Anyone who halts a game I'm involved in because they're uncomfortable is getting thrown out and never invited back. Thankfully I already don't play with anyone who would ever dream of doing that. And while it sucks what Faggots of the Coast has done to the various properties they've consumed in the grand scheme for culture, I personally just don't pay attention or let it bother me. Just like with Star Wars or Star Trek, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything made after it went bad and I move on with my life. Like a band with great early stuff who later sold out, just listen to the old albums. You can still find the old 3.5 books, or better yet, make your own campaigns. The basic premise and rules to D&D isn't that difficult. Once you know the framework and the mechanism of how it works, you can just change the rules however your group wants. If you're playing with 3 other similar minded people and you all decide that you think a particular rule is gay or don't like something that the faggots added later on, just decide it doesn't exist or count anymore. They're not (yet) standing over your shoulder forcing you to play their way. So don't. Just decide that what they say doesn't matter and do what you and your friends want to do.
I've never understood the notion of playing tabletop RPGs with people who you aren't already friends with. It very cleanly circumvents all of this. Who roleplays with random strangers?
People who don't have large enough groups with both the time and interests aligned already to play with. In fact, playing with randoms is a great way to build a group of friends and was a solid choice for nerds for decades before Progressives invaded it.
If TTRPGs were limited to just "got lucky enough to grow up with a group of friends to play it with" then they would have died a long time ago.
Most of mine have been over Discord or Google Hangouts back when that was still a thing, but it's always been with people I've known for years prior to ever rolling up a character.
Anyone who halts a game I'm involved in because they're uncomfortable is getting thrown out and never invited back.
That’s pretty much on point with 95% of games. That 5% are Streamers and tourists who can’t run two brain cells together to imagine a non-self insert character.
Anyone who halts a game I'm involved in because they're uncomfortable is getting thrown out and never invited back.
The only appropriate response to someone pulling that stupid fucking X card or whatever it's called. No wait, actually that one deserves worse, because just demanding a scene rewrite without even offering an explanation is scum behavior.
In all these, there is care to protect and maintain the pure species. You can always recreate the hybrids by re-doing registered crosses from scratch if there is still a pool of quality specimens of the species.
You cannot recover a species that has its gene pool polluted by accidental or deliberate hybridizing to the point the pure individuals no longer exist.
Some hobbyist circles for types of animals generally frown upon any sort of hybridizing, such as finch breeding. The risk of genetic pollution from bastards that look like a species is just too high, and several species can no longer be obtained pure from the wild due to being endangered, general wildlife preservation export ban, or risk of diseases introductions.
Accidental finch hybrids should either be culled or housed as pets in a cage where they cannot breed, in the hand of someone who will never re-sell them.
The problem with that definition is that it made too few endangered species. So now, a new species can be identified and called distinct based on whatever asspull some environmental 'scientist' can justify, in order to halt human progress and development in an area.
There exists no coherent definition of a species, anymore. No objective test you can apply. Just like everything else the left touched, the answer is 'whatever benefits the left the most in this situation'.
Also is there a "mid tier" rules system where the rules are halfway between 3.5 (accounting homework) and "just make everything up"? I just don't have the energy to DM 3.5 anymore but using AI tools out there to help keep track of and write a campaign are calling me.
I'm just not in a place now where I can write + run a campaign and homebrew/kitbash a system that isn't retarded, but then again my target players are casuals so itight work well enough.
I think with the AI tools I can either train an LLM on the srd+splats+modules or pull them in as a project data set and my homunculus can do the drafting and homework for me and help me keep my lore consistent.
A lot of people say Pathfinder (1, not 2's woke trash) is D&D 3.75, but it is still very number-crunchy, just a lot more options.
It has a bad reputation because of its playerbase, but Vampire:The Masquerade is a lot more freeform than D&D, but maintains still having rulesets and rolls.
And of course, there's always Dungeons: The Dragoning 40k 7th seas edition.
I would say stick with vampire revised or at worst 20th anniversary edition. The new edition is pretty much garbage and shies away from the idea of you playing monsters instead tries to be like you're subverting vampire society.
WoD is superior for telling a compelling character based story over DnD. DnD is essentially a video game to me in comparison. There's just so much you can do with character and conflict. The metaplot is peerless if it's up your alley. And depending on how much arc welding youre willing to do, can serve everything from gritty gutter level stories and eschatological scenarios in the same universe, occasionally even with significant character crossover.
That said. V5 has the hunger die as an innovative mechanic, and every other word and picture in the core book and it's supplements is hot steaming still garbage. W5 is even worse. And i shudder to see what M5 looks like when it arrives.
