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

[EleventySeven]

I have made some character art of Lord Captain Tristain Gildenkin and Darrius the Seneschal.

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Darius has no sense of adventure nor of boldness. And this is my alternative to listening to my officers like Civ 5 advisors. Anicletus can be culture, Darius is economic, Sextus is science, and whomever the Voidmaster/Arch-Militant will be military.

 

[ScurvyRat]

I've been running my own game of my own creation recently. I took the world from decade long writings of mine and applied it to a simplistic table top system. With a team of some of the best role players that I know, I've been leading a Role-Play focused TTRPG that I like to call Gifts and Consequences.

The world is low magic and very fleshed out. I play my cards close to my chest and slow roll them info and lore. I'll speak more about the system because I doubt anyone on the farms wants to hear about my low fantasy homebrew world.

The system works very simply. They started with 0's in all stats (DnD standard + luck) and 10 health. There's no skills, they just justify to me how what they're doing would translate to a benefit from their stats. Pretty simple, allows dex and str characters to do similar stuff as well without getting into the 5e bullshit of athletics vs acrobatics. I also added the idea of "pushing" your roll from CoC

They're basically just worthless and have to explore the world for a few sessions. At the end of the sessions I let them each take 1 point to distribute into any stat, including health and luck, and then allow them to give 1 stat each to another player. The receiving player does not get to pick where the stat goes.

I then distribute 2 perks to the party. One perk I pick, and goes to the player who best role-played that session, and then they pick another player to receive a perk and a different player to determine what that perk is.
Feedback has been really good, I picked a good group, 6 of us in total. Really fun to see people explore my world that I spent so much time on, in a system that I built for them to have freedom but still have some crunchy mechanics.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Besides vampire the masquerade what rpg has the worst fans

3. Power by the Apocalypse
Seems to be the go-to game for progressive wokeshit that wouldn't survive hitting the table. I'm not sure why. Produces some of the worst games. At least they keep to their corner where they can be ignored.

2. DnD 5e
I don't hate 5e or even Critical Roll like most here. What bothers me about the 5e fandom is they hate the game, they hate the rules, they hate the company that makes it. Will they play anything else? Nope. They keep trying to twist 5e into something it's not. As a tweet I keep losing says. If video games operated on the same logic as 5e players, they would want to play Half-Life, but refuse to play HL, HL2, Ep2, Alyx, or Black Mesa. Instead they'd mod Skyrim to replace all the Drauger with Combine. The fact these make up a large portion of RPG players frustrates me.

1. DnD 3.5/ADnD grognards (and maybe OSR)
I'm sure I'll piss off half the people in this thread with this one, including some of my favourite posters. But these people have a lot in common with PbtA guys in that I doubt their games actually work at the table, and the setting seems unworkable. Everything has to be a peasant mudfarming simulator where if you're not burning through half a dozen characters per session you're doing it wrong. No fun allowed as everything has to be strict Tolkien human, elf, dwarf, or hobbit. God help you if you arrive at the table with a dragonborn, drow, or catfolk.

Then they turn around wank themselves into a nostalgia coma if you mention Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or Planescape, how they used to play as a psychic beetle man or a musket shooting hippo. They complain about the mix maxing you can do in 5e, then turn around and complain how Dragonborn and monks at not viable because they don't have optimal stats, and then turn around again and praise 3.5 despite being all but broken.

You could try Savage Worlds too.
PAGING ALL SAVAGE WORLDS FAGGOTS, COME PITCH YOUR SYSTEM

Sorry I'm late. What did I miss?

I picked up a copy of "Heart - the city beneath" and the setting is pretty interesting but the mechanics look like they're going to be getting in the way of the game. I don't like the fallout mechanics or the poorly separated attributes. Really what shines is the setting, classes, and probably most importantly the Zenith abilities AKA: die a Glorious Death button.

Do you guys know of a system that can easily handle a weird, moderate lethality, narrative heavy horror-fantasy story or that's easy to convert/adapt oddball settings to? I know of GURPS and Fate but I haven't ever used or really looked into either of them. I was thinking maybe starforged but it's too focused on solo play. I'm considering just hacking the shit out of OSE or something but then I'm basically falling into the trap of forcing shit to run in DND when a different system would be better. Maybe Into the Odd or UVG would handle it but I don't know much about their systems either.

Savage Worlds has already been suggested. But it works for a horror fantasy story because, even though the system itself isn't a meat grinder, exploding dice opens the possibility of infinite damage.

