Do libraries carry RPG books? I've never thought to check. Then again only having a Player's Guide or what-have-you for a couple weeks would be kind of tough. A boardgame / tabletop room in a library seems like a slam dunk though if they had the space for it. I wish I was wealthier, there are so many little projects like that that I would want to fund.
My local one has a giant manga and comic book section, so I wouldn't be surprised. But I've never thought to check.
I saw a post on either Facebook or Reddit where someone showed their local library had at least the 5e Player's Handbook. I don't remember if they said whether it had the Dungeon Master's Guide or Monster Manual or not though, but it at least does that one library carries one book
Living and working at a camp with a TTRPG program spoiled me, as there were books available to me for years from the camp stash, thus I didn't need to own any.
So right now I've just got Planet Mercenary that I've never played.
Things I have that I have played in the past but not in a while:
A couple GURPS books
D20 Modern
Star Wars d6 (1987, core and lore books)
XD20
Things I have that I'm currently GM'ing:
Star Wars Edge of the Empire (4 or 5 copies), Age of Rebellion, and Beyond the Rim
Things I have played but have no books for:
Pathfinder 1E
D&D 3.5
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
It would be nice if they were able to do that and then like, set up weekly game nights or whatever to take place at the library to go with it
You'd probably want to keep a copy of each book in perpetual reserve so that it could be used while people are there, but for more popular games you could have multiple copies and lend them out or whatever
Also, it looks like Chicago Public Library does carry RPG books, I found D&D 5E, Dungeon World, and Blades in the Dark on a cursory search
Well as far as I've gotten you either find a way to cut off the entire prime material plane from all the others, or you simply destroy every magical text and artifact and kill everyone in the world who knows magic
I may join another campaign with some work folks, so I think I'll finally get to take my elf rogue that wants to kill magic for a spin
How does one kill magic, exactly?
edit: I'm asking because I'm going to steal that character idea
Just like
keep stabbing at it.
+9
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
I was contemplating starting a 5e game at my local library, they have clubs and stuff, but I don't think I'd want to until I can afford to buy like, a bunch of Player's Handbooks to bring in, and maybe some of the other books that add character stuff.
and probably I should wait until I'm prepared to do an actual long campaign, maybe get an adventure path
all my campaigns go totally off the rails because I get tired of the setting and start over.
Well as far as I've gotten you either find a way to cut off the entire prime material plane from all the others, or you simply destroy every magical text and artifact and kill everyone in the world who knows magic
It's a big project either way, you know
I'd figure cutting off the prime material plane from the rest of the multiverse would require magic to do. And since I'm trying to KILL magic for some reason(magic killed my family and kicked my cat?), using it is probably a no-go.
Unless by cutting it off you mean with like a really big knife
0
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
oh shit, you gotta find the Subtle Knife and use it to cut a hole into Mystra or whoever's domain and then stab them with that knife. It's so sharp that one side cuts anything and the other side cuts reality itself, no way can they handle that
0
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
oh shit, you gotta find the Subtle Knife and use it to cut a hole into Mystra or whoever's domain and then stab them with that knife. It's so sharp that one side cuts anything and the other side cuts reality itself, no way can they handle that
I may join another campaign with some work folks, so I think I'll finally get to take my elf rogue that wants to kill magic for a spin
How does one kill magic, exactly?
edit: I'm asking because I'm going to steal that character idea
I think in the Forgotten Realms setting it would probably be stopping the weave from interacting with your realm.
If you're in Eberron you would just want to recreate the Day of Mourning but on a global scale.
The Mournland still experiences chaotic magical effects constantly, which is not really what my guy wants (and in fact this is probably the event that made him realize magic is too dangerous and civilization should not be so reliant on it)
Edit: I will never say my guy is not a hypocrite
He's an arcane trickster rogue but his code is that he will only use magic for illusion and distraction, never to directly cause magical harm - but he has little hesitation to kill basically anyone by mundane means
He will absolutely use magic to destroy magic if he can be sure it will be the last use of magic ever. And even if it probably results in many deaths he will consider it necessary in the long run
This is the kind of question that you can't really answer without getting deeply philosophical and up your own ass real quick, but this is an RPG thread on a webcomic forum, so I assume we all of us were born up our own asses, and that everyone's on board.
