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

[Pendulous Dong]

THE TROONQUISITION HAS BEGUN!

I unironically have zero idea how Venger Satanis, a guy that tried to start a cult to Cthulhu and whose name translates to Satan's Revenge, got pegged as a "christofascist." Is it because he has a wife and a kid?

 

[Imperial Citizen]

Yeah, I can't speak to what the DG folks get up to on Twitter, and maybe they did suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, but historically they've been fairly middle-of-the-road.

The designers are lefty, but in the anti-establishment sense. Delta Green as a whole was born out of the conspiracy theories of covert government action in the 90s.

I get the sense that if the game was released in 2015 we would have a paragraph about Delta Green using Obama’s drone strikes to blow up occult rituals disguised as weddings.

 

[robobobo]

5th edition Shadowrun is mediocre. They took 4th, which was contentious for updating the setting to wireless technology to better reflect a future that wasn't conceived of in 1987, and hacked the shit out of it in a bunch of arbitrary ways that really hurt gameplay. If you want elves plugging keyboards into their heads, stick with 3rd. If you're for more of an updated view of the future, 4th/20th anniversary is best. In no instance should anyone touch 6th, it's an utter shitshow.

I unironically have zero idea how Venger Satanis, a guy that tried to start a cult to Cthulhu and whose name translates to Satan's Revenge, got pegged as a "christofascist." Is it because he has a wife and a kid?

It's because he's not on the troon/BIPOC bandwagon

 

[ZMOT]

3E is the best, the main problem is it has the combines the jankiness of early 90s RPGs and early 90s ideas of future technology, which isn't everyone's cup of tea. 5E is probably the most playable of the newer editions, but it still requires a ton of houseruling, and it has the absolute most dogshit metaplot in history (but 6E might beat it at this rate and it's not even that far into the plot yet) which should probably also just be ignored.

only kept up with the plot from the novels, last I read ended somewhere around 2055 or so I think.

tbh if I ever wanted to run shadowrun I'd just grab genesys with https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/288120/MegaCity-Magic and go HAM (or just stick to android which is already cyberpunky enough in the blade runner sense). imo shadowrun simply fits a narrative system better (too bad asmodee/edge will probably never do a humblebundle where you can simply donate everything to charity, given how retarded they are with the dice already).

5th edition Shadowrun is mediocre. They took 4th, which was contentious for updating the setting to wireless technology to better reflect a future that wasn't conceived of in 1987, and hacked the shit out of it in a bunch of arbitrary ways that really hurt gameplay. If you want elves plugging keyboards into their heads, stick with 3rd. If you're for more of an updated view of the future, 4th/20th anniversary is best. In no instance should anyone touch 6th, it's an utter shitshow.

tbh wireless was always kinda retarded, even these days there are good reasons people and especially corps don't use wireless for EVERYTHING, and even if they do you still need to be on-site which means the whole point is moot.

heard about 6th, was always curious how bad it really is but since my system knowledge of SR pretty limited I'd only get half the enjoyment of seeing where they fucked up.
apparently the license was up for grabs years ago, saw some posts bemoaning pegasus (who fixed 5e) didn't get it...

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

All of you are wrong.

2E Supremacy.

 

[Gingervitis]

All of you are wrong.

2E Supremacy.

>not playing 1e
Cucks, the lot of you.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Real men homebrew Johnny Mnemonic on BECMI.

 

[Pendulous Dong]

Fools, all of you. True Shadowrun fans jerk off to The Matrix soundtrack while thinking about elves.

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

Can we agree that everything up to the shit year of the comet added is the way to go for Shadowrun?

 

[Tactical Wizard]

I know

Can we agree that everything up to the shit year of the comet added is the way to go for Shadowrun?

nothing about Shadowrun that I didn’t learn from the video games but I very, very much want to run a game set in Chicago when the insect spirits show up and the town gets walled off.

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

I know

nothing about Shadowrun that I didn’t learn from the video games but I very, very much want to run a game set in Chicago when the insect spirits show up and the town gets walled off.

