Tabletop Games Thread

[warellis]

Nope. I've not looked at S&S products since 3.5, really, except as things to mess around with in PF1E.

Which ones were around then? I only know of Scarred Lands from the Swords & Sorcery product line.

[SpoonyViking]

I've read Beasts & Barbarians (though it was an older edition, since it was back in 2011, 2012, I think), but never played it. The only SW games I've run or played were in the Deadlands setting.

[Twelveseal]

Which ones were around then? I only know of Scarred Lands from the Swords & Sorcery product line.

To be fair, not much was available locally, so it was mostly just the Scarred Lands setting's monster manuals, Creature Collections. There was obviously more content, most prominently the three region books, but short of ordering it or going out of town to get it at the time it wasn't available to me.

The exceptions to the Scarred Lands stuff, though, would be Dragonlance and Ravenloft.

[Ratman]

>good day, the payment with the credit card xyz in the internet shop ROLL20 NET has been denied due to not enough credit balance. Please add money to your account first. Your bank

Four year long campaign just got finished 12 hours ago.

[mAc Chaos]

Nice! What was the campaign finale?

[Ratman]

There'll be a storytime on /tg/, so I can't spoil much.

[Deathhappens]

Storytimes are bestimes. What thread should I be looking for?


edit: I do realise that was a 5 day post I responded to, but I can still dig up the archives.

[Ratman]

I wanted to run it on Christmas, but writing even the first bit up is taking us a lot longer than I thought, mostly we're unsure of how much the setting needs to be explained, to strike a balance between not slogging it down too much and not confusing the audience too much.

Look for Magical Girl Noir World. I hope you like sparklies, because this is going to be some serious sparkly autism.

[Iceblade44]

Well, I feel terrible. One of my players is getting overloaded by anxiety and will probably quit because of it, and I probably am partly responsible. Huuuuuuu

[SpoonyViking]

How, exactly?

[Iceblade44]

So basically it contributed to 2 parts that fostered the players anxiety.

1. They weren't comfortable in rping the character they created, they said didn't know what path to take with her and just cringed whenever she played, since she felt she was doing something dumb. For that I advised on focusing on one aspect of the character or to edit her character to become more clearer. Which seemed to work but we didn't get a chance to do much progress with it.

2. The other was because she was getting annoyed by a dynamic by the other players. They were good friends, often played together and thus for here they had their characters know each prior to the beginning of the game. Now this had the effect that these two often rped their characters together and was very much the face of the party. This however made her feel like a third wheel since she didn't see her character really a part of these twos relationship thus got irritated everytime whenever they did something their first action was to tell it to the other ones character, since in game their close friends. For this I advised her to let her complaints of being left out known to the duo, which she did and the others understood. Understanding why she felt that way, that they would try to have their characters form a closer bond with her.

But then she had to advise the other characters that if it was really this much of a problem, maybe they shouldn't have their characters know each other in other games? Now this annoyed the other two, saying that no. Having their characters know each other is a rare thing and they haven't done it like for other games and that they shouldn't just assume so and portray it like it's all their fault despite having made efforts to include her in their rp. They put it in a way blunter then I would have liked and well she didn't take it that well. It's not like the other two were saying that angrily, more annoyed but well this gal was literally a ball of anxiety so she took it as both of them now hating her.

In the end we decided that we have been trying to fix it for a while now and she just wasn't having fun and was getting to much stress, sadness, and self-hate from it and that it be better for her to just quit and move on. It just well, hurts it bit that it was my advice that served as the trigger. Since it was I her told her to talk with them and that they were often together in other games as well and kinda gave her the image that this was a type of thing they usually did in the others. It just feels like I failed and screwed up as a GM you know?

[Twelveseal]

Reminds me of how Roadbuster and Elf would play...
Anyway, I wouldn't say this is your fault. This seems like a situational problem rather than a management issue.

Gimme a while to think on it and I might have some advice... as is now, I'm just thinking of the other two players getting involved in incorporating the problem child's pc into their group somehow, and maybe help resolve her RP issues at the same time.

[SpoonyViking]

It may not help much, but I don't think you're at fault, Iceblade.
My advice would be to let the player make a new PC, preferably one that can also be linked to the other PCs' background (you will have to work that out with them ahead of time).

