D&D V6 - Edition jokes don't really make sense anymore - Games

usually that entails sponsorship, not just straight-out buying the town (though I'm sure sufficient wealth could be used to do that too...) that being said, fantasy worlds really don't make sense to have straight 1-1 comparisons to real medieval power structures. I know games love to make it the case but that has the effect of completely ignoring the existence of monsters, magic, actual gods, and all sorts of other things that are huge game-changers in that regard Which is not to say there can't be intrigues and courtly politics and that sort of thing involved, but it does kind of entail a bit more work to think it through, because unless you are playing a very mundane D&D setting those things can and should have big impacts on regional politics. But regardless, at least in the context of a typical adventuring parties, PC's have a pretty easy in to a role somewhat analogous to knights, that is, trained and professional warriors granted land/status as a consequence of being good at protecting the holdings of their greater lord. And then they can move up from there

[QUOTE=SiberysTranq;51935694]usually that entails sponsorship, not just straight-out buying the town (though I'm sure sufficient wealth could be used to do that too...) that being said, fantasy worlds really don't make sense to have straight 1-1 comparisons to real medieval power structures. I know games love to make it the case but that has the effect of completely ignoring the existence of monsters, magic, actual gods, and all sorts of other things that are huge game-changers in that regard Which is not to say there can't be intrigues and courtly politics and that sort of thing involved, but it does kind of entail a bit more work to think it through, because unless you are playing a very mundane D&D setting those things can and should have big impacts on regional politics. But regardless, at least in the context of a typical adventuring parties, PC's have a pretty easy in to a role somewhat analogous to knights, that is, trained and professional warriors granted land/status as a consequence of being good at protecting the holdings of their greater lord. And then they can move up from there[/QUOTE] We run a West Marches game where the central premise works like this: 1. It's run by multiple DMs with a pool of around 10 players. Who runs a game with who is usually based on scheduling for that week. 2. The map is based on a frontier town where everyone lives, around six hours away from a the border where civilization starts. The land past the town is unexplored and we literally fill in the map as we go along. 3. The politics and current state in the civilized lands are ill-defined and vague to keep attention towards exploring the west. The general sentiment is that it's in a state of peace, and any adventurers that exist are the ones coming to the frontier. So politics is less of an issue and becomes one more of how you define upstart nobility and the implication of a now rich adventurer just plopping down a huge castle full of guards and servants next to the frontier town. The closest we've got to intrigue is a story one DM is working on involving a Strahd type character whose been implied to have an interest in the frontier and set up a castle around 12 hours away. I encouraged our rich player to talk to the DM writing that story because a player suddenly crowning himself lord of that little slice of land changes the dimensions of his story.

I need help shaving 5e down to it's bare essentials. Going to be running a game for a few irl friends and I'm basically just playing it 5e on a map of Europe circa 13th century. The biggest issue is that I've got 3 people with no tabletop experience playing and they're rocking a human bard, goblin (just a reskinned gnome) cleric, and a HUMAN FIGHTER, so I want to engage them without swamping the game down with rules

[QUOTE=No Party Hats;51938849]I need help shaving 5e down to it's bare essentials.[/QUOTE] I mean the good news is that it's not difficult, since you're practically there. All you need is attack/spell descriptions and you're pretty good to go. [editline]10th March 2017[/editline] I mean, what is there in 5th Ed that is really required, that would be considered needlessly complex? Outside of splats of course.

[QUOTE=No Party Hats;51938849]I need help shaving 5e down to it's bare essentials. Going to be running a game for a few irl friends and I'm basically just playing it 5e on a map of Europe circa 13th century. The biggest issue is that I've got 3 people with no tabletop experience playing and they're rocking a human bard, goblin (just a reskinned gnome) cleric, and a HUMAN FIGHTER, so I want to engage them without swamping the game down with rules[/QUOTE] Just take a look at the starter adventure. It's literally designed for people who are completely new to the game.

There really isn't much you can do to parr down 5e more beyond really removing spellcasters outright, as they're by definition the most complex player-side part of the game

Yeah, 5e is literally as simple as tabletop rpgs get really. Trim down any further than it already is and you're basically just widening the gap between it and more rules-heavy systems.

