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

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Anonymus Fluhre said:
The best traps are the ones that aren't traps. Like faulty doors that have been rusting away for years. Floors that give way with age live wires above water. various natural gases in dungeons. Sinkholes. Rising tides which can affect a cavern/ dungeon and moving rocks or logs around around. Natural "traps" can't be found with abilities like trapsense.
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I'd consider them more hazards than traps. Great ideas though, I might have to steal them.

Though I've never ran traps right. They either devolve into "roll perception, fail, take damage" type that no one likes, or they're basically puzzles where a wrong answer costs hp. Even the "best" traps like in the often recommend Tomb of the Serpent King are basically instant death where the player has to roll to dodge or be killed. The only difference is an overly long description of the trigger.

I think they're supposed to use their inventory and initiative to MacGyver a way to disable it, but I've yet to see it play out like that. At best, someone will use a spell or some other means to trigger it from a distance.
 
Judge Dredd said:
I'd consider them more hazards than traps. Great ideas though, I might have to steal them.

Though I've never ran traps right. They either devolve into "roll perception, fail, take damage" type that no one likes, or they're basically puzzles where a wrong answer costs hp. Even the "best" traps like in the often recommend Tomb of the Serpent King are basically instant death where the player has to roll to dodge or be killed. The only difference is an overly long description of the trigger.

I think they're supposed to use their inventory and initiative to MacGyver a way to disable it, but I've yet to see it play out like that. At best, someone will use a spell or some other means to trigger it from a distance.
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You should look into the grimtooth books or the updated 2015 version books. You can also run puzzles which lead into traps when they get the puzzle wrong.
 
I was playing Siege of Dragonspear the other day and I came across *that* NPC. The one who loudly proclaims, without being asked, that they are trans and immediately deadnames themselves, just like actual trans people don't. It winds me up, not just because it's an obvious piece of tokenism done for SJ points by someone who's clearly never met a real tranny, but that it's so incongruous in the setting. Not because people wouldn't be trans, but because the Forgotten Realms is a setting with gender-swapping and polymorph magic that everyone knows about (in the "sequel", BG2, one character gets gender-swapped by a cursed item, and there is much hilarity). The NPC in question is a high-level priest too, so they could easily arrange for themselves to get magical SRS that has none of the downsides of the real surgery, and maybe even be capable of pregnancy. But no, "I AM TRANS, PAY ATTENTION TO ME".

How's this for a couple of trans-related plotlines that actually work in a universe where you can alter your body with magic:

1 - You befriend an NPC (or even involve one of the PCs), who wants a "cursed" belt of gender swapping (this was a canon item in 2e) to become a woman, and you embark on a quest to get one. Along the way, they wonder if just using magic make them a "real" woman, and whether other ways of changing sex might be more authentic. It brings up wider concepts of who you are and what identity even means in a universe where you can change species at a whim.

2 - There's a serial killer loose in the red light district. All the victims were last seen in the company of an almost impossibly beautiful courtesan. Trouble is, the description of said courtesan (race, hair, facial features) is completely different in each witness account. The truth is, the killer is a gay male AGP fetishist using polymorph magic to change into a different beautiful woman every time, fuck some dude, then murder them. Perhaps he's a proto-sjw type who hates straight men in general and Johns in particular, and after seducing them he incapacitates them, changes back into male form, lectures them on the evils of prostitution, then rapes and murders them. The party have to figure all this out and catch him.

Having gender-bending plotlines needn't be shit, you just have to adapt the ideas for the setting.
 
Spunt said:
Having gender-bending plotlines needn't be shit, you just have to adapt the ideas for the setting.
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See, you need something called an "imagination", which these people straight up do not have. That's why these sorts always go for "modern day" crowbarring of shit instead of going "Hey, I wonder what's available in this literal fantasy world that could apply?". And since these people don't know anyone who isn't a fellow narcissist, the idea of having this sort of "unique" character have an actual personality is an alien concept to them.
 
I think what bugs me about the damn wheelchair is that I can't think of a single instance, in my experience in RPGs (which spans over 30 years) where someone wanted to RP a character with a disability the same as or similar to theirs, simply for 'authenticity'.

There are games where disadvantages and yes, disabilities exist (mostly as a way to milk extra points out of the system). But nobody uses those solely for the disadvantages. Nobody plays Charles Xavier for the 'authenticity' of being in a wheelchair; they play him because he's a telepath who can turn your brains to pudding.

