[Bear Hands]

With the right people, TTRPGs can be a decent introduction to improving speaking skills. A friend owns a game store and we have used these kinds of games to help socially-awkward people get more used to speaking up in funny and persuasive ways. We have to come up with our own scenarios in order to accomplish what we want (no endlessly going into dungeons for treasure), but I enjoy having an outlet for creative fiction, and my rambling game has improved from improvising a lot as I run a game. The best advice for people who want to get something constructive out of the hobby is to pretend you have sliders on bits of your personality like a soundboard and test out how things work when you turn up and turn down different aspects. People over 20 usually understand, "The Rock is Dwayne Johnson with his ego turned up to 11." Keep moving these people around to different groups of people periodically and, with any introspection, they start to see how to be themselves in a way that other people enjoy.

[YoungBlade]

(04-21-2016 10:07 AM)Bear Hands Wrote:  

With the right people, TTRPGs can be a decent introduction to improving speaking skills. A friend owns a game store and we have used these kinds of games to help socially-awkward people get more used to speaking up in funny and persuasive ways. We have to come up with our own scenarios in order to accomplish what we want (no endlessly going into dungeons for treasure), but I enjoy having an outlet for creative fiction, and my rambling game has improved from improvising a lot as I run a game. The best advice for people who want to get something constructive out of the hobby is to pretend you have sliders on bits of your personality like a soundboard and test out how things work when you turn up and turn down different aspects. People over 20 usually understand, "The Rock is Dwayne Johnson with his ego turned up to 11." Keep moving these people around to different groups of people periodically and, with any introspection, they start to see how to be themselves in a way that other people enjoy.

It can be a good way to work through your vices too, and turn them into virtues. My last 3 characters have been explorations of cruelty, ambition, and stubbornness. Through the process, I've seen how cruelty can become intensity, ambition can become drive, and stubbornness can become steadfastness if channeled rightly.

[YoungBlade]

SO it seems the RVF dnd crew might be happening (though half the people in the group aren't RVFers). I'll be posting the adventures as they come, with only the characters' names.

[Dalaran1991]

Big fan of anything warhammer and that motivates me to write better and get into combat sport, but generally its not a good idea. Its like you can find a good girl in a night club but thats extremely unreliable.

Got into HEMA and sword sparring with a guy I know through this kind of stuff. He is far from the usual nerdy sjw so we get along pretty well (as well as not getting along with the rest of the players). Eventually we just work on weekly meetups, don armors and wacking each other with polysterene swords. No point system like stupid fencing or kendo, we go all medieval and I tell ya its fucking awesome. Its like boxing but with everything exaggerated: range, strike power, footwork etc.

The crowd is horrible, only short neon colored hair girls, and big fat chodes. Thats why its easy to spot quality.

[Mekorig]

Long time RPGs player. Got again in the hobby with D&D 5ed after a long hiatus. Luckly i found a very good group. RPG with a bad group (or worse, with SJW) can be a very bad experience.

[NilNisiOptimum]

I was a big Warhammer fan back in the day. My very first job when I was a teenager was at one of Games Workshop's retail stores. Looking back on that job, I realize now that girls truly don't care where the money comes from, just that you have it. I had 3-4 different girls my age who came to see me at the store, often within 24 hours of calling me a nerd when I said where I worked.

While I haven't played tabletop games since high school, I still have an affinity for the Warhammer Fantasy and 40K universes. The 40K Dawn of War series on PC was a fun way to get an old fix of blasting Space Orks and Chaos with a troop of Space Marines.

[YoungBlade]

(12-26-2016 10:24 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  

Big fan of anything warhammer and that motivates me to write better and get into combat sport, but generally its not a good idea. Its like you can find a good girl in a night club but thats extremely unreliable.

Got into HEMA and sword sparring with a guy I know through this kind of stuff. He is far from the usual nerdy sjw so we get along pretty well (as well as not getting along with the rest of the players). Eventually we just work on weekly meetups, don armors and wacking each other with polysterene swords. No point system like stupid fencing or kendo, we go all medieval and I tell ya its fucking awesome. Its like boxing but with everything exaggerated: range, strike power, footwork etc.

The crowd is horrible, only short neon colored hair girls, and big fat chodes. Thats why its easy to spot quality.

