I've never actually played a real game of D&D. A practice game of 4E over Skype doesn't count, since my character was just a sassy talking sword.
Technically a Warforged Sword Swordmage. I don't know how the system really works, I just took suggestions on the mold I was going for to be a silly ass.

Our crew was tasked to rescue a beastiophilic eledrin's wife, who was a donkey, in a cave. The donkey turned out to be a kobold in disguise.

I don't even know.

I used to play all the time, back in high school. Did a bit after...haven't in years, though. I would love to, I just don't have a group.

I got into tabletop games in high school since a lot of my friends played. We had so many weekends where we'd staying up all night playing D&D. God, it was great having a friend who had his own apartment.

I'm in college now and just found a group a few weeks ago. We've been playing sporadically during the summer. It always seems to be hard to schedule that shit, ya know? If we were scheduling a movie night, it wouldn't be hard, but as soon as it turns to D&D it seems like some vengeful god comes down and turns out schedules to shit.

Personally, I'm a fan 3.0/3.5 because that's what I started playing with. 4E is fine, but not my cup of tea because it feels like it would play better as a minis game. I'm also a big fan of Dark Heresy since I loves me some GRIMDARK SPACE FIGHTAN. It's so over the top, I can't help but love it. I've wanted to try GURPS for a while since I've heard awesome things about it, but haven't been in a group that wanted to.

>>84765

GURPS is a weird position in gaming terms.

It CAN do whatever the fuck you want it to. But at the same time. You need to have a distinct idea where you're going with GURPS, what you want to do with it and a decently fleshed out civilization to basically get shit done in. It's not the kinda game you can just say "Hey I got this idea for an adventure, lets run it in GURPS!" it's really more like, "Hey I got this idea for an adventure! Lets make a setting, clearly defined character traits and abilities, limitations, necessary restrictions and then we can try running it in GURPS".

It's really a nice toolbox for gamers and nothing more. Good for practically anything but you need to put time and effort into it if you want it to work out right.

I play in a 4th edition game and a 3.5 edition game "weekly". The 4E game is kinda sporadic right now but we're working on it.
I'm waiting for Heroes of shadow to come out so I can give my assassin some feats.

I've always wanted to try, and a couple of my friends have a regular group, but I've always felt weird about going up to them and asking if I can join their D&D group.

>>84782

I don't think they would have a problem with it.

I mean unless they're total dicks or something as long as you're willing to pick up the basics relatively fast you should be OK.

HEY
HEY HEY HEY HEY

You guys remember that somebody here on Plus4chan was modifying Maid, so that it'd be based on fairy tales? Is that guy still around? Because I am still so interested, I want to read and play that system.

>>84784

That was me.

AND AN INTERESTING NOTE ABOUT THAT.

I'm actually working with someone else on a way to refine the system into more of its own thing. Literally it's kinda like "Fairy Tale's" second edition if that makes any sense.

But I'm really more surprised you remember that. In fact I'm REALLY surprised that you're interested.

>>84766
I tried running GURPS, I didn't like it. You can play anything you want, but anything you want becomes mechanically boring.

I've barely dipped my toes into DnD. A friend of mine has been DMing a sporadic 3.5e campaign for me and a few other RPG newbies. I love it and would kill to get more RPG time in but our schedules don't work. The other people in the group are pretty bad at meta gaming but they're also hilarious.

I have another buddy who wanted to start a campaign, but that hasn't gotten off the ground. I'm kind of hesitant though. The guy was DM for his last campaign, apparently he had a DMPC who was a super speshul female cleric who was deity or descendant of gods, something like that. He claims it was really enjoyable, but this is the same guy who hates anime fanservice and thinks FFXIII is an amazing game with one of the best stories ever.

I've been running a 4e game with some amount of frequency, and it's been pretty fun. I have some stories to tell if people are willing to listen.

>>84795
DO EEET

I won't be able to get back together with my regular campaign until school starts again, but on my birthday this July I'm planning on gathering some local friends for at least one session. Maybe it'll become a semi-weekly thing if people have the time, but everyone's schedules are looking kind of patchy.

So, anyone want to game online? 4e specifically, I've been wanting to give it a spin.

I'd be willing to run a campaign for plus4ch, through Gametable and Skype.

Rogues up in this piece, being the best class. Devas are also the best race.

>How'd you get into it?
I had a Commodore 64 growing up. I found the book that was called something like "Writing Adventure Games for Your Microcomputer." The introduction explained that it was about writing D&D-likes, and what D&D was. It had a little watercolor drawing of some polyhedral dice and miniatures sitting on top of a map drawn on graph paper. I read through the book, worked on some of the example code, and decided I was more interested in creating a setting (which I still have the original hand written notes for somewhere) than debugging arrays and figuring out how to code graphics in Commodore Basic (which, if you owned one, you will remember was a colossal pain in the arse). So I decided I was going to buy D&D. Or more precisely AD&D 2nd Edition. Took me a while to get the money together, what with being a kid, in a poor country town, during a crippling recession. Luckily, I met a guy who had a AD&D (first edition) Dungeon Masters Guide (the original one, with the Efreet on the cover), and between that and my 2nd Ed. Players Handbook we were able to get a campaign going.

>You ever play?
1992-1997: All the fucking time.
1998-2005: Rarely.
2005-2010: Not at all. :(

>How do you enjoy the editions?
D&D (original): Wait, you mean I can be either a Dwarf or a Thief, but not both? Why did you buy this again?
AD&D 1st Edition: Assassination success table! My God! Gygax Thinks of Everything!
AD&D 2nd Edition: Okay, so you're a Kobold Assassin, you're a Githzerai Ninja, and you're a Human Fighter specializing in stiletto throwing? Just let me grab the relevant splatbooks... You guys are gonna love this Spelljammer stuff.
D&D 3rd Edition: PLAYTESTING? SOMEONE PAID ATTENTION TO CHAOSIUM? BARBARIANS ARE BACK? HUMANS ARE USEFUL? THAC0 GONE? REALLY? PROMISE? OMGWTFD&DGASM!
D&D 4th Edition: Rules completely overhauled to more resemble an MMORPG? But they still don't fix the linear warriors, quadratic wizards problem? Weird new classes and races that fall seem designed to appeal to Otherkin and XTREEEEM kids? Completely discarding Greyhawk as a setting? I have to buy a splatbook to get barbarians and bards? You know, I think I'll just play Exalted.

Seriously, I started reading the 4e Players Handbook, got into the races section, and gave up in dismay. If I wanted to play an MMORPG, I'd play an MMORPG. When I open a book with the Dungeons & Dragons logo on it, there are certain things I expect, and 4e basically fulfilled none of those expectations.

>>84798

I would absolutely be up.

>>84798
Askal, TMC, and I were talking about it, I think TMC was in that conversation.

>>84812

>moment you get to 4E

HEY! HEY!

Stop that. We're having NONE OF THAT HERE.

If you can't play nice. I'll have to ask you to get out of the kiddie pool.

Man, I wish I grew up with this stuff.
I got some sort of board game RPG at a garage sale as a kid but no one would play with me.
They said it was "too complicated".

>>84812
>But they still don't fix the linear warriors, quadratic wizards problem?
Yes, yes they did. What gave you that idea?

>I have to buy a splatbook to get barbarians and bards?
Yeah, that pissed me off to, but the way I see it is that they (1) just didn't have enough room for all of the classic classes in the first PHB, and (2) needed to do more playtesting and experimentation until they could get them all right.

>Seriously, I started reading the 4e Players Handbook, got into the races section, and gave up in dismay.
Dragonborn and tieflings were both in 3.X, man.

Your whole post made me feel like it was 2008 on /tg/ again.

>>84798
I might be up for it, but I'm already running one 4e game and playing in another.

>>84786
Any ETA on that?

>>84827
>Yes, yes they did. What gave you that idea?
The impression I got from the 4e PHB was that the fixed the problem of a 1st level wizard being basically a Sleep spell on legs, but at the higher levels their power levels still got out of hand. But as you have actually played 4e, I'll take your word for it and say "oh, okay. Good."

>Yeah, that pissed me off to, but the way I see it is that they (1) just didn't have enough room for all of the classic classes in the first PHB, and (2) needed to do more playtesting and experimentation until they could get them all right.
If this is the case, they should have omitted the new classes and races and held off until they'd completed the playtesting and experimentation. I'm more inclined to think, however, that this is just a way to get nerds with a bad case of completitis (i.e. me) to shell out for another hardback.

>Dragonborn and tieflings were both in 3.X, man.
Tieflings were both in 2nd Ed., too. Tieflings were introduced as a player race in the Planescape boxed set. Now, I only skimmed the Dragonborn entry, but the look like Half-Dragons, which were introduced in the Council of Worms boxed set.

