Thread 96415445

An old Pathfinder buddy of mine sent me this and it just hit me as so tragic.
How many people are stuck with shelves full of stuff that they'll never be able to use at a table? To what end?
Post any similar /no games/ misery and / or discuss anything relevant.

Look at this shit

>>96415445 (OP)
>I know! I'll tell Reddit how heckin sad I am about not having a group.
>THAT'll help me play a game!

>>96415445 (OP)
I don't get how people decide to all in a hobby without trying it at all
I had a friend that started painting minis and just bought entire paint ranges from companies and an air brush and a lot of fancy tools before painting a single mini
He gave up on the hobby 6 months later

I have two unused books in my collection and already feel bad

>>96415449
F-list?

>>96415445 (OP)
I’m like this but for world of darkness. I have a huge collection of old 90s OWoD and 2000s NWoD (CofD) that I’ve never ran but I love reading those books, they’re a delight. My players just wanna play like Call of Cthulhu and Cyberpunk.

>>96415445 (OP)
I only buy I already pirated and played and liked. So my shelf is spacious whilst my PDF folder is plenty.

>>96415582
Unironically some of the best roleplayers I have ever been in games with were ones I met on porn/fetish sites. And I was not running those kinds of games either.

Just go to fucking adventurers league at the FLGS, suffer through the spergs, and find some non spergs to play with.
Or find some geeky coworkers.
Or see if you can join the local college DnD club even though you're not a student. If you don't seem like a total fucking freak they'll probably let you.
I'm sorry but if you're that into DnD but can't get a game then you're not trying.
There's no such thing as a D&Dcel. Even moreso than incel, it's entirely self-inflicted.

>>96415445 (OP)
I admit I have a one or two systems I haven't been able to get people to try out yet but at the same time. I know I want to play it and willing to back the kickstarter to put my money where my mouth is. Even if it's going to take me a few months to set up a game or two for it.

>>96415900
I absolutely believe you, mostly because those guys are gonna be roleplaying way more than your average TTRPG player, who only roleplays once or twice a week whenever their scheduled game(s) come up.

>>96415900
That's less them being good and more you being shit.

Here's my table I just bounced from:
>two autistic murder hobos
>perpetually angry Bluesky addict
>guy that never bathes
>DMGF that doesn't bother to learn the system and has the DM play for her
>DM is trying to use this to start a polycule
I didn't choose the nogames life, it chose me. I hate that I'm probably going to have to learn Roll20 and play with internet buddies if I want a table again, since Roll20 defeats the purpose of tabletop gaming, but that's where I'm at.

>>96415445 (OP)
All 5Eslop and a token red box... Brutal.

>>96416540
erm actually that's a 3e phb to the left of the starter set

>>96416540
True, if he had gods chosen MorkBorg he’d have plenty of Osr friends to play with

>>96415502
My first hobby painting purchase was a complete speed paint 2.0 set.

To be fair though, I got it to knock out a shit ton of board game minis and I've painted well over 100 minis in the past year.

>>96416623
Nu-OSR fuckbuddies, you mean

>>96415445 (OP)
Some people just like collecting stuff, even books. I'm not planning to use my figures either, but I like having them. The Best part Is you can just sell them when you don't want them anymore and want to collect something else.

>>96415445 (OP)
i have some stuff, just for how cool it is, enjoy reading it (CY_Borg, Death in Space, UVG). and right now the only thing that's stopping me from getting Masks of Nyarlathotep, Strahd and The Enemy Within is being financially responsible, but jeez, if they aren't sweet. i don't even touch that stuff, i prefer reading pdfs so the originals are kept mint. if i ever ran them, i would probably need duplicates. i can't imagine handing over a manual to a player's cheetos dust covered paws. i gave away a book or two as gifts on social occasions, and seeing them later being used, beaten down, it literally breaks my heart.