Actually, two dudes in one of my groups are into HEMA. Need to ask them if I can join.

[YoungBlade]

(12-26-2016 10:43 AM)Mekorig Wrote:  

Long time RPGs player. Got again in the hobby with D&D 5ed after a long hiatus. Luckly i found a very good group. RPG with a bad group (or worse, with SJW) can be a very bad experience.

Absolutely. Especially with all the nonsense "Be whatever gender and race you feel!" removes the consequence of choice, which suits SJWs perfectly.

[YoungBlade]

(12-26-2016 01:11 PM)NilNisiOptimum Wrote:  

I was a big Warhammer fan back in the day. My very first job when I was a teenager was at one of Games Workshop's retail stores. Looking back on that job, I realize now that girls truly don't care where the money comes from, just that you have it. I had 3-4 different girls my age who came to see me at the store, often within 24 hours of calling me a nerd when I said where I worked.

While I haven't played tabletop games since high school, I still have an affinity for the Warhammer Fantasy and 40K universes. The 40K Dawn of War series on PC was a fun way to get an old fix of blasting Space Orks and Chaos with a troop of Space Marines.

*ahem* WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

[Mekorig]

(12-26-2016 07:10 PM)YoungBlade Wrote:  

(12-26-2016 10:43 AM)Mekorig Wrote:  

Long time RPGs player. Got again in the hobby with D&D 5ed after a long hiatus. Luckly i found a very good group. RPG with a bad group (or worse, with SJW) can be a very bad experience.

Absolutely. Especially with all the nonsense "Be whatever gender and race you feel!" removes the consequence of choice, which suits SJWs perfectly.

Well, check Mike Mearls twitter. The guy is the current lead designer for D&D. I usually pass from all the SJW or "Magical Realm" trash they are puting in the game lately.

[Suits]

It would be easy to jump to conclusions about what most D&D players look like, since all of those conclusions are true. I had a homeless, unemployed college classmate with a degree in history and five years experience teaching English in Japan living with me for free for several months because he was broke. He had a weekly D&D game he organized and there was even a girl in the group, a solid 3 by my estimate.

However, as easy as it would be to criticize, I have to give them credit. Nobody was taking selfies during their games or paying any attention to their phones at all. They engaged in the pure enjoyment of their hobby for hours on end. They might have been a bunch of losers (they were) with questionable social skills for dealing with the general public, but they actually had a fun, affordable hobby that they enjoyed for its own sake.

I know I have definitely learned something from that.

[YoungBlade]

(12-26-2016 10:32 PM)Mekorig Wrote:  

Well, check Mike Mearls twitter. The guy is the current lead designer for D&D. I usually pass from all the SJW or "Magical Realm" trash they are puting in the game lately.

Yeah, I don't actually buy their products, I pirated them.

I did buy all the latest MYFAROG books though (v2.6, Deus Ex Machina, Travels and Treasures, etc.) Varg supports his family that way, and there is absolutely 0 cukoldry going on in that game.

[BortimusPrime]

I remember playing D&D back in high school and a bit in college, but once world of warcraft came out everyone dropped it for that. Our group was always playing it like a tactical combat game instead of SJWs pretending to be transsexual goblins as therapy for their daddy issues or whatever it is now.

Nowadays I just stick to overly-complicated euro board games.

[Leonard D Neubache]

My entire experience of TTRPGs was the art of rounding up a half a dozen quasi-autistic and/or borderline personality disorder types and attempting to herd them through an interactive story with about the same success as you'd have herding cats through a cucumber farm.

In fairness though it got me access to a certain level of pussy that would have otherwise been beyond my capability to bang at that time.

[AnonymousBosch]

(12-27-2016 11:51 PM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

My entire experience of TTRPGs was the art of rounding up a half a dozen quasi-autistic and/or borderline personality disorder types and attempting to herd them through an interactive story with about the same success as you'd have herding cats through a cucumber farm.

That's an amazingly-accurate description of my experiences watching my friend's little brother play it with his friends.

One time, waiting for it to be late enough for us to go out, my mate and I and our dates tried playing it with them, thinking it might be funny. (We were a worldly fifteen, and believed ourselves far too old for this kid's shit).

