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

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anti SJW said:
Nice. But how did that work when they were in town, trying to eat at a tavern, sleep, use the outhouse. ect.? None of the other party members noticed the fighter never putting his sword down, at all? Also wouldn't the town or city watch notice Him walking around town with His sword out? That's usually considered threatening in those areas.

Sorry to sperg about it. Just wondering how the Mimic could have done that for so long without someone else noticing something was up.
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So, one of the main features of this deal early on is that as a Bonus Action the character was allowed to change the shape of his weapon at will and or retract it into the gauntlet since really it’s all part of the mimic. This was much the same for the helmet down the line.

The whole eating thing really didn’t become an issue until late game by which time they often had enough privacy that it wasn’t an issue. It’s not like they didn’t know about the mimic mind you, they just didn’t know the extent to which it was eating the character.

Basically, up until the point that the mimic started eating his flesh there were no major issues
 
Jet Fuel Johnny said:
The novels.

I mean, they were hit and miss back then, but compared to the shit you get now, they're fucking Iliad quality.

Modules too.

Holy shit, there was a lot of lore in modules.

Shadowrun was also the only game I saw that had a page of "So your players are retards/fucked up" and the repercussions of the run going wrong at the end, as well as at the end of every scene.

Fucking Elven Fire had so if the PC's fuck up bad enough, it turns all of Seattle into the goddamn DMZ for like 10 years.
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The original core three novels were great.

I know a lot of folks here will probably cringe because the main character is an angsty gay guy, but the Tommy Tallon novels by Kenson were pretty good.

Any of Nigel Findley's books.

anti SJW said:
Not up on current Shadowrun. But I remember the first edition sourcebooks being great because they had in world hackers that would add comments to the "official" Corp stuff.
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Yeah, Shadowtalk continues even in modern books, but a lot of the old characters from before the Great Crash are gone, and no more Captain Chaos. I miss that old grognard. I always kinda pictured him like Gary Gygax meets a unix grognard.

Bug City has some of the best shadowtalk. Flat out, Bug City would not have been near as amazing a book without the shadowtalk. It brought that book to life in a way very few other RPG products have ever been, for me.
 
Corn Flakes said:
Not gonna lie, that's triggered all the body horror fears I've got going on, including ones I didn't even know I had.
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Yeah, that’s definitely the intention. I always kind of thought of it like “What if Knightmare from Soul Caliber had more body horror?”

Another fun Mimic to try is the Mimic Puppet. At a glance it looks like a person, and even has a realistic moving mouth like a normal human. But beyond that it’s all a high end life sized puppet with lots of ball joints. So kind of like a more lore friendly damsel in distress mimic since it still abides by the mimic’s stated abilities. The trick here is that you have to cover all the joints which seems easy enough at first right? Long sleeves, long pants, gloves, boots, scarf or something similar.

Again this lends itself to the horror genre pretty well but also gives the players a lot of clues to work with before they really fuck up. As well it gives your mimic a lot more versatility as character and villain.
 
Ghostse said:
Mimics disguised as chests = old and busted
Mimics disguised as bejewled swords inside of chests = new hotness
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mimics disguised as mimics inside mimics

765125339e49ec6e97.jpg

Jet Fuel Johnny said:
The novels.

I mean, they were hit and miss back then, but compared to the shit you get now, they're fucking Iliad quality.
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I don't remember them that bad, but then my scale starts very low having read quite a few very crappy fantasy novels in my time (like my negative favorite is a series about a group of heroes trying to defeat the big bad over several books, and around 2/3 in the last book they encounter a flower that puts people to sleep as a defense mechanics. of course they defeat it and kill the bad guy, happy end PSYKE they didn't defeat the flower, the last third of the book, which includes the climax, was just a dream they had in their coma while slowly dying, since it's unlikely someone else will find them).
heck I would rate even the worse one higher than most of "the dwarves" books, and a lot of nerds (and normies) seem to really like those for some reason.

@Morethanabitfoolish
just grab the first one, it's a collection of short stories by most of the same authors who later wrote whole novels, so if you like what you see there just get the rest. however I suggest reading them in order since they (loosely) follow the timeline and/or reference each other. although it doesn't help that right after the short story collection you get a full-blown trilogy (I enjoyed it, but might be a bit much for some).
 
