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

[Techpriest]

I'd love to just buy some Flames of War models, but no store in my area sells them currently. I've got the V3 core books, but I've heard V4 is on the way soon.

 

[Sable]

Snip

Look, until you end in a game where a team of wrestlers (well, two wrestlers and one edgelord) conquers Australatina, your ADF game is entirely insufficient.

Not really though, that's pretty neat. I mean, no-one else in your game will get the reference but it still works.

---

Anyway, someone mentioned Ravenloft a page or two ago and I've always wanted to play- is there anything that needs to be taken note of, other than not to do any deals with the shadowy whatsits in charge?

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I'd love to just buy some Flames of War models, but no store in my area sells them currently. I've got the V3 core books, but I've heard V4 is on the way soon.

Check out Miniature Market. Decent place to pick up miniatures and the shipping is pretty good. They're also cheaper than local stores usually.

For Ravenloft. Don't do anything and be prepared to say forever.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Look, until you end in a game where a team of wrestlers (well, two wrestlers and one edgelord) conquers Australatina, your ADF game is entirely insufficient.

Not really though, that's pretty neat. I mean, no-one else in your game will get the reference but it still works.

Speaking of wrestling, a fun thing my group likes to do is give our characters entrance music, usually by selecting a song that we think would be cool as their theme or is relevant to their concept.

This is Angelo DeLici's entrance music....


Frankie Valli-"Grease Is The Word"

(His alternate entrance theme is "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" by Dean Martin)

 

[Hummingbird]

Anyway, someone mentioned Ravenloft a page or two ago and I've always wanted to play- is there anything that needs to be taken note of, other than not to do any deals with the shadowy whatsits in charge?

One thing is that if you don't want your character to end up all corrupted, just watch your actions.

 

[Sable]

I figured I'd need to anyway. So long as it's not as certain as CoC san loss, I should be alright then.

 

[Hummingbird]

I figured I'd need to anyway. So long as it's not as certain as CoC san loss, I should be alright then.

Granted, one actually has a fighting chance in Ravenloft and the a number of the bad guys are in a way, just as miserable as the people they hurt. Here's something on fear, horror and madness checks as well.

 

[Lackadaisy]

Okay so I tried to run a one-off Beast game as a joke and it just devolved into everyone shitting on the setting by playing overt sociopaths with nonsensical Hungers. Like one of 'em seriously gained super special Beast powers from managing a McDonald's.

I think it was the most fun anyone's ever had with Beast.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Were they trying to go for Leviathan when they made Beast? So far I cannot find any redeeming qualities for the game.

For a Ravenloft game I like to add the corruption rules Pathfinder came out with for their Horror Adventure book, Sanity rules and addiction rules they had with their Gamesmaster book. It's a decent way to tie yourself over until 5th Edition brings out a rule book for Ravenloft, but I wouldn't really hold your breathe on that happening for awhile. You could play the Ravenloft books White Wolf brought out, but I personally wasn't a fan of those. They didn't really feel like AD&D Ravenloft to me. Not to mention 3rd Edition had horrible rules for undead. Made playing a rogue or similar class useless against them and fighters were even more boring than usual.

There's the Mutants and Masterminds Supernatural book that does an okay job with horror but I find it's best off as a one-off zombie game or Supernatural (as in the TV show) game with lower powered character like around 5 or so.

I've been meaning to see what one can do with True20 for a horror game. Rather like some of the rules I've seen even some parts of Blue Rose which I've seen some people haven't been a fan of.

 

[krautkid]

I'd argue you can use the Curse of Strahd 5th Ed has a jumping off point for making your own Ravenloft campaign. If you pay attention to the story style / NPC's, they're fairly formulaic (but good imo) then it's easy enough to kinda adapt them and add in your own madness / horror rules.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I would agree, but where's the rules for such a campaign? When WotC brought out their Ravenloft adventure we had the Hero's of Horror book and Unearthed Arcana. Hell we even had Call of Cthulhu for corruption and sanity rules if all your DM would allow is official WotC material.

You could maybe use Ravenloft AD&D horror/ sanity rules as 5th Edition wanted to be a mix between old school and new school.

 

[Hummingbird]

For a Ravenloft game I like to add the corruption rules Pathfinder came out with for their Horror Adventure book, Sanity rules and addiction rules they had with their Gamesmaster book. It's a decent way to tie yourself over until 5th Edition brings out a rule book for Ravenloft, but I wouldn't really hold your breathe on that happening for awhile. You could play the Ravenloft books White Wolf brought out, but I personally wasn't a fan of those. They didn't really feel like AD&D Ravenloft to me. Not to mention 3rd Edition had horrible rules for undead. Made playing a rogue or similar class useless against them and fighters were even more boring than usual.

