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

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Imperial Citizen said:
Dice Scum is going to dive into one of the worst rpgs ever made. It's time to review World of Synnibarr!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5cwAHeV6nWg
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They should also review the Brownie recipe found in HYBRID.

Be warned! it has too much sugar!!!

NOTE that that the sugar in my brownie recipe is NOT good for you is a disclaimer, since excess sugar is harmful, bad as any illegal drug out there, but why sugar is legal (which) is a mystery, but NOT a complete mystery, for there is lot of corruption in government, which is bribed by the sugar industry to keep it legal; &, making of brownies can be diluted with some or lots of extra flour.
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acell_briefing_blur.jpg

Good morning,

I'm looking for 1-4 players for a Delta Green game played on Friday or Saturday afternoons PST (UTC-7). The game will be played on FoundryVTT with some other content in Discord.

Contact me point-to-point or reply in this thread for more information.
 
AnOminous said:
The only remotely furry PCs I ever allowed were Kzinti in Ringworld, and nobody actually played one. At least not as a recurring PC.
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Actually, I played in a Chaosium Ringworld TTRPG campaign back in the 80s. There was one player that loved the books and Kzinti. So he played one.

We played a prank on the Kzinti when he was sleeping and color his fur pink, put bright colored ribbon in the fur. Made him not look like the proud warrior he was. Player was pissed.

This player also trooned out a couple of decades later. I posted in the loosing friends to troons thread a few years back.
 
Do you guys have any advice for running combat without the round based element?

Asking because I'm setting up a discord game since people want to play but can't line up schedules. It's pretty clear that turn based combat where people are doing d4 damage isn't going to work. At the same time, a single check determining a win-lose seems swingy and harsh.



An unrelated rant. I like playing. I'm usually a forever DM, but not being able to ban people or tell people to knock it off is frustrating. I might be a control freak.

I was playing in a one shot. Groundhog day scenario.

The idea was simple. The party goes around getting intel on what happens when, and then sets about to have a perfect loop. I'm sure you know how these go. The party jumps through hoops to learn something, next loop they already have that information. They can use knowledge of traps and monster weaknesses to their advantage.

The most vocal player wouldn't accept the whole "everything resets" premise. If an event could lead to a persons death, they would try to save them every. single. loop.

A fictional, simplified example. Let's say NPC Ghostse drowns at the lake due to a leaky boat. Next loop we should check location B, C, D, and E for intel and see what's going on there, right? Or maybe try to intercept Ghostse before he got into the boat, or repair or scuttle the boat before he gets in it? Instead, Mr Vocal would insist we row out to the late and wait for Ghostse so we could pull him out the water. Every. Single. Time.

If I was DMing, I would start to ignore his demands and choose another player to decide what the party does, but the DM capitulated every time. Eventually the DM made it so that certain changes were permanent. I'm not so sure this was intended.
 
Judge Dredd said:
Do you guys have any advice for running combat without the round based element?
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Any particular system? You could yoink skill challenges from 4E like @EleventySeven if you want everyone to participate, while avoiding a 10 round combat. X amount of successes, with a set of specified skills, before Y failures. Players might be able to argue for the use of a different skill. They're intended for non-combat encounters, but if you're willing to use skill checks for combat to begin with, it's a fine enough solution.
 
Judge Dredd said:
An unrelated rant. I like playing. I'm usually a forever DM, but not being able to ban people or tell people to knock it off is frustrating. I might be a control freak.

I was playing in a one shot. Groundhog day scenario.

The idea was simple. The party goes around getting intel on what happens when, and then sets about to have a perfect loop. I'm sure you know how these go. The party jumps through hoops to learn something, next loop they already have that information. They can use knowledge of traps and monster weaknesses to their advantage.

The most vocal player wouldn't accept the whole "everything resets" premise. If an event could lead to a persons death, they would try to save them every. single. loop.

A fictional, simplified example. Let's say NPC Ghostse drowns at the lake due to a leaky boat. Next loop we should check location B, C, D, and E for intel and see what's going on there, right? Or maybe try to intercept Ghostse before he got into the boat, or repair or scuttle the boat before he gets in it? Instead, Mr Vocal would insist we row out to the late and wait for Ghostse so we could pull him out the water. Every. Single. Time.

If I was DMing, I would start to ignore his demands and choose another player to decide what the party does, but the DM capitulated every time. Eventually the DM made it so that certain changes were permanent. I'm not so sure this was intended.
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Player agency is important, but sometimes a DM needs to step in with an "are you sure you want to do that?" In that case, I would have subtly pointed out that the party has already done that same course of action repeatedly without changing the results. Y'know, definition of insanity and all that. I would point out there are only so many hours in a day and saving this guy from drowning in the same way every time is eating up time that could be spent learning about the loop and figuring out the solution (as well as eating up time in the session itself). I'd then ask the rest of the group if they have suggestions for something else to try.

Put another way, if the guy was having issues understanding the concept of a time loop, they might be a bit too stupid to be making the party's decisions for them.
 
Judge Dredd said:
Do you guys have any advice for running combat without the round based element?

Asking because I'm setting up a discord game since people want to play but can't line up schedules. It's pretty clear that turn based combat where people are doing d4 damage isn't going to work. At the same time, a single check determining a win-lose seems swingy and harsh.
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I am going to preface this by saying this sounds like Play-by-Post with extra steps and discord pedophiles and play-by-post never works out.

System is important, but I would do something like this:
Basically run B/X, so have the players before combat give you their general strategems of how they want to act during combat. If people don't order around their characters, DM decides what they do.
Crib a bit from the BrOSR faggots but don't go full gay; Have a set time when combat will be resolved at a set pace and anyone wanting to participate can, otherwise the GM takes the players general orders and attempts to translate them to the tactical situation.

