A roleplayer frustrated at the structure of our society. She/her.
Seoni, the iconic sorcerer of Pathfinder.
I’ll note that one thing that bugs me about the Sorcerer class *is* that, despite how fairly early in D&D 3e’s life there was a Dragon article talking about many alternative ways to have innate magic other than being born with it, both D&D itself and Pathfinder after it doubled down on the “magical bloodline” lore and terminology.
My preference is more “wizards have an education, warlocks have a magic sugar daddy, sorcerers have a superhero origin”.
While the Eberron setting doesn’t directly tie dragonmarks to the Sorcerer class, it does explore hereditary magic as a privilege. In general, if you’re not of the bloodlines who are “supposed to” get particular constructive magic and want to go into business using that magic, you need to either sign a contract with the appropriate Dragonmarked House or they’ll go Pinkerton on your ass. This cuts the other way, too, where anyone in the House with such powers is pressured to participate.
One idea that pops to mind is simply learning about the strange and sometimes dangerous flora and fauna of a new region… or, more fantastically, about its spirits. Rather than having the tension come from the usual “and we need to find X kind of resource to exploit in the process” (since that’s more colonialist thinking), there should be a dawning realization that the region itself is in danger from something the PCs need to stop.
Have to agree about six. The classic D&D videogames didn’t choose a party size of 6 by accident in their designs.
That being said, the push towards four instead definitely started in 3.0’s playtesting, on the assumption that parties would have one of each basic archetype (warrior, rogue, arcane caster, divine caster) for some reason. It probably also had a lot to do with how scheduling a dedicated table becomes exponentially more difficult with each added player.
Essentially, yes.
PCs having grievances can happen too, but it tends to be more of an intermediate technique than a basic one for players, and dependent on them already having a solid understanding of the setting.
The first thing to understand about how to have NPCs with legitimate grievances be a thing in a TTRPG is to imagine the world as a real one and the NPCs as people within that world. If you’re just thinking of the setting as a flat backdrop for gameplay and the NPCs as colorful questgivers whose protection is a thin excuse for the plot to happen, then you’re not going to be thinking in terms of things like what needs various NPCs might have and why they’re unfulfilled or violated.
Thing is, your typical clear-out-the-humanoid-tribe dungeon crawl could be considered pretty evil in its own right by modern standards. Just putting an emphasis on how much that old trope would actually involve disrupting lives and destroying families could be enough, depending on what she’s going for.
@ICCrawler @Zagorath
You can still buy materials from their store. I think they’re counting on that alone to prop it up.
The kinds of people who find replacing artists a “desirable purpose” do not belong in a creative community.
Sounds like you might need to explain that NPCs in TTRPGs aren’t like NPCs in video games. They’re not ambulatory signboards, but non-player *characters*, emphasis on character.
Just that while the setting sounds fundamentally very similar between the two Vampires with just differences in details, it sounds very different between the two Werewolf settings and the two Mage settings. Notably, from what I’ve heard the relationship between werewolves and spirits is fundamentally completely different between the two, to the point that I’d expect system differences.
Plus I’ve heard Werewolf: the Forsaken criticized as being more of a shaman game than a werewolf game.
So are you saying that all the mechanics are generic enough that they don’t support the Forsaken’s specific story anyway?
Isn’t Werewolf: the Forsaken built around a completely different story and cosmology, though? At that point you may as well use a generic game…
I’m thinking Ecology would likely be very useful for helping to restore areas damaged by the machine revolution – the worse the damage, the harder the job. Maybe one easy roll to replant after a clearcut, a whole adventure to restore a mechanized town.
As for Academics… the use of that sort of skill in TTRPGs in general is often to enable exposition and determine how extensive that exposition is. (Basically look at how Sally’s handheld computer Nicole is used.)
I have never played nor read this game, but the moment I heard about it I was struck with how it was clearly inspired by a specific cartoon from the early 90s which I’d hoped would eventually see inspired-by, serial-number-filed knockoffs: the ABC Saturday morning version of Sonic the Hedgehog. If you’re not familiar with “the SatAM”, looking into it might help you make some connections (it’s obvious to me what an Ecology skill would be good for in a SatAM game, for instance).
This also relates to my mention elsewhere in this discussion of what used to be called “special snowflakes” (before the birdsite ruined the word “snowflake”). Some people want novelty and creativity above all in their RP, and that doesn’t always come with a sense for how to balance that with intended theme or tone. And as you point out, if *no one* is playing things remotely straight, things can become farcical, or at least like an “Oops! All Foils” situation with no requisite normal.
It used to be that the opposite of “crunch” was “fluff”. These days, instead of “fluff”, people say “lore” — definitely a more respectful term for worldbuilding, metaplot, and the like than “fluff”, which has implications of filler.
Nowadays, rather than contracting “crunch” with “fluff/lore”, people are more likely to contrast it with being rules-lite.
It could also be applied to the “Chaotic Stupid” interpretation of Chaotic Neutral.
…Which does bring up the “stupid” alignments topic in general. There’s also “Lawful Stupid” (being an asshole enforcer of rules and laws beyond all reason; one of the more infamous ways to play a paladin), “Stupid Good” (“I’m sure the dark lord is just lonely and needs a friend!”), and “Stupid Evil” (being malicious and destructive in ways that don’t serve one’s interests and might even endanger oneself).
Referring back to my “sorcerers have a superhero origin” proposal elsewhere in this discussion… one of the Dragon suggestions for an alternative source of inherent magical power is being the subject of magical or alchemical experimentation.
In Eberron, since it just came out of a massive war that involved advancements in combat magic and artifice, it’s easy to imagine that type of origin specifically manifesting as “Captain America, but a sorcerer”.