Tabletop Community Watch

[Fromtheblackdepths]

Tabletop has always attracted weirdos, troons and lefty fags are merely the newest flavor. Fat, stinky, pedantic, fedora-wearing neckbeards were at the game table long before they took up computers.

I quit playing D&D in the early 90s after neckbeards started playing (their interpretation of) "hot women." One particularly disgusting specimen at an open game night at FLGS looked at me and said, "My character is rubbing her huge breasts against your arm and whispering seductively in your ear..."

It had been building up for awhile, but it was at that moment it became clear that I wasn't having any fun. I liked the idea of the game, but the game itself was usually a disappointing exercise in tard-wrangling and I hated 99% of the people who played it. I walked out.

I have to agree.

After nearly a year and a half on Roll20, I've realized how socially functional I am compared to other people.

I remember working with a new player to create a character, doing this for one hour, then having that guy leave. His excuse was that he got angry he was playing a system he didn't know, and with people wasn't familiar with, and being asked to do things he didn't understand. When we weren't even beginning to play the game. And I was putting it down that I would teach the system.

 

[Wormy]

I honestly don't mind the use of the term “Freakshit,” as I feel it a rather prominent issue in modern tabletop where it seems everybody wants to play some sort of monster race, beastfolk, or lolsorandom species even when the DM explicitly tells them those races don't exist in that setting or are unplayable. Some people just want to play a game with the Tolkien Four and clear divisions between good and evil societies, not sparkledogs and softboi orcs.

So why are people still getting called "Freakshit" even when they DO play the Tolkien four?

 

[Flaming Insignias]

So why are people still getting called "Freakshit" even when they DO play the Tolkien four?

Are they? The most extreme definition of freakshit I’ve heard have only gone so far to include Tieflings alongside the furries and monstrous races, never elves, dwarves, or halflings.

 

[Corn Flakes]

So why are people still getting called "Freakshit" even when they DO play the Tolkien four?

Are they? The most extreme definition of freakshit I’ve heard have only gone so far to include Tieflings alongside the furries and monstrous races, never elves, dwarves, or halflings.

I think a lot of people also lump in character concepts that don't add up to the world into "freakshit" Blue-haired genderqueer POC elves, beardless otherkin dwarves raised by gnomes... shit like that.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

Are they? The most extreme definition of freakshit I’ve heard have only gone so far to include Tieflings alongside the furries and monstrous races, never elves, dwarves, or halflings.

It's people stretching definitions to include anything that vaguely resembles the thing that they don't like. It's like in the gun community, calling anyone who likes bolt action rifles or old mil-surp a fudd. When in reality, a fudd is specifically a hunter who supports gun control.

 

[Agarathium1066]

I think a lot of people also lump in character concepts that don't add up to the world into "freakshit" Blue-haired genderqueer POC elves, beardless otherkin dwarves raised by gnomes... shit like that.

I've seen and dealt with a lot of overreactive backlash to any concept that ranges past 'Man what do the fighting'. It's clearly pushback against the weird pastel haired firbolgs and yet-another-snowflake-tiefling but it gets equally tiring. There's nothing wrong with having a few unique traits or interesting hooks, not everyone must play JOHN FANTASYMAN. If there's no weirdasses for the straight-man to contrast to then they're all just boring in my eyes.

 

[Wormy]

I think a lot of people also lump in character concepts that don't add up to the world into "freakshit" Blue-haired genderqueer POC elves, beardless otherkin dwarves raised by gnomes... shit like that.

It's a retarded buzzword that lost it's real meaning faster than usual, so from here on out, I'm disregarding the opinion of any player or DM that uses it.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I've seen and dealt with a lot of overreactive backlash to any concept that ranges past 'Man what do the fighting'. It's clearly pushback against the weird pastel haired firbolgs and yet-another-snowflake-tiefling but it gets equally tiring. There's nothing wrong with having a few unique traits or interesting hooks, not everyone must play JOHN FANTASYMAN. If there's no weirdasses for the straight-man to contrast to then they're all just boring in my eyes.

