As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

Advanced Table-Top RPG Thread: 2nd Edition

13031333536100

Posts

  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Denada wrote: »
    I personally see every character death as a precious gift, because it means I get to make a new character.

    I think my record was six or seven characters in a single campaign

    The first character went off on his own and got attacked by a lion (he technically survived, and served as an occasional antagonist for the party afterwards), then he was replaced by a character who was shortly left to die in a tough fight because the party didn't know or care about him (this is on me - he was a jerk), then I had a character who I didn't actually play for more than half a session because we switched editions between sessions and his class no longer existed so he died in a train crash, the next one they tried to resurrect when he died in the middle of the dungeon but he'd been harboring some resentments towards the party and refused to come back, his replacement heroically sacrificed himself at the end of that same dungeon, the next one was the rear guard in an escape sequence and just barely failed to make it out, and then finally I picked up playing the original character that I'd started with again, now grown up as a different class. He died in the final fight of the campaign.

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    Glal wrote: »
    Having your character die in a spectacular/hilarious fashion is the dream.

    At the end of a one-shot I declared that my character would make the ultimate sacrifice for The Emperor (40k game) by opening the various valves to flood the volcano-powered chaos base with lava, going out in a blaze of glory in a suitably epic pose

    Then my geologist GM told me how slowly the lava was flowing

    So my character pulled the levers, struck the pose, then after two or three minutes realised he was fine and wandered off to join the rest of the party

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Presumably they were then executed because the machine spirits did not accept their sacrifice and so they must be chosen by chaos to sabotage the group's ordained work.

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    That's part of the Animal House ending of every Dark Heresy game

    "Sawyer went on to join the Imperial Guard and was executed when convicted of collaborating with Xeno scum"

    "Drake was shot by his Commissar pour encourager les autres"

    "Wisden was accused of Heresy for everything they did in the campaign and was shot in the face"

    "Heinrich got hit by the Warp and mutated into something which turned out to be weak to bullets"

    "Booger graduated and now throws sick keggers in his role as Planetary Governor of a backwater planet"

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    That's part of the Animal House ending of every Dark Heresy game

    "Sawyer went on to join the Imperial Guard and was executed when convicted of collaborating with Xeno scum"

    "Drake was shot by his Commissar pour encourager les autres"

    "Wisden was accused of Heresy for everything they did in the campaign and was shot in the face"

    "Heinrich got hit by the Warp and mutated into something which turned out to be weak to bullets"

    "Booger graduated and now throws sick keggers in his role as Planetary Governor of a backwater planet"

    Yes, but what about in the game?

    JtgVX0H.png
  • DepressperadoDepressperado I just wanted to see you laughing in the pizza rainRegistered User regular
    edited April 2021
    Denada wrote: »
    I personally see every character death as a precious gift, because it means I get to make a new character.

    making a new character is one of my favorite parts of playing D&D

    which is unfortunate for my Partymembers because every couple of sessions, their third companion dies horribly and they are immediately introduced to some new guy.

    Depressperado on
  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    I've gotten my players so good at making characters that i can start a session by saying "roll up a level 3 character", and after about a half hour we've got characters produced and we've talked out their origins and background, and we have a new party to get rolling dice for the rest of the session.

    Admittedly at least one of them has a random character generator they use for convenience cause they will run most any class.

    Sleep on
  • ZonugalZonugal (He/Him) The Holiday Armadillo I'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User regular
    Sleep wrote: »
    I've gotten my players so good at making characters that i can start a session by saying "roll up a level 3 character", and after about a half hour we've got characters produced and we've talked out their origins and background, and we have a new party to get rolling dice for the rest of the session.

    Admittedly at least one of them has a random character generator they use for convenience cause they will run most any class.

    Jesus Christ, I am fucking mad jealous over here.

    Ross-Geller-Prime-Sig-A.jpg
  • ZonugalZonugal (He/Him) The Holiday Armadillo I'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    It takes my players a week to create their characters, including a session zero.

    Ahaha, that was a lie. They'll show up to the first session still needing to work on their character.

    Ahaha, that was a half-truth. They'll ask me to help them finish building their characters at that first session.

    Ahaha, KILL ME

    Zonugal on
    Ross-Geller-Prime-Sig-A.jpg
  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    Sleep wrote: »
    I've gotten my players so good at making characters that i can start a session by saying "roll up a level 3 character", and after about a half hour we've got characters produced and we've talked out their origins and background, and we have a new party to get rolling dice for the rest of the session.

    Admittedly at least one of them has a random character generator they use for convenience cause they will run most any class.

    How...how much electro-shock did this feat require?

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • Mx. QuillMx. Quill I now prefer "Myr. Quill", actually... {They/Them}Registered User regular
    Denada wrote: »
    I personally see every character death as a precious gift, because it means I get to make a new character.

    making a new character is one of my favorite parts of playing D&D

    which is unfortunate for my Partymembers because every couple of sessions, their third companion dies horribly and they are immediately introduced to some new guy.

    Just pretend you're playing FF4.

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    It's helpful that we don't get super in depth right at the outset, the characters are essentially improv prompts. You build the general framework and mechanical options then you can backfill the stories and anecdotes and attitudes of the character as you see fit while we're playing through. My general feeling is that a character doesn't really get set in their ways till a few sessions of actually playing them has transpired, and you can find trends in those first playthroughs to backfill explanations for those repeated behaviors. The farther forward a character makes it the further back into their background connections and stories you'll end up. It also helps that by 3rd level you'll basically have 4 to 5 major decisions in race, background, class, subclass (which is two options in the warlock class) with maybe about 5 or 6 minor decisions in spells or maneuvers or like totem selection (we can start rolling without these fully filled in if you want to make the decision on the first moments you actually use it im not a stickler so long as you stick to the option moving forward after it's resolved into view).

    It also helps I've been playing with the same crew on the same living setting for the better part of a decade.

    Sleep on
  • ZonugalZonugal (He/Him) The Holiday Armadillo I'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User regular
    I've been recently been hard-modding the first edition of Pathfinder to eventually run an Eberron game.

    Last night I got a thought while thinking on the setting.

    Do any of you radically alter generic/basic animals for a TTRPG fantasy setting?

    I mean, do you have cows, cats, dogs, goats, chickens, horses, ect. all just be the same as we have in our own world, in addition to there being stuff like Owlbears & Blink Dogs?

    Do you think TTRPG fantasy settings could do to be a bit more like Avatar the Last Airbender's world, where exotic animal combos are just treated as a standard thing?

    Ross-Geller-Prime-Sig-A.jpg
  • ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    That always seemed to me to be a fast track to, "Oh, it's not a cow, it's a cow-analogue with scales." "Okay, so, the lizard-cow wanders over and ..."

    Elvenshae on
  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    I like the idea of changing the basic fauna of a fantasy world in order to make it feel more weird and different, but I worry about losing a tether there - people know how big a horse or a dog is, and when you're constantly describing your weird reptilian riding porcupine or whatever, everyone is going to imagine something slightly different and not necessarily be in like, the same imagined space.

    You mention Avatar, and I think there's a real advantage there in it being a visual medium, where these sorts of things can be shown to the audience and understood implicitly, rather than having to be based on description. Plus, it's a less collaborative medium, you don't have like, one player talking about how their tragic backstory involves a dog that they grew up with and you're constantly correcting them and explaining that actually hermit crabs are the dominant mid-size pet in the region of the world they're from.

    Of course, I tend to go the other way, and cut down on magical bullshit (especially things that are more fantasy and less mythology, if that makes sense), so I might not be the best judge of such things.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    Straightzi wrote: »
    I like the idea of changing the basic fauna of a fantasy world in order to make it feel more weird and different, but I worry about losing a tether there - people know how big a horse or a dog is, and when you're constantly describing your weird reptilian riding porcupine or whatever, everyone is going to imagine something slightly different and not necessarily be in like, the same imagined space.

    You mention Avatar, and I think there's a real advantage there in it being a visual medium, where these sorts of things can be shown to the audience and understood implicitly, rather than having to be based on description. Plus, it's a less collaborative medium, you don't have like, one player talking about how their tragic backstory involves a dog that they grew up with and you're constantly correcting them and explaining that actually hermit crabs are the dominant mid-size pet in the region of the world they're from.

