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

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Anyone remember that GiantLands RPG that came out a few years ago? That one about playing a post-apocalyptic world without white people, akin to Coyote & Crow? Was curious if anyone else knew all that much about it; found a recent video on it is why I'm curious:

The only thing I know is that the guy who stole the company from Ernie Gygax had a complete racist fucking meltdown and I hope he ends up choking on his own tongue.

It's all about what you want to do and where you want to go. If you're talking Rifts earth... Either Ultimate Edition or the core edition along with the GM guide and the guide to magic are essential. For sourcebooks it's all about what kind of game you want to run for your party. There's enough in those books to think up adventure hooks and a bunch of provided ones in the GM's guide.
My favorite are the Phase world books. So if you wanted to run it yourself you could probably get away with buying or acquiring the ultimate edition for character creation and rules and stuff, and for content the Phase World dimensions books. For Rifts Earth, the Coalition War Campaign books are good if you want to stomp magic-user and extra-dimensional migrant ass.
Heroes Unlimited is fun as fuck too if you have the right group for it. It can quickly turn into Villains Unlimited, but that's sort of half the fun of it.
If you want to have a one-off joke campaign there's the TMNT books that are also compatible with HU.

Dont' forget Chaos Earth.

I still have a game running in that.

 

[PhoBingas]

Dont' forget Chaos Earth.

I did forget about Chaos Earth! So many post apocalyptical games out there but Chaos Earth is the literal coming of the rifts and the apocalypse is live and happening all around you.
There's a bunch of Robotech / Macross supplements and books that are compatible with Rifts too if you're into anime.
After the Bomb is another fun SDC setting if you want to go around genociding furries.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'd also like to draw your attention to one of the underlying principles of Shadowrun in general. Offence > Defence.

I was reading/watching videos about GURPS too, and that seems to have the same kind of thing. GURPS seems a bit too much of a sim for me, but I'm coming around to it. The problem is I have Savage Worlds which fills my "any genre" itch.

At this point, dude just needs to go pick up the 3rd, 4th, or 5th rulebook(the one formatted the worst) and start reading over the weekend.

Already have/am. I'm planning on running a one shot this weekend, and still haven't decided on a rule system. Might be going with Alien of all things, but as a backup I'm preping Tiny with some houseruled car stunts.

For what I'm doing, Shadowrun might be too specific.

Spoony

You seem obsessed with the guy. I just found his videos funny, and he does a good job at explaining a few common problems RPG players refuse to discuss.

eg. All Jedi or no Jedi, the problem with superheroes, and connection timed out being three of the big ones.

I'm aware he's a killer DM, and his big YouTuber campaign Death Clock fell apart.

Oddly enough I heard that too, but usually from people that you didn't want touching your tabletop stuff, less your stuff takes on their smell so I always took it with a grain of salt or assumed they meant it was a good system for doing freaky furry shit.

Maybe I fall into that category? It's been a while since I read it, but I remember it working similar to Savage Worlds mechanically. Oddly enough, Ironclaw seems to be remembered because it's so hated, and it's hated simply for having furries in it and the whole "yiff in hell furfag" meme of 2008 or so.

What sourcebooks would you recommend?

Not a paladium guy, but the TMNT source books are kind of strange. There was an old edition where fetishes were a flaw you could take. That was removed shortly after. Eventually the game became kid friendly. But the game went almost RIFTS level of out there judging from the covers and what little I've read/been told about each book.

I know a guy who played it a lot in his youth, and games would always devolved into characters throwing dynamite at each other as it was OP.

 

[PhoBingas]

Maybe I fall into that category? It's been a while since I read it, but I remember it working similar to Savage Worlds mechanically. Oddly enough, Ironclaw seems to be remembered because it's so hated, and it's hated simply for having furries in it and the whole "yiff in hell furfag" meme of 2008 or so.