>>96415900
>cares about characters
>cares about stories
>is able to, willing to, and frequently has committed multiple hours at a time to a single hobby activity
If you're not playing with ERPers, you're probably going to have your entire campaign fall apart in 2-3 sessions.

>>96415900
People who do frequent ERPing already get all the elf-waifu and fetish shit out of their systems, so when they have a chance to do "real" RP they tend not to have as many of the repressed bad habits as your typical /tg/ gooner or discord degenerate.

>>96415445 (OP)
My bookshelf is DnD 5e (got into it because friends), a bunch of GURPS books, grim hollow, BRP, and Rogue Trader.
Haven't played any except the DnD stuff because nobody wants to try other systems.

>>96415900
I cut my teeth in ERP chatrooms, Goldshire, etc. Especially if you could spin narratives past the smut (or inversely, knew how to set a scene) you could get some really heartfelt roleplay.

>>96418573
This is also true as long as the person isn't socially stunted. You get your vices out elsewhere so you just bring good roleplay to the table.

>Bought the big expensive Curse of Strahd
Not surprising they don't have any friends.

>>96418573
It's funny that the social aspect of the hobby really has been carried hard by theater kids and the sort of ladies who ended up getting big into Maplestory and the like in the early 2000s, that and furries winning the culture war basically

>>96415582
People with F-List accounts will be the first thrown into camps when the revolution comes

>>96415445 (OP)
I understand the excitement of buying new things for a hobby that you intend to get to later. Or even wanting a complete collection... But I can tell none of those books were used and most of them weren't ever read. Maybe if they were, the collector would better understand how little they need all of those other books and how, even if they actually did start playing, it could be months or even years before they'd need even 1/10th of those books.

>>96415445 (OP)
I have a crate full of board games in the hopes that I may one day have friends. It's not going well.

>>96415445 (OP)
>bought srd4
>all the splats
>the updated version of the book
>learned both character generators
>read all of the rule books, and setting books cover to cover
>ran exactly one campaign for 4 months years after the fact
>never been in a game after making numerous original characters for it
>all i could do with it was make shadowrun threads on /tg/ and rp as an orc ganger and post run ideas until i got made fun of for doing that until I stopped
see bullying does work to improve the board!

>>96415445 (OP)
I can see the appeal of TTRPG books even if you don't plan in actually playing it. I had Genius: The transgression on my phone for years and I'd read snippets and parts of it every now and then, despite never playing the game myself.

Of course, D&D books aren't that interesting to me, since most of the skill/feats sound really "game-y" to me, barely any flavor on the abilities nowadays and the standard D&D lore is really boring and barebones, but I'll read a planescape book any day of the week easily.

>>96422886
Please.
We're going to be running the camps. You can't stop the Raceplaywar that's going to ensure when the barbarians from Bluesky come for my favourite kink buddy.

>>96422886
You think the camps could keep anyone safe?

>>96427137
Isn't this the one where the concentration camp officer fucks the jew and then they end up in America?

>>96427137
There's a really good Italian movie about this kind of thing, but the concentration camp guard is a fat girl and the prisoner is male.

>>96415445 (OP)
>How many people are stuck with shelves full of stuff that they'll never be able to use at a table? To what end?
While I have and do (if not as much as I used to) play games, sometimes I still pop into the LGS and buy some random old source book just because they're often fun to read

My dad is being an asshole and won't let me drive his truck except to work so I'm nogames

>>96415445 (OP)
My shelves have all the MotW books since my local groups said they were interested and I've always wanted to run it. At least some of the groups bought me two of the books before they went "oh actually anon please just keep running 5e for us, it's too much to learn a new system". I'm getting closer and closer to dumping my meat space groups and running shit online.

>>96422886
>let's put all the horny people in one place
Anon...

>>96427230
The Jew finds the Nazi in Brazilentina. There's tension because she's supposed to black bag her. I think.

>>96415502
Dopamine induced overspending is a very american thing.