>>84839
As a wizard, I almost never use sleep, as they only fall asleep for a round and Coup de Grace doesn't instantly kill like in 3.5. I find encounter powers are the most useful of all, although I did manage to kill this one big beasty after blowing every power I had before giving up and using magic missle.

I'm glad I never tried to understand THACO. Having 3.5 explained to me is bizarre enough.

I'm more of a World of Darkness: Werewolf: the Apoc player. Just on a whim of why-not, I tried to translate over the game mechanics for Garou into a D&D setting.
..
Nnnnnup. That doesn't work. No DM/GM would allow it.

>>84841
Theres a story, I don't know if it was true or not, that THACO was deliberately hard to figure out, the fear being that players would figure out exactly what they needed to hit monsters beforehand, say by, memorizing armor class.
The solution was to make a system so convoluted only having the book in front of you could help you figure it out.

>>84839
The fact that spellcasters can't rape everyone's shit at high levels is one of the reasons that some people don't like 4E. Go figure.

>Tieflings were both in 2nd Ed., too. Tieflings were introduced as a player race in the Planescape boxed set. Now, I only skimmed the Dragonborn entry, but the look like Half-Dragons, which were introduced in the Council of Worms boxed set.
Then what's so terrible and MMORPG-y about them?

I mean, I'm not exactly a fan of PoL when it comes to D&D settings, preferring the stolid Greyhawk setting (chalk it up to Mystara) instead of Forgotten Realms. Not a big fan of the new races they introduced in 4e either, nor the creative deadness in naming classes in the "adjectivenoun" form.

But the rules seem well-thought out and actually fun to play, as well as being relatively balanced. And the fact of me being a fan of console SRPGs such as Fire Emblem, SRW and Ogre Battle...

Seems the best case would be to take the 4e core rules and reflavor the fluff and descriptions into something a little less... trite.

>>84839

>If this is the case, they should have omitted the new classes and races and held off until they'd completed the playtesting and experimentation. I'm more inclined to think, however, that this is just a way to get nerds with a bad case of completitis (i.e. me) to shell out for another hardback.

Thing is. The way PHB is constructed you don't actually NEED any of the later ones to play. All of the classes in the original PHB work perfectly fine and create a decent party dynamic with just those listed (yes. I'm aware Wizards are the only controllers on the list. But honestly controllers are such an unusual class role all in and of themselves parties don't really NEED one).

The only reason you'd complain about Barbarians/Bards not being in the core books is because you automatically associate DnD with those classes. Which is pretty dumb considering the templates around those classes can be molded into PHB1 classes without much trouble. I don't see why your "Barbarian" can't be a fighter with a great axe who learned how to fight by being out in the wild. Or why your bard can't be a Warlock who got some mad instrument skills from making a pact with an archfiend or something. PHB1 pretty much covers almost the entire gauntlet of fantasy archetype adventurers.

Oh and one more thing. The moment you said Otherkin? You may as well have been holding up a sign that said "HURP DE DERP I TROLL U" with how mouth breathing stupid you sounded. Now I don't care how you drew that conclusion. But it's pretty stupid all the same.

>>84858

If you want a less-stupid scenario. There's Eberron, which is basically unchanged from 3.5 and the Dark Sun setting is coming out in August. We dunno how well they're gonna do it, but from the looks of things the Eladrin are being re-flavored relatively appropriately and it seems to be mostly unchanged from the original setting. Which is apocalyptic fantasy.

As for how the book is categorized. I can't necessarily berate anyone for being annoyed at changes. But it's really like judging a book by it's cover.

>>84860
Well I've always been a reflavorer of fluff.

I used Exalted to run a Orientalpunk Hong-Kong neon-light martial arts invasion from hell setting rather than the gonzo original setting...

>>84822
Oh, I feel your pain.

>>84787
You didn't use all the rules, did you?

I have yet to see a published D&D setting that was superior to Eberron.

You want classic monster-slaying adventures? BRELAND'S GOT GOBLINOIDS COMIN' IN FROM DROAAM AND EVERYTHING ELSE COMING IN FROM DARGUUN THOSE FARMSTEADS AIN'T GONNA DEFEND THEMSELVES!

You want urban fantasy? MEET SHARN, THE SKYSCRAPING LOVECHILD OF ANKH MORPORK AND CORUSCANT!