When introducing new players, I usually tell them that a character just starting should have one good "hook" to it. One main personality or physical trait, and two supplementary/background ones. Neither should be so important as to completely define the character, but they should help summarize it into a five-to-ten-word elevator pitch. Most other things should be developed as the game goes on, since characters are supposed to evolve and learn as they go around the world. IMO D&D characters at least aren't really supposed to come out of the oven fully fleshed-out, since there's a lot of adventuring and progression ahead of them.

In my experience, this method usually does the trick with the newbies, because it encourages even Generic McHumanwarrior, Esq. to have something going on right from the start that both the GM and the player and latch on to get the character to interact with the world. Even if it's just something as simple as the character's hobby being having a tankard of every local beer or ale he can get his hands on. It also helps avoid the opposite issue, with would-be playwrights coming in with eight-page backstories for their oh-so-original dark-and-brooding level 1 tiefling rogue.

It's a retarded buzzword that lost it's real meaning faster than usual, so from here on out, I'm disregarding the opinion of any player or DM that uses it.

Good man. That's just about the best way to go about it.

 

[Ghostse]

So why are people still getting called "Freakshit" even when they DO play the Tolkien four?

It is usual word dilution. You know, literally.
Someone calls an Elf Freakshit as a joke/sarcasm. newbies see it and only grok Freakshit = Bad, so start using it to refer to anything they don't like when it should only be used to refer to Species and maybe classes that would not only fit in, but stand way the fuck out all in a classical Tolkien fantasy session (And also gnomes). Like the average NPC would need to on copious ammounts of valium to not just shout "JESUS CHRIST PELOR ABOVE! Its fucking alive! Get the torches and pitch forks so we can fix that!"

Furry races, Gay 5e North Trolls, Shard Minds, Wilden, Bird people, etc.
Dragonborn & Warforged shoud fit the bill, but for some reason those races never seem to attract the dangerhair crowd, only powergamers.

Anything where the 'uniqueness' of a character stems solely from the very non-human(oid) physical appearance and odd coloration of hair/skin/eyes. Where the player doesn't want to part of the party, they want to be a special snowflake and everyone else is there to witness how cool they are.

I've seen and dealt with a lot of overreactive backlash to any concept that ranges past 'Man what do the fighting'. It's clearly pushback against the weird pastel haired firbolgs and yet-another-snowflake-tiefling but it gets equally tiring. There's nothing wrong with having a few unique traits or interesting hooks, not everyone must play JOHN FANTASYMAN. If there's no weirdasses for the straight-man to contrast to then they're all just boring in my eyes.

I always tell my players we can do one of two things:
You can tell me the race & class (or role) you want to play and I'll suggest some backgrounds, or you can bring me a character concept and we'll tune it to the world and work out class and race.
(Alternatively, just tell me what you're looking to do in the party and I'll make you a character & background)
Unless its OSR. In which case you won't be alive long enough for it to matter.

I like to do the usual building bonds shit:
Unless its covered by their background, I look for at least one NPC for a character to have a strong bond with, something to draw them into the party, and some sort of relationship with at least one other party member.
Again, you have people who put at least some

I'll sometimes put together fake "personality quizzes" like a d20 Voight-Kampff, but its really just throwing creative writing prompts and see if any get them get the gears going. ("Someone has been spreading a viscous lie about you around town, and you see them in the local tavern. How do you get even?";"You are walking along the road at night and see something in the bushes. What is it?" If people seem to struggle with the early questions, I'll start giving them suggestions.
Like a job interview, the question and answer don't matter, its more about HOW they answer the question, and it helps figure out what motivates the player/character so you know what to give them to get & keep them engaged.

I really hate the PbtA shit or party building guides that codifies this, because you need to flex on this. Some characters just lend themselves to more integration than others. And sometimes someone just wants to show up and dungeon crawl; they just want to be Dick McSwordbody and stab some orcs; as long as they are fine having their character just chill in the tavern while everyone else does things related to their character's stories, I'm good with that. No one should be forced to play pretend if they don't want to. I try to encourage because it usually results in everyone having a better time, but they shouldn't feel forced.

