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

[Ghostse]

The stuff I have printed at Office Depot is all crumbling to dust with age now, and typically not cheap to buy used anyway.

I dunno; its been a long minute since i went looking but when I looked at Books-a-Million for RPG books they were priced pretty damn low. And not just the WotC, they had some shadow run, battle tech, and a couple others I've forgotten, even some Warham40k. It was basically two commerical bookshelves where one and maybe 1/5th was WotC and the rest was other systems - it was more diverse than I thought it would be. But anything out of plastic wrap was like $5-10 and anything in plastic wrap (that is, new overstock from other booksellers) was $10-20. Even my former FLGS would usually knock $10 off MSRP for WotC after the first month, and usually down to 50% for older-but-still-in-print things like the plain-jane PHB, and 10% off anything else that was older than a year and usually before.

Which given the stapes starting rate, including paper, is $0.24/page for B&W, that means a 100-page print job not hard bound and on consumer-grade paper/equipment, is $24; add more for binding, probably double that for color. So if you want the whole book, even MSRP you're only saving $25 - unless you have access to free ink/paper/etc.

Again, financial calculus matters less if you are doing something else with your print: only taking certain sections, including your house rules/rulings or adding footnotes, adding your own content, excising fluff or sections about respecting nigger and tranny feelings, even if you just want a book spiral bound so that will lie flat on every page. But sort of the old addage about the bandwidth of a station wagon full of harddrives, don't underestimate the value in just getting a second book.

 

[Brain Problems]

Books-a-Million

>only ship in the US

My 0.02c on the whole printing thing is that in the frozen pajeet infested hellscape of CUCKada I looked into printing/binding a bunch of D&D material at Staples and the ~400 pages worth of stuff was going to cost me some atrocious number that made me just accept that I'd print what I needed at home as needed in small amounts and just use a tablet/computer to read off of.

I prefer to buy books (used if possible, new if there's some crazy sale/deal and I'm not feeling aggravated by the company) for modules/adventures because I will be looking through those things a lot and it's nice to make bookmarks in and hold onto but I hate reading lots of shit on a computer screen or tablet screen and avoid it whenever possible outside of stalking people on Australian fruit forums.

The books also look nice on a shelf, especially CoC stuff.

 

[The Ugly One]

I had a very simple rule for that and it is that you could never use a low level spell to do something that a higher level spell was designed to do.

I have that exact same rule. No, you can't use a cantrip to blind somebody, because Blindness is a Level 2 spell.

I dunno; its been a long minute since i went looking but when I looked at Books-a-Million for RPG books they were priced pretty damn low.

A complete World of Greyhawk boxed set tends to run over $100 and will not withstand even gentle use at the table. It was printed on actual garbage. I think having it all printed out, except Darlene's map, ran me something like $30. Stuff that was printed in the 1990s or later is okay to buy used--AD&D 2e stuff holds up nicely--but late 70s and early 80s? Forget it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I hate reading lots of shit on a computer screen or tablet screen and avoid it whenever possible outside of stalking people on Australian fruit forums.

I dunno; its been a long minute since i went looking but when I looked at Books-a-Million for RPG books they were priced pretty damn low. And not just the WotC, they had some shadow run, battle tech, and a couple others I've forgotten, even some Warham40k.

The problem I face in Britbong land is nowhere has these. Some book and comic shops might carry mainstream WotC stuff, but otherwise I'm limited to the FLGS next town over, and they are a small local chain so it's not really a place where you can talk shop and get special orders in. I could try I guess, but I doubt it'll work. Even Amazon doesn't help. Just today I tried buying Alien RPG. It's marked as sold out on FLGS site and Amazon doesn't have it.

Now, I'm told I can just use my name and password on Amazon.us and they will import it for a small fee, but that was long before the Trump tariffs, and I've never tried it personally.

Making matters worse, FLGS chain bends with the wind at a surprising rate. That is to say, their board games and RPG sections have been greatly reduced to make way for manga, gunpla, and Warhammer stuff. And they went heavily into wokeshit the last year or two. I'm talking year round pride flags. But it's still the only place to get things as obscure as Alien RPG and Tales of the Valiant.

