#trpg essentials

[canvaswolfdoll]

you know what, not only is this stray oklahoma! reference i put into my ryuutama video hilarious, but everything i put into the classes summary was inspired and i don't get enough credit for it!

[blacktowbarony]

Changing Knave 2e's Encounter Dice

"At the end of each turn, roll the dungeon hazard die and apply the result" - Knave 2e

Rolling a d6 and having a 5-in-6 chance of an impactful result every 10 minutes of dungeon-delving is too frequent, in my opinion. There's usually enough happening between players and the room as written that you don't have to interject almost every time they do something to say that something else also happens.

In-game, when I don't get a result that's a 1 I panic, and just pretend I had rolled a 6. Time to make a plan. I'm of the faith that the makers of true old-school D&D knew what they were doing, and if I don't like a rule in Knave, I should at least try to emulate the original rule before making my own. My preferred text for referencing "true" old-school D&D is OSE, Old-School Essentials.

"Wandering Monsters. Chance: Typically 1-in-6 every 2 turns" - Old-School Essentials

So I have a choice here. a) roll a d6 every 2 turns, b) roll a d6 every turn with a half-dangerous wandering monster table, or c) roll a d12 every turn.

Keeping track of each turn is something I don't always do, so I'll try b). My current project is turning The One Ring rpg's new Moria book into a series of dungeons to emulate travel through Moria, as the players will soon have to brave the depths to retrieve Mithril. Calling it Kagyar-Dum to make it match the lore of the Rockhome gazetteer I'm using.

So let's try this encounter table. I can even incorporate some of the ideas on Knave's encounter die, like shifts or torches! 6 should be enough monsters, as I can change results between sessions to keep it fresh. Expand to a d20 if you've got the effort.

I would also use this technique with wilderness travel. I discussed in a previous post how I've started thinking of hexes as big dungeon rooms, with a turn taking 4 hours instead of 10 minutes. It worked well!

So in Kagyar-Dum, every 10 minutes of exploration has a 1-in-6 chance of an Encounter. If so, roll on this table:

d12 Kagyar-Dum Encounters

2d4 Orc warriors and d6 Ogres. Tactics: aim to pen the party in a dead-end passageway or chamber so they can be captured or slain.

2d4 Orc spies. Tactics: watch from a distance, try to tempt or scare into a dangerous place. They tap-tap-tap on walls with sticks as morse code to each other. Will report to local leader all they see.

1d6 Doppelgangers impersonating ancient dwarf nobles. They request to camp with the party in exchange for information. Upon morning, they have transformed into their intended victims.

1d3 Aranea. Wizard-spiders exploring for magic and artefacts. Their queen lives in Westwood. They have a camp in Kagyar-Dum with a magic stepping-mirror to their Westwood home.

Mad dwarf. Gibbering, insanity. An escaped orc-slave, thinks all others are cruel orcs and will fight to the death to flee.

The dragon queen Tiamat. Shadow and flame! ---------------------------------------------------------------

Cave-in. Ceiling creaks, stone pillars topple with the pressure of time. Those who aren't crushed are waylaid.

The active torch/light source expires.

Smoke comes faint at first, then thickly. Flames lick from cracks in the floor. Tiamat is nearby...

Dead Orcs. Roll d4: 1. Killed eachother over a small purse of mithril. 2. Killed in a scrap, then eaten by scavengers. 3. Looks of twisted agony. No wounds. (assailed by dwarf ghosts). 4. Small, disfigured. Driven off and died of starvation.

Nausea penetrates the unlucky as players are probed with a mind-reading spell. Roll d4 for the culprit: 1-3: Aranea. The spiders are rummaging through your neurons like fidgety librarians. 4: Tiamat. Her presence looms over you, looking down into your mind like a queen into a puddle.

Dead dwarves. Roll d4: 1. Ancient charred skeletons, 1000 years old. 2. A failed expedition. Got lost and drank an orc-poisoned well. 3. Escaped slaves, only to succumb to decades of toil and torment. 4. Haunting spirits. Difficult to communicate, but they have faint memories of the glory days of Kagyar-Dum.

