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

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OK, I do have one more question about virtual tabletops. The game I'm working on is a fangame of an existing IP. The rights holder probably won't take notice, but I assume that if they do and object, that Roll20 will cuck instantly. Are there any reasonably popular virtual tabletops that don't have such a single point of failure?
 
I haven't been paying attention to D&D 5e happenings but last month I heard about a controversy related to AI art in one of their books, could someone give me a rundown on that?
Tactical Wizard said:
It wasn’t always like that. Fifth edition started as a sincere attempt to win back fan good will and if you go back to anything published between 2014 and 2019 most of it is… fine. It’s nostalgia bait. This was the era of Curse of Strahd, Princes of the Apocalypse, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Tales from the Yawning Portal and the Sword Coast Book that was just setting info for the forgotten realms that put it back to basically how it was in third.

System wise, it was meant to feel like red box D&D without actually being based upon it. Probably because they brought in a bunch of OSR guys like Kasimir Urbanski and Zak Smith and those guys worship at the altar of BECMI. And for a time, it was.

For a time. Corporate churn somewhere around late 2019 or 2020 showed Mearles and Winninger the door. We started getting a lot of trend chasing and Twitter faggotry. The absolute joke that was Candlekeep Mysteries and its wheelchair-accessible dungeons. Tasha’s subclasses broke the balance of the game and introduced “optional” floating stat bonuses that then proceeded to make their way into every subsequent release.

So that’s the weird thing, 5e at launch and for years resembled nothing of what it became.
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To me the beginning of the end was Mearls getting attacked on social media for supposely defending one of the PHB and playtest contributors who caught shit for harassing women or something years ago. Now I get Mearls wasn't perfect and I had a few issues with him and Crawford's design choices, but I liked what he was doing at the time which were game design streams where he made quite a few class archetypes... Which ended up being scrapped alongside the Mystic (I will never not be fucking mad about it). Sure they could have been scrapped for a variety of reasons but the most likely was distancing from Mearls.

The Littlest Shitlord said:
OK, I do have one more question about virtual tabletops. The game I'm working on is a fangame of an existing IP. The rights holder probably won't take notice, but I assume that if they do and object, that Roll20 will cuck instantly. Are there any reasonably popular virtual tabletops that don't have such a single point of failure?
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FoundryVTT and host the game yourself, nobody will be able to do shit
 
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The Littlest Shitlord said:
OK, I do have one more question about virtual tabletops. The game I'm working on is a fangame of an existing IP. The rights holder probably won't take notice, but I assume that if they do and object, that Roll20 will cuck instantly. Are there any reasonably popular virtual tabletops that don't have such a single point of failure?
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1) Unless you are making money off it (or using trademarked terms) you are very likely going to be covered under fair use with as much transformative effort as you're putting in. If you are really pananoid just make sure any documents generated have "Based on characters that appear in Queer Eye For the Straight Guy" on the page footer so its double clear you aren't trying to assert rights and are transformative fair use.
2) Roll20 will almost certainly cuck instantly to anyone for any reason, but if you are just running a Blue Clues Presents: The Horror From Beyond the Stars CoC reskin game on Roll20, literally no one will give a fuck.
I guess I should quantify that with "unless you are mong who is live streaming it on twitch" but even if you are, your posting for advice on the gnome-and-trannydeath fruitbird agriculture forum, which gives me an idea of your audience reach. I doubt any of the 4 people who tune in will rat you out to "the man".
3) MapTool, Foundry, TableTop Simulator do not depend on the tranny-enabling greedy weasels who helm Roll20.
 
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The Littlest Shitlord said:
OK, I do have one more question about virtual tabletops. The game I'm working on is a fangame of an existing IP. The rights holder probably won't take notice, but I assume that if they do and object, that Roll20 will cuck instantly. Are there any reasonably popular virtual tabletops that don't have such a single point of failure?
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I use Tabletop Simulator. If you're into looking through the steam store you can make some really good stuff with it. If you're a lazy fuck like me you can also briefly look through said steam store, find a tabletop that suits you and then make all of your minis the little picture stands where you import jpegs onto. I've had friends make entire beautiful dungeons on it, star trek bridges, warzones with destroyed buildings and mechs on it and they've all looked fantastic but there's also a marker you can use to scribble out a dungeon too.

I tend to semi-improv a lot of my sessions anymore and it's really good at switching things on the fly which TTS lets me do but if you're looking to put love and craftmanship into the visual aspects of a game AND YOU DON'T HAVE A PARTY OF ASSHOLE ELVES THAT WILL IGNORE IT than it works very well for that too
 
Judge Dredd said:
What are some games (systems or campaign ideas) that you want to run, but can't/won't for whatever reason?