[Iceblade44]

Thanks guys. I have settled thing amibically with the player. Just a downer anyway. Thanks for the advice, will keep in mind if something like this were to happen again.

[Sesto]

tfw your character just gets one-shot (instant death) at full hp

[SpoonyViking]

Yikes! What happened?

[Twelveseal]

Clearly, he angered the RNGod.

[Sesto]

We were playing Waterdeep Dragon Heist. We were investigating an incident involving elves being murdered and decapitated in the Dock Ward.
My character is a half-elf so I was used as bait. We managed to attract who we suspected to be the murderer and I lured them to an alleyway, with the entire rest of the party trailing us.
Initiative starts and we all roll high. But the first turn the murderer goes, he pulls out a pistol (we had no real reason to suspect he'd have one) and shoots me. I die. Also my arms gets blown off.

The party managed to resurrect me by going to a random temple, and our Warforged Artificer is making me an artificial limb, so I guess it ended up okay.

[SpoonyViking]

Didn't know firearms were that powerful in 5E. I remember they used to suck unless you had a bunch of feats or class features to improve them.

[Deathhappens]

I wanted to run it on Christmas, but writing even the first bit up is taking us a lot longer than I thought, mostly we're unsure of how much the setting needs to be explained, to strike a balance between not slogging it down too much and not confusing the audience too much.

Look for Magical Girl Noir World. I hope you like sparklies, because this is going to be some serious sparkly autism.

Mahou Shoujo is the best sparklies. Even better if you were running Princess: The Hopeful, I've been trying to track down stories by people who've actually played the system for ages.

- - - Updated - - -

So basically it contributed to 2 parts that fostered the players anxiety.

1. They weren't comfortable in rping the character they created, they said didn't know what path to take with her and just cringed whenever she played, since she felt she was doing something dumb. For that I advised on focusing on one aspect of the character or to edit her character to become more clearer. Which seemed to work but we didn't get a chance to do much progress with it.

2. The other was because she was getting annoyed by a dynamic by the other players. They were good friends, often played together and thus for here they had their characters know each prior to the beginning of the game. Now this had the effect that these two often rped their characters together and was very much the face of the party. This however made her feel like a third wheel since she didn't see her character really a part of these twos relationship thus got irritated everytime whenever they did something their first action was to tell it to the other ones character, since in game their close friends. For this I advised her to let her complaints of being left out known to the duo, which she did and the others understood. Understanding why she felt that way, that they would try to have their characters form a closer bond with her.

But then she had to advise the other characters that if it was really this much of a problem, maybe they shouldn't have their characters know each other in other games? Now this annoyed the other two, saying that no. Having their characters know each other is a rare thing and they haven't done it like for other games and that they shouldn't just assume so and portray it like it's all their fault despite having made efforts to include her in their rp. They put it in a way blunter then I would have liked and well she didn't take it that well. It's not like the other two were saying that angrily, more annoyed but well this gal was literally a ball of anxiety so she took it as both of them now hating her.

In the end we decided that we have been trying to fix it for a while now and she just wasn't having fun and was getting to much stress, sadness, and self-hate from it and that it be better for her to just quit and move on. It just well, hurts it bit that it was my advice that served as the trigger. Since it was I her told her to talk with them and that they were often together in other games as well and kinda gave her the image that this was a type of thing they usually did in the others. It just feels like I failed and screwed up as a GM you know?

Yeahh... I think that one's pretty much down to the social skills of the player (and at least partly the other two), not your own. D&D is a social game, after all, you all could've been playing any other tabletop (RPG and non) and if two people are acting really chummy while the third feels excluded the same thing would've happened. As GM you can try to mediate (which you did) but you can't force people to play together if they aren't "clicking", so to speak.

If I had to give advice on the matter, however, bizzarely enough I'd advice getting a fourth player in, preferably a complete stranger. That way a)social anxiety player gets reassurance that they're not the "odd one out", b) there's someone even newer for them to bring up to speed (you could even ask them to do so directly) which gives them a way to bond in-and-out-of character and c) removes the pressure of the other duo to include social anxiety player in everything they do even when it wouldn't make logical sense. But of course, that's one more person's baggage to take into account and one more person's work for you as a GM to go through. Though from a balance perspective 4-man parties are ideal, imo.