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itmeJP Community

What tabletop games are you running/playing?

I’ve been running games for a local library with a group of teens who DM as part of a tabletop gaming night they do once a week. Running D&D 5e for them, and while it’s not my favorite system, it’s definitely been a treat running for kids who have passion for the hobby.

On a personal front, I’ve been prepping two games for friends: One is a Fate Accelerated game called Breakfast Cult, which is about an occult high school and totally overflowing with anime-inspired bits, and the other is a Scum & Villainy game (a sci-fi hack of Blades in the Dark) using a lot of Stars Without Number generation bits.

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I am about to play in my first campaign of D&D with a character I personally made (i filled in twice for a guy who couldn’t make it) and I wanted to roll all my stats and I think I made a character more OP than Geoff’s on court of swords lol. I was told to build a level 4 character because everyone i think is level 5 and i have like a +7 to dex on a rogue and i hope my DM will let me play the character!

Currently running a game of Dungeon World that has kind of sprawled out of control in a good way. About to pick up Shadowrun 5e after a 6 month hiatus (due to one of the players becoming a father).

Just finished a brief-ish Dark Heresy 2e campaign. Man, I like the base system for that, but i wish it had been properly playtested and edited. So much dumb and janky shit puts me off. If anyone plans to run this, please make sure to read the psychic rules for underpowered casting, the rules for throwing objects and the influence rules closely and wonder how any of this crap got through. Also, the prewritten missions are horribly written by people who havent read or understood the rules.

Looking for a sci-fi exploration/trading/adventure type game. Not really sold on traveller and dont think that SWN fits for it. Any system suggestions would be appreciated - I would prefer not a generic system, but something tailored to the setting.

I’ve never played or participated in a tabletop or roleplaying game before. O_o

I would like to though someday.

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If i was going to play DH again, I would happily rewrite about half the rules. Some examples that came up in our game:

Overwatch (action, p223) - Allows you to fire at EACH AND EVERY target that meets the conditions you set. So its possible you can attack a dozen or more times in a turn.

Psychic Powers having no minimum PR score to use, meaning that undercasting is vastly superior for most uses.

Influence and Requisition of Equipment - according to p269 you could sacrifce 1d5 influence to automatically succeed at an influence roll unless the GM deems it impossible. So… You could requisition basically any piece of equipment and just have it. I don’t see any narrative reason to forbid most items when the PC’s are at a place where Imperial rule is strong - such as a planet with a naval base, inquistorial vessel in orbit, Planetary Guard armoury or so on. If the group works optimally, only one person would have any Influence after the first time they get to any such place, the rest spending it to tool up with power armour, relic force weapons, melta guns and so on.

The Snare quality - good god almighty, where do i begin with this. The rule itself isnt awful, apart from Immobilisation preventing you from using psychic powers or other mental/social actions. Its how badly implemented it is. A webber has snare 1, so a -10 penalty to avoid being snared. Ok. A Mancatcher (enemies within, p 46) has 4 so a -40, regardless of where you are struck by it.

There are others, but these are the ones I remember.

As to why the missions are badly written:

First, a beginner GM may have problems with the plots and structuring. They are written assuming that the group will do this, then this, then that, OR that they are happy to have the GM lead them around, OR that they can only visit places once they get clues about them.

Second, they are very unclear about linking scenes, clues and information that the characters can receive from various sources. As an example in Dark Pursuits, the adventure in the corebook, it is mentioned in the opening text that there have been several horrible deaths involving the archeotech, but none of them are detailed. Also the opening scene is very bare bones until the group get to Hesentanz manor by speaking to some nobles and making a test - which if failed gives the group no information. So many scenes rely on passing tests to get information or having information that the group has little or no chance to have acquired.

Thirdly, the encounter scaling is awful. The rules for designing encounters are ignored (which is fine, but you would expect the pre-written stuff to follow them to some degree), and encounters seem to be either far too easy or very difficult. We stopped after playing through Desolation of the Dead from the GM’s Kitbook, where the final encounter includes something that would have one shot each of the characters. The group only won due to a poor psychic phenomena roll on my part. Otherwise it was going to be a TPK, no doubt.

Lastly, the statblocks for NPC’s are just bad. They don’t include full skill listings for no reason, people are missing skills and talents that they probably should have (eg: fighting type characters having acrobatics instead of dodge [Vornas for example has neither dodge or parry]), some NPC’s have talents that don’t exist, or traits that they maybe shouldn’t (the boss in Desolation of the Dead has Touched by Fate, giving him 2 fate points making him basically immune to death, but the group are meant to be able to kill him and get bonus xp for doing so)

I think that all of these could have been solved by being proofread and edited properly, which suggests that they were probably rushed and that there was very little oversight from a developer. The expansion books - enemies within, without, beyond - suffer greatly from the writers seemingly not understanding the games rules and mechanics.

YMMV though. I think the underlying system is fine and some of it was even suprisingly elegant (character creation and development for example), but everything draped on it to make Dark Heresy 2E didnt fit well enough.

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Just to answer and discuss your replies, not meaning to come off as hostile or what not (tone is hard on the internet):

Except there is nothing stopping you using this in combat. ‘Every enemy in that direction that does anything’ is a valid condition RAW, allowing you to attack up to your clip size in attacks, instead of once. Not just powerful, but outright dumb as fuck, particularly in the case of large capacity or high damage weapons (imagine, overwatching over a large flat plain with an emplaced lascannon or missle launcher or hell, volcano cannon.)

Not for most powers it doesn’t. In fact in some cases not undercasting is the wrong thing to do. Anything that isn’t an attack or buff basically only has range affected. Take Foreboding for instance. Undercast that to PR 1 and get a ridiculous evasion test for example. That’s just one of many problematic powers.

Yeah, I addressed your concerns about narrative placement already. Subtlety is basically a non factor. If you want to go loud, you will do it regardless. Plus being unsubtle brings as many pros as cons - by the book - working with imperial officials and even interrogating cultists.

The problem is that a Webber, a high tech weapon that fires ’ jellied filaments, which expand in the air to form a web of sticky, near-unbreakable material (emphasis mine). A favoured armament for Adeptus Arbites and bounty hunters alike, it can easily subdue violent mobs’ has less chance of entangling someone than being grabbed around the arm by a mancatcher - a case of either poorly thought out or poorly understood mechanics. Reverse the snare scores, or have the mancatcher only snare on head hits. As it stands, unless you greatly outclass your opponent, a mancatcher is by far the best weapon to use against a single opponent, any hit gives them a strength or agility test at -40 or they are basically unable to act. 10 guys with mancatchers could beat a Bloodthirster in combat, which is utterly laughable.

Then you need to read the section on burning fate points again.You survive the encounter, your body ignored by enemies and so on. The GM works with the player to decide on this. One of the examples is escaping a warp drive implosion, which by your reading would be impossible as your remains would be obliterated.

Sadly, SB isnt what you test on for snare. Its strength, which is ‘only’ 75, 35 with the snare penalty. 1 in 3 chance or thereabouts to resist having a mancatcher snare its pinky finger. And I was assuming that the 10 men were what was left of a guard regiment told to attack a bloodthirster with mancatchers :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree, but if you go unsubtle, it works just as well but from a different angle. You could probably take on the 12 gangs if you had a bunch of characters stacked with implants, power armour and a nasty weapon of your choice. Then interrogate the survivors with your unsubtle bonus. Swings and roundabouts.

I just wanted to pop in and say that this is the most in-depth discussion I’ve witnessed here so far. It’s amazing and I don’t even understand what you guys are talking about. Love it! :itmejpbro:

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Unsubtle would probably go and grab a bunch of these guys to come with them anyway. Bonus to convince them to follow orders for being unsubtle after all.

Guardsmen should have like 30ish WS, +10 for standard attack, +20 for Bloodthirster size iirc. so 60ish % to hit. The BT parries or dodges a couple, then eats like 4 hits doing no damage but getting snared so it can’t do anything else.

Passing the fear test isnt that hard. Baneful Presence is -10 WP in range, which is the 30, fear 4 is -30, so you only need to get +20 or so from command, magic flaming helmets, priests, talents etc to get some of them to pass, and a regiment will have some troops who would naturally have fear resist etc. 10 out of 100 isn’t unlikely with a modified 10 wp.

Also it can only spend 1 fate per roll, so its only like a 60ish % chance to avoid each one. As soon as it fails, it would have to basically burn a fate to leave the battle in some manner (which i can only imagine would lead to epic trolling from other bloodthirsters) or start eating attacks as a helpless target (roll double damage + auto hit).

Getting allies to follow you is not part of reinforcement. In the published adventures (^^) it becomes clear that getting law men and gangers to follow you about is pretty easy. Having mook meatshields shouldnt be covered by the rules for getting SPACE MARINE buddies to help you out. But yes, the investigators were alone in the example.

Hmm. Isnt there some kind of drug that renders you immune to fear… Pretty sure fluff wise penal battalions or something get jacked up on stuff and told go get em boys. Can we retcon the Mancatcher Guard Regiment to have that?

The breakout strength check is still at that -40 though. And the rules are not clear at all about multiple snares stacking, or counting as teamwork or what.

Like I said, this game needs harder edge case playtesting and severe re-editing.

I remember watching a Con panel that Patrick Rothfuss was giving where he talked about J.R.R Tolkien, and that what was so great about his work was not the history and languages that he created for tLotR, but that he brought that which he was a geek and nerd about into his writing. That is what is so great about this thread, when people discuss their passions others can feel it and get caught up in it. :itmejpheart:

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I’ve been running a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Campaign (2E) for a couple of months now. It’s set in Mordheim, The City of the Damned. So far we’ve had two casualties, backstabbing, greed, nightmares and Betrayal. I’m very satisfied. Even been broadcasting it on twitch and uploading it to youtube for shits and giggles.

I do still want to find something I can play in. It’s been years since I was a player in any substantial campaign.

You can find both my Youtube and Twitch by Searching for my User Name. Be weary though, I don’t have the greatest camera presence, or grasp of Technology, so calling it “rough” is an understatement.
Still, if you’re into that sort of shit, look it up.
Youtube uploading hit a snag a while back, but that was resolved recently so I’ll be uploading most of the backlog over the coming week or so.

After watching JP finally decided to play some tabletop … currently in a new Shadowrun 5e campaign just finished the first run and now in the planning phase for the 2nd run :slight_smile:

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