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- Dec 17, 2017
Look on the plus side. As long as you stay away from 5th Edition and PF2e, you’ll filter out all the CRitters.
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
- Thread starter Surtur
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- Dec 28, 2014
That would be a really hardcore way to play Paranoia.
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- Aug 6, 2019
90% of OSR twitter is younger millenial and zoomer nogames.
I stopped listening to them when an OSR guy tried to call me a liar for saying there was a few books for a Diablo 2 campaign. They’re terminally online nogames.
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- Apr 13, 2021
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- Aug 6, 2019
Yeah, that’s the set. Here’s more on it but it’s definitely a thing that happened prior to 3e.
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- Mar 13, 2024
Ah, my bad. I've been a forever DM back in the day if it was only a few games, and a shit GM at that, so I rather look to play.
Not sure if I'm close to any game stores but I haven't check in about 2 years, and I'll be damned if I'm going to look for randoms to play with online, I'll get either faggots, furries, furfags, or some other degenerates. "No, I don't want to enter your 'magical realm', what are you doing to that poor troll?."
I've heard stories, not many people want to branch out and try new things since they're either intimidated new things or intimidated by anything more complex than 5e. Human nature is either curiosity or "I'm not touching that with a 39 and a half foot pole." If I find someone willing to try new things and it's a (complete) degenerate I'm keeping that person in touch if it kills me.
I very much appreciate your advise, I guess I'm just looking for that kick in the ass to get going at this point. Also, scheduling, cancer on a good day.
For something called Old School Renaissance there's a lot of zoomers in it. Then again, the term "Renaissance" is enough of a give away that it's going to be infested with them.
Morethanabitfoolish
Sick of politics, time to join the anime posters.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2021
My sympathies. I still have some functional games on Rpol but those are dwindling fast. You might have better luck with doing similar hobbies like board gaming and finding people able to act as functional humans in other areas who are also willing to do RPGs.
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
I'm on that same boat since I started to pay less and less attention to new releases around/after mordekainen's tome of foes dropped, I was busy at the time and when I finally got some free time to myself I only skimmed it and didn't find it as interesting as volo's.
I did try to read Tasha's since I was excited about a new book with warlock and monk options but I found the comments by Tasha to be off, they were really unfunny and nothing the little comments in Volo's guide to monsters, biggest personal annoyance with that book was making the optional rule "assign racial ability score bonuses as you please" into the norm, felt that removed a ton of identity from races.
By the time Fizban's treasury of dragons came out I gave up on reading any of the fluff text, went straight for the classes/spells and to my disappointment the monk subclass had been nerfed for no reason and the spells were really poorly balanced. Lastly I have no idea when monsters of the multiverse came out and had zero interest in reading, only good thing out of that book (which I am aware of) is the update to Genasi which was much needed.
As for the system itself I think 5e is fine despite all the bitching about it and my personal gripes, it gets the job done. I believe it's sad that all of the opportunities the team had to fix issues with the system (the many ranger reworks, downtime and crafing rules in xtg, etc) were squandered, one d&d being specially baffling since it seems to be such a minor update which fixes none of the issues that matter.
Nowadays am trying to get a proper PF2e game going, ran a few one shots and short campaigns and so far I like the system.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
A question came up at the table leather armour, and I was told leather armour and studded leather armour were never a thing in real life. I looked it up on google and got no results. So I asked the HEMA guy and he said leather armour and studded leather armour were never a thing in real life. The closest you got is gambesons. I struggle to believe this is the case, so I thought I'd ask the council of Kiwis.
A while ago I mentioned I cut random encounters from PF2 because they were trivial for the over leveled players. Now I'm running into another problem where they're spamming 10 minute heals between combats. I'm thinking of grabbing some monsters from late game and having them be random encounters, or removing xp from random encounters so they can't grind the easy ones. I don't want to cripple the downtime medical skills because the player built his character as a low-magic healer, but full heals for sitting in the corner is too much in the other direction.
One of my players loves PF2 despite his sub optimal build and still failing to grasp the specifics of the action economy and wants another PF2 campaign after this. My attempts porting other adventures to PF2 have been a disaster. However, aside from Abomination Vaults, I don't know any campaigns that are good. I'm especially after something with a megadungeon or hexcrawl theme. I loved the concept of the circus campaign, but the wokeshit put me off. I also want to avoid adventures with oilcat games if possible.
However, I did run a funnel as a one shot using knave and it went brilliantly. So I don't know.
A while ago I mentioned I cut random encounters from PF2 because they were trivial for the over leveled players. Now I'm running into another problem where they're spamming 10 minute heals between combats. I'm thinking of grabbing some monsters from late game and having them be random encounters, or removing xp from random encounters so they can't grind the easy ones. I don't want to cripple the downtime medical skills because the player built his character as a low-magic healer, but full heals for sitting in the corner is too much in the other direction.
