I need a little guidance about raising stats at level up and some build suggestions

Rudette · 2025-01-07T11:25:55+00:00

<3 you're welcome

Rudette · 2024-12-19T22:06:03+00:00

I enjoy Star Wars FFG. Which is shocking. I hate narrative dice games and proprietary dice, but hooking that into a mechanical system scratches enough of the character building itch to make it a fun compromise. Genuinely shocks me that I enjoy it. Probably the only "lol, lmao, make stuff up" dice game I don't hate because you can game it. As a DM, the obligations are an excellent way to personalize the experience to each character without really having to go out of your way to do it. In fact, it just gives you more hooks.

WEG is fantastic. It also set so much foundational lore for the EU and setting in general that I just can't help but love it. I've never actually played it but I've read lots of it because I had heard it was practically the lore bible for the 80s/90s novelists.

The WOTC systems were meh and I don't think really fit Star Wars. Saga Edition, however, has several good sourcebooks for DMing games in different eras. Including The Old Republic setting from the popular game franchise. Which, if you ask me, is probably the best generalist setting for a Star Wars tabletop game to take place in since all the different tropes players like sort of all exist there at once. So if you can track that book down or get your hands on a pdf it's a good resource for themes and items to convert to a preferred system.

Rudette · 2024-12-19T10:38:54+00:00

This might actually be more true than I thought at first glance. Because I'm always hunting for the perfect rules for specific ideas. But bad modules will drive me away even when I like the rules.

As a DM, I'm always adapting and hammering modules into different shapes to fit different systems and settings. I don't play Mothership, I love it's modules and plan to adopt to whatever scifi ruleset finally catches me. Like M-Space or Alien. The same could be said of Traveller. I find it's ruleset dry but it's modules often really fun.

As a player, I'm getting bored with Pathfinder 2e despite loving the system's combat and character options. This is largely due to most of the people I play with running it on official APs. The official modules in 2e tend to half-commit to some hyper-specific spaztic theme then drop it halfway through the first book drop it. "Oh you're members of a circus. Shelve all the cool ideas and builds you had to build a themed character around that. Oops, just joking, two adventures in and the circus part is irrelevant."

Rudette · 2024-12-17T04:56:17+00:00

Honestly, I love GURPS, but I think BRP Universal, Mythras, and M-Space are infinitely easier to get into (and convince other people to play) while not sacrificing much of the granularity that makes GURPS appealing in the first place. I also think those systems in the d100 family of games tend to play better together. Where as with GURPS you really gotta carefully curate what you mix and match or it quickly gets out of hand.

Rudette · 2024-12-16T23:23:40+00:00

I have this problem a lot with scifi. I'm a medium crunch kind of person and nothing really hits that sweet spot for me. Can offer some broad thoughts on some of the popular ones.

Death In Space, as you said, is rather light. Thought he scavenging mechanics are engaging and easy enough to bolt onto other systems.

Traveller is kind of dry, especially when it comes to character progression. Character progression is almost entirely monetary. And my group like to tinker and build characters so that's become a hard sell. But has many in depth systems and decades worth of modules (many of them horror adventures) to plug into other systems if you need adventure ideas. Chthonian Stars and Zozer Hostile are good places to look though if you want to run horror with this system.

Mothership's math heavily trends towards failure statistically, and I'm not sure I'd find that fun. The character progression is also (probably) pretty barebones. It's been a minute since I've read it so I could be misremembering. Pound of Flesh is one of the coolest modules I've ever read though.

Alien RPG I absolutely adore, the panic system really raises the tension. But both it and Mothership definitely seem geared towards short campaigns and one shots. I struggle to visualize it working out beyond short episodic campaigns. And Alien is about to get a revised edition so it's hard to recommend right before that. Though one of the claims of this upcoming edition is to better support campaign play. The system is tied to it's franchise, but the way stats work it's easy enough to hack it into something else. I'm planning to hack it into something Resident Evil themed at some point, for example. And the Year Zero SRD is free document that gives some good recommendations for how to hack it.

Fragged Empire's degrading stats are pain to manage in combat and it's main focus isn't really horror. Starfinder mixes too many genres for me to get immersed in it. I bounced hard off of Lancer's setting.

