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

[JJLiautaud]

Holy shit this Zak story is fucking wild i finally read the article and these people just admit to absolutely ruining a man's life because of vague ambiguous reasons and nobody is allowed to voice dissent its so bizzare.

 

[RSU 1741]

only read a few, but compared to the few warhammer (or even magic the gathering) books I read they were fine. least there was no alien mindrape of female inquisitors or some questionable "freakshit" in there...

Try reading some Clans-focused novels. The amount of "I guess this is the author's fetish" is out of the charts (random child abuse, incest, weirdo fetishism, weird sex customs because "the Clans are totes an alien society").

The main issue I have is one of borderline quality: while the vast majority of Warhammer books are utter crap, sometimes you find decent action or decent build-up. All Battletech novels I've read have terrible action, terrible characters, terrible attempts at "politics". Let's take the classic Wolves on the Border, commonly suggested as "the best starting point": sure, the Samurai Black Man is a funny character and the cheap 80ies orientalism is borderline hilarious, but the plot is essentially Mary Sue Dragoons Win Because They're So Cool against such fascinating enemies as "Jerry Akuma". They're on the level of Dragonlance novels, if not worse.

I can understand it's part of the charm and I repeat, the ambience is lovely, but the execution....

 

[Tactical Wizard]

I can't speak for Heavy Gear (I only know the PC game) but I'm sticking far away from Battletech. First and foremost is the setting*. Then there's spreadsheets and mech building that scare people off. The battles sounds too big. I don't want to set up a massive hex grid with terrain, and spend all day on a simple 3v3 combat. I've heard there was a stripped down version that was faster and played more like 40k (alpha strike?), but given how it's widely ignored and dismissed by the fanbase, it doesn't fill me with confidence.

*The setting isn't really bad on it's own, but it's a well worn story line with only one plot anyone knows or cares about. The clan invasion. MW5 got fans mad for not having a mad cat/timber wolf, and even that game references the invasion at the end.


Didn't watch the video, but this all sounds like corporate sales tactics to me. WotC trying to boost the price by "leaking" the contract and then putting out a statement that they aren't for sale (for that price). Only way it could be more transparent is if they announced a bunch of fan favorites to build positive buzz.

As far as battletech goes? Classic battletech isn't that bad as long as you keep chatter to a minimum and you use D6's to track modifiers and facing. I was playing that shit as an RPG in high school and we could get through it fairly quickly. It just takes a bit of discipline. The mech sheet looks intimidating until you realize that it's all just crossing out damaged equipment and lining through armor dots.

Initially, the clan war era had a large amount of inherent imbalance as one clan star (5 mechs) was meant to be a match for two inner sphere lances (8 mechs) but it wasn't well explained. They have since implemented a Warhammer style point buy system that's a little more in depth because it allows you to set different skill levels for the same unit.

Alpha strike plays much more like a Warhammer game and much faster. Grogs might turn their noses up but I've been getting into it and the box set has great value in terms of minis. You get two inner sphere lances and one clan star. The increased streamlining also allows you to run larger, combined arms battles on a reasonable time frame and it's as easy to integrate into the tabletop RPG as Classic battletech.

Let's see... what else. Eras! Battletech has a defined, year by year progression that's proceeded over a 125 year period as of this post. They're all neatly defined. Read a one paragraph blurb on them and pick the one that most appeals to you. Don't worry about getting too in depth. Alternatively? There's a self-contained setting within a setting that was designed to bot need a heavy commitment to the larger lore.

Get this fucking book. Seriously. It's an area of space that was balkanized by opportunistic actors. It's completely self-contained and the clans are nowhere near the area of operations.

EDIT: If you want to dip your toes in with a Vidya adaptation, get the 2018 Battletech videogame. It's a turn-based strategy game that does a good job of simulating small scale classic Batlletech combat.

 

[Judge Dredd]

EDIT: If you want to dip your toes in with a Vidya adaptation, get the 2018 Battletech videogame. It's a turn-based strategy game that does a good job of simulating small scale classic Batlletech combat.

