Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Ghostse]

This is the least concerning part but how is this even an OSR game? Fuck me even their games pretend to be something they are not.

Its not. its PbtA

As a side note, I'm not much of a TTRPG player, I've only played a bit of 5e, so what is PbtA? Is it just an alternative system like 5e or pathfinder? Is it why there are no combat stats like HP or AC, or is the game just that incomplete? If it is meant to not have combat stats how do you see who wins a fight?

I'll try to normify this and not go on too long:

PbtA is Powered by the Apocalypse. The "Apocalypse" referenced here is "Apocalypse World" which is/was a primarily narrative game about adventures in a post-apocalyptic world. The player classes are genre trope archetypes, and have their own specific actions they can take called "moves". The game is less of a traditional RPG like Dungeons and Dragons and more about providing a framework for people to collaboratively tell a story in the chosen genre.

the developers of Apocalypse world exported this "genre storytelling" system to other genres like "Dungeon World" for traditional fantasy aventures and "Pulp World" for competing with Savage Worlds. The designers then broke the core mechanics of the system into an SRD (system reference document) which they made available for free.

So something being "PbtA" is like a system being "D20" or "D100" or "3D6". There's no real consistency.

The only core of the system is three points:
1) Its primarily a narrative game adn there is a GM or some sort of central authority for the story.
2) resolution is designed by rolling 2d6.
3) Characters have actions called "moves" they use to influence the story being collaboratively told.

This has resulted in the sort of emergence of things that are PbtA which is they are "genre narrative" instead of being mechanical or portable. That is, unlike 5e compatible stuff, you cannot easily take characters classes from one PbtA game and put them in another. Other than the fact you are rolling 2d6 and usually modifying the roll somehow, everything else is different. Character classes often have completely unique mechanics that do not cross over with other classes in the same game. So playing one class is completely different than playing another.

This is made even more confusing by it looks like there was a PbtA game called Keys that took PbtA even deeper into narrative game territory and that seems to be what PbtA games are now leaning into.

The other thing that marks PbtA is limited or no character progression; there is usually no "leveling up". Characters are there to tell a narrative and when that narrative is over so is the campaign. There is no years or decades long games of PbtA, its usually single sessions.

The other important thing to note on PbtA is...
Due to the creators making the SRD available for free and making no effort to control branding, and the fact its a narrative game with no progression and hyperfocus on a genre and sometimes specific subgenres, PbtA "games" are very often low-effort and lazy. TrannyFrame is one of the higher-effort releases, but you can see in things like the Tag and Identity system a lack of playtesting or consideration for how those mechanics might play out in real groups.
But as the game is collaborative storytelling, these are usually only moderate drags on playing the game as the entire.... PbtA "ecosystem" is built on people being in general agreement about the story they want to collaborately tell, because there is really no mechanism to stop the game from getting steered into someone's magical realm, especially if that person is the GM or the GM is onboard (or at least not actively stopping them).

@Adamska and @Imperial Citizen I think can give more/better info if they want.

Yes, it is about raping lesbians. Yes, it is about getting off to becoming a woman. Yes, it is about getting off to being abused. This is just how AGPs act when they think they are creating things for other AGPs, they drop all pretenses.

just wanted to QFT this.

As for positives to the game, I think this mechanic would be pretty interesting to roleplay, especially if you didn't get to pick the three things but had to role for them:

As @Imperial Citizen said in his post, there is a game in there and work on the structure supporting their fetish and some cases of actual interesting mechanics.
which means you can assume the tranny stole them from someone or some other game.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

Venger is still around. There was a VengerCon this past year and and attendance seems to be up due to Sandy Peterson attending (mostly due to SP also being in Wisconsin)

Fer fuck's sake, Sandy. You'll always have flowers from me for creating one of my favorite TTRPG's, but god your culture war sperging is insufferable at times. Seriously, you post about how good a Christian you are but you're carrying water for a self proclaimed Satanist/Cthulhu worshipper?

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'm a casual fan and I remember checking this one out just to ponder how a Dragon Ball campaign where your players roll up their own characters would even work.

For years (well, on and off) I've been thinking of how to do a game of The Matrix. There are two surprising hurdles. What the story is without "The One", and how to handle being able to download skills at a moments notice.

Dredd was talking about this tranny. The Strange High House in the Mist apparently knows your true gender and hooker name:

I was talking about this one.

