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

[Rapier Ape]

What's your opinion on "it's what my guy would do"? Should RP always take the back seat to efficiency? If not, what's the limit?

I once had a player back in the 2e days up and say that he was just going to dick around in town and not go a goblin stomping with the rest of the party because he was "true neutral " so therefore he wouldn't care one way or the other.
Also he should be awarded experience for playing out his alignment.
I ran the game anyways and wasted around 3 hours of dudes time (4 other players)
After everything was said and done he was awarded 0xp because 10% of 0 is still 0.
He also suggested the party use their gold to buy elephants to gang up on and kill to "farm xp".
Bro it doesn't work that way.
At one point later on he approached me with the idea to play a fighter and then dual class it over to Paladin so he could carry over weapon specialization.
Im pretty sure he was trying to pull a fast one there thinking that I didn't know how it worked RaW.
Regardless though I wasted several sessions of his plan to deny it.
I wouldn't have put up with his shenanigans but his dad didn't give a crap about all of us playing and staying there. His mom was a fat stay at home boomer evangelical that was addicted to valum, Xanax, clonopin and hydrocodine.
She'd take her coma cocktail and pass out for 8-16 hours at a time.
Then we'd snatch the car keys or dip into her meds while she was passed out.
His younger brother also had a rittlin script that he ever took.
We'd snatch those up.
Mind you we were like 15-16.
His dad was "working doubles " see banging his mistress. And was never present.
Guy was okay to hang out with but I swear to Christ if you played any sort of tabletop with him he was trying to scheme the system in the dumbest way possible.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Man all the GURPS talk in the funny picture thread really makes me want to play some GURPS we should get a campaign started

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Man all the GURPS talk in the funny picture thread really makes me want to play some GURPS we should get a campaign started

Would you want to play with Kiwis?

 

[JJLiautaud]

Would you want to play with Kiwis?

Insert chad yes here

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Insert chad yes here

Honestly? Would either be the best or the worst game ever. No in between.

TAX:

 

[JJLiautaud]

Honestly? Would either be the best or the worst game ever. No in between.

TAX:
View attachment 9041144

Nice thing about bad games they only last for a couple of sessions so its not so bad

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Wait a minute, this isn't the funny pictures thread at all. You tricked me!

 

[AnOminous]

I once had a player back in the 2e days up and say that he was just going to dick around in town and not go a goblin stomping with the rest of the party because he was "true neutral " so therefore he wouldn't care one way or the other.
Also he should be awarded experience for playing out his alignment.
I ran the game anyways and wasted around 3 hours of dudes time (4 other players)
After everything was said and done he was awarded 0xp because 10% of 0 is still 0.
He also suggested the party use their gold to buy elephants to gang up on and kill to "farm xp".
Bro it doesn't work that way.

That's not how any of this works. True neutral actively tries to maintain a balance, so if it's unbalanced towards evil, they'll generally act good

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

Would you want to play with Kiwis?

It would have to be something that a table of normies would never be open to, like a realistic GURPS Ice Age campaign.

 

[Judge Dredd]

What's your opinion on "it's what my guy would do"? Should RP always take the back seat to efficiency? If not, what's the limit?

So long as it isn't causing strife within the group player to player (this includes the DM) who really cares?

I don't think I've ever seen someone use the ole "it's what my character would do" if it wasn't in the context of being totally retarded and lolsorandumb chaotic stupid. It doesn't happen often but when it does you roll your eyes.

Asked about this recently.

I was playing a bookworm. When cornered by a gangster, grabbed a nearby object and hit him with it. This was non-optimal and pissed off the players. Another adventure, character we were sent to rescue was possessed. The party decided to start blasting. I refused because, you know, I want to save the person we were sent to save.

This is creating friction within the group, even though it's in character and within the goal of the game.

Do a braunstein

I can't because I don't know what that is.

I get it's version 0 of DnD. ...or -1 if we include chainmail...

Look, my point is that it just seems like OSR snobs answer when OSR became too mainstream. I can't even get OSR principles to be fun, so turning them past 11 up to 26 isn't going to happen. Especially since the core ideas appear to be the same as OSR.

Why are people so apprehensive to play anything but D&D or pathfinder anyways? Especially when they are clearly trying to go for a different genre and trying to homebrew it into something else entirely. Surley it is easier to just learn another system.

