Tabletop Roleplaying Games
#1
What is the general opinion on TTRPGs around here?

I'd imagine it's far more of a Millenial/Gen Xer thing than it is a Zoomer one, although I still see many games being played in college and still participate in and host games with other Zoomers to this day. Most of them seem to play D&D 5e or Pathfinder. The more you get out into the boonies of obscure TTRPG games, the older the demographics get. Old School Renaissance is an obvious one. Some of the people I see on forums discussing rules for OSE are 50+, although I think the writers themselves are overwhelmingly 30-40 years old.

Obviously, TTRPGs have been subjected to the Great Trannification, just like video games. Nowhere does this jump out more painfully than in the aforementioned OSR, where you crack open a modern rewrite of the '80s Basic/Expert edition and there's little bean-mouthed negroids of indeterminate gender and colored hair in the artwork. A similar phenomenon to the "tranny aesthetic" where there's a bipolar desire to "keep it old-school" and also introduce the latest ZOG retardation into the work. However, the OSR is also home to Legends of the Flame Princess, whose creator is a massive troll and makes modules named "Wight Power" and fills them with guro fetish art of women being chopped apart. Like indie video games, the level of trannification varies per product, and I'd imagine this is true of all obscure, independently published TTRPGs.

I see much of the same sort of cultural tensions popping up in the TTRPG sphere as I do the video game sphere, probably because the two ultimately share a distinct bond. However, it's clear that Zoomers are infinitely more invested in video games than they probably ever will be in tabletop roleplaying games.
#2
(05-28-2022, 10:19 PM)cats Wrote: What is the general opinion on TTRPGs around here?

I'd imagine it's far more of a Millenial/Gen Xer thing than it is a Zoomer one, although I still see many games being played in college and still participate in and host games with other Zoomers to this day. Most of them seem to play D&D 5e or Pathfinder. The more you get out into the boonies of obscure TTRPG games, the older the demographics get. Old School Renaissance is an obvious one. Some of the people I see on forums discussing rules for OSE are 50+, although I think the writers themselves are overwhelmingly 30-40 years old.

Obviously, TTRPGs have been subjected to the Great Trannification, just like video games. Nowhere does this jump out more painfully than in the aforementioned OSR, where you crack open a modern rewrite of the '80s Basic/Expert edition and there's little bean-mouthed negroids of indeterminate gender and colored hair in the artwork. A similar phenomenon to the "tranny aesthetic" where there's a bipolar desire to "keep it old-school" and also introduce the latest ZOG retardation into the work. However, the OSR is also home to Legends of the Flame Princess, whose creator is a massive troll and makes modules named "Wight Power" and fills them with guro fetish art of women being chopped apart. Like indie video games, the level of trannification varies per product, and I'd imagine this is true of all obscure, independently published TTRPGs.

I see much of the same sort of cultural tensions popping up in the TTRPG sphere as I do the video game sphere, probably because the two ultimately share a distinct bond. However, it's clear that Zoomers are infinitely more invested in video games than they probably ever will be in tabletop roleplaying games.

Never really got into TTRPGs. I'm on the later end of the Millenial spectrum, so we were all gaga for video games. That said, I used to work a basic tech job with this really interesting guy. He wrote novels and was a big TTRPG guy. We spent our lunch breaks playing board games. I really liked this one set in China that features ghosts, vampires, etc. Always had a fun time. Still, I must admit that I really feel the urge to play (mainly because no one around me would be interested).
#3
In regards to warhammer it is more fun to collect and paint than to actually play. Successfully built an army and got dragged into a comicbook shop campaign where I realized rolling dice for morale tests isn't appealing.

