DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

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DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by sharkmafia (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 12:13 pm

and also cyberpunks if you want

What is your favorite tabletop roleplay game? Do you have a group?? Are they cool??? Post about your dungeons and shadowruns and dragons and pathfinders and whatever the 40k tabletop game is calleds here

Personally I like 4th edition best out of the DnDs. It has cool and well-designed combat, imo, but nothing about its design precludes heavy roleplay. The only system i like better in terms of mechanics is 13th age, and finding a group for that is a lot harder. So, currently I'm playing in a 4e campaign. My dude is a hybrid executioner/cleric, and his design kind of illustrates the number of character options available to you in 4e.

He's a former hitman who was converted to faith in prison, and he tries his best to be a good person, do good works, and make up for his past life, but in terms of skillset he's still a far better assassin than he is a cleric. Also he's sickly as a result of being fuckin' old and spending most of his life in medieval prison, but he's spry and knows how to dodge. All of this is reflected in his mechanics (low fortitude, high AC/reflex/will, much better dexterity than wisdom meaning his assassin powers are much better than his cleric ones). You just don't get this level of customization built into 3/5e.

that said all tabletop games are good+fun! I've also played 3.5e, 5e, shadowrun, and 13th age, although none of those groups lasted as long as this one.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by The Ghost of Ember (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 12:38 pm

I play DnD 5e with some friends. currently I am DMing a new game just doing a simple tales from the yawning portal quest. I'm debating whether i should continue on to storm kings thunder or just do my own thing next.

I previously played the cleric up to 3rd level in 5e doing Mine of Phandelver. I was a crabby old man cleric who was a religious scholar, it was fun. He did end up being more tanky then I thought he would.

4e seems like the most advanced and balanced version of dnd but I feel like it should maybe have been marketed as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons? With something like 5e being just 'Dungeons and Dragons', like they did back in the day. Dungeons and Dragons is a gateway game for a lot of people and 4e didn't seem to be as conductive towards that.

I've also played Nobilis, which is a great fuck-around game even if its clearly almost batshit fanfiction.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 2:42 pm

I'm currently in a group playing Pathfinder, following an adventure path cooked up by our GM. It's pretty fun. We also did a single session demo of Starfinder recently, which was a ton of fun. Adding sci-fi and tons of cool playable alien races to the Pathfinder universe was really cool, and I liked the changes to the HP system. We were only level 1, so we didn't get to try out many of the cool weapons and gadgets, but I imagine that things get even cooler the farther in you make it.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 4:03 pm

I'm more about the roleplay than the combat. I find the drawn out combat of 4e to be quite laborious, but for people with the opposite likes to myself I can see that it'd work well. I'm in a 5e campaign right now with a bunch of people I know.

The premise of our campaign is that we're all 13-17 year old urchins at an orphanage. The orphanage is putting us through a vocational course in adventuring because we don't show any aptitude for real trades. Being parentless teenagers puts the usual dickish behaviours of an adventuring party into a weird context. We're young enough to be passed off as asshole teens but not old enough to buy beer at the taverns.

I'm part of two IRL groups who've played all sorts of tabletop games:

Pathfinder
DnD 5e
EDH (The best Magic: The Gathering variant ever)
Necromunda (A warhammer 40k game where you battle your small hive gangs)
Dragon Racer (A cute board game about racing dragons)
Settlers of Catan (A hex grid tribal expansion game that encourages trading and being a huge dickhole)
Risk: Legacy (Risk but with crazy shit)
Pandemic: Legacy (Pandemic but with crazy shit)
Pandemic: The cure (A dice based version of Pandemic that's much easier to set up)
Dark Souls: The board game (Really hard and really rewarding)
Netrunner (A difficult asymmetrical card game that pits one hacker player against one corporation player)
Die Zwerge (A co op game where dwarf heroes have to defend against untold hordes of enemies)

There are so many others I can't think of
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Aramek (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 4:18 pm

4e DnD is, in my opinion, the best system.

I've liked them all, but wow that was seemed tailor made for all the shit I love.

