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

[Capsaicin Addict]

Don't forget that even back in 1E/2E, immunity to normal weapons (or to even lower-level magical weapons) played a part. Your +1 sword was useless against a creature with the 'can only be hit by +2 or better weapons'.

3E mitigated that somewhat with the damage reduction rules, though base 3.0 still relied on plusses. 3.5E changed this with less emphasis on the plusses and more materials, but nothing stopped you from blowing through an enemy's damage reduction with a lucky crit or just two-handing a weapon.

 

[Adamska]

There's also the fact that even a 'cruddy' +1 also meant you could straight up finally hurt and bypass a lot of DRs for monsters in 3e, let alone hurt them in older editions. Which meant that yeah it ain't doing much better against a goblin. But that jackass who has DR/magic in 3.5e? Well fuck you you ain't soaking 5 damage from me this time asshole.

It's similar to whenever you feel happy you got a mace, since now you can fully beat the unliving piss out of that gigantic skeleton monster with full force.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Anyone has any predictions of what the two new campaign settings will be like? I have 4 predictions. Feel free to rate my predictions on the scale of 1 to 10. 1 is not very likely. 10 is very likely.

1. I think the most likely new setting is Hasbro/WOTC turning the 80s Dungeons and Dragon cartoon into their own setting. The new cartoon setting will also serve as a woke reboot of the 80s cartoon.

2. I still think and hope they won't touch the Dark Sun setting. But I think Hasbro will demand a mature setting. Hasbro has an adult board game devison. That's why I think one of the new settings will be safe edgy and probably be a hell setting. Think Dungeons and Dragons meet Hazbin hotel/Helluva boss.

3. WOTC/Hasbro are so creatively bankrupt. I wouldn't put it past them outright ripping off Shadowrun cyberpunk setting.

4. Dungeons and Dragons but set in modern times. Good excuse to appeal to hipsters with coffee shops, defund the police propaganda, anti-capitalism themes, BLM and tranny politics. With a Donald Trump wizard as the main villain.

1: 8. I can see this happening.
2: 7. All the hype about Dark Sun online being a reason if nothing else. They will make it super woke however.
3: 1. I don't see that. I don't know if WotC owns Shadowrun, but I don't see it if they dont.
4: 2/8. I don't see them doing a modern setting. At least, not 2024, I do however see them doing a "current year" setting.

Which brings me to my prediction. I can see them doing some cringe setting inspired by current year politics. What is basically Wakanda but everybody is gay and everything is perfect. The villains will be thinly veiled versions of people like Trump, Richard Spencer, and Andrew Tate. The plot would involve a GamerGate like backlash, explained as dark magic brain washing the public. The setting would be condemned by the left for some horribly racist, sexist, homophobic, or problematic content, just as all the other attempts at woke have been (though I don't remember Strx being hated).

There would also be other mass media trends like multiverses thrown in.

 

[AnOminous]

As much as I want you to be right, WOTC claims they sold three times as many copies during the first week than the 2014 5e player's handbook.

Bullshit.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

much as I want you to be right, WOTC claims they sold three times as many copies during the first week than the 2014 5e player's handbook.

Bullshit.

Poor sales of 6E player handbook is what Hasbro using to justify the mass layoffs at WOTC.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

Selling three times as many copies than the 2014 version and Hasbro saying the sales are poor are not mutually incompatible.

 

[Illumithotty]

Oh shit Delta Green. I haven't heard that game in a long time. Didn't they make new versions relatively recently? Like a few years ago? Wonder if they're any good.

They're really not. The new Delta Green has the same problem as the new Unknown Armies and the newer versions of World of Darkness, in that all of those games relied on or heavily used a lot of conspiracy minded thinking. Which was great at the time because most modern fantasy relies heavily on the idea that the Powers That Be are out to get you in some way, through active malice or carelessness/obliviousness to greater existential threats.

That's a problem these days because newer writers or older ones who're trying to stay hip and relevant are now aligned to the Powers That Be, so now all that conspiracy minded thinking is suddenly dangerous because forcing Ritalin on kids, political influence of the WTO, and the MOVE bombing are all cozy fight-the-power conspiracies everyone can enjoy but forcing puberty blockers on kids, political influence of the WEF, and the 9/11 bombing are all dangerous and scary conspiracies. It's that shit-handed little dance about how when they do it, it's a virtue but if someone they disagree with does, it's violence. With Delta Green specifically as well, even in the writing they tie themselves up in knots about whether or not anyone enforcing the law, the norms of society, or the idea of civilization itself can ever be considered a good person.

 

[Brain Problems]

All I know is that in my circles of D&D players/fans (~12) not a single one I know outside of a guy who gets paid to DM, have gone near, let alone bought anything associated with whatever new shit that wotc is trying to shove at people. No one even talks about it beyond some vaguely autistic worries about spell changes/wording in new editions when in reality the answer is "which one is gayer? okay, don't do that."

 

[Imperial Citizen]

...God damn it not again. Throw the combat system out and replace it with...GURPS or some shit. Get some writefag (*cough*) to make some adventures for you, and you should be good. Seriously what's with the fucking politics? What did they do specific-
View attachment 6565690
Ah.

I think that is referring to the campaign, God’s Teeth. It does contain somewhat of a commentary on Trump’s treatment of migrants. Not to spoil but it’s moreso that Trump’s admin would look the other way when it comes to mistreatment of migrants (particularly children) in captivity. You then have something malevolent exploit that ignorance to do monstrous things.

The book is mainly about the issues surrounding child foster care in America than treatment of migrants. That children can be sent to and from abusive households and that the government just looks the other way. Cycles and cycles of trauma. It is an incredibly well-written campaign that handles its dark subject matter respectfully.

 

[Adamska]

Selling three times as many copies than the 2014 version and Hasbro saying the sales are poor are not mutually incompatible.

That's the thing. Wizards knew that 5e is their own best selling iteration of the game; it just straight up is. It's the first game that actually matched and beat TSR's insane numbers to give people an idea; it has somewhat recently outsold B/X and 1e in terms of core book sales, which were at 1.26 million and 1.56 mil respectively.

Wizards is very aware of how much wider the potential captive audience is due to that brand expansion and saturation; the last time the game had it this good was the 1980s. So even if DnDead sold three times as much as 5e in four weeks, they could still see it as a failure to reach target by their metrics, since they are predicting based on reach.

Again, DnD 4e sold well. Pathfinder ever seriously outselling it was a myth. However the game did not meet target goals at all, and had a harsh drop-off in units after the first couple of years.

I also don't goddamn trust their numbers, since entertainment loves to lie about that shit. They also will chase self-awards obsessively since they have brain problems and narcissism.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

With Delta Green specifically as well, even in the writing they tie themselves up in knots about whether or not anyone enforcing the law, the norms of society, or the idea of civilization itself can ever be considered a good person.

Don’t those questions fit the tone of Delta Green? Your characters commit a multitude of crimes to protect the US and the world. You will have to abuse your authority, misallocate funds, even murder American citizens in order to stop the Things from Beyond to enter into our reality.

Your superiors are all mentally unwell, if not insane, due to their experiences with the unnatural. Your conspiracy benefits from increasing surveillance, crackdowns on civil liberties, the bloating of intelligence and military budgets.

Why fight against the darkness if it will inevitably win or you will join in its madness?

 

[Illumithotty]

Don’t those questions fit the tone of Delta Green? Your characters commit a multitude of crimes to protect the US and the world. You will have to abuse your authority, misallocate funds, even murder American citizens in order to stop the Things from Beyond to enter into our reality.

Your superiors are all mentally unwell, if not insane, due to their experiences with the unnatural. Your conspiracy benefits from increasing surveillance, crackdowns on civil liberties, the bloating of intelligence and military budgets.

Why fight against the darkness if it will inevitably win or you will join in its madness?

Right, that's pretty much what the original set-up was for Delta Green and why it was still so popular (Okay, popular among roleplaying nerds that were tired of pretending to be vampires) even among the leftists and crackpot minded. There's some nuance there where fighting the agents of the Elder Gods and trying to keep the power-hungry who'd destroy the entire human race in exchange for their personal ambitions being fulfilled one picosecond before the earth becomes one endless mass of protoplasm, is best served by burying journalists out in the desert. They're just doing their part for greater transparency in one of the player character's agencies but they still get buried next to the gibbering cultists.

However, there isn't any of that nuance when you're writing from the ACAB baseline. It's downright sympathetic to the gibbering cultists as long as they're niggers or natives. If they're people of crime then obviously it'd be better to just let them go on their way rather than admit that law enforcement has a necessary role in society, especially when it comes to black-bagging Hoteps that started reading from the wrong scrolls.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

That's a problem these days because newer writers or older ones who're trying to stay hip and relevant are now aligned to the Powers That Be, so now all that conspiracy minded thinking is suddenly dangerous because forcing Ritalin on kids, political influence of the WTO, and the MOVE bombing are all cozy fight-the-power conspiracies everyone can enjoy but forcing puberty blockers on kids, political influence of the WEF, and the 9/11 bombing are all dangerous and scary conspiracies. It's that shit-handed little dance about how when they do it, it's a virtue but if someone they disagree with does, it's violence. With Delta Green specifically as well, even in the writing they tie themselves up in knots about whether or not anyone enforcing the law, the norms of society, or the idea of civilization itself can ever be considered a good person.

Lol the Fed game doesn't want to talk about modern issues because they're too dangerous? Jokes write themselves.

Keep in mind that most people don't care about niche internet drama like the OGL and Pinkerton stuff. They want to play Dungeons and Dragons and will buy that over anything else.

Sadly this part right here rings true...kind of. It's definitely still correct but it's less accurate as more and more people are getting sick of corpos being corpos. The people into tabletop as a whole are a fraction of the overall population, DnD players are the majority (probably) of that fraction but it still cuts a nice chunk out of the overall population. This population are unavoidably online, terminally or not, they'll hear about shit like OGL and the Pinkerton stuff from all sorts of sources whether they want to or not, and eventually their tiny brain gears will turn just enough to realize "wait a minute, that's bad!" And we all know what happens when normies (relatively) want to feel like their doing a good thing, they'll pull out...for about a week. Still, a noticeable dip is still a dip, the corpos will notice this and either reinforce this dip by doing something retarded or 180 on some of their retardation.

Poor sales of 6E player handbook is what Hasbro using to justify the mass layoffs at WOTC.

Honestly the second video was enough, short and to the point. The first video looks like another grifter overextending his video and his voice and tone is grating.

However, there isn't any of that nuance when you're writing from the ACAB baseline. It's downright sympathetic to the gibbering cultists as long as they're niggers or natives. If they're people of crime then obviously it'd be better to just let them go on their way rather than admit that law enforcement has a necessary role in society, especially when it comes to black-bagging Hoteps that started reading from the wrong scrolls.

Truly the mindset of an author and RPG that got glowified. Pottery.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

However, there isn't any of that nuance when you're writing from the ACAB baseline. It's downright sympathetic to the gibbering cultists as long as they're niggers or natives. If they're people of crime then obviously it'd be better to just let them go on their way rather than admit that law enforcement has a necessary role in society, especially when it comes to black-bagging Hoteps that started reading from the wrong scrolls.

I haven’t seen any of that in Delta Green’s writing. There are scenarios that deal with race but it never comes out as saying “fuck 12” or go on a paragraphs long diatribe about the systemic oppression of trans women of color.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Kek (good page).

