Tabletop RPG Catch All

Bit late for me but I might pop in and hang for a bit.

Mixolyde wrote:

Have you looked at Scum and Villainy at all, Mike?

Not yet.

I've got too much in the RPG pile of shame already, so avoiding it (although I have the PDF from the Blades in the Dark kickstarter).

Hot Take: having run D&D a sum total of one time so far it appears to me that it's really, really easy on the DM. Certainly compared to the other systems I've GMed.

Maq wrote:

Hot Take: having run D&D a sum total of one time so far it appears to me that it's really, really easy on the DM. Certainly compared to the other systems I've Games.

After running my first D&D5 game last night, I'd agree.

EXCEPT

I'm running this fairly complex murder mystery scenario and it was pretty hard to keep all the details of who was where doing what when straight. (Not about D&D rules, of course).

5e is pretty easy to run. It’s also pretty malleable, which makes tweaking it for a group pretty easy.

I’m gearing up to run the PF2 playtest for my group, and I’m a bit nervous about the complexity. The system is much more internally consistent compared to PF1, but some of the changes (like adjudicating skills) feels much more fiddly.

Speaking of the PF2 playtest, am I the only one having trouble logging into Paizo's website to download the PDFs?

It sees me logged into the forum, but it just keeps showing the login screen when I go to my digital content. However, I’m not sure the forum is working either. The latest posts in the playtest forum are from Saturday, which can’t possibly be right.

*checks Twitter*

It looks like the Paizo website is having some technical problems.

The One Ring is up on Humble. Really fun system, with a really great price for all of those books.

Igneus wrote:

The One Ring is up on Humble. Really fun system, with a really great price for all of those books.

Yep, having an ongoing game that's been going for years, I'd say that's a must-buy if you have any interest in gaming in Tolkien's world. Fantastic game! (Of course, I already have them all )

The Actual Play Podcast "Spout Lore" is ridiculously good and hilarious.

So I’ve never played a table top rpg, but I love Tolkien’s world so I bought the humble bundle. Hopefully one day I will get a chance to play it.

Aggie-SWO wrote:

So I’ve never played a table top rpg, but I love Tolkien’s world so I bought the humble bundle. Hopefully one day I will get a chance to play it.

Although the game is fairly big and might be intimidating to jump right into, I can recommend the adventure "Of Leaves & Stewed Hobbit" as a self-contained and fun introduction. (It's in "Tales from Wilderland"). Getting a few people together to play through that with the example characters in the back of the main book would work for a starter.

You still need someone more or less familiar with the rules to GM, but that isn't necessarily a huge amount of work (you don't need to know everything to get started).

MikeSands wrote:
Aggie-SWO wrote:

So I’ve never played a table top rpg, but I love Tolkien’s world so I bought the humble bundle. Hopefully one day I will get a chance to play it.

Although the game is fairly big and might be intimidating to jump right into, I can recommend the adventure "Of Leaves & Stewed Hobbit" as a self-contained and fun introduction. (It's in "Tales from Wilderland"). Getting a few people together to play through that with the example characters in the back of the main book would work for a starter.

You still need someone more or less familiar with the rules to GM, but that isn't necessarily a huge amount of work (you don't need to know everything to get started).

Thanks for the tips. I will let you know how it goes if I ever get a game together.

Yesterday my boys texted me and said that they and one of their friends want to get back into D&D and wanted me to DM a new campaign for them.

Later than evening, I found a sheet for a freshly-rolled character they had put together and named "Chippson Dipp".

I'm not sure whether to be excited or what.

Potential Enemy Conspiracy Group names:

  • The Cool Treat Kids
  • The Hot Meat Men
  • The Dairy Queens
  • Guaca-Moles
  • Salsalitos
  • The Mad Cow Butchers
Boudreaux wrote:

Yesterday my boys texted me and said that they and one of their friends want to get back into D&D and wanted me to DM a new campaign for them.

Later than evening, I found a sheet for a freshly-rolled character they had put together and named "Chippson Dipp".

I remember in high school when I played my very first game of D&D, I was struggling to think of a name for my newly created Elf Ranger. I looked around my friend's basement for inspiration and spotted a recent issue of Time Magazine...

Thus, Algore, the Elven Ranger was born.

I'll admit, I can vaguely remember being 12 and thinking names like "Grim Goodshot*" and "Dark Blade*" were cool names.