For those who don't know or it was before their time year of the comet is seen as sort of the BC/AD of the series allowing players to be furfags and psychic weebs.

 

[AnOminous]

>not playing 1e
Cucks, the lot of you.

Not playing by the original Chainmail rules.

 

[Snekposter]

tbh wireless was always kinda retarded, even these days there are good reasons people and especially corps don't use wireless for EVERYTHING, and even if they do you still need to be on-site which means the whole point is moot.

Yeah, they really went too far with the whole wireless thing. IIRC 5th scaled it back to something more sensible with rules requiring you to actually do something to have access to systems, but I don't know what else got changed there. Will say 4e/20 made being a hacker/decker a lazy, easy combo since you sat in a van and ran the drone and hacked if necessary, so changing that up was IMO necessary. I don't know what other changes they made but its always one step forward and one step back at best with these things.

For those who don't know or it was before their time year of the comet is seen as sort of the BC/AD of the series allowing players to be furfags and psychic weebs.

Had an entertaining game with a furry who played something actually entertaining even if he was you know, a furry. Shame he contracted TDS though...

 

[robobobo]

4e put in the wireless stuff specifically to stop the hacker in a van scenario where the party would get pizza while the hacker did a solo minigame for half the night. Remotely matrixing at stuff was de-emphasized (though still possible) in an attempt to get the hacker actually with the team, while astral grounding got removed so people would stop putting their astral mage in a blastproof box. Same for rigging by untethering riggers from a big console; it's still possible to run drones from the van, but ECM/ECCM stuff made that riskier if some security goon whips out a jammer and your rigger's two blocks away.

Themewise, I love the 80s retro futurism of needing most things hardwired and plugging your brain straight into stuff, but gameplay wise it caused a lot of snags where it was a dumb move to have your decker/rigger/mage onsite where they could easily catch a bullet versus sitting on their couch and remoting/astralling in. 4e did fall down however in the concept of offensive hacking against cyberware, because the game gives zero compelling reason for a person to enable wifi on their cyberarm. There was a lame 'oh they need wifi for diagnostics and stuff', but anyone who wasn't a fucking moron would only turn that on when necessary. The one and only change in 5e that I liked was them adding perks to your cyberware if it was online, so there was an actual reason for a person to do so.

 

[Ghostse]

Fools, all of you. True Shadowrun fans jerk off to The Matrix soundtrack while thinking about elves.

Real men get right to the essence of Shadow Run by fucking a copy of Neuromancer.

 

[Gingervitis]

I have a question I’m asking out of curiosity. I have a list of every officially published D&D setting, minus the licensed settings. All subsettings (Hollow World, Blackmoor, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, etc) are counted as part of their main setting (Mystara and Forgotten Realms, mostly).

Out of all of these:
1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)
2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?
3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

 

[AnOminous]

I have a question I’m asking out of curiosity. I have a list of every officially published D&D setting, minus the licensed settings. All subsettings (Hollow World, Blackmoor, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, etc) are counted as part of their main setting (Mystara and Forgotten Realms, mostly).
View attachment 4763462
Out of all of these:
1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)
2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?
3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

Haven't heard of a single WotC because I never gave a shit.
But Greyhawk/Ravenloft/Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms/Spelljammer/Planescape

Although I never played any of the last three.

When I did AD&D it was always Greyhawk or a thinly-disguised pastiche of Greyhawk/Blackmoor, other than the actual Ravenloft module and its accompanying material, which I adopted elements of into my main campaign.

Nothing post-TSR remotely interested me. I don't know if WotC was already wokeshit early on but they were just always trash from the very beginning.

 

[Ghostse]

I have a question I’m asking out of curiosity. I have a list of every officially published D&D setting, minus the licensed settings. All subsettings (Hollow World, Blackmoor, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, etc) are counted as part of their main setting (Mystara and Forgotten Realms, mostly).
View attachment 4763462
Out of all of these:
1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)
2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?
3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

only ones Ive not heard of is Birthright, Palinore, Jakandor and Council of Wyrms. I guess also Mahasara and Ghostwalk technically.


