Well . . . with all the varied humanoid monsters like Goblins, Orcs, Kobolds, and others, you could just list those and point out how many different things D&D has borrowed from culturally. It's a mish-mash of stuff borrowed from Tolkien, folklore, fairy tales, and just original stuff, and, honestly, pointing out that "Kobold" represents a distinct and separate group of creatures in D&D when it's really just German for "Goblin" is a good way to illustrate what an utter clusterf*ck the history of D&D is.
That and the fact that many of the monsters were cheap Japanese "prehistorical animal" toys:
Displacer beast
Troll
Wight
Umberhulk (sp?)
Giant centipede
Griffon
So my Intro to D&D presentation went so well yesterday that in today's corporate update two executives mentioned how great it was and then the CEO ended the company wide presentation saying I inspired us all to be more creative!
I'll be riding this high for a while.
I know this isn't the How's Work Been? thread, but I'd strongly encourage you to get this into your eval/file.
Great example of team building.
Good job!
I am a player in a badly run Curse of Strahd campaign and had an idea of running it myself, but with a twist. Since it is so wildly popular, it is often difficult to find experienced players that haven't had a run through or own it. So with very few actual surprises in the material, I had the idea of going pretty meta with it a la Tranquility Lane/Vault 112. The idea being that it is some sort of whack game within the game and that escaping Barovia isn't just about defeating Strahd, but figuring out why it always appears to reset after the they complete the campaign or the party gets wiped out.
So my Intro to D&D presentation went so well yesterday that in today's corporate update two executives mentioned how great it was and then the CEO ended the company wide presentation saying I inspired us all to be more creative!
I'll be riding this high for a while.
mrwynd wrote:So my Intro to D&D presentation went so well yesterday that in today's corporate update two executives mentioned how great it was and then the CEO ended the company wide presentation saying I inspired us all to be more creative!
I'll be riding this high for a while.
HECK YEAH! Well deserved man!
Good, short review of Stonetop, the state-of-the-art in fantasy PbtA games. A spiritual successor to Dungeon World, but better in every way and with a ton of GM prep help.
I played a bunch of The Perilous Wilds, which Stonetop grew out of. Absolutely fantastic, and I’m really looking forward to its release. I know from Kickstarter updates that the preview materials are mostly complete, but I’m waiting for the final version to really dig into it.
We started doing Stonetop recently. This is the GM’s third or fourth group he’s run. I feel pretty meh about it so far.
Exalted Funeral, indie RPG publisher/distributer put together a Pride Collection of Queer/Trans themed RPGs they carry. Man do I wish the exchange rate wasn't so crap right now (not to mention the expense of shipping to Canada) because I would buy a bunch of these. 
In the wake of the apparent, ongoing clusterf*ck that is Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2, I have stumbled across some rumblings that the most recent edition (Fifth, I believe) of the TTRPG was not well-received.
Now, I bought the book last year, mostly for reading purposes, and hadn't seen any literature about it probably since 2nd edition. I'm just curious if anyone has the lowdown on what happened and what the gripes are.
I'm not really surprised by the news, speaking as someone who loves Shadowrun and absolutely was not here for the latest edition, I'm just interested in what the apparent issues with it are.
EDIT: A look at the wiki shows a lot of "Financed by crowdfunding" and several sourcebooks recalled by Paradox Interactive, neither of which I'm assuming are good.
From what I can tell looking in from the outside, Paradox did not do a particularly good job of putting together their incarnation of White Wolf after they bought the IP. I expect Ken Hite's work on the core book is as solid as his other stuff, but the people they had running the actual product line and producing supplements were problematic in a bunch of ways. Paradox has reorganized them a couple of times and I think now they're subcontracting development out to an established RPG studio.
A story of amazing customer service:
My RPG group started playing Modiphius's Fallout RPG back in April and I was lucky to find a starter kit when I was in Kelowna visiting friends. One of the d20s is a little effed up, but effed up in a kinda cool way:
I mentioned that to my group and they said that Modiphius' customer service is amazing and if I told them they'd probably send me another d20. So I posted that photo on twitter, they got back to me right away saying they'd be happy to replace it. Being a good nerd, I wasn't going to turn down the chance for more dice, so I took them up on their offer.
Y'all, was only expecting them to send a single d20 in an envelope, but instead they sent a full set of Fallout dice! And because shipping to Canada from the US is insane right now, it cost them almost $30 to ship it... an item that retails for $25. They were more than happy to spend almost $60 to replace a perfectly functional d20 that just looked off, but still rolled just fine. They could have said "oh wow, that DOES look weird and we'll look into our manufacturing process to see what happened" and I would have been fine with that answer.
And because they we're happy to eat that expense, I was happy to buy the Fallout book. I wasn't planning on it, and just using the PDF, but after that kind of treatment I couldn't NOT buy it. I even wrote them a letter thanking them and to make sure they knew that I bought the book because they treated me so well 
KiwiRPG week 2023 is this week, to promote and share all the stuff that's happening in RPGs in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Check it out, lots of cool things going on.
It looks like several TTRPG subreddit communities are moving here. While scrolling threads I discovered that not only does Thirsty Sword Lesbians have an expansion book called Advanced Lovers & Lesbians, but the free reference sheets include this amazing random table.
