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

[Maverick Vile]

In the book of Exalted Deeds for d&d 3rd/3.5 edition describes one example of a lawful good female Illithid Monk, but from what I recall the pretense of this happening is basically divine intervention.

Yeah, her name's Thaqualm. I poured over the Book of Exalted Deeds when it first came out (nowhere near as much as the Book of Vile Darkness, because I'm an edgelord). Unfortunately, there is no divine intervention mentioned to make a lifelong slaver Illithid suddenly rethink her life choices. Her duergar thralls shook off her mind control and made her a slave for about 3 years until an adventuring party rescued her and for some reason never killed a fucking MINDFLAYER! For no reason at all, she joins the party and eventually joins a monastery. The only motivation I can possibly gather for her change of heart (if Illithids even have those!) is the Family Guy meme:

Seriously, they don't even address how she works around needing to eat sapient brains in order to live. That's the kind of story I would expect for an orc or a drow becoming good, not a goddamn psychic vampire from space. Barely any consideration for the established lore for illithids. I'd buy that an Illithid can turn good, but not through the power of friendship. Their lore kind of hints that they're physically incapable of feeling positive emotions outside of when they're eating someone's brain, which is probably hinting that their brains can't produce chemicals required to feel positive emotions. An enslaved Illithid is way more likely to identify a group of adventurers sparing it out of pity as weakness and play up the defenselessness until returning to full power more than anything else. If I were tasked with writing a good mindflayer, I would hone in on the ceromorphosis process. It's not unheard of for a mindflayer to retain some of their host's personality after ceromorphosis is complete. It's considered a serious issue in Illithid society and they take immediate and drastic measures to remove the lingering personality once detected, but imagine a scenario where a paladin was selected for ceromorphosis and his righteousness started to creep into the back of the resulting Illithid's mind while he was away from the Elder Brain's influence on a mission to the surface. There's a good story in there. Thaqualm is just a generic "I didn't know compassion felt so good" redemption story stapled to a creature that most likely cannot appreciate it.

Do you have a link to that video? I'm interested to see what kind of arguments this guy would be making.

I haven't watched all of it, because I wanted to avoid spoilers for some of the things he discusses in it, and he's also a circuitous, video-padding dullard, but you can watch it if you want. I also hunted down one of his tweets where he hems and haws about whether Illithids are an evil race.
"They're so alien to us!"
They're evil, dude. You can say it. By they way, he also uses this logic to say the Xenomorphs are just animals following their programming and the Cenobites are just really bored kinksters because in the Clive Barker book they ask for Frank's consent before skinning him alive. I swear to God he has a tweet where he says the Cenobites aren't evil because they are sharing what they consider to be a gift, but reading through this guy's pseudointellectualism is a slog and it took me way longer than I was willing to invest to find what I have.

I'm going to disagree since they're always or almost always Lawful Evil and Lawful implies some sort of rule-based ethics, even if those very rules are morally abhorrent.

You know what? Fair enough. You caught me using ethical and moral interchangeably. And yes, mindflayer ethics are morally fucked.

Also this whole transformation into a mind flayer thing is nuDND bullshit imo. Illithids were inherently extremely racist/speciesist and the idea of a mere human ever ascending into being a mind flayer would have been abhorrent to the ones I had in games.

You must've been around since first edition, then. From what I understand ceromorphosis has been a concept since AD&D.

I seriously question the type of people who apply this moral relativism to D&D.

They just have a sexual fetish for being seen as the smart guy in the room, but every moral relativist has their line, and the guy I mentioned constantly posts lefty shit in his timeline (surprise surprise). It's very obvious he's one of those "the idea of fictional evil races give those nasty alt-righters race realism talking points!" types when he says evil races are "boring."

 

[White Slaad]

They just have a sexual fetish for being seen as the smart guy in the room, but every moral relativist has their line, and the guy I mentioned constantly posts lefty shit in his timeline (surprise surprise). It's very obvious he's one of those "the idea of fictional evil races give those nasty alt-righters race realism talking points!" types when he says evil races are "boring."

It baffles me because it doesn't come from a place of a DM running a D&D game, it reads more like the perspective of a genre fiction writer tired of tropes. Makes sense, since the trope-heavy pulp fantasy that heavily influenced D&D is full of cliches that make leftoids seethe. From the perspective of a DM, a clear villain is exactly what you need because if players decide that the orcs are good, then they aren't going into the orc dungeon you made for them to plunder: they'll be busy chastising the human kingdom for being racist or whatever. These people think that D&D can tell stories about political intrigue and deep character drama when in reality 75% of the rules are built around skirmish combat and 25% are about exploring a wilderness or dungeon. How strange that these types of people are usually trying to "fix" D&D5e—I wonder why the system doesn't feel right to them.