Jet Fuel Johnny said:
Sorry, Knife Ear Lover.

It is.

See, Elves had laws and social contracts that actively discriminate against non-Elves. Their version of the Supreme Court made it entirely legal to beat a human and drop him off at the border. They have no rights under Elven law. Elven culture and society says that all non-Elves are stupid apes who elves are doing a favor to when the cops shoot them.

I know it was a smartass comment, but the lore of Shadowrun is really good.

Azatlan, the Elven Nations in Oregon and Ireland, even the Native American Nations (I've got the NAN book 1 and book 2 right here) have structural racism baked right into them. Hell, every nation has racism baked into it, at a legal, social, cultural, ethical, and even propaganda level.

From forcing human/white people off of land they'd owned for centuries, nationalizing human/white people businesses, putting white/human citizens as second class or best citizens.

It's really well written. Less "Everyone holds hands" and more "Tribe X would gut Tribe Y with a fucking spoon if they had a chance."

If you want some fun, and actually researched Native American stuff, I cannot recommend NAN 1 and NAN 2 enough just for the reading.

Hell, they even address that sugar smuggling is a massive thing in the Alaskan tribal areas.

EDIT: Hell, the game even touched topics that Wizards and the others claim they're going to address in games but never did.

Fiction had it where the corps were taking massive advantage of the poor underclass based on their race. One book had it where the corp was paying Troll families to allow them to experiment on unborn children, complete with a Troll father weeping as he angrily tells the shadowrunners they don't get to judge him or his wife, since one of their cybereyes is worth more than he'll make in 10 years, and the shadowrunners embarassed about how poor and run down the Troll apartment was compared to the garage they hung out in.

Another piece involved the sex trade in Seattle, how pimps had a guy with some spells, usually charm or befuddle type stuff, they'd hang out at the bus stations, looking for some wide-eyed girl come to the big city for her big break, grab her with magic, and bring her back to get her hooked on drugs and BTL shit. There was at least once adventure like that that ended up a whirling nightmare of bug spirits and drugged out prostitutes.

They always talked about Desert Wars, which was a Forever War SPONSORED BY SUBWAY AND VERIZON in the Middle East which was televised so the viewers could watch men fight and die in a war that had been going on for 30 years and no longer had any objectives but ratings and PR.

Hell, even sexism and racism between humans was addressed in books and game material. Even the commodification and dehumanization of pop stars, including K-Pop and J-Pop stars. One module, Against the Hive, was another nightmare, the same with Ivy & Chrome.

Police brutality was always talked about. In the Street Sam Catalogue there was a bit with a shock baton having 'a sin wave effective against larger opponents' and one of the commenters goes off about how that's code for Orks and Trolls. Other books talk about how brutal the cops are, and how trolls and orks tend to get killed during arrest or in custody more than anyone else, how ork and troll neighborhoods are overpoliced, complete with 'commenter' arguments about whether or not the policing is due to the high crime rates or the high crime stats are due to over-policing.

Hell, the Universal Brotherhood, which they kind of made into a video game, was all about a cult taking advantage of the poor, desperate, lost, and lonely, and turning them into FUCKING BUG SPIRITS.

Mind you, this was all in the NINETEEN FUCKING EIGHTIES AND NINETIES!

You don't see that in the modern games, for all their shit talking about being inclusive and progressive and social commentators.

It's kind of funny. Shadowrun gets shit on a lot for the fantasy/magic elements, but, to be honest, the world was more real than a lot of other worlds.

Second Edition and First Edition Shadowrun, before the Great POTUS Dragon's assassination, is what I'm familiar with, but god-damned if the sourcebooks weren't fascinating as fuck. Even if you never played, the sheer world building and information in them was fucking phenomenal. Never played 3rd and beyond, because I'm poor and lazy, but holy shit, the 2E shit was sooooo good.

Shadowrun should have set the standard for fucking lore, not Wizards.

But that was back in the old FASA days, with Nigel Findley.
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I ran a campaign in Atlanta that had the government do the simple expedient of building a wall along the ring road and not letting in anyone who didn’t have a SIN. Also instituted building regulations that required a building to be built to higher specs or old buildings be reinforced if they wanted to have trogs in the building, for the safety of the public of course. When goblinization hit skin color became a lot less of an issue compared to skin thickness.
 
