Tabletop Games / Traditional Games
Wargames, Roleplaying Games, Board Games, Card Games, Drinking Games, and so on and so on.
What are you playing/running/home-brewing? What do you have to recommend or criticize?
>>3763>I'd like it to be quite sandboxy and open but I'm struggling on finding a starting point.Start by outlining the broad strokes of the setting and situation. Then figure out where the campaign will start. Flesh out that area, going more specific as you approach the exact area where the players will start. Then figure out a few points of interest and flesh them out a bit to hook the players. The rest of it is best built as you go. Try to anticipate where they'll go with it and focus on building that. Save yourself a lot of work.Do have some idea of where the different sides in the fight are, what territory they have, and a few specifics. The more vague and in the background something is, the more leeway you have to change the situation as the plot develops. If the players only know that a certain area is contested between two sides, you can keep it that way or pick a side that won. If it's established who has terrain advantage, better armament, etc the story has to make sense in that context. Keep in mind that the more is known about an area, the more likely the players are to pay attention or get involved there. That's just using bait basically. Keep that in mind when deciding how much the players will know. If you give them a map showing different areas, they might know more about this or that town or base or what have you. Mystery is itself a kind of bait though. Don't go full on "nOBodY KnOwS wHaTs HaPpEnNinG hEre" with it, just say "This area is controlled by X and uncontested." Boring areas can become interesting later as the conflict progresses. Areas near the front line would be most dynamic naturally.>Do you think the RP genre could work for something like this that is very non-pulpy?For something that's realistic you are probably better not being too rules-heavy. Even something as simulationist as GURPS isn't that realistic and might get in the way of the story.>>3764If you haven't heard of the West Marches style of campaign you might be interested in that.
>>3763Focus on locations and factions. Think of the logical places PCs would go, and add interesting NPCs there. In D&D that's normally taverns and blacksmiths and markets, in your game it might be a barracks, a doctor, a rations distributor. Those NPCs should be fleshed out and have their own interests and conflicts, which you can tie into the different factions. Don't overdevelop shit, because it's probable most of it won't be used, but it's great to have a network of NPCs and locations mapped out and with about a dozen descriptive bullet points each so that your PCs can wander around and do what they want and the world feels developed and full. Don't be afraid to give immediate, pressing goals, it's not railroading or contrary to a sandbox, it gives more weight to the world and gives them more motivation to actually interact with the world and something to do with all that content you provide. If you want me to be more specific or need help with particular ideas or questions I'd be glad to.
The Polish company D-Day Miniature Studio, which makes toy figures of military personnel, has released a new series called "Red Storm over Europe. Soviet Rear Troops 1944-1946".
https://preview.redd.it/46lp8sxf7kp51.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6791990b95101f750175fc2f26013523b6565aaThe series includes four figures of Soviet army soldiers. Polish sculptor Pawel Krasicki depicted them as looters.
https://preview.redd.it/1px9f4nv7kp51.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7863fc610c99903554929c57764aa88762a10770These miniatures reflect the main idea of modern Poland and the West that the Soviet army didn't liberate the country from the Nazis, but simply plundered it. Meanwhile, if it weren't for the Soviet Union, there wouldn't be any Poland now.
>>5792Always wanted to but time reasons never allowed me to.
Really a fan of the whole 'transhumanist after the collapse' theme, however. It has a lot of potential.
>>5886>what's exactly wrong with 5e?<Bounded accuracy (small bonuses to skills and attacks) makes it hard to feel really good at anything
<d20s are too swingy, and combined with the above problem it's way too common for characters to fail at what they're good at and succeed at what they're bad at
<Not many options; still only a dozen classes, and most classes have one subclass which is clearly the best
<Totally built around combat, can't really handle running a game based on exploration, intrigue, etc.
<Massive HP bloat makes fights take forever at higher levels
<Regaining all health, spells, and class features on a long rest means you can go from dying and useless to fully healed by sleeping for eight hours, incentivizing players to blow all their resources on one fight and then retreat and rest
<Caster supremacy; wizards have a million ways around every situation and lots of ways to fight, while fighters can only hit stuff
<Lots of the game's elements, like multiclassing, feats, and magic items, are officially "optional", meaning the game isn't balanced around them even though 99% of DMs include them
<Supplements released at a glacial pace compared to past editions
>Should I start with 3.5 instead?3.5 has its own problems. It's insanely unbalanced (caster supremacy is a much bigger problem than in 5e), and while it has a lot of options (unlike 5e), 90% of those options are shit.
