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

That's not particularly fair. Same rules apply as for roll20 applicants - avoid popular games when recruiting off there, because you'll end up with folks who likely couldn't get a game anywhere else or get shifted out of them real quick. Otherwise, you might get a pretty solid group out of it. Eventually. With lots of weeding out applicants.

Comparing /tg/ to /v/ is a bit much

Been wanting to play D&D for a while now, always got buried underneath swarms of applications on roll20 and friends either have full groups or don't want to play. Finally getting my first taste in a one shot this coming up friday, hopefully. Rolled pretty good stats and I'm happy with my character so hopefully things go well.

Thanks for the extensive reply. The quoted part was my experience with Pathfinder yesterday. Every game that looked half decent had like 20+ applications. Seems like it would be easy to host my own game there and find enough people to play with me. I'm the GM for our group, but we are all completely new to Pathfinder and pen&paper games in general, but I'm not confident enough to GM with complete strangers that most likely have much more experience than I do.

I have found success through recruiting through various D&D discords.

Storytime? Storytime. A group of my friends had been doing a weekly homebrew game set in an original universe of superheroes. They'd been at it for some time before I managed to join in; all in all, basically what you'd expect in terms of characters. We have a guy in power armor, we have a force-field person, we've got not!Daredevil, all pretty reasonable. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/SOxaXQHsm5IV6-8GmIqVNaeg17jpQCwfySo9gHtlmPNheDmgw3NtGJCRBe0CDBCaQj9WC184eqDBK8LgVXhBJDuiKDrd0Ktqz-jXtcH9BZqY2PnTV4Ah=w170 And then there's my character, the impossible Ghostronaut. I'll maybe get into his convoluted backstory another time (if people like this story, that is), but the gist of it is that he's a half-mummy half-astronaut with the power to manipulate wormholes and shoot beams of mummy energy. I also gave him an ability I call "ghost taste", in which Ghostronaut sucks out and tastes the ghost of the target (not unlike a wine-tasting), gaining insight into their thoughts, knowledge, and emotions. So on my first session, Ghostronaut shows up in NYC looking to join one of the several teams of superheroes that live there. He's basically like Groot or the Iron Giant; becoming Ghostronaut kinda scrambled his brains, so now all he's really interested in is doling out justice while evading the pursuit of NASA (but like I said, that's a whole other story). So he ends up "trying out" for The Super Squad, a team of preppy rich heroes who act as sort of rivals to our team; naturally, he doesn't make the cut, but they set him up with a nice bag of Super Squad merchandise for his troubles. It's at this point that he gets attacked by a pirate on a moped, who steals his swag bag and runs off. Ghostronaut gives chase, attempting all kinds of portal bullshit, literally none of which works thanks to me failing all my rolls. So the game at this point is basically a ghost in a space suit and a pirate falling in and out of portals, slap-fighting over a bag of free promotional stickers and t-shirts. Eventually the player characters show up (even for their game, this was a very silly occurrence that was quick to gain attention) and we work together to capture the pirate. So we've got the pirate suspended in a force field bubble, interrogating him for info. I try to wormhole my arm into the bubble to taste his ghost, only for him to dodge and stick a live grenade in my hand. So now we're stuck, literally tangled in each other's powers, with the grenade set to go off the second I loosen my grip. Our force field user drops the bubble and seals me in a barrier to protect everyone else, letting the pirate go while I tank the explosion. Miraculously, I survive with all my limbs. We end up chasing the pirate to the docks (where else), where his crew is waiting, attempting to pull off some sort of organized villainy. We engage the mooks in an Adam West fight scene, only for them to reveal that they've got a giant, mutated lobster man on their side (not giant giant, but a big guy for us). Cue a few turns of us throwing stuff against the lobster man and failing to really do any serious damage. Until I get a wonderful idea. I ask the DM if I can try something stupid; curious to see what I've got in mind, he lets me proceed. I then decide to open a wormhole inside the lobster man, stick my hand in, and fire off a mummy beam as hard as I can. Here is an artist's rendering: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/241798/bd6271c5-33c3-4db8-aa70-aca445ade580/image.png As the DM describes it, the docks begin to smell suspiciously like a lobster bake before we notice the lobster man growing redder and redder. "Wait... something doesn't... ow... OW.... OW OW OW, OH GOD OW, OH NO, OH IT HURTS, OWWWWWW", says the lobster man, as beams of purple light begin to peek through growing cracks in his shell. Naturally, the lobster man explodes, but it's worth noting that I didn't quite kill him. So he's basically laying there, mostly dead, having been cooked from the inside-out, while everyone else looks on in stunned horror. Frankly, I thought it went pretty well.

