#a fool's errand ttrpg

[atieflingtime]

GAME: A Fool’s Errand by Mike Free

DESCRIPTION: “You are the jester in King Lyrics’ court. Through mere observation you discovered a conspiracy threatening their rule. You now have the fruitless task of warning their majesty.”

ITEMS NEEDED: A deck of playing cards (jokers included)

THOUGHTS: I read the rules wrong! I used both the number and suit of the same card to determine the petitioner, rather than drawing one card for the kind of petitioner and a second one for their relation to the conspiracy.

My mistake didn’t wind up taking enjoyment out of the game at all (which is a plus in my books!) since it also means it didn’t rely on everything being followed exactly. The only thing is I had to adjust to not getting repeat petitioners, but that’s because of my mistake rather than anything in the actual game haha and it still worked out well imo

It was pretty interesting to play through a situation where your goal is futile — like no matter how much your jester character desperately wants to warn the king about the conspiracy, they are destined to ultimately fail.

Perhaps having some reference to what sort of timeframe in-game we’re playing under? I think that’s really the only thing that could be a tweak, but tbh ain’t ABSOLUTELY needed since players can decide how long time is between petitioners. I kinda threw myself off since I didn’t make myself any time indicators in my own text-playthru but I intended it to be seen as taking place over several years!

I think I played for about 3 hours? Definitely could have gone on for longer but my shuffling put my two joker cards only one card apart lol

Also I’ll be entirely honest I don’t know anything about jesters or courts but I had a lot of fun :P

unedited playthru is under the readmore (:

The King: (8 of diamonds) A prophesied demi-god Goal of the conspiracy: (Queen of hearts) eradicate loyalty to the king

The King is prophesied to be a demi-god, half-seeded from the god of the sun. There’s a conspiracy brewing to eradicate loyalty to the king — people whispering he’s no sun god’s son.

The Jester is a rather rude man. The sharp smile combined with a foxed face makes even the kind words he says, however infrequent, sound rude and disingenuous.

FIRST PETITIONER: 3 of Clubs A merchant asking for a permit to sell wine; unaware of the conspiracy

I could hear the merchant approach before he rounded the corner to walk through the archways of the hearing hall. He was already fat and jingled with the coins in his coin purses. His strides were clipped and unconfident, and the etching of uncertainty showed in the flush of his face. This wasn’t anything I hadn’t watched happen before. People are funny when in the presence of others they think are above them.

Watching his flushed face as he spoke to the court of the god-king — I didn’t realise anyone could costume themselves to look like they had berries smeared across their nose and cheeks so thoroughly without ever touching the fruit — it seemed just pedestrian petitioning for a permit. The maroon of his clothes stitched in greens and yellows didn’t look familiar, and there was no other families in the area with royal ambitions that had that particular stitching colouring that I could recall. And I would be able to, if there were.

After the rambling, disorganised, and frankly extraneous request was ended with the merchant’s voice petering out, my god-king looked to me and gave me a nod. The beginning bell of my performance.

In a fluid motion, I got to my feet and removed the heavy winter weight cloak I’d left sat beside me. Fashioning it around me in a crude approximation of the size of the merchant, I bound to the court’s floor making deliberate movements to the bells on my wrists with my footfalls. Jingle your coin at me, and I will jingle back. It means nothing to me.

A wide arc of my arms out hold them as far apart as I was able, punctuating the movement with a flick of my wrists to make the bells tink. “Oh dear, glorious, illustrious, golden god-king of whichever other descriptors my father of name Orszak before me told me to call you to flatter you.”

Small stifled chuckles rippled through a few of the court attendants.

“I wish to request permission to drink my wine-wares inside of the city walls for coin!” An over exaggerated sway as I stood, “pardon me, I want to sell the wine I am unable to drink myself to the fair peoples of your inner city.” I jingled my wrist-bells again, tugged at the lapels of my overcoat. “We produce it ourselves; Orszak family name is proud. My father was the businessman, I’m merely inheriting his routes.”

