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

[Agent of Z.O.G.]

On the topic of critical role fans harassing the snake plissken wannabe: I would't call CR fans "based" or anything for being sick of self hating white dudes, since from what I gathered they are mad at him for ponting out and mocking a bit about cultural appropiation in Candela Obscura (CRs newest rpg).
I also heard how mediocre Candela Obscura is, lacking mechanics for stuff like pvp and the book just telling you "make it up lol" and thats on top of them "playing" this system when only a fraction of it had been written out.

Edit: shit I realized I should have posted this in the other thread

Seems like this GBC (Goony Beard Man) hasn't heard of PBTA and BITD before and is misunderstanding the entire point of why the rules are like this.
I mean I don't like the systems and I wouldn't be surprised if Powered by Patreon is worse than your average reskin, but shit nigger I'm not listening to a babby's first encounter with abstract rules for 20 mins.

 

[Ghostse]

Seems like this GBC (Goony Beard Man) hasn't heard of PBTA and BITD before and is misunderstanding the entire point of why the rules are like this.
I mean I don't like the systems and I wouldn't be surprised if Powered by Patreon is worse than your average reskin, but shit nigger I'm not listening to a babby's first encounter with abstract rules for 20 mins.

Honestly I went in expecting to make fun of this guy for being useless and/or stupid but he did a pretty good job of laying out the system and hammering on why it, and the other 'Oh no this isn't a narrative game; dice are involved!' type systems, suck balls.

This shit is worse than even the average PbtA skidmark, in so much as the GM does not have a method to initiate conflict. Everything is a response to player action alone. GM is supposed to tell the players the stakes of a roll for ultimate min/max. Its a dice poll game, but # of successes don't matter, only highest die. (though it caps at 6, but that doesn't include re-rolls)
Its to RPG systems what Critical Role is to actual play.

Also, 10 minutes. What sort of retard nigger are you if you aren't 2xing "influencer" drivel.

 

[Agent of Z.O.G.]

This shit is worse than even the average PbtA skidmark, in so much as the GM does not have a method to initiate conflict. Everything is a response to player action alone. GM is supposed to tell the players the stakes of a roll for ultimate min/max. Its a dice poll game, but # of successes don't matter, only highest die. (though it caps at 6, but that doesn't include re-rolls)

This is just Blades In The Dark, no the GM doesn't roll against you, he tells you what the situation is and you say how you deal with it.

Also, 10 minutes. What sort of retard nigger are you if you aren't 2xing "influencer" drivel.

I don't live in zoomertime

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

On the topic of critical role fans harassing the snake plissken wannabe: I would't call CR fans "based" or anything for being sick of self hating white dudes

That's how I feel about the Vampire The Masquerade and the World of Darkness fandoms. It's no secret that the vampire masquerade has always been liberal slanted with environmental themes. But I have even seen 90s and 2000s vampire masquerade players mocking how hyper political and pandering 5E world of darkness is. Not to mention World of darkness 5E removed the majority of horror and being evil from a horror setting. World of darkness is pretty much a horror superhero series now. There is a new book that adds nothing to the game beyond adding more pronouns and comparing the struggles of vampires to BLM. Because vampire hunters, just like racist police. Then again, I always found most vampire fiction faggy. They don’t even put sexy vampires on covers anymore.

 

[Phenomena]

lol, lmao even

 

[Ghostse]

You love to see it.

 

[iScream into the void]

Reap what you fucking sow jackass.

Spoiler: Autism

I feel like the "there are no women in tabletop gaming" is a cope for the lack of women interested in your tabletop gaming group. My old group that I've mentioned previously had a woman or two in it at one point or another, and they were perfectly fine learning the system... Granted it was 5e, which for better or worse, is a tourist's port of call into Tabletop gaming as a whole, but that's beside the point. Like it's a vestige of the old stereotype of tabletop gaming being a bunch of neckbearded nerds hunched around a table in the DM's mother's basement and the room reeks of BO so thick you can taste it.

Does anyone actually* have an issue with women in tabletop gaming? Assuming they're not just the tourist gf of one of the guys or something
.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

Ollie's Bargain outlet selling discounted Dungeons and Dragons board games and toys. The Dragonlance board was being sold for $100 and is now being sold for $9.99 at Ollie's. Even on Amazon, Dragonlance board game is discounted for $20. I have also seen dungeons and dragon socks and toys being sold at dollar stores. I wouldn’t be shocked if D&D 5E books get sold somewhere for around $10 to $5.95 new at this rate.