You want political intrigue? IF YOU WANT IN ON THIS DRAGONMARKED SHIT YOU HAD BETTER BE READY DEAL WITH THE MACHINATIONS OF GIANT NOBLE-FAMILIES-SLASH-INTERNATIONAL-GUILDS!

You want magicpunk? WE'VE GOT ELECTRIC HOVERTRAINS, SAPIENT BATTLE CONSTRUCTS, ELEMENTAL AIRCRAFTS, AND AN ENTIRE CLASS DEDICATED TO BEING AN ENCHANTMENT ENGINEER!

You want war? BITCH THIS WHOLE CONTINENT JUST GOT DONE FIGHTIN' FOR A HUNDRED YEARS AND IT'S STILL A POWDER KEG WAITING TO EXPLODE!

You want new takes on class races? OUR ELVES ARE BLOODTHIRSTY RAIDERS, OUR ORCS ARE DEFENDERS OF NATURE, AND OUR HALFLINGS RIDE DINOSAURS!

You want moral ambiguity? GOOD LUCK PICKING A SIDE THAT DOESN'T HAVE SOME SORT OF ULTERIOR MOTIVE, AND GOOD LUCK PICKING AN ENEMY THAT DOESN'T HAVE SOME SYMPATHETIC ANGLE!

You want post-apocalyptic survival? TAKE YOUR PICK BETWEEN THE CANNIBAL TRIBES OF THE THE DEMON WASTES AND THE MAGICAL FALLOUT OF THE MOURNLANDS!

You want to be Indiana Jones? THEN GET YOUR ASS OVER TO XEN'DRIK AND START EXPLORING SOME DROW-INFESTED JUNGLE RUINS!

You want straight-up awesomeness? DID YOU EVEN HEAR ALL THE STUFF I JUST SAID?!

So yeah, it's pretty good.

>>84873
I treid. Unless there was something I was really missing, I just found even if it fairly represented stuff, it was just kinda...missing something.

>>84878

I've always wanted to try Ebberon. If my gaming group ever decides to try D'n'D, I'm gonna demand it'll be Ebberon.

Pic related, by the way, my take on an old /tg/ meme.

>>84886
Assuming you meant "I tried", you were doing it wrong, big time. GURPS openly encourages you not to use every single rule described in the book, but to choose whichever works best for your adventure and setting. Trying to use every rule in GURPS must be a nightmare.

>>84888
"YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT I'M A VERY OPEN GUY."
"Right, Rood."
"BECAUSE I USED TO BE A DOOR."
"We all know that, Rood."

>>84857
>Then what's so terrible and MMORPG-y about them?
Nothing. My MMORPG comments were solely about the redesign of the rules systems, not about the actual content as such.

>>84859
>The only reason you'd complain about Barbarians/Bards not being in the core books is because you automatically associate DnD with those classes.
This is actually a pretty neat summation of my gripe with 4e. I'm sorry if I wasn't entire clear on that. I do tend to ramble.

>Oh and one more thing. The moment you said Otherkin? You may as well have been holding up a sign that said "HURP DE DERP I TROLL U" with how mouth breathing stupid you sounded. Now I don't care how you drew that conclusion. But it's pretty stupid all the same.
Now I feel like you're trolling me. We are in a troll spiral.

>>84995

No, Shirou is just a naturally combative person. It is his nature, like the stars in the sky and the birds in the air.

>>84995
>>85009

Look I'm sorry.

I probably go on /tg/ too much but the moment somebody tries to pull the "4e is for furries" card on me I get angry inside. But even then I can typically control it so I dunno why I lost my shit here.

Maybe it's because I expect better from /cog/...

>>84995
You should'a specified, man, because given your earlier comment about "Otherkin and XTREEEEM kids" I was under the impression that you had a problem with the new races.

>>85014
Its been called for MMO-fags, kids, furries, weeaboos, what else...

>>85029

Really. Inert derogatory generalization targeted at a specific group of people. 4e players have been called it.

>>85054
...'for nerds'?

>>85055

... YES! I've actually seen people argue that 4e is more "nerdy" than other editions of DnD. Make of that what you will.

>>85056
That's redonkulous.

So, I'm setting my party up against a crime syndicate that controls the city. We have a half-elf paladin, a half-elf monk, a dragonborn invoker, and a bard that recently joined.

