D&D and Tabletops RPGs V7: Yes you can talk about tabletops other than D&D - Games

Has anyone here played the new Waterdeep: Dragon Heist module yet? If so, what are some general thoughts about it?

had my first ever D&D game last week. ended up stuck in the middle of an angry mob and we needed a distraction. for some reason my first instinct was arson. I fear I might be getting too deep into character. fortunately our cleric, despite having all the charisma of a brick, was able to pull religious rank and give us the opportunity to talk the crowd down

DM (me):- *rolls* "you manage to swim through the underwater cave just fine, but your Gnome best friend didn't have the lung capacity to match you, and fell unconscious near the end." Dragonborn Monk: - "Shit, okay.. I place him down somewhere solid and start giving him mouth to mouth." DM: - "Okay, roll medicine." *not a brilliant roll* DM: - "You can't get enough air into his lungs, as a Dragonborn you really don't have the ability to pucker your lips to create a blowing motion ... If you even HAD lips to begin with..." *other players agree* Dragonb: - "that's fair enough... Hmm... AH! I know what to do." DM: - "okay, whats the plan?" Dragonb: - "I need something something that can pucker, well... My asshole can pucker AND blow air!" https://youtu.be/TDV15-HbpXk I have seen such horrors... I no longer wish to be a DM.

No, it's great! It's like mouth-to-mouth and smelling salts rolled into one!

i mean did it work

Just beat the first chapter boss of my wife's D&D Campaign (I'm a Cleric). Guy was such a bitch to fight. But Bestow Curse is so fucking good to shut a caster boss down. I barely did any damage that fight, just kept my curse on him and disabling him. He still got a Finger of Death off on our enchantress and nearly insta-killed her but thankfully she got half-damaged. Boss did a kamikaze bomb at the end and half the party fell to 0 HP including myself but thankfully I still had a Death Ward from a divine boon. I used Turn Undead and somehow every single one of the undead juggernauts that were swarming us and making us fail our Death Saving Throws turned, and I was able to get off a Healing Word on everyone that had fallen, basically ending the fight in our favour. Never was so heart-pounding to play D&D but so worth it. We were pretty underlevelled for the encounter (it's an open world (evil) campaign and we happened to choose the most difficult area to go into first lol. Our own fault, who chooses to go to the fucking lava world zone at level 4)

https://i.redd.it/nytlc547dgr11.jpg Drew my first city map

So tonight in one of my group's campaigns, our bard named Bobby Shmurda apparently met his arch nemesis, whom none of the rest of the ~7 members of the party knew about, in an inn, who happened to be Soulja Boy..the bard. Bobby tried to be civil and tried to buy Soulja a beer, who promptly threw it back in his face. They fist fought in armor, Bobby took Soulja's face and slammed it into the bartop and slid it down the length of the bar, knocking drinks and plates everywhere. Then Bobby finally smashed Soulja in the face with a glass beer mug at which point they drew harmonicas and started music battling (complete with celtic music playing in the background of our session IRL). This worked by each bard rolling a d20 and whichever rolled higher would tip the scales of "battle" in their favor. In short, Bobby rolled a bunch of high rolls, fucked Soulja's bitch, and sent Soulja running from the inn in a few turns. Bards are weird.

Also I did a color version of the map https://i.imgur.com/miT9JSb.jpg

So, anyone else going to Pax Unplugged at the end of November?

I'm gonna be there with my superhero group; we're all gonna be dressed as our characters, meaning that I've got to build a giant glowing spacesuit with a skull face inside the helmet

I'm so excited to finally see Acquisition Inc. live.

Why would you unplug me? I want to live!

I paid big money to unplug you, ya know. I'm kidding, you were relatively cheap

Story of my life.

That depends, do you believe the GM and players are still interested? If they still seem genuinely interested and still talk, then yes. Things happen sometimes, especially in Fall and the holiday season. I'm having to hold off playing a game for a solid month due to a series of things getting in the way and I still expect to come out the other side playing it.

Oh yeah, we're all IRL friends and like the game. Just realized we're probably going to preempted this week by Daredevil Season 3 and Red Dead 2 next weekend, though, so this coffin is getting pretty heavy with nails.