GW's high pricing has inadvertently gatekept women and minorities - keeping the medium safe. All worth paying 200$ for an incomplete plastic mold imo.
#4
(05-28-2022, 11:19 PM)Heil Wrote: I have never played a tabletop rpg in person, I did do a star wars type dnd thing online one time and I have a bit of a feel for the genre, but I would say that tabletop is basically redundant now with video games, especially table top simulator. The only thing stopping TTRPG from completely being destroyed is the normalfaggotry of millenials and companies like Games Workshop who generally avoid creating videogames that are too similar to their table top games for fear of a mass exodus. There are so many warhammer inspired games with huge fanbases that I think you could probably kill the table top version for good just by creating video games that accurately reflect the tabletop. Ultimately there are only two appeals to tabletop games. One is that it offers total control for the player without needing to mod the game. The other would be the actual models involved in some of the table top games, which are pretty interesting and enjoyable to paint. But both of these are becoming increasingly irrelevant. I think tabletop gaming was a good precursor to many modern games that introduced a lot of mechanics and ideas that are now foundations of modern games but it doesn't have much reason to exist anymore and zoomer anti-social behavior will probably be the nail in the coffin for in-person table top at least. I remember going into one of those stores and there was no one my age.

While it was arguably "obsolete" as soon as Final Fantasy was released there's still one other advantage it has over videogames and that's the fact that not all of your actions within the game are constrained by the usual systems. Want to take a risk and try to stab your opponent's weak-point? Want to just burn the bandit camp down instead of fighting them all? So long as your DM allows for it you can come up with these creative solutions without it taking away from the experience like choosing a dialogue option to avoid a fight in a videogame would. Also, you're not limited by a developer's dialogue trees. I would also add that it gives you the option to "go anywhere" but as games like Elden Ring continue to refine the open world formula this is less of a draw to the medium.

Its modern incarnation however is popular for entirely different reasons. The nu-fans don't want a game. They just want fantasy improv. As a result the people behind D&D have increasingly tried to remove the "game elements" by making encounters practically impossible to lose, removing any disadvantages for choosing a certain race, printing campaigns without any combat, etc.
#5
Just read icycalm.

Calling stuff like Final Fantasy RPGs is a millennial misnomer. DnD is on a completely different level. There are proper CRPGs though such as Baldur’s Gate and Disco Elysium (these still don’t have the freedom and scale of proper RPGs, but they make a good faith attempt). In my experience D&D is very time consuming but can be fun if you have lots of free time. You can make friends and meet nerdy girls. This unfortunately becomes the primary benefit most of the time because most DMs and players suck and make the game terrible.
#6
I wouldn't really consider 40k or board games as TTRPGs. Just by nature of being focused on mechanics rather than characters, it leaves much less room for any cultural tensions to make themselves evident.
#7
40k is definitely not an RPG. But rigorous mechanics in RPGs are quite important to the immersion. There needs to be goals, obstacles, and uncertain outcomes to conflict (hence the dice). Otherwise it is just an improv theater circlejerk. The DM’s job is to administer the adventure and the mechanics and decide on a course of action for things that are not covered in the rulebooks. Contrary to soy, an adventure written by a professional is always better than your geek/theater kid “homebrewing” or improvising. I imagine the adventures might be worse than usual now due to Wizards of the Coast being very SJW, but I don’t know. It is important to avoid spoilers for professionally written adventures. Like icycalm says, there are enough 2e and 3.5e and Pathfinder 1e adventures to last you a lifetime. Unfortunately, 5e has a better way of calculating stats than those, in my opinion.
#8
Quote:Its modern incarnation however is popular for entirely different reasons. The nu-fans don't want a game. They just want fantasy improv. As a result the people behind D&D have increasingly tried to remove the "game elements" by making encounters practically impossible to lose, removing any disadvantages for choosing a certain race, printing campaigns without any combat, etc.


This can be said about video games as well. Several years ago a 'game journalist' recorded himself failing to jump over an obstacle in a platforming game, calling it a proof of excessive difficulty. The last decade has seen the market fill up with 'walking simulator' games bereft of any challenge or mysteries to solve, whose purpose was only to 'tell a story' and make the player walk from A to B. I wouldn't say that a game that is narrative-driven (especially in the case of tabletop games) is necessarily bad, but as others have pointed out, there has to be a degree of challenge, progress, a set of goals and ambitions to achieve (or try to). A good part of modern video games fail to provide these too. 

What is my point? I've played tabletop extensively, mostly as part of a group of colleagues, and I've never been autistic enough to enjoy the number-crunching; the games have always been, to me, about the narrative, the progression of the story and of the characters within it. The personal sense of achievement after having figured out the puzzle by own wits, instead of passing a skill check; the similar sense of achievement of having correctly planned the fight and succeeded by own comprehension of tactics instead of just having the higher attack rolls and higher strength than the other guy. The freedom of creating a character with common sense instead of relying on stiff rules from a textbook stating that a fighter cannot, under any circumstance, be proficient in lockpicking or persuasion.

The hobby has always been divided between various 'philosophies', each claiming its own to be the best. It's a shame, though, that the views seemingly closest to my own have been coopted by interlopers and, for some, become a mark of decline. But I can still find like-minded individuals and run a tabletop game of my own, and that's the charm of it. On the other hand, there will never be another Planescape: Torment.

Quote:Contrary to soy, an adventure written by a professional is always better than your geek/theater kid “homebrewing” or improvising.


The adventures written by 'professionals' (trust the experts, huh?) were written to be sold to as many people as possible and to turn a profit, not to be 'good'. The modern 'professionals' telling you that your campaign has to include women and minorities, and that you should expel 'nazis' from your table are the natural conclusion of the erstwhile ones who cared only about reaching as wide an audience as possible. I might be biased here since I've had the luck of playing with really competent people not to be forced to rely on someone else's material.
#9
Competent or not, I am sorry I do not think your burger-flipping buddy wrote better campaigns or settings than 80s and 90s white male archnerds working 40+ hours a week and getting paid to do it. Pre-SJW these people did not give a fuck about reaching as wide of an audience as possible; they only cared about making a quality product and/or making money. You seem to be under some self-deception about that, but I agree with the rest of your poast.
#10
"In real life, I am near-sighted, and have spinal abnormalities, but in the mystical world of Honargal, I am Nelothien, the Shield of Gamor!"

If you want to understand a hobby, you need only look at its demographics: it wasn't by chance that this so-called "Great Trannification" took place. Video games are equally as pathetic, but at least most of you play them in isolation, so you're not debasing yourself in front of other people.
#11
(03-02-2023, 05:58 AM)Guest Wrote: If you want to understand a hobby, you need only look at its demographics: it wasn't by chance that this so-called "Great Trannification" took place.

[Image: cScO6mp.png]

"You see if den trannies were REAL MEN they would not go that way!"
Tabletop wargaming grew out of the needs and plans of European officers and then hopped over to being a gentleman hobby played by limelight figures such as H.G Wells. Decades latter after the rise of a few key technologies you would have young white college aged men in the midwest interested in middle ages Europe both in history and fantasy make rules for a game where you were the protagonists in the underworld and then rose up to being generals(Usually meeting a fun and violent end quite a few times beforehand at the hands of the DM). At the most conceptually grand with a lot of pen and paper there could be dozens of players on the same world questing and having some fun at weekends. Unless your a stoic nigger who should shortcut to what his forbears abysmal analysis in the Okhrana lead to and get himself shot by Jews, it should be quite apparent there's nothing wrong with TTRPGs or a magic trans essence that only just now truly revealed itself 48 years later from D&D's release which is the case for all culture. Something has instead happened to the people to change them. What that might be?

[Image: 3wndRtA.jpg]
[Image: 3RVIe13.gif]

“Power changes its appearance but not its reality.”― Bertrand De Jouvenel
#12
AD&D 2e and it's modules complete the faustian spirit.
#13
(03-02-2023, 05:58 AM)Guest Wrote: "In real life, I am near-sighted, and have spinal abnormalities, but in the mystical world of Honargal, I am Nelothien, the Shield of Gamor!"

It is nothing more than a healthy form of escapism. Instead of this, in the CURRENT YEAR you have cripple players wanting to play cripple characters and demand wheelchair-accessible dungeons. Check it if you don't believe me.
#14
(03-02-2023, 05:58 AM)Guest Wrote: "In real life, I am near-sighted, and have spinal abnormalities, but in the mystical world of Honargal, I am Nelothien, the Shield of Gamor!"

You Will Never Be White

[Image: boy-reading-adventure-story-1923-norman-rockwell.jpg]
#15
I love TTRPGs. I think the collision of creativity, suspension of disbelief/roleplaying, and the "randomness" of human behavior is something that cannot be replicated in really any other medium. Even you have a bad time, you still walk away with a good horror story to tell others.
[Image: fontani.gif]



[-]
Quick Reply
Message
Type your reply to this message here.




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)