The people who told me about Ironclaw were friends of friends that were annoying, unwashed furfags that kept their proclivities quiet enough until they thought they were in good company and began oversharing after a few sessions I either ran or played in. I had to begrudgingly tolerate to not start drama with two of the three groups I gamed with at the time. Luckily I just sort of drifted away from the two groups that had annoying furries in them. Keep in mind this was like 2009ish, so they weren't quite the level of furry coomer we see today but they were still annoying, stunk and I didn't invite them to my place because I was worried they'd molest my pets when I wasn't in the room.
The annoying furries were part of why I only ran Palladium based games from like '09 to 2016. Even back then I wouldn't have been able to tell the degenerates what I thought about them without becoming a pariah I find non D&D stuff, depending on the setting is coomer and weirdo repellent.
The sad part is, if someone sane told me about it, I probably would have gave it a chance, but it was coming from people I tried my best to either ignore or barely tolerate. Haven't looked into Savage Worlds much, but I don't think it was ever that big in my area or with any of the groups I knew about at the time. There was always at least a couple SW books on the shelves at the gaming stores in my town but I never really checked them out.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

The only thing I know is that the guy who stole the company from Ernie Gygax had a complete racist fucking meltdown and I hope he ends up choking on his own tongue.

Yeah, I've taken a look at the game myself; it's basically just a worse version of Coyote & Crow with a bunch of random crap from Gamma World stapled on. Story-wise, GiantLands is supposed to take place in a future where Gaea, the Earth Mother, woke up and destroyed the world because of the white people's pollution, greed, and violence; this also resulted in various supernatural monsters appearing... somehow. Now in the far future, the various Injun-led groups of survivors trapse around the post-apocalyptic USA, doing... essentially nothing.

Put simply, there's not really any gameplay from what I've ended up seeing; everything's a broken mess, with the economic part of the game being particularly bad (every weapon, no matter how crap, somehow all cost the same price - roughly 6,000+ Opals, one of the two new currencies), though the rest of the game is severely undercooked as well. Combat rules are basically non-existent, there's no real worldbuilding or even ways to develop the world, the various monsters are just there with no explanation, there's supposed to be some talk about "mutations" people can have that never get explained... seriously, aside from the hatred of white people, the game legitimately has nothing to do.

I kinda want to see Dice Scum give this game a rip, honestly...

 

[Allied-Mastercomputer]

Now in the far future, the various Injun-led groups of survivors trapse around the post-apocalyptic USA, doing... essentially nothing.

So it’s Rifts: Spirit West but worse.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Haven't looked into Savage Worlds much, but I don't think it was ever that big in my area or with any of the groups I knew about at the time. There was always at least a couple SW books on the shelves at the gaming stores in my town but I never really checked them out.

The main thing with SW is that stats aren't numbers, but die sizes. So a stat or skill goes from d4, to d6, to d8 etc. Both games use that mechanic iirc.

Savage Worlds is also setting agnostic. It's a low numbers game where DCs are usually 4-6, and a +1 makes a big difference.

I've not run Ironclaw. I think the setting in the book is a fictional renaissance Italy where the PCs join big rival houses that are always feuding. There was also an asian setting with a martial arts focus called Jadeclaw. I assume other games have done it, but that was first exposure to those sorts of settings. If I were to play it these days, I'd run it as Redwall I think.

Those who have never heard of it, Redwall was a long running fantasy novel series. Quite popular, even got a few TV series adaptations.

I kinda want to see Dice Scum give this game a rip, honestly...

They haven't already?

Not a regular watcher of the show, but I assumed they would've done all the big ones. Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Zeihander, Meatpunks Forever. Radiant Citadel, Even Ironclaw.

Not a dice scum specific question, but I guess there's overlap. What RPGs give the players nothing to do? This was my big problem with PathFinder 2es setting. Every PF1 adventure was canon, so all the big bads have been taken care of leaving many official campaigns being the PCs doing cleanup afterwards.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

So it’s Rifts: Spirit West but worse.

I guess? Never took a look at that part of Rifts, but I'll just say yes.