 

[Ghostse]

Does anyone actually* have an issue with women in tabletop gaming? Assuming they're not just the tourist gf of one of the guys or something.

I look at any unvouched-for female at a table askance. But if they prove themselves competent, they can hang and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

The biggest issue I've had is Theater Majors where they needed to play a narrative game, general drama, afforementioned taking D&D too seriously to the point of sobbing. But its not just females who often really want a narrative game, guys can be drama queens, and while no guys have broken down sobbing I've had some rage quits.

The only real female-specific issues I've had with female players is with Faghags wanting to live their smolboi uwu gay fantasies (or be flaming manwhores). And coomerism isn't unique to females, but I don't cotton to trannies, furries or fags and shut their shit down early so maybe I just need to tune my Fujo Cooming Early Alert System.

Ironically the last guy with a tourist girlfriend, other than her being really unfamiliar with the system she was actually a good player. She paid attention to what was going on during other peoples turns and not fucking around on her phone, and while she wasn't sure what to do on her turn asked really good questions. Only issue was complete unfamiliarity with the game (and she was a little quiet unless directly addressed) and needing her hand held. But you can train that away, and I sort of wish we would have gotten her in the break-up instead of the boyfriend.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Does anyone actually* have an issue with women in tabletop gaming?

I don't, and no one I know does.

Like it's a vestige of the old stereotype of tabletop gaming being a bunch of neckbearded nerds hunched around a table in the DM's mother's basement

Part of the reason the "hates women" accusation is they accidently cancelled their own insult. Feminists started a push to claim that it was unfair to judge women for the amount of sexual partners, but they didn't want to give up using "virgin" as an insult. They used "incel" for a while, but it kept blowing up in their faces for the same reason. They just want to call people loser virgins without using the V word.

 

[robobobo]

I've only ever had one problem woman in a tabletop game, the girlfriend of another player who just sorta tagged along, and when they broke up he fucked off but she stuck around trolling for a new consort. As a decent-looking non-hambeast, unfortunately a handful of the thirstier nerds in the group were falling all over themselves for her, leading to a few months of drama as she was both heavily disinterested in the actual game that was going on and a shallow bitch. Every other woman I've played with has been in the same average range as the men when it comes to being decent at RPGs, and no complete disasters.

 

[Quintus]

I think I've only really had one female player be a problem. She was a theatre kid (shocker) and constantly tried to insert herself into every situation, even if she couldn't possibly add anything to it.

 

[Spergetti]

That's not D&D's approach to alignment, that's GMs being lazy and not thinking about morale. Chaotic evil means you revel in the slaughter, not that you're suicidal. I guarantee you any GM that has orcs always fighting to the death will also run animals who always fight to the death.

I'm actually curious if anyone here has good rules for combat morale that they use. I have been trying not to be lazy and make every enemy fight to the death, but every time I remember morale I just roll a d20 and make an ad hoc decision about whether the roll was high enough for morale not to break. This feels unsatisfying, and I'd like to hear if ya'll have a better approach

Does anyone actually* have an issue with women in tabletop gaming? Assuming they're not just the tourist gf of one of the guys or something

I've never had an issue with women at the table, but tourist gf/wives have been about 90% of the women I have played with. I have also seen a tourist bf, but he was already nerd adjacent and he took to the game like a fish to water, so I never really thought of him as a tagalong for his gf. I've seen good and bad outcomes from having women at the table, and the bad outcomes I have seen were very avoidable if the people involved had better self-control and used better judgment. For example, one of the first groups I ever played with fell apart after about four months because one of the young men at the table admitted to our only girl player that he had feelings for her and asked her to break up with her boyfriend (tourist bf I mentioned before) to be with him instead. According to her the confession came out of nowhere, and this guy was pretty autistic so it seemed likely that he just interpreted her being friendly at the table as flirting. She turned him down, the autist threw a shit fit and quit the group along with two of his buddies, the girl and her bf just decided they would look for other people to play with, and so it was just me and the DM left in the smoldering remains of a campaign we had gotten pretty invested in. After the fact, the DM admitted that he had known the autistic guy for a few years prior, and he kind of suspected that he was going to cause a problem at the table eventually so he didn't actually invite that guy. However, his two buddies brought him to the first session without asking and the DM didn't object because he didn't want to rock the boat. Perhaps this group was doomed from the outset and there was nothing anyone could do to salvage it, but I walked away with a lesson about the importance of using good judgment about who you invite to play, and I'm glad I got that lesson early.