I enjoyed the WW stuff for it, but I'll check out the corruption and sanity rules you mentioned. Thankfully, they didn't go into any SJW stuff with the series and making Hazlik gay actually makes sense. Which makes the feminine tattoos his fellow wizards punished him with (in the older stuff) even more humiliating. (He was framed for attempted rape of another man and his rivals needed an excuse to get rid of him.) I was lucky enough to DM a campagin and I used a mix of the old stuff for adventure ideas and one of the adventures in Dungeon magazine for it.

 

[krautkid]

Oh yeah. I kinda forget people do like rules. I'm such a rules-lite kinda person when I homebrew that I don't usually think about it and just go with what feels right but yeah, like you said, mix a few together to get the right balance of what you want.

I do hope the success of Curse of Strahd means they'll do a whole 5th Ed Ravenloft book but hey, we'll see. They did Eberron didn't they?

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Nah, early 2000's White Wolf wasn't really bad for that. 2007 and beyond White Wolf...Well just look at the people they hired for NWoD.

The Horror Adventure book has some really good rules for corruption where you're slowly turned into another creature until you finally lose control of your character and it turns into an NPC. Paizo's sanity rules are a bit basic, but it can work. I prefer the work they did with addiction. You also have Villain Codex book for more rules on evil characters. Monster Codex for at least the Vampire stuff. It's too bad they only have Geb and Ustalav countries to really do a good horror campaign in.

Tome of Horrors from Frog God Games has the N’gathau race which are great to use for a Hellraizer campaign. Tome of Horrors also gets used a lot for Paizo's Adventure Paths.

And yes, Eberron got an update for 5th Edition, I haven't checked it out yet. I stopped paying attention after Alpha playtest.

 

[Hummingbird]

And yes, Eberron got an update for 5th Edition, I haven't checked it out yet. I stopped paying attention after Alpha playtest.

Gotta love the Warforged. It would be fun to play a rouge named Bender.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I've seen so many companies try and do a Warforged like race and none have done a good job of it besides WotC. Kobald Press has their Gearforge and they can come close. Onyx Path & Nocturnal Publishing has the Hollow Legionnaires which is interesting but not a half-construct in their Scarred Lands book.

Edit:
My bad, sorry. Hollow Legionnaires are half-constructs. Totally missed that.

I enjoyed the WW stuff for it, but I'll check out the corruption and sanity rules you mentioned. Thankfully, they didn't go into any SJW stuff with the series and making Hazlik gay actually makes sense. Which makes the feminine tattoos his fellow wizards punished him with (in the older stuff) even more humiliating. (He was framed for attempted rape of another man and his rivals needed an excuse to get rid of him.) I was lucky enough to DM a campagin and I used a mix of the old stuff for adventure ideas and one of the adventures in Dungeon magazine for it.

Sorry for the double post. I forgot to mention. There's also Mythic rules you can use for Strahd and the Mythic Vampire progression seen in Mythic Adventure. There's also the Mythic Lich rules for Azalin Rex. For someone like Lord Soth, there's the Grave Knight template.

 

[Syaoran Li]

I love OSR gaming and I am currently working on an OSR campaign heavily inspired by Ravenloft and the Castlevania video games that uses Basic Fantasy for the core rules.

I also want to write a joke OSR retro-clone adaptation of Black Tokyo titled "Hentai & Horrors" as an April Fool's joke. Not sure if I want to use AD&D or OD&D as the base for the game though.

As intentionally terrible as Hentai & Horrors is, I can probably guarantee it contains less spelling and grammatical errors than Black Tokyo and is probably better organized too.

It'd be the kind of game that wouldn't be fun to actually play, but would be lulzy to read.

 

[Sable]

They once tried running a game of some magical girl thing on a forum I was once on. In character creation, if I remember correctly you had a wish (which was granted) and a dream, which was the long term goal of the character. I'm not sure what the system was, but it was pretty silly (I'm probably not remembering correctly, I only found out long after the fact)

A grognard-esque friend of mine (who is the kind of person who's great to play with by virtue of being creatively evil, or creatively creative) chose his wish to be that everyone's dream be granted, throwing everything off

He's one of the few DM's I've had who's done DMPC's right. They were deliberately not proactive about things, which meant the party was the one making most of the decisions, and they were a healer (which the party lacked). That said, they were completely unable to stop the monk from leaping down a several-story pit and landing next to a gelatinous cube, but that's another story.

That's a pretty low standard of good for a DMPC, but there's too many people making OP spotlight stealers.

 

[Hummingbird]

Has anyone heard of the Maid RPG? A dickish side of me would love to run that with some unsupecting otaku and make the Master a cross between Gregory House and sociopathic Bunsen Honeydew.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I have, though there's few RPG's I haven't heard of. I even have a The Witcher RPG and some Polish RPG I'd love to play but my Polish is pretty shite now days. (I think it's Polish)