Thanks to the Ennie awards of last year, I just discovered this amazing free OGL fantasy region sandbox hexcrawl generator.
It's filled with towns, shops, inns, npcs, dungeons, sites, terrain, points of interest, factions, rumors, secrets, etc. It even has a hot link index. An incredible tool.
New rather silly minigame release from me today: OBEY THE GM!
An article about the upcoming Planescape stuff on D&D Beyond says "Sigil (pronounced si·gl, not si·jil)" and that is an abomination that I cannot tolerate. Literally unplayable.
Any recommendations for High Fantasy TTRPG that aren't DnD, Pathfinder or PtbA? Was having a chat with my mate last night and although we really enjoy Warhammer, it would be nice to play something that isn't as gritty and dark and we can do daft magic based things.
I assume it dominates the market so much it might be hard, although I do have Pendragon so that might fit the bill.
Godbound might fit what you are looking for, it's based on classic D&D system-wise, but barely. Maybe ICON, or adventures on a dime. Into the odd, troika, and electric bastionland, are all really interesting but weird twists on fantasy settings, kind of like Planescape.
Otherwise when I am in the mood for something new and out there, I usually start looking through recent Ennie award winners.
Hmm... Savage Worlds might fit the bill. It is unlike DnD and Pathfinder in that characters aren't built around classes and adventures aren't structured around resource attrition. And it defaults to a light, pulp-action tone. The spells/powers system is a little bare bones in just the core, but I think the recently updated Fantasy Companion addresses that. Haven't actually checked out that supplement yet myself, but I hear good things.
Any recommendations for High Fantasy TTRPG that aren't DnD, Pathfinder or PtbA? Was having a chat with my mate last night and although we really enjoy Warhammer, it would be nice to play something that isn't as gritty and dark and we can do daft magic based things.
I assume it dominates the market so much it might be hard, although I do have Pendragon so that might fit the bill.
You might like The One Ring, second edition.
Its a Lord of the rings TTRPG, with all the tone and atmosphere of the books and movies. The system is really nice, and incorporates some interesting things I haven't seen in other games, like Patrons, and specific rules for downtime, where you actually do something that has relation to you and your character.
It also incorporates heirs, that can take over part of your adventuring gear and money.
You can read more here at Free Leauges website: https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/...
Its also purchasable at the Drivethrurpg website.
and that is an abomination that I cannot tolerate. Literarily unplayable.
FIXED!
onewild:
Section vote for The One Ring from me, it's great. The current edition of RuneQuest, RuneQuest: Roleplaying In Glorantha is also very good.
Swords of the Serpentine looks like a nice one too: mystery-focused sword and sorcery. But I've just read the book, not played it yet.
An article about the upcoming Planescape stuff on D&D Beyond says "Sigil (pronounced si·gl, not si·jil)" and that is an abomination that I cannot tolerate. Literally unplayable.
This is exponentially worse than the entire OGL thing.
Some people spent a lot of time and effort scanning in a ton of old west end games star wars books, supplements, adventures and other stuff. It's an amazing treasure trove of material.
Small DM rant. I'm running this boxed 5E campaign from WotC, and I'm sitting here reading about this dungeon level my players will get to eventually. There are four main NPCs or groups of NPCs involved, and they each have personalities, conflicting goals, problems they want solved, stuff they're willing to offer the characters in exchange for help, etc. And there's a bunch of history and backstory, how things got this way, etc. So far so good.
The issue is, one of the NPCs is long-gone, one of them cannot speak, one speaks only Giant, and the last speaks only Sylvan. As written, what percentage of player groups could possibly find out any of this exposition? Oh and I forgot the best part - all the NPCs start out hostile to the players, and one of them has lost their memory and doesn't even know any of the level's back story.
On what planet does any of that lead anywhere except that "players have several combat encounters and then leave, never having heard any of the exposition"? Either I run it that way, or I need to litter the area with secret journals, new NPCs, talking mirrors, or whatever. Which is fine, and probably what I'll do... but, I mean, why write the campaign this way in the first place?
I should add, I've run a bunch of boxed WotC campaigns (my players like them), and they're all filled with stuff like this. There'll be a dungeon room with an ancient chair, and the campaign book will describe who put the chair there centuries ago, and why, even though no NPCs in the campaign could know those things or tell the players about them. But if the players cast Legend Lore on a chair, you're covered... 
(rant over)
Small DM rant...
I know what you mean. On the one hand, it is a good idea to give some extra background to the people and things the PCs encounter just so that you can reward those PCs who take the opportunity to dig deeper (or just have the right talents at the right time)—even if the expectation is that they'll probably dive in sword-and-spell first and never ask any follow-up questions.
I also genuinely think that a lot of the detail in these prewritten campaigns is for the enjoyment of the people reading the campaign book, as a piece of literature rather than merely a tool.
