randomlyrolled

[randomlyrolled]

D&D 5e supposedly has a GM shortage and idk maybe if the player culture of the game didn't treat GMing as a thankless job and the rules of the game as an issue to be fixed by the GM maybe things would be better. Ah well, who knows. Maybe a couple hundred more "we ruined the GM's campaign on purpose" memes will make people enjoy running the game better.

[randomlyrolled]

Welcome to the Sailing Sloop!

This ship features a top deck armed with 8 cannons, a quarterdeck with cabins for the captain and first mate, and a cargo hold for the rest of the crew, a kitchen, and storage area. Historically, a sloop was a small sailing ship with one mast and a jib, making it ideal for low-level raiding parties.

There are 8 total variants including Fire, Ice, Storm, Night, No Cannons, Pirate, and Underwater. I also made tokens of each floor of the ship to provide full flexibility in using this ship!

Foundry VTT modules with pre-built walls and lighting are available to patrons.

Download the original map for free here.

[randomlyrolled]

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

[randomlyrolled]

Hi! I scrolled through your asks (and found a lot of cool ttrpgs to look at) to see if you asnwered this recently and I don’t think you have:

Do you have any Agatha Christie style mystery campaign system recommendations? So far BitD has been recommended as an option but it’s more heists than murder mystery.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by @anim-ttrpgs. It's my favorite system for investigative gameplay and while it is specifically meant for modern day urban fantasy mysteries, it is enough of a toolkit system that it's easy to not include the supernatural elements and to transport it back in time to the early 20th century. It's still in development, but there is a free version of the game available on itch.io and the creators are constantly updating it as they prepare for final release.

[randomlyrolled]

Hey! I was wondering do you have any reccomended replacements for dnd? Im trying to find a fantasy ttrpg but im not sure where to go or what to start reading

This is an incredibly broad question and there is no exhaustive answer I can give without some specifics. What is it you want out of a fantasy TTRPG? Do you more or less like D&D's gameplay but wish you were playing something else? Do you want something less focused on dungeon-crawling and resource management, or are you okay with those parts but would rather the system was crunchier? Is it specifically the current edition of D&D and its design that bothers you?

Anyway, a while back I did make a two-part post highlighting some alternatives to D&D, all broadly in the same genre Fantasy Adventure Games, or FAGs as I like to call them, as D&D.

I should really make a follow-up to that post. But yeah, the question here is quite broad and I am more than happy to offer recommendations, but I also want to make my recommendations specific, because as I have posted many times, a lot of people make the mistake, in their game recommendations, of not actually identifying what the other person actually wants, so then they end up recommending Pathfinder to someone looking for a game that's not D&D.

[randomlyrolled]

Hi, just wanted to ask if you have any advice for someone who grew up with DnD 3.5e and wants to branch out into other game systems. I would really like something that is more storyfocused but also has a space for more rules light combat.

(Sorry if this ask is too demanding, you can gladly delete it. I just have seen you answer other asks about recomendations and wanted to try my luck)

I can give it the ol' college try, but firstly: the ask that something be "story focused" is a bit too vague and broad and can mean any number of things depending on what the person means. Some people use it to mean "rules light instead of crunchy," while others use it to mean "a game focused on genre emulation," and yet others mean "you know, something that's not about dungeon-crawling and combat." I know this is one of those issues where it might be hard to articulate what it is you want exactly unless you already have been exposed to other games, but it's always worth trying to be a bit more specific.

Anyway with all of that out of the way, I'm going to keep these suggestions within the realm of fantasy. Even though you didn't specify that, I'm going to keep at least one angle consistent between these suggestions, because otherwise this'll be all over the place.

Quest is a game I've recommended a bunch of times for people looking for a game that is broadly in the same genre of D&D (fantasy adventure) but does away with some of the mechanics that the genre of "D&D as it's played on podcasts" does away with. It's a simple d20-based fantasy RPG with lots of room for player input and relatively light mechanics. The perfect type of game if you mostly want to chuck some d20s with your friends while playing a pretty straightforward adventure game with minimal logistics. It's also free!

Grimwild is another one I've found quite charming. It's an interesting one: clearly inspired by D&D 5e (like, the character options are straight from 5e), but approaching that genre from a completely different direction. It clearly takes cues from some more modern indie RPGs like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark, but still has its own unique twists on many ideas. Worth taking a look if you're into the broad genre of fantasy adventure but want something that approaches that genre via something a bit more generative. Also has a free version available, with the paid version mainly adding some essays about the designer's rationale for some of the choices in the game as well as advice on how to hack the game to different subgenres of fantasy.

Third I'm going to suggest QuestWorlds. QuestWorlds is technically setting neutral, but specifically meant for pulp adventures where the heroes are larger than life. It's a game with a history going as far back as the early 2000s and has gone through a few names, with QuestWorlds being the latest, and at the time of release it was one of the first examples of a roleplaying game that did not try to simulate its fictional reality via specific procedures but very specifically applied its rules towards emulating story convention. The main issue with QuestWorlds with regards to this ask is that it's very much a toolkit and also it doesn't really have a combat system. It has systems for resolving conflict, and those systems can in fact be used for resolving combat, but it's probably not what you're looking for if you want an actual combat system. Regardless, a very interesting game, but sadly no free version of this one.