What does magic mean in your game world? Is it a way to break the laws of reality, or is it something that 100% conforms to those laws (but is an obscure use of them that few know about/can leverage)? Is it a process that transforms some physical substance (mana?) into effects, or is it powered by a metaphysical component? Is magic executed directly by practitioners, or do practitioners borrow power from or ask favors of powerful extradimensional entities to do magic for them? A bunch more questions can be asked, of course, and depending on these answers, you'll know if you can kill magic without doing a magic yourself.
If there's a physical fount in the world that spews mana (whether a physical substance, or a mystical one) into the atmosphere, and this ambient mana is what powers magic, then maybe you can just put a real big cork in the fount and be done.
If magic is executed by extradimensional entities on behalf of petitioners, maybe you can cut off lines of communication with them, or convince them to ignore their petitioners.
Maybe magic is just ideas, maybe conversation is magic, so maybe you can travel to the home plane of the god responsible for magic and have a conversation with them. We all know Planescape, right? The right talk with the right entity at the right place at the right time can shift the universe. Is that a magic? I dunno, you tell me, is a song a magic? Oh, is getting to the god's plane a magic? Maybe, but also maybe there are some thin place in the world where you can slip into the astral, and sail that sea into the Outer Plane, all without being magical yourself.
Unacceptable, I expect you to make this DM do several weeks' worth of homework, scholarly reading, and soul-searching on the subject before the first session.
Also not to be a bummer about it but no DM I've had has gone much beyond what's laid out in the material, and we very much know where magic comes from for each class that uses it
I like the way you're thinking about it but it's not something I've seen much leeway with in my games
Yeah, I'm just messin' around, D&D tends to be very clear and delineated about its magic. Like one setting goes "you just drain all the life from plants/animals in a 30-foot radius and use that to make someone with 1 Hit Die or less feel mildly drowsy", another setting might say "it comes from the moons", and another setting might say "oh yeah, magic, that's from Jeff over there".
I wouldn't expect a "we do b&e on orc villages and sell priceless ancient artifacts for pocket change" game to worry too much about What Magic Means, that's more in the realm of something like Planescape ("we do b&e on ideologies and sell priceless emotions for pocket change").
I have very ridiculous and convoluted rules for how magic works for each class.
I had to because my groups always have a Bard in them and I wanted Bard to be like a profession as well and people started asking what the difference was and can that guy also cast spells and inspire courage, so I decided to figure it out, and once that was done, well I might as well keep going...
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Once upon a time, a lady named Mystrararara discovered the server of the universe. Being a cool gal, she opened a series of APIs for consumption. For a time, things were rad. Eventually, exploits were discovered, and server resources were strained.
Alas, the APIs were all publically available and widely consumed and so could not be altered.
That jumbled, half-baked, typo ridden interface....we call magic.
Now Mystrararara is both beloved and reviled, font of magic and overburdened sysadmin of a crumbling infrastructure...
Once upon a time, a lady named Mystrararara discovered the server of the universe. Being a cool gal, she opened a series of APIs for consumption. For a time, things were rad. Eventually, exploits were discovered, and server resources were strained.
Alas, the APIs were all publically available and widely consumed and so could not be altered.
That jumbled, half-baked, typo ridden interface....we call magic.
Now Mystrararara is both beloved and reviled, font of magic and overburdened sysadmin of a crumbling infrastructure...
Just hax0r all teh yuor megabytes and become a GOD
+1
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Once upon a time, a lady named Mystrararara discovered the server of the universe. Being a cool gal, she opened a series of APIs for consumption. For a time, things were rad. Eventually, exploits were discovered, and server resources were strained.
Alas, the APIs were all publically available and widely consumed and so could not be altered.
That jumbled, half-baked, typo ridden interface....we call magic.
Now Mystrararara is both beloved and reviled, font of magic and overburdened sysadmin of a crumbling infrastructure...
One guy tried to give himself admin access, but unfortunately the kernel wasn't really designed for multiple admins or changing admin status, and it broke his account as well as those of his whole group.
+2
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Grey Ghost, maybe your character has a history with the Ashbound druid sect?
Gosh I sure do love a good druid terrorist cult
Big fan of Dark Sun?
Eh, yes and no. It has some stuff I like, for sure, and it seems like something I would be into conceptually, but it also puts a lot of emphasis on psionics, which has never been my jam.
0
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
I was just thinking about the fact that one of the major factions on Athas is a druid terrorist cult, is all.
