Tabletop RPG Guild (5e, etc)

[faedemon]

oh no!! i hope that they'll make friends and grow attached to people in the party! what all has happened your game so far?

also do you have art/a picrew of their current form at all?

i don't, unfortunately. and in our game (a sci-fantasy setting) so far we have been accused of murder + almost executed, sent to our deaths, and most recently coerced into taking a job from a tyrant queen to wipe out a rebellious faction. all three events on different planets!

what about your character, Mara, and the story she's in? i'd loooove to hear more about her toxic girlfailure status

[Icethornstar]

i don't, unfortunately. and in our game (a sci-fantasy setting) so far we have been accused of murder + almost executed, sent to our deaths, and most recently coerced into taking a job from a tyrant queen to wipe out a rebellious faction. all three events on different planets!

what about your character, Mara, and the story she's in? i'd loooove to hear more about her toxic girlfailure status

WAIT are you guys playing spelljammer???

that sounds awesome! who did you guys supposedly kill?? and how did you end up escaping from the people who wanted you dead (on two planets now i suppose)?

mara is my main OC now so I have an insane amount of sessions with her since she's in a 1x1 game (probably around 1,000 hours of playtime). i have So Much to say about her haha. i recently started playing her in Masks (another pbta-based game, but this one is about superheroes), and it's been really fun to port her into different universes and switch it up! so far we've done:

• monsterhearts (mara is a jiangshi and lives in new york and goes to college and has a terrible time)

• lancer (mara is a mech pilot who has a mech that's temporally unstable so there are fun time-loop things, and has a terrible time)

• pokemon (mara is a pokemon trainer and has a pretty good time actually)

• masks (mara is a new superhero and she's having a decent time)

most recently, she's a luck-based rookie superhero (think domino from deadpool!). something that happened last session is that all of the veteran heroes got targeted by an evil syndicate run by a magical artifact dealer named shakir. she was with one of the top heroes, who got targeted by a 9-person ambush (one was a mechsuit that was designed to look like anubis). so he almost died BUT didn't mara completely destroyed the building they were fighting on in order to get the killing shot to miss, with luck.

[faedemon]

nah, the setting is homebrewed by our DM. and we allegedly killed a druid advisor to an elven prime minister (a corrupt figurehead! fun stuff), and only escaped execution because our ship captain literally crashed into the trial and rescued us. on the next planet, we fought our way out of the death trap they planned for us (giant ant nest)

mara sounds so fun! i loooove pokemon it would be so fun to play a pokemon tabletop... is there a defined one out there, or how did you do that game?

also oooh lancer sounds super fun! i have it from an itch.io bundle a few years ago, and i love mech stuff--i have GOT to take a look at the book. do tell about the fun time loop things going on there!! i am so very intrigued

[PhoenixSolblade]

So Ghara got sent on a rescue mission by her mercenary company that were contracted by a well-known noble family. One of the family's heirs and his retainers had been kidnapped by a local cult. While Ghara was able to lead her platoon and successfully storm their compound, they were near death from being used in a rite and arranged in a ritualistic fashion. They were able to yet be saved...but Ghara couldn't bring herself to order her fellow mercs to move them from their macabre positions or render them any aid. She lashed out at those who tried, entranced by how they were slowly slipping away from this mortal plane. For so long she studied them that no-one survived.

According to her company, The Shattered Spears, there was an unavoidable accident that resulted in the total failure of the mission. But that was just to save face: Ghara herself was cast out. She remains hunted by agents of the noble family that do not fully believe that it was by mistake that their favored son had perished.

[faedemon]

oh, Phoenix, that is SUPER spooky. i am veery intrigued. any other exciting stuff happen in your game?

[PhoenixSolblade]

The campaign she is in is unfortunately on hiatus, ppl were getting too caught up in college and life in general to meet consistently I hope to return to her someday soon though!

[Icethornstar]

nah, the setting is homebrewed by our DM. and we allegedly killed a druid advisor to an elven prime minister (a corrupt figurehead! fun stuff), and only escaped execution because our ship captain literally crashed into the trial and rescued us. on the next planet, we fought our way out of the death trap they planned for us (giant ant nest)

mara sounds so fun! i loooove pokemon it would be so fun to play a pokemon tabletop... is there a defined one out there, or how did you do that game?

also oooh lancer sounds super fun! i have it from an itch.io bundle a few years ago, and i love mech stuff--i have GOT to take a look at the book. do tell about the fun time loop things going on there!! i am so very intrigued

YO THAT IS SO AWESOME..... I love political intrigue types and corrupt figurehead things are the best. A giant ant nest sounds like a lot LOL but I'm glad y'all made it out! who else is in the party and how do they interact with vik'tree?