It's so tactical and crunchy, and all the powers are cool and the builds are so neat and varied, I can tolerate all the RP that goes on.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by sharkmafia (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 5:52 pm

West Filly wrote: ↑
Wed Nov 15, 2017 4:03 pm
I'm more about the roleplay than the combat. I find the drawn out combat of 4e to be quite laborious, but for people with the opposite likes to myself I can see that it'd work well. I'm in a 5e campaign right now with a bunch of people I know.
See, I don't see the system as an impediment to rp. Our group often goes entire sessions without getting into a fight, but it's nice to have one, and for it to be actually interesting, when it comes up in the story.

Also for long campaigns it's nice to have mechanics that can match the bonkers places your characters will go. The higher levels of 4e stuff get increasingly grandiose, which is actually great when you've been playing for 20 levels and your character has basically saved everyone in the world at least once. Not that I've gotten that far yet, but i have high hopes for this group- pretty stable.

Like, things get a little bit tricker with character building a hybrid in paragon/epic tier but I think I can see my way forward with reflavored dark watcher paragon path -> avatar of hope epic destiny, as my dude becomes less of an assassin and more of an actual cleric. I'll also probably retrain one of his two poisons to another cleric daily as time goes on, and so on. This is a character arc reflected in actual game mechanics.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Octavia (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 6:31 pm

I've been playing with the same D&D group since high school, back when 3rd Edition was brand new. We switched to 3.5 when it was introduced, but we stuck with 3.5 even after 4th edition was released. We finally switched to 5th edition with a new campaign this year, which I'm enjoying very much so far.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Thu Nov 16, 2017 4:29 am

sharkmafia wrote: ↑
Wed Nov 15, 2017 5:52 pm
See, I don't see the system as an impediment to rp. Our group often goes entire sessions without getting into a fight, but it's nice to have one, and for it to be actually interesting, when it comes up in the story.

Also for long campaigns it's nice to have mechanics that can match the bonkers places your characters will go. The higher levels of 4e stuff get increasingly grandiose, which is actually great when you've been playing for 20 levels and your character has basically saved everyone in the world at least once. Not that I've gotten that far yet, but i have high hopes for this group- pretty stable.

Like, things get a little bit tricker with character building a hybrid in paragon/epic tier but I think I can see my way forward with reflavored dark watcher paragon path -> avatar of hope epic destiny, as my dude becomes less of an assassin and more of an actual cleric. I'll also probably retrain one of his two poisons to another cleric daily as time goes on, and so on. This is a character arc reflected in actual game mechanics.
My main issue with 4e is that when combat starts you're locked into it for hours, compared to other systems that seem to get to the point quicker. Also in spite of my liking for Necromunda and other mini battle games, I much prefer theater of mind combat in RPGs as opposed to combat where you're positioning figures on a grid.

I doubt you can ever hinder roleplaying in an RPG, given that people in a room pretending to be characters can always just roleplay for a while without touching the "game". 4e puts so much detail into combat, however, that once combat is entered into the combat seems to sprawl out. It's like I'm reading this cool book and then suddenly it's a chessboard and I can't turn the page until I checkmate the opponent, which would be fine if the game of chess didn't take hours.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by sharkmafia (?) » Thu Nov 16, 2017 2:48 pm

Well, if you consider the combat a chore then that would be a problem, yeah. You seem like the exact opposite of aramek in terms of what you like about tabletop, whereas I fall somewhere in the middle.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Fri Nov 17, 2017 8:12 am

My D&D group started with 4th edition and we liked it a lot.
Yeah. The combat was drawn out but heck all the classes had cool stuff to do in combat. All the powers felt different and were cool.
Even the fighter class didn't do just the same attack action each round. It was a magical time.
That doesn't mean that we skimped on roleplay. We had a lot of roleplay. The combat/roleplay ratio is more a thing that is in the control of the DM and the group itself and not by the system.
The character creation was tedious but we used a software that helped us in that regard but at that time we enjoyed to optimize our characters to our liking.

We played 4th edition until 5th edition had more supplement material to make a new campaign worthwhile, also the 4th edition campaign was far from being at an end when the core books were released. Until then we had a few one-shot (up to 2 sessions long) adventures to gauge the gameplay of 5th edition.

