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What is your preferred system?

Any D&D/D20
Shadowrun
World of Darkness
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Other (feel free to post about it)

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Author Topic: Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: COBRA!!!  (Read 933691 times)

Iduno

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9060 on: July 24, 2022, 11:19:03 am »

Back in the 70's and 80's, when you could get away with making a similar product to someone else, as long as you did it differently, and small teams could just build a business without millions of dollars, D&D was created, and then had competitors who tried to improve on it in some way. Does anyone have any favorite D&D-based TTRPGs?

I'm familiar with Tunnels and Trolls which tried to go for simpler rules, less serious game (D&D was still based on wargaming at that point), and only use d6s.
I've heard of RoleMaster the d100 game, which then had Call of Cthulu spring off from it.
I've also very much enjoyed reading on Earthdawn, where they wanted everything in the game mechanics and the world to fit together nicely, and get rid of clerics who were necessary for a party but not as fun to play. Ambitious and weird, but it works. It's also why [AD&D] 3rd edition was so much different from 2nd.

I am sure there are others as well, and what are your experiences?
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Grim Portent

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9061 on: July 27, 2022, 03:14:20 pm »

Cautiously optimistic that I'm finally going to get a game of VtM off the ground.
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There once was a dwarf in a cave,
who many would consider brave.
With a head like a block
he went out for a sock,
his ass I won't bother to save.

Loud Whispers

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9062 on: July 28, 2022, 04:39:08 pm »

I wish you all the fun. I've just been burning all my games to the ground. NONE OF THEM. NONE OF MY PLAYERS ARE FREE FROM SIN. Except one; who is a model player in every respect. The rest...

Spoiler: RAGE (click to show/hide)

There is so much more to these stories, even more reasons I have to be angry, but if I typed them all it would be too long. Maybe if people want to know more I will type, as is, I think I will just post what I was planning for the Dark Heresy campaign I killed. The gang were tasked by an Ordo Xenos inquisitor with killing two Tau ayyy lmaos, one being an ethereal and one being a fire warrior commander. The Tau presence on the planet they were on was minimal, numbering only around 500, but they were indirectly pressuring the Planetary-Governor Elect to submit to the Tau Empire peacefully. The thing which killed the campaign was that instead of doing their job or questioning why they should have to kill some aliens who seemed perfectly friendly, their feral-world character was arguing that they should be instigating regime change by depriving the populace of the economic goods they desire to forment a revolt. Being a metagamer, they assumed that they knew what the inquisitor wanted, and that what the inquisitor wanted was what I wanted. So they assumed I wanted them to exterminate all aliens and instigate regime change for the Imperium, even though the inquisitor was a radical who worked with xenos and whose agenda was actually to avoid a Tau-Imperial war that would divert resources away from combatting hive fleet jormungandr. Whether they ultimately assassinated the xenos commanders or worked with them would lead to different outcomes, naturally, but if they took too long then things would progress very differently. (As an aside - if they wanted to play mastermind schemer who worked indirectly through politics and subterfuge, that would have been fine. But they indicated no such thing when we worked together to make a feral world character!!! D:<)

They had just brushed into contact with acolytes working for an Ordo Hereticus radical, who believed that psykers were the natural development of humanity. They were also a serious crime lord with a tight control on that sector's illicit drug production, including heretical drugs like spook which awakened psychic potential in their users. Manufacturing and distributing spook is something which even an inquisitor would have a hard time getting away with without being branded a heretic or a threat to the imperium, but that is exactly what this chap was doing. And he would instigate a mass psychic-awakening on this planet at a certain date, which the ordo xenos inquisitor would notice, as the xenos inquisitor was herself a potent telepath. Depending on how things would play out, there'd be a good chance that the ordo hereticus inqusitor would bite off more than he could chew and the psychic phenomena unleashed on the planet would spiral out of control, leading to a race to either control the rogue psykers or find the evidence behind the suspicious mass awakening.

Btw how are the VtM rules? I'm thinking of giving them a try. However, with carefully picked players. I seem to be getting the worst luck with players, whether in vidya or ttrpgs.

Kagus

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9063 on: July 28, 2022, 05:15:43 pm »

H-... How do you lose your penitent engine?

"It's true... For my heinous crimes against humanity, I have been sentenced to live out the rest of my days in this gibbet."

"...what gibbet?"

"Oh, I forgot it at home."


And ah yes, the intricate multi-layered scheming of feral worlders... I believe Machiavelli himself was one!

Egan_BW

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9064 on: July 28, 2022, 05:17:42 pm »

Btw how are the VtM rules? I'm thinking of giving them a try. However, with carefully picked players.
Ooh ooh pick me pick me! :D
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Kagus

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9065 on: July 28, 2022, 05:24:35 pm »

Actually, that seems like kind of a fun concept in a way. Someone so colossally absent-minded that they manage to misplace things which shouldn't physically be capable of being misplaced.

They're not expert escape artists or cunning spellbreakers, they're just... A living, breathing, bag of unholding.


The kind of person who has a cursed item irreparably bind to them and they accidentally leave it behind on the table at some inn.

Grim Portent

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9066 on: July 28, 2022, 06:43:03 pm »

Btw how are the VtM rules? I'm thinking of giving them a try. However, with carefully picked players. I seem to be getting the worst luck with players, whether in vidya or ttrpgs.

Different is the best way I can describe them. Haven't had a chance to properly play it in years, and this is a different version of the WoD rules than I have played with before, so I'm going to be making a bunch of vampire/ghoul/mortal NPCs using the PC creation rules to get back to grips with it.

Lots of mechanics to do with not being entirely in control of the characters, and accompanying mechanics to encourage players to go with the flow of their inner beast from time to time.

