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

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RomanesEuntDomus said:
Well, creating a shitton of ghouls for the long run seems like it's a really bad idea, but just from a theoretical point of view, wouldn't it be possible to boost your numbers for some high-risk combat encounter by making a quick few disposable ghouls? I mean, you'd still need a bit of time to set it up.
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If you're full on fighting something where you need ghouls on hand for numbers, you probably already seriously broke the Masquerade or screwed up. What I'm trying to say is you probably will be visited by at the minimum Hunters. Maybe even my own homebrew conspiracy where they use flame units to purge in the name of Allah.
 
REGENDarySumanai said:
This is one of my main criticisms about D&D (especially modern D&D) as a whole, that it makes beginners believe that everything is similar to D&D, where everything is just walking loot bags with numbers and not actual creatures. I honestly don't know where this school of thought came from, but I sure as hell want to see it quashed.
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I don't have that much experience with DnD, but I guess the character progression is the main offender here.
You get certain enemies with certain threat levels (or whatever they are called) at a certain character level, and you have a somewhat rigid system of loot that is recommended to the GM, making the whole thing feel less like an RPG and more like some sort of boardgame.
And your character picks up amazing feats and skills every other level, which also makes it feel less like you're in a world to experience and more like you're stuck on an endless stat-treadmill.

This might be overly dramatic, but it's how I feel about it. Strangely enough, though, these aspects about DnD are also its strength, since it's structured more than other games in that regard. It's just that it might lead new players into thinking everything should be approached the same way in any other game.

Adamska said:
If you're full on fighting something where you need ghouls on hand for numbers, you probably already seriously broke the Masquerade or screwed up. What I'm trying to say is you probably will be visited by at the minimum Hunters. Maybe even my own homebrew conspiracy where they use flame units to purge in the name of Allah.
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Well, there needs to be something to prevent players from just swamping everyone with Ghouls - by making ghoul maintenance really fucking tedious in the long run but also by preventing the players from amassing a private (disposable) army.

This is neatly achieved by the "Masquerade" aspect of the setting, which puts a cork on many possible powergaming issues. Otherwise, you'd have players that behave like kids on a sugar high in a toystore in no time.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
Well, there needs to be something to prevent players from just swamping everyone with Ghouls - by making ghoul maintenance really fucking tedious in the long run but also by preventing the players from amassing a private (disposable) army.

This is neatly achieved by the "Masquerade" aspect of the setting, which puts a cork on many possible powergaming issues. Otherwise, you'd have players that behave like kids on a sugar high in a toystore in no time.
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Requiem attaches a willpower cost to making a ghoul. Not that that would stop a determined player, but then you get the first Tradition, and oh boy, the violation mass creating ghouls is of that is and should make the prince come down on you line a ton of bricks. Barring that, feeding enough to sustain that many ghouls is difficult even for ancilla, and would be beyond most neonates.

As a temporary thing, the only justification would be a near apocalypse happening.
 
REGENDarySumanai said:
This is one of my main criticisms about D&D (especially modern D&D) as a whole, that it makes beginners believe that everything is similar to D&D, where everything is just walking loot bags with numbers and not actual creatures. I honestly don't know where this school of thought came from, but I sure as hell want to see it quashed.
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My guess would be console JRPGs. Fortunately, OSR is billed as a remedy for this kind of play.
 
It's not so much the game as it is the GM and players. You can have fun even with a clunky system if the GM and players work to flesh things out.

Actually, the whole 'mass ghoul' thing strikes me as a great hook for a VtM story. The PCs are tasked with tracking down who is binding large numbers of mortals into ghouldom. Maybe it involves a magical MacGuffin, or some horrible bizarre perversion of diablerie. Obviously, the PCs won't be allowed to retain the technique or device used, but it'd make for a good tale.
 
So update from the tabletop campaign I am in:
  • Four guys tried to steal an ATM with motorcycles only for three of the bikers to die because one ate pavement after being in an infinite wormhole loop, one guy catching on fire, and the other guy careening head first into a cement truck and being pinned under the barrel. The last guy I left alone. Turns out the last guy is a guy with an IQ of 30 or so who was severely abused as a child and got kidnapped by the other three because they wanted to use his super strength for criminal activities. He eventually got reunited with his siblings.
  • A shootout at a pub by the mafia, only to find out that the shootout was caused by a woman who tried to backstab her boss, only to get riddled with bullets. Said mafiosos were only there because the boss wanted to clarify an incident with the bartender and not fuck up the entire place. He gave the bartender some cash in case he wanted to go back to his homeland, and one of the police officers chewed them out and made them cover money for damages and write an apology, along with telling them not to come back unless they wanted her to tear them five new assholes.
  • The future space pirate tried to hunt for Asian poon again, only for me to cockblock him by walking by to talk to a Russian midget.
  • Some more backstory for my character, one of the military higher ups died after trying to fuck around with a motorcycle and I was suspected of doing it. By that point, I was discharged and I already immigrated to the United States.
 