[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;51939855]Yeah, 5e is literally as simple as tabletop rpgs get really. Trim down any further than it already is and you're basically just widening the gap between it and more rules-heavy systems.[/QUOTE] [thumb]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S1L4JIY_P3Q/Vcy1SHdtLMI/AAAAAAAAE-k/agnh7a-8aww/s1600/Simple_d6_3rd_ed_rules.jpg[/thumb]

[QUOTE=elowin;51939866][thumb]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S1L4JIY_P3Q/Vcy1SHdtLMI/AAAAAAAAE-k/agnh7a-8aww/s1600/Simple_d6_3rd_ed_rules.jpg[/thumb][/QUOTE] Well yeah, I'm talking about commonly played mainline products here. There's a niche for everything. I've written a single page rpg myself

I mean, I've seen simpler, but it's definitely pretty basic. "Everyone Is John" is simple, or stuff like that. 5e just doesn't have a ton of crunch. Progression is all straightforward and kind of linear, all laid out for you beforehand for the most part.

[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;51939879]Well yeah, I'm talking about commonly played mainline products here. There's a niche for everything. I've written a single page rpg myself[/QUOTE] Just saying, 5e is very simple but it's nowhere near the most simple you can get. Especially when you get a few levels in and have a bunch of class abilities, possibly including a fairly large spell list.

You could arguably go simpler by running 1e D&D or an OSR game. [editline]10th March 2017[/editline] That removes Advantage/Disadvantage, Inspiration, skills, reduces the number of classes to 4(+3 racial classes for Elf/Halfling/Dwarf), and simplifies all the classes it does have a decent amount, too.

See, what I don't like in DnD is how unintuitive it is. Write a bunch of stuff down. Roll a d20, and then roll this many of that dice and then add X modifier for this specific thing. It's terribly painful for new players, and I think 5e's strength is that you're just not rolling as much. WoD is incredibly clunky when it gets down to combat, but for everything else, including character creation, it's extraordinarily simple and intuitive for the base game, and everything uses d10's. You want to deadlift something? Roll your strength+athletics dicepools, difficulty and needed successes determined by your storyteller. Also, the storyteller has a lot of leeway in making up monsters and a lot of ease in imagining NPC stats. it can suck if your storyteller knows nothing about the real world. I miss WoD. My friends who were into it have had life move them along. We've been playing a few dread games (Literally your character sheet is just a few descriptions, and you pull from a jenga tower to see if you fuck up) and that's pretty fun, if unsuited for complex/multi session games. I want complex, long sessions though. Still ain't got the group to try shadowrun with. Sucks to be a final year uni student. Our uni's gaming society has fallen apart due to incompetent leadership. Last year was magnificent. we had to get a bigger room because of the membership boom. This year, I'm one of five people likely to show up, and one of them's my partner who I drag with me. The leader rarely comes. And I'm never going to find a group to game with here.

DnD is actually really simple. You roll a d20 for literally everything except attack damage. The real tricky part is in the many details spread all over the rulebook, unless you're playing a non-spellcaster, in which case you just move and roll your attack. There's also about as much leeway in making up monsters and NPCs. There aren't really any restrictions, you can do whatever. oWoD though is a lot less intuitive at its core because of the fact that you have to determine difficulty and the needed successes on your own for each roll, you need to figure out which attribute+skill combo to actually use for your dice pool, and you also have to deal with a whole bunch of other archaic mechanical leftovers from the wild 90s that the developers probably thought was part of the charm or something.

So. Our homebrew mass effect game had it's first combat encounter today We're on the space station Omega, on the trail of some mysterious killer that had been slaughtering the comrades of Patriarch, the former ruler of the place. We know nothing about this killer aside from the fact that it's been rendering Krogan (the biggest, toughest widespread race) down into basically pulp between hideous physical strength and some sort of flesh-dissolving acid We start checking out the crime scenes (something we're generally pretty unsuited for, as the party consists of a Krogan warlord, a gunslinging mercenary, an overenthusiastic demolitionist/arsonist, a biotic vigilante, a quarian hacker, and then the closest thing to someone suited for this being our generalist ex-military Asari. Basically, a lot of firepower but not so many investigative skills). Despite this, we find a street bum near the latest attack site, and interrogate him. He says he saw some huge monster maul our latest vic after it leapt out of a nearby garbage disposal system, a fact that the quarian soon corroborates with the footage from a nearby security camera ...and then, as we're watching the video, we hear the same sound of the mysterious killer's approach in the physical world, these very heavy, slow, thundering footsteps. We're a bit confident despite the fact we were probably out of our league, and try to set up an ambush. And as we're doing it, something just EXPLODES out of the garbage disposal. Our helpful vagrant is reduced to paste in one strike. Fortunately, despite it's immense size and speed, the creature attacking us isn't a quick thinker, and we have a full round of firing before it can move. This doesn't turn out to be anywhere near enough. Despite a storm of pistol and hand-cannon fire, plasma bolts, and biotics, the thing doesn't give a single fuck. It walks up and nearly breaks the mercenary in half in a single swipe, leaving her at exactly 1 hit point. At this point, the team all starts panicking, and starts making a fighting retreat. Fortunately, the thing we're up against (some manner of mutated beast twice the height of our biggest party member) isn't a great dodger, so even as we're barely scratching it, we are still hitting it with basically every shot. My demolitionist, having already spent a round lining up a shot, unloads a third of her machinepistol into the thing's head as the mercenary makes a run for it after her brush with death. Still not enough. We're causing damage, just not enough. Being that I didn't retreat, I get slammed against the wall, shattering my armor and leaving me only marginally better off than our ruined mercenary. The biotic takes another huge chunk out of it and despite wound penalties the merc is still blowing holes through it, and we finally drop it into it's critically wounded threshold. Despite the fact we are relatively unskilled, using some of the cheapest weapons available, we're actually killing it. There's just one problem. My demolitionist is too far back to make it safely out of reach before it's next turn, and unlike the mercenary I don't have the endurance to sprint far enough. Plus, doing so would put one of our even squishier backliners right in the thing's path. So I do something dumb. I blew a lot of my starting money and a good deal of my skills on unlocking a grenade. One, single, grenade. A very nice grenade, mind, as much damage as a heavy-duty pistol, 6m blast radius, and microthrusters and an internal guidance system so it can lock on to targets without needing my help. I am too close to get out of reach of the monster, too heavily injured to aim with any other weapon, and it's only me and the poor Quarian left before the thing's turn. We're in an alleyway with no maneuvering room. So, I do the only thing I can do: I launch the grenade not at the monster itself, but the building behind it. Boom. Roll only 1 short of max damage. And then the building drops on top of the monster, crushing it to death. So, in summary: a fight that we by all rights should have run away from, against an enemy with more health than the entire party put together whom could kill most of us in a single strike, we took down with little more than some pistols, a few pieces of technological wizardly, a grenade and dropping a building on it. It was fucking awesome. We still have no idea how this thing could keep up with the precise schedule of killings that we observed, so even if it's dead we're still looking for whatever was directing or controlling it. But god damn, was it a satisfying fight. And our homebrew-of-a-homebrew has held up pretty well so far, and the fact it didn't bog down massively in combat worked out great too.

Got Fate of the Norns today. Damn, what a cool game. First of all, you're Norse heroes during Ragnarok, which in and of itself is pretty cool. Character classes include Warrior with rune-scribed weaponry, lightning fast rogue type, witch who gets more powerful by making herself more susceptible to posession from spirits, Warrior-bard and fucking Werewolf (of the "turn into a giant wolf" variety, as opposed to humanoid wolf on its hind legs). The system is diceless, instead using runic symbols (which can either be bought as a separate pack of small wooden pieces or cards, or printed out), which are assigned to stats during character creation and then drawn from the bag depending on your stats, and allows you to augment your abilities depending on what runes you draw (e.g., you can turn a generic leap attack into a superhuman lunge). Also, as your character dies, you as a player level up. Depending on a number of factors, including things like whether or not your character died gloriously in battle or if your fellow PCs told stories of your exploits as a toast in your honor, you get points that let you acquire special abilities for your next character. Down the line, you can even bring a character back from the dead as an immortal warrior who decided to come back to Midgard to keep kicking some ass. Plus the art is really awesome. Definitely something you guys should check out if you like Vikings and/or Norse mythology.