Later this year we end our current 5th edition campaign. The previous DM got a bit tired and a player wanted to be the lead this time, so the switch went smoothly so far (in regards to a beginner). We play in the criminally under-supported Eberron campaign setting since the 4th edition. The lack of official support didn't stop us continuing with 5th edition. Most of the fluff we got from 3rd edition when we played 4th edition anyway because in the 4th edition times it got a lackluster support. We decided to only use the core classes and nothing from Unearthed Arcana due to balancing issues and being able to check the validity of the character. There was an Unearthed Arcana post about Eberron but some things weren't right, like for example the Warforged, that seemed to be highly imbalanced.

5th edition was a breath of fresh air at the beginning with the very fast combat. But it was a small disappointment for me because the huge array of customization options from 4th edition went away. With the standard progression table I had the impression I had no control over how my character develops. I still feel that way but less so. I realized that this doesn't matter so much. I'm playing an elf ranger and 5th edition didn't play any favor to that class. Most of the times I cast Hunter's Mark and shoot arrows. The spells my ranger can use are also very limited and limiting. The wizard on the other hand has the best time in comparison because the spells are favoring the use out-of-combat use.
I still have a good time hanging out with my friends so I can look past the poor performance of my ranger.

We anticipate the release of Xanathar's Guide to Everything. A handful of new class variations will make the cookie-cutter core classes a bit more interesting, as far as I know. With that book we want to make the cut. I plan to play a bard to get out of my comfort zone and to benefit from the rich range of spells, and still being able to do some melee combat.
Our plan is to set the setting into the frontier. The frontier to an unknown and undiscovered land and our characters are the inhabitants to a frontier town and make it run. In the past we discovered that the money we gather was mostly meaningless due to the lack of a proper money sink and traveling from town to town didn't make us connected to the world. My bard will be the major and the owner of a saloon.
We want also keep our progress reflected on that town and the buildings we own.

This is my tavern:
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Ground level and top level

We made a simple system to upgrade our houses:
100 gold per 5foot tile on ground level
120 gold per 5foot tile on each level above ground
150 gold per 5 foot tile on below ground level

Each player has a budget of 2500 gold, except for business owners who get 5000 gold as starting budget and the initial set of modest furniture is free.

I'm really excited.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Fri Nov 17, 2017 4:09 pm

Yeah, I got my copy of Xanathar's Guide to Everything a few days ago, and it's pretty great. I love the little asides from Xanathar sprinkled throughout the book (similar to the ones from Volo and Elminster in Volo's Guide to Monsters), but by far, the best part of the book for me is Appendix B: tables of names for characters. (I'm bad at naming things.)

It's got names for dragonborn, dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, half-orcs, tieflings but best of all, it's got names from seventeen different real world cultures for humans. :-D

Arabic, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, English, French, German, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Mesoamerican, Niger-Congo, Norse, Polynesian, Roman, Slavic and Spanish. I will never want for names for characters in RPGs ever again. :awesomedash:

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Nov 18, 2017 3:27 am

You cannot imagine how bad I'm at naming my characters.
The first 5 characters (mostly one-shot characters) all started with an 'A', what severely distracted my friends because they were confused after character #3 to what name my character has.
Then I stole the name Zeddicus for my wizard from the Sword of Truth book series (also The Legend of the Seeker TV show).
After that I had another wizard with the name Meltor, but he didn't cast any fire magic.
My current character is an elf ranger called Fenrir. I was totally oblivious about Norse mythology.

My next character, a changeling bard, amplifies that because I have not only name my changeling (an easy one syllable name) but also his alter egos.
The names so far:
True name: Sam
The tavern owner: Sam Copper, Max Valiant, Lance Montaine
Mayor: Guy Truman

My character's partner/wife (also changeling):
True name: Pon
Tavern owner's wife: Alice (+ my character's last name)
Mayor's secretary: Clara Freeman

Tavern's name: Drunk Unicorn (To the drunk unicorn)

I'm somewhat dissatisfied with my current choices, except for the tavern's name.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Aramek (?) » Sat Nov 18, 2017 8:51 am

None of those names are very German at all. They all sound like badass pulp novel heroes. I love them.

