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

[Fuck Bankers]

I might be trying to run a fallout game for a different group that isn't anyone on the farms. I'm wanting to make it Midwest so I'm wanting ideas for factions to throw in there with none of the standard stuff that's been done to death as so far I'm thinking a faction of catholics out of Cincinnati going to have the claims of a pope out of it.

What system? Fallout 5e conversion, the fallout ttrpg, gurps, some type of basic roleplay homebrew, gammaworld? I've always wanted to run a fallout campaign but I've never felt like any one of these would feel right without a lot of work. Let alone building the sandbox. The ideas in this thread were absolute fucking gold and I will rip them off one day

 

[Aib Ld]

When is the time to deliver a death to a player character or slap a heavy punishment like dismembered limb, slavery, or anything?

 

[Fuck Bankers]

When is the time to deliver a death to a player character or slap a heavy punishment like dismembered limb, slavery, or anything?

When they fail in a deadly encounter. to have opertunity there must be danger, or crisis.

 

[Kyria the Great]

What system? Fallout 5e conversion, the fallout ttrpg, gurps, some type of basic roleplay homebrew, gammaworld? I've always wanted to run a fallout campaign but I've never felt like any one of these would feel right without a lot of work. Let alone building the sandbox. The ideas in this thread were absolute fucking gold and I will rip them off one day

The modiphus 2d20 one myself as I like many suggestions but I might go for a combo of crazy but logical. One such idea I have in general is that the setting is going to have a mix of heavily industrial rust with rural borderline Luddite sensibilities. Though I'm likely to make Detroit a destroyed but holy place with the Cult of the Motor being a major cult with more tech aligned tribals.

Punishment in MoTown will be to be to be enslaved to work in the dangerous lines or to scavenge parts. Death penalties for the Cult of the Motor are doled out by draw and quartering by vehicles or just dragged to death.

Another is the major trade hub of New Novgarad, coming from Soviet Immigrants who settled in the Midwest during the Sino- American war. I think I remember that the Soviets might have been invaded through Manchurian parts of Siberia. They were actually one of the folks who bought into the national revival/ religious movement called The Heartland.

 

[The Ugly One]

When is the time to deliver a death to a player character

When they run out of hit points and fail whatever the system's death test is.

or slap a heavy punishment like dismembered limb, slavery, or anything?

Dismemberment works in systems where starting over at low level isn't a campaign-ender. I often do slavery or prison instead of TPKs...but now the "good ending" is out of reach.

 

[2LtMashengo]

3.5 MM - For lore, you get just three short paragraphs about devils. I think it's a few more words than 3.0, but there's not much. As for the Pit Fiend itself?

Wizards jewing us on the word count. Pozzo gave pit fiends a 500 word essay in the bestiary.

 

[D. Pedro II]

I have extremely mixed feelings on the keywords.
On one hand, it is extremely useful for figuring out "does this work and does this apply?; you get an AOO if the enemy uses a power with the ranged keyword in a square you threaten. Your feats apply to powers with the Melee keyword. It is a simple, straight forward, extensible system.

On the other hand it is spergy and moderately unsatisfying to play because of how clinical it is.

I get what you are saying, but personally I appreciate it. I think it helps alot having a separation of game rules with game lore and rp. It helps when you separate the more rules of the system in a more clinical format to help with adjusting the combat and the likes of it. I guess it helps I play alot of TCG games, where keywords are a god send.

in a word, cards.
They released packs of power cards for the 4e core classes which were hideously overpriced. There was some other stuff they released too that I don't remember.

Color me surprised, WOTC pulling a WOTC, but even more retarded. Guess they can't help themselves.

You won't play card games, but it uses the Deck as a RNG generator. Events in the Abbey can unfold VASTLY differently. So you draw out the deck, and depending on what cards you draw in what order various events might happen, not happen, or happen in different ways.

So without spoilering too much, in MaGA the cards of the Deck of Many Things were spread out over the abbey. These are acquired by various NPCs and the players will collect them over the course of the adventure. The majority of these cards can be obtained from the NPCs without fighting (or at least not fighting the NPC that possesses them). Which NPCs have which Cards is also determined by the random draw.

In battle, the players can draw from their partial deck and the card will produce an effect on the battlefield. When they start combat with an NPC with a card, the NPC's card (or one if they have multiple) will activate. Basically you can run the module dozens of times and it'll never be the exact same.

Now this is a really cool setting and theme to play around! Whenevr I run another 4e campaign, I will probably use this one!

Same for 4e's economy.
There was a good blog post I read about instead of having the party track gold, to instead issue them "money points" equal in value to a magical item of their level. Consumables cost 1/8th a money point and anything with a value less than a consumable magical item of the party level can be acquired in reasonable quantities "for free".

