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

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You know, I don't think we ever covered That Guys in this thread. Might as well do it, since dealing with them is a part of the experience. So let me tell you the tale of my first ever campaign DMing.

I had two That Guys in the group, and I would not know this fact until a couple of sessions into the game with them. Hell, with the nastier of the two I didn't figure it out until just a shade over halfway through the game though in retrospect I feel dumb for not catching it. One of my more fun players also on occasion slid into That Guy territory, but he for the most part did fine barring two sessions I'll talk about later, one of which was my own fucking fault anyway due to being a shit ST. Let's start with the one I caught first, who I'll call Switcharoo Steve.

Switcharoo Steve was a fucking bane for a coherent narrative, which was made all the worse given the system I was running was VtM. Every session or two he would before the campaign kvetch and whine about his character, threatening to either quit or make a new character... and he chose to switch his fucking character three times throughout the campaign. His first character was a Brujah combat beast who played essentially a bounty hunter, and she had a simple "kill evil sister/revenge against sire" backstory. I had little to no problem with this given I was admittedly over my head while DMing (I could arguably be called a That DM for some of my sins back then) and it worked for the setting. It wasn't like I neglected him either, given I did give him time to contact and mess around with his ally, who was basically Dolomite as a vampire hunter.

But he began to bitch endlessly about playing her. In his defense, his character was not his own so I could understand the issue (I'll explain it when we get to the other That Guy). But then he began to threaten to quit. Given I was new and I did not know the best rebuttal to this (k bye), I kept talking him back into the game. This went on for several sessions, he'd cry about not having fun and I'd talk him back into it and it began to wear me down. In retrospect, he was probably an attention whore so this was done on purpose. Eventually I let him reroll a char and turned his old one into an NPC, and he came up with a Toreador facegirl who used her society contacts for diplomacy and talking. I was rather fine with this, and was ready to roll with this connection once we finished up the gang storyline.

But then she got shot in the head by a gangster during a raid on los Carnale's hang out. It hurt (and I was doing gangstas wrong now I know), but she lived on through it fine, minus two wounds. This made him bitch again though and he decried that my game was too combat heavy for the char. Now it's true I tend to go that route given the players I worked with, but I do like to incorporate roleplay as well. Plus this was literally his third session playing as her so he did not even bother giving her a fucking chance as a char. So he happily leaps back to his murderhobo build, thus fucking over the inter-character relationship he had with another player, who played as the face's Ventrue bodyguard when he came back to the game after a hiatus.

He played her a whopping two more sessions before he and the other That Guy decided to drop the game for no reason other than the other That Guy basically being his dom and his main arc being done.

When I feel less tired due to getting some sleep and beating this insomnia spell again, I'll talk about Leeroy... the powergaming self-centered christfag fuck who made Steve the bitch that he was to play with.
 
Adamska said:
You know, I don't think we ever covered That Guys in this thread. Might as well do it, since dealing with them is a part of the experience. So let me tell you the tale of my first ever campaign DMing.

I had two That Guys in the group, and I would not know this fact until a couple of sessions into the game with them. Hell, with the nastier of the two I didn't figure it out until just a shade over halfway through the game though in retrospect I feel dumb for not catching it. One of my more fun players also on occasion slid into That Guy territory, but he for the most part did fine barring two sessions I'll talk about later, one of which was my own fucking fault anyway due to being a shit ST. Let's start with the one I caught first, who I'll call Switcharoo Steve.

Switcharoo Steve was a fucking bane for a coherent narrative, which was made all the worse given the system I was running was VtM. Every session or two he would before the campaign kvetch and whine about his character, threatening to either quit or make a new character... and he chose to switch his fucking character three times throughout the campaign. His first character was a Brujah combat beast who played essentially a bounty hunter, and she had a simple "kill evil sister/revenge against sire" backstory. I had little to no problem with this given I was admittedly over my head while DMing (I could arguably be called a That DM for some of my sins back then) and it worked for the setting. It wasn't like I neglected him either, given I did give him time to contact and mess around with his ally, who was basically Dolomite as a vampire hunter.