Just use Space Mutiny names too, those are always great.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:05 am

Well... Personally I want to avoid German-sounding names because they sound all very mundane to my ears.
When I step out of my home I see people with names like Peter, BjΓΆrn, Bernd, Thomas, Christian, Heiko, Sven, Wolfgang...
Also it avoids having any overlap with my friend's names or their relatives and friends. I guess that it'd be awkward.
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Your MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue.

"So you're saying..."

Your brain is about 20% tumor.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Aramek (?) » Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:07 am

Here, this are all perfect:


When I step out of my home I see people with names like Peter, BjΓΆrn, Bernd, Thomas, Christian, Heiko, Sven, Wolfgang...
All good Dwarf names. You live in a dwarven kingdom.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:15 am

Haha... Those names from the MST3K Space Mutiny clip are sooooo bad.

Whenever we encounter a NPC dwarf, despite having a proper name, it automatically gets this fitting name from us players: "Axtbart Bartaxt" (axe-beard beard-axe)
I don't know why but it stuck around for a long time and it is hard to get rid of this habit.
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Your MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue.

"So you're saying..."

Your brain is about 20% tumor.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Aramek (?) » Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:20 am

My go-to fast, mockable name system is <race>-y(ey)(ie) Mc<Class>-o.

"This is my good friend Elfy McBardo."

"This is the kingdom of the legendary adventurer, Humie McFighto!"
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Strangething (?) » Sun Nov 19, 2017 1:34 pm

Adiwan wrote: ↑
Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:15 am
Whenever we encounter a NPC dwarf, despite having a proper name, it automatically gets this fitting name from us players: "Axtbart Bartaxt" (axe-beard beard-axe)
I don't know why but it stuck around for a long time and it is hard to get rid of this habit.
When I was obsessed with Neverwinter Nights, I made a whole clan of dwarf PCs of the Axebeard clan. :pinkieshrug:
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sun Nov 19, 2017 3:50 pm

This reminds me of an old running gag from our group.

"I want to borrow your boat."

This causes a laugh every time.
In our first newbie campaign, that was as structured as a heap of mikado sticks, we had to overthrow an evil wizard.
The wizard lived in a tower in the middle of a lake and the lake was surrounded by a dozen of lizardfolk villages.
As you might think we tried to ask for a boat, however those lizardfolk people were loyal to the wizard.
A fact that we conveniently disregarded in our decision making.
It ended in a catastrophic way with a near total party kill. We survived it barely.

That quote became synonymous with: "Let's make a stupid decision!"
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Your MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue.

"So you're saying..."

Your brain is about 20% tumor.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Aramek (?) » Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:06 pm

Strangething wrote: ↑
Sun Nov 19, 2017 1:34 pm
When I was obsessed with Neverwinter Nights, I made a whole clan of dwarf PCs of the Axebeard clan. :pinkieshrug:
Khelgar's "It's not fair" speech is still the coolest fucking thing.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:00 pm

I haven’t played tabletop since the early β€˜90s (basically since we all went off to college). At the time that would have been Torg (which we bought the license to for a little while) and Star Wars.

The last DnD I bought was 3e, and the last DnD I actually played was 1e. :granny:

Our group in high school was more about superheroes: I ran one Champions campaign and my friend ran another.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Strangething (?) » Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:48 pm

I've been playing D&D since 2nd edition was fairly new. I'm playing a 5e game now.

Anyone here a fan of Fate? It's the system used for the Dresden Files RPG. When I homebrew stuff, it's my go-to system, because it strikes such a perfect balance between indie and traditional RPG rules.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:43 pm

Finally I got Xanathar's Guide to Everything!
It has some great options, especially for my upcoming bard character that will be a major of a small frontier town. The College of Glamour will be too awesome for that purpose.
With Enthralling Performance at 3rd level I can gain hardcore fans that idolize my character up to 1 hour and speaks only well of me.
This can be very handy as a politician.
At 6th level I can cast Command additionally to that, without expending a spell slot. This means that I can always use Command at the highest spell slot level my character has, which means that I can control more people.

The College of Swords is also not so bad whenever someone wants to make a Bard/Ranger multiclass but doesn't want to spend 3 levels to gain the fighting styles.

