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

I want you think about your earlier "1/100 for crit opportunity" statement and then re-read the part where you say you did the math and it took over 50 rolls for a max level character to crit, and just sort of meditate on that for a moment.

That is not what I said. The 50 rolls were damage rolls for a one-shot. As in they had to roll damage around 50 times to get that lucky, if they even crit.
 
I finally found a game. I realized that if my schedule is gonna be unpredictable, might as well go play by post. And I finally got that magical girl game I wanted to play in. It started out rocky (its hard trying to get someone to DM for a system you’ve never played, and we had to kick a would-be player), but I finally start a game of Princess: the Hopeful, a magical girl fangame set in the World of Darkness universe.

Anyway, besides shilling a legitimately fun looking system, I’m making this post to shill pbp as a valid method of tabletop. If your online schedule’s erratic and you have trouble getting friends together irl, a good pbp is a ton of fun, if a lot slower paced with different time zones.
 
I finally found a game. I realized that if my schedule is gonna be unpredictable, might as well go play by post. And I finally got that magical girl game I wanted to play in. It started out rocky (its hard trying to get someone to DM for a system you’ve never played, and we had to kick a would-be player), but I finally start a game of Princess: the Hopeful, a magical girl fangame set in the World of Darkness universe.

Anyway, besides shilling a legitimately fun looking system, I’m making this post to shill pbp as a valid method of tabletop. If your online schedule’s erratic and you have trouble getting friends together irl, a good pbp is a ton of fun, if a lot slower paced with different time zones.
It works better when you also have everybody on some kind of instant messaging service. Discord, Telegram, whatever. That way you can discuss things with one another, joke/shitpost without polluting the roleplay "thread", do mid-post rolls, set up dialogue scenes in a single post, and prod that one guy who keeps forgetting to post.
 
I finally found a game. I realized that if my schedule is gonna be unpredictable, might as well go play by post. And I finally got that magical girl game I wanted to play in. It started out rocky (its hard trying to get someone to DM for a system you’ve never played, and we had to kick a would-be player), but I finally start a game of Princess: the Hopeful, a magical girl fangame set in the World of Darkness universe.

Anyway, besides shilling a legitimately fun looking system, I’m making this post to shill pbp as a valid method of tabletop. If your online schedule’s erratic and you have trouble getting friends together irl, a good pbp is a ton of fun, if a lot slower paced with different time zones.
Damn that's funny, I'm also in a magical girl game. Iirc it's in a heavily modified form of the FATE system, and it's set in a kind of cyberpunk universe.
 
I finally found a game. I realized that if my schedule is gonna be unpredictable, might as well go play by post. And I finally got that magical girl game I wanted to play in. It started out rocky (its hard trying to get someone to DM for a system you’ve never played, and we had to kick a would-be player), but I finally start a game of Princess: the Hopeful, a magical girl fangame set in the World of Darkness universe.

Anyway, besides shilling a legitimately fun looking system, I’m making this post to shill pbp as a valid method of tabletop. If your online schedule’s erratic and you have trouble getting friends together irl, a good pbp is a ton of fun, if a lot slower paced with different time zones.

Pass this along to the GM if they aren't used to pbp:

They should give players 'homework' on a set, regular basis (every week, every other day, etc). It can be practical stuff like getting players to say what they'd do in town/what powers they'll want next level/what sort of loot they'll be scrounging from bodies, to queueing actions, to hook-mining like asking questions about player background, to pop quizes about past events, to just silly shit like "What is your favorite animal".
I should only take a paragraph or three to answer at most, and not more than 15-30 minutes to complete.

It keeps the players engaged, thinking of the game, and can delay the inevitable fate of all pbp games.
 
Anyone have thoughts on games like Deadlands where the game mechanic is based on a Blackjack hand instead of a dice roll?

My friend group and I like it better. There's some thought and control over it, instead of getting screwed by bad luck (like so often happens to me).
 
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Anyone have thoughts on games like Deadlands where the game mechanic is based on a Blackjack hand instead of a dice roll?

My friend group and I like it better. There's some thought and control over it, instead of getting screwed by bad luck (like so often happens to me).

I've never heard of Blackjack as a randomizer, but its as valid as any other probablistic outcome.

You have to really watch metagaming (ie card counting). And I guess a big salute to your GM because I'm no where near autist enough to adjucate the Black Jack hand tables. I guess you're also stuck with the randomized outcomes - I don't know how you'd give out circumstance bonuses for blackjack.

But really if your group is having fun, that's the most important part.
 
I've never heard of Blackjack as a randomizer, but its as valid as any other probablistic outcome.

You have to really watch metagaming (ie card counting). And I guess a big salute to your GM because I'm no where near autist enough to adjucate the Black Jack hand tables. I guess you're also stuck with the randomized outcomes - I don't know how you'd give out circumstance bonuses for blackjack.

But really if your group is having fun, that's the most important part.
I don't know Deadlands proper uses that system, as AFAIK it's our GM's own homebrew.
 
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Posted this and my party immediately lost their collective shit.
 
View attachment 2350325
Posted this and my party immediately lost their collective shit.

Its not wrong, but at the same time...its a game played by people. Its hard to for you unknow things you know.
And don't split the party makes play go better by not having either rapid scene switching or by having a bunch of people sit around waiting for one part of the party to wrap up. So sometimes, for a game, you need to meta a bit because you are trying to avoid the mundane time-wasting drugery of real life.

Talking about +1s and +2s is metagaming, but the characters know the relative strength of their gear and I'm not going to force the players to talk only in in-game terms (to each other at least) as we aren't that sweaty. Same vein, I'm also not going to RP every word of dialogue every NPC says (unless its an interesting and fun verbal sparring match), and at some point and just going to summarize the conversation they have. Because I don't want to waste everyone's time by making the all-night wedding feast take real time all night.

Plus I mean....they're going to split anyway. They are players. They are going to try to murder plot NPCs and they are going to wander off because they saw something shiny. Its how it do.
Might as well ask them not breathe.
 
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Plus I mean....they're going to split anyway. They are players. They are going to try to murder plot NPCs and they are going to wander off because they saw something shiny. Its how it do.
Might as well ask them not breathe.
You say that but most groups I’ve had to deal with act like they have to be some sort of hive mind. Just the other day I got griped at because rather than follow the party to an inn I as a roguish wizard snuck off and stole a Belt Of Dwarvenkind from a merchant I had been scoping out.

Which I couldn’t do with the party thanks to our lawful stupid cleric. Apparently they thought my character having his own goals and ambitions outside of the main plot was disruptive despite the whole thing only taking about three in game turns to pull off if you cut out their constant out of character welching.
 
View attachment 2350325
Posted this and my party immediately lost their collective shit.
Like so much of RPGs, players often do this for the wrong reason (spotlight on ME, Mr. DM!), and a lot of DMs can't handle split parties. This is where you take a brief sidebar with the splitters, ask them what they want to do, pass some notes back and forth depending on how much actual DM involvement they need, and then they rejoin the rest of the party at another time. Or, in the alternative, you play the main party for awhile, send them on a piss/snack break, play the split party members, then everybody meets back up again.
 
Recently I terrified my players with a completely normal elevator. They're stranded on an island in a homebrew fantasy setting full of ancient ruins. While exploring one at the behest of an undead king, they encounter a small dead end room with a single button in it. Upon pressing it, the door to the room closes by itself, sealing them inside. They hear grinding mechanical sounds around them, and they suddenly feel strange feelings in their gut. I spend several minutes describing everything in detail, from the slow closing of the doors to the faint feelings of motion, and they're absolutely freaking out at the table, thinking they've let themselves fall straight into a death trap, when... the door opens again and they're on a different level. I think it's the pinnacle of my (admittedly short compared to some people) career as a game master.
 
I remember when 3rd edition Forgotten Realms was treated by some as absolute trash, boy did those days despite having issues look less bad compared to 5e
You can't tell me WotC going full retard by going "akshually drow never were really evil" retconning tons and tons of existing lore, cheaping the existing good drows and aving all Lolth worshippers having a mark that indicates killing them is ok or whatever is going on (my sources claim different stuff) isn't retarded on a whole new level. Oh and Eilistraee keeps getting fucked over.
Rate me late if needed but i just found this out, wtf else retarded has WotC pulled in Forgotten i missed? (for reference my last time reading about Forgotten Realms was all the way back in the 4e splatbook)
 
Recently I terrified my players with a completely normal elevator. They're stranded on an island in a homebrew fantasy setting full of ancient ruins. While exploring one at the behest of an undead king, they encounter a small dead end room with a single button in it. Upon pressing it, the door to the room closes by itself, sealing them inside. They hear grinding mechanical sounds around them, and they suddenly feel strange feelings in their gut. I spend several minutes describing everything in detail, from the slow closing of the doors to the faint feelings of motion, and they're absolutely freaking out at the table, thinking they've let themselves fall straight into a death trap, when... the door opens again and they're on a different level. I think it's the pinnacle of my (admittedly short compared to some people) career as a game master.

No ghost sound muzak version of the Drow from Ipanema? *shakes head*
I'm not mad. Just disappointed.
 
Recently I terrified my players with a completely normal elevator. They're stranded on an island in a homebrew fantasy setting full of ancient ruins. While exploring one at the behest of an undead king, they encounter a small dead end room with a single button in it. Upon pressing it, the door to the room closes by itself, sealing them inside. They hear grinding mechanical sounds around them, and they suddenly feel strange feelings in their gut. I spend several minutes describing everything in detail, from the slow closing of the doors to the faint feelings of motion, and they're absolutely freaking out at the table, thinking they've let themselves fall straight into a death trap, when... the door opens again and they're on a different level. I think it's the pinnacle of my (admittedly short compared to some people) career as a game master.
Did that shit in a Gamma World game a long time ago and the mutant rabbit about killed himself trying to get out when I mentioned that there was what looked like a trap door in the ceiling.
 
I finally found a game. I realized that if my schedule is gonna be unpredictable, might as well go play by post. And I finally got that magical girl game I wanted to play in. It started out rocky (its hard trying to get someone to DM for a system you’ve never played, and we had to kick a would-be player), but I finally start a game of Princess: the Hopeful, a magical girl fangame set in the World of Darkness universe.

Anyway, besides shilling a legitimately fun looking system, I’m making this post to shill pbp as a valid method of tabletop. If your online schedule’s erratic and you have trouble getting friends together irl, a good pbp is a ton of fun, if a lot slower paced with different time zones.
I actually know of two on Discord, randomly. But I never did get a chance to play. Unfortunately the ones I know of are all filled with anime girl avatars which is secondhand for discord troons and personally I'd rather neck myself than play with trannies. They fuck up games.

So good luck. Hopefully no troons.
 
The magical girl game I'm in is filled with anime avatars, but they belong to people I've played with for years, so I know that they can handle the responsibility of being a teenage girl balancing saving the world with school, family and friends.
 
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