I don't know, but I suspect part of it is DnD 5e is a complex game. Once you know it, it's simple, but for normies there's a lot to learn before you roll your first d20. Classes, rules, and they half expect to know most of that thick rule book.

Most RPGs can be taught in minutes, but they don't see it that way. They see it as having to learn all of that shit again.

They don't have access to a massive selection of lore and build videos. The 5e meta is well understood and people can easily tap into that.

It's also a shared language. If one guy plays Savage Worlds, another Traveller, another Rune Quest, and another CoC, all will likely know DnD.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Asked about this recently.

I was playing a bookworm. When cornered by a gangster, grabbed a nearby object and hit him with it. This was non-optimal and pissed off the players. Another adventure, character we were sent to rescue was possessed. The party decided to start blasting. I refused because, you know, I want to save the person we were sent to save.

This is creating friction within the group, even though it's in character and within the goal of the game.

For me personally those are both totally understandable and good so long as they truly are consistent with "What my character would do" because an RPG without some semblance of RP is just Fallout 4. It's natural for people to have disagreements and your characters are the same. Also, I'm the DM, not a therapist and I would expect something as mild as that to be handled in a healthy and constructive way by the (supposedly) grown adults I am playing with without me needing to ref the fight.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

On the topic of "it's what my character would do". I usually have my characters just leave the party if their goals become too unaligned and just roll a new one.

As an aside, I swear my current group didn't set out to make a stereotypical dnd party the dice made us (we rolled 3d6 down the line).

We're have a Human Barbarian, Halfling Rogue, Dwarf Cleric, and Elf Sorcerer.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

We're have a Human Barbarian, Halfling Rogue, Dwarf Cleric, and Elf Sorcerer.

Certified Realm Classic

 

[LovisXVI]

It would have to be something that a table of normies would never be open to, like a realistic GURPS Ice Age campaign.

Well, Würm exists, though I can't recall if it is "realistic" or not.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

Weekend rolls around and I get a text from him saying his group gave up on the game just 2 hours into the session, because his players told him and I quote "Using 2 d20s is just too confusing". These chode smokers got through character creation and gave up trying to learn in literally the first encounter. There's being lazy, and then there's whatever the fuck is going on with 5e players.

THIS. 100 times, this.

The infuriating thing is that they have this attitude about game systems that are distinctly less crunchy than 5e. I had a prospective player pull this shit on me while our group was playing Feng Shui, a rule system that's almost pure narrative at times. She did not make it in, needless to say.

 

[Brain Problems]

If resistant, feel free to deploy "All roads lead to Ravenloft because that is what I am running"

Question for all the RL bros out there: how do you guys handle the dark powers checks? Do you go by the book, simplify it, expand it? Same for failures and what not.

Addtionally, one of the things I wish I spent more time on and maybe is easier now because I can just crack the whip on the machine, is to make cleverer curses from Vistanis or other characters.

 

[JJLiautaud]

It would have to be something that a table of normies would never be open to, like a realistic GURPS Ice Age campaign.

Technomancer but you spend 90% of the game time filling out TPS reports

 

[Konigsberg]

This may sound like #1 but it isn't because the #1 people actually want to play D&D. These people want to appear to be playing D&D as it is a lifestyle brand because popular people play D&D

There's definitely some outliers. One of my players seems to be obsesses with D&D as a...concept? He has brought up multiple times that he has never played a 'real' campaign of D&D (he calls all TTRPGs 'D&D' which doesn't help the confusion) where we're adventurers, that go out on quests, meet in taverns n' shit. Except we absolutely have done all of those things, multiple times, at one point or another across multiple games. He has tried explaining this higher form 'D&D' that exists in his head multiple times and nobody in our game group can figure out what the fuck he's talking about. He seems to be describing exactly what we're currently doing but because it lacks some hidden aesthetic only he can picture it's not 'real' D&D. He's a fine player and friend but I think this may genuinely be a generational issue. All the younger Zoomers I know seem to suffer from a combination of obsession over the surface level details of things, and a complete lack of vocabulary to express their inner thoughts or understand deeper level topics.