Here's what I'd really recommand you do, which is don't play Dungeons and Dragons, play Age of Sail global commerce company. This would work well with the play-by-post's detached nature. You equip your ships, you choose your captains, then you send them out to carribbean and hope they come back and make you fabulously wealthy.

2LtMashengo said:
Any particular system? You could yoink skill challenges from 4E like @EleventySeven if you want everyone to participate, while avoiding a 10 round combat. X amount of successes, with a set of specified skills, before Y failures. Players might be able to argue for the use of a different skill. They're intended for non-combat encounters, but if you're willing to use skill checks for combat to begin with, it's a fine enough solution.
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I have worked a bit on turning 4e random-encounter combat into skill challenges to stream line exploration but didn't do it enough to refine it but it had promise. That would be find for piddle fights but i'm not sure how you'd handle actual battles that matter, at least in a manner that would translate in a satisfactory mannet.
 
Ghostse said:
I am going to preface this by saying this sounds like Play-by-Post with extra steps and discord pedophiles and play-by-post never works out.
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That's my concern as well. I have ideas for how to make it not that, but let's be honest, it is that.

satorrotas said:
system
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I was going to use a generic rules lite system like Tiny d6. Or even simplified Savage Worlds. Long lists of complex abilities and tactical grids would have to be out. Even turn based TotM doesn't work.

Savage Worlds does have a system called "quick encounters" which is what I kind of want, but it's intended to be used occasionally. The game isn't built around it. Savage Worlds also has other issues I won't bore you with, but that's the general template I was going to graft on to whatever system.

Loss being tied to a couple of bad die roll is asking for a sudden end to the campaign.

Ghostse said:
play Age of Sail global commerce company. This would work well with the play-by-post's detached nature. You equip your ships, you choose your captains, then you send them out to carribbean and hope they come back and make you fabulously wealthy.
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I didn't think of that.

That's not sarcasm. This came about when a couple of ex players started talking about a cyberpunk game I had planned years ago but never finished, and a steampunk game that also fell apart after a session. Here's me trying to figure out how to have cinematic gunfights without turn based combat, but I didn't consider changing the scope to avoid combat. Age of Sail might be too dry for my group, but I love the idea.

Something I need to sleep on. Those shitty Pathfinder campaigns people love where you build a city or run a resistance movement. I don't like them because the two modes are separated by a canyon made of saw blades so the management feels like a waste of time. I wonder if flipping them around to the PCs are running the city and NPCs are sent out to do the adventures would work?
 
Judge Dredd said:
Here's me trying to figure out how to have cinematic gunfights without turn based combat, but I didn't consider changing the scope to avoid combat.
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Boot Hill actually did this okay. Fun fact, it may have actually introduced percentile dice, one of the advantages of the Chaosium games, which overcame the limitations of d20 systems to some extent (while introducing others).

It had the aspect I liked that all PCs were doomed from birth. Hard to sell actual players on that though.

And just from Wild West legend, this was a thing in reality. You could be Billy the Kid and get shot by the next punk you met in a bar. You could be Jesse James and get shot in the back by a coward.
 
Judge Dredd said:
Something I need to sleep on. Those shitty Pathfinder campaigns people love where you build a city or run a resistance movement. I don't like them because the two modes are separated by a canyon made of saw blades so the management feels like a waste of time. I wonder if flipping them around to the PCs are running the city and NPCs are sent out to do the adventures would work?
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What, like one of those tactical management games, like X-Com or Darkest Dungeon? Eh, I dunno.

That being said, you're not wrong about PF campaigns shoehorning in useless goddamn management mechanics. Jade Regent's caravan system irritated everyone so much the GM discarded it and stuck to the encounters instead.
 
Furries have always been a percentage of the nerd population, I don't think the ratio has changed appreciably over the years. What's changed is that D&D visibly pivoted away from grimy dungeon crawls into... whatever the fuck gay vegan bistro bullshit they're doing now. I had the misfortune over the years of running across a couple players who tried to inject their furry OCdonutsteel into a game, but the other players had zero tolerance for someone wasting everyone else's time LARPing as Sharpfang Sparklefur when the rest of us wanted to hurry up and get around to stomping on goblin babies. But now that the official published D&D content is tiefling polycule prom night and the stuff you see on youtube is idiots mugging around at a camera instead of actually playing a game, that sort of player has been provided more fertile ground for their fetishes. That is the actual cause for our pain. Once WotC finishes flatlining and the youtubers quit drawing enough young viewers to keep the grift going, the hobby will be able to right itself.
 
Capsaicin Addict said:
What, like one of those tactical management games, like X-Com or Darkest Dungeon? Eh, I dunno.

That being said, you're not wrong about PF campaigns shoehorning in useless goddamn management mechanics. Jade Regent's caravan system irritated everyone so much the GM discarded it and stuck to the encounters instead.
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The "bean counting" as we would call it in Adventure Paths was so ridiculous, I don't even know why they bothered. The vast majority of the time it required skill, time (game and real), and gold investment to wring out basically no benefit. They sucked. The only one I ever actually liked and thought was decently designed was the revolution builder in Hell's Rebels. That one rewarded you for making smart decisions in game, gave you extra gold, XP, bonus feats, useful NPCs, and rewarded investing in irregular skills like Perform and Knowledge while also giving options for regular skills like Stealth and Diplo. All the other ones (ship management in Skull and Shackles, refugee camp in Ironfang Invasion, colony management in Ruins of Azlant, most of Kingmaker) were ass.
 
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