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

[Sumptinsfuckey]

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.

Thays my take on it too. I enjoy the performative aspect and I like entertaining the other players.

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.


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

Fellow wierdo here.

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?

A what?

 

[Ghostse]

When I'm GMing I try to put some sort of distinct voice on for my characters. I've noticed my vocal range has shrunk in the past 10 years or so. But again, you might get greated by the noble-sounding king and then after a few pleasantries I might just say "The King then describes the situation with the noble houses for you in details, providing you a list of contacts and inviting you to stay for a feast"
I usually adjust my body posture and facial expression for important NPCs. I did that even during voice-only lockdown gaming.

But I don't expect voices of my players.

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

A what?

The guy who's featured as one of the premiere lolcows, some of his most famous moments with voices were his character Isaac Himmler stomping zombie jews in Dead Space and Mr. Chinky Chang Wang in Metal Gear Solid.
TLDR I remember some faggotry shoehorned into a D&D official guideline saying if you do voices don't punch down in other words no fun allowed.

 

[The Ugly One]

I do voices. In keeping with WotC lore, I use my normal, white person voice for the human characters, and the orcs are all like, "ooga booga, where de white wimmen at?"

 

[Sumptinsfuckey]

The guy who's featured as one of the premiere lolcows, some of his most famous moments with voices were his character Isaac Himmler stomping zombie jews in Dead Space and Mr. Chinky Chang Wang in Metal Gear Solid.
TLDR I remember some faggotry shoehorned into a D&D official guideline saying if you do voices don't punch down in other words no fun allowed.

Oh So the whole "caricatures are racist/apu is racist" shit? Not surprising.

 

[2LtMashengo]

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.

It was a lot of fun to play a character that sounded like Kremit the frog barking orders and interrogating POWs.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

@Ghostse the sack of the Radiant Citadel is covered primarily in this video:

Welcome to Mystara: The Known World 1030 AC Part 3 | Dungeons and Dragons

The advance of time continues, as Thyatis gets its own video showcasing the huge changes to the empire. Emperor Eusebius is obsessed with reversing the decl...

youtu.be

 

[Alabama Gamer]

My Pathfinder party is currently planning to incite an (in-game) race war to inconvenience our enemies.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Book 3 of Hell's Vengeance

Book 3 is widely considered to be the weakest book of the Adventure Path. 75% percent of it, I'm told, is wandering around a forest having random encounters with posses of paladins while looking for a portal to Hell that Abby 2 wants closed for some inscrutable reason. Even before the DM told us that he was looking for an excuse to skip most of the book, we had devised a brilliant scheme to hinder the forces of Good through ethnic strife. The town we're operating out of has a substantial tiefling population (because, y'know, next door to a Hell portal and all), and doesn't like the Glorious Reclamation any more than the old rulers. Insert your joke about "better the devil you know" here. Once we've secured the MacGuffin we're in town to find, we plan to embark on a systematic campaign of propaganda and false-flagging to turn the tieflings and humans against each other. Our work is cut out for us because the town has the Tolerant trait, but we have a good track record with espionage.

One of our players is playing as one of the faceless stalkers we met in Kantaria in Book 2, and our tyrant (LE antipaladin) has this brilliant wheeze of masquerading as a tyrant of Abadar which he used to great effect there, so our first step is to stage an instance of good old-fashioned police brutality. From there, we will play both sides, with the antipaladin (who is also an accomplished writer, it's a long story) churning out anti-tiefling pamphlets and my face rogue starting the National Association for the Advancement of Fiendish Persons and inciting the tieflings to "peaceful protests". Within two weeks we expect the violence to be so bad that most of the Reclamation's forces in the area will have to be recalled to suppress the riots. We may even stick around for a day or two afterwards so we can deploy the Discord Bottle (creates gas that makes creatures attack anyone near them) during the riot suppression to add to the unrest.

 

[Ghostse]

@Ghostse the sack of the Radiant Citadel is covered primarily in this video:

Welcome to Mystara: The Known World 1030 AC Part 3 | Dungeons and Dragons

The advance of time continues, as Thyatis gets its own video showcasing the huge changes to the empire. Emperor Eusebius is obsessed with reversing the decl...

youtu.be

That was pretty solid. The fun starts about 10 minutes into the video.

