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

So I haven't read through the recent posts but has anyone been paying attention to Shadowdark? I'm a bit suspicious of it. All these OSR You Tubers came out the woodworks to praise it. So I checked it out and I just don't understand how it can merit the sort of praise it's getting. It's just one of many 5E x B/X hybrid games. No more profound than Five Torches Deep. And it has features lifted direct from other OSR games like Lion & Dragon. Whilst the author is claiming it's not. When it's fairly blatant. It's not a bad game. Just doesn't seem like anything special. I just struggle to understand in good faith why OSR You Tubers are overhyping it when it simply isn't the groundbreaking game they are advertising it to be. I can only come to the conclusion the coverage is NOT in good faith at all. Some of them have at least admited to having a relationship of some kind with the author.

I like the OSR due to how decenteralised it is. I'd rather it stay that way rather than a group of OSR "influencers" in a clique deciding what gets coverage or not. That leads to bad things, like the state of video games journalism. I don't want that clique shit in my OSR.
 
Do you guys ever think tabletop gaming might be an inherently woke or culturally Marxistic medium? These past few years, seeing so many games start espousing those ideas and so many people, be they players or developers, has made me doubt the entire hobby and wonder if the 80s Panic was making a few good points. Not so much about playing D&D causing you to try to summon demons, but about it and similar games goading you into self-destructive ways of thinking. Look at all the heavily sexualized art from back in the day, basically thinly-veiled fapbait. Look at the political shit in it today and how just about every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the tabletop RPG community is a far-leftist, Marxist, groomer, what have you.

A few guys like RPGPundit seem legit, but I can't shake the feeling they're fighting a lost cause, like trying to make the Communist Manifesto palatable to non-communists or something, as a lazy example. Taking something inherently meant to corrupt and subvert and trying to hammer it into something else. Then again, Gygax and Arneson appeared to be fairly devout Christians, so I don't know if commiepolitics and cultural subversion were the original intent or not. Maybe the woke shit's just a recent hijack. It's hard to make sense of a lot of it.
 
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Do you guys ever think tabletop gaming might be an inherently woke or culturally Marxistic medium? These past few years, seeing so many games start espousing those ideas and so many people, be they players or developers, has made me doubt the entire hobby and wonder if the 80s Panic was making a few good points. Not so much about playing D&D causing you to try to summon demons, but about it and similar games goading you into self-destructive ways of thinking. Look at all the heavily sexualized art from back in the day, basically thinly-veiled fapbait. Look at the political shit in it today and how just about every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the tabletop RPG community is a far-leftist, Marxist, groomer, what have you.

A few guys like RPGPundit seem legit, but I can't shake the feeling they're fighting a lost cause, like trying to make the Communist Manifesto palatable to non-communists or something, as a lazy example. Taking something inherently meant to corrupt and subvert and trying to hammer it into something else. Then again, Gygax and Arneson appeared to be fairly devout Christians, so I don't know if commiepolitics and cultural subversion were the original intent or not. Maybe the woke shit's just a recent hijack. It's hard to make sense of a lot of it.
Do you believe guns are inherently evil objects that kill people by themselves? Because you're trying to make an argument that sounds very much like it.

Tabletop gaming isn't inherently woke or trad or cringe or based or whatever political term you'd like to use. Tabletop games are just things. They're objects. They're games. They're creations made to entertain. There's nothing about the genre that ties it to any political theory or platform. If anything, the only thing tabletop games select for is an ability to perform basic abstraction and/or maths.

Just because the "community" has been flooded with entryists and tourists, doesn't mean the medium itself is like that. Wizards of the Coast could have 100% market dominance and D&D could be wall-to-wall trannies and kiddy-diddlers from the character archetypes to the spell names, and even then nothing could stop some alt-right asshole from running a D&D game where the players are Fantasy Nazis. Nothing could stop someone from just creating their own homebrew game and playing with their friends, using whatever themes they feel like either. The medium is neutral. And if you don't like the "community" and the business side of things because you disapprove of what they're doing, you have the power to disengage and try to find your own merry band of spergs to have all the politically-incorrect fun you want.

3.5 D&D rebalanced by nerds that love overly designed key art for characters that makes them indistinguishable from an unordered pile of railroad spikes.
It's like they gave the artist a PC's inventory after a dozen adventures and told them "make sure everything in this list is visible on the character". It just looks weird.
 
