What the fuck was the Emperor doing during the DAOT and the age of strife?
>>97204994Played vidya.The reason big E got so assmad was because when the DaoT collapse occured his stream library and his carefully curated mod settings were deleted.
>>97221670Wait, what?Is that origin no longer canon?Really?Jesus Christ, can't GW focus on writing horrible, inept continuations to their lore instead of disambiguating and shitting up the foundations of their setting.At least that way I can soundly ignore all the stupid shit they ham-fistedly introduce.Blagh, I do not want this knowledge.This is the NuCrons all over again.
>>97210955That's always been one of my favourite explanations
He was obsessively building a bunch of weapons because forging weapons was his only real hobby outside of the science of genecraft
>>97215136>sheman russ
I have wanted to play RPGs for years and posted on /tg/ for like a decade, but have never found someone to play with. Finally my kids are old enough to play with me, but the problem is, I don't know HOW to play. Like, what is a game supposed to even look like? All the rulebooks I've read go over in depth the character creation and mechanics, etc. but none really paint a picture of the structure and flow of the game and what it is supposed to look like. Where do I start??
>>97249229Just watch some Critical Role or D20 liveplays and do what they do
>>97257874>why would you pick something, even if slightly, more convolutedAn abiding love of the byzantine.A quirky adherence to quaint precedence.A learned aversion to unified resolution systems.The first two are just a matter of taste, but the third one is a considered rejection of the desire to make all things part of a monolithic structure. It can lack robustness or specificity or become over burdened with exceptions or edge cases or conditions to the point that it may as well be divided into separate systems anyway. It can also lead to same-ness between classes which can lead to accusations of "it's role play to roll play" but let me elaborate.I'm not a big fan of modern D&D but iirc 5e saving throws are roll vs difficulty, bonus for ability score, extra bonus for some based on class, characters can improve ability scores while levelling which minimally affects save through the bonus. I much prefer the older system look up save on class based table that improved with level, apply ability score modifiers. It's just a game but I don't see the new inherently making the game better, though I don't see it making it worse either. On the other hand, I dislike the current lock picking rules which to me greatly detracts from the flavour. Even though the dice rolling is nothing but random number generator vs target value with only the dice rolled and the target value differing, the different mechanisms present before 3e led to something like thief feeling different to other classes in AD&D and Basic. Sure, I am supposed to roll play but I thoroughly enjoyed and continue to enjoy the differences in how things were done without designers feeling the need to try and simplify and unify at the cost of flavour. At the same time I've played and enjoyed systems where everything can be as simple as the old WEG d6 system (ability relevant to task determines size of your dice pool, difficulty class set by GM) so it's not as if my aversion is all consuming.
>>97261336*it's role play not roll play
>>97249229The simplest explanation of what RPGs are, as an activity, is that they are a sort of narrative conversation where uncertainty and chance are resolved with dice rolls.The game master sets the scene, the players introduce their characters and what they're doing, the GM reacts and tells them the outcomes of their actions. You keep the conversation going, back and forth, to see what happens. How the characters deal with challenges. How they handle their victories and losses. Then you look back and find that you've got a story.All the finer details of actually running and playing games are harder to talk about because it's a sort of proverbial social alchemy. All the people at the table, the game being used, the type of story the GM is trying to tell, the type of characters the players are trying to play, all combine and interact in ways that are extremely dependent on those people. You can learn certain tricks and strategies for how to best run a game, but the people you are running for will be what makes or breaks the experience.
>>97249700>Don't watch critical roleSeconding this. If you must watch a live play, watch almost literally any other podcast.
