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

[Starscreams Cape]

I've played FFG Star Wars . I don't like it at all. You have to come up with a story for literary every single die roll. But sometimes you just have to know if you succeed or not. More complex than it needs to be. Character creation is very complex and the organization of the core books are bad.

I like the original WEG Star Wars RPG better.

I kind of liked the FFG system. It can wear you out as a GM trying to think of things for every advantage. But if you trust your players a little they can certainly help you out. I do also fully admit to occasionally just ignoring most of the roll aside from failing or succeeding.

Never played WEG Star Wars, but for Halloween I did run a WEG Ghostbusters one shot. It was exceedingly fun. Simple to run, simple to play, and you can find every PDF online.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

The trick is to ensure the powergamer benefits others besides themselves. If they can't do that then you need to shut it down. If they're not doing it out of malice, maybe try to limit it to SRD only, since the worst excesses besides casting relies on splats.

Correct. I occasionally catch flak because I try to optimize, but I'm also the guy who plays a spellcaster that spams buffs like he's getting paid for it with blowjobs.

 

[Professor G. Raff]

I'm coming close the end of a 5e campaign I'm running that will have gone for the better part of two years. I started it as a pre-made campaign (Dragon of Icespire Peak) that rolled the story and characters into a greater custom campaign. This was my first time playing D&D at all as well as a majority of the players, although two of my original crew where experienced DMs that helped me along. Probably not gonna DM again for a long time, especially doing it session to session as I have here because I have to spend a lot of time on it per week... next time It'll be mostly prepared before the start and only improvised as players change things.

Backstory out of the way, I'm wondering how people here find good games to join. My primary group is made of people I know well and I'd love to play a game with pretty much any one of them as DM, but none of them have the time and/or patience to DM. I've been playing a game I found on D&D Beyond for months, but it is certainly going to fall apart and it also kind of sucks with many cliches:

-Most of the group is really young when I am more on the boomer side
-The DM kind of blows and puts very little effort into stuff besides "I saw this in an anime, so I want to include it!" and pisses off everyone with his lack of improvement and DM-versus-players syndrome
-We had a furry fetish guy who just dropped and did unprovoked sex stuff in game
-One guy who is trying to be nice I think, but won't stop messaging me with his theoretical min-max character stuff I got bored of after a single time

The game is pretty much 90% just me and the only other good player in the group doing RP with our polar opposite characters as my good character slowly gets him to understand the rewarding nature of caring for others than yourself, and his slowly showing mine things are not always so black and white and some bad acts can be for the greater good which I enjoy, but there is very little variety.

D&D Beyond is the obvious choice... but my current experience from the group I found there, as well as the crowd Wizard of the Coast's policies has cultivated is not really the kind I want to interact with so much, has left some doubt on it's long-term effectiveness. Just looking at some of the buzzword filled titles in the LFG board makes me cringe. Since I am pretty new to the tabletop community having largely been insular up to now I don't know about any places to check besides the obvious surface level ones. Any tips or specific dens where more mature players gather would be most appreciated.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Has anyone played Sentinel Comics or the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game? I just bought them and want to know what to expect.

FFG Star Wars/Genesys system should be played by dumping all starting points into your attributes (brawn, agility, etc.) and then bullshitting your way through like you are a character in a B-Action film. Force sensitive Twilek I intended to be the group's face with no combat skills? Ended up constantly doing crazy John Wu action scenes. Android engineer/technician in the cyberpunk style game who was going to be the Mr. Fix-it? Meet Doctor Sluggo, attorney at law and black belt of the 4th Dan in Krav Maga with a chest compartment filled with morphine and C-4. Just roll with whatever gets thrown at you, and don't worry about how many weird DRM dice you're throwing (I recommend a dice roller program). Have fun.

As far a navigating the creation system, the Trove had some useful PDFs some people had made which were a lot easier to refer to than the books, which are laid out horribly.

 

[Stalphos Johnson]

Has anyone played Sentinel Comics or the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game? I just bought them and want to know what to expect.

I posted earlier in the thread about FFG Star Wars;

My group and I have also been enjoying FFG Star Wars, but I do agree a lot of the stuff is spread across too many books. Here's a great database of all of the enemies, which I haven't seen a link to in the Trove. Most of the time, you can get away with the 3 core rulebooks depending on what kind of game you want to run. Age of Rebellion for Rebel focused or Imperial focused if you grab the Imperial Duty Chart off the Trove, Force and Destiny for Jedi games, or Edge of the Empire for anything else.

