Pen & Paper Role Playing Games

I've been playing 5e with some people a friend introduced me to.
I have discovered a definite pattern to the game over the last 3-4 months. I call it "The Hamster Wheel of Adventure."
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Playing Star Wars FFG online the other day on a West-march server. Joined a Rebel mission that was a direct follow-up to a war-meeting where we decided that our best course of action of getting help from inside a heavily secure location was to speak to someone on the inside (effectively a "I know a guy" scenario). The GM often liked to point out in his tone how silly that "I know a guy" option was, but he planned out a mission around it anyway.
We found out the mission was basically us being arrested and processed into an Imperial work prison very in line with the one seen in the Andor series, but where the temperature controls could be turned off to cook the inmates due to the facility built inside a volcano instead of the electric floor thing. We were not informed by our superiors if there was any kind of extraction plan in motion by them.
The GM's tone was also implying that this was a very silly and dangerous idea, even suggesting that my character's cybernetics would be confiscated during processing and likely never seen again because a few are illegal.

We decided to back out of the mission and take the bare minimum of XP awarded for the session because 1) as it is a west-march the campaign going forward is not dependent on our characters surviving or making it out. They are therefore expendable. 2) His tone suggested we were dumb for trying it at all.

After we backed out he revealed that some prisoners were going to help us. I asked if in this case we could use the meta knowledge of that to go forward with the mission so not to undo all the hard work he clearly put into it, and I got a snappy "nope. Too late" response.

I get his side as meta gaming is typically a "no no" in RPing, but to a degree there is always meta-gaming involved: Our characters do dangerous things all the time because we have the understanding that there is a chance they may be successful at it. In this case we backed out because the GM's tone kinda made us rethink our choices and look at this even more from the perspective of our characters who were basically hearing "you'll be imprisoned for up to 5 years just so you can talk to someone inside. You down?".

Overall any game is supposed to be fun for everyone playing. If you have to meta game a little bit to make that happen and give the players the encouragement to be heroic then I say do it.
 
I always go into games with the belief that the GM isn’t setting me up for a terrible death. At least if I’m not playing Paranoia. Cause it’s supposed to be fun for everybody and a tpk is fun for nobody.
It’s metagamey but you don’t play rpgs to play a guy who tops out in middle management because he never takes risks in his life.
 
Been playing Star Wars FFG for years now. Still love it. They updated the company to Edge Studios but they are just reprinting the books.
 
It looks like it’s trying to make every encounter feel super epic and remove any chance at having a character die unless the player wants it to. Which is fine if that’s what you’re looking for. I don’t know if it would be my cup of tea, but I’ll be watching it.

The best quote I heard on it was something like “It feels like a game made for grand moments that will make for a great streaming show.” I can’t remember where I heard it, or if it’s even correct. But, that is probably what they’re going for.
 
I think the point is to be less combat forward and more RP forward, leaving most of character creation moldable in the hands of the player.

I did character creation with my normal D&D group last night and we all had a really good time coming up with experiences and connections as a group.

Combat feels easier to balance now, as enemy actions are tied to player action, so you aren't just making 20 enemy moves while everyone at the table falls asleep, with GMs having the ability to jump in with extra attacks if combat needs more spice, the idea of successes and fails having potential consequences depending on if you roll a hopeful or fearful result makes things more interesting than "I rolled a 2."

I personally love the death system. Games that are RP forward make you way more attached to your character and their story, and the player having the choice on what happens is a big part of collaborative storytelling.
 
Using this thread cause I'm not sure where else it would fit.

What D&D podcasts are people listening to (if any)?

I dropped Critical Role years ago because it started feeling too arduous to keep up with. It took me a bit to start listening again but now I've picked up a bunch.

My favorite by far is Worlds Beyond Number, but I also listen to Dimension 20, Not Another D&D Podcast (NADDpod), and my teen's favorite Just Roll With It.

Mostly just looking to see if anyone else wants to nerd out about podcasts. :D
 

Dave

Staff member
Was watching someone on Twitch today. He was talking about how he was running his game and the players found this quaint little town but something was absolutely amiss. They were terrified of this little cottage just outside of town. The party went to investigate and found absolutely nothing. The vegetation around the cottage was chewed up and trampled, but it wasn't in any discernable pattern. The house was well stocked but it didn't seem anyone lived there. And it had several magical things like a stove that gave off no heat but cooked when you placed pans on it or the basin that always produced fresh water. So the players made it their base of operations in the area.

Couple nights later the moon rose and the house changed. It grew to several times its size and it became a death trap for the players inside, basically an escape room. When they finally got out they realized...

It was a werehouse.
 
Was watching someone on Twitch today. He was talking about how he was running his game and the players found this quaint little town but something was absolutely amiss. They were terrified of this little cottage just outside of town. The party went to investigate and found absolutely nothing. The vegetation around the cottage was chewed up and trampled, but it wasn't in any discernable pattern. The house was well stocked but it didn't seem anyone lived there. And it had several magical things like a stove that gave off no heat but cooked when you placed pans on it or the basin that always produced fresh water. So the players made it their base of operations in the area.

Couple nights later the moon rose and the house changed. It grew to several times its size and it became a death trap for the players inside, basically an escape room. When they finally got out they realized...

It was a werehouse.
I blame Amazon.
 
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