So I have heard good things about the Talislanta tabletop RPG. It debuted in the early-1980's and a lot of people liked the simplicity of the game mechanics when it came out. It takes place in a world that has been shaped by the collapse of an empire on a floating, magical city which has caused various races of creatures to arise out of the aftermath. Talislanta has a very "exotic" feel to it, as it does not take place in a standard medieval world, but seems like it is very much its own time and place.

Its tagline is "no elves" as there are no standard Tolkienesque races or even humans, but there are lots of different playable creatures with different backgrounds.

Unfortunately, Talislanta kind of got lost in the shuffle when it came out due to the popularity of D&D at the time, but it seems to have a small, but dedicated following. The publisher has released the out-of-print sourcebooks for free on the website in PDF format, and the only difference between the different editions is the refinement of the game mechanics in the 5th and final edition as the story remains the same.

Talislanta Library – Talislanta

talislanta.com talislanta.com

Does anybody here play or have played Talislanta in the past? Because it is relatively unknown, it has not been flooded by wokeness and troons, yet.
 
MembersSchoolPizza said:
Talislanta is the poster child for "our pointy eared gorgeous people totally aren't elves, you guys!".
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I like the fact that Talislanta outright says that some races have better stats than others and are not necessarily "balanced".

Taking the Kharakans as an example; yes, they are giants but their size inhibits them from using tools, clothing, or furniture from other races, and because of their relatively small population size, this has caused them to become primitive and often in a state of poverty simply due to not being able to find enough food to eat because of their large size.
 
Hepativore said:
Taking the Kharakans as an example; yes, they are giants but their size inhibits them from using tools, clothing, or furniture from other races, and because of their relatively small population size, this has caused them to become primitive and often in a state of poverty simply due to not being able to find enough food to eat because of their large size.
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When RIFTS does that, it's called unbalanced, munchkin trash.

At least the RIFTS world and (some of) its races are interesting.
 
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My high level players ran into a dilemma.

The emperor and empress had died without issue, and the Empire has been on the edge of civil war for the last 5 years. The nobility would prefer not to go to war, but, in a twist, nobody wants the Imperial Throne. It's well known to be a hassle and take up all your time, where the nobility has plenty of leisure time and recreation activities. Plus, as emperor, no matter what you do, you piss someone off, and the nobility have so many ties to one another that it would cause the empire to explode. The military is apolitical and just patrolling roads and the border. There's no way a commoner can be chosen, since that leads to favoritism with the nobility and they have no experience at ruling.

The whole reason it's going to be a civil war is SOMEONE has to be Emperor or Empress. Someone has to be who the commoners look up to, who is the intercessor for the common man between the gods, the nobles, and Guilds. The Church needs the Emperor in place, the Mage Guilds need it, everyone needs it.

There's been a few attempts at the Imperial Senate voting someone in, but usually the noble elevated (all the noble families have some imperial throne lineage due to marriages) run back to their fortress manors and say "Then come get me!"

The players are all high level (restricted magic, restricted spell lists, some other stuff to limit caster supremacy) and know this isn't something they can fight their way through. They got involved because one of the characters has "Noble" background and they got caught by the Imperial Guard and brought back. This guy doesn't have all the entanglements, but HE doesn't want to be Emperor. That sounds like a real job and like he'd have to give up prostitutes and whiskey and bar brawls.

So the noble player comes in with a big shit eating grin and he has a plan. (I recognized it partway through)

They get some tailors and dress makers and other craftsman.

They have a doll made of the Emperor and Empress's daughter who died at a young age. They use her clothing, they find some hair on the old hairbrush, and make sure the doll has symbology.

They claim that the doll has the Imperial Princess's soul in it.

The cleric (15th level) and the Paladin (17th level) goes to the Cathedral and runs the bargain past the Gods. The Gods, not wanting the Empire to fly apart, but still bound by the Tablet of Laws, agree.

They talk to the high level nobles, convincing them to go along with it. After all, the Empire needs rulership and do THEY Want to give up their manors and entertainments to be the Emperor?

It goes around the Empire that a new Empress has been found and will be crowned.

They have a huge celebration. They anoint and crown the doll. They put the doll on the throne. The Gods light up their icons to show their approval.

Everyone celebrates the new Empress.