>>96415900
>>96418346
>>96418573
I find it funny how different ideas of good roleplaying are.
Personally I hate playing with thespians who think everyone wants to hear their play-acting.
We're here to explore a world and if your grandstanding is taking away from that, and not adding to it in small amounts, then it's unwelcome.

>>96415593
>I have a huge collection of old 90s OWoD and 2000s NWoD (CofD) that I’ve never ran but I love reading those books, they’re a delight.
Same, but also for other games which I actually played and discovered I didn't like...
They were great to read, but not as fun to play.
Now I only play OSR game(s).

>>96429977
>We're here to explore a world and if your grandstanding is taking away from that,
How? Like in what way playing as a character takes away from exploring?

>>96430834
By having irrelevant theatrics, including "in-character discussions" and arguments about "my character wouldn't X", take up large amounts of the session that could have been spent actually doing things.
If Critical Role and shits like that are a 10/10 on the thespian scale i'm okay with a 3 at most.

>>96415593
The sourcebooks for some WoD lines are basically more akin to short story collections than actual rulebooks, so I do feel like that's at least a slightly different case

>>96415445 (OP)
I only ever play online, I don't own anything related to RPGs.

>>96415900
Wanted to laugh at this at first, but then I realised the most immersive and roleplay heavy campaign I've ever participated in by far was ran by a somewhat eccentric friend of mine who along with his gf were in fact very openly active in bdsm scenes and their apartment looked like a combination of a brothel and an art studio. Granted, there was a definitely above average amount of weird sex stuff in the game, but it was a very solid campaign nevertheless. Wtf anon, I think you're really onto something
Also yes, it was a VtM campaign, because of course it was

>>96415445 (OP)
>To what end?

Reading RPG books is pleasurable by itself you retard.

>>96429944
And the rest of the planet benefits from it.
Seriously, if the USA didn't have the paypig, cash chunkers spamming currency into the hobby the majority of games (digital and physical) simply would not exist.

>>96415502
this is what you do when you don't have a wife and kids but still have a career

>>96431131
You're absolutely right and I agree with you. Now how does that work for people who never read their books?

>>96415449
Quickly, no one tell her about any of the dozen RPG forums with game finding boards.

>>96422394
The image says the fag bought it from a friend who never used any of those books a single time, which implies both the original purchaser and the fag have at least one friend each.

>>96431829
>Have at least one friend also into D&D
>Still never played
Really zero excuse

>>96431729
People who complain about not being able to find groups aren't even really trying. Their local gamestore, library, and community college probably all have groups with regular schedules too, but they never checked.

>>96432310
>local gamestore, library, and community college
People underestimate public posing boards for sure. The game store in my area has a bunch of post-it notes and pinned fliers for games, either looking for GM or players, and while they can be up for a few months at a time they seem to do alright since they do get cycled out by the people who posted them.

>>96432279
Feeld and Grindr are better for finding players

>>96415445 (OP)
I've collected all of these dice and game pieces over the years without realizing that my chances at getting people around a physical table is a Herculean task.
This is not even the boxes of boxes of printed out RPGs that I have made books out of.
For about a year I've also given up on digital games due to the fallout I had with a former friend. Currently I am still licking my wounds. I would try to play more solo games but I get so much into the routine of eat sleep work repeat, on top of working second shift that I really don't have any time to myself from sleeping and recuperating from work.

>>96415445 (OP)
I've collected all of these dice and game pieces over the years without realizing that my chances at getting people around a physical table is a Herculean task.
This is not even the boxes of boxes of printed out RPGs that I have made books out of.
For about a year I've also given up on digital games due to the fallout I had with a former friend. Currently I am still licking my wounds. I would try to play more solo games but I get so much into the routine of eat sleep work repeat, on top of working second shift that I really don't have any time to myself from sleeping and recuperating from work.

>>96422386
What are the etceteras, I would deeply like to know so I can have more hunting grounds for players.

>>96431131
Personally to me it's like owning a Smith and Wesson Remington gun, or , an historical accurate sword made with Superior material and techniques.
You're just going to put it on your wall and never use it, you're just going to occasionally dry fire the gun or pull the sword out the sheath every once in awhile and look at it.
You don't want to one day use that on the firing range and shoot a cantaloupe melon or a couple of water bottles with food dye in them. You're not going to take that sword and hacking at a tatami mat for fun one day.
It's like having sex organs, are you satisfied by masturbating by yourself alone every night or don't you actually want to have sex with a beautiful significant other. Or are you going to look at what you can't have on pornhub.

>>96415445 (OP)

I feel like collecting for its own sake is wasteful. Objects should be used for their intended purpose.

And people really need to get over themselves and try things outside their normal wheelhouse. If your bro shells out his hard earned money for Numenera or Delta Green or whatever, throw him a bone and give it a try.

>>96415449

Nothing but human detritus hangs out peoplefinder apps/websites. I hope everyone eventually comes to their senses and realizes that our remaining third spaces are precious and the ability to chat up/assess/befriend strangers is important.

>>96431029
Playing with people is the game. Loosen up and roleplay back at them, dork.

>>96439361
The game is the game. Thespianism is a way to eat up everyon's sunday with stuff only tangentially related to the game if you squint hard at it and pretend that stopping every five minutes to chew the scenery adds something.

>>96439361
Number one reason for no-game is people are judgmental. Stop being an old fart and enjoy others for what they are, if you can find someone who is trust worthy and reliable that's often enough

Have fun with your weird and tard'd friends

>>96439336
The old umberto eco quote applies here:

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.
"There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.
"If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!
"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."

>>96415445 (OP)
>Never been used!
>every book is unusable
No wonder.
Well, I guess I'm a little surprised that he's never played that copy of Operation. Hoes love Operation.

>>96416540
>a token red box
Anon... that thing has a Wizards logo. It's the 5e starter set for nostalgoids.

>>96415445 (OP)
I have a huge collection of non D&D games. Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Only War, Genesys, NWoD like Changeling the Lost VTR WtF. More Indie games like Skeletons, Polaris, Nova just to name a few. But the moment I try to get my players to try something other than 5e oh suddenly their schedule isn’t free or “I lost my character sheet”.

Maybe one day I’ll find a group that wants to try something new.

>>96415593
>I have a huge collection of old 90s OWoD and 2000s NWoD (CofD) that I’ve never ran
I want to blame you for this but at the same time I know perfectly well that those books were only ever written to be read, not played, so you're using them as intended.

>>96444630
I tried playing a mini campaign of Promethean. The disquiet rules needed a lot of tweaking for the game to be playable. I miss the 2000s. Before everything went woke as fuck.

>>96415445 (OP)
there isnt much of an rpg scene where im at. Some people at my college tried putting together an rpg club a couple of years ago but it never materialized.

>>96444607
Honestly there's a bunch of niche games that I would love to get the play or run, but I've been burned so many times that this hobbies not fun anymore.
I hate 5e for a multitude of reasons. Be it the single role system. The build culture that surrounds it left over from 3.5 edition. The idiotocacy around giving players all the tools and toys and not giving the DM anything they help them run the game. The scrap yard like nature of picking and choosing parts from homebrews and people's add-on homemade splat books and supplements that treat D&D like a Bethesda game.
AKA, you can't play the game unless you mod the fuck out of it.

>>96445236
I had a group where we tried a rotating DM approach of different indie games. Someone ran mothership then GURPS. I brought Skeletons. I played Skeletons with two friends which went well but with this group they were unimaginative and it was pretty shit. They were also really shitty people. Especially the troon who seemed to really dislike me. I ended up ghosting the group because they were just too toxic.

>>96445280
Honestly I hope you have a better group nowadays.
And I hope you've had better luck than I have in the past.

Personally I need to get around to making a secondary discord account for going into the deep end for looking for players. At this rate I'm willing to try my luck with furries and bronies just to document my experience.

