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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Grim Portent]

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.

My preference is for voice calls. I've tried play by post in the past and found it sufficiently less enjoyable that I prefer the hassle of scheduling calls.

My current rl group mostly meets via voice calls these days. Used to be that the four of us who live in town would meet in person and the GM would call in from Canada, but we started shifting to Discord and Roll20, partly for the pandemic and now also because two of us have moved to another town.

[MonkeyHead]

PTF.

FWIW, I am an experienced 5e DnD player, and have  dabbled with pathfinder.

[Loud Whispers]

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."

He's got a serious talent for it. He's in the past played an airship captain who lost his ship, a paladin sworn to no oath, he wanted to play a rogue trader captain who had no ship, penitent engine pilot with no engine, and most recently suggested playing the mother of a martyred sister repentia - even though the sisters of battle almost recruit exclusively from the schola progenium, who are orphans. He plays captains with no ships, mothers with no daughters, orphans with mothers, clerics with no gods, paladins with no code, and I swear next one'll be a CEO with no company. He's addicted to the subversion

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

To be fair there is a fair bit of room for scheming feral worlders; the first character they met was the King's eunuch who was a sneaky breeki kinda politics type guy. But there's different flavours of multi-layered scheming you know? There's "go Perseus, go forth and bring us the medusa's head" and "welcome to this episode of the CIA destabilises a nation for drug money again"

Ooh ooh pick me pick me!

If I ever get around to it, I'll defo post a link here as a call to arms. But I'm not going to be doing anything of the sort for at least the next month, as I'll be travelling around a lot :<

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.

Well now I have to give it a look. I liked the rules for Mage: The Wizardening so I am optimisting about Vampire: The Secret Gothening

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.

Secret ending B: Turkic Vampire and Byzantine Vampire continue their 1,000 year war from their neighbouring apartments in Germany

In completely unrelated news

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I am yet to try LOTFR or booty shorts

Spoiler: and I've been wasting time making equipment charts (click to show/hide)

Ideally I should be going battlemaster with dual wielder but instead I've gone cavalier with polearm master & mounted combatant. Battlemaster can use all of this equipment very well, has special tactics related to drawing and throwing weapons as part of the same action, and a whole bunch of other nice stuff. It even has its own version of cavalier marking. But I am playing with a player who detests when another char is useful in all situations, so I'm going to stick to one that kills goblins but runs away from skeleton pikemen, so he can deal with the skeletons for me. After my friend asked me to find him a system that;

-featured magical things rarely
-had more player mortality/risk, but not "punishingly" so
-started off the chars as weak, scaling them up to great power, but stopping just short of mythic martial prowess
-similar enough to DnD that it is not a far departure from what he and his players are familiar with (d20 system, same attribute system & class system)
-different enough to DnD that it does not suffer from the usual issues surrounding spell lists, HP bloat, non-combat RP support, (no spellcaster classes or restricted)

In short he wanted DnD... But not DnD
And I seem to have actually found one called Low Fantasy Gaming, which as the name suggests, is all about Low Fantasy Gaming. I've yet to see it in try or try it myself but this >very specific niche< has apparently been filled

[Kagus]

Stealth Transport Helicopter: D&D Edition

Genielock, pact of the chain. Imp familiar.

Genielock communicates the plan to their familiar, then jumps inside their vessel for up to proficiency bonus x 2 hours.

Familiar executes plan by changing into a raven (60ft fly speed), grabbing the vessel (which is classed as a tiny object), and turning invisible as an at-will action. This includes any equipment it's wearing or holding, but it's up to speculation as to whether or not your vessel counts as "equipment".

You can now fly, invisibly, for a minimum of 4 hours. You can even hear the space outside the vessel, so the imp can tell you when you've reached your destination. Don't even need to worry about fall damage, as if you're dropped the vessel just breaks and you're popped out onto the ground next to where it hit.