But he began to bitch endlessly about playing her. In his defense, his character was not his own so I could understand the issue (I'll explain it when we get to the other That Guy). But then he began to threaten to quit. Given I was new and I did not know the best rebuttal to this (k bye), I kept talking him back into the game. This went on for several sessions, he'd cry about not having fun and I'd talk him back into it and it began to wear me down. In retrospect, he was probably an attention whore so this was done on purpose. Eventually I let him reroll a char and turned his old one into an NPC, and he came up with a Toreador facegirl who used her society contacts for diplomacy and talking. I was rather fine with this, and was ready to roll with this connection once we finished up the gang storyline.

But then she got shot in the head by a gangster during a raid on los Carnale's hang out. It hurt (and I was doing gangstas wrong now I know), but she lived on through it fine, minus two wounds. This made him bitch again though and he decried that my game was too combat heavy for the char. Now it's true I tend to go that route given the players I worked with, but I do like to incorporate roleplay as well. Plus this was literally his third session playing as her so he did not even bother giving her a fucking chance as a char. So he happily leaps back to his murderhobo build, thus fucking over the inter-character relationship he had with another player, who played as the face's Ventrue bodyguard when he came back to the game after a hiatus.

He played her a whopping two more sessions before he and the other That Guy decided to drop the game for no reason other than the other That Guy basically being his dom and his main arc being done.

When I feel less tired due to getting some sleep and beating this insomnia spell again, I'll talk about Leeroy... the powergaming self-centered christfag fuck who made Steve the bitch that he was to play with.
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I feel a little bad that I seem to have been the lucky one and not get into games with such people. I tended to just get people who didn't know the rules or DM's and the such who liked to TPK groups with unfair fights meant to get his characters over.
 
So I promised you Leeroy, let's talk about Leeroy.

Leeroy at first came off as a reasonable guy. He wasn't too much of a sperg barring his weebery, he could bant a bit, and at first I had no gripes with him. He also was a solid roleplayer; he kept in character and everything. I honestly thought he was a good player for a long while. But it was how he interacted with other players and what he did right at the end of the campaign that ultimately made me realize he was not the type of guy to play with.

He was a complete powergamer in retrospect. He statted his own Brujah combat beast who could oneshot fuckers from the start if his dice played nice. I can get the sentiment; I'm of the mind that everyone in a party, even in story heavy VtM does need to have some combat skill. Your Ravnos trickster should for example be able to shuck and jive out of a battle and use illusions to disorient. But he was a shit about speccing for combat. He dumped most of his discipline points into Celerity and abused firearms heavily to take advantage of a fuckhueg dice pool due to me not growing the DM balls yet and limiting the access to good guns. He then abuses dodging with all of his speedy might to no sell damage.

Did I also forget to mention that he also made his (probable) twink slave's character for him? And that Leeroy fucking told him upfront he had to take this build and gave him no options about other builds and took advantage of his newness with PnP? Yeah... didn't learn that fact until Steve began bitchfest #2 and that was why I let him make his new char and rank him lower despite how he annoyed me at the time.

He also was very self-centered, in game and out of game. He had a nasty habit of forcing the focus on himself in game, talking over the other players and basically running roughshod over me, the new DM. He once fucking managed to make half a session (2.5-3.5 hours) about himself and Steve, hogging up for near an hour combat, which made my bros Jack and Cole fucking annoyed. This was partially my fault, since I did not master the art of dealing with groups yet and giving out the talky stick, but he sure took advantage of that.

Out of game he was little better. If you spoke with him, it had to be about his interests or else you'd get nothing. He would not pay attention to you or try to change the topic to what he liked instead. This usually led to anime, wrasslin', or vidya at times. He in particular was a big Yu Yu Hakusho fan and Rouroni Kenshin guy too, so convos often went to that.

So the Christfagginess. I decided to run a downtime game for my buds Jack and Cole since they were the only ones who showed one game. They deal with the machinations of a demented LaSombra Methuselah who stole their motel for a plan he had where he'd kill Batman with it... despite him being fictional. He decides to give them all a single gift in exchange for the hotel. Jack, being a bit mad, asks for the corpse of Jesus Christ. It was metagaming my houserules lore a bit since Jesus in my lore was a holy man who was executed and the Malkies stole the corpse of for Weekend at Bernie's style hilarity, but fuck it why not? So the LaSombra gives him that most holy of mummies.

