Questions that don't deserve their own thread.

I'll start. What are some thematically fitting war animals for orcs that aren't wargs or giant hogs?

Pic unrelated.

Cassowaries.

>>96032491 (OP)
>What are some thematically fitting war animals for orcs that aren't wargs or giant hogs?
Rhinos, easy. Rhinos and hippos are both very Orcish.

Here's a question that's been rankling me in my current campaign: How do you run an effective mystery/murder-mystery scenario when one of the characters has the ability to Read Minds and another has the power to Detect the Supernatural? Without just saying "lol ur powers don't work", that is.

Are there any RPGs that feature only non-human, non-humanoid beings as PCs? Preferably zero humans nor humanoids in the game at all.
(I don't care if it's some artsy auteur shit or if the rules are bad, I'm interested if anyone actually made a completed RPG like that and where to find it.)

>>96032503
Ratites are fairly good candidates for domestication. We have semi-domesticated a number of times.

Also bison and moose can be semi-domesticated so, if someone stuck to it long enough, those surely could be domesticated as well. Also musk-ox, which are just sheep.

If you wanted just hunting animals, cheetas make a good one that can absolutely be domesticated.

>>96032525
If you're going for "fuck it, it's fantasy" then yeah, I like rhinos or hippos. They're both way too large, their care too specialized, and far too aggressive for it to make realistic sense, but I like them thematically.

>>96032615
No humans? Absolutely and it's awesome.

No humanoids? Surely there's some indie bullshit out there somewhere, but I can't help you. I'd be shocked if there isn't a ttrpg out there that lets you striaght up play as sentient vehicles.

>>96032624
The Aggression is a positive for Orcs. Heck, an angry mistrested hippo knocking a rider off to eat it is even weirdly onbrand.

>>96032624
>If you're going for "fuck it, it's fantasy" then yeah
Nigga it's literally fantasy. If you don't want fantastical mounts, everyone's riding horses, camels or MAYBE elephants.
Moose riders would be cool though.

>>96032645
>hippo knocking a rider off to eat
Aren't they strict herbivores?

>>96032615
>>96032643
I tried to find one (non-humanoid ttrpg) but only came up with furry shit in which the characters might as well be humanoid for all they're anthropomorphized, or games where you play dragons that do the same thing.

Looks like Car Wars did eventually get releases where your car IS your character, so I guess that semi-fulfills what I imagined has to be out there somewhere. But I imagine the setting still assumes human involvement. But somewhere out there someone musta said "like transformers without the transforming."

>>96032775
Nope. They've been seen eating both wildebeasts and zebras. Personally? I imagine they do it just to prove they can.

Any recommendations for a system?

I'm starting to gather friends who are interested in tabletop. One has experience in World of Darkness and the other has played CRPGs a bunch, presumably exposing him to dnd basics. I have experience with dnd 3.5, pathfinder 1e, a smidge of world of darkness, and dnd 4e (I actually really enjoyed this one as a player because I like tactics games and it was the most that I ever felt that our party was working as a team). I'm going to need a system that's easy to run, easy to learn, and avoids some of the things I dislike about dnd and derivative that I've played.

The lense that I view things through is that there are combat, social, and puzzle encounters. I greatly dislike that so commonly a fighter is only good at combat and has fuckall to contribute in dialogue, investigation, research, utility, or resource acquisition and management. I hate the endless +1, +1 necessary to keep up with premade character-level threats.

I've never ran a game before, and neither have my friends. I'm looking to run a simple standard fantasy game (human players, human settlements, perhaps some beast races as threats, perhaps perhaps they'll discover elves or dwarves way down the line). I want to keep things low powered, and maybe not mudcore, but mudsoft (as a level 1 sorc, I was the hero of the day because I had a bear trap and flasks of oil to set up for ambushes).

Eons ago, GURPS was on my mind. 13th Age too, as people said it was similar to DND 4e, but I never cracked open a book.

>>96032790
>I'm going to need a system that's easy to run, easy to learn
Pick any retclone or old edition of D&D and run a module you like.
>the things I dislike about dnd and derivative that I've played.
You prolly need to say what those are.
>I hate the endless +1, +1 necessary to keep up with premade character-level threats.
I don't understand what that means.

>I've never ran a game before, and neither have my friends
I suggest reading the old Dungeon magazines to find one (google it and you can find them all online for free. My personal favorites are in issues #40-70 or so). They're short and sweet and generally are set up to launch you into your own campaign, rather than official modules that lay out a campaign trajectory.

