amiplayingright

[amiplayingright]

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.

#discworld my beloved

[amiplayingright]

You do of course understand that the reason most people prefer DND 5E is that it's one of the easiest systems to learn? Like I'm sorry it's all well and good to 'break up the cultural monopoly' but I have Dyscalculia and DND is seemingly the only tabletop system that doesn't consistently ask me to do a hefty amount of complex math. I've never given WOTC a penny but the reason I've primarily played 5E over basically everything else is it's the only system that was extremely easy to learn and completely self explanatory. (Also - I like elves and magic and shit.) You roll one dice to see if you can do a thing, you add whatever your plus or minus is, and then roll damage where appropriate. Easy. Meanwhile seemingly everything else is like "Okay so you roll two dice except sometimes it's four and then you take this stat and you divide it by that dice roll and then you add a number equivalent to the day of the week unless it's a leap year then you times that by three and if you get a prime number you can lift that coffee cup." Like have you ever heard of Villains and Vigilantes, for instance? It's fucking insane.Like I'm not saying I don't get why you wanna make this point? But I feel like I have to point out that most people who make indie TTRPG's don't seem to focus on accessibility when designing their systems and they are EXTREMELY intimidating for new players. And often, what people who are big into TTRPG's do is assume that because THEY fully understand this system and how it works, new players will too just as easily. The amount of times I've spoken to a GM, said "This sounds a bit complicated", and they've gone "No no no it's easy" and then described the most complicated set of rules I've ever heard is ridiculous.

Okay it sounds you’ve had a very narrow range of experiences with RPGs then because D&D 5e is on the higher end of complexity when it comes to RPGs and most indie RPGs are actually a lot less complex than D&D 5e. Like, Villains & Vigilantes is not the median when it comes to RPG complexity. There are systems even lighter than D&D out there. :)

[amiplayingright]

ur tabletop takes are fucking insufferable i can't stand the constant 5e hate coming from u and ur cliquewhat does it matter if i want to use 5e to play everying, do u want me to learn a new game for every setting? let people play what they want, u have no right to tell me what to play

Lemme screenshot something real quick.

Like. If you find my opinions so insufferable then good news! you aren’t forced to look at my blog or the blog of any of the handful of intense weirdos who agree with me. Blogs that post nothing but 5e content outnumber us dozens to one, go follow those instead.

WotC has largely succeeded in getting every mainstream space within this hobby to cater to people who think exactly like you. The idea that it’s okay to never branch out from d&d and you can hack d&d for any setting you wanna play doesn’t need to be defended, it’s the default opinion in this hobby.

Go to any popular tabletop space and the most common response you’ll find to “i want to play a game set in ______” is “here’s how to reskin d&d for it”. Many publishers are releasing 5e conversions of their non-d&d games, or straight up ditching their own in-house systems in favor of 5e because they know they won’t sell enough to stay afloat otherwise. Go to the RPG section of a bookstore and non-5e material will take up at best a tiny fraction of the shelf space if there is any at all.

You won. Your opinion is the dominant one and still you can’t resist the urge to butt in on the little spaces that people who don’t agree with it have carved for ourselves just to rile yourself up about the fact that we don’t share the dominant opinion in the hobby.

[amiplayingright]

unofficial 5e supplements/conversions are often physically exhausting to read because they're trying to do pretty dramatic things within their scope, but they're made by people who have been playing Exclusively dnd for so long that even the things that really should warrant stapling on a custom system wind up getting handled as weird statblocks

anyway I'm thinking about this because I remembered a conversion with 300 distinct mecha, all of which are statblocked to say "immune to poison" instead of just saying that mecha categorically can't be poisoned and trusting players to understand why that's the case

[amiplayingright]

I don’t think I have the chops for D&D or other tabletop RPGs but I could make a good DM’s assistant. I don’t play the game but I sit and listen and then after the session the DM can ask me for ideas.