 

[The Ugly One]

Sadly this part right here rings true...kind of. It's definitely still correct but it's less accurate as more and more people are getting sick of corpos being corpos. The people into tabletop as a whole are a fraction of the overall population, DnD players are the majority (probably) of that fraction but it still cuts a nice chunk out of the overall population.

People obsessed with woke shibboleths are a fraction of that. The reality is that as D&D's gotten woker, the quality of the product's declined. The adventures have gotten more boring, and the lore's gotten sanded-down and lame. The art is incredibly gay. People just don't like bad products.

 

[East_Clintwood]

(good page).

These are entities that have not engaged in any known anti-consumer behavior and generally have remained apolitical.

Pinnacle Entertainment (Savage Worlds/Deadlands) Removed the CSA from Deadlands and removed a lot of the old art that might offend anyone particularly anything with partial nudity or more risque outfits. Allegedly made sure there weren't "too many white guys' ' in their core rulebook. Otherwise generally treat all of their customers with respect and strongly encourage 3rd party products and even allow them to keep all of their work as intellectual property.

There are a lot of words I might choose to describe the newest Deadlands, apolitical is not amongst them, especially given the reasoning they used to justify removing the confederacy.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

There are a lot of words I might choose to describe the newest Deadlands, apolitical is not amongst them, especially given the reasoning they used to justify removing the confederacy.

Yeah I noticed this too, the page hasn't been updated in about 2 years and I think some people have commented on this so you're not the only one who noticed. Unless of course "removed a lot of the old art that might offend anyone" includes that shit reasoning. Also unrelated, I know roll20 and Fantasy Grounds have issues up the ass and I'm usually adverse to online TTRPG playing but is there any actually good platforms? Only one I tried that isn't the aforementioned two was F(oundry) V(irtual) T(abletop).

 

[Ghostse]

Which brings me to my prediction. I can see them doing some cringe setting inspired by current year politics. What is basically Wakanda but everybody is gay and everything is perfect.

They already made Radiant Citadel.

mass layoffs at WOTC.

Fully erect.

Selling three times as many copies than the 2014 version and Hasbro saying the sales are poor are not mutually incompatible.

As @Adamska put out, "doing well" isn't always well-enough for WotC's corporate masters. 4e moved a lot of units and sold a lot of ancilliary merch as well, but the numbers weren't high enough and led to shit like tardtandrums about sharing PDFs.

Its also possible they were always planning to lop heads once it shipped and it could have sold a billion units and still not sold enough.

but is there any actually good platforms?

Maptool is my go-to. There is a significant skill cliff - you need to be comfortable doing port forwarding on your router.
But 100% free and made by hobbists not people trying to cash in for investors.

 

[PancakesPancakesPancakes]

Right, that's pretty much what the original set-up was for Delta Green and why it was still so popular (Okay, popular among roleplaying nerds that were tired of pretending to be vampires) even among the leftists and crackpot minded. There's some nuance there where fighting the agents of the Elder Gods and trying to keep the power-hungry who'd destroy the entire human race in exchange for their personal ambitions being fulfilled one picosecond before the earth becomes one endless mass of protoplasm, is best served by burying journalists out in the desert. They're just doing their part for greater transparency in one of the player character's agencies but they still get buried next to the gibbering cultists.

However, there isn't any of that nuance when you're writing from the ACAB baseline. It's downright sympathetic to the gibbering cultists as long as they're niggers or natives. If they're people of crime then obviously it'd be better to just let them go on their way rather than admit that law enforcement has a necessary role in society, especially when it comes to black-bagging Hoteps that started reading from the wrong scrolls.

Source please?

Because as far as I can tell you are making this up. The authors frequently get called out for not making the Tcho-Tcho sympathetic, and weaponizing anti-racist Western tendencies. There are several scenarios where you have to fuck up an isolated middle eastern villages that have fallen to mythos worship. There's an adventure with rape monters, another adventure with the recently decided to be unPC wendigo's, and so, so many dead and mutated children.

The only time Trump gets mentioned it to say, that they didn't tell him about Delta Green for obvious reasons.