Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
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- Aug 23, 2018
This is a recurring problem with all RPGs I've mentioned in this thread before. When asked, players will want low magic, high lethality, open world political intrigue. In practice they want a dungeon crawl with big monsters and cool loot.
I didn't realise this was a problem. Does the same work with films? I've wanted to run a 1940s pulp game for a long time, but every time the pitch goes something like this.
"Anyone interested in a 1940s pulp adventure with mummies, nazis, and lost treasure?"
"What's 'pulp adventure'?"
"Things like Indiana Jones, Rocketteer, and Uncharted."
"I love those things! Can I play an ace pilot with a m1 Garand?"
"Of course! I'll add you to the list."
"Oh, I'm not playing. The game sounds like great fun though. Good luck."
A game I was a player in used a modified version of the Kingmaker rules. Every few sessions we'd have a half hour city management scene, deciding what to build where, and deal with dilemmas like "a caravan of sick people arrive and want to stay. What do you do?"
In that campaign the city didn't really amount to anything because it had no connection to what we were doing. In a West Marsh game, I could see that paying off mechanically in various ways.
I didn't have a serious discussion, but maybe I should've. As I said, I did ultimately decide to pause the game indefinitely until everyone was available again. Something I doubt will happen any time soon, if ever. Maybe I should have been more harsh.
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- Jan 29, 2021
Well, it is the classic. There's just so much you can do with the medium it seems a shame to just do the same thing over and over.
Geez. Still better than joining, rolling up a character, then quitting after two sessions, though.
Ah, a missed opportunity. GMs love using Kingmaker rules, but most I've seen are really bad at connecting the kingdoms to the campaigns.
Well, it's not too late. Here's what I would do. I'd send out a message basically saying "Hey, it doesn't look like we're going to be getting back together for the game. Should we just forget about it." After that you need to use your judgement if there's any wailing or gnashing of teeth. If there is, you need to point out it's a commitment, since you're putting in the time to create the adventure and on game days you need to run at a deficit so it doesn't feel like you're wasting your time. Let them know you understand life happens, but players not at the game get zero XP and the loot is what the party decides to give to them.
Of course, if trying to backdoor them with one shots works better for you, then you can do that too. I'm just saying what I would do since it works for me and my friends wouldn't be offended if I put it like that.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
You can tell within five sessions or less who actually wants open world stuff and who just WANTS to want it. Its frustrating with these players who aren't willing to get invested or help make that happen. In general, especially with older players, they don't want to think to hard about what to do next - which isn't bad when they're willing to play along with the setting and follow along the narrative.
When they don't play along (and often try to disrupt the narrative) its like they tell a chef "I want to eat a 7-course traditional italian feast"... but then they give eggnoodles, ketchup, and a package of hotdogs and are mad you didn't make something fancy with it.
Trying to compare your campaign to any other campaign is a terrible idea because you'll never run that campaign -even if its one that you ran. You might be close, but everyone takes away different things from a campaign. Its just bad pool, and one of things that infuriates me the most about Critical Role theater majors when they try to compare the game to CR - because whatever they say, it boils down to them just want to have the whole session be endless twists where their character is the best at everything, without even doing the minimum groundwork that Mercer goes through to set these things up.
Movies can work for conveying a general theme, but usually I don't tell my players what media I'm stealing from, exactly. For example for my Guild Manager RP, I did just tell them "You step through a portal to another world, think Star Gate" but didn't tell them about age of exploration/XCOM connections.
Also I have discovered that Pulp is hard to recruit for. People tend to like the concept, but not the implementation because you aren't hitting things with swords. Also, you probably mentioned a system (Savage Worlds) they aren't familiar with. I know I shouldn't have to, but when I recruit for OSE I usually describe it as "Its a simpler version of D&D, combat goes a lot quicker" .
Never tried doing the Kingmaker stuff, but you could easily integrate something like that into a guild manager. I'd advise something less "City" and more "estate" based - have the players take over as minor nobles and give each of them a crumbling estate to revive. Maybe have something like your world's equivalent of the 100 years war has ended with two children from the warring families marrying, reuniting the old kingdoms. In the new peace, old family lands that were on the other side of the front are now able to be claimed by heritors (which is why three to seven minor nobles are all returning at the same time).
(In my game, use of the teleporter was restricted just to nobility, so you needed to have land and a title to send a mission. I also had the portals buried deep underground in quarantine zones so they didn't need to worry about anything bad coming back through)
I had thought about random events involving characters in the roster that might affect their readiness, but for a holiday game based on Maze Rats that was more bells and whistles than I wanted to engineer. It was just straight "Sell Loot, Pay your guys, pay medical expenses, restock provisions, buy new gear, hire new guys, receive new contract, enter the interstellar teleporter".
Eh, depends. You shelved the game with no players having hurt feelings. I'd just take that, make a note of lessons learned, and walk away. Reach out to any players who did show up regularly and seemed on board with what you were laying down about starting a new game.
I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
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- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
isn't that most media these days...?