 

[Revelator]

It baffles me because it doesn't come from a place of a DM running a D&D game, it reads more like the perspective of a genre fiction writer tired of tropes. Makes sense, since the trope-heavy pulp fantasy that heavily influenced D&D is full of cliches that make leftoids seethe. From the perspective of a DM, a clear villain is exactly what you need because if players decide that the orcs are good, then they aren't going into the orc dungeon you made for them to plunder: they'll be busy chastising the human kingdom for being racist or whatever. These people think that D&D can tell stories about political intrigue and deep character drama when in reality 75% of the rules are built around skirmish combat and 25% are about exploring a wilderness or dungeon. How strange that these types of people are usually trying to "fix" D&D5e—I wonder why the system doesn't feel right to them.

It's especially irritating because they could break out of their gamer tourism by doing a little research and finding one of the 300 rules systems that support the kind of game they want to actually play. But no, that's not Critical Roll...

 

[Ah ha']

It baffles me because it doesn't come from a place of a DM running a D&D game, it reads more like the perspective of a genre fiction writer tired of tropes. Makes sense, since the trope-heavy pulp fantasy that heavily influenced D&D is full of cliches that make leftoids seethe. From the perspective of a DM, a clear villain is exactly what you need because if players decide that the orcs are good, then they aren't going into the orc dungeon you made for them to plunder: they'll be busy chastising the human kingdom for being racist or whatever. These people think that D&D can tell stories about political intrigue and deep character drama when in reality 75% of the rules are built around skirmish combat and 25% are about exploring a wilderness or dungeon. How strange that these types of people are usually trying to "fix" D&D5e—I wonder why the system doesn't feel right to them.

Any and all leftist types Ive gamed with were more interested in rules light games. Especially Fate

 

[Deus Exica]

It's so annoying because, yeah, I could buy that just about any categorically 'evil' race could produce an outlier we would conventionally consider 'good.' I mean, fuck, that's been the basis of lots of well-written characters. But the point is that those characters are outliers, working against the order of their society or, in more fantastical cases, their very nature. That's what makes it work.

But these people can't deal with that. It is either 'All orcs are sweet little Mexican immigrants who just want to sell street food in Baldur's Gate' or 'Orcs are literally niggers' with nothing else.

It's fucking boring.

Seriously, they don't even address how she works around needing to eat sapient brains in order to live.

In BG3 if you let Karlach become a Mindflayer to avoid being returned to Avernus she offers the terminally ill and wounded a chance to pass peacefully by doing the brain eating thing. That's the only relatively reasonable way I can see a Mindflayer being able to exist on relatively healthy terms with society and even then I'd probably be a bit miffed if some giant octopus motherfucker ate my Grandma's brain.

But no, that's not Critical Roll.

It's fucked because Critical Roll used to actually be run like a proper game of DnD before Matt and company made it even gayer and turned it into an amateur fantasy drama hour.

 

[Maverick Vile]

From the perspective of a DM, a clear villain is exactly what you need because if players decide that the orcs are good, then they aren't going into the orc dungeon you made for them to plunder: they'll be busy chastising the human kingdom for being racist or whatever.

We've discovered that at our table over the years. Not the insufferable "orc rights!" stuff, we were always just willing to befriend NPCs if they survived getting their teeth kicked in or we were willing to find a diplomatic solution to a problem. Honestly, it can really bog down gameplay and sometimes you just wanna trash some bozos. You can really let some of the more skill-focused character classes shine, but the fighter who wanted to roll up a heavy combat-mechanics character can really feel shafted if the entire session is a negotiation and all he wants to do is roll dice.

In BG3 if you let Karlach become a Mindflayer to avoid being returned to Avernus she offers the terminally ill and wounded a chance to pass peacefully by doing the brain eating thing. That's the only relatively reasonable way I can see a Mindflayer being able to exist on relatively healthy terms with society and even then I'd probably be a bit miffed if some giant octopus motherfucker ate my Grandma's brain.

I've heard about Karlach, and that sounds pretty cool to have a party member undergoing ceromorphosis during a campaign. Kinda seems like Karlach remains Karlach, though, instead of an Illithid with Karlach's chacteristics. How does it happen?

