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Pen and Paper Role Playing Games (Warning: May contain Dungeons and/or Dragons)


SirFozzie

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So, I got the urge to run a D&D game despite my anxiety issues, and also despite being immuno-compromised when the Omicron variant is bang-zooming through the world. I don't know with whom, when, or how, but the first step is building a world.

 

I found a Kindle Unlimited-free book (can also buy it if you don't have Kindle Unlimited) (James D'Amoto's "The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create and Customize Your Own Game World") that's part of a boxed set and I'm finding it very useful, as it kinda guides you down the path to fleshing out a game-world to make it cool (and logical).

 

Don't worry, I won't share my notes (unless asked), but I've been really busy writing up a ton of stuff.

 

All this without having a game currently.

 

What Pen and Paper/Tabletop RPG's do most folks read/play? I am a big fan of D&D as well as 7th Sea, Battletech, Shadowrun, etcetera. I'm enjoying the schadenfreude of the fake Nu-TSR trying to grift the culture warriors because D&D is "too woke" and stifling the hobby (while personally, they don't like anything after 1980, including people born after that date and all women)

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I used to participate in a 3ed D&D campaign utilizing the Eberron setting, but that was ages ago.  

The nerds at work run an ongoing Cyberpunk Red campaign, but will probably get into the Star Frontiers reboot campaign if it ever sees the light of day.

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I DMed D&D 5e (online) earlier this evening. They fought 3 Allosauruses (Allosaurii?) but I moved the Giant Crocodile to later in the campaign because the Ranger was at work and the Barbarian was having a bad mental health day. It's a revolving DMs campaign though, so in the next session I'm playing my Oath of Glory Paladin. Probably New Year's day though. Unlikely we're playing Christmas Day. Might run a one-shot instead.

Supposed to be getting an in person group together in the New Year, but we'll see.

Also, I think I might get Cyberpunk Red. I enjoyed CP2020 back in the day, but I'm not sure playing the classic version is too good an idea now.

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yeah, I don't think in-person gaming is going to happen much in the early stages of 2022.

 

Cyberpunk Red is another one of those games I really want to run, but don't have a gaming group.

 

one of the things that Nu-TSR, who has one of Gygax's kids on board) hates is the cultural disclaimer that this past material was written in a time when norms were different. For some reason a lot of the OSR (Old School Revival, Retro-clones of Original D&D/AD&D, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etcetera) clones really love their.. um.. super problematic content (rape demons etcetera) But these changes aren't just because of that, they've also posted so many different worlds, they don't want to say "Orcs are always Chaotic Evil" when in one of their worlds, the Orcs might be the good folk. Between that and the fact that people like to use in-game groups to stand in for real-life groups in a bad way, I can see how they want to make sure they don't encourage it)

 

Edit: Oh, I forgot the best part, the main grifter behind the NuTSR debacle is a tattoo parlor owner, who made two women in his parlor wrestle in grits to determine who would get a promotion. I wish I could make that up.

Edited by SirFozzie
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2 hours ago, AxB said:

Orcs aren't evil in Ebberon.

Yeah, the only creatures in Eberron that hold statically to alignment rules are planar beings (infernals, celestials, pure elementals, etc.)  The Kalashtar (a new gestalt race) are an exception only because they share a psychic tie with a planar race.

Be warned, Foz.  Eberron is not a traditional fantasy setting.  There is a magepunk feel to the world which may turn off those who prefer a more classic fantasy setting.

 

Edited by J.T.
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Yeah, I'm familiar with Ebberon through "After the Last War" etcetera, It's one of the things I'm thinking about exploring in my campaign world. (Mageocracy group like the Red Wizards of Thay, who parlayed their magical abilities into controlling Manatite, a spell-bonding crystal that can literally store mana-energy, and a nation that turned to artificers and SCIENCE to throw off their puppets)

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Started a new campaign with a small group of friends. We run a bit of 5th Ed and Pathfinder. Plus our own 'vibe' for things.

I'm a Goliath Barbarian+Bard

Yes, my toon is a shit talking athletics based wrestler who grapples in combat.
It's super fun pushing people prone then dragging them around by their feet while I cut promos to buff my team.

Ganzief Musclebuster #1
All the rest HACK POOIE!!

The rest of the group - 
An Elf Paladin who is trying to remain the Lawful Good 'leader'
A Tiefling Sorcerer who is afraid of fire.
A halfing rogue who has the skills of a killer but is a total pacifist that wants to settle things by talking.
An Air Genasi monk who seeking to learn the ways of the Earth, Fire and Water Genasi and fulfil a prophecy.

It's been a blast getting into so far.

Edited by L_W_P
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Just ran a one-shot. Called it Happy New You, it was set on January 1st 2022. A bunch of people woke up to find they'd been inexplicably transformed into Level 12 characters, but still had access to all their normal technology and vehicles. Strap your Quarterstaff to the roof-rack, we're going for a drive.

First time I've ever had to say "Make a history check, or google 'Stockport Pyramid'".

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For the first time in about 15 years I'll be DMing a campaign, doing a DnD 5e rendition of Dragonlance, but more of a fractured fairytales sort of way.  My friends and big Acquisitions Inc fans so I'm setting it up as their characters get a shot at joining AI, go through a test house, only to be told that there are no more opportunities in the Forgotten Realms, but they've been selected for a bold new expansion opportunity.  Zip-zap they're teleported to Krynn, which causes all sorts of Chaos to ensue hopefully.

 

It'll be interesting because A) its my first time using Roll20 as a DM, so I'm sure even with all the reading up I've done there'll be a learning curve and B) My DM style is very RP and skill check-heavy with a dusting of combat and I'll have to make sure I'm satiating everyone's bloodlust in between.  Either way it should be entertaining.