It's very much a game about playing psychologically damaged people with super powers and a vulnerability to addiction.


Sorry to hear about your troubles with games by the way. I've been lucky to not have to deal with drama in any of the groups I've been in, just scheduling problems.

Btw how are the VtM rules? I'm thinking of giving them a try. However, with carefully picked players.
Ooh ooh pick me pick me! :D

TBH there's probably enough RPers on the forum that we could try to arrange a group and run games using Discord.



If anyone's interested I did three pitches to my group for VtM games and had them vote.

Pitch 1 was a game set in the Great Heathen Army invasion of the British Isles. They would be vampires allied to the Norse, specifically Bjorn Ironside, helping invade Northumbria to avenge the death of Ragnarr Lodbrok, helping to fight the native mortals, vampires and werewolves and plunder the lands for their own purposes.

Pitch 2 was them being Byzantine vampires in the lead up to the Fall of Constantinople, facing the approach of the Ottoman army and the vampires of the Ashirra (Muslim vampire organisation essentially, as opposed to the more Christian Camarilla.) Idea was more of a focus on politics, looking for ways to assure their own survival and the safety of their assets and freedoms in the event the city falls, but without looking like traitors in the event that the city doesn't fall.

Pitch 3, the winning one, was them being underlings to a freshly returned openly vampiric Dracula.* Full kingdom of evil, open war with mortals rather than hiding as was the norm for the time. Initial enemy being the Ottomans, as they were Vlad's enemy at the time he died with the Holy Roman Empire being tentative allies. As things progress though the Inquisition, Camarilla, Ashirra, rogue vampires, other supernatural beings are all going to show up to try and quash this flagrant breach of the normal status quo, and the PCs are going to be tasked with convincing the HRE to maintain prior friendship with Wallachia as a buffer state against the Ottomans.

My brother is the only person who's shared a PC idea with me so far, he's thinking of being an Ottoman assassin who was sent to Wallachia to kill Vlad, who went and died in battle before he got a chance to try, and then jumped ship when Vlad strode back into Wallachia as a freaking vampire and claimed the throne from his cousin. Summed it up as him going 'Well the devil is real, hail Satan I guess,' and swearing loyalty to the returned Dracula.



*Canon WoD Dracula has two versions, the Old WoD and the New WoD versions. The game is in the OWoD, but Dracula's canon for the OWoD isn't of use to me, so I threw it away and decided to go with a version inspired by various pop-culture versions of him. Going to give him the powers and weaknesses of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which among other things means he doesn't die in sunlight, which is a power no other vampire has. In a way it's a power even Caine, the first vampire, does not possess, as while he cannot die the sun still causes him great pain. Dracula in the campaign is going to be something new, something scary.
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There once was a dwarf in a cave,
who many would consider brave.
With a head like a block
he went out for a sock,
his ass I won't bother to save.

MrRoboto75

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9067 on: July 28, 2022, 08:55:40 pm »

X the Y-ening always seemed like a session 0 exposition vomit in order for the players to understand the 10 or so factions, why they all hate each other yet not hate enough to not form a rag-tag player party, all before the players can even start about character gen or whatever.
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Kagus

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9068 on: July 29, 2022, 02:05:33 am »

X the Y-ening always seemed like a session 0 exposition vomit in order for the players to understand the 10 or so factions, why they all hate each other yet not hate enough to not form a rag-tag player party, all before the players can even start about character gen or whatever.

[laughs in Legend of the Five Rings]

Rolan7

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9069 on: July 29, 2022, 02:08:04 am »

I'm interested, and I've played NWoD, but they fucked the versions so hard that I don't know what that means.  It's certainly not Old World of Darkness, nor the latter thing I don't understand.
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scriver

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9070 on: July 29, 2022, 02:36:47 am »

Last time we got a WoD game going it was me who ruined it by pulling out in the last second -- being too shy to play with strangers on the Internet (I'm one of those weirdos who thinks it's more difficult to talk with people over line as opposed to in person. Not being able to read people makes me nervous) -- so I'm a little bit embarrassed to say it in light of that but I too would be interested. I've since started playing online regularly during covid so that is is something I've overcome since then, at least I can say that ;)
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MCreeper

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9071 on: July 29, 2022, 03:46:43 am »

Huh. Well, if fellow Bay12'ers intend to play some VtM right around there, then i'm tempted to try join in. Although i would be far from the great player, as it would be my first RP expirience at all. [pet peeve on]Just, pretty please, make it immidiately clear how many players there are or can be. My previous attempt to join a game failed in a stupid way because GM posted discord link on a forum right away, and everyone went straight through it, not bothering to say that they are in on a forum.[pet peeve off]
FAKEEDIT: Ah, most impotant thing - text or voice? Because i don't have a working mic at all.
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Grim Portent

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9072 on: August 07, 2022, 04:01:17 pm »

Would people still be interested in trying to arrange a game with forum members?

Personally have an idea for a Black Crusade (40k chaos rpg) game I've really been wanting to run.
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There once was a dwarf in a cave,
who many would consider brave.
With a head like a block
he went out for a sock,
his ass I won't bother to save.

Egan_BW

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9073 on: August 07, 2022, 04:15:09 pm »

What format? Lotta people dislike the slowness of play by post but I think that the alternative of trying to find meetup times for a bunch of internet randos is even worse.
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MCreeper

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #9074 on: August 08, 2022, 08:34:16 am »

Nah, warhammer is not my cup of tea.  :P
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Rest of the sigs
The helicopter is rent apart by the collision, its steel unable to resist its inevitable reunion with the ground, and the meat within is smashed by the crumpling cockpit beyond any practical hope of recovery. What comes up, must come down again. Ore and ape, returned to mother planet's embrace.
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