+1 Thread of Tabletop Roleplaying

Cy_borg is an astonishing thing to look at, but I'm not sure how practical it would be at the table.

I have a few issues with the Mork Borg games, but they seem to be perfectly playable. They are just fairly basic OSR games at their core after all. One of the regular GMs at the bookshop is a big fan.

Not the game, the book itself – the layouts, colours and fonts are different in every section. It looks like referencing it mid-game would be a nightmare.

Oh, yeah.

Mork Borg at least has freebie text-only version. Not sure about Cy Borg.

I cracked and bought a Mausritter box. It's expensive, but there were only 30 left, and I don't know if/when it'll be available again.

Also, my youngest saw the PDF and said he wants to play the Mouse Game.

I got a notification email earlier today from about the Pathfinder 2e book coming back in stock, and by the time I clicked the link to the retailer's site they were sold out again. So I'm guessing Paizo are doing okay at the moment.

The Mausritter box is one of the most gorgeous RPGs I've seen. Get The Estate as well if you can!

The Estate sold out long ago, alas.

Well it's still available in pdf and it's less important to have that set in hard copy at least.

Oh, I didn't think to look for PDFs..! Thanks, I'll check it out.

I spent a lot of this weekend at the Conpulsion rpg convention in Edinburgh. It was good! I ran a session of old school D&D for a table of one mum and four eight-year olds and then today I ran a session of Offworlders. The D&D game was pretty good, but I was really pleased with Offworlders. I gave them loads of silly guns from video games (BFG, Portal Gun, Sheepinator, a few others) and they had to fight their way through some daft alien fauna and lots of Earth Defence Force style giant ants. Dead on three hours even with character generation.

I've downloaded the FoundryVTT v11 developer preview – mostly to test my own systems rather than planning to run anything with it yet; most things seem to work out of the box, which is nice – and I'm quite impressed with the glow-up it's received. It's not a huge change, but it looks much slicker, especially on a 4k monitor.

Local hero @Hapimeses managed to get his WFRP actual play off the ground. 1st episode is here: https://youtu.be/w8AxAuSm8F0

Last night's Scum & Villainy session was the best kind of chaos, even with a reduced party size.

Last time, I'd given them the choice between two different missions – an exciting, time-sensitive train heist with a big payout, or going to steal a datapad from a pawn shop (for significantly less money). They chose the pawn shop, and for the crimes of literally no prep and calling that job "the boring option" the players (and dice) made sure it was anything but.

After some relatively sedate information-gathering about the pawn shop owner's whereabouts and habits, they came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to kidnap her and get the item's location out of her. So: assault approach, grabbing her at an arranged meeting in her own pawn shop where they were posing as sellers of an extremely rare (and highly illegal) space coral.

The engagement roll did not go well, right out of the gate. Doubting their veracity, and tempted by the prospect of capturing and selling the team's Stitch (a hyper-intelligent chimpanzee on the lam), the pawn shop owner locked herself in a forcefield and attempted to knockout gas the three party members in the shop.

At this point, the Muscle drove the getaway car through the wall. The pawn shop security guard (previously outside the front door) grabbed the chimp in his cybernetic arms, which were popped off remotely by the team's Mystic. The chimp attempted to sedate the now-disarmed guard – dubbed "Cyberboy" – but missed with the syringe and numbed up his own arm instead.

Backup guards arrived and were promptly run over by the Muscle in the getaway car (pulling a slick J-turn out of the pawn shop wall), but an attempt to kidnap Cyberboy went poorly and he legged it, still sans arms.

The team eventually got the forcefield down and threatened the shop owner into coming with them for "questioning", but she seemed more annoyed than worried – at least until the monkey started concocting and administering the truth serum. She was extremely cooperative, the dice finally coming to the players' side and giving them a crit on the Consort roll, calling her courier to bring the item to a pre-arranged secondary location.

Unfortunately she passed out immediately afterwards, before the team could identify the secondary location, and they've been able to identify two possible candidates from her hand terminal – 80 miles apart from each other.

So that'll be their next problem. Nobody's taken trauma yet at least, but between the four of them they have three injuries and only 14 combined stress remaining, so it's going to be a tricky one.

