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

[ZMOT]

I want to make a adventure to be run at a convention. Not organized play and living characters like they are doing now, old school with pre made characters.
Characters will be first level. They need to go clear a multi level cave complex of goblins.
Everyone of the characters will be in a wheelchair. The caves are in an area where no magic, even divine magic will work. So they have to navigate the caves and fight the goblins with normal items.
One character will be black, one lesbian, one gay, one trans, one furry, and one straight white male that everyone else will blame their own issues on.
Did I check all the boxes so I won't get canceled?

don't forget to put it in an arabian setting and everyone into a burqa, even the males out of solidarity. the burqa's need to be grey so no one gets offended by certain colors.
also the goblins are way too problematic from a classism standpoint, they're just acting based on their nature and you don't want to infringe on their traditions. that's why all your enemies should be gelatinous cubes of various colors.
wheelchairs are also problematic since they're ableism against other handicaps - what about mutes, deafs, amputees etc? to properly convey it just like a wheelchair does, there's no talking among your table either - if the characters can't hear or talk, players shouldn't either. the one without arms obviously needs to get pushed by one of the other adventurers. also no hills, stairs or anything - the whole setting exists on a literal plane. every house and dungeon has exactly one floor.

bonus points if your dungeon layout looks like pacman.

 

[Drunken Fox]

Nice! I'll check those out! Thank you!

Is GURPS any good? I've heard a little bit about it.

As a GM who pretty much exclusively runs GURPS I would say it is probably a very bad system to start with if everyone is fairly new to playing TRPGs. The system is great for a GM who wants to create very custom worlds that push beyond what other systems are capable of handling (I personally have been running some world hopping campaigns where there are wizards interacting with people with machine guns and other stuff along those lines). That said it is a lot of extra work for the GM to put together a game using the system since instead of just having to worry about the story and the encounters you also need to select what rules you are actually going to be using for your game since the system assumes a lot of the rules are optional and you pick and choose which ones you want to use for your game. This can be going very rules light, using wildcard skills, and just making up modifiers to very rules heavy with tons of modifier calculations for roll resolutions.

Now if this doesn't scare you or if it sounds like something you'd want to work towards being about to use, I'd suggest either doing the Dungeon Fantasy Line within GURPS which kind of streamlines everything a bit to play a standard D&Desc type game or they have a separate stand alone Dungeon Fantasy RPG which is a self contained and further streamlined box set of the normal GURPS Dungeon Fantasy ruleset.

 

[The Curmudgeon]

Thank you for all the advice and information, guys! It looks like there are a lot of options. I'm going to research each of these games.

@Drunken Fox Thank you for explaining GURPS! Honestly, it sounds very DIY and I like that!

 

[ZMOT]

Thank you for all the advice and information, guys! It looks like there are a lot of options. I'm going to research each of these games.

@Drunken Fox Thank you for explaining GURPS! Honestly, it sounds very DIY and I like that!

if you're looking for a local game, humble bundle currently has a pathfinder 2e beginner bundle (I know, I know, >paizo), but since it's a humblebundle you can distribute the money how you see fit and if you're in the US the big package with the physical box is an absolute steal for that price (usually it's 40 bucks alone, 50 for the whole thing with lots of extra stuff).

since it's a beginner box it's ready made to jump in and learn the ropes this way. and worst case if you don't like it you can sell it because physical or use the dice and other stuff for other games. but you also get the PDFs you can use on the foundry or whatever, iirc paizo is pretty lenient when it comes to those, afaik foundry just checks if it's original PDFs and then you can use them with it.

 

[anti SJW]

As someone who played GURPS alot back in the day, I agree that its not the best system for TTRPG newbies. Its a great rules heavy crunchy system.
A couple of people I played with have credits in the GURPS Ultra Tech book.

 

[Ghostse]

iirc paizo is pretty lenient when it comes to those, afaik foundry just checks if it's original PDFs and then you can use them with it.

You link your Paizo account to the Foundry account and it approves your Paizo purchases. Paizo is (or was for a time) pretty leniant about adding phyiscal copies to your digital library. They were handing out PDFs if you sent them a picture of the physical book and where you got it. I think now they want a receipt/bag? I might be getting them confused with another publisher.