>>96032790
I'll have to throw in my two cents and say: Ryuutama

If you and your group like, or at least have a higher than average resistance for the animes, Ryuutama is great!
It's focused on survival and exploration, having you track travel time as well as food and water. Oh and also carry weight.

Combat is not a big part of it, all of its systems are simple enough and interact brilliantly.

>>96032491 (OP)
Bears, mountain lions, and hawks. Any animal that can be plied and partially tamed with offerings of meat, but which will still be extremely dangerous when unleashed in the direction of an enemy. The idea that they'd "tame" boars even seems silly, because they'll lose their dangerous qualities if domesticated too much. You want them feral and violent, not docile and controlled.

Any advice for decision paralysis on what type of campaign you want to run? For context I am trying to run Everyday Heroes (5e Modern, but committing to the bit the players are action movie heroes) and I have 3 campaign ideas in my head but can't decide which one to go with:
1. Half-Life 1/Abiotic Factor inspired dungeon crawl through a super science facility
2. Men in Black/Control inspired campaign where the party investigates, hunts, and contains of supernatural/eldritch stuff
3. X-Files/X-Com inspired campaign about stopping alien infiltrators and outright invasion.
The system can reasonably handle doing all three (in typical 5e fashion), but I can't decide on how to proceed.

>>96032615
>>96032776
OK, let's count anthro furfags as humanoids for the purpose of my question. I was interested in shit that's really out there, not just rubberheads or animalistic features but either freakshit beyond freakshit or something entirely alien.
>>96032643
Sentient non-humanoid machines would count too. Titles please?

>>96032834
>Problems
Yes, I mentioned them but you did understand
>+1,+1
Got to get that cloak of resistance, got to get that +1 sword, can't take a dip in a class to obtain an interesting game mechanic 'cause I need to maintain full BAB to hit anything, can't buy any interesting magical gear cause I need to keep increases my to-hit, damage, ac, key attributes, save dc, etc
That's something I want to avoid.

I ought to take a look at old modules for systems that I have played, though.

>>96033303
I didn't understand it because I'm not clear. Are you saying the problem is that some monsters require +1 magic items or better to hit, in D&D? Is that what you're trying to avoid?

>>96033315
It's the endless chase of increasing key stats, +1 at a time

>>96033338
I still can't tell whether you're trying to just say "not any D&D or retclone," or whether you're worried that the problems of 4e might impact retclones/TSR (they don't). But good luck, anon.

>>96032491 (OP)
Can I play /tg/s in-person if I'm terrible at math?

>>96033921
ttrpgs? sure, just look up a build online for the particular system and follow that, actual math at the table is then quite easy

>>96032790
>Eons ago, GURPS was on my mind
Your instincts were correct. Come home, Aryan man.

>>96033921
How terrible? Because the overwhelming majority of RPGs made in the last 30 or so years have been very simple, math-wise. Can you add and/or subtract single digit numbers? If so, you're smart enough to do RPG math.

Think Wood Elves in a modern setting would be more Amish, sticking to the old ways with limited technology, NW hippies who are just annoying about how much closer they are to nature, or Southern rednecks who just live in the woods doing redneck shit and making due with whatever?

>>96034247
>Can you add and/or subtract single digit numbers?
Isn't there shit like multiplication for damage calculation or some shit?

>>96032525
>Here's a question that's been rankling me in my current campaign: How do you run an effective mystery/murder-mystery scenario when one of the characters has the ability to Read Minds and another has the power to Detect the Supernatural? Without just saying "lol ur powers don't work", that is.

That's easy: the culprit is not among the people that you can interrogate, BUT interrogating them can still give you clues that help solve the mystery.

Imagine, for example, the following scenario: a man has just been killed by an assassin, who immediately left the scene rather than sticking around. None of the man's staff or family that are left behind know who did the murder, and since most of them do not know the assassin is in play they are actively suspecting other culprits or explanations.
The assassin further complicates matters by having what is either shape-shifting or very good illusions that let them mask themselves as other people. This is what they used to get in and out without being detected.