Cue Leeroy sobbing and chimping slightly, since I implied that Jesus was not the messiah and he could not handle that. Even though I made the corpse so fucking holy it glows with Auspex despite being dead for so long. Even though I still made Jesus a holy man who taught amazing parables. That he did not Ascend and was not the Son of God like the Bible said was fucking heresy and he could not stand that. I was baffled on why he would be mad, given the fucking setting we were in. Remember, the White Wolf settings includes such gems as "Cain and Abel did not fucking happen like the Bible and Caine is a vampire", "God" is not the biblical God, and don't get me started on Demon and what they did with Lucifer. At the time I was baffled and my mind full of wat, now I just kek at how salty he got.

But the thing that made me mad was how he ditched, taking Steve with him when his arc was done. His character was motivated on finding and killing the person who killed her sire/lover. As soon as that bitch was dead (literally OHKO due to their ludicrous builds and planning around it), they left the game, and I put too much on these two jackasses to really continue.

And that is why my next VtM game was just with Jack and Cole; I was not in the mood to try recruiting for more guys. That campaign was great too, but I sadly had to drop it when college dragged me down too much to really be able to plan it.
 
Hodor said:
Feng Shui.

I've heard Jadeclaw is surprisingly good despite being furry bullshit. Use the non-furry races rules to get past that.
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I have quite a bit of material for Tianxia on my external so I'll be checking that out. I think I also have some Feng Shui. I also should have some Jadepunk to check out, but not too sure about that one as a lot of pdf's I've found for it were poorly optimized so I may have gotten rid of them because of that (think 5mb per page type of bullshit).
 
Is it wrong that I like Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem equally?

They're both good, solidly made games and I like them for different reasons. I generally play Masquerade either without the metaplot (specifically the later metaplot from Revised Edition) or run it as a period piece in the early 1990's (the same era First Edition was popular) if I have metaplot purists in my group.

So I like the fact that Requiem explicitly does not have a metaplot and that it takes a more toolkit approach to most things. I also like the smaller and more localized nature of Requiem.

As much as people complain about Requiem's Covenants vs. Masquerade's Camarilla and Sabbat, I always felt that the Covenants are really more of a framework of basic archetypes to make your own local factions, which is why they aren't as in-depth and codified as the Camarilla and Sabbat. The Clans are explicitly meant to be broad basic archetypes of the vampire myth. And I like that. Plus, it's much easier to do crossovers with the other gamelines in New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness than it does in Classic World of Darkness.

But I also love the evocative old-school Gothic-Punk atmosphere of Masquerade (especially early Masquerade), along with the quirkier and more varied Clans and the cool powers that come with them.

I enjoy both Masquerade and Requiem equally, but for different reasons.

I don't know much about Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: The Awakening, Promethean: The Created, or Geist: The Sin-Eaters, as I only own the nWoD 1E corebook and the 1E corebooks for Vampire: The Requiem and Hunter: The Vigil. I used to have the corebook for Changeling: The Lost 1E and that game was awesome and probably my favorite of the newer White Wolf releases. Sadly, I traded my copy of Changeling: The Lost for a copy of the corebook to Mage: The Ascension 2E.

I don't care much for Chronicles of Darkness/New World of Darkness 2E, mainly because of all the setting changes, Demon: The Descent and especially Beast: The Primordial have left a bad taste in my mouth, but I'm willing to give the 2E versions of Requiem and Lost a chance.
 
Syaoran Li said:
Is it wrong that I like Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem equally?

They're both good, solidly made games and I like them for different reasons. I generally play Masquerade either without the metaplot (specifically the later metaplot from Revised Edition) or run it as a period piece in the early 1990's (the same era First Edition was popular) if I have metaplot purists in my group.

So I like the fact that Requiem explicitly does not have a metaplot and that it takes a more toolkit approach to most things. I also like the smaller and more localized nature of Requiem.