And as @Corn Flakes says, characters should start out sort of generic just with a few unique traits/quirks and then grow as they adventure.

 

[Shaka Brah]

>He follows the rules as written.

tbh martials can be fucking yoked even with RAW. Once you have charop down to a mad science, only someone equally interested in mangling the balance of the game can beat you on a caster. I had a buddy who made it his mission to only play melees and he would focus on one gimmick so laser-tight that he could do stuff like decapitate a mage from across the mat with a throwing knife or wrestle someone into a coma in one round.

 

[Adamska]

It's a retarded buzzword that lost it's real meaning faster than usual, so from here on out, I'm disregarding the opinion of any player or DM that uses it.

You got it right in one.

Especially since the people who used it unironically originally were also the type of retards who tended to pretend their terrible medieval LARPs filled with rape are the truest form of play.

As for nerfing casters, honestly? I don't think you can fix that problem unless you heavily okay and deny spells after reading them carefully. Combine this with actually being an autistic asshole and count the pages used per spell, since a spellbook only holds 100 pages. A cantrip costs one, level 1 spells also cost one. From there, it's the number of spell pages per level. For example a level 3 spell like Fireball takes three pages. I

That would force the wizard to ration somewhat, but will eventually result in them trying to cram all the spells they can in a library. But this I think was supposed to throttle the spell list they can pick up. It's annoying, tedious, and obnixous, but it's the only thing I can fairly state without just saying fuck it and play something else. Like Conan. Even then I've never had a DM do this, and I know I don't have the patience.

I usually just make up insane bullshit or just roll with the madness with the aid of the powergamer in my group. Guy's a magnificent bastard with his builds and happily helps you on ideas.

 

[Sir Joahim Browinson III]

I've been DMing with a lot of different parties and on avrage out of 4 party members at least 2 of them play generic fantasy races or humans which is good enough with me.
Despite what "freakshit" complainers usually tell you, there are some players that are more comfortable with playing just human, ether because they can't asociate themselves with another race, or just want a free feat, which is nice.
Speaking of which, there are also ppl who play non-generic races to powergame, which is a factor some neglect to keep in mind, and yes, this is the same reason players would rather pick Paladin than Fighter, because there is no reason not to pick spellcasting class over maqrtial in most cases (asside from rogues, but they are usually picked for multiclass).
And there might be players who just god bored out of playing generics and went with something more wild.

 

[Ghostse]

Got any advice to nerf casters? I’m wanting to build a table, and I really don’t want some wizard bending the plot hooks over their atrophied knee.

Switch to 4e.

Joking aside, Adamska danced around it which is currate the spell list and/or make magic less reliable in combat.

I'm assuming 5e here.

First thing to do is what Gygax did, which is have casters level slower; and don't forget to apply the same restrictions to your monsters' HD unless they really like a challenge. When the Fighter is level 15 and the wizard is still level 6 it levels the field a bit.

When they learn a spell, don't let them pick the spell. It should be random. I don't remember if 5e has magic domains but if they don't crib from 3.5e - caster picks the domain but the spell is random. If you have a power gamer who is an actual good Caster and not just a guy who follows a statistics major's guide from reddit to be the best at Virgin Checkers, they should dig the challenge.

If you do that, especially if you're doing something with a lot of spells, give them the ability research new magic. It shouldn't be easy or cheap. I did a sort of... streamlined 3.5-based campaign where... spellbooks were unique and only good for the caster, but you could still glean some information from them. The Wizard to cast spells had to find someone who cast the spell to teach them, or kill an enemy caster, get their book back to town, and spend time researching to (maybe) get the spell. They had to decide if they wanted to pawn off their ring of protection to get the lab chemicals needed to try to learn enervating ray.
The Cleric and Paladin had to write letters to Santa pray to their God for new spells, and go on about all the good things they did in their God's name.