[amiplayingright]

It's very funny to me that the stereotypical gelatinous cube is bright fucking green when the monster itself is almost perfectly transparent. Like its gimmick is that it's a monster that imitates an empty 10x10 hallway. How many people have fallen victim to gelatinous cubes because they "know" that the ooze is bright green and so don't bother to check the suspiciously clean corridor in front of them.

[amiplayingright]

I know I've posted this thread in the past but it's still like top TTRPG posting of the decade

[amiplayingright]

The thing about fantasy worldbuilding is that verisimilitude and the rule of cool are not enemies. Someone who looks at a pod of flying whales and asks "what do they eat?" is not being a spoilsport – they're engaging with the premise. There are any number of much more serious objections to aerial megafauna than lack of any obvious role in a trophic web that could have been raised if they just wanted to shoot the idea down; a person who wants to know what the flying whales eat is all but explicitly yes-anding the idea. Sure, you might not have an answer at your fingertips, but acting like it's unimaginative for them to have asked is a really fucking weird way to react.

[amiplayingright]

I tend to specify "homebrew setting"

This has been rolling around in my head for a while which is the fact that the term "homebrew" as it's used by some portion of the D&D fandom seems somewhat different from how I'm used to using it: I've talked about this before, but a friend of mine (@invidiavoncarstein) and I recently got to talking about how some people use the term "homebrew" in the context of using an unofficial setting, something which neither of us considers homebrew. It might be an age thing, and in my case, I started playing with D&D 3e, and while official settings did exist for 3e and we sometimes did use them we actually played most of our games in a nebulous setting that had very little to do with any official setting.

But yeah, at least in my old guy brain "homebrew" actually means that you're somehow engaging in game design, even if it's just making a magic item or creature. The idea of using a custom setting but with all the rules and mechanics intact being considered homebrew sounds off. And I realize this is simply a matter of semantic shift.

[amiplayingright]

DnD 5e is actually so good though you can change anything you want. My friends and I have a fun homebrew rule where we don't actually use maps or dice or minis or pen and paper at all, we go out on the sidewalk and use chalk to draw squares with numbers in them and we take turns hopping through them one foot at a time

[amiplayingright]

THINGS TO UNLEARN AFTER WATCHING CR

DMING STYLE – you will never be a professional voice actor with enough time to make rigid scripts describing everything and preplanning dialogue. you will lose your ability to improv, especially if you do not come from an improv background. you will never have the vocal qualities of matt mercer. you will never have the free time you need to write a dm script like that. focus on ideas and adaptability. find your own style. stop mimicking his.

TREATMENT OF THE DM – the players at the table are kind of shitty to matt and his story because they can be because they are his friends. engage in the plot threats your dm is putting down. they're doing a lot of work to host a story that is fun for you, you will have more fun by meeting them halfway and engaging in it.

CAMPAIGN LENGTH - 90% of the time you will never actually complete a 4 year campaign. good luck. start planning shorter stories and have fun with it instead of idolizing that 1-20 journey.

[amiplayingright]

Hasbro laid of 1100 workers, including people working in its only growing division, Wizards of the Coast.

I am reminded of an old post of mine where I said something like "Yes Wotc only cares about money but you still shouldn't pirate dnd because if they make less money they will start laying off the people making it".

In my defense, I was like 17 when I made that post. But yeah this is pretty clear proof that something being successfull doesn't protect the people working on it from being laid off. On the contrary, if something is incredibly successfull, like DnD was this year thanks to Baldur's Gate 3, the only way to increase profits further often becomes cutting costs, i.e. layoffs.

I'm not entirely sure why i'm making this post, it's part venting my anger over those layoffs, part correcting a stupid post from over half a decade ago

[amiplayingright]

"people who play paladins are goody two shoes--" wrong. people who play paladins make eye contact with the DM while gathering every. last. d8 at the table for the smite damage roll.

[amiplayingright]

WotC got caught stealth-editing a lot of their PDF back catalogue again, and some of the changes are just bizarre. Mentions of racism, even as fantastical as the Beholders' extreme xenophobia, and slavery and slavers, were erased. So what are the bad guys even doing in this high-fantasy pulp adventure world, embezzlement?