Glancing over to the Merchant, his large grey eyes were fixed to the floor.

I postured my hands out, palms up but not supplicating like a beggar, my back kept farm-straight. “My father and elder brother, Tomasz Orszak, were only recently unfound through their route. An injured and scared ass only what we’ve found so far.” My nod was slow, and could easily be mistaken for a theatrical over-exaggerated motion, but my unwavering eye contact with the god-king let him know my personal answer. “I am the second-son and thought always my future was in the fields.”

The second eldest Orszak merchant rubbed a wrist, one of his meaty hands covering over the pulse point and lightly wiping the crooked and dirt-marred thumb of his rubbing his skin. Nerves from a fish out of water. Or a farmer without a field, I guess.

The god-king raised one of his slender, gilded hands. I straightened and stood as motionless as I was able. The courtiers sounded like they were holding their breath.

“You are approved for you and your foodwares to be sold inside the inner city,” the god-king’s voice was smooth and tinny, “I ask for your family to write a formal request with your situation, in addition to sending one of your ilk to acquire the permit.”

The merchant visibly sagged in relief — all the tension pulling his spine tight leaving in an instant. He thanked the god-king in a thick and clumsy country term, and left quickly.

I knew the look in the god-king’s eyes was saying to me that I was took harsh in my initial portrayal. That’s fine. He’s allowed to be wrong about things as interpretive as art. Though that certainly wouldn’t be an opinion I’d ever let taste oxygen.

SECOND PETITIONER: 9 of Diamonds A doctor needs subjects for research ; a neutral party in the conspiracy

Doctors always had a particular stench that seemed to follow them. Maybe death, but more likely just a miasma of sickness. This one was different from the rest. They stood rod-straight, but their shoulders rounded forward to create an odd gathering of fabric draping over their chest cavity. When told to remove any of their garb, they refused. A curiously higher-than-expected voice carried muffled from the beak-mask of the doctor. I decided not to include that peculiarity in my performance.

Not being able to see the doctor’s face made my job more challenging, but when the god-king gave his nod, I had no choice but to perform.

They were aware of the conspiracy for treason — I could tell that much — but it seemed they weren’t swayed to either way. Doctors were hard to convince into the kingdom, and seldom lasted very long. I wasn’t about to dissuade this one from continuing.

I stood as tall as I was able, jutting my chest out instead of caving it in like the doctor was. There must be a reason they’re keeping that posture, and I was not going to draw attention to it with my performance. “”Regardless of any situations that arrive,” I tried my best approximation of their accent, eating my Rs and pushing the sides of my tongue to my teeth, “matters of the body still need to be investigated.”

Arching my arms to hold my palms up to the gilded ceiling, a position of higher pleading. “These subjects of research will help future generations of the sun-god’s kingdom.”

Eye contact. Slow nod.

Approval.

THIRD PETITIONER: 3 of Diamonds A merchant asking for a permit ; neutral party to the conspiracy.

Immediately, I didn’t like how this merchant walked into the court. He looked too at-ease and comfortable.

His ashy straw-coloured hair laid in a thick plait twisted around itself and pinned against the back of his neck. Impossibly intricate embroidery made the previously soft felt-fabric stiff and likely itchy. Stabbing storm-silver in jagged patterns through the cobalt sky of his coats. A brilliant red waist-apron secured with a thick blue cord weighted at the ends with metalcrafts spilled down his lap like a bloody waterfall.

The nod.

“God-King,” I tried to force my voice to have the same tenor as the petitioner, “even as I stand here asking for permits to continue growing my hoard of silver, I speak to you as one powerful man to another.” I glanced to the merchant, his dark eyes glowering at me from where he stood. “Do you not deign to meet me on the same level? Truly it isn’t so far down?”

A murmur of light shock and gossip rustled through the rest of the court.