It was... an experience. We were a group of adventurers, arriving at an Inn in a strange town for information looking for some Evil Dungeon or something.

Things went south when we were told there was a barmaid behind the counter. The nerds wanted a description of her and got back "She's like the chick in 'Weird Science' but with bigger norks". I vaguely remember some stat or skill that described how fuckable you were to others that involved rolling dice, so the game stopped for about ten minutes as I heard a bunch of spotty-twelve year old autistic virgins attempt to run game on 'her' - her being the nerd running the game - and roll the dice.

They all failed, but then my mate asked for the dice. When I looked at him, he shrugged and said "Never let a chance go buy mate."

Eventually, we got the hell out of the Inn and entered an enchanted forest, only for me to discover what girls find interesting about adventuring: oohing over the cute squirrels running around; one deciding to tame the squirrels through magic; her then deciding it to magic up a little hat and boots for it, described in excruciating detail; her then deciding that it needed a name - Sammy De Squirrel; and then asking if it could be trained to sing with magic. All of this took seemingly-endless discussion and much rolling of dice.

That was when the other girl decided she wanted a Pet Magic Singing Squirrel of her own, and with her being 'Kit The Warrior Woman', the other girl with the magic powers used up all her alloted magic creating another fucking girl squirrel called Madonna, magic that we were supposed to need to fight the expected eventual monsters, whereever they were.

That's when we were approached by wood nymphs with a mysterious tale to tell... after which all the nerds tried, in order, to get off with them.

That's when the guy running the game started getting pissed off and pulled out a different book called 'The Lost Tomb of Horrors' to much outrage from the nerdlings, who said it was the 'worst thing ever'. (A few years later, one of the nerds used this as shorthand to describe his girlfriend's apparently-very sloppy vagina - beggars can't be choosers I guess - so the title stuck with me).

We came to a door, managed to get it open, and entered the first room of the dungeon. Sammy D. Squirrel was sent up to a keyhole to see if he could put his little Squirrel Hands through to jostle a key loose, only to get shiskabobbed through the head in gory detail. Just as I was thinking "You know, I'm starting to like this game," we were all killed within the space of a minute as traps started going off everywhere.

"Good," the guy running the game said, packing his books up. "Let's go get a video."

That was my first and last experiencing playing 'Dungeons and Dragons'. From what I've seen recently, I get the feeling that nothing much has changed - just that minutely-described dysfunctional sexuality has replaced personalised-squirrels.

OP: you want children's board games - preferably nostalgia-inducing ones - and alcohol. They're low investment, so it's easy to talk. What was around when you and your friends were young?

[fokker]

If you read any of Varg Vikernes' articles on burzum.org, he mentions TTRPGs quite a bit. They were a big part of his formative years.

[weambulance]

A DM can't force players to buy into the premise. It requires willful cooperation. It's not the fault of the game itself if people aren't willing to play it properly.

It's the same sort of issue I have as a writer. If someone goes into one of my stories determined not to believe in it, well, what can I do? Suspension of disbelief is a choice. Shitty writers break the reader's willing suspension of disbelief, but not even the best writer can force someone to buy into the story if they're unwilling.

[Paracelsus]

(12-28-2016 12:41 AM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

That's when the guy running the game started getting pissed off and pulled out a different book called 'The Lost Tomb of Horrors' to much outrage from the nerdlings, who said it was the 'worst thing ever'. (A few years later, one of the nerds used this as shorthand to describe his girlfriend's apparently-very sloppy vagina - beggars can't be choosers I guess - so the title stuck with me).

I am going to very reluctantly identify that book as the Tomb of Horrors module/adventure.

It was essentially D&D's equivalent of a serial killer movie. From the first edition onward* the book is the quintessential Fuck You to a party of players, an adventure that the creator, Gary Gygax, created to be essentially unbeatable. And even if you do somehow avoid the fiat that results in death for every member of the party in less than fifteen minutes or so, it gives you a shit treasure that itself kills you or marks you for death thereon.

*Although much less so in the 3rd edition on, mainly because 3rd edition was subtitled Caster Edition, The Rest Of You Fighters, Rogues, Rangers, etc., etc., Can Go Get Fucked While The Mages And Clerics Render You Completely Irrelevant As They Utterly Break The Game Thanks To An Avalanche Of Sourcebooks That Were Not Playtested Together And Thus Can Be Combined In Weird And Wonderful Ways Not Excepting Turning Yourself Into a Literal Kobold God By About Fourth Level.

[weambulance]

(12-28-2016 02:38 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(12-28-2016 12:41 AM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

That's when the guy running the game started getting pissed off and pulled out a different book called 'The Lost Tomb of Horrors' to much outrage from the nerdlings, who said it was the 'worst thing ever'. (A few years later, one of the nerds used this as shorthand to describe his girlfriend's apparently-very sloppy vagina - beggars can't be choosers I guess - so the title stuck with me).

I am going to very reluctantly identify that book as the Tomb of Horrors module/adventure.

It was essentially D&D's equivalent of a serial killer movie. From the first edition onward* the book is the quintessential Fuck You to a party of players, an adventure that the creator, Gary Gygax, created to be essentially unbeatable. And even if you do somehow avoid the fiat that results in death for every member of the party in less than fifteen minutes or so, it gives you a shit treasure that itself kills you or marks you for death thereon.

Huh. That makes me hate Ready Player One and its protagonist even more. I didn't know such a thing was possible. (The protagonist in Ready Player One zips through a VR Tomb of Horrors scenario like it's a game of pattycake because he's just that good. At everything.)

[Leonard D Neubache]

Whole post, AB. Brilliant. Hilarious nostalgia mixed with deep personal shame and a heartfelt gratitude that I reached social escape velocity from that scene unlike so many others I knew.

(12-28-2016 12:41 AM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

...
OP: you want children's board games - preferably nostalgia-inducing ones - and alcohol. They're low investment, so it's easy to talk. What was around when you and your friends were young?

There are actually some really fun board games to play over a few drinks. The Arkham Horror game is loosely based around the Cthulu mythos and you can take it just as seriously as you want to. It leads to all sorts of running jokes in the vein of "what was Colonel Mustard doing in the basement with the lead pipe?"

The best part is that once you pack it up for the night it's fucking over and you don't have whiny little bitches complaining all week about how you need to run a scene again because you forgot to include their dick-plate in their fucking THAC0 on the 37th dice roll.

[AnonymousBosch]

This is a good example of the sort of thing I mean: nostalgic kid's games. You need to tailor said nostalgia to the age group of your friends.

'Ghost Train' was a seemingly-legendary game around the playground back in the 1970's, where no-one ever had it, but there were whispers of friends of friends who maybe once got to play it. I eventually found it at a jumble sale when I was about 7, and bought it with money from my paper round.

I only had it for a week or so, but I felt like a King of the School. Unfortunately, my Dad tripped over it one night in the dark, so it went out into the garbage.

I discovered it on Ebay recently, and, then bought it thinking some old friends would lose their minds over it. Once it arrived, I sat down with a beer to open it up and start the many repairs I expected it would need, given its age (1974), only to find it in almost brand new condition. Weirdly, it was cheaper than something like 'Last Night On Earth' or 'Zombicide', which I was given as a gift but have never completed a game of, because the complexity bores everyone.



I took that photo and sent it to a friend, and she rang 30 seconds later, squealing and screaming with excitement, wanting to know if it was 'out' again and how on earth I found it.

A group of us played it recently and had a good time. Although it seems like a basic 'move from start to finish' game, it has this ingenious interlocking gear / turntable system where the wheels move in different directions. The idea is to land on the turntables to be able to spin other players in bad directions, which also moves the ghosts around. If they sending other players flying, they are sent back to the waiting room, whilst you hopefully run for the exit. There's two main problems: you always have to move in the direction you left your car facing at the end of the previous turn, meaning you have to plan ahead of time; and there's this damn spider that can be raised or lowered to block the exit, meaning, if it's down as you approach, you have to loop halfway back around the board again and try again.

Most of the strategy of the game involves deliberately-fucking over the other players in the situations where you can choose directions - maybe you choose to go backwards to spin the turntables, or aim to lower the spider. You can block player movement by turning a skeleton holding a lantern - you can't pass unless the light facing you is green. Unless you're extremely-lucky, you'll go around and around the board multiple times trying to get out that damn exit before someone drops 'that bloody spider'.

