WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit
-
Expanding from Lounge discussion —
There's an idea to reboot the RPG sessions from a few years ago. No ruleset and no setting has been decided yet.
- Looking for DMs (1 or 2); so far, @Atazhaia and @Mason_Wheeler have expressed tentative interest in taking the role.
- Looking for players; so far, me, @Jaloopa, @Vault_Dweller, and @PleegWat are interested.
Personally, I have no preference as for setting, and for game system, I'd rather have something light on complexity and rulebook thickness (lighter than D&D 3e), but since I know next to nothing about pen and paper RPGs, I have no particular suggestions.
@apapadimoulis, could you restore the RPG categories so we have a place for all the game-related crap and not pollute the general Games category?
-
@Gąska Re-confirming I'm up for it. While I have played plenty of RPG video games, I have no experience with the pen & paper kind.
-
@Gąska I wasn't there for the first game. Is this play-by-post? Roll20/other-online-thing? Related: what's the time commitment?
-
@PotatoEngineer play by post, but last time DMs used some web tool for showing combat map.
-
@PotatoEngineer I think we'd definitely want an intent to play every weekday? Not sure how strict we'd need to be with initiative, as that could slow the game down. Having everyone online at the same time would speed things up.
-
@PleegWat said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
every weekday
not viable for most pen and paper beyond a certain depth of story. Note that I have no intention of playing as I would like the experience to be enjoyable.
-
@Gąska said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
@PotatoEngineer play by post, but last time DMs used some web tool for showing combat map.
The aforementioned Roll20.
-
@Gribnit Depends on the format I guess. If we have everone online at the same time and can do a decent back-and-forth in an evening with everyone participating, you could do it less often.
-
@PleegWat ... and if we have people in the group with non-overlapping timezones, we'll probably only be able to play one turn per day and we may want to have some commitment to do so more often to keep any semblance of progress.
-
@PleegWat IIRC last time there was a 24H timeout for posting your action on a turn, and if you didn't, DM made the decision in your place. But that's inside combat - normally there's nothing to wait for, and if you don't do anything, you just don't do anything. DMs asked everyone before scene transitions if everyone's okay with moving on.
And yes, it was very slow. One combat encounter took over a week IIRC. But I don't think there's any way around it unless we want to schedule regular live sessions. And I don't think we want to. Personally, I don't mind slowness.
-
@Gąska That's what I recall as well, and why I reflected it in my first post on the subject. I know many people here don't post in weekends, which is why I said weekdays.
-
Okay, I'm up for being a player. I can manage to post at least once a weekday, and I'm okay with GM taking over for the few times I can't.
I have practice with a small variety of bad systems, so I'm game for just about anything except FATAL. I ain't doing FATAL, for two reasons: 1) it's a godawful mashup of bigoted, hateful tropes that an edgy teenager would invent if he couldn't get the girls to talk to him, and 2) it's honestly a terrible system.
-
@PotatoEngineer isn't FATAL like Brainfuck? Created for the memes and not actually meant to be played
-
@Gąska said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
@PotatoEngineer isn't FATAL like Brainfuck? Created for the memes and not actually meant to be played
As far as I can tell, FATAL was written, in all sincerity, by a guy (and, apparently, his friends!) who a) wanted to make sure that rape was appropriately simulated in RPGs, because "you rape her" just wasn't enough, and b) was entirely obsessed with enumerating all of the stats about your character, and describing the world in mind-numbing detail. It's 900 pages, and countless arguments on the web; if it was created just for the memes, the creator doubled down.
It definitely shouldn't be played. But I think the writer wanted it to be played.
-
@PotatoEngineer I recommend Rifts or Toon, mostly since I will not be playing. They're a good level of insane. Paranoia, though... actually, y'all would love Paranoia.
-
@Gribnit I've played one or two mafia games here in the past, and I'm not interested in doing PvP in that style again.
-
@PleegWat PvP is generally inadvisable for an RPG anyway, when a role is removed it stops getting played.
-
I was thinking 5e. It's (relatively) simple and accessible, and a wide enough audience that if you're into TTRPGs you're probably already familiar with it to one degree or another. Makes for a decent default system.
