". Giving the players their cash reward... in copper pieces, so hope you like hauling it back, figure that one out!

 

[Ghostse]

This makes it all the more strange that 5e gets shit on as much as it does, because it shows "DnD was all mud farmers dying if they breathed through the wrong nostril until Critical Roll/5e came along and turned the game into fantasy Avengers" is a lie.

Its not that its new or novel, but 5e characters are incredibly durable and death-resistant compared to any edition except maybe 4e.
5e characters are just not expected to die.

There's really no way to win. It is bullshit that a guy with 249.9 lbs of loot and equipment strapped to his back can run across a cavern, leap over a crevasse, and then stab a giant beetle to death, but everyone sighs and shakes their heads when you start looking up rules for encumberance in combat.

There's plenty of good encumbrance rules. Where I tend to get a fidgety is how digital its and how you describe:
"I can't jump that crevice? Hold on let me put down this ration pack. Boom, lightly emcumbered"

I've toyed with "there's a grey area between medium and heavy; you roll against a logarithmic probability table AFTER you declare what acrobatic bullshit you're going to attempt to see what your encumbrance is" but that slowed down play too much. Not just mechanically but also the 10 minute arguments about the odds and how much weight to drop.

My usual thing is to just use OSE's 'coin' system and be done with it.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

There's plenty of good encumbrance rules. Where I tend to get a fidgety is how digital its and how you describe:
"I can't jump that crevice? Hold on let me put down this ration pack. Boom, lightly emcumbered"

"I eat the ration, am I still encumbered?"

 

[AnOminous]

There's plenty of good encumbrance rules. Where I tend to get a fidgety is how digital its and how you describe:
"I can't jump that crevice? Hold on let me put down this ration pack. Boom, lightly emcumbered"

I was pretty lackadaisical about this. Generally if it was normal you could carry it. I'd only really take note of things like plate armor and large amounts of gold. Even with the latter, unless you were carrying it around through the dungeon, I'd usually gloss over things like bringing back the major treasure, just assuming if they had to they'd take multiple trips.

"Oh so how come I can carry a ten foot pole everywhere? Where is it?" "Umm, it's collapsible." Problem solved.

 

[Lt. H. DuBois]

BG3 did a halfway decent job of translating alot of 5e mechanics to a video game, I wonder if thus will open a floodgate for more studios to build on this

 

[Corn Flakes]

When it comes to comedy/"gonzo" DnD, there's Barrier Peaks, but also Spelljammer. These seem to be treated as outliers in favour of sucking off Dark Sun. Planescape, and Ravenloft for the billionth time. At the same time, there's a disconect in the OSR. On one hand, they preach the lie that old DnD was depowered characters and meat grinders. On the other, the art for their games depicts a goofy, kid friendly cartoon where everything is a joke and the player characters are the punchline. People on the internet complain about "freakshit" characters because that doesn't gell with the gospel acording to Tolkien, and get pissy about female characters and chainmail bikinis because that's not "historically accurate" or "realistic", while lementing that DnD has lost the edge that made the game start a moral panic back in the day.

I think a lot of those arguments and complains are people either deliberately or accidentally missing the point.

Yes, gonzo, silly or lighthearted stuff was always in DND (as was everything else). The problem isn't the tone, it's how lame much of the recent stuff is. Previously, one would expect an adventure module to have at least a few spots that would be tight for most parties. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks threw a fair amount of danger and difficulty at the players if they weren't careful, after all.

Compare that to Descent into Avernus, the most low-stakes adventure module about rescuing a city from hell I've ever seen in my life. Or to Strixhaven. Either because the characters are too hard to kill, or because the writers can't come up with frightening situations or imposing enemies to save their lives, a lot of modern shit just feels lame and uninspired to someone who cut their teeth on more deadly material.

 

[Adamska]

Gonzo just means "lol so random" or "haha pop culture activates my neurons" garbage when people try writing it now in my experience. They don't actually play it unflappably whenever it gets used.

Barrier Peaks is gonzo, but it treats the scenario with a relatively straight face. Several greyhawk setting scenarios have gonzo elements, but are MOSTLY played straight, where it rolls with it rather than tries to congratulate itself over being randumb. Castle Greyhawk is sort of an exception, but that's because it was written to be a love letter to and lampooning that gonzo aspect.

I suspect that the joke was lost in mental retardation by later writers.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Barrier Peaks is gonzo, but it treats the scenario with a relatively straight face.

It's all fun and games until the rogue bursts into vegepygmies, the cleric gets their organs removed in the medbay, and the wizard gets beaten to death with a kettlebell in the gymnasium.

 

[Judge Dredd]

BG3 did a halfway decent job of translating alot of 5e mechanics to a video game, I wonder if thus will open a floodgate for more studios to build on this

There are two ways to answer this.

