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

[2LtMashengo]

only other game that seems to get players now-a-days is Gorgeworld, which I'm told is a furry fat fetish game.

What in the fuck. This is the worst shit I've seen all day.

>additional art by morbidly chubese

 

[p1138]

Dice are hard to come by,

What the fuck? I've seen various FLGS in my travels over the past year sometimes be low on dice, but never just not having them. Fuck even Barnes & Noble, yes the bookstore chain sells polyhedral sets and I don't think I've seen a game store without at least a basic chessex display with poly sets and d6 bricks nevermind the dozens of other smaller companies that try to get into stores q-workshop(blech), level up dice, metallic dice games, sirius, and so on. And that's before even getting to online vendors like baronofdice

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

Having run a couple sessions of Starfinder I can absolutely see why people don't care about it. I love science fantasy/space opera settings, but the game is in a weird "it's just fantasy but in space" kind of setting that doesn't 100% work and the rules are too loose between Magic and Tech items IMO. Still only 2 sessions in it and following modules. I think I'll have my total feel after I finish Junker's Paradise.

I played starfinder for two sessions and I hated the game stars without numbers is 10 times better I just don't like the revised edition because it took out all of the ridiculous psychic abilities that allowed you to smash planets together at the highest level or teleport people into black holes.
There was actually one that allowed you to sacrifice your body at high level biomancy and we used that in one campaign to pull off a massive scam where one of the characters was wanted for a billion credits so we just had them dissolve his body and transport back onto the ship.

It's a really fun system that's really bare bones when it comes to background information but very good rule

 

[Adamska]

There's two major problems with that, though: 1) I've only ever played with friends and friends of friends, so I'm kind of at a loss on how people do this stuff "in the wild," so to speak, and 2) Local games and the very concept of an FLGS just don't exist where I live, which confines me to pursuing this hobby online. So, if I may ask, where do you guys usually go looking and how do you do it (if anyone has experience with that)?

I've had my best successes with randos via discord groups that have at least something to do with RPGs; you still have to filter for cancer, but they at least knuckle up and play at least a session to two. Usually.

In terms of finding someone who'd GM since that's your true bugbear, that's a bit harder since players are always easier to find than GMs. Your best hopes are to look for people recruiting on said discords for a campagin. You can't be too specific persay at first, especially if you're looking for something not-DnD, but that's the best approach online right now.

Also never use the Roll20 forums. They are flakiest niggers I've ever met in my fucking life. Many years ago before Discord I used that to recruit and it took accepting something crazy like 15 people before I got 3 to actually show up to even 1 session.

This is true. I've never had any good luck with r20 in finding players, and one of the most infuriating flakes I ever dealt with was a cunt who did not want to do Deathwatch less than an hour before gametime since one faggot didn't show; they apparently really wanted this fucker on and gave up when they said "lol can't do it" right before the game. And don't get me started on those shitstains that plan the campaign and characters and just want you to run it for them.

Fuck you, you did all the hard shit already. One of you fuckers run.

I've found the most success usually by someone dragging in someone else who had interest in my discord games.

 

[Fagguccine]

where do you guys usually go looking and how do you do it (if anyone has experience with that)?

I tend to use discord, there's usually an official Discord for other systems that aren't dnd (I know there's one for Fallout and Cyberpunk) and there's an official dnd discord, for the official dnd one there's a lot of games dms are looking to run, you need to sift through a lot of the shite to find a good concept with decent people but I've managed to find long-running groups and decent friends through that server. Other systems don't have a lot of people running games so it might take longer to find something good but it's the most reliable way to find people promoting their games, there tend to be a couple of games that crop up a week, though most are paid, never pay for a GM. DO NOT bother with r20 as other people here have stated.

I've had my best successes with randos via discord groups that have at least something to do with RPGs; you still have to filter for cancer, but they at least knuckle up and play at least a session to two. Usually.

Yeah, I can attest to that. A game seldom gets past a few sessions, and the group usually breaks because people have no chemistry. It's just part of the process. I consider anything that lasts half a year a success, and the group tends to stick and run other games. That's when you can use some good concepts you've been saving.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

Yeah, I can attest to that. A game seldom gets past a few sessions, and the group usually breaks because people have no chemistry. It's just part of the process. I consider anything that lasts half a year a success, and the group tends to stick and run other games. That's when you can use some good concepts you've been saving.