This means that every person who can be interrogated has SOME bit of information that can be a clue to help unravel the story, but most of them may not realize it. There is a lot of red herring information where they suspect each other, but some of those accusations about motive DO feed into the reasons that the assassin was hired to kill the guy in the first place. You also have people giving accounts that the players will need to realize don't add up: there are people that are being spotted in too many places at once at the same times, and realizing that there is a duplication happening will be essential to unraveling the mystery.

The ability to read minds and detect the supernatural, then, lets them gather clues but because the killer isn't HERE you can't just read their mind to find out they did it.

>>96034313
Wood Elves in a modern setting would be radical guerilla ecoterrorists if they are at all still tied to their identity as "protectors of and a part of nature".

>>96034446
So the three crucial lines of inquiry come down to:

> uncovering that no one currently here actually did the murder, and some outsider was responsible
> realizing that the alibis and timelines don't line up to reveal that some people were in multiple places at once, which reveals the shapeshifting and who the assassin was impersonating before and after the murder
> using those testimonies to build a timeline of the killer's actions, revealing their path through the house and therefore roughly where they got in from and how they left.

Ideally, this final bit of information gives the players a strong idea of where the assassin went, and they can then catch up to them and confront them. Perhaps the assassin is hiding somewhere outside of the house for an opportunity to leave undetected, like needing to wait for a boat to arrive that they can leave on, or to impersonate a member of the staff during the day to leave through the front gate without raising suspicion because they need to get back to the nearest town by car or something.
Alternatively: the assassin has a SECOND target that they need to take out, and they were either interrupted during initial assassination and had to back out, or the second target will arrive *in response* to the death of the first person, and the assassin is waiting for them to show up to scratch that name off their list before leaving. This serves as a solid backup plan for you as GM, because it means that if the players botch solving the mystery the assassin basically gives them a second shot at stopping him/catching him.

>>96034313
Radical sovereign citizens that do not respect the laws of man because they were here before humans settled these places and do not recognize the authority of mortal governments.

>>96034416
Not in most of them. I've seen a few systems that use multiplication for some mechanics, but not for damage rolls or whatever.

>>96033247
>Sentient non-humanoid machines
Engine Heart
You can find it on the /tg/ archive or the 1d4chan mirrors with a simply askjeeves search.

I miss Viral...

>>96033921
Any game worth your time requires at most basic addition and comparing numbers during play.

>>96034416
Sometimes in D&D-alikes but your game master will using handle that for you, and its rarely more math than doubled or cut in half.

>>96032491 (OP)
Trying to figure out how to make ice and cold make sense in a sci-fi/fantasy setting.

Throwing chunks of ice at someone is about as stupid as throwing a rock at them and calling it magic.

What would be an interesting way to represent it in the sci-fi context?

>>96033197
I would write a short summary of the feel of each and get input from your players on which sound interesting to them. Even if they end up going "any of these would be cool," they may speculate on potential characters or adventures and you can choose based on the ones that you would be interested in doing. Most players eat whatever they are fed, but something for which they come to the table excited makes your job easier.

If you just wanted someone else to pick for you, do the Half-Life one.

real or mythical, what animal represents Nippon most?

>>96034807
If all you're doing is rationalizing cold/ice/frost as a damage type, apply cryogenic gasses as a sort of reverse flamethrower.

>>96035121
Kirin.

>>96035202
Seconding this

>>96035121
The almost certainly extinct Honshū wolf is a real animal with significant ties to Japanese folklore and religion. The kitsune and tanuki are also interesting, but don't represent muh Wapan very much. Deer (or rather Ame-no-Kaku) would work better than kitsune and tanuki but worse than the Japanese wolf. Finally there's the purely mythical Ōwatatsumi-no-Kami, which given Japan's geography could work as nicely as the wolf, especially since early Japanese Emperors actually sacrificed people to water kami, IIRC.

>>96035268
>>96035202
>>96035248
Excuse me, correct answer coming through.

How the fuck does play by post work? Is it even any fun?

>>96035381
>How the fuck does play by post work?
Poorly. Depends on the setup but typically you state or have some mechanic to post dice rolls and just freeform roleplay around what you do as a result.
>Is it even any fun?
Well, lemme put it this way: know those "Sonic OC donutsteel" that used to be the most popular memes on the internet? Every single one was a real character in a play by post.

>>96035149
That's what I've been going towards. My rational being that the "magic" in setting allows them to do it like Torch from X-Men so all they need is a little bit of fire or liquid ntirogen and they can control and amplify the effects.