But yes, I do sometimes wonder why they don't add just a few more ways to find some of this information out, to maximise the chance that all this extra colour actually reaches the players—especially when it has bearing on the plot.
Maybe the assumption is just that the DM will always add some tailored hooks for their own parties, and that it's not worth the extra effort (and pages) anticipating how they might do that for disparate groups and play styles? It does rather reduce one of the benefits of these prewrittens in the first place though—allowing enthusiastic but busy DMs to run adventures for their players without significant preparation.
I also genuinely think that a lot of the detail in these prewritten campaigns is for the enjoyment of the people reading the campaign book, as a piece of literature rather than merely a tool.
I've heard RPG developers talk about the writing process, and about this part of the audience specifically. What you're thinking is a confirmed fact.
See also me and my Exalted collection.
That doesn't excuse what fenomas is complaining about, but it does explain why such things make it into the books.
Also I expect a not-insignificant percentage of the D&D audience includes a DM who cares about story--that's why they're the DM--who is running for a group of players that mostly wants to hang out, push their miniature around, and roll some dice. For those players, not speaking the right language means not having the fluff get in the way of the fight, but having it in the text throws a story bone to the DM.
Yup a solid chunk of people get campaign book to read just for fun. That's why so many books are written in universe instead of more dryly but more clear like an instruction book. Where it gets weird is a lot of reviews of books are from people who didn't run the campaign too.
Also most DND books I found suck at making villains. No build or anything. They mostly just show up in the last fight. Which makes them very generic.
Also most DND books I found suck at making villains. No build or anything. They mostly just show up in the last fight. Which makes them very generic.
Well, that's one way to stop the players deciding to attack them early...
Yeah, I get that some of the sourcebook is just there for the reader. But it's annoying when the backstory is just filler - like it says the chair was placed there by a wizard named Blorble to win the heart of a chair-loving girl named Beeble, and you check and find that those names don't appear anywhere else in the campaign or the setting. Text like that feels like Lorem Ipsum that somebody stuck in to meet a word count.
Also most DND books I found suck at making villains. No build or anything. They mostly just show up in the last fight. Which makes them very generic.
Hoooo-boy. The one I'm running is Dungeon of the Mad Mage, the big bad's motivation is.... n't. The campaign leaves it unspecified, and just gives a couple of one-line suggestions for possible motivations he might have. But they're optional, so there's nothing actually in the campaign that relates to them or foreshadows them or anything - if you want the players to have any idea why the big bad does anything, you're on your own.
I think the argument about not having a motivation is something to do with making it easier to slot the prewritten material into your own campaign. I generally prefer it when the author(s) give you several short, evocative, mutually exclusive suggestions to address that; I find that helps way more than a blank check does, even if I end up choosing "none of the above."
master0 wrote:Also most DND books I found suck at making villains. No build or anything. They mostly just show up in the last fight. Which makes them very generic.
Well, that's one way to stop the players deciding to attack them early...
Another line presented as a joke, but is actually a significant factor in scenario design... 
Yeah, I get that some of the sourcebook is just there for the reader. But it's annoying when the backstory is just filler - like it says the chair was placed there by a wizard named Blorble to win the heart of a chair-loving girl named Beeble, and you check and find that those names don't appear anywhere else in the campaign or the setting. Text like that feels like Lorem Ipsum that somebody stuck in to meet a word count.
master0 wrote:Also most DND books I found suck at making villains. No build or anything. They mostly just show up in the last fight. Which makes them very generic.
Hoooo-boy. The one I'm running is Dungeon of the Mad Mage, the big bad's motivation is.... n't. The campaign leaves it unspecified, and just gives a couple of one-line suggestions for possible motivations he might have. But they're optional, so there's nothing actually in the campaign that relates to them or foreshadows them or anything - if you want the players to have any idea why the big bad does anything, you're on your own.
I ran Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and we had a great time; it was a very open, sandbox-y adventure I could easily improvise off of, and everybody had loads of fun. Rolled immediately into DotMM, and, man, it became a slog. It's one thing to do an old-school dungeon crawl, but 20+ levels of dungeon crawl is way too much. We were slowing down anyways but COVID hitting killed off that campaign entirely.
My beef is the otherwise interesting dungeons filled with nonsensical traps. Somehow they don't feel like fair play, either as a player or a DM.
WHY is there a random, still-active, devastating, trap still here in the long-abandoned dungeon? Why was it even there in the first place?
I also have not figured out how to run diseases and poisons satisfactorily. It's one of the few things where you're likely to be considering out-of-combat durations, and there's all sorts of player-hidden information.
A lot of this issues seem to me to come from the way D&D has developed. There are all these expectations ("dungeons are filled with traps!" etc) which are now included all the time, because that's what people associate with D&D. And there's a lot of things in there, because of the 50 years of accumulated traditions.
However, most people actually want to play only one approach to D&D, not a buffet filled with everything that's been associated with any approach to playing D&D. Which means all the stuff there for those other people is either nonsensical, useless, or directly works against the game you want to play.