I'm not fond of the College of Whispers. It has a wonderful set of features but I cannot see me playing a mischievous character seeding paranoia and dealing with toxicity.

I'm not done reading with Xanathar but each page has a little treat that has something inspiring.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:25 pm

Today our current D&D campaign has ended. It was bonkers. First our beholder landlord (also an underground crime lord who has an orphanage) turned out to be a cult leader that our group fought against several times, then it turned out that the beholder was working towards saving the world from a super dangerous extra-planar monstrosity, and then my character was part of a prophecy to stop the beast by sacrificing himself because my character's ancestor was Vol http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_of_Vol BUT my character used the vizier ability of the deck of many things that he bought ages ago to determine a non-lethal way for my character to defeat the monstrosity and then my character got the information that my character has to father a reincarnation of Vol that can defeat it but luckily the beholder had a time-dilation chamber around the portal from which the monstrosity should come out from to make that possible.

In an epilogue my character went on a tour (we played mainly fairing entertainers this campaign) and had a dating show which was a facade to father that child.

Don't ask me. It's by far not my proudest moment and the least heroic and least honorable.

In the previous campaign my wizard character had a more heroic ending with steering a spelljammer into a gargantuan dragon.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Dec 30, 2017 4:53 pm

I spent the last days to paint some figures for the next campaign

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I'll name the donkey "Unicorn" because he's magnificent :vogue: .
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Your MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue.

"So you're saying..."

Your brain is about 20% tumor.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Aramek (?) » Sat Dec 30, 2017 5:04 pm

You are so damned talented.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Dec 30, 2017 6:05 pm

Aramek wrote: ↑
Sat Dec 30, 2017 5:04 pm
You are so damned talented.
Thanks :hiii:
I have a little bit of an artistic talent, or more an eye for colors and composition.
(don't look at my pony ask blog that I made and that I am terribly neglecting at the moment for over 2 years) :-I

Maybe the self-deprecating humble person in me is speaking but they look better from afar (as they usually are).
The closer you get the more nasty details appear. I wish I had a steadier hand for painting minis.
It's super exhausting and the lack of sunlight at this time of the year isn't helping much either.
Also I didn't put extraordinarily much time into each figure (max 4 hours each).

Here a better close-up of a few the minis
Image

Still much better than my first mini
Image

Or my second-ish mini (I made a succubus in between those two but was scrapped)
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The Ghost of Ember
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by The Ghost of Ember (?) » Sat Dec 30, 2017 6:18 pm

Adiwan wrote: ↑
Sat Dec 30, 2017 4:53 pm
I spent the last days to paint some figures for the next campaign

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I'll name the donkey "Unicorn" because he's magnificent :vogue: .
who's playing vladamir lenin?
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RIP Syndrome wrote: ↑
Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:56 pm
this universe is cursed

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Dec 30, 2017 6:30 pm

My changeling bard (third from the right) will be the mayor (I guess you mean the second mini from the right).
He'll have a changeling wife (second from the left) and she'll be the mayor's secretary (third from the left).

I also decided on their final names at last:
My main character (changeling bard): Varrick Blackstone
His wive: Alana Blackstone
Mayor: Garrick Trueman
Mayor's secretary: Clara Freeman
Donkey: Unicorn

I have no real plan for the mini on the far left. I guess it'll be a female version of Varrick whenever I need that. At first I thought about it being the wife but I chose a more different design.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Captain Rufus (?) » Sat Dec 30, 2017 9:10 pm

Oddly enough I just blogged about rpgs and griped about DnD: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2017/12 ... s.html?m=1

Yall can find lots of DnD stuff in the blog back when I actually played RPGs. :fluttersmith:

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Marioland1 (?) » Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:52 pm

I played once with a few people over the internet (don't remember which edition), but I wound up as the only person on the "Good" side of the line while everyone else was so overbearingly "Evil" that they burned the entire starting town to cinders before we got out. Basically, the entire group aside from the GM (who was actually kinda swell given the company) was full of total asshats who acted like asshats and basically made the game into a personal pyromaniac playground.

The only good thing that happened in that short time was the moment where everyone else was rolling incredibly low for Intimidation (well outside of my usual skills) while I said "neigh" before rolling a perfect 20. The GM made the poor sod faint in terror from my simple horsey sound, apparently completely terrified of it. Even in a group of unappreciative Evils, they got a good laugh off of that one.