Without getting into the weeds, the basic idea behind savage worlds is that skills are based on die size. d4, d6, d8, etc. It's a low numbers game, so a dc of 4-6 is common. It also makes +1s valuable. Health rarely scales above 3. So there's no point where a PC becomes immune to attacks. A d4 switchblade is potentially as lethal at level 1 as it is at level 16.

There are also different flavours of it. Savage Pathfinder is basically the fantasy version with classes. Deadlands Noir is prohibition era with voodoo magic. etc. But the base game handles all setting well enough, with the setting books being setting specific ideas more than complete re-writes. I hear the new books are shit, but SWADE and anything written before the pandemic should be fine.

Another suggestion is Stars Without Number. I've not played it, but it is a OSR derived sci-fi game without a specific setting.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Then they turn around wank themselves into a nostalgia coma if you mention Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or Planescape, how they used to play as a psychic beetle man or a musket shooting hippo.

EXCUSE ME, SIR, BUT IT WAS A PSYCHIC MANTID, NOT A BEETLE, THANK YOU

 

[Irish Turtle]

This will get a lot of hate and negative reactions from people in this thread but 5e is actually pretty fun its not perfect by any means but has a lot of customization options. There are ways it could be improved on but its a solid foundation.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

This will get a lot of hate and negative reactions from people in this thread but 5e is actually pretty fun its not perfect by any means but has a lot of customization options. There are ways it could be improved on but its a solid foundation.

It's good for entry level, but I'd have to give it a C- at best.

 

[AnOminous]

Anything not sanctioned by Gygax is canonically bullshit.

 

[Irish Turtle]

It's good for entry level, but I'd have to give it a C- at best.

what is your favorite version of dnd?

 

[ChampFantana]

what is your favorite version of dnd?

3.5.

 

[Ghostse]

3. Power by the Apocalypse
Seems to be the go-to game for progressive wokeshit that wouldn't survive hitting the table. I'm not sure why. Produces some of the worst games. At least they keep to their corner where they can be ignored.

This shouldn't be on the list.
No one actually likes PtbA so it doesnt' have any fans, thus can't have any bad ones.

 

[Adamska]

This shouldn't be on the list.
No one actually likes PtbA so it doesnt' have any fans, thus can't have any bad ones.

In all honesty that slot should be taken up by flavor of the month games that randomly pop up and are talked about a lot and then die out. That I find more annoying in some respects.

And honestly it sounds like the solution to your issues Dredd is to not play DnD. I too agree with this at times; I might be a 3.5 grog, but there's a reason you'll see me play at least half a dozen other systems as well just as happily, many of them not even being d20. Most systems have a niche that doesn't really appeal to some players, and that's why there's so many.

I will however agree and state OSR games usually just reinvent the same shit that B/X and 1st and 2nd editions already did though.

 

[AnOminous]

what is your favorite version of dnd?

1e.

 

[Corn Flakes]

This will get a lot of hate and negative reactions from people in this thread but 5e is actually pretty fun its not perfect by any means but has a lot of customization options. There are ways it could be improved on but its a solid foundation.

5e can be fun. In one-shots and occasional short campaigns, mostly. The two groups I belong to played long campaigns in 5e and we all found out it wears out its welcome pretty quickly unless you homebrew a lot.

It's a solid skeleton for a system, but Wizards of the Coast, either through laziness, incompetence or a misguided attempt at "streamlining", refused to actually put some meat on those bones. The game needed a better stat balance (Dexterity should not be the end-all-be-all stat, Intelligence shouldn't be the universal dump stat), an actual skill system (with the ability to learn new skills), saving throws and resistances that matter, actual choices while leveling up instead of just "you get X ability at Y" level, and so on and so forth. You can make it work, but you'd have to add so much complexity yourself that you might as well just play another system at that point.

 

[Judge Dredd]

In all honesty that slot should be taken up by flavor of the month games that randomly pop up and are talked about a lot and then die out. That I find more annoying in some respects.

Speaking of which. A couple of clickbait DnD videos got me thinking about some topics.

First, what games do crafting well? I've largely ignored crafting outside of McGyver like characters. The main problem seems to be that crafting is just a slower, cheaper way to get items from the shop. It's never really come up in a game I've run. Even my PF2 game has a trained crafter that hasn't tried to craft anything.

Second, what are the best versions of classic modules?

The video in question was hyped that WotC is doing a 5e remake of Keep on the Borderlands, but the comments quickly point out that it'll be censored for a modern audience. Supposedly there's a bunch of versions, with the Goodman Games version and a Hackmaster version considered the best ones. I know Ravenloft has had a few revisions over the years. But which, if any, do you swear by?

And honestly it sounds like the solution to your issues Dredd is to not play DnD. I too agree with this at times; I might be a 3.5 grog, but there's a reason you'll see me play at least half a dozen other systems as well just as happily, many of them not even being d20. Most systems have a niche that doesn't really appeal to some players, and that's why there's so many.

I try to. 3.5 is off the table entirely, and I try to steer people to Knave when I can. Savage Worlds is also a favourite of mine, though players hate it, and I've yet to get Castles and Crusades off the ground despite rave reviews.

I will however agree and state OSR games usually just reinvent the same shit that B/X and 1st and 2nd editions already did though.

Agreed. OSE is pretty much the old school DnD clone. They even have versions of the 5e races and classes in a zine I think. I also really like Knave for being an old school compatible without the bullshit.

This will get a lot of hate and negative reactions from people in this thread but 5e is actually pretty fun its not perfect by any means but has a lot of customization options.

5e is good early game, but after level 3 there isn't really many options, and by level 6 things start to drag a bit.

As said, I don't hate 5e. It's just it has a lot of small problems that build up to cause problems bigger than the sum of their parts.

 

[AnOminous]

It's a solid skeleton for a system, but Wizards of the Coast, either through laziness, incompetence or a misguided attempt at "streamlining", refused to actually put some meat on those bones. The game needed a better stat balance (Dexterity should not be the end-all-be-all stat, Intelligence shouldn't be the universal dump stat), an actual skill system (with the ability to learn new skills), saving throws and resistances that matter, actual choices while leveling up instead of just "you get X ability at Y" level, and so on and so forth. You can make it work, but you'd have to add so much complexity yourself that you might as well just play another system at that point.

You've captured how the homogeneity enforced by Faggots of the Coast utterly ruins the game and turns it into some kind of Final Fantasy knockoff. I hate to get into politics again, but this is precisely because the politics of these assholes pervades and degrades the very fabric of the game, even down to the level of mechanics, that it really is all political.

They say they're all about diversity, but even the game mechanics these assholes force into the game amount to forcing everyone to be exactly the same. And it's impossible to escape these cocksucking scum.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

what is your favorite version of dnd?

AD&D 2e

 

[AnOminous]

AD&D 2e

I never fully went to 2e but I did import some shit from it.

 

[The Ugly One]

As a tweet I keep losing says. If video games operated on the same logic as 5e players, they would want to play Half-Life, but refuse to play HL, HL2, Ep2, Alyx, or Black Mesa. Instead they'd mod Skyrim to replace all the Drauger with Combine.

Until you've played another RPG system, you don't really understand how the stories a game generates and the structure of its rules are inextricably linked.

But which, if any, do you swear by?

I ran the original game and converted to 5e on the fly. I had a 1-page doc I made myself to convert classic modules to 5e. There's no good reason to buy 5e conversions of old modules. Just run the old modules. I've done Keep on the Borderlands, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, the Lost City, Greyhawk Ruins, and more in 5e, cold, zero prep to convert.

IMO, all versions of D&D are imperfect, and 5e's the only one in the AD&D lineage that isn't a crumbly mess. It does have something for everyone to complain about. 3.5 fans complain you don't get to choose a new feat every two levels. AD&D fans complain that the initiative system is too easy to understand. 4e fans complain that the game is playable. Etc.

 

[AnOminous]

IMO, all versions of D&D are imperfect, and 5e's the only one in the AD&D lineage that isn't a crumbly mess. It does have something for everyone to complain about. 3.5 fans complain you don't get to choose a new feat every two levels. AD&D fans complain that the initiative system is too easy to understand. 4e fans complain that the game is playable. Etc.

Jihad on 5 and fuck anything that isn't a crumbling mess.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

Is someone who spent six years attempting to break into TTRPG publishing and design and the only thing I got was a bunch of people driving knives into my back repeatedly I can tell you TTRPG game designers are some of the most petulant people I have ever had the displeasure of working with and I've worked with stone Masons in -5° weather.

The whole idea that these people aren't constantly trying to find a gap in someone's character to drive a knife into is hilariously naive these people are basically Anita sarkeesian levels of dishonest.
Also all of the products are basically shovel whale