PF2 has some good ideas, but its like using a dancers belt to make sure balls never come into contact so you aren't gay like those faggots playing 5e.

 

[Big Nasty]

don't forget to put it in an arabian setting and everyone into a burqa, even the males out of solidarity. the burqa's need to be grey so no one gets offended by certain colors.
also the goblins are way too problematic from a classism standpoint, they're just acting based on their nature and you don't want to infringe on their traditions. that's why all your enemies should be gelatinous cubes of various colors.
wheelchairs are also problematic since they're ableism against other handicaps - what about mutes, deafs, amputees etc? to properly convey it just like a wheelchair does, there's no talking among your table either - if the characters can't hear or talk, players shouldn't either. the one without arms obviously needs to get pushed by one of the other adventurers. also no hills, stairs or anything - the whole setting exists on a literal plane. every house and dungeon has exactly one floor.

bonus points if your dungeon layout looks like pacman.

I think it get what you're getting at.

These types don't really want to play tabletop rpgs. They want to play tabletop video games. Makes sense as Meatpunks is a failed video game rebranded as a ttrpg.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Shameless stolen from Yaoi Huntress Earth in the other thread

They are coming for everything left.

You are not allowed to enjoy anything they do not approve of.

You may not consume old product, you must consume new product.

Remember, if you play the older stuff, you are a bad person having badwrongfun.

They are coming for it all.

They cannot be bargained with, they cannot be reasoned with, and they will not stop until everything you love and enjoy has been murdered, skinned, and is worn as a skin for these people to dance around in while you are forced to applaud them.

 

[anti SJW]

 

[Bleacher]

They are coming for everything left.

You are not allowed to enjoy anything they do not approve of.


You may not consume old product, you must consume new product.

Remember, if you play the older stuff, you are a bad person having badwrongfun.

They are coming for it all.

Being a bad person doesn't sound too bad tbh. In our group, it's always 3.5 and racism, and we will keep it that way.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Being a bad person doesn't sound too bad tbh. In our group, it's always 3.5 and racism, and we will keep it that way.

Treasure your rotten compatriots. The highlight of Thanksgiving 2020 in my gaming group was my 5+ minute off the cuff anti-semitic rant during some JackBox game which gave me a landslide victory over the others.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Shameless stolen from Yaoi Huntress Earth in the other thread

View attachment 2831965
They are coming for everything left.

You are not allowed to enjoy anything they do not approve of.

View attachment 2831964
You may not consume old product, you must consume new product.

View attachment 2831963

Remember, if you play the older stuff, you are a bad person having badwrongfun.

They are coming for it all.

They cannot be bargained with, they cannot be reasoned with, and they will not stop until everything you love and enjoy has been murdered, skinned, and is worn as a skin for these people to dance around in while you are forced to applaud them.

They leave out just as fictitious those Arabian settings are, shit like Vikings are just as equally fictitious since there's no historical evidence that they wore the horned helms. That was just a popular depiction that people agreed upon because it was cool, only like one or two viking helms were found and they looked nothing like the headwear in fiction.

 

[anti SJW]

 

[Bleacher]

Treasure your rotten compatriots. The highlight of Thanksgiving 2020 in my gaming group was my 5+ minute off the cuff anti-semitic rant during some JackBox game which gave me a landslide victory over the others.

Very nice
Granted we're all brown beaners so the racism is guaranteed, and the fandom is slightly less tarded here...for the most part. A couple friends got kicked out of a campaign for shit-talking a female villain, though.

 

[ZMOT]

PF2 has some good ideas, but its like using a dancers belt to make sure balls never come into contact so you aren't gay like those faggots playing 5e.

it's fine as an entry game imho, while 5e might be even easier to get into as a player, it can easily breed some lazy habits and requires more work from the GM having to fill it's holes. some like it, some don't, but from a beginner perspective more is sometimes better, least of all there's more rules you can fall back on and more stuff codified (which some people feel like hamstringing, but that shouldn't matter for someone starting out). I'd go as far and say even 5e is ok _if_ you have an experienced GM, if your whole group is new go with pf2 (beginner's box preferably).

there are probably even easier/better ones, but then lacking the community or resources if you're just starting out. or you could go OSR, but again as a beginner probably hard to grasp (like I wouldn't expect them to look up what B/X means) and kinda "nerdy" if they just want to try that "ttrpg thing I heard so much about".

and ofc the price in this case, hard to beat unless you trawl the high seas (which won't give you physical stuff unless you reproduce it yourself).

runequest had a new starter box coming out recently I think, but no idea about it's quality/improvements to get into the game. same for CoC.

