I'd definitely chime in on the side of 5e - they did a really good job streamlining and simplifying a lot of the fiddly bits of the system. I actually got my books secondhand at a local gaming store for something like 15-20 bucks each? So that's worth checking out if you don't wanna be a pirate but still don't have enough discretionary funds for brand new hardcovers.
Pathfinder is kinda fiddly, but it's easy enough to handwave and tweak things like, "confirming" critical hits. That's stupid. A nat20 is a nat20 and crits are exciting for the story and make your players cheer and stuff.
Whoa. Thanks everyone! :D @Aviari - Is there more than what is in this thread? Because if there is I'd love to read it. Honestly you're my hero even just for doing the Homestuck thing with the pantheon. .... though now I'm sort of scared that one day my GM will pull the succubus(/desire demon I guess since dragon age?? except another party member has actually dared me to try and seduce a desire demon if we ever meet one and honestly i am definitely not chickening out from this dare i'm gonna fucking do it) on me one day, because so far, while I haven't exactly flirted with everyone, I've definitely done it when the time feels right. Which is nearly every time we meet an age-appropriate NPC important enough to merit a name and a character sheet. (He makes really bad willpower rolls for them. Meanwhile, I roll pretty good seduction ones. Slowly, slowly, I am acquiring a harem.) !!! I am definitely giving these a try. Thanks for the tip! :D ....also, naturally, I, a law-abiding and morally upstanding citizen, would never even consider using illegally acquired materials for anything. Um. If you happen to have a link or something please PM me apparently my google skills are not quite up to par for this ...this is the same type of rule as 'every door they forget to check WILL be trapped', isn't it? b l e s s :') So, in summary, 5e for simplicity, Pathfinder for accessibility? Sounds about right. I'm probably gonna go with 5e, given that one of the future party members is apparently really excited about the possibility of playing a Tiefling. I... can't really bring myself to tell them not to u_u They're so excited, you guys. So very excited. I'm probably gonna buy the Pathfinder books off Humble Bundle anyways just so I'll have them and also because books but that's neither here nor there
Pathfinder also supports tieflings! They're in the Advanced Race Guide. (And maybe also the first Bestiary?)
@Erica Here's the thread It starts out with more focusing on the GM antics and the shenanigans of dice rolling but then Suddenly Plot and it was more fun to write it out novella style. Lots of me screaming about my players being OP and kicking my ass. My husband spends waaaaay too much time researching how to make his character reality-breakingly-overpowered and it shows in play.
PF definitely supports Tieflings in the "Advanced Race Guide" for PCs and the first Bestiary for combatants. They're fun. They make good magic users.
oh man tieflings. one of my friends pointed out to me that you can *technically* make a tiefling that's half demon/half whatever race you want, you just don't get any of the benefits of the other race, just appearance so i proceeded to make a half-tiefling half-changeling witch named Mako, who kept her familiar Edgar, the black raven, in her prehensile hair. she had heterochromia (because all changelings do) and black claws and her father was a devil that her mom made a contract with, and thus where she drew her witch powers from. she was kinda the greatest? man, tieflings
This just makes me want to find one DM who'd be willing to accept a half Demon/half Gnome tiefling. It's a teeny tiefling, a cupcake of darkness.
YMMV. This kind of stealth reality reshuffling really rubs me the wrong way as a DM, and it's something I hate as a player if I cotton on. May type up an effortpost on why specifically later, but I'm gonna try and get those blogrecs I owe @Arxon done first.
Well, I assume within reason? I mean, if you end up hitting a trap on the tavern door in business hours, either the DM is just being mean or you're going to the most metal tavern in town and better be willing to bring your a-game for these pints of ale.
Yeah one time the DM pulled that "every door you don't check is trapped" with our party until he got annoyed with how goddamn thoroughly we checked each door after that- every single person doing a perception check and then having a meeting where we compared results before anyone even touched the door. "What's your in character reason for doing this?" "The first of these fuckers nearly killed Arnira and we're not taking our chances and Zaire will cry if one of his friends dies." *sigh* "Fair enough."