They haven't already?

Not a regular watcher of the show, but I assumed they would've done all the big ones. Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Zeihander, Meatpunks Forever. Radiant Citadel, Even Ironclaw.

I took a look at the channel, but could find anything about GiantLands; I swear they did have an episode on it at one point, but I guess not. I genuinely hope they review this and Bellum Maga sometime in the future, though.

 

[Ghostse]

Anyone remember that GiantLands RPG that came out a few years ago? That one about playing a post-apocalyptic world without white people, akin to Coyote & Crow? Was curious if anyone else knew all that much about it; found a recent video on it is why I'm curious:

@Scream Aim Fire pretty well covers it. I looked into it when I became aware it just post the kickstarter. Nothing in the system other than TSR and gygax appealed to me: I tend to dislike Percentile, it looked spergy in the wrong places, the whole "Earth spirit summons a meteor" sounded really dumb (looks like it was), and it had interesting concepts about "ways to resolve conflict other than violence" but they sounded very underbaked.

Oh and thye were having some big jerkoff about how the GM was supposed to wear a mask and there was an official GM mask you get and that part sounded monumentally gay.

I might have gotten a copy to see if there anything worth stealing and to support TSR but they wanted $80. Very glad I didn't now.

I don't know how you make a more racist, more retarded Coyote and Crow but they found a away.
anywyay even if it was the greatest game of all time I'd say avoid it because of what the racist founders did to Ernie Gygax even if its his own fault for letting himself get used by these faggots.

 

[AnOminous]

Oh and thye were having some big jerkoff about how the GM was supposed to wear a mask and there was an official GM mask you get and that part sounded monumentally gay.

They just went full homo. Never go full homo.

 

[p1138]

You seem obsessed with the guy. I just found his videos funny, and he does a good job at explaining a few common problems RPG players refuse to discuss.

eg. All Jedi or no Jedi, the problem with superheroes, and connection timed out being three of the big ones.

I'm aware he's a killer DM, and his big YouTuber campaign Death Clock fell apart.

He's a lolcow with his own thread. Like I said, used to be a fan especially the counter monkey stuff till I got more experience with tabletop RPGs and other tabletop games, went back a few years later and realized he was an idiot and is either explaining things incredibly poorly, or was just a terrible player from both a game and social standpoint(and like I said based off of his own livejournal, it's probably a combo of both).

The all jedi or no jedi bit isn't even true for every star wars ttrpg. The FFG Star Wars system handles this just fine, the bigger issue is if you can actually keep everyone engaged and of course make sure to provide enough resources for the non jedi players to interact with while the jedi guys get the occasional duel.

Connection timed out, we've already discussed it in this thread regarding shadowrun(which he has multiple videos about, and his DMSO one is just dumb because the GM could have put an end to that at any point).

The trouble with superheroes, I thought I remembered this being another example of him making broad assumptions while admitting he doesn't know wtf he's talking about and sure enough a minute into the video he admits his experience is limited, the two systems he does mention are from the 80s(he does have a revised copy of heroes unlimited from the 90s), has notes on the screen talking about he can't remember shit and in this 12 year old video admits he isn't even aware of how some of the stuff in his books mechanically works and went to the LGS after the video and was surprised that there were several newer RPGs published between his gap in playing and when he made the video.

At least he admits it in this one?(the screen grab is from 13:46 toward the end of his subtitle tangent)

 

[Tom Bombodildo]

Not a dice scum specific question, but I guess there's overlap. What RPGs give the players nothing to do? This was my big problem with PathFinder 2es setting. Every PF1 adventure was canon, so all the big bads have been taken care of leaving many official campaigns being the PCs doing cleanup afterwards.

Holy shit, this was one of the biggest missteps in their transition from 1e to 2e. The writing of each 1e Adventure Path tended to be hit or miss, but they were great at putting large scale plot hooks in the setting, and it was nice to play multiple Adventure Paths with the same group because the setting would naturally evolve with each campaign. But they really shat the bed with the end of the last 1e Adventure Path and the establishment of the setting in 2e.