The party makes a run for it.

When I tell them that they've crossed the border and are into the frontier and probably safe, the mage says "You just know one of those nobles has fucked that doll by now. I'll bet she's pregnant."

It was funny. Yeah, they stole the idea from a webcomic, but to be honest, I liked the idea of just everyone going along with this because fuck being the Emperor. It makes me laugh and amuses me enough that I was willing to drop the whole noble houses plotline and the lost prince plotline for them to get out of it.

ALL HAIL EMPRESS ESMERELDA, LONG MAY SHE RULE!

Sometimes it's fun to break up serious campaigns with something goofy and fun.
 
Jet Fuel Johnny said:
Sometimes it's fun to break up serious campaigns with something goofy and fun.
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Our parties accomplish the mission in the most retarded and outrageous ways possible. We love to see how far we can bend the rules.

>My Necromancer character has a spell that makes corpses in the area explode
>Orc Bard starts carrying around a corpse for me so I always have an IED at my disposal
>Use it to blow up the locked front door of a mansion, only to find a key under the mat in the rubble

>Tasked with putting down a prison riot that has spilled out into residential areas of the city
>Orc gets the idea to sew a bunch of plague victim corpses together into a giant ball of meat
>Since all the bodies are connected, we are now rolling around a WMD, to which I have the detonator
>We quelled the riots by killing the main instigator in regular combat
>But since we went to all the trouble of making a giant meatball bomb, we send the prison into the stratosphere

The Orc Bard also was able to play/sing the Brown Noise and make enemies shit themselves to death.
 
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Jet Fuel Johnny said:
When I tell them that they've crossed the border and are into the frontier and probably safe, the mage says "You just know one of those nobles has fucked that doll by now. I'll bet she's pregnant."
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One of them? They've probably run a train on "her" by now.
 
Jet Fuel Johnny said:
My high level players ran into a dilemma.

The emperor and empress had died without issue, and the Empire has been on the edge of civil war for the last 5 years. The nobility would prefer not to go to war, but, in a twist, nobody wants the Imperial Throne. It's well known to be a hassle and take up all your time, where the nobility has plenty of leisure time and recreation activities. Plus, as emperor, no matter what you do, you piss someone off, and the nobility have so many ties to one another that it would cause the empire to explode. The military is apolitical and just patrolling roads and the border. There's no way a commoner can be chosen, since that leads to favoritism with the nobility and they have no experience at ruling.

The whole reason it's going to be a civil war is SOMEONE has to be Emperor or Empress. Someone has to be who the commoners look up to, who is the intercessor for the common man between the gods, the nobles, and Guilds. The Church needs the Emperor in place, the Mage Guilds need it, everyone needs it.

There's been a few attempts at the Imperial Senate voting someone in, but usually the noble elevated (all the noble families have some imperial throne lineage due to marriages) run back to their fortress manors and say "Then come get me!"

The players are all high level (restricted magic, restricted spell lists, some other stuff to limit caster supremacy) and know this isn't something they can fight their way through. They got involved because one of the characters has "Noble" background and they got caught by the Imperial Guard and brought back. This guy doesn't have all the entanglements, but HE doesn't want to be Emperor. That sounds like a real job and like he'd have to give up prostitutes and whiskey and bar brawls.

So the noble player comes in with a big shit eating grin and he has a plan. (I recognized it partway through)

They get some tailors and dress makers and other craftsman.

They have a doll made of the Emperor and Empress's daughter who died at a young age. They use her clothing, they find some hair on the old hairbrush, and make sure the doll has symbology.

They claim that the doll has the Imperial Princess's soul in it.

The cleric (15th level) and the Paladin (17th level) goes to the Cathedral and runs the bargain past the Gods. The Gods, not wanting the Empire to fly apart, but still bound by the Tablet of Laws, agree.

They talk to the high level nobles, convincing them to go along with it. After all, the Empire needs rulership and do THEY Want to give up their manors and entertainments to be the Emperor?

It goes around the Empire that a new Empress has been found and will be crowned.

They have a huge celebration. They anoint and crown the doll. They put the doll on the throne. The Gods light up their icons to show their approval.

Everyone celebrates the new Empress.

The party makes a run for it.

