woo, a gentleman bastards reference! great series.
Blades in the Dark is great. It has most in common with Dishonored and the designer said as much. You could take it as written with minor setting changes to make it work to play a group of assassins in Dunwall. There is also a RollPlay series if someone wants to see the designer run the game. Quality is so so but gets stronger a bit later in. https://youtu.be/QNzpg-qdZ0g
Rollplay rocks! I am chugging my way through the SwanSong one DMed by Adam Koebel which is just fantastic (aside from JP early on but he gets better).
I think I may pull the rrigger on some online rpg action soon. It really looks a lot of fun and playing Traveller with my son has whet my appetite.
I have two games per week I play online right now. It took me a year to find a good group but now it’s amazingly fun. Online gaming can be hit and miss as any table group can. But if it works it works almost as well as the table. Adam Koebel is a great GM. I watched lots of SwanSong as well. One of the main reasons Stars Without Number is so popular.
Does anyone have any thoughts on Dungeon Crawl Classics?
Only that I’d love to play it but can’t get the free time together to start another RPG. Can barely fit in my bi-monthly D&D.
I’ve read a ton of the modules and they’re all interesting, have a unique tone, and tickle the weirdness funny bone.
I think my only concern is that, after having only really played 5e, the magic chrome in DCC looks like it might add some un-fun overhead.
Over the top, crazy gonzo madness! Weird mix of old and new school with the plain old weird. I’ve only gotten to play once, at GenCon, but it was a blast. Always wanted to run with it, but just haven’t made it happen yet :-(
DCC is fantastic with a unique style that oozes from the rules to the settings. It looks super cumbersome but big parts of the book are art and the pages for spells. The rules itself are easy and DnD like. But they love their weird dice and randomness. Double thumbs up if you like weird fantasy and old school DnD like play.
Absolutely love DCC! I got to play some with other QT3 folks awhile ago and its really a fun system. The level 0 funnel adventure is just an absolutely fantastic mechanic for getting attached to your character ( if any survive). Once you get rolling the system felt easy to use and understand and wasn’t overly cumbersome.
Yesssss
I never get to run the kinda game where this sorta thing is super appropriate, but I desperately want to.
DCC is cool as balls and was the system of choice for my absolute favorite session I played this year at GenCon. Also the magical mishap tables are a fucking hoot :-D
Sailfish Bill! I had a great time running DCC. There are all kinds of wonderful things in DCC: the funnel, the creative fighter’s heroic moves, the crazy random spell tables, the almost certain death. I haven’t played it in years, but I love picking up the rulebook and reading bits. I hope to run it again some day.
Yes! Sailfish Bill the Halfling sailor(Pirate?!) ahhh good times! @Rob_O_Boston1 did an excellent job running the game and brought up a couple fun things. The Heroic moves for the fighters gives the player a lot of creativity in what they want to do and a crazy amount of improv potential. As both Rob and Armando said the spell tables are an absolute blast (figuratively and literally).
I used to play D&D a lot from around 5th grade to maybe 9th or 10th. I saw the Pathfinder bundle at Humble and was wondering if that is a good system. I will probably not ever play it, but it made me feel nostalgic. Is it a good system at least worth browsing over?
Pathfinder is D&D 3.5 with fewer Prestige Class shenanigans (but don’t worry, they were replaced by a whole host of Alternate Class Bonus, Feat-based, and Archetype-based shenanigans!). That may be a ringing endorsement or a cruel insult, depending on your opinions of D&D 3.5 ;-)
To the point of this particular set of books, I think that losing stuff like Advanced Players Guide, Ultimate Magic, and Ultimate Combat hurts the bundle a little, but the obvious horror focus is kinda cool regardless. Anyway, those books introduced some of the interesting new classes that really help differentiate PF from 3.5, so I consider them fairly core to the experience.
The included books also don’t have a ton of material about Golarion, Paizo’s setting of choice. I’m personally not a giant fan of the setting, but it’s certainly one of the most unique things about PF. So, again, a little sad. I don’t know much about the novels included in one of the higher tiers, but they might be a fun introduction to that world.
So, to attempt to answer more succinctly: PF’s a pretty complex, rich system with a very well-fleshed out setting and tons and tons of supporting material. It’s very D&D-esque, but hey, I drew a lot of enjoyment out of reading my old 3rd ed books over and over again without playing.
Until 5th edition D&D came along, it was the most popular roleplaying system in America, possibly the world. I would not describe it as good myself, but it’s relevant.
Actually, that reminds me. I still have some 1st and 2nd edition books that I had when I played. I have the DM’s guide, but I think I let someone borrow the players handbook a couple decade’s ago.
As far as Pathfinder, I was thinking the core rulebook might be interesting to look through.
I’m kinda curious where D&D has ended up these days. I think there is some free starter kit I can download somewhere.
Edit: I guess I’m mistaken. Starter kit is $20. I thought there was some free resource to get started.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules !
The PF Core Rulebook is enormous and is ostensibly enough to run a PF campaign out of for a good long time, insofar as it incorporates all the GMing rules and even has some monsters in it, IIRC.
Ahh thanks! I guess that’s what I was thinking of.
If you’re just interested in mechanics sans flavor and pictures, there’s also d20pfsrd.com, which compiles virtually every class, race, spell, feat, weapon, armor, item, monster, and GMing guideline in the entire Pathfinder line (barring a very small number of items whose very names are subject to a more stringent license, and even then, most of that stuff just shows up under different names).
It’s a lot of fun to just get lost clicking through all the archetypes of a given class, seeing all the fascinating ways they can be changed and modified.
Another free and helpful, if limited, 5e resource is that edition’s System Reference Document, which mashes together much of the player’s handbook, dungeon master’s guide, and monster manual. It leaves off some of the especially DnDish monsters like beholder or displacer beasts, but there’s plenty of dragons and dungeon-type activities to scan through.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-document-srd