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

[Fields Of Rye]

Also, You left off that if they are under 25 - fuck, damn near under 30 now - there is very good odds that unless you are personally involving their character expressly in something attention-grabbing, they aren't paying attention and on their fucking instagrams or whatever.

If Critical Role was real players and not a bunch of actors working from a outlined scripted, 3/4 of them would be on their phones and need to get that short-bark of "NAME! What're you doing?" when its their turn - which you are not going to correct during a one-shot without seeming like Ms. Sandigina.

Of course, getting people to even do voices is difficult. If you can't snap voice a character you can't play them, and trying to kick off proper rp with those people is like trying to set rocks on fire.
It's crazy how many people don't think all the games they watch is on a hard script. Once you start paying attention to it you'll literally notice people all but saying the timers gone off and they gotta go.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

I started a new game with three players recently and made it clear to the players that I hated Critical Role and wouldn't allowit to be brought up at the table. One nodded enthusiastically, another didn't know what Critical Role was, and the third seemed unbothered. We had a great session 0/1. Blood was shed, robots were smashed, and an orphan was vaporized, all to the table's delight. We'll see how session 2 goes...

 

[BiggerChungus]

Tabletop gaming has always been for weird nerds. For example, RPGPundit is a weird nerd who believes in magic and tarot. Alex Macris is a weird nerd who is really, really into medieval economics. And right now, the weird nerds with panty collections are having their cultural moment, so they're the ones who get put in charge of everything.

Basically, what I'm saying is, if the cultural moment of America resembled, say, Germany in 1939, WotC would have been taken over by really annoying wehraboos who managed to shoehorn a fantasy version of the Panzer IIIJ NOT THE PANZER IIIH MOM THAT THING SUCKS into the Forgotten Realms.

Can't reply to the other guys, but maybe. I still can't help but see it as a case of looking at the fruit the tree grows. It seems RPGs produce or attract an inordinate number of weirdos and people who do or say genuinely vile things.

 

[Spergetti]

Can't reply to the other guys, but maybe. I still can't help but see it as a case of looking at the fruit the tree grows. It seems RPGs produce or attract an inordinate number of weirdos and people who do or say genuinely vile things.

I'm sympathetic to this concern, but I don't think RPGs have a uniquely strong tendency to attract or create degens. It's good to have a healthy self-awareness about what kind of effects a hobby and the people around it might have on you, but that risk is present in every hobby community that appeals to nerds. I have dropped hobbies when I noticed I was forming unhealthy patterns or I noticed the people I would hang around for the sake of the hobby were not the kind of people I would ever want to rub off on me. I haven't had this experience with TTRPGs so far, and in fact, the people I've met in person through this hobby have been more well-adjusted than the average person I am likely to meet in an ordinary setting. I recommend TTRPGs to anyone with similar nerdy interests because I think they're a lot of fun, but your mileage will vary and if you believe this hobby will have an unhealthy influence on you, then you should definitely consider stepping away from it.

 

[Ghostse]

There is a push-pull thing.

I was having a discussion about in Hollywood movies the number of effeminate Male protagonists, bullied, descidedly not healthily masculine, from broken homes. And then you see the writers and realize they are just writing what they know, and we came to the conclusion that "Chad Thundercock is too busy slaying pussy to write movies." Only those who want to escape something get deep into escapism, and thus queers, fags, and sissies from broken homes populate the writing rooms.

So I think there's a tendency for RPG groups to attract misfits. You don't hear a lot about the Edgelord end of the spectrum because, Venger Satanis aside, most of them know to keep their edgelord shit private. And a lot of the center-wise RPG players tolerate degeneracy in their games because they don't want to be bullies or exclusionaries. When you have a troon melting down, screaming and crying because their pronouns aren't respected when is Bob calming saying "Ted you aren't fooling anyone, stop trying to groom my children", everyone is going to talk to Bob and say 'Is it really the end of the world if you just call Ted by Thea?' and Bob being a reasonable man agrees for the sake of peace while having his children stay over a friend's when "Thea" is over.
Trannies and degenerates colonizing anywhere that doesn't throw them out or throttle their bullshit.