Spoiler: Autistic Opinions Inside

In all the official 1e material, the Whispering Tyrant looms large, a lich so evil and powerful that when nearly all the forces of good on Golarion combined to defeat him, they could still only seal him away. So in the very last adventure path of 1e, he returns with some kind soul nuke that can instantly purge an area of living beings. The party start the game by dying to the soul nuke but because of plot they fight through the afterlife to get re-incarnated and become the key to reversing the soul nuke to destroy undead instead of the living. So you get to the very end of the Adventure Path and you fight the Whispering Tyrant; you're not even supposed to defeat him, mechanically speaking. Just get him down to like 1/4 HP and he activates the soul nuke, which rebounds due to the plot stuff from the first book of the AP. You'd think that would be it; the soul nuke destroys all his undead armies and shreds his soul in all his phylacteries across the planes and he is defeated once and for all by his own lust for power. But that would be cool and make sense. So instead, the soul nuke destroys his armies which prevents him from conquering Golarion immediately, does jack diddly fucking shit to him and permanently erases the PCs from existence. Not dead, not flung to the realm of the gods, the book literally says that their souls are erased from existence permanently and irrevocably. Then in the main setting book for 2e, it's revealed that since then, he has conquered a country in central Avistan and he now rules it as a horrid land of necromancy and undeath.
They just couldn't let him go, they had to write that dogshit ending to 1e so they could set up the spooky undead nation. And you know what the really insulting thing about it is? That country literally already exists on the southern continent of Garund. It's called Geb, it's ruled by a level 20 Necromancer Ghost whose wife is a former god's herald who he soulraped into undeath and the citizens are undead who keep living beings as livestock. Literally anything they wanted to do with the Whispering Tyrant's nation they could have done with the country of Geb, which has been a criminally underutilized area of the setting for years.

And when 2e isn't spinning out shitty adventure paths about running a circus or ending orc oppression, they're ruining actually good adventure ideas by making shit like Harry Potter Wakanda and French Revolution Brain Worms instead of doing the cool shit they would have done with those adventure ideas 15 years ago. And we're still rehashing shit in Varisia, which is a tiny corner of Avistan, over and over again when out of the ~40 Adventure Paths there have been like 5 in Garund, 3 in Tian Xia, and 2 in Arcadia (and most of those suck).

Fuck me I guess for getting invested in this stuff back in 2017 when there was already evidence of Paizo collectively trooning out, but Golarion was one of the few tabletop settings I seriously enjoyed learning about and running games in and they fucking ruined it.

 

[Overly Serious]

Those who have never heard of it, Redwall was a long running fantasy novel series. Quite popular, even got a few TV series adaptations.

I read it when I was very small. I still remember the serpent Asmodeus.

I don't know about SW, but there was a game called Pugmire which I think was some kind of post-apocalyptic setting where humanity had left or wiped itself out and there were just evolved or genetically engineered animals. Everybody was a dog though I think there was a kingdom of cats. I never played it but it looked kind of endearing and didn't have a Furry vibe thank goodness.

 

[p1138]

but Golarion was one of the few tabletop settings I seriously enjoyed learning about and running games in and they fucking ruined it.

That's because no one publishing TTRPGs these days wants to put in the effort to actually create a setting worth a shit, and that's been an issue for years. WotC's idea of settings books are thin garbage that's 30% tables for random nonsense compared to the fucking tomes you'd get from 2e-4e about a setting, it's history, locations, etc. with every other publisher in the past 15 years either relying on a licensed established IP or wanting to chase the market of people looking for rules lite "narrative" generic shit that doesn't actually amount to any substance.

 

[Adamska]

Anyone remember that GiantLands RPG that came out a few years ago? That one about playing a post-apocalyptic world without white people, akin to Coyote & Crow? Was curious if anyone else knew all that much about it; found a recent video on it is why I'm curious:

Isn't that the one I shat on for turning into hippie shit and made me not bother at all with Nu-TSR?

