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

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Thats genuinely disheartening to hear, because from the few things I saw and listened to, it sounded like it was something akin to tabletop forever winter.

But yeah, if its this bad, I'll just stick with forever winter, and trying to dip my toes into 40k
You can see me bitching about it in more detail in the community watch thread, but yeah, it's got some major issues, the main one being that the devs handed control of their official Discord over to a cabal of dickheads from an online tabletop "zine" who then got mad when right-leaning 40k players showed up and started banning people based solely on vibes, which pissed off a lot of potential fans. This caused a kerfuffle that forced the devs to step in, and then later they decided to whine about the haters in a presentation at Adepticon while simultaneously having no demo games or minis available for people to try out.

It has not been a particularly well-run endeavor up to now, which is a shame because they managed to recruit some real talent for art and design, including Tuomas Pirinen, John Blanche, Andy Chambers, and Jervis Johnson.

I find the setting interesting, but it's definitely a level of over-the-top grimdark that is off-putting to a lot of people, and you can tell that it began as one guy's personal art project instead of an actual story or setting. There's potential there, but they need to sort their shit out before it can be realized.
 
you can tell that it began as one guy's personal art project instead of an actual story or setting. There's potential there, but they need to sort their shit out before it can be realized.
This right here, this is why it caught my eye, because this is how forever winter started off.

A simple art book and web story detailing a war journalist going through the battle fields. Only forever winter is being molded by some very very talented and well meaning people, and the discord isn't a cluster fuck.

But it seems the more I read, and the more I learn, the more this kinda seems doomed, ill still keep an eye on it, I have a tiny bit of hope that they can make something amazing from it, and maybe not burn it down
 
This right here, this is why it caught my eye, because this is how forever winter started off.

A simple art book and web story detailing a war journalist going through the battle fields. Only forever winter is being molded by some very very talented and well meaning people, and the discord isn't a cluster fuck.

But it seems the more I read, and the more I learn, the more this kinda seems doomed, ill still keep an eye on it, I have a tiny bit of hope that they can make something amazing from it, and maybe not burn it down
I'm also keeping an eye on it, since I backed the Kickstarter for the miniatures and rulebook, but at this point I'm expecting a flameout in a few years as the initial hype dies down and the team's lack of experience with running a project this big takes its toll.
 
I'm also keeping an eye on it, since I backed the Kickstarter for the miniatures and rulebook, but at this point I'm expecting a flameout in a few years as the initial hype dies down and the team's lack of experience with running a project this big takes its toll.
Ill be checking into the thread from time to time then to see if you make any posts as updates then
 
Ill be checking into the thread from time to time then to see if you make any posts as updates then
I'll post whenever I actually receive my minis (allegedly sometime in July at this point, but I'm not holding my breath) and I'll probably do a breakdown of the rulebook when that finally rolls out. Both have been delayed. The rulebook is more understandable because they managed to hire a bunch of well-known TTRPG artists and writers and wound up adding like a hundred pages to the final count. The minis are much less so because they went with Only-Games, a company that is infamous for bad prints, lousy shipping, and worse customer service, and the TC team has been making excuse after excuse for them when people post to complain about missing, broken, warped, or incorrect minis. One backer recently got sent the same messed up item twice in a row, and his responses to the Kickstarter guy sound like he's so done with the whole mess.
 
while I haven't looked at the 2nd Ebberon book for 5e, the first was worthless.
By first edition you mean Wayfinders guide to Eberron?

Well that sucks, its hard to find good tabletop these days. I cant reply to you. But thank you dredd
But yeah, if its this bad, I'll just stick with forever winter, and trying to dip my toes into 40k
Sorry to hear that. Like I said, I know little of it, as aside from the cool art, it set off my red flags alarms almost immediately. It got a lot of mention in the 40k thread because it was hyped as a 40k killer, and I think it came at a time 40k was pissing off the fanbase.