For the lazy:

- not!Roman cleric goes looking for Elven artifact, discovers Radiant citadel.
- Learns it is a stagnant city stiffling innovation, grinding down anyone trying to better themselves for equality, lots of gold, gems and magic. Defenses have key flaws, no army, and disgruntled traders/merchants due to oppressive taxes.
- Makes deal with Not!Chinese to help stop defense activation in exchange for their own lands.
- Comes back, tells not!Roman Emperor about this. He initially believes it too good to be true, but is convinced to give into his greed.
- Makes alliance with their rivals the Wizard Kingdom to split the booty. Both keeps the Wizard Kingdom from getting upto shenanigans and gives them high-powered wizards to counter those in the Radiant Citadel.
- Radiant Council is shut down by abducting (not killing) two of the council members, shields can't be raised. Two others escape through luck or skill, but doesn't matter.
- Anti-dragon weaponry kills the Citadel's guardian minutes into the battle.
- Shield Bearers are slaughtered; skill doesn't matter much when its 50-to-1.
- Golems are made of gems and are killed and then looted.
- Total Tiefling Death
- Total Tabaxi Death
- Anything not demi-human is killed. All the other peoples of color are enslaved.
- Radiant citadel mined for everything, now a lifeless rock floating in the astral sea
- Cleric gets a Triumph and the artifact she was looking for in the first place.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

Holy fuck, Welch woke up and chose violence that morning.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Holy fuck, Welch woke up and chose violence that morning.

A place of incredible riches and poor defenses is what you call 'low hanging fruit'. And the two nations involved -- Thyatis and Alphatia -- are not, as Welch notes, known for their humanitarian ideals.

Fun bit: In part 5 of that series Welch goes into the Alphatian civil war. When the dust settled, lunatic incompetent Zandor was the loser. His niece Araphne opts to simply imprison him rather than execute him. But she's not dumb enough to imprison him just anywhere. Oh no. That dead chunk of rock that used to be the Radiant Citadel? That'll do just nicely. A little bit of magical fixing up, and it now serves as his permanent home in the Deep Ethereal.

 

[anti SJW]

 

[Fields Of Rye]

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!

"Change of Cadence" is probably the better way to phrase it. We're not asking for you to drop a stone cold Donald Trump. Just maybe your goblin should should just a tad more antisemitic than your normal voice.

 

[BiggerChungus]

I think something a lot of people forget about voices is you don't necessarily need to do a totally different voice than your own. It's not like no one in a fantasy setting would possibly sound like you. I feel a GM has to do more work in this regard, but even then, and especially for players, if you aren't comfortable doing a "new voice" at least change your cadence and vocabulary. That's really all you have to do to make it immersive.

 

[Gingervitis]

I’m genuinely starting to wonder if I should just give up on this hobby.

For one thing, literally everything is turning political. It wouldn’t even be as bad if they weren’t mostly left wing drivel written by overweight manchildren.

But then the few times I do find a system that’s both good, interesting, and apolitical, I want to run it. The problem is that all my friends are leaving the state, save 3 (soon to be 4, only to be 3 again). And whenever I try to introduce, say, OSE, Sword World, or Castles and Crusades, everyone’s magically busy.

Online games are out. I get no privacy in my room, so I’ll have to deal with my sub-100 IQ sister and her sub-80 IQ boyfriend acting like special ed children while I enjoy a hobby a normal adult enjoys. And play by post games never last either. They always crumble like wet toast after a couple sessions, maximum. Not to mention, actually finding peoplr is a gamble.

And IRL games with randos are even worse. With online games, you can just find a server with no troons and find games, and already a plurality of the problem players are gone. Irl, you have to find a way to vet people without giving away that you’re avoiding troons. Once they catch a whiff of it, you’re on everyone’s shit list.

That’s if you can even find a store to begin with. There’s almost no FLGS in my area. Every time I look on google, it lists every store near me- the vast majority being in New York City. And no, I’m not paying 15 dollars each week to go to one of the worst cities in the country.