3cl1ps3 on
+1
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Ah, alright. I've never gotten deep enough into the game to really know its lore - I most actively played D&D during 3.X, where it wasn't really a thing, and I don't think any stuff came out for it while I was playing 4E.
0
GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
Funny that this topic comes up because I'm totally introducing an NPC in my campaign who is a Ranger/Rogue and wants to kill all magic. She is taking the personal route and just going after powerful magic users.
The idea I have with her is that she has connections to one character's past and I can use her to test how far he will go for his own revenge story. Like their goals will align initially but her methods will (hopefully) start to feel extreme and at some point there's a decision to be made on how to deal with her. (that can also function as a campaign exit for that character because the player sometimes waffles on if he wants to switch chars)
Ah, alright. I've never gotten deep enough into the game to really know its lore - I most actively played D&D during 3.X, where it wasn't really a thing, and I don't think any stuff came out for it while I was playing 4E.
A Dark Sun campaign setting, monster manual, and adventure (so 3 books total) were produced for 4th Ed. If I recall correctly, it was around the time they introduced rules for psionics to 4th Ed.
It was an interesting revamp of the setting in that (1) the rules and cosmology were stock 4th Ed D&D (the rules and cosmology for the original 2nd Ed's version were pretty wildly different), and (2) it rewound the timeline for the setting to bring the world back to the state it was after the original boxed set, discarding the events of the Prism Pentad (which was the set of books that revealed the past history of Athas and advanced the setting's plot and socio-politics considerably).
0
astrobstrdSo full of mercy...Registered Userregular
I think a good character background for wanting to kill magic is being a disgruntled stage magician. Guessing your card seems more impressive now that you've slain the occult.
GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
i made a magic-phobic thief as a thought experiment in 4e once, mainly to test whether the class could keep up with average striker optimisation with no magic items (it could, that class is a monster)
I think a good character background for wanting to kill magic is being a disgruntled stage magician. Guessing your card seems more impressive now that you've slain the occult.
When I still played City of Heroes, my demon summoning Mastermind was a guy who wanted to be a stage magician, but unlinking some loops doesn't impress when Chilldonna, mistress of the storm and cold just zoomed overhead. One day he found a dusty book in the backroom of a magic shop and made a deal.
The next weekend, he was at a kid's birthday party and, well, it wasn't a bunny that came out of that hat.
You could rename pets in the game, so I just stuck apostrophes into normal names. It was the family that were his demons. Bel'Inda, Mar'Garet, Joh'Nathon, etc.
+16
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
It would be nice if they were able to do that and then like, set up weekly game nights or whatever to take place at the library to go with it
You'd probably want to keep a copy of each book in perpetual reserve so that it could be used while people are there, but for more popular games you could have multiple copies and lend them out or whatever
Also, it looks like Chicago Public Library does carry RPG books, I found D&D 5E, Dungeon World, and Blades in the Dark on a cursory search
A friend of mine (one of my old players, in fact) runs a weekly game for teens who have never played before at the local library as part of their community program.
There had been so many inquiries for games at the library they actually put out a call for local DMs to see if they could find volunteers available to run a game.
My Star Wars RPG group just finished their first campaign as a reborn merc company liberating a planet from post Death Star 2 Empire remnants.
Their first NPC as part of this is Astrid Wynver, a cybernetics heavy soldier/turbo bad ass who used to work for the rebellion before joining up with said remnants as a cash influx and play acting Death Trooper very well inspite of not being human.
What cool shit should Astrid Wynver be doing on a destiny point spend when the PC's sick her on a task?
Albino Bunny on
0
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
so excited to DM some Dee and Dee today
will the Party make it through my betrapped graveyard? Will they save their new friend?
tune in at 19 o'clock for episode 2: THE RIPPER STRIKES AT MIDNIGHT or, THE BAG LADY'S GAMBIT
(the Bag Lady is an awful Frankenstein's monster with metal claws and a sack full of offal [and treasure, should the Party be brave enough to take a dig])
+2
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
My Star Wars RPG group just finished their first campaign as a reborn merc company liberating a planet from post Death Star 2 Empire remnants.
Their first NPC as part of this is Astrid Wynver, a cybernetics heavy soldier/turbo bad ass who used to work for the rebellion before joining up with said remnants as a cash influx and play acting Death Trooper very well inspite of not being human.