But here, I'll give you the advantages of 5e:
<By far the most popular game; probably over 90% of all games are 5e, so you'll never have trouble finding a group
<Very beginner friendly
<Competent (not amazing but good) at what it's meant to do, i.e. if you just want to go into a dungeon and kill stuff you'll probably have fun
<Fairly well-balanced; even though casters can do a lot more than martials, casters aren't really "stronger," just more versatile
>>5892 <d20s are too swingy, and combined with the above problem it's way too common for characters to fail at what they're good at and succeed at what they're bad at
<Not many options
<Totally built around combat, can't really handle running a game based on exploration, intrigue, etc.
<Massive HP bloat makes fights take forever at higher levels
<Regaining all health, spells, and class features on a long rest
Heh, just like modern video games.
>>5886Even as someone who simps for 3.5, I will tell you that it's not exactly an intuitive system or anything. I just like it because of it's "intangibles" and the fact that it's a system with a lot of homebrew and a playerbase (nowadays) that will usually accept some version of homebrewing.
Basically it's an oldfag haven, the same reason why people play the older versions of dnd
I'm thinking of running a campaign in an industrial/steampunk fantasy setting, a lot like arcanum.
The theme will largely focus on the societal aches of switching from agrarian to industrial, nobility struggling against growing capitalist influence, and the workers getting caught in the middle.
A huge emphasis will be placed on the 'monstrous' races, mostly orcs, as professional standing armies that can get around quickly on trains make the old nomadic raiding lifestyle challenging, forcing them to integrate, and be societies punching bag.
We'll have communist orcs, fascist dwarves, and Elven eco-terrorists.
I'm still trying to pick a system, but GURPS seems the most likely, despite the fact I've
Never actually ran a game in GURPS.
>>7361"Excuse me but my fantasy setting is explicitly decolonial and all the fantasy societies have a rich and vibrant culture without being romanticized."
>>7665Sounds neat. Most fantasy tends to sit in the medieval tech level though, so not a lot of systems would fit.
>>7680True, also in my experience players like to do rebellious or revolutionary shit in roleplaying games for some reason.
>>7361Tell them to get a fucking life and learn about historical accuracy of medieval-feudal settings.
Also I tend to incorporate various leftist ideas or factions in my fantasy stuff.
>>18080>skill requiredTo simplify it a bit, deck construction is generally the harder part rather than actually playing it. You can look up some champion's deck build and just copy it. Brainfog is a killer in games like these though so you might suck even with a stellar deck.
>cost0 cent if you have access to a charge-free printer. All the cards can be conveniently found online and printed out.
>>18085huh, you can just print out the cards? i didn't think of that
>Brainfog is a killer in games like these though so you might suck even with a stellar deck.yeah that's what made me quit playing hearthstone, i just couldn't think a few steps ahead or i was sticking to my plan too rigidly. do you think it's a good idea to practice with the free online game before challenging people irl?
>>19412it's easy to make them corporatist or fascist.
just make the worship of ancestors translate into children being on literal debt bondage to "repay" their parents and "society". the distrust of outsiders etc will do the rest.
you can do a lot of things with them.
>>7665>>19412>>19413Why not both? Why should dwarves or any race for that matter be a monolith? Why their society should be immune to class conflict?
Dwarves proles rising up against bourgeois dwarves who in turn prop up fascists dwarves.
Every time there's a thread on /tg/ about how steampunk is just a boring meme genre compared to the themes explored in cyberpunk, and barely anything beyond aesthetics, ie gears on tophats. And every time someone suggests the obvious, that the abuse of working poor, class struggle, unions and revolutionary thought, and a industrial society built upon an existing nobility, royalty, and imperial wars of aggression, are all integral parts to a setting inspired by Victorian England. And every time, that posters gets called a commie and to fuck off and how boring it would be.
It's just interesting how people can easily accept cyberpunk including things like militarized police and powerful corporations that control most of society for the sake of profit and produce invasive dangerous technology, where the main characters are usually at the bottom of society, but refuse to see it in steampunk. Maybe because it's more obvious? Because steampunk isn't as developed so you have to spell it out for them?
>>19625You absolutely can play as a nazi-type asshole, which is what they must love about it; but that's the point: you
can play like that, but you don't have to. There are lots of different paths, and afaik the game does not condone nazi shit. Sseth has a video about the game which is suprisingly in-depth, and also shows this racist side quite explicitly (given the /v/-like humor he is known for), so watch critically.
>>19627I watched it when it was new, and discussion does pop up more when he discusses any game.
>(given the /v/-like humor he is known for)Let's be clear, that's usually just racism, he definitely leans right and as do most of his viewerbase.
The usual thing I see being reposted is that orcs have a terrorist liberation movement and are also being bred by greedy rich gnomes who kidnap human women and have them raped to breed more orcs. You can see the obvious parallels here.