Do you guys ever think tabletop gaming might be an inherently woke or culturally Marxistic medium? These past few years, seeing so many games start espousing those ideas and so many people, be they players or developers, has made me doubt the entire hobby and wonder if the 80s Panic was making a few good points. Not so much about playing D&D causing you to try to summon demons, but about it and similar games goading you into self-destructive ways of thinking. Look at all the heavily sexualized art from back in the day, basically thinly-veiled fapbait. Look at the political shit in it today and how just about every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the tabletop RPG community is a far-leftist, Marxist, groomer, what have you.

A few guys like RPGPundit seem legit, but I can't shake the feeling they're fighting a lost cause, like trying to make the Communist Manifesto palatable to non-communists or something, as a lazy example. Taking something inherently meant to corrupt and subvert and trying to hammer it into something else. Then again, Gygax and Arneson appeared to be fairly devout Christians, so I don't know if commiepolitics and cultural subversion were the original intent or not. Maybe the woke shit's just a recent hijack. It's hard to make sense of a lot of it.
There's nothing inherently commie or woke about TTRPG's. It just that for a very long time, most of the people who played them were some flavor of social outcast or at the very least, weren't the type who were typically popular and outgoing. This by the way goes for most Nerd/geek hobbies. Vidya game, comics, models/etc

As a result, when the wokies started infilitrating, it was very easy for those folks who had themselves been ostracised to a greater or lesser extent to be manipulated by thier own empathy. "You're doing the same thing to us misunderstood trannies/fags/gender specials/ commies etc that the jock and cheerleaders used to do to you!" By the time they realised it was all bullshit spewed by folks looking to takeover, it was too late.
 
Do you guys ever think tabletop gaming might be an inherently woke or culturally Marxistic medium? These past few years, seeing so many games start espousing those ideas and so many people, be they players or developers, has made me doubt the entire hobby and wonder if the 80s Panic was making a few good points. Not so much about playing D&D causing you to try to summon demons, but about it and similar games goading you into self-destructive ways of thinking. Look at all the heavily sexualized art from back in the day, basically thinly-veiled fapbait. Look at the political shit in it today and how just about every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the tabletop RPG community is a far-leftist, Marxist, groomer, what have you.

A few guys like RPGPundit seem legit, but I can't shake the feeling they're fighting a lost cause, like trying to make the Communist Manifesto palatable to non-communists or something, as a lazy example. Taking something inherently meant to corrupt and subvert and trying to hammer it into something else. Then again, Gygax and Arneson appeared to be fairly devout Christians, so I don't know if commiepolitics and cultural subversion were the original intent or not. Maybe the woke shit's just a recent hijack. It's hard to make sense of a lot of it.

Tabletop gaming has always been for weird nerds. For example, RPGPundit is a weird nerd who believes in magic and tarot. Alex Macris is a weird nerd who is really, really into medieval economics. And right now, the weird nerds with panty collections are having their cultural moment, so they're the ones who get put in charge of everything.

Basically, what I'm saying is, if the cultural moment of America resembled, say, Germany in 1939, WotC would have been taken over by really annoying wehraboos who managed to shoehorn a fantasy version of the Panzer IIIJ NOT THE PANZER IIIH MOM THAT THING SUCKS into the Forgotten Realms.
 
I got the 1st edition Pathfinder rulebook from my LGS, what should I expect?
It's 3.5 with some tweaks. I'd stick to core rules because a lot of the other shit really busts the game up. If you like screwing around with rules you'll probably like that. They ramped up the power for every class and then changed like two spells so they could pretend they didn't do it to wizards, which is a lie.

3.5 for autistic min/max powergamers.
Hope you love the grapple flowchart!
As an autistic min/max powergamer I really do miss 3.5 grappling. Size bonuses were great back in the day, think you got a +4 for every category. Get a guy with improved grapple and enlarge person then just go to town. Don't get me started on polymorph.

Ah... memories.
 
Mechanically, PF1E is 3.5E with a number of changes; some good, some bad. Caster primacy is still a thing, unfortunately, and if you read the excellent 'autistic analysis of 3.5e classes' thread in this forum, PF1E has all the same problems. Fighters are practically an afterthought even with weapon and armor mastery abilities, and they didn't come anywhere close to fixing the monk till Pathfinder Unchained (and it's still kind of weak in some respects).

That being said, all the rules for PF1E and PF2E are online, so that's not bad.
 
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I like how PF2 keeps coming up as less gay, despite having a tranny dwarf iconic and the preamble reminding the DM that you owe niggerfaggots representation in your game.
Sadly, compared to 5e, PF2 is less gay. They at least haven't released a book of adventures with gay tiefling proms featuring prominently, or a no-whiteys-allowed book.
 