>>96032775
Obligate herbivorey does not exist in nature. Grazers will chow down on insects, bones, and even small animals given the chance

>>96036095
Well that's silly. Sure they do. Larger, more complex animals rarely develop it, though.

>>96032491 (OP)
>Questions that don't deserve their own thread.

Do players actually enjoy lots of different elemental/magic-types (lightning, light, shadow, frost, fire, arcane, chaos, etc..) or is it generally perceived as "clutter" compared to a system with several normal damage types (cutting, bludgeoning, etc), but a completely homogenized "magic-damage" type?

>>96036313
NTA but it really doesn't. The only cases where you could conceivably argue it exists, which would be cases where an animal eats exclusively one type of thing like termites, still practice either cannibalism, carrion feeding, or opportunistically eating insects.

>>96036533
I like having different types of damage in so far as that damage takes meaningfully different forms in how it affects the body. GURPS, for instance, has the usual cutting/crushing/piercing/impaling, but then it also has
>Burning: Distinct because taking enough burn damage will set you on fire
>Fatigue: Distinct because it attacks FP instead of HP
>Corrosion: Distinct because it reduces the target's DR
>Toxic: Distinct because it can't affect machines or those with immunity to hazards, and often comes with repeated damage-over-time.

Whereas things like "light" and "shadow" and "arcane" damage types are purely color-swapping and window-dressing.

>>96036533
It works better in video games than TTRPG. In a video game, you get to retry a fight and experiment with different abilities and damage types to find an enemy's weakness if your Plan A isn't cutting it.

In a TTRPG, most fights you only get one shot at. The ability to experiment with your options against a specific enemy is fairly low, unless you make it a recurring enemy that teleports away when defeated/specifically doesn't finish off the players after a wipe. This doesn't make elemental weaknesses *impossible* to include, but it does mean that you either have to telegraph the weaknesses hard in advance or make said weaknesses minor enough that the advantage using them bestows is not important.

>>96032615
Do you consider penguins humanoid
They’re not furries.
>>96032790
I’m just gonna throw it out there that you can get what you want (literally the things you are describing) by playing older versions of DnD, or OSR stuff.
>>96033921
Hasn’t stopped anyone before.
>>96034313
Sad fucks on Native reserves.

>>96036533
Having been futzing with a multitude of homebrews for two different groups, I've found that more than a handful of types ends up as clutter. D&D's almost a dozen is just way too much.
My shitty homebrew uses only four types: Physical, Energy, Frost, and Toxic.

What are some creative ways to have ghosts as obstacles rather than direct combat encounters? If, say, PCs open an ancient tomb and explore it, what would angry ghosts do to scare them away aside from facing then in combat directly? I've thought about ghostly flames floating about or hands coming out of the walls to scratch up a face before disappearing again.

>>96036763
>>96036802
>>96037496

Anon you're quoting, this consensus matches my general experience. I'm going to continue to not worry about it, beyond their practical applications (like fire or acid or poison).

>>96034673
>Engine Heart
Huh, I thought it was something like Nechronica but with robots. I'll take a look.

>>96037691
Engine Heart is TRVE /TG/ heritage. Play it.

>>96032615
Engine Heart?

>>96032491 (OP)
That pic is so stupid.
>Question
Why did you choose such a dumb picture for the thread?

>>96037816
Because it's a generic silly fantasy picture. I always pick those for QTDDTOT threads.

>>96032491 (OP)
No games thread. You guys should really work on making friends and actually playing some table top instead of writing inane, stupid ass shit that nobody at any table gives a flying fuck about.

>>96037649
Illusions. Chasms to the underworld opening up before the PCs, the walls closing in, light sources seemingly snuffing out (turning back on when the illusion ends).

>>96032491 (OP)
Rocs, crocs

Has anyone used Hex Kit and is it worth the money?

>>96032615
Engine Heart.

>>96037809

>>96036533
My players never have a problem with different damage types, but then again I play system where there is a tangible difference between fire damage and lightning damage, and it's not just about weakness.
Life fire obviously can light things on fire, but lightning ignores metal armor and may stun, and cold usually slows or gives penalties of some kind.
And for physical damage types, blunt is good against armor, cut is great in general, piercing can target specific body parts, etc.
So if the damage types are actually meaningfully different, I find players like it.