How are you even supposed to play a game with all the horseshit going on in the hobby? I just want some kind of white pill for not just this hobby, but literally any hobby I have.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

Recruiting for a game that isn't 5e is hard work. You have to advertise online and IRL way more, and make it absolutely clear that they aren't going to Wildemount without seeming too aggressive. Passing out copies of the core rulebook is important, whether it be a pirated digital copy, or, if you really want to gamble, physical copies of something cheap like BFRPG (I've done something like this for my current table and it seems to work pretty well), because people who might otherwise be interested will hesitate to invest $40 or more for a game book that might not ever be used.

Securing a table is also tough. You can get in touch with a local cafe and see if they'd allow it, or reserve a room at a library or university (if you are in or know anyone in college). Go crazy, call music stores with practice spaces, indy bookstores, comic book shops, the worst that can happen is that they'll hang up—but they also might tell you that you're welcome at any time.

Excluding freaks is the trickiest part. You can always just ignore emails from guys named Lilith, but if Susan turns out to be a dude, you'll have to wait until he says or does something iffy. Then you can ask the other players in private if they are uncomfortable or afraid around him, which will allow you to make him leave without revealing your true self. Another possibility is introducing world elements that will bother trannies, dangerhairs, etc more than normal people. It doesn't have to be mega based, just add stuff like slavery or imperialism. They will leave the table on their own.

 

[2LtMashengo]

On the topic of recruiting, does anybody have any suggestions for places to recruit for online games?
My group has actually had some success getting decent people off of game finder threads on /tg/, probably only because we don't use discord but I think we ran that well dry, and we're still down a man for one campaign.

I have taken a look at RPG codex, but the pnp section seems dead, and the last time we tried recruiting off of Roll20 half the applicants ended up being fe(male).

 

[Agent of Z.O.G.]

On the topic of recruiting, does anybody have any suggestions for places to recruit for online games?
My group has actually had some success getting decent people off of game finder threads on /tg/, probably only because we don't use discord but I think we ran that well dry, and we're still down a man for one campaign.

I have taken a look at RPG codex, but the pnp section seems dead, and the last time we tried recruiting off of Roll20 half the applicants ended up being fe(male).

If you're a DnDfag you can recruit anywhere and get a ton of replies.
If you're not you'll just have to cast a very wide net and then make the respondent jump through a bunch of hoops to make sure they're not fags/speds/etc.

 

[2LtMashengo]

If you're a DnDfag you can recruit anywhere and get a ton of replies.
If you're not you'll just have to cast a very wide net and then make the respondent jump through a bunch of hoops to make sure they're not fags/speds/etc.

Hopefully that applies as well to DnDerivative (PF) as it does to DnD. I'll probably write up some sort of interview questions with the GM to serve as a filter.

 

[Steinercard]

Thays my take on it too. I enjoy the performative aspect and I like entertaining the other players.


Fellow wierdo here.

A what?

Okay so I'm a weirdo who's like one half of a theatre kid and one half of an awkward autistic grognard. The only other person I know like myself is The Spoony One. I don't know anyone else who has my combination of autism.

What I like to do is perform these interesting characters but everything has to be within the context of the game and systems therein. The story is informed by the game. Not the other way around. I like it when I design something with interesting systems that a player can interface with and use to play the game. And I consider Roleplaying to be a system in service of the game. Not the be all end all.

What I mean by this, is it's all well and good to play an alchoholic in Savage Worlds. But what does that mean mechanically and how does the player act that out. It's all well and good for the player to just "roleplay" being an alchoholic. But I also want that represented mechanically because it can lead to interesting dynamic gameplay. Let's say a debuff to agility based tasks when craving booze and willpower tests when sober to avoid booze. Along with mechanics to look for alchohol in a given place. So you have a player who decides if it's worth risking rolling to stay sober or just looking for booze for a slightly smaller debuff. Does that then mean that PC is absent for a suspicious period of time? Has he informed the party of what he's doing? What do they think is going on? This then informs the roleplay. Is the character a "functional" alcoholic trying to hide their addiction from the party? Is he a complete fuckin lush who doesn't care and just wants his booze? This way there's much less separation between mechanics and role playing. Or story gaming and actual gaming.