“These goods are merely the work of others, but I know I’m among compatriots when it comes to building things off others.” The merchants face was flushing in anger. I locked eyes with the god-king, and lolled my head side to side in a ‘no’ while speaking, “There’s few differences, yes?”

Denial of the petition. The merchant spat at me when he left. I’d fear I’ve made more enemies than allies in my time here but I don’t particularly care either way. When the god-king dies, I’ll still be alive.

FIFTH PETITIONER: 4 of Hearts A famous musician hoping to be commissioned ; loyal to the king.

If the clang of brass and the hollow noises sounding when she rounded a corner too closely weren’t enough of a tip-off, then her poufed hat with feathers and filigree certainly took out the guesswork.

She hoped to be commissioned for at least one ballad extolling the virtues and benefits of the god-king and his kingdom. From the rolling of her silver ring, however, I believe she was hoping to be taken on as a resident artist. Those kinds of silver rings were made by hand only for those who you loved.

Nod. Expectations or my performance.

I took a supplicants posture. “Would you not want someone so deeply in love to write and sing about the beauty inside the fair kingdom of the god-king?” A jingle of my wrist-bells and I dramatically gripped my abdomen. “For one to give you and your subjects the love I have felt inside my heart and soon to grow in my belly?”

Wide-faced fear and surprise jolted through on the musician’s face, her lips sticking out just a bit as she ground her teeth to try and keep the expression from pulling any noises from her throat.

Eye contact to the god-king. “Merely exchange my talents to the god-king in return to consistent work and stable housestays for me and mine.” I nod to him.

The musician glossy eyes nearly overflowed when the god-king said she will be held for contract, and her own may also live in one of the sites in the inner city.

FIRST JOKER DRAWN

My words were quick and plain. “There’s a conspiracy whispered through the inner city and the fields outside it.” I stood straight, shoulders far more relaxed than I felt. There was far more than whispers snaking their way through the ears of the god-king’s spheres of influence. Even the more loyal subjects of his were wavering in their faiths.

I’m not wholly surprised.

The god-king has been taking less and less interest in the common subject — preferring to dote on emissaries from surrounding kingdoms, boldly to the detriment of the people that keep him safe.

“If there’s more than a whisper, then that’s when we will simply order them buried,” the god-king’s voice disgusts me for the first time. It sounds greased from the pheasant poached in butter he’d eaten with the jewel-dripping emissaries from the southwestern country lining the border.

I nodded. I couldn’t look him in the eyes.

“Leave if there’s nothing interesting to come out of you, then.”

I did as I was told.

SIXTH PETITIONER: 10 of Spades A diplomat attempting to establish a new trade agreement ; part of the conspiracy

The diplomats were certainly a sight to behold.

The main speaker out of the pair of them was tall and glinting with the sheer amount of filigree inlaid to the layers of cloth draped so delicatly in dizzying amounts. I couldn’t make sense of when a swath of fabric ended and another started, or if they were just metres-long sheets of finery folded in meticulous ways. Her hair hung heavy over her back near-below her shoulderblades, with the ends of it somehow tied and pinned under so the shown length was only half the true amount. It was covered with constellations of filigree pins inlaid with precious stones.

Her companion was a man in similar stature to her. His foxed face reminded me of my own, though his eyes were rimmed with a purposeful soot, and his mouth was less scarred from teeth. The same dizzying swaths of fabric made up his clothing, though his seemed less imbued with threaded metal since it didn’t glimmer the same way as the speaker’s did. There was a heavy overcoat of fabric placed over his shoulders, splitting somewhere under his long hair from the single pane down his back, to two tails down either side of his neck. The leather belt holding it tight to his waist almost looked out of place, but it clinked and glittered with chatelaines full of golden curiosities.

“A new trade agreement needs to be worked out,” the Speaker’s voice was clear and decisive. “Your kingdom is left wanting.”

The god-king sat with glazed over eyes — bored before any conversation had ever started. This was exactly why the conspiracy has been able to grow like wildfire. Apathy was oxygen to its fire.

