Tag: rpg

randomitemdrop:

Item: unlabeled ziplock bag of white powder sitting on the counter of the breakroom. Roll d20:

  1. Confectioner’s sugar
  2. Cocaine
  3. Table salt
  4. Chalk dust
  5. Anthrax
  6. Baking soda
  7. Talcum powder
  8. Drywall dust
  9. Waffle mix
  10. That powdered Tylenol old people like
  11. Infant formula
  12. Borax
  13. Flea and tick powder
  14. Splenda
  15. Chlorine
  16. Vitamin C
  17. Mass-builder protein powder
  18. Fine-grated parmesan cheese
  19. Alum
  20. Carpet deodorizer

vintagerpg:

By popular request, here is Rifts!

While Palladium Games has a long history before
Rifts (which we’ll get to later in the week), this is the game that made them
the #3 RPG maker for over a decade. Released in 1990, it presented an Earth beset
by multidimensional tears that warp the world we know into a variety of strange
and dangerous lands. (For example, back in October, I covered Vampire Kingdoms,
which turned Central America into an undead paradise.) There must have been
something in the air, because West End Games’ TORG has the same premise (and is
better executed – sorry Rifts fans!).

Rifts is bonkers, pure and simple. It caters to
players who want to fight deranged giant robots and demons with the biggest
explosions possible. Its (extremely arcane) rules system is built for
bombastic, over-powered play, so it is no surprise that Rifts initial audience
was found among teenagers who had never previously played RPGs. In fact,
creator Kevin Siembieda started his career as an illustrator and would-be comic
book artist. Perhaps because of this, Rifts books were a staple on shelves in
local comic shops in the early 90s (or, at least, my local comic shops).

There is something about Rifts that seems
unbound (or unleashed, or unhinged), like it is the product of a never-ending
brain storming session where everything gets increasingly bigger and badder and,
generally, covered in skulls. Artist Kevin Long does a great job making all
these disparate things seem super cool (god, his art style is frickin’ amazing)
but it always seemed a little much to me. There’s magic and tech and high tech
and super-high-tech and psionics and animal people and faction after faction.
And so many skulls!

Take me with a grain of salt: I’ve never played
Rifts. The rules are too dense and my tastes just run toward more plausible
settings. That said, I still love it after a fashion. It delivers the gonzo
promise of those long ago ads in Dragon Magazine in spades and captures the anything-goes
attitude of 90s RPGs.  

birdechoes:

Roleplay Recommendations:

Gumshoe– Gumshoe is not one game, but a rule engine that does a very particular job: ensuring a story gets told. Every rule, from Investigative abilities which let you gather clues without ever needing to test, to General abilities that let you shine only so many times in an episode, and the simple D6 dice mechanic, all allow for the GM and players to focus more on storytelling and character interaction than anything else. Games in this line range from Night’s Black Agents- a spy vs vampire shadow war, to Timewatch- a time traveling romp, all the way to its own take on the Cthulhu Mythos with Trail of Cthulhu.

Savage Worlds– Perhaps the perfect roleplay out there for GMs who like simple, malleable rule systems, and parties who like in-depth fight mechanics, to mix wonderfully and play nice together. This game also has the wonderful added benefit of making character advancement feel great, as making your stats better is actually tangible and overtly visible to a player. A “do whatever” system, it comes with core rules (which are like $10-15 on Amazon,) but no real setting. A make it yourself game at its core, but it does have quite a few source books sitting there that you can use for settings. I recommend Rippers, which is legit just Bloodborne.

Delta Green– Perhaps, perhaps the greatest roleplay ever made. Mechanics wise, anyways. Jam packed with a super easy character creation, a fight system so simple it blends flawlessly with the horror of the situation, awesome post-adventure story rules, and simple changes to the Call of Cthulhu sanity death spiral to make them even better than they already are! An impressive work of game design, and really my personal favorite game to run, and introduce new players to roleplay with.

Puppetland– Look, this one is weird. One hour playtime, no dice, NEVER out of character. This game is for silly, silly improv at its finest, and throwing in some creepy puppet horror into the mix. You may scoff at that hour time limit, but trust me, this amazing game turns your brain to mush after.

Hillfolk– A game for large parties only- 6-8 players. I… have never had so much fun not doing anything as GM. Ever. This game is designed around personal party drama; it’s called the Drama System, and it does its job damn well. Competitive, rude, and very intelligently designed, Hillfolk will make your players become little micro GMs while you sit back and watch as they backstab and have a great time trying to out roleplay each other. It also has some 40+ settings to play in, if you get its sourcebook.

Fate– I don’t think I have to talk Fate up too much. It’s tried, it’s true, and it’s free. Like Savage Worlds it’s a “do whatever” dice system, but it’s 100% free on Drivethrurpg. My favorite Fate setting is the Secret of Cats, where everyone is playing a kitty protecting their small town from awful horrors and ghosts.

