Tabletop is Magic, or Cynewulf Plays Dice With the Universe · 7:18pm May 5th, 2016
One of the best things I ever did involving ponies was run a tabletop RPG over Skype for, like, ever. It was mildly a big deal. Kitsune Risu was there, even, so you know it was a super huge amazing bash of awesome. But I had a blast running that game and writing letters as Luna and generally just enjoying the hell out of the setting. A lot of things that ended up in Night started out life as ideas for that game, or at least first were used there as a sort of test run. Jannah, the Hideous Strength, the Western Batponies, the Siege of Manehattan are all related in some way to that game I ran.
I'd like to start again!
I'd like to do a game with pones, but I don't necessarily have to. There are several options for ponies as far as tabletop systems go--of course, there is Ponyfinder which is supplemental material of the highest order for that normal Paizo Pathfinder system (I own all the booooks its so good y'all). Aspirations of Harmony, which I've run over Skype before. Roleplaying is Magic, and like at least two FOE-centric systems. The last pony game I ran involved being Luna's free-agent champions, having an airship, pegasus separatists, accidentally buying lingerie, world shattering evil, a radioactive rat, robots, and a two hour nightmare-marathon-yet-also-super-fun enounter involving an army of giant wooly giants and Lunar Rangers.
Of course, I could also run a standard Pathfinder game (though not THAT standard) or maybe something like Masquerade that's more amenable to Skype/voice chat. The last Pathfinder game I ran involved magitech, lots of muskets and gunslingers, fancy rogues, and a coup/fake revolution/mutiny. Also airships were there.
Generally, I tend to run games that are epic in scope and heavy on story. When I design encounters I design them to be difficult. Few fights, but hopefully better ones that require some real tactical forethought. I used to love big moral decisions in sessions that would divide the party or at least prove troublesome. I coax and cajole and bully players into roleplaying. You ain't getting away with more than a couple of "I just roll diplomacy to see if I can convince him" deals--I'll give a few obviously but I've always encouraged players to roleplay those sorts of interactions and give bonus XP and bonuses to rolls based on it. (Not big ones on either of those. the Bonus XP was actually something I picked up from someone else. I think maybe in the DM Pathfinder material?)
Anyone interested?
(also, any stories since my last blog? Listening to anything? I'm in the middle of finals now. Actually I have to turn in my final in about six hours.)
You'd have to put up with me being a based n00b in all things RPG, but sure.
3922341 : D
I'm pretty good with
scrubsbeginners. Even the smug ones.How often/when would you plan on playing?
3922353 Probably once a week. I'd have to have prospective players before I ironed out when and stuff.
Dear Princess Cynewulf,
I'm sorry to say that this isn't my sort of thing. However, I did write some words recently.
Sincerely,
Icelight Starkle
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My faithful student Ice Star,
I'm glad to hear it. For all I rail and sermonize about the emptiness of words, I love them all the same. Words can still engender feeling, after all, and sentiment is something I value. What sort of words? That's the real question. Both with fiction and with other things, the kinds of words one uses are very important. The choosing of the correct word is not just a science but an art in of itself, and it is a wonderfully fun endeavor. We often forget that words carry baggage along, but when we do remember the lines we commit to the virgin page can explode with layers of meaning beyond the superficial glance. That is a large part of the joy of writing. It is what kept me from dying of boredom through many papers in school. Best of luck in your wordslinging.
Verbosely,
Princess Cynewulf
Oh! Yes, I'm interested! I recently bought Ponyfinder books, but I can roll with whatever system you decide on. I'm rusty on Pathfinder (I think it's been 2 years since my last game...?) But I'm down!
The only trouble with me is that I'm Pacific time and I can only play once a week at night (mostly after 6pm), so.... yeah.
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Dear Princess Cynewulf,
Thank you for your well-wishes. As to what sort of words I have recently written, they are the words of a child: thoughtful, playful, even witty and adventure-filled. If you wish to see them, they are here.
Your Faithful Student,
Icelight Starkle
3922407 I'll add you to the list. No set time yet--I'm probably only going to be able to play in the evening and afternoon. (there are people who don't play at night? I just assumed it was like sacrilege to play tabletops when the sun could see you) but I'd be glad to have you aboard.