What cool shit should Astrid Wynver be doing on a destiny point spend when the PC's sick her on a task?
what do destiny points do? I haven't played a Star Wars P&P game in like, 15 years
My Star Wars RPG group just finished their first campaign as a reborn merc company liberating a planet from post Death Star 2 Empire remnants.
Their first NPC as part of this is Astrid Wynver, a cybernetics heavy soldier/turbo bad ass who used to work for the rebellion before joining up with said remnants as a cash influx and play acting Death Trooper very well inspite of not being human.
What cool shit should Astrid Wynver be doing on a destiny point spend when the PC's sick her on a task?
what do destiny points do? I haven't played a Star Wars P&P game in like, 15 years
Destiny Points are something the players can spend to upgrade their checks or get some sort of benefit that basically represents them being the main character in a Star Wars film, like having just the right tool for the moment despite not having it on their character sheet before.
The GM can also spend Destiny points to made checks more difficult or represent some sort of especially badass enemy doing something extra-cool.
There's a set number of Destiny points that are rolled at the start of each session, and they start out as either Light Side (for players) or Dark Side (for GM) and when you spend one it goes over to the other pool. So it encourages dramatic play that goes along with the more cinematic and narrative style the system was built to represent.
Posts
I saw a post on either Facebook or Reddit where someone showed their local library had at least the 5e Player's Handbook. I don't remember if they said whether it had the Dungeon Master's Guide or Monster Manual or not though, but it at least does that one library carries one book
So right now I've just got Planet Mercenary that I've never played.
Things I have that I have played in the past but not in a while:
A couple GURPS books
D20 Modern
Star Wars d6 (1987, core and lore books)
XD20
Things I have that I'm currently GM'ing:
Star Wars Edge of the Empire (4 or 5 copies), Age of Rebellion, and Beyond the Rim
Things I have played but have no books for:
Pathfinder 1E
D&D 3.5
You'd probably want to keep a copy of each book in perpetual reserve so that it could be used while people are there, but for more popular games you could have multiple copies and lend them out or whatever
Also, it looks like Chicago Public Library does carry RPG books, I found D&D 5E, Dungeon World, and Blades in the Dark on a cursory search
How does one kill magic, exactly?
edit: I'm asking because I'm going to steal that character idea
It's a big project either way, you know
keep stabbing at it.
and probably I should wait until I'm prepared to do an actual long campaign, maybe get an adventure path
all my campaigns go totally off the rails because I get tired of the setting and start over.
I'd figure cutting off the prime material plane from the rest of the multiverse would require magic to do. And since I'm trying to KILL magic for some reason(magic killed my family and kicked my cat?), using it is probably a no-go.
Unless by cutting it off you mean with like a really big knife
I think in the Forgotten Realms setting it would probably be stopping the weave from interacting with your realm.
If you're in Eberron you would just want to recreate the Day of Mourning but on a global scale.
Well that just gets you a Spellplague
The Mournland still experiences chaotic magical effects constantly, which is not really what my guy wants (and in fact this is probably the event that made him realize magic is too dangerous and civilization should not be so reliant on it)
Edit: I will never say my guy is not a hypocrite
He's an arcane trickster rogue but his code is that he will only use magic for illusion and distraction, never to directly cause magical harm - but he has little hesitation to kill basically anyone by mundane means
He will absolutely use magic to destroy magic if he can be sure it will be the last use of magic ever. And even if it probably results in many deaths he will consider it necessary in the long run
What does magic mean in your game world? Is it a way to break the laws of reality, or is it something that 100% conforms to those laws (but is an obscure use of them that few know about/can leverage)? Is it a process that transforms some physical substance (mana?) into effects, or is it powered by a metaphysical component? Is magic executed directly by practitioners, or do practitioners borrow power from or ask favors of powerful extradimensional entities to do magic for them? A bunch more questions can be asked, of course, and depending on these answers, you'll know if you can kill magic without doing a magic yourself.
If there's a physical fount in the world that spews mana (whether a physical substance, or a mystical one) into the atmosphere, and this ambient mana is what powers magic, then maybe you can just put a real big cork in the fount and be done.
If magic is executed by extradimensional entities on behalf of petitioners, maybe you can cut off lines of communication with them, or convince them to ignore their petitioners.
