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makeshiftcoop · 1 year ago

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Misfits and Sandbox

Some words to show what i mean with "sandbox" in Misfits

And I mean something like a mix of The Sims and Lego.

That's really my vision when someone says sandbox. Oh and GTA IV. Liberty City and stuff, you know. GTA V was a bit too overwhelming for me. But, really, when im thinking about modern sandbox (something that does not involve "medieval" aesthetic and low tech) my mind goes back to my time playing with Legos and the hours that I spent with different iterations of The Sims and all the gratuitous crime i commited as I child/teen robbing vehicles and just doing whatever.

I also like the procedurally generated vibe, as in the osr/nsr scene with the tables as input driven engines, or with roguelikes in digital games, specially when they are well executed with a twist (like hades and the fragmented narrative).

So, this is my way of integrating that stuff. The procedural generated stuff is where i idealize the mechanics, generating narrative with die and choices from tables. Also, i think my goal for subsystems is one of generating stuff to make actions more significant than the usual "just RP it" or "just write a short entry" (for solo ttrpg). Like the famous clocks from Blades and a myriad of other cool games. Soon i hope to expand that to other stuff that I'm still daydreaming about (dating system! car chases! smooching people!). For now the game is Acting and Plans. In terms of mechanics frontiers for the Misfits. Acting is normal rolls that get solved in itself and Plans are more like long term or complex stuff with clocks and checks to fill ticks for resolution.

That's it.

The rest is Lego, a big toybox with stuff for you to play with, and the Sims, some Faces for you to meet, fall in love, fuck, kill, befriend, move together, rob, etc.

That feeling is what I'm wanting more in analogic games, specially my designs. There's a lot of stuff for you to see and interact and daydream and even play about. And there's also a set of things that make this little world consistent.

I want to provide interesting toys and interesting faces and expand on the procedures to make those trips to this little world more interesting. Fun takes many forms. Maybe it can be more spicy or erotic. Maybe it will be powerfantasy, cape shit. Maybe something more heavy, political or tinged with horror. I think that's my goal, cover all those possible vibes of stories that comics managed to fit into people capable of defying reality using cool costumes and spilling cringe dialogue.

Right now Im planning on divide things in "Tapes". Each tape is like a season and have a name that's also kind of a more structured group of faces and happenings that will do things that can show up in future seasons. Some form of persistent world. I know that's not very popular nowadays with most people in indie ttrpg spaces but i admit im a sucker for weird plots encompassing a game universe in a greater narrative. I think it's nice to play in a bigger world. Have some kind of canon, or at least possible canons. I also think that marvel multiverse shit made people feel sick of it but im not elaborating.

Im not making a canon that you have to know to play the game or anything, but the Tapes will have this little bits of stuff that i pretend to mention in the next and, maybe, creating some kind of persistency with Faces and Places that you can use in your playsessions or just scrap it off or pick it a part.

So, I'm not capable yet of assembling things into a coherent layout, but i want to get some pieces of Misfit outta in the world. Here are some building blocks (hah) of what your Misfit will interact in the world:

Faces are people to meet. Places are places to go. Happenings are like encounters, things that happen in the world, favours that Faces ask, or just slices of life

Later I pretend to divide those tables in Regions, each one with a vibe more well defined and some neighboorhoods.

FACES: 1 - Key, bald drug smuggler with a mustang, a mumble speech and the ghost of his dead brother to raise. 2 - Van Helith, tireless basketball player, dreams with the big lights, cocky but kinda awkward with people. 3 - Eva, extremely powerful freak. she's slowly dying because of her powers but also discreetly searching for a cure. successful businesswoman, practically lives in her private jet. 4 - Hobbs, DJ who's also a kaoist who uses sonore dissonance to fuel their magic. 5 - Montaineblanc, revived semi cadaveric ex-royalty. perverse and rotten human being, enjoys his newfound immortality. 6 - Ceci Boo, overworked freelancer. pretty crafty philosopher. talented martial fighter. fae bloodline, she does not know. a little misanthropic. 7 - Noah, psyonic, talented musician. Usually depressed. uses his powers to play multiple instruments at once. 8 - Haysha, smoker, tormented psyonic e-celebrity, likes to drive fancy cars. 9 - Michael Zaraj, a bloody, also mad scientist and toxin experimentalist. made mutating intelligent spiders to have minions capable of bring humans for him to experiment on. 10 - Any Corvo, popstar and "crimefighter". a hot fash who streams music and murders petty thiefs in revealing pink and black costume for her far right audience. lethal swords. seems like a build up persona. 11 - Mindy, traveled a lot as kid, never knew what is home. Can always be seem with her red bike full of patches. Blunt and suspicious. 12 - Joan, artist, has a little online following by her creepy collage projects. The themes of her pieces are a contrast to her ponytails and flowery jumpsuits 13 - Benji Skrinar, talented dev, prolly a cybersyko but he hides it well. Does some online scams for an extra buck. 14 - Max London, Ex highschool quarterback, now a model. Hates to travel. Knows everybody important in their hometown and is kinda of a local hero. 15 - Talissa Mür, a know face in circles of luxury events, restaurants and parties. Seems like some kind of heiress, but actually does a dirty job in an Exclusion Zone as a geneticist. Vos, an ex huntress that left behind the fucked up reality of The Houses. Now they are the guard commander of a small castle 16 - Ethel, a librarian and weaver. Trans girl stranded from her big family, arrived in the region to start living with her caring but confuse and troubled dad. 17 - Natalie, prodigy student and Supe. Her family was one of the rare exceptions that didn't want their daughter becoming part of a Corpo, which she did mainly as an act of pure rebellion, but also to exercise some control to her life for the first time. 18 - Hellen, knows as her stage name of Ziggy, is a freak with teleportation powers, dancer and singer. Performances like hers, mixing entertainment and powers, are getting really popular. She is discreet with her identity, but soon will attract wrong attention 19 - Mulaney, idealistic boy born into nobless, discharged from C.A.G.E. after caught sabotaging operations. His family saved his ass and now he is backpacking around the countryside thinking in ways of "dismantling the system" (but mostly just vibing. he is rich, after all) 20 - Cora, Psyonic, top of their class in The Citadel, the prestigious college for Overly Capable Humans. After few drinks will spit out that they have beem abduced twice. If drinks waaay to much will admit that cheats in every test with a complex methodology (it's a heavy burden for them)

