Table top RPG thread: D&D, Pathfinder, GURPs, you name it we'll roleplay it.

[JBSchroeds]

You are right in that I over plan it, but I am so conflicted on this. Just this week my GM spent 20 minutes setting up a very small encounter, then once we started he noticed he did it wrong and we had to do it again after 10 more minutes. To me that can't happen. It was likely an on the fly encounter but I would make sure I would have my 1-3 different sets/levels of reskinable enemies in the barrel ready to rock for any situation. It killed the rest of that game.

Ugh, that's teeeerrrrrrrible. That's one of the fastest ways to kill momentum in a game. If I tried something like resetting a combat halfway through with my last group I would have had a general mutiny on my hands. It sounds like the guy needs to learn to roll with the punches better.

On having stock encounters ready to go: I think that's a good idea.

It looks like we have a few newer or interested players so any advice on where to begin, what to expect, and how to play is welcome from the rpg vets


My one suggestion is on etiquette. If you are new to RPGs and are looking to join a game the biggest tip I have is attend when you say you are going to attend. Nothing ruins a game more then last minute cancels or flake outs. It puts the GM in a terrible position and likely wasted some of the planning he/she did. So give notice ASAP when you know you won't be there and try to never leave your attendance up to a "maybe."

Also, if you are I a group, make it a point to attend regularly

That's all I got

Yeah, don't run on "gamer time." Be punctual! Habitually late people ruin things for everybody.

Oh, also: bringing communal snacks is always welcome. If everybody pitches in and picks up a single bag of chips or 2L of soda (or six pack of beer if your group is so inclined) you can have a fully stocked game session for $5 a person.

 

[Irenaeus]

To try and mitigate the "15 minute adventuring day" where spellcasters burn through their spells and then the party hits the hay I added a number of support feats. They add spell-like abilities that key off the most powerful spell the wizard has memorized. So as long as they keep their best spells un-cast the repeatable ability is more powerful, but not nearly as good as if they cast the spell.

This is a completely awesome idea! Definitely the best d20-related house rule I've heard in a long time.

More to come tomorrow. Bedtime now.

This is some solid d20 mash up. Very well done.

Thanks. I suspect it's harder to pull off than come up with, though. The devil's in the details.

 

[JBSchroeds]

This is a completely awesome idea! Definitely the best d20-related house rule I've heard in a long time.

One of the books that came out at the end of the 3.5 life cycle (I think it was Complete Mage) does this sort of thing, so it's not really my concept. IIRC they are called reserve feats, but they have much narrower prerequisites based of specific elements and spell subtypes.

 

[BeRGLeZ]

SO jealous of everybody in this thread (most)!

I am yet to actually play a dungeons and dragons/tabletop RPG game; my father had an olddddd school D&D set from the 70s or 80s and since I was a boy I had been infatuated with it's potential.
Perhaps that planted the seed in me to love all things D&D - Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights - amazing video game experiences for me.
I've always wanted to play in a group - but actually finding dedicated people and GM's is a daunting task.

The closest thing I've had is weekend LAN's of Neverwinter nights - that was great fun, getting together with a group of people and storming dungeons and looting. Great times.

 

[HomeRun916**]

any1 here play munchkin?

http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/game/

So random, just was in line behind a kid buying that at Hastings today. What is it?

 

[JBSchroeds]

So random, just was in line behind a kid buying that at Hastings today. What is it?

It's a cardgame. There's a bunch of different versions based around different themes. In the game you try killing monsters so that you can get treasure and go up levels, with the first person to level 10 winning the game. The game has a good sense of humor, poking fun at the different genre conventions. It's a lot of fun.

 

[Conrad]

Yep. Not actually an rpg, it is a card/board game but most regular rpg games I go to embrace it as a time filler when someone isn't there yet or something comes up.

 

[Ronnie911]

Never been into RPG, clicked on this thread just out of curiosity...its like trying to read a second language!

 

[Cyke_out]

I find the best way of dealing with the 15 minute adventuring day is to handle it out of game with your players, or in game with reasons why the party can't rest.

