Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and General Tabletop RPG thread

[Old dead account]

Tabletop RPGs. The subject of many great stories, fun times, and much undeserved controversy by a handful of religious zealots and soccer moms.

Started in 1974 by Gary Gygax, DnD has gone on to become the most well known tabletop RPG game of all time. It's had many editions over the years, the most popular possibly being 3rd edition, and after reading up on the rules for previous and following editions I can see why, it just seems so much more fluid. In these games, the scenarios play out in your mind as you control your character in any way you see fit as the GM (game master, also called DM) controls the environment, enemies, NPCs, encounters, and the world in general. It's up to you to control your character in battle, dungeons, and roleplaying in social situations while cooperating with other players and avoiding metagaming by separating player knowledge (what you know about the game) from character knowledge (what your character knows).

Use this thread to discuss anything related to the genre, stories from your own campaigns, characters you've played/are playing, character builds, GMing advice, asking questions if you know nothing about this, or even starting an Online campaign with other members here. I personally got into this genre late last year. I had always ignored it because of the association it carried and realized what a fool I was for missing out on it for so long, and thankfully that association with satanic Cults has disappeared as of the early 2000's. It has sort of semi-overtaken video gaming for me because of how inexpensive it is to play. All you need to buy are dice and bring some imagination. I've played 4 campaigns so far, the first one I played was a 3rd edition one-shot 24 hour campaign where I played a human barbarian named Conan (originality amirite?) along with 2 fighters, a bard, and a sorcerer. We didn't get to finish it since one of our players was a batshit insane fighter that killed random/important NPCs for no reason and kept coming back as the same character every time he was killed, which happened a lot because the DM was pissed but didn't want to kick him out, eventually though the DM made him play a level 1 kobold servant, to our amusement.

The third campaign I played was another one shot 12 hour campaign for a game called Call of Cthulu, which is an RPG like DnD except you are a regular person in the real world in a story like that of an H.P. Lovecraft novel dealing with mystery, death, cults, and elder gods, the game is even named after one of the novels. I suggest trying this game out if possible.

The last campaign I played was yet another one shot 12 hour DnD Star Wars themed campaign, and it was pretty great, as it used star wars races and character classes. I played a Jedi guardian along with a Jedi consular, a wookie, a Han Solo-esque gunner, and a... gungan. This story was actually quite disorganized but entertaining nonetheless, especially since our consular decided to betray us at the end and join a sith lord.

My second campaign is actually a long term one that I'm still in which is an MLP module titled Ponyfinder (Pathfinder but with ponies, almost the same rules as DnD 3e), our two players that don't care for MLP say that it doesn't feel too much different at all and they can still find much enjoyment out of it. Classes are the same but the races are MLP themed. I play an earth pony Paladin along with an earth pony ranger, earth pony druid, unicor bard, griffin fighter, and persian (cat creature) wizard, so yeah big party. This is my favorite campaign so far not just because of the theme, but because of player synergy and cooperation, and the fact that the GM is competent enough to keep up with his story and doesn't get mad when we do something that may mess up the plot.

As of right now, I am working on a Zelda-themed hyrulean campaign to GM that I think is gonna be pretty cool once I finish it. Aurprisingly easy to convert creatures into zelda themed enemies.