At level 10, you can now invite up to 5 willing creatures within 30' to join you inside the vessel when you enter it. Invisible helicopter ride for the whole party. And you should be able to reach some fun places in the 8 hours of "gas" at that level.

Extra: You can eject anyone from the vessel as a bonus action at any point during their time inside the vessel. The vessel does not need to be safely located on the ground for you to do this.


As an aside... L5R looks like a cool game with some nice concepts and fantastic background fluff that needs a degree just to build a character and have it interact with the world properly.

[Loud Whispers]

I had a warlock-sorcerer player do the tactical imp-conveyor lamp. Kept trying to get everyone to jump into his lamp but half the party refused to get in the lamp. Including my centaur character. So after some very clumsy climbing up the wall, we split into two groups. The warlock and I would stay behind as we were too noisy, whilst the other two stealthy boys would sneak on ahead to scout the mansion, filled with zombies as it was. Everything was going perfectly until the warlock got bored and decided to go check on the other two, failing his stealth roll and alerting all the undead - and the beholder, that there were intruders on the top floor. Ended up gettiny my character killed, in what was one of the most enjoyable deaths possible - disintegrated in one shot after heroically charging the beholder head on, stabbing it in the eye with my char-god's banner, saving the paladin player from certain death (after the paladin player had placed himself into certain death by front flipping into the zombie horde). A completely unnecessary heroic sacricice, but a heroic sacrifice nonetheless ;]

Then they resurrected my char ;[

[Grim Portent]

Then they resurrected my char ;[

Ressurection is one of my pet peeves with D&D. It undercuts basically all the possible drama that comes from what should be an important moment.

If a character dies, be it a heroic death, a tragic one or even a stupid one, it should generally be permanent or only able to be undone at great cost.

I'd much rather my character just be dead than rezzed, unless bringing them back is going to leave a permanent mark of some kind.


Really the only 'resurrection' mechanic I think I've ever liked is cyber-resurrection from Dark Heresy. You take a recently dead or nearly dead character, and fill them with cybernetics to get them back on their feet, at the cost of severe damage to their mind and humanity. It basically turns you into a bionic zombie, and for some characters is a fate worse than death.

I'd actually like it if D&D treated proper resurrection magic as much harder to do, instead making the readily available option be necromancy. Your character dies and gets the option of being brought back as an undead with their previous class levels intact kind of thing.

[scriver]

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.

Unfortunately, the chaos 40k is probably the one I'm not particularly interested in playing, personally. I don't really have an idea of BC games goes though. But I'd be worried of it being too "edge for the edgy throne" if you know what I mean.

[Iduno]

-featured magical things rarely
-had more player mortality/risk, but not "punishingly" so
-started off the chars as weak, scaling them up to great power, but stopping just short of mythic martial prowess
-similar enough to DnD that it is not a far departure from what he and his players are familiar with (d20 system, same attribute system & class system)
-different enough to DnD that it does not suffer from the usual issues surrounding spell lists, HP bloat, non-combat RP support, (no spellcaster classes or restricted)

In short he wanted DnD... But not DnD
And I seem to have actually found one called Low Fantasy Gaming, which as the name suggests, is all about Low Fantasy Gaming. I've yet to see it in try or try it myself but this >very specific niche< has apparently been filled

That is the largest niche that exists among people looking for a game that isn't D&D.

Then they resurrected my char ;[

Ressurection is one of my pet peeves with D&D. It undercuts basically all the possible drama that comes from what should be an important moment.

If a character dies, be it a heroic death, a tragic one or even a stupid one, it should generally be permanent or only able to be undone at great cost.

I'd much rather my character just be dead than rezzed, unless bringing them back is going to leave a permanent mark of some kind.


Really the only 'resurrection' mechanic I think I've ever liked is cyber-resurrection from Dark Heresy. You take a recently dead or nearly dead character, and fill them with cybernetics to get them back on their feet, at the cost of severe damage to their mind and humanity. It basically turns you into a bionic zombie, and for some characters is a fate worse than death.