>>96032491 (OP)
Baboons

>>96032615
>non-human, non-humanoid beings as PCs?
Aw fuck. Mine, but I don’t have anything I could link you to at the moment.
It’s sci-fi, you exclusively play aliens. Some of the antagonists are humanoids, but you can perfectly play a full campaign without encountering them.
Check out “Imperatoris Universe” on Facebook, that’s basically the only thing I have online at the moment

>>96033197
Oh, this one is easy:
You do all three, in that order.
>Players are working in Area 52 (scientists, security…) when things go south. (Campaign 1)
>After showing their prowess there, they are read in and sent on missions as MIB (Campaign 2)
>Turns out the event in Area 52 was the prelude to a full scale invasion (Campaign 3)
Alternatively, you could run them in this order: 2, 1, 3

>>96034313
Like the native tribes who used to live in forests.
In a modern setting, you get multiple shades of them:
>”my distant ancestors used to live in forest and shit” LARPers.
The most dangerous, because they occasionally dip in eco terrorism like >>96034488
>”we were displaced by President Ulminster in 1854 in an event remembered as ‘the path of salt’ and moved to a reservation which can’t even sustain a forest”
Now spend their subsidies drinking themselves to death. See >>96037348
And, lastly
>”We lived in a place remote enough to be ignored through the 19-20th century”
full on uncontacted tribe primitivism. They shoot arrows at anyone coming close to their enchanted forest.

>>96033338
That's inherent to all forms of D&D. Try something like Mini Six, or Blades in the Dark, or look for a decent fantasy PbtA. Try something really different.

>>96032491 (OP)
I'm reading Dungeon World right now and the book tells you to draw a map as you go of dungeons or dangerous areas that you haven't planned out, but in almost all examples of play I've seen not many people seem to be drawing maps, I guess this is something that the DM does? Does this even matter?

>>96049572
It's advice to players, but I've found fewer and fewer players enjoy drawing shit nowadays. Time was, I had exercise books full of shitty doodles of stuff from our campaigns. Lost them all when my shitty 20 something apartment flooded.

>>96050284
ADHD, pls understand.
>>96049572
A big thing is also that GMing has tended to shift into being more lenient about this kind of thing. It used to be predominant that if the players didn’t keep their own map they didn’t have any help - getting lost in a dungeon crawl was the parties fault after all, they would not get any help from the gm. Now the GM might even show the players the map they made for them.

Is there any homebrew content for Stars Without Number?

>>96033921
A GM might balk at you using a phone midsession, but a cheapo calculator would do basically everything you need to do for any given campaign. Like, you would need to be essentially innumerate to not be able to play 99% of TTRPGs.

>>96034313
Rural natives who engage in guerrilla terrorism from time to time. Like in Latin America.

>>96032525
>>96032624
I also immediately thought of rhinos, but because AtLA stamped them as the "bad guy mount" for me

>>96052661
Forgot pic. Slavs are close enough.

>>96052666
Now that I think about it, did they really use rhinos? Just regular rhinos, I mean? Isn't every animal in ATLA a weird hybrid?

Is there a good way to challenge a That Guy who's creeping people out? Like obviously talk to him like an adult, but any tips apart from "draw the rest of the owl?"

>>96052796
There's a bit of komodo dragons mixed into them too.
>Isn't every animal in ATLA a weird hybrid?
There's a few early ones that are just real animals but weird, hybrid animals came about during the production when one of the animators was drawing hybrid animals just to fuck around and people liked it enough that they became canon.
Then there's the... bear. Just a bear.

>>96032491 (OP)
Orcas. Have them as seabound raiders atop these mighty brasts.

>>96050284
>>96050448
The reason I ask is that while dungeon world says its in the theater of the mind, I can't help but think that having a map of the battlefield laid out and monster tokens would be helpful for both the GM and for the players. That being said, maybe he intends it to be the GM drawing the map as the players explore the dungeon for everyone to see, much like how the world map is drawn "in vivo" for players.