This is actually a good idea to simply the economy of 4e. due to the sheer amount of magical items the players can get, and the crazy numbers that they can reach, this really helps. maybe I will adopt it in my tables.

The keywords made the 3.5 grogs burn with white-hot rage. Game rules, they argued, aren't supposed to be clear and unambiguous. Not in an RPG. They're supposed to be fun to read first and foremost (most of these people buy RPG books to read them, not play games). Then they got mad that the 5e rules took a more natural language approach (although still used a lot of keywords if you paid attention, up until Jeremy Crawford started being clever-silly about his Sage Advice rulings).

the more I hear about 3.5 people, the more I sense they are a little too fixated with their pet RPG system.

 

[Agent of Z.O.G.]

Due to commitment to a dumb pun I realize I'm in need of CWC map assets.

 

[Rapier Ape]

As to the Midwest Fallot game don't forget killer Walleye fish. There's also a massive rabbit and birds of prey population. Then you have pheasants. If it gets to NoDak and SoDak you 100% have to incorporate video lottery casinos for Caps in all businesses. Also close to zero sober drivers. It's not IF they're drunk. It's HOW DRUNK are they?
Buffalo could also be a hazard. As well as giga Chad snapping turtles in waterways.
Also people have to go out of their way to not use swear words. Wisconsin people will have to talk through their noses.
Make sure that Wall Drug is still standing as well. With signs in a 600 mile radius pointing you to it.

 

[Ghostse]

When is the time to deliver a death to a player character or slap a heavy punishment like dismembered limb, slavery, or anything?

At character creation. Assert your dominance early.

When they fail in a deadly encounter. to have opertunity there must be danger, or crisis.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FRQNcFcyF1c

And when they piss you off.
Also randomly, just to keep them on their toes.

Now this is a really cool setting and theme to play around! Whenevr I run another 4e campaign, I will probably use this one!

Its a very open sandbox.
The only real weakpoint of the module I discovered as written there is sometimes rather weak incentive for the party to continue to venure into the ruins of Gardmore and engage some of the factions, and in some events very poor progression down the quest chain.

I've only run it twice, and the last time the way the party progressed through all the main storylines in basically round-robin. So instead of completing one and getting hints about needing to complete the others, they would be completing one, and just due to how they decided to progress the module stumble smack into a hook for another storyline's advancement. And players being players.... "Oh shiny! Lets chase that!".
So there were a couple of moments where all the progression hook locatiosn were deep into the Abbey - and worse, in places they had already visited but at the time had nothing going on - but the party was back in he start location. fortunately they were interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons and not Obstinate Shitty Munchkins.

But you might want to at least have something in your back pocket to herd the party back into the ruined Abbey.

I get what you are saying, but personally I appreciate it. I think it helps alot having a separation of game rules with game lore and rp. It helps when you separate the more rules of the system in a more clinical format to help with adjusting the combat and the likes of it. I guess it helps I play alot of TCG games, where keywords are a god send.

I think the word I was looking for was 'restrictiveness'. Which also might be stucking out in my mind a bit more because they last 4e campaign I ran had a bunch of PF1e grogs and every session for like 2 years I had to explain base shit like "no, that doesn't work in 4e, this isn't PF. Standing up just consumes a full move action, it doesn't provoke AoO", "No you can't just grapple the mage and have them not cast. If you'd have asked about your clever plan I'd have warned you. Its far too fucking late now." so I had to be very anal on RAW or they got pissy if I let something slide to keep play moving and then would be all "but last time you...".
I didn't have any of that issue with the other 4e games I ran.

I very much prefer the exactness and its "Only one bonus per source" to the end result of munchkinning that 3.5/PF permits, and I prefer when they they expose it to the player/make it a part of the system as opposed to the quiet keywording they do for 5e.

Part of the issue I think is also 4e choses some inopportune keywords due to their struggle to maintain a level of backwards compatibility with earlier D&D systems.

But despite the rigidity of the subsystem it still is very much a shut up and play mindset in the design. You can counter enemy abilities but you can't hard-lock them. And they have a hard time hard-locking you back.

Also you mentioning the CCG game experience making you enjoy the very exacting rules makes sense and now makes me wonder if instead of BX and 5e if I shouldn't have tried 4e at the card shop.

the more I hear about 3.5 people, the more I sense they are a little too fixated with their pet RPG system.