Just wanted to say I appreciate everyone's input on the Ghoul situation. Some good advice here.

I think I'm going to allow it, but really stress just how much work and dedication it would be maintaining an army of addicts. Someone made a good point saying that it would be like wanting a cadre of heroin addicts protecting your life. Let the player have what he wants, but let him deal with the consequences as well.

And yes, D&D really has clouded how people view other tabletop games. Still like D&D, but my God it is annoying at times...
 
So we kind of lose it a bit while going through the setting of Wraeththu... did not expect the crossover bit:

And complain all you want about DnD, the problem is it seems to be the only game that a lot of players tend to want to play. Bit of a shame too, since there are other games I either want to play or run at one point.
 
I really lost interest in D&D at 4th edition, 3.5 was a broken mess but I really didnt see the point in re-inventing the wheel into poor mans WoW and the loss of a lot the flavour didnt help. GM was fucking pissed when he realized he had to buy pathfinder instead when he'd already ponied up for 4th and entered a 10 minute rant about how he hates tieflings and warlocks.
I've always frowned on too radical changes with editions since it really should be a process of refinment and improvement rather than making a completly new game system, each time and relying on the brand name to get away with it. Just make a new game and be done with it.

Also lolth is the brianna wu of Deities.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
I don't have that much experience with DnD, but I guess the character progression is the main offender here.
You get certain enemies with certain threat levels (or whatever they are called) at a certain character level, and you have a somewhat rigid system of loot that is recommended to the GM, making the whole thing feel less like an RPG and more like some sort of boardgame.
And your character picks up amazing feats and skills every other level, which also makes it feel less like you're in a world to experience and more like you're stuck on an endless stat-treadmill.

This might be overly dramatic, but it's how I feel about it. Strangely enough, though, these aspects about DnD are also its strength, since it's structured more than other games in that regard. It's just that it might lead new players into thinking everything should be approached the same way in any other game.
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From my experience, it heavily depends on the Dungeon Master. How creative they are, and how well they can hide the existence of things like CR, loot drops. ect. I've had DM's that could take me to another world, even with a module. Their energy and investment rubbed off on me and my fellow players, turning spells and abilities into powerful skills a character had mastered but only had the training or stamina to use a precious few times before becoming winded. I've had DM's describe each hit my characters takes in such detail that it painted a vivid image of my character taking a grievous wound in my mind and made every point of XP or gold obtain feel like a hard earned and well deserved reward. A good DM can make things like skills, feats, and stats become simple building blocks in the crafting of your character and their story.

And I've also had DM's that made D&D feel like I'm grinding a character in a video game with some friends, especially with the more boring modules. I personally had to spice up Forge of Fury at my Adventure League game last week when it was my turn to DM just so my players could get more invested in the dungeon.

To make it short, I think all tabletops have the potential to feel like what your describing, it's up to your DM (and to some extent you and your fellow players) to make it into something more.
 
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Well, a good DM can breath life into even the most assbackwards and inconvenient game systems. I guess the issue with DnD is, that it's kind of an uphill battle, since the DM actively has to fight the suspension of disbelief of his players and sort of put a thick layer of narrative over the gameplay mechanisms, that are very video-game-y.

Not impossible, but I'd argue other game systems are easier to maintain a narrative atmosphere than "I reached Level 6, therefore I should get this kind of loot and XP from an encounter as by the spreadsheet on page 274" DnD.
 
And yet despite these thoughts I hear, I get naught but fucking crickets most of the time when it comes to getting a non-DnD game going even when this is brought up. Contrast to DnD, which gets almost everyone happily volunteering for at least one game a week, sometimes even two or three.

And I say this as a guy who is stupidly lucky in getting a group since sure, I've played Star Trek Adventures, have a VtR game I'm going to start playing this week, and have done semi-successful Warhammer stuff in the past, a decent variety. But this is because there's like 12 of us, and even those games at best have half the interest that a DnD game exploring similar themes would garner.