I watched the man, beautiful and glinting, move his rough hands over to an empty spot on his belt. Probably habit from having a sword or other weapon hung there for longer than it rested elsewhere. “I implore you to listen to the Speaker,” is voice held less presence than the Speaker’s, but it was oaky and I wanted to hear more.

A moment of pause before the god-king waved his hand dismissively and turned to me. “Perform. Now.” His eyes slid off me as soon as the word was spat out.

I ground my teeth. I didn’t expect to be treated as even partly an equal, but I never would have though the king I served to the detriment of my life milestones to not even look at me as he spat commands.

Rising from my seat — downgraded severely from my previous spot near the court’s seats, to a threadbare pillow on the chilled floor with the petitioners — I exhaled and dropped my shoulders. Trying to relax my jaw and prevent soreness from grinding my teeth. I stood straight and unwavering, feet squared and arms bent lightly out at the elbows with my palms down. I can feel the metal in my over-cloak bite me in the ribs.

“I implore you to listen to the Speaker,” I repeated the man’s lovely oaky words in my own thistled voice. A deep, measured breath shook its way out of my throat. I repeated the Speaker’s words with as much clarity as I could lend my own voice. “Your kingdom is left wanting.”

SECOND JOKER The conspiracy is successful ; game finish.

I threw knife.

Gods don’t bleed, and neither do their offspring. The former king proved to be neither.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello! I’m sorry if you’ve answered this already, but do you have any recs (or anything you want to say for fun) about games with multiple GMs?

Theme: Multiple GMs

Hello friend, I may have recommended games similar to this but I don't know if I've actually fulfilled this prompt before! I'll do my best to show you some interesting games, and you can check out previous posts at the bottom in case there's something there that fits your tastes more.

Questlandia: Second Edition, by Turtlebun.

In Questlandia, you and your friends will invent a world from scratch. It might be fantastic or bizarre, from a remembered past or imagined future.You’ll paint a picture of your society and its people, their laws and customs, how they live and how they dream.

But your society is failing. As you play, your characters will attempt to find beauty and purpose amidst the chaos of a changing world.

Questlandia is a tabletop roleplaying game that creates fantastical worlds in states of change. It may be medieval fantasy in a ghost-haunted kingdom, neo-noir in a roboticized undercity, or microscopic slipstream suburbia in a puddle. The possible settings are boundless, but will always come from the interests of those at the table. Bring in real-world themes that intrigue you, references that inspire you, worldbuilding that follows your curiosity.

Questlandia uses dice and cards to help you create a society, as well as your character’s role in that society. I think this is a good example of a game where every person is a character, but every player is also a GM. You’ll roll against each-other to determine whether or not your society will be able to overcome their troubles. Overall, I think Questlandia is great for telling a story that spans a number of factions or nations.

Pantheon, by harpoon_gun.

4-6 GMs, who are distant Gods with their own desires and needs, and up to 3 players, champions of the Gods who are being forced to do their chores. Take turns toying with the champions, screwing over the other Gods, and building relationships of both the positive and negative variety. 

All I know about this game is what I can divine from the description, but I would hazard a guess that much of this gameplay is going to feel a little bit like PvP. The gods that your GMs are embodying will have conflicting goals and desires, so expect to run into a lot of backbiting and backstabbing. The game itself was designed for the Bad TTRPGS Jam, which encouraged designers to fuck around with rules and see where it got them. So no guarantees for a balanced game here - but maybe an interesting experiment!

Fool’s Errand, by Myles Wirth.

You are a group of questants, pledged to a seemingly-impossible task. You must set out alone into the world, each following your own path by which the quest might be fulfilled. They will be long and difficult journeys, with no guarantee of success.

