I second this. The campaign I'm trying to start is a superhero one where I'm forcing my edgelord friends to play as proper Silver Age good guys in a sanitized Silver Age city, but then they'll make Invincible-esque villains that get sent through a portal who can do proper damage to fight their previous hero characters and wreck the city that can't even comprehend overt violence, let alone stop it. That game sounds like it would be good inspiration.
Edit: well bugger me, the goods were delivered as I was writing this, lol.
Edit again: oh, it was just a lore dump, I thought it would have been at least a player session. Oh well, still a good listen.
A big contrast here is with 4e, where the math was fundamentally broken, and 3.5, where players could cherry pick feats and MC dips to do really stupid things.
I've always wondered why more GMs don't just put a hard limit on the number of races in their worlds. Not even necessarily something like just PHB races, but having combos like human, warforged, duergar, goliath, nothing else.
Because it stifles player choice for no good reason. Unless you're playing Redwall or Eberron or something.
I'm the odd man out in this forum as a whole in that the people I know don't flip out whenever anthro characters are mentioned. They can see a game like Atlyss and Liars Bar and not immediately fly into a mouth frothing rage as is common on KF. I say this because the general consensus from the people I know seems to be that dragonborn and warforged are cool, and people like playing them.
Not to beat a dead horse as I've said this before, but on the internet the consensus seems to be that all RPGs should be straight tolkien and mud farmer simulators, before turning around and praising Darksun, Planescape, and Spelljammer. Some DMs try to soft-ban races by allowing them, but making them illegal, hated, or just harder to play. While people have made a case for them here, I've yet to see it work.
And let's be honest here, unless the setting is radically different from typical medieval fantasy, no one is going to care that in your setting tiefling are inbred and dragonborn are illegal.
Of these, six are one-shot collections: Tales from the Yawning Portal, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Candlekeep Mysteries, Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, Keys from the Golden Vault, and Quests from the Infinite Staircase.
I don't know half of those, but I will defend Saltmarsh. Yes, it's a series of old adventures put together as a campaign, but at least there's an effort to tie them together. Secrets of Saltmarsh leads to a raid on a pirate ship which leads to learning about a lizard man invasion plot and so on. The only adventure in the set that felt tacked on was the raid on the abbey.
The thing I love the most about the take down is despite RC being a liberal wankfantasy, they are made as serious of an opponent as they could possibly be, with the complete ruination being "a clever opponent with a couple minutes to plan" and not due to some retarded Aryan Ubermensch or w/e. Obviously any attacker will pack anti-dragon weapons to end the #1 threat, and all you have to do is confine a couple council members and they can't activate the defenses. Small number of elite soliders overwhelmed so skill at community policing isn't even an issue.
I don't know if this is bad, but since I have a campaign in mind that is a series of one shots, I wonder if it's worth stealing this idea unironically.
Idea 1: There is a nearby settlement that is sold as wakanda, with blackjack, and hookers, but are constantly faced with problems the PCs have to sort out. The sheild stops working so they have to replace the magic crystal powering it. One of the council is missing so it doesn't work. They constantly have supply issues. And they never pay the PCs of course because communism. Eventually the PCs arrive to help with the latest problem and are attacked, being blamed for the constantly failures because they need a scapegoat, and the PCs were the last to mess with the defenses.
Idea 2: A more subtle version. The setting includes a basic political sub plot where the royals and the elected council are at odds. The council are presented as corrupt and are trying trying to take over by removing the royals remaining veto powers. They get control of the cities defenses, and you have corrupt hold outs leaving the city undefended, or honest members are kidnapped. I'm not sure what their motive would be yet.
I'm the odd man out in this forum as a whole in that the people I know don't flip out whenever anthro characters are mentioned. They can see a game like Atlyss and Liars Bar and not immediately fly into a mouth frothing rage as is common on KF. I say this because the general consensus from the people I know seems to be that dragonborn and warforged are cool, and people like playing them.
Yeah it's uncommon but not rare to have people in our group play as animal races or whatever but it never once feels like anyone verging on Dost Thou Dare Enter Thine Magic Realm ERP stuff. If anything the last person to play a Tabaxi is one of the most dyed-in-the-wool take-no-prisoners get the flamenwurfer furry haters I've ever met, curiously. It's usually just because someone is min-maxing certain classes/specialties.
It's fun playing Ravenloft though and having your non-human characters actively discriminated against by residents of whatever domain they're in. (Barovia)
I've always wondered why more GMs don't just put a hard limit on the number of races in their worlds. Not even necessarily something like just PHB races, but having combos like human, warforged, duergar, goliath, nothing else. I've done stuff like that a few times and it definitely helps worldbuilding feel a lot more cohesive when you don't have to account for some retard attempting to bring a sparkly catgirl or tumblr poisoned tiefling rogue to the table. Then again, I've largely played with people who have been vouched for by friends and almost never have to fish for strangers when running new games.
Because GMs are scared of telling people "no" and not finding players. It is absurd to me that some people insist that every time WotC publishes a race, your setting has to change. No, it doesn't. There are no Warforged or Tabaxi in this world, and if you don't like that, fuck off. World consistency matters. Owl-people will not suddenly start showing up just because they appeared in a splat.
I've run Eberron campaigns where the full menagerie of freaks is available. After all, if goblins and gnolls live in Sharn, why not cat-people and turtle-people? But if I'm running classic Greyhawk, it's classic Greyhawk. I have a soft spot for Tieflings, but they're not in classic Greyhawk.
Because GMs are scared of telling people "no" and not finding players. It is absurd to me that some people insist that every time WotC publishes a race, your setting has to change. No, it doesn't. There are no Warforged or Tabaxi in this world, and if you don't like that, fuck off. World consistency matters. Owl-people will not suddenly start showing up just because they appeared in a splat.
I've run Eberron campaigns where the full menagerie of freaks is available. After all, if goblins and gnolls live in Sharn, why not cat-people and turtle-people? But if I'm running classic Greyhawk, it's classic Greyhawk. I have a soft spot for Tieflings, but they're not in classic Greyhawk.
This is why I’m a Dragonlance fan at heart; because that setting knows what it is and what the fuck it’s about. For races, you have Humans, Elves, Dwarves, gnomes, lender that are a variant halfling and a smattering of fantasy races found in mythology like centaurs and minotaurs. No orcs, drow, tieflings or Dragonborn.
Yes, I know that this is the setting that gave us draconians. Those aren’t Dragonborn.
I recommend doing this if you're looking for players on places like roll20. It acts as a good filter for players that don't even bother reading the campaign description.
"Oh, this is a low magic campaign set in fantasy ancient Rome? I'd like to play a war forged cleric."
I'm the odd man out in this forum as a whole in that the people I know don't flip out whenever anthro characters are mentioned. They can see a game like Atlyss and Liars Bar and not immediately fly into a mouth frothing rage as is common on KF. I say this because the general consensus from the people I know seems to be that dragonborn and warforged are cool, and people like playing them.
Not to beat a dead horse as I've said this before, but on the internet the consensus seems to be that all RPGs should be straight tolkien and mud farmer simulators, before turning around and praising Darksun, Planescape, and Spelljammer. Some DMs try to soft-ban races by allowing them, but making them illegal, hated, or just harder to play. While people have made a case for them here, I've yet to see it work.
And let's be honest here, unless the setting is radically different from typical medieval fantasy, no one is going to care that in your setting tiefling are inbred and dragonborn are illegal.
There's what you'll accept from people you've played with and trust, and what you'll let randos roll up with. A rando brings me Furryshit or Problem races, they'll be told to bring something different or walk. Actually I'd probably just tell them to walk.
Actually I've been getting around that one-shots by just bringing pregens.
Also I put Tabaxi players as only about 1/2 a peg above Kender players.
Yeah it's uncommon but not rare to have people in our group play as animal races or whatever but it never once feels like anyone verging on Dost Thou Dare Enter Thine Magic Realm ERP stuff. If anything the last person to play a Tabaxi is one of the most dyed-in-the-wool take-no-prisoners get the flamenwurfer furry haters I've ever met, curiously. It's usually just because someone is min-maxing certain classes/specialties.
IME, Tabaxi players usually have just figured out it's a key part of min/maxing a Monk build. Female players often like fantasy animal people, but I hate women.
I recommend doing this if you're looking for players on places like roll20. It acts as a good filter for players that don't even bother reading the campaign description.
"Oh, this is a low magic campaign set in fantasy ancient Rome? I'd like to play a war forged cleric."
I was trying a homebrew system i had made on a dare. it was all about dueling in medieval italy. I said this to all of my players, i said them there is no magic or fantasy, i just want to play a real europe centric middle ages duelling game.
one of the players came with loli vampire samuri build. I told him no, he insisted, i told him NO. he then said ok but only if he can play as a samurai. In the end i told him get tf out. before i fred him he was writing about how the system lacked support for katanas (in the system i had basic moves such as feint, attack etc so everyone can try the moves, i do not know why he believed the system lacked in supporting a sword that is good on cutting and poor on stabin.)
All he negative shit around furfag and problem races has gotten to the point where I and my group hesitate on running any even in our games. Hell, my DM actually encouraged me to run a Tabaxi a while back because it fit really well with a Bard build I was making, and I refused because... well, I've dealt with too much furfag shit on my end to really enjoy the race. It's a combination of the potential for degeneracy and the min-maxxing bullshit that really pisses people off, if anything.
Obviously any attacker will pack anti-dragon weapons to end the #1 threat, and all you have to do is confine a couple council members and they can't activate the defenses. Small number of elite soliders overwhelmed so skill at community policing isn't even an issue.
Yeah it's uncommon but not rare to have people in our group play as animal races or whatever but it never once feels like anyone verging on Dost Thou Dare Enter Thine Magic Realm ERP stuff.
Shit was beyond Kino; the donut steel Romans raid it, kill the guardian, slaughter all the furries, kill the men, enslave the women and children, and plunder the resources and then proceed to haul off the Residuum and gems which is all promptly wasted on lavish displays of wealth.
I remember reading a PDF on this book a while back; me and my party planned a similar campaign, because it's basically the definition of "soft target" in every way, but we never did run it. Glad to see someone did a villain campaign on this, the RC is basically the perfect setting of a villain plot.
Yeah it's uncommon but not rare to have people in our group play as animal races or whatever but it never once feels like anyone verging on Dost Thou Dare Enter Thine Magic Realm ERP stuff.
It's fun playing Ravenloft though and having your non-human characters actively discriminated against by residents of whatever domain they're in. (Barovia)
This also makes me want to ask; are there any "furry" races that don't attract a bunch of furfag shit? Like, the Tabaxi are basically just shit overall, I've seen a mixture of opinions about Dragonborn, Leonin, and the Humblewood races... what about Lizardfolk, Harengon, Aarakocra, Minotaur, etc.? Been a while since I dipped into the DnD community.
Are loads of events like this as corporate entities viewing D&D/TTRPG hobbies all think if they can be the company to crack the code and open the hobby up to a wider audience then they can rake in huge amounts of money. It's rather funny in a way that all these companies trying to make money off Dungeon Masters/Game Masters are at the moment now also gambling on which game system to support too.
It was mostly about connecting being a Dungeon Master to being a good employee Linkedin-style.
I can't reply to the post @Judge Dredd made but it was not officially sanctioned by WotC, just by the college.
I'd be interested in going to one of those just for shits and gigs. When I'd go with a big group of friends to GenCon back in the day we'd all get the cheapest hotel we could find and drive in at like 7 AM. I was mostly there to hang out with my friends so I never signed up for events and thus I would end up at seminars half asleep while my friends drafted Magic when the con opened. Monte Cook did one that was really good. I'd like to sit in on a bunch of retarded danger hairs yelling about how I suck just for fun though.
I hate this phrase, "dominated by white men," as though D&D were just lying in a field, and those wicked old white guys, Gary Gygax, David Arneson, Tim Kask, David Cook, and the rest of them grabbed it away from the BIPOC genderqueers who were on their way to pick it up.
I didn't, though. No Tasha's, except ranger, no furry races. That's it. I ran the game just fine for 10 years playing it like that. Never felt any need to house rule initiative. A big contrast here is with 4e, where the math was fundamentally broken, and 3.5, where players could cherry pick feats and MC dips to do really stupid things. I didn't have to play Build Cop or substantially rewrite core mechanics. It all worked well enough out of the box. (And I house-ruled the furries out because they're fuckin' gay.)
The problem with 3.5e building when it comes to races is how absolutely stupid the stat bonuses are, "Elves have +2 to Dexterity, -2 to a stat everybody uses, and nothing for Intelligence, a stat which wizards use. By the way you're supposed to be a wizard!"
Hot take: While roleplaying (as opposed to roll-playing) isn't bad, too much focus on the "role" part drifts away from the wargame roots of the hobby.
It's how you get the theatre kids, the stupid/horrific stuff in certain World of Darkness supplements and other freak shows, the Critical Role shit, and so on.