Winter Gloom EditionPreviously on /slop/: >>97227237 ▶ Thread Task: Moody and gloomy winter pictures.And maybe characters trying to find a comfy warm corner.▶ Generatorshttps://bing.com/images/create/https://sora.chatgpt.com/https://gemini.google/overview/image-generation/https://perchance.org/ai-text-to-image-generatorComment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>97262142>>97251802>>97252221>>97253530>>97252120>>97253488>>97253575>>97253624cont:It should also be noted here that victims of sacrifice could be well treated: These were formal religious ceremonies with rules for who could be selected, how they were treated, what they had to do before and during their sacrifce and what happens to the remains after. In pic related for instance you can see there's multiple paragraphs worth of precise traits and conditions the main impersonator and sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca had to meet, and lived in luxury as the god for months before having to preform ritual duties and tasks in the weeks leading up to his sacrifice and during the ceremony. Captured soldiers allegedly lived with their captor's family and were mourned by them as a family member after their death, and while this is all surely romanticized to a degree and not all sacrifices were so glamorous (Child sacrifices to the rain god Tlaloc were tortured to cry as much as possible, some sacrifices to fire deities were as well with embers and hot ashes, and victims who weren't impersonators or even some who were may not have been treated as well leading up to their deaths), the sample size from the Huey Tzompantli excavations show that the victims were in disproportionately good health and physical condition prior to their deaths and even foreign victims lived in Tenochtitlan for months or years prior to their deaths, supporting those claims.There was also a lot more to Mexica society then war and sacrifices, and I would strongly argue that the role of sacrifices in Mexica culture is drastically overemphasized in popular imagination and conversation. The discussion I initially replied to wasn't even specifically about sacrifices in particular (rather about if the Aztec get treated with sensitivity in pop culture or not), yet >>97260155 and >>97259747 flipped out solely because I didn't bring them up.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>97262151cont: Like yes, it's an important aspect of Mexica and Mesoamerica religion in general (and it should be stressed here that ALL Nahua subgroups, not just the Mexica, and all other separate Mesoamerican civilizations entirely, also did sacrifices: The Mexica simply did it the most), but it wasn't even the most common form of offering (which would be things like incense, ceremonial goods, animals, or small amounts of your own blood), and religion also wasn't the only facet of their society. The average person was not constantly living in fear of being sacrificed or witnessing it much. Their typical day was waking up, doing morning ritual offerings, eating breakfast, the father/husband would go out to work farms or public construction while the wief would do domestic work, weave, and buy/sell things at market, kids would stay at home and teens would go to a school, they'd have dinner and take baths, and go to bed (See: desuarchive.org/his/thread/7617096/#7619771). See also youtube.com/watch?v=wsNdYD8DODo which IIRC is a decent video.Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world at the time and had a functional, sophisticated society: You had merchants, diplomats (and strict diplomatic rules and procedures, which is a big part of why Cortes got as far as he did, since he identified himself as representing the Spanish king), scribes, poets (existential and moralistic poems/songs were a big thing, as was rhetorical public speech), schools (arguably the first universal public education system) judges and legal courts (both local community ones and a series of state appellate courts), botanical gardens (not just used as recreational sites of relaxation for nobles, but also stocked medical herbs and were used to experimentally test their properties and growing conditions, and to categorize plants and flowers) and more. 7/?
>>97262158cont:Even if you want to argue that they're among the most brutal or evil cultures in history, that doesn't justify or excuse the obsessive need to center every conversation about them on sacrifices, when as the image in >>97259897 shows, even the Conquistadors and Catholic friars conquering, colonizing, and converting them made it a point to praise other aspects of their society and stressed that it was worth learning about and even preserving, or at least select parts. >>97259722The Jaguar Warrior is just one example. But yes, I am aware that they recently got a visual update that improves them. A shame the building assets still look like worn ruins without plaster or paint. I hope Age of Mythology Retold handles it better.>Besides, another DLC will be about Mezoamerican nationsWas one announced?8/8
>>97262131Hey man as the guy that originally called them evil thanks for the write ups. They're interesting.
>>97262151Whoops, I gave you too much credit >The discussion I initially replied to wasn't even specifically about sacrifices in particular (rather about if the Aztec get treated with sensitivity in pop culture or not),You know damn well human sacrifices are relevant to that discussion. Guess you're just another subversive. Alas.
You have to play Monopoly.Which Monopoly do you play?
I got roped into playing a version that was supposed to be shorter and faster and made sure to follow the rules to the letter so no house rule bullshit that extends the game. It still took nearly 4 hours to finish and ~2 hours of that I didn't even get to do anything since I was out of the game by that point.
>>97257417Lmao
Anything that removes the monotony of playing actual monopoly. This one turns it into a dexterity game.
>>97247712Tossup between Naruto and Wakanda monopolies.>elf monopolyI will burn your fucking house down.
>>97247712Standard Monopoly, but with 2 house rules:Auctions only, and no collecting rent while in jail.
>the dark lord just wants bitchesIs this a good villain motivation?
>thread is extremely low quality but reporting won't do any good since the mods made it
>>97258179Helps if the bitches are princesses.
Still works if your villain is just plain weird too.
>>97259728dunno man, his cheek may be shiny but otherwise the guy abducting the chick looks normal to me.