Pathfinder would be fun, though I would need to play with some of the online tools for doing encounters a bit so as to have them up to my normal terrifying levels of tactical goodness. Nothing is more fun than an urban ambush. Delicious.
If I do Pathfinder there is a decent chance I would let people use material from the Ponyfinder books as well, if we could work on a backstory a bit. They are really well done and it would be fun to have the party have to explain why they have a dimunitive horse with them all the time that can talk and also kick ass.
If we end up doing a pony game, Aspirations of Harmony and Roleplaying is Magic seem pretty simple. AoH I know is pretty easy on the learning curve, as I ran that game with like 2 tabletop noobs who were fantastic and learned quick.
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I would be interested UTC - 6
Any game type I would play, though most familiar with 5E and eclipse phase currently (3.5 and 4th on the last)
3922423 DnD 5e, I'm assuming. I actually liked 5e quite a bit. I definitely liked it more than fourth.
I might join in depending on what day its on. I'm also a complete noon so yeah.
UM yes. Yes I would be interested. Never played Pony or Pathfinder, but I've played several games in 5e.
I've... never played a tabletop RPG of any kind in my life, but if you have the time and room, I'd be open to learning (and playing).
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Okey dokey! I only say 6pm Pacific is "best" for me, because that's generally about the time my son is asleep or winding down. I guess the only other thing I might warn is that there may be times when I have to switch off my mic or excuse myself to be a parent. Most groups I've been with have been pretty forgiving of this, but some folks find this troublesome. Just wanna be up front about my situation.
You'd be surprised! The online tabletop site I use has people from all around the world playing at odd hours. It drives me nuts because half the games I want to play start at noon or in the morning. Those are the games that go on ALL DAY.
Have you tried Roll20.net? That's where I do all of my online tabletop gaming. They have a lot of tools and macros specifically for Pathfinder. It's very friendly with other systems as well. Best of all, it's free.
Cool! I'll look those up in the meantime in case you do decide on those. I'm not a power gamer like my husband (my mental math is garbage), but I've been tabletop gaming for several years, so I feel pretty comfortable learning new systems.
I'm pretty interested in this if you'll have me. I'm fairly familiar with 5e D&D, but I only have a tiny bit of Pathfinder experience. I can also make nearly any time work because insomnia, hooray.
I'm kind of interested, but I've never RPed over Skype/voice chat before. My group usually did it via IRC
3922466 The first experience with tabletops I ever had--and I really should do a blog about this one day--was with two former teachers. My old Latin teacher and my Physics teacher/academic team coach were married and when I graduated they invited me to join their Pathfinder and Vampire the Masquerade games 'cause I was a friend now and also graduated. They had a son I basically got to watch grow up (I babysat him for like half a week once. Super fun) and he would occasionally wander in. His dad would sometimes roll his eyes at the transparent attempts to school night bedtime but we loved it. It helped that I love kids and our barbarian/go-to pulerizer/ambulance driving butch lesbian was his actual godmother and she just loved him to pieces. We occasionally took a break so she could tuck him in. Then, of course, the whiskey appeared when his little light went off.
I wasn't a power gamer so much as a diplomancer. If it can talk I am going to talk to it. I am going to talk the hell out of it. I once had a vampire priest who convinced actual clergymen he was an inquisitor searching for vampires. Before the Inquisition was official.
3922459 only if you will Pink Floyd the Bard
3922447 Pathfinder is basically DnD 3.75. If we do that you'll find it feeling pretty familiar. Just different names for things and different skills.
3922442 *adds*
Okay so definitely some interest. I'll put you guys in a list and send a PM in a while. How does picking the system based on the potential campaign sound? Also, go ahead and PM some prospective times you can play over the summer so I can find an optimum time. If you aren't sure just do your best. I'm pretty flexible and I got awful good at working with people and weird times.
3922477 It ends up basically working exactly like playing around a table after the initial strangeness. Encounters are really the only problem. We usually kept text open as a line of communication as well.
If you're ever down a player, since it seems like you have such a big group alrwady, let me know. I might be able to work something out to play, although I'm not sure I could do more than something text based, which would probably be a problem.