The dice being proprietary does suck and there is a conversion table for normal dice in the core rulebooks, but it's cumbersome. Here's a decent online dice roller. Despite that, the dice are one of my favorite parts of the game, mostly because it allows for outcome beyond fail/succeed. The gameplay is solid for the most part, but throw most of your XP into attributes like @40 Year Old Boomer said. It's much cheaper to level up career skills than go through your career tree to get another attribute point. The main problem is that vehicle combat and starfighting is pretty crap. D6 managed to do it the best, but you can fix it with a couple house rules. The ones I use are cutting 1 point of vehicle soak = 10 points of character soak to 1 vehicle soak = 5 character soak, and use the Starfighters of Adumar ruleset. You can grab that off the Trove.

The FFG Forums did have a lot of useful information, but FFG shut them down recently. Here's an archive of the forums.

I like to use this site for the Genesys/Star Wars dice.


The SW general on /tg/ has a lot of useful info for all the games. I recommend Star Wars D6 or FFG if you're thinking of running a Star Wars game. D6 is real easy to learn and has tons of source books on any Star Wars topic or location for the OT and old EU, but doesn't have a lot of prequel information. FFG does cover the prequels/Clone Wars and I really like the Genesys/Star Wars system itself. The vehicle rules aren't the best, so I recommend grabbing the Starfighters of Adumar house rules that really improve it.

The Genesys general on /tg/ has a link to a bunch of homebrew, including an Elder Scrolls homebrew. I haven't taken a look at it so I can't say if it's any good. If it links to the FFG forum, you'll need to look it up on the FFG forum archive, since FFG shut those down a couple months ago.

With Genesys/Star Wars character creation, my advice is to always spend as much starting XP as you can on Characteristics instead of skills or talents. Good characteristics make up for poor skills.

 

[Aleph Bet]

!-!-! MADMAN DID IT AGAIN !-!-!

The Skyrim board game lets you meet that guy before he took the arrow to the knee​

Written by Dustin Bailey

Yes, friends – ten years later and it’s time to pick up a new version of Skyrim. Well, besides the Anniversary Edition, I mean. Bethesda’s most ubiquitous RPG is coming to tabletop with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – The Adventure Game, which has just launched for crowdfunding and has already met its initial funding goals.

Skyrim – The Adventure Game is £82 (around $112 USD) during the crowdfunding period, but that price will go up to £100 (around $136 USD) after the proper launch. Two additional expansion sets – Dawnguard and From the Ashes – bulk up the content with more stories to play through and more pieces to play with. The first round of copies launch in August 2022.

But what is the game, anyway? It’s a cooperative board game for one to four players, where you create a character, draw event cards to see how the story unfolds, and play through a narrative as you gather new gear and level up. Previews of the rulebook and scenario book are available from publisher Modiphius if you want a closer look at what to expect.

The first campaign included with the base game is set 25 years before the start of Skyrim, and the second takes place concurrently with it. That means you will, for example, get to meet NPCs from Skyrim, “but 25 years before when they were a young adventurer and then they take an arrow to the knee”, as game designer Juan Echenique tells Polygon. Choices you make in each campaign will continue to carry forward as you continue playing through the story.

Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/tabletop-game

 

[ZMOT]

I kind of liked the FFG system. It can wear you out as a GM trying to think of things for every advantage. But if you trust your players a little they can certainly help you out. I do also fully admit to occasionally just ignoring most of the roll aside from failing or succeeding.

ironically it should actually be easier, just let the players explain their dice (of course that requires the right kind of player, but as GM you can still veto it). and remember you can go off the dice itself to base the description on, like ability dice are what you manage to do, advantages from boost dice are a circumstance etc.
if nothing else just let them heal strain or depending on the situation turn it into a maneuver and assist another player for 2, basically giving them another die so it's not "wasted". (dunno what the equivalent in sw is, going by genesys). and you can always counter it with a setback die mechanically if you want.

Has anyone played Sentinel Comics or the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game? I just bought them and want to know what to expect.

forgot to add, make sure everyone understands the dice, after that everything should be easy. biggest issue is "eew it's new and I don't wanna learn it". it's 6 symbols, 4 cancel each other out, 2 are important for the check. not that complicated really.

peak ffg to have their own dice and then not license them for cheap to get people the "hardware" easily, especially how autistic people are with their dice sometimes. hope the margin from the few sales were worth all the other lost profits and reduced adoption...