Played that. Didn't like. The story is a joke with the diversety cast and a mary sue in a hijab. Gameplay I didn't like either. A small number of maps, and training pilots was rendered pointless as RNG could decide to headshot your mech and undo hours of progress. When the solution for a game is "save scum" or "mod the shit out of it", that's a bad game imo.

Eras! Battletech has a defined, year by year progression that's proceeded over a 125 year period as of this post.

Gave it a skim and something lept out. There isn't as much there as I thought there'd be. Some of the stuff seems to be part of other stuff. Makes sense I suppose, but it goes back to the point that the lore was never meant to be a tangled impenetrable mess. I'm guessing Mech Warrior 4 Mercenaries is set during the Civil War era?

Get this fucking book. Seriously. It's an area of space that was balkanized by opportunistic actors. It's completely self-contained and the clans are nowhere near the area of operations.

I'll give it a look. It says it's system neutral, and even if I don't run Battletech, the set up sounds like something I can steal.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Gave it a skim and something lept out. There isn't as much there as I thought there'd be. Some of the stuff seems to be part of other stuff. Makes sense I suppose, but it goes back to the point that the lore was never meant to be a tangled impenetrable mess. I'm guessing Mech Warrior 4 Mercenaries is set during the Civil War era?

Really, the lore is pretty basic if you look at it from a bird's eye view:

Humanity spread into space, colonized a roughly circular chunk of the galaxy centered around Earth. We formed the Star League to help coordinate the six major factions colonizing space under a single banner and things were good for a while, until there was a coup. There was a huge civil war, and by the end of the civil war what was left of the Star League's military went into self-imposed exile. The remaining factions warred themselves back to the stone age, eventually said "hol' up, we should probably try to rebuild", two of the major factions merged into one bit superfaction, and they were just starting to claw their way back to the technological ladder when the descendants of the Star League army showed up to try to conquer the entire place. They get stopped, then the superfaction breaks up, there's a war to settle the break up, and the setting has been dormant ever since don't @ me.

There, that's all of BT's relevant lore in a single paragraph (don't @ me) Yeah, there are lots of details, characters and memes with every step, but it's not exactly a Dan Brown thriller with its plot twists. It's an eternal war setting, the lore is ultimately only there to allow for more war and to give you something to fill up a page so units aren't just their stats.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

It's strange no one hooked onto later designs like the Uziel. I guess being an Inner Sphere medium instead of a Clan heavy or assault does that.

There are lots of mechs I like and are fine, but plopping down a 267 point Mad Cat Mk II in a 300 point game supported by two antipersonnel infantry units and proceeding to curbstomp all the other tournament participants who were used to gaining a slight edge and just running out the clock while surrounding their own Branson's Raiders mechs with disposable infantry and a repair unit earned it a very special place in my heart. Fuck your Long Toms, I'm charging across the map and making you eat your own shit.

Edit: Have a gif of first runner up in my heart.

Just look at that boy go

 

[ZMOT]

Hasbro have already released a statement denying this:

Edit: Someone already posted the video. I'd say its still 50/50 they sell it to Tencent.

pretty sure the whole DND GETS SOLD story was made up for clicks. hasbro needs money but they're not desperate yet. if anything it was about the videogame rights, which would make sense asking larian first. otherwise why ask them in the first place, larian is a vidya developer, not a publisher, even less of physical goods like books etc.

in further news, this happened: https://foundryvtt.com/article/dungeons-dragons-arrives/
seen some theories that wotc's VTT is dead and they're now doing what everyone else does, selling their shit whereever people want it. which again makes sense since wotc isn't a vidya developer, and building up that infrastructure to sell microtransactions might not be worth the money it would cost, even more so since that their move to ban or at least remove dnd from competing VTTs backfired. why spend shit on a semi-3d interpretation of a ttrpg session when people are fine with 2d tokens and some fancy effects for no extra cost? everybody knows trying to sell shit to people they don't want or even need (since they can get an easy replacement, if not make one up themselves) was a dumb idea from the start.

can't wait for them simply buying foundry, just to ruing people's fun

Try reading some Clans-focused novels. The amount of "I guess this is the author's fetish" is out of the charts (random child abuse, incest, weirdo fetishism, weird sex customs because "the Clans are totes an alien society").

funny enough I read some of them, don't remember them that bad. the whole clan invasion thing struck me more of an asspull anyway, so stopped reading afterwards. I remember somewhat enjoying the first trilogy, however I read most of those books as a wee lad, probably would look at it different now.

