No.894[View All]
Thread for TTRPG discussion and organization.
#
What is a TTRPG?TTRPG, sometimes TRPG, stands for TableTop Role-Playing Game. It includes big names, like D&D, and much less heard of ones, like Song of Swords. The rule systems run from extremely thorough, with rules for things like how many Thai chilli peppers you can eat before getting ill, to so broad as to be nearly nonexistent, with only basic guidelines on how to play. In almost all systems, the key component that sets it apart from video game RPGs is the presence of the Dungeon Master, Game Master, Referee, etc. They help to adjudicate edge cases not covered by rules and create exceptions to the rules in favour of fun, meaning a TRPG has much more freedom of action than a normal RPG.
#
Where do I play?Generally, TTRPGs, especially niche ones without large player bases, are played in-person, but there are also sites and apps that allow you to play over the internet and find groups. The biggest one right now is probably roll20; signing up is free, and as a player, you never need to pay for anything. Other applications include FoundryVTT (paid for by a GM), Maptools (free), AstralVTT (free), and Fantasy Grounds (expensive, but very nice). Some groups even play on Tabletop Simulator, which has the added bonus of letting you play poker or Life before a session starts or if someone flakes.
There's also the potential to show up at a gaming store; if you live in the US, Canada, or Europe, there's plenty of those around too. Gaming stores are in-person, obviously, but they also often boast long-time, highly experienced and confident game masters who are knowledgable at how to best cater to newbies trying to enter the hobby. There are many websites online to help you find game stores near you.
#
Where do you get the rulebooks?You can buy them from places like drivethrurpg, or you can pirate them from
https://thetrove.net/. As a new player, you often don't need very many books; both Shadowrun and Pathfinder have relatively complete wikis online with all the setting-agnostic information you need, and Pathfinder even has a setting wiki so there's no reason to buy the books for their content.
No.1465
>>1462Vivi player here, I can, yes
No.1467
Are the servers weird or am I the only one connected?
No.1468
>>1467They're still fucked
I'm crashing out
I think we need to figure out a way to deal with this shit
No.1469
>>1467I'm connected too but I only see myself.
No.1470
>>1468Damn. It looked like it went through fine for me but now I'm just sitting alone in a room where the game is paused
We could go back to me hosting on whatever that software was called. Or roll20. Not sure which you prefer from a GM perspective
No.1471
Or tabletop sim or whatever else lol
I'm willing to install whatever
No.1472
>>1470>>1471We will see
Let's do it this way: next session is Jul. 10, and I will test it extensively with bot computers in the US and EU, and then we can talk about how to deal with the fact that we've had like four sessions of this pirate game I don't know how to run anymore in the past four months.
No.1473
>>1472Sounds good to me
If you're suggesting you run something else I'm fine with it, the fates have conspired to stop us from playing enough that I'm not singularly attached to it at this point. I just miss playing with everyone.
No.1486
DnD status?
No.1490
>>1486On, if everyone else is here.
No.1496
ddb, you going to be here next week?
if so please answer if you're looking to continue pirates y/n
No.1502
bumping thread just in case
>>1496 wouldn't be seen otherwise
No.1503
>>1496Yes, I'll be there. I'd like to continue pirates. Apologies for last week.
No.1504
computer's updating, give it a bit
No.1520
>>1519Starting as a GM by running a homebrew setting is like starting as a sculptor by creating a marble statue of yourself. It can be done, but it takes a lot of work and you're going to feel bewildered. Best advice I can give is to try to run a little less homebrew. Focus more on writing the setting and less on designing the game. Aesthetic and lore changes to the game are great and can make your game feel unique, but once you start to change how the game plays, it can fall apart very fast.
Instead of thinking "how could I change the racial traits of elves", think about "what gods could I connect the elves to?" Start with what the game gives you (elven weapon training and trance) and work backwards. Perhaps your elves are holy warriors blessed by a god of conquest, and this blessing gives them a natural feel for melee weapons and the ability to spend less time asleep (more time punching). Perhaps your orcs are partially undead or fungal, so the half-orc "relentless endurance" feature is more like a "back from the dead" feature.