I keep toying with a game set in The Matrix but finding interested parties has been difficult, which is the case for most games I try to run.
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Dungeon Crawl Classics. I'll never happen and its about 75% the spergy magic rules, 15% being way too 70s including inconsistent module design and theme, and now about 10% that Goodman Games (or atleast Goodman Games Con) has bent the knee to Screeching Trannies by adapting a code of conduct that makes it impossible for a tranny or nigger to offend anyone but they can get you booted for any reason real or imagined.

I really want to do a full late Bronze-age campaign with iron weapons just starting to appear and a "mythological" magic system.

Actually what I'd really like to run would be a permadeath, west march/that one sperg who has kept a persistent D&D game world for 40 years sort of game of Traveler. Where if you die during character creation it actually fucking matters. But its hard enough to get a group together, let alone one where character death means they're voted off the island.
 
Judge Dredd said:
What are some games (systems or campaign ideas) that you want to run, but can't/won't for whatever reason?
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Nu Twilight 2000 but burgerpunk, no room for it,
Freeleague Blade Runner (mostly because I've accepted nobody will run the starter module 4 me)
That one LOTFP module, no room for it
That one Delta Green Module because I want to play it first but nobody running
GUMSHOE, still don't have a good feel for how to handle the investigative skills
Blades In The Dark Shadowrun Hack (started as a side game but I think everyone forgot about it)
Black Seven, spy rpg because I'm too lazy to read the rulebook
Deadlands because it'd have to be a text game since I can't do the yeehaw accent without sounding cringe.
 
Agent of Z.O.G. said:
Blades In The Dark Shadowrun Hack
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I've never heard of this, but it sounds intriguing

Agent of Z.O.G. said:
Deadlands because it'd have to be a text game since I can't do the yeehaw accent without sounding cringe.
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The key to good yeehaw is to just embrace the cringe. One of my current Shadowrun characters, which was primarily designed to see how much I could wind my playing group up, has mid-campaign developed the most annoying/cringe southern accent and mannerisms I can conjure from my several years of experience living in Texas/being married to a Texan girl, and it's mostly all this thread's fault, for which I thank you all.
 
East_Clintwood said:
The key to good yeehaw is to just embrace the cringe. One of my current Shadowrun characters, which was primarily designed to see how much I could wind my playing group up, has mid-campaign developed the most annoying/cringe southern accent and mannerisms I can conjure from my several years of experience living in Texas/being married to a Texan girl, and it's mostly all this thread's fault, for which I thank you all.
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That's really the best way to go about it with your games. Go at it with confidence, and have fun. I just constructed my Cyberpunk campaign around a bunch of loose ideas rattling around my brain: SethTzeentch as an AI, Hearst Castle, and Californian history, among other things. It's a bit of a mess, but I have a throughline that looks like fun!
 
Corn Flakes said:
Simply put, one of their "artists" got caught using AI to "tweak" sketches (rumored to have been produced by another artist on the project, seemingly without that artist's permission).
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Thank you.
I was trying to look up for videos on the topic on YT but they were all terrible, seems the decent/big channels don't wanna get on wotc bad side or totally ignore D&D after the OGL fiasco save for the odd jab.

Speaking of D&D: despite BG3 renewing my interest for the system the urge to play PF2E is stronger, sadly am still trying to wrap up a 5e campaign and helping with a second one, on top of that I'm considering going back to college/doing courses so I am iffy on committing to another potentially long campaign when my time might be scarce.

Judge Dredd said:
What are some games (systems or campaign ideas) that you want to run, but can't/won't for whatever reason?

I keep toying with a game set in The Matrix but finding interested parties has been difficult, which is the case for most games I try to run.
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For systems? Mythras, been wanting to run it since 2019 but my group never had any interest.

Campaign ideas? Several but among them a proper hex crawl or west marches game, I like the concept but I lean more towards minimal prep and improvization, am also ass at keeping tracks of things from session to session which is a must for these exploration heavy games.
A zombie game: the system doesn't matter a lot as long as I can do something similar in tone and setting to resident evil 2, 3 and outbreak, again my group aren't all that interested.
 
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Speaking of art, have any of you DMs commissioned art for handouts in a game? I have a new phase of a campaign I'm running coming up, and there are some complicated elements which I think the players would do well to have illustrations of, and I had an idea for one that's sure to crack the table up.
 
Well, the whole Ring of Winter story was resolved, though not how I thought. The wizard attempted his suggestion trick, but in his attempt to sow doubt in the NPC's mind, that managed to crack his ability to resist the ring's influence, causing it to take over his mind and make him teleport away. The rest of the party was like "wtf" and proceeded to beat the wizard up and take his stuff, then kicked him out and forced him to run off into the jungle without supplies or his spellbook. Maybe he'll come back at some point as an enemy, who knows.