Inspired by legends and travelogues, Fool's Errand is a single-page tabletop game about perseverance in the face of uncertainty and the joy of worldbuilding together. It is prepless, gm-less, setting-agnostic, and can be played on its own or as a setup or interlude for another game. Rather than flattening Player-GM distinctions entirely, it inverts the traditional balance of a ttrpg table; players take turns as "seekers", individual characters traversing the world in search of an impossible goal, while the rest of the table forms the "Chorus", building and refining the world around the seeker as they explore it.

Fools’ Errand asks you to make some travellers and give them a quest that they cannot achieve. The game occurs over a series of turns; on your turn you’ll control your Seeker and declare what you want to do. The rest of the table becomes the Chorus, and build the Location that Seeker is in. The Seeker may then attempt to convince the Chorus that the way in which they will attempt to solve the problem is something they would be good at; and then rolls 3d6. Your result may grant you a Boon or a Burden, which may draw you closer to or pull you farther from your character’s goal. Your characters also have a Resolve pool, which will diminish over the course of play.

I think success is still technically possible in this game, but it’s highly unlikely. What is more likely is that characters will slowly give up on their quest, and join the Chorus in telling the story of who remains.

Bleak Spirit, by potatocubed.

Bleak Spirit is a storytelling game where you and your friends create a brooding, cryptic tale about a stranger in a strange land. Everything is falling apart, crumbling, corrupted, and the wanderer carries the potential for a return to past glories – or the power to sweep away all that remains.

Everyone contributes to the tale, sharing the sense of mystery that comes from no-one knowing the entire truth of what's going on. Everyone takes turns being the world for a scene, introducing lore which hints at the history of the setting. After every scene everyone leaps to conclusions based on the lore which has been revealed – and these conclusions affect the sorts of lore they will introduce when it's their turn to be the world.

Bleak Spirit is meant to replicate the narrative beats of Dark Souls, Hollow Knight, and Bloodborne. It gives everyone at the table a chance to play the Wanderer, a chance to play the World - and a chance to sit as part of the Chorus. The game is very structured, which I think helps the table keep on track, since everyone is going to have a chance to contribute to the story. The Wanderer dictates the character’s actions, but never their internal thought or feelings. The World creates Areas and Locations that the Wanderer will visit. The Chorus will introduce themes, descriptions, and motifs that are meant to make the world full of grandeur, mystique and decay.

This is a game that you might be interested if you like melancholic tones, large gaps in historical knowledge, and collaborative world building. The creator has also created a Cat version of this game, called Cat Spirit!

Two Weeks One Summer, by Rick Cockram.

In Two Weeks One Summer the players take the role of a family visiting a rambling old house in the woods during a summer holiday. The game focusses on the activities of the children of the family as they explore the house, it's grounds and the surrounding woodland. It is a game about finding things to do, creating your own excitement and exploring an unfamiliar environment.

This game divides the participants into two roles: the Children and the Grown-Ups. Over the course of the game, each of these roles will contribute different things to the description of the house, and the events that happen as you stay here. I think this works well for a slice-of life game, but it also might be an interesting source of inspiration for telling stories that are more dramatic or fantastical.

I'd Also Recommend Checking Out...

Co-Optional Games Rec Post

Unique Player Responsibilities / Rotating GMs

Asymmetrical Games Rec Post

[txttletale]

It feels like Homestuck's world has a lot of appeal that crosses over with ttrpgs, so why can no one seem to make a decent playable one about it? Ignoring the fools errand of trying to model sburb, it feels like a more narrative-focused game about kids trying to win a broken cosmic video game that wants to push them to grow into archetypes could be incredible in a system that takes inspiration from something like Masks: A New Generation.

i saw a pretty good pbta hack of it once that had a double playbook system (one for class, one for aspect). seemed cool

[zedecksiew]

The Zone has different rules

Posting about this mainly as a reminder to self that it is a thought I want to think more on.

Also because it dovetails with notions Liam and I discussed over on Toa Tabletop, about how you can portray subjective fantasy worlds in TTRPG play---essentially: Oh, the party visits a culture with different mores / cosmology / etc? The actual rules of the game change.