I posted about the other TT thread, but do a Lore-based nerfing that encourages scrolls/wands/staves. Make it so one of the Gods doesn't like magic and whenever a caster casts a spell they don't purposely burn a higher level slot to cast, that God might become aware of them and send extra-planar beings to rip out their tongue.

Add more variability to spell results sot of like DCC. Have them roll Arcana as well as Attack. Maybe those D6s become D8s, maybe the fireball increases in size, maybe its a flock of burning pigeons instead.
I hadn't found a good balance on this one, where power should be highly variable but someone with better control gets better results, before I started doing OSR things and said fuck it.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Got any advice to nerf casters? I’m wanting to build a table, and I really don’t want some wizard bending the plot hooks over their atrophied knee.

I'll vouch for the tweak I talked about in the TTRPG general thread: don't try too hard to nerf the casters. Curate their spell lists and make them actually go looking for these spells they want. But no one likes to lose something they already had, so nerfing casters is likely to make all but the most mature players grumble.

Instead, buff the martials. In 5e terms, either give martials more actions directly or (my favorite solution,) give them slightly lower-level followers they can direct around the field. I GM'd a short dungeon crawl campaign and everybody was happy with the martials having underlings. It gave martials something casters by definition don't have: more staying power, multitasking potential, and reliable, consistent damage, without cramping the casters' style. It worked for us, and our GM has been working on codifying my little experiment into his own big book of house rules.

 

[Eldar faggot]

I honestly don't mind the use of the term “Freakshit,” as I feel it a rather prominent issue in modern tabletop where it seems everybody wants to play some sort of monster race, beastfolk, or lolsorandom species even when the DM explicitly tells them those races don't exist in that setting or are unplayable. Some people just want to play a game with the Tolkien Four and clear divisions between good and evil societies, not sparkledogs and softboi orcs.

I hate the term Beastfolk. There's very few things which turn me off buying minis from a company than having the beastMEN labeled as beastfolk. It's a clear sign of pozzing up the language when we're a species of huMANS. Beastmen are beastmen, same as lizardmen, humans and fishmen. Simple as.

I have to agree.

After nearly a year and a half on Roll20, I've realized how socially functional I am compared to other people.

I remember working with a new player to create a character, doing this for one hour, then having that guy leave. His excuse was that he got angry he was playing a system he didn't know, and with people wasn't familiar with, and being asked to do things he didn't understand. When we weren't even beginning to play the game. And I was putting it down that I would teach the system.

Any one out in the wild of the clubs and stores has to deal with this revelation at some point. Tabletop games creates a weird mix of too intelligent and isolated too outright retarded and has an obsession with space wolves. Always feels a bit dirty to be around someone with an 80 iq and realizing others assume your hobby is just the tards and children.

It is usual word dilution. You know, literally.
Someone calls an Elf Freakshit as a joke/sarcasm. newbies see it and only grok Freakshit = Bad, so start using it to refer to anything they don't like when it should only be used to refer to Species and maybe classes that would not only fit in, but stand way the fuck out all in a classical Tolkien fantasy session (And also gnomes). Like the average NPC would need to on copious ammounts of valium to not just shout "JESUS CHRIST PELOR ABOVE! Its fucking alive! Get the torches and pitch forks so we can fix that!"

Elf freakshit is valid because Elves are rather distinct in their archtypes. High elves, Wood elves and Dark elves in various fashions are fine. Then you get into weird home brew setting elves where everyone is sexless and watches anime for their cultural. If it could fit in Warhammer pre-AoS it's not freak show, if it's in Age of Sigmar then it's borderline or freak shit. Steampunk dwarves, Fish Elves, Dryads are actually dead elves but not really all falls in line with the snowflake unique race/stolen from anime tropes which make up the majority of freak shit.

I'm not a big roleplayer so I don't have the answer to this but how big of an impact has Critical roll had on the freakshit crowd and how much has anime/gaming had? People usually take ideas from other media they watch/read. If you read a lot of tolkien and conan you have mostly grounded characters. If you watch Tokyo ghoul and play Genshin Impact you're going to want those weird half demon lolicon characters with dual katanas.

