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

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So I've been running Blades in the Dark for a couple sessions now, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Structurally I like how each session is essentially one heist/job/failed arson attempt which makes it a lot easier to run now that its summer and people's schedules are utterly unable to sync properly. I've run 3 games and haven't had the same table for any of them, but it's worked just fine.

Storywise, the setting is neat, though I've already hacked it a bit since we kept forgetting that the sun is supposed to be shattered and dark all the time, so sunlight is just faint or something. I'm afraid my players aren't quite paranoid enough yet to survive in a city where everybody is distrustful of everyone else, but I'm working on it.

We're still pretty combat minded group coming out of 5e and Pathfinder, so the solutions typically tend towards the violent end of the spectrum, but they're slowly learning that no, you cannot take on 5 thugs with guns aimed at your face and come on top.

I'm slightly miffed that they didn't flood the giant underground pit thing that I described in ominous terms every time it came up as a solution to putting a tavern out of business. There was a dock directly above it full of their rivals and everything. I had a whole storyline about an awakened ancient evil that flooding the pit would've roused that I have to put back on the backburner. Oh well.

It's a fun system, would recommend.
 
MementoMalum said:
So I've been running Blades in the Dark for a couple sessions now, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Structurally I like how each session is essentially one heist/job/failed arson attempt which makes it a lot easier to run now that its summer and people's schedules are utterly unable to sync properly. I've run 3 games and haven't had the same table for any of them, but it's worked just fine.

Storywise, the setting is neat, though I've already hacked it a bit since we kept forgetting that the sun is supposed to be shattered and dark all the time, so sunlight is just faint or something. I'm afraid my players aren't quite paranoid enough yet to survive in a city where everybody is distrustful of everyone else, but I'm working on it.

We're still pretty combat minded group coming out of 5e and Pathfinder, so the solutions typically tend towards the violent end of the spectrum, but they're slowly learning that no, you cannot take on 5 thugs with guns aimed at your face and come on top.

I'm slightly miffed that they didn't flood the giant underground pit thing that I described in ominous terms every time it came up as a solution to putting a tavern out of business. There was a dock directly above it full of their rivals and everything. I had a whole storyline about an awakened ancient evil that flooding the pit would've roused that I have to put back on the backburner. Oh well.

It's a fun system, would recommend.
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On regards to the combative mindset, what would you like more? Sidestepping enemies and not letting them know you were there until you're long gone, or doing some digging and finding out on of these thugs has a special boy-toy we visit he's unwilling to let anyone know about, getting him to make sure the other thugs take a different alleyway during patrol?
And don't worry about the pit and your player caution. Its more than likely your players had picked up on the pit was full of bad juju and decided they didn't want none to that shit. Most smart players tend to notice more clear traps but can fall face in less obvious ones or just get reckless, like deciding to go deeper into a location because it been easy so far and the loots good, only to turn the corner on the boss and his bodyguards looking as surprised as the greedy thief.
 
For the combat-mindset, I'd just like for Plan A to be something other than "well we have weapons in our hands and they have brains in their heads, so lets change that". I don't really care what they do, it'd just be nice for violence to be Plan B or C for a change.
 
MementoMalum said:
For the combat-mindset, I'd just like for Plan A to be something other than "well we have weapons in our hands and they have brains in their heads, so lets change that". I don't really care what they do, it'd just be nice for violence to be Plan B or C for a change.
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Well, if they have fun doing that... But if you want them to do something else for a change, get them into a situation where violence isn't the answer and if they use it anyway, put them into an uphill struggle to get out of the hole that they put themselves into.
 
If nothing else, getting violent proves you were there. The best criminals steal things in such a way it takes a while before anyone notices something is off, if ever.
Say the crew needs to steal something, but if this gets traced back to them, they get the old byzantine special as the starting act to what is gonna happen to them. This may end up with the group killing a lot of people, but if you make it to where killing just is to big a mess, then they actually have to come up with a plan beyond, 'kill, maim, burn'
 
That Guy George said:
If nothing else, getting violent proves you were there. The best criminals steal things in such a way it takes a while before anyone notices something is off, if ever.
Say the crew needs to steal something, but if this gets traced back to them, they get the old byzantine special as the starting act to what is gonna happen to them. This may end up with the group killing a lot of people, but if you make it to where killing just is to big a mess, then they actually have to come up with a plan beyond, 'kill, maim, burn'
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Also: Stealing something will get a few people on your tail.
Killing a few people will get more people following you.
Kill a lot of people and you will never be save again.

Depending on the situation, it is possible to give them a moral dilemma. Or have shit spiral out of control. Berserk has a nice scene where shit just goes south very quickly.
 
Eclipse Phase's lore is occasionally fucktarded. People who aren't cool with all the technology are treated as backwards assholes, even after rampaging AIs murdered like 99% of humanity and turned Earth into a hellscape of deathbots. Almost all of the space station colonies are listed as some flavor of anarchist because a great idea for living floating in a hollowed-out rock in space that needs constant maintenance to not let all the air out is to have no government. Several places use what is essentially Facebook likes as currency, which is a terrible idea because once a person is popular it becomes easier and easier to gather likebux, while an unknown person would likely never reach enough exposure to start the ball rolling.
 
robobobo said:
Eclipse Phase's lore is occasionally fucktarded. People who aren't cool with all the technology are treated as backwards assholes, even after rampaging AIs murdered like 99% of humanity and turned Earth into a hellscape of deathbots. Almost all of the space station colonies are listed as some flavor of anarchist because a great idea for living floating in a hollowed-out rock in space that needs constant maintenance to not let all the air out is to have no government. Several places use what is essentially Facebook likes as currency, which is a terrible idea because once a person is popular it becomes easier and easier to gather likebux, while an unknown person would likely never reach enough exposure to start the ball rolling.
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Techno-optimist lolbertarians in space sounds staggeringly autistic tbh.
 