-
@Mason_Wheeler Frankly, I'd be willing to try just about any system that isn't too rules-heavy. My only regret is that while I'd really like to try out a Powered By the Apocalypse game (like Dungeon World), each action seems like it involves too much "negotiation" to resolve, which doesn't work in a PbP format.
But yes, I have the 5e books. (That's kinda the reason I'd prefer something a little different, but I understand that not everyone is looking to learn a new system with this game.)
-
@Gribnit said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
@PotatoEngineer I recommend Rifts or Toon, mostly since I will not be playing. They're a good level of insane. Paranoia, though... actually, y'all would love Paranoia.
I have played Rifts.
I have tried to "fix" Rifts. It is not possible. Even fixing the strength system is not possible: it's just D&D 1e-style hacks-piled-upon-hacks, with no attempt to reconcile anything.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
I was thinking 5e. It's (relatively) simple and accessible, and a wide enough audience that if you're into TTRPGs you're probably already familiar with it to one degree or another. Makes for a decent default system.
5e is the only system I'm familiar with, although I'd be willing to try something else.
-
5e is pretty much all I have experience with, which means I'd be comfortable with it but also up for other systems if people want.
I can share links to digital copies of the phb and XGtE, as well as a Google spreadsheet character sheet that does a lot of the calculations for you
-
My proposal:
The End War. (Working title.)
Original setting. A small group of soldiers end up in way over their heads when their world is invaded by demons, under conditions that the Gods say may well be the end of the world if they are not stopped.
Character Restrictions:
Dragons are very rare in this setting, and are not known to mate with mortals. Dragonborn are incompatible with world lore.
Contact with extraplanar entities is nearly unheard of before the events of the game. Characters of extraplanar heritage, such as aasimar and tieflings, are incompatible with world lore.
The party starts out as a group of soldiers. If you want to play a Barbarian, you'd better have a convincing explanation for how (s)he ended up as a formal rank-and-file soldier in the military of a foreign nation.
Murderhobo-ing is a good way to end up very dead very quickly, with no possibility of a ress.
Tone:
Challenging, but in a "help the party become awesome heroes" way.
Every planned combat encounter is winnable by killing all the bad guys. Many of them will have other ways to win as well, generally resulting in bonuses one way or another, if you can find them.
Some combat encounters can be avoided entirely through good RP.
I have a story plan in mind, but it's meant to be relatively flexible. Try not to blatantly gremlin things up, and I'll try not to railroad you.
All characters will start at Lv 2, because everything sucks at Lv 1. Campaign is intended to end confronting an apocalyptic-grade threat.
Sound reasonable?
-
@Mason_Wheeler sounds great since I'm not playing.
-
@Mason_Wheeler the problem with being soldiers (assuming we stay soldiers for the duration of the campaign) is that you're ordered to fight and you fight and that's it. No freedom to explore, no refusing quests, no branching paths, no betrayals (unless something happens that will make us deserters or traitors, but then we stop being soldiers).
-
@Gąska said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
assuming we stay soldiers for the duration of the campaign)
This is not a valid assumption
-
@Mason_Wheeler then I'm cool with that setting.
-
@Gąska Without giving too much away, let's just say that it can be reasonably assumed that the impending end of the world will entail a certain degree of breakdown of the ordinary societal order.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
The party starts out as a group of soldiers. If you want to play a Barbarian, you'd better have a convincing explanation for how (s)he ended up as a formal rank-and-file soldier in the military of a foreign nation.
You're calling out Barbarian here, but I just want to be certain: are pretty much all classes on the table, here? Or does "rank-and-file soldier" mean "martial class only"?
But yes, this sounds cool.
-
@PotatoEngineer all classes are on the table, if you can come up with a reasonable backstory. Just figured Barbarian would probably be the worst for that.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
@PotatoEngineer all classes are on the table, if you can come up with a reasonable backstory. Just figured Barbarian would probably be the worst for that.
Barbarian's easier than most, really: lots of historical examples. But yeah, I can see that you can't just slap the class on a character and call it a day.