Backstory out of the way, I'm wondering how people here find good games to join. My primary group is made of people I know well and I'd love to play a game with pretty much any one of them as DM, but none of them have the time and/or patience to DM.

if you just wanna hang out, roll some dice and push some plastic, why not grab a boardgame? doesn't need a GM (most of the time) and there are plenty that lean into one aspect or the other.

as for online groups, you could try outside the dnd-sphere which is probably be less pozzed and retarded depending with what you're going.

 

[anti SJW]

forgot to add, make sure everyone understands the dice, after that everything should be easy. biggest issue is "eew it's new and I don't wanna learn it". it's 6 symbols, 4 cancel each other out, 2 are important for the check. not that complicated really.

The FFG Star Wars RPG dice were easy to learn. The issue I have is trying to come up with what happens with every single die roll. For every single possible situation. On the fly.

I understood adding or taking away dice depending on the situation. The problem is trying to interpret the results every time takes alot of time.

 

[Ghostse]

I'm coming close the end of a 5e campaign I'm running that will have gone for the better part of two years. I started it as a pre-made campaign (Dragon of Icespire Peak) that rolled the story and characters into a greater custom campaign. This was my first time playing D&D at all as well as a majority of the players, although two of my original crew where experienced DMs that helped me along. Probably not gonna DM again for a long time, especially doing it session to session as I have here because I have to spend a lot of time on it per week... next time It'll be mostly prepared before the start and only improvised as players change things.

Backstory out of the way, I'm wondering how people here find good games to join. My primary group is made of people I know well and I'd love to play a game with pretty much any one of them as DM, but none of them have the time and/or patience to DM. I've been playing a game I found on D&D Beyond for months, but it is certainly going to fall apart and it also kind of sucks with many cliches:

-Most of the group is really young when I am more on the boomer side
-The DM kind of blows and puts very little effort into stuff besides "I saw this in an anime, so I want to include it!" and pisses off everyone with his lack of improvement and DM-versus-players syndrome
-We had a furry fetish guy who just dropped and did unprovoked sex stuff in game
-One guy who is trying to be nice I think, but won't stop messaging me with his theoretical min-max character stuff I got bored of after a single time

The game is pretty much 90% just me and the only other good player in the group doing RP with our polar opposite characters as my good character slowly gets him to understand the rewarding nature of caring for others than yourself, and his slowly showing mine things are not always so black and white and some bad acts can be for the greater good which I enjoy, but there is very little variety.

D&D Beyond is the obvious choice... but my current experience from the group I found there, as well as the crowd Wizard of the Coast's policies has cultivated is not really the kind I want to interact with so much, has left some doubt on it's long-term effectiveness. Just looking at some of the buzzword filled titles in the LFG board makes me cringe. Since I am pretty new to the tabletop community having largely been insular up to now I don't know about any places to check besides the obvious surface level ones. Any tips or specific dens where more mature players gather would be most appreciated.

I was hoping someone would give you a good answer, but since this didn't get a lot of reponses, I'll give you my shitty, not very helpful answer.
Never dealt with D&D Beyond or Roll20 (I refuse to use roll 20 on principal*). I also prefer to be the DM, so trying to worm my way into an existing game is less of an issue for me.

Sadly I don't have any real advice to give you.
The forum I used to go hunting for games on Discord Skype & IRC is no more. I'm going to assume its for the reason I didn't know it died until a few months after it went to domain squatters - people came, found games (or gave up) left, checked back in after 2 years. And even then, I don't know that I'd have recommended it too hard - no sobbing snowflakes, but the user base had enough of an edgelord problem you wanted to do some screening.

Do you hang out in any discords or any other online user populations? Try asking friends there if they want to play, that's more or less how I got my first online game together. Granted that's an easier t/ask when you're the one volunteering to be running the game.

You said in your current D&DB game there's one other person you get along with. Maybe see if they know some people? (Though I'd guess not if they're in a group with a furry)

Maybe try the RpTools forums? They were pretty dead for a while, but they've been cranking out new versions over the past year, so presumably engagement is up.

Also, as @ZMOT said, why not just play a boardgame if you can't find a good DM?

Spoiler: * REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I backed their OG kickstarter, was promised Cool Dude status for life, got bait-and-switched with a coupon code for three free months and 'backer flair' for what's otherwise the same free account any faggot off the street can make.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting like access to the whole art catalog or anything nuts, I figured there'd be some caps, but at least give your backers No Ads and more than 100MB of asset upload. Seriously, come the fuck on.