But also I'm pondering upon starting a couple play by post and taking advice from this video to keep the games going.

https://youtu.be/WRRd8mYLTKQ?si=bvkMR2cBEvuDOF5H

>>96415445 (OP)
I like reading systems, but the games are just a huge hassle to play, honestly, and GMing (the only part that interests me), is not that easy unless all you're trying to do is dump a bunch of random monsters into a dungeon.

>>96445468
I'm trying my best not to be an ass here.
But there is something called the GNS theory.
Known as game, narrative, and simulation.
When people talk about it half the time they change one of the words but it pretty much fits all the same.
D&D pretty much heavily lead inside game side of the triangle.
World of darkness, and nowadays powered by the Apocalypse is in great example of narrative meaning games.
While a good example of a simulation game would be something like I don't know basic Call of Cthulhu and most games that use the basic role-playing system.

You can expand your horizon with different types of games, not everything has to be going to a hole in the ground to kill goblins for pocket change.

>>96443074
He was high on his own farts

>>96445357
>Honestly I hope you have a better group nowadays
They’re much more pleasant people but will only play 5e. I managed to get them to try genesys but ended up not liking the system very much. I thought combat was meant to be snappy but it felt like a slog. Maybe I just wasn’t running it right.

>>96445793
You're not talking to the right person. I have read fate, d&d3.5 and gurps, and a couple other lesser known ones. I have probably thought about the gaming <-> storytelling <-> simulation triangle more than most people who actually play.

>>96415449
Much like Tinder, you're only getting matched with losers on a party finder site. If they could be easily accepted to a table, they would not be there

>>96415900
>>96422386
>>96418573
>>96418346
>>96416388
>>96431128
Pathetic losers.

>>96446432
your projection level is over 9000

>>96445468
Buying books and reading them is good. Collecting books so you have a collection is less good. Perhaps even bad. I also have a pile of RPGs that will never make it to the table, but that's because time is finite and players are fickle creatures. If you're going to get any game going and if you can keep it going, that means one system for months at a time. Maybe years if you are blessed enough.

Reading other systems can be a way to get new ideas, to understand mechanics more intuitively, or just to keep you invested in the hobby when you aren't playing every day. As long as you're reading the books you're buying, there's nothing wrong with buying books for games you aren't going to play right away. Especially because the majority of all RPGs ever printed will only ever get one print run.

>>96415449
I congratulate the tabletop community for keeping... *that*... out of our games. Please never let it discover any of the trillions of tabletop LFG communities.

>>96415900
I just realized... same. Same.
I'm not sure how to feel about this.

>>96446432
That attitude isn't gonna get you invited to any games. Windowlicker.

>>96445856
That's as may be. But his point is undeniable. All books (or RPG supplements) are not equal and interchangeable. If you have an extensive library you have something for any mood or audience. You have resources you can cherry pick from. These are not cans of beans sitting on a shelf.

>>96415449
It's kind of ironic that we have physical signifiers for what type of person you are when it comes to a date. Just as much as we have physical or mental signifiers on what type of player you might be.
For every dating site there's a that girl.
For table and game there's a that guy.
At this point roll 20 is that site.
And Dungeons & Dragons has become that game or should be saying that rpg.

>>96445793
GNS was not very good. Neither players nor games can be divided neatly between the categories, so you’re left with them vaguely referring to the agenda of a game or group. Sure, WoD groups are theoretically trying to tell a story, but they do a lot of powergaming too - but is that gameism, given how notoriously ham-fisted the WoD rules are? Is D&D 4e not the epitome of gameism, D&D as board game? Forge games purport to be narrativist, but they often gamify the process of storytelling to a point where you’re doing a kind of narrative paint-by-numbers rather than telling a story - is that not gameism? And simulationism - isn’t this just OSR D&D, with its admonition to ‘prep places, not events’? Often ‘simulation’ is interpreted as a lack of abstraction - carefully tallying modifiers for wind speed when firing arrows, hit locations etc. - but isn’t a highly abstract game where the rules are simple but consistent and the world has a consistent state that doesn’t depend on the players observing it more of a simulation than this?
But there are a lot of different games, and if you ever come up with any house rules it’s a good idea to have read a bunch of them even if all you got from them was different ways of rolling dice. Sometimes you need a roll with a nice bell curve, sometimes you need a nice flat percentile.