PLACES: 1 - Small coffee shop named Plantoffe. Lots of weird plants. runned by an middle age couple. 2 - Master Tara's Boxing Club. A franchise of generic martial arts with underpaid instructors 3 - Bills Square, billboards everywhere, neon and luxury stores mix with tall comercial buildings, a mix of tech and finances. Security cameras and cops are omnipresent in this vicitnies. 4 - Makeout Creek, a little creek near the high school, famous spot for teens to hang out and... well, mostly smoke weed but some actually still makeout 5 - Gemini Hills, just out of the city. a spot with parks, places to eat and with a great view of the skyline. 6 - A moto bike shop decorated with random esoteric stuff and violet neon lights called Azphalt 7 - An abandoned construction site. upon further looking there's trash, a mattress and signals of a rushed escape. 8 - An old mass grave turned to a boring park with a couple of benches and a monument in honour of a dead local stray dog named Chico. 9 - A plaza in the Campus. A brutalist fountain sits at the center of it, with different handrails, elevations and concret benches being used by skaters to perform different tricks. Cliques of college students gossip and drinks and eat observed by the scorching sun. 10 - Caricá Beach, paradisiac little spot, hide between deep vegetation and a hill that ends in a rocky cliff used for risky jumps into the water

HAPPENINGS: 1 - Missing posters of a boy. His brother handling pamphlets, asking for help. The cops are ignoring the case after coming back from the woods with scared eyes. 2 - A neighbor is moving out and found some weird stuff in a basement that they had never noticed. At least they will tell you that. 3 - Two girls asking for help, last night they were hired to dance in a party in a secluded club. Turns out thar it was the last rite of a suicide cult and today they are locking themselves in a gold revested bunker to transmit their conscious to a new dimension. Oh, the leader really seemed to have some weird powers. 4 - The bus from the local basketball team broke. They could use some help to reach the game. Also, their reserve squad is lacking some players... 5 - Traveling band of street artists is being held and investigated by two strange Border Patrol cops. 6 - Sunglasses, tans, boys without shirts and groups of people in beach clothing in the trail that leads to the Costa Esmeralda beach. 7 - A C.A.G.E unit running roadblocks, aiming to pass an image of security to the a region with recent unrests 8 - A thematic party at the sorority-run bar Pinkgarden. Good opportunity for getting laid, do some networking or play the hero stopping a mortal brawl between highly intoxicated supe rivals

#ttrpg #game design #writing #indie rpg #rpg

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destinylegendrpg · 2 years ago

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hey!! im curious, how have you guys built around 3.0 subclasses? 👀 i wanted to know so i could have an easier time DMing my own campaign!

Great question! So, this might be a lengthy answer, but hopefully it helps with what you're looking for ~

@frombrad2worse and I began building the D:BL system after Void 3.0 came out, but way, way before Solar and Arc 3.0 released. Much like with Stasis, we both loved how modular it was, how easily you could set it up to a playstyle you preferred. Both of us have played in a lot of TTRPG campaigns and we really like systems that allow for build-crafting - even if you play the same class as someone else, the flavour and feel you put into it can end up with seemingly disparate character mechanics. So when we began thinking about how we wanted to make a TTRPG, we knew immediately that we wanted to craft a system that allowed for this, and what better way to achieve this than by mimicking Light 3.0 in a TTRPG style?

Unfortunately, we don't currently have the system set up in a way that we can share the Vanguard (GM) rules just yet - it's not that we don't want others to try it out, just that we haven't had the time to type everything up yet, lol. BUT. Let me give you the low-down on how it works for characters... and if you don't wanna read all this mumbo-jumbo, skip to the last paragraph! 👀

When creating a character, you start with, of course, the basics: your race and class. In our system, race is just flavour - there's no mechanical benefit to choosing any one race over another. But just like in the video game, your class locks you into being either a Hunter, a Warlock, or a Titan. Once you're in, you're in, and you move onto assigning your stats.

When beginning a new character, you have 24 points to put into 6 stats: Mobility, Resilience, Recovery, Discipline, Intellect, and Strength, all of which probably sound eerily familiar, eh? And I'm sure you can imagine the benefit to putting points into each of them. So what's the catch, right? Where does Light 3.0 come in and what does this have to do with build-crafting?

Well, that's look at those stats a second. How well do all of these translate to a TTRPG? The first three stats make sense: Mobility lets you run around the battlefield, Resilience boosts your shields, Recovery lets you heal yourself with the Light faster. All three are obvious gameplay modifiers. But what about Discipline, Intellect, and Strength? Sure, they have their own benefit just like in the game: a higher Discipline leads to a faster grenade, but when you're using a d6 system where a roll of 4d6 determines the actions on your turn, there's only so high and so low you can go. If a grenade costs a roll of X on those 4d6 to use on a turn, you can only move that X so much before it becomes either too difficult to use at low levels or unfathomably easy at high levels. So what do you use to help balance those stats while keeping them rewarding to put points into?