It's a solution in search of a nonexistent problem -- or it's trying to MAKE a problem so it has a reason to exist.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
I will never understand how they think they actually "include" someone, when they only pay lip service to a very limited perception of the attributes of said someone and change them so much that it is in no way applicable to this "included" group.

It's like "including" blind people into your game but giving them magic eyesight (that's more powerful and useful than regular eyesight).

"You're blind, but you're able to see better than anyone else."
"You're a cripple in a wheelchair, but you are more mobile than anyone else."
"You're deaf, but your hearing is stronger than anyone esle's."
"You're quadriplegic, but you're more nimble and strong than anyone else."

It's not even just reducing something as severe as a disability to a mere label, it's less than that.
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Reading this reminded me of a bit of brainstorming I did with a friend and our GM a few years ago. The game we created that character for never got off the ground, but we felt it was an interesting implementation of a disabled character.

Keeping the powerleveling short and sweet and tweaking the idea a bit (thankfully I don't think they read the farms), the idea was that the character was originally a noble (classed as a Fighter) who developed some sort of wasting condition that no one in her kingdom, doctor, wizard or priest, could cure. So the character learned of a wish-granting entity living somewhere in the unexplored side of the world and decided that would be her best chance at not wasting away. So she hired a wizard prodigy specialized in creating golems and enchanted items (that would be my character) to craft the character an enchanted suit of armor she could wear to be able to fight and move like a normal person (ish), then went adventuring with the wizard in tow. In the end, we decided on the following mechanics for it:
- Mechanically, it was a set of Plate Armor +1. The bonus would be increased as time went on and my character would keep tinkering on the armor.
- It restored the character's Strength and Constitution back to their original values, but her Dexterity was capped at 8.
- When not worn, the armor could still walk around slowly (at 20ft max) and follow very simple orders like a reanimated skeleton, but not fight.

And now the more interesting things that made it more than just "a normal character with a tweak":
- The armor could not be worn 24/7. If the character wore it for longer than 8 hours she would take a level of exhaustion.
- Outside of the armor, the character had -8 Strength and -6 Constitution (I think her final scores were 6 and 8 ) and needed a cane or a walking stick to walk at a maximum of 20ft/second.
- The armor itself needed to be powered by magic. A spellcaster (again, this was meant to be my wizard) could sacrifice spell slots to power the armor for Spell Slot Level x 2 hours. If it ran out of juice, it would revert to automatic mode and lock the wearer inside unless pried open or recharged.
- The bulk of the armor gave the wearer disadvantage on Dexterity checks related to manual dexterity and stealth.
- It allowed her to carry weight like a Large creature (like the Goliath racial feature).
- It also increased their weight by something silly, like 150lbs. It made her a real walking bank vault. We actually thought of it as being troublesome when walking over fragile or soft terrain.

Was it a lot of work for admittedly very little reward? Probably. But it was fun to think up, and it resulted in some potentially interesting situations. For one, it linked the noble and the wizard together (she was going around in his magnum opus, there would be a good amount of banter and bickering). For two, it was recognized as being an one-of-a-kind wondrous item and it would draw a lot of attention from bad guys looking for an expensive piece of gear, so it would be a good hook for adventures and antagonists. For three, it gave the noble a great motivation to keep adventuring: she was on a time limit to try to find a cure to her condition because eventually she'd reach CON 0 and die.

Anyway, that's enough autism. Thanks for attending my TED&D Talk.

Snekposter said:
See, you need something called an "imagination", which these people straight up do not have. That's why these sorts always go for "modern day" crowbarring of shit instead of going "Hey, I wonder what's available in this literal fantasy world that could apply?". And since these people don't know anyone who isn't a fellow narcissist, the idea of having this sort of "unique" character have an actual personality is an alien concept to them.
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Ironically, porn text games like Trials in Tainted Space or Corruption of Champions do it far more realistically to their settings than any of those "inclusive" fantasy concepts the woke crowd likes to push. Someone wants to turn into a woman/man? Want an extra cock? Want to turn into a slime person? Whatever. They look for the right item that will make that happen, or save up to buy a treatment. No whining, no pushing for rights, just a weirdly positive go-getter attitude in a goddamn porn game.
 
