Our little hobby is already a microcosm of an industry. So what is your micro obsession within our miniature marketplace, what makes you as autistic like train enthusiasts within table top RPG or The wider spectrum of traditional games?
>>98021652Customization.Pushed to the extreme, it is a PF 1st ed 3 class multiclass, all with archetypes with a Fragged Empires customized gun. Oh, and my mech needs the keyword "modular". Very important.Oh, and let me set up the rebel base, the guild's layout, my smith's floorplan or the whole goddamned settlement. If necessary, I'll design it ans we'll roleplay the necessary bits in-between sessions and I'll weave in other players' request.
I often feel I am incredibly well-balanced with RPGs and have preferences but no obsessions, and I enjoy a wide variety of mechanics and settings, so there's nothing to really bite into for being particularly autistic about. So that probably means I'm incredibly autistic about all of it.
>>98021652Setting details, usually.I'm obsessed with plenty, but the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco is my very-favorite, most obsessive interest RE: ttrpgs. It's the setting of the VtM game I am forever writing. I come back to it over and over, tinkering with it. I have for about ten years. I've tried to run it twice, but one time the table died because I couldn't keep up running two games at once. The other time I was running for an online group and eh... it just wasn't a good fit. But that's alright--it's more about me writing it than running it. I have other things I actually run. But I'm obsessed with it. Here's a small selection of some of the most-relevant books and trinkets I've read and collected from it. The big red tomes are a complete and fascinating history of the fair. It's around 2,500 pages, but they're a fairly easy read and have many photographs. There are also 3 genuine bluebooks from San Francisco in 1911, *14 and *15. They're like phone books before phones were a thing (the first coast-to-coast, us phone call was actually made at this world's fair). The turquoise gem is one of the Novagems from the Tower of Jewels (the building that was the entrance/central piece of the exposition). They sell for about $400-$2000 usually, depending on the color and condition. I have a few, but that one is my favorite. You can also see the little green gem in the cloche that's actually a pin from a ladies' auxiliary. Anyway I have a million trinkets and many thousands of pages of books of history and essays about art and culture and science, and poems and photographs and... it's a little obsessive. But it's TTRPGs that drive the interest. I care about the thing in and of itself, nowadays. But it was "this'd be a cool setting for a game of VtM" that ultimately got me interested in a consuming obsession with a ten month long event that happened more than a hundred years ago.
>>98022542Just as an example, here's the actual, official poem written about the closing of the fair (official in the sense that dude was comissioned to write a poem about the event by the organizers).I bent down low and asked her to tellWhat she was crying about,And she told me it broke her little bronze heartTo have the lights put out.She pleaded with me as she softly sobbedIn the darkness of the night,To “please tell the men who built the FairTo come and turn on the light.”I wiped the tears from her baby eyesAnd told her she cried in vain,That when the lights were turned out that nightThey never would shine again.Tell me that poem doesn't make you wanna pretend to be a vampire who eats people. More sparkly things related (I moved the cloche back to where it belongs on my bookshelf, after taking the first picture).
>>98021652Probabilities and chances of specific things happening, be it RPG checks, draw chances in cards or board game strategies.Except people either want to talk about min-max (which I find utterly counter-productive, especially if you know your actual chances) or how under/overpowered specific strategies are.I also love automation in TTRPGs, where you don't have to make a roll for something, because there is no/close to no way to fail so the game is designed around that concept and auto-succeeds on specific situations (like basic checks in the field of expertise of your character).Except people instantly bring falling-forward (which is completely unrelated) or start bitching about lack of rolls. Because clearly, the best time to spend your time in game is rolling dice on check you can't mess up.t. accountant
>>98021652In My games, I really like giving loot that doesn't come in the form of gold pieces. Rewards and treasure typically take the form of art objects, gemstones, or miscellaneous "junk" that isn't useful to the PCs but can fetch a good market price. Bandits attacking wagons are just as likely to take the 5 metres of tanned leather as they are to take the coins in the merchant's purses. Dungeons have art objects and leftover weapons from whoever used to live there, with coinage very rarely placed around as others may have already been here, or the survivors from whatever force drove them out took whatever cash they could carry before abandoning the site. In the case of a monster's lair, there often just isn't practical reason to keep coins around, but they may have a magic greatsword taken from another adventurer they killed long ago, or perhaps they keep some live sheep around. Also, different goods have different values depending on location. In the rural settlements further inland, a jar of peanuts is worth significantly more than the coastal settlements where trade is easier. A painting has more value to a member of the noble class than a peasant farmer, and is nearly impossible to sell outside of a major city. Fish native to a particular river will be pricier the further away you are from that river. So on.My favourite thing I ever gave a party was a decrepit and abandoned farmhouse about a 10 minute walk outside the city. They got it as a reward for killing a monster attacking the city. They cleaned the place up, but hadn't bothered to repair or renovate it by the time a TPK came around. Despite that, I liked it because it led to some good and fun roleplay moments and even bit them in the ass one time when they chose to stay home all day on the same day I'd planned to have orcs attack the city, and they had to deal with the partial loss of their reputation as heroes. They did go out and pursue the orcs afterwards, but got wiped out.>>98022238Nice.