The player later came back into the party with a mage-hunting warlock who was tracking down the wizard to retrieve something he'd stolen from the warlock's patron. He did that immediately (it was in the bag of holding) but realized his patron didn't give him a way home, so now he's sticking around until we finish the campaign so we can have our group patron send him back (assuming we finish the campaign before she bites the dust).

Maybe not exactly how the ring works, but I'll take it. Did get some good quotes this session:

"BANG BOOM CRASH I'M WEARING CHAINMAIL" (initially the player describing why he wasn't good at stealth, retconned into his paladin shouting and being  really bad at stealth)
"I guess I need to shit more often" (the DM, after revealing he came up with the ring plot on the toilet)
Judge Dredd said:
What are some games (systems or campaign ideas) that you want to run, but can't/won't for whatever reason?

I keep toying with a game set in The Matrix but finding interested parties has been difficult, which is the case for most games I try to run.
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I was going to say I'd like to play an Eberron campaign but I'd probably have to be the DM, but funnily enough, I brought it up at this week's session and the current DM was like "oh hell yeah, I loved that, I'd DM it." I forgot I'd run a one-shot with the group a while ago. So instead I'll say that I'd like to run some kind of sci-fi game at some point. Mecha, space war, or just going out exploring, I'm not picky.
Sayer of the N-Word said:
Speaking of art, have any of you DMs commissioned art for handouts in a game? I have a new phase of a campaign I'm running coming up, and there are some complicated elements which I think the players would do well to have illustrations of, and I had an idea for one that's sure to crack the table up.
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I haven't, but I'd recommend giving AI art a try. It might take some attempts to get what you want, especially if it's complicated, but there are lots of models that do well with fantasy concepts, as well as plug-ins that can help for more complex scenes. Lots of tutorials to help you get started or get into advanced techniques. Best of all, it's free, as long as you have a decent computer to run it on.

I keep meaning to make portraits of my party, just haven't gotten around to it.
 
Sayer of the N-Word said:
Speaking of art, have any of you DMs commissioned art for handouts in a game? I have a new phase of a campaign I'm running coming up, and there are some complicated elements which I think the players would do well to have illustrations of, and I had an idea for one that's sure to crack the table up.
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A couple of times. We had a longtime player who died quite suddenly IRL and so I commissioned a piece of art, based on a drunken postgame group photo of us all, as all our characters from the last campaign together.
As a tribute we also kept his character around as Contact/occasional Mr Johnson. His character was the group's face, and had a dayjob as a wagie at City Hall, with running being a sidegig where he was trying to get the money/resources to fix shit when he couldn't do it within the system. A couple of years later our DM announced we'd be running a massive campaign where we'd be trying to get that NPC elected as Mayor of Seattle. Between sessions I had a bunch of fake election posters featuring his character made, and we even went and put a few of them up, which undoubtedly confused the shit out of people who live near our FLGS.
 
We are apparently back on clearnet and on the .st domain no less. How did this happen?
 
Sayer of the N-Word said:
Speaking of art, have any of you DMs commissioned art for handouts in a game? I have a new phase of a campaign I'm running coming up, and there are some complicated elements which I think the players would do well to have illustrations of, and I had an idea for one that's sure to crack the table up.
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No. I have busted out MS paint a couple times. I was trying to find an artist who would do character portraits at a bulk rate but didnt' have much luck.
As others have said, AI art generation is pretty much tailor made for it.
 
BlazikenLover said:
Speaking of D&D: despite BG3 renewing my interest for the system the urge to play PF2E is stronger, sadly am still trying to wrap up a 5e campaign and helping with a second one, on top of that I'm considering going back to college/doing courses so I am iffy on committing to another potentially long campaign when my time might be scarce.
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They released kineticist right now and they're recently trying to errata EVERYTHING because of the OGL shit so everything is a bit wonky in the nethys wiki and pathbuilder.

Also kineticist has a hard time interacting with ANYTHING since technically nothing they do is a strike or magic, so runes don't work at all. So no sneeak attack, no panache, etc. But the module it came in did explicitly add something that turns all your kineticists concentrations into a rage trait. So you can be some sort of bloodrager.

Also it's kit is p decent as is, since you have a base class feature that ignores immunities. Not just resistances, immunities.
 
Ghostse said:
No. I have busted out MS paint a couple times. I was trying to find an artist who would do character portraits at a bulk rate but didnt' have much luck.
As others have said, AI art generation is pretty much tailor made for it.
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it is in general. need a map quick? prompt it. need a fitting npc image? prompt it. want darth vader narrate your magic realm? prompt it.
the faster and more convenient it gets to use, there more people and even normies are gonna use it.
 
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