Anyone else here play GURPS and just wish that the combat system had a simplified and streamlined version? So far my experience with making a campaign in GURPS has been trying to expedite combat as much as possible while providing story, roleplay and puzzles as often as possible to keep things interesting and interactive.

:| GURPS is a streamlined combat rpg. What other games have you played?

I've played D&D 5e, WoD and another homebrew 3.5e ruleset. All of them seem much easier to do combat in than GURPS. If you're working with a medieval/Renaissance fantasy setting, it's usually fine, because most of your characters will be melee fighters and very few ranged fighters. However, when you get into ranged fighting in GURPS 4e it's like opening a can of worms. For starters, there is the size modifier system. Usually most people will range from 0 or +/-1 for a size mod. That's pretty understandable and easy to work with, but once you start fighting dragons, tanks and microscale creatures, you'll start having a bad time once you realize that factors into an accuracy check to hit. That's not also to mention that accuracy has falloff as soon as it reaches a very short range, meaning long range targets will confer atk mod penalties. However, it's gauged in a specific yardage in GURPS, and the given table for figuring out modifier penalties is super confusing as is, especially when having to also add in size mod to the equation. It takes a good couple minutes to figure that out, when in D&D or pretty much any other popular RPG out there has effective range of either it will hit in this range, this will maybe hit but you need a good roll to counteract the disdavantage, or this will definitely not hit. GURPS 4e does have effective range on weapons, but the added accuracy mods make it long to calculate mods and tricky to rebalance if you don't really enjoy tactical combat. Also damage seems to also struggle with cumbersome calculations, every weapon has a damage type. Usually for most guns it's pi+ (or for readers who are just joining in on this conversation, piercing +), which gives a certain damage boost for any damage that beats the DR of the creature or vehicle's armor. This again slows down combat even more for calculating multiple d6's worth of damage and also accounting for multiple shots, which are considered separate instances of damage instead of all just one. If they all get considered as one, that is another entire re-balancing issue on its own. But yeah, that's my two cents on the issue. You might have a much easier time with it than I do, but I'd much rather stick to low tech GURPS 4e from now on with tactical combat.

There is a table listing the attack penalty for specific yardages. Like many other rules in GURPS, it can be mostly ignored. The table is there as an option when you want to be sure you have the exact right penalty, but for most games it's probably not something you ought to be looking at for run of the mill casual attack rolls. Think of it as more of a rough guideline, get a feel for about how large the penalty should be at various ranges, and then just wing it a bit. It usually doesn't matter that much if you get the penalty wrong by one or two points, anyway.

Ahhhh, I see. So it's more of a guideline rather than something you have to use then? Like I mentioned before, rebalancing for that seems like it could be iffy. Then again, balancing isn't really GURPS's strong suit, it thrives off of making some of the most unbalanced/stupidly powerful characters and NPCs sometimes.

Yeah. The game doesn't expect you to adhere perfectly to the table, exactly how much you want to use it is up to you. It doesn't matter much if the penalty isn't exactly right as long as it's close enough.