So I think like most things you have a well adjusted silent majority dominated by a screeching minority.

And there's also the issue of... Survivor Bias. When you find a well-adjusted group of players, they stay together for years and sometimes decades. If they are stable and everything works, they aren't looking for new people and the players often aren't looking for other games. When you are looking for players for a new group, by and large your applicants are going to be people without a group and maybe they don't have a group for a reason. Maybe the group you're joining has openings because they are a bunch of deviant mutants who chase off anyone normal.


sorry, if this is disordered and rambly, I put in as much effort as I felt like putting in tonight which wasn't alot.

 

[Another Char Clone]

So I think there's a tendency for RPG groups to attract misfits. You don't hear a lot about the Edgelord end of the spectrum because, Venger Satanis aside, most of them know to keep their edgelord shit private. And a lot of the center-wise RPG players tolerate degeneracy in their games because they don't want to be bullies or exclusionaries. When you have a troon melting down, screaming and crying because their pronouns are respected and a Bob calming saying "Ted you aren't fooling anyone, stop trying to groom my children", everyone is going to talk to Bob and say 'Is it really the end of the world if just call Ted by Thea?'
Trannies and degenerates colonizing anywhere that doesn't throw them out or throttle their bullshit.

Basically https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/

A more serious form of GSF4 becomes another “friendship test” fallacy: if you have a friend A, and a friend B, but A & B are not friends, then one of them must not really be your friend at all. It is surprisingly common for a carrier, when faced with two friends who don’t get along, to simply drop one of them.

Autism.

GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know — asking a friend’s roommate’s ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it’s appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend.

Even more autism.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeys_through_the_Radiant_Citadel

Only the PoCs were permitted to write for the book, which they hyped extensively on Twitter, though as it is a WotC production every senior person remained a dirty white male.

The book was also absolute garbage, the setting was written as a utopia of brown-skinned bliss where benevolent leaders run everything and give free welfare to everyone by taxing imports, because that's a sustainable way to do it and merchants are totes on board for having all of their profit margins vanish. They also didn't have cops but had social workers to deal peacefully with crime, except if you did crime they would brainwipe you until you couldn't do crime anymore, which is not at all a dystopian nightmare. It's progressive! Anyways, if you look around with any degree of effort, it's easy to find critiques about how dumpster fire the book is and how the setting completely collapses under any scrutiny.

The funniest bit to me was that recently Mr. Welch has been doing a homebrew timeline update for Mystara.

In his update, Thyatis and Alphatia get together for a joint operation and sack the Radiant Citadel. Good times.

 

[Brain Problems]

6 girls show up. Don't know shit. Make their character. Take pictures of his minis and their character sheet. Have a session 1 then never return. Week after week. Ad infinitum, or at least until the novelty wears off.

You can unironically do some fun one-offs with girls who know nothing about the system if you just play it fast and loose. Essentially play pretend but with the veneer of a TTRPG on top. It's also pretty revealing how most women default to seducing/sex when it comes to solving problems.

If Critical Role was real players and not a bunch of actors working from a outlined scripted, 3/4 of them would be on their phones and need to get that short-bark of "NAME! What're you doing?" when its their turn - which you are not going to correct during a one-shot without seeming like Ms. Sandigina.

This hits harder than it should.

 

[Hijo de Dang Woodchucks!]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeys_through_the_Radiant_Citadel

Only the PoCs were permitted to write for the book, which they hyped extensively on Twitter, though as it is a WotC production every senior person remained a dirty white male.

The book was also absolute garbage, the setting was written as a utopia of brown-skinned bliss where benevolent leaders run everything and give free welfare to everyone by taxing imports, because that's a sustainable way to do it and merchants are totes on board for having all of their profit margins vanish. They also didn't have cops but had social workers to deal peacefully with crime, except if you did crime they would brainwipe you until you couldn't do crime anymore, which is not at all a dystopian nightmare. It's progressive! Anyways, if you look around with any degree of effort, it's easy to find critiques about how dumpster fire the book is and how the setting completely collapses under any scrutiny.

This sounds like the perfect setting to play an evil campaign. Especially the line of "mindfucking" people into being compliant... I'm selling whoever thought that up to my friendly underdark mind flayer commune as slaves indentured servants.

 

[LobsterBoy669]

Of course, getting people to even do voices is difficult. If you can't snap voice a character you can't play them, and trying to kick off proper rp with those people is like trying to set rocks on fire.

Even if a player can't do a voice, I at least expect a change in cadence and vocabulary. When someone is playing a paladin, I expect them to talk like a paladin. Sadly, even getting people to put in that much effort can be a tall order at times.

It's like, man, I am literally presenting a world for you to play in and presenting you with challenges, and giving you cool magical items when you succeed at them. Least you can do is not call people "dude" when you're a dwarf cleric. That's more than fair, damn it!

 

[Sumptinsfuckey]

BTW, slightly off topic but is anyone else reading/listening to Forgotten Ruin? Its an awesome series, U.S. Army rangers vs a world based on AD&D.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

I really liked the system, bought everything up through Xanathar's. Real shame how badly they're fucking it up in the name of niggerfaggotry.

To make it, they brought in a bunch of OSR guys who worship at the altar of Mentzer Red Box DnD. Things hummed along for a time, it wasn’t the best system but it did what set out to do and played fast and intuitive.

Then in 2020 we got the one-two punch of candlekeep mysteries and Tasha’s, WotC slammed on the accelerator and haven’t let up on it since.

 

[Ghostse]

Thyatis and Alphatia get together for a joint operation and sack the Radiant Citadel.

Link?

Even if a player can't do a voice, I at least expect a change in cadence and vocabulary. When someone is playing a paladin, I expect them to talk like a paladin. Sadly, even getting people to put in that much effort can be a tall order at times.

It's like, man, I am literally presenting a world for you to play in and presenting you with challenges, and giving you cool magical items when you succeed at them. Least you can do is not call people "dude" when you're a dwarf cleric. That's more than fair, damn it!

If you can't snap voice a character you can't play them, and trying to kick off proper rp with those people is like trying to set rocks on fire.

I'm of two minds, sort of like I am with every-turn initiative.
In an ideal world its much better if everyone does a voice and puts on an accent.
In a realistic world, things go much smoother when people can just talk normal.

It is much better when people do a voice, change up vocab, etc. But its hard to free-form respond like that.
Hell, I have NPC notes and a general idea of the conversation topics and it can still take me some time to build an appropriate response.

If everyone is fine dealing with some abstracts, I am ok with players saying "I complement the merchant before getting down to business", because at some point I'm going to mulligan on an NPC and say "You get several minutes of bitching about the Kingdom's finances before the Vizier gets down to the business of the Goblin infestation".
Its good information to get the players to recount tales of their travels - its fun to see what sticks in their minds vs yours - but that is also a lot of table time, especially multiple times an adventure. So I usually let them go with "you tell <NPC> about your travels; is there anything you hold back or anything you embellish or make up?"
Everyone has limited time and mental space, and you gotta make some compromises.

The other thing is doing a voice doesn't guarantee shit. The chaotic-bored player I've complained about before did voices for some of his characters, and being a booming paladin or squeaky chipmonk halfling or Thog-Talk goblin didn't change that after two sessions he was shit-stirring as himself not his character.

 

[Corn Flakes]

If everyone is fine dealing with some abstracts, I am ok with players saying "I complement the merchant before getting down to business", because at some point I'm going to mulligan on an NPC and say "You get several minutes of bitching about the Kingdom's finances before the Vizier gets down to the business of the Goblin infestation".