As much as people complain about Requiem's Covenants vs. Masquerade's Camarilla and Sabbat, I always felt that the Covenants are really more of a framework of basic archetypes to make your own local factions, which is why they aren't as in-depth and codified as the Camarilla and Sabbat. The Clans are explicitly meant to be broad basic archetypes of the vampire myth. And I like that. Plus, it's much easier to do crossovers with the other gamelines in New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness than it does in Classic World of Darkness.

But I also love the evocative old-school Gothic-Punk atmosphere of Masquerade (especially early Masquerade), along with the quirkier and more varied Clans and the cool powers that come with them.

I enjoy both Masquerade and Requiem equally, but for different reasons.

I don't know much about Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: The Awakening, Promethean: The Created, or Geist: The Sin-Eaters, as I only own the nWoD 1E corebook and the 1E corebooks for Vampire: The Requiem and Hunter: The Vigil. I used to have the corebook for Changeling: The Lost 1E and that game was awesome and probably my favorite of the newer White Wolf releases. Sadly, I traded my copy of Changeling: The Lost for a copy of the corebook to Mage: The Ascension 2E.

I don't care much for Chronicles of Darkness/New World of Darkness 2E, mainly because of all the setting changes, Demon: The Descent and especially Beast: The Primordial have left a bad taste in my mouth, but I'm willing to give the 2E versions of Requiem and Lost a chance.
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It's ok to like both Vampire games.
 
Yaoi Huntress Earth said:
It's ok to like both Vampire games.
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I know, but a lot of the IRL gamers in my area who play WoD are Classic WoD purists and generally act like you have to pick one or the other. That's why I only play WoD/CofD either with my younger brothers or online nowadays.
 
Syaoran Li said:
I know, but a lot of the IRL gamers in my area who play WoD are Classic WoD purists and generally act like you have to pick one or the other. That's why I only play WoD/CofD either with my younger brothers or online nowadays.
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I never liked the overall lore for WoD but I preferred the gameplay, the opposite for OWoD for me, good lore overall terrible crunch that could only be used for it's game unless you got the fan stuff that "helped" with that.
 
I've always liked the idea of a semi-historical fantasy D&D game set in Sub-Roman Britain or an equivalent thereof, inspired by the Arthurian legend as well as the actual history of that era.
 
Syaoran Li said:
I've always liked the idea of a semi-historical fantasy D&D game set in Sub-Roman Britain or an equivalent thereof, inspired by the Arthurian legend as well as the actual history of that era.
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Check out RuneQuest, it does a pretty good job with that sort of setting.
 
Syaoran Li said:
I've always liked the idea of a semi-historical fantasy D&D game set in Sub-Roman Britain or an equivalent thereof, inspired by the Arthurian legend as well as the actual history of that era.
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I hear RPGPundit's game, Lion & Dragon, is supposed to focus on historical accuracy. But then, Pundit's a massive autist.
 
Wallace said:
I hear RPGPundit's game, Lion & Dragon, is supposed to focus on historical accuracy. But then, Pundit's a massive autist.
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I do plan on buying Lion & Dragon pretty soon, actually.

Pundit is a little out there, to put it mildly. But he knows how to make a good OSR game, I'll give him that.

Honestly, when it comes to autists and wackos in the RPG industry, I'd rather put up with Pundit's bullshit than say Holden Black or David A. Hill since Pundit can actually design a good and enjoyable RPG, but that's neither here nor there.
 
My first ever online campaign fell through and I was wondering if anyone was GMing or if a currently running campaign was taking new players? I know very little about these games but I'd very much like to try it out sometime.
 
Melkor said:
My first ever online campaign fell through and I was wondering if anyone was GMing or if a currently running campaign was taking new players? I know very little about these games but I'd very much like to try it out sometime.
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I know of a few games currently going on over discord, I can send you a channel link.
 
I learned about this game from a rant about mental illness in tabletop games. The kind of author that thinks you shouldn't use the word crazy and thinks Everyone Is John is insulting. Even though I have had problem with anxiety and depression, I guess I get less offended by stuff like this where you play mental patients who think they're superheroes. It looks kind of fun.
 
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