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

[Kirtto]

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You are right. Probably the real reason why they hate cyberpunk. Cyberpunk predicted modern woke culture and Disney adults' mindless consuming culture. The podcast is being run by journalists. They probably run hit pieces and damage control articles. Like geek culture, journalists and breadtubers attacked Anime over demon slayer movies, making more money than madame web.

Cyberpunk 2020 which was the basis of Cyberpunk 2077 was created by a libertarian and it shows. He predicted modern day political landscape perfectly

 

[Pendulous Dong]

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Cyberpunk 2020 which was the basis of Cyberpunk 2077 was created by a libertarian and it shows. He predicted modern day political landscape perfectly

I hate when people post this pic. It's not your fault, you probably just saw someone on /tg/ or whatever posting it and saying that Pondsmith is actually le based black man.

In reality the pic you posted is from Neo-Tribes, a sourcebook written from the perspective of the nomad tribes in-setting. Not only is nothing on this page written by Pondsmith (it was written by Ross Winn because Pondsmith had already moved on from Cyberpunk and started working on anime bullshit), but he actively retconned it out of the setting when he started working on it again years later.

 

[Kirtto]

I hate when people post this pic. It's not your fault, you probably just saw someone on /tg/ or whatever posting it and saying that Pondsmith is actually le based black man.

In reality the pic you posted is from Neo-Tribes, a sourcebook written from the perspective of the nomad tribes in-setting. Not only is nothing on this page written by Pondsmith (it was written by Ross Winn because Pondsmith had already moved on from Cyberpunk and started working on anime bullshit), but he actively retconned it out of the setting when he started working on it again years later.

I knew it was from the supplementary/sourcebook Neo-tribes for Cyberpunk 2020. I just didn't know it was written solely by Ross because Pondsmith name is also in the book. I imagine then that his name was in it because his company financed and published the book?

 

[Pendulous Dong]

I knew it was from the supplementary/sourcebook Neo-tribes for Cyberpunk 2020, I just didn't know it was written solely by Ross because Pondsmith name is also in the book. I imagine then that his name was in it is because it was his company that financed and published it?

In the credits at the beginning of the book, Pondsmith is listed last and credited with "spiritual guidance."

Pondsmith is, at his core, the George Lucas of cyberpunk. He doesn't give a shit about the setting, and pretty much everything cool in the setting came from someone other than him. When he's given complete creative control over a project he produces the worst dogshit you've ever read. Once he had finished copying the first thirty pages of Neuromancer and sprinkling it with Bubblegum Crisis references, he moved on from Cyberpunk 2020 and started writing the aggressively awful CyberGeneration, its official sequel* in which you played as nano-augmented superhero children in the year 2027. By 1994 he was already hard at work writing the second edition of this anime bullshit, and had begun work on an official Bubblegum Crisis game (which is all he wanted to make in the first place).

*CyberGeneration was later retconned** by Cyberpunk V3.0 for being terrible because nobody reigned in Pondsmith's autism.

**Cyberpunk V3.0 in turn was retconned by Cyberpunk Red for being terrible because nobody reigned in Pondsmith's autism.

 

[RA-5C Vigilante]

In the credits at the beginning of the book, Pondsmith is listed last and credited with "spiritual guidance."

Pondsmith is, at his core, the George Lucas of cyberpunk. He doesn't give a shit about the setting, and pretty much everything cool in the setting came from someone other than him. When he's given complete creative control over a project he produces the worst dogshit you've ever read. Once he had finished copying the first thirty pages of Neuromancer and sprinkling it with Bubblegum Crisis references, he moved on from Cyberpunk 2020 and started writing the aggressively awful CyberGeneration, its official sequel* in which you played as nano-augmented superhero children in the year 2027. By 1994 he was already hard at work writing the second edition of this anime bullshit, and had begun work on an official Bubblegum Crisis game (which is all he wanted to make in the first place).

*CyberGeneration was later retconned** by Cyberpunk V3.0 for being terrible because nobody reigned in Pondsmith's autism.

**Cyberpunk V3.0 in turn was retconned by Cyberpunk Red for being terrible because nobody reigned in Pondsmith's autism.

V3.0 is the one where they made the plot somehow even messier and Pondsmith basically slapped a badly made RPG together as an excuse to show his dolls off, right?