I have seen posts in various places advising to never let women play at your table because they are incapable of playing the game correctly and they will always fuck up the social dynamics of the group. I have always just assumed these were made to be performative edge rather than serious advice, but I guess these posters could have been serious. In all honesty, I think we all know that the push to promote "women in gaming" is a paper-thin justification to give make-work jobs to bitches with sociology degrees, it's not that hard to figure out.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I'm actually curious if anyone here has good rules for combat morale that they use. I have been trying not to be lazy and make every enemy fight to the death, but every time I remember morale I just roll a d20 and make an ad hoc decision about whether the roll was high enough for morale not to break. This feels unsatisfying, and I'd like to hear if ya'll have a better approach

I know most people are looking for actual rules, but my group usually goes for a "feel". If the fight isn't going the enemies' way, they'll break up and try to run away after a while. What "not going their way" means of course changes depending on the monster:

- Solo sentients start considering their escape options at half health (heretofore referred to as "wounded").
- Most groups of sentients run away when a third of the group is killed or the majority are wounded. That's the nice thing about a fireball: it might not kill everybody but it'll hit enough enemies packed close together that they're likely to run away or at least scatter.
- Groups of sentients with a leader will hang around until half to two thirds of them are killed. In most cases the leader will try to run away first. If the leader is killed, the group reverts to the "default" behavior for groups with the added condition that any enemy that gets wounded tries to run away.
- Non-sentient animals run when wounded.

Of course, there are situations where those guidelines don't apply, or monsters that run away at higher or lower thresholds. For example, animals defending their den/young might just fight to the death, a sorcerer might be mind-controlling the orcs so they never break, some specific effects will be more or less frightening to certain enemies (using fire vs. trolls or acid vs. most sentients), some enemies are just more cowardly than others, or they're just mindless undead and never break ranks.

"But Corn Flakes, you magnificent bowl of vitamin-enriched, poorly-narrated RPG anecdotes, doesn't that make encounters too easy?"

Au contraire, mon frere! Since you're setting up encounters with the assumption that most enemies will be running away if the players play their cards right, you can really up the enemy numbers and retain a "fair" challenge that still makes the players feel badass. Fighting 5 goblins is one thing, fighting 15 goblins that run away when 6 of them (or just the leader) get killed without the players breaking a sweat is a whole different bucket of narrative fun. And you get to do in roughly the same turn and minute count if your GM is good at rolling quickly.

(Plus you get to reuse the goblins that survived in later encounters if you want.)

 

[Ghostse]

I'm actually curious if anyone here has good rules for combat morale that they use. I have been trying not to be lazy and make every enemy fight to the death, but every time I remember morale I just roll a d20 and make an ad hoc decision about whether the roll was high enough for morale not to break. This feels unsatisfying, and I'd like to hear if ya'll have a better approach

Depends on system, depends on group.

In general, morale roll at half way, death of leader (if present), and if the PCs spent an action to be scary, and sometimes a roll at the start if the PCs get the drop on enemies that are not fixed on combat. (dropping into the middle of scavenging goblins with a warcry swinging a battle axe might scatter them. A group of kobolds previously alerted to the party's presence probably won't scatter)

I'm doing 4e, so most everything will fight till dead unless the players do things otherwise (or monster instructions say otherwise). I've got notes on a mechanism for party notoriety (creatures that broke before are more likely to break again, PCs that spare monsters might find intelligent monsters more likely to lay down their arms instead of going down swinging) but no one has ever given me cause to use it.

For B/X, the enemies are much more likely to bolt if the players play their cards right. Even just getting the drop on a group of enemies is likely to get anything not dedicated to combat with the party to bolt. At one half (or there about) they might flee especially if injured (so the party doesn't need to duel one thing at a time).
Basically I just ask the question "how reasonable is what they are fighting, and has the party done anything to make a being that level of reasonable think leaving is a good idea?"