===

Over on cohost, Amanda Franck poses the following question:

How do you make rules/problems for a place that is supposed to be inexplicable & mutable & impossible to understand (like fairyland or dreamland or roadside picnic zone)? ... My experience in playing through a few of people's dreamworlds where anything can happen has been mostly bad, because it's hard for all the players to understand the physical space that they are in, and frustrating to try to interact with a world that doesn't respond in a sensible way.

To which Scampir proposes:

If i really wanted to get the point across that an area was under the influence of different logics, I would just use a different game for that area. Maybe a smaller game just so it can be quickly integrated.

(Attribution to make it clear I'm building on other folk's ideas.)

===

So here's my idea:

Say you are running a campaign using D&D or retroclone. Your players encounter Faerie / the Dreamlands / Area X / the Zone.

When they slip into its borders, you tell them things are gonna getting weird. But you don't give them new character sheets. You just start organically calling for resolutions and mechanics from a game that isn't D&D.

Maybe a dice-pool game like RuneQuest or WFRP. Or Blades in the Dark:

GM: "So you rest? Okay, tick your healing clock."

Player: "Wait, wtf's a healing clock?"

This does a few things:

Discombobulates players. They have to figure out the ways in which assumptions of reality differ.

The choice of new ruleset you use signals the specific ways that this specific Weird Zone is weird. (Use a game with more story-game mechanics and you imply that the Weird Zone has a different relationship with causality.)

Players learn / jot down / use new mechanics on the same old character sheet---implying that the Weird Zone changes their characters.

Abilities / mechanics they pick up remain when they leave the Weird Zone, and return to boring normal D&D rules. A signal that the Zone has changed them in uncanny ways.

Player: "Hey, I've still got this '+1d to gather info' ability, right? And this counts as a gather info situation? Can I roll two d20s and total them?"

GM: "Yes."

===

So yeah: bashing incompatible game systems together.

Maybe that's a fool's errand. But I feel like it should be possible to create a procedure for ruleset mash-ups, so that there's a process to follow? Best practices for how it happens.

Consistency at the layer of play culture, even if there isn't consistency at the layer of mechanics.

I'd like to pursue this more, because---as mentioned above---I'm interested in portraying subjective fictional worlds, and this "different place, different rules" thing seems like one way to do that at a conceptual level.

Also I like it because jury-rigs and mash-ups seems quintessentially "rulings not rules"-sy, to me. It seems to be in that OSR-y spirit.

===

( Image source: https://sciencefictionbookart.com/roadside-picnic-arkady-boris-strugatsky-1979/ )

[meanderingandrambling]

🔥 About TTRPG

🔥 About occultism

🔥 About astrology

Yay! Thanks for the ask meme my beautiful narwhal prince!

TTRPG:

This is the most difficult one for me because my opinions regarding gaming are pretty normal. I suppose I have a stronger than average preference for emotional, rp heavy games? Also I loath minmaxing (minamxxing? minmaxxxing?) Like yeah, a little massaging of traits is cool, obviously you build a character with certain types of gameplay in mind, but minmaxing is something else and flattens characters. This is collaborative storytelling, if the character is not compelling why are we even here?

Occultism:

Entirely materialistic. Magical practice is beautiful, life-changing, deeply profound, a method by which we can escape ourselves and commune with the world around us. But it is all done through entirely explainable and mundane means. Spell results are either the result of the psychological results of ritual/entheogens/art or coincidence. This opinion has lost me some practitioner friends (well acquaintances).

And I don’t think this is an actual unpopular opinion outside very specific sections of social media, but you’re not going to find an ideologically pure framework, it doesn’t exist. We obviously have a responsibility to learn and drop the shitty parts but looking for some philosophically perfect system is a fool’s errand.