V20 is inadequate but... serviceable.
W20 is the best of the 20s but still pales to revised, I'd say that Chronicles werewolf is actually better than w20, and is the only new game line I'd consider good that wasn't a complete new line.
Chronicles werewolf is probably going to give you the most loot and level experience of any of the lines, and is fun enough. I just like big metaplot and thus find it shallow.
Please ask me questions about Whitw Wolf gamelines because I will not shut up about them.
Was/is a series of urban fantasy role playing games. The big three being Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage.
Each was focused less on being on a quest or doing some sort of investigation, but more about interpersonal conflict and fighting losing battles.
The metaplot was enormous and convoluted and didn't actually work on its own without extensive homebrewing, but it managed to run it's entire course and publish an end of the world conclusion.
It's been rebooted twice/three times to mixed results.
I loved/love it and still run it for my play group as our primary game.
This is the Stormwind Fallacy in action. The system does not change how much roleplaying one does. It is the players that do that. You can infact run a HighOp DnD campaign and have the best roleplaying at the same time. (In fact running a campaign with High System Mastery players is better because there is less rules lawyering, munchkining, and just slow play that blocks the story.)
It's not worse at it. That is the fallacy in action. And having fewer tables just means the DM has to spend more time coming up with that stuff himself. Those tables are there to let a DM create encounters and situations on the fly faster. The roleplaying is entirely dependent on the players, not the system. If a DM is calling for rolls when the players are role playing then he is just a bad DM, which is unfortunately the standard and not the exception.
What built in mechanics does DnD have that track sense of self?
What mechanics encourage the use of a completely non-combat capable character?
This isnt even really an argument. Cause I didn't say anything about role-playing or about optimization. So you're just blatantly wrong about your application of the fallacy.
Frankly the only people I've heard make the argument that you're making are the ones stuck in a dnd centric mentality. And you bringint up "encouters" is reminiscent of that.
Your version of stormwind would apply to role playing in Monoploy, since "the system doesn't matter, people can role-play how they want"
What built in mechanics does DnD have that track sense of self?
Why do you need a rule book to tell you how to do that? Anyways that is pretty much reflected in your Cha score, when it hits 0 you become a potato without a sense of self. Damage to Wis also does this, and outsiders like Gibbering Mouthers (aka lovecraftian horrors) do this.
What mechanics encourage the use of a completely non-combat capable character?
That depends entirely on the campaign you are playing. You can do the same sort of emo intrigue wankery that is the ONLY thing you can do in VtM just as easily in DnD. You just have to have a group willing to do that. After all, most of the spells in the 3.5 handbook are non-combat spells. Zone of Truth does nothing in combat, Sending does nothing in combat, Stone to Mud does very little in combat. For that matter most of the skills in DnD are non combat.
They're racists with guilty consciences, yes, but it goes beyond that.
The whole idea is to soften language, make it impossible to have a serious discussion about serious issues without boring everyone to tears as you try to explain complex concepts without stepping on a societal landmine.
So the “monsters” you fight are still bound by biologically determined behaviors and dispositions, but that same biological determinism somehow does not manifest in anyone who belongs to the arbitrary categories of “player” or “npc”.
Sorta like how blacks jump higher and run faster because of evolution, but there’s no similar explanation for IQ differences. Evolution stops at the neck.
To me it's correcting a technicality. We consider apes and elephants and humans all different species, but make them bipedal and sentient and suddenly they're a race? Nah. Species is more correct, even if it did come out of wokeness. This changes is like the least controversial/woke change they made in 5/5.24 IMO.
EDIT: And for all those who are like "well species can't breed with each other." And to that I say, it's a fuckin magical fantasy land of pretend. Do what you want. That's the beauty of TTRPGs. The official rules only really matter during official sanctioned play stuff like Adventure league and whatnot. Just homebrew shit. When I made a game, I let it be dark/gritty/real, so all the woke shit got removed and replaced with things that made sense.
Though in Eberron setting, there were "pure-blood" half-elves and half-orcs, because Eberron itself as a plane of existence is only a thousand years old, and it stole lifeforms from around the multiverse to populate it, there's proud halfs who claim their blood has never been tainted on that plane by inbreeding, and they actually get rewarded for it (mongrel halves can't get Dragonmarks, biologically impossible to get the superpower birthmarks, but pureblood ones can).