 

[Tom Bombodildo]

I want to throw out a question to both DMs and players; how strongly do you feel about playing in a homemade setting (made by either yourself or your group) vs. an established tabletop setting (Ravenloft, Golarion, WH40K, Traveller's Third Imperium, etc.) vs. a setting from a series of books, games, tv show, whatever? And do you feel you and your group have had more fun playing common systems (d20 stuff, Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Savage Worlds) or have you had more fun playing around with more niche or fanmade systems? Or have you noticed no difference whatsoever? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, since I realized that despite like 5 years of my group going all in on Pathfinder, the setting, and the published adventures, the most fun I've had both running and playing was with more niche systems and settings either made by the group or from books and games.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It's a copout answer, but it depends on the game.

When it comes to settings, as a DM I'm a big believer in things being "gameable". I simp for Eberron so much because everything in that setting is something I can use at the table, with enough wiggle room that some setting lawyer can't be a dick about it.

TV settings rarely work for this reason. I don't know if I mentioned this here, but a little while ago I wanted to run a Star Trek game, but things like the transporter and technobabble make it difficult to run, and there always some settings lawyer that knows every episode and has read the technical manuals. Running a completely homebrew setting meant needing a two page setting doc people didn't want to read. For Star Trek fans it was basically "Star Trek but without transporters", but for non-trekies I had to explain that phasers have a stun setting and what a tricorder is.

As a player I don't like homebrew settings because most DMs don't know how to make things gameable. They spend weeks world building, they plop down a thousand page tome of dates that events happened, lines of succession for the throne of obscure kingdoms, how the economy and magic systems work, and none of it is relevant to the game. What's more is that many homebrew settings offer little that established settings don't. If you're setting a game in medieval Europe with orcs and goblins and dragons, just use Forgotten Realms or Golarion.



Rules systems are far more complex. I've had this rant several times here, so I'll keep it brief. Popular games like PF1 and DnD 5e have some serious problems, so niche games work way better for things I like to do, but getting people to move out of their comfort zone is difficult. I think people assume every new system will be a huge learning process like 5e and PF, but they aren't.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

I want to throw out a question to both DMs and players; how strongly do you feel about playing in a homemade setting (made by either yourself or your group) vs. an established tabletop setting (Ravenloft, Golarion, WH40K, Traveller's Third Imperium, etc.) vs. a setting from a series of books, games, tv show, whatever? And do you feel you and your group have had more fun playing common systems (d20 stuff, Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Savage Worlds) or have you had more fun playing around with more niche or fanmade systems? Or have you noticed no difference whatsoever? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, since I realized that despite like 5 years of my group going all in on Pathfinder, the setting, and the published adventures, the most fun I've had both running and playing was with more niche systems and settings either made by the group or from books and games.

I've never been in a group that ran a game in an established setting, per se (though one GM used the map of Khorvaire from Eberron as a base, the game wasn't set in Eberron). Nor have I ever been in a game that used a licensed setting from another medium (like any of the Star Wars tabletops). I had a friend however who basically began creating his own game setting, and he used me and a few of our mutual friends basically as playtesters. Good times.

 

[AnOminous]

I want to throw out a question to both DMs and players; how strongly do you feel about playing in a homemade setting (made by either yourself or your group) vs. an established tabletop setting (Ravenloft, Golarion, WH40K, Traveller's Third Imperium, etc.) vs. a setting from a series of books, games, tv show, whatever?

I really liked specifically sited fictional settings like Chaosium always used to do (CoC Stormbringer Ringworld and the like), but my D&D was usually a fairly generic setting. I didn't directly use Greyhawk as a setting but it was the general basis for my settings.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

As a player I don't like homebrew settings because most DMs don't know how to make things gameable. They spend weeks world building, they plop down a thousand page tome of dates that events happened, lines of succession for the throne of obscure kingdoms, how the economy and magic systems work, and none of it is relevant to the game. What's more is that many homebrew settings offer little that established settings don't. If you're setting a game in medieval Europe with orcs and goblins and dragons, just use Forgotten Realms or Golarion.

I don't think this necessarily has to be the case. Every game I've ever been in technically used a homebrew setting, but most of the time, shit that wasn't relevant to us just went unexplained unless we asked directly about it. Homebrew and original settings give the GM flexibility, and allow him not to get dragged into the autistic lore bullshit that an established setting comes with. It also allows him to ignore lore he dislikes. Medieval Europe with orcs and goblins and dragons is literally such a simple concept, that there's no real need to use Forgotten Realms or Golarion specifically.