I finally played a session of Blades and I’m still not sure what I think of it. It really is all about those Stress points. Still, your pawn shop debacle sounds like a lot of fun.

This was only our seventh session, so I'm definitely still finding my feet – I under-utilise clocks, for one thing. But I feel like last night I finally got over my hesitation to throw around more severe consequences for bad rolls, pushing the players to Resist more.

And it worked! They were eating through Stress, feeling like everything was on the knife-edge of chaos, but still making progress towards their goals rather than just failing.

I was throwing rocks in last night's D&D 5e session. (I'm a player again!)

We had a combat that lasted three rounds, and my owlin ranger managed to outright defeat a bandit, solo, in each round. Critical hit on a guy's kneecap with my crossbow in the first, two-weapon fighting shortswords to another's shoulders in the second, and shot another in the leg in the third.

(I was going for non-lethal damage, as we'll get a higher bounty for bringing them in alive. The fourth bandit in the encounter was taken out more permanently by the druid, who'd wildshaped into a lynx.)

I'm really not used to being so effective in combat. I feel a little bad for the other players, who weren't rolling particularly well.

As ever, cutting edge of the zeitgeist. I just wrote my critique of D&D 5e.

I was running RPGs today at the Cymera SF convention in Edinburgh. I got to run a session for crazy prolific RPG writer Gar Hanrahan which was nice.

One step closer to playing The One Ring, at last - had a session zero tonight creating characters with Sarah and her sister.

Trying to decide now if I ought to play it safe and run one of the prewritten landmark adventures, or just go for it and do something homebrew…

…

…it's going to be homebrew, isn't it?

Traveller Facsimile Edition is free on Drivethru if anyone doesn't have it already:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/355200/Classic-Traveller-Facsimile-Edition

It's one of the best ways to play Traveller IMO.

Oh, cool - I've heard people mention Traveller a lot, but don't actually know much about it!

Well, another player has decided that Scum & Villainy isn't for them, so that looks like the final nail in that campaign. Started with seven players, ended up with just three willing and able to engage with the system.

No idea what we'll be doing next – I've suggested converting to The Expanse for a less improv-heavy system, as that was a main issue some players had, but I don't know that the group's in a position to reach consensus on anything just yet.

Trying not to take it personally.

@Ninchilla I'm a huge fan of Traveller, I probably own over a hundred books. The Facsimile Edition collects the three Corbie of the first edition and they are very retro. That said, of the dozen or so editions out there, I think Classic Traveller is one of the two best options.

If when you read it you find it a bit dry, try rolling up some characters, sectors, worlds and aliens. It's a game which really comes alive when you start rolling.

@aniki That sucks, although it's not the first group I've heard of which bounced off of Scum & Villainy (or FitD in general).

Finally ran my first session of The One Ring last night! Still processing a bit - it's more complicated in play than I sort of expected, but I think as I get more experience with the system, those bumps will smooth out.

I (foolishly) ran an adventure I've written, rather than one of the pre-published ones, but at least it means I worked out some issues with that that I'll be able to improve for the next group.

Journeys were the part I felt the most wary of, going into the game; I still think they're a little too abstract, but part of that was me being so fixated on getting the system right, I don't think I played enough as a narrator. "Pick someone to roll vs. injury" is an underwhelming outcome for Journeys, though, and it makes the journey feel less like a grand adventure, and more like an exercise in hex-counting. In the end, I used the core book rules for determining when events happened, and a combination of the Strider Mode Journey Events tables and the "Encounters along the East Road" table in the core book to populate the events. I think it worked okay, but I'll try to streamline the process a bit for next time.

Combat was surprisingly a bit of a slog; their first fight was against a couple of Goblin Archers, who they dispatched fairly easily, but encounter number 2 - against a single Fell Wraith guarding the entrance to an ancient Elven hideout - took about an hour. It didn't help that its abilities meant it was able to just avoid death three times, but I only had 2 Player-heroes - which meant not only were there fewer attacks going at the bad guy, the different Stance Combat Actions (Defend Ally, Intimidate Foe, etc.) didn't get used, because just attacking was almost always the most effective option.

Overall, we had a decent time; there was some good RP around the rules-y stuff, and I got useful feedback that will hopefully help me streamline things for my next run at the system.

If there's a weakness to the system, it's tied to perhaps its strongest aspect: its dedication to the setting. There are several places where there are mechanics for things that maaaaybe didn't need mechanics, but it's a part of Lord of the Rings, so it's got rules in The One Ring.

That all sounds like what I expected from the game. It's all a bit too structured and too meta for me. Progress ends up defined more by dice rolls and pools of points than by roleplaying and player decisions. That's not bad necessarily, but it's not what I'm looking for.

To a certain extent, I like the points - in theory, at least. The idea of having and spending resolve/hope to improve your odds, but at the risk that you'll have less in the tank if things take a turn later is pretty compelling to me; I do think there are probably too many competing "currencies", though.

I’ve just got to the second fellowship phase for our group- and I have to agree about the Journey stuff, I’ve just simplified it a little by having the players roll, and then get a bonus or debuff on their next Patron.

I think my overall feeling after a six month run is that the role playing is most important.

I’ve laid a number of threads for the party, but at every opportunity they’ve run away from the first sign of trouble - I think a couple more weapons will help that!

The Cairn 2e playtest is available. It looks really nice. Worth a look if you like the Into the Odd family of games. https://newschoolrevolution.com/2023/07/10/cairn-2e-playtest

Bundle of Holding have all of Root up for $15 at the moment. It's a PBtA take on the asymmetrical board game of the same name, which features the most adorable art of backstabbing, conniving animal ruffians you'll ever see.

I've spent the last few days reading it, and it's an interesting setting, with a lot of political/factional manoeuvring built in at the ground level. The emphasis is definitely on a… flexible morality; the PCs are definitely more on the anti- side of the hero coin. All of the playbooks (9 in the core book) include a background in some kind of criminality, ranging from light larceny to full-on arson.

For the unfamiliar, the party are a band of Vagabonds - effectively mercenaries, travelling from clearing to clearing in a dangerous woodland and taking on missions for the various political factions who control them - the haughty Eyrie Dynasties, the militaristic Marquise de Cat, or the rebellious Woodland Alliance. The Travellers and Outsiders book (also in the bundle!) includes a company of mercantile beavers, a Duchy of moles who are tunnelling under everything , and a cult of lizards who worship a dragon and… just want to grow gardens?

Just as a setting, I love this game. It's burrowed right into my brain, and I've already ordered the hardback of the core book and started writing something to run in it Some Day™…

I've heard good things about Root but I haven't read it myself. You make it sound fun for sure.

Got my Kickstarter rewards for Dragonbane. It looks pretty great! I like the roll-under for skills, and the progression mechanic is intriguing. Not entirely sure how NPCs work (the GM section of the rule book is very thin), but monster attacks being effectively auto-hit (players can attempt to dodge) is an interesting approach. I'm all for less rolling as a GM.

Mine arrived today just before lunch. Only a cursory glance so far, but I've read all the PDFs pretty thoroughly and I agree that the some of the process of running the game is a little light or vague.

I might just run one of the adventures and see how it goes.

We played Dragonbane! I ran the intro and one of the other adventures for a chaotic, all-mallard group of ne'er-do-wells including aniki. He'll be able to provide more of a sense from the players' side, but as GM, I think it works better than I feared it might.

One of the big things I was worried about was combat initiative; the idea of drawing a new initiative order every round send like it might be a lot of upkeep, but it actually kept moving just fine. I also thought that reactions using up your turn for the round would feel kind of restrictive, but (as written, at least) there are never do many enemies hitting so many players that nobody gets to attack in a round, and there was at least one occasion where someone chose to take a hit so they could try and kill an enemy on their turn.

As for what didn't work so well, I think the maps are kind of poor, from a tactical point of view. We played two - the opening scene, which takes place in a pretty barren canyon with little to no cover or tactical features; and Bothild's Lode, which is a handful of corridors too narrow to move around the giant enemy snake you're supposed to fight threre. I think if I run then again, I might homebrew a bit to try and make things a little more flexible and interesting.