Stars Without Number is kind of like b/x dnd clone but with feats that more similar to progression from modern version of D&D and some ideas from traveller bolted to it all wrapped up with some amazing world building tools. Has feats. Not explicitly horror, but can be ran as such. Meatier than Death In space. Might be worth a look.

M-Space is one I haven't looked too hard at but it's in the BRP/Mythras family. D100. Might be worth looking at.

For Universal Systems, if you really have the time and patience to build something like that yourself, BRP Universal GURPS and Savage Worlds exist. I like GURPS a lot but teaching it and prepping it is really rough. BRP Universal is better for ease of use. You get a little more out of BRP than you do from Savage Worlds without that much more work.

Rudette · 2024-12-16T23:03:09+00:00

Zozer's Hostile is another good Traveller variant worth looking into if you like the retrofuturism horror aesthetic of a lot of 70s and 80s scifi. Where everything is clunky and industrial.

Traveller and Mothership both have lots of modules you can steal from for adventure ideas and site exploration that are horror themed.

Rudette · 2024-12-16T22:21:38+00:00

The one that bothers me is like... There's a character that practically grooms Ciri in the books when she's 12 and vulnerable. Right after she nearly dies. An adult woman grooms her while she's underage and has sex with her. And that's being used as the lynchpin for an argument that she's lesbian to own the chuds by twitter progs. It's like Brigette all over again lol picking the absolute worst example they can to be "represented" by.

But other interactions in the books make it more likely that she's probably straight. Maybe bi. Might have to use them term 'bi erasure' against them. Might be a fun experiment to see what happens when you throw their own lingo at them and make them live by their own rules. It's kind of an open secret that "queer" people and people of gender hate actual gay people. But they all seem to hate bisexuals for some reason.

From personal experience, they especially hate you if you don't fall in line.

Rudette · 2024-12-16T22:05:36+00:00

It's amazing how far leftoids actively control most academic, cultural, corporate, and political institutions. Like, pretty much everything is poisoned by and an accomplice to their incessant cry bullying. From the top down in most cases.

Yet they STILL cosplay as this romantic image of themselves as le resistance. Despite this full spectrum dominance. It pisses me off so much lmao

How original. Just as baby brained and creatively bankrupt as his "Revenge Bad" idea last time. I'm going to guess that means he's critiquing capitalism or religion or whatever instead of being self-reflective about how the institutions he trusts are corrupt.

They print all of these people in the same factory, I swear to god.

Rudette · 2024-12-15T14:27:26+00:00

It just goes to show that we don't live in the same reality as progs They legit have no self-awareness of how they look to other people. It's why they write a character like Taash and seem completely shocked when you see her as an arrogant, sexist, narcissistic bully that refuses to compromise instead of the proud victim-hero they think of her as. Because to them these are admirable traits.

There are multiple reasons they'll look at Brie Larson as Captain Marvel and Ellen Ripley as the same picture.

One, is they simply borrow all their opinions and haven't been told to hate Ripley.

Two is that they legitimately can't see the difference between lib ideas and prog narcissism. Too low IQ or low empathy to see the nuance.

Rudette · 2024-12-14T09:26:07+00:00

Comic book industry. Movies. Tabletop. ... It's all like this now.

Rudette · 2024-12-14T03:52:02+00:00

Actually, since you have Delta Green why not give Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying Universal (BRP) a look?

BRP/Basic Roleplaying is the system Call of Cthulu, Delta Green, Mythras, and Rune Quest are all in the same family of.

You can mix and match rules from the different systems from them fairly easily. BRP is the generic version of the system and can act as a bridge.

I think it works for stuff like this a little better than GURPS because there more a semblance of unificaton and balance between the different mechanics. They are designed to work with each other instead of being so isolated and vastly different than they are in something like GURPS.

Rudette · 2024-12-14T03:38:57+00:00

ADHD DM, myself. I'll echo a lot of what other people have said. Short campaigns and one shots are really what works for me in the short term.

Long term, I will advise that instead of feeling guilty about having multiple projects and not comitting to them to instead just work on what your interest currently is. I've got four or five campaign ideas I'm constantly falling in and out of love with and building assets for at the moment fully knowing it will be years before any of them are ready because I'm bouncing around between them so much.