If you think 3.5 holdouts are bad, PF1e holdouts are even worse in my experience.
3.5 people just don't seem to want to learn another system because 3.5 is what they've played for 20 years, PF1e hold outs don't want to learn another system because they learned all the 'cheat codes' and don't want to play a system where they can't use their favorite Konami code to be overpowered.
They also really hate 4e because they can't just select Wizard or Sorcerer and break the game.

But as that's what I cut my teeth on, I have a very big soft spot for 3.5 and I'll say part of the appeal of the system is how flexible and open it is. the 3.5 d20 system can really model just about anything. (now, how WELL it models that is another question....)

For me, I really like running B/X now but the system is too abstract/too narrative in places. I also really like 4e but it can sometimes be a little too algorithmic. 3.5 sits in a good middle between the two. but there is so much else that is broken about the system re: skill point autism that is technically fixable but by the time you've fixed it you've nearly made a whole new system.

5e has never clicked with me. I actually steal a lot from it a fair bit (Advantage, Fear) but something about the way they put it together I just didn't like and felt like there was another system that would run the sort of game I wanted to run better.

I never actually put too much thought into that before but i didnt hate 4e
I didn't liked it but it didnt caused the anger and annoyance that 5e cased.
Like 4e tried to do its own thing in a way and i could respect that even if i didnt cared for it.
5e felt like skinwalker of 3.5 that also thinks you are a retard who cant add 4 to a number.

Mad soyjak: Character Options
Excited soyjak: Subclass

 

[The Ugly One]

If you think 3.5 holdouts are bad, PF1e holdouts are even worse in my experience.
3.5 people just don't seem to want to learn another system because 3.5 is what they've played for 20 years, PF1e hold outs don't want to learn another system because they learned all the 'cheat codes' and don't want to play a system where they can't use their favorite Konami code to be overpowered.

The worst 3.5 holdouts are the ones who have never played any TSR-era D&D at all and think a whole bunch of 3.5-isms are foundational D&D, like they have no idea that feat chains, lego-style multiclassing, prestige classes, and so on are 3rd and only 3rd. They tend to get the most virulently angry about the differences between 3.5 and 5e.

 

[Aib Ld]

I often do slavery or prison instead of TPKs...but now the "good ending" is out of reach.

I treat prison and such under 'death' since the character is gone for a long time, absolutely no way anyone else in the group is waiting one month since that gives the evil villain of the campaign an easy way to reach whatever goals he has without any resistance. but yes, the good ending will be out of reach too.

Haven't done a TPK yet. I know that is mostly a campaign-ender, but I haven't seen the type where people still roll new characters but the path ahead will be much harder like Delta Green having agents in reserve to keep investigations in check in-universe.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

My big plan for a TPK is to just run the party in the afterlife, which in my current game is for 5 awful people who are damned anyway. I want it as an opportunity for them crawl their way out of hell (which would scare the shit out of everyone) or to never have to run this god damn pathfinder game ever again. @Ghostse wasn't kidding about that Konomi code bullshit.

 

[LovisXVI]

Due to commitment to a dumb pun I realize I'm in need of CWC map assets.

Take a regular map and run it through an LLM or other generative algorithm to give it a low-quality marker illustration look. That should do the job.

 

[AnOminous]

The keywords made the 3.5 grogs burn with white-hot rage.

You can't be a 3.5 grog. Anything past 2 and you are just a nunigger.

 

[Judge Dredd]

"2e was great because of the deep, rich Planescape setting. Every edition after was disappointing."
Oh, so tell me about your 1990s Planescape campaign, and how your table reacted to 3rd edition.
"Oh, I didn't play D&D in the 1990s, I was too little, and I never really played a Planescape campaign, but I hope to some day."

In fact, I've noticed the people with the strongest opinions play RPGs the least.

Quoted for fucking truth.

One I've repeated often in this thread and outside of it is the condemntion of 4e and 5e for "freakshit" and how anything that isn't a pigfarmer meat grinder and/or straight tolkien ruins the game, only to turn around and praise Planescape and Dark Sun with their wacky races like minotaurs and psionic dwarves.

Or go on lengthy tirades about OP or under powered builds ("Dragonborn are crippled. Monks are useless. Any campaign can be trivialized by making a lvl 3 druid and turning into a t-rex. Mages in full plate with a 1 lvl fighter dip.") even though none of this happens in RL.

You can't be a 3.5 grog. Anything past 2 and you are just a nunigger.

In video games, it's easy to tell when someone was born by what generation of consoles they consider too primitive to go back to. DnD is kind of the same. Like how post OGL, I'm seeing a lot of "4e was good actually" type content, whereas previously 4e was widely considered shit.

 

[Paradox Mystic]

When is the time to deliver a death to a player character or slap a heavy punishment like dismembered limb, slavery, or anything?