The one time we tried to run Battletech? Two people; including myself were willing to give it a run. Warmachines? Three, not even enough to get a full party.

Complain all you will, but good luck getting asses into seats when it ISN'T DnD.
 
Adamska said:
And yet despite these thoughts I hear, I get naught but fucking crickets most of the time when it comes to getting a non-DnD game going even when this is brought up. Contrast to DnD, which gets almost everyone happily volunteering for at least one game a week, sometimes even two or three.

And I say this as a guy who is stupidly lucky in getting a group since sure, I've played Star Trek Adventures, have a VtR game I'm going to start playing this week, and have done semi-successful Warhammer stuff in the past, a decent variety. But this is because there's like 12 of us, and even those games at best have half the interest that a DnD game exploring similar themes would garner.

The one time we tried to run Battletech? Two people; including myself were willing to give it a run. Warmachines? Three, not even enough to get a full party.

Complain all you will, but good luck getting asses into seats when it ISN'T DnD.
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Well, your mileage may vary. In my circles, it's actually hard to get people playing DnD, whereas it's super easy to get them to play The Dark Eye, CoC or some one-off system that we try out for a time.

That being said, we haven't played that much in the more recent past and to this day, I have not gotten around to test out Degenesis, sadly. Though it's on the backburner.
 
Adamska said:
And yet despite these thoughts I hear, I get naught but fucking crickets most of the time when it comes to getting a non-DnD game going even when this is brought up. Contrast to DnD, which gets almost everyone happily volunteering for at least one game a week, sometimes even two or three.

And I say this as a guy who is stupidly lucky in getting a group since sure, I've played Star Trek Adventures, have a VtR game I'm going to start playing this week, and have done semi-successful Warhammer stuff in the past, a decent variety. But this is because there's like 12 of us, and even those games at best have half the interest that a DnD game exploring similar themes would garner.

The one time we tried to run Battletech? Two people; including myself were willing to give it a run. Warmachines? Three, not even enough to get a full party.

Complain all you will, but good luck getting asses into seats when it ISN'T DnD.
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I really really want to play Battletech. Giant robots in space Game of Thrones is my jam.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
Well, a good DM can breath life into even the most assbackwards and inconvenient game systems. I guess the issue with DnD is, that it's kind of an uphill battle, since the DM actively has to fight the suspension of disbelief of his players and sort of put a thick layer of narrative over the gameplay mechanisms, that are very video-game-y.

Not impossible, but I'd argue other game systems are easier to maintain a narrative atmosphere than "I reached Level 6, therefore I should get this kind of loot and XP from an encounter as by the spreadsheet on page 274" DnD.
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I can see your point there. I started my tabletop experience with D&D 3.5e as well as having played and enjoyed a bit of Call of Cthulu for perspective, so I can understand why some people can find D&D, especially 5e (which hampered character customization quiet a bit) a bit to video game-y in regards to leveling up, loot, ect. But I'd argue for a lot of people that can be a draw to it.

Almost everyone plays video games at least a little bit now-a-days, so D&D having a few "video gameish" mechanics can help bring in and ease new comers to Tabletops into the system. I'll even admit, part of me enjoys looking into the books, wiki's, & various other source materials to find new ways to customize my character to better work with my group (or in the case of Adventure League where I don't know who I'll be plying with half the time, which build will make my Fighter most adaptable to a wide variety of groups). Is it nerdy and can it break immersion a little? It can, but I think that's the case only if you let it.

It helps, in my opinion, if while customizing your character, you try to stay true to what the characters personality is. Even when looking through books for the best stat options or abilities I always think "Yeah, this abilitys good, but is it something my character would go for?" For me at least, the immersion isn't broken so long as I don't try to do something like making my town drunk/ village idiot & troublemaker Barbarian multiclass into Monk because it would give him really cool abilities, despite the fact that he'd be completely unsuited to the Monk life-style.

Basically, don't put Min-Maxing before characterization, separate yourself from that stuff when your at the table and I think the immersion shouldn't be broken.

I'll also elaborate more on a smaller point I made on my previous post that I didn't really go into that well, because it also relates to your point. While the DM is probably the biggest factor for giving people immersion into a tabletop, your fellow players are also a huge factor in that. If your players are constantly holding up the game to pull out a book and spend five minutes double checking every single rule or spell, or saying "according to the book, that monster should have more HP then that", or a player is always running in just the right area where treasure is because they already ran through (or read) the module. Yeah, you get my point.