 

[Judge Dredd]

It baffles me because it doesn't come from a place of a DM running a D&D game, it reads more like the perspective of a genre fiction writer tired of tropes. Makes sense, since the trope-heavy pulp fantasy that heavily influenced D&D is full of cliches that make leftoids seethe. From the perspective of a DM, a clear villain is exactly what you need because if players decide that the orcs are good, then they aren't going into the orc dungeon you made for them to plunder: they'll be busy chastising the human kingdom for being racist or whatever. These people think that D&D can tell stories about political intrigue and deep character drama when in reality 75% of the rules are built around skirmish combat and 25% are about exploring a wilderness or dungeon. How strange that these types of people are usually trying to "fix" D&D5e—I wonder why the system doesn't feel right to them.

Over time I've become more convinced by the argument that the people pushing this stuff are evil themselves and want to make stories that justifies that evil, either by painting villains as victims, or as just misunderstood.

 

[AnOminous]

You must've been around since first edition, then. From what I understand ceromorphosis has been a concept since AD&D.

I'm definitely guilty of grognard.

 

[Booger1488]

I haven't watched all of it, because I wanted to avoid spoilers for some of the things he discusses in it, and he's also a circuitous, video-padding dullard, but you can watch it if you want. I also hunted down one of his tweets where he hems and haws about whether Illithids are an evil race.

Watching the video and TBF he does make some good points regarding motivation of evil characters, but in places he twists his logic so much to be able to prove his main point I'm surprised the video is a square instead of a pretzel. "Oh an evil race is one which chooses to perform cruel acts upon another so technically all of these 'evil' races are actually just misunderstood or animalistic". That definition erases the following:
- Zombies (because they eat flesh to survive)
- Robots (because they're following their programming)
- Xenomorphs (they're just animals hunting down prey)
- The Flood (similar to xenomorphs and zombies)
- Vampires (because apparently vampires being 'supernaturally compelled' to do evil makes them not an evil race?)
- Cenobites (because AK-TUALLY they're like angels who only hurt bad people)
- Bugs from Starship Troopers (they're an animalistic hivemind)
- Drow (because it's the way their society is set up which makes them evil, not an intrinsic part of their race)
- Orcs (see above with drow) (for LOTR specifically: they can't be evil because they were corrupted by Morgoth and so it's not their fault)
- Demons (similar to vampires)
- Aliens (their motivations are so alien that we can't call them evil)
- Creatures from the Cthulhu mythos (their motives are alien and can't be called evil)
- Dragons in Skyrim (because they have an evil nature and therefore can't choose to not be evil????)
In a way it's similar to the argument used by the left to explain away the crime rates in certain inner city neighbourhoods. No one is born evil, it's the fault of the society he grew up in, et cetera et cetera.

And then we get to the Illithid section. "Illithids aren't an evil race because here are a few examples of Illithids which aren't evil. And also they're not evil because they have to eat brains to survive, it's not their fault they're like that". Well, I guess there aren't really any evil races then, are there? They're all just misunderstood or animalistic or doing what they have to in order to survive or compelled to do evil by some supernatural influence.

Also I laughed at the fact he pronounces Skaven as "Skah-veen". Way to prove you're part of the hobby and not just some limp-wristed NYU faggot looking to preach your morals over people you deem less educated.

 

[EleventySeven]

From the perspective of a DM, a clear villain is exactly what you need because if players decide that the orcs are good, then they aren't going into the orc dungeon you made for them to plunder: they'll be busy chastising the human kingdom for being racist or whatever.

To be fair, villain doesn't need to be evil. My players fought a war against a bunch of conquering Hobgoblins who were ultimately led by a Neutral Good leader and made friends with a lawful neutral hobgoblin nobleman but still fought the war. Both sides knew the other wasn't Evil with a capital E at the highest levels. It was just a clash of civilizations. Both were incompatible in their current states and so war was inevitable. I think an important viewpoint that most characters in a pre-contemporary setting will have and that the players should remember to internalize as the norm for most settings is that conflict and war aren't some accident of misunderstanding or the result of one good side against one evil side, at least where mortals vs mortals are concerned. They're just the natural state. A truly politically complex game should make good use of this. Your enemies need not be evil, just opposed to the players.

Of course, it was and is both fun and interesting to fight undeniable evil. Great hordes of a truly evil race, supernatural evil entities, evil masterminds, etc. Mr. Mashengo has always refered to pathfinder as fantasy super heroes for a reason.