Finally, it's not part of the system, per se, but everyone really leaned into the Daffy/Darkwing Duck idiom, and it was one of the funniest games I've had in ages. Lots of duck puns.

I just realised the snake boss has Ferocity 2, meaning it should have had twice as many turns as it did. Gah.

Oh, well - next time!

If you are interested in the role of the designer in shaping your play, this video is essential.

It's ostensibly a review of Root: The RPG, but it also covers The Stanley Parable, Severance, theForge, the Gauntlet, the capitalist nature of Magpie Games, and ABA and the concept that game designers are capable of programming players and the ethics of that.

Worth every one of its 181 minutes run time!

Watching in fits and starts, so I've still not made it to the end - just over halfway! - but it's an interesting view on games as behavioural (if not mind) control.

I've just got to the first bit of "review" of Root, and while I recognise most of the issues they identify with regard to the meagre worldbuilding, they're not really a problem for me - as someone who tends to chafe against prewritten settings, leaving all that stuff vague or unanswered means I have a lot of blanks I'm excited to fill in. If the book says "there's no answer", then, uh… fuck you, book, yeah there is.

The thing about the ad-copy product-shilling is pretty bang-on, though.

I ran the first session of the Dragonbane Starter Box adventure in Foundry at the weekend; it went great! The system is very well built, intuitive to use, and strikes a nice balance between sticking to the layout of the physical sheet and the benefits of a digital one.

The group enjoyed themselves too, despite coming dangerously close to a TPK on the first encounter. This was a combination of a few factors: I'd accidentally put an extra goblin in the opposition, probably ran them a little smarter than I should have, and got very (un)lucky with a couple of crits against weaker party members. The party also isn't terrifically spec'ed for combat (we have two bards, an artisan and a low-damage mage), which would be fine in a more homebrew campaign, but this adventure as written throws a lot more combat into the mix than I would normally run and they might find themselves struggling if I can't pull punches more.

Once they made it through, though, things went much smoother; they made it to the village without much trouble, made contact with a questgiver, and had some good RP with villagers and each other.

If there's one issue with the Foundry implementation, it might be that the map sizes are far too big for players on slow connections. I've had to manually edit some files down and resize the scenes to make loading quicker — especially on the main Misty Vale map; it's over 18MB by default!

Watching in fits and starts, so I've still not made it to the end

A little farther through - about the two-hour mark - but a lot of the issues they have seem to be more with PBtA games in general, rather than Root, in particular the concept of Playbooks with limited Moves and the specificity of Move triggers.

I mean, they're not wrong, but it's not just Root doing it.

I get more what they're saying about the (lack of) worldbuilding, too, and I can see their point. To be honest, maybe I'm going overly easy on the book because I, uh… didn't actually read it cover to cover? I tend to just skim RPG books, especially the setting stuff.

I keep coming back to a bit earlier in the essay, though, where they're laughing at the idea of those two podcasters talking about RPGs as though they're Suitsian games, but then the video approaches Root through that lens, and is enraged when it's not one? I guess maybe I'm muddled over the premise.

There has been some discussion elsewhere about whether Vi is criticising Root or All PbtA. I think they are ctiticising All RPGs Like Root, which isn't all of PbtA, but it is a lot of them.

I forget why they came back to the Suitsian thing, but I think the point is just that they defences of this approach are only valid if we assume Root is a Suitsian game, which I think it's pretty clear it isn't. So I think Vi might have been getting annoyed that people keep acting like it is Suitsian, when it absolutely isn't.

I think your admission that you bought it, played it and liked it, despite not really reading it, backs up Vi's point quite well.

Yeah, if you're taking the book as a strict limit on the things you can or cannot do, it's probably not a great instruction manual - but I don't know that it's worse than any other RPG? The whole point of RPGs is to go around the edges where there aren't rules, though I agree that Root's specific (and repeated) claim that doing so is Against The Spirit Of The Game is quite weird.

I think it's well-established round these parts, though, that I'm generally easily pleased. I think Root is an interesting springing-off point for a story, and as someone who prefers to do my own worldbuilding, all those blanks to fill in aren't necessarily a negative for me.