*actual names of my kids' characters in previous D&D games

so i played the first session of the D&D campaign i'm a part of last evening. It went great!

I'm a Chaotic Good(ish) Tiefling Rogue Charlatan with terrible impulse control (stats are all great except for wisdom, which is 10). In the course of the session, I convinced the other two players to spring me from a prison cart, stole half of some guy's pancake using the ol' "tapping them on the shoulder with my tail" routine, made a profit of 10 silver selling a phial of coloured water to a passer by and pledged loyalty to the crown for the Big Main Story under a pseudoname I made up on the spot.

During our first official mission for the crown, we encountered a potential suspect counterfeiter hiding his home and chased him up to the rooftops. As he was about to jump to the next building I carefully shot him in the leg (because honestly dahling, who has the time and energy for a rooftop chase!) , sending him crashing down into unconsciousness in the street below. And that's more or less where the session ended.

I'm looking forward to our other missing player character show up. In the back story I sold him an amulet that is supposed to make his dragonborn self look human (it doesn't) providing he thinks about it really really hard! I've left it up to him to decide if he catches up demanding a refund or convinced the disguise works.

All in all. Had a blast

well, i now seem to have gone from playing no games of D&D to playing in one campaign and DM'ing another for a group of GWJ Euro peeps. :O

No pressure, it's only been *counts in head* about 25+ years since the last time I've DM'd anything. What could go wrong?

Watch some Office Hours with Adam Koebel!

Mixolyde wrote:

Watch some Office Hours with Adam Koebel!

I second this.

Speaking of which, great panel from PAX West 2018 here. Adam does a good job of stating the overall purpose and common themes of the show.

pyxistyx wrote:

well, i now seem to have gone from playing no games of D&D to playing in one campaign and DM'ing another for a group of GWJ Euro peeps. :O

No pressure, it's only been *counts in head* about 25+ years since the last time I've DM'd anything. What could go wrong?

Congrats! It'll be awesome.

I've got session #0 coming up tonight for a new 5e campaign I'll be playing in. It's been about 5 years since I played at all, and closer to 10 since I last had a regular gaming group.

I'm going to play a Half-Orc Bard with the Folk Hero background.

Forc* Hero?

misplacedbravado wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

well, i now seem to have gone from playing no games of D&D to playing in one campaign and DM'ing another for a group of GWJ Euro peeps. :O

No pressure, it's only been *counts in head* about 25+ years since the last time I've DM'd anything. What could go wrong?

Congrats! It'll be awesome.

This

Anyone ever play Achtung Cthulhu?

Maq wrote:
misplacedbravado wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

well, i now seem to have gone from playing no games of D&D to playing in one campaign and DM'ing another for a group of GWJ Euro peeps. :O

No pressure, it's only been *counts in head* about 25+ years since the last time I've DM'd anything. What could go wrong?

Congrats! It'll be awesome.

This

Agreed.

Remember that there's no secret tricks to being a DM... you're still just playing the game, with different things to do compared to running a player character.

I'm also DMing a D&D campaign for the first time in about 25 years (although I have run one or two one-shots and played a handful of times along the way). I've found it to be useful to let each player take charge of the rules for their character so I don't have to, then I can just focus on the adventure, NPCs, and critters they are fighting. (I guess this wouldn't work well for people new to D&D though.)

I think only Maq is an RPG vet in the group, the others are mostly new to it (i think?) so will probably need a bit of time to get used to the rules (which I'm still kinda figuring out for myself in places too). That said, we're going through Mine of Phandelver as an introduction so it should be relatively easy-going to begin with, and I've given them shared access to the character creator, the PHB and Xanathar's Guide on my D&DBeyond account for quick reference.

I will say, I' super-glad Roll20 is a thing that exists though. That is a handy piece of software!

There are lots of good things in these modern times. With all the communication methods out there you can now play with people around the world. No need to be restricted to people just in your area. For people that can't be locked down for specific time play by forum and play by email games exist. I played a pathfinder game for nearly year by forum. Then like you said we have tools like roll20 that makes things easier for rolls. We also have paid for apps like tabletop simulator and fantasy grounds that are great to get a desktop feel and help with dice rolls.

I'm once again trying to run a PbP game over Discord with some folks at work. I've always had problems with players (myself included), regarding consistency, but I keep hoping sooner or later it'll stick.
I'm running DCC and using the Sailors on the Starless Sea adventure. Wish me luck!