I'd really like to try again with a group that's not full of total asshats sometime, whether it's IRL or over the internet. I got a minor start in roleplaying off of a text-based browser game (although one that contains textual nudity, so I'm not gonna link it just to be safe), and I found it fun to do, and even though Mom has a negative stigma on D&D (after hearing some tragic tale somewhere about people getting so absorbed in their roleplaying that they died because they forgot basic human needs like food and sleep), I still want to give it a fairer try.

Also, those figures are amazing. I'm impressed.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:39 pm

So, my local playgroup has run a few testing sessions of Paizo's new Starfinder system and setting, and it's pretty cool. It takes all the flavor and lore of the Pathfinder fantasy setting, but transplants it into a sci-fi future, with all that implies.

Mechanically, it modifies the hit point system to not use die rolls anymore, and adds in stamina points (an easily regain-able buffer to hit points) and resolve points (a resource used for class abilities). The skill system remains largely unchanged, except with similar or redundant skills being consolidated into things like athletics or life science. I haven't explored all of the new classes fully, but I really love the new Envoy class, since it's a support class that's focused on skill checks and inspiring allies in combat. It's also really refreshing to play a game without all of the bloat that comes with dozens of books with new spells and gadgets and such, though I suppose that those will come with time.

Lore and roleplaying-wise, the setting has a ton of flavor, and not just from the transplanted Pathfinder lore. In addition to all of the playable races from that setting, there's tons of new alien races that run the gamut of nifty sci-fi designs without seeming too cliched. Combined with the introduction of computers and cybernetics, it allows for a ton more character customization than before, so it's a lot harder for two players to go into a game stepping on each other's toes when it comes to character design and functionality. Overall I had a blast playing it, and hopefully we can put the game in rotation with the other systems we play.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Captain Rufus (?) » Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:47 pm

If you want heroic or at least not GTA rpg edition I recommend avoiding World of Darkness stuff. I was derisively referred to as a White Hat for not wanting to play my Changeling character as a grimdark edgelord like nearly everyone else was. Vampire is even worse.

Technically my name is my 40k Chaos Marine commander who in DnD terms is Lawful Evil. My explanation is that he tends to do all the wrong things for all the right reasons.

Problem is most rpgers just want to play Jason Voorhees types that are super powerful and can run roughshod over things that can't fight back. Idgi. I want to play the heroes I cant be irl or in Rufus' case do redemption arcs.

But even my comedic joke gimmick characters are basically helpful, even if they want to destroy humanity and leave it to the Penguins.

Game groups really should communicate and compromise on what they all want even before character generation. Much like relationships in general folks almost never do this. And passive aggressive actions or yelling is not communication.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Tue Jan 02, 2018 11:18 pm

You need a group that wants the same things.

I've played a high level Pathfinder game where we're the world's leading group of villains and heroes try to stop us, where we're constantly backstabbing each other and on a few pre agreed occasions we've even had fatal PvP combat. We were all asshats and often asshats in ways that wouldn't be recommended in an RPG, but because we agreed on it it worked well.

I've played a low level inquisitor game that was basically a cheesy horror movie where we were constantly wondering who the GM would kill next and how. Again people often gripe about the GM opposing players but we knew from the start that the GM wanted to make this gory and difficult.

It's all about setting the tone, and as a GM I often get this incredibly wrong, but my GMs are usually great at this.

One time we were starting a one off game where we're all halflings, and the GM announced (before character creation) that an NPC was called "sado gaggins". Immediately it sets the tone that he's going for low brow comedy, and if you're with people who you've broken the ice with and are on a level with, all you need is a little time to think of some awful puns of your own. I was George Kush, the dopey est mother out there.

One GM set the scene that our party arrives at before character creation, which was a visceral description of the gore that an alien left behind when eating humans. He then went on to say, out of character, that this is likely going to be how you end up. We had already discussed that the game was going to be along the lines of a video game called Dead Space. We basically had all the warnings not to roll characters we're particularly invested in.