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Corn Flakes said:
Was it a lot of work for admittedly very little reward? Probably. But it was fun to think up, and it resulted in some potentially interesting situations. For one, it linked the noble and the wizard together (she was going around in his magnum opus, there would be a good amount of banter and bickering). For two, it was recognized as being an one-of-a-kind wondrous item and it would draw a lot of attention from bad guys looking for an expensive piece of gear, so it would be a good hook for adventures and antagonists. For three, it gave the noble a great motivation to keep adventuring: she was on a time limit to try to find a cure to her condition because eventually she'd reach CON 0 and die.
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I like the idea above a lot. The inevitable "fight bad guy who stole and donned the armor" plot writes itself and could be a lot of fun.
 
Dante Alighieri said:
Or to not exclude a player from a cool fight the BBEG could have copied it. Iron Man 1 all over again.
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Maybe the rest of the group could cobble together a makeshift suit with less durability, less capable. Or the DM finds something else for the character to do during that time (or he plays a one-off character hired by the party).

It shouldn't come at the players expense and the DM should clear things up and ask if this is ok before that plot starts.
 
Corn Flakes said:
Ironically, porn text games like Trials in Tainted Space or Corruption of Champions do it far more realistically to their settings than any of those "inclusive" fantasy concepts the woke crowd likes to push. Someone wants to turn into a woman/man? Want an extra cock? Want to turn into a slime person? Whatever. They look for the right item that will make that happen, or save up to buy a treatment. No whining, no pushing for rights, just a weirdly positive go-getter attitude in a goddamn porn game.
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Back when Anita Sarkeesian was relevant, feminists would push the Bechdel test. It was a test to measure how "feminist" a film was.
  • Are there two named female characters?
  • Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?
Answer yes to both, and the film is feminist.

You don't hear about the test any more because it quickly became apparent that feminist films and films SJWs love fail the test, while sexist films and porn films often passed.

When applied to games, the same thing happened. Gone Home? Fail, because it's all notes with no talking. Senran Kagura? Pass, because all the big titty ninjas have names and talk about things.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
I like the idea above a lot. The inevitable "fight bad guy who stole and donned the armor" plot writes itself and could be a lot of fun.
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Dante Alighieri said:
Or to not exclude a player from a cool fight the BBEG could have copied it. Iron Man 1 all over again.=
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RomanesEuntDomus said:
Maybe the rest of the group could cobble together a makeshift suit with less durability, less capable. Or the DM finds something else for the character to do during that time (or he plays a one-off character hired by the party).

It shouldn't come at the players expense and the DM should clear things up and ask if this is ok before that plot starts.
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The player was fine with the idea of having the armor taken away if the situation called for it, so that was fine. The character being a noble was also meant to be able to help with the social parts of the game since the rest of the party was shaping up to be rather antisocial (animalistic barbarian, edgy rogue, socially-inept cleric, and my wizard had an ego the size of a small moon) so she wasn't going to be suited up all the time.

Talking to the GM after the campaign fell through, his very rough outline of the final fight against the BBEG involved the suit being taken away after the BBEG realized he couldn't copy the design without the original. The party would then infiltrate the BBEG's citadel during a feast, and find the BBEG's workshop along with some huge, incomplete animated armor suits he was tinkering with but couldn't get to work without the noble's armor. My wizard would get an inkling on how to finish the most complete armor, and while he worked (with the noble as his assistant) the rest of the party would either be fighting a delaying action against the BBEG's goons, or crashing the feast itself. With the new suit ready, the noble would climb inside and the party would go smack the bad guy around together.

That was his idea, anyway. But knowing our group, I'm sure we'd throw about fifteen wrenches into that plan if the campaign ever got off the ground.
 
Judge Dredd said:
Back when Anita Sarkeesian was relevant, feminists would push the Bechdel test. It was a test to measure how "feminist" a film was.
  • Are there two named female characters?
  • Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?
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Also, badly flawed because "a man" is often an antagonist. A buddy film about two female cops who talk about the drug lord they're taking down fails. The original comic strip that presented this noted that science fiction films do well, but doesn't point out it is because the antagonist is often nonhuman.
 
Fagnacious D said:
View attachment 1845625
At last, D&D has been made more accessable. People in wheelchairs can play it. yaaaaay!

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Capsaicin Addict said:
I think what bugs me about the damn wheelchair is that I can't think of a single instance, in my experience in RPGs (which spans over 30 years) where someone wanted to RP a character with a disability the same as or similar to theirs, simply for 'authenticity'.