Besides the mechanical consideration there is also the aspect of does it seem fair if you were the player getting punished with death or significant penalty to the character? For example if a campaign is based around slowly building power until they can fight the big bad evil red dragon then it's logically they'd die if they try to speedrun finding and fighting the dragon at level 1.

Or go on lengthy tirades about OP or under powered builds ("Dragonborn are crippled. Monks are useless. Any campaign can be trivialized by making a lvl 3 druid and turning into a t-rex. Mages in full plate with a 1 lvl fighter dip.") even though none of this happens in RL.

Thankfully a lot of those concepts can be shut down when people actually suggest implementing them before the game starts by the DM simply saying "That idea doesn't fit this campaign, do you have any other character ideas?" After potentially getting a few ideas shot down they'll move on to bother some other table. Also it goes well with keeping a limit to how many times someone can switch their character like a rule where you can only try three different concepts unless your character dies or otherwise becomes unplayable (which is determined only by the DM)

 

[Judge Dredd]

Thankfully a lot of those concepts can be shut down when people actually suggest implementing them before the game starts by the DM simply saying "That idea doesn't fit this campaign, do you have any other character ideas?"

You don't even need to do that.

The OP builds never pan out. Either you need to be high level for them to work, by which point the PCs should be way more powerful than orcs and goblins. eg. A fighter that can do 18 attacks in a turn is a moment of cool that feels right for a level 20 party that's calling down meteor showers on a regular basis. Or they simply don't work like that. The druid t-rex exploit iirc doesn't work like people says it does.

And even if they do find an OP build that works, what do they really get? An extra 5-10% chance to hit? +2 more damage than average? More healing in a game with too many defensive options? And even then, OP builds tend to be very one-note. My go-to example is turning into a t-rex is powerful, and cool, but it's not going to help in a murder mystery, or a cave, or a wizard turns up (t-rex has low mental scores).

It goes back to @The Ugly One 's point. These people don't play DnD. These builds are theory crafted assuming an empty arena vs common foes like orcs and dragons.


As for the others I mentioned. Dragonborn are fine. Monks are often MVP in games I've seen them. The only shit, underpowered class is Ranger, which is weak and not fun to play.

 

[AnOminous]

In video games, it's easy to tell when someone was born by what generation of consoles they consider too primitive to go back to. DnD is kind of the same. Like how post OGL, I'm seeing a lot of "4e was good actually" type content, whereas previously 4e was widely considered shit.

Nunigger detected.

 

[Adamska]

The only real weakpoint of the module I discovered as written there is sometimes rather weak incentive for the party to continue to venure into the ruins of Gardmore and engage some of the factions, and in some events very poor progression down the quest chain.

To be blunt I think it relying heavily on the Deck of Many Things in general just makes it a weak module in general in my eyes. That RNG sounds really neat until the proliferation of bad RNG results culls the game early.

It just sounds like an annoying gimmick that is used as a crutch to me personally. Well that and reee cards *autistic shrieking*, but that's besides the point.

If you think 3.5 holdouts are bad, PF1e holdouts are even worse in my experience.
3.5 people just don't seem to want to learn another system because 3.5 is what they've played for 20 years, PF1e hold outs don't want to learn another system because they learned all the 'cheat codes' and don't want to play a system where they can't use their favorite Konami code to be overpowered.

And 5e makes them look reasonable.

You can get a 3.5e grog to step down and try different systems with a bit of coaxing; my group had one and shorter shitpost games worked decently well in getting them willing to try other things. Modiphius (Star Trek was the key) then to PF1e, then to a few d6 systems. It's more than doable. They just usually don't see a point because most TTRPGs they'd be interested in tend to just be fantasy anyways, so like what's the point in shifting to something else when most of it's the same, the group knows how 3.5 works fine, and the alternatives tend to have less options?

Never had a PF1e guy like that, but then that culture couldn't really take hold due to our powergamer of the group being very willing and actually happy with helping others keep up, including the DM, on going hardcore on being the most broken fuck they can with the build they want to be. You can't powergame and flex if everyone's playing broken builds. It also allows me to be a ruthless little fucker as a DM too; they almost always can survive me shooting to kill.

The closest I know still was very willing to play other systems though.

5e fuckers will actively refuse to take suggestions and would rather reinvent whole games using a jankier d20 build than to just try something fucking new. I've never seen people able to get them to really try anything new at all, which is damning.

This is currently biting Wizards, since they do not want to move from 5e to DnDone. Yeah. the dnd 2024 books sold decently well, but more like 4e than 5e, which is making them not very happy given their shittastic finances.