It's too grimdark for me, but that's because there's a contingent of 40k fans claiming 40k lost it's grimdark edge and is all happiness and ponies. People on my side of the fence call that "grimderp" or "grimdumb" because it goes a little too far. (For me it was the giant mech suits that are lined with hooks and barbed wire to torture the pilot, while people argue be die by being nailed to the shield which is also a breaking wheel.)

Another complaint I've not seen mentioned in this thread specifically, is the claim that they're cutting FLGS out of the loop. Because it's all 3D printed there's no incentive for FLGS to stock it or host game nights.

That said, there are some neat kitbashes out there combining knight and world war 1/2 kits to make cool looking trench crusade guys.


It has not been a particularly well-run endeavor up to now, which is a shame because they managed to recruit some real talent for art and design, including Tuomas Pirinen, John Blanche, Andy Chambers, and Jervis Johnson.
Andy Chambers is a weird one. He keeps getting name dropped on every "40k killer". At this point I wonder what games he isn't working on, and what he's actually doing for them.

Fuck eh? Didn't know they were like typical twitter leftists. It looks cool, but that's like the only point in its favor, but in the age of 3d printers and indy artists, looking "cool" isn't hard. Every video I've seen feels like an advert they're really trying to sell me on, and it really just feels like they're trying to out grimdark 40k with their lore so I'm not a fan of it, but at least the mini's I've seen in the adverts look like they could be cool encounters in other tabletop shit.
Feels like some fuckery there, though some might be trying to cash in on the kickstarter success. As with RPGs, it seems like every month or two there's some new "Omg! New sci-fi minis game by former 40k creators! GW is cooked!" and then after a week it vanishes. There was some game Alpha Zeon or something that tried to be that. It's was 80s anime inspired, and had Andy Chambers on game design.


I actually didn't know that. But when vehicular stuff became really common in the CoC campaign, I was like "hey why won't we just run these in Car Wars?" It just made sense.
I was looking into GURPS and supposedly one of the expansions was GURPS Autodule which was a tie in. And from the videos, the vehicle combat rules basically pushed you to run Car Wars. Both of which was Steve Jackson Games at the time. I know little of Car Wars. I assume it's like Gaslands?
 
By first edition you mean Wayfinders guide to Eberron?
The shitty book that at best was just a remake of the 4e eberron players guide rather than actually being comprehensive like the 4e eberron campaign guide? Yes. It wasn't a 1st an 2nd edition, it's entirely different books that came out years apart. Looks like the 2nd was attempting to be a campaign guide but still wastes 40 pages on a bestiary, another 70 pages on character creation options that should have been in a players guide, that's already 1/3 of the book. The khorvaire and Sharn chapters isn't even 80 pages and there's next to nothing for the rest of the place.
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Even just comparing the table of contents the 5e book is mediocre.
 
Random post, looking for random thoughts.

I've been spending some of my spare time after work streamlining and retrofitting AD&D 1e to be a bit more friendly for some of my non-D&D friends. They really want me to host a game for them (it would be their first) and I know their desire is genuine. But when I told them I would have to do it in AD&D 1e (because that's what I know best) they sort of went cross-eyed at the amount of stuff involved. I'm trying to offload some of the busywork so that they can more or less jump in and start running around and rolling a d20.

Yeah I know it's not the same. But I think I can keep most of the charm of AD&D and cut down on some of the work. If you were in my shoes, what would you do (besides killing yourself or not doing the project)? I guess I'm sort of redesigning 3rd Edition/3.5 with knowledge of where those systems failed and ended up breaking some of the core aspects of the game.
 