>>96032525
Orcs with a cultural relationship with hippos also gives them a neat angle as river raiders/dominators of river trade

Do you anons have any mundane (as in not supernatural) adventure ideas that primarily happen in a settlement? coming up with adventure ideas outside of civilization is easy enough but I kind of struggle thinking about urban adventures. All of my ideas boil down to committing crime, stopping crime, undoing crimes (returning stolen items), dealing with wild animals, gladiator stuff. I think I have a huge blind spot for this kind of thing.
setting is conan-y low fantasy.
system is The Riddle of Steel, so high potential for sword fights are appreciated.
>>96036533
I've never seen it be a problem or not a problem. "this attack does chaos damage" is background noise 99% of the time. as long as the damage types aren't wishy washy and can be concretely defined ("light damage"?) then it's cool.
>>96032491 (OP)
bears
hippos
black horses
nothing (they've heavy) and they're just so large and formidable individually that it kind of cancels out in terms of how dangerous they are collectively. this would have the interesting effect of making orcs susceptible to horseback hit and run tactics, but extremely dangerous in pitched battle which feels pretty appropriate and ambushes.

>>96050448
>It used to be predominant that if the players didn’t keep their own map they didn’t have any help - getting lost in a dungeon crawl was the parties fault after all, they would not get any help from the gm.
I remember playing with my Dad as the GM and he tried to pull that shit on us. We went down a way to a dead end and we wanted to go back and my Dad wouldn't let us because no one drew a map, which I thought was dumb. Usually when you are actually lost in a cave and hit a dead end, you just go back to the last fork in the cave, I don't see the point in holding the players accountable that way unless that's the whole puzzle of the dungeon is that it's a maze.

>>96056614
There’s a big difference between
>we turn around and go through the only door in the room back to the last fork, where we will then try the east passage instead of the west
And
>We’re just going to backtrack all the way to the entrance

>>96054239
Try to be understanding. That Guys fucking suck, but they usually have reasons for sucking, and like with any social encounter approaching them without immediately putting them on the defense/offense will make resolving the situation easier. Besides that, depending on what the creeping out entails and who the people being creeped out are, maybe don't name names.

>>96057152
>>we turn around and go through the only door in the room back to the last fork, where we will then try the east passage instead of the west
Which is what we were trying to do, yes.

>>96057250
nta, but I agree as a former That Guy, I didn't realize how disruptive I was being due to really poor diet and low impulse control. Sure its convenient to say it was only partly my fault, but I also think that I just wasn't really a good fit for the group I was playing with. Their version of fun was serious turbo autism with little to no humor, my version of fun was basically an unhinged and chaotic version of improv with dice.
I don't have any hard feelings about it now that I was older, but self-awareness of how retarded you are is something that not everyone can afford to develop.

>>96056234
> All of my ideas boil down to committing crime, stopping crime, undoing crimes (returning stolen items), dealing with wild animals, gladiator stuff.

Well anon, if everyone in town was being good law-abiding citizens, there wouldn't be much need for a band of sellswords to ply their trade, would there? Crime is naturally going to be a part of an urban adventure, whether engaging in it, fighting it, or a mix of both. Don't think so much about high-level "is it going to be crime or an animal encounter" but more on "WHAT kind of crime is it going to be, and WHO is committing it to WHOM?" Some options include:

>Uncovering a cult that has been kidnapping people to indoctrinate them
>Sneaking/breaking into the Western Tower of the citadel to free an ally who's set to be executed tomorrow
>helping a certain influential officer rid the city of a cell of thieves
>helping a certain cell of thieves rid the city of an influential officer
>stealing an artifact of immense historical value from a private vault
>defeating the bandits who stole an artifact of immense historical value
>stopping agents of an enemy nation from infiltrating the city's administration
>helping a certain nation get their man inside the city's administration
>getting shanghai'd into a smuggling operation for having seen too much
>rescuing a friend from the smuggling operation that shanghai'd them

>>96056234
>setting is conan-y low fantasy
So lots of rape, forced prostitution, slavery, backstabbing, drugs, nobles doing something that incites a peasant riot, and other fucked up shit. You can easily take from modern day occurrences too, like a bunch of *Insert fantasy races here* are blocked from getting into the city and form a ghetto and gangs and other crime syndicates use them to dig holes or get over the walls and such, race riots, human trafficking/sacrifice to dark gods. The politicians are using or abusing the population secretly, the most obvious one being that they are secretly vampires that are using the population as human cattle. The list can go on.

>>96054786
I think elsewhere he says that evocative art trumps maps?
DW works fine with tokens, a rough sketch map and such. It sucks of you bring too much D&D baggage and stifle creativity with precise movement.
Maps should definitely be player drawn, incomplete, and leave gaps for later GM inventiveness.
>>96057250
It's going to be very clear who's uncomfortable. There's one woman and he's being a /D/ tier weirdo around her.