First is the computer game aspect. There will be more computer games, but given WotC has already pissed off the devs, we're going to get sequels that are woke hacks. Given that BG3 was already fairly woke, the idea that they didn't go far enough doesn't look good. I can also see future modules written not to ran at a table, but as fodder for computer game licensing.

Second is backporting of BG3 edits to 5e. I know a DM whole loves BG3, and he wants to bring in rules like weapon specific moves, and 2 short rests per long rest. There was also some fuckery with bonus actions he talked about but I forget. He did complain about Greater Invisibility being nerfed, but overall he seems positive on the changes and wanted to port them to his game.

I forget where I heard it, but supposedly WotC was leaning hard into Illathids as the next big DnD icon because of BG3s success. Given the fall out with Critical Roll, I can see that being their next big push. On the one hand I love abominations as a monster class. On the other, I can see them getting overused and ruined in the same way they keep messing with Ravenloft and Strahd.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

There's plenty of good encumbrance rules. Where I tend to get a fidgety is how digital its and how you describe:
"I can't jump that crevice? Hold on let me put down this ration pack. Boom, lightly emcumbered"

I've toyed with "there's a grey area between medium and heavy; you roll against a logarithmic probability table AFTER you declare what acrobatic bullshit you're going to attempt to see what your encumbrance is" but that slowed down play too much. Not just mechanically but also the 10 minute arguments about the odds and how much weight to drop.

My usual thing is to just use OSE's 'coin' system and be done with it.

I always thought that encumbrance system that includes non equippable items is silly. If you include it then the most obvious choice is having a mule carry all your shit, which just adds another headache to keep track of. It's the kind of points that is a break from reality for convenience sake, since a sane person wouldn't carry unnecessary shit in a dangerous location.

 

[Ghostse]

I always thought that encumbrance system that includes non equippable items is silly. If you include it then the most obvious choice is having a mule carry all your shit, which just adds another headache to keep track of. It's the kind of points that is a break from reality for convenience sake, since a sane person wouldn't carry unnecessary shit in a dangerous location.

I've never met any any sane PCs, so why wouldn't they wheel a shopping cart full of whatever garbage they've picked up like the murder hobos they are?

My reason for doing general encumbrance is simple: if you don't, the hoarder party will never toss anything and key/useful items will likely be lost & forgot in their inventory. If tracking a mule, hireling, or other livestock is too much of a headache, they can stop anytime they want. It's easy for them to sell their ass next time they get to town.

Here's my metric for how autistic I get: If the party/player will not bitch, complain, cry, protest, be pissy or otherwise sulk when I say "You lost a mule, that mule contained your most valuable loot and spare magic armor" then they do not have to track where which items are carried on each mule (I'm not going to do that, I'd just take an average, but with maybe two exceptions every player I've played with would immediately bitch when I start scratching items off their loot list "Wait no I wouldn't have risked that magic sword and the bag of emeralds on the last mule in the train!").
If they want to abstract out the mule train that's fine too, but only as long as they are not going to bitch, complain, cry, protest, be pissy or otherwise sulk when they want an item to use in combat and I say "no, you left that on your mules back in the last camp".

 

[Lt. H. DuBois]

There are two ways to answer this.

First is the computer game aspect. There will be more computer games, but given WotC has already pissed off the devs, we're going to get sequels that are woke hacks. Given that BG3 was already fairly woke, the idea that they didn't go far enough doesn't look good. I can also see future modules written not to ran at a table, but as fodder for computer game licensing.

Second is backporting of BG3 edits to 5e. I know a DM whole loves BG3, and he wants to bring in rules like weapon specific moves, and 2 short rests per long rest. There was also some fuckery with bonus actions he talked about but I forget. He did complain about Greater Invisibility being nerfed, but overall he seems positive on the changes and wanted to port them to his game.

I forget where I heard it, but supposedly WotC was leaning hard into Illathids as the next big DnD icon because of BG3s success. Given the fall out with Critical Roll, I can see that being their next big push. On the one hand I love abominations as a monster class. On the other, I can see them getting overused and ruined in the same way they keep messing with Ravenloft and Strahd.

Game is way overrated, played through it twice about 80 and 60 hours respectively, no desire to go through again really. Very little actual "choices and consequences" type game play, its all just a a theme park, with one carefully manicured shallow area following the next.
The amount it almost seemed like it was ripping off Dragon Age Origins was uncanny at times, which I love, but alot of that may be childhood Nostalgia

 

[LovisXVI]

that may be childhood Nostalgia

Nope, Dragon Age: Origins holds up, genuinely great, the only negative I can think of is how utterly brown the game is in the art direction. Though that was the style of the time so to be expected.