One of my players loves PF2 despite his sub optimal build and still failing to grasp the specifics of the action economy and wants another PF2 campaign after this. My attempts porting other adventures to PF2 have been a disaster. However, aside from Abomination Vaults, I don't know any campaigns that are good. I'm especially after something with a megadungeon or hexcrawl theme. I loved the concept of the circus campaign, but the wokeshit put me off. I also want to avoid adventures with oilcat games if possible.
I'm skeptical about many OSR claims. Things like character meatgrinders and dying from a single unlucky roll sound bad to me.
However, I did run a funnel as a one shot using knave and it went brilliantly. So I don't know.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Leather in medieval times was expensive and usually reserved for things like footwear, work aprons and whatnot. I'm sure you could make a set of leather armor at the time if you had enough money, but the padded lining underneath would probably do a better job of stopping incoming attacks than the thin shell of hardened leather on top of it. Really, the leather would be protecting the layered fabric, and the fabric would be protecting you.
So yeah, gambesons of multiple grades/thicknesses (which was also worn under other kinds of armor) would be the closest realistic alternative for D&D leather armor.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2019
Studded leather didn't exist, because if you think about it for a few seconds you'll realise it's retarded. Most likely explanation I've seen is someone saw pictures of Brigandine and didn't understand what it actually was (the "studs" are rivets holding a layer of metal, which is the primary armouring material, on the inside)
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- Sep 3, 2014
Leather armor actually did exist and wasn't that much more expensive than gambeson honestly. It was mainly used for the chestplates, shields, and helmets. The word cuirass is legitimately from the term "hide/leather" in older french dialects, meaning that the boiled leather mainly was used as a way to make chest protection. Same with helmets and shields, which do well with not needing to flex. That'd be where you'd have your thicker boiled leather stuff.
You likely used thin layers of the stuff on gambeson for limbs, usually to add a bit of protection and/or for a more uniform or aesthetic look. Leather often was used as a veneer for plate armor for example.
As for studded? Reminder that rule of cool is a thing and the idea is likely it's a simplification of Brigandine. Definitely didn't exist like the RPG suggests tho.
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- Dec 18, 2019
This talk about OSR opened my eyes, I believed most of the claims that crows made about such games/systems being meatgrinders and not really heroic.
What Fatr said makes a lot of sense since without internet you likely had to go with whatever you understood from the books you had and at best you would get rule clarifications from magazines or (if you were lucky) conventions. Even with the current ease of access to rules, materials and discussions each table will be different with their own houserules, banned books and homebrew, so again makes sense tables were much of the same back then.
On a similar vein: The bits about heroic fantasy and not killing characters previously discussed, videos on youtube about "emergent story", how gygax made greyhawk made me realise I did many of those things and never considered them special, in fact for a long time I thought I was doing things the wrong way since I didn't plan the story from start to finish, fleshed out two dozen npcs and a large etc that some of my DMs, pretentious fa/tg/uys and even more pretentious, fart huffing on discord peddled. Now don't get me wrong I think there is a place for campaigns with grand, epic narratives but it is not for all DMs/players and a lot of times chasing such a thing comes at the expense of everything else. Also those same types seem to scoff at simplicity and feel the need to overcomplicate what could otherwise be a simple element. For example someome went on a long tirade about original sin 2's magic resource being called Source, claiming it was too generic.
Likewise I think there is a place and audiencr for "meat grinders" and brutal games but trying to sell it or force it as the one true D&D experiemce is retarded.
What Fatr said makes a lot of sense since without internet you likely had to go with whatever you understood from the books you had and at best you would get rule clarifications from magazines or (if you were lucky) conventions. Even with the current ease of access to rules, materials and discussions each table will be different with their own houserules, banned books and homebrew, so again makes sense tables were much of the same back then.
On a similar vein: The bits about heroic fantasy and not killing characters previously discussed, videos on youtube about "emergent story", how gygax made greyhawk made me realise I did many of those things and never considered them special, in fact for a long time I thought I was doing things the wrong way since I didn't plan the story from start to finish, fleshed out two dozen npcs and a large etc that some of my DMs, pretentious fa/tg/uys and even more pretentious, fart huffing on discord peddled. Now don't get me wrong I think there is a place for campaigns with grand, epic narratives but it is not for all DMs/players and a lot of times chasing such a thing comes at the expense of everything else. Also those same types seem to scoff at simplicity and feel the need to overcomplicate what could otherwise be a simple element. For example someome went on a long tirade about original sin 2's magic resource being called Source, claiming it was too generic.
Likewise I think there is a place and audiencr for "meat grinders" and brutal games but trying to sell it or force it as the one true D&D experiemce is retarded.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
I think the ideal balance would be a lethal game, but one where most of the lethality can be avoided without relying on combat or saving throw luck. This is kind of a wooly concept because I admit I didn't get to play all that much AD&D before 3e bulldozed through back in the early 00s, but that was my first GM's philosophy.