Pokemon tabletop is SO good!!! There are two big fan-made ones out there, but the one i played was Pokemon Tabletop United (PTU). It's a little number-crunchy and complicated (ok if you're playing on like roll20 tho), but they try to mirror the games as closely as possible. It's super fun and they even allow trainers to get in on battling action (seriously, there's a class where YOU the trainer can learn hyperbeam, which is insane??). It's funny because there's both more and less prep than there would be for d&d, because you have to really set up encounters BUT they have an amazing generator out there for wild/etc pokemon so you don't have to make anything up yourself!

lancer is SOOO fun!! personally, i'm really terrible at it since it's so combat heavy but the book is pretty great!
so in the ktb book, there's a mech called the lich and it's basically a walking counterspell. like if someone hits you or an ally of yours, you can say 'no you didn't' and nullify that damage once per turn. ALSO, the mech+pilot get a 1/combat revive! so every time mara died, she just got shunted to another timeline where everything was fine and she definitely, totally didn't kill a fellow pilot listening to the whispers of the lich and following it's suggestions. another time, there were assassins that attacked the base and killed everyone, but when she died she was able to warn everyone before it happened again so they could plan ahead!

So Ghara got sent on a rescue mission by her mercenary company that were contracted by a well-known noble family. One of the family's heirs and his retainers had been kidnapped by a local cult. While Ghara was able to lead her platoon and successfully storm their compound, they were near death from being used in a rite and arranged in a ritualistic fashion. They were able to yet be saved...but Ghara couldn't bring herself to order her fellow mercs to move them from their macabre positions or render them any aid. She lashed out at those who tried, entranced by how they were slowly slipping away from this mortal plane. For so long she studied them that no-one survived.

According to her company, The Shattered Spears, there was an unavoidable accident that resulted in the total failure of the mission. But that was just to save face: Ghara herself was cast out. She remains hunted by agents of the noble family that do not fully believe that it was by mistake that their favored son had perished.

PHOENIX THAT IS SOOOOOO SICK
i love that concept and it has so many things that a dm could use!! it makes me wonder what she would think of the art/statues in hannibal (the one with hugh dancy). it's too bad her game is on hiatus- what stuff happened up until then? ALSO do you have any art/picrews of her?

[PaleoMage]

Oh hey this is something I do sometimes

I'd like to be a tabletop tomato

What name you go by: Paleo- but if it comes up, I'm Gentlefish on every other site/service
Favorite systems: Pathfinder 2E. Savage Worlds is an honorable mention, but the exploding dice are a little too volatile for me.
Combat or RP?: I struggle with RP (even in roll20 text chat, as my group does it) because I'm something of a perfectionist and far too self-conscious. Combat is obviously more straightforward, but then sometimes you're just waiting for your turn to come around so you can make (and fail) the same roll you do every turn. So... it really varies by system, campaign and the cast of characters.
Favorite class: I'd say magus, but I can feel one if not two GM friends disapproving. You would not believe how much I struggle with the simple addition that goes into calculating a roll, and when your entire turn comes down to making one very big roll that defies PF2E's three-action rule, it gets complicated. I think the most fun I've had class-wise is with a polearm-focused fighter in, ironically, first-edition Pathfinder.
A character you've played before and a bit about them: Since PTU came up in discussion already- I have a soft spot for Evan from the PTU game I was in. His character concept is basically "what if the Silver/Gladion-style edgy rival tagged along for the entire adventure?" Despite being soft-hearted deep down, he stole somebody's Pokemon with his ne'er-do-well friends, felt really guilty about it, and quietly returned the Pokemon before leaving town and eventually winding up in a different region, where he met the other PCs and underwent character development. I ensured that all six of his Pokemon were purple and made him a poison-type specialist. His starter was a Skorupi; while I did always like Skorupi, it and Drapion are now among my favorite Pokemon specifically because of this character and campaign.