 

[Adamska]

The FFG Star Wars RPG dice were easy to learn. The issue I have is trying to come up with what happens with every single die roll. For every single possible situation. On the fly.

I understood adding or taking away dice depending on the situation. The problem is trying to interpret the results every time takes alot of time.

It's not that hard, but then I thrive with "on the fly" scenarios.

I do think there should be a house rule where if you get a certain number of advantages, you should still succeed. I swear when I played as a mechanic and I was paired with a pilot one of use would get like 3 or 4 advantages, 1 success, and 1 failure die and that meant nothing.

 

[Waifuwars]

Backstory out of the way, I'm wondering how people here find good games to join. My primary group is made of people I know well and I'd love to play a game with pretty much any one of them as DM, but none of them have the time and/or patience to DM.

If you REALLY want to play a game with your primary group, you'll have to bite the bullet and become a forever DM. Roll20 does suck but if you take the time to interview and filter your players, you can find a few actually decent players among the shit heap that is the 5e player base. However, they are cracking down really hard on groups that are using external software in their games and the actual platform is shite. I think /tg/ still sometimes has Gamefinder threads up but their sekrit club Discord is full of the worst kind of autistic circlejerking.

A tabletop podcast I occasionally listen to also has a forum (link here) and Discord and it's primarily boomers since the hosts themselves are boomers. There's still a veneer of PC bs but overall the community seems much more bearable than the alternatives.

 

[Steinercard]

I've played FFG Star Wars . I don't like it at all. You have to come up with a story for literary every single die roll. But sometimes you just have to know if you succeed or not. More complex than it needs to be. Character creation is very complex and the organization of the core books are bad.

I like the original WEG Star Wars RPG better.

I gotta agree. FFG just have this weird habit of putting gimmicks in for the (((sake))) of it. The only thing I like of theirs is Dark Heresy the 40k RPG. And that wasn't even really made by them. It was made by Black Industries. It was just WFRP in space. Which is what it should have always been. WFRP 3'rd edition was like they got the memo to make a board game and at the last second were told it was actually supposed to be an RPG.

I will say WEG had issues with any kind of force user. Force stuff in general was just broken as all hell. To the point you knew if a player was a Jedi he was a GM pet or something. And you knew you'd have a bad time. In general when I'm playing Star Wars I tend to go towards homebrewed Traveller or Stars Without Numbers. Both are more sandbox-like. Which fits in more with what I think of as Star Wars.

 

[Black Light Red Panic]

Hello does anybody want to play D&D online with myself and other random online people.

Why are other good websites for recruiting players. I have an ad on Roll20 and will post on /tg/ in a minute.

I will be the DM. The system will be Basic/Original D&D.

 

[Hummingbird]

Hey everyone, Thirsty Sword Lesbians is back with an new Kickstarter for their expansion book. In fact, one of my personal lolcows is writing for it.

 

[Adamska]

Hey everyone, Thirsty Sword Lesbians is back with an new Kickstarter for their expansion book. In fact, one of my personal lolcows is writing for it.

Already said my bit here. I will state that I'm not surprised it was just Evil Hat demanding more money with the scamming of the gays. Because let me tell you that each class listed in their piece of shit game can be classified as "abuser" or "abuse victim".

 

[derpherp2]

Correct. I occasionally catch flak because I try to optimize, but I'm also the guy who plays a spellcaster that spams buffs like he's getting paid for it with blowjobs.

Exactly.
I'm literally the healer because why the fuck is something like heroism and death ward only relegated to clerics, and thus my spite demands I find ways around said limitation through making wand factories and atheism brothels where you must praise my name in a bid to godhood to fuck over every God that dares tell me I cannot give people a +1 to attacks because I'm an arcane caster.
I think it got to a point where I made a wand minigun that shot Heals and some sort of pylon that automatically casted heroism/death ward/resist ele/protect ele every day during a rest.

And I'm going to eat shit on it because WIS is my favorite dump stat.
People that bitch about munchkins really forget that CoDZilla means the two biggest support classes.

 

[Ghostse]

Because let me tell you that each class listed in their piece of shit game can be classified as "abuser" or "abuse victim".

I mean they said its about lesbians, so that tracks.