A player made this after last session https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/207166/8b52e588-9644-4ef8-808f-40ae597bdc15/unknown.png

Just bought my tickets for Pax Unplugged! Im so excited. Hopefully i'll get to see Acquisitions Inc

Holy shit, I never realised how much more ALIVE your world feels when you make a calendar with festivals and celebrations It adds SO much

So my group is approaching the end of Curse of Strahd, and the paladins player sent me this, based on a prior event. I don't entirely recall what happened. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/290187808663142402/450479102302879750/unknown.png

I've always been a huge fan of planning out a random events table or even have a set schedule for events to happen in my world. So if there is a certain date nearing for an event or an event is going on, it's always nice to show the differences in appearance of the town and activities of the NPCs just for a couple minutes before letting the players go on to do whatever they want. Sadly, my last campaign got canned after the first act, so I wasn't able to get into the meat of certain events and such. And the other campaign that I did in my early DMing days kept moving locations and had players that were more interested in doing combat and dungeon crawls, so I never got the time to be able to plan out shit like that unless it was the local guild hall hosting something, but even then they were moving from town to town.

Currently in Storm King's Thunder. Our party just hit level 6, and I've been informed we've only just finished chapter 2. It honestly makes me excited to see what crazy shit is going to happen in the next 10 chapters.

Converting an expanded version of FantasyCraft's Lifestyle, Reputation, Holdings, Favor, and Renown mechanics (as well as Magic Item Creation and Downtime Crafting). It's taken 32 pages so far to get it in. And every page has made me sad that 5E hasn't adopted some of these mechanics to the system (partly so I wouldn't need to write 32 pages in order to port a fun, useful, and gameworld-improving subsystem into the game so that there's actual things to do during Downtime players can mechanically benefit from)

One of my favorite published modules. It drags on a bit, and a few of the story hooks are wildly predictable. But it's no Hoard of the Dragon Queen, so i'll take what I can get. My DM used it it as a 'prologue' for our high level campaign, worked out well. I'm sure you'll continue to enjoy it.

So using my fave system of all time, Mekton Zeta, I'm currently doing the pre-game work for a Crimson Skies game I'm going to be running this summer. Maps, tokens, music, NPC/Plane sheets, etc. Along the way I have been teaching myself how to draw pixel art and with thus knowledge, following a few tutorials and nabbing some free use assets from DeviantArt to work off of (some of the planes have some features cut off of a WWII planes pixel art sheet that I just couldn't get right, mostly some of the wings) I've made what might be my fave set of tokens of all time, including this big ass Zeppelin in the colour scheme of the Confederation of Dixie for the planned finale of the first chapter or so. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/245137/d923fd62-4559-448a-8202-6652634310e3/image.png I know its not great or anything but I'm proud of actually making assets of my own for the first time, ever? Besides some shitty rough map work that is

So our group is going to give D&D 5e a try after playing 4e for three years or so. What can I expect from the transition? This sounds like the coolest shit- I loved crimson skies and always wished for a way to go back into that setting to enjoy it more. Post updates when you have them, I'm really interested.

If you want I could post the other planes I have done so far? I plan on eventually doing tokens & sheets for every plane in the main PC & Xbox games, and the official tabletop game rulebook & expansions

Sure, if you wouldn't mind. My brother and I loved the setting after playing the xbox game, and I'm sure I could convince him to give that system a try if it's for a chance at playing crimson skies tabletop.

5E is them attempting to put one foot in 3.5E and one foot in 4E. It's an interesting system. Death, for instance, no longer automatically occurs once you hit -10. It's only instant when you reach -HitpointMaximum; otherwise you make a save (just a straight d20) every round and after 3 success you stabilize - after 3 failures you die. Like with 4E they've tried to simplify a lot of the system, for instance rather than giving out a bunch of varying bonuses/maluses in various spells they'll often instead simply give Advantage or Disadvantage. (Advantage means you roll 2d20 and take the higher; Disadvantage means you roll 2d20 and take the lower) Features are also very Short-Rest/Long-Rest now, and healing occurs more through spending Hit Dice (you can think of 5E resting as something like the resting/healing subsystem of Darkest Dungeon, except instead of Food you have Hitdice) than by slow regeneration or healing surges (which are not present in 5E). It'll take some getting used to - but I think it's a big step up personally from 4E, though there are some weird 'gaps' you might find in it, like the Equipment lists being very short and there being hardly any Feats.