(My suggested solution, if one is needed: identify the style of play your group actually wants, and find a game focused on that in particular. It is almost certainly out there already).
Yeah, DotMM is a pretty clear homage to the old-school nonsensical adventures of AD&D, where you'd just have completely random stuff from room to room and an endless series of deadly traps that made no sense at all. Stuff like that was normal in D&D 40 years ago, and we're just more used to things that fit together a bit more organically than something like White Plume Mountain, which was vampires and then manticores and a giant crab and a variety of humanoid guards, plus bizarre environmental puzzles and traps.
It's just really what DotMM is designed to do, make people relive the adventures of the early days. The thing is, those really weren't all that good, so, you know.
Yeah, and a lot of those adventures were written specifically as "incredibly hard convention scenarios, so you can score each group on how far they made it before they all got killed." (White Plume Mountain was one of those, as was Tomb of Horrors)
I'd like to run a little fun stuff for my friend and I think he'd like the idea of The Wild Beyond The Witchlight. for those that have run it, or even just read it (which I haven't), do you think it will translate to a solo adventure? Well, I'd probably have an NPC joining him, so more like an adventure for 2.
I'm good at tuning combat on the fly, but what little I read about this adventure, a lot of the adventure can be completed without physical combat.
-BEP
A lot of this issues seem to me to come from the way D&D has developed. There are all these expectations ("dungeons are filled with traps!" etc) which are now included all the time, because that's what people associate with D&D. And there's a lot of things in there, because of the 50 years of accumulated traditions.
However, most people actually want to play only one approach to D&D, not a buffet filled with everything that's been associated with any approach to playing D&D. Which means all the stuff there for those other people is either nonsensical, useless, or directly works against the game you want to play.
(My suggested solution, if one is needed: identify the style of play your group actually wants, and find a game focused on that in particular. It is almost certainly out there already).
I agree with this but the one thing that really sucks is finding a group for non dnd stuff is so much harder. If I post somewhere for a dnd game I'll get ten to twenty responses. For anything else I am lucky to get one.
I agree with this but the one thing that really sucks is finding a group for non dnd stuff is so much harder. If I post somewhere for a dnd game I'll get ten to twenty responses. For anything else I am lucky to get one.
5e has clearly dominated the TTRPG space like no other game ever has, and nothing else has ever come close to the kind of market share it's had. When I started playing AD&D in the early 80s, I wound up playing a bunch of different TTRPGs, because people were just cranking different stuff out left and right, but 5e's explosion of popularity kind of nuked everything else in the mid-2010s. That is changing, and I'm seeing more game books on shelves at game stores, and WOTC's OGL fiasco is helping inspire people like Matt Colville and Kobold Press to create their own systems. Even Critical Role has one system out right now with Candela Obscura, and another on the way.
5e and 5.5e (whatever next year's books will be called) are still going to be incredibly popular, but I think the days when it was really the only game out there with any number of people playing it are coming to a close.
Agreed. There are more and better other RPGs than ever before right now, although the hobby is also dominated by D&D more than ever as well.
MikeSands wrote:A lot of this issues seem to me to come from the way D&D has developed. There are all these expectations ("dungeons are filled with traps!" etc) which are now included all the time, because that's what people associate with D&D. And there's a lot of things in there, because of the 50 years of accumulated traditions.
However, most people actually want to play only one approach to D&D, not a buffet filled with everything that's been associated with any approach to playing D&D. Which means all the stuff there for those other people is either nonsensical, useless, or directly works against the game you want to play.
(My suggested solution, if one is needed: identify the style of play your group actually wants, and find a game focused on that in particular. It is almost certainly out there already).
I agree with this but the one thing that really sucks is finding a group for non dnd stuff is so much harder. If I post somewhere for a dnd game I'll get ten to twenty responses. For anything else I am lucky to get one.
I'll say, I'm starting to see some cracks in the D&D monolith with pathfinder and some of the OSR stuff. I would still have a hard time getting much of a group together to try out something like Disaster Wing, but there's plenty of interest in Pathfinder right now if you're in a decent sized city
I do hope that some of the new system can get big enough to be self sustaining. Although I'm not so optimistic. That said I do believe dnd has left a huge gap to be exploited. I thought about what it would to take to make a game to overthrow dnd for a while now. And the answer is mostly just a pile of money and a good system designed to take advantage of computers. Something where the on-boarding to learn to be a player or a dm could have a single player component. A bit like modern card games.
Honestly I'll take any improvements really. I do love dnd but after playing it for a while you do realized how many flaws it has in its Frankenstein design.
And the answer is mostly just a pile of money and a good system designed to take advantage of computers.
Or a radical simplification and a refocus on imagination. Look at the plethora of Powered By The Apocalypse derived systems, for example, which have a lot less crunch.
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