The only thing I know is that the guy who stole the company from Ernie Gygax had a complete racist fucking meltdown and I hope he ends up choking on his own tongue.

Oh it IS the one that I completely noped out of for being nothing but hippie bullshit, to the point it poisoned my interest in TSR's revival. I only remember it being a setting that could've been good if the environmental death cult messaging wasn't dialed so high. If I want that sort of shit, I play Werewolf... not that.

Nice to see my idiot scumbag sense worked correctly; not surprised that the writer turned into your average racist.

I was reading/watching videos about GURPS too, and that seems to have the same kind of thing. GURPS seems a bit too much of a sim for me, but I'm coming around to it. The problem is I have Savage Worlds which fills my "any genre" itch.

GURPS has the problem of not having a niche and trying to be too customizeable; that makes it less attractive to players since they'll just select a game that fits that niche better. Also the vehicle mechanics are shit and overcomplicated as hell.

eg. All Jedi or no Jedi, the problem with superheroes, and connection timed out being three of the big ones.

I liked those videos, but the All Jedi no Jedi one was horseshit since he as a player broke his own rules by trying to essentially play a Mando in an all Jedi game and shat it up completely by meta'ing hard on range. He's entertaining in them, but you have to also factor in he's a hypocrite and not always right. He has very different standards as a GM vs. as a player, and it's a big factor in why he hasn't gamed that often. Also a factor in why he has a thread.

He was however correct in how chems in Cyberpunk can be broken as shit, and decking was always fairly clunky if you wanted to play it as intended.

Not a regular watcher of the show, but I assumed they would've done all the big ones. Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Zeihander, Meatpunks Forever. Radiant Citadel, Even Ironclaw.

We actually haven't really looked at Radiant Citadel, just shat on it a bit during streams, and while I've referenced Iron Claw a few times and we've done terrible furry mods and even a game or two, we've not talked about that one yet.

Giantlands sounds rather terrible to be honest, and definitely fodder for a run, but I ain't fucking paying 80 dollarydoos for that fictive suicide note.

As for what game gives nothing to do? Oh there's a list but the one I think of first is Our Travelling Home. It was a god awful Howls Moving Castle Rip-off that had no actual game mechanics and it was structured as a bad play and lesson plan. Another one is Hardwired Island, which took dystopian space stuff and some banger anime from the 1990s and turned it into strip malls and cat cafes.

 

[AnOminous]

GURPS has the problem of not having a niche and trying to be too customizeable; that makes it less attractive to players since they'll just select a game that fits that niche better. Also the vehicle mechanics are shit and overcomplicated as hell.

I could never get anyone to play GURPS. If it were current year they'd have just told me it was way too autistic to play. I forget the excuses back then, but they basically translated into it.

And when vehicle mechanics were actually important I'd actually just whip out SJG's Car Wars and play vehicle combat on the tabletop. Almost all my Call of Cthulhu campaigns involved '20s gangsters who were also bootleggers and sometimes scenarios would just be pure bootlegger shit with automotive combat and no eldritch horrors.

 

[The Ugly One]

Yeah, I've taken a look at the game myself; it's basically just a worse version of Coyote & Crow with a bunch of random crap from Gamma World stapled on. Story-wise, GiantLands is supposed to take place in a future where Gaea, the Earth Mother, woke up and destroyed the world because of the white people's pollution, greed, and violence; this also resulted in various supernatural monsters appearing... somehow. Now in the far future, the various Injun-led groups of survivors trapse around the post-apocalyptic USA, doing... essentially nothing.

Did Gaia get rid of the jeets and chinks, too?

 

[p1138]

I liked those videos, but the All Jedi no Jedi one was horseshit since he as a player broke his own rules by trying to essentially play a Mando in an all Jedi game and shat it up completely by meta'ing hard on range. He's entertaining in them, but you have to also factor in he's a hypocrite and not always right. He has very different standards as a GM vs. as a player, and it's a big factor in why he hasn't gamed that often. Also a factor in why he has a thread.