As someone who has years of breaking people away from D&Drone play, I find that the best way to get someone to learn a new system is to:

To be fair I did it in the brute force 1-step process. I looked around my greater TTRPG group and saw there were 2 willing GMs to about 13 players, and I told them I wasn't running Pathfinder or D&D anymore. I would be running the games I wanted to run and they could either play or sit it out. It worked out, the bottom feeder Forever-5e and Pathfinder players (all of whom happened to be the worst players we had available.) got offloaded to someone else, and we have successfully completed multiple campaigns all in different games. Sometimes Dungeon Massa just needs to crack his whip on these lazy porch-players.

That's not how any of this works. True neutral actively tries to maintain a balance, so if it's unbalanced towards evil, they'll generally act good

Sir you are asking for a hobby full of crippling autists to ponder the nuances of the Alignment system and what it means. That's a losing battle.

a realistic GURPS Ice Age campaign.

An idea so based it could never happen.

The infuriating thing is that they have this attitude about game systems that are distinctly less crunchy than 5e.

That's the rub isn't it? A demographic so lazy the idea of learning, period, stunlocks them into passing on things that are a lot easier than what they're currently doing.

After pondering on it some more I think there's an effort-post worth of discussion into the phenomena that does go beyond "lazy ass mf's" but it'll have to wait.

 

[LovisXVI]

To be fair I did it in the brute force 1-step process. I looked around my greater TTRPG group and saw there were 2 willing GMs to about 13 players, and I told them I wasn't running Pathfinder or D&D anymore. I would be running the games I wanted to run and they could either play or sit it out. It worked out, the bottom feeder Forever-5e and Pathfinder players (all of whom happened to be the worst players we had available.) got offloaded to someone else, and we have successfully completed multiple campaigns all in different games. Sometimes Dungeon Massa just needs to crack his whip on these lazy porch-players.

Well, that falls under my "All roads lead to Ravenloft" rule in number 2. You are the Game MASTER, not the Game Elected Official, act like it. Don't ever for even a moment feel the need to run something you don't due to unspoken social obligation.

 

[Ghostse]

Why are people so apprehensive to play anything but D&D or pathfinder anyways? Especially when they are clearly trying to go for a different genre and trying to homebrew it into something else entirely. Surley it is easier to just learn another system.

Hi. System Skeptic here. Not 100% helpfulas I dislike 5e & its playerbase but I'll shed some light on the reasoned mindset of "No, I don't want to switch systems".

There are the usual reasons (lazy, fear of change, D&D in the narrative/crunch sweet spot) but there are also some real issues and bad experiences that make people reluctant to invest time and mental energy in learning a new thing that might turn out to be wasted efforts.

1) System Power Grogs/winning with Experience
You can blame Pathfinder for this one, at least in part (or at least is most common in PF grogs in my experience). But the issue with going to a new system is that usually the person suggesting the new system wants to use their knowledge of said system to be King Nerd instead of having fun.
I have had several players try to make not-Pathfinder into Pathfinder because they want to use their pathfinder "...And then I win" mechanics.

I had a person in a friend group who was like this with boardgames. He would suggest a boardgame to play, one he knew the rules to and had played but no one had played before, and would constantly try to get us to play until we caved, where he would proceed to bust out all his Elite Gamer Moves. This would be repeated until someone else managed to "git gud" and he was no longer able to dominate inexperienced players, at which point he'd move to a different game.
I saw him pull this shit on a "New Player" night, and and nigga couldn't figure out why he couldn't find people to play Dominion with after. Its because you practically Mao'd the new players with bullshit and made them feel stupid, powerless, and like they wasted their time.

2) Magical Realming.
I don't just mean someone using a fetish system like Gorge World, no matter how surprisingly solid it is. What I mean is that systems usually model certain things well, but not others (See: D&D and stealth), so often a new system scratches that person's autistic itch a little too well at the expense of the other gaming experience.

3) Going along with 2, Possibility of Absolute Jank.
D&D has (or had i guess) quality control not present in many games. You know what you're signing up for. When you have even "surprising solid" systems like Gorge World, QC is often lacking or non-existent.

One gaming group had someone who just liked abysmally shit systems. I imagine the same impetus that makes people watch terrible movies. You show him some shitty Zine with mispellings and nigga nearly creamed himself wanting to play. I can only imagine he jerks off to every *Borg game book nightly.
But it also means that if he was fishing for players it was because HE was going to be having fun with worthless janky games, so

4) No one else to play with.
The ultimate catch-22, but I have never seen anyone in any physical space recruiting for Traveller. Its very rare to see PF. In short, why bother learning a system you'll never play again.