The main issue I have is one of borderline quality: while the vast majority of Warhammer books are utter crap, sometimes you find decent action or decent build-up. All Battletech novels I've read have terrible action, terrible characters, terrible attempts at "politics". Let's take the classic Wolves on the Border, commonly suggested as "the best starting point": sure, the Samurai Black Man is a funny character and the cheap 80ies orientalism is borderline hilarious, but the plot is essentially Mary Sue Dragoons Win Because They're So Cool against such fascinating enemies as "Jerry Akuma". They're on the level of Dragonlance novels, if not worse.

I can understand it's part of the charm and I repeat, the ambience is lovely, but the execution....

that's interesting, because I know charrette to be at least a competent author. but then I also don't mind some YA-tier cheesy snowflake writing, so maybe I just got a higher tolerance. I rather have that than trying to be "original" or "subvertive" and falling flat on their face - we pretty much all know what that looks like.

 

[Ghostse]

I'm guessing Mech Warrior 4 Mercenaries is set during the Civil War era?

All two point five/three of the MW4 titles were set in the FedCom civil war, as is MechCommander 2.

Also I'd recommend playing Mechwarrior 3 for a good overview on how a campaign could go.

To tl;dr:
Background: The Star League got couped, and in the aftermath all the nobles start warring with each other trying to take the throne using their territorial defense armies. The Star League army tries to stop the madness, can't. At best, they make things worse and usually they make things worse while getting their guys killed and their shit stolen. So the top general rather than picking a side says "fuck this, we out" and nearly all the military units. they eventually come back, intending to defeat the bullshit nobility. There are 4 major Clans that lead the charge and of these the Smoke Jaguars are the "baddies". The noble houses unite against the common threat, and enact a "counter invasion", their goal to smash the Smoke Jaguars because they have just been real assholes.

Imagine if the US president & congress all got genocided, and various state governors all starting commanding their national guard units to try to beat the other states into submission, and the Joint Chiefs just said "Nope" and took all of the US military into northern canada. Or if you're a bong the King is killed, your indian Manlet tries to take power, is taken out by SAS and afterwards the Lord Admiral takes all the Marines & Gurkahs and fucks off to parts unknown.


In MW3, a Smoke Jaguar commander has moved to a planet he intends to marshall forces at and try to hit the counter-invasion as it passes. You are part of a mercenary unit given the job of stopping him. Things go wrong, your team realizes its going to take more than a regiment of battle mechs to deal with this, and you now are trying to get off the planet while doing as much damage as possible
You have three Mobile Field Base vehicles that haul salvage and can give mid-mission repairs - but you have to protect them (which isn't too - too hard). If they get blown up, you aren't getting any replacements. So you have to be a little selective with what salvage you keep. They have a good variety of missions.

There is an accompanying novel that's been on my "get around to it" that covers a bit more of exactly what goes on, but you don't need to know or care who the players are to enjoy the game.

 

[The Ugly One]

everybody knows trying to sell shit to people they don't want or even need...was a dumb idea from the start.

So, so many executives do not know this. It's depressing how many people don't know this, really.

 

[Mega Black]

I read the first three dragonlance books as a kid and enjoyed them. I didn't know they were considered terrible until recently. What's so bad about them?

 

[Tactical Wizard]

I read the first three dragonlance books as a kid and enjoyed them. I didn't know they were considered terrible until recently. What's so bad about them?

Short answer? They were written by amateurs with a talent for storytelling but not the developed skill. Before getting a job at TSR, Hickman was

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

I read the first three dragonlance books as a kid and enjoyed them. I didn't know they were considered terrible until recently. What's so bad about them?

The first ones were pretty good, but they produced too many books to the point where they ended blending together.