I always have trouble with improvising. Seebs's rule is one I've never implemented because I can see it introducing complications into the plot that I won't be able to reconcile. On the other hand, the players' unpredictable reactions mean you have to improvise somehow, sometimes, and playing into their expectations is one way to maintain suspension of disbelief. Also there's a difference between "what you search for twice exists" and "doors you don't search are trapped". The first is letting player expectations guide outcomes; the second is punishing players for carelessness.
Okay, here we goooooooo Pinging @Arxon and @Erica http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/ One of the first dnd blogs I started lurking, and still my favorite. NSFW occasionally, but not nearly as much as the title might suggest. If anyone remembers the Zak callout drama that seebs got involved in a while back, this is that guy. Anyways, excellent bits on gaming and game design philosophy with a heavy emphasis on DIYing and kitbashing the shit out of every ruleset you come across. Also has a hell of an eye for aesthetics, that being his actual background, so his Art History for D&D People and his original worldbuilding stuff are well worth checking out. He's also got a bunch of original monsters and spells and variant classes and whatnot, but I find that his general tools and philosophy posts are what I tend to actually use. Also, lots of actual play posts, which I suppose could be nice as examples, but which I generally skim over, and lots of dramaposting, which i find interesting but isn't strictly dnd-related. Some specific posts to look at: - http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/06/some-trap-theory.html Exactly what the link says - classifying types of traps by what they do for whoever built them in-game and what they do for the dm. - http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2014/03/beauty-vs-fun.html good thoughts on aesthetics and where to aim - http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2012/03/imagine-gm-rolling-on-orange-chart.html for when the government is hunting your PCs - and a bunch of other stuff i can't be arsed to hunt down and link rn http://blogofholding.com/ I think this is actually the first blog on this list I started reading. Just all around excellent - good ideas pulled from books, good random generators, good shit to grab for your setting, good new spells/items/etc. Much more "new school" than most of the other blogs on this list - has a lot of shit specifically for 4e and 5e. Also has an ongoing play-by-poll community dnd game in the sidebar. http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/ Has not been super active of late. Does one thing and one thing well - talking about player agency. In particular, check out the series of posts on traps and associated clues for how to run a high-lethality, save or die dungeon without being unfair and allowing sufficiently cautious, observant and clever players to get through unscathed. Also has a good bit on "Quantum Ogre" railroading-by-illusion. There's a bunch of content generation stuff in the blog sidebar that I haven't had time to really look through and a social mechanics booklet on Lulu that I have heard is good but haven't bought myself. Everything else is pretty much skippable. http://jrients.blogspot.com/ Carousing table. I mean, the rest of the blog is decent enough, but let's not fool ourselves. That's the star of the show. http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/ Surreal esoterica and half-baked ideas out the wazoo. He's mentioned that what he looks for in rpgs and worldbuilding and art is a kind of shard of numinous Other forcing itself into our world. This tells you a lot about him, really. Not so much with the gameables, but great for Weird Shit inspiration. Also has a bunch of interesting thinky thoughts on scupture and miniatures-as-sculpture, but again, not so much with the things you can actually use in a game. http://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.com/ As above (they've collaborated on a lot of shit, actually), but with more immediate usability and less grammar. Describes herself as a "kludge witch" which tells you a lot about the aesthetics of what you're likely to find here. http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/ Arrogant, obnoxious, smug, elitist, pompous, "serious" and "mature," self-congratulatory asshole with ideas worth stealing. Goes in for massive amounts of simulation and DM-facing complexity, without burdening the players with a lot of fiddly rules. Is the origin of the HP-by-mass and incidental-damage-by-mass house rules, which I love and which make big things super dangerous by the mere fact of being big. Has an admirable tendency to ignore what is "possible," "reasonable," or "feasible" in system building and just start building shit like comprehensive world economies or weather generators or character background randomizers based on starting stats. For the love of god do not read his opinion pieces. Has a wiki, which doesn't have all his good stuff, but is blessedly free of his propounding. http://thealexandrian.net/ The prepmaster. If you wanna do complicated pre-prepped scenarios, go here and read all this shit: http://thealexandrian.net/gamemastery-101 (nb. the link says gamemastery 101, but i'd put it more as 201 or even 301; a lot of this is stuff that's pretty hard to digest, let alone start implementing, until you've already got some solid experience GMing) Good shit for mystery/investigation games especially. The rest of the blog is a lot of mostly forgettable product reviews, some stray interesting bits, and a few of the blog author's scenarios/modules and actual campaign reports, which are good practical examples of the gm advice stuff. http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/ Lots of good "party game" style rules and tools and game set-ups for when you want to resolve something other than by rolling dice. Also just general good ideas on lots of things. Talks a lot about the concept of the negadungeon: you have Fucked Up on a cosmic or moral level by even going here, everything you do from here on except for (possibly) leaving and never looking back is going to make everything worse, and the genre just took a huge swing towards Lovecraft. Also raises the good point that just having an obvious one of these on the map can be interesting in a campaign world, even if the players never go there. http://chaudronchromatique.blogspot.ca/ gorgeous and super creative-juice-priming art. Not much in the way of ready-to-use shit, but what there is is fantastic (orc brew mutation table, magic bathhouses, etc.) http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/ Does really nice syntheses of implied monster ecology and of rules for things like light or food or dealing with explosions and area effects when you're not tracking the exact positions of everyone on the map. Setting stuff is also not bad, but not exceptional. Skip the module reviews. http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/ The only dnd blog I've found that could plausibly compete with dndwithpornstars for my no. 1 spot. Fucking awesome worldbuilding, simple, usable and fun rules for shit, fantastic new monsters and dungeons and adventure scenarios and whatnot. Doesn't have as much in the way of game design thoughts, but they're always great when they do turn up. Seriously, just read the entire damn archive here. General cool resources: - you can just get... maps... online... Not even like game maps: steal street maps, steal campus maps, steal historical maps, steal floorplans. You should never be mapping a dungeon or building or town by hand unless you want to. - also for when you do want specifically game maps: http://davesmapper.com/ - AnyDice: if you like fucking around with dice probabilities and whatnot, go here - city names that don't suck ass on account of being culled from real-world city names http://www.mithrilandmages.com/utilities/CityNames.php (also similar things for people names and whatnot) - https://campaignwiki.org/face random npc face generator - https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/LinksToWisdom/HomePage and then let's finish off this linkdump with a link to another linkdump >:D
I discovered goblinpunch a couple weeks ago and just binged on all his worldbuilding stuff. Centerra is the most deliciously weird campaign setting I've ever read, and yet surprisingly cohesive and well-thought-out on a conceptual level. (A little gratuitous grimdark at times, for people who are put off by that, but that's a very minor qualification to my recommendation.)
Traps and Puzzles! For when you want to make your players screech at you. https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1l72cw/10000_greatest_traps_puzzles/ http://www.giantitp.com/forums/show...te-puzzle-you-made-encountered-bragging-ideas http://strolen.com/browsing/dungeons/none/Puzzles Strolen is great, lots of one-page/one session dungeons https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1b3tva/your_most_unique_dungeons/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/q0ndq/what_are_your_favorite_challengestrapspuzzles_to/
@Dist Just remember, they're likely all going to be there to have fun rather than to pick on their DM! In my experience playing at uni, newbie DMs are more often given help by older players than criticism/scorn.
I'm DMing a new 5e campaign for my housemates. (in a tavern) Rogue: "I'm going to look around for someone who looks like they might know something about the monsters in the woods. Would that be Perception?" Me: "actually, that'd be Insight, since it relies more on subtle social cues... roll it." Rogue: "6." Me: "...you see an old man with a long white beard. You think he is a wizard."
Still looking for a fourth player for my campaign! :> (Don't worry, this is the last time I'll mention it, I don't wanna spam the thread :B I don't get any bites, I'll look elsewhere. Once my campaign gets started though I'll surely have stuff to share with the thread :3) So far, I've got one player who's looking at playing a half-orc rogue, and another that's designed like five characters already but just last night discovered the warlock class for the first time and promptly fell in love :B so that oughta be interesting! also dangit third edition doesn't have much on fey creatures besides their monster manual entries :F gonna need to homebrew a lot of stuff since I don't think I wanna go with the standard 'Seelie/Unseelie Court' thing, OTL.