>>96056234
>setting is conan-y low fantasy
I mean Conan has quite a few adventures within cities, including escaping a full blown dungeon.
So you can add to the list, directly lifted from Howard:
>Infiltrate a tower to steal a magical artefact (it doesn’t go as planned)
>Infiltrate a dungeon under a sorcerer’s place, because you’ve been hired by a nobleman to kill said sorcerer (it doesn’t go as planned)
>You are trapped in a sorcerer’s underground zoo of magical horrors and need to escape
>There’s a monster in the city, who eats people at night

>>96057734
So what, he said you couldn’t leave the dead end and the game was basically over at that point?
No offence your dad sounds kinda fucking stupid

>>96032615

The Warren, altough it GENERALLY can feature NPC humans.

>>96035121

Foxes AND racoon dogs.

Surprinsingly enough, birds as a whole. They are considered the messengers of the gods.

I'm a duegrar how do I talk to this hot drow?

>>96057973
Don't listen to this man his brain has been rotted by grimderp mudcore shlock. Indeed, in Conan things like rape and coerced prostitution and drug-dealing were seldom-mentioned and generally portrayed as atrocities that honest men reviled and eagerly punished. But worse than that, inserting modern political shit into a premodern fantasy setting is the most loathsome of trends. "The goblins were banned from the city so they dug holes to become illegal immigrants" just sounds like the silliest crap.

>>96058350

I mostly agree, while I can't see myself agreeing with REH's political views even then... fuck, man, if I'm playing Conan I fully embrace the whole race cycle thing going on.

>>96057897
I suppose you're right. I'm hung up on the wrong details (a common issue in my prep now that I think about it). thank you for the good suggestions.
>>96058157
admittedly I'm a Conan-newbie so I need to brush up on my reading.
>t. zoomer who's only watched 1 movie and read 2 books.

>>96058350
>>96058410
It shocks me how many people here don't read history books and think that the problems today weren't problems decades ago...

>>96058350
>conveniently ignores the Christian Slums outside of Medieval Jerusalem
>conveniently ignores the Muslim Slums outside of Medieval Jerusalem
>conveniently ignores the slums out of Rome
Literally nothing has changed and everything you like about Conan is what your complaining about if you read REH's notes.

Another Orc.

>>96059573
Zoomers and Liberal Millennials are just NPCs that think history is fantasy and if it's not said by a man in a suit from a corporate media network, then its a consipracy.

>>96058350
I'd argue that migration and people moving from one place to another and comes into competition with another group is literally humanities oldest crisis story that doesn't involve nature directly. Our ancestors killed the Neanderthals by moving into their habitat and coming into direct conflict with them millions of years ago.

>>96059596
Nigga slums are not the same thing as beaner borderhoppers who do you think you're fooling? If the poster in question wants to make the city a literal Holy City that people of competing faiths are fighting over he's free to do so but that's a very different scenario.

>>96059673
Sure, peoples move and migrate into other lands and the people living there generally don't approve of this, nothing remarkable there. Not what's being described though, which is a city banning people of a certain group from entering but somehow being totally fine with them just camping outside the walls and sneaking in at will. Made even more absurd by them being some nonhuman race like orcs or goblins that would so easily be differentiated from the city's normal inhabitants. But since the game is a conanesque low-fantasy game that part will probably not be relevant to them anyhow.

Trying to reimagine bard and looking for ideas/inspirations for names based on the broad things I think a bard should encompass with one of them obviously being necromancy focused.

Does Sable Psalmist or Sable Hymnist sound better?

What other musical poetic terms can I crib for subclass names?

>>96060172
>Nigga slums are not the same thing as beaner borderhopper
Literally the same thing..

>>96061135
I use Cantor for clerical bards in my own game. Hymnist or Psalmist could work too, but maybe consider just Wailer as it has less of a clergyman sound it it.
Wailers, or moirologists, were professional mourners who would cry and/or sing at funerals for pay.

>>96061937
This is wrong of course, but the fact that the jannies deleted my comment is proof enough of the ontological correctness of my statement. As he who is on the side of the jannies is both gay and retarded.

>>96062974
Well you're racist, obviously

>>96062974
>is both gay and retarded.
Are you the guy that slipped and hit is head in /SRPGG/ and became gay and retarded? Because you are posting like him.

What are red flags as a player that tell you that an NPC is untrustworthy or otherwise dangerous?