I'll wait until you've watched the end of the video before commenting further.

Okay, finally finished it, and… yeah, they're right about pretty much everything.

I definitely agree 100% with the philosophy or what RPGs are - or should be - in the closing statement.

I think my attitude towards Root - or any game, really - is based on that philosophy; yeah, there's maybe a varying amount of bullshit shit in any book that I dislike or disagree with, but I'm perfectly willing to throw that in the bin and use what's left as a framework for the stories I want to tell.

I think I'm making the same distinction between Root as an RPG and ROOT: THE RPG™ as the video does, I'm just less mad bout it.

The last 20 minutes or so make a pretty good argument for getting mad about it, though - or at least, less tolerant of it.

Can someone summarize the video? I'm not spending 3 hours on it.

…not really. It meanders quite a lot.

I guess the gist of it is that trying to treat RPGs the same way as board games (i.e., making a lot of rules about The Correct Way To Play) is bad because you're not trying to help tell a story, you're trying to control your players' behaviour. There's a lot of stuff in there about what kind of boils down to what I think of as toxic GM behaviour, where you're trying to reward or punish their players into making the "correct" (or "functional") choices for the GM's story, and how some games/designers try to codify that incentive into the rules of their game.

They really don't like Magpie (and don't seem to be much of a fan of PBtA in general).

I wrote a 400 weird summary for a friend. One sec…

AAA tldw

Vi spends a lot of the video reading through the Root RPG, highlighting at every turn how turgid, pointlessly restrictive and dehumanising it is. Root offers no insights into the setting, no details to colour your game but claims that if you follow its rules you will get the Root RPG experience, despite a significant proportion of its rules being restrictions, things that the players are not allowed to do. Essentially the book is a lot of promises and useless words.

But Vi points out how the book lays claim to everything good which happens at the table. Player creativity isn't relevant here, it's just the game functioning as intended. Everything the GM says and does is claimed as a Move so that's all thanks to good game design too. This is all despite the actual instructions being largely nonsense.

So Vi asks how did we get here? How did we end up with one of the biggest RPG Kickstarters ever being a useless book which nobody cares about and nobody plays?

The answer is Forge theory.

Vi backs this up by discussing GNS/BigModel/CreativeAgenda and how it talks about functional Vs dysfunctional play (so behavioural therapy) how it centers the designers vision (reducing player agency). Vi spends a lot of time discussing how behavioural therapy is bad and how the designer's creative agenda is only valuable if you believe that there is a right way to play games.

So what is the value of Forge theory? Marketing.

Forge theory tells us that it is possible to fix bad play (bad players) by providing the right system. Games are pitched as experiences replicating the IP customers want to inhabit. They are told "Follow these rules to see the art of Root come alive!" but then the Root RPG takes your $600,000 and writes in a book "describe everything as if it is the art come to life".

Root, and games like it, are trying to sell our own creativity back to us.

Vi goes on to talk about how we don't even have language for play, because Forge thinking means that reviewers, bloggers, critics just talk about the concept of the RPG and the rules of the RPG and never the quality of play.

Vi finished by saying that they don't want RPGs to be another corporatised commodity sold back to us. Play is (or should be!) folk art which we create for ourselves and our friends.

Okay, yeah, that's a better summary.

reviewers, bloggers, critics just talk about the concept of the RPG and the rules of the RPG and never the quality of play.

Isn't the the quality of play massively dependent on the people at the table, though? There's no universal experience of any RPG system beyond "what's in the book" (and even that is open to a broad spectrum of interpretations).

Once you start putting rules down on paper, you're carving out spaces of what players are and aren't able to do. By codifying the abilities and skills of a character, you're going to be pushing players to think of that character in those terms.

It's not always as strict about "players are not permitted to X" as in a videogame, but even the loosest rulesets I've read encourage some behaviours and discourage others – even just by the way the character sheet prioritises information.

And so long as D&D is the 800lb gorilla in the room, I don't think licensed PbtA games are the major threat to creativity and folk art in the RPG space.