I'm also not a fan of everything being fractionated to direct purchases from sites. Nimble, City of Arches, and now Alien RPG are only really available if you order direct from their site. No book shops, no nerd shops, few FLGS.


Unrelated. Recently watched some slop YT videos about campaign ideas. Most are cringe "what is the paladin was the bad guy" and "a campaign where you fight capitalism!" type stuff, and some stuff that doesn't make any sense. Like, how is a kaiju campaign supposed to work in DnD exactly? But there was a couple of good ones. One is to combine DnD with SCP style weirdness where the party start as park rangers but soon realise they're dealing with abominations. Another genre I like I can slip into DnD. Basically DnD Delta Green. Another is DnD Openheimer where you work on a secret black project the PCs are not aware of the specifics. I'd combine these two and have the PCs are hunting SCPs and Abominations that are appearing because someone is trying to make one of the old gods into a WMD.

 

[Apparatus Aruspices]

I posted about this a while ago, and while I doubt many people care all that much, here's an update blogpost about that Sorcerer game I was asking people about; It's going FINE.
The GM isn't a pervy weirdo and my character hasn't been thrust into any undue sexual situations. One of the players is a real honest to God actual woman who's like 40 with a husband who has cancer, and the other player is a sperg who doesn't know how to write prose and is way too into how incomprehensible the rulebook was. The GM is letting his autistic obsession with 20th century American shitholes shine proudly because the game is set in 1920's Portland and the Klan has already made itself the bad guys by killing one of the PC's who was a Native American.

The actual game mechanics of Sorcerer are arcane and stupid at best. Doing dice checks isn't really that confusing but it feels very "so what". The way the Demons were explained and expressed confused the other players but I think that's probably just because they're not the smartest people in the world. I very much feel it's a 2/5 game at best, but the way it's being run is a 4/5 at worst.

On an alternative topic, the same guy who's running this game is thinking about doing something small with either Mausritter or Unknown Armies. I've never played either but I've read the Mausritter book-- has anybody here played Unknown Armies? I know all about what it's "about" but I know nothing about the actual mechanics or how it functions structurally, since I've never read it (and kind of don't want to bother right now).

 

[Judge Dredd]

(Sorry if it feels like I'm spamming the thread)

Was Wrath and Glory ever fixed? If so, what cover do I look for?

Long story short, I'm at FLGS tomorrow, and I'm considering picking up some RPG stuff. Alien isn't available, but Wrath and Glory is. From what I read online, 2e is supposedly fixed, but it's not marked as such. Instead, you have to go by the cover. According to one random reddit post, the cover with the guy in the white power armour is okay to buy, but thought I'd run it past kiwis because I'm struggling to find info on it.


And a small update on Mr Autism. He is willing to RPG, but his friend is hesitant, wanting a DM (even though I offered to DM). Mr Autism continues to confuse me.The idea of DnD having different settings, or rules being separate from setting, confused him.

 

[Halbschwanz]

Some things can and should be beyond the players' reach, otherwise you get people thinking shit like this is kosher:

I remember when you had to be level 20 to pull off the Psionic Sandwich. Now you can shit up your game from level 1!

I’d love if the game focused more on that than possible vampire/werewolf polycules.

That is the primary thing its audience is looking for. Anyone who would want to have a realized game about companionship and the bonds of friendship would not be playing PbtA.

PF chicken flight

The leaf leshy's glide also works for reasonably balanced flight. No ability for upward movement but you can still stay airborne at the end of your turn and slowly drop round by round. Even requires setup which forces your players to pay attention to the environment.

There's a trickle of sales post-release (half of them going to incredulous reviewers, I'm sure)

Or Humble Bundles/DTRPG sales. Most people I know with huge RPG collections who don't sail the high seas will just end up with a bunch of crap they got for the price of a candy bar in a 20 pack with the game they actually wanted.

 

[Blarmed&Dangerous]

(Sorry if it feels like I'm spamming the thread)

Was Wrath and Glory ever fixed? If so, what cover do I look for?

Long story short, I'm at FLGS tomorrow, and I'm considering picking up some RPG stuff. Alien isn't available, but Wrath and Glory is. From what I read online, 2e is supposedly fixed, but it's not marked as such. Instead, you have to go by the cover. According to one random reddit post, the cover with the guy in the white power armour is okay to buy, but thought I'd run it past kiwis because I'm struggling to find info on it.