    Of course, I tend to go the other way, and cut down on magical bullshit (especially things that are more fantasy and less mythology, if that makes sense), so I might not be the best judge of such things.

    This right here. Its the same reason you don't change the days of the week or the seasons unless you are playing way far out there. The fantastical seems more fantastical when compared to the normal. Also everything is going to break down to "This is a farmyard bird we eat, the Ichyana!" and the players respond with "Oh its a chicken ok". As a player I don't want to have a list of creatures to reference when I want to talk about a dog or a chicken. I just want to say dog.

    I'm honestly surprised in D&D that displacer beasts just aren't called "Whip cats". We have blink dogs after all.

    webguy20 on
    Steam ID: Webguy20
    Origin ID: Discgolfer27
    Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
  • ZonugalZonugal (He/Him) The Holiday Armadillo I'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User regular
    All of these are very reasonable answers!

    I just find it funny that in a game like D&D you have different races with magic and such, but every farm would still look roughly the same.

    Ross-Geller-Prime-Sig-A.jpg
  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    I think I like to throw a few of the mythological like griffons being raised as standard mounts in some places, or they're being oversized versions of existing things, or in the very least dinosaurs. Like raptor farms and hunting are definitely a thing that exist in my setting especially for the small sized Raptors which fit in a cat carrier, and domestication for riding for the largeer Raptors. You've definitely got your standard animals but there's some extras thrown on top to weird it up just a little. However you want those things weirding it up to still be well shared creatures between everyone in the group and not necessarily a totally new thing you need to describe. Potentially okay to throw like one or two setting specific animals on there, to really put your stamp on it but in their introduction those animals should play a roll other than just set dressing.

    Basically the animals and set dressing like that act as the anchors on scenes
    Stuff everyone can have a very shared mental image to build from.

    Like a dumb thing I did with my setting is that all of the large bodies of water are fresh water. All the salt comes from a dried sea elsewhere. It really fucks up most age of sail style adventure's folks might want to run because a lot of the description doesn't match the traditional salt spray ocean voyages us coastal townies have all grown up on.

    Sleep on
  • DJ EebsDJ Eebs Moderator, Administrator admin
    Generally I guess you want the day to day to be familiar if you want the weird stuff to stand out. Crops are crops, you know, if they're weird there should be a reason for it or it'll just roll off people's backs

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    Zonugal wrote: »
    All of these are very reasonable answers!

    I just find it funny that in a game like D&D you have different races with magic and such, but every farm would still look roughly the same.

    This is where you can have fun with it. Yea all the core races it looks mostly the same, but the underdark? That shits weird down there. Under the ocean? Tritons are all about that aquaculture. How do Giants farm? What do you do when the small races food animals are just like a snack to you. That's where you introduce fantasy cows and stuff. Let that fantasy flag wave where we don't have a standard frame of reference.

    webguy20 on
    Steam ID: Webguy20
    Origin ID: Discgolfer27
    Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Zonugal wrote: »
    All of these are very reasonable answers!

    I just find it funny that in a game like D&D you have different races with magic and such, but every farm would still look roughly the same.

    I agree, I just use this as an excuse to get rid of elves.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    Straightzi wrote: »
    Zonugal wrote: »
    All of these are very reasonable answers!

    I just find it funny that in a game like D&D you have different races with magic and such, but every farm would still look roughly the same.

    I agree, I just use this as an excuse to get rid of elves.

    Above ground elves are Vegan and Drow are all about the Atkin's lifestyle.

    Steam ID: Webguy20
    Origin ID: Discgolfer27
    Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
  • JarsJars Registered User regular
    my most ignoble death was getting imprisoned by a deck of many things

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    webguy20 wrote: »
    Zonugal wrote: »
    All of these are very reasonable answers!

    I just find it funny that in a game like D&D you have different races with magic and such, but every farm would still look roughly the same.