It is what it is. Everybody keeps talking about how TTRPG is this vibrant ecosystem that's never been more popular, when in fact the genre itself is in deep, deep trouble. Remove 5e from the equation and I'd argue TTRPG would be as popular as it was before 3e came out. Sure, there's more variety in products and they're often more "accessible", but even with Wizards' constant fuckups most people aren't actually playing anything besides the big monolith dominating the space. And I shouldn't have to explain why a single brand representing over 80% of a hobby is a Bad Thing™.
The turnover is insane too. I tried running a complete home-brew overhaul of DND's combat and it was fucking insane how many people I shuffled through. It felt like every group I pulled in had one or two old salts looking to try something new and a fuck ton of college kids who had played DND once or twice and couldn't find a game otherwise.

The clubs aren't active. I keep hearing about how there are swarms of players looking for DM's but I can't seem to find them. It's wild how 5-10 years ago when I was a terrible DM and had no clue what I was doing how I could drag 5 randoms through my magical realm at ease and today when I've refined my setup to the point where I can whip out isometric dungeon crawl maps and have curve calibrated encounters with hand drawn art and painted models if I don't play anything but bog standard DND the numbers are pathetic and when I do play bog standard DND I get swarms of first timers who are trying to play goopy shit they heard about online or trying to play bubblegum tieflings expecting critical roll.

My friend got payed to DM and he said it was very much the same. 6 girls show up. Don't know shit. Make their character. Take pictures of his minis and their character sheet. Have a session 1 then never return. Week after week. Ad infinitum, or at least until the novelty wears off.
 
Sadly, compared to 5e, PF2 is less gay. They at least haven't released a book of adventures with gay tiefling proms featuring prominently,
Paizo published an adventure in 2019 where the goal is to help two gay elf dads meet and start buttfucking each other. Age of Ashes.

or a no-whiteys-allowed book.

Published by WotC, or are you referring to some random OGL trash? Because there's always the "you must have fags and negroes in your game" preamble in the PF2e Core.

People keep forgetting that Paizo went woker earlier, harder, and faster than WotC.
 
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It is what it is. Everybody keeps talking about how TTRPG is this vibrant ecosystem that's never been more popular, when in fact the genre itself is in deep, deep trouble. Remove 5e from the equation and I'd argue TTRPG would be as popular as it was before 3e came out. Sure, there's more variety in products and they're often more "accessible", but even with Wizards' constant fuckups most people aren't actually playing anything besides the big monolith dominating the space. And I shouldn't have to explain why a single brand representing over 80% of a hobby is a Bad Thing™.
Its even smaller if you remove anything that doesn't borrow 5e.
Which, TBF, there are some systems that are pretty much "B/X but Advantage". Its nearly impossible to get people to branch out from 5e or PF. One of the reasons I've been putting off learning WHFRP is because I know I'll probably never find enough people to run it. Hell, its hard enough to talk people into giving OSE a shot and that's because you pitch it "Early D&D with readability improvements".

The turnover is insane too. I tried running a complete home-brew overhaul of DND's combat and it was fucking insane how many people I shuffled through. It felt like every group I pulled in had one or two old salts looking to try something new and a fuck ton of college kids who had played DND once or twice and couldn't find a game otherwise.

The clubs aren't active. I keep hearing about how there are swarms of players looking for DM's but I can't seem to find them. It's wild how 5-10 years ago when I was a terrible DM and had no clue what I was doing how I could drag 5 randoms through my magical realm at ease and today when I've refined my setup to the point where I can whip out isometric dungeon crawl maps and have curve calibrated encounters with hand drawn art and painted models if I don't play anything but bog standard DND the numbers are pathetic and when I do play bog standard DND I get swarms of first timers who are trying to play goopy shit they heard about online or trying to play bubblegum tieflings expecting critical roll.

My friend got payed to DM and he said it was very much the same. 6 girls show up. Don't know shit. Make their character. Take pictures of his minis and their character sheet. Have a session 1 then never return. Week after week. Ad infinitum, or at least until the novelty wears off.

This is pretty accurate.
The situation I'm most familiar with hasn't recovered from COVID lockdowns, one of the LGS closed (well, it was more of a bookstore with a gaming section - it wasn't my favorite but it was closest). But even before, the number of people who even had interest in making D&D a regular thing were minimal.

Also, You left off that if they are under 25 - fuck, damn near under 30 now - there is very good odds that unless you are personally involving their character expressly in something attention-grabbing, they aren't paying attention and on their fucking instagrams or whatever.

If Critical Role was real players and not a bunch of actors working from a outlined scripted, 3/4 of them would be on their phones and need to get that short-bark of "NAME! What're you doing?" when its their turn - which you are not going to correct during a one-shot without seeming like Ms. Sandigina.

Those 6 girls got exactly what they paid for: A character sheet, "OMG I played D&D! I'm such a nerd! Look at my awesome character!" to post to Insta - LARPing on Insta is the only roleplaying game they have time for.
Its like the guy who played the megadungeon - completely checked out during the game, but anytime there's a conversation about D&D he tells the tale of the one time he was forced to participate like it was all his idea & plan.
 
Published by WotC, or are you referring to some random OGL trash? Because there's always the "you must have fags and negroes in your game" preamble in the PF2e Core.

Only the PoCs were permitted to write for the book, which they hyped extensively on Twitter, though as it is a WotC production every senior person remained a dirty white male.

The book was also absolute garbage, the setting was written as a utopia of brown-skinned bliss where benevolent leaders run everything and give free welfare to everyone by taxing imports, because that's a sustainable way to do it and merchants are totes on board for having all of their profit margins vanish. They also didn't have cops but had social workers to deal peacefully with crime, except if you did crime they would brainwipe you until you couldn't do crime anymore, which is not at all a dystopian nightmare. It's progressive! Anyways, if you look around with any degree of effort, it's easy to find critiques about how dumpster fire the book is and how the setting completely collapses under any scrutiny.
 

Only the PoCs were permitted to write for the book, which they hyped extensively on Twitter, though as it is a WotC production every senior person remained a dirty white male.

The book was also absolute garbage, the setting was written as a utopia of brown-skinned bliss where benevolent leaders run everything and give free welfare to everyone by taxing imports, because that's a sustainable way to do it and merchants are totes on board for having all of their profit margins vanish. They also didn't have cops but had social workers to deal peacefully with crime, except if you did crime they would brainwipe you until you couldn't do crime anymore, which is not at all a dystopian nightmare. It's progressive! Anyways, if you look around with any degree of effort, it's easy to find critiques about how dumpster fire the book is and how the setting completely collapses under any scrutiny.

PF2e's default setting is just as gay, they also mandate that Trannies are Real Women and must exist in your games along side fags, and it is racist to not have niggers in your game. Even the evil dudes are not allowed to be slavers. They also have gnomes as a default playable race and for that alone they should be put up against the wall.

The only difference between Pozzo and WotC is Pozzo view people playing TTRPGs as people and not just lines on a spread sheet. Cows to be milked vs. paypiggies to be slaughtered. And they actually have pride in their output instead of "Release product then have your paid shills fake excitement for next product".

Shit on WotC and thier gay Teifling Tranny Fag Prom all day, every day, but holding out PF/Pozzo as a less woke alternative is madness. Pozzo is the cleaner end of the turd by a wide margin, but its still a turd.
 
PF2e's default setting is just as gay, they also mandate that Trannies are Real Women and must exist in your games along side fags, and it is racist to not have niggers in your game. Even the evil dudes are not allowed to be slavers. They also have gnomes as a default playable race and for that alone they should be put up against the wall.

The only difference between Pozzo and WotC is Pozzo view people playing TTRPGs as people and not just lines on a spread sheet. Cows to be milked vs. paypiggies to be slaughtered. And they actually have pride in their output instead of "Release product then have your paid shills fake excitement for next product".

Shit on WotC and thier gay Teifling Tranny Fag Prom all day, every day, but holding out PF/Pozzo as a less woke alternative is madness. Pozzo is the cleaner end of the turd by a wide margin, but its still a turd.
Oh believe me, I said what I said not to endorse Paizo in any form. "Better than WotC" is not the same as being good on their own merits. Also Pathfinder 2 is a steaming pile of dogshit. Pathfinder 1 is solid, because it's a ripoff of 3.5, but once they were on the hook to design actual new systems, they were awful at it. Pathfinder 1 and its setting are inoffensive to me; the setting was an insane mishmash of things, but it wasn't wall to wall queer like they're making it post-Pathfinder 2, much like 3.5 and 4e were reasonably free of that for D&D. Anyone wanting to play it, I would recommend just snagging second hand books or PDFs off the Internet for the original Pathfinder and roll with that. Or just stick with 3e D&D, which is flatly better than 5e in any event.
 
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