[canvaswolfdoll]

it's the first japanese trpg with an officially licensed english translation!

i'd love to play it, but not enough people i'd be able to stand in this context.

Have you played MAID RPG ?

By Ryo Kamiya

Maid: The Role-Playing Game is a comedic take on a uniquely Japanese cultural icon: The fetishized modern maid. Injecting the concept of Maid with 50ccs of anime and comedy, the players take on the roles of maids, serving the master (played by the GM). Sheets are left unfolded and mantelpieces undusted when giant robots crash through the mansion, ninjas attack and kidnap the young master, and a demonic pit to Hell opens up in the pantry… and all before teatime!

[kurorobot]

Welp, I cracked

So. I love robot. But, I thought. Hey, i'm already doing videogames, already doing trpg, and even some stint in tgc. I won't do gundam on top of that.

And then, I see gundam is doing a wargame. My warhammer friend tell me: Since your near gunpla shop, why don't you go ask question here?

I go to the gunpla shop. Great shop, every one they sell is built and dipslayed. Very cool.

Anyway. I forgot to ask the questions. But I did buy a gundam box.

I'm now invited at my local wargame club to come build with them.

I think this is the stupidest fall into a hobby I ever done. My wargame folk keep sending me "One of us, one of us" meme or similar.

I'm not even sure what material I need. I got some precision pliers and metal files from when I worked with 3d impression, and should have a cutting mat somewhere and a precision knives. Anything else that are essential? I saw lot of people online saying sponge sandpaper or small nail like files are a must, but I'm supposed to start tomorrow, so I'm a bit short on time to get material.

I'm taking advice. Please.

[sburbian-sage]

So I brought up with my coplayers, the idea of weekly D&D games? You know, could be fun, give us something to de-stress with.

They were kinda on board, but... well they're all trolls, and they're more familiar with FLARP, and said we should play that instead...

Is it just me though, or is FLARP like, a nonsense game??? It seems super dangerous, and I can't tell if it's roleplay-heavy, or more like a video game?

I guess it's kinda like Sburb in that way... Which, uh, kinda gets away from the point of this being stress relief. You know, somehow, my idea of us all sitting cozily around a table, eating snacks and cracking jokes, seems to have been subverted into essentially playing *another* live-action game where you need to act as a specific class and leverage nonsense abilities. Don't I get enough of that already...?

But hey, I can roll with the punches, I wanna at least *try* it. So yeah, any advice or tips? Have you ever played it?

Oh man. I'm all for cultural sensitivity, but only Alternia could produce a game like FLARP. It's somehow simultaneously "your rural cousin who doesn't know what a gameboy is takes rapturous joy in throwing rocks at roadkill because that's his only hobby when he's not plowing the field or learning how to read (he is 15)" and "this FPS/superhero movie was directly paid for by the government, enjoy uncritically and join the military now to die in WWIII". And that's putting aside that on Alternia "let's play FLARP" can either be a friendly engagement between friends or a socially acceptable pretense for murdering someone and jacking all of their shit.

But then again, maybe I'm the one that needs to live a little. I've never played FLARP, or at least I don't remember having played it (I do remember the severe head trauma, but not anything leading up to it), but I do have a scan of the FLARP handbook, and enough familiarity with "actual play" to understand the social conventions and playerbase. So if you wanna commit to this, listen up.

Standard TRPG stuff. Establish lines and veils and other safety tools, be a fan of the players, respect the Clouder as a fellow player. Don't be a killer GM who tries to "win", but don't hand out victories like candy because the game isn't fun without legitimate stakes. This is my advice by the way. The closest the book comes to this is "as the Clouder, the players are all your bitches, but keep in mind that they outnumber you and the only thing sating their bloodlust is 1) you running a good game 2) you're not worth much XP".

Like D&D, FLARP can be surprisingly versatile in the games it can run. You can run FLARP cooperatively or divide into competitive teams. You can also run campaigns that focus on intrigue. However, like D&D, it's also mostly about killing things. So don't expect good results if your ideal TRPG experience is "cozy and conflict-free emotional story about queer people gardening" or whatever. It's an actual game.

