TRPG General Chat

2:20 AM

@BESW Heh, I'm not terribly fond of rust monsters, though they do fit the bill. Giant vermin and tiny dinos are both good staples. I might save the dinos for later, though, if jungle-y terrain ever comes up. Or for weird dungeons.

I was looking over various monster lists for 5e, 3.5, and PF earlier for inspiration and stumbled onto the leshy, which is a concept I am in love with. I don't know how much of the lore I'll keep, but it's a very cool type of creature.

trogdor

Rust monsters do seem like they were made to give a giant middle finger to anyone using metal equipment

which if you think about it,.... are the people who are weaker than the Wizard and the Druid (for the most part anyway) anyways

nitsua60

@Pixie Blights were invented to help flesh out the niche you're looking for. I know they were recommended to you already; they've got interesting lore around them, too.

Pixie

They can do a number on magic items too, if they're made of metal, can't they? They're bad news for everyone. I've never actually had to face one though. I think they fill a useful niche, but it's something I'd use sparingly and plan for, I think.

@nitsua60 Yeah, I like the blights too!

trogdor

I'm not so much saying they should never be used,.... but I kinda don't like them

nitsua60

@trogdor There are a lot of "eff you" monsters hanging around. I tend to associate them with 1e, particularly the MM2.

The adherer: indistinguishable from a mummy but those are really flaps of loose skin covered with a sticky secretion that'll TAKE YOUR STUFF!

trogdor

2:27 AM

@nitsua60 also true, there are plenty of monsters that just exist to let the GM say Eff you to one specific player or the whole group

Pixie

Between leshies, blights, and awakened shrubs/trees... I can get a really fun "weird enchanted forest" vibe going on, I think, which plays well into the scant established lore of the setting.

And some oozes and slimes, because we like the idea of incorporating a bit of the feel of western fantasy translated through anime and JRPGs, and if you do that, you gotta fight slimes at low level.

nitsua60

@Pixie Dragon Warrior much?

=D

Pixie

@nitsua60 Hehe. Yes, very classic.

I mostly played a couple of the Dragon Warrior Monsters games, though.

Speaking of which, I definitely want some almiraj in there too.

nitsua60

@Pixie Dragon Warrior (I) was the last I played. In fact, it was the last video game I played--like, sat down and played myself--IIRC.

(Not counting my annual soloing of FF1 I used to do.)

trogdor

ah slimes

is there a JRPG they are not in?

Pixie

2:41 AM

The various mushroom monsters make me think of Funguy from Phantom Brave, too (which also has slimes, of course, because yes, who doesn't have slimes).

trogdor

2:51 AM

wow

that is a cute murderous mushroom

Pixie

Yes. :,v I love NIS monsters. And you can get them as your own units, too. All the monsters.

I love the bunnies.

trogdor

ah

you can recruit monsters who you fight in it?

Pixie

These are minor characters rather than the battle mobs I think, but here's an example of the scrabbits.

If you beat the monsters enough times or sometimes if you beat one on a certain map in the story, you get the ability to create your own.

trogdor

oh

that's pretty dang cool

Pixie

I'm fond of it. It's a staple of NIS strategy RPGs, which are one of my favorite kinds of games.

trogdor

2:58 AM

NIS?

Pixie

Ah, sorry, Nippon Ichi Studios.

Disgaea is the most famous one, I think.

trogdor

ah ok

I have heard of Disgaea though I have never played one

Pixie

That's actually one of the few of their strategy games I haven't played much. I own multiple copies of it, but... I always struggle to get started because there's an obnoxiously long mandatory tutorial at the beginning.

I know how to play these games like the back of my hand, and I hate it. :v

trogdor

@Pixie from what I understand Disgaea itself is really long,... so a long tutorial doesn't surprise me

@Pixie ah yeah that would suck

Pixie

They offer opportunities for extreme amounts of grinding.

Which I will do happily to some extent if you let me into the random dungeons. I just don't want to sit through a tutorial.

trogdor

3:01 AM

if they were suddenly to make a new Breath of Fire game that worked exactly like Breath of Fire 3 and it had a long tutorial,... I would be maaaaaaaad

Pixie

Disgaea is an older one than some of the ones I played first, I think, but it's been rereleased multiple times and no matter which version I tried, that stupid tutorial was there. :,v But I think I finally got through it on a Steam save. I just haven't gotten into the game proper yet.

trogdor

ah

I do like some tutorials

Pixie

Oh, no, La Pucelle came out first. That was the first one I tried.

trogdor

but an aspect they usually share is being optional

not always though

like Enter the Gungeon, you can't get into the game proper without doing the tutorial,... but the mechanics they teach you are unexpected and necessary

and it's relatively short

Pixie

They are a perfectly reasonable feature, and if they're short it's not too big of a deal. But mostly I think you should be able to opt out of them.

trogdor

3:06 AM

yeah

that's fair

I think sometimes they are necessary, but being able to skip them is always a good thing

I think Egoraptor made a whole series on games that didn't need tutorials because they taught you on the first stage everything you needed to know?

something to that effect

it has been a while

the only one I remember is Megaman

Pixie

I'm not sure if I've seen his video or not (it's possible I have), but I definitely know the principle. It's nice when it works.

trogdor

it is

obviously not every game can work that kind of thing in

even BoF 3,... it sort of has the first section work as a tutorial,.... but there are fights where you are forced to lose involved

not my favorite way to work that kind of thing in

even though I like the game

Pixie

Like a scripted loss?

trogdor

a couple,... technically after a few small story arcs I guess

there are these two horse guys, Balio and Sunder

and you are literally forced to lose like at least two fights with them

Pixie

Those are kind of hilarious when the fight lets you fight as normal first, because some games I've played... I'll be doing perfectly well against the enemy, nearly full HP, etc., and then it stops and the characters are like, "He's so strong!"

