Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?
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My favorite game right now is Delta Green it uses a modified version of the BRP system developed by Chaosium. So everything is percentile blackjack. It's really easy to introduce people to and the only complex rules are those that can be ignored until you're ready to deal with them.
It's also, and you'll see a running theme here, a modern day horror game where you play government agents (or subcontractors) that are involved in a secret government conspiracy to fight the unnatural. It's a very deadly game for PCs and there are a number of ways to make it super bleak, which turns out my player's love.
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I've tried a lot of things over the years. But I keep coming back to D&D.
I prefer 3.5/Pathfinder.
I gave 5e a couple years in my online campaign and finally called it off and converted everything to 3.5 with a Pathfinder allowance.
Of course, I have a decent number of house rules. That is what I like most about pen and paper RPGs. I can do WTF ever I want.
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I think that I just want to move to Pathfinder.
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@scottalanmiller said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
I think that I just want to move to Pathfinder.
Pathfinder is basically D&D without traditions that tie you to bad ideas.
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@kelly said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@scottalanmiller said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
I think that I just want to move to Pathfinder.
Pathfinder is basically D&D without traditions that tie you to bad ideas.
Exactly, that's why I want it. I'm a D&D 3.5 fan.
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@kelly said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@scottalanmiller said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
I think that I just want to move to Pathfinder.
Pathfinder is basically D&D without traditions that tie you to bad ideas.
I mean it's 100% tradition though. It's a straight copy of the OGL 3.5 rules that they've been, slowly, adding to over the years. Even Starfinder, their Science Fiction version, is basically a reskinned 3.5. While that's not necessarily a bad thing there was a lot of room to improve on the 3.5 ruleset.
I enjoy Pathfinder, I've run it at a few cons, but it's just as clunky and crunchy as 3.5 was, even more so as they have tried to add mechanics on top of it with simplifying the base game.
5e, while not perfect, does improve on the game quite a bit. It's not as jarring as the 3.5->4 edition switch was, and kind of combines the best of both worlds between those two rule sets. My big complaint (and I'll mimic @JaredBusch here) was that they don't put out nearly enough supplements for it. They have moved away from the individual campaign books and moved to online distribution with DMGuild.
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Actually my biggest complaint with 5e is how magic items have been scaled back. This is a continuation from the abomination that was 4e.
I run high magic campaigns because I want the wonderous to happen. I don't want the same boring adventure story every time.
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@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@kelly said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@scottalanmiller said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
I think that I just want to move to Pathfinder.
Pathfinder is basically D&D without traditions that tie you to bad ideas.
I mean it's 100% tradition though. It's a straight copy of the OGL 3.5 rules that they've been, slowly, adding to over the years.
That's what I want. Exactly. I don't want big changes. It's a rule engine, I don't want that changing other than tweaks that are tested over a long period of time. I want changes to be in the story, not in the engine.
In real life, we don't change physics to tell different stories, we write good stories.
That's fundamentally why I detest super hero genre - they tell terrible stories and try to make it interesting by changing physics instead.
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I wasn't playing D&D during 3.5 or 4e, but I have been playing my current 5e campaign for about a year and a half I think. I've heard that a lot of math is needed in pathfinder and 3.5 respectively. I like the roleplaying aspect of it but combat can be boring depending on what your party chooses to do. We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
I also played a Deathwatch campaign, which I absolutely hated. Spacemarines just don't have a lot of wiggle room for a lot of roleplaying (especially compared to something mostly open like D&D) because ultimately, you're a space marine.
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I've never actually played any pen n paper games...
I guess I should probably give it a try but I feel that making an investment to purchase a book etc would be wasted.
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
That means you have a bad DM.
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@jaredbusch said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
That means you have a bad DM.
It's kind of a hard thing to fix from what I'm seeing. Sometimes his CC fails and other times it's OP. What do you think he could do better?
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@jaredbusch said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
That means you have a bad DM.
It's kind of a hard thing to fix from what I'm seeing. Sometimes his CC fails and other times it's OP. What do you think he could do better?
Kill off the bard or force a random class reroll
I honestly have no clue, am just being sarcastic.
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@jaredbusch said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
That means you have a bad DM.
It's kind of a hard thing to fix from what I'm seeing. Sometimes his CC fails and other times it's OP. What do you think he could do better?
That's easy, introduce a single monster at a higher CR that has advantage on Charisma or Wisdom saves.
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@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@jaredbusch said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
That means you have a bad DM.
It's kind of a hard thing to fix from what I'm seeing. Sometimes his CC fails and other times it's OP. What do you think he could do better?
That's easy, introduce a single monster at a higher CR that has advantage on Charisma or Wisdom saves.
This guy happens to be the only person attempting to min/max his character so the rest of us are pretty underpowered, myself most of all right now. We've fought things that have advantage on CHA + WIS and it's still just chance. Hypnotic Pattern is pretty damn strong.
He could add in creatures with immunity to charm but I just don't think specifically trying to counter certain spells in the party is necessarily the right way to go either. It's like taking a spell away from him. Not really a solution for the rest of the campaign.
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On a side note, this is a pretty hilarious post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/8r0z4u/how_edgy_is_your_resident_edgelord/
"I was reading char resumes for a game I was going to run. Came across one, his character duel weilded katanas which were made from his parents spines, because he had killed his parents while possessed by a darkness demon. The demon was now his slave though as he overwhelmed it with his own inner darkness which was greater than any fiend of the hells. Also he had a demon eye and a devil wing.
Rejected faster than you can teleport behind me and say “nothing personnel kid.”
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
Hypnotic Pattern is pretty damn strong.
I can't count the number of monsters immune to charm.....
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
He could add in creatures with immunity to charm but I just don't think specifically trying to counter certain spells in the party is necessarily the right way to go either. It's like taking a spell away from him. Not really a solution for the rest of the campaign.
This is the right way to do it. It will force the player to think on their feet and use tools in their arsenal that they haven't touched yet because one of them was so effective. It can lead to dramatic tension and make battles more rewarding.
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
He could add in creatures with immunity to charm but I just don't think specifically trying to counter certain spells in the party is necessarily the right way to go either. It's like taking a spell away from him. Not really a solution for the rest of the campaign.
This is not correct. The DMs job is to challenge the players. Every single campaign will have some player come to the fore with some skill or ability that is overwhelming.
A good DM will counter it so that the payer has to use other tools and not just rely on their one trick pony.
That doens't mean taking it away. It means thinking for yourself. A DM that cannot think for theirself and change something about the encounters to handle something as simple as a 3rd level illusion needs to hang it up.