On the one hand, if humanity ever reaches such a technology level that any random Bubba could stick a bunch of nanites in the flatbed of his space-Dodge, fly out to an asteroid, and turn it into a space station, then yeah, I think you would see a lot of experimental societies forming. However, I think most places would wind up being dictatorships or cults, where the founding person or persons are perpetually more-equal than the average citizen, even if they claimed to be a socialist utopia or whatever. While there are plenty of humans who would likely embark upon the attempt to work out a good post-scarcity society, I believe they're vastly outnumbered by humans who just want to be high and fuck a sexbot 24/7. Like most theoretical societies, the future that Eclipse Phase shows would inevitably be fucked over by people who are out for #1.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
Which is pretty much how normal currency works, isn't it?
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Not really. In Facebooks case there would only be one way of making money, whatever you said on the site to generate the likes. You would also start to see less and less likes per post as people just forget about you or drop off the platform. This means you'll need other ways to generate those likes off of users
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
Which is pretty much how normal currency works, isn't it?
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Yes and no, the ludicrously rich do often essentially print money with investments and interest that they can access with their existing wealth, but at the lower end people aren't as shut out as they would be in a Facebook economy. Picking up a useful trade (especially if you're living in a space station with a constant need for skilled labor to maintain it) is a generally-attainable goal even for people without wealth. But breaking into the ranks of the internet famous is one in a thousand. And that's just to reach the point of making a decent living, we aren't talking about being the next PewDiePie here.
 
Wallace said:
It looks like Adam Koebel is going down for good.

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Moral of the story: Woke social media is utterly without mercy, forgiveness, or pity, and no matter how good you are, it is only a matter of time before they turn on you.

Koebel built his brand around giving SocJus friendly advice to GMs, and then he proceeded to disregard his own advice. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt that what he did was a mistake, it still shows that even the most woke are just a few poorly chosen words away from being excommunicated. It's extra ironic given how if anyone else would have done this, Koebel would have been the first to publicly call for their head. "The hateful reaction was so severe that it shattered my previous beliefs about how my community operates." Bullshit. Karma is a bitch, Adam.
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This alongside the recent slew of cancellations and virtue signalling to appease violent thugs makes me wonder how much longer society will tolerate these assclowns.
 
CheezzyMach said:
This alongside the recent slew of cancellations and virtue signalling to appease violent thugs makes me wonder how much longer society will tolerate these assclowns.
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The replies to his announcement on Twitter were mixed. Some people were sad to see him go. Others, not so much.

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Edit: Here's a twitter thread that Elspeth retweeted which accuses Adam of pulling a DARVO and analyzes his language to conclude that he is a serial rapist. Such charming friends he's surrounded himself with over the years. Why would anyone in their right mind publicly create any art at all if it's going to be scoured by the Division of Problematics?
 
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Wizards of the Coast bends the knee to the woke mob.

Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only a diverse group of adventurers can overcome the many challenges a D&D story presents. In that spirit, making D&D as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities over the last six years. We’d like to share with you what we’ve been doing, and what we plan to do in the future to address legacy D&D content that does not reflect who we are today. We recognize that doing this isn’t about getting to a place where we can rest on our laurels but continuing to head in the right direction. We feel that being transparent about it is the best way to let our community help us to continue to calibrate our efforts.

One of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D is to depict humanity in all its beautiful diversity by depicting characters who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs. We want everyone to feel at home around the game table and to see positive reflections of themselves within our products. “Human” in D&D means everyone, not just fantasy versions of northern Europeans, and the D&D community is now more diverse than it’s ever been.

Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.

Here’s what we’re doing to improve:

  • We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.
  • When every D&D book is reprinted, we have an opportunity to correct errors that we or the broader D&D community discovered in that book. Each year, we use those opportunities to fix a variety of things, including errors in judgment. In recent reprintings of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, for example, we changed text that was racially insensitive. Those reprints have already been printed and will be available in the months ahead. We will continue this process, reviewing each book as it comes up for a reprint and fixing such errors where they are present.
  • Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
  • Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we’ve not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show—working with a Romani consultant—the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.
  • We've received valuable insights from sensitivity readers on two of our recent books. We are incorporating sensitivity readers into our creative process, and we will continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.
  • We're proactively seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists. We’ve brought in contributors who reflect the beautiful diversity of the D&D community to work on books coming out in 2021. We're going to invest even more in this approach and add a broad range of new voices to join the chorus of D&D storytelling.
And we will continue to listen to you all. We created 5th edition in conversation with the D&D community. It's a conversation that continues to this day. That's at the heart of our work—listening to the community, learning what brings you joy, and doing everything we can to provide it in every one of our books.

This part of our work will never end. We know that every day someone finds the courage to voice their truth, and we’re here to listen. We are eternally grateful for the ongoing dialog with the D&D community, and we look forward to continuing to improve D&D for generations to come.
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Wallace said:
Wizards of the Coast bends the knee to the woke mob.
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I mean they admit they've been doing this for the last 6 years.

I'm more annoyed at the continuing infantilism and coddling of manchildren by corporations and half the political sphere.

It isn't WOTC's job to play mommy for a bunch of social maladjusts and protect their feefees from being hurt.

Hilariously though this is the exact same shit Christian soccer moms tried to force on these people 30-40 years ago and they hated it then for ruining their fun but now they cheer it.

Makes me wonder how the younger Gen Zers and Alpha Gen will handle this?
 
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