 

[Acrid Alchemist]

I want to throw out a question to both DMs and players; how strongly do you feel about playing in a homemade setting (made by either yourself or your group) vs. an established tabletop setting (Ravenloft, Golarion, WH40K, Traveller's Third Imperium, etc.) vs. a setting from a series of books, games, tv show, whatever? And do you feel you and your group have had more fun playing common systems (d20 stuff, Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Savage Worlds) or have you had more fun playing around with more niche or fanmade systems? Or have you noticed no difference whatsoever? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, since I realized that despite like 5 years of my group going all in on Pathfinder, the setting, and the published adventures, the most fun I've had both running and playing was with more niche systems and settings either made by the group or from books and games.

I essentially always run in homebrew settings unless I'm using an already fairly loose setting like Nentir Vale. I feel like there is always some thing in established settings that either irks me personally or clashes with what I want out of the game that I'd rather just make my own settings.

For example I run the fan game Pokemon Tabletop Adventures most of the time. The couple of times I ran it in established regions and with more or less vidya and/or anime lore I felt really constrained because all the players had expectations about things like what Pokemon appears where and what Gyms appear there and such. My current game I sat down with the group and did a like Session 0, or I guess Session -1 since it was even before character creation, where together we plotted out the major beats of our custom region but still left more than enough wiggle room to surprise the group and it feels just so much better when I'm sitting down to do session prep.

That said me and my group do really like Savage Worlds and its our go to when we aren't playing very niche and weird settings like Pokemon that would be too much work to bend SW to or otherwise not translate well to the style SW plays well.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

As a player I don't like homebrew settings because most DMs don't know how to make things gameable. They spend weeks world building, they plop down a thousand page tome of dates that events happened, lines of succession for the throne of obscure kingdoms, how the economy and magic systems work, and none of it is relevant to the game. What's more is that many homebrew settings offer little that established settings don't. If you're setting a game in medieval Europe with orcs and goblins and dragons, just use Forgotten Realms or Golarion.

The weeks world building thing was always weird to me when someone whips out a homebrew setting. I usually just toss out a vague description of the area the players are in, a general description of what the setting is like and what they're doing. Most importantly I tell everyone that if there's some place they want to be from, or some idea they want to explore as their character let me know and we'll work on it. I usually add, "no bullshit" to the end of that.

I've sort of done that with every campaign I've ran for years except that every new one takes place about 50 years later from the last one and in an entirely different place. New group of players? Great, that part of the world can be basic or at the non-bullshit whims of the players. Same group as before? Also great, maybe you learned from an NPC you really like, worship a the god created by the previous party of asshole wizards, or be a group of sadistic elves scared because that same party of asshole wizards released a death plague on your homeland (which is where I'm at currently). Make up something new too, no bullshit.

I've also just completely tossed the reins to other people at times. Ones who liked the previous game and what they've built to want to see where it goes. That adds to it too. I was one of those asshole wizards after all.

It's kind of rare experience, I've been revisiting the same world off and on for at least 15 years, but now if I decide to run for an entirely new group for someone who doesn't know about it there's still a part of it that can be familiar, but I can answer one hell of a knowledge check.

Next game is probably going to look something like Dying Earth... with really fucked up elves... and more hags.

 

[Kirtto]

In the credits at the beginning of the book, Pondsmith is listed last and credited with "spiritual guidance."

"Spiritual guidance" is the reverential/polite way to say he wasn't involved at all outside of maybe some feedback and footnotes in between his autistic anime projects, right?

 

[ZMOT]

As a player I don't like homebrew settings because most DMs don't know how to make things gameable. They spend weeks world building, they plop down a thousand page tome of dates that events happened, lines of succession for the throne of obscure kingdoms, how the economy and magic systems work, and none of it is relevant to the game.

Around 24:00 they just stopped talking about GURPS all together to talk about some random board game.

pendragon is a king arthur/"chivalric" rpg by chaosium, not a boardgame.
still not gurps tho.

 

[JJLiautaud]

pendragon is a king arthur/"chivalric" rpg by chaosium, not a boardgame.
still not gurps tho.

If anyone want to read what Pendragon is like by cool dude here's a quote from @Henr' brief little discussion

Kind of, but a lot of it is being called to battle by Uther or Arthur. (There's a very long sequence of several battles during Arthur conquest of Rome at the end of which you're stuck in Rome and have to pay your own way home). And all the big name knight go on their own adventures. Gawaine will go on the adventure of the Green Knight and it's not necessary for the player knights to get involved.