And Small Quibble:
'Nentir Vale' is called 'Points of Light' and IIRC is to take place in the same universe as (I believe) Forgotten Realms or Eberron but a different world or continent.
Its my favorite setting because its got that right level of "Everything is fucked so there's alot of adventuring to do, but its improving and players aren't just bailing water on the titantic until hell invades or the elder gods eat everyone's mind" - as long as you stick tot he material plane. The feywild/Shadowfell are fun ideas but too much a of a junk drawer of concepts. Feywild was an attempt to clumsily bold-on Celtic fey mythology, and the Shadowfell writers couldn't decide on a tone.

 

[Judge Dredd]

1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)

Grayhawk
Mystara
Ravenloft
Dragonlance
Forgotten Realms
Spell Jammer
Dark Sun
Planescape

Eberron
Stryxhaven

Al Qadim is missing from the list.

2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?

Eberron for a number of reasons. I'm a fan of pulp adventure and Eberron allows me to add that stuff to a game people actually play. It fixes some of the problems I have with generic fantasy settings, like if you live in a world where people can turn invisible after reading a book, why doesn't security account for that. It's a setting designed to be played in with pretty much everything being game material. Powerful NPCs are either limited, villains, or disinterested.

Second place would be Ravenloft. I like the gothic horror aesthetic. Spelljammer would be third for just being silly fun.

I've not played in and don't know much about most of them however.

3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

Dark Sun and Planescape.

I'll take all the trash cans and puzzle pieces, but grognards won't shut up about how amazing these settings are, but what I do know of them (which isn't much) always sounds really bad and unusable.

Dark Sun has a good pitch. Post apocalypse DnD with strange psychic insect people and Conan esc barbarians. "If you get thirsty, you become Chaotic Evil until you get a drink! That's hardcore brah! There's no metal, so everything is made of bones and chitin! That's metal as fuck!". Cool. The problem is, if all you do is wander the desert looking for water, the villain so powerful that any victory is immediately undone, and all friendly NPC will screw you over, then what point is there to doing anything?

Maybe I lack imagination, but I don't see how you could run a full campaign in the setting without "playing it wrong". I could see it working for a one-shot, but not a campaign.

As for Planescape, I'm sure people only hype that up because of Planescape Torment.

 

[Ghostse]

Dark Sun and Planescape.

I'll take all the trash cans and puzzle pieces, but grognards won't shut up about how amazing these settings are, but what I do know of them (which isn't much) always sounds really bad and unusable.

Dark Sun has a good pitch. Post apocalypse DnD with strange psychic insect people and Conan esc barbarians. "If you get thirsty, you become Chaotic Evil until you get a drink! That's hardcore brah! There's no metal, so everything is made of bones and chitin! That's metal as fuck!". Cool. The problem is, if all you do is wander the desert looking for water, the villain so powerful that any victory is immediately undone, and all friendly NPC will screw you over, then what point is there to doing anything?

I am 100% with you on Dark Sun. Gods are dead and all fantasy tropes are projected through a grim-dark mirror, cool. Its not that the situation is grim, its the whole thing is hopeless and pointless, there's no point. And its not even like Ravenloft where "Ok, yes, Barovia is completely fucked but maybe you can escape to a place that isn't" the enire world is fucked and anything you do to 'fix' it would only make the situation worse. Also the ven overlap on Dark Sun fans and Pathfinder Min-maxers is nearly just a circle so that probably influences my perspective.
And you have shit like Muls where shit just seems needlessly grim dark for grim dark's sake.

Planescape, I've never played but A) the Planescape fans seem to be less annoying and B) there's so much ground to cover with Planescape. I mainly have Spelljammer issues with it, where it just feels like a bunch of random ideas put in a paint mixer; I can see how people have fun with it, just not my jam.