>>97261880damn earth men taking our womens
After about 8 years since I last DM'ed a game, I've been asked to run a session. Unfortunately my books - adnd, 2e, 3e, 3.5, 4e, and 5e are in storage two states away.And i prefer physical copies. Thanks to critical role and the movie DND books have gone up in price which is weird.>4e books are ~10-15$ now. Is it viable to run 4e in 2025? I don't remember hating it and I still remember some home rules to streamline combat to speed it up a touch. Does anyone have suggestions for 1-3lvl adventures or campaign settings? >4e thread I guess
>>97258839On the topic of campaigns, >Can anyone sauce me up a pdf for this thing?
>>97258742ALL of the Essentials classes fall off very hard past level 10 because of pausity of options.Basically, what you got from 1-10 gets a bigger number, but nothing new or something that matures the class in to new heights.>>97258839I disagree, as someone who played Dark Sun in 2e and recognizes that it was built with a different mechanics paradigm in mind.It was still ruthless on paper while instilling the fear of death in even high level pcs. Losing healing surges is the best and most efficient way to remind players of their pcs mortality, especially if they are cocksure, and it is really damn easy to do so in DS.That said, it also offered a way to do real heroics and cleave to the 4e ethos of 'You are big damn heroes, and can do big damn heroic things'.>>97258879A friend of mine was planning on running this. If you have time and the thread lasts, I can ask him to send me the pdf on promise to not read it.
>>97258879Not that last anon but I got youMF /folder/qnx91216m4tp4/Stuff
>>97260346What is this file type??
>>97261994A pdf? Does it not show the pdf symbol next to its long ass file name when you go to the link?
Wanted to talk about advice on GMing, settings you prefer, and styles or issues you as a GM have. I generally tend to prefer dark fantasy or sci-fi settings rather than trying something a little different. I also tend to have a style, depends on the system though, where i have a combat heavy session or two and then a more intrigue/exploration focused session. I have been working on how to better balance games I run, but trying to tie that to timing a game session gets tricky at times. Another issue I noticed is that puzzle solving or investigative games can be a lot harder for a player to get into the mindset for than the dm. It is easy to think everything you planned makes sense when you thought it out in your head but the players might not have the same line of thought.
>>97248491Yeah, we were playing once per week. I'll keep trying.My players are upset because they really liked the 5E campaigns that I ran, but they don't want to play indie games, and I've decided to stop running 5E.I even tried 5.5E. It seemed basically the same as 5E with a few noticeable differences. Maybe I'll go back to 3E or Moldvay D&D. That might be pretty cool.In any case, I just wish players would see that the system is there just to facilitate the play between the people at the table. It's possible to have a great game without having to copy Matt Mercer, and different systems allow you to do some things that you can't do in 5E.To be honest, even when I was running 5E, I was only loosely adhering to the rules and the players seemed to enjoy it.
>>97248144First of all, don't try to persuade people to play whatever it is. Just advertise that you're running it and then vet whoever shows up. Be explicit that it's not D&D. The only reason people advertise D&D games is because it's either all they know or they don't believe anyone will play anything else. But I can assure you, I've never failed to fill a table in a week or less, no matter what I'm running. And, ironically, you have to do far less vetting when you're running something that isn't D&D. The players who will show up for a non-D&D game are already experienced and they have some self-awareness and growth under them so they're already better than the D&D population.Now, am I gonna want to play your own personal little homebrew "system" that you just pulled out of your ass after six months of autism? No. There are tens of thousands of game systems and most of them all have far more professional design work and playtesting than your never-been-played-before bullshit. Be realistic and exercise some humility, some self-awareness. The odds are, your personal little toy is actually just D&D or GURPS or whatever with a few house rules, so be honest about that if it's true and you'll have more interest.And lastly, I've never had problems filling a table after meeting prospective players. So if you are having problems consistently, you are the common element in all those interactions, dude.
>>97252478Mostly because they're busy overthinking shit. If you put the same puzzle in front of them in the context of a video game, they wouldn't have any trouble at all. In a tabletop, they're bogged down trying to imagine whatever simulationist bullshit that might bypass / trivialize the puzzle so they don't have to think about it, or they're fizzing around with nonsense because they're worried it's one of those gotcha nonsense trick questions.In the former case, you need to establish clearly out-of-character that they need to get into the spirit of the game and stop trying to bullshit their way out of engaging with content. No one would build dungeons if adventurers just scryed the treasure location and dug a tunnel straight to it. No one would build a sphinx statue puzzle lock on the temple vault if people could just throw a bag of holding over the statue to open the door.In the latter case, it's a similar solution. Sit them down and explain to them the sphinx's riddle wouldn't serve any purpose if no one could solve it to open the door. The long corridor full of traps is obviously a series of skill checks to detect and disable them. You literally have several skills on your fucking character sheet which are specifically there so you can roll to see if your character knows anything related to the matter at hand. The game has fucking mechanics for this situation, dude, fucking use them.A lot of this is greatly alleviated by players being more familiar with you personally. And there's no shortcut for that, you need to spend time running games for them and demonstrating *consistent* behavior for them.