If your friends are constantly meta-gaming (Which is sadly more common in DnD) then it's going to hurt immersion a bit. This part sort of falls on the DM and other players to tell this person(s) to cut it out because it's slowing down the game and ruining immersion. I think what a lot of people forget when playing DnD is that it is just a game and not every rule has to be followed to the "T" and you shouldn't try to squeeze out every little advantage you get while playing.
 
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Lurkio said:
I can see your point there. I started my tabletop experience with D&D 3.5e as well as having played and enjoyed a bit of Call of Cthulu for perspective, so I can understand why some people can find D&D, especially 5e (which hampered character customization quiet a bit) a bit to video game-y in regards to leveling up, loot, ect. But I'd argue for a lot of people that can be a draw to it.

Almost everyone plays video games at least a little bit now-a-days, so D&D having a few "video gameish" mechanics can help bring in an easy new comers to Tabletops into the system. I'll even admit, part of me enjoys looking into the books, wiki's, & various other source materials to find new ways to customize my character to better work with my group (or in the case of Adventure League where I don't know who I'll be plying with half the time, which build will make my Fighter most adaptable to a wide variety of groups). Is it nerdy and can it break immersion a little? It can, but I think that's the case only if you let it.
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Yeah, it's kind of ironic that DnD's biggest appeal and strength can also be it's biggest drawback.
And all things considered, there are so many games with worse rules than DnD that overall, it doesn't matter that much. Sometimes, immersion can take a bit of a hit and sometimes, the metagaming can run wild, but in the end, you're still playing a well-structured game with easy to use rules.

Lurkio said:
I'll also elaborate more on a smaller point I made on my previous post that I didn't really go into that well, because it also relates to your point. While the DM is probably the biggest factor for giving people immersion into a tabletop, your fellow players are also a huge factor in that. If your players are constantly holding up the game to pull out a book and spend five minutes double checking every single rule or spell, or saying "according to the book, that monster should have more HP then that", or a player is always running in just the right area where treasure is because they already ran through (or read) the module. Yeah, you get my point.

If your friends are constantly meta-gaming (Which is sadly more common in DnD) then it's going to hurt immersion a bit. This part sort of falls on the DM and other players to tell this person(s) to cut it out because it's slowing down the game and ruining immersion. I think what a lot of people forget when playing DnD is that it is just a game and not every rule has to be followed to the "T" and you shouldn't try to squeeze out every little advantage you get while playing.
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It can't be underlined enough how important this is.
Anyone who's ever played a horror game will know how devastating it is for the whole game to have just one guy make a joke at the wrong time. It can easily throw the entire session down the crapper, even if it's just one remark.
A lot of the immersion depends on the players not goofing around too much and only when appropriate. Even in Call of Cthulhu, you can get a few moments were making jokes is ok, but when you do that while the GM is trying his best to create an eerie atmosphere and really make you feel paranoid and in danger... well, it's inconsiderate towards the group and outright disrespectful towards the GM.

Metagaming, too, can ruin the game. Two classical situations are the "Dagger at the throat" or the "hp > falling damage" scenarios, which function basically the same.

Say one of your characters sits in a tavern, drinking ale, he's not wearing his armor. Some bad guy grabs him from behind and holds a dagger to his throat. IRL, that would be pretty fucking dangerous, but when the player goes "Wait, that dagger does like 1d4 damage and I have 50 HP, screw this shit, he can't hurt me even with a dozen slashes", similar with falling from great heights. When the player figures out that he will receive at worst ~40 points of damage while having 50HP, he might decide that he'll just jump down.
That's the kind of metagaming that I really dislike, cause no one in their right mind would just punch someone who's holding a dagger to his throat and no one would casually jump down like 70 feet.


Anyway, speaking of Horror games, has anyone played Eclipse Phase?
Only thumbed through a few rulebooks, the setting seemed kinda weird but also cool, what with the ability to actually have your character die, his conciousness replaced in a cheap body and then proceed with the quest... it's kind of neat, but I wonder how well the rules work out in a game.
 
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I love reading through first edition Pathfinder splats to see what kind of shit was cooked up. Someone thought that it was a good idea to have a barbarian and sorcerer forcefully fuck each other and give birth to a class called bloodrager. It actually works.
 
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