I know I said "establish boundaries" earlier, but I'm enunciating right now that FLARP can be lethal. I'm not trying to insinuate that your Troll coplayers are going to go into automatic blood orgy mode as soon as the game starts. All I'm saying is, muscle memory can be a bitch, and if I'm going to play paintball with military veterans who have own landmines and stuff, it might be a good idea to double-check the guns to make sure they aren't loaded with live ammo.

Don't go in with a solid idea of what character you wanna play. All of your stats are randomly rolled, and your two highest stats determine which class you get to play as. It's honest-rolls, baby, and like honest rolls they can provide uneven results. The Boy Skylark class sucks, but their endgame potential is unreal.

There are homebrew rules for point-buy attribute determination, as well as picking whatever class you want, but if you ask to use them your coplayers are legally allowed to wedgie you. Casually bring them up and insinuate that it might be a good idea, maybe.

Clear out a large area for play. One or five square miles at least. When the campaign hatches, the monsters will need space to propagate.

Don't rob yourself of the fun. Alchemize some low-tier beginner equipment, and don't use your Classpect abilities. The game is balanced around players not being gods. There are homebrew "epic campaign" rules, but it gets really stupid really fast. If your Troll coplayers can use psionics, either ask them not to use them, or allow your human players to use certain Title powers to "balance" it out.

Related note, classes can only use certain types of weapons which may not correspond to your Kind Abstratus. Normally using a non-Kind weapon ensures you don't get damage bonuses (and it applies damage penalties if it's a "real" weapon), but FLARP uses its own damage calculations based on class, level, and stats when you're playing it. You might think it's weird that SBURB seemingly respects FLARP as its own independent game type and will suspend its own damage calculations while playing it. Don't think about it too much. Also don't think about how the Boy Skylark is just the Page in all but name.

If you don't maintain strict time records, you won't have fun, your game will suck, and I'll kill you.

Happy FLARPing. And if it doesn't work out, try pilling them on another game. D&D won't work, FLARPing basically does all the same stuff D&D does, except D&D is for babies and FLARP is EXTREME ROLEPLAYING. Maybe try VtM. Or if there's a jadeblood among your team who thinks roleplaying as vampires is culturally insensitive, try Mage. Try to emphasize that you can do things in the realm of imagination that can't be faithfully done live-action.

[rrr-rariru]

Character Descriptions (general descriptions)

 Detailed settings are described in [Detailed settings of each attribute] from "Detailed World Settings" below.

★ Angel

 Angels are baptizers of souls, and are in charge of solving the problem of reincarnation.

 Many of them have almost no human heart, so they may commit genocide when it comes to demons.

★ Reaper

 They are the carriers of souls, and play the role of overall balancer.

 They are the hardest workers, but there are also smart and bad guys sometimes.

★ Demon

 Predator of souls, deceives, tricks, and devours people.

 Recently, another being is in the demon world, so the demons themselves are having a change of heart.

★ Humans

 Life forms that can be found almost anywhere.

 Special and abnormal individuals appear here and there.

 ★Spiral souls, etc.

 Characters created in TRPGs conducted by Rarirurira are also included.

 They are categorized as special individuals as described above.

★ ⚠︎ special spiral soul

 "Con," "Louis," "Fayyad (+Phantom)," and "Null" were originally created as characters in the "Derivative Work" of a certain game.

 Since they have already been transformed into the third or fourth generation, we call them "reincarnated" and transformed them into the characters of the first generation.

 Essentially a 240cm monster of the electronic world, he wears a suit. It recognizes human emotions with its "sense of taste", reads the world as data, and rewrites codes.

 It also sometimes "plays" by thinking jacks, throwing people into its own virtual space and shifting the time axis, rewriting and erasing existence itself, and using doors, chairs, and rain as keywords.

 6, AB, and IJK are also reincarnated characters in the same vein.

 By the way

 0:null

 1: Male

 6:female

 a: Fayyad (fα:Phantom Fayyad)

 C:Con

 L: Louis

 and "rrro" and "gggo".