Jamie has never hesitated to follow their heart. From a young age, Jamie liked to wear dresses and hunt along the bayou of the Mississippi Delta. They often listened to stories from their mother, who told Jamie that “Papa heard the call of the sea and he had to answer. One day, you will understand.”

The sea enthralled Jamie, to the point where they eventually signed up to be a sailor, and they have felt at home on the waves ever since. When a body was found in the Atlantica’s chapel, Jamie’s experience in beauty salons helped them identify the face powder laced with arsenic on the victim’s teacup. But why do they feel so at home on the ocean? Could they have been the one who poisoned the woman to begin with?

It's fun finding rulebooks for licensed properties you never realized had a TTRPG. Starcraft, Power Rangers, Bubblegum Crisis. It's just fun to see how they try to implement systems around the source material.
Ver archivo adjunto 9056490Ver archivo adjunto 9056489

Maybe of the anime ones are just reskinned cyberpunk. I find it interesting how unofficial games handle it too. Supposedly Spycraft has a module for running the Disney classic Gargoyles.

I have the Bubblegum Crisis books, got them way back at Nashcon when they were new. Even if you're not down with the actual mechanics, they're beautiful sourcebooks on the franchise and they clearly had a love for it. The third book was basically a "What If" of ideas if someone wanted to monkey around with the canon it'self.

I didn't know there was more than one. I have the PDFs as part of the BlueRay they put out, but I guess I never read them.

The DM has a DMPC

I don't know if I ever got around to asking this, but what is Kiwi's thoughts on DMPCs?

---

Girl Frame retardation.
Edit: Evangelion and it's consequences have been a disaster for anime and the fanbase.

It’s also got the mechanics tied into the theme of gendered females being unable to be their true selves, with the frame being the physical presentation of the pilot to the world. Things that the frame does/wants will conflict with the pilot’s priorities. The game is making its points better than shit like Sigmata or Extreme Meatpunks Forever.

I brought the game up to an internet friend, and supposedly mechs as a trans/identity allegory has been a thing for years.

Rephrased.

The use of a mech is an outer shell to do things. You control the mech, and it does what you cannot usually do. The mech can slay enemies, contribute, is accepted in society, but what is the pilots purpose but to work that machine?

Flip the genders to faggot twinks, and with very few tweaks you have a Sissy/feminization fetish game.

Sold!

BDSM-abuse integral to the game, and excising it would be a nearly ground-up rewrite.

I will give troons this, they are good at having rules tied to the specific setting. Lancer did this and it was annoying.

Bliss Stage

Never heard of this.

so what is PbtA?

A very hyped RPG. Dice Scum and @Ghostse go into more detail, but on the casual side, the game is praised for boiling down DM actions into finite, manageable "moves". Making the DM into his own kind of player, instead of a referee juggling stat blocks.

Personally, I couldn't grok it and never got the "DM as a selection of fair cards to play" feeling.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

Never heard of this.

Bliss Stage is an older (pre-Apocalypse World) game that is pretty much what Girl Frame purports to be without the AGP. You have mecha that have to be piloted by specifically underage teens, there is an evil GMPC commander (there is a rule that if you kill the GMPC, you have to become the GM and your character is the new evil GMPC) and the mechanics encourage lots of fucked up sex. The conceit is that the mecha are powered by feelings, so the stronger bonds you have with people, the stronger you are in combat. There are only two ways to get above the standard limit for relationship strength: blood-related family members and sexual relationships. To discourage powergaming, these two ways do not stack.

 

[Ghostse]

I think I'll try to make a community watch thread on the community around it, it just seems to be a perfect example of troon-for-troon media and has quite a few degenerate community members involved from my brief look at it.

To help you with your CW thread, I did some digging into mechsploitation while the site was taking a shit.

I thought this was some sort of Cyberpunk "aesthetic" sort of thing for an art style, but checking the reddit I found no real art just memes and people posting fapfic or doing dumb fanspeculation.

So "Mechsploitation" isn't a genre, it is a collective of transbian fans self-pegging to one work of fucked up fetishfic called Warhound (and then several stories released in the same 'universe'). It is all extremely fucked up Gor-type BDSM abuse for trannies.

