General Roleplaying Banter

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Delora Filth

Do you want to run this ship?
Marquis
We had a thread like this once. But I think it was in the wrong subforum. And also, it's buried in time by now. But I reckon it'd be fun to have a separate, specific thread to discuss RPing in general, systems we like/would like to try, campaigns we're playing OTI etc.

My DnD group just got two new players who, thankfully, fit in really well. We have the absolute worst-best combat performance ever though. Mostly because all our characters are fairly unusual due to 5th edition's delightful lack of alignment restrictions. My alcoholic, angry and generally unpleasant Pally and our rather dicky Bard had just finished interrogating a....... whatever the Underdark version of gnomes are called, alchemist. And decided he needed to be.... dealt with, to avoid possible repercussions later on. It ended in both of us stuck in a grapple with the little bastard on the floor and due to our DM being as he is and how we rolled the Bard snapped his neck during a choke hold and I stabbed him repeatedly in his throat. Which in turn prompted our Lawful Good monk to go ballistic and break my nose. Later on we somehow encountered three caged cave bears who she of course felt the need to release, idealistic as she is. Naturally they all attacked us right off the bat. Had to pull back to a tunnel opening in order to bottleneck them and fight them one at a time. I tanked the ****ers while the monk, being a halfling and therefore able to occupy the same square as me, swatted at them, presumably from between my legs. Meanwhile our Rogue, who's sole instinct in combat is to bugger off, suddenly decided to spend a few of his I'll gotten vials of alchemist's fire, and basically went Molotov grenadier on the things. And ending up being our main damage dealer through sheer amount of alchemist's fires active at the same time. At the end I think he had to roll 10 D4's at,the start of every round. Afterwards we decided to eat the bears since they were already partly cooked and we hadn't had anything but weird mushrooms ever since we got stranded down there.
 
IoPV9sY.gif


Sounds like crazy fun.
 
Teofish said:
Afterwards we decided to eat the bears

:lol: That's usually my first instinct too.

I joined a fairly regular group last summer, and our DM just finished a long (20+ sessions?) 5th Edition campaign and wanted someone else to take the wheel. Most of my experience is as a DM, but I tend to think D&D is crummy so I managed to convince the group to give RuneQuest 6 a try. I've decided since I was able to get them to try RuneQuest, I might as well take them to Glorantha, and now we're having our third session on Saturday. Not sure what's going to happen, I'll take them up through the Kitori wilds and have them fight / negotiate with some trolls, but then I'm not sure if I want to break out the ducks yet or hold off until another session.
 
:lol: Sounds fun. Take it slow. it's always tempting to rush through stuff to get to the parts you want to. But that usually just stresses out the players and makes for a less fun experience altogether. Also, how did you feel about 5th edition? I'd like to hear other peoples' thoughts on it.

Jhessail said:
IoPV9sY.gif

Sounds like crazy fun.
Can't tell if sarcastic........
 
Teofish said:
Also, how did you feel about 5th edition? I'd like to hear other peoples' thoughts on it.

I don't have any problems with the 5th Edition specifically. I think it's much better than the 4th, about the same as 3rd (but more streamlined which is nice), and better than AD&D (which was my first exposure to dungeons and dragons and role playing in general, which means I'll always love it for nostalgia's sake).

My problem is more with the tone of D&D games as a whole, and it is something that I recognize is subjective. But, I'll try to explain anyway. For me, the tone of D&D hinders immersion because I think their version of "Fantasy" conflicts with the types of drama that I want to engage in when I'm role playing.

Mechanically, it comes down to the fact that I don't like levels. It feels gamey, and it takes me out of role playing. Real life just doesn't work that way - you don't kill things and then suddenly become better at everything. It's bonkers. Especially with regards to how special abilities and feats are chosen. "I killed the Beholder, so now I can use Rage 3 times per day instead of 2 times, and I can move 10 meters faster, and I get a special ability on my Rage that gives me an extra attack." All of that happens within the span of one or two levels, but there doesn't seem to be a good reason for why it happens. Eventually, you get to a point where you are above and beyond the likes of mere mortals, and this makes it hard for me to relate to my character. I want my character's decisions to be grounded in the reality of the setting, and not the reality of the game mechanics. In any given world, my character would probably want to avoid certain conflicts to avoid the potential consequences, but if I am a 13th level Barbarian, why should I care if the 7th level village militia is telling me to give back the stolen goods? I can just crush him, and then crush the entire village 1st level peasants if they want to do anything about it.

Related to this, I don't like hit points as they are defined in D&D. You get so many of them, and it makes combat feel inconsequential and boring. Oh, the enemy got a critical hit, stabbed you in the gut and dealt 22 damage - good thing you have another 30 hit points because you're a 5th level Barbarian! If anyone gets stabbed in the gut, they should be extremely concerned about it, regardless of whether they are a novice or a master. Fights typically end with everyone surrounding the monster and continually using their most damaging ability that they have available, and this hack fest feels flat. I want something more dynamic, something where things can go wrong at a hair's notice, because that's the kind of dramatic combat that interests me the most (your shield breaks, you trip and fall, an arrow pierces your arm and is lodged there). I'm reminded of the end of Conan the Barbarian - James Earl Jones is a powerful (i.e., high level in D&D speak) Sorcerer, but he fails to mesmerize Conan, and Arnold takes him out with a single blow to the neck. It's quick. It's brutal. It feels more realistic. I don't get this same experience when I play D&D, because combat feels formulaic and predictable. The encounters all bleed together, even when the DM is making an effort to introduce varied enemies and mechanics, because the party reaction to combat is typically the same.