If a TV show is what's delaying you and you arent actually on the show itself then you have a problem. I was thinking people being out of town or medical stuff not "I felt like watching a show"

DnDSports DnDSports is the first online D&D Tournament in a cooperative Party vs Party setting from EncounterRoleplay & DnDBeyond with a grand prize of $5,000. Over the course of 4 weeks, 16 players will compete in teams of 4 in single elimination games. Each game is a best of 3 arena battle and played via Roll20. How is it Played? The full rules for DnDSports will be released shortly after our next round of Playtesting. We don’t claim to have created perfect balance, nor is that our aim, as every competitive game has an element of strategy. We’re also implementing MOBA-esque mechanics such as a Pick/Ban phase to help expand the strategy. We’ve been working closely with over a dozen talented DMs to create 15 pre-generated characters from which the players will choose, and adapt the pre-existing Dungeons & Dragons: 5th Edition rules. We know that this will be an incredibly fun new way to play D&D, because as long as you’re having fun, you’re doing it right! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7u9hP4r1S8

Just a life tip, if someone is too 'busy' with a show or a videogame to spend a few hours playing a game/doing any activity, they don't really wanna do that activity.

So, what is there in terms of martial arts focused roleplaying games?

There's a few but none are particularly great. Wushu is pretty simple, though more like a generic Hong Kong modern action film than specifically martial arts. Legend of the Wulin is an extremely, extremely complicated game but pretty much the most Wuxia you're going to get out of a game. I've also heard of Wandering Heroes of Ogre's Gate but haven't looked into it myself. It seems to be full of a zillion martial art techniques along with rules to make your own, and runs on a higher Wuxia level of power. Overall there's just not much, unless you want to include silly shit like the WWF RPG.

Feng Shui's the big one.

I started playing with my friends a year ago and we love using battlemaps. To the point that we're using 3D printed tiles because they look prettier than just using a marker on the laminated grid paper. A few months ago I also started playing with groups that have been playing for years (or even decades in a few cases) and they hate battlemaps and much prefer theatre of the mind kind of battles. What are your opinions? Did you also start loving battlemaps and start disliking them after a few years or is that not the usual progression?

Battlemaps are way better than theater of the mind, imo. The only drawback is they require just a bit more prep work.

Different games benefit from theatre of mind and battlemaps. I ran Dark Heresy for years and it required battlemaps for almost every combat interaction, just to manage ranges and whatnot. But recently I've been running Genesys, which largely encourages Threatre of Mind combats instead. Since ranges are all measured relatively (engaged, short, medium, long and extreme), you are instead measuring your distance not by a metric, but by proximity to other PCs, NPCs or features of the environment. It's made combat a lot faster, last session I managed to juggle a four-way battle with the PCs (and 4 NPC servants), with Dinosaurs, Guards, Orks and the PCs without a map. Everyone knew where everything was in relation to oneanother, and the whole combat was done in half an hour.

White Wolf Street Fighter

I took a monitor that I could lay down and put plexiglass over it, vola table top. Problem is getting the interface down, so I'll need a second pc like a small windows pc from china then have my cheep tablet to remote into. I'm not the DM for the games I've been playing so the user experience was difficult in the first test run.

So I GM two campaigns set in my own setting/world. One is set on a desert continent and the other one is set in a northern continent. I just had a session of the desert campaign and well... http://alexanderlozada.com/iasip/?IlRoZSBHYW5nIFNhZmVseSBTdG9yZXMgQXJjYW5lIEFydGlmYWN0cy4i https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idoYCVLh2qI Here's a highlight of what happend: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/324397626

My D&D5e campaign has been going well. The players were wanting to fight some bigger monsters, so they decide to tackle the Ankheg problem at it's source by going for the Matriarch. Sadly, they're all level 3, and so far in the battle they're up shit creek without a paddle because the monk who has the acid resistance potions forgot to distribute, or even mention that they had them. Also, what's the weirdest thing you've had a player do whilst playing? Because atm mine is our bard cooking drugs in the background (we play over Roll20 + Discord). I'd be really annoyed but they engage well with the game and make a big effort to roleplay so I can let it slide.