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On 12/23/2021 at 7:50 PM, SirFozzie said:

Speaking of my world-building, does anyone mind looking over some notes (on dropbox) I've made? I'd prefer a set of eyes to tell me if something is too outlandish, or what the knock-on effects would be...

I don't have drop box but if you C/P them to me in the DVDVR PM, I should be able to give them a once over unless we're talking about pages and pages of notes. 

Times like these I miss OSJ because he had an eye for world building. ?

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  • 4 weeks later...

WotC decided to run a celebrity PvsP tournament for some reason. Here is Commander Shepard's voice actor vs a Twitch Streamer/ ex-Beauty Queen. But they had Debora Ann Woll and Matthew Lillard in other match-ups. Oh, and UFC's Bruce Buffer is doing introductions, and Urijah Faber is randomly on commentary.

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  • 1 month later...

So, the last couple months saw a couple new d20-ish systems (called Essence20), which is not remarkable, d20 and it's variants are everywhere, but considering it's Power Rangers and GI Freaking Joe the RPG (and transformers RPG is coming in Q2), I had to buy them. Maybe I'll fanboy about it here, I'm doing a where I read/Review of GI Joe elsewhere.

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10 hours ago, SirFozzie said:

So, the last couple months saw a couple new d20-ish systems (called Essence20), which is not remarkable, d20 and it's variants are everywhere, but considering it's Power Rangers and GI Freaking Joe the RPG (and transformers RPG is coming in Q2), I had to buy them. Maybe I'll fanboy about it here, I'm doing a where I read/Review of GI Joe elsewhere.

Would be interested to learn more. I ended up getting one of their adventures for this system during Free RPG day. It didn't really tell me exactly what the system was though.

I've been looking at Savage Worlds to figure up a action superhero settings for tokusatsu kinda influences.

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It's a highly skill-based version of d20. the six D&D stats have been coalesced into four S-stats (called Essences):Strength, Speed, Smarts, Social.

Each point in an essence allows you to buy one rank of a related skill. That gives you a skill die (that starts at d2 and normally can go up to d12, and higher via circumstances), that you roll with your d20 when you make a skill check (against a target number from 5 to 30, depending on difficulty). The Natural 20=critical success has been replaced where if you succeed on a roll and one or more of your skill dice shows its maximum number (has to be d4 or above). 

The reason I say one or more is that skill specializations will greatly increase your chances of a critical success. When you roll against your specialty, you roll your normal skill dice AND every size die below that (taking the best result)

So, let's take Zartan (please, take him far away from anything secure). He has the skill Deception (Disguise) at d12. So, when he rolls against Deception, he'll roll a d20+d12. But, if he's using Disguise (something he's the master of),. he'll roll a d20 still, + the best result of (D12/d10/d8/d6/d4/d2), and if one or more of the skill dice shows it's maximum number (12-10-8-6-4, respectively) and he succeeds, it'll be a critical success. (so, for example, not only did he convince the person that he's General Hawk, he'll also convince the person that he forgot his keycard, so the person will swipe him into a highly secure area. Health totals are low, (major major baddies will have barely double digits health) but most weapons do 1-2 damage on a normal success, so it balances out)

I go more into the system (GI Joe, but Power Rangers is a lot of the same) here: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/wir-review-gi-joe-rpg-pdf-releases-3-15-book-release-3-30.895008/

The Power Rangers book is similar, but it does have a couple small flaws, as the first major RPG release from the studio involved, it has a couple layout issues in that they mention bits of information in one place, and if you miss it, it's not repeated elsewhere. I called it on release a beautiful couch from IKEA. You're going to have to put it together and you'll be constantly afraid you misplaced a screw or two somewhere. It's also very Power Rangers focused (the colors of the Power Rangers are like the classes, compared to Team Roles in GI Joe), so you'll definitely have to do some kit-bashing to turn it into general tokuatsu (for example, I ruled in a PBP game that the colors of the uniform do NOT have to match the class)

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My party did a savage worlds pulp campaign in the summer and we enjoyed it. Their chase rules are infinitely better than D&D's but it's a flexible system in general and I enjoy that you're weakened when damaged, again, unlike 5e. 

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So, these are the systems I'm looking at recently, I either picked up the books in hardcover or PDF:

 

GI Joe and Power Rangers, we already discussed, with Transformers coming April or May most likely

Achtung! C'thulhu: Fighting Nazis AND punching Cthuluhu cultists and Mi-Go right in the face. What more can you ask for. Used the 2d20 system (named as such because you normally roll 2d20 and compare to abilities and skills to determine successes)

Fallout (another 2d20 system game, and set around the timeline of Fallout 4. I still want to get a game sometime of it)

Hard Wired Island - Retro Cyberpunk, set in the futuristic age of 2020, with an semi anti-capitalist feel, set at a giant L2 Station/city. More like what Cyberpunk was imagined to be in the 80's

Level Up! (5E) Basically, "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" 5th Edition as done by the folks at ENWORLD

Avatar Legends (yes, there's an official Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra RPG)

Soulbound (Age of Sigmar): It's amazing how a kick ass RPG turned my worldview around on Age of Sigmar (I still hate it as a wargame compared to Warhammer Fantasy, but man is it a great RPG)

Along with my perennials (Battletech/Shadowrun/D&D5E), I'm filled with games I want to run but don't have a group for. 

 

I still have to share my world-building notes at somepoint fopr my 5E/Level up campaign!

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I'm putting together a D&D 5e campaign that's planning on levelling every session, so we can go from 1-20 in like 5 months. It occurred to me that 5e is built to be a high fantasy game, but most people only play it at the lower levels for whatever reason.

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