Uhhh what else... speaking of reusing characters in different games, my shapeshifting space-dragon from a Mutants & Masterminds campaign briefly featured as a janky sorcerer/barbarian multiclass in a short PF2E game. The gimmick was to use the dragon bloodline's dragon shape spell to then do barbarian things in dragon form.

[PhoenixSolblade]

Pokemon tabletop sounds so fun! I like your reformed rival character concept Paleo ^^

I don't really have any art for Ghara, I think the picture I was using for her reference was something I made on that heroforge website where you can customize miniatures lol. From what I recall the last thing goin on in her campaign was searching for a magical weapon that would be able to break an enchanted mirror that was important to the big bad evil warlord's plans. One fun thing about our campaign is that it was happening alongside another campaign of the same region but a couple hundred years in the future, with the way that we would be interacting unknown

Oh and something yall should know if yall haven't heard already, Humble Bundle has a charity bundle that includes the sourcebooks for Vampire: The Masquerade and Hunter: The Reckoning along with some other splatbooks and things at a starting price of $18! I got them cuz I love reading through stuff like that even if there's no chance of me playing a game in that system anytime soon lol

[faedemon]

YO THAT IS SO AWESOME..... I love political intrigue types and corrupt figurehead things are the best. A giant ant nest sounds like a lot LOL but I'm glad y'all made it out! who else is in the party and how do they interact with vik'tree?

Pokemon tabletop is SO good!!! There are two big fan-made ones out there, but the one i played was Pokemon Tabletop United (PTU). It's a little number-crunchy and complicated (ok if you're playing on like roll20 tho), but they try to mirror the games as closely as possible. It's super fun and they even allow trainers to get in on battling action (seriously, there's a class where YOU the trainer can learn hyperbeam, which is insane??). It's funny because there's both more and less prep than there would be for d&d, because you have to really set up encounters BUT they have an amazing generator out there for wild/etc pokemon so you don't have to make anything up yourself!

the giant ant nest went okay honestly! vik'tree got down to 4hp, but we killed the ant queen pretty quickly since one of the other PCs, a warforged named M3-AT (pronounced meat), got a big fireball gun to shoot at it. literally a gun that uses the spell fireball, ramped up.

the other PCs are two tieflings, M3-AT, a human, and an astral elf. vik'tree gets along with one of the tieflings, valthra, because they're both sorcerers and have similar personalities, nobody gets along with the astral elf (which makes them a very fun character to RP interactions with), and we're so early into the campaign that otherwise we haven't had a lot of interaction yet.

i IMMEDIATELY went out and snapped up the PTU rules. i love pokemon very very much so playing a tabletop version would be SO FUN!!!! i can't wait to have the time to set up games of my own. i have so much love for ttrpgs

lancer is SOOO fun!! personally, i'm really terrible at it since it's so combat heavy but the book is pretty great!
so in the ktb book, there's a mech called the lich and it's basically a walking counterspell. like if someone hits you or an ally of yours, you can say 'no you didn't' and nullify that damage once per turn. ALSO, the mech+pilot get a 1/combat revive! so every time mara died, she just got shunted to another timeline where everything was fine and she definitely, totally didn't kill a fellow pilot listening to the whispers of the lich and following it's suggestions. another time, there were assassins that attacked the base and killed everyone, but when she died she was able to warn everyone before it happened again so they could plan ahead!

oh that is SO cool. so ripe for emotionally heavy storytelling. i'm even more excited to poke around at lancer

Since PTU came up in discussion already- I have a soft spot for Evan from the PTU game I was in. His character concept is basically "what if the Silver/Gladion-style edgy rival tagged along for the entire adventure?" Despite being soft-hearted deep down, he stole somebody's Pokemon with his ne'er-do-well friends, felt really guilty about it, and quietly returned the Pokemon before leaving town and eventually winding up in a different region, where he met the other PCs and underwent character development. I ensured that all six of his Pokemon were purple and made him a poison-type specialist. His starter was a Skorupi; while I did always like Skorupi, it and Drapion are now among my favorite Pokemon specifically because of this character and campaign.

your character evan sounds so delightful Paleo!! i'm a big sucker for rivals like silver, so i'd love to hear more about evan. also ahh having a pokemon on your team is always a fun way to find a new appreciation for pokemon. skorupi is a sweet little guy. and has a great shiny!