I have one group that we've been playing consistently every Saturday at 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM for the better part of five and a half years still haven't gotten through the campaign though really the campaign should end it like three years ago but we keep getting sidetracked.
But it gets kind of hard to do combat when everyone can literally throw around thousands of damage.
But I finally got to use towering Thunderhead wing of lightning and a bunch of other spells I never use because they do double damage under water

 

[The Ugly One]

Apologies for just barging in like this, but can I mind asking you all a question? I see people talking about actual games here (which is far more than /tg/ nowadays can say for itself) which is why I thought it'd be a good idea to ask how you guys find players for games/games to join. I've been in this hobby for almost 5 years now, played pretty much everything under the sun with my friends, but now one table is practically dead and the other table I'm stuck as the forever DM of. And I've gotten pretty tired of forever DM'ing in the latter, so I've told my players that once this current game wraps up, I'm gonna be doing other things for a bit.

There's two major problems with that, though: 1) I've only ever played with friends and friends of friends, so I'm kind of at a loss on how people do this stuff "in the wild," so to speak, and 2) Local games and the very concept of an FLGS just don't exist where I live, which confines me to pursuing this hobby online. So, if I may ask, where do you guys usually go looking and how do you do it (if anyone has experience with that)?

meetup.com, but I only play these games in person. Downside is you'll probably be stuck DMing. Historical wargamers tend to be pretty cool guys, since the mere presence of the CSA, Wehrmacht, or Imperial British forces on a game table makes the woke piss and cry.

 

[AnOminous]

What the fuck? I've seen various FLGS in my travels over the past year sometimes be low on dice, but never just not having them. Fuck even Barnes & Noble, yes the bookstore chain sells polyhedral sets and I don't think I've seen a game store without at least a basic chessex display with poly sets and d6 bricks nevermind the dozens of other smaller companies that try to get into stores q-workshop(blech), level up dice, metallic dice games, sirius, and so on. And that's before even getting to online vendors like baronofdice

I miss my days of intense autism when I would spend hours rolling all of my dice and testing them for chi-square bias and then angrily throwing away biased dice.

Life was simpler then.

If I did the same thing these days, I'd probably just rate all my dice for bias purposes and let players have a choice of which biased die they use and they could spend some points to use the loaded ones.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

I miss my days of intense autism when I would spend hours rolling all of my dice and testing them for chi-square bias and then angrily throwing away biased dice.

There's actually a reason why certain dice seem weighted especially the speckled dice the plastic internally doesn't melt evenly if you use clear plastic dice you can see flows if it has any.
I had a science teacher who was really into D and D

 

[Rapier Ape]

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.

If you're just looking for a bunch of d6 just hit up Walmart and find the little section with poker stuff and boomer card games.
You should be able to find little sets of multiple d6s. I've even seen those at Walgreens etc.

 

[DefinitelyNotMe]

We had a session yesterday (Pathfinder 1e) and by the end of it we were gifted pretty serious divine favor (we returned the symbol of a divine alliance between 4 gods Gorum, Sarenrae, Iomedae and Pharasma from a vampire controlled city). And our DM let us choose the divine gift for ourselves. Me as a pure fighter had an idea to became first "paladin of Gorum" but I'm not sure how to play the thing of in terms of game mechanics. I don't care if it would be underpowered compared to the rest of the party, i just want something that fits the theme. For comparisson one of our sorc got the ability to heal 0,5 damage twith his fire spells and deal 1.5 damage to undead. Which is bonkers in terms of power level.
If you have any ideas please tell me. The only thing im sure that paladin of Gorum shouldnt heal or cast spells.

 

[Revelator]

We had a session yesterday (Pathfinder 1e) and by the end of it we were gifted pretty serious divine favor (we returned the symbol of a divine alliance between 4 gods Gorum, Sarenrae, Iomedae and Pharasma from a vampire controlled city). And our DM let us choose the divine gift for ourselves. Me as a pure fighter had an idea to became first "paladin of Gorum" but I'm not sure how to play the thing of in terms of game mechanics. I don't care if it would be underpowered compared to the rest of the party, i just want something that fits the theme. For comparisson one of our sorc got the ability to heal 0,5 damage twith his fire spells and deal 1.5 damage to undead. Which is bonkers in terms of power level.
If you have any ideas please tell me. The only thing im sure that paladin of Gorum shouldnt heal or cast spells.

I'd probably give you a Smite class feature and call it a day.