I have lots of experience with dnd 3.5 and a small amount of Vamp Masq and Shadowrun.
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Roll20 is amazing and does all the things
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Sweet you can count me in, my dice are itching to be rolled
3922551 I've always wanted to play Shadowrun.
And I shall remember. I actually usually have a few characters / excuses to insert temporary players in on hand. Lack of voice is not that big of a problem if I know beforehand!
3922557 Shadow run is okay, but I'm not a huge fan of the dicesystem. That added to having probably not the best person dming was just a turn off.
3922557 Same! I've always wanted to play Shadowrun. Every time I try to rope my husband into it, he complains that we'd have to use science calculators.
My first tabletop experience was when I was 19. I had already been sitting on an RP listing for a few years when I was contacted out of the blue by these Air Force nerds to join their Werewolf the Forsaken game. I'd never met them before, but being the adventurous filly that I was, I went out to their apartment. They were...an eccentric bunch, but the guy running the game was mature and very good. The werewolves all died except for my cautious little street rat Iron Master. The players rolled out new Mage characters, but I stubbornly stayed wolf. Somehow, my Iron Master drank the essence of an archmage, and the group debated on killing me for "discovering" mage secrets. As it turned out, the knowledge was just in my head, but I had no real access to them. In the end, one of the Mages adopted my werewolf as a "pet". The game thankfully ended, because I probably would have eaten her character.
Fun Fact: this was the group that introduced me to my nerdy husband.
I have lots of amusing tabletop stories. We should trade sometime. I love hearing them just as much as telling.
3922501 I've never played around a table. Would be willing to try the Skype thing though
I'm highly interested; only thing is I am a complete n00b around tabletops and RPGs.
What are the particulars?
I used to play DnD 3.5e extensively over IRC, but that's been 10+ years. We were all writers (or considered ourselves such), so sessions sometimes went a long time between dice rolls. I played a paladin of Heironeous, and I had the worst luck on combat rolls. My horse did more combat damage--his name was Soylent "Facebiter" Donner.
I rolled dice to decide his age, and ended up with a paladin who was pretty old to be level 1. I ended up giving him a fall and atonement quest arc as his background. They'd had him carve his quest into his chest, to make sure he didn't forget why he was doing what he was doing. That was a completely extemporaneous decision--I had to come up with something quick because his background got questioned IC before I'd come up with something properly (we liked making each other improvise). It was all a lot of fun--obviously, since I just wandered down memory lane at the slightest prompting.
Do you actually use voice chat over Skype? That would be a new experience for me--we used to play bridged across two channels on IRC--one IC, one OOC, with extensive use of the ole /me. It looks like I've been pretty severely beaten to the punch on volunteering for the game, though.
3922808 yup, voice chat! With text as a fallback and to report rolls for posterity.
I'm strongly considering running two games now.
Oh man... Old paladin. That sounds amazing. "Back in my day we only adventured in basements and there was always black sabbath in the background and we liked it!"
I had a gunslinger named Luna with insanely high charisma. Her "flaw" was that she was a consummate glutton, just constantly pilfering food. I had zebra cakes on hand to scarf for comedic effect. But she would intimidate people mostly by caring more about food than them that she came across less as klutzy and more as "I'm so powerful I could murder you with my eyes closed".
Lyra the Alchemist was kinda the same. Except she hit on every single unattached female in every settlement and was usually drunk. If you were a dhamphir with no actual alchemical prowess besides explosions you would drink too.
Ooooh. I've had my own deep, literary and in some ways literally magical experiences with pony RP — running a pony-based forum game of D&D4e whose highlights I've linked from my userpage. I'm not interested in playing for the sake of playing (I've got a good local tabletop group that scratches the itch), but you running it? My ears are definitely perking up. I want in on a game shaped by your storytelling, and I can bring the A game you've already seen.
Of course, it's depending on schedule and the player lineup you manage to pull together (group chemistry can quickly elevate or sink a game independent of any other factors), but definitely consider me interested.
3923356 Consider yourself in the loop. The last pony game got pretty mythic by the end.
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Well, count me as interested, in any case. I'm only well-versed on DnD 3.5E, though--anything else I'll be learning. I do have three monitors to put sourcebooks up on at once, though!
if you're running any non-pony games, I'd be up for it. I'm not super interested in learning a system I'll never use again, but I can get my hands on the PDFs for just about anything, and I have a thing for tearing a system apart to try and do something unusual, be it using tech in a dragonball game or playing as a generic secret agent type in a supers game. Usually pretty good at it. I prefer stuff with a high focus on martial, because I'm a fighter 4 life. Gotta love the swords.
Saw you mention shadowrun- if you do run it, hit me up, there's a few suggestions I'd have to make about that game. It's really nice... as long as you avoid a few of the common pitfalls. Nothing screws a good shadowrun game over worse than deckers, for one.
I do tend to have a preference for some of the older stuff though. I find newer stuff tends to be way more broken- not in an unbalanced way, balance is impossible, but the newer stuff, especially newer D&D, is forgetting what made the lack of balance acceptable. We shall all mourn the bow wielding fighter, made completely irrelevant in a system where eldritch blast is a 100 yard range level 0 1d10 damage spell for warlocks.
If you can help me adapt Rabbit/HABIT, my Warforged Artificer / Barbarian into a pony robit, or help me make heads or tails of the system, sure.
3923882 funny you should say that.
The pony game I ran had a character named Ferrus--the selfless polite ambulance mare. Who never seemed to get tired... Or need much sleep... And who seemed almost indestructible. Surely she's just that tough.
Nah she was a robot originally designed to be a sleeper agent/terror weapon.
Man that was fun.
3923887 Rabbit is intrinsic to the lore of the campaign setting she appears in. As in, she's a fixed point in time, and responsible for whatever Schizo-tech might appear in the setting (There's at least two space stations, one of which is a terraforming engine, that she built.) Any mechanical monster of sufficient size or type, like any sort of mech, is based upon her design.
HABIT was picked up during a short jaunt to Space Station 020, whose inhabitants were murdered, their consciousness downloaded and "saved" to the servers of the attendant A.I., the Red Queen. We fought the Red Queen, I got into a hacking duel with her, and ended up with a copy of her coding in my head. So I can set up a short runtime and execute the Red Queen coding and trade in my current iteration character sheet (my statistics change sometimes, but all the random modifications I have made remain intact. This has allowed me to keep a 2d12 dwarven siege crossbow and a 4d20+4d6 sonic/electrical laser cannon across campaigns.) for a level 30 prestige-classed berserker-spec Barbarian named HABIT, where Red Queen takes over and attempts to eradicate all organic life within line of sight. (Last time this was used was to properly "motivate" a party that insisted on hanging around in the plane of an Outer God (Shub-Niggurath) where everything dies when the sun sets, party insisted on faffing about instead of listening to the scary robot lady who had been there before).
She's a lot of fun. She's 100% sass.
Through skype? That'd be cool. I've only played the vampire game a few times. Any nights except sat/sun
I'm building a war game version of Jannah that's at the core of my Wayfarer Tactics game.
Of fucking course I'd be down
I also wanna run a parallel game of Eclipse Phase because that is my shit lately.
I'll totally allow pony morphs and unicorns with psi sleight. But one of my characters is, in fact, a drunk octopus with a Hitler mustache so...heads up, it's a weird game.
Hey Cynewulf,
The thought of table topping with you is very exciting! I used to play DnD with my siblings growing up, and later joined my high school's strategy club, which was a euphemism for geek club, where we would play DnD every week. The sense of camaraderie and possibility when creating a world with others is a deep joy.
I haven't played pathfinder, or any of the other systems being mentioned, but i am an eager learner, and i will not allow that to hold me back.
At the moment I am a university student, so weekend always work best for me, but for an opportunity of this nature, I can be flexible- plan ahead with work and such. I say this because, although you plan on beginning during the summer, I wanted to plan ahead in case the story rolls over into the school year.
There are many interested in joining you, and i understand if you must exclude me in favor of those which volunteered first. However, I will be an active participant in your story, and i have a passion for learning- this passion is a boon to changing circumstance, and creative flow, which I believe is what you are looking for in your party.
If you need details from me, or want further input, please message me and i will get back to you as soon as i can.
You have made someone in Wisconsin very excited,
Serenity Rising