Does anyone know some good resources for dark fantasy or weird fantasy? I am mainly looking for stuff for BRP/mythras or stuff for ad&d.Is cults of zahak any good?
>>97258142Lovecraft
A girl made me the most awkward of dice sets>inb4 fat hands
>>97239620Anon you need to lose weight it impacts every aspect of your health. People around you won't say it for the sake of propriety, but we are all anon here so I have no problem telling you that you will lose years of your life if you do not make serious and permanent lifestyle changes. You can do it.
>>97260459Reread the thread. That sentiment was expressed many times over even if not in those exact words.
For Christmas my mother, knowing I like TTRPGs but am slightly intimidated by the idea of mini painting, bought me a bunch of miniatures that are really cheap and shitty so I could practice my first paint jobs.I consider it the most thoughtful she's ever been about one of my hobbies, generally she'd just kind of let me do my own thing and didn't really care about what I'm doing in my free time as long as I was staying out of trouble.I baked her fresh brownies as a Christmas gift and bought her and her sister a weekend trip to a cabin like she's been saying she wants.
>>97260459Why should we care about some random fatass in some ass-end of the world?
>>97239620it's so over
>dwarf speaks>scottish accent
>>97254657icelandic is a beautiful language, sounds like you need less shit colored skintone friends.
>>97254657I don't know what that even sounds like, but if it's like most Nordic accents it's going to sound goofy as shit and not badass at all
It's the easiest to do
>>97254657Icelandic accent are for elves, anon.
>>97254657lol
I’m running a low fantasy game, and social advancement is gonna be a thing. So the PCs are gonna be rubbing elbows with a lot of noble families as they make their way into high society. I’m just asking for NPCs and ideas.Most of the nobility are humans, but a few are half-elves and halflings.
>>97251474You have no idea what charisma actually is, do you anon?
>>97257602In a historical context it's a magic word used to handwave everything you can't explain.
Watch costume dramas and soap operas. Read 'period' bodice rippers and pot boilers. Cheerfully rip off any character who grabs your attention and stick them in appropriate clothing, with pointy ears/fangs/whatever as appropriate.Well-paid professionals have already done most of the spade work for you, it would be a shame to let it all go to waste.
>>97233040Alayisa The Courtesan.The Matron of the most respected "House of Culture" is renowned of her taste and finger on the pulse of high society. But jealous enemies fear her and her female "courtiers" ability to know most rumors well in advance of even the official spies. To suggest that she fucks the crown prince is a capital offence - they are just old companions. Most cruel of her enemies accuse her being a vampire or demon. She is not. But is her patron?
>>97256826>Orcs that murder and pillageBased
how did you explain having literal blue human women in your scifi setting?
>>97259986I stole a plot point from StarCraft for a sci-fi game using the old Shadowforce Archer Spycraft rule set.The OG precursor race had genetic memory (each one had all the memories of their bloodline back to the beginning) and were dying out from Reasons, but created two inheritor races. One was humanity, the other was the not!Asari/not!Twi'lek/not!Orion race. Each was designed to include an "explorer gene" in part of the population and thus to develop the desire to seek spaceflight and to reach out across the cosmos like adventurers in human history, with the (unknown to them) goal of one day meeting the race designed to be compatible with them as their other half, designed to appeal to each other on a genetic level as sexually attractive, and thus to fuck like rabbits, where after a couple of generations the precursors would have bodies to be reborn in from recombining the DNA of each.All other alien races are not cross compatible, and people have recently been looking into why there is one exception. It played into the main narrative for a while, but the game fell apart when a couple of the players got deployed overseas. I hadn't decided whether the Precursors were evil or not.
>>97259986They make my dick hard
>>97259986Alien interface organism.Basically, aliens use custom printed biomorphs instead of space suits, when you come to a new planet its easier to simply copy the template of the existing local life forms and use whatever THEIR evolutionary optimizations are for the local environment than it is to try and solve all of those problems yourself on short notice to keep your true self alive on a planet wildly different than what you were evolved for. If you are a methane-ocean jellyfish creature, life on the surface of the Earth is never going to work very well without massive life support systems and robotics. So instead of that, you whip up a human/jellyfish creature hybrid thats human enough to survive on Earth but jellyfish alien enough that its compatible with your brain patterns and then download yourself into that to walk around on Earth and talk to humans with.if you are going to do this anyway, you naturally would also design the interface organism to be as broadly attractive as possible to the species you are communicating with, making it more likely that you will be accepted and treated favorably. There are almost never downsides to being considered hot. So what do aliens talking to humans end up as? Different varieties of space babes. Space hunks might *seem* like an option, but male humans are more likely to feel intimidated by a sexy space man, so that's counter-intuitive to the purpose of the interface.