My group understands that the general rule is 3-5 encounters per day and each class is designed to handle that. If a character gets really fucked up or an encounter went worse than I originally planned, then maybe certain exceptions are required.

My group is made up of older players and we try our hardest to keep metagaming out and maintain the illusion of a real-working setting. It makes no sense for a group of adventurers and bad-asses to take an 8 hour sleep after every single fight.

 

[Gaeric]

I worked on my own game for some time, still have most of the content in it. I enjoyed designing it, maybe one day I'll finish it up, polish it a bit, and publish it. It's based on bug-eyed-monster movies with a healthy dose of X-Com/Starship Troopers.

The last tabletop RPG I played was Warhammer Fantasy with my then-fiancee and a group of 3 other players and 1 asshole GM. I say "asshole GM" because he wouldn't tell us the planned adventure, then when our choices strayed away from what he had planned he did everything he could do to kill us all off so we'd have to make new characters that would fit in with what he wanted us to do.

We ended up leaving the group when he forced a "religious experience" on my character, making him give up his life of mercenary work. However, rather than just trash my character, I chose a religion that had Warrior Priests and went on a pilgrimage to an ancient, evil-infested temple to purge it and restore it to the worship of Sigmar. He was fucking pissed off, every day we'd be assaulted by hordes of orcs & bounty hunters and all sorts of shit, it got to the point where in the last game one of the other PCs (whose character died for the third time that night) just got up and punched the GM in the fucking mouth. Nobody got up to help the GM, nobody liked him, it just stopped being fun, we all left.

 

[DoctorTaco]

Interesting read on gaming etiquette:

http://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=http:...ys-to-be-a-better-roleplayer/&h=LAQFKD5-C&s=1

 

[Thrawn33]

I just remember playing D&D with this guy who created a whole campaign world during his time deployed overseas. He had several big ass three ring binders of material for his game world, so he could literally react to anything we came at him with. Wish i had the free time to create something like that.

Total free will in his game, if we went off course of his intended track, he didn't bat an eye because he had the alternatives set "So you're not going north? ::flips a few pages and rolls D20::...ok on your second day of travel you notice in the distance a burning town, several large reptillian figures fly overhead...."

Best DM I've ever played with.

 

[Cyke_out]

I just remember playing D&D with this guy who created a whole campaign world during his time deployed overseas. He had several big ass three ring binders of material for his game world, so he could literally react to anything we came at him with. Wish i had the free time to create something like that.

Total free will in his game, if we went off course of his intended track, he didn't bat an eye because he had the alternatives set "So you're not going north? ::flips a few pages and rolls D20::...ok on your second day of travel you notice in the distance a burning town, several large reptillian figures fly overhead...."

Best DM I've ever played with.

wow, that is a lot of work. I've seen shit like that before, but it's way too much for me. I don't like giving my players a premade map of my own created setting. If I plan for them to run into a band of orcs, I allow them to pick their direction and no matter which way they are going, they'll face that band of orcs. It's like hiding the rails and giving them the illussion of free will.

 

[Conrad]

I just remember playing D&D with this guy who created a whole campaign world during his time deployed overseas. He had several big ass three ring binders of material for his game world, so he could literally react to anything we came at him with. Wish i had the free time to create something like that.

Total free will in his game, if we went off course of his intended track, he didn't bat an eye because he had the alternatives set "So you're not going north? ::flips a few pages and rolls D20::...ok on your second day of travel you notice in the distance a burning town, several large reptillian figures fly overhead...."

Best DM I've ever played with.

This is the kind of GMing I like to do. Total world creation. it's tiring but it's the only way I feel comfortable. I create a map and then make regions were its mostly humans, elves, ect and make a bunch of at ready arcs there. , then I tend to have some sort of war in a land that takes some time to travel there and have arch there. I have a wilderness area where it's hardly any civilization and more monsters and dungeon crawl story arches. I have 3-5 kingdoms all with story arches. My maps will have villages they can stop at in between cities and I have arcs in each. In the past I have actually spent my prep time rolling dice for the progression of the arcs, and for the movement of bandits, forces, and other parties on the map. It is over prepping but yeah, makes you feel good.