You and find the collection here and I believe they can be found reposted elsewhere but

https://kallidorarho.itch.io/warhound-volume-one

Warhound is fanfic based off themes touched on in Armored Core 6.

Spoiler: Armored Core 6

To enlighten those of you who have known the touch of a woman, Armored Core 6 has the player play as "C4-621". What exactly the player character is isn't made clear, just that you used to be human and have been modified into part human, part machine, and part MacGuffin Nano Material. Your form has been retrieved and awakened by a "Handler" who gives you the identity of a mercenary called "Raven" who is presumably deceased. there is a fan theory that C4-621 was Raven and either their corpse was recovered and used to make C4-621, or Raven was captured and mindwiped/experimented on such they became C4-621

You work as mercenary and get hired by two megacorps who are slapfighting and sometimes used to take down agents of the interstellar government that is supposed to be monitoring them.

You are promised to be de-augmented and given the ability to go back to a normal life if you comply with your handler's missions (it is implied that your Handler is unlikely to be able to actually deliver on this promise)

The main thing driving the action is that there is a Macguffin Nano Substance called Coral that has incredible potential as a fuel but also for human augmentation in a process never really addressed. The planet you are on was exterminutus'd when the Coral escaped confinement and looked like it might spread from the planet.
(It is heavily implied in one of the endings that there has been a cycle of Exterminatus -> Research -> Coral escapes -> Exterminatus going on for a long time before the player takes control of their character) and you are working in the aftermath.

As it implied the Armored core 6 is transhuman (not trans*) and is at the mercy of handlers with their own agendas that are likely not to the player's character's best interests.

Anyway, the tranny who wrote warhound made the Handler a woman in lesbians with a reprogrammed rebel ace, and their fucked up Master/slave-pet relationship. Transbians love this story because not only does it involve dominating and raping women but because the "pet" is made to be ultraviolent so they can imagine them letting out their male aggression at the direction of a dommymommy.

The fact the PbtA fap-sesh game was so fleshed out makes a lot more sense now.

In summary, fuck you for making me aware of this piece of shit and I hope the author of Warhound and everyone in their fan subreddit dies.

 

[AnOminous]

Uh... sort of? I was in a campaign where the threat of losing his head to a knockoff Kilrathi with a stick up her ass about proper moral behavior had my Han Solo knock-off choose his words and schemes very carefully. When your life is on the line in a moral debate, smart thing to do is let the walking carpet win.

It's a little different when you have a gun to your head. I don't really consider that a conversion. I mean when a character, through legitimate roleplaying, actually has moral development.

Seriously, you post about how good a Christian you are but you're carrying water for a self proclaimed Satanist/Cthulhu worshipper?

Sheeeeeeit mang, did he have to tard this hard?

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

I don't know if I ever got around to asking this, but what is Kiwi's thoughts on DMPCs?

I hate using them, personally. I have enough on my plate with running the entire rest of the game already, I don't need to also split my attention further by going into and out of "Player Mode" at the drop of a hat. However, sometimes the party needs special help (usually because they're special needs) and so a DMPC may join them for a session or two to help them out if they really need it.

To discourage powergaming, these two ways do not stack.

Can the creators truly call themselves weebs at that point?

 

[Judge Dredd]

To enlighten those of you who have known the touch of a woman, Armored Core 6 has the player play as "C4-621". What exactly the player character is isn't made clear, just that you used to be human and have been modified into part human, part machine, and part MacGuffin Nano Material.

I only really know AC1, but in that game you were a mercenary. The story was poorly translated and had FromSoftware vagueness on top of that, but the game has you as a human pilot. When you die, you get a new-game-plus of sorts, where it's implied you're brought back to life and given some kind of cyborg implants. These grant buffs to your next run. The mercenary company was the Ravens.

From what I remember of the other games, the world was wiped out in some kind of apocalypse, and only recently people have started coming out of their bunkers/satellites and started fighting over what's left.

That's a long way of saying, what you're saying seems to check out.


I could be wrong, but I thought phrases like "dogs of war" referred to mercenaries in general, not something unique to AC?

In summary, fuck you for making me aware of this piece of shit and I hope the author of Warhound and everyone in their fan subreddit dies.

Agreed. This mechs-as-trans shit is a downer as I love Titanfall. I want to like Mechwarrior but there's so much retardation around that franchise. And now this.

