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

I find silly games tiresome so mostly play serious games. Now, that's not to say there isn't banter, jokes, etc, but most of the time is spent actually playing the game rather than goofing around or doing lolrandom stunts.

Yeah, I'd say that most of the games I've been in or ran have a serious plot and characters, but there's moments of humor and general lightheartedness too that come naturally. It's mostly about finding the right group of dedicated players (and GM) that work together to make something more serious really work out and be rewarding. If you're tired of jokey games and nobody in your current group can seem to run something more your speed, it might be worth checking around for a more serious group or game that's ongoing.

Depends on what you understand as a "serious" game. Me personally I think all that matters to qualify as one is, that the group cares enough about a setting to not want its longterm integrity be sacrificed by cheap joke actions or liberal bending of rules in favor of quick and immediate fun. That doesn't mean you can't have any fun ever or aren't allowed to make jokes, but you generally treat the game itself with a note of respect and make sure that your character's actions actually make sense in context and are still believable. It's not a terribly hard thing to do, it just comes down to how invested you are in the world.

Wow this looks AWESOME! I'll definitely have to give Saderan's tutorial another pass after seeing this. When I first ever did it, it seemed REALLY boring and washed out. Didn't even come close to the proper results. Are your clouds your own technique? Also, maybe you guys can offer some insight. I'm writing an article on story telling in tabletop games vs video games. I was trying to think of some appropriate topics for this. I was thinking: Art Style vs Theater of Mind (How a game's assets/appearance can tell a story vs the story happening in your mind.) Linear Storytelling vs Freeform/Cooperative Storytelling (Emergent gameplay in both video games & tabletop and linear stories in both.) Mechanics Telling Story vs Story Being Dictated (All games, even boardgames like Monopoly, are effectively telling a story whether it's apparent or not.) Options vs Choices (Video games often have set in stone options whereas boardgames/tabletop RPGs allow us to come up with more creative or alternative solutions to issues.) There's probably a lot more I can cover but I kinda had this dropped on me. I'm someone fairly new to tabletop games, coming from a video gaming background. I'm writing this article for a site that mostly caters to the old blood in this community so I feel super out of my element. Since Facepunch is pretty big on gaming, I'd be excited to hear your guys' thoughts!

Depends on how deep you want to go for your article, but your second topic and fourth topic mesh well enough together I think that you can discuss both in the story and keep it cohesive, seeing as the two topics are almost like two sides of the same coin.

Yea, the default Saderan tutorial can end up washed-out until the very final step where you apply saturation/contrast adjustment layers. I use different colors, sourced from earth satellite photographs, instead of the ones used in the tutorial. The clouds are from NASA.

My players have managed to fail walking down a single hallway as a party before the hysterics began.

I've been playing in more RPG groups online, in a forum-ish, post-by-post format. I gotta say, when you can collect yourself in privacy for as much time as you need to make a written RP post, it makes it a lot easier, not to mention more enjoyable, to take "seriously" in a more serious setting, or even just a serious moment or scene in an otherwise average setting tonally. I find it a legitimately daunting task to do any "serious" RPG stuff with rl friends in person, and could even see those same conflicts with something like strangers over a voice app.

Follow up question, has anyone ever actually finished a campaign in play-by-post format?

Cerberus Daily News Have six years worth

Holy fucking shit.

Started my first real game with a group of friend a few weeks ago. Running Rise of the Runelords or whatever it is, I'm just a player so I dunno really. Anyway, after a rough time getting started and with some of our players learning how to play still it's starting to get really fun as we get into the meat of the story, though our GM is both frustrated and happy that he's mostly having to make up everything since we've gone so far off track while missing blatant plot hooks. Our intrepid party of a Witch, Bard, Ninja, Druid Tree Singer, her pet tree Leaf, and my Occultist as the tank is successfully getting screwed up at every turn, it's so bad I've made a replacement character since I expect to die within the next two sessions through our incompetency. Super fun though!

Alright lads I want some opinions, im thinking of running a one shot campaign centered around a heist (may or may not have gotten inspiration from reddit) To add an interesting twist, I thought of giving certain players conflicting objectives that are sent only to them, spy vs spy sort of deal. Realistically the group would need 4+ players and i'd have a bunch of pre generated characters to fit the heists roles, everything is set up in advance and the players just get a backstory stating they were contracted as they were the best at X and the price was right. As for the conflicting objectives, while I can just change them if I run the session again im thinking a good combo would be: 1 player is basically a traitor to the group, either they have to prevent success without being detected etc or that they have to steal the artifact or whatnot but for a different 'contractor' so they will need to escape the rest of the group once they have the item in question, or along the way try and weaken or remove the others to make the job of taking it easier. 2 other players are given conflicting objectives to do with part of the heist that is somewhat of a secondary objective, like save/destroy a priceless vase in the location. 1 player that is not the traitor is given a note stating that there is a traitor in the group and to trust no one, but no information to who. There might be opportunities to get clues such as divination during the heist but these will be very vague and at most, remove one person from suspicion if you put a few clues together. All players are also given secondary objectives that do not clash with anothers, those with objectives above would be given less of these than others. Possibly score players and determine a winner based on objectives as these are all cutthroats who don't necessarily like eachother so in the end, someone comes out on top.

So, last session was interesting. Not only has the chaotic good rogue shifted to Neutral Evil, he also lost his left arm and leg, the party accidentally destabilized the government of a city, caused mass riots, blew up the town hall in a teleportation mishap, Followed by them rallying the townsfolk into their own personal army. Next session will be more interesting.