Storyteller system. I consider D&D the kiddies version of table top where kids play before they grow up. Then when you graduate in experience you go to the storyteller. Which includes world of darkness and Exalted. 3rd edition is absolutely glorious and I use it to power campaigns from, high fantasy to hyper advanced sci-fi. It's extremely "modable" which is what I've done. I've gone so far as to write an entire campaign book that converts exalted to my groups custom canon and adapts it to use battlemaps.
And if you're thinking I don't know d&d enough, I also wrote a 600 page manual for D&D that does the same thing. Between the two, the exalted system has proven to be infinitely more fun for both me and my players. But it requires pros. Elite imagination because if you are not creative as fuck, you will not even scratch the capability of the Exalted system.
From vanilla it is a power fantasy system inspired by wuxia. Check it out on drivethru rpg. 3rd edition is what you want, but you will want to trap 2nd too if you want to dive into official canon lore and play its story. Onyx Path makes it. Formerly from whitwolf before things went fucky.
So, we're admitting that blacks are a different species?
Well, I mean, at least 2020s Democrats agree with 1960s Southern Democrats, who agree with 1860s Democrats...
Black characters only get 3/5’s as much XP.
It works out because they end up in many more combat encounters.
But have to split it up between 20 party members.
There's also the friendly fire and hit ratios to consider.
DEMOCRATS ARE THE REAL RACISTS!
Always have been
Lol we can breed together so no
Anyone who halts a game I'm involved in because they're uncomfortable is getting thrown out and never invited back. Thankfully I already don't play with anyone who would ever dream of doing that. And while it sucks what Faggots of the Coast has done to the various properties they've consumed in the grand scheme for culture, I personally just don't pay attention or let it bother me. Just like with Star Wars or Star Trek, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything made after it went bad and I move on with my life. Like a band with great early stuff who later sold out, just listen to the old albums. You can still find the old 3.5 books, or better yet, make your own campaigns. The basic premise and rules to D&D isn't that difficult. Once you know the framework and the mechanism of how it works, you can just change the rules however your group wants. If you're playing with 3 other similar minded people and you all decide that you think a particular rule is gay or don't like something that the faggots added later on, just decide it doesn't exist or count anymore. They're not (yet) standing over your shoulder forcing you to play their way. So don't. Just decide that what they say doesn't matter and do what you and your friends want to do.
I've never understood the notion of playing tabletop RPGs with people who you aren't already friends with. It very cleanly circumvents all of this. Who roleplays with random strangers?
People who don't have large enough groups with both the time and interests aligned already to play with. In fact, playing with randoms is a great way to build a group of friends and was a solid choice for nerds for decades before Progressives invaded it.
If TTRPGs were limited to just "got lucky enough to grow up with a group of friends to play it with" then they would have died a long time ago.
You have people playing over zoom now.
Most of mine have been over Discord or Google Hangouts back when that was still a thing, but it's always been with people I've known for years prior to ever rolling up a character.
That’s pretty much on point with 95% of games. That 5% are Streamers and tourists who can’t run two brain cells together to imagine a non-self insert character.
The only appropriate response to someone pulling that stupid fucking X card or whatever it's called. No wait, actually that one deserves worse, because just demanding a scene rewrite without even offering an explanation is scum behavior.
fork 5e, get rid of the woke shit, profit. Pathfinder did it with 3.5, but they're also woke.
Pathfinder forked so it could be more degenerate. Their favorite goddesses are in a three way polyamorous relationship.
Pathfinder is even worse than WotC, and that's saying a lot.
Also "spaceship man bad".
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/arts/dungeons-and-dragons-rule-changes-race-species.html
https://archive.is/z2q8s
I was going to make a quip that different "species" can't breed with each other.
But looking it up, that theory is from 1942 and isn't absolute.
Yeah plenty of species produce offspring with other related species, sometimes they are fertile.
Macaw species can interbreed, so can lions and tigers, and orchids can be cross-bred across different genera ( which is a whole industry and hobby, example from a single alliance. ).
In all these, there is care to protect and maintain the pure species. You can always recreate the hybrids by re-doing registered crosses from scratch if there is still a pool of quality specimens of the species.
You cannot recover a species that has its gene pool polluted by accidental or deliberate hybridizing to the point the pure individuals no longer exist.
Some hobbyist circles for types of animals generally frown upon any sort of hybridizing, such as finch breeding. The risk of genetic pollution from bastards that look like a species is just too high, and several species can no longer be obtained pure from the wild due to being endangered, general wildlife preservation export ban, or risk of diseases introductions.
Accidental finch hybrids should either be culled or housed as pets in a cage where they cannot breed, in the hand of someone who will never re-sell them.
The problem with that definition is that it made too few endangered species. So now, a new species can be identified and called distinct based on whatever asspull some environmental 'scientist' can justify, in order to halt human progress and development in an area.
There exists no coherent definition of a species, anymore. No objective test you can apply. Just like everything else the left touched, the answer is 'whatever benefits the left the most in this situation'.
Woke more correct?
Also is there a "mid tier" rules system where the rules are halfway between 3.5 (accounting homework) and "just make everything up"? I just don't have the energy to DM 3.5 anymore but using AI tools out there to help keep track of and write a campaign are calling me.
You could always do 2.0 and take what you like from 3.5.
I'm just not in a place now where I can write + run a campaign and homebrew/kitbash a system that isn't retarded, but then again my target players are casuals so itight work well enough.
I think with the AI tools I can either train an LLM on the srd+splats+modules or pull them in as a project data set and my homunculus can do the drafting and homework for me and help me keep my lore consistent.
A lot of people say Pathfinder (1, not 2's woke trash) is D&D 3.75, but it is still very number-crunchy, just a lot more options.
It has a bad reputation because of its playerbase, but Vampire:The Masquerade is a lot more freeform than D&D, but maintains still having rulesets and rolls.
And of course, there's always Dungeons: The Dragoning 40k 7th seas edition.
I would say stick with vampire revised or at worst 20th anniversary edition. The new edition is pretty much garbage and shies away from the idea of you playing monsters instead tries to be like you're subverting vampire society.
My game is mentioned so here I am.
WoD is superior for telling a compelling character based story over DnD. DnD is essentially a video game to me in comparison. There's just so much you can do with character and conflict. The metaplot is peerless if it's up your alley. And depending on how much arc welding youre willing to do, can serve everything from gritty gutter level stories and eschatological scenarios in the same universe, occasionally even with significant character crossover.
That said. V5 has the hunger die as an innovative mechanic, and every other word and picture in the core book and it's supplements is hot steaming still garbage. W5 is even worse. And i shudder to see what M5 looks like when it arrives.
V20 is inadequate but... serviceable. W20 is the best of the 20s but still pales to revised, I'd say that Chronicles werewolf is actually better than w20, and is the only new game line I'd consider good that wasn't a complete new line.
Chronicles werewolf is probably going to give you the most loot and level experience of any of the lines, and is fun enough. I just like big metaplot and thus find it shallow.
Please ask me questions about Whitw Wolf gamelines because I will not shut up about them.
What is WoD?
World of Darkness.
Was/is a series of urban fantasy role playing games. The big three being Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage.
Each was focused less on being on a quest or doing some sort of investigation, but more about interpersonal conflict and fighting losing battles.
The metaplot was enormous and convoluted and didn't actually work on its own without extensive homebrewing, but it managed to run it's entire course and publish an end of the world conclusion.
It's been rebooted twice/three times to mixed results.
I loved/love it and still run it for my play group as our primary game.
This is the Stormwind Fallacy in action. The system does not change how much roleplaying one does. It is the players that do that. You can infact run a HighOp DnD campaign and have the best roleplaying at the same time. (In fact running a campaign with High System Mastery players is better because there is less rules lawyering, munchkining, and just slow play that blocks the story.)
I didnt say you couldn't. I said it's worse at it. Which is true.
You can see what each line is geared towards by the ratio of supplements.
Dnd books have tables of magic items, WW will have a half dozen.
It's about focus.
It's not worse at it. That is the fallacy in action. And having fewer tables just means the DM has to spend more time coming up with that stuff himself. Those tables are there to let a DM create encounters and situations on the fly faster. The roleplaying is entirely dependent on the players, not the system. If a DM is calling for rolls when the players are role playing then he is just a bad DM, which is unfortunately the standard and not the exception.
What built in mechanics does DnD have that track sense of self? What mechanics encourage the use of a completely non-combat capable character?
This isnt even really an argument. Cause I didn't say anything about role-playing or about optimization. So you're just blatantly wrong about your application of the fallacy.
Frankly the only people I've heard make the argument that you're making are the ones stuck in a dnd centric mentality. And you bringint up "encouters" is reminiscent of that.
Your version of stormwind would apply to role playing in Monoploy, since "the system doesn't matter, people can role-play how they want"
Why do you need a rule book to tell you how to do that? Anyways that is pretty much reflected in your Cha score, when it hits 0 you become a potato without a sense of self. Damage to Wis also does this, and outsiders like Gibbering Mouthers (aka lovecraftian horrors) do this.
