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Any D&D/D20

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[Egan_BW]

I feel like "you might die in character generation" is close enough to a warning.

[Yoink]

Isn't the same true of Traveller, though?

[Liber celi]

Speaking of things getting weird, I've started a local "weird RPGs" group.

If I had the time and logistics for that I would round up my most hardcore friends and run a HYBRID one-shot.
All the rules are printed out in a heap on the table and players have to dig around in there and try to find mechanics and argue why and how they apply. In case of rule controversy connecting your reading to the bigger right-wing nutjob conspiracy wins.

[Mephisto]

I said weird RPG, not bad RPG. I'm going to run the players through silly shenanigans, not run them off with the standard entries of a "worst RPGs ever" list.

[Dorsidwarf]

I said weird RPG, not bad RPG. I'm going to run the players through silly shenanigans, not run them off with the standard entries of a "worst RPGs ever" list.

Rolling up deadEarth characters, then playing them in an actually good system is always fun.

[Sirus]

You could always run them through FATAL character creation. That's plenty weird.

[Rolan7]

FATAL is great to joke about, but its chargen is seriously so bad that it's not worth doing oneself.  I still recommend watching this LP instead.  Note that it's 5 parts of ~40 minutes each, has timeskips, and *ONLY* covers generation of one character.  With snark, to be fair, but snark is literally required to enjoy FATAL sanely.

Almost all of character generation can be automated *, of course, because the player in FATAL makes no choices.  Do I mean "no choices in chargen?"  Not really.  Chargen includes rolling various aspects of your character's personality.  You're supposed to figure out what your character would do *based on those rolls*, not actually choose.  Of course, that's actually just insulation so the target audience can claim "*I* didn't decide to [compliment] her in the [competence at her job], that's just what my character would do!  Look, my sheet says so!

* You get to choose the name, and maybe the job...  from a list which very often only includes "serf" or possibly "whore", IIRC.  If you had the misfortune to roll female.
Also I might be exaggerating, it's been some time since I actually looked.  This isn't me being sex-negative, the game makes me groan from sheer edginess and also poor utility.  It's not only gross and x-tReMe, it's an awful system for its job 

[Kadzar]

Whereas deadEarth char gen is actually interesting, even without the choices you get to make. I'm not actually sure how you'd run it, though, since it has no example NPCs or NPC creation rules, so I think you're required to gen up NPCs by the same convoluted process PCs are made. If there was a character builder for deadEarth, though, I think it could be rather fun to play.

[Grim Portent]

Eh, even without NPC creation rules you can usually just knock up the end point NPC without going through character building in most systems, provided it's not a class based progression system anyway.


I might finally be getting a chance to DM something again for the first time in ages. I was chatting with some of the people in my current gaming circle and they expressed interest in an idea I floated about a game set in a 1920s noir detective sort of set up. They'd like some supernatural elements to come in at some point, so I'm now thinking I might dust off some VtR 2nd edition rules and get to writing up two or three early scenarios and some locations in not!Chicago.

Biggest issue is going to be who to invite to play in practice, we rarely get to game with the group as it stands because three of us have highly variable work hours, so I might have to keep it to just two players, at least to start with since I'd like to get games in more often than bi-monthly.

[pikachu17]

Ceremony+Find Steed=Horses for everyone.
Ceremony+Find Familiar=Familiars for everyone.
Ceremony+Tenser's Transformation+20th level Champion fighter=Fighter making 9 attacks and 18 Attack rolls, each attack doing +2d10 damage.

[Gentlefish]

Wait what

[pikachu17]

Ceremony is a first level cleric/paladin spell. It takes one hour and 25 gold to cast.
It has multiple options, but choose the investiture option, and you can allow anyone else to cast one of your spells, using an additional spell slot, as long as the spell takes less than one hour to cast.
So you can pass Find Familiar and Find Steed to everyone in your party.
And pass Tenser's Transformation to someone who already cannot cast spells, and is not a barbarian.
EDIT: However, this appears to only be in the UA version.

[Grim Portent]

Wait what

The playtest version of the spell Ceremony for 5e allowed the caster to spend a spell slot, in addition to the one used to cast Ceremony, to let an ally cast a chosen first level spell in the next hour. This could be used to cast Find Familiar so everyone could have it.

Tenser's Transformation and Find Steed would not work with that Ceremony function since they're 5th and 6th level spells.

Ceremony has since been printed in Xanathar's Guide to Everything and lost that function anyway.

[pikachu17]

Wait, it specified first level?
Edit:Oh, not as useful as I thought it was.
Well, a ring of spell storing can also do Find Familiar, and Find Steed.

[Kadzar]

I was confused at first, because Ceremony is a spell in Xanathar's guide to Everything, but has no option to let you do anything with other spells. Then I checked the original Unearthed Arcana version, and it indeed had an option to let you allow others to cast a spell you had prepared. However, it's limited to first level spells only, so only Find Familiar would work, supposing you were allowed to use the Unearthed Arcana version.

PreEdit: Ninja'd by Grim Portent, though I will point out that Find Steed is actually a 2nd level spell, which still wouldn't work for this.