Besides D&D, what are you playing?

[Campbell]

Third session of our micro Blades in the Dark game. Due to a confluence of fallout from a previous score and the way fortune rolls turned out the crew was approached by Roric, the now very dead leader of the Crows. He wanted Silence, the players' crew of arcane thieves, to kidnap Lyssa, the current leader of the Crows (who I decided was actually his daughter). Some elements from The Hive who had dealings with in the past were about to make a move on Lyssa and he wanted to make sure she was safe despite the whole her having killed him thing.

This was a significant distraction from the crew's current priority - tracking down a set of Iruvian daggers said to be linked to the demon lords that are supposed to be U'duasha. The whisper decided they could use the help of a powerful ghost down the road plus the money Roric offered seemed nice. I thought the players were going to let her die and was totally prepared for that situation.

Lyssa is in paranoid meltdown at this point because there is a 3 way gang war going on and she is losing badly to the Red Sashes. The hound sniffs around Crow's Foot and learns Belle, the Crow's second in command is about to go shake down some Lamp Blacks.

A plan is hatched. Our thieves sneak into a union hall where The Crows shakedown of the Lampblacks is going badly. There is an all out brawl. The whisper lays in wait preparing Roric's spirit jar and the hound shoots the gentleman Belle was trying to