I had a complete blast in the Theros campaign I played in a few years ago and was wondering if there was a similar sourcebook (possibly third party) based on the Aztec pantheon. I was thinking about running a Mesoamerican/Pre-colombian campaign.
MtG has a "Vampire Conquistadors vs. meso-American pastiche empire and river merfolk" world called Ixalan, but that's full of dinosaurs and doesn't have a defined pantheon of gods. And I don't think they're planning on a D&D book for that one. But they are returning to that world this year, so maybe we'll get something...
Just discovered that an itch.io bundle I bought a while ago includes this weird looking game called FIST: Freelance Infantry Strike Team.
You belong to a legendary rogue mercenary unit called FIST. You are a soldier of fortune who doesn’t fit into modern society. You are a disposable gun for hire, caught up in the death and destruction of pointless proxy wars and oppressive establishments. You may also be someone who can turn into a ghost or control bees with your mind.The paranormal secrets of the Cold War are your bread and butter, and you fight for your life to make ends meet alongside others like you: stopping disastrous science experiments, infiltrating occult compounds, neutralizing eldritch horrors—all in a day's work for FIST.
Use the modular traits system to construct unique and fully-equipped characters in seconds. Play as a telekinetic alien, a mutant sniper, or a cyborg ninja.
Seems pretty rad as hell, and another cool system I will enjoy reading and probably never play.
Oh man there is a book series I havn't thought about for years, had a great time reading them. Also I do like Cubicle.
Anyone ever play Root? A woodland creatures PbtA from Magpie games. Any comparisons to other woodland critter games like Mouseguard, etc.
Anyone ever play Root? A woodland creatures PbtA from Magpie games. Any comparisons to other woodland critter games like Mouseguard, etc.
There's a board game version of this which is super interesting and one that I think Beto has talked about on the CC. We haven't had a chance to play it yet, but thematically it has some really interesting things going on. In the board game, there is a faction of just regular woodland creatures who are a real slow-burn faction, easily the weakest at the start of the game but can become the strongest.
Mixolyde wrote:Anyone ever play Root? A woodland creatures PbtA from Magpie games. Any comparisons to other woodland critter games like Mouseguard, etc.
There's a board game version of this which is super interesting and one that I think Beto has talked about on the CC. We haven't had a chance to play it yet, but thematically it has some really interesting things going on. In the board game, there is a faction of just regular woodland creatures who are a real slow-burn faction, easily the weakest at the start of the game but can become the strongest.
Yeah, it's definitely based on that game, which I would also like to try.
I've played the digital version which was solid. It basically an asymmetric card euro game. One side play the tyrant trying to keep the peace, one side the commoner's rebellion, another the former elites trying to retake the throne, and the last side is a wandering adventure. Each with different rules and goals.
Anyone ever play Root? A woodland creatures PbtA from Magpie games. Any comparisons to other woodland critter games like Mouseguard, etc.
If I'm right, Mouseguard is like Burning Wheel lite, so even then it will be way more cruchy than any PbtA game. I have big issues with PbtA but that's because it doesn't suit our group, we like rules and structure, Pbta doesn't.
I have never played either the board game or the RPG, but when the Bundle of Holding deal went up, I found these reviews:
https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22834334/root-the-roleplaying-game-review (very positive)
https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2022/03/30/root-the-roleplaying-game-review/ (detailed and fairly critical)
What I took away from them is that the RPG manages to make PBtA mechanics feel like an OSR hexcrawl but doesn't necessarily convey the flavor of the board game or of playing woodland creatures.
I occasionally post stories from our epic D&D campaign in the ‘Love’ thread. I guess they’d be more at home in here:
My monk, Ryth, still a prodigious size after touching a magical spear, is starting to explore the potential in her new stature.
We were fighting a group in a room at the top of a tower yesterday and there was a magic wielder (I forget the official name. Diviner?) who was levitating after Chando set the ground under her on fire. There was not a lot I could do to her as she was out of my reach and I had no ranged ability. I had summoned a giant rat earlier and was toying with the idea of throwing the rat at her.
On his turn Braga, our heavily armoured warrior dwarf, said, “You should throw me!” Ryth had already thrown him across a gap in a flight of stairs (resulting in only a modicum of bludgeoning damage when he hit the wall on the far side) so we knew it was possible. He readied an action so he could wallop her with his axe as he flew by and we waited for my turn. Enna, our Rogue, took a shot with her bow but the Diviner dodged effortlessly out of the way.
Thankfully it was my turn next. With an effort I picked up Braga, shouted, “Dodge this!” and threw him as hard as I could. He missed the target of course but, just before he slammed into the wall opposite, he drew his laser pistol (a story for another time) and fired with disadvantage (I like to think of it as happening in slow motion, with Braga gradually shouting something unintelligible and a look of alarm slowly dawning on the Diviner’s face.) Miraculously the shot hit for a considerable amount of damage. For the rest of the short fight, before Kallista finished her off, the Diviner seemed personally offended that we had even tried that stunt (shout out to Pyxi.)
In my experience you can often think of something cool to do in a fight but by the time it comes around to your turn the situation can have changed so much that your epic play is no longer an option. It was wonderful to get to do something so wild and funny.
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