I'm re-watching the all jedi or no jedi video because I was curious if I remembered anything wrong. The beta test for edge of the empire was out by the time this video was out but I guess he just wasn't paying attention to that. Complains about players min-maxing like an inexperienced DM fails to realize that means those characters have a min.

He then describes his party of idiot players wanting to chase down vader and can't take a hint when vader starts force moving their turrets, and when they land is nowhere to be seen, could have also just brought out heavier weapons to scare them off. He does admit having Vader appear was a mistake on his part, but doesn't change how dumb the table handled it.

Then he describes another game he's running where 2 sith lords appear and challenge the 2 jedi in the party, so the 2 non jedi decide they're going to just shoot at the sith lords. Yeah he had storm troopers, and the dumb party complained about the sith lords being the guys in charge... which wouldn't be correct and why wasn't there enough of an imperial military threat? Ok, fine storm troopers not enough, if the building is large enough that's where an AT-ST comes out, or some storm troopers start wheeling out E-Web emplacements.

He also mentions this game is before the prequel movies... so even at the date of this video he's basically a kid as that puts these games taking place before the summer of 1999. He also sounds like he never paid too much attention to the novels either. Yes, star wars generally boils down to some 1v1 duels, with the other heroes busy doing other shit even in the original trilogy.

The video where he did the shitty mandalorian thing was the jedi hunter and his buddy was running the game and had taken his advice where everyone was a jedi. But again, before the prequel trilogy. Builds his character as a sith hunter because he doesn't want to feel "left out". Ok fine whatever. Even the GM questions him about it.

Complains about making a pilot character that can't do anything outside of an x-wing, that's him failing as a player because apparently he could only make 1 note characters. The DM didn't pay attention to Spoony's character sheet to notice he had flamethrowers instead of a jetpack, so that's a major failure of the DM. Fails to note spoony's "deck clearing blaster" again failing to pay attention to a player(especially one new to the table) , so again fails as a DM. This same pattern continues to happen repeatedly. That's not a fault of the game system or the setting, or even jedi vs non jedi balance. It happens with bricks of c4 planted on his own ship, an electric net, it's just stupid.

So if we assume any of this is actually true, not only was spoony being an asshole but the DM was also being a fuckup either by not going over the new player's character sheet, or just ignoring it entirely. If we assume they were all roughly the same age, that puts them at what, 17-19 maybe? Again, they're still immature kids. But it's a good example of why spoony is full of crap when it comes to tabletop RPGs.

Even the shadowrun DMSO wars bit, yes it works that way but why did the DM let them have access to all of this? Why did the security forces who became aware of this not just shoot to kill? Chems/drugs are extremely powerful in shadowrun, especially if you can get that super liver thing for your character that makes it easy as fuck to resist addiction9I think it's the toxin extractor?) but just because you can afford it doesn't guarantee you have access to even get it, get the surgery, and then the downtime for recovery from the surgery.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

So it’s Rifts: Spirit West but worse.

Rifts Spirit West is pretty good. Of course, part of RIfts problem and charm is there are 30+ different magical bobbins around.

But they did a decent job and the campaign I had in the PWN that would run into Native Americans went perfectly fine.

Edit: How can you dislike the Heya Hoya Heya Hoya Power Armor?

 

[Allied-Mastercomputer]

Rifts Spirit West is pretty good. Of course, part of RIfts problem and charm is there are 30+ different magical bobbins around.

The pitch for Spirit West is amazing. In the 1500’s, a Native American deity saw what the white man was about to do and whisked away a few tribes into a pocket dimension through a Rift. Now that the cataclysm is over, the Rifts are releasing the missing magical Injuns to Earth, now with the full backing of tribal magic and Native American gods to empower them and their goals. That’s a pretty solid elevator pitch tbh.