    This is where you can have fun with it. Yea all the core races it looks mostly the same, but the underdark? That shits weird down there. Under the ocean? Tritons are all about that aquaculture. How do Giants farm? What do you do when the small races food animals are just like a snack to you. That's where you introduce fantasy cows and stuff. Let that fantasy flag wave where we don't have a standard frame of reference.

    And it's easy for the Underdark - just use depth and darkness words

    Deep Chickens

    Undercows

    Dark Horses

    Bunnoir Rabbits

    Shadonkeys

    Pit Pigs

    Burrow Deer

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • ToxTox I kill threads he/himRegistered User regular
    We talking about horse-sized ducks in here?

    Twitter! | Dilige, et quod vis fac
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    I like taking a leaf out of the naming convention of sea creatures, in that they don’t look anything like the land animals they’re named after.

    Pit pigs? Actually some kind of proto-toad thing with no eyes that wear giant’s skulls like a hermit crab puked up from the depths.

    Endless_Serpents on
  • MaddocMaddoc I'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother? Registered User regular
    All dogs are now Cliffords

  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    Fuck it, give me a campaign setting in Roshar from Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere series, where there is no soil, only rock, and like 95% of all the animals are some form of crustacean or insect or spirit-thing. Shit is weird and I love it so much

    JtgVX0H.png
  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    I mean if that's what you and the people you're playing with want, great, go for it!

    A lot of the issues arise with mixed levels of investment - the GM has decided that all trees are pine trees and all animals are moths, and the players just have to go with that. If you come up with that sort of thing collaboratively it can work a lot better, or if you're all pulling from a shared piece of media like AtLA or Cosmere or whatever, that's a solid basis to work from.

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    My GM would just use 'space' as a prefix when playing Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader

    Space pub, space mobsters, space bungalows, etc

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • JarsJars Registered User regular
    everything cooler is in space

    a rock is a rock. a space rock? now that's a different story

  • admanbadmanb unionize your workplace Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    Darmak wrote: »
    Fuck it, give me a campaign setting in Roshar from Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere series, where there is no soil, only rock, and like 95% of all the animals are some form of crustacean or insect or spirit-thing. Shit is weird and I love it so much

    This is honestly a great example of @Straightzi 's point because 90% of the time when I'm reading that series I'm just imagining normal flora and fauna until he mentions one of their weird soil bulbs or giant crabs and then I re-jigger my mental picture for a few pages until it ceases being relevant and I revert again. I agree that it's a cool idea and it was one of the first things I thought of when the topic came up, but because it's not a visual medium it doesn't register until it's specifically mentioned.

  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    edited April 2021
    There is also an eternal different strokes thing with all of this.

    I love thinking about structures and cause and effect, so if you tell me that the primary farm stock are large terrestrial hermit crabs, I'm immediately considering where they're getting the shells from, the effects of the variation of diet on farm construction, how the lack of leather is going to affect the way that sword handles are constructed, et cetera

    If you're not into thinking about those things, if you want to just say "Nah but there's cheese still, pizza rules" then that can also be fine

    Straightzi on
  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    As a DM I don't like when players make in-depth backstories. Just enough to get your ass into the adventuring party is great. Some problems with excessive backgrounding:

    1) It's super easy to end up creating a character who really shouldn't be part of the party. When you look at all that backstory and think "so why would you ever be in a dungeon killing monsters and taking their treasure?" / "so why would you ever be hanging out with these other characters?" it's a problem.

    2) What is important and what people remember is the stuff that happens at the table. Going in with Mike the fighter who has a 17 strength and a battle axe vs going in with Shadowvein the Thief-Assassin who wears a dark cloak called Revenge and whose only friend is the savage call of the wild night makes way less of a difference than we'd all like to admit compared to what they do during the game.

    3) In my experience it's hard enough getting players to read a page of backstory on the campaign itself. Getting them to remember any kind of detailed backstory (again, as opposed to stuff they did together at the table) for the other player characters is way harder.


    On the other hand there are a lot of tabletop RPGs that get printed that are way more about being read than actually played (*cough*planescape*cough*). And there are systems that lend themselves way more to theorycrafting character builds and making up elaborate backtories to go with them than earning those levels / skills / feats at the table (3rd ed / pathfinder I am looking in your direction).

    Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
  • admanbadmanb unionize your workplace Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    I suspect when most people are bemoaning how long it takes their players to create a character they're talking primarily about the mechanical decisions required of games like D&D.

  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    edited April 2021
    admanb wrote: »
    I suspect when most people are bemoaning how long it takes their players to create a character they're talking primarily about the mechanical decisions required of games like D&D.

    3rd ed I totally see that yeah. And any system has a learning curve so the first couple characters are gonna be time consuming no matter what. But 5th ed characters are super easy to roll at least at 1st level. The (in hindsight) absurd multiclassing and prestige class rules of 3rd ed meant that you could super easily make a "wrong" choice at 1st level that would prevent you from doing stuff you might want to do at 5th-8th level. But that doesn't really happen in 5th ed. It's that lack of entanglement with later decisions that keeps character creation manageable in a given system.

    edit:

    basically if in a system you can pick what looks cool / interesting when rolling a starting character and that doesn't screw you over later it will have reasonably simple character creation after the initial learning curve even if the system itself is a lot more complicated than 5e D&D. If you have to plan out a "build" then the system is fucked and its going to take ages to make characters even if it is simpler mechanicially.

    RiemannLives on
    Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Personally I feel that character creation should be a collaborative experience, and not coincidentally tend toward games where that is the case in the rules as written. Whether that's in the form of bonds or a shared party character sheet or a worldbuilding structure, it always feels like it makes for a stronger experience to me.

    If you're not doing that though, then the GM should provide some sort of hook or constraint that will keep the characters together through the first arc at least. I'm a big fan of the Clue setup (everyone has to have a dark secret that they are being blackmailed over) or some sort of mandated shared social group (military veterans, guild associations, etc).

  • ZonugalZonugal (He/Him) The Holiday Armadillo I'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User regular
    admanb wrote: »
    I suspect when most people are bemoaning how long it takes their players to create a character they're talking primarily about the mechanical decisions required of games like D&D.

    3rd ed I totally see that yeah. And any system has a learning curve so the first couple characters are gonna be time consuming no matter what. But 5th ed characters are super easy to roll at least at 1st level. The (in hindsight) absurd multiclassing and prestige class rules of 3rd ed meant that you could super easily make a "wrong" choice at 1st level that would prevent you from doing stuff you might want to do at 5th-8th level. But that doesn't really happen in 5th ed. It's that lack of entanglement with later decisions that keeps character creation manageable in a given system.

    I mean, it does.

    The multiclass rules in 5th edition are far more punitive and restrictive than anything in 3rd edition.

    Ross-Geller-Prime-Sig-A.jpg
  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    Zonugal wrote: »
    admanb wrote: »
    I suspect when most people are bemoaning how long it takes their players to create a character they're talking primarily about the mechanical decisions required of games like D&D.

    3rd ed I totally see that yeah. And any system has a learning curve so the first couple characters are gonna be time consuming no matter what. But 5th ed characters are super easy to roll at least at 1st level. The (in hindsight) absurd multiclassing and prestige class rules of 3rd ed meant that you could super easily make a "wrong" choice at 1st level that would prevent you from doing stuff you might want to do at 5th-8th level. But that doesn't really happen in 5th ed. It's that lack of entanglement with later decisions that keeps character creation manageable in a given system.

    I mean, it does.

    The multiclass rules in 5th edition are far more punitive and restrictive than anything in 3rd edition.

    More restrictive yes (also, optional and requires DM permission to use at all). But the only thing you choose at first level that would impact your later multiclassing options are needing certain ability scores to be 13+. In 3rd ed if you wanted a prestige class or something like that you need to be planning it from level 1 to get the right feats and skill points.

    You don't need to plan out a 20 level build for a new character in 5th ed.

    Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
  • ZonugalZonugal (He/Him) The Holiday Armadillo I'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User regular
    You don't need to plan out a 20-level build for a character in 5th edition because you'll never get there...

    Ross-Geller-Prime-Sig-A.jpg
This discussion has been closed.