When I tell them that they've crossed the border and are into the frontier and probably safe, the mage says "You just know one of those nobles has fucked that doll by now. I'll bet she's pregnant."

It was funny. Yeah, they stole the idea from a webcomic, but to be honest, I liked the idea of just everyone going along with this because fuck being the Emperor. It makes me laugh and amuses me enough that I was willing to drop the whole noble houses plotline and the lost prince plotline for them to get out of it.

ALL HAIL EMPRESS ESMERELDA, LONG MAY SHE RULE!

Sometimes it's fun to break up serious campaigns with something goofy and fun.
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I'm not sure what would be funnier: if the doll is just an inanimate object, or if it's some form of golem.
 
Corn Flakes said:
I've never been a fan of mimics. The memes are overused, and from an "ecological" standpoint (I know, I know, thinking ecology in a game about killing gold-obsessed dragons) a creature that seamlessly disguises itself as arbitrary inanimate items that would only be of interest to adventurers in order to eat doesn't make sense. It's even more "a mad wizard did it" than dumbass hybrids like owlbears. Sure, they make sense in some locations, but in others I'm just wondering what was that chest eating for the decades that dungeon was completely empty for. Shock value aside, a trap does the narrative job much better. It doesn't help a lot of "mimic" idea/memes out there feel like they were clearly made by vore fetishists.

Now, monsters that imitate other creatures? Now that's a much more interesting concept for me.


Not gonna lie, that's triggered all the body horror fears I've got going on, including ones I didn't even know I had.
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Mimics shouldn't be deserted dungons, and also I believe in conservation of mass for mimics - mimics should onluy be able to imitate objects between a range of sizes and weigh the same; i.e. throw a rope around that chest, if you can drag it easily its probably a mimic.
Also I think mimics as "ecology" are dumb & wrong, clearly they should only be aberations, a golem making gone wrong (or right). Like they should be used as guarddogs for a wizard deliberately fucking with the party. Or in rare cases, a vengeful intelligent mimic.
 
Ghostse said:
Mimics shouldn't be deserted dungons, and also I believe in conservation of mass for mimics - mimics should onluy be able to imitate objects between a range of sizes and weigh the same; i.e. throw a rope around that chest, if you can drag it easily its probably a mimic.
Also I think mimics as "ecology" are dumb & wrong, clearly they should only be aberations, a golem making gone wrong (or right). Like they should be used as guarddogs for a wizard deliberately fucking with the party. Or in rare cases, a vengeful intelligent mimic.
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Agreed on all accounts. I'm just tired of people taking jokes and running them into the ground so hard the original thing the joke was about loses its charm. As you said, mimics are aberrations. They're single-purpose constructs created to fuck people over. That's where they work best, because otherwise they make zero sense.

But then people do shit like this:
EXHZsGEXgAAuU6s.jpg
(Note that there's no expectation the players will ever just kill the whole pack of mimics on the spot, even though every single one of those "babies" will eventually turn into a people-eating monster.)

And more. I've seen people making house-sized mimics, town-sized mimics, whole mimic-based campaign settings, all kinds of "tee hee don't I love mimics so much" shit that might work as an encounter with a lot of work, but mostly just feel like someone's Magical Realm.
 
My party is about to encounter two mimics working as a pack to pretend to be a 10ft bridge.

There is a small chance they will notice the bridge doesn't look quite right.

While we're talking about monsters...
- An evil GM has a trap open a door to a 10x10x10 empty room - the room contains a Gelatinous Cube that will attack the party.
- A truly evil GM has the trap open a trap door that sends party down a 10x10 pit into a gelatinous cube.
- However the greatest GM has the trap open a trapdoor in the ceiling that drops the gelatinous cube onto the players.
 
I suppose it makes me a bad GM, or at least a boring one, but I've never really been a big fan of dungeons.

Not that I never use them. Old dwarven cities, dragon caves, crypts, things like that. But when a player encounters them, they're likely going to mostly get one or two thematic types of monsters, that thematically fit the dungeon. A crypt will mostly be undead, with maybe some cultists. A ruined dwarven city will be crawling with goblinoids. The whole Gygaxian "dungeon ecology" thing has never worked for me. Which is, I imagine, why I never use things like mimics. I have this mental block where the whole "dungeons as lethal theme parks for roving bands of adventurers" mentality fails for me.
 
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