 

[RX-78]

I'm going to be that gigantic douchebag who asks the obvious question instead of doing the bare minimum amount of research: why is 5e considered bad? I blindly assume it's due to critical role dragging in the Twitter crowd, as well as everything Hasbro touches being complete shit as a strict rule.

 

[Adamska]

I'm going to be that gigantic douchebag who asks the obvious question instead of doing the bare minimum amount of research: why is 5e considered bad? I blindly assume it's due to critical role dragging in the Twitter crowd, as well as everything Hasbro touches being complete shit as a strict rule.

Its splats outside of the original release try as much as possible to tear down the system they even want to play. They hint at wanting to remove racial mechanics despite them being physically different with different adaptation, advertise how cripples can totes be barbarians, and have taken the hammer to a variety of settings and lore things. The most recent big rape (besides trying to shame GMs for doing their own thing and trying to retcon shit in Unearthed Arcana), was to Ravenloft by trying to remove the spoop and turning it into literal Scooby Doo.

Basically the splats outside of core are fucking shit, don't touch them. Also probably don't touch the PHB, since Wizards thinks you're a piece of shit.

 

[Ghostse]

I'm going to be that gigantic douchebag who asks the obvious question instead of doing the bare minimum amount of research: why is 5e considered bad? I blindly assume it's due to critical role dragging in the Twitter crowd, as well as everything Hasbro touches being complete shit as a strict rule.

The issues with 5e can be separated into "5e, the system" and "WotC's 5e output"

My issue with 5e, largely, is that it has all the issues of 3.x and 4e, and discarded almost everything that was an advancement from 4e.
There's some good shit in 5e; I like advantage, they have a decent fear mechanism that doesn't remove player agency like PF, I like the resting mechanics, HD are better than surges, allowing a single "bonus action" with the option of giving up move/standard to get more. Allowing average rolls for things like HD in the RAW is also a big plus in my book.

What I hate is the spells have the same power creep as 3.5 and the endless & unbalanced subclasses. I really hate saying no as a DM, but for 5e I toss more than I keep or the game just goes stupid. To keep bitching about subclasses, there is no subclass trade off they are only additive. Which on one hand is good, you don't have to think about fucking over your character for a choice you made at lvl 1. But its also really bad because people just google "Best 5e subclass" and everyone makes that subclass because its easy to see that it is the most powerful.
Over dependence on skills. I am not against skills - you don't have all your senses, players need some help. But 5e adventures trains players to overly depend on them and to not think critically, because thinking is abilist, racist, and gatekeeping.
Also Crossbow Expert, and the return to infinitely stacking bonuses.

Mainly it just feels like for all of the multitude flaws 4e had, 5e feels like a step backwards in terms of layout and playability.


Then there's the issue with WotC output.
4e did a lot of tomb looting with adventures and ... I don't know if you can call them splats when they are hardcover... supplements that were revisits of classic settings like Tomb of Horrors. But they weren't module reboots/reskins, they were very clearly to take place after adventures from an earlier age had been through.

5e straight fully reboots the settings it revisits to be as woke as possible. It destroys them, full "Year Zero, the Past is dead". Which wouldn't be too bad (minus the woke) except 5e goes back to the 3.xe model of allowing nearly direct conversions. Conversion of something like Ravenloft to 4e takes a little doing as you need to convert items and monster abilities to 4e action economy & power levels. 5e maps almost directly, there is no need to do a woke retooling of Ravenloft except as a cash grab.

So while 4e sort of exhumes the sarcophagus for display in a museum, 5e flays the corpse, puts on "Goodbye Tarraraques" and dances around in the skin.

Then, Like @Adamska says, the system almost from release started to tear itself down. It does this really annoying thing by using vague terms in feat & spell descriptions, but then going out of its way to remove GM agency to rule on things it doesn't make clear. The GM is expected to Arbitrate what "Power over wind" means, but deciding if Orcs are murderous or able to integrate into lawful societies is simply beyond the pale.


On a related tangent,
I know I have grognarded about Theater Majors shitting up games, and critical role making people think they should play the wrong sort games, and what I'm about to suggest would only making it harder to try to get a group of people together "to play D&D" by making the definition of D&D even more over broad than it already is, but...

They really need to bring back Basic and Advanced D&D.
They really need to segment out the crunch and let you pick and choose what you want to matter.
I know you can home brew some of this shit, but when I am buying into a system I'm not paying to be told how to roll dice. I'm paying for playtesters and people who are good at math to have given me a model that maps to real world expectations but is more fun and doesn't explode when you find the edge cases.