 

[Danger]

I want to throw out a question to both DMs and players; how strongly do you feel about playing in a homemade setting (made by either yourself or your group) vs. an established tabletop setting (Ravenloft, Golarion, WH40K, Traveller's Third Imperium, etc.) vs. a setting from a series of books, games, tv show, whatever? And do you feel you and your group have had more fun playing common systems (d20 stuff, Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Savage Worlds) or have you had more fun playing around with more niche or fanmade systems? Or have you noticed no difference whatsoever? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, since I realized that despite like 5 years of my group going all in on Pathfinder, the setting, and the published adventures, the most fun I've had both running and playing was with more niche systems and settings either made by the group or from books and games.

I am running a Starfinder game right now and it's my first time using a premade setting.

Before this we always used homebrew settings.

I am not sure my players have a preference, as middle aged adults I think we all are just glad to have a game at all with everyone's schedules.

As a GM I like how much flavor and variety there is built for me to work with. I still make my own outposts and planets for them sometimes, but sprinkle it with the official lore and NPCs.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

I want to throw out a question to both DMs and players; how strongly do you feel about playing in a homemade setting (made by either yourself or your group) vs. an established tabletop setting (Ravenloft, Golarion, WH40K, Traveller's Third Imperium, etc.) vs. a setting from a series of books, games, tv show, whatever? And do you feel you and your group have had more fun playing common systems (d20 stuff, Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Savage Worlds) or have you had more fun playing around with more niche or fanmade systems? Or have you noticed no difference whatsoever? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, since I realized that despite like 5 years of my group going all in on Pathfinder, the setting, and the published adventures, the most fun I've had both running and playing was with more niche systems and settings either made by the group or from books and games.

Like most GMs over the decades, I've found that the happy medium is borrowing liberally and shamelessly from sources that you know well to give you enough material to save you from floundering when the players throw you a curveball, while also freeing yourself from the strictures of canon. Most people are not especially bothered when they meet King Commodus on his Steel Throne. After a while the world will organically evolve through gameplay into something that's unique anyway, but it'll be something that the players had a hand in developing and neither you nor they will find yourselves buried in irrelevant infodumps.

 

[Atypical Dog]

Like most GMs over the decades, I've found that the happy medium is borrowing liberally and shamelessly from sources that you know well to give you enough material to save you from floundering when the players throw you a curveball, while also freeing yourself from the strictures of canon. Most people are not especially bothered when they meet King Commodus on his Steel Throne. After a while the world will organically evolve through gameplay into something that's unique anyway, but it'll be something that the players had a hand in developing and neither you nor they will find yourselves buried in irrelevant infodumps.

I'm all for this. I usually use ripped-off characters from properties that the group doesn't know about or doesn't know well to quickly populate NPC's. Since they already have a particular personality in your head, you can improvise pretty quickly, too.

 

[AnOminous]

The weeks world building thing was always weird to me when someone whips out a homebrew setting. I usually just toss out a vague description of the area the players are in, a general description of what the setting is like and what they're doing.

My general autistic obsession was creating ridiculous numbers of NPCs to be in various places, often with some motivation or goal. I had broad strokes of history that could be developed if needed, but not a hugely detailed history. I'd also have a bank of 2-3 page short scenarios so if the party decided to wander off instead of doing whatever planned mission was on the table, there would be something to do wherever they went and someone to do it with, whether it was an item retrieval or an escort mission or just some political thing to solve either diplomatically or by just killing someone.

NPCs could also be someone like a craftsman or whatever who created items (at a premium price) with some higher quality, like (nonmagical) +1 weapons (that also generally took enchantment better too).

 

[Mr. Manchester]

My general autistic obsession was creating ridiculous numbers of NPCs to be in various places, often with some motivation or goal. I had broad strokes of history that could be developed if needed, but not a hugely detailed history. I'd also have a bank of 2-3 page short scenarios so if the party decided to wander off instead of doing whatever planned mission was on the table, there would be something to do wherever they went and someone to do it with, whether it was an item retrieval or an escort mission or just some political thing to solve either diplomatically or by just killing someone.

NPCs could also be someone like a craftsman or whatever who created items (at a premium price) with some higher quality, like (nonmagical) +1 weapons (that also generally took enchantment better too).

I hear you on that one. If I get distracted by anything it's sitting down and making NPCs, maybe how they interact, maybe little things they're involved in day to to day. That's just something I've always loved doing so I don't really consider it work though.

Nice thing with NPCs is that if they never come up you just toss them somewhere else later on.