This is where Light 3.0 comes in. Each of the bottom 3 stats gives you an edge in build-crafting. In our system, putting more points in Discipline and Strength don't just give you a boost to getting a faster grenade or charge melee, they also give you Fragment slots, up to 2 per stat for a total of 4. Your Intellect doesn't just let you a faster Super either, it allows you to take up to 2 Aspects.

And now... now the fun begins. >:)

You see, just like in the video game, each subclass has an entire sheet dedicated to unique Aspects and Fragments that you can pick and choose from to create the unique playstyle you want. These can also be changed at (almost) any time so you can have fun in the way you want without being locked into past decisions that no longer feel good. It's built to be flexible and modular so players can let loose and play around to find out what works (and doesn't work) for them!

Void 3.0 is almost directly translated: taking the Bastion Aspect as a Void Titan stilllets you and allies gain an Overshield when summoning your Barricade, just like it does in the video game. Taking the Echo of Undermining Fragment still lets you weaken enemies with your grenade for 1.5x damage. But some Aspects and Fragments don't have a direct TTRPG translation, meaning we had to play around and figure out what felt good before we moved on.

Arc and Solar 3.0, however... well, we had mostly finished the system and were already tweaking the numbers by playing 1:1s with each other before they were released by Bungie. So our Aspects and Fragments are a bit different there - they even have different names. While Bungie's are Spark of and Ember of for Arc and Solar, ours are Call of and Song of, respectively, because we thought they sounded cool. Weirdly, some of them ended up very similar but with slightly different vocabulary (for example, we originally had a mechanic called electrified which Bungie named jolted; the vocab has been changed to match Bungie's for consistency, though our Aspect and Fragment ideas remain our own). We're still tweaking them to make sure they match up to how powerful Void can be, but we think they're pretty fun. In fact, I currently play a Solar Titan and have a great time with it. You can see me in action, along with my Arc and Solar Warlock companions, in our stream! Here's a link to our fireteam's first episode so you can listen along and get a general feel for how the system plays.

SO!

With all that said... well, I know I mentioned that the Vanguard rulebook isn't set up yet for wide release, but if you'd like, feel free to DM me here or @cassiefisherdrake. I will HAPPILY send you the character + combat sheets and walk you through them to help you set up a character. We want people to test this system out so we can work out what needs fixing, so the more the merrier! Hell, I'd happily Vanguard a one-shot for you so you can see what it's like if you're interested. :>

#answered questions #destiny #destiny 2 #destiny the game

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skullchicken · 2 years ago

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Ich habe 8.367 Mal im Jahr 2022 etwas gepostet

92 Einträge erstellt (1%)

8.275 Einträge gerebloggt (99%)

Blogs, die ich am häufigsten gerebloggt habe:

@yondamoegi

@arkatrine

@the-barabarian

@friendlygiantstm

@nyoxt-was-here

Ich habe 976 meiner Einträge im Jahr 2022 getaggt

#shadowrun – 59 Einträge

#my art – 30 Einträge

#self-reblog – 23 Einträge

#tabletop – 18 Einträge

#urban fantasy – 18 Einträge

#cyberpunk – 16 Einträge

#lol – 15 Einträge

#inspiration – 14 Einträge

#ttrpg – 13 Einträge

#artists on tumblr – 12 Einträge

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#and discipline are all variables in a large equation that exists to determine how good a grade you can get on some cosmic test that you’re

Meine Top-Einträge im Jahr 2022:

On the way home, 2020

104 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 2. März 2022

"This won't go over well at the next team meeting"

Please click to see the details! (or you might not spot the guy)

I love myself some illustrations that tell a story, so I tried my hand at one. I had a lot of fun snapping reference photos for sloppily eating ramen ^^

125 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 9. März 2022

I dunno, I think that went well

125 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 28. August 2022

Here's a rule of thumb that really helped me build up a circle of close friends in my twenties:

Friendship = bonding x times met

Meaning: if you want to befriend someone, make sure you have contact on a somewhat regular basis.

I know this is easier said than done for many people, but if you have the brain-space and ability for it, try this:

Make a list of people you know personally and that you'd like to know better or be good friends with. people who bring you joy. I would not make the list too long, maybe 12 at the most.

Now write the last time you spoke or wrote to them next to their name. bonus: note down subjects you talked about.

Put the list somewhere where you see it (your desktop, first page of your notebook, wall, whatever).

Write the person you haven't spoken the longest to, if it has been longer than two weeks. ask them how they are doing (or if you remember, how something they have been talking to about last time has turned out)

This helps you to make sure you don't drop off the face of the earth unintended. It also keeps you from letting people slip away that you get along great with but that don't stick around in your memory much, for whatever reason.

Most people, I feel, aren't great at keeping contact or contacting someone out of the blue. if you're one of the people who struggles with it, you're not alone. But if you can form a habit of contacting people you'd like to have in your life more, it can be a great source of joy and comfort.

370 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 13. April 2022

Meine #1 des Jahres 2022

I just had a small epiphany why you might like other people's art more than your own:

It's the lack of suspension of disbelief.

When you see something someone else has drawn or painted, you take in the content faster than you take in the technical aspects. You experience it as pseudo-real, the same way you stop perceiving animated characters as drawn or book characters as written as you get into the story.

On the other hand, when you yourself have made something, all you see is the machine behind the theater, so to speak. You're probably thinking about lines, shading, coloring in a "does this make sense? Is this the best decision I could have made?"-kind of way.