III keeping it alive keeping it alive, I I I I giving a thread alive going to bump it up for a time oh yeah you can tell me how to type my keyboard all the way and now you should know how it goes every time every way till the day ends away I I I I I'm trying to keep it alive oh yeah.

>>96448823
His point is daft and bears no resemblance to the way books can be or are used. You can hardly pick the right book for your mood if you have a library full of books you've never read.
Most people amass unread books because they aspire to read them but don't. Often because they hardly actually read at all and are just lying to themselves. I don't that's so terrible as far as failings go, nor do I remotely agree with the fag that said collecting things is wasteful. But it's silly to pretend it's actually some noble, intentional pursuit when it isn't.

>>96431621
The majority of games are boring and of low quality. Most of the actually good stuff would remain.

>>96453569
> You can hardly pick the right book for your mood if you have a library full of books you've never read.

Found the guy who doesn't read books.

>>96431029
What's the point of "exploring the world" if you're not even invested in the characters inhabiting it?

>>96427137
I watched the entire thing in gif form after so many years of seeing it posted. I don't know how I feel about it.

>>96458863
>There has to be a German word for this.
>Sonderkommando.
>God damn it Fritz.

>>96448071
>*that*
Would

I was forced to dance with a cougar and take care of their drunk asses, but a single session is simply asking too much

This was me for a while, and now that I found a group, all the books I've amassed are slowly getting used. Guy in the group said he wanted to run a Cyberpunk RED game, and asked if I was interested since he liked how I played our 5e sessions. Told him I already got the book on standby, and his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

Gonna try and get them to try Shadow of the Weird Wizard some day when I feel ready to GM (schedule too busy for that atm), but the group I'm with unironically might be ready to go full degenerate and jump into Demon Lord instead. Basically what I'm trying to say here, is that your shelves of books only go to waste if you never take a risk and just try.

>>96418346
>If you're not playing with ERPers, you're probably going to have your entire campaign fall apart in 2-3 sessions.
Just make sure they're not from those discord servers that get linked here sometimes

>>96432310
Not everyone is a burger

>>96438052
If you can't have it, looking for it is a waste of time

>>96463991
This should be true in every part of civilised world honestly, I live in Slavlands and can confirm. Unless you're from outside of America/Europe or live in some bumfuck nowhere area

>>96464095
Not all of Europe is EU, either. People here don't know what TTRPGs are, and they don't even have a name for them. So if the very rare group falls apart due to any reason, you're shit out of luck.

>>96464167
While obviously you won't find TTRPG groups everywhere, I know of active communities in countries like Romania Bulgaria or Estonia and in places as small as 15-20k residents small towns. Nerds are basically everywhere where life is bearable enough to have time for a hobby.
>People here don't know what TTRPGs are, and they don't even have a name for them
It was the same in a town where I grown up, so one day I basically talked a group of friends into giving it a try. Nowadays I've heard there is actually an active club there.

>>96463933
Which one. Please.

>>96470203
Erotic game finder, lewd dice shenanigans, high impact sexual friendship

>>96470233
Yeah, those places suck ass.
Those places are very cliquey and snobbish.
Not to mention the constant mother may I or I'm not worthy or bullshit you have to do while jumping through hoops.

>>96439336
>Collecting for collecting sake is wasteful

Time spent posting on 4chan is time wasted as well.
Go build something, faggot.

>>96416471
No it doesn't. Roll20 is objectively superior to in-person.

>>96415449
>we need an app for this!
PERISH