>>21410Good video on how much of a shift WotC is inducing by trying to define D&D as a virtual tabletop game first and foremost, both in terms of impact on the game and in terms of the business implications.
Gotta love monopolies.
>>23114Does it count if you understand the rules so poorly that you basically aren't following them? That's how I and a lot of other people started playing lol.
Am currently "homebrewing" a system that is actually more like building one from scratch, but I'd still call it a homebrew because it's mostly deriving components from several other systems.
>>25589You should probably distinguishe race/species/etc from culture. Bonuses and penalties to skills make more sense for the latter because that would relate more to things you are likely to learn in a given society.
Other than the answers given, I would say innate qualities work best when they are specific and distinct, like dwarves being better at resisting poisons or elves being able to see farther without range penalties. Think of what kinds of adaptations would suit this creature for where they live (whether they evolved or were created). Any distinct traits should probably be unheard of in humans but maybe not in other animals. You should also think about how these differences are likely to impact culture. Like the dwarves being resistant to poison could lead to pic related.
Another good question to ask is what makes humans distinct? Usually humans are treated mechanically as the most generic race without anything special to set them apart (often replacing that part of design with just "more choice" for other parts of character creation). But there might be particular qualities humans have that other species do not, and which should be reflected mechanically by reducing the "baseline" stats and rules below the human level on certain things. For example, in real life humans beat all other species at endurance running, so you could incorporate that by reducing the overland travel speed of most characters from the default and giving humans a boost that puts them back up at "normal."
>>25614That's a fair consideration, but it was just meant to be an illustrative example. A more practical implementation might be giving humans resistance to any fatigue-related effects. However, the main reason for that particular advantage is bipedalism and temperature regulation through sweating, so it probably wouldn't be unique to humans among fantasy races.
Some other ideas:
<Humans are more social than others, maybe by having reduced penalties to communicate without a common language or across cultures.<Humans make better connections, getting a bonus to making people like them or faster advancement on the reputation or similar social track.<Humans are better at learning, earning bonus experience points for certain things like observing others gain XP or by tinkering with things. >>25629>Come to think of it, how would you present a race that's above capitalism, feudalism, communismThey never developed a class society or developed something different. For fantasy races it makes the most sense to do this based on the aspects that make them different.
Elves live forever so the original elders hold onto power indefinitely. Instead of producing heirs they just keep having offspring, who they keep loyal to them. Controlling reproduction is still important but for different reasons - only the elders get to reproduce, because the more generations removed you are the less loyal you are.
Dwarves are so focused on crafting by nature that they don't need class to emerge for them to start producing a surplus, and because they all bond over their common drives to mine and craft, they naturally lean toward a planned economy accumulating treasures and devices. Their greed might make them vulnerable to the kind of people who became early capitalists in human society, but without an already-existing feudal state to seize, the wannabe capitalists lack the power to do primitive accumulation or to proletarianize other dwarves, making capitalist production at most an oddity on the periphery of dwarven society. Through their tendency to tinker and dig, they are most likely to start burning coal and to develop the steam engine, leading to steampunk communism. However, they also tend to be insular and knowing the kinds of things that the capitalist dwarves get up to, are extremely protective lest early industrial technology proliferate among other races who lack the worker-centric ethos of dwarven society.
>>25698That's up to them, but probably the least resource intensive is infantilizing the kids emotionally and making them desperate for parental approval that motivates them. Maybe that's why elves reach maturity at a much older age, too. The more kids you have the more they have to compete for attention but also the more opportunity for rebellion, so there would be a balance to strike.
The thing about being immortal is you have plenty of time, and you don't need to have a high birth to maintain your population because nobody dies of natural causes. So the leaders of the society can personally keep raising a new generations of mommy's boys and daddy's girls as necessary. You don't have to rely on some ideological apparatus or state institution if you can personally raise your people the same way generation after generation. Elves would have the least dynamic society by far, and probably be continuously speaking basically the same language and holding the same ideology with thousands of years of continuity.
Elves tend to me more magically inclined as well, which means the elders would have more time to master magic than entire civilizations of other species. They wouldn't even need mundane psychological abuse. They have charm spells and such. In a really extreme version (like the drow perhaps) they might dominate person so much that younger generations don't even form individual identities and their society is more like an ant colony than a human-like culture.
>>30261The Star Wars system is pretty easy to work with from what I've played of it, but it uses special proprietary dice. Might be awkward to use if you don't have those, but you
can use standard polyhedral dice and convert the numbers to symbols using a table.