I think that's also why sometimes, pictures you haven't looked at for a long time starts looking nice to you again, à la: "Hey past-me was unto something! Why can't I replicate it nowadays?". It's probably specifically because you've forgotten the process of making it that you are now seeing it with fresh eyes.

Art is an illusion, but a magician has a hard time tricking themself. So don't be so hard on yourself: it's probably just that you can't see the magic right now, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

742 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 23. November 2022

Hol dir deinen Tumblr-Jahresrückblick 2022 →

#tumblr2022 #Jahresrückblick #Mein Tumblr-Jahresrückblick 2022 #Dein Tumblr-Jahresrückblick #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #yeh it's german but I'm too lazy to translate #you know the drill #gestures vaguely

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kvothbloodless · 8 days ago

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In terms of how high level damage Is "balanced" (it isnt)... well okay so Id say there are 4/4.5 tiers of building in complicated TTRPGs like this. To be clear, all are equally valid, and all can be just as fun, etc etc. Also, im talking purely about big damage builds, which tbh in my opinion are usually the least interesting powerful builds in pathfinder, but if I start talking about other high level, optimized pf builds I will never stop, so Ill stick to damage. And Im putting a readmore because even Without getting started on the really fun builds like creating a feedback loop of infinite actions, I'm about to be Very autistic.

1st tier is someone who really does not have any system mastery, usually someone just starting out. Theyre mostly gonna pick options that sound fun and arent too complicated. When they level up, theyre gonna look through the most accessible options and pick whatever sounds cool or interesting. I cant actually put any good numbers on this tier just because Ive never had many players in this tier, and even when i have, i like helping players build more mechanically complicated characters that give them more options in play.

2nd tier is someone who mostly knows what theyre doing. They dont have any particular urge to optimize and dont go through every possible option, but they have a specific build in mind and mostly find good options. At higher levels in a normal campaign, in my experience, these guys (if built primarily for damage) tend to average ~120 damage per round against enemies at around their CR, give or take a bit depending on how theyre doing it/whether theyre built for reliability or are more well rounded, etc.

3rd tier is where I tend to build at, and where most of my players end up. This is players who have either a near encyclopedic knowledge of the options, or enjoy going through the prd for hours at a time to find the best options available. At high levels, again allowing for some variation based on other choices, these guys tend to average ~250-300ish damage per round, with the far end getting up to ~500ish (and if you allow mythic abilities, you can basically double or triple those numbers). This is where you need either all of (the combat focused members of) the party to be somewhere around the same level of optimized, or need a good gm, because it isnt fun for anyone if one player (speaking from experience as this used to be me) is dominating combat because the others just cant keep up. But if the entire party is at this level of optimization? Imo thats where pathfinder really shines. Being able to out extremely dangerous combat puzzles in front of a group of characters that are all well designed machines, who have a very good knowledge of what they can do and how to do it...thats why I stick with pathfinder 1e even though my group has come to the conclusion that a solid 15% of the game was written by giving particularly vicious chimpanzees access to typewriters.

4th tier is when you are no longer building to play the character, you are building in the hopes of raising the character high enough to catch a glimpse of the gods. This is where you get mages who can go all out and deal a quarter million damage in 1 round or a slayer who can sneak attack someone 20 times in a round. These are the characters that I have dreams about, praying that at some point in some campaign, Ill find a way to actually use them.

The weird 4.5 tier is cheating because its not really focused on damage specifically, but I want to give it an honorable mention anyways. This is the same as 4th tier, but instead of building specifically for big damage, youre building for something very specific instead, with damage as your metric for how well youve pulled it off. This is the tier where you see a weird ability and go "hmmmmmm" while grinning evilly. Examples here include stuff like "how much damage can i average in a round using nothing but magic missile (~360 iirc)" or "how many attacks can I give this summoner in one round? (~25 or ~50, depending on how stricly you interpret a specific ability.)" Some of these ones Are actually playable without wrecking a campaign, but like, itd be Really weird.

Also I lied because 5th tier exists and its the ones on My List, where you find something very poorly designed or not thought out and discover that making your character into a demigod only requires 11 levels in a specifc class and a friend willing to cast a random spell on you a few hundred times.

Quite possibly the best out of context quote from any session ive ever run

#ttrpg #pathfinder #tracking

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theonyxpath · 5 years ago

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This week we’re releasing the core rulebook for Dystopia Rising: Evolution into both stores (the traditionally printed version) and on DriveThruRPG with the PDF and physical book PoD versions.

When Mighty Matt McElroy brought up the idea of talking to the DR folks, the only thing I knew about Dystopia Rising was that a fair number of people I knew with good gaming taste enjoyed getting dressed up in Mad Max style gear and heading out to its live action events. I did see a ton of DR players at several Mid Winter Conventions leading up to sitting down with Michael and Ashley, so I had an inkling of the setting, at least.

Talking with them, and subsequently taking a deep dive into the already existing material made me impressed by what they had accomplished, and pretty sure that we could create an evocative TTRPG version. My big concern with any new game is whether we’ll be retreading ground we’re already covering, and while we had touched on post-apocalyptic milieus, we had not yet gone all in.

The chance to work with a post-apocalyptic setting, and then to adapt the Storypath System, which was just in its infancy when we decided to use it, combined for a very exciting project on both the setting and system levels. The final result, which you’ll be able to get on Wednesday, delivers both those things, and combines them, in ways we had only hoped to achieve when we first decided to make the game.

Eddy, as developer, was able to take the base Storypath System and, as we had hoped with the System, tweak it and add in elements like scavenging/building rules to better portray the setting.