 

[JBSchroeds]

[shitty DM story]

That's awful. The Plot Hammer is something a DM should always leave tucked away inside his toolbox and only pull out in the most dire of circumstances.

I just remember playing D&D with this guy who created a whole campaign world during his time deployed overseas. He had several big ass three ring binders of material for his game world, so he could literally react to anything we came at him with. Wish i had the free time to create something like that.

Total free will in his game, if we went off course of his intended track, he didn't bat an eye because he had the alternatives set "So you're not going north? ::flips a few pages and rolls D20::...ok on your second day of travel you notice in the distance a burning town, several large reptillian figures fly overhead...."

Best DM I've ever played with.

That's a ton of work. I've done a bit of homebrew setting development, but nothing remotely close to that level of detail. I had one DM that used a setting he and some of his other friends had been developing for probably a decade by the time I joined the game. It was a living setting where things previous characters had done still mattered, and the big stuff we did also made permanent changes (we channeled a Disease spell through an evil artifact and inadvertently released a plague that killed like a million people and an entire region had to be quarantined by some of the epic-level characters who existed from previous games).

That level of detail and commitment can add a whole new layer to a game world, and anybody who hasn't been lucky enough to experience it is missing out.

Interesting read on gaming etiquette:

http://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=http:...ys-to-be-a-better-roleplayer/&h=LAQFKD5-C&s=1

cleaned up link, no facebook rerouter: http://lookrobot.co.uk/2013/06/20/11-ways-to-be-a-better-roleplayer/

Some of that is good advise, some of it is, IMO, not so great

The good:
-No rules lawyering! If you've got a problem with a ruling, make a single argument and then accept the DM's ruling. If you still have a problem with it, discuss it after the game. Don't interrupt everybody's fun to debate a piece of rules minutia
-Be involved. A good DM will keep everybody in the table in the game, but sometimes you need to speak up for yourself and interject into a situation.
-If you are at the game table, you are playing the game, not talking on the phone or playing videogames. Got other business? Take it elsewhere.

The bad
-"Don't try and stop things." To hell with that, if your character would try and stop something, they would try and stop it. Doesn't mean the DM has to let you be successful in your attempt.
-"Take full control of your character." If you're finding your character keeps getting into the situation where he says no to doing things, it isn't necessarily that players fault. The DM should know his group better and tailor things so that it'll be something everybody wants to do. Either that, or the DM should have discouraged a particular character from the outset (i.e. a Paladin in a group of chaotic rogues and bards probably isn't the best idea). These games are a group effort, and telling one person that their character just needs to "let it go" or "get with the program" is a good way to alienate somebody (but not that there won't be some players who are just a stick-in-the-mud and need to be booted from the game)
-"Don’t harm other players." This is entirely situational. Intergroup conflict will ruin some groups, but it works perfectly in others. One of the best games I've ever been in had a shitload of conflict between characters with backstabbing and conflicting motivations.

 

[bubkusjones]

I've never played a table-top RPG. Been interested, but don't know anyone around me who does play, nor do I know of any clubs/shops in my area where such-minded people would gather.

 

[Thrawn33]

wow, that is a lot of work. I've seen shit like that before, but it's way too much for me. I don't like giving my players a premade map of my own created setting. If I plan for them to run into a band of orcs, I allow them to pick their direction and no matter which way they are going, they'll face that band of orcs. It's like hiding the rails and giving them the illussion of free will.

I would've loved to be able to build a world like that. I was usually pretty straight up with my players when I DM'd (they were good friends of mine) "look I only got so much material in the world right now, try not to go too crazy". They wanted to play so they'd at least head in the direction it prod them in.

 

[Zer]

This is the kind of thing that fascinates me but I've never actually done (Besides playing Hero Quest back when I was a kid)

I like Spoony's Counter Monkey series where he discusses this shit

 

[zackryder]

So random, just was in line behind a kid buying that at Hastings today. What is it?

kind of a roleplaying card game

based on wat u draw u become a certain race, class, ect, fight monsters, and loot rms

based on expansions theres different items and hirelings, and steeds

 

[Conrad]

I’ve been waiting to tell this story to use it as a “bump” for this thread.