If you are new to games then just reflavoring things like you suggest is a good way to go. Keeping the game mechanics as written is best if you don't have experience with how they work, but the flavor/fluff can be whatever fits the story you want to tell.
>>30262We're going to be using tabletop simulator, so the special die should be on the workshop somewhere.. I'll check when I get home.
It'll be a learning experience for everyone because nobody has really played a ttrpg before. I suggested something like traveller or stars without number, but they insist on having "ebin nat 20s" so it's good to hear that sw5e is a good choice.
>>30267>We're going to be using tabletop simulator, so the special die should be on the workshop somewhere.. I'll check when I get home. IDK you might need to get a pack for that. Maybe there's a community plugin for it that's free.
>but they insist on having "ebin nat 20s" so it's good to hear that sw5e is a good choice.…well the Star Wars RPG doesn't use a d20 or have you rolling numbers. It does have a critical system though.
>>30270>>30267>>30262Oh nvm, SW5e is something different from what I thought. It's just a D&D5e hack. You should be fine, you are still playing D&D. It's going to probably be more or less the same experience as any general D&D game. I would guess that's no better or worse an entry point into TTRPGs than 5e is in general.
>but they insist on having "ebin nat 20s"You may be struggling against bad attitudes toward the game if they're coming in from watching "actual play" streamers. Even if those productions are improvised, they usually have professionals planning out a narrative for a show behind it, and it works very differently from a typical game. If some of the players flame out because it's not what they expected you may talk to the ones who remain about switching to a system that was actually built for the setting you are playing.
>>30267>but they insist on having "ebin nat 20sI feel bad for you anon this is gonna be a dogshit group I have met this type. :(
Please don't let it dissuade you to future groups most tarot gamers are not like those weird redditors.
>>30296tl;dr overall looks good but you have several relatively minor "user experience" things you should tweak.
Pros:
>good overall layout, no notes except the credit/copyright would fit better at the bottom>distinct and fairly consistent aesthetic (the symbols are simplistic compared to the grungy detail of the art and "frame" but that helps with recognition)>thematically distinct and eye catching art>design of the dice for stat display is good conceptually and easy to read especially the white pipsCons:
<all of the text and symbols should be bigger (readable at card size) - do some test prints to see how it looks at the size you will use and adjust to make sure it's easy to read anything important<red color is more attention grabbing than the other colors used besides white and yellow, making the purple, blue, and green details stand out less, and the red text especially harder to read (lower the saturation and/or darken to more neutral color and that's fixed).<color associations are usually pretty strong, and your main stats don't really need to be distinguished that way on a card (assuming they'll use a consistent layout). Unless you have some other feature that specifically uses color coding it's extra information that may distract or confuse players and increases the complexity of the design. Distinguishing with the symbols is enough unless you are doing something that won't use the symbols and needs the colors to match with it.<symbols next to the dice have different alignments, which is a little inconsistent and makes it feel "noisy" and the middle one looks like it's being emphasized - pick one (top left, top right, above, below, whatever) for all of them<dice pips use different orientation for the 2s for some reason, which makes your brain take slightly more time to process than if it was the exact same symbol (your 2 and 3 pips should also use opposite corners to make them quicker to distinguish)<Black and white concentric circles in the art's background is very distracting, from the foreground of the art and the rest of the card. Stark black and white is going to draw the eye more than almost anything. Keep that for text or important symbols. The pattern also draws the eye but wouldn't be as much of an issue if it was 2 similar shades of gray or something.Other suggestions:
- Make all the text bigger and white so it's easier to read (maybe do a few iterative draft prints in black and white at the intended size to help you adjust)
- Consider making the "attack" stat red, since it's an easier association to make, and avoid using yellow except on some feature that's particularly important and unusual since that's a very noticeable color.
- Darken (don't desaturate) the colors of the dice a bit to increase contrast with the pips further.
>>30298We plan on using different colored cards to indicate different types of cards, like Yu-Gi-Oh!
Here's an older mock up (still rough, unfinished, alpha state) for an item card.
The symbols are used here to indicate what the item does to your stats. In this case it's
>It gives you +2 to your attack stat> X means it doesn't effect defense (need to change this bc X is a variable in most contexts like this)>It takes -1 HP each time it's usedIt also has these traits:
| Cursed | Must pick up if slot is empty; can't drop
| Virulent | +1 Attack, +2 vs Akasha |
We dropped the Augmented ability so ignore that.
>>30262I actually own the Edge of the Empire books and ran a campaign with an Ewok star ship Captain which was the funniest shit because he talked so much shit in Ewok no one knew what the hell he was saying, a Twilik that got roped into trying to carry out an assassination of a crimelord on Nar Shadaa hiding a gernade in her boobs, I forgot what the other two were but it was good time. Although I hate the properietary dice Table Top Simulator is a god send.