Oh god, the vampire larp. Yeah, he got moderately hazed like any noob does when it comes to joining a larp group out of the blue, couldn't handle it, made up a bunch of bullshit that no one bothered to challenge him on, then fucked off never to return again so you know next session they just retconned everything he did and went right back to normal.
It's actually worse than that; he made a character without consulting the guy who brought him to the LARP at all, and then got outraged when he brought a Carthian (think a more political Anarch) to a city run essentially by the vampire mob and a holy order dedicated to scourging and scaring bad mortals to act justly, and he got tortured and brainwashed by the latter since he had no patrons to watch out for him.
On the subject of cheating, I really don't care if my players cheat generally, as long as everyone's having fun, it doesn't bother me whatsoever. It's like people who constantly slap the wall book for people. forget things The purpose of this is to have fun. as long as they're not **** up anybody else's fun. I don't care.
Which Spoony did both times. He got booted from the LARP from attempting to suicide bomb, which ironically proved the LARPers totally fucking right. He also shat up for weeks the Star Wars game for the other players and Big Mike, until their characters either died or retrained to be less monofocused on lightsaber duels and could deal with his power gaming and sheet editing ass.
Palladium system stuff is so slept on it's criminal. It's a shame a lot of tabletop people just turn their nose up at anything that wasn't published by Wizards or Paizo. There's enough settings books, conversion books and supplemental things that you can spin up pretty much any character concept you can imagine.
It's because Palladium's jank as hell depending on which book you pick from. I remember going through RIFTS, thinking the setting was kind of interesting (though not as wild as I've heard), and then finding it to be a pain to make a character and going through the mechanics. Now admittedly it's because good fucking luck finding a good fillable sheet for the game specifically listed; the one I found was a botched attempt at making a universal sheet. The book also has a bad habit of having random new ideas thrown in whenever Kevin cooks it up.

And you have to actually go against the creator and streamline and customize that shit too, like to the point you might need one of the other books to do it just because it's laid out in a simpler way. It also runs into the GURPS "Yeah you COULD do that, but there's (x), (y), and (z) options you could play instead. Books are less clunky, it specializes in the thing you want, and it's easier to learn and read."

Just makes it a hard sell tbh, especially since the two fantasy splats are a hell of a lot easier to plug in and play.
Anecdotal, but the "jank" of the system has really filtered out weirdos,
That's funny, since I remember that it was the odder duckies who tended to want to shill this book.
I dont understand why settings struggle so much. 9/10 they are either a waffer thin with nothing of substance to latch on to (fill in the blanks yourself!), a dense list of kings, gods, and geopolitics that no one cares about and isn't gameable at all, or some overly weird "gonzo" setting struggling so hard to be original they fuck up their own setting. This is why I don't apologize for being an Eberron shill. Everything in that book is interesting and gameable.
It's because it's easier to make tables and short highdeas than it is to make a logical world setting that's not just the writer's failed fantasy novel. It also often gets spun as a selling point, since it can be sold as compliant to more popular books to leech off of it.
What the fuck is this? I remember this appearing back in 2012 but then quickly being stomped out, but here it is again? Unless the game was released in 2012?

Woke likes playing teacher for some reason.
Nope. It came out in 2020. And it was fucking dogshit and was not a game; I still don't know how the hell it managed to even get to over 100 pages given how nothing it was as a game.
I can't sell you on the devs either because last I heard (dont quote me on this) they ran to Discord and BluSky to set up a criticism proof hugbox and go on safe edgy rants about Christianity being the bad guys.
It wasn't the devs, it was the stupid group they chose to tie their product to to shill as their marketing partners and community officers. Given the creators picked them, I'd not be shocked if they have the same ass takes.

Since it does take great asspain and the desire to shame customers to whine about them specifically in a marketing meeting; like sure, Arch is a retard, but you've transcended him by doing this and the other thing. Oh, and it takes pretty big batches of incompetence to fuck up giving their backers their products deformed or busted, and to them fuck up by not having demos for skirmishing during a FUCKING CON.

I also personally just saw the setting as all flash, no substance, with stale lore in general. I found it to just be a lamer grimderp setting with shitty color palates for their minis.
Kneel before the brand new King Arthur, losers!
I remember getting very bored when I heard it was just fucking camelot again. I'd have preferred a Nightmare take on the Commonwealth of the 1650s, where it's run by a maniac in the vein of Cromwell.
I actually didn't know that. But when vehicular stuff became really common in the CoC campaign, I was like "hey why won't we just run these in Car Wars?" It just made sense.
If you like vehicle combat, I'd also recommend Gaslands. It's a post apocalyptic minis/skirmish game where people have to essentially race to the death via blood sports as a common pastime. I remember enjoying reading that and finding it pretty fun as a game.
 