I think it get what you're getting at.

These types don't really want to play tabletop rpgs. They want to play tabletop video games. Makes sense as Meatpunks is a failed video game rebranded as a ttrpg.

it was more about how turning everything into the same sanitized grey sludge is boring as fuck.

having seen the never ending dnd4 discussions (which are still going on..) and me coming from boardgames which were always more rp-lite/rules-heavy that whole thing was nonsense anyway, there's plenty of room for people to play how they want, no game and table is the same. if you don't like the rest of the group treating it as a pnp videogame either propose to try something else or look for another group, no point in endless bitching or "they ruin the hobby" (meant in general, not regarding your post).

View attachment 2831984

wait, is that recent? why are they still using vivian? and didn't even knew that existed (great minds thing alike or something...).

it was mainly a spin on an idea I had years ago doing a mario clone with a grey cube that plays itself when you select journo mode

 

[anti SJW]

wait, is that recent? why are they still using vivian? and didn't even knew that existed (great minds thing alike or something...)

I have no idea what comic that is. Someone posted that on Twitter and I thought it was appropriate here

 

[Syaoran Li]

My brother got me a hard copy of the core rulebook for Vampire: The Dark Ages for Christmas this year, the original one from 1996.

I've been reading it recently and I'm digging the setting. I'm thinking run a one-shot with my brother and some of my IRL friends.

 

[Airbrushed Van Art]

My brother got me a hard copy of the core rulebook for Vampire: The Dark Ages for Christmas this year, the original one from 1996.

I've been reading it recently and I'm digging the setting. I'm thinking run a one-shot with my brother and some of my IRL friends.

I recently re-acquired that book. It is lovely. The artwork and layout is just… the book is nice to own and flip through even just as a coffee table book.

 

[Techpriest]

My brother got me a hard copy of the core rulebook for Vampire: The Dark Ages for Christmas this year, the original one from 1996.

I've been reading it recently and I'm digging the setting. I'm thinking run a one-shot with my brother and some of my IRL friends.

I stumbled on the original release at a used book store in good condition. I also recommend the V20 dark ages book - it’s fantastically well done and illustrated.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

It's not tabletop but it falls under the RPG umbrella. I spotted this article and while it carries some relevant points even if at its core it is just whining about how LARP isn't really that inclusive to new players it's last three paragraphs.

The silent killer of LARP communities - Larp News - www.larpnews.org

However you categorize LARP, be it sport, activity, camping or otherwise, usually there is some aspect of competition. In general, most LARP groups usually try to get their players to work towards a common foe. There are some LARP’s that don’t always follow this general rule, and PVP is...

larpnews.org

Going into a game that you’ve put your hard earned money and time toward can be disheartening when it’s full of isolation. You go to a game to feel strong and have fun. Of course another big part of LARP is meeting like minded people that are similar to you. Keep in mind that segregation can be much more detrimental to people with mental health issues. I challenge readers to really look inward. Most of us come from a background of being bullied or not fitting in at school, work and society. We all just want a place to be our unapologetic selves and have a sense of belonging.


Instead of judging people immediately based on looks, identity, your gain from them or if you know them, just give them a fair chance. Be decent and kind like we all should have been treated in our lives previous from LARP. We can be the change, but first we have to stop gatekeeping a community of misfits and embrace one another instead. How much more fun would it be to face the enemy together?


Please consider this thought if nothing else; You don’t have to be friends with everyone you meet but your words and actions (in and out of character) can really hurt someone that is just trying to survive day to day.

I find it amusing that in some circles there are those who remain locked in this high school level mindset that Rpgs are still a bunch of misfits and bullied nerds. There's plenty of them in their numbers but a fair amount of them are not so unhinged to still flashback to being called "geek" once and even more of them are not misfits because this is their hobby, not their life.

The writer's use of "segregation" and "trying to survive day to day" is just hyperbole of a massive level and I won't even bother with it.