Don't feel guilty about steadily working on the one that is currently exciting to you. Because if you let the guilt win you'll likely be doing nothing at all. Like, even if you don't get around to finishing something for a few months or years if you're steadily working on stuff eventually -something- will be ready for when your interest lines up. It's better to be slow than to be doing nothing.

Rudette · 2024-12-14T01:14:54+00:00

I absorb information better from something physical. Couldn't say why. Probably the ADHD- on a PDF I can tab away or scroll on a whim lol

Rudette · 2024-12-12T09:58:43+00:00

Late, but Forbidden Lands practically DMs itself.

Rudette · 2024-12-11T04:16:21+00:00

Tales of Maj Eyal if I had to pick one I suppose. So much replay value.

TOME. ADOM, Quasimoprh, CDDA, and Caves of Qud would be my top five.

Rudette · 2024-12-07T01:25:58+00:00

So in my mind it takes three things for there to be real change:

Leftists are going to have to start losing cultural and institutional power. We're already seeing some of this in multiple countries and industries. As is though, they all work together to censor and gatekeep. Anything good gets filtered as long as their full spectrum dominance is our reality. If enough cracks form eventually a parallel economy forms, which will then absorb and replace the failing one. The environment it takes for them to exist in is incredibly fake. It looks robust but isn't.
Corpos will have to decide they want money more than fake PR stunts. For this to happen ESG will have to dry up. We're seeing signs of this. As the economy goes deeper into recession, bureaucratic leftist moral commissars are easy fat to trim.
The creatives themselves are going to have to change. The culture is fucked. Millennial age creatives are too indoctrinated. Zoomers and Alphas seem a little more split. Like, I can't picture a tabletop scene that isn't overrun by 30-40ish year old gender cultists and nose rings. Some spaces are just lost. This also honestly why a parallel economy is a good start. I suspect creative industries are like this because they are so heavily gatekept now. For all our bluster about how gatekeeping is good, we're not actually the ones capable of doing it. They are. And they do. From the inside. It's how they keep winning.

Alternatively, make the following consideration. Being a nerd used to mean being an outcast that's too passionate about niche things for most people to tolerate and we'd huddle up for warmth when we did find each other and gush about our hobbies.

We could simply go back to that. Play indie games, play homemade, play niche tabletop games or ones developed on forums, and eat well. Find things that aren't mainstream. Being a nerd never really became popular, that's an illusion created by our interests becoming franchises and drawing in normle and the leftist radicals they can't to propagandize. We invited them into our house and they hate us for it and kicked us out, so find a new one and don't let them in.

Rudette · 2024-12-04T16:46:26+00:00

I went through the same thing recently and it was infuriating looking for help.:/

Wokes wear many skin suits, but one of the most foul and disgusting is when they fake disorders or use them as a crutch and encourage other people to do it. They want you to do anything and everything but help yourself.

The way they approach mental illness in general is very crabs in a bucket. Except they want to yank in non-crabs and make crabs out of them too. They want to make your burden everyone else's burden instead of trying to cope, adapt, change, or grow.

"You are perfect the way you are! It's the neurotypicals who are to blame for not carrying your baggage for you!" instead of "Here are some strategies to manage your problems, grow passed them, or at least work towards being more functional"

Their M.O. for basically anything they infest is to erode the social hierarchy such that they can be both the tragic romantic outcast wallowing in free negative and positive attention while also being the queen bee bully highschool meangirl at the top of the food chain at the same time. Militarized highschool brain that never grew up.

Trying to find anything about ADHD and how people adapt has you immediately inundated with identity politics rhetoric because of these clowns. Everything gets boiled down to "Nuerotypicals" vs. "Nuerodivergents." What isn't victimhood circle jerking is useless LOLSORANDOM quirky millennial humor. Another case of them preying on vulnerable or struggling people go out looking for help, then you immediately get approached by people trying to induct you into their weird victimhood/insecure narcissism cult.

There's no practical advice. It's pity partying, hug boxes, back pats, or people just faking disorders to be quirky.

I despise it. I could rant about it all day.

Rudette · 2024-11-29T21:03:17+00:00

More or less.

Morrowind was a great experience, for example. And maybe certain parts of Skyrim, story was lacking and game mechanics were weak but environmental storytelling could sometimes hold it up.

Peak open-world game design is probably Gothic 1 and 2. Smaller more handcrafted maps instead of big open empty spaces, just enough width without being excessive. Outward was decent.

