In this thread we share tips with those new to the traditional gaming scene

*double handful

Fucking hell, how did I even screw that up.

beginner here, tried dnd 5e for 3 years and I didnt have a good time with any adventure. should I go to WHFRPG instead?

It works either way, admittedly.

Do not play any game that is OGLd20 or OGLd20-in-all-but-name. It uses the same psychological feedback loop as TCG collecting, freemium games, and gambling, to literally make you addicted to the specific "feel" of that set of rules, preventing you from being able to branch out. Many of the people who started playing those games who did not branch out soon enough will be playing nothing but games within that purview for as long as they stay in the hobby.
Games to avoid include, but are not limited to
>D&D 3
>Any instance of [Insert minor fandom]D20
>D&D3.5
>Mutants and Masterminds
>Pathfinder
>Stardfinder
>D&D 5

Also, when you first start DMing, do NOT overplan. No matter how carefully you've fortified your house of cards, the players will do something unpredictable and throw a monkey-wrench at that house of cards. Have a solid but flexible framework that you can improvise off of, and don't be affraid to keep half of the world on a quantum-wave-state, ready to be collapsed for the convenience of moving the game forward.

Don't listen to someone telling you're gaming "wrong," because if you and your friends enjoy it, then it's good for you (not this includes me ranting about OGLd20 a couple paragraphs ago... I mean I'd still not start there, but if it's where you end up, congratulations on finding a game you like.)

>It uses the same psychological feedback loop as TCG collecting, freemium games, and gambling, to literally make you addicted to the specific "feel" of that set of rules, preventing you from being able to branch out.
Mind elaborating on how that works?

lol'd hard, thanks for this

>3 years and I didn't have a good time with any adventure
tell us what you do enjoy, first. vidya rpgs? mmos? broadway musicals?

Video games, art and writing, jerking it of Friday nights. listening to music. normal stuff.

not that user, but... I've found that in games I enjoy the novelty of something new, the achievement of working towards a goal within the rules of a system, and the assurance that the system's underpinnings will not slide while I work toward that. Novelty wears off, of course, and if that's all a game has going for it, then people drop it, because the tedium of the game isn't worth it. And once you've achieved all there is to achieve in a game system, the tedium becomes pointless as well. But with the scale of d20 being a slow plod from level 1 to level 20, that point is a long way off, especially with so many configuration choices. At some point, the cost of replacing the system rules for something new becomes contraindicated because you are fully invested in this longrunning system.

That's also part of the reason why people flocked to PF when 4e came out. They weren't done with all the options of that system, and 4e restrictions on those options were completely at odds with where they were in their exploration.

I should also mention that I actually never finished a adventure before because of personal issues (family dying and moving), and the ones I where in usually where run by what I only now realize are "that DM"

And I was "that guy" for the first two sessions too so thats on my fault

I'd really like to play a TTRPG, but I don't want to do Roll20 (I'm rather bad at remembering online commitments), and the LGS only has Pathfinder Society and some D&D3.5 elitists. I don't know where I'd meet people to join groups, either, since I've never played, and most people don't want to deal with beginners.

You might want something more narrative driven than WHFRP. Those games aren't my purview, though, so I wouldn't know what to recommend. Dogs In The Vineyard is popular right now...

Being a DM can be really really hard. Not everyone is cut out for the work, and of those, not all enjoy doing it. I'd focus on finding some active DMs at the LGS or another LGS. The ones who really enjoy it often DM multiple systems.

I dont really care about narrative, I just wanna do fun stuff with a make believe character. and from what I've heard of WHFRP it seems pretty fun

It sounds like you're saying a robust system with an overabundance of options is a bad thing, but I'm almost certain that's not what you mean. If a system can generate that sort of investment, isn't that a positive thing, not a negative one? I guess I can sort of see the comparisons, but generally freemium games and gambling profits off of obsessive types, typically called Whales. D&D is just massively popular, it's not like there's a tiny subgroup that acts as its lifeblood.

Like, I agree D&D is boring as fuck, but I wouldn't consider its abundance of rules and options a weakness. Rather, it's the fact that the rules themselves are bad and don't balance well. I'd take it over a rules-lite where I just narrate my way through most of the game any day. Too freeform for me, I'd rather just write on my own time in that case.

>just wanna do fun stuff with a make believe character
you want a narrative-driven game for that. hope WHFRP works for you, but I highly doubt it.

The original commenter thought it was bad and described it as a sad addiction. I don't feel that way.

There are 3 LGS in town. One only does TCGs and Smash Bros, one only does MtG, Dice Masters, and 3.5 (and it's full of elitists), and the one that carries other TTRPGs doesn't have an active RPG playerbase. I go there twice a week for Warhammer, plus a few more days when I have free time just to browse and talk to people.

I'm with you then, I just don't see it.

flatter power is easier to play and easier to DM and easier to believe.

Since player power doesn't scale so much its a lot easier for players to understand what they are capable of and what they are not. Also their character growth isn't so rapid that it outpaces their tactics.

It's also easier to DM when you don't need to gain a ton of experience in running combat encounters to determine. No DM has the time or the care to try to parse and evaluate monster stats against their parties ability. HTe flatter curve makes it easier to evaluate what is powerful and what isn't.

The action economy actually means something 3rd/3.5 was weird as shit cause you could have fighters basically wading through entire armies of goblins with basically no threat to themselves. Serious world building questions come up. In 5th ed, 6 adventurers can not defeat a goblin army in a head to head battle. The mechanics lead to a world that logistically makes sense.The importance of the action economy in 5th ed combat was a good choice.

Advantage and disadvantage prevents look-up table hell. I want to actually play an rpg, not stare at spreadsheets of bonuses all day. I have a job that pays me to do that kinda shit.

Actually play rpgs, don't just read the books and look at tables.

>No DM has the time or the care to try to parse and evaluate monster stats against their parties ability.
Designing encounters is the best part of prep you bastard.

Let's put it this way: does any RPG *really* need more than ten pages of rules? At the end of the day it's all about imagining stuff and playing make-believe with your friends, and I'm hard pressed to come up with meaningful, significant rules for that to fill up even one.

I am to elaborate on what I actually meant by
> uses the same psychological feedback loop as TCG collecting, freemium games, and gambling
I personally never much enjoyed PLAYING any of the games within the OGL oeuvre, but even I have to admit that it is fun to build a character. This experience is basically built the same way as high-tier TCG deckbuilding: the REAL game is played before anyone actually sits down at the table. The game itself presents a set of rules, and a set of tools to break the initial rules in small ways, and challenges the player to find a combination of those small rule-breaking tools that break the rules in much bigger ways, and then intentionally buries the game-breaking combos within a great deal of "timmy cards" that you have to sift through. Sifting through the timmy cards, and learning to identify the good cards, and the good combos, is then rewarded with "success." However, I've found that, much like MTG-Legacy-Constructed, while deckbuilding is fun, the actual PLAY gets boring quickly after you've sufficiently shown off your build/deck to your friends, and/or after you've affirmed proof-of-concept for your build/deck. Again, much like Legacy-Constructed, what keeps it fresh is a new set of cards/rules coming out every few months or so, adding to the "meta" and challenging the players to break the game anew.

This isn't objectively a "bad" or "wrong" paradigm for where the locus of the game is in TTRPG, but it's not compatible with most modern gaming.... or most pre WoTC-Era gaming.... or basically anything that isn't OGLd20. For everything else, the locus of the game is the game itself, and the building process is intentionally built to resist the sort of breaking 3e-style character construction encourages (to varying degrees of success admittedly.)

>2017
>designing encounters
just use one reskinned encounter every time, bro

Is there a reason it needs less than eleven pages? Some people appreciate the mechanical aspects of tabletop gaming more so than the narrative ones, and it's an equally valid playstyle.

Okay, I see what you mean. I chalk that up more to boring class/ability design and the fact that the books don't encourage gamemasters to think about meaningful encounter design choices, but that's just me personally.

To continue with the MTG metaphor, while I personally have nothing against Legacy-Constructed in theory, I'd much rather play EDH (modern gaming) or Draft (Old-School Gaming) and the landscape in general could use a lot fewer people who were raised on and refuse to branch out from hyper-competitive constructed formats that encourage more douche-baggery than camaraderie and lulz

Is this some horrific parody of an advice thread, or do people actually believe this stuff?

thanks for nothing I guess.

We're off to a great fucking start!

And yes, that was sarcasm, you ape.

The best advice I can think of right now is when it comes to tabletop RPGs, the exact system you are playing matters about 20% and the people you are playing with matter about 80%.

Sadly, this is what these people actually believe (and worse, they think pushing their opinions is what constitutes "good advice")

What exactly is the bad advice here? That D&D sucks and you should stay away from it?

Making sweeping statements about how all d&d and mtg is bad and you should stay away from them is ridiculous when you consider the wide swath and large variety of people enjoy those games very much enjoy those games. Its like if you went into a sports forum and your advice was "listen, I know everyone likes football, but that shit is dumb and you should stay away from it, 100%"

>Making sweeping statements about how all d&d and mtg

These things were good once, but no longer.
We could go into great digressive detail--listing what was good and how it faded--but would would this help the newcomer?

Better to dispatch these monsters with alacrity.

Grow some balls and learn to communicate with people. Being passive-aggressive with Those Guys is fucking stupid. If you find you're the odd-one-out in your group, find a new group. Don't play in shitty games.

>I know everyone likes football, but that shit is dumb and you should stay away from it, 100%

Unironically this.

Play more than one game and setting. Try different games, genres and styles.
Don't invest to much time and energy in a single game until you tried others.
Investing to much to early will make you reticent of playing new possible more enjoyable games.
Preferably play with friends and not online or at cons with randos. People tend to be their worse when they play on this environments.
Don't be afraid to ask for help, everybody makes mistakes at first. Just try to ignore the trolls an get the useful advice.
The GM is not God, but he has the ultimate word in any rule argument.
Talk before the game starts about what everyone expects of the game and make sure that everyone is on the same page.
If you don't like something about how the game is going talk about it like an adult, if no compromise can be obtained leave (or offer to leave if you GM).
And most importantly: no game is better than bad game

I'm not even trying to argue the quality of d&d or mtg or football for that matter, a point which I thought about attaching to the end of my statement but which I thought was implied. The point I'm trying to make is that if you are giving advice to a stranger, trying to point them away from the reigning most popular thing is foolish. If that thing that you don't like is the single most popular thing its category, chances are that the person you're talking to would actually like that thing. Once again, I'm NOT arguing that "all these millions of people can't be wrong". If I went on a car forum and said to someone wanting a cheap reliable fun compact: "stay away from Hondas, they're all crap" I'd be unfairly injecting way too much of my own bias into my advice.

>The only difference between a commoner trying to climb a ledge and a level 1 rogue who trained for years at it, is 10%
The commoner also trained for years to be a commoner. The rogue spent marginally more time practicing climbing than the commoner did, and as such is marginally better. As their respective careers continue, they will continue to diverge. I don't see the problem with this.

The alternative is that the rogue is a much better climber out of the gate (50% better, whatever), in which case the scale of obstacles needs to be scaled appropriately, and it becomes an issue for classes without a given skill. This sort of approach works better in games without D&D's built-in progression system, which necessitates room for improvement. Exalted, for example, offers players the opportunity to start with skills and stats maxed, because the main progression is via charms, not skills.

When something is so popular people end up doing it just because it is popular, even if they would prefer some other thing. Because the popular option hides all the other options from view.

Buy Reaper Bones.
Thin your paints, rinse your minis before painting, scrape off your mold lines, use washes and drybrushing.
Airbrushes are WAY cheaper than you think.
When you screw up, just soak in Simple Green and try again.
Never buy anything new that you can get used, and try not to buy more models if you have 50-100 miniatures unpainted or you'll get where I am and have around $2000 worth of models not even touched and weighing down on your soul and causing the sharp parts of your broken dreams to cut deeper than they would alone.

Oh, and try to limit your time on Veeky Forums. If you're not careful you'll get stuck in the state where you haven't actually played a Veeky Forums game in a decade but post here nonstop regardless. Try not to spend more than 15 minutes a day on Veeky Forums on days you aren't actually doing real life Veeky Forums stuff.

Right, but it might be more honest to say that thing over there is the popular option but this niche thibg that I like is cool for all these reasons! Saying d&d is cheap isn't advice. It doesn't help anyone. Its just more pointless tg bitching and moaning.

Saying d&d is crap isn't helpful. Piece of shit phone

I would rather say play games until you find what you like, because my taste doesn't have to align with theirs. But yeah, saying DnD is crap must no be the best approach to the issue

That got sort of personal man. But true.

Its an important lesson a lot of us learned the hard way, I figured it needed emphasis.

1) The anticipation surrounding a game always sounds more fun than it actually is
2) You always remember it as being more fun than it actually was
3) All games end in frustration and disaster, making you wonder why you ever played
4) RPG's are a sad, lonely, pathetic hobby, lower and less productive than even masturbation.
5) Your time is better spent filling out an job application or talking to a girl.

Well if you're too stupid to figure it out, then you really should go back to smash bros., I was just being polite because Down's isn't something you brought on yourself.

It's too late. You're stuck here now forever.

>3.PF Neckbeard: the Post

If the DM asks you to enter his piss forest, go for it. He's invested a lot of effort into it so you know it'll be good.

Don't stare at the balls

Jesus.

Group is a good 70-80 percent of your expirence. You could be playing whatever game you want- the greatest system the greatest setting the greatest campaign- but with the wrong combination of players/dm things are going to end poorly. This could be anything from you all want different things out of the game, like or dislike particular themes or scenarios in fiction, or even just rub each other the wrong way personally.
On a more positive note, the right combination of people can make literally anything work and still have fun.

So I should just give up on finding a group to help me get into TTRPG, stick to wargaming and vidya, and avoid the tables full of morbidly obese middle-aged men playing D&D and scowling at anyone younger than them?

Find the clitoris.

Those were some premium quality keks, many thanks. I could almost smell the unwashed 3aboo your post portrays.

Seek the riddle.

Yes and no. Download some free game or pirate some non-free game. (an easy one is preferable)
Read the rules and the advice for the GM.
Talk to some of your IRL friends and see if someone is interested in playing with you. Any number will do but 3 to 5 would be the optimal.
Play a couple of sessions until you feel comfortable playing and role playing or until you realize the group don't work or you don't like pnp rpgs.

DON'T PLAY WITH RANDOS IN A LGS UNLESS YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING

None of my IRL friends are interested - I've already tried that before. One doesn't get the idea of roleplay, one plays pretty much two games: Overwatch and MtG, one doesn't like games that take a long time, and the rest live too far away to consistently meet with.

Whether you're a player or a GM, it's important that you try to make sure everyone is having fun. Don't be "that guy"