#that or he for some reason went to scottland first to set up shop

[sluttyjonahmagnus]

wait a minute is jonah scottish

[trpg-dingusmaster]

I got to be a player!

i joined a dnd group at the game shop in my town, it has rotating dms as well as rotating campaigns.

I have gone twice now, but it was the same campaign and dm both times, I guess this is unusual but I’m not clear on why, it seems like everyone else knows something about it? but honestly I don’t care, if I need to know I’ll find out easy enough because:

my older brother is dating that dms older sister and we hang out as a group every week/every other week. (or used to until my work schedule changed)

I was hesitant to join because I was concerned I’d feel weird about being the oldest one there? but one is probably close-ish to my age and theres two others who are much older, though they didn’t show up to this game.

this campaign is vaguely dnd 5e, for the purposes of organization I’ll tag posts about this campaign “90lbs FineCoal”, its very homebrewed- which is fine but I wasnt told shit about the campaign before starting. Like when I made my character I wasnt even given a full explanation about what my homebrewed “huntsman” class is. I’ve just been playing it like a magicless-druid/rageless-barbarian? I’m only 55% sure my character is human, they might be a dwarf? idk.

what I now know is, the setting is fantasy victorian/edwardian “london”? but like, nobody ever bothered to actually look up a map of that? so??? anyway... There is no magic either, at least none in england that is any common knowledge though there may be some in other parts of the world. A giant wall has for some reason been built around england, cutting it off from the rest of the world- even its ties to ireland and especially scottland, presumably any and all foreign nation where england should have connection to in this time- there is none. At least none that any of our lowly characters would know about- who are all like, street urchins (4 of the characters) or simple simple trades folk just trying to get by- (my character Josiah Hugo and his? sister? brother? roommate? idk Jamie?) theres also a disgraced noble and his body guard. but I assume they werent important enough to know any of that stuff.

theres very little in the way of group cohesion, but one of the more antagonistic players didn’t show up this time so it was better than the first time I went. though theres still a problem with players not knowing the difference between being in character and being disruptive and derailing... or like.... actively hurting the party. again, it was better this time. and hopefully, when players behave badly the dm will manage them better or at least continue making them actually roll or do opposed rolls to do the thing they were trying to do. something that didn’t happen at all last time, resulting in a near tpk but deus ex machina dwarf rolled up and saved the day.

one of the stranger things about this campaign and why its only vagely 5e is that some checks and saves and whatever seem to function like the call of cthulhu set up where you must roll under a number seemingly arbitrarily picked by the dm not above, but I have yet to figure out how to tell what distinguishes when the roll is for one or the other. I don’t think anyone else knows yet either? I suspect ts an attempt to keep the players honest? But I have trouble imagining what could have happened where that’s needed.

Theres also a really big focus on resource management and base/territory construction and expansion. I think probably to help illustrate how poor the characters are and how desperate the state of the country is or its to make up for the near entire lack of roleplaying, which probably a good thing for now. Or its both I guess

and going back to the lack of magic in the setting, theres also in england anyway only 4 races- humans and dwarves being most common and pretty much as they usually are, gnomes- who are probably less common and more like how I see goblins portrayed as usually or maybe like gully-dwarves?  I cant really explain it that well, but I’m sure somebody gets it. theres also elves- no half elves, just elves, probably because they are very much looked down on and face extreme discrimination to the point where most of them must cut and reshape their ears to go through their day with any reasonable amount of peace. 

one of the players who rotates as dm is planing on starting a 2e dark sun game? the other runs a 5e high seas based game which had some extra rules but nothing major, I’ll tag posts about this game as Bassun on the Sea. another mentioned he wanted to run like... some sort of official event/game? but I wasnt really sure what that meant and didn’t bother asking. I’ll tag those posts as OfficialEvent.

I considered offering to join the dm rotation but I’m really not sure I’d be prepaired to handle a group that could be between 4 and 9 and I’d have no idea the exact number until I got there. I’ll have to think about it. its weird though that it seems like most of the players actually WANT to have a turn at dungeon mastering, I’ve never heard of that happening before.