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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

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Other (feel free to post about it)

[Iduno]

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?

[Grim Portent]

Cautiously optimistic that I'm finally going to get a game of VtM off the ground.

[Loud Whispers]

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)

The rest have many problems. One is a consumate redditor, with all the problem mindsets that comes with. Doing things like trying to "win" TTRPGs so they can brag about how they broke the game later on reddit. One of my DM friends killed his campaign after he realised the redditor was bragging about destroying his campaign on reddit, treating it like player vs DM and not a collaborative event. They view everything through reddit eyes, and try to fit everything to DnD or stale memes. I had never been railroaded by a player before but I was treated to this rare debacle after they thought my inquisitor was acting unrealistic because they didn't behave like a TTS meme and my tech priests didn't behave like DnD wizards (exact wording) and got mad after I asked them repeatedly to come into this game with no assumptions or prior knowledge so that everyone could get the same frame of reference. This is on the back of yet more drama where the same player convinced two of my other friends that I was trying to destroy their campaign by playing an evil overpowered necromancer. I RP'd as a blues clues kid with a kill count of 0; to cut an incredibly long story full of hipocrisy and stupidity short, after months of silence as to why I had been kicked (kicked from a game they invited me back to after I had left amicably, and after I had taken annual leave to join them only for them to show me up by accident), I got three different accounts from each of them, each of them blaming the other two, even though I wasn't looking for anyone to blame I just wanted to know wtf was going on. And when prodded, the player whose character exterminated the afterlife said the other guy kicked me for being too powerful in game, and the player whose character had harvested a million souls (no exaggeration) and got defensive when others questioned why he harvested the soul of a child said the other guy thought my character was too evil. I had resurrected three corpses - of men they had gleefully killed, healed the arm of another man they had assaulted, and used the wish spell to break people out of a concentration camp the rest of the party was supporting at the cost of his own life (being a necromancer he got better. But he could still never cast wish again). Followed by months of talking about me behind my back instead of a single one of them just talking to me. So after I discover what the hell had happened behind the scenes, I start asking them all one by one what the hell had happened, and why none of them had just done the simple thing and just talked to me. I even asked one of them like if you thought my char was too powerful why didn't you just ask I reroll a char? Why did he believe so quickly that I was a powergamer set out to destroy the campaign when of the 7 characters I had played with them, 5 of them had no player levels and were just NPCs, compared to a straight bard and a combat god sorcerer-warlock paladin he had rolled. He said idk lol

This friend I much appreciated because his response was just to acknowledge that he just went with the flow and didn't think to talk to me or just ask basic questions or such. But it is still frustrating how much grief they had caused me by acting so, when all of them who I trust implicitly in turn showed no trust of me and so willingly caused me harm that was so avoidable. Yet they apologised profusely and promised to speak with me frankly and directly, which was the nicest thing he could have pledged, and I am much grateful for it. Yet the reddit browsing one made no such rapproachment and to the end continued to make references about conversations they had had behind my back, e.g. "maybe they were right about you." The sheer disrespect of talking behind my back to my face after I complain about the disrespect of talking behind my back convinced me to kill my campaign outright. Even mulling killing our friendship altogether; I will try to speak to them one more time as they have not contacted me since, but I can only build so many bridges to a man with a torch.

The third one is a great player to have... If I could have them. Instead they commit yet more diverse and brilliant sins, such as promising to make a character to join my campaign, stringing me along with weeks of "ah I need help with this chargen" only to blank me when I ask what they need help with, and when the day rolls around to game - after three days of ignoring my calls, announcing that they had decided to cancel on me but just weren't going to say. This guy is someone I would give up my left arm to save, but he has the worst communciation skills in the world. When I asked him about his terrible communication skills he said the legendary line "I couldn't not possibly be any clearer than I am currently, wouldn't you not agree?" I WAS FUCKING SHOOK like god damn man there is no way you can be doing that naturally that's a triple negative. You have to rehearse that level of civil service speak. Currently on the verge of giving up on him because although he was amazing in the last one shot, trying to get him to make new characters is painful. He asks to do really specific characters like a penitent engine pilot that's lost its penitent engine, and I have no idea who keeps telling him to make these characters because he doesn't know what a penitent engine is. When I give him lots of suggestions and ask what he wants to play, he gives me politician responses like "oh just whatever fits your setting." MY GUY I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU WANT TO PLAY A REPENTENT MECH PILOT. If you WANT to PILOT A MECH I CAN DO THAT, but do YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU WANT? TALK TO ME FFS. But actually getting to talk to him about any of this is impossible because of real world scheduling, and the fact that he returns none of my calls or messages until he decides to send me some lore about barber shops 2 weeks after I asked what help he needed.

The last one is genuinely a precious gem in this world and I treasure them for being god's gift to TTRPGs. They call ahead if they need to cancel or don't feel like gaming. I'm of the opinion that you don't need a reason to cancel; if you just feel down that day, don't force yourself to play. Real people matter more than games schedules. But one of them won't tell me when they cancel because they're worried it will offend me. It won't! It offends me that they think it would, it offends me that they cancelled but didn't tell me would cancel. Lord I need to vent. I speak in plain, simple English. But some of them I can't ever reach, and when I do reach them, they keep trying to read my mood or sentiment instead of just taking my words at their very obvious face value. Not this treasured gem player; he takes me at face value, and if he has a problem with me, he criticises me openly and we resolve it the very same minute. He rp's like an actor and reads rulebooks, he makes decisions quickly and his characters are actually characters instead of self-inserts or avatars of dice rolling and phone scrolling. He's the only one I've seen put in effort to match the effort I've put in. If I ask him not to metagame in this particular game he just says "yeah sure" and doesn't. Because it is not a big deal.

I'm not sure I can salvage this. Multiple trainwrecks piling upon one another from multiple GMs and DMs campaigns failing because the white players won't stop talking behind peoples' backs instead of just addressing reasonable criticism up front. I warned my DM friend that he was playing with fire and people were going to get hurt IRL. Two weeks later I was disappointed to hear him saying I was right and he wished he had listened earlier :/
Honestly I have the patience of a saint but I can't keep putting up with this and hearing them complain about me when they have consistently fucked me over for no reason.

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]

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]

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!

[Kagus]

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]

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!

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.

[MrRoboto75]

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.

[Kagus]

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]

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.

[scriver]

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

[MCreeper]

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.

[Grim Portent]

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.

[Egan_BW]

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.

[MCreeper]

Nah, warhammer is not my cup of tea.