[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;51939855]Yeah, 5e is literally as simple as tabletop rpgs get really. Trim down any further than it already is and you're basically just widening the gap between it and more rules-heavy systems.[/QUOTE] Old Basic D&D is much better for a beginner than 5th edition. Six stats and that's it, super simple.

Honestly if you're looking for a casual, social experience you'd probably be best served by a Japanese RPG, as that's what their gaming culture is more geared towards. If your players have a tolerance for comfy anime stuff Ryuutama would probably be a good introductory system.

Had a conversation about the campaign I used to play in. One of the new guys mentioned there's a new three strikes system for missing games (three and you're out), and that he already has two strikes because he went to go be with his pregnant wife last minute and then went out of province for a week to do some networking. The more I hear stuff like this the happier I am I got out man.

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;51945040]Honestly if you're looking for a casual, social experience you'd probably be best served by a Japanese RPG, as that's what their gaming culture is more geared towards. If your players have a tolerance for comfy anime stuff Ryuutama would probably be a good introductory system.[/QUOTE] I wish, these are all my hardcore party hard friends so they don't want 'pussy weeb shit'. Currently our bard is a german master pizza chef who intends on creating a mythic pie which is said to bring great power to whoever tastes it, which leads him to our Human Fighter, an old farmer who owns a large portion of land in the Italian countryside which is primarily tended by goblin slaves (goblins are pretty much bred whipped for labor, to the point where they very often find themselves lost without a slavedriver. Some of course have transcended their nature and become successful individuals), who is known for his acute ability to identify only the finest of crop and ingredient. Tagging along with them is the fighters most loyal goblin slave, a pathetic creature with a skill for divine healing and far-seeing. Goblins are going to be centered out of Switzerland, which covers a cross section of caverns that have been industrialized by the dwarves of the north. As it stands I'm thinking of structuring it around the hunt for 3 to 5 key ingredients of power, each kept safe by its own unique challenges. As it goes on of course I'm going to try to introduce some factions gunning for the same goal with good and bad intentions.

I'll pull a reddit and just recommend anything Powered by the Apocalypse, GURPS, Savage Worlds, Fate, and Risus.

[QUOTE=Alsojames;51948702]I'll pull a reddit and just recommend anything Powered by the Apocalypse, [b]GURPS[/b], Savage Worlds, Fate, and Risus.[/QUOTE] Wait, what?

[QUOTE=Amakir;51948841]Wait, what?[/QUOTE] Gurps? The Generic Universal Roleplaying System? Has a million and one sourcebooks for everything?

GURPS can run anything [I]any[/I] [I]thing[/I]

Four of us are looking for a new weekend Roll20 D&D 5E session, we're all GMT timezone. Any DMs on here interested?

[QUOTE=Snood_1990;51949171]Four of us are looking for a new weekend Roll20 D&D 5E session, we're all GMT timezone. Any DMs on here interested?[/QUOTE] Oh you sweet summer child.

[QUOTE=UzumakaiPatch;51949463]Oh you sweet summer child.[/QUOTE] I get the feeling I'm asking in the wrong place. :thinking:

[QUOTE=Snood_1990;51949171]Four of us are looking for a new weekend Roll20 D&D 5E session, we're all GMT timezone. Any DMs on here interested?[/QUOTE] It's usually the other way around. Groups asking for a GM makes us GMs a bit worried/wary. It's hard to explain but it always gives me a huge warning sign. There's not that many GMs that are trying to find a group that way. Just keep that in mind.

[QUOTE=Snood_1990;51949528]I get the feeling I'm asking in the wrong place. :thinking:[/QUOTE] There's nothing wrong with asking, it's just that because GMing is such a big investment in terms of time and prep you'll be very hard pressed to find someone. As a general rule there's far more willing players than GMs.

[QUOTE=Snood_1990;51949171]Four of us are looking for a new weekend Roll20 D&D 5E session, we're all GMT timezone. Any DMs on here interested?[/QUOTE] Best advice I can offer you is for one of you to DM a game.