Even though you were just wailing on him...

trogdor

3:13 AM

technically they only show up after you have finished the first few areas but

and then even later you fight a guy who is going to join your party and he wipes the floor with you after you beat everyone else in a tournament

Garr

then you fight him again and you are supposed to win

Pixie

Haha.

trogdor

the first time,.... I was like "THIS GAME ALREADY FORCED ME TO LOSE AGAINST THE SAME GUYS TWICE,..... hes gonna beat me agian"

Pixie

Third time's the charm?

trogdor

so I just threw the towel in because you know,... what did they expect?

and I got a game over

and I realized I could win the fight

to be fair after that I got pretty pumped for it

but I had gotten some mixed signals before hand

really,... I suppose, it isn't so much that I hate using a forced loss in a fight

it's that there was more than one, more than even two, and a precedent had been set

Pixie

Yeah, unless the game does something out of the norm to signal that the fight is different... that's a clear pattern there.

trogdor

3:21 AM

@Pixie also yes you fight the Horse Brothers (decided to call them that at some point,...) again and you,.... kill them in their weird final form transformation that they had never needed to use when they won

top is them without, bottom is,... why did they have the ability to turn into that? XD

to be fair,... they had established weird transformation to gain power stuff with your main character already,... so I guess

user363297

9:57 AM

hAllow

ACuriousMind

10:17 AM

hForbid

user363297

11:34 AM

:V

Anaphory

11:45 AM

@BESW Well, I'd hope they would wonder why there is scope for so many over-the-shoulder-shot-em-ups and maybe start imagining that maybe some of them might not be (shock!) shooters. Same with RPGs. Plus, even if a third of them are very much D&D-wassitsnames, I'd guess another third is the really strange tiny games that come out of contests – Game Chef, 200 word rpg, Role Playing Poem, etc. – because those contests incentivise the creation of many many games each year.

user363297

0-0

Anaphory

Not that I actually want to argue against you. The numbers game is indeed not as uesful as looking at the wide scope of games out there.

user363297

who you talking to

Anaphory

BESW. They pinged me about 14 hours ago, when I was deep asleep.

user363297

oh ok

Anaphory

11:49 AM

If you see the “↰@BESW” at the start of my message, the “↰” links to their message, and the “↰@Anaphory” there links back to mine about 2 days ago.

user363297

okey dokey

Anaphory

Sorry, sometimes conversation here end up like that :) How are you, what are you up to?

user363297

Im good

user363297

trying to find new things on the internet to do in IRL

user363297

mabey card game

user363297

11:51 AM

might try getting into magic

user363297

you ever played

Anaphory

@mustardgunner It's a bit of a mystery to me that I never got into Magic, probably because it was never a big thing in my (tiny) social circles. I think I would have enjoyed it then. I have played maybe a handful of games.

user363297

my father played it

user363297

suggested it to me

Anaphory

My parents own and play a lot of board and card games, but Magic and RPGs were and are not on their table.

Somehow.

user363297

11:57 AM

yeah my father is the only person who really has experience with magic and RPGs like dnd3.5

user363297

he wishes he had saved his stuff now that im interested

Anaphory

With Magic, you'd probably end up buying a lot of new cards anyway, I think things change a lot between releases and often old cards are essentially taken out of play.

user363297

yeah

Anaphory

Do you have people to play Magic with?

user363297

At my local frontline games, there is a tournament every week

user363297

12:05 PM

some people just wait till someone ask

user363297

saw people playing magic when I went to see if I could join the dnd group

Anaphory

12:18 PM

I think our local games store also hosts Magic players. IIRC Magic is about their biggest source of income?

user363297

mostly magic,yeah

user363297

lots of boosters, starter packs

user363297

deck boxes

user363297

they have lots of books and other games/rpgs

user363297

have dungeon masters guide and volvo's guide

user363297

12:27 PM

dice bags, chain and another one

user363297

miniature dice

user363297

miniature figures

user363297

you can get pre painted or can buy unpainted figures and buy paint

user363297

hey @Miniman

user363297

12:58 PM

:v

nitsua60

1:19 PM

@Anaphory They're literally just printing money at this point.

user363297

hey @nitsua60

Anaphory

@nitsua60 Well, I'm talking about the game stores, not the publisher.

trogdor

@nitsua60 it's definitely an expensive hobby

user363297

1:34 PM

0-0

user363297

2:26 PM

:V

nitsua60

3:01 PM

@mustardgunner hiya

user363297

hAllow

user363297

how are yeah

user363297

nitsua60

@Anaphory Yeah, but my impression (being friendly with two store owners) is that the outsized profitability of cards percolates down to their level, too. Card players just pour money into the store (albeit in 2- and 5- and 10-dollar drips) so much faster than TTRPG-folks.

@mustardgunner Good--have my son and a nephew to myself today, as my wife was called away to help her family with something. Last night's thunderstorms should make our planned hike to the local falls spectacular!

user363297

yeah, the reason most people spend so much money on card packs and other card boosters come with random cards, making it so that you have a chance to get it

user363297

3:06 PM

it depends on how much your willing to spend

nitsua60

@mustardgunner I played a lot (weekly tournaments) back in the 90s and don't remember spending on anything. Maybe a starter deck or two at the beginning, but never a box. Of course, back then we played for ante so well-constructed mostly-common decks were a great way to beef up one's collection.

I could usually get back my tournament entry fee be selling back some of the cards I'd won, and ended up ahead. Back in the Wild West days....

user363297