-
@PotatoEngineer Except Green Star Adept because I mean, it comes with all its own material so how hard could it be to integrate.
-
Im thinking a rogue, Nobby Nobbs type character. Got in a bit of trouble with the law and signed up with the army to get the hell out of Dodge
-
I had an inspiration last night and it's been percolating. Halfling, chaotic good, started out as a self-employed prostitute. As a long string of people who really didn't think they needed to pay got in the way of actual paying customers, she was approached by a recruiter who noted her skills in ridding herself of aforementioned undesirables could be employed in other ways. After a few days thinking, she said yes.
I'm not sure of the best class fit yet.
-
All right. Anyone who wants to be in the party, set up a Lv 2 character with basic race, class, stats, and backstory. You are soldiers in the army of the cosmopolitan Kheal Kingdom, ruled by King Vandaran, a tolerant and well-liked monarch. Kheal is on the east of the continent of Avarone, bordered on the north and west by the Izavian Dynasty, a principally human kingdom that's falling to ruin because of mismanagement, and to the south and west by the Donokar Lands, a wild plain full of orcish nomad tribes.
The kingdom is generally at peace, but your company has been sent off to the Teeth of Calcona, a mountain range that forms the border with the Donokar Lands, to investigate rumors of a tribal uprising and mobilization that scouts report may lead to raids or even war.
I'd like one character who is either a cleric or a paladin, staying at an isolated monastery in the mountains, which the rest of the party will visit very early on in the storyline. The rest are soldiers. Please set up characters and post them for approval. Soldiers, don't worry about starting equipment for your characters; the army will take care of that. Also, all soldiers please DM me with some minor-to-moderate infraction the character has recently committed that would get them in trouble if caught. Nothing extremely serious (murder, high treason, desertion, etc) but... bored soldiers sometimes make their own entertainment in ways the Commander wouldn't appreciate, no?
-
@Mason_Wheeler Do you have any links to help setting up? I do not own any resources (EG player handbook).
-
@PleegWat This should help:
-
Player's handbook
Xanthar's guide to everything
Character sheet with formulas to simplify a lot of the calculations
-
@Mason_Wheeler any preference on how we roll up ability scores? I generally do standard array but if we're rolling do you want it done in some way you can verify we're not cheating? Any low score mitigation tactics like rolling extra and discarding?
(Edited to get what I think is the right account mentioned)
-
@Jaloopa last time we used @sockbot's !roll command for all rolls, including character creation rolls. @error said he's going to add that module to his bot too.
I remember there was an option to reroll stats if your total stat points were too low (we'd need to ask @Mason_Wheeler what the cutoff is this time).
-
Testing...
@sockbot !roll 3d6
-
...yeah. Since we don't seem to have a working dicebot currently, and we don't have Roll20 set up yet, simplest thing might be just to use the point buy system described on the page I linked.
-
@Mason_Wheeler or, you know. We can wait until things are set up. It's not like we can do a lot of playing without rolls.
-
I have a basic Discord dice bot I wrote as an excuse to learn some python, but it's not hosted anywhere so would be reliant on either my PC being on and the bot running, or me overcoming the to get it online somewhere. Also, getting a discord server for it to run in and people trusting me not to have put any backdoors in
-
@Gąska said in WTDWTF RPG game pre-sign-up and shit:
@Jaloopa last time we used @sockbot's !roll command for all rolls, including character creation rolls. @error said he's going to add that module to his bot too.
I remember there was an option to reroll stats if your total stat points were too low (we'd need to ask @Mason_Wheeler what the cutoff is this time).
@error_bot wa 2d6+6
-
Wolfram|Alpha said:
Input interpretation
Expected value of total + 6
Distribution of total + 6
Example
-
@error_bot random int 1 20
-
random.org said :
- 15
-
-
@Jaloopa I know nothing about the administration of Discord servers, but there exists a Discord server that @bb36e set up for an online campaign a while back that is currently sitting completely unused (because we can't find anybody with the time to DM a continuation of the campaign, and I don't see any reason it couldn't be repurposed. It already has a dice bot installed.