In our group, if you can't/won't put on a voice/roleplay the character, you go with a good description of what your character said, and how they said it. I can't put on an accent to save my life besides a really shitty Scottish accent that makes me sound like Shrek with a throat infection, but I will paint a pretty vivid picture of how my Paladin tries to negotiate with the city guard so they'll let the Rogue free. Again.

Really, so long as you're not going "'sup bitches?" to the circle of archmages we're trying to get a favor from, we don't really care. Either performative or descriptive, so long as the speech is appropriate we're game.

 

[Sumptinsfuckey]

Regarding voices, I've always done voices or accents when speaking in character, but use my normal voice/vocab when describing my characters actions, or asking tge DM questions. Byt then I like doing voices and coming up with interesting/funny character personalities. Whether it was my haf-orc dandy bard who loved getting manicures, massages, and living in luxury, or My pompous Human Noble fighter who wasn't that bright, or my Redneck fairy barbarian based on macho man randy savage half tge fun is getting to cut loose.

 

[Rogue Telvanni]

Doing voices is a big issue when playing with people for whom english is a second language - sometimes it's hard to put on a specific accent while you already have one of your own.

I do not mind players doing descriptions or just slightly changing their tone when speaking in character, but in turn I expect to be allowed to do the same. People I usually play with don't do voices besides changing their intonation to old man/pompous fuck/whore and I am fine with that - it's what they say that actually matters, as people have said above. If the character is interesting and consistent (and moreover not a fucking obstacle for his or her own party) - who cares about the voice, we all can use our imagination.
I usually don't have to consider this issue since a big chunk of games I actually DM or play are done via text, which is a method of playing I don't see mentioned often. My theory is that not every good TTRPGS player is good at writing, same as not every writer can sit down and enjoy TTRPGS. It has it's downsides (combat encounters can take fucking ages, in general the pace of the game is slower), but in all honesty I prefer it to voice, since you don't have to fuss over a gaggle of similarly autistic people so everyone has time for a session and I have more time to plan shit out. Or maybe it's just my bias for creative writing showing, idunno.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

I do retarded voices all the time when I'm gming, it's part of the fun. A few months back I had a gnoll chieftain sound like Gilbert Gottfried and tell dirty jokes that made fun of elves. Everyone said it was a good impression and everyone laughed so I marked it down as a win.

 

[BiggerChungus]

Really, so long as you're not going "'sup bitches?" to the circle of archmages we're trying to get a favor from, we don't really care.

Archmages bow to Chad Warden.

 

[LobsterBoy669]

If everyone is fine dealing with some abstracts, I am ok with players saying "I complement the merchant before getting down to business", because at some point I'm going to mulligan on an NPC and say "You get several minutes of bitching about the Kingdom's finances before the Vizier gets down to the business of the Goblin infestation".

In our group, if you can't/won't put on a voice/roleplay the character, you go with a good description of what your character said, and how they said it.

That's a good alternative. It shows effort; you're at least separating how you speak versus how your character speaks. I've had that exact thing happen at my table, and it's a fine alternative to speaking in character.

Regarding voices, I've always done voices or accents when speaking in character, but use my normal voice/vocab when describing my characters actions, or asking tge DM questions. Byt then I like doing voices and coming up with interesting/funny character personalities. Whether it was my haf-orc dandy bard who loved getting manicures, massages, and living in luxury, or My pompous Human Noble fighter who wasn't that bright, or my Redneck fairy barbarian based on macho man randy savage half tge fun is getting to cut loose.

I too enjoy coming up with voices for characters. I've done every single kind of accent I can do. I once played a changeling character that sounded like Kevin Spacey's character on House of Cards in his normal state, and then I had to change up my voice with every new alias I took. It was fun for me but I'm a fucking weirdo, I'd never expect that kind of devotion from my players lol

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

Didn't they literally shoehorn into some bullshit D&D code of conduct about the voices and it boiled down to do be a DSP?