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Random post, looking for random thoughts.

I've been spending some of my spare time after work streamlining and retrofitting AD&D 1e to be a bit more friendly for some of my non-D&D friends. They really want me to host a game for them (it would be their first) and I know their desire is genuine. But when I told them I would have to do it in AD&D 1e (because that's what I know best) they sort of went cross-eyed at the amount of stuff involved. I'm trying to offload some of the busywork so that they can more or less jump in and start running around and rolling a d20.

Yeah I know it's not the same. But I think I can keep most of the charm of AD&D and cut down on some of the work. If you were in my shoes, what would you do (besides killing yourself or not doing the project)? I guess I'm sort of redesigning 3rd Edition/3.5 with knowledge of where those systems failed and ended up breaking some of the core aspects of the game.
I would just switch to ACKS. Because that's what I did. It feels like what AD&D would be if it were remade with the hindsight of the last 40 years. Plus you can use AD&D monsters & modules unmodified.
 
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It wasn't the devs, it was the stupid group they chose to tie their product to to shill as their marketing partners and community officers. Given the creators picked them, I'd not be shocked if they have the same ass takes.

Since it does take great asspain and the desire to shame customers to whine about them specifically in a marketing meeting; like sure, Arch is a retard, but you've transcended him by doing this and the other thing. Oh, and it takes pretty big batches of incompetence to fuck up giving their backers their products deformed or busted, and to them fuck up by not having demos for skirmishing during a FUCKING CON.

I also personally just saw the setting as all flash, no substance, with stale lore in general. I found it to just be a lamer grimderp setting with shitty color palates for their minis.
Couple specific posts from the other thread so people can get some more insight into how fucking badly Trench Crusade has been run as a business.

Yes it's my own post, but it has the video from their fail of an Adepticon presentation in it covering their own idiotic talking points about how they mis-handled the community, only wanted "creative" people and no one with any project management experience involved, and so on. They didn't even have product for sale other than bullshit merch at their Adepticon booth. No minis, no starter packs, no terrain, nothing.
That post explains how they decided to handle their bigger customers. The more you bought, the further back in the line you go to get anything from your order.
 
I was effy about it at first but yeah I can see it as being more of a good thing. So far I am really liking 2E.
keep in mind that goes both ways. if the group doesn't have a fighter or someone else for crowd control there are all kinds of shenanigans to fuck with them as a GM to not make combat look like this:



there's even an example in the beginner box where one time the GM running it let the kobold trapmaster escape downstairs, then on top of the archer ambush put a trap right at the bottom of the stairs. lot of groups let the meatshild go first who usually lacks the perception to spot either.
if you don't wanna wipe them outright you can still use it as good teaching lesson regarding the power of flanks and boni. even rats know the advantage of ganging up on someone, but kobolds certainly do.
 
Just makes it a hard sell tbh, especially since the two fantasy splats are a hell of a lot easier to plug in and play.
Admittedly it is a bit of a hard sell, and it's not a system for everyone. I know I'm 100% biased just because some of the most fun I've had as a player was in palladium system games.
Feels like some fuckery there, though some might be trying to cash in on the kickstarter success. As with RPGs, it seems like every month or two there's some new "Omg! New sci-fi minis game by former 40k creators! GW is cooked!" and then after a week it vanishes. There was some game Alpha Zeon or something that tried to be that. It's was 80s anime inspired, and had Andy Chambers on game design.
My hopes are low. Other people in the thread have said it's like they turned somebody's artbook project into a mini game. Most kickstarter tabletop things fail, so I'm not holding out much hope. If it goes tits up, hopefully the STL files at least end up getting posted or leaked somewhere, because like I said before, the minis look really good from what I've seen in the little youtube adverts the company was putting out.
That's funny, since I remember that it was the odder duckies who tended to want to shill this book.
Like I said, anecdotal, I'd be leery of the GM running after the bomb as the mutant animals against the 'evil racist humans'. The groups I ran Rifts, HU, Phase World, and System Shock for were all mostly normal except for a couple military spers so maybe I was just lucky.
*Edit to not double-post.
 