 "rrro” and “gggo” are also derived from “Derivative Work” characters in different games

 For more details, please refer to the "Old World" section from the "Chronological Works Summary" page.

 ★Evil God

 Basically, they do not interfere with soul-returners, but there are cases where Aldebaran is a Hastur, is with a modern Con, or messes around with explorers.

[gwydionmisha]

Personal: We Are Home

The trip was lovely. Goth Millenial and New Millenial and I stayed with my two oldest continuous friends, Karjack and Werepixy and their four delightful cats. The city has changed a lot, to the point of being disorienting because so many businesses and entire buildings had been replaced and even key chunks of street. My favorite food stall was still at saturday market, an Afghanistani place that must have been there 40ish years. New Millenial fell in love with their food. They got to soak up the very different culture of the city and made several exciting perchases.

One day, I took them to the little art museum which has a fine asian art collection for it's size. We had new york style pizza in my beloved 19th and earliest century graveyard, though the piper of my youth was long gone. Another day we met with a friend of one of the millenials in a park. They got to see the fancy architecture at the New Library. We play tested a tRPG werepixy is going to be running at a convention later this Autumn. Mostly we just hung out.

Karjack made each of us a custom scent before we left on our last night there and a soecial thing for my nails (my immune system's been extra brutal on them lately), and some scented epsom. All three of the custom scents were lovely. Mine is a mix of marigold, clary sage, imortelle, and cardamom, something I couldn't have gotten anywhere else and off the beaten path, but I saw it in my head when they let us smell there esential oil collection. I had back ups if it didn't work, to substitute out, but i'm pretty good at knowing what goes with what at this point and could mix them in had head an had a pretty good idea of what the final product would be like. It was even better with karjack's knowledge of proportion than even I had pictured. (They mixed a proper perfume with carrier oils. DO NOT put essential oils on your skin, pets or in your mouth). I am just a sucker for herbal/wood blends and i've a fondess for more subtle floral notes like geranium, daisy, carnation, etc. mixed with them. The Millenials were delighted with theirs are well, even Goth Millenial, who is super sensative to scents, but who likes smelling like a forest it turns out.

Neither of my cats knew fuck all about suitcases and I had never been gone longer than a day, so they didn't have any idea what was happening. Squirrel described them as mellow and well behaved. I strongly suspect they were mourning me. tavy had two panic attacks the first hour and a half i was home and is needing Lots of reassurance in between attempts to maul me. It took Livia about two hours to decide i was neither ghost nor doppleganger and decide to let me pet her. As I have to be up anyway for laundry reasons, I unpacked and cleaned and bathed, and am now trying to re-establish normal routine for them.

Squirrel'd changed the bed pads after an incident, but Livia also hit the area in front of the bedroom litterbox as I anticipated. Tavy, miracle of miracles did not rin Livia's desk box. Nhe did piss all over his desk box, got three layers of sofa and an extra pad I left over there, expecting this, but also managed to pee all over my desk in the area between Livia's box and my computer, getting so [paper work and the three mpty pills bottles i'd tuckedthere to remind myself to phone them in on my return. I had to do a lot of cleaning and go through the urgent paperwork pile to make sure nothing esseential got hit.

The reason I am up writing is because I need the pads to all be in the dryer before bed, as I need to use the bed pads to cover the sofa, and I'll need them back when I get up.

There is a rather large housing related problem that occured while I was away. It is catastrophic and bullshit and I'm not up to explaining tonight. We're going to try to fight it, but it's possible we are completely fucked out of the blue and not remotely our fault. Fucking Boomers.

I already contacted my social worker and have a government agency I can try to contact, though I'm not particularly sanguine they can help or help fast enough, even though what the fucking boomers are doing doesn't look legal on it's face. I've set squirrel to trying to contact the residents who were trying to organize against the august $141 rate increase to see what they are planning and at minimum to see if we can organize some sort of campaign against to boomers in charge who are trying to fuck the rest of us over. The millenials are going to see about a fundraiser, but i told them to wait until I contacted the government agency and squirrel had time to try working the facebook angle. (I don't facebook. I've avoided it for excellent reasons. Me trying to learn it now makes a lot less sense then them doing it as they do facebook and follow the complex chatter.)

I'm not posting the whole explanation and likely fundraiser until I've a better idea of how those two avenues pan out and squirrel can guestimate his resourses properly.

I literally didn't find out about the Boomers' move on the rest of us until Thursday night. I still needed to do my share of gas if we wanted to get home. The money I'd already spent on things like extra food on the trip was spent. I have an essential car appointment I scheduled for the 2nd I can't postpone as they estimate the car will be dead by November if they can't find out what is leaking and I keep driving it. I have a thing that must be mailed early October that iI can't not mail. After essential bills including housing I have about a hundred left in a normal month. I need a certain amount of gas for things like physio appointments and inevitably there are things EBT doesn't cover like TP. Which you know, eats that leftover bit.

I just don't have much room for penny pinching is what I'm saying, and I don't think the grad students and the fixed income people are any better off than I am.

I am furious and I can't see the math working out. Laundry switches in about ten minutes, so I'm posting this.

[infimace-blog]

Okay I have to say it. I have to say it because it passes my mind every single time I see anything remotely related to Baldur's Gate 3.

So there's the first quest, right? There's an idyllic druid glen and you have to rescue the head druid Halsin because the vice head druid is racist against tieflings. And he got captured by goblins so you go to the goblin camp in the ancient ruins, where the goblins are all completely and utterly unsympathetic. And that's racial essentialist horsefeathers but it's a DnD game and you can't rely on Wizards to actually commit to being less racist rather than just saying they will. We knew what we were getting into when we bought the game.

And then you find the head druid and he's stuck in bear form and getting tormented by three kids and their babysitter, and to free him you have to murder every single goblin in the room?? Including the children??? Who are not combatants?????? You can go out of your way to not kill the children, which makes the fight harder because they inevitably call more goblins who can actually fight, but then the noble and progressive head druid you came to save will just murder the children himself.

I'm not trying to turn this into 'every person who's fantasized about a Shadowheart/Astarion three-way thinks goblin children deserve to die'. Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games and I love talking about Tequila Sunset and Kim, the World's Most Perfect Man, but also Measurehead exists and I hate him and everything about his writing. But also I bring up Measurehead more than I normally would when I talk about Disco Elysium because the weird way his race is handled in the game compels me, and no one does that with the goblin children murder? It's not an obscure part that no one sees. Rescuing Halsim is one of the easier routes in the first major story quest, he can become a recruitable companion, and the first I heard about the game was 'hey, there's a druid companion and you can bang them while they're turned into a bear'. The game pointedly glosses over the fact that you murdered three children for the crime of being jerks to an animal, and I guess that means the playerbase did too? Even I had to do a double-take because I initially assumed that I screwed up the encounter and that the correct way would have let the goblin children live (and probably give me an easier fight to boot). But no, unless you're handling the quest in some really unintuitive way (maybe you can knock them out?????), you gotta kill the kids to get the bear sex.

I guess some players just agree that there's nothing wrong with killing children as long as they're goblins and categorically evil. But I feel like the overlap between that kind of DnD player and the kind I occasionally see posting shipping art of BG3 isn't that large. Hopefully.

And it bugs the hell out of me because the biggest game of the year, based on one of the most popular TRPGs of all time, just goes 'yeah, we're going to put child murder in one of the good routes to complete this quest, but it's fine because they're the wrong race and they're kind of dicks' and it's not news. Wizards has spent years trying to do a soft rollback on all the racial essentialism in its worldbuilding, up to and including retroactively making a type of good drow so they can get off the hook about making an entire race of dark-skinned fantasy creatures evil. Sure, Wizards cares about fixing the obsession DnD has about race performatively half the time, but it does try. And now Wizards knows that it doesn't even need to care performatively anymore. If the product's good enough and the racism is subtle enough, it just goes forgotten.

I don't even, like. Need this to be universally condemned by the fanbase. But at least talked about more? I'd have preferred it if I knew about the goblin children murder *before* I bought the game and played enough of it that Steam won't refund me.

[zoethehead]

Here's a bit more Elijah.