5e is… not a great system, but it is fairly robust and balanced. I'd say work with what the game gives you and change the flavor text.
No.1521
>>1520Thanks for the advice, I'll probably put a hold on the cultures and races and history stuff and focus more on like… "here's a goal and here are some obstacles, go wild".
I was thinking maybe all the PCs live in the same small village/town, and some kind of big monster has been encroaching on it, wrecking peoples houses. It's proved too much trouble for the NPCs in town to manage. In order to save their own homes from being destroyed they decide to take it into their own hands, and discover that everyone is blaming an eccentric wizard who lives up on the hill. The players can head straight into the monsters lair/dungeon and kill it themselves, or they can trust the townsfolk and kill/drive the wizard out of town. Either option will result in the monster leaving them alone. But if they investigate with the wizard they will find out that he has, in ignorance of what they actually are, been using the monsters eggs (which are laid in trees and look like fruit) to make potions. This has been what prompted the monster to attack the town, so a peaceful solution can be obtained where they simply convince the wizard to knock it off. If they discover the truth of the eggs and still decide to kill the beast they'll get some cool potions made for them, in exchange for the moral cost of killing an endangered monster.
>5e is… not a great systemYeah I don't like it much compared to pathfinder/3.5 but the people I'd be running for have zero TTRPG experience, and 1 of them particularly "just wants to have adventures and play the game" ('play the game' meaning not read rulebooks and have to do lots of chargen) so, I think it's an alright compromise.
No.1522
>>1521This is a really good way to start a campaign! It gives the players a common goal that cannot be avoided, a reason to work as a group, and it sets up immediate action for them to dive into. Great first adventure, let us know how it goes!
No.1524
>>1519>>1521There's a trap for new GMs that is to homebrew a ton of setting and make an original world. The secret that nobody wants to tell you is essentially that nobody cares unless you make them care, and the way to make them care is actually to set aside the homebrew and worldbuilding for a second and think about the campaign you're looking to run.
Your starting idea is actually pretty good, I like it, it's very nice for a new GM. Before starting though I would make sure if your players are all looking to play heroes or whatever. It changes what sorts of generic adventures you can give them.
5e is not a good system but it is an incredibly good beginner system for players because the basic logic in use carries over to most crunch-based systems. With that said it's actually pretty hard to homebrew for as an inexperienced GM because the numbers are so incredibly tightly constrained that changing them at all creates problems. If you're going to homebrew I recommend doing nothing but giving advantage/disadvantage for now.
A bit of advice: when in combat, past the first few fights (when the main focus needs to be to make sure the players know how their abilities work), add in wind-up attacks. As in, on the turn of the PLAYER being targetted, tell them "the orc chief roars and heaves his axe above his head with both hands. His veins bulge in exertion as he prepares to bring the axe down…", giving the player the choice to either fuck off out of the way (and not attack) or attack but get hit with a heavy blow that e.g. knocks him back if he fails a strength save. When you're more experienced you can probably start making more advanced homebrews but these are fairly easy to balance and simple to create, while being more engaging than just "I walk up and hit you, oh, I hit, you take uhhh 8 damage." At the same time, don't overdo it; speed is absolutely the most important thing in combat, esp. in 5e where there's just not too much decisions about the character sheet going around.
No.1534
Game tonight, yes?
No.1535
>>1534Vivi player here, to my knowledge yes.
No.1536
>>1535>>1534If I don't faint before then then yes, for a few hours anyway.
No.1537
Actually no
Turns out you actually have to sleep after a surgery
Go watch some shows or something
No.1539
>>1522>Great first adventure, let us know how it goes!Thanks! It went pretty well, I ended up prepping way more than I needed to since getting everyone's characters made and explaining how everything works took a long time. Group said they had a great time, which is all I care about. I fell into first-person RPing for most NPCs fairly naturally, but it's very hard for me to ad-lib dialogue for certain characters. People seemed to enjoy interacting with each other and the NPCs, and one of them is already attached to the town blacksmith. I'm glad I picked 5e because even with the simplified rules, I still am doing a lot of reminding people of things. Which dice to roll where, what's a skill, what's a save, what's the difference between attack and damage rolls, nudging people towards using their bonus actions in combat, etc. etc.