Something magical then happened. Some of us went out of our way to put in character flaws like "never retreats", "is too curious", "Believes in his own capabilities in a cocksure 'no, watch me do it' kind of way" or "always does what [other character] says without question because he's loyal to her in a creepy nice guy way". We did this to make sure they had a mechanism by which they'd end up getting eaten by aliens.

It's hard to get everyone to agree on the same thing, which is why setting the tone is the first thing to do. If you go strong with your tone then people can say yes or no from the outset, where if you just say "oh we're setting up an RPG it's going to have some medieval shit whatever" then people will join in for the fun game and bring their own misaligned preconceptions with them.

If your party is going to have chains and latex you better put some pictures of chains and latex on the poster, with "BDSM" printed in big letters you know? Don't just say "hey I'm having a party at my place want to come over?"
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Tue Jan 02, 2018 11:28 pm

A good thing to do is be honest with your fellow roleplayers even outside of any particular campaign. If someone has an idea for a campaign and you don't think it'd be enjoyable, be honest with them and say "nah I wouldn't be down for that". Yes it hurts feelings a little but if you then come up with some ideas they're more open to throw "nah I wouldn't be down for that" back at you when your idea sucks. Eventually someone will come out with something that everyone starts riffing off and all you need to do is pick the GM. It's a lot nicer than the standard situation where a guy has spent the past year fantasising about their perfect world and lore, pouring their heart and soul into a campaign that their friends are too polite to tell them sucks, and which the GM's passion for is steadily dying, until one day it all emerges in some unrelated inter player drama.

That was me. I made the crappy game :lol:
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Tue Jan 02, 2018 11:38 pm

Who wants to play a roleplaying game where you're a bunch of martial artists who try to fight capitalism with kung fu? So there's these greedy bankers who tear off their ties and it's just muscle all the way down, but communism is ninjaing in and you're all cheesy pulpy type kung fu communist action heroes. A game where it's less about whether you defeat the bad guy and more about how badass you can be doing your inevitable duty as an action hero.

Describe your character by describing the opening scene at the start of the movie where they do a cool thing and then the camera freezes and their name appears.

That's the kind of dumb idea I'm talking about. These dime a dozen crazy ideas set the tone and allow people to go "yay" or "nay" from the outset.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Logicgate (?) » Wed Jan 03, 2018 8:00 am

I think the "Jason Vorhees" problem has a lot to do with D&D's influence on roleplaying, its roots as a wargame, and its general combat focus. I mean, we can talk about how many other ways there are to resolve problems and skill checks all we like, but how much of the D&D ruleset is fundamentally focused around combat? What percentage of the base rulebook is combat and items that specifically enhance one's ability to kill things? For all that players choose their own paths, they'll usually go where the game is, ya know?

And early efforts to simulate as much as possible with the rules and accommodate player choice in published adventures MOSTLY boiled down to making sure that everything had stats that specified exactly how hard it would be to kill and exactly how rewarding. The things a system is good at and focused on influence how it is played.

That's not a bad thing! It also means sometimes you can shake things up in a huge way by playing a different system. There are a lot of specialized roleplaying systems built to simulate particular genres, and that can be a way to communicate the type of game you're in for.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:26 pm

I built an elf that is basically pearl as a 5th edition character at 5th level and I'm not even ashamed.

Spears are quarterstaffs but strictly better, that's the main weapon right there.

Dual wielding swords works because finesse means she can use dex on the damage even though it's not her monk weapon. Yes that means she can't do monk weapon things, but it's there purely to maximise the amount of melee weapon attacks in a turn. The stunning blow class feature doesn't specify that it has to be a monk weapon, just that you can apply it after a hit on a melee weapon attack, so dual wielding gives you a third melee weapon attack in the turn with the potential for delivering stuns.

It's tricky to pull off, but one day I will stun three separate enemies in a single turn.

Edit: shortswords are monk weapons anyway :-D
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 3:16 pm

I dunno all the 5e jargon, but please tell me she watches the other characters while they sleep.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 4:05 pm

Most characters need to sleep 8 hours to be fully rested. Elves on the other hand only need to meditate for 4.

Yes she watches people while they sleep and then cooks breakfast for them to be ready for when they wake up.
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