Scion Companion art by Andrea Payne

So, the question has come up as to whether this post-apocalyptic opus is appropriate to offer right now. Certainly, a lot of folks are feeling like they are living in a plague movie right now, and I’d certainly understand not wanting to be reminded of that.

One of my thoughts about DR:E since first reading Eddy’s text, is how the setting demonstrates the adaptability of humanity in the face of seismic changes to civilization and society. DR:E isn’t set during the fall of society, but after humanity (in a wider definition of that term) has begun rebuilding. Which in its own way is a positive message that we can use in challenging times, like now.

Plus, there a a lot of different zombies to fight!

Along the same lines, as the rebuilding of communities is very important in the game, so are the live-action communities that have been built have been the key to DR’s success all these years. We like art imitating life imitating art, so in the interest of the tabletopDR:E‘s community we’ll be opening its Community Content site next month.

Now, as a bit of an aside, we’re not sure how many stores are actually going to be able to order this, get it, and then sell it. If they have an online store component, and you’ve been buying from them that way, please let them know that their store can get copies from Studio2 and IPR. And if you don’t have a store option right now, you too can direct order.

They Came From Beneath the Sea! art by Brian LeBlanc

How Are We Doing?

A question we share with old friends, co-workers, family far more now, and with good cause. We asked our developers, in two “town hall” group meetings last week, this very thing.

Mostly, our creators are doing okay, with varying degrees of focus from day to day (hour to hour?) on their projects. So far, two of our creators have been diagnosed with Covid 19, and so far they are doing okay. We also fielded some concerned questions as to the state of Onyx Path these days.

So far, so good. Like I’ve mentioned these last few weeks, our variety of sales channels have helped us, and we’re still rolling along with our projects even while being responsive to the challenges in the lives of our creators.

And in this taxing time, it is also tax time.

In terms of the work that we’re not just still doing but are really excited about, here’s an interview with Dixie, Neall Raemonn Price, and Monica Speca talking about Exalted Essence, a pretty innovative and important project that they continue to pull together. Lots of new details from the book in this interview: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/exalted-essence-dev-team-interview

Let The Streets Run Red art by Michael Gaydos

Finally, as a personal example of finding ways to find the fun while being shut-in, this Easter I created an Easter Bunny scenario for the Gloomhaven boardgame for my kids, and their characters chased him through maps of the city streets, dodging the Easter Eggs he was blocking their way with. Each egg they picked up corresponded to a plastic egg with prizes inside I was hiding under the game table!

It was fun, plus I got an even better appreciation for how the designers set up and balanced Gloomhaven. Which I’ll consider as we review our own games, but it’s worth noting that info came through a diversion. Sometimes that’s what we need; we need to come at things indirectly. Even moreso when under stress.

Here’s hoping we’re providing you folks with a similar break, and a similar chance to explore new ideas…not to mention our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

We’ve cancelled the Legendlore Kickstarter for the time being. While we wait for that happy day, here’s a fantastic Legendlore interview with developer Steffie de Vaan, hosted over at High Level Games! https://www.highlevelgames.ca/blog/legendlore-rpg-from-onyx-path-publishing-an-interview-with-steffie-de-vaan

We’ll get Legendlore back on KS as soon as we can, and meanwhile we are building the M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday is the Onyx Pathcast‘s 100th full episode! Huge congrats to Dixie Cochran, Eddy Webb, and Matthew Dawkins! Here’s to another 100!

This week, the Terrific Trio present a brand-new episode of Scion Actual Play! So if you’ve ever wondered how Scion plays – this is your chance to hear it in all its glory!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

As we mentioned last week, Virtual Horror Con took place raising lots of money for charity! If you haven’t already, do check out their website https://www.gehennagaming.com/, and if you missed some of their actual plays of our games, please check them out here:

CofD Mortals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdPfkI0FLFk

Trinity Continuum: Æon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7masQukyjQ

Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13UtpbAFAfk

And here’s Gehenna Gaming’s Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/gehennagaming

If you’re self-isolating or locked down, you can always tune in to our games this week. A few of our usual hosts are having breaks due to the situation in the world right now, but we’ve got plenty coming over the next few days, including V5, Scion, Pugmire, Changeling: The Lost, Changeling: The Dreaming, Mage: The Awakening, Scarred Lands, and a Dark ErasWerewolf: The Forsaken chronicle!

There are also several shows not yet on the schedule that are revving up to fill in for those who need a break right now, so please check out our Twitch channel during the week and keep an eye on Onyx Path social media for announcements of new programming!

This week you should really check out the new Scion game we’ve got going on our channel. You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed!

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Trinity Continuum – Aberrant: Community Service: https://youtu.be/51-Y_Diaefg

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/uysogPwNFOM

Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood City – Chicago by Night: https://youtu.be/MKoMRxi9x0w

And still more Trinity Continuum – Aberrant: Community Service: https://youtu.be/5SXY7Q-Z80M

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Have you checked out the Botch Pit‘s gaming transcripts? Have a look on their clean, beautiful website, and check this one out for a Chronicles of Darkness game: http://thebotchpit.com/new-england-by-night-season-1-session-01-im-not-making-anyone-a-supernatural-yet-transcript/

https://ift.tt/3b89G4W

More new Occultists Anonymous for all you Mage: The Awakening fans:

Episode 96: Other Mages With the dark gift of a vampire’s patronage looming over their heads, the cabal seek out the names and identities of mages they think are appropriate sacrifices to the vampires’ bloodlust.https://youtu.be/3m0-va-JvdM