It's just the right combination of simple-but-complicated, meaning kids and drunk adults can play it so you can talk without having to concentrate too much. The backdrop and design is beautiful and fun to look at - I always loved the skeletons sharing a drink on the edge of the board. My nephew lay his head on the edge of the table and kept staring at it saying "That's so creepy," in that spooked-out but totally-fascinated way you do when you're a kid. I had to explain to him what a Ghost Train is / was - I guess it's another part of culture that's vanishing.

One great little design touch is the player figures. The girl looks o-mouth scared, whilst the guy has a Pepe-style shitlord smirk, just like real life. Contrast with something new like 'Zombicide', where the female characters are the ugliest tranny-dyke things I've ever seen.

I suspect anything pre-1979 is worth a look - I think games of that era were expected to be played as a family activity rather than just aimed at children. After that, there's seems to be a deliberate-dumbing down of board game culture - if you want such classics as 'The Game Of Life', 'Payday' or 'Careers', you need to experience their older, more complex versions, particularly to experience the design culture of Mid-Century art. (My friend's kids are fascinated with my '65 'Game Of Life' due to the enormous size of the board).

This was another good one. 1979's 'Electronic Detective' - so complicated the instructions came on a flexidisc, where a post-'Get Smart' / pre-'Inspector Gadget' Don Adams explains to you how to play a game. I didn't understand the choice - he always played lousy detectives.



It's basically a boardless, more complicated 'Cluedo' where you grill suspects and use elimination and deduction to find the culprit. It's good in that only one player uses the machine at once, freeing up lots of time to talk, but your turns are involving enough - picking the suspect who can give you the information you're missing, then questioning them via the screen - to keep the interest up, but not so hard being drunk won't mess things up too much. Definitely worth a look.

[UlteriorMotive]

When I was in my early teens I played a ton of Warhammer 40k tapletop at a local Games Workshop.

I spent a lot of time and money painting my Orkz to perfection.

[Leonard D Neubache]

In fairness TTRPG kept me off the street causing all manner of trouble and probably ending up with a record of petty offences.
A lot of my friends that played 40k tabletop were smart kids. They were like supercomputers with their ability to memorise ridiculous amounts of trivial statistics and alter them all in an instant every time a new update came out.

Shame nobody came down and grabbed us all by the ears, dragged us in front of a stock market terminal and dumped a thousand bucks in our laps. All they'd have had to tell us was "first one to a trillion bucks conquers the galaxy and gets to do all the women".

[Tytalus]

Outing myself as a major nerd here. I got into these games by a "cool" 20 year old when I was 11, and really got into the hobby. D&D is just one of many games. One game, Ars Magica, a fairly obscure game, has actually led people to get MA's and PhD's in history.

Done right, the game is a fun way to spend time with friends and engage in a form of shared story telling and improv acting, typically resulting in moments of utter hilarity. I once played a game as a super vanilla "good" guy in my friend's "homebrew" table top RPG. I was some kind of battle wizard working for the government in a fantasy world and the rest of my group were a bunch of dicks.

So I miss a session. My friend, playing an illusionist, takes this opportunity to impersonate my character and do a bunch of wild and outrageous things to much hilarity. Then, the next week, I role-played through this.

My character was repeatedly slapped by many a woman for hitting on them badly, and I really hammed up the "why me? What did I do?" thing a white knight would say. It culminated in my character being propositioned by a gay wizard trainer for "naked sword fighting." I decided to just play it straight "I don't understand why would we be naked while fighting with swords. But then again, I suppose I could be ambushed while sleeping at night so I think this would be a good idea to take up this opportunity."

Or something like that. My friends couldn't stop laughing for a long time and still gets brought up from time to time over 10 years later. It was the perfect setup giving the previous roleplaying and very memorable.

I've definitely spent more time on this hobby than I should have- part of my avoidant personality flaw. On the plus side, I've run a lot of medieval history which can make for some interesting conversation at dinner parties. Also helps me educate my children, I can explain to them for real how bad things used to be a long time ago.

While the hobby can definitely have more than its fair share of social rejects... My friends and I all have good jobs. Programmer, Logistics, Sales, Data Scientists. No Catpissmen living in their mom's basement.

[sterling_archer]

So game you just described is a made up one. Do you know how to create TTRPG that works? I have countless ideas.