Other Games Worth Saying Hi To– Cthulhutech, the Void, Eclipse Phase, Call of Cthulhu, the 40k rp line, English Eerie, Gumshoe one-2-one, and so many more. There are so many damn games that are all so fun to play.

D&D Player Mods Hundreds Of Monsters Into Playable Characters

shrineart:

drawing-cookie:

audrey-the-tomcat:

dr-archeville:

Your bread-and-butter Dungeons & Dragons party won’t include a manticore, a gargoyle, a hyena or a sentient fungi, but maybe it should.  One D&D player spent a year and a half converting every single creature in the D&D [5E] Monster Manual into playable characters, and now players can live out their dreams of being a great fire beetle who slays dragons.

There are hundreds of monsters in D&D’s Monster Manual, many of which don’t really lend themselves to the Lord of the Rings-esque adventures that traditionally star humanoids.  Most dungeon masters won’t let players stray too far from that model.  It’s hard to wrap a plot around a rag-tag team of dire bats and oozes, and it’s hard to make sure a party’s stats are balanced when it contains both a faerie dragon and a mastiff.

Creator Tyler Kamstra’s new 283-page homebrew mod “Monstrous Races” offers ways for players to embody any of D&D’s monsters using stats, role-playing notes and everything else you’d expect to see listed next to the “Human” race in the D&D Player’s Handbook.  To play a basilisk, for example, players can attempt to petrify a creature with their gaze as an action.  This is helpful, since basilisks don’t have hands, rendering them incapable of holding a sword.  To play a banshee, or an undead spirit of a female elf, Kamstra recommends that players covet beautiful objects and remain within five miles of anywhere the banshee lived while alive.

This “Monstrous Races” mod is the sort of wonderful thing that, back in D&D days of yore, would exist as a titanic document in some far-flung basement, only to be enjoyed by a handful of players.  We can at least thank the internet for giving us playable purple worms.

Oooh

@mazanica @boopidyboopidyboop @mugetsupipefox some day one of you will actually DM for the rest of us and you must be prepared for this

@the-blonde-goblin

DAMN RIGHT IF YOU CAN’T PLAY AS A MANTICORE OR A BEHOLDER THEN WHAT IS THE POINT?

D&D Player Mods Hundreds Of Monsters Into Playable Characters

elsajeni:

leaper182:

elsajeni:

theemotionaldm:

battlecrazed-axe-mage:

Are you sure?

ancient DM proverb

Other often used DM proverbs that are actually thinly layered warnings;

“You can certainly try.”
“Do you say that in character?”
“Do you say that out loud?”
“You can try to touch it.”
“Where are you looking?”
“Are you paying attention to what’s going on over there?”
“That’s going to be hard, but I’d love to see you pull it off.”
“It’s your choice.”
“Do you really want my opinion?”

Man, y’all have some uncommonly kind-hearted DMs

#lol ‘you can try to touch it’#i have known some VERY generous dms who VERY much do not want their players to die#and i still don’t think even one of them would say anything but ‘great! you touch it! roll a reflex save!’#‘are
you paying attention to what’s going on over there’ you know damn well
i’m not just hit me with the arrow or whatever already

(tags by elsajeni)

I’ve never actually heard “Are you paying attention to what’s going on over there?”

I just figure that as soon as we enter the room, I’m going to get an arrow to the face because those asshats had a readied action because my party was too freaking loud in the other room. *sigh*

TRUE TALES OF STUPIDITY: we met some goblins. We decided to be merciful and tie up the goblins instead of murdering them. Then we opened the door to the next room, saw a bunch more goblins, went “AAAH GOBLINS,” backed off, and took up ambush positions to jump the goblins when they came through the door.

“Okay,” says the DM. “Well, the goblins you left tied up over there, where you can see them, are still cussing and hollering at you in Goblin. Which… none of you speak?”

“Nope.”

There is a long pause. Nothing happens. No goblins come charging through the door, for some reason.

“Is it possible,” says the bard eventually, “that the tied-up goblins over there hollering are in fact… hollering information… to the other goblins.”

It’s this kind of impeccable tactical planning that’s made us the wealthy, successful, level 3 adventuring party we are today.

r-n-w:

A fun and useful way to keep inventory!

We made a series of cards that contain all of the items from the equipment packs you start the game with (eg, when you pick warlock, you can choose from the scholar’s or dungeoneer’s pack) and little themed boxes for the items to be kept in!

It started because at the end of every session, I would hold all the treasure cards the DM had given to me with a paperclip on my stack of character sheets, and by the time the next session rolled around, everyone’s stuff was all over the pile. We’d have to sift through to figure out who owned what, so I made little boxes for everyone’s items, then started making item cards, and here we are!

They’re available as individual packs, or you can get the full set here!

There’s also a free download of the blank item card template here.