On another note there is this TTRPG that I thought was cool was called Forgotten Lands.
>>30721So, among other things, about two years ago i have attempted to translate STAR HEROES: THE CHRONICLE OF BATTLES TO COME - the setting book for the world of СТАРСИС ("STARSYS"), mostly known for the tabletop game of БРОНЕПЕХОТА ("Armoured Infantry") by ТЕХНОЛОГ; the translation is still incomplete (missing two descriptions of exemplary battles), and its formatting could use a pass or more.
I am, however, unsure on how to share it; the site doesn't seem to allow attaching MS Word files, and the PDF of the untranslated original seems to be too heavy for the site to handle. Where should i upload these?
>>30729>>30723The English is quite probably not as good as it could be, and the writing itself is of debatable quality, to say the least.
Anyway, here it comes; maybe i could manage to finish and enhance the translation later.
>>31944I feel like you are getting too offended by a conversation that has literally nothing to do with you
offended enough to try to shut it down
>>31947exactly that, but instead your first response was
>uhm you are looking offended sweetie, stop talking, okay?would sect be a better euphemism? I think that's precisely why this type of game is so popular among self-proclaimed socialists, specially the easily influenced and not very smart ones, that, more often than not, end up in ultra-left cults or terminally online circles
I'd like to run a game for anons but a certain gamer chat app is frowned upon here and roll20 lags my computer
I was thinking The Fantasy Trip, it's like GURPS but stripped down for old school fantasy adventures, fairly intuitive once you grasp it (and, as an aside, the creator Steve Jackson isn't a reactionary twat)
Three possible issues (aside from the issue of what app to use):
1. Game assumes the use of proprietary hex maps for combat, running it theater of the mind is possible but annoying because the game references hexes (or "megahexes") for distance rather than actual distance
2. The game, like GURPS, is lethal, taking a "realistic fantasy" stance, and finding ways to give players a way to feel more powerful is hard even being generous with XP (like GURPS, every humanoid is squishy)
3. This is my own personal stance but, like GURPS, I feel the game is fundamentally broken, the notion of "balance" may as well be non-existent, this all stems from the aforementioned "realistic fantasy" stance that makes simply the idea of adventurers stupid, as well as questioning how a D&D-esque setting could exist at all with such scrawny humanoids not being wiped out by bigger monsters
But these issues aside, the game has a certain old school charm, and appeals to the inner strategy player with how tactical fights can get, as well it's super simple to make characters (bonus points for effectively being classless) and as mentioned is fairly intuitive to play once you grasp it
>>32500>Christmas layoffsThis is disgustingly common, yet there's never any solidarity. Everyone left just thinks "at least it wasn't me". I was at a web development firm that got dismantled by private equity scrappers. The first round of layoffs were right before Christmas. I made the cut, but we were left without any QA on our team. I wish we had stood up for the people who got laid off that round because in the end, the only guy left was the one with 10 years of tenure.
>>32503WotC revenue is mostly cardboard crack.
>>34932What's the hook? What sets it apart from other TTRPGs?
>the creator Steve Jackson isn't a reactionary twatno but his games tend to have some galaxy brain logic in the mechanics to facilitate making things more proprietary.
>running it theater of the mind is possible but annoying because the game references hexes (or "megahexes") for distance rather than actual distancecase in point lol
Sounds like a job for homebrew. If hexes are a consistent size it shouldn't be that hard to convert to distance (and maybe angle). If the abstraction is more important, then a "zone" system might be a better alternative. Knowing what solution is best would require familiarity with the whole system though.
>The game, like GURPS, is lethal>finding ways to give players a way to feel more powerful is hard even being generous with XPPlaystyle preference tbh. Games like this are less of a straight power fantasy and more about trying to be clever.
>this all stems from the aforementioned "realistic fantasy" stance that makes simply the idea of adventurers stupid, as well as questioning how a D&D-esque setting could exist at all with such scrawny humanoids not being wiped out by bigger monstersAdventurers make sense as long as the rewards are worth the risks. IRL you have a long history of grave robbing and hunting big game. Going back further, stone age people were exploring caves and killing ice age megafauna. The only unrealistic part is maybe how people didn't manage to kill all the monsters before reaching a medieval tech level. Another Steve Jackson galaxy brain moment.
>>36261Search is turning up nothing but
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/302307/haywire which doesn't match the description. You probably got the name wrong and strong political themes is pretty vague. Maybe Paranoia (Cyber-McCarthyism) fits the bill?
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