Episode 97: Short Straight The cabal gathers together their collected grimoires in one place, checking for further magical resonance and consult the ghost of a dead mage for further information.https://youtu.be/fjG2wPalY-s

Here’s the Story Told Podcast with an excellent interview with Dixie Cochran, Neall Raemonn Price, and Monica Speca on the subject of Exalted Essence: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/exalted-essence-dev-team-interview

Garblag Games have commenced a new series of Mage: The Ascension, which has got off to a rocking start right here: https://youtu.be/yN47_NjYxtA

And if you loved V5 Chicago by Night, tune in to Junie von Esch’s channel to watch her group play through some Vampire: https://www.twitch.tv/junie_von_esch

Roll the Role continue with their Scarred Lands Gauntlet of Spiragos actual play! Roll the Role is a fantastic show, so please do give them a look: https://www.twitch.tv/rolltherole

And the bizarrely named Scabby Rooster continue their actual play of Scion, right here on their Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/scabbyrooster

One of Matthew’s personal favourites, Devil’s Luck Gaming, continues their Werewolf: The Forsaken chronicle over here: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming Please do give them a follow!

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

Update: the devs are working on the updates for the roller in both Android and iOS; here is the rundown from them:

1) Redo the UI for system for Android. It will look the same as the current design. My goal is to have something ready by Saturday to send out to the Facebook users, asking them if this fixes the issues. This will be a beta type thing. This will break several of the fancy dice.

2) If the above worked out and the android users give all the clear, we’ll redo the graphics system to fix the fancy dice that got broken. We’ll do another Android beta through Facebook. This might take up to two weeks, as my schedule allows.

3) If everything worked well, we’ll release to Android for real at that point.

4) Port all of the existing stuff to iOS and release on that.

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition continues its fantastic sale at IPR, soon to be joined by Game-Line Bundles! Check them out!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This week the Dystopia Rising: Evolution core book will be available in PDF and PoD versions on DriveThruRPG on Wednesday, and the physical traditionally printed books will be available in stores via Studio2 and IPR!

No one knows how long it’s been since the world was blasted with nuclear radiation and became infested with the undead. The survivors of the Fall were the first strain of deviation of the human condition and were able to make it through the rapidly spreading epidemic. Finding a community of decent size in this world is rare; finding one that has any concept of equality or morality is rarer still.

Oh, and people have the unnerving ability to come back from the dead, regrown from the very virus that destroyed the world.

Some highlights of Dystopia Rising: Evolutioninclude:

Rules for creating characters for 24 different Strains, variations on humanity that survived the Fall.

Details on the powers of faith and psionics.

Advice on running action-adventure stories, webs of personal intrigue, and procedural investigations.

Dozens of antagonists, including a variety of zombies and raiders to use in your series.

Welcome to the Evolution!

We’re also offering the Dystopia Rising: Evolution Gaming Screen on Weds!

Conventions!

Though dates are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s our current list of upcoming conventions:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

V5 The Faithful Undead (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

The Book of Endless Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Scion Titanomachy – Wrapping up contracting.

Tales of Aquatic Terror – Contracted.

TC Aeon Terra Firma – Most of the art is in, maybe all of it.

V5 Let the Streets Run Red – Tweaking some art re: WW art approvals.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

WoD Ghost Hunters

Aberrant – Contacting and contracting – wrapping up half-pagers and portraits.

Pugmire Adventure

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant – Rolling along.

Legendlore – Kickstarter on hiatus.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Art and graphics ready to go.

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Contagion Chronicle

Vigil Watch

Duke Rollo Book

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart

Pirates of Pugmire

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – Inputting proofing comments.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Awaiting 2nd proof notes.

Scion Companion – Tweaking art re: proofing notes.

At Press

TC Distant Worlds

Night Horrors : Nameless and Accursed – Awaiting Errata.

Dark Eras 2 – PoD proof shipping.

VtR Spilled Blood – PoD proof shipping.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – On Sale this Wednesday!

DR:E Screen & Booklet – On Sale this Wednesday!

DR:E Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

Geist 2e Screen

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Reviewing Indexing.

Geist 2e Anthology – PoD proof ordered.

C:tL 2e Oak, Ash, & Thorn – Awaiting Errata.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Happy Birthday! to the 5th Doctor: in 1951 Peter Davison was born. He’s looking at me right now from my 2020 Doctor Who calendar, as April is the month he appears in this year. Must have been a tough assignment following Tom Baker after the 4th Doctor had been burned into people’s minds for 8 years. Yet, for many, Davison’s Doctor is Their Doctor, which is the way it should be – so kudos to him for creating another version and era of the classic character!

#Onyx Path Publishing

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forgottenrealmsrp · 7 years ago

Note

Hello, I am very new to DnD and I would really like some tips on how to play and roll for certain things (Im not too good with examples) etc. etc.

Howdy! Mod Nate here coming at you with some Tips for Beginners. There’s a hell of a lot to cover that I cannot fit into one post (because, let’s be honest, that would be a nightmare), but I will try my best. So, without further ado, hold onto your butts.

The Three R’s

I find there are three main aspects to remember (and master!) when starting off in DnD or other such TTRPG’s. You can sort them into three categories:

Rules,

Rol(l/e)s, and

Roleplaying

Of course there are heaps of other things to consider in game, but for a beginner, it can get overwhelming very quickly, so we’ll just stick to the Three R’s for now.

Rules

What better thing for a game than rules! The first thing you hopefully would have done if you were gearing up for your first game is to get your hands on a Player’s Handbook (For DnD 5e), or your RPG’s respective rulebook. Hobby stores, book stores, libraries, even video game shops might stock a physical copy of our favourite WotC volumes, but you can also secure them online wherever you may find them.