But the conclusion that evil races are necessary or else people wouldn't want to fight the enemy is probably true with most of the leftoids, redditors, and general retards who engage with 5e.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Dragons in Skyrim (because they have an evil nature and therefore can't choose to not be evil????)

Paarthurnax would like brief three words.

 

[Quintus]

They're evil, dude. You can say it. By they way, he also uses this logic to say the Xenomorphs are just animals following their programming and the Cenobites are just really bored kinksters because in the Clive Barker book they ask for Frank's consent before skinning him alive. I swear to God he has a tweet where he says the Cenobites aren't evil because they are sharing what they consider to be a gift, but reading through this guy's pseudointellectualism is a slog and it took me way longer than I was willing to invest to find what I have.

Sounds like someone didn't read the book lol....One of the main characters opened the box on accident and only the reason they didn't take her was she knew where Frank was. That's even how it happened in the movie, with the exception that they tried to take her afterwards anyway.

 

[Janusz z Gliwic]

These people think that D&D can tell stories about political intrigue and deep character drama when in reality 75% of the rules are built around skirmish combat and 25% are about exploring a wilderness or dungeon. How strange that these types of people are usually trying to "fix" D&D5e—I wonder why the system doesn't feel right to them.

I think it's because D&D and derivatives are relatively easy to run, just throw some correct CR monsters at party. Actual systems focused on narrative are hard without railroading and require more work and foresight from GM. I doubt your average whiny faggot is creative enough to be able to GM like this.

I think an important viewpoint that most characters in a pre-contemporary setting will have and that the players should remember to internalize as the norm for most settings is that conflict and war aren't some accident of misunderstanding or the result of one good side against one evil side, at least where mortals vs mortals are concerned. They're just the natural state.

The issue is, at this point most big RPG settings are modern liberal USA with very thin coat of paint so this logic does not really apply.

 

[Ghostse]

They're evil, dude. You can say it. By they way, he also uses this logic to say the Xenomorphs are just animals following their programming and the Cenobites are just really bored kinksters because in the Clive Barker book they ask for Frank's consent before skinning him alive. I swear to God he has a tweet where he says the Cenobites aren't evil because they are sharing what they consider to be a gift, but reading through this guy's pseudointellectualism is a slog and it took me way longer than I was willing to invest to find what I have.

Small point of order, Cenobites are too alien of mind to be "evil".
Their actions are incredibly evil from the perspective of the beings that encounter them, but in Cenobite's world view they are helping.

Clive Barker basically hadn't gone ultrafaggot yet, and was sort of horrified by the measures San Fransisco faggots would go for sexual gratification; after 20 years of fucking and sucking the only thing left for you do to do is bifurcate your penis and have a leatherdaddy stomp your balls while an unlubed traffic cone is shoved up your ass while two midgets shit in your mouth. So Clive expanded that mindset to an entire race where they are so fucking bored the only thing they feel anymore is the most extreme sensations. Before settling in on this Slaanesh convergent evolution they nearly drove themselves to extinction and wish to prevent other races from following the same path by showing them the CORRECT way to achieve FurryCon levels of coomer degeneracy.

They were involved in the creation of the Lament Configuration, a puzzle box so hard to figure out that obviously the only way one would possibly solve it would be they are so absolutely bored with life they need a bunch of practically immortal creatures to show up and have every single nerve ending firing non-stop 24/7.
"We're from the Cenobite Government and we're here to help!"

This doesn't mean they are actually good though. They are in it for their own selfish gains - basically they are groomers viacariously reliving the days when ripping organs out through their urethra was fresh and new with beings found via the Lament Configuration - but even if they weren't...
A hurricane isn't evil, its just a force of nature. But if you were able to shoot a hurricane to stop it, that would be the right course of action.

tl;dr:
Cenobites = End-stage of gays. Xenomorphs are animals but the morally correct thing to do is extinct them.

 

[Deus Exica]

Kinda seems like Karlach remains Karlach, though, instead of an Illithid with Karlach's chacteristics. How does it happen?

She can undergo Ceremorphosis since you need an illithid who isn't under the Elder Brain's control to stop the bad guys. It is left ambiguous as to whether or not she is still her or just an Illithid that has her memories and impulses. Worth noting, though, that Karlach is one of only two party members who are so firmly good aligned they can't join you in an evil route through the game.

Whether you think it's really her or just a squid pretending is up to your interpretation I suppose.