This is why I'm a big fan of RQ6/soon to be Mythras. Combat is brutal and realistic. A well placed blow can take down a hero, just like it can take down a peasant. Characters feel more grounded in the logic of the setting they have a culture, they have a profession, and their improvement makes sense. They have certain skills, and they can improve those skills, and that's pretty much it with the exception of improving themselves by acquiring resources and building relationships with people and organizations. Deciding to engage in combat is no small task, even for a group of experienced warriors. You aren't rewarded with experience points just because you made a decision to fight a particular enemy - you might achieve gold or fame and renown, but if your character is also interested in survival, it might be just as valid to run away or avoid the beast altogether. These are the types of decisions that I like to see a party discuss, but I find that in D&D, these decisions are rarely born out (and even when they are, the monster inevitably fights you anyway, usually to the death, despite the fact that the monster would probably be motivated to survive as well).
 
Fun time tonight, playing Basic Fantasy RPG with a group of about 8.

I'm the designated leader for the evening, so I lead us through a series of corridors and passages until we stumble into a dark and creepy room. Lots of sludge and corpses on the floor, and giant centipedes start dropping from the ceiling. We begin fighting them off, and have killed most of them when three of us (a half-elf and two Dwarves) decide to pick up our resident 300lb half-ogre and throw him at the remaining centipedes. He crushed all 12. :lol:

Meanwhile the thief of the group tried to light the sludge on fire, thinking it was something flammable like tar, but manages to light one of the corpses on fire instead. Then gets burned while trying to loot the body.  :razz:
 
Moose! said:
My problem is more with the tone of D&D games as a whole
I think that your problem is that you are taking the rules of D&D too much on face value. When you stab someone for 22 damage, you're not stabbing them in the gut but they are still fine with 30 remaining hitpoints. No, you are hurting them for roughly half of their "life force" or whatever you want to call it. It's up to the GM and the players to then describe what is happening. Similarly, I've often heard of the argument that D&D combat is boring because "you roll to hit and you miss and then the other guy rolls to hit and that's not like real combat" but again, it's only an issue of description. The rules do not force you to describe each combat round as an individual attack but rather a 6-second period of feints, parries, dodges and hits, some turned away by shield and armour and so on.

Now, one could argue that the rule do not enforce or even support that kind of thing either. I don't actually know if 4th or 5th edition do as I haven't played them. But personally, even with the far more tactical rules of 3.0 and 3.5, pulling that off is possible, not to mention the more lax and "heroic" rules of 2nd edition.
 
Jhessail said:
Moose! said:
My problem is more with the tone of D&D games as a whole
I think that your problem is that you are taking the rules of D&D too much on face value. When you stab someone for 22 damage, you're not stabbing them in the gut but they are still fine with 30 remaining hitpoints. No, you are hurting them for roughly half of their "life force" or whatever you want to call it. It's up to the GM and the players to then describe what is happening.

Maybe it's just my experience with DMs then, since I don't DM D&D. Still, the fact that my life force increases tenfold over the course of a campaign feels wonky to me.
 
Teofish said:
We had a thread like this once. But I think it was in the wrong subforum. And also, it's buried in time by now.

Eh, the latter. The last one died because nobody was really posting in it. :razz:

So I took on GMing a second Shadowrun group and I'm pretty sure this one is going to be the quickest TPK yet. The team consists of an Ork street sam whose only skills are killing people with a dozen, highly customized and distinctive looking weapons and nothing else. Also distinctive stlye quality. Then a Troll street sam whose only skills are killing peple with 2 oversized and distinctive looking katanas, absorbing a heck of a lot of bullets and nothing else. Also distinctive style quality. Then we got a mage whose only skills are in combat spells, summoning spirits, shooting very customized crossbows and nothing else. Also distinctive style quality.

I think you're starting to see what I'm seeing right now.

Luckily, the remaining two members of the team, a decker/face and a B&E expert, actually have a brain between them. It damn near brought a tear to my eye when their first order of business was to figure out a backup plan when things inevitably go to **** and they need to cut ties with the loonier half of the team. Plus a small betting pool on who's getting arrested first 5 minutes after stepping out of their front door.
 
To be fair Shadowrun is a really easy game to get TPK'd in. But yeah. Those two first one sound like the quintessential DnD 2nd ed. Barb build.

ALso, about the gameyness of some DnD mechanics. I actually kinda like it like that. It's not really as immersive as many other systems. But for me it's the nostalgia factor of it all.
 
Meh, I've been far too lenient with my previous groups, but I feel like I gotta put my foot down at some point.
 
Yeah, I remember your stories of their utter idiocy in other threads. Probably either the old RP one or pissed off. Makes me sad Jhess' Shadowrun thingy died. No one in my current playergroup likes Cyberpunk much.
 
Maybe we could resurrect it? Try first with just 2-3 players if we can get the ball rolling, then add more people if we have a stable core group and a campaign that is actually progressing. Instead of the usual "HYPE HYPE HYPE" thing where 8-10 people sign up but it then fizzles due to delays and whatever real life stuff.
 
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