There are games where disadvantages and yes, disabilities exist (mostly as a way to milk extra points out of the system). But nobody uses those solely for the disadvantages. Nobody plays Charles Xavier for the 'authenticity' of being in a wheelchair; they play him because he's a telepath who can turn your brains to pudding.

It's a solution in search of a nonexistent problem -- or it's trying to MAKE a problem so it has a reason to exist.
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Imagine the kid who lost his ability to walk due to an accident or illness and manages to cope with it well 'cause hey, at least in D&D i can piss lightning, dual wield greatswords, and german suplex a tarrasque, only to get this patronizing bullshit pushed at him by someone with no self-awareness. "Hey Anon, now you can be a cripple in the game, too!"
 
Dang Woodchucks! said:
Imagine the kid who lost his ability to walk due to an accident or illness and manages to cope with it well 'cause hey, at least in D&D i can piss lightning, dual wield greatswords, and german suplex a tarrasque, only to get this patronizing bullshit pushed at him by someone with no self-awareness. "Hey Anon, now you can be a cripple in the game, too!"
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I remembered this subject coming up in Dragon Magazine, and had to sort through my scans. If you can, hie thee over to the Internet Archive and look up issue #145. There are a couple letters in the Forum, discussing how to best accomodate various disabilities (and there's no condescension or resistance, just 'OK, here are the issues, here's my take on resolving them'). Efficient and effective and nobody gets left out.

Mind you, this issue dates back to 1989 -- over thirty years ago.

There are no "rule" changes that have to be made to accomodate the "handicapped". In most AD&D game campaigns and dungeons, once the rules are explained, and the DM's quirks stated (I am a DM with a lot of quirks), nothing else is required except common courtesy, a willingness to help (if asked or necessary), a sense of humor, and patience.

A member of our group (who has since died) once thanked us for allowing her to join. She was overjoyed at being able to walk, run, and fight, not to mention have the magic she could (she had a 6th-level fighter-mage). We never had a chance to thank her for enriching our campaign.

I've been classified as totally disabled, although (luckily for me) I'm not in a wheelchair -- yet.

Just a small reminder: The "handicapped" are people first.
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Social justice forgets about the person, and focuses on the labels to the exclusion of all else. No wonder it comes off as cruel, humorless, and unpleasant.
 
Judge Dredd said:
Back when Anita Sarkeesian was relevant, feminists would push the Bechdel test. It was a test to measure how "feminist" a film was.
  • Are there two named female characters?
  • Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?
Answer yes to both, and the film is feminist.

You don't hear about the test any more because it quickly became apparent that feminist films and films SJWs love fail the test, while sexist films and porn films often passed.

When applied to games, the same thing happened. Gone Home? Fail, because it's all notes with no talking. Senran Kagura? Pass, because all the big titty ninjas have names and talk about things.
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You forgot Bayonetta as an example of something that passes the Bechdel test, which is ironic since that game's mere existence drives feminists to tears of rage.
 
I finally convinced my friends to let me run a magical girl campaign. The problem is, I never thought I'd get this far. It'll be my third time DMing, but the first time was a shitty dungeon crawl I made and the second time was White Plume Mountain. How do I write a story for a shortish tabletop campaign when all I have is a premise?
 
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Capsaicin Addict said:
Social justice forgets about the person, and focuses on the labels to the exclusion of all else. No wonder it comes off as cruel, humorless, and unpleasant.
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They can't even get the labels right. I'm sure it's been mentioned in the 200+ pages, but the whole "orcs are black people" controversy annoys people, likely because "human" is right there. The amount of racism required to believe black people aren't human, and that orcs represent black people is bad enough, but to make both of those leaps at the same time is so extreme that it's hard to think they believe it themselves.

Gingervitis said:
I finally convinced my friends to let me run a magical girl campaign. The problem is, I never thought I'd get this far. It'll be my third time DMing, but the first time was a shitty dungeon crawl I made and the second time was White Plume Mountain. How do I write a story for a shortish tabletop campaign when all I have is a premise?
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I don't know if this is good advice, but I personally start ripping off films, games, books, and any other media. Not beat for beat, but general plot points. I'm not familiar enough with magical girls to give an example.

Another idea is to take an existing campaign and swap the setting. This might just be my fondness for mashups talking, but many genres have overlapping themes. You can easily swap cowboys and samurai, or sci-fi and fantasy. Someone mentioned magical girls being super heroes with personal drama thrown in, so that would be a good start.
 
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