So I'm playing an architect in The Veil and their thing is that they can manipulate the augmented reality everyone uses and VR but the draw back is that sometimes parts of the character's subconscious influence things around them as well so long story short my GM is going to have to roleplay my character's fursona at some point

Sounds fun, look at Hollowpoint for a ruleset or general heist inspiration.

Just play Fiasco. The game you wanna run sounds like its rife for actual drama.

Yo guys FYI amazon is having a 50% off sale on most of the 5e hardback books right now. DM guide, monster manual and guide to everything for $70 is a pretty decent price, tempted to pick them up even though I currently don't DM.

I don't know if this has already been posted or if this just got missed, but... https://twitter.com/PA_Megacorp/status/973997354629070853

Man, Battle Royal is even hitting tabletop? What is this world coming to?

Looking for some insight. I am running a 5E game with a larger group (6 people) in the Curse of Strahd Campaign. Sometimes, when my players end up meeting a quest giver, or anyone of slight importance, it turns into all of them firing off as many questions as they can to the NPC. Most of which, I am not prepared for. While asking questions, a few will start wanting to roll checks to make sure they are getting truthful information. I want my characters to have all the information they need to succeed. I guess my question is, what is the best way to handle characters from verbally interrogating every NPC they come across? What could I be doing differently on my end?

Referencing that game I mentioned before, I got looking at classes and decided to make something less optimized since I was kinda outshining people. Ended up making the strongest pathfinder class! Shifter Oozemorph! It actually turned out pretty good, rolled an 18 for my Strength so I'm punching out at +10, 2x1d6+11 at level 4 to start but I'm not sure quite how well it will hold up long term. Not telling the rest of my party I'm an ooze so it'll be fun when I walk into an AMF or something and turn to goop. Or in a dire situation I can suddenly turn to goop and start climbing walls or something. It'll be fun i think!

Can you give an example question that they might ask, but that you wouldn't have an answer to?

If they ask an NPC and you don't know what to say, the NPC simply don't know. They can roll all they want, it doesn't change the fact that the NPC doesn't have anything more they know or can/want to tell. What I personally do in those cases is have the relationship with that character or related group degrade.

Players shouldn't be rolling for shit until you tell them to, for one thing. For another, you should generally have the answers to questions in your head ahead of time. Finally; how many people/beings appreciate being interrogated so rudely? They'd probably tell them to fuck off, to say the least, if they're going to act like it's a video game going through all the dialogue choices. There's more polite, and more effective, ways to get information than being bombarded with questions. ONE person should probably be the spokesman, and the others can feed questions to them. This stops YOU from getting overwhelmed, and IC it stops the NPC from being assaulted to the point where he might call the guards.

Yeah, pretty much they try to exhaust all options of the "video game RPG dialogue choices". I usually have as many answers as I can ready but, of course, I cannot have all the answers all the time. I will probably work with having the relationship with that character degrade a bit. Have the NPC become lest trusting or frustrated. Thanks for the replies! This is getting the gears moving. I'm having some ideas now on how to handle this.

Plus if they're rolling Sense Motive or the like to determine if they're lying, well, one, they shouldn't be rolling at all, you should be rolling it for them so they don't know how well they did. If this is an online game, you may not even have the obligation to do that, since they can't see you actually toss the dice. Second, Sense Motive is not a lie detector, it's a general gauge of someone's trustworthiness. Maybe instead of them getting a check for every statement, they can get an overall roll versus a character per conversation, with a possible second roll if the topic changes to something more sensitive or one the NPC is trying to hide something about. An NPC might be more than happy being honest as long as they're talking about geography, but the mood may change if the topic turns to politics for example. Finally, if the problem is real bad, you could make your PCs roll initiative for conversating, maybe with CHA instead of DEX? The NPC could address concerns in the order presented, with the most social forceful person getting their's in first.

That's some great advice, thank you! I actually never considered having me roll instead of my characters. I usually let them roll and just set a DC or do some fudging if I really want it to go my way. I would also use vague words so they would not get a definite answer depending on said subject. This discussion had me to do some research on and I found an amazing stack exchange write up for those interested. Link A lot of great advice! Thanks again!

Basttle royale's been thing in TT since the 80s, there was even a 40K/FB version.

Actually, in 5e it's REALLY 10000% NOT the proper demiplane. However, even in the actual demiplane it doesn't go after good. The only things it does to Good is tempt them - and it leaves the TRULY good and pure alone. The demiplane of Dread is designed for one primary purpose - the eternal torment of the darklords. They are given what they thought they truly wanted, with the caveat that they are stuck there forever, and swiftly find out that it is not as good as they had thought. Strahd, for instance, wanted the love and obedience of everyone around him, and Tatyana as part of that. What he got was obedience, but only through the same fearsome methods he used when he was mortal, and Tatyana only exists as continued temptation for him to commit the same vicious acts as those that cursed him, forever. The reason the demiplane brings in adventurers and travelers is to keep things fresh for the darklords - something to prevent the stagnation which occurred in Sithicus, and to see if something MORE entertaining might crop up. Darklords have fallen before, to final death or to one of surpassing evil, usually helped along by the actions of adventurers. Part of what I dislike about 5e's Curse of Strahd is it turns Ravenloft into a funhouse, starting with a little ghost story that only the GM is likely to get anything out of since the players sure as shit aren't likely to find out anything about the history, and progressing with Barovians not stoning to death/burning at the stake obvious witches and demons/monsters like tieflings, warlocks, or dragonborn as they sure as hell would have done. They were craven in the face of something obviously terrifying, like a vampire, but a human they can (and would) form a lynch mob for. In fact, the original adventure had huge roving bands of angry villagers as random encounters, who would massively increase the odds of further random encounters and run away in the face of anything but the lightest resistance.