Essentially, he's all beaten up and is having his injuries tended to by his vampire bf

Picrew link: obvious CW/TW for NSFW content.

[canvaswolfdoll]

okay, as resident 'i have a how-to play trpg youtube series' guy and 'i struggle to read non-discworld fantasy' guy, i feel compelled to weigh in:

point 1:

this exists with the gurps system (in fact, this screenshot is for what's at least the third edition of gurps discworld), and my research does seem to indicate pterry was directly involved in it's production. (gurps 4e discworld was published december of 2016, after his passing, by sj game stakeholder report indicates the book was essentially finished in 2014, before his passing, and the previous two versions were published 1998 and 2002)

point 2:

so far, narrativia limited (and, by extension, his daughter rhianna pratchett) hasn't overly exploited the rights of discworld and terry pratchett's other works, choosing to let what exists stand and focusing on adaptions of pre-existing works, and publicly denouncing the one recent work that was went against the spirit of what was licensed.

so i broadly and currently trust narrativia limited, until given reason not to. they certainly haven't been making endless video games and prequels like what the tolkein estate's being doing.

i mean, the second season of good omens goes past the original novel, but that's co-written by neil gaiman, so he can do what he wants by right of being the good omens highlander.

(i have not seen the second season of good omens, for the record, so i cannot comment further)

point 3:

i don't really go for licensed trpgs, because they (personally) give me exam anxiety, so i much prefer to look at a work, say 'these are the elements i want to emulate', then use different names and not have any pre-existing canon to be called out on.

(side note: this is why i think the forgotten realms are actually the biggest millstone on d&d. just give us the mechanics and generic terms, and untether us from waterdeep and the pantheon and such. let the players create canon wholecloth as they go)

point 4:

at least modiphius doesn't endlessly churn out ___ing powered by the apocalypse games, so this game will probably actually be purpose built.

Exclusive: Discworld TTRPG in the works by studio behind Fallout wargames

Modiphius, the studio responsible for tabletop adaptations of Star Trek, Fallout, and more, is working on a Discworld TTRPG.

Having secured the rights to the beloved series with an agreement from the late author Sir Terry Pratchett's estate, Modiphius is already at work on a Discworld roleplaying game "around the city of Ankh-Morpork and the wider Disc." This will hit Kickstarter later in the year.

Read more here.

[dicejar]

we're on bluesky now, for those interested.

[canvaswolfdoll]

the bugbear's primary ecological niche is to be visual aids.

the bugbear's secondary ecological niche is to be funny little guys.

the bugbear's tertiary ecological niche (and where they differ from player pawns) is to be slain without moral hesitation.

transcription below

panel 1:

beatrice: why do we keep fighting bugbears?

andrea: cuz they're monsters?

panel 2:

b: but they're intelligent, they can speak and have a culture. is it ethical to just kill them?

panel 3:

a: surely there's some reason behind our systematic violence.

panel 4:

a: hey! bugbears!

2: yes?

a: do you know why we fight?

panel 5:

2: why are we fighting?

1: to keep us out of their town.

2: why?

1: racism i think

panel 6:

2: and we want in the town because...

1: they have kittens, puppies, and babies

2: ooh. those are my favorite foods

panel 7:

2: you guys should stop killing us so we can go eat some succulent human babies!

panel 8:

a: they eat babies, bea.

b: i heard.

a: what a unique cultural dish!

b: just get back to the violence

[sepiadice]

for the record, maid rpg is on the trpg essentials docket

it's... difficult to art, though.

What are the advantages of being a maid

[sepiadice]

new project

[canvaswolfdoll]

for the interested

Have you played RYUUTAMA ?

By Atsuhiro Okada

A natural fantasy game played with dice (d4-d12) about travel, where seasons and the weather can play a big part. From the translated edition's site: "Adventures usually involve traveling from one town to another, packing gear, crafting items, cooking and sharing along the way; getting lost, meeting people and (sometimes cute) monsters along the way; braving the elements and trying to set camp properly." It's also a game where the GM creates an in-fiction dragon-person (Ryuujin) with narrative abilities specific to the type of story you want to tell.