"Storygames" may not inherently be bad but I think they've gatewayed a great number of the problem children currently plagueing the hobby.
It's pretty all right, I was soured on it for a while because the last time I went was a year after Covid ended and they were still being absolute cockcukers about wearing masks. I remember some fat piece of shit yelling at me for taking my mask off before exiting the building literal feet away from the door and ignoring him entirely in the hopes that it would ruin his day. Between that and the pride shit they had plastered everywhere I haven't been back. Despite my masking, it was the first time I caught covid.
Indianapolis is a trash pit too, the kind of place that's full of drug addict bums. The type of bum that's under 30 and just begging for money when they should be put in a woodchipper instead.
I might go back this year to check it out, if only to go drink at the bar where the Quarting got punched.
It's pretty all right, I was soured on it for a while because the last time I went was a year after Covid ended and they were still being absolute cockcukers about wearing masks. I remember some fat piece of shit yelling at me for taking my mask off before exiting the building literal feet away from the door and ignoring him entirely in the hopes that it would ruin his day. Between that and the pride shit they had plastered everywhere I haven't been back. Despite my masking, it was the first time I caught covid.
Indianapolis is a trash pit too, the kind of place that's full of drug addict bums. The type of bum that's under 30 and just begging for money when they should be put in a woodchipper instead.
I might go back this year to check it out, if only to go drink at the bar where the Quarting got punched.
Because, By and large, we’re talking about a class of people that were given a glide path to a comfortable, partially professional if not professional life. They went to a good school if not a great one, got a job that didn’t ask them to hustle too hard or get calluses. All they had to do was vote the right way, say all of the fashionable and “correct” things on twitter and they had a boring, anonymous but safe life ahead of that. COVID completely shattered that illusion and a small but noticeable number of them still have not recovered and so they cling to n95 masks as if they’ll ward off the evil spirits.
It's pretty all right, I was soured on it for a while because the last time I went was a year after Covid ended and they were still being absolute cockcukers about wearing masks. I remember some fat piece of shit yelling at me for taking my mask off before exiting the building literal feet away from the door and ignoring him entirely in the hopes that it would ruin his day. Between that and the pride shit they had plastered everywhere I haven't been back. Despite my masking, it was the first time I caught covid.
Indianapolis is a trash pit too, the kind of place that's full of drug addict bums. The type of bum that's under 30 and just begging for money when they should be put in a woodchipper instead.
I might go back this year to check it out, if only to go drink at the bar where the Quarting got punched.
They stopped with the mask crap after 21, because it was really unpopular even that year. 21 was a terrible year if only because instead of the State Fair being in town, it was some group of dudes who modify cars in hideous ways. Didn't sleep all weekend. Where the fuck are you running into addicts near the convention center? It's mostly that one street preacher who yells and the JWs, who won't actually speak with you. Anyhoo, if you go, we should meet up. You'll find me at Kobolds Ate my Baby.
IME, Tabaxi players usually have just figured out it's a key part of min/maxing a Monk build. Female players often like fantasy animal people, but I hate women.
I don't really care if someone wants to play Disney's Robinhood as long as they aren't a furcoomer. Actually let me take that back, as long as I can't tell they are a furcoomer. I have no issues (other than furcoomers) with Swords & Whiskers settings. I just hate Tabaxi and people who want to play tabaxi.
I think one of the stupid splats introduced a human sized lion people, basically less murdery fantasy Kilrathi. And as long as I knew they weren't going to turn this into a yiff inflation/vore fest, and they weren't trying to shoe horn them in like Fantasy Bronze Age, I'd probably be ok with that - the lion people aren't superpopular so I'm assuming that means they aren't broken.
(Actually, I take that back too. I could see a lion-man working into Fantasy Bronze Age as some sort of work of the gods.)
Same with Dragonborn; I'd have no issue with Lizardmen but I'd just point out everyone is going to expect you to be evil and you could just be a Dragonborn and get a breath weapon.
I take issue with Bird people becasue that's usually just min-maxers who want Fly. I wouldn't be wholly objectivable to the Turtle or Elephant people, but I don't really see how they'd work without just being effectively costumes.
I make fun of story gamers, but at the end of the day if they have fun, who cares. I really only give too much of a shit when they take their special Theater Major attitudes to other games. D&D isn't perfect but for me sits in that sweet spot between