I'd actually like it if D&D treated proper resurrection magic as much harder to do, instead making the readily available option be necromancy. Your character dies and gets the option of being brought back as an undead with their previous class levels intact kind of thing.

Something like Deadlands? You can come back from death 1 time ever, with slightly increased stats, if you have the correct card in your hand* when you die. Or you can start as an undead for the improved stats, but stay dead the next time you die.

*I haven't played personally, so I have no idea how difficult or unlikely that is. Less than 100%, anyway, and you have to choose to keep a card in your hand that does nothing unless you die, which a more useful card may have prevented.

[MonkeyHead]

Resurrection bothers me too. When DMing I try and home-brew it away into non-existence, or get an agreement that it requires some incredibly rare material component, or even significant consequences of sometype: say, ability penalties, or being chased from beyond the grave in some way. Death needs to have consequences.

[Kagus]

I mean, if you get blasted by something like Disintegrate, it does explicitly state that you're not coming back except under the circumstances of True Resurrect, which is a 9th-level spell with a 25,000gp price tag attached.

Or, alternatively, Wish. Which is one of those circumstances where the caster may potentially never get to cast Wish again.

...but then again, if you're playing in a campaign where those restrictions are meaningless, then I guess those restrictions are meaningless.


Personally I kinda liked the concept of WHFRP's fate points... You spend a rare resource instead of dying, as part of a choice you make. Once you're dead-dead though, good friggin' luck.

[Egan_BW]

I've never been in a dnd campaign where we were high enough level to cast any of that shit regardless. Must be nearly an irl year of meeting regularly and killing tons of monsters to get a cleric to that point by the default rules and I can't imagine that kinda game actually happens.

[Grim Portent]

I've never been in a dnd campaign where we were high enough level to cast any of that shit regardless. Must be nearly an irl year of meeting regularly and killing tons of monsters to get a cleric to that point by the default rules and I can't imagine that kinda game actually happens.

For 5e at least, following the reccomended number of encounters and exp gains it takes about four sessions to hit level 5 from level 1, at which point Revivify, the weakest rez spell comes online. In practice it's the only rez spell a PC is likey to ever need unless they fight beholders constantly.

Getting to the next rez spell takes a lot longer, because of how 5e is structured. The design intent is for games to mostly occur between levels 5 and 16, with levelling outside of that range being faster than it is within the range.

Thing about rez spells in D&D is that they aren't hard to do in a normal campaign. Money flows like water, so getting the reagents is trivial to the point that it's a cliche for the casters to carry around enough diamond dust to buy a small kingdom. Being disentegrated is something that shouldn't happen often, if ever, most of the time someone dies because something slapped them hard, and revivify can rez you from anything short of being turned into ash provided the caster can get to you within a minute of death, which due to the ranges involved in normal D&D is so trivial it's barely worth mentioning.

Thing is that D&D, especially 5e, intends for death to be nothing more than one of the tools of attrition. It's not a loss state, it's just another way to expend spell slots and gold. It's an actual part of the design philosophy, which is rooted in an outmoded 'dungeon delver' concept that most people don't actually play like.

[Criptfeind]

5es a lot more loosey goosey with the treasure and expected wealth of a party then previous editions, and the economic assumptions underpinning the fantasy worlds it takes place in a lot less fleshed out in general. It's a GM decision about how trivial the cost of reagents for expensive spells are for parties. To quote the DMG "You can hand out as much or as little treasure as you want." There's no particular reason to go with an average if you don't want it to be so trivial to cast such spells.

[Egan_BW]

For 5e at least, following the reccomended number of encounters and exp gains it takes about four sessions to hit level 5 from level 1

The recommended number of encounters per session is absurd unless you're both a well oiled wargaming machine of a group AND don't care about anything but fights. It's not how things actually play out with any group I've played with.

[Grim Portent]

Encounters is supposed to include things like traps and social interactions. Convincing someone that they should sell you stuff at a discount, gate guards that they should let you pass, or fording a deep river for example.