Right, to save this from becoming 'Pan's Pixelart Palooza' I'll dump each faction one at a time as their done, with Dixie being first because fuck it I already posted their airship The first plane that I did, partly because it was my fave in High Road to Revenge and partly because I wanted to watch at least one player get blapped out of the sky by the Long 88 on a plane https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/245137/a4a67a84-df77-4ded-82e3-61c8a245ffb2/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/245137/282f2a5e-5d10-4362-9c42-a98ec37ccec9/image.png In game model for reference. The camo was, interesting to do, might end up redoing it after being much more comfortable with it after later examples? The engine isn't also close to canon in design so this is probably a v1 and I'll do a v2 later but, this was a learning experience for me. God I love this design. The Warhawk is a heavy fighter, should be a good fun high damage tanky enemy in the early game, wings could use some work and shortening but other than that I'm pretty happy with it? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/245137/c165054e-1fc6-4350-993c-d17bdd549c1b/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/245137/79074dbf-55b0-4cbc-bd34-803ffef3c73a/image.png Reference, again. And last but not least is one that, the tabletop and video games kinda disagree on? Mostly in the shape and angle of the wings, but regardless, the Valiant! https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/245137/62b8435d-6050-4234-8fba-3146b7065d50/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/245137/30175bbe-b004-44c5-83c6-f7fff53ece75/image.png None of these are perfect, and I probably need to do a looooooot more work (before even getting to shading like I did with the zep which, is gonna be another pain entirely ) but hey, I'm having fun, so that counts for something?

To continue from this from a general perspective: Some changes and design philosophies you'll see: +3 is the absolute highest bonus you'll ever see an item give, and a +3 item is considered highly dangerous in terms of campaign balance, players should only start seeing these at level 15 if even that. The system was designed to be highly customizable and be completely under the DM's control. Things like Feats and even magic items are considered 'optional' in this system and can be nixed completely without problems. The entire system is based around a very tightly balanced 'bounded accuracy' system, which means that AC and to-hit numbers do not change much unlike previous editions. This means a player can readily survive from levels 1 to 20 with 19 ac and +9 to hit, which can be reached as early as first level. All monsters will generally have somewhere between 11-20 AC with only gods and other very powerful creatures breaching the 20 AC cap. As per the bounded system, stats very rarely ever breach 20, and a 20 in a stat is considered very powerful. Thanks to this bounded system, something as small as a +1 item can end up being highly valuable to a player. New content is aggressively balanced against previous content and power levels always remain relatively consistent in official published material no matter what book you dip into. A few books have objectively fantastic choices, but usually only as a virtue of providing options not previously achievable in the system.

Yarp, said changes have made implementing this Magic Item crafting system pretty tough - especially since the system it's from can see attack bonuses reach +23 and damage from a non-spell-based hitting over 60 points in rare circumstance. Finding the edge I can get up to and over has been a little rough, especially since creatures seem to have way more 'gusto' in their hitpoints than previous editions due to damage from attacks sinking a lot (except apparently from some builds of spellcasters). Mind, this MI-Crafting system also allows for the creation of Artifacts and so I'm having to consider the 'full range' in Magic Items https://imgur.com/HGtvrxn

I'm running a 5E campaign and playing in one, and I've gotta say I'm completely over this system. Anyone know any other decent systems for running games in?

What kind of game? Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Urban Fantasy? Some mixture? Narrative or Simulationist? Personally, my recommendations are World of Darkness, Chronicles of Darkness, Unknown Armies, and Exalted. But those aren't for everyone.