No.1540
>>1539Yeah 5e is very good for new players since its actions and stuff are simple but clearly defined and there's almost no numbers to crunch
No.1546
>>1537Oh, I never saw this post. Hope you're doing okay. Are we playing tomorrow?
No.1548
Girls? Where are you?
No.1549
>>1547>>1548Vivi here, my graphics card (or my monitor) is fucking dead or something, I woke up and all I can see is static
No.1550
>>1549I thought the time was fucked somehow and DST became an entire day, since the server told me I was an entire day late
Oh well
No.1553
>>1549Update on this, I moved my hard drives to a spare (shitty) computer, so I'm good to play next week unless this one somehow dies on me too.
No.1557
>>1552Easy new player trap to fall into.
A whale person though, really?
Centaur and skeleton could potentially be the basis for a decent story ngl, especially if the skeleton rides on the centaur, but both races are broken as shit and also just weird.
If you want to go really balls to the wall have them roll for their character, like the entire thing, and then construct their backstory around what they rolled. Roll for race, roll for gender, roll for personality 3d1000 on
http://www.roleplayingtips.com/1000-npc-traits/ and hell why not roll for age. Only works if your players are accommodating but rolling for stuff on tables is its own sort of fun. The only reason I don't suggest rolling for class is because that's actually heavy mechanics and not everyone wants to play the same classes.
No.1558
I can't attend this week
No.1562
>>1560Human only is pretty damn strict unless the setting or campaign conceit demands it.
No.1563
Vivi player here
I'm not gonna be able to play this weekend due to some family stuff, really sorry. Especially since it's been so tough to get everyone together. As ever feel free to play without me or get together for a 1 shot or something, hope to see everyone next week.
No.1566
>>1562It's only until they get used to the system. Then the PCs can be whatever they want.
No.1567
>>1566Suppose so, though I guess it depends on the system
I've actually been running a human-only game but largely on the premise that the world basically is all-human in the first place.
No.1573
Vivi here again
I'm sick as heck but I'll be around for tomorrow. Apologies in advance if I'm not 100% cognizant
No.1574
Not Vivi here, i won't be able to play tomorrow.
No.1576
It may unironically be dead. I start my Masters program this week and am expecting twins in two more after.
We shall see. I haven't really been invested in pirates to begin with which probably explains a lot about why the quality of the campaign suffers (I don't know about pirates and don't care to find out). I don't like killing games but it's been quite a while since the original group got together and scheduling is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Perhaps another timeslot works better.
No.1587
>>1576Congratulations!
I'm not really interested in continuing, I appreciate all the games and for introducing me to TTRPGs. It was fun.
No.1589
>>1587Yes, I did get that feeling. Unfortunately.
Since someone doesn't want to continue, I don't think I will be running, at least not for a while. Perhaps in a few months once things settle down a little I might see if anyone still on sushi is interested in a game, but for now, campaign is over.
I hope you continue to explore the genre (?). If you're ddb then I can really only apologize since you came on at a time when the original group was fragmenting, then I had neither the time nor the drive to focus on the new one. If not, well, still, I hope you at least enjoyed the first campaign.
There's plenty more DMs more skilled than me, especially in English, and plenty of players looking for GMs. I do encourage you all to be bold in trying to run if you're at all interested. Until next time.
No.1597
>>1589While it's sad for me to hear, it's totally understandable. As someone that was playing with you since the very start you got me back into a hobby that I only ever interacted with a bit in school with 2E, and since then I've been able to get friends IRL into it as well. I'm gonna have fun bringing in my old characters as NPCs when I DM. So yeah I'm very thankful for your efforts and I had a ton of fun with all the campaigns we did. I'm always down to play more if ever you're able to!