>>96065959
is named or described with any sort of attention beyond the baseline
has any kind of powers or spells, especially of the special variety
the two games I'm playing are in "strongest guy wins" land and players as a """secret""" police in the other

>>96065959
Elvish features. But not dangerous.

>>96065959
Is particularly friendly towards the NPCs despite the fact he only just met them and they never helped him with anything. Offers the PCs treasures if they just look down this hole real quick.

>>96066324
*towards the PCs

>>96065959
GM checks his notes for more than a second on the particular NPC, meaning it has not just a name but also stats, meaning we are expected to fight it at some point..

>>96065959
NPC keeps reoccuring or is almost always tied into the plot or story without us choosing to do so. "Has connections", if it makes you feel better, if you stall long enough for your cleric to get w/e system has the "truth saying" spell or w/e level wizards get mind read or mind domination spells, you can sniff them out very easily after that. Assuming the GM allows you to do so anyway, another hint is if they are immune or easily get around secret inconveniences you enact upon the NPC: stealing their money or stuff that important, attempts to dominate or kill them secretly, attempts to thwart their plans just to be silly.

>>96061954
This particular conception of Bard is suppose to be more overtly divine in nature except not all bards religiously believe in the Words of Creation.

I really hate the whole "college" thing they have going on especially since being a savvy fop shouldn't be a strict class concept.

>>96068229
D&D 5E is a bad game anyway, maybe consider taking the 2E pill. Kits are so much more versatile than subclasses.

>>96066006
Never forget what those knife-ear bastards did to Orc City

>>96032491 (OP)
How realistic is it to build my own scene or poach players for games I want to play?
Everyone locally exclusively plays 5.5e generic AL modules
Should I just give up and only try to arrange games online?

>>96070684
Do you have actual friends
If you do you can talk to them like a normal person and it may work

>>96070708
All my actual friends live in different states/countries now.
Good point though, I'd probably hate most of the players who I could randomly poach. Maybe I should just do it by degrees, run 5e for a while and slowly try to get some decent players.

Does ultramodern5 redux have 11 classes or 12? The back of the book and previews I looked at show 11, but a lot of store pages mention 12. Was there some update or something?

Also wanted to know if it is possible to use everyday heroes in place of the base 5e book. I like some of the fixes that does.

Should I draw maps for important locations that aren't battlemaps? For example, there is a castle in my current game that acts more or less as a base of operation for the PCs, but I have a bit of stuff prepared for the castle itself aswell. I guess what I want is to get my players to explore the castle, and simply describing that there are several different rooms probably isn't as interest-grabbing as a map of the castle's layout.

>>96070737
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Good luck finding an IRL group to play games besides 5e

>>96070684
You're better off catching new players, a lot of people plunge newbies into D&D and people either click with it or they don't because of how confusing the system is. You can try getting people who have never played before into introductory games like Dungeon World, Index RPG, or Cairn and then slowly introduce more and complex systems. That way you know you have people who are actually interested in the hobby and they are less likely to be rebuffed by some of 5e's complexities that might scare off newer players.

>>96037960
So if I told a story about my experience with 5e, that would be off-topic?

Anything but discussion of rules and the lore of traditional games is off-topic in your eyes? If anyone shares a personal anecdote or an experience illustrating their point, the post and the whole discussion suddenly becomes off-topic?

I only need a yes or no answer.

>>96077800
He's a troll, don't bother replying.

>>96032965
Ryuutama is a great system for those who want a more travel friendly adventure over a combat heavy dungeon crawl. Also gives the GM something to do outside of just throwing orcs and goblins at you as they are a Dragon scribe that writing your adventure for their dragon god as they love hearing stories of the adventures of men.

>>96059635
>t a stupid NPC.

>>96032491 (OP)
>What are some thematically fitting war animals for orcs that aren't wargs or giant hogs?
Wholly mammoth, war elephants.

>>96077800
Yes. The topic of the board is traditional games. Not personal blogs.

I remember seeing a website with something like "civilization questionnaire" which was a huge list of things needed to describe a culture, it was great for worldbuilding inspiration but I can't find it now, googling the above phrase returns unrelated shit.

A collective of families who go from one asteroid/celestial mining location bringing an extended family of service experts with them or a network of various families working multiple jobs at once?

>>96083153
I'm looking for said questionnaire or even just the name, it that's not obvious from my prematurely posted fragment.

>>96082640
Great album