Once you have your grubby little goblin hands on a handbook, give it to a friend, and have them read it to you. If that gets too boring, have them explain the rules in detail - you’ll need a pen and a notebook! If that is too time-consuming or - more likely - you don’t actually have any friends, you’ll have to settle for a hurried and often last-minute explanation of the core mechanics of the game, the finer details of which will be left unaddressed until you get your creative spirit crushed by your mean Dungeon Master, or local rules lawyer.

(Remember kids, if you aren’t sure of where to locate one of these “rules lawyers”, simply talk out loud about your homebrew weapon or Pathfinder game, and they will be sure to find you!)

In this fabled Player’s Handbook you will find a fun breakdown and walkthrough of the game’s races, classes, and backgrounds, all of which you will need to read through several times and then immediately forget. Only after you have asked yourself “Which Bard School is going to make Sildaar Hallwinter not a steaming pile of crap?” for the fifth time in 10 minutes, can you move on to “equipment” and “rules”. Make sure to read these thoroughly, because you’ll learn them pretty quickly after your party’s Paladin once again forgets how many d10s to roll. It’s two, Derek. You asked the exact same question last round.

Idiot.

Rol(l/e)s

Once you manage to wrap your head around the rules, you get to the meat of the sandwich - rol(l/e)s. Whoever came up with this idiotic word hybrid (me) needs to report to their editor (also me) and get his ass whooped (still me).

Now, I know you’ve gotten this far and thought “Wait, Nate, that may have rhymed but you haven’t actually given any tips yet?!??!?!?!!/1!?!?!?!?1?!???????????”. To that, I say yes (or no?), I have(n’t?) given you tips for how to play and roll for certain things, because the biggest tip I have for you is coming right up.

Wait for it.

You cannot build a dragon’s tower without strong foundations.

Meaning: Only once you have “mastered” the rules and basics of roleplaying (and rolling!) will you be able to spread your beautiful dragon wings and soar as a damn good DnD player. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to learn and remember every single mechanic or rule in the book! Because that would be a nightmare and if you can do it, you will be God. No questions asked. But hey! People make mistakes, or remember things wrong, or guess incorrectly, or even make it up as they go along. Having the handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide on hand for these occasions will save everyone’s sanity at least once, but knowing when to draw the line between fairness and fun will make everyone’s play a whole lot better.

So! Now that you’ve become God, rolling and role-ing (not a word) are your new best friends. And you know who makes the best friends? DICE! Just google it and have fun, kids, but remember that you have to eat and sleep somewhere warm and cozy tonight, so try not to build your hoard of shiny forbidden snacks too quickly, now. All you will need for starters is your standard 7-dice set: d4, d6, d8, d10*, d12, and d20.

*The d10 often comes in pairs to act as a percentile dice. The die with the ten’s (00, 10, 20, 30, etc.) will act as the ten’s place, and the other die will act as the one’s place. So, if you roll a 60 and a 9, you get a really funny number. If you roll a 00 and a 0, that’s 100! If you roll a 00 and a 1, however, that’s a 1. You die in game and you die in real life. Goodbye.

The handbook will tell you all the dice you will need to roll in order to both run the game, and make your character! That’s right! Maths begins even before the game does. Even Death themself cannot escape the point-buy system. Just submit.

Stats are fun.

What do they mean? What do they do? Who even knows what Constitution does?! I certainly don’t! But that’s where you’re in luck, bucko.

This post is already long enough without getting to the good stuff, so I’ll keep it simple.

Strength - a measure of how well you can do stuff with your muscles. Skills like Athletics (aaaaaaand nope just athletics, huh, really? No fish-lifting skill? Huh? Cowards) will benefit from having some damn good muscles. Also you can stab stuff real good.

Dexterity - a measure of how deft, nimble, and stealthy one can be. Contributes to skills like Acrobatics and Stealth, unsurprisingly. If you can move good, you can groove good. I’d add a skill for dancing if I were you, WotC.

Constitution - I lied before when I said I had no idea what constitution does, but it was only partly a joke. Constitution contributes to skills like not dying, staying alive, and stopping being dead. Sometimes it determines how much health you have. Sometimes it means you can drink an entire frog. Don’t ask.

Intelligence - Are you a smart cookie? Can you learn languages fluently in a short span of time? Can you destroy scores of defenceless troops with a single pillar of flame? Can you read? Are you kept awake at night by their screams? Intelligence makes you good (or not) at skills like History, Religion, Arcana, and being a nerd. Oh wait. No one is good at being a nerd. Sorry nerdlord. Also, if your intelligence is under 10, you can’t read! Just like me.

Wisdom - Not the smartest cookie in the shed? Like to eat leaves? You and me both, kid! Wisdom is a measure of your STREET SMARTS! so you can throw those nasty pervert kobolds off their rhythm. Unfortunately, starting equipment does not include a money clip. It makes you good at eating dirt and walking through forests and stuff. Also I think you can pet dogs really well?

Charisma - If you’ve ever played a bard, you would know what this is. If you haven’t played a bard, it’s not too late! Quick! Choose a Warlock or a Cleric if you want a Charisma based build! Choose the entertainer background if you must! -sigh- but if you insist, charisma is a measure of how easily you can quite literally charm the pants off a dragon. Also, sometimes you can roast people really well?

Having high skills is all fine and dandy, but the next tier of DnD player character power is owning your low skills. Have low constitution? Your tiefling is sickly or has a weak stomach! Low intelligence? Your character can’t read or write! Low charisma? You cause every single npc interaction to end with you being punched in the face. There is colour and interest in every aspect of your character, so make sure to let your character sheet represent your character as well as you can!

But how do you determine these stats?

Looking in your class description, you will see under the ‘Quick Build’ section the recommended stat scores, backgrounds and/or spells for that character. These are NOT mandatory, but I find them to be a helpful guideline for how to keep your character functional and, well, alive. Stat scores themselves can be determined a few different ways: Point-buy (I have no idea how this works but it looks like a lot of maths and that’s homophobic, so); Cascading, and rolling.

Cascading (or at least that’s my name for it, I have no other way to describe it) is where you take the values 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 and assign each to one of your stats. For example, before adding racial stat modifiers, I could assign my barbarian’s stats as follows:

STR: 15, DEX: 13, CON: 14, INT: 8, WIS: 10, CHA: 12.

I may have a character-based reason for assigning my barbarian a relatively adequate Charisma score. Maybe he was a particularly intimidating character, or perhaps his iron-will makes his Constitution a 14. Maybe he likes to dance. You could have a particularly burly mage with a strength score of 15, just because you feel like it. Maybe your cleric is part of team sweet-flips? Or your monk could study tomes night and day to get her Intelligence to a lofty 17 points post-modifiers. Balancing stat scores so that you don’t die is awesome, but having a change to shout “YOU DO NOT SEE GROG!” and win 9 times out of 10? Priceless.

Rolling your stats is perhaps the most widely-used way to determine stats, but to be safe, ask your DM (or get crafty if you’re the DM!) about their preferred method. It’s pretty simple: roll 4d6 (the six-sided dice four times), noting down each individual roll. After four rolls, you cross out the lowest roll, and add the remaining three. Repeat five more times and you have some good good stats, bro! Don’t forget to add your racial stat modifiers before you assign your stat scores!

Modifiers seem pretty confusing as a newbie, but there is a handy table in the PHB to help you keep track. Alternatively, you could subtract 10 from your score, and then half what you have left, making sure to round down! A score of 19 would have a modifier of +4 (19 - 10 = 9/2 = 4.5 ≈ 4, rounding down). A score of 8 would have a modifier of -1 (8 - 10 = -2/2 = -1). Pretty simple, right?

So now I think I can finally address whatever the F*$# I mean by ‘Roles’. What the heck is a role? Do you mean roleplaying? No, dear reader, I do not. A ‘role’ is what I like to call your position in the party. Because yes, on the unlikely occasion that you do manage to wrangle a group of people willing (or able) to play DnD with you, you still have to play with other kids, Derek. That means that the typical balancing applies. You cannot just have a 7-person party filled entirely by bards. Or bees. Though I would prefer the bees. Who would want 7 bards? That sounds like the start of a bad joke.

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you have enough bases covered in the traditional party makeup that you won’t die immediately, but you also don’t have to deal with 7 goddamn bards, Derek, I swear to God-

You’ll want someone to hit stuff, someone to get hit, someone to help those who get hit, and someone to hit things when you don’t want to get hit. This could be solved any number of ways. Get creative, go hog wild. But not buck wild, Derek. I will not have the “Seven Buskateers” at my table again, do you hear me?!

This brings us to the finale. I’ve been writing this post for half an hour, and we’re finally getting to the good stuff. Thanks for stick with me so far. How about dropping your favourite stardew valley bachelor/ette down in the replies if you’ve read this far? Mine’s Elliot, because he’s beautiful and I love him, just like I love you. :3

Roleplaying!

It’s in the title! The very mechanics of the game! So, the question you’re asking me is: “Nate, how the Flippity Doo Daa do you roleplay?????????”

And I reply, “How are you making those noises with your mouth? Where am I?! Who are you? Why can I hear each individual question mark even though they shouldn’t have a place in the mortal coil? What are you?!”

And then I tell you about my favourite thing to tell my own players.

The easiest character to play is one that exists. So? What does that mean???

It means that YOU, my dead, dear nerd, can’t just pull a self-insert every single dang game, Damn it Derek! No one LIKES YOU! GO HOME! You have this opportunity to think of a fun, unique concept, and roll with it. So, how can you create the next Taako, or Nott, or Yashee’rak or Caduceus?

If you have a concept to work from, that’s great! If not, start from the ground up. Who is your character? What are their likes, dislikes, loves, hates, loyalties, vendettas? I often like to establish both a backstory and a goal for them to accomplish, the simpler the better, to get you on the right track. Perhaps a Neverwinter begger wishes to open their own tea shop in Ba Sing Se? A cursed child of an angel and a demon takes it upon themself to avenge their brother’s death? A simple farm girl falls in love and follows her princess Buttercup across Faerûn? You name it!

Some good questions to ask yourself about your characters personality could also include:

What would they kill for?

What would they die for?

What would they watch someone else die for?

What are some rumours your party members would have heard about your character?

What would they think of your favourite meme?

How do they treat their mum? How would they treat your mum?

Do they have any recurring nightmares? Why?

Etc. Etc. Think of them as a real being, with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears! The more detailed you can get in theory might help in the long run. If you find yourself deviating from these details, however, don’t sweat! That’s a character’s natural development and progression as a character! In fact, if things don’t change as you play, you might have to have a look at your play style. Loosen up. No one is one emotion their entire lives. Characters lie! They hide things and change details and cheat and steal! But they also act kindly, even randomly, and change and grow. Encourage that. Let them grow. They (and your party members!) will thank you for it!

I think that’s all I have in me for now, and oh man there are so many more things I could mention. DMing in itself will have to wait for another day, of course, but I hope this helped! I’m going to die now.

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