I heard the later ones were actually not _that_ bad (and even the first one with jeremy irons chewing through scenes was pure gold), but then I'm a guy who keeps his expectations low when it comes to fantasy movies to the point I even liked uwe boll's dungeon siege (gimme the stickers). I mean everybody goes WHY ISN'T THIS LIKE LORD OF THE RINGS completely missing the work and more importantly money that went into the whole thing, like wtf do people expect with a shoestring budget in a genre that needs lot of expensive outdoor shots, visual effects and makeup to look "believable"?
speaking off, there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythica_(film_series)
call me when hollywood does something like baahubali...
tbh at that point I'd just bust out the co-op boardgame and be done with it.
and while I might sound like a judas in a TTRPG thread, this might be a better option in your case. instead of trying to get people invested more when they might simply not have the time or energy, play any of the dozen "narrative" dungeon-crawlers like middara that are available these days and let the lite RP come from there. people inevitably get attached to their characters, even in games like KDM where they're basically cannon fodder, but it's much easer to miss a session or play something else for a bit (5 min explanation vs rolling chars), and they're less likely to feel left out or think they're missing something in the story.
if they don't wanna play if it's not the full group, just tell them you gonna play something else and they don't have to come. if they want they will, if not they don't have the "but only when we play THIS" excuse. if they want to hang out it shouldn't really matter what you play anyway, and you save yourself a lot of headache. if they want to play a TTRPG again you can always go back to that, and maybe they're more open to do it in a more loose group then.
regarding the kingmaker stuff, there's also 5e material (of course), even free, which might be worth cribbing from.
Fag Albert
kiwifarms.net
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- Sep 6, 2015
Yes and I fucking hate it.
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- Oct 10, 2014
Some of the CGI looks good. It'll be an excuse to drink a bucket of beer and eat chicken wings while I watch it.
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- Sep 7, 2019
tbh the period after they figure out "if everyone's wacky and zany no one is" is probably even worse where the double down on grimdark no fun allowed and being edgy2themax (not in the funny 90's way). everybody being the science nerd from NCIS can at least be fun sometimes (in very small doses)...
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- Sep 7, 2019
now that you mention it tho, the whole trailer is whiter than the latest LOTR crap from amazon or whatever netflix shits out. there's one latina, one mystery meat and an outright redhead (which hasn't been replaced yet). also after rewatching the trailer it makes me wonder if it might be worth it for hugh grant channeling jeremy irons. prolly good enough watching it while getting wasted with some mates, shared suffering and all.
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- Feb 19, 2015
<sassy black woman gif with netflix logo in lower right hand corner>
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- Aug 23, 2018
That was my thought as well, but I'm waiting until the reviews are in.
I don't expect them to try and bait and switch with the trailer, which I've heard has been common with Disney recently, but I'll wait to see if they're hiding the wokeshit.
My shit takes.
- It's clear to me that they're trying to rip off Guardians of the Galaxy. There are worse ways to make a DnD movie I suppose. I'm not a fan of the Marvel/Joss Whedon dialogue.
- Why is this not animated? If every spell, action scene, and background is CGI. There's no much left to be live action. It'll look better and age better. If you disagree, people on Discord inform me that animated movies don't sell tickets because Lightyear and Onward were flops.
- I hope Vin Diesel gets to be in one of these if it's a success. The man has been wanting to make his DnD movie since forever.
I have to share the most horrible take I saw people bring up on Discord. That the film should have fourth wall breaks where characters make dice rolls and sometimes roll a nat 20 or a nat 1.
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- Nov 4, 2017
That's fucking horrifying. Please get your friend some help.
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- Apr 25, 2020
Contract in the guys who animated Arcane. You get a cartoony and highly expressive visual style, without having to deal with actors moving awkwardly because 90% of the environment around them is CGI.
Irreverent Anthropoid
kiwifarms.net
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- Feb 2, 2019
I think that's the best you can hope for from a D&D movie, brain-dead nonsense to let you while away an hour or two.
At least it doesn't look like its going to smack you with the moralising stick straight off the bat.
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- Feb 19, 2021
*eagerly jots the idea down before forgetting it*
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- Sep 7, 2019
actually I don't mind whedon-shit that much, simply because I stay clear of most of the crap involving it, so I don't get as much overexposure. it also gets a bit of a bad rep since in the OG buffy days it was still somewhat of a niche (before everyone started doing it), and more importantly better written (ymmv). you got the same writers who can't write dialog for shit now trying to be witty and clever with one-liners, which is so bad it takes you right out of everything. if it wouldn't be whedon-crap it would still suck donkey dick because they're shit writers. for all his retardation whedon at least knew when to reign that shit in depending on scene and mood (back in the old days at least), now you got "your mama" jokes in fucking star wars!
regarding animation, either too expensive (arcane is rumored to have cost 10 mill per episode, and some say that's a low estimate) or not something you wanna be "serious" with in a theatrical release. pixar/dreamworks stuff is something you can take your kid to, rate it T and that cuts out a big chunk of the audience. plus I doubt the average zoomer would want to watch that in a cinema anyway, and those movies have a fair share of sales due to BRAND (if lightyear wouldn't have the disney logo probably no one would even know it exists).
as for vinnie, well he kinda did (most people already forgot about it tho):
can't really blame him for that either, that stuff never was successful in the mainstream unless it's YA stuff, marvel (quippy) or le wacky comedy (hence the dnd movie trying to rip off GOTG is prolly the only way to get some asses in the seats). still mad the solomon kane movie bombed (granted the final fight was crap, but still...).
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- Aug 24, 2020
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- Sep 3, 2014
I honestly see nothing wrong with this party at all. Now if there was munchkinry involved with creating the characters and said powergamer did not share how to optimize with others? Then it'd be an issue.