To take down the syndicate and the leader they first have to take down 3 lieutenants. A brute/gladiator Shifter named Jerg Johnson. In the battle with him the monk, who used to be a slave gladiator, encountered one of her old friends from her gladiatoring days, but instead of being the person she remembered, he was driven crazy and mind controlled by drugs and magic. He was killed during the battle by one of the hirelings I gave them to help them out. At the end of the battle Jerg managed to kill the hireling as a last hurrah before the paladin struck him down.

The next lieutenant was Sorashana, also known as the Lady of the Night. She was very much the face where as Jerg was the sword. She worked as a stripper at the strip club, when the party went there they overheard one of the crime syndicate members talking about a "Ms S" but the trick here was is that EVERYONE, including the owner of the club (Madam Serie) had an S in their name.

So after Sorashana managed to give false information, seduce, and sleep with with the paladin (I am such a dick), they went to arrest Madam Serie, only to find that she was cursed and couldn't speak in common. To make a long story short (too late) they went to a room behind the bar to find Sorashana holding one of the bartenders hostage, she snapped the paladin's heart in half and then was beaten to death by the monk, despite this she was still smiling and laughing as she was punched to death.

The third and final lieutenant is a Revenant known as Wrath, he's more professional than the other two and isn't actually evil per-say, he's just obeying the will of his goddess the Raven Queen. They haven't found out all that much about him yet, but the reason he joined the Syndicate is that the leader of the Syndicate is hoarding holy magic items to combat an undead menace that's growing outside the walls... for a price. One of these magic items is the paladin's church's artifact, which is why he came to the city first place.

S'pretty awesome.

>>85060

You remember that time my Rogue threw that sicknasty shuriken at that duergar? Shit was tiiiiiiiiight.

I never hear anyone talk about the 1st and 2nd editions, nor can I find any real info about them. Why is that?

>>85063
There were no 1st or 2nd editions.

I've DM'd a small campaign of 4e. Never gotten to play a real campaign as a player though, only a few forgettable one-off's. very sad. I wish I could play a real campaign as a player character.

I started playing 4e after the guys from Penny-Arcade started doing those podcasts, and fell in love with the table vibe they constructed. Overall I've had a pleasant experience with the system, though at times I wish things like monster fluff was a little more descriptive.

I would love to either play a campaign with you guys on +Cog, but I'm pretty certain I can't host a game on Maptools (I'm incompetent when it comes to firewalls.), and it's slightly tricky to justify "wasting" 5 hours with dudes over the internet.

>>85062
Shit yeah bro.
>>85068
I use OpenRPG, I don't have to fuck around with firewalls that way.

>>85068
>though at times I wish things like monster fluff was a little more descriptive.
Have you checked out the MM3? The text still doesn't get into a lot of specifics, but it's more flavorful than a mouthful of Starbursts.

Pic related; the entry on banderhobbs reads like a creepy-ass campfire story.

Oh also, I'm going to make my players fight the Wrath in a silence'd and magically darkened room. The good news is is that they will only have one guy to fight. The bad news is is that they won't be able to see who is who and they might hit each other.

>>85070
>>That Face
>>What do?

>>85014
No worries, dude. I had no idea the "4e is for furries" was a /tg/ troll technique, and that being the case I can easily see how you mistook me for a troll.

>>85018
Well, it sort of is, but the MMORPG aspect is, in my mind, unrelated to that.

>>85056
Obviously an insult by someone too young to have seen the 1st Ed. DMG or the immense pile of parody it generated (HōL, I'm looking at you).

P.S. I can't seem to find HōL fanart anywhere, so I guess it's up to me to create some.

>>85070
I see it, I just have trouble justifying EVEN MORE money spent on this damnable game. I put out money for the DMG and the MM (I didn't know three was out yet), and also bought the DM screen and the Hammerfast supplement. No freaking way can my wallet support any more.

While DMG 3 looks good, and I read a lot in my favorite game shop (Games & Gizmos for the win!), I just can't justify a new D&D Book when my opportunities to play as a player or a DM are so few.

>>85076
>Child goes where?

>>85078
Well if you want to run a game on the internet, OpenRPG would be a good choice since you don't need to screw with firewalls, and I'm sure you could gather people on /cog/ or the plus4 skype to play.

>>85066
Wh-what?!
But, how canthat be? If a 3rd and 4th exist how can a 1st and 2nd not exist?

>>85084
You have been bamboozled.

I don't think I'd like to DM, but are any of you interested in playing a game? Maybe we could get a google group set up or something to organize it and exchange files?

I'd love to play some, but I'm not up for DMing. I just don't have the energy for it; I mod a roleplay on Livejournal, and it's basically like DMing except with more people and stupider. It's basically chewed up all my 'running shit' energy.