Hopefully at least one of those will scratch and itch. If not, do let me know if there's something more specific you're looking for! :)

[randomlyrolled]

What ttrpgs would you recommend if you wanted to focus on kingdom-level politics?

Depending on the specific focus I could go for a few

If I wanted to mostly make the game about the interpersonal conflicts and rivalries of nobles in a king's court and have it be serious, mostly like a big character-driven drama, Burning Wheel, definitely. It has a lot of mechanical grit for running deeply passionate characters who probably want to get balls deep into intrigue. However, it's also a very heavy game and I would only play it with a group who actually cared about learning a somewhat complex game.

If I wanted the interpersonal dramas of nobles in a royal court played as a comedy of errors, I would go for Most Trusted Advisors. It's absolutely hilarious and I want to play it right now. Kind of like Black Adder as a TTRPG.

Now, both of those games still approach their drama via individual characters and their motivations instead of as something that has kingdom-wide consequences that reflect on the whole map. For that type of gameplay I would probably pick something like Free from the Yoke.

Honorary mention to Reign which I know is about controlling whole factions, but I don't know enough about it to be sure.

[randomlyrolled]

🎨 Chroma Pack for the Dockhand on Patreon

As I've been doing with the other townsfolk (Commoner) the chromas have a slight token variation to show different ancestries, i.g. hal-elf, half-orc, aasimar, undine, and others.

One of the aspecs that I adore in fantasy settings is the variety in the cities/towns/village's population and I find it boring when there's only humans (arbitrarily without reason, of course). We need a rich society in our fantasy TnT)9

I will add more ancestries in the future, cuz there's a lot that I am missing.

By supporting us on Patreon you will get access to more than 400 creatures, maps and assets! Complement your campaigns with hq hand-drawn tokens and start building the adventure of your dreams with our isometric and 2D assets 🏰!

[randomlyrolled]

The party is all half human  half other races looking for their shared human parent.

[randomlyrolled]

I never thought I would enjoy dungeon crawling much, but your posts and some others' convinced me to give it a try and I had a blast with dungeon crawl classics, so thanks! Do you have any recommendations for solo dungeon crawlers?

I'm so glad to hear it! :) As far as solo dungeon crawlers and solo RPGs in general go, they're generally outside my wheelhouse because I don't do a lot of solo RP myself, but I have enjoyed using Hexroll to create a solo sandbox to explore one hex at a time using Old-School Essentials rules on top, and FORGE, a free old-school inspired game, has lots of solo gaming support!

[randomlyrolled]

[randomlyrolled]

I’ve started playing dnd again and the campaign I’m in has the pitch that we all must be characters from written works. The plot is we got thrown out of our own stories and must find our way back.

I am Hamlet, a warlock who made a pact with his Dad’s ghost (it’s absolutely his Dad’s ghost, he wasn’t tricked at all, ignore the fiend patron type) to get revenge on his Uncle. But this post isn’t about him.

Because our cleric, the one entrusted with keeping the party full of heals, the only person with healing magic, is House MD.

“Wait Iz!” You cry. “House MD is a television show, not written fiction.” You’d be correct. Which is why our cleric House is not from the television show.

He’s from a fan fiction.

It’s as funny as it sounds.

[randomlyrolled]

Concept: a D&D-style fantasy setting where humanity’s weird thing is that we’re the only sapient species that reproduces organically.

Dwarves carve each other out of rock. In theory this can be managed alone, but in practice, few dwarves have mastered all of the necessary skills. Most commonly, it’s a collaborative effort by three to eight individuals. The new dwarf’s body is covered with runes that are in part a recounting of the crafters’ respective lineages, and in part an elaboration of the rights and duties of a member of dwarven society; each dwarf is thus a living legal argument establishing their own existence.  

Elves aren’t made, but educated. An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it, starting with house-breaking, and progressing through years of increasingly sophisticated lessons. By gradual degrees the animal in question develops reasoning, speech, tool use, and finally the ability to assume a humanoid form at will. Most elves are derived from terrestrial mammals, but there’s at least one community that favours octopuses and squid as its root stock.  

Goblins were created by alchemy as servants for an evil wizard, but immediately stole their own formula and rebelled. New goblins are brewed in big brass cauldrons full of exotic reagents; each village keeps a single cauldron in a central location, and emerging goblings are raised by the whole community, with no concept of parentage or lineage. Sometimes they like to add stuff to the goblin soup just to see what happens – there are a lot of weird goblins.  

Halflings reproduce via tall tales. Making up fanciful stories about the adventures of fictitious cousins is halfling culture’s main amusement; if a given individual’s story is passed around and elaborated upon by enough people, a halfling answering to that individual’s description just shows up one day. They won’t necessarily possess any truly outlandish abilities that have been attributed to them – mostly you get the sort of person of whom the stories could be plausible exaggerations.

To address the obvious question, yes, this means that dwarves have no cultural notion of childhood, at least not one that humans would recognise as such. Elves and goblins do, though it’s kind of a weird childhood in the case of elves, while with halflings it’s a toss-up; mostly they instantiate as the equivalent of a human 12–14-year-old, and are promptly adopted by a loose affiliation of self-appointed aunts and uncles, though there are outliers in either direction.

[randomlyrolled]

I am obsessed with this idea

[randomlyrolled]

Random mansion generator

The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html

[randomlyrolled]

Looking for some RPG map making tools?

Find some of the best tools here: