TRPG General Chat

12:14 AM

6

Q: Where does poisonous "oil of taggit" come from?

Is there any lore in D&D, whether in 5th Edition or prior, about where the poison "oil of taggit" comes from? What kind of thing is a "taggit"? An animal or plant? A mineral? In 5th Edition, it's listed in the Dungeon Master's Guide on page 258, but as far as I can tell, it's been in the game sin...

Someone_Evil

Regarding the legality thing, I remembered this meta, which 1. doesn't seem to have been acted on, and 2. is now slightly moot as the site in question has gone private (and thus isn't hosting any of the relevant content)

Hot RPG Questions

2:16 AM

11

Q: Why would this NPC in Curse of Strahd ever attack Strahd?

In Curse of Strahd, there is an NPC the PC's may encounter whose weapon explicitly does more damage when he uses it to attack Strahd. However, said NPC states explicitly that he will not attack Strahd (emphasis mine): The module says that the players may want to take his weapon; but its descrip...

dnd-5e npc curse-of-strahd

TheDragonOfFlame

Anyone play call of Cthulhu?

im learning and don’t the skills seem super low

Also does anyone know where I can find a free copy of the 7th Ed rules online (or am I not alowed to ask that)

BESW

There's a Quickstart set PDF in Chaosium's free stuff section.

(We try not to encourage or support piracy.)

I'm not super familiar with CoC rules-wise; I've read a lot of it but never played it, there are other horror-style systems that I much prefer.

TheDragonOfFlame

For example what out of curiosity

BESW

2:31 AM

Depends on what kind of game you're after.

If you want an adventure that lasts several sessions, with potential for an even longer campaign, and stories focused on supernatural investigation, Trail of Cthulhu is the obvious choice: it was designed specifically in response to Call of Cthulhu's failure to actively support investigative stories.

If you want to play single-session horror games more focused on uncertainty and the terror of slow understanding, Cthulhu Dark is an excellent option.

If you want single-session horror focused on heavy atmosphere and the internal mindscape of the protagonist, Lovecraftesque is really good, with the added bonus of being structured so that nobody at the table knows what's going on until it's revealed through play.

If you want a more adventurous combat-focused romp through horrific worlds, Fate of Cthulhu uses time travel to explore alternate universes where the horrors have already won, and PCs have access to overpowered combat options at the potential expense of their own identities.

If you want a one-player-one-GM experience, there's a Trail of Cthulhu offshoot called Cthulhu Confidential which has good support for intense single-player investigations in multi-session forms.

If you want a game about confronting your inner demons in an over-the-top waking dreamworld where your own anxieties are your greatest weapon and your greatest threat, there's Don't Rest Your Head.

Oct 3 at 11:35, by BESW

There's also a lot of games more tuned to one-shot horror, like Trophy Dark, which has a lot of third-party scenarios, which it calls incursions.

Aug 14 at 23:12, by BESW

SQUISHY! by Surgeryhead is a rules lite system for those who want to run a survival horror scenario in a pinch.

Aug 8 at 0:47, by BESW

They Came to Play Ball by Adira Slattery is a cosmic horror sports game created using the Firebrands Framework, with touchstones like the movie Space Jam, the cultural event Blaseball, and the LARP Beastf*cker.

Jul 14 at 5:53, by BESW

What's So Scary About A Haunted House by Zargo Games is meant to be a jumping-off point for making your own horror game. Make your own rules, if that's what you want to do! Made for What Is So Cool Jam.

Jun 27 at 11:44, by BESW

house by Marn S. is a horror storytelling game based on House of Leaves.

Feb 25 at 13:14, by BESW

WHAT HAPPENED by Mercedes Cibby Acosta is a missing persons horror TTRPG about spiritual danger, cosmic encroachment, and inevitability. For many Indigenous people worldwide, sometimes we find ourselves asking WHAT HAPPENED? We've lost so many but they aren't truly gone. This game explores my reflections on that.

You get the idea; there's a LOT of stuff out there and Call of Cthulhu's strength AND its weakness is that it's trying to be very generic while still being closely tied to the bigoted conventions of a particular author from a hundred years ago. I like to look for games that are more active about supporting a particular kind of story, and about interrogating or rejecting the racist legacies of the genre.

BESW

3:02 AM

Oh look, this just started up:

Folk-Horror Game Jam Hosted by Feral Indie Studio. A month-long celebration of haunted harvests and deadly folk traditions!

TheDragonOfFlame

Oh cool

BESW

My personal go-to horror system is Cthulhu Dark. I use Scooby Doo and Doctor Who stories as inspirations for the mysteries.

Hot RPG Questions

3:29 AM

4

Q: Is the Adult Gold Dragon's Weakening Breath considered a curse, disease, or poison?

In a fight with an Adult Gold Dragon today our delightful barbarian suffered from the effect of Weakening Breath. Our transmutation wizard used his Transmuter's Stone for Panacea to restore hit points, and cure poison, disease, and curses. Would this cure the effect of Weakened Breath?

dnd-5e wizard dragons poison disease

Hot RPG Questions

5:32 AM

1

Q: Does the Svirfneblin Magic feat use spell slots

Does the Svirfneblin Magic feat use spell slots? Feat is stated as follows: You have inherited the innate spellcasting ability of your ancestors. This ability allows you to cast nondetection on yourself at will, without needing a material component. You can also cast each of the following spells...

dnd-5e feats spellcasting gnomes

Bardic Wizard

What kinds of dice-based horror RPGs are there? I’m putting together a thing for a friend for Halloween and they know they want dice as a randomizer but they’re not sure how the dice might affect the game and I suggested we look at already existing games to see what they use and how it increases tension

BESW

[gestures at massive list above] I think DRYH and Cthulhu Dark are particularly notable in terms of dice.

DRYH uses a rather complicated dice pool of multicolored dice, each of which come with different kinds of limitations or permissions on what you can do with their successes, and also create different kinds of drawbacks and problems if they roll certain numbers.

The upshot is that you're constantly balancing between risking a difficult-to-control power escalation whereby you become unstoppable and then lose the game because you turned into a monstrous embodiment of your anxieties; or avoiding that fate but slipping into an involuntary slumber during which other anxiety-monsters might devour you.

Cthulhu Dark is interesting because it's almost impossible to fail: most rolls are only to determine what goes wrong in addition to your success, and even when you've got a chance to fail it's very small. However, doing things which aren't humanly possible, or re-rolling, always introduces the risk of freaking out.

The more you freak out, the less likely you are to freak out again, but if you freak out six times you go into permanent freakout mode and can't continue as a player character... but once you reach high levels of freak you can lower your freakout level by actively obstructing the party's attempts to understand what's going on.

So CD starts out with characters jumping at sudden noises, then settling into a slow boil where they don't startle as easily but the scary stuff keeps coming at them and the stakes are higher, until they begin to fight back by obstructing the story so they can stay in it.

Bardic Wizard

Hmm. Both sound like there’s a lot of trade offs involved; I like the way that CD makes it hard to fail

BESW

Yeah. CD balances this by having one thing you cannot do: if you try, you automatically die. That thing is directly attacking a monster.

trogdor

Yeah

I actually liked CD better

Even though I was excited to try DRYH at the time

BESW

5:48 AM

In CD, you roll 1d6 if the thing you're doing is humanly possible; 1d6 if it's within your personal expertise; and 1d6 if you're willing to risk freaking out. You can re-roll once, so long as the re-roll includes the freak-out die.

Check your highest die roll: the higher you get, the better you succeed and the less bad stuff also happens.

If someone at the table thinks it'd be interesting for you to have a chance to fail, roll another 1d6 also and if it's the highest die then you fail.

trogdor

We didn't do much of that

BESW

BUT: if your freakout die is the highest, roll it again and compare it to your freakout score (starts at 1). If the die rolls over your freakout score, then roleplay freaking out and increase your freakout score by 1.

You also roll to check for a freakout any time your character encounters something that would reasonably make 'em freak (whether it's connected to the horror or not, but it usually is).

And the story advancement is primarily gated by the group's collective exposure to horror-related freakout opportunities.

Bardic Wizard

Hmm. The game I’m (I hesitate to say writing) involved in is a thing about being fancy Victorian nobles in hoop skirts (no matter the gender) investigating strange occurrences during a high society party, with a record that the party keeps through embroidery. Based on that, I think maybe something like CD, that seems at least pretty simple to start, would be a good system to base some of it on

BESW

The core Cthulhu Dark rules fit on a back-and-front piece of typing paper with room for examples, and the guide for GMs to build scenarios fits on another paper.

Bardic Wizard

I will go look that up

BESW

5:54 AM

@BardicWizard I've put the free PDF links in the tag wiki! Grab the core rules and the scenario creation.

(There's a numbering error in the scenario creation, but you can figure it out.)

Bardic Wizard

Thanks!

BESW

Note, the language of the PDF is "sanity." The later big-book edition re-names it "insight" which is better but honestly I just call it "fear" and leave it at that.

Despite being called Cthulhu Dark, the game's got no ties to L*vecraft at all. Its dice mechanics are just as good for Scooby Doo or Supernatural.

Bardic Wizard

I think I’ll just do a Cthulhu dark hack and maybe leave embroidery till later

Hooped horrors sounds like a bad name in hindsight

BESW

I do have a fondness for games that produce record-keeping artefacts.

...I wonder how Pilgrims of the Flying Temple could be hacked for horror?

Not that it's dice-based, it uses "draw some, put some back" tokens.

trogdor

6:16 AM

@BardicWizard lol

Thomas Markov

11:45 AM

@NautArch I'm writing a meta post about that question now.

Thomas Markov

11:59 AM

0

A: Is this question about an Ordinary Items Database an off-topic tool recommendation question?

This question is off-topic. This question asks for a tool that serves a certain purpose, particularly, a database that lists common items found in various rooms at different points in history. 1. This is not an RPG question. That this question relates to RPGs at all is because its answer may be u...

RevenantBacon

(still wasn't an answer)

Thomas Markov

Okay bud

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