>>85089 >>85093

We frequently host games via Skype, organized through a Steam group. Haven't updated with an event in awhile, and I keep missing them, but its good fun the few times I've been in.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/5bucks

>>85084
Nope, definitely no such thing as 1st and 2nd Editions.

Still up for my offer of DM'ing.

...and I'm not particularly inclined to using OpenRPG. You don' t really have to tinker with firewalls unless you're hosting, Gametable-wise.

Back then we used Fantasy Grounds to play WFRP and that was a hell of a lot harder to set up.

>>85080
This monster isn't scary. It's adorably confused.

Honest to God I've yet to see an online map-sharing program that does not require you to do a hell of a lot of visual work.

I can make a map, but I can't use photoshop and I'm not an artist.

Me and my bros played a lot of DnD 3\3.5 ed throughout junior high and high school. We had many groups and sessions over the years, some less successful than others. I tended to play low tier characters due to my inability to roll a d6 or my refusal to maximize skills when we did point buy.

Yet to try 4th edition, we don't have as much time to game anymore. Skimmed through it, very different, modernized system. Seems way more balanced.

Meh, DnD is more often than not, a combat simulator, and overall, that's not really my thing.

nWoD is much more to my liking as far as systems go. We played some one shots in recent years and they went great.

>>85132
I think what really makes D&D so entrenched and persistent is how it's both impacted and relies upon the fantasy standards. When you play D&D you don't actually need to know terribly much about the world since that can be explained to you as you go.

But most people already have a tenuous idea of what a dwarf or an Elf is. Say things like Half-Devil, or Half-Elf, and Hobbit, and you've got the entire game in a nut shell.

I've tried 4E with my friends once. It seems to be that for a large campaign with lots of depth, 3.5 is best. For a quick dungeon crawl, 4E is probably best.

>>85156
I've heard this stated a couple of times and never argued with it, but now I'm inclined to ask what led you to that conclusion.

>>85156
>implying that depth has to do with the system and not the DM

>>85132
nWoD feels too simplified. The Defense rating removing the dice from enemy pools Vs. Old WoD's 'stamina is your soak pool' just rubs me the wrong way.

But then again this is coming from a werewolf: the apoc player. The "tank with my face" guys. And the uninspired crude matter that is Werewolf: the Forsaken makes me a sad panda.
... Their Gift system and tiered spirit world is interesting, though.

>>85156

Pretty much >>85158

I mean seriously. It's a freaking game system. Yes mechanics influence story to a degree but the story telling aspect is only there as much as the players and the GM want it to be.

>>85159
I have no real background with the Apocalypse, so I find the Forsaken well made and written.
New Vampire feels bland to me, but I understand what they were going for.

>>85177
In W:tA, were-things were created by Gaia as a way to police and manage forces of nature. The Garou (wolves) were the marines of the natural world.

In that system's cosmology, you had Wyld (creation, chaos, the stuff of reality) Weaver (order, structure, pattern, symmetry, consistency) and Wyrm (entropy, degeneration, death, oblivion.) All triatic aspects had a place. Beginning, middle and end. The Weaver grew upset at things that died and sought eternal perfection, so Order tried to calcify Death. Wyrm got butthurt and decided, "Well fuck all of you" and decided to overstep its bounds to destroy the whole damned celestial poker table.

Gaia went "Oh shi-!" and decided to make creatures that were both humans and animals. She gave each a different purpose, but I won't get into the others right now.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse is a game about Row Row Fight the Powaa against a celestial body intent on devouring everything. It contained a lot of metaplot, and lots of metaplot characters that spanned about ten years of development, revision and adventure that went from the Americas, Europe, to Africa, all of Asia and Australia.

It culminated in a canonical Apocalypse supplement that tied up everything and ended the franchise.

>>85190
I never understood how any of the lines tied into one another in the old system. I mean it's great when they're disconnected continuities, but then there would be odd references to the Technocracy or what not and it left me confused as fuck. (I know you weren't supposed to cross the streams though.)

But does Werewolf: The Apocalypse take place in the same world as V:tM? How the fuck does that work? Hell, how does a game of Werewolf even play? I can relate to powermad Humans, or almost-Human vampires. But whenever I try to think about how Werewolf must be played, all I can think of are Other-Kin LARPers.

>>85202
It isn't really fair to use otherkins or furries as a reference for W:tA. No more than serial murder can be chalked up to D&D or Doom.