Astrology:

It’s not real, the qualities of each sign are vague enough to apply to anyone, especially if you’re looking at a full chart with so many different variables. Still fun though. And I do love my taurus jewelry.

[utilitycaster]

I'm still thinking about the question from yesterday/the misguidedness of so many indie ttrpg fans and I think it does come down to the simple fact that there isn't an inherent intuitive indie game to switch to from D&D. D&D is basically two related games in a trenchcoat anyway; a fairly open RP game with specific skill and magic rules, and a combat game. The only intuitive switch is pretty much to or from Pathfinder.

Which doesn't mean there aren't plenty of good reasons to play a different game - I've mentioned before that I think playing D&D with the intent to de-escalate and avoid combat at all costs sounds miserable and like you should be playing a game that's less combat-focused in its ruleset. But going after D&D fans who generally are enjoying D&D, without specifying that the game you're recommending is completely different, is a fool's errand, and yet people keep doing it.

[klysanderelias]

So I've been playing through the beginning of the wrath of the righteous crpg that just released and it's... weird. Part of it is because I had the adventure path books like 6 years ago and read through all of it then, so I have a minor level of stuff to compare in my head, but also because I kind of dramatically grew as a person re: rpg stuff and DND in particular. Not gonna spoil anything, although I'm likely to keep posting about it so I'll put a note in the tags just in case, but...

Pathfinder moved somewhat away from the bullshit of old-school 3.0/3.5/4e dnd in a lot of ways but there's still a lot of the bizarre genetic essentialism and really uncomfortable parallels being made to real-world ethnic groups (shoutout to the guy who created the continent of mwangi for his only understanding of africa apparently being congo by michael crichton), and I know that 2nd ed pathfinder did a lot of work to address THAT, but WotR still has a LOT of really uncomfortable moments.

and at the end of the day, I think what really bothers me is that CRPGs as a whole aren't really comparable to ttrpgs because the level of freedom and interaction is always going to be limited by file size, creator imagination, authorial intent, and natch, money. And, most crpgs spend their biggest efforts on combat and gameplay and tend to tack dialogue and character interactions on almost as an afterthought - I think pillars of eternity 2 was the best I've seen the system implemented, and nothing else has really met that standard since. And that's okay! It'd be almost a fool's errand to try and implement that in a crpg to anything close to the level a basic ttrpg could do, but then it basically feels like half of your character creation is superfluous or unnecessary because like, the game is designed around the combat. You have one character with a persuasion or diplomacy equivalent skill, and everything else is either for exploration or combat and that's it.

I guess it's just frustrating to have been like, 5+ years without a real ttrpg game in my life so I'm using crpgs to substitute and it's not at all the same experience, and yet I KNOW that it could be because I own the fuckin' adventure path and have planned how to run it in the past. Or maybe what I mean to say is like, i know what this recipe tastes like homemade, and the storebought mass-produced version is something completely different even though it's supposed to be the same.

I dunno, I'm only a few hours in and honestly, it's pretty good! I can genuinely recommend it as a crpg, and I know from kingmaker that the studio a) creates quality work and puts in the time on writing and b) patches and bugfixes like crazy unlike a lot of other studios that make crpgs.

Oh, but one thing I will say - I remember the adventure path being a lot more progressive about this shit from like, fuckin' TWENTY-THIRTEEN. They had a trans lesbian in their game like it weren't no thing, and WotR in 2021 feels a little like a step back, again because of weird genetic essentialism undertones as well as the tendency to equate fantasy religions to christianity to the point that one character prays to her goddess to forgive her sins etc and another character talks about seeking forgiveness from his god re: his terrible decisions in the past and it's like... y'all know that not all religions are christianity, right? And i say that as a white dude raised super fuckin' christian! Maybe it's silly but it makes me feel skeezy when a character starts spouting the sort of shit I have heard almost verbatim in a southern baptist church but here it's okay because it's regarding literal actual demons?

At least Anevia is still a lesbian, here's hoping they didn't walk back her being trans.