 

[Black Light Red Panic]

Got any advice to nerf casters? I’m wanting to build a table, and I really don’t want some wizard bending the plot hooks over their atrophied knee.

Reserve the right to ban specific spells. I always have the instant bypass cantrips like mending, knock, etc banned as well as boring go-to shit like magic missile.

Best autistic bet if you want to spend time is go back to before casters were broken. Like Ad&d or so. Go in a different direction.

Alternatively you could come to the sensible realization that all balance issues stem from a) combat spells and b) too many spells with c) too much versatility in effects.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

You might consider the Elephant in the Room, which is a suggested set of alterations to fighters. It's written for PF but any half-baked GM should be able to adapt it.

The only alteration I'd suggest to that 'mod pack' for PF would be to give fighters either Deft Maneuvers or Powerful Maneuvers for free (they can take the other if they want it as a fighter bonus feat) to reflect a fighting/combat style.

PF2 (whatever its flaws) has some spells flagged as uncommon or rare, meaning you can control access to them as a GM. Useful.

 

[Adamska]

Honestly you can still do a lot of bullshit with just a single spell and metamagic. My caster in an E6 game routinely softens or kills whole mobs just with shaped and elemental substituted feats. Just take a save or suck and do that.

Also you'd be shocked at how many spells you'd have to yeet. At a certain point you just have to sigh and either find a d20 game where magic is weaker, or one with good martials to blunt the curve

 

[Corn Flakes]

Honestly you can still do a lot of bullshit with just a single spell and metamagic. My caster in an E6 game routinely softens or kills whole mobs just with shaped and elemental substituted feats. Just take a save or suck and do that.

Also you'd be shocked at how many spells you'd have to yeet. At a certain point you just have to sigh and either find a d20 game where magic is weaker, or one with good martials to blunt the curve

It doesn't help that any semblance of class balance starts falling apart by level 9, and by level 14 you might as well just give up.

You know, I'm starting to warm up to the old-school "casters level slower" way of doing things...

You might consider the Elephant in the Room, which is a suggested set of alterations to fighters. It's written for PF but any half-baked GM should be able to adapt it.

The only alteration I'd suggest to that 'mod pack' for PF would be to give fighters either Deft Maneuvers or Powerful Maneuvers for free (they can take the other if they want it as a fighter bonus feat) to reflect a fighting/combat style.

PF2 (whatever its flaws) has some spells flagged as uncommon or rare, meaning you can control access to them as a GM. Useful.

I'm not sure how PF2 balance works, but these changes feel to me like less a buff to fighters and more like a set of changes to foster build variety. Which is good, don't take me wrong, but I don't see how they address the power gap between martials and casters.

On the other hand, that article made me realize how much I miss Sunder. Damn it, now I'm sad.

 

[Sir Joahim Browinson III]

Elf freakshit is valid because Elves are rather distinct in their archtypes. High elves, Wood elves and Dark elves in various fashions are fine. Then you get into weird home brew setting elves where everyone is sexless and watches anime for their cultural. If it could fit in Warhammer pre-AoS it's not freak show, if it's in Age of Sigmar then it's borderline or freak shit. Steampunk dwarves, Fish Elves, Dryads are actually dead elves but not really all falls in line with the snowflake unique race/stolen from anime tropes which make up the majority of freak shit.

I am personally feeling like you have more problem with high fantasy/anime writing than "freak races".
If elven subrace is porly characterised or it's simply shit writing.
Still even weeb fantasy and high fantasy can be valid, since there are numerours ways you can do fantasy. You just DON'T MIX THEM, and you make sure players realise in which setting they are and act accordingly. In the group of friends it's usually really easy. However if you are playing with randoms this could be much harder to negotiate and you should be ready to filter what players want and even players themselves to not turn your game into a horror story, which I assume is the main fear of anti-freakshit crowd.