That depends entirely on the campaign you are playing. You can do the same sort of emo intrigue wankery that is the ONLY thing you can do in VtM just as easily in DnD. You just have to have a group willing to do that. After all, most of the spells in the 3.5 handbook are non-combat spells. Zone of Truth does nothing in combat, Sending does nothing in combat, Stone to Mud does very little in combat. For that matter most of the skills in DnD are non combat.
They're racists with guilty consciences, yes, but it goes beyond that.
The whole idea is to soften language, make it impossible to have a serious discussion about serious issues without boring everyone to tears as you try to explain complex concepts without stepping on a societal landmine.
So the “monsters” you fight are still bound by biologically determined behaviors and dispositions, but that same biological determinism somehow does not manifest in anyone who belongs to the arbitrary categories of “player” or “npc”.
Sorta like how blacks jump higher and run faster because of evolution, but there’s no similar explanation for IQ differences. Evolution stops at the neck.
Dogs and peanut butter is a choice?
To me it's correcting a technicality. We consider apes and elephants and humans all different species, but make them bipedal and sentient and suddenly they're a race? Nah. Species is more correct, even if it did come out of wokeness. This changes is like the least controversial/woke change they made in 5/5.24 IMO.
EDIT: And for all those who are like "well species can't breed with each other." And to that I say, it's a fuckin magical fantasy land of pretend. Do what you want. That's the beauty of TTRPGs. The official rules only really matter during official sanctioned play stuff like Adventure league and whatnot. Just homebrew shit. When I made a game, I let it be dark/gritty/real, so all the woke shit got removed and replaced with things that made sense.
'Species' is a loaded term and doesn't really capture either
(a) The tone/style of fantasy genre (b) The breadth/range of differences that different fantasy races might have
It's a shit change that's worse in every possible dimension
...anyone wanna help me make a parody game?
working title: Dollhouses and Drag-Queens
The goal is to make the game as offensive as possible, but basically steal the rules from the DND rulebook of your choice.
Your idea intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
full disclosure: I probably know less about DND than the people currently working on the franchise right now...
...Never had enough friends to learn. 🥴
oh, another idea, almost forgot. Call it "DNDQ" for short.
The fact that half-orcs are fertile technically suggests they are all the same species. Unless there's some sort of magical bullshit going on.
Anyways, any good DM knows that race is perfectly fine to use.
I assume half orcs are a product of rape, right? And.. leftists seem to associate goblins as jews and orcs as blacks. Lolol.
Usually.
Though in Eberron setting, there were "pure-blood" half-elves and half-orcs, because Eberron itself as a plane of existence is only a thousand years old, and it stole lifeforms from around the multiverse to populate it, there's proud halfs who claim their blood has never been tainted on that plane by inbreeding, and they actually get rewarded for it (mongrel halves can't get Dragonmarks, biologically impossible to get the superpower birthmarks, but pureblood ones can).
Many species can cross-breed and produce fertile offspring, without having their status as distinct species questioned.
Ex : all macaw species produce fertile offspring. Here is a second generation hybrid.
Hmmm. Curious. I may have been taught wrong.
Wait until you learn about the 2-toed and 3-toed sloths! Seriously, go look it up.
See, this is why you just Homebrew shit
They are, but not the way they think.
"I was an undead Orc Lich, but now I identify as a female high elf,
and I wish to join the female baths."
This is why I stopped playing D&D and haven't been to an event in years.
Based
Casting the dice within a controlled environment... https://img.gvid.tv/i/2mY7LiHW.jpg
The Babylon Bee D&D https://youtu.be/cEAsMMx_1jg?feature=shared
This is why I play exalted.
What's exalted?
Storyteller system. I consider D&D the kiddies version of table top where kids play before they grow up. Then when you graduate in experience you go to the storyteller. Which includes world of darkness and Exalted. 3rd edition is absolutely glorious and I use it to power campaigns from, high fantasy to hyper advanced sci-fi. It's extremely "modable" which is what I've done. I've gone so far as to write an entire campaign book that converts exalted to my groups custom canon and adapts it to use battlemaps.
And if you're thinking I don't know d&d enough, I also wrote a 600 page manual for D&D that does the same thing. Between the two, the exalted system has proven to be infinitely more fun for both me and my players. But it requires pros. Elite imagination because if you are not creative as fuck, you will not even scratch the capability of the Exalted system.
From vanilla it is a power fantasy system inspired by wuxia. Check it out on drivethru rpg. 3rd edition is what you want, but you will want to trap 2nd too if you want to dive into official canon lore and play its story. Onyx Path makes it. Formerly from whitwolf before things went fucky.