But it does explain a lot. Lancer, Girl Frame, Armored Core, Battletech. I just assumed it was an autism connection, but no.

 

[AnOminous]

I hate using them, personally. I have enough on my plate with running the entire rest of the game already, I don't need to also split my attention further by going into and out of "Player Mode" at the drop of a hat.

My group's solution was to have another actual player step in to play what would otherwise be an NPC. This was often me. I would always play an obnoxious jerk and the "challenge" of having me there was you had to put up with my bullshit and not just kill me, because my character knew where the MacGuffin was or whatever.

(Yes, I know the obvious solution was "just torture this idiot" but the Paladin would never allow that.)

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

My group's solution was to have another actual player step in to play what would otherwise be an NPC. This was often me. I would always play an obnoxious jerk and the "challenge" of having me there was you had to put up with my bullshit and not just kill me, because my character knew where the MacGuffin was or whatever.

If I had an extra guy who was available when I needed him to be for that sort of role, I would do that in a heartbeat. But all my friends outside of the group either have no interest in tabletop or are simple unavailable the night we play.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

I didn't know there was more than one. I have the PDFs as part of the BlueRay they put out, but I guess I never read them.

One of the supps covers AD Police (the prequel) and Crash (the sequel). The other one is basically a "What If?" for the setting. Good sourcebooks like the core, even if you don't like the Fuzion system.

As for DMPC's, I have a simple protocol for them; DMPC's are fine IF they're only for filling in a skill gap (emphasis on A, not all of them) and story exposition. That's it.

 

[Adamska]

@Adamska and @Imperial Citizen I think can give more/better info if they want.

There's a little more that you could add to this.

In actuality you can blame "Dr." Ron Edwards for the catastrophe that is PbtA and the propensity of gooners and sex perverts making their own crap. I put his doctor in quotes because the fucker loves to lie about what the doctorate is in. This mother fucker has a habit of claiming that it's for game design and theory. It isn't. It's actually a biology degree that he plays down.

He became somewhat of a darling among the independent ttrpg community, mainly because he absolutely hated the concept of chance. He saw dice rolls as inhibiting the role-play aspect of games. In reality, he's a trouble-causing arrogant piece of shit who basically has severe main character disorder. As in, he has bragged about being in dozens upon dozens of games, when in reality he's probably been kicked from dozens upon dozens of games for tantruming over bad dice.

But you see he ran a piece of shit forum called the forge. It was a place where Indy TTRPG guys could talk about game design and their principles and philosophy behind it. In reality, it was self-important retards who basically were not aware of their delusions of adequacy, assuming that the player base is as dumb as they are. These are the sorts of people that think that blacks, women and gays are too retarded to do math. They also had some actual delusions of grandeur.

But one of these mongoloids involved was a guy who worked on indie rpgs before. He originally made dogs in the vineyard which was a sort of deadlands-esque Mormon wild West RPG. He's ashamed of it now for no fucking reason.

He was on the forge and he basically bought hookline and sinker. That mechanics should be easier because the normals are too stupid to run games with anything resembling crunch. He also for whatever reason was on a bondage kick, so he decided to make a post-apocalypse game that had heavy elements of sex involved with it.

This worthless pile of shit was called apocalypse world, and It's where the sex mechanics come from that most of the older stuff has. It also repeats itself endlessly because you could have easily made this piece of shit book 40 pages but he wanted to make it 200. Lastly, he had some understanding that making a weird gooning BDSM book is weird so he kept trying to play it off like no no just jokes.

Powered by the apocalypse eventually lost its sex pest elements in dungeon world which was written by Adam Koebel. You would know him best for being the person who forced one of his players to do an erp with a robot being forced to cum. He's canceled now quite obviously.

Because it's essentially free to use, it uses d6s and the mechanics are only slightly more complex than fate, a lot of talentless grifting hacks love using it, despite its lack of progression, an actual unfair dice mechanics because of how the success but with complications bullshit actually works.

Had no clue on the weird autogynophilia mech warrior 6 shit though. Not surprising it oozed out of some weird fucking niche fantasy garbage.

 

[AnOminous]

As for DMPC's, I have a simple protocol for them; DMPC's are fine IF they're only for filling in a skill gap (emphasis on A, not all of them) and story exposition. That's it.

My personal "DM PC" was an NPC I called the "Eternal Accountant" and this was the dude who kept track of the money. He was literally in every single game, and always had the same name. Also despite being good with books, he was also good with guns.

 

[Ghostse]

As for DMPC's, I have a simple protocol for them; DMPC's are fine IF they're only for filling in a skill gap (emphasis on A, not all of them) and story exposition. That's it.

Pretty much this.
Most of my DMPCs are more like "NPCs that go with the party for one reason or another". in one campaign I gave the party an option of a "5th member" that they could fill from several NPCs they had done favors for or otherwise befriended.

 

[AnOminous]

Pretty much this.
Most of my DMPCs are more like "NPCs that go with the party for one reason or another". in one campaign I gave the party an option of a "5th member" that they could fill from several NPCs they had done favors for or otherwise befriended.

I always played one of these and these and the entire party was like "oh fuck you not THIS again." Because it was always one of my jackass characters. But wait. It's your buddy friend. Don't you like having your friend here again?

Somehow they never did.

 

[Snekposter]

It's a little different when you have a gun to your head. I don't really consider that a conversion. I mean when a character, through legitimate roleplaying, actually has moral development.

Well, that was happening too. Said character included plenty of lectures on how to properly behave on top of their glares and growls of lethal intent. He was learning, slowly. Hard to teach an old elf new tricks and all that.

 

[demicolon]

tl;dr: FATAL had a lot more work put into it to be a viable system. And from what I've heard from people who played it, it was a viable system if you can tolerate a more autistic d1000 GURPS. But that wasn't the focus of the designer; the maximum anal circumference tables were what they cared about and everything else is window dressing.

A looong time ago in a galaxy far away my younger and dumber self took it upon himself to analyze the whole pdf in autistic detail. What I found is that maybe 10 out of the 900+ pages are gratituous fetish stuff and the authors had much more of an obsession over extreme wrestling and shithead deathmetal tropes than sex or rape. The general impression was something between "this spell system is meant to be roleplayed as a black mass, not to actually cast spells" and "wow, this guy can't do basic math despite allegedly having a PhD in it".

As for the Rape roll - you could accidentally roll for it in combat. I think they knew it, but left it for comedy purpose. Say, in case you play as a woman and accidentally roll for Rape agains a man in a swordfight.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

I will rarely hand a party an opportunity at a DMPC, which is a character that has class levels and tracks XP like a player. These are usually a generic class, like magic - user, fighter, cleric or thief. They are placed in advance in dungeons the party will pass through, usually prisoners and/or slaves of the inhabitants. The party will be able to free them and they will then offer to join the party for an equal cut of the loot, gaining their own XP and items from adventuring. The big differences between them and a PC is that you can't ask them meta questions like "how much XP do you have" or "what are your attribute scores". They also won't generally take a less equal cut of the treasure unless you want them to walk away and not come back, people don't like being cheated out of labor after all. They also don't tend to pool wealth like PCs do so you can't count what you pay them to be available for escapades later. That is really what separates them from typical followers or hirelings too. You don't pay them a flat amount and they certainly aren't willing to work for free. They also are a bit more separated from the morale system that a standard NPC and may act however their personality fits them.

Of course nothing makes the PCs pick one of these guys up. But I also don't give many opportunities for an NPC that can gain experience and thus levels either. If the party has a hole in it because nobody wanted to play cleric again then you might only get one opportunity to fix that. I also might just make you live with the choice until someone's character up and dies and the group bullies them into playing something better. I don't referee for party politics.

If you want an example of where I drew my rules from an officially written module check out B5 Horror on the Hill which features a Human Thief who has been captured and imprisoned and is willing to work for an equal share of loot.

 

[Aib Ld]

A game almost fell apart because the group were doing a mystery session and some player thought we were heading to someone getting raped. The group haven't gotten all the clues, they're like 30% complete. All it took was one line of "He took advantage of her" when what they gathered so far should be obvious that isn't leading to rape, it is about a few guys taking control of a corporation from the inside.. Now the big problem is the player is sure it is rape despite 3 hours in the mystery, and wants to quit and start a different mission. Kept telling him its not the answer, but he is stubborn. Could tell him the answer behind the scenes since hes one of the best players i have yet, but didn't want him to metagame.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

Kept telling him its not the answer, but he is stubborn.

It's always the answer. He's stubborn too? Clearly you should rape him.