 

[Mega Black]

Hickman was

The suspense. I know they're like weird Mormons and the books have some retarded Mormon shit in them. I'm just curious because I didn't expect the opinions of them to be so negative.

The first ones were pretty good, but they produced too many books to the point where they ended blending together.

I do remember seeing like fifteen at a bookstore once and imagining that there's no way the quality could have been good across that many books.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

The suspense. I know they're like weird Mormons and the books have some retarded Mormon shit in them. I'm just curious because I didn't expect the opinions of them to be so negative.

I do remember seeing like fifteen at a bookstore once and imagining that there's no way the quality could have been good across that many books.

There is as well as some more general Christian imagery. You have the first cleric in three-hundred years recovering gold tablets of ancient knowledge and the first time that Takhisis (Think Tiamat's bigger, meaner sister who's portfolio is tyranny rather than greed) is banished in lore, it's very reminiscent of Saint George and the dragon. Hippies used to rage at that but at no time will you ever be sermonized by the author.

 

[Snekposter]

Imagine if the US president & congress all got genocided, and various state governors all starting commanding their national guard units to try to beat the other states into submission, and the Joint Chiefs just said "Nope" and took all of the US military into northern canada. Or if you're a bong the King is killed, your indian Manlet tries to take power, is taken out by SAS and afterwards the Lord Admiral takes all the Marines & Gurkahs and fucks off to parts unknown.

You forgot the part where the Royal Black Watch bagpipes until the end fighting against the usurper's forces.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I read the first three dragonlance books as a kid and enjoyed them. I didn't know they were considered terrible until recently. What's so bad about them?

I have no knowledge of Dragonlance, so take this opinion as utter bullshit.

At some point before COVID, WotC were under contract to release a bunch of new Dragonlance books, but WotC were mad at them for some reason or another. So WotC bragged on either social media or a podcast that they were going to get around this by just never approving any draft. The Dragonlance people sued and the case was settled.

I don't know why soybeards were mad at them, but if the opinions are recent enough, I assume that's why.

 

[Snekposter]

I have no knowledge of Dragonlance, so take this opinion as utter bullshit.

At some point before COVID, WotC were under contract to release a bunch of new Dragonlance books, but WotC were mad at them for some reason or another. So WotC bragged on either social media or a podcast that they were going to get around this by just never approving any draft. The Dragonlance people sued and the case was settled.

I don't know why soybeards were mad at them, but if the opinions are recent enough, I assume that's why.

The authors would rather write good stories over wokeshit. That made WotC and WotC's cum chuggers mad, so they just told the Dragonlance people "Nope, fuck off, no more stories."

 

[ZMOT]

At some point before COVID, WotC were under contract to release a bunch of new Dragonlance books, but WotC were mad at them for some reason or another.

while I doubt that was the cause (cba to check the timeline), even without it hickman & weis are established authors who know their worth (and thus their price of commission), not some westcoast libtard hack working for hotpockets and a booster of magic cards.

as for the books itself, some people have some issues with the original trilogy, which only got worse with the rest of the books (if people actually read them tho). back when they were written they were fine, some stuff also gets projected on it in retrospect (kender) or from the outside (it's not really a setting with a lot of freedom to do your own shit unless you invest a lot of work, at which point you might as well homebrew from scratch).

 

[Janusz z Gliwic]

I can't get over how bad modern RPG art is, especially compared to art of yesteryear.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I can't get over how bad modern RPG art is, especially compared to art of yesteryear.

Art went down hill when they removed the tits from female dragonborn.


Seriously though, I like a modern RPG art. What damages it is publisher guidelines, what is chosen to commission, and to a lesser degree fan demands. Publisher guidelines (ie. wokeshit) need no explanation in this thread, and the fan demands for "realism" I just joked about, but when it comes to weird choices of what to commission I immediately think of 5e Eberron.

That book was so strange. Wayfinders guide has a great picture of a warforged jumping from airships onto a lightning rail. The 5e main book cover was originally going to be some womans face. They replaced it at the last minute with a generic shot of an anemic looking warforged and a halfling. Better but such a strange choice. Meanwhile the special edition had a gorgeous pic of airships over Sharn.