>>85202
But at the same time, yes, there's no excusing the hilariously racist and melodramatic undertones to WoD. But those like all things in tabletop are only as corny or fun as you mold them to be.

>>85202

W:tA plays very differently from Mage or V:tM. In Werewolf, your main antagonists are rarely human beings. Your antagonists are the things that prey on human beings. And things that don't belong. In this world, or in this world after.

>>85202
You're Garou. Your kind walked the earth since before people wrote down their history. You're a supernatural symbiont drifting between mortal wolves and mortal humans in equal measure, because you call both Kin. Together with your pack, you elbow-drop any aberrant motherfucker that steps foot in the mortal world.

>>85202
Why? Because eons ago, Mother Earth brought your kind to life and then pointed out who belonged at the party and who didn't. She said keep the mortal world from going to shit and being overrun with stuff that ain't kosher with reality.

And they obliged. Garou are BC era Ghost Busters. A secret society of badass marines that live in the mortal world, and live apart of it in their own little cloistered secret society. Sutras and prayers written in calligraphy on rice paper? Proton Packs? Fuck no. These guys exorcise ephemeral spirits that won't behave by punching them in the face.

One of the principle fundamentals of the universe has gone off its rocker. As a result, death itself comes for the world from the bottom to the top. Schemes to hasten the dissolution of all things from as mundane as spirits that poison individual minds with addiction, greed and depravity, to more mundane machinations such as engineering oil spills in the Gulf as part of a master plan by those fuckers to wreck our shit.

W:tA stories can be anything from heavy RP faggotry slice of life things, to urban fantasy dungeon crawls.
(done.)

>>85202
The old WoD games were originally intended as standalone titles, but somewhere (just before the release of the second edition of Werewolf, IIRC) they decided to wrap them all up into one setting. This worked better for some of the games than others. Rules-wise, following the rule in the core books to print as of 1st edition Mage, a vampire who is a supposed to be a superhuman killing machine would be quickly torn to threads by a werewolf. Both would then be transmogrified into (most famously) lawn chairs by a low-to-mid tier mage. Setting wise, Vampire and Mage feature competing Secret Masters of The World. As far as I know White Wolf never came up with an entirely successful synthesis of the two. Werewolf and Mage didn't completely agree on cosmology, but once you decided which took precedence, they worked surprising well together. Wraith, the fourth game in the series, seemed to me to do the best job of working together with the rest of the series. Strangely, the fifth game, Changeling, seemed to gel the least with any of the other games.

As for how Werewolf played, just think of werewolves as the EPA, as run by supernatural vikings.

>>85229
Changling was never really supposed to, I don't think. To me it seems like they made Changling not really mesh with any cosmologies by intention. They're imaginary beings. Unknowable, fae monsters. In the Apocalypse book supplement, the Garou waited and waited for their fair folk allies to come. But they never came. When the Garou went looking for Arcadia, it wasn't there. Like dreams had died.

I'd like to play a well structured 4th ed. campaign. Preferably with maps FFS, chat-based D&D is probably a step DOWN from MUDS and MUCKS on telnet, since you're fucking PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.

>>85230
This is the best explanation of Changeling's general no-fittiness that I've ever heard. By far.

>>85235
>PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.
I non sequitur'd! What

Continued from >>85238
ever do you mean?

So you guys mentioned having trouble finding local players, and then Kurtz posted this on PvP:

>If you’re interested in following our D&D adventures, I’ve set up a page for our group at Obsidian Portal. I’ll be posting game recaps and short stories that I forward to my players every week. So it’s a fun way of keeping up with our adventures in roleplaying. If you’re interested in running your own game, but don’t have you own group, may I also recommend Pen and Paper Games.

>Pen & Paper Gamesis the perfect place to visit if you are looking for tabletop gamers or a game to get into in your area. They have a slick search tool (http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/memberlist.php) that lets you quickly plug in your location and find players and games within 10, 20, or even 100 miles of where you live. Kinda like an e-Harmony for gamers.

Funny thing about Wraith: the Oblivion. Wraith was White-wolf's pride and joy. That nobody else loved.

So they retired it with sadness and then made the existence of Wraith's metaplot events crucial for the metaplot events of the other series.

Then they moved on to Mummies, who were supposed to be the real true honest to goodness Good Guys of the franchise. Osiris/Aman Ra being some sort of super-ascended cainite that became something else and now hates vampires and evil mummies.

Anything can be converted into a mummy. From there, they just can't die. They might stop moving for awhile, but they'll get back up.

I never understood the point of Demon. I guess Demon is about fighting other Demons over whose view of reality and how to redeem or maintain themselves on Earth was best.

>>85243
I never read the mummy or demon books, but man those mummies sound cool.

Also, I loved Wraith so much, I wanted to take it out the back of middle school and get it pregnant. Also: FUCK YEAH THE RISEN.

>>85244
Was it just me, or did you get an Asian Wraith: the Oblivion vibe from the Kuei-jin too?

>How'd you get into it?

Other people asked me to play and told me it was fun.

>You ever play?

I tried out 3.5e in high school a couple of times, didn't really like it. I tried out 4e a few times on Skype, and enjoyed it much more, now I'm in an on-going game.


>How'd you enjoy the editions?

I like 4e quite a lot. 3.5e was okay, but not really what I wanted.

We tried to do Advanced Dungeons and Dragons once, for Tomb of Horrors, and I ended up giving up while making a character.


Honestly though, I'm finding that I like Dark Hersey a lot more.

>>85251
Kuei-jin... I don't remember them...
>Google
Never read KotE. I was thoroughly pissed off at all the Vampire tools by that point. (See: Goth Goose of the Week.)

>>85260
>We tried to do Advanced Dungeons and Dragons once, for Tomb of Horrors, and I ended up giving up while making a character.
Fig. 2.1: probability distribution of 3d6?

>>85356
Year of the Lotus was officially 'meh' and 'rage.' If you want a lowdown, the Kuei-jin are a sub-order of the V:tM line same as Mummy was (both started off as offshoots of cainites but then evolved into their own separate canon things) but distinctly eastern.

White-Wolf decided to throw everyone a curious curveball which I think was also reflected in the metaplot. The East can be summarized as more mystical, the Eastern people can be summarized as more "spiritually pure," and the Easterners social mechanics meant that the Kuei-Jin and Hengeyokai (ALL the shapeshifters of Asia assembled under one communal court) would work together to expel Western incursion.

The way a Kuei-Jin works is you're a somewhat useless person. You die unjustly. You go to one of the bajillion karmic hells. Your humanity and your p'o nature (your... shadow? Though in asia, it's just your assholic personality.) separate so your dark side can claw you up and out of hell.
You come back. Your soul reinhabits your body. You're now a chi-eating hungry dead.

The way Kuei-jin work is they exist on a Dharma chart. You could compare Dharma to having the functions of Mage Arete but the mechanics of cainite Generation. A Kuei-jin's position on the "road back" determines how powerful they are and how spiritually purified they've become. A Kuei-Jin with 0-1 Dharma has to eat flesh to get chi. 2-3 get it from blood. 4-5 can steal peoples life energies from their orifices by summoning it out of them. 6 and up can osmose it from the environment.

They have disciplines like Cainites or, so I hear, Risen. They're very eastern oriented, but they have parallels. "Iron Mountain"= Fortitude. "Blackwind" = Celerity + Potence. Yes, Celerity PLUS Potence..

>>85359
In terms of in-universe mechanics, that is almost identical to the Risen, except for the Dharma bit, which sounds really cool.

I take it you haven't read The Risen?
Risen can learn vampiric disciplines, but only Potence, Celerity, and Fortitude, IIRC. (In other words, only the physical disciplines.) They also possess the default wraith abilities of deathsight and lifesight, and have to be fairly powerful in a couple of wraithy Arcanos (wraith powers) to begin with. Some of them (e.g. the one to do with traversing the formless chaos of the underworld, Argos, I think) is useless in "the skinlands." Others (e.g. Pandemonium, AKA A POLTERGEIST IS YOU) are become obscenely powerful.

Risen are really bad news in a fight (or good news, if they're on your side). They don't take wound penalties, because they feel no pain. The can draw on their Pathos pool (akin to a vamps Blood pool or werewolf's Rage and Gnosis pools) to regenerate damage or power the aforementioned Disciplines or Arcanos. The real clincher, however, is that when they start to run low on Pathos, rather than simply get stomped, they are likely to be taken over by their Shadow, which is powered by a different stat (Angst; yes, they have a stat called Angst), which is usually larger than the Pathos pool, and at any rate, not at all depleted yet. And most Risen tend to have high strength to begin with, because they had to be strong enough to dig their way out of their grave. Nasty.