Maybe magic is just ideas, maybe conversation is magic, so maybe you can travel to the home plane of the god responsible for magic and have a conversation with them. We all know Planescape, right? The right talk with the right entity at the right place at the right time can shift the universe. Is that a magic? I dunno, you tell me, is a song a magic? Oh, is getting to the god's plane a magic? Maybe, but also maybe there are some thin place in the world where you can slip into the astral, and sail that sea into the Outer Plane, all without being magical yourself.
It's more for my own guidance of the character
I like the way you're thinking about it but it's not something I've seen much leeway with in my games
I wouldn't expect a "we do b&e on orc villages and sell priceless ancient artifacts for pocket change" game to worry too much about What Magic Means, that's more in the realm of something like Planescape ("we do b&e on ideologies and sell priceless emotions for pocket change").
I had to because my groups always have a Bard in them and I wanted Bard to be like a profession as well and people started asking what the difference was and can that guy also cast spells and inspire courage, so I decided to figure it out, and once that was done, well I might as well keep going...
Alas, the APIs were all publically available and widely consumed and so could not be altered.
That jumbled, half-baked, typo ridden interface....we call magic.
Now Mystrararara is both beloved and reviled, font of magic and overburdened sysadmin of a crumbling infrastructure...
Just hax0r all teh yuor megabytes and become a GOD
Gosh I sure do love a good druid terrorist cult
Big fan of Dark Sun?
Eh, yes and no. It has some stuff I like, for sure, and it seems like something I would be into conceptually, but it also puts a lot of emphasis on psionics, which has never been my jam.
The idea I have with her is that she has connections to one character's past and I can use her to test how far he will go for his own revenge story. Like their goals will align initially but her methods will (hopefully) start to feel extreme and at some point there's a decision to be made on how to deal with her. (that can also function as a campaign exit for that character because the player sometimes waffles on if he wants to switch chars)
It was an interesting revamp of the setting in that (1) the rules and cosmology were stock 4th Ed D&D (the rules and cosmology for the original 2nd Ed's version were pretty wildly different), and (2) it rewound the timeline for the setting to bring the world back to the state it was after the original boxed set, discarding the events of the Prism Pentad (which was the set of books that revealed the past history of Athas and advanced the setting's plot and socio-politics considerably).
When I still played City of Heroes, my demon summoning Mastermind was a guy who wanted to be a stage magician, but unlinking some loops doesn't impress when Chilldonna, mistress of the storm and cold just zoomed overhead. One day he found a dusty book in the backroom of a magic shop and made a deal.
The next weekend, he was at a kid's birthday party and, well, it wasn't a bunny that came out of that hat.
You could rename pets in the game, so I just stuck apostrophes into normal names. It was the family that were his demons. Bel'Inda, Mar'Garet, Joh'Nathon, etc.
A friend of mine (one of my old players, in fact) runs a weekly game for teens who have never played before at the local library as part of their community program.
There had been so many inquiries for games at the library they actually put out a call for local DMs to see if they could find volunteers available to run a game.
Their first NPC as part of this is Astrid Wynver, a cybernetics heavy soldier/turbo bad ass who used to work for the rebellion before joining up with said remnants as a cash influx and play acting Death Trooper very well inspite of not being human.
What cool shit should Astrid Wynver be doing on a destiny point spend when the PC's sick her on a task?
will the Party make it through my betrapped graveyard? Will they save their new friend?
tune in at 19 o'clock for episode 2: THE RIPPER STRIKES AT MIDNIGHT or, THE BAG LADY'S GAMBIT
(the Bag Lady is an awful Frankenstein's monster with metal claws and a sack full of offal [and treasure, should the Party be brave enough to take a dig])
what do destiny points do? I haven't played a Star Wars P&P game in like, 15 years
I feel like that's already been done, but it seems like it'd be fun.
Also a familiar that's a blood red crow
Destiny Points are something the players can spend to upgrade their checks or get some sort of benefit that basically represents them being the main character in a Star Wars film, like having just the right tool for the moment despite not having it on their character sheet before.
The GM can also spend Destiny points to made checks more difficult or represent some sort of especially badass enemy doing something extra-cool.
There's a set number of Destiny points that are rolled at the start of each session, and they start out as either Light Side (for players) or Dark Side (for GM) and when you spend one it goes over to the other pool. So it encourages dramatic play that goes along with the more cinematic and narrative style the system was built to represent.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar