#rpg discussion

[chosenofthegods]

I'm aware some folks don't like rpg.net

But I haven't found moderation like this on any other forum, and this alone would be a great recommendation in my opinion.

[limbobilbo]

I really want to make a ttrpg where checks are decided by group consensus. With incentive to mix up your votes.

Just because I think it would be funny if you tried to convince someone and the table just voted that you didnt because it would be funnier.

Idk just spitballing.

[legionofmyth]

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[probablybadrpgideas]

Make the conflict between Elves and Orcs more low stakes by declaring that Thark, Lord Of The Burning Wastes and Aelrindel, Warden of The Silver Woods have a hatecrush on each other and are just unable to express their emotions.

[alish-artie]

I’m having fun so far playing Super Mario RPG !

(Also I didn’t expect Mario to be absolutely ready to punch a kid just because he doesn’t think highly of him-)

[beedreamscape]

I'm pretty much the worst person to even weigh in on this topic because I've been partial to Suvi since day one, but in my opinion there wasn't ever a need to explain or justify Suvi's choices/reactions.

Not because she's perfect, never wrong (though in my heart I know...) but because I'm very certain that the people that keep on hammering on her mistakes/shortcomings/tendencies are people that already dislike Suvi (or don't like Aabria very much, I wish this wasn't a topic of consideration but even 30+ eps in there's still people like that around) for whatever reason and gather excuses to justify their bias against her and no amount of explanation will turn their hearts in her favour.

It really feels like a parallel to the way Suvi herself tries to be understood by her friends and yet she fails time and time again.

And people insist on forgetting that Suvi is not the Citadel, she's just one young wizard of the Citadel.

And it's gut-wrenching how much I relate to that feeling of alienation before every corner she tries to fit in: amongst her citadel peers she's othered by her position and privilege, and now by her friendship to a witch and a spirit; between her friends she's the odd-one-out because of her Citadel connections and the nature of her power; and now amongst the witches she stands out by being the face of the "enemy".

I don't blame her for clinging to the little corner of the world that has not made her feel foreign despite the very nature of her presence: in Steel's family whom she's not related to by blood, yet completely by heart.

And it'll never be a fair game. The girls especially are very young and with new-found independence, they're given colossal decisions to make, and that before beings older than three generations of them combined and incomprehensively more powerful and less empathic.

As much as Mirara wants there to be a good witch and bad witch, there's no such thing as black and white, there are decisions and consequences, what one does with the power they're given. There is no right or wrong in a fight filled with so much heart, there was never a world where a fight between Ame and Suvi would be clean.

[usagi-luna01]

omori ending spoilersss

a lot of the discussion surrounding the ending is very wack to me because i’ll see people claiming that the game spent all this time trying to convince us that sunny and basil are ‘good kids’ and that the twist is just unbelievable. but i’m like. who said they’re ‘good’ kids? what does that even mean, anyway? sunny and basil are two mentally ill children (even before mari) who are deeply traumatized. that is fact. and they did a horrible thing! they kept a horrible secret for a long time from their loved ones. regardless of any labels of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they’re kids who need help. do you believe kids who do bad things are still deserving of help?

without being able to take that to heart, i don’t think the final battle has nearly as much significance. omori’s words in the fight hurt so much because they genuinely feel true, to sunny and to the player who has just learned this secret. as the player, we’re supposed to feel betrayed, angry, even disgusted. at least that’s what i felt. sunny’s friends will probably feel that way at first. and sunny obviously feels that way about himself. in the game, sunny has to forgive himself, and as the player who acted in sunny’s shoes for 20+ hours, the game asks if we can forgive him, too.

[ersetu-gazette]

Brainstorming the Mother of Learning TTRPG

So every once in awhile there are forum posts or questions asked about what tabletop roleplaying system would be best for playing in the Ersetu universe. Usually I say that something like Pathfinder or D&D 3.5e would be best because they are the most popular rpgs that MoL at the very least alludes to, with a crunchy gameplay style that the narrative references. There's obvious deep complexity and lots of magic spells. At one point Zorian wonders out loud why some first circle spells aren't 0 circle spells because they don't seem to be more complex and the other character says "marketing" (read: a joke about spell balance). And any missing components could easily fixed with homebrew and hacks (my opinion at the time).

But as I explore more indie ttrpgs and otherwise step further outside of D&D hegemony I realize that it might be that there is a more appropriate ttrpg out there for Mother of Learning. So let's go over the wishlist of what I think might be needed for the system to emulate the world of Ersetu correctly:

Core Mechanics:

Spell points instead of spell slots, no vancian magic.

Partial spell point regeneration in about an hour, mages have options other than needing a full 8 hours to recharge.

Class and character options are mostly magic user focused. No fighters with normal swords. The only martial users of note is a sword user using an obviously magical sword (and also did magic themselves iirc?), and the gun users that individually can't do much: they're only a threat in numbers.

Crunchy and extremely deep range of spells.

Magic item crafting that allows for simple things like spellcasting aides up to complex stuff like automatons.

Counterspelling and dispelling is a core thing most mages are expected to do.

The more the better wishlist:

(These mechanics aren't all necessary but at least some are needed)

Bloodlines and unique abilities reducing spell point cap (how it's done, whether that's through the "vanilla" classes just being assigned more or that taking bloodline feats outright reduces, doesn't exactly matter. As long as it's balanced somehow)

Magic defenses being divided into body, mind, and soul.

The expectation for players is that they're all humans. Shifters and Morlocks seem to be types of humans, cultures and races (shifter might be a class), as opposed to a fully different species like an elf.

Capped base ability scores and spell point growth. No Hercules with a magic pool that continues to grow after hitting the cap. Instead progression past early levels is using what you have more efficiently.

Epic/Mythic optional system to represent the divine abilities/items. (ex. Zach's special mana reserves, the divine crown, high level angels with access to divinity, etc.)

And a skills system that can be invested in.

So, is there a "perfect" ttrpg system we can use for Ersetu? Or are there systems that work better than others that we might need to homebrew?

[crystallizedkingdoms]

okay yiik i.v is out so it’s time to say it again

please for the love of GOD and all that is holy, if you are going to completely shit on the game, TAG IT as anti yiik, yiik crit, or yiik critical. especially if it is in bad faith or you haven’t even played it! im not here to change your mind, but you guys Have to understand that there are fans of this game whether you like it or not, and fans across tumblr generally do not like it when you use the tag to fill it with negative opinions that are 95% of the time conceived from bad faith misinformation campaigns.

just Tag it as the tags above (or don’t tag shit at all!) instead of using our general fandom tags so some of us can filter it out, it’s basic tumblr etiquette. Come on

[crowgore-throwaway]

Genuine question: Why do so many people hate or dislike Trant Heidelstam?

Like, I see a handful of people play the game and get tired of him (yet they still continue talking to him) and in fanfictions, in the rare occasion he appears, characters talk shit about him.

Like, I get that people think he's annoying (I personally don't feel that way), but why shit on him? Harry is an INCREDIBLY flawed character, but he's not shat on as much as Trant. For what? Having interests?

Like, I know he's middle class or whatever and shelters his (VERY YOUNG) son from violent history. But like... idk??

He has a special place in my heart, I consider him my favorite character because I relate to his passion for art and culture and how he likes getting into deep conversations about his interests.

I might be missing the parts of the community who like Trant, but still, why the hate?

[lemonduckisnowawake]

You know. Something I noticed about myself is that I enjoy learning to like something. In other words, sometimes I "force" myself to like something or sit through it until I start to actually genuinely enjoy the piece of media. Because, sometimes, it's less about "forcing" and really about training yourself to the direction and way you care about being. I care about seeing better females written in fiction, for example? Then I'll force myself to sit through a story that is well-done, even if it doesn't grip me immediately or even at all. And sometimes, it'll be something I enjoy fondly, sometimes it'll end up consuming my life and give me a new genre to suffer and die over, which is actually the worst. BUT THE POINT

[kirkwallguy]

i find the whole grand necropolis to be so world breaking even though i know it was established in the lore before datv, like nevarra's under the chantry law how have they not gotten exalted marched on yet?

i thiiiink like there's lore to support them not being exalted marched (from my vague memory?) but as more of a vibes guy than a lore guy and the vibes definitely felt WAY off. if the necropolis was structured more like a circle with a few floors of dangerous restricted areas i would have found it interesting but it just feels so fake and not grounded in the way areas in other games' were. this is my complaint for pretty much all of vg though, and the necropolis and the anderfels are the worst to me because they were the ones i was most looking forward to so they're the ones i find the most disappointing

[legionofmyth]

From Mega to Giga: What Does This Mean for Your Game?

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[filipfatalattractionrblog]

I think you've run into an old issue - does your game challenge the characters or the players? Because I assure you, skills were put into the games like d&d to end the stream of complaints that came from dissonance between the fantasy of playing someone who is a genius or extremly perceptive, while the player themselves does not know how to do that. Perception checks are in the game to put an end to the steam of endless "I'm playing a professional assassin and yet I somehow didn't think of checking for a simple trip wire and my character fell like an idiot" and knowledge skills to end complaints that players feel like they have memorize the monster manual in order to actually play a "wise wizard" or other characters who should know these things. Without knowledge skills, your character will only ever be as smart as you. Without perception or investigation (which is more what "roll to find secret symbol behind the tapestry" would fall in 5e-circle of games, btw) your PC is only as good detective/oberves as you are. It's the same way Charisma-based skills were put to allow socially awkward kids embody the fantasy of charismatic hero. Also, in hands of shitty GM lack of such skills enables railroading by simply witholding information from the players. I run my game on the rules of giving out general information about the setting to the players, but keeping some cooler things secret (it helps I'm learning about the setting myself as I go because it's an old published setting with more fan content than official one) and I can tell you, it's been countless times where knowledge and perception checks puished the game in direction I was not expecting and improved it by gently taking control out of my hands.

Thinking about the gap between player knowledge and character knowledge in RPGs. In general, I think withholding knowledge from characters that players could know rarely leads to interesting gameplay (like, so what if I recognize that the symbol left at the crime scene is a holy symbol of Mask? That doesn't reveal to me who the murderer is. What is the point of spending multiple turns trying to roll a high Int check just to get access to the information you already knew, which is that fire hurts trolls?) but I started thinking specifically of an RPG where that barrier could be struck down in such a way that it would satisfy even the hardest immersionist.

Modern supernatural horror. Because, like, almost everyone's got a smartphone these days. Once you connect the dots and realize that that monster was a vampire you Google that creature's weaknesses.

[dice-wizard]

This shit is so fucking exhausting. This is what I mean when I talk about the damage done to the TTRPG scene by Wizards of the Coast. This is why I'd rather explain what I work on to my completely uninformed boss than to a person whose sole exposure is D&D.

I'm so fucking tired.