 

[Adamska]

We had a session yesterday (Pathfinder 1e) and by the end of it we were gifted pretty serious divine favor (we returned the symbol of a divine alliance between 4 gods Gorum, Sarenrae, Iomedae and Pharasma from a vampire controlled city). And our DM let us choose the divine gift for ourselves. Me as a pure fighter had an idea to became first "paladin of Gorum" but I'm not sure how to play the thing of in terms of game mechanics. I don't care if it would be underpowered compared to the rest of the party, i just want something that fits the theme. For comparisson one of our sorc got the ability to heal 0,5 damage twith his fire spells and deal 1.5 damage to undead. Which is bonkers in terms of power level.
If you have any ideas please tell me. The only thing im sure that paladin of Gorum shouldnt heal or cast spells.

I'd probably do the following:

1. You get smite evil or smite good due to Gorum being that kind of deity that's CN and you pick. Alternatively you get the ability to smite lawful if you wish instead.
2. You gain a selections of divine spells based on his domains and subdomains and based on Paladin progression. Some examples from Chaos you'd get is Align Weapon to turn your blade chaotic for purposes of damage, and Chaos Hammer turned into a touch attack.
3. You cannot use ranged spells unless channeled directly into your weapon; they must cause damage. So using something like say, Shatter from Destruction, has to be done via your weapons.
4. I would say Gorum would tolerate buffing spells, but they must only enhance the physique. No CHA, WIS, or INT boosters are available since that aids indirect murder.
5. I'd probably borrow a few items from the Disciple of Dispater from 3.5 since Gorum's shtick is Iron based. Mainly things like a slightly improved crit if you use iron weapons, or abilities like Iron Hews.
6. Your oath is to never stop a war with words, but to finish the damn job through weapons. You cannot be party to a peace negotiations unless you've beaten the shit out of them already, and must try and stop the party if they do try to talk down from fights. You also cannot kill anyone who surrenders or prisoners, since that isn't honorable.

There's more I could cook up, but I ain't the GM of this, I just know you'd be able to tap into magic if I did this.

 

[Halbschwanz]

We had a session yesterday (Pathfinder 1e) and by the end of it we were gifted pretty serious divine favor (we returned the symbol of a divine alliance between 4 gods Gorum, Sarenrae, Iomedae and Pharasma from a vampire controlled city). And our DM let us choose the divine gift for ourselves. Me as a pure fighter had an idea to became first "paladin of Gorum" but I'm not sure how to play the thing of in terms of game mechanics. I don't care if it would be underpowered compared to the rest of the party, i just want something that fits the theme. For comparisson one of our sorc got the ability to heal 0,5 damage twith his fire spells and deal 1.5 damage to undead. Which is bonkers in terms of power level.
If you have any ideas please tell me. The only thing im sure that paladin of Gorum shouldnt heal or cast spells.

Maybe getting Gorum's Divine Fighting Style? Free Vital Strike if you don't already have it? Getting Sentinel Boons as though you were a sentinel of your level seems fair. Is it a little overtuned? Maybe, but compared to free healing on one of the most common types of damaging spells and the equivalent of permanent Empower Spell against one of the most common enemy types it will hardly be a dealbreaker.

 

[The Bogwater Rises]

Hey guys it's me, the idiot who decided to try Starfinder because "Why not?" and having run it for a while and trying to go through all its feats to notate them and possibly rework them I must say:

I really want to keep running Starfinder, there is some very neat stuff here. Why does Starfinder not want me to keep running it because of all the stupid bullshit I keep finding?

 

[iScream into the void]

I really want to keep running Starfinder, there is some very neat stuff here. Why does Starfinder not want me to keep running it because of all the stupid bullshit I keep finding?

Because Starfinder started out as the weird bastard child of PF1e and PF2e. It has the worst parts of both. As part of the dozen of people who enjoy Starfinder, I can only hope and pray that Starfinder 2nd feels better to run and play than Starfinder 1st.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

Perhaps this is the wrong thread for my gripe. If so, point me elsewhere and I'll post this elsewhere. Apologies in advance for going off the current dialogue.

I've noticed a lot of people (most new to the hobby) are in favor of *just* eliminating alignment or similar mechanisms. Even the most popular manifestation of D and D in current day, Baldur's Gate 3, completely forgoes alignment. I dislike this heavily for reasons I will explain.

Let's take ALL the steelmanned critiques of alignment and give them their most generous allowance. "Lawful, by what standard?", "What is good anyways?", "Evil people see themselves as good", "You can't classify every moral outlook under 9 (or the appropriate number) categories", "What about the nuances of the circumstance?" and so forth. Let's assume all these critiques, individually and collectively, raise legitimate concerns.