There were traps, there were powerful single monsters and "unfairly" large groups of weaker enemies. But for the vast majority of threats if the players were smart, paid attention to the rooms they explored, and knew when to retreat to come up with a plan, they'd come out on top with remarkably little dice rolling. The inventory management mini-game wasn't just because the game designers were complete autists (although they were), it was so players could weigh their options and know when to retreat when the rogue came back from his scouting run and told the party of the monsters two rooms over. Do we wait to see if the monsters wander off? Do we leave and come back later? Do we have enough options to deal with them quickly and quietly? Can we take on them directly without taking too much damage in return? Does the wizard have a fireball still prepared? Etc, etc.
Sure, levels 1-3 were still incredibly lethal because a single arrow from a goblin archer taking cover behind an overturned table would one-shot half the classes available, but once player characters gathered enough HP, gear and knowledge deaths became far less likely (and resurrection a lot easier). They weren't meant to be difficult to kill because they were superhuman, as all the instant kill effects in the game even at high levels made clear, but because they were experienced and well-prepared. One of the guys on my first group joked that in order to get good at AD&D, you had to be AC&C: Awfully Careful & Crafty.
Of course, that was just my first group and my first GM. I have no idea what other groups were doing at the time, and once we settled into 3e there wasn't quite as much incentive to be careful & crafty. Which most of us were fine with back then because it was just fun to be able to play an impulsive character without getting one-shot by a poison trap or a hidden kobold with a blowgun five minutes into the session.
Personally, I feel 5e wouldn't be terrible when it came to lethality if you did away with death saves and going down to 0HP meant you were either dead or so seriously wounded spontaneous healing magic couldn't get you back up. All the HP characters have in 5e, plus the three chances to just refuse to die, on top of any healing getting you back up instantly, feels like it's too much. There's rarely a reason for player characters to run away unless things went poorly from the start. Even if one or two of them went down, so long as they knew they'd win the damage race they could just get their friends back up with barely any investment in resources.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
Cuir bouilli, or boiled leather, was actually pretty common especially before things like plate.
I always preferred systems with damage to actual body parts such that even a pleb-tier orc type enemy had a chance, however small, of critting some body part, breaking a bone, cutting something off, or otherwise wrecking someone's day. It provided an incentive to seek alternatives to just mindlessly hack 'n' slashing everything, like using those stealth skills, setting traps and ambushes, or even (gasp) diplomacy.
I always found the vagueness of D&D armor odd, considering how much detail they went into in having virtually every polearm ever. (Halberd is best polearm, change my mind.)
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MISTER-CREEPMAN00
kiwifarms.net
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- Sep 14, 2023
I enjoyed this April Fools video by Notepad, it perfectly capitalized my thoughts on DnD 5e.
Jesus, D&D really is the CoD/Walmart of ttrpgs, it's miracle that anyone ever manages to get out of the massive shadow that D&D casts over.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Studded leather did exist and is more properly known as a coat of plates. Those studs are actually rivets that keep the plates where they're supposed to be. They're a less advanced form of the brigandine since the plates are typically larger and with much less overlap.
The first pic is the early type of coat of plates where it was limited to a small area, and the second pic is a more advanced version from what I'm guessing is the mid to late 1300's that covered the entire torso as protection for even commoners became increasingly affordable and even necessary. It was overall a very capable armor and should definitely be medium instead of light though.
Fun fact: kettle helmets like in the second picture were in use just about everywhere, especially among commoners, since they were relatively cheap, offered good protection against arrows and blows from above, and the wide brim kept the sun off you whenever you had to stand guard duty.
Even persisted into relatively modern times, being used to create the infamous pickelhaube as well as firemen's helmets since unlike something made of metal it acted as an insulator against the environment instead of a conductor.
From what I remember hearing when D&D was being written up there wasn't nearly as much material available in easy reach on armor as there was compared to weapons so they basically had to wing it and pull stuff from their posterior.
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2014
I still think kettle helmets look cool af. You don't see them a lot in more recent fantasy and that's a shame.
Sallets are also badass.
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- Aug 6, 2019
5e definitely is, D&D sickness is very much a real thing because people want the easy rules for 5e and don’t want to try something different. I remember people asking for a cyberpunk D&D homebrew and I’m just like nigger, shadowrun and cyberpunk are TTRPGs that exist and are cyberpunk settings. People will ask for a D&D setting in America during the current times, and I’m like the various white wolf games are perfect for that, but they want to use the 5e system.
DDBCAE CBAADCBE
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2019
D&D 5e is the only actually playable TTRPG. Not to mention the only TTRPG that you can reasonably get anyone invested in these days since other TTRPGs are so ridiculously over designed that most potential players feel immediately overwhelmed and back out.
Pathfinder is a mess with half the classes being unplayably unbalanced while the other half have been overhauled to resemble 5e to simulate balance.
Shadowrun is exclusively played by violent slobbering pedophiles.
Cyberpunk is actually too interesting and based for anyone to actually be interested in playing it once they see the extensive rules.
5e is superior and the sooner you can come to terms with that the sooner you can start feeling even the smallest hint of self respect return to your body.