It also really ups the threat level of low-level undead, being that they will fight to 0-hp

 

[King Dead]

I'm actually curious if anyone here has good rules for combat morale that they use. I have been trying not to be lazy and make every enemy fight to the death, but every time I remember morale I just roll a d20 and make an ad hoc decision about whether the roll was high enough for morale not to break. This feels unsatisfying, and I'd like to hear if ya'll have a better approach

Seconding the "feel" approach @Corn Flakes suggested. Barring exceptions like magically enslaved beings or non-sentient constructs or undead, most creatures can and should be considered rational actors that decide to surrender or get the fuck out when the tide of battle starts to turn against them. When exactly that is is your call. I personally don't roll for it, I just put myself in the NPCs' shoes when it's their turn, consider their current state in relation to how they started off, and make a decision about whether they continue fighting or not based on their disposition.

I suppose you could construct a table for a morale roll, incorporating various modifiers as applicable. Some suggestions for such:

• More likely to surrender: intelligent beings, severe injury (even more so if they're on death's door), leader defeated, majority of comrades defeated
• Less likely to surrender: non-intelligent beings (beasts, etc.), magically controlled, personally angered at the party, believes the party is weak

Set the base DC to 10 or 15, add or subtract based on how many modifiers apply, and roll. Beat the DC, the NPCs start looking for a way out.

But again, that's probably a bit much to keep track of and 5e combat is already kind of a slog, so I'd keep it simple and just feel it out in the moment.

 

[Adamska]

I'm actually curious if anyone here has good rules for combat morale that they use. I have been trying not to be lazy and make every enemy fight to the death, but every time I remember morale I just roll a d20 and make an ad hoc decision about whether the roll was high enough for morale not to break. This feels unsatisfying, and I'd like to hear if ya'll have a better approach

You could just be me and roll for both morale and brainpower. I legit roll twice sometimes because when facing against anything remotely intelligent, sometimes they might want to fight, but will actually recognize that it's better to fall back, hide away, or just save your skin if you recognize you're losing. So what I'll do is roll something like a willsave, and if they succeed in that but the fight's not going their way, I might then roll a "brainsave", which is their INT. For d20, I'd likely use their will modifier since it's thought. It's unintuitive, but a successful brainsave will mean they will disengage or try to escape.

What usually happens is pretty funny whenever I do this, since I'll usually critically succeed in the former, but fail horridly on the latter. Which results in them going cross-eyed, foaming at the mouth, and tard-screaming that "I'LL NEVER SURRENDER!" while probably shitting their pants.

It's absolutely fucking hilarious when it's a trash mob that does it, but it can also be annoying because you're trying to avoid this too.

 

[AnOminous]

I'm actually curious if anyone here has good rules for combat morale that they use. I have been trying not to be lazy and make every enemy fight to the death, but every time I remember morale I just roll a d20 and make an ad hoc decision about whether the roll was high enough for morale not to break. This feels unsatisfying, and I'd like to hear if ya'll have a better approach

I never really added a morale system to any game that didn't have one built in, but would have a general idea of what different enemies would do. This would range from:

non-intelligent undead, minor demons, orcs and a couple other stupid beasts under strict orders, basically the ones that would always fight to the death

normal animals, which would run away if you killed some of them

intelligent species and NPCs with actual motivations, who would act according to their inclinations, i.e. so my choice for them would be what I would do if I were roleplaying them myself

And then there would be specific situations that would affect a decision. Like if you got the drop on a bunch of gobbos and the first thing you did was wreck them with a fireball they'd scatter.

That kind of thing might also determine how they'd respond to the player group running away or surrendering. For instance, slavers would obviously consider a party of adventurers, however many of them were left, well worth sparing to sell.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Anybody else ever write (and sometimes even stat) characters you know you'll never get to play? I've never played Starfinder, don't know anybody who does, yet somehow here I am writing a brief backstory/personality/etc for a character I know will never get used.

What did my brain mean by this?

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

You know, all this shit about WOTC and DND reminds me of a question I asked on the WoD tread awhile back:

Bit of a dumb little joke question/challenge for you guys; for DND 5th, which races and classes do you guys think would fit best for an anti-woke character? Like, if you guys wanted to make a character that was basically a gigantic middle finger to WOTC and their woke crowd, what would you run?

Not entirely sure on the race side of things, but on the class side of things; I know that Barbarian and Druid have had some issues with woketards disliking them for some reason. Bard could work; these fucks completely lose their minds the moment they hear "mean words", so Vicious Mockery sounds fitting. Paladin and Cleric fit, since both can be about faith and holiness and such. Monks fit, since the woke seem to hate anyone being healthy and such.

What do you guys think? What would you choose?