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

[LovisXVI]

What's your opinion on campaigns where everyone has to play a member of a certain Non-Human race? Like all Jawa in Star Wars or all Elf in the Realms. Yay or nay?

Well that's just a theme campaign, which I'm a fan of generally.

 

[Brain Problems]

I'm a little iffy on chronically late. But a lot of it depends on
Are they "late to session with an organized character folder, having emailed me in between sessions to talk about character actions, game face on and asking if they need to roll for anything before they take off their coat" or are they "Late to session, showing up, Oh man what I day I had. sits down Oh wait I'm hungry where are the snacks. Anyway these are good. Oh where did I put my sheet (rustles in bag) go ahead and skip and get back to me, my dice are here somewhere. I saw you email but didn't get a chance to read it, anything important?"

I've been the chronically late before because work would always fuck up on game/event days, but I'd show up ready to go and not needing to talk about my feelings before session was done.

If people have work shit or family stuff all bets are off, I'm extremely sympathetic to it. If I know you aren't working, don't have kids, and have zero responsibilities beyond Getting Out of Bed, my tolerance is rock bottom, especially on a weekend and not exactly first thing in the morning either. I've had a guy show up, be this close to stepping inside, get a work call, and end up on doing stuff in his car outside for hours before just leaving. I call that giving it a good try to attend, no harm there.

Also it's different if the flake is they give you at least an hour or two of warning because they either had something happen, feel like shit and just can't show due to not wanting to drag it down, or work is being shit, and just no-showing with no explanation. There's schedule conflicts, and then there's just not bothering to give notice.

Best way I can describe is that it's like a bank account that unconsciously builds value session over session and occasionally people have to make a withdrawal (illness, inexplicable absence, take your pick). When you've got a healthy balance no one blinks. When you're in arrears and attempting yet another overdraft it's infuriating.

@AnOminous and other CoCers: I'm prepping Lightless Beacon but I'm curious your thoughts about whether to A) go with prebuild characters or B) let PCs make their own? For B though, would you say anything about things getting violent and if so, how do you cap players rolling in strapped to the teeth (this is also applies generally I suppose)? I know in HotOE the book makes a point about going into customs and gun laws in different countries but my understanding is that 1920s US was fairly loose with letting you flash your piece out on the lane.

 

[Manly_Brony]

I mean no-human campaigns are way more common than all-human campaigns so *shrug*

Yeah but it's always a zoo instead of 5 Dwarves doing hero shit around Erebor during Dain Ironfoot's rule to name one example. I like these campaigns very much but I always feel like I'm in the minority because everyone wants the Companions of the Hall.

and other CoCers: I'm prepping Lightless Beacon but I'm curious your thoughts about whether to A) go with prebuild characters or B) let PCs make their own? For B though, would you say anything about things getting violent and if so, how do you cap players rolling in strapped to the teeth (this is also applies generally I suppose)? I know in HotOE the book makes a point about going into customs and gun laws in different countries but my understanding is that 1920s US was fairly loose with letting you flash your piece out on the lane.

I remember not liking TLB, it's uninspired and what I call a B-scenario. These can be fun but you have to switch off part of your brain. The pre-gens are a well-balanced party which should work. If they want to roll up their own you can suggest that balance is a better idea than a trio of hookers and their pimp. I would probably drop the Bureau Agent though because their presence just screams forced intra-party conflict.
You could mail-order Tommy guns, firearms were like household appliances but they can arm themselves however they want because the Esoteric Order of Dagon will outgun them at every turn since they have handguns, rifles, shotguns, Chicago typewriters and even BARs. Not to mention magic spells, Shoggoths, Dagon, Hydra and Star-Spawn.

 

[Fagnacious D]

Yeah but it's always a zoo instead of 5 Dwarves doing hero shit around Erebor during Dain Ironfoot's rule to name one example.

An all dwarf party would be fun:

My backstory?
An elf slighted me once and now I hate all of them.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

An all dwarf party would be fun:
View attachment 8623140
My backstory?
An elf slighted me once and now I hate all of them.

You can use the dwarf slur list I think I saw in this thread too, sounds like great fun honestly. Can already think of names, Grongis Tree-Smelter. Bulmoc Knifeblunter.
And that image should switch the expectation and reality, then make the reality even more gay and boring, complete with x cards on anything fun.

 

[Manly_Brony]

An all dwarf party would be fun:
View attachment 8623140
My backstory?
An elf slighted me once and now I hate all of them.

I tried this more than a decade ago and bought/downloaded every single Dwarven supplement I found online to prep but the it collapsed after a couple of modules. Lots of subterranean adventuring in an around their city, the PCs wouldn't have seen the sun until lvl 5 or 6 IIRC. I even remember wanting to write an encounter with an Elephant-Being of Yag from the OG Conan story The Tower of the Elephant into the campaign who would've acted as an ally/quest giver with a second, evil one as the main villain:

https://hyboria.xoth.net/bestiary/elephant_being_of_yag.htm

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

but the it collapsed after a couple of modules.

Did it go too long and everyone got bored? Because damn man have an encounter with that elephant fellow sounds metal.

 

[Manly_Brony]

Did it go too long and everyone got bored? Because damn man have an encounter with that elephant fellow sounds metal.

We were scattered across two counties, some worked, some studied, I was unemployed I think, one had a gf hostile to the hobby and half of them decided that an all Dwarf party was too limiting after all.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

some worked, some studied, I was unemployed I think

Not sure why but I found this amusing. My brain went "this sounds like a joke missing a punchline, are they going to walk into a bar?"

one had a gf hostile to the hobby

Let me guess, another stereotype of "ew nerd, what a loser." Or just someone who didn't understand and therefore didn't like anything more complex than *insert woman dominated thing here*? They tend to be anathema to tabletop, which is understandable since both genders have something they are commonly anathema to.

decided that an all Dwarf party was too limiting after all.

Get the fuck outta here, really? What's with people man, same shit happened to the All Goliath Party right at what should have been the peak of it. I understand getting burned out but it's starting to sound like people just can't work their creative juices and just give up. What a drag, I would kill to be in an all one race party but nobody I like playing with wants to do that.

 

[LovisXVI]

half of them decided that an all Dwarf party was too limiting after all.

What's with people man, same shit happened to the All Goliath Party right at what should have been the peak of it.

It might have been a good idea to give them a reason to all be dwarves. The Hobbit is a good example of how to do a theme campaign, where everyone needs to be a dwarf because you are on a quest to reclaim your ancestral home, so it would be weird to have an elf or human tag along. I find that theme campaigns need a stronger conceit than thrown-together adventuring parties since you can't rely on the natural diversity of PCs and their interests to drive it, but the highs are all the better.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

It might have been a good idea to give them a reason to all be dwarves. The Hobbit is a good example of how to do a theme campaign, where everyone needs to be a dwarf because you are on a quest to reclaim your ancestral home, so it would be weird to have an elf or human tag along. I find that theme campaigns need a stronger conceit than thrown-together adventuring parties since you can't rely on the natural diversity of PCs and their interests to drive it, but the highs are all the better.

Also helps make sure campaigns don't go too long, much as I would enjoy an all x party, it needs something to help prevent it from getting stale.

 

[Manly_Brony]

Let me guess, another stereotype of "ew nerd, what a loser." Or just someone who didn't understand and therefore didn't like anything more complex than *insert woman dominated thing here*? They tend to be anathema to tabletop, which is understandable since both genders have something they are commonly anathema to.

The chick never played and was actually jealous of the hobby so he dumped her after a few months. Outsider women tend to go for horror TTRPGs unless they're LOTR fans. Maybe superhero ones too after all the capeshit the world has been subjected to but I haven't tested this theory yet.

Get the fuck outta here, really?

It might have been a good idea to give them a reason to all be dwarves. The Hobbit is a good example of how to do a theme campaign, where everyone needs to be a dwarf because you are on a quest to reclaim your ancestral home, so it would be weird to have an elf or human tag along. I find that theme campaigns need a stronger conceit than thrown-together adventuring parties since you can't rely on the natural diversity of PCs and their interests to drive it, but the highs are all the better

Only two people liked Dwarves enough to want to continue, the rest "just wanted to try it out". I can't recall if one of us ran another campaign after it. We probably played one-shots in various systems every 2-3 weeks because I remember playing a lot of 7th Sea, CoC, Shadowrun and Vampire back then. 1st edition 7th Sea is pretty cool but our GM had such a huge pirate fetish that he always kept a bottle of Captain Morgan around, wore a tricorne hat and the POTC soundtrack was constantly playing in the background so it got a bit corny.

 

[LovisXVI]

Only two people liked Dwarves enough to want to continue, the rest "just wanted to try it out".

I would shoot for something broader then. Something like "you are all members of a street gang", "you are all soldiers in a regiment of Imperial Guard", "you all are knights from a certain kingdom". Also for a gang, corporation, military unit, whatever you are all a part of etc. it helps to make the organization as part of character creation to give a stronger sense of ownership over it. Yeah you could all be Cadians, but that is boring and someone else owns it, so we're from the Kiwi VI Hussars, and these are the traits and gear we have etc. (luckily, Only War has rules for such a process which makes it all the easier to make it mechanical).

 

[Manly_Brony]

I would shoot for something broader then. Something like "you are all members of a street gang", "you are all soldiers in a regiment of Imperial Guard", "you all are knights from a certain kingdom". Also for a gang, corporation, military unit, whatever you are all a part of etc. it helps to make the organization as part of character creation to give a stronger sense of ownership over it. Yeah you could all be Cadians, but that is boring and someone else owns it, so we're from the Kiwi VI Hussars, and these are the traits and gear we have etc. (luckily, Only War has rules for such a process which makes it all the easier to make it mechanical).

The CoC campaign I managed to start a few years after the Dwarven debacle was exactly like this: a Bri'ish aristocrat, his chauffeur, his shrink, his gardener, his gamekeeper and his maid. They started in the UK's Campbell Country and ended up in Kenya. Imagine Out of Africa but with unhinged, trigger happy alcoholics who are desperately trying to train some burly Niggers living on the lord's farm and buy one of those early airliners to form an Anti-Cthulhu Mythos rapid response unit. They all perished after trying to defeat the cannibalistic Lion-men of Tanganyika. A tad anachronistic since that shit happened 20 years later in the late 40s but I really liked them and Nyarlathotep has a Black Lion avatar to explain it.

 

[AnOminous]

@AnOminous and other CoCers: I'm prepping Lightless Beacon but I'm curious your thoughts about whether to A) go with prebuild characters or B) let PCs make their own? For B though, would you say anything about things getting violent and if so, how do you cap players rolling in strapped to the teeth (this is also applies generally I suppose)?

I won't speak to this particular scenario (RIP Greg Stafford), but thanks to player input in my own games, the party was always strapped to the teeth, including even the accountant. This made dealing with humans pretty easy (although any gunfight could end in your death so it was never just like slaughtering hordes of goblins), but the obvious problem in CoC is always SAN. You lose it, you never get it back, it just always goes down when you encounter the eldritch.

Since the eldritch, and even encountering them, or knowing about them, or even reading about them, wrecks your shit, they're always the hand of doom that you face.

There's no happy ending in any CoC campaign. There's just staving off the inevitable, the return of the Old Ones and the end of the human race. All the guns in the world can't stop it. So I say allow all guns. It won't stop the end, but at least you can have fun going down.

tl;dr I don't cap them they're going to die anyway.

1st edition 7th Sea is pretty cool but our GM had such a huge pirate fetish that he always kept a bottle of Captain Morgan around, wore a tricorne hat and the POTC soundtrack was constantly playing in the background so it got a bit corny.

Don't you mean TRI-corny? Sorry about the corny joke but that dude sounds like a huge fag.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

The chick never played and was actually jealous of the hobby so he dumped her after a few months.

Sounds about right, your friend is smart too since any women getting vindictive and upset over their lover's hobby is not worth keeping around (unless the hobby is incredibly unhealthy or the man makes it unhealthy). Why would anyone want the fun police around.

Maybe superhero ones too after all the capeshit the world has been subjected to but I haven't tested this theory yet.

They rather have a real superhero than play as one from what I can tell.

edition 7th Sea is pretty cool but our GM had such a huge pirate fetish that he always kept a bottle of Captain Morgan around, wore a tricorne hat and the POTC soundtrack was constantly playing in the background so it got a bit corny.

Fuckin' kek, I fuck with that.

 

[The Ugly One]

1st edition 7th Sea is pretty cool but our GM had such a huge pirate fetish that he always kept a bottle of Captain Morgan around, wore a tricorne hat and the POTC soundtrack was constantly playing in the background so it got a bit corny.

Your DM rules and should post here.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

As an offering to Khaine, the Bloody-Handed One, Dice Scum reads from the WFRP 4th edition adventure/sourcebook on the Dark Elves!

 

[Edward "Caesar" Sallow]

Is there any interest for Fantasy Flight Warhammer RPGs here? I made some custom Chapters for Deathwatch RPG a while back and once I rework them (I've been using Claude AI to assist me) and would love some critiques from actual players. The two I have made are for Lamenters as well as Nemesis Chapter.

 

[Adamska]

As an offering to Khaine, the Bloody-Handed One, Dice Scum reads from the WFRP 4th edition adventure/sourcebook on the Dark Elves!


https://youtube.com/watch?v=xjrGYJdk4YM

4e is inferior by a noticeable degree to 2e, but it does make up for it with decent to good art and for expanding regions of play by a country mile. It actually touches Grand Cathay, Ind a bit, and the Vampire Coast as places. And it synergizes with other books to do a Man O' War style campaign decently well.

It's an inferior edition, but still a decent option IMO. Kinda like how some Shadowrun variants are still fine, if inferior to your personal tastes.