 

[robobobo]

Instead of "evil", I think "antagonist" is better. Drow aren't genetically evil or whatever, but 99% of their society is. Gnolls are demon-spawn, on the other hand, so you just aren't getting one who got hugged enough as a child to turn nice. A bunch of D&D monsters are just animals who want to eat your party because you're food. In any of those cases, if you run into a bunch of them you're liable to have to put them to the sword. Whether they're objectively bad people or not isn't relevant to the simple reality of the situation that you're going to have to fight for your lives. I simply don't get why anyone would be wringing their hands about this. Actually, I take that back, I could see someone wanting to play a Drow/Gnoll/etc to be their shiny OC donut steel would argue that their character is one of the good ones so the party should totes let them join and not immediately decapitate them. The Drizzt books leave a sort-of avenue for this for Drow, and I remember one older D&D book having an evil Drow spy passing herself off as good and banking on Drizzt's popularity to sucker the surface-dwellers into believing that she was a starry-eyed refugee from the Underdark, but it falls apart pretty quick for intrinsically-evil things like the various flavors of demon.

 

[The Ugly One]

The issue is, at this point most big RPG settings are modern liberal USA with very thin coat of paint so this logic does not really apply.

They're not even "modern liberal USA." They're a modern American liberal's fantasy of what the USA would be like without all that pRoBlEmAtIc stuff. If I were to make a fantasy setting where, 150 years ago, the Orcs were slaves of the South Humans, but now were free because the North Humans and the South Humans had a civil war over the issue, and today, the Orcs were poor, criminal, and generally extremely dysfunctional, and this were portrayed as entirely the fault of the Humans for not putting enough money into government programs and having DEI initiatives in their adventuring businesses, I'd still be called a racist and cast into the outer darkness of their faggy community.

 

[Judge Dredd]

What's the proper way to run a hex crawl, especially over repeated areas, without it turning into a tedious, pointless slog? And how do you handle transport options inside dungeons?


I can kind of make it work with roads. I ask where they're going, if they're sticking to a marked path. Roll random encounter, say they follow the road without issue, done. And sometimes I ignore the random encounter roll.

The problem I struggle with is anything beyond that. A common thing I see is "If the party searches this hex, they find X". The problem is, X can be anything from a hermits hut to a treasure chest. I don't know about you, but 6 miles is a large place to search, and especially if it's untamed woodland. I've seen a couple of OSR adventures where hexes can have multiple villages, roads, and encounters for each hex. Yet most OSR/old school guides have one feature per hex.

Making this worse, many of the adventures I'm considering have a central location the PCs return to between dungeons, meaning they'll be retreading the same three or four hexes multiple times. Likely twice per session, if not more.

This is just the start. There's a lot of edge cases I'd like to ask about, but most would have to be rulings made at the table. But there's one constant. I don't think designers fully grasp how big six miles is.


A related problem I've run into in my current campaign is teleporters. In one adventure I'm considering, a reward for some dungeons is access to a teleporter, basically allowing fast travel. This is a neat idea but I struggle to make it work. In Abomination Vaults, many floors have teleporters that can be restored with a ritual. The problem is again the repetition. I've taken to skipping travel and just having them arrive at the most recent floor they've unlocked and only narrating when they roll a random encounter.

 

[White Slaad]

What's the proper way to run a hex crawl, especially over repeated areas, without it turning into a tedious, pointless slog? And how do you handle transport options inside dungeons?

If a hex crawl involves retreading a certain path over and over, then it should change over time. For one, following the "classic" D&D formula, adventurers are out to pacify the frontiers: by expediting travel at higher levels, players feel as though the area they are clearing out is actually becoming safer by their efforts. Changing the encounter table to reflect changes in the region or the character's level might help keep things fresh. Lots of time spent traveling ought to be expected in a hexcrawl campaign, so I don't think anyone should be surprised at some repetition.

I don't have extensive experience with megadungeons that would accommodate teleporters, but I am in the midst of running Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (D&D 5e), which has exactly that. In my opinion, it only works if you're willing to engage with the dungeon slog, since the reward of a teleporter should be avoiding random encounters and saving time. At my table, I run their travel room-by-room (expedited on repeat visits, of course), and my players enjoy it because when they're planning to pull out, they're biting their nails over the potential of a deadly random encounter getting them while they're at low resources, and so the teleporters are a godsend to them. Otherwise, it's like giving your party a Decanter of Endless Water in a campaign where you're not tracking thirst. I'll throw it out there that the perceived "tedium" of repeating locations isn't that bad, but I'm just a 5ebabby so take what I say with a grain of salt.

 

[Snekposter]

Paarthurnax would like brief three words.

Yeah, Joor-Zah-Frul.