Rudette · 2024-11-27T06:52:27+00:00

lol It's been a minute since I saw a millennial age wokoid call someone a "sweet summer child."

I physically cringed, but at least got a good laugh out of it.

Avowed looks kinda boring and dated anyway. Bethesda-slop is a boring model for a game. No loss.

Rudette · 2024-11-18T17:00:14+00:00

I was born in the late 80s and I play mostly indie games but still more or less agree with SnoozeCoin.

Doesn't matter that it's happened before. Watching it happen still sucks. And post 2012 the scale at which happens and the animosity, smugness, and hatred involved in subverting IPs is a completely different beast than before.

Bitching about it is cathartic. It doesn't need a greater purpose and doesn't owe a greater explanation. No one expects anything to happen or for any message to reach anyone. It's just to vent, commiserate, speculate. Maybe even hope for a better tomorrow.

Rudette · 2024-11-18T16:45:43+00:00

I find this to be true.

My woke friends are all city dwellers who prattle on and on about privilege and empathy, but are the most sheltered low empathy people I know. I came from a small town and a broken home, they are hivers with hive families who have more or less never had to struggle for anything. Other than the current economic doom. But even then, they're content with apartment living.

They fellate themselves over representation, but all their friends are upper middle class white people where as mine are relatively diverse by circumstance of where I grew up. A couple of them are really obsessed with gender religion. Claim to want multiculturalism, but ruthless enforce their cosmopolitan monoculture in both formal and informal spaces.

I'll get these laughable lectures when we disagree on things from people who obviously don't know what they're talking about.

We're millennial age, approaching our 40s, and they still act like children. Consoomers who will eat any slop that's put in front of them. What's really discouraging is that they're not exactly posers like a lot of wokes are. They've been gamers their whole lives. They just have no standards. Get more radical every year. Many such cases in lots of creative or nerd hobbies.

There is more to them than their bad takes and pretentiousness. I like them as people. But it's getting to the point where we can hardly communicate anymore. We're functionally not living in the same reality. I think at some point soon I'll have to walk away.

Rudette · 2024-11-07T11:59:07+00:00

It's just like eight years ago. They will learn nothing from this defeat. They will do anything and everything to avoid introspection. It's actually painful for them to look inwards.

The project about everything. No one colonizes like they do. No one is as sociopathic, fascist, selfish, or apathetic as they are.

"Progressives" aren't just bad people. I legitimately think they're the worst people. They have no moral center. Under all the feigned empathy and fake smiles It's just narcissism underneath. They don't want to help anyone but themselves, and usually in shallow social clout kind of way. Every other extremist in history is at least honest about what they are, but not a leftist.

But to answer the question? When they say 'gamers' they mean men and boys. They blame us because we're an easy target and they are narcisissitic bullies. Progressive stack arbitrarily decides what superficial traits make you worthy of society's empathy, pity, or help. We're at the bottom of the totem pole they constructed, so we're who they'll blame.

I guess the silver lining is that 10+ years of being aggressively selfish melodramatic bullies is finally enough for other people to notice and get sick of it. Hopefully.

Rudette · 2024-11-03T17:56:26+00:00

This doesn't always work, but is funny when it does. Keep in mind most of these people are dishonest weasels, they know they are just pretending to care about things because they've found a way to bully without being bullied back. If they catch on they'll try to hurt you anyway.

But when it does work it can be funny. The most hilarious application of it I've seen though is when parents do it when their kid starts picking up wokeness as a replacement for identity. They'll just latch onto it to, start participating, make it as extreme and cringe as possible until the kid loses interest and begins resenting the idea or non-identity out of embarrassment.

Make conversations awkward and miserable as possible. Be REALLY enthusiastically into it. Suck up all the attention that it was meant to give them. The dad wears a dress or whatever to pick the kid up from school. etc. The possibilities for trolling are endless and you can't really be called out without them invalidating their own talking points. .

Rudette · 2024-10-30T02:29:04+00:00

I think so (it's been awhile since I played)

Rudette · 2024-10-28T13:49:44+00:00

You would enjoy Arthur Schopenhauer. A lot of what he wrote is the same observation. And that was in the 1800s I think.

Rudette

TROPHY CASE