As noted, I consider myself only an average GM. I like to prep but my improv and fast thinking skills aren’t all that great so I would rather be a PC. I do have one GM story I will always cling too. It was a one off based on a gimmick, but a gimmick that worked perfect for that one night.

One of my groups changes games about every six months. In between we have usually have a one off campaign or a board game night. Fiasco, short D&D stories, munchkin, that sort of thing. It was my turn to pick and run it. In a play session near the end of our long campaign, 80s movies such as The breakfast Club, 16 Candles, and other sort of “dating” type movies came up. The women in the group reminisced while the guys joked around and talked about Porky’s and later movies like Swingers and American Pie. Someone made an off hand comment on how we should run a “Dating” campaign. Knowing my game night was coming up, I thought about this as an idea.

In the weeks leading up to my one off, I developed a “dating” system using Gurps lite to build characters with attributes from the core book as a base but basically creating my own mechanics for the actual game. The setting was a modern times house on a lake and the PCs would be late teens. We have 8 players but there was only 7 of us for that night. 6 PCs, 4 guys, 2 women, and me. I told them there would only be one winner. Each person picked positive and negative personal traits.(advantages/disadvantages) I then developed 6 NPCs, 2 male, 4 female that each responded differently to the negative and positive traits. Only 50 points per character creations. We then basically had a dex round where we played common party games like limbo and beer pong. Drunk Olympics we called it. Winners of each game got rewarded points. These points would later be used to “court” the NPCs. I then made a map of the land, where in a later round people would go take their “dates” and could spend money to get to different bases in places such as the car, barn, the raft in the lake(skinny dipping of course) and some other generic places on the land. I told the PC that each NPC had a certain spot that would score them big “Game points” so if they could figure out where to take in NPC in later rounds they would likely win. It was then a role play round where a PC could pick an NPC to chat with, and the PCs could exchange information to each other. It basically turned into a mystery round.We got the laptop and instant messenger out. I would communicate as an NPC with one PC giving them information, and PC would communicate with each other in private using the instant messenger to share info and mislead a bit. There was also an outloud “party mingling” roleplaying where people were rewarded courting points for acting out their characters and for mixing in 80s and 90s nostalgia. The point was to try to see at what “courtship points” level an NPC would go with you. Some NPC were “easy” and others harder but could possible score more points. These first two rounds led to some unique role playing that you don’t see around a table very much. There was a lot of reaction roles and charisma roles to move things along with the NPCs.


This was all crap. The system was extremely broken. That was okay since the players had fun and it did it’s trick as a complete distraction. The actually way a PC won was by being the last alive as the game was actually a slasher with a 215+ pointed Jason Vorhees/Micheal Meyers character heavy on stealth and combat waiting on the outside for people. It turned out really funny. For me at least. One by one the PCs would figure out what NPC they should take out and I would then talk to the player through instant message. The rouse was that I was making them roll to see how far they got with chick without giving the other players “relationship” information, when bassicly they were rolling perception checks and survival type rolls. An example of an IM from me. “I need to tell you information that is crucial to the game but the other players can’t know that any “big” information was given. Can you promise to give no reaction what so ever when I give you this information.” They would reply “yup.” “You are dead. Your character had their throat slashed and are now bleeding out. “ Oh god the reactions to that were priceless.

“wait, what?!?!?!?!”
I killed one of the ladys’s NPC before she died and her intense looks while she was rolling to get away almost gave it away to the other players at the table. I just joked and told the table that STDs were in play. I finally killed off four of them, and on the fourth one I killed him on the way out the door of the house where the last 2 PCs could see them die. The living PCs ran, my killer NPC got one while the other fled to safety as the winner.
I still get comments on that game today. Most of them liked it, I think the fact that I made the final part only like 45 minutes made it go over smoother. Horror RPG games are never all that fun because you know they are horror RPG games. I tried changing that. Gimmicky but fun as hell.