[amiplayingright]

Do you ever think that D&D multiclassing is kind of like dual citizenship?

Like, RAW you can be any class you want at creation (being born somewhere) but to multiclass you have to meet a minimum ability threshhold (citizenship test), even if that's higher than the person of that class in your party (learning more for the test about the country than the average citizen knows)

idk a just woke up

[amiplayingright]

Went to my LGS to preorder the LANCER physical book coming out next year and the owner didn't know what LANCER was, I felt like this

[amiplayingright]

Note: I claimed a community copy for this game, so while I did not pay money, I received it for free.

Exquisite Biome was pointed my way by one of my Discord community members as something I'd be interested in, and oh my God, they were right. As a professional ecologist and wildlife conservationist--and a fan of all things spec evo/bio--Exquisite Biome is everything I love conceptually, and it even had the audacity of being fantastically designed.

Caro Asercion on itch.io has managed to make a masterpiece of a GM-less game for one to three or four players, using only a single deck of cards. It's incredibly simple and intuitive, with much of the interaction coming from the human element. In fact, I loved the test run I gave it. Exquisite Biome (is it named after Exquisite Corpse? I'm pretty sure right?) uses drawn cards to guide player(s) through the designing of a speculative species, from the creation of the biome it lives in, to its most notable features and how it interacts with other species within the ecological web. Each designed species culminates in a scene played out, almost akin to a nature documentary, of an important part of the animal's life--giving greater insight into both its daily existence and its most important evolutionary aspects.

I can't give too much detail as to how, exactly, the game parts function, or what they are, but they are precisely balanced between detailed and loose enough to allow players the structure/random element needed for fun and guiding through the process, while leaving the vast majority of the imagination up to them. A traditional Exquisite Biome session is intended to be done with creating three unique animals, seeing how they all intersect with each other, but there are also other options for various modes of gameplay given as well!

My favorite aspect of Exquisite Biome, however, may be what isn't in the game just yet. The system itself is so perfectly intuitive and genius that it lends itself instantly to conceptualization of further deep-dives into specialization (speciation?) of different biomes and concepts--expansion packs, in short. What would a variant of EB look like in a xenobiological setting? Or perhaps an entire variant dedicated to rainforest or tropical reef biomes (or the various listed ones, even--even deserts have great biodiversity!)? Caro Asercion has managed to hit upon something here that I would really hope to see find success, because I can envision it having an incredibly dedicated and loyal fanbase for years and years to come.

I'd recommend this game to anyone who loves nature documentaries, who is passionate about life sciences, and who enjoys worldbuilding natural elements for tabletop settings! For fans of Monster Hunter, In Other Waters, Pokemon, Pikmin, and Wingspan, definitely give it a look to see if you'd be intrigued!

And, bonus round--a sketch of my own Exquisite Biome's first animal, the Shepherd Spider!

=====

A highly territorial species of cobweb-spiders, shepherd spiders create various 'pastures' with their webs where small insects such as beetles, flies, butterflies, and aphids can safely use as nursery habitats. By hiding within the webbed pastures, they obscure their location from predators, allowing an easier chance to reach adulthood and pass on their genes.

Additionally, the shepherd spiders tend to avoid immature specimens as much as possible: they prefer to hunt adult prey at the end of its lifespan, or sickly or otherwise 'unfit' food. In doing so, it ensures itself a steady supply of food, keeping a 'pantry', and opportunistically feeding on the young as needed when times are dry.

Shepherds mate for life, and their courtship rituals are based on the large, iridescent eyespots of the chelicerae. During rainy seasons, male spiders will gather up dew and rain and daub them on themselves, magnifying their false eyes to greater proportions and causing bright refractions in the water's reflected curves. A female will choose her mate based on the brightest display. There seems to be a growing subpopulation of males with prominent pseudopupils as well, which may affect apparent fitness during these rituals versus specimens with smaller or nonexistent pseudopupils.