I seem to remember the yellow power armor cover was the better one. Don't quote me, though. I tried joining a discord server that advertised itself as kind of a big interconnected story, and they insisted on the yellow cover version. I played half of one session, got partied with a tranny who insisted on trying to seduce every character, including players, and I immediately disconnected and left the server.

 

[The Bogwater Rises]

Was Wrath and Glory ever fixed? If so, what cover do I look for?

Oh fuck you gotta care about covers? Humble Bundle had I think all the WANG books for like $20 and that was way easier than pirating them indiividually so I got them. Hope it's the right versions lol

 

[Judge Dredd]

Oh fuck you gotta care about covers? Humble Bundle had I think all the WANG books for like $20 and that was way easier than pirating them indiividually so I got them. Hope it's the right versions lol

PDFs should be fine. It's printed copies you've got to be careful of.

I think it was @Overly Serious that pointed it out, if I got the wrong kiwi, I apologize.

Basically, Kobold Press Labyrinth World Book is almost worthless in print, because important text was put behind the artwork. The PDF was updated the next day to fix this, but anyone who ordered print books was fucked. A Kiwi mentioned this happened to Wrath and Glory as well.

They took the wrong lessons from video games.

For what it's worth. Tales of the Valiant is kind of like this as well. Despite being a 5e overhaul that is almost DnD 6e, certain OP spells were left untouched. The meme spells like True Strike got revamped, but a lot of spells that cause problems for GMs were left untouched. I don't know if this was updated in the pdf or just left as is for DMs to homebrew.


While I'm posting, might as well give a quick overview of my small diver into minis should anyone want that.

Spoiler: Mini Mini Research

DnD minis are a wild west, compared to the fairly standard ...standard, of wargaming fare.

Price
Usually very cheap. Small packs of characters that are £4 for a single hero. £30 for a box of 50+. Though other models can go into space. Rarely to GW levels, but still.

Variety Boxes
Combo boxes with 50 models, covering a wide range of subjects is incredible. The downside to this is that you don't get much of a single thing. This is mainly an issue for swarm enemies like wolves or kobolds. Speaking of which-

Esoteric Subjects
Sometimes esoteric subjects are well covered, most of the time they're not. You want orcs, knights, skeletons, or dragons? Lots to choose from. Want kobolds, wolves, or aberations? Lol, get fucked. Player characters are a lot more hit and miss. eg. There are Dragonborn martials such as fighters and paladins. Good look trying to find a dragonborn caster. Starfinder runs into this really bad. Sure, there's a couple of Vesk sculpts floating around, but no Yoski or floating brains.

I saw one model of an animated roast turkey carrying a knife. What would you ever use that for? It's so weird you can't not use it.

No Building
Most minis are single piece prebuilt.

Alternate Sources
This I knew about going in. Supposedly the best way to get a fantasy mini collection is to buy a board game. Descent, Hero Quest, Hero Clix, Dark Souls, and pretty much anything by CMON are valued for this reason. However, these are often time limited offers not presented as such. Overstock from Kickstarter campaigns, board games that flopped and are on deep discount, etc. Rune Wars is a great example of one I see recommended repeatedly despite being out of print and priced like a collectors item when it does appear.

Limited Run?
Related to what I just said, these models seem to have an almost GW level of FOMO or limited print runs? Hard to tell as I just started looking into it, but again, some of these boxes are cheap, but others are asking high prices. £25 for a blind box of 4 minis.

Inconsistent Naming
Goes to the whole "wild west" approach to minis. There doesn't seem to be consistent search terms or names for these.

"Sexy" Models
Bit off topic, but I've heard feminists complaining about the sexy, scantily clad female models in the hobby (plastic model) scene, even though I couldn't find them. Most stuff in the hobby was just World War 2 and vehicles. Maybe a couple of GW elves at a stretch? Well, DnD occasionally delivers with a leggy fighter or a druid with her midriff exposed. These are still rare and the vast majority of minis are not this. Most female minis have the flat chested fully covered look that has been the norm for a while, especially if you go Wizkids or other "official" branded stuff, but the fact these exist is a thing I noticed.