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I was looking into GURPS and supposedly one of the expansions was GURPS Autodule which was a tie in. And from the videos, the vehicle combat rules basically pushed you to run Car Wars. Both of which was Steve Jackson Games at the time. I know little of Car Wars. I assume it's like Gaslands?
This would have been the original classic SJG style game, the "pocket box" which was the whole game in a small plastic box. The original Illuminati card game had this sort of packaging too. So it was probably simpler than the current more involved version of the game.

It gave a fast-paced way to handle things like people driving cars while shooting at each other and rules for maneuvers like the bootlegger reverse (the party at the time were gangsters and bootleggers), deliberately crashing into each other, etc. without inefficiently spending the entire session on a single battle.
 
Explaining Armor Class to people is the filter for AD&D.
No. It's just dumb. Adding extra steps for the sake of complexity. Otherwise you could make DnD the ultimate game by just adding more pointless shit to the formula. "Roll a d20, take the result and -9, +5, -2, +8, -6, +27..."

Though that game already exists. It's called Pathfinder 1e.

I think I can keep most of the charm of AD&D and cut down on some of the work. If you were in my shoes, what would you do (besides killing yourself or not doing the project)? I guess I'm sort of redesigning 3rd Edition/3.5 with knowledge of where those systems failed and ended up breaking some of the core aspects of the game.
The Ugly One mentioned ACKS, I know of OSE (basically a reprint and reedit of 1e DnD), then there's games like Castles and Crusades that sell themselves on this.

Which brings me to the question. Which ADnD are we talking about? I ask because I get it wrong. 1e is Basic and Expert, but Advanced is a different game but not 2e? Except it is 2e? Except it's basically the same game with new climb rules?

Fuck it. Echoing my hot take that gets me negative stickers here.

Step 1: Remove formula.
Attubutes being 3-18 and then run a formula to calculate a bonus? Nope. Gone. Just have the mod since that's all that matters. THACO? No more arguments. Get rid of it and have ascending AC.

Step 2: Define common sense.
Later games are so afraid of rules lawyers every stat block is in legalese. Old DnD is too vague when it comes to magic. Surely there's a middle ground between several paragraphs of text, and "makes it harder to be heard in the room it's cast."

Step 3: Scrap legacy bullshit.
There's a lot of bullshit in old DnD. Things like wizards having 1 spell and then going home. Stats being rolled 3d6 in order. Adventures being character meatgrinders were one or two bad roles means instant death, and the only way to avoid it is to have hirelings do anything like you're playing a shitty version of Xcom? Nope. Out. Feat taxes that make specific things like duel wielding unobtainable? Get rid of it.

Step 4, which should be step 0 and written in all caps and triple underlined: Make the "community" have more consistency than 0.
The grognard DnD community is infuriating to deal with because they keep talking out of both sides of their mouth. "DnD should be straight tolkien mudfarming simulator! ... Except Dark Sun, Planescape, and Barrier Peaks which are the shit!"
"Get the freakshit races and furfag shit out of the game! ... But my space hippos and minotaur must stay!"
"Stats should be 3d6 in order as Gygax intended. Anyone who says otherwise can fuck off from my table! ... Unless I'm the player in which case I'll re-roll until I get what I want."
"Chainmail bikinis? Yay! Chainmail bikinis? Boo! Unrealistic! No more Chainmail bikinis? Boo! Wokeshit! Chainmail bikinis are back! Boo! Fuck off with that gooner shit!"
 
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