>>97259986In that specific example, it's implied they project a mental effect that makes them attractive to whoever is looking at them (since different aliens claim they have traits humans can't see). Tho even in that it's implied they mostly humanish
>>97261670>we can thus conclude that these are in actual fact sexy clam girls.FUCK YEAH!!!
>Dragons that exist on a level above Kings and are paid tribute but otherwise largely don't interfere with the affairs of mortals Vs>Dragons establish their own empires with their own bureaucracies, integrating half-dragons, dragonborn, humans, kobolds, and other racesWhich do you prefer? Or is there one that fits a particular type of dragon more than the others?
>>97253010He misleads him, very briefly as you described, and then Smaug quickly sorties out, tries to find and kill the dwarves, fails to find them and so burns or eats most of their ponies so they can't escape the Lonely Mountain, and then flies off to Laketown just to fuck shit up, intending to return and root them out and torture them to death immediately after. The dorfs and Bilbo would've been completely fucked if there wasn't Deux Ex Machina Man, descendant of the King of Dale, with a never-before-mentioned Super Special Magic Macguffin Arrow, who talked to a fucking bird to learn Smaug's weakpoint and then was lucky enough to land a perfect instakill shot with said arrow. Weakest part of an otherwise perfect story. I don't think Tolkien wrote himself into a corner, I think he just wanted to find some way to involve Men in the Battle of the Five Armies, as if a mountain full of fucking gold wasn't motivation enough. But TLDR no, he doesn't reason with Smaug at all, and if he hadn't had the ring during their brief exchange, he'd have been a pile of ashes.
>>97253085It's true that Bilbo only survives through remaining unseen and Smaug would have gladly killed him if given the opportunity, but my point is that dragons, especially those lesser than Smaug, aren't stupid and could respect the power of dangerous rivals and negotiate, at least until they found a way to take the said power for themselves.
>>97252736>They can be tricked or misdirected but never reasoned withSo you don't like mythological dragons. Got it.
>Dragons that exist on a level above Kings and are paid tribute but otherwise largely don't interfere with the affairs of mortals This is kino
>>97252946lol
Would you consider this IP slop or worth playing?At least the system isn't d20 or PbtA...
>>97252802Monty Python is the name of a group of comedy performers (about half of which are now deceased), rather than the name of a particular individual.
>>97252786lmao
>>97252685I feel like most classic DnD games probably didn't go too long without a Holy Grail reference
If they really wanted to make a good Monty Python game they should base it on the weird animated segments rather than yet more Holy Grail. I remember there was this old computer game from the late 80s or early 90s like that, but sadly it was just another Mario-clone since the technology just wasn't there yet to do it justice.
is it lulzy?
So, imagine for a second that a GM is pitching you a sci-fi game to play in soon. The setting is "like StarCraft," the rules system is a new one to you (Flex D6 if it's essential you know), and the general flow of the game is described as flying a small ship around and going on planet side adventures in the face of an approaching disaster. What do you need to know, or want to know, ahead of time? What would be useful to you practically, creatively, etc? Do you want a session zero?
>>97250918>session zeroYes, but has to be setting description, group character creation and a short encounter to get everyone on board. >need to know Rules to the game ideally on a quick reference sheet or short 4 page thing. >want to know Scifi sort, space opera, fantastical, very soft, a bit more technical, are the people I'm playing with part of a regular group or new? >usefulElevator pitch for the setting, blurbs for the space area, how space travel works, what themes we're aiming at, how character mortality works.
"like StarCraft"
What this >>97251058 anon said plus >Can I shoot lightning?>Can I shoot lasers?>Can I have a cool robot arm that does any of the above?
>>97257414this
Or have another type of disability before becoming a space marine? Note this is not meant as insult on the disabled I am legally classified with Asperger's and get Canadian Disability for that.
>>97253970 I'm using a speech to text internet program. it's not supposed to be artsy it's supposed to be autism.And no this is my first post since I made the OP.
>>97253872>artistic Yeah, he makes exquisite paintings of mountainscapes.
>>97253987>I'm using a speech to text internet program.Please go and stay gone.
>I am legally classified with Asperger's Average warhammer fan
I am legally classified with Asperger's Not sure if always legally but this describes all of 4chan
