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

[Brain Problems]

I've got a couple players off the top of my head who are lovely people and fun to play with (hence why they keep returning for games) but are fucking exhausting when it comes to forgetting their abilities/not planning their turn out beforehand. The amount of times I've had conversations about spellcasting and how levelled spells work would fit a small novel. I acquired little playing card sized dry erase pages to write down his spells and one dedicated to spell slots alone that he could cross off as he used them. It worked... sorta.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

I've got a couple players off the top of my head who are lovely people and fun to play with (hence why they keep returning for games) but are fucking exhausting when it comes to forgetting their abilities/not planning their turn out beforehand. The amount of times I've had conversations about spellcasting and how levelled spells work would fit a small novel. I acquired little playing card sized dry erase pages to write down his spells and one dedicated to spell slots alone that he could cross off as he used them. It worked... sorta.

Shit like this is why if I ever made a DnD clone, magic wouldn’t work the way that it does but like Thaumaturgy does in V:tM.

 

[EleventySeven]

I don't think it even matters. A bunch of boomer executives tried to hitch their cart to a wildly successful money printing machine of the mid-2000s? Well, duh. I can absolutely believe that it was their motive, especially since they were trying to get a VTT running for it and 4e's fairly rigid powers fit well with automation.

However, my contention was and is that, regardless of motivation, 4e is not remotely like WoW in execution. It's a turn-based top-down grid map tactics game. Not a single one of those things matches WoW. The powers only resemble WoW's in the most unfocused general sense; "hit an enemy and it does damage and x debuff or y other thing" is hardly a ground-breaking concept here. If you're sitting down to play 4e, your actual gameplay is much more in the vein of something like X-Com.

There must have been something cursed with 4e if the guy who they made work on the VTT murdered his wife and then killed himself. I blame the martials and the attempt at a wargame, personally.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Sorry if I asked this before.

Does anyone have ideas about how to handle low lethality health (KO, arrests, etc)?
What are some good systems/rules for handling mundane real life problems or cover stories that also effects the game?

Cutting right to the point, I'm planning a one-shot (likely a short series) in which the PCs are under cover at an office*. The PCs have to balance mundane office work to keep their cover, vs investigating supernatural events. For the bulk of the adventure the bad guys will be security guards.

My current plan is:
For low lethality. HP drains as normal. At 0, they are either KOed for the rest of the fight, or each hit adds a restraint they then have to escape. This is just HP/wounds with a different theme so I don't know if this is a good option or if there's better.

For mundane work. I'm tempted to steal the student rules from Savage Worlds. Each character has a major, and when they study they get a bonus to the roll. This would require a change of setting to a university, but that shouldn't change the plot too much. I'm not sure how failing this work/test should lead in increased security. Maybe if they fail they get fired and have to break in.

 

[Ghostse]

Sorry if I asked this before.

Does anyone have ideas about how to handle low lethality health (KO, arrests, etc)?
What are some good systems/rules for handling mundane real life problems or cover stories that also effects the game?

Cutting right to the point, I'm planning a one-shot (likely a short series) in which the PCs are under cover at an office*. The PCs have to balance mundane office work to keep their cover, vs investigating supernatural events. For the bulk of the adventure the bad guys will be security guards.

My current plan is:
For low lethality. HP drains as normal. At 0, they are either KOed for the rest of the fight, or each hit adds a restraint they then have to escape. This is just HP/wounds with a different theme so I don't know if this is a good option or if there's better.

For mundane work. I'm tempted to steal the student rules from Savage Worlds. Each character has a major, and when they study they get a bonus to the roll. This would require a change of setting to a university, but that shouldn't change the plot too much. I'm not sure how failing this work/test should lead in increased security. Maybe if they fail they get fired and have to break in.

I read a write up a Heist game that seemed it had a good balance of high stakes but low lethality. Where they just had different phases and if you fucked up in one phase you were only out until the next phase started. i.e. If you got busted during the case phase, you'd just get hit with a Trespass charge. The penalty for someone "dying" during the case & prep phases was you had one less person racking up bonuses for the next phase.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'd just check point phases.


In reality though "Tactical Stealth Action" and turned-based RPG doesn't really play well together.

 

[Quintus]

I've got a couple players off the top of my head who are lovely people and fun to play with (hence why they keep returning for games) but are fucking exhausting when it comes to forgetting their abilities/not planning their turn out beforehand. The amount of times I've had conversations about spellcasting and how levelled spells work would fit a small novel. I acquired little playing card sized dry erase pages to write down his spells and one dedicated to spell slots alone that he could cross off as he used them. It worked... sorta.

Yeah my sister is like that. We've played games together for years not just ttrpgs, other stuff too. But she still pretty regularly won't be paying attention or have long turns trying to figure out what to do. To her credit, she mostly plays pretty simple classes and stays away from full casters for the most part.

 

[Brain Problems]

Yeah my sister is like that. We've played games together for years not just ttrpgs, other stuff too. But she still pretty regularly won't be paying attention or have long turns trying to figure out what to do. To her credit, she mostly plays pretty simple classes and stays away from full casters for the most part.

It's my fault for not vetoing him being a caster, but yeah, give newer/less... adept PCs simpler classes with less thinking and more hittin' or at least with easily memorable bonus actions abilities. Fighter man hit! Rogue man sneak!

And on the other side we've got courtroom stenographer-tier autists with literal spellbooks they've written who are on top of everything, so much so and to such a worrying degree that I almost feel like when I'm fucking up rules/flubbing things I can feel their stern gaze upon me.

 

[anti SJW]

This is from the new solo tabletop RPG Mech Requiem.

A totally solo game telling you not to get triggered and use safely tools.

 

[Adamska]

View attachment 7016521

This is from the new solo tabletop RPG Mech Requiem.

A totally solo game telling you not to get triggered and use safely tools.

Oh, I thought this was a book about how to save yourself if your attempts at bondage or anal go horribly fucking wrong.

Since it would say the same fucking things. Seriously, whoever thought BDSM was a good choice in managing player comfort is a moron, and the people who fear adopt the takes are even dumber. On par with the tards who unironically use the bechdel test, which was a a fucking joke btw, as a standard seriously.

 

[p1138]

View attachment 7016521

This is from the new solo tabletop RPG Mech Requiem.

A totally solo game telling you not to get triggered and use safely tools.

What the fuck? Apparently it's a part of the base system "Loner"(it's free, pdf attached) with the same stupid message in it. The sample for the mech game also has some god awful AI art. If you're so emotionally unstable that you get traumatized by your own story in your single player RPG... just fucking kill yourself.

 

[Coolio55]

View attachment 7016521

This is from the new solo tabletop RPG Mech Requiem.

A totally solo game telling you not to get triggered and use safely tools.

What the fuck? Apparently it's a part of the base system "Loner"(it's free, pdf attached) with the same stupid message in it. The sample for the mech game also has some god awful AI art. If you're so emotionally unstable that you get traumatized by your own story in your single player RPG... just fucking kill yourself.

It makes sense in context. One of the enemy attacks is this knockoff EVA thing where they beam shit into your mind and you gotta flip to one of the pages filled with shock images.

 

[p1138]

It makes sense in context. One of the enemy attacks is this knockoff EVA thing where they beam shit into your mind and you gotta flip to one of the pages filled with shock images.

I'm not seeing anything like that in the base game system at all. Hell, it's only 39 pages including covers, ToC, the character sheets, some tables, etc.

 

[The Ugly One]

Shit like this is why if I ever made a DnD clone, magic wouldn’t work the way that it does but like Thaumaturgy does in V:tM.

The original sin with D&D magic is its kitchen sink approach of "anything you imagine can be a spell." Should have just had one attack, one debuff, one defense, and one utility spell at each tier, or something similarly constrained.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Three unrelated topics.

First, has anyone had issues getting dice IRL recently? I had heard online that DnD dice were available at dollar stores/pound shops, but I never saw them personally. Recently I wanted to get a bunch of d6s for Bolt Action, and I'm struggling to find them. I found a deck of cards that came with 5 d6s a while ago, but not seen recently. Even "geek" shops just sell books, magic cards, and gunpla. No dice. I can always go to amazon, but I'd rather find them brick and mortor if I can.

A RPG discord Im in was talking about DnD, and combat (If you're curious, a DM was struggling with combats being too easy, and then almost TPKed when he dialed up the difficulty a little). This led to a bizarre discussion where the OSR DM said killing a PC is a failure state. Combat is a failure state. Rolling dice should be a failure state. The rational being that people who want to roll dice are gamblers and that should be discouraged, especially if kids are playing. I assume he was joking, but his overall point he kept pushing is that characters should try and overcome encounters with roleplay, not by leaning on the character sheet.

What do you think of Matt Corville? I don't like him personally (something about him seems off to me, and I've yet to be wrong about that.) but I see his videos brought up a lot in online TTRPG discussions.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'd just check point phases.


In reality though "Tactical Stealth Action" and turned-based RPG doesn't really play well together.

It was more "combat with tasers and batons" than MGS, but I scrapped my idea based on feedback here. Will go with something else.

 

[Ghostse]

First, has anyone had issues getting dice IRL recently? I had heard online that DnD dice were available at dollar stores/pound shops, but I never saw them personally. Recently I wanted to get a bunch of d6s for Bolt Action, and I'm struggling to find them. I found a deck of cards that came with 5 d6s a while ago, but not seen recently. Even "geek" shops just sell books, magic cards, and gunpla. No dice. I can always go to amazon, but I'd rather find them brick and mortor if I can.

No, but I haven't looked for dice in a long ass time. I have more sets of metal dice than any man should own, my gemstones dice where the chinese dropshipper sadly retired operations because I was going to buy more of their product, two sets of Game Science and a literal 4lbs of Chessex.

A RPG discord Im in was talking about DnD, and combat (If you're curious, a DM was struggling with combats being too easy, and then almost TPKed when he dialed up the difficulty a little). This led to a bizarre discussion where the OSR DM said killing a PC is a failure state. Combat is a failure state. Rolling dice should be a failure state. The rational being that people who want to roll dice are gamblers and that should be discouraged, especially if kids are playing. I assume he was joking, but his overall point he kept pushing is that characters should try and overcome encounters with roleplay, not by leaning on the character sheet.

That's not a OSR mindset. Even if dice aren't ever touched, if the log trap triggers that player is dead.
Well, the fact that if you are rolling for a skill check it means they're probably going to fail is a mindset of some OSR folks; one I don't share.

What do you think of Matt Corville? I don't like him personally (something about him seems off to me, and I've yet to be wrong about that.) but I see his videos brought up a lot in online TTRPG discussions.

Never heard of him.
But a fast google

Matthew Colville is one of the authors of the Vox Machina Origins Volume 1 comic series, along with Matthew Mercer.

Sounds like someone you can wholly disregard.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

The original sin with D&D magic is its kitchen sink approach of "anything you imagine can be a spell." Should have just had one attack, one debuff, one defense, and one utility spell at each tier, or something similarly constrained.

Also that it's barely linked if at all to the game world because DnD evolved into a generic system that they then bolted additional campaign settings onto. I've been mulling over this one for a while and my other source of inspiration is how magic works in Warhammer Fantasy. There are different lores that are linked to different winds of magic that are themselves a part of the worldbuilding that went in to that setting as opposed to the fairly dry, descriptive ways that different kinds of magic are presented in DnD.

So, you'd have a class that represents a certain kind of spellcaster; a classic wizard or a backwoods witch or something like that. They would have access to multiple different lores of magic. Those lores would work like paths in thaumaturgy. Some would give you expanded abilities ie the ability to do different things and some would give you the ability to more of one thing. Take for example "Movement of the mind" in VtM; it's just Telekinesis all the way down. At level one, you can move a paperweight or something equally small. At level three you can move a person, including yourself and at level five, you're hurling Buicks at people.

Every class has a primary lore that is foundational to their style of magic and you take that at level one and level two. At every level, you increase a lore by one step and At level three, you can begin to put points into other lores that fall under your class's purview with the catch being that they can't be higher than your primary lore. They'd be themed, they'd have in-universe names and they'd be linked to actual in-game cultures that tie into the world.

@Ghostse I'll have to dig out my bronze D20 that's sculpted to look like a bunch of skulls chained together. It's fucking metal (literally and figuratively.)

 

[The Ugly One]

What do you think of Matt Corville? I don't like him personally (something about him seems off to me, and I've yet to be wrong about that.) but I see his videos brought up a lot in online TTRPG discussions.

He's written some pretty good 5e supplements, like Kingdoms & Strongholds, that do some things WotC isn't interested in for expanding the breadth of the game. He's also a woke, troon-loving retard, but that's par for the course for anyone with a public face in this hobby.

 

[Ah ha']

A RPG discord Im in was talking about DnD, and combat (If you're curious, a DM was struggling with combats being too easy, and then almost TPKed when he dialed up the difficulty a little). This led to a bizarre discussion where the OSR DM said killing a PC is a failure state. Combat is a failure state. Rolling dice should be a failure state. The rational being that people who want to roll dice are gamblers and that should be discouraged, especially if kids are playing. I assume he was joking, but his overall point he kept pushing is that characters should try and overcome encounters with roleplay, not by leaning on the character sheet.

What do you think of Matt Corville? I don't like him personally (something about him seems off to me, and I've yet to be wrong about that.) but I see his videos brought up a lot in online TTRPG discussions.

These guys should probably pick up a copy of Knights of the Dinner table as a prerequisite to Rpgs before ever touching a DMs guide.

Obviously KOTDT is meant to be funny but it still captures the essence of what ttrpg playing is.

 

[w.a.m.s.]

A RPG discord Im in was talking about DnD, and combat (If you're curious, a DM was struggling with combats being too easy, and then almost TPKed when he dialed up the difficulty a little). This led to a bizarre discussion where the OSR DM said killing a PC is a failure state. Combat is a failure state. Rolling dice should be a failure state. The rational being that people who want to roll dice are gamblers and that should be discouraged, especially if kids are playing. I assume he was joking, but his overall point he kept pushing is that characters should try and overcome encounters with roleplay, not by leaning on the character sheet.

That's... comically stupid. If he views it as bad to use the dice, there's no reason to bother playing a game with dice. Sounds like that guy would have more fun doing something like collaborative writing/freeform RP, or playing some new-school game where limited lethality is baked into the rules. (Also, like @Ghotse said, that's not OSR. I wonder if Mr. "OSR" DM's school of thought sprung up in response to wanting a low-lethality, long-interactive-story type game - which is antithetical to a lot of OSR advice.) If a DM chooses a game with rules and proceeds to dodge around them constantly, it will hamstrung their ability to run the game, and confuse anyone at the table who read the rules. Limiting and retarded.

Also, dying laughing at the implication that rolling dice to add chance to an outcome and not rely on consensus to resolve every single task or conflict = precursor to gambling addiction.

 

[Adamska]

A RPG discord Im in was talking about DnD, and combat (If you're curious, a DM was struggling with combats being too easy, and then almost TPKed when he dialed up the difficulty a little). This led to a bizarre discussion where the OSR DM said killing a PC is a failure state. Combat is a failure state. Rolling dice should be a failure state. The rational being that people who want to roll dice are gamblers and that should be discouraged, especially if kids are playing. I assume he was joking, but his overall point he kept pushing is that characters should try and overcome encounters with roleplay, not by leaning on the character sheet.

That's the most retarded take I've ever heard, and I know for a fact a decent majority of OSR guys would state upfront "Characters die. It will happen either due to misfortune or foolishness, but it will inevitably happen at a table.". It isn't a failure state for the game; it just fucking happens. Also this mongoloid is really fucking dumb, because one of the biggest draws to the game is combat, and if it's a failure explain why the point of most martials is to throw down when needed. Lowkey this sped sounds like the exact person who chimps if they do something retarded and gets geeked.

Also I'm going to be blunt: if you are trying to tweak the magic in DnD because you do not like how wizards work... the game already does that. Sorcerers and Wizards can only pick x amount of spells to select from to represent their blood gift or their studies, and your build is based on that. Same with Clerics, Druids, and Bards, based on what they gain based on devotion, focus, and how their charm plays off.

You don't like the current system? There's another one you can play just fine that was mentioned in chat. Simple as.