Okay, now spoken from the perspective of a forever GM/DM, let me tell you what *just* eliminating alignment does. It robs the GM of the predictive power of how characters will respond to given stimuli and provocations. It is critical for the GM to know what motivates the characters. Alignment is not the only mechanism that can resolve this, but if it is simply removed without a backup mechanism in place, the GM loses his most powerful tool to create compelling dilemmas for the players. I am not saying alignment *can't* be removed, I am saying you can't *just* remove it. If the critiques of alignment overwhelm you, you have to have an alternate mechanism in place to resolve this dilemma. An engine with a poorly functioning critical part still runs, whereas taking the critical part out makes the engine completely inoperable. Flawed is better than none.

To this same end, I hate the more open ended, wishy washy, permissive alignments (ESPECIALLY CHAOTIC FUCKING NEUTRAL) like true and chaotic neutral because they severely limit GM planning, but are favored by players because "freedom" (never mind that there are an infinite ways to accomplish a goal, even if the goal is written stone or "railroaded"). The anti-railroading crowd (a righteous concern) overcorrects by "eliminating alignment" and, to a lesser degree, when they choose the "I do what I want" alignments. /endrant

 

[The Bogwater Rises]

Because Starfinder started out as the weird bastard child of PF1e and PF2e. It has the worst parts of both. As part of the dozen of people who enjoy Starfinder, I can only hope and pray that Starfinder 2nd feels better to run and play than Starfinder 1st.

I know people have mentioned there are some really cool things in it and there are, but man yeah it overall is bad and whoever though "yeah just publish as is" should be beaten.

I agree and pray Starfinder 2e is better, which goddamn if they make it worse I will be impressed!

 

[Halbschwanz]

Okay, now spoken from the perspective of a forever GM/DM, let me tell you what *just* eliminating alignment does. It robs the GM of the predictive power of how characters will respond to given stimuli and provocations. It is critical for the GM to know what motivates the characters.

There are plenty of games that have succeeded and allowed for meaningful character prediction without alignment. I think one of the main issues with alignment isn't necessarily the concept, but that it hasn't been consistently implemented regardless of edition. It's a sort of half-gameplay mechanic/half-RP guide that doesn't come up in a lot of play cases save for the handful of classes that were restricted by it (paladin, cleric, monk, 3.5 warlock, etc.) In older editons it was a mix of team notation and religion. 3.0 and newer tried to treat it more as an RP guide that occasionally had ingame effects and 5e mostly treats it as fluff. It comes up just enough to start arguments but isn't as integral to a character as say, Humanity is in V:tM.

I will agree about chaotic neutral because I have mostly seen it chosen by people who want to be evil but get indignant when told that serial killing and wanton destruction are evil proclivities.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

There are plenty of games that have succeeded and allowed for meaningful character prediction without alignment. I think one of the main issues with alignment isn't necessarily the concept, but that it hasn't been consistently implemented regardless of edition. It's a sort of half-gameplay mechanic/half-RP guide that doesn't come up in a lot of play cases save for the handful of classes that were restricted by it (paladin, cleric, monk, 3.5 warlock, etc.) In older editons it was a mix of team notation and religion. 3.0 and newer tried to treat it more as an RP guide that occasionally had ingame effects and 5e mostly treats it as fluff. It comes up just enough to start arguments but isn't as integral to a character as say, Humanity is in V:tM.

I will agree about chaotic neutral because I have mostly seen it chosen by people who want to be evil but get indignant when told that serial killing and wanton destruction are evil proclivities.

Yes, I agree that you *can* eliminate alignment (I favor alternate mechanisms), but you have to have an alternate mechanism in place to serve that function. I like putting character traits on a 10 point scale. Are you motivated by Greed? Anger? Justice? Power? Wealth? Loyalty? If multiple answers apply, which takes precedence? If a character is equally motivated by greed and justice, what does he/she do when one must be sacrificed in pursuit of the other? I used to incorporate these traits into a point buy system, essentially giving char points for more restrictive codes, but if you don't use a point buy system, you can just list as follows "Loyalty 8, Greed 6, Compassion 5, " or "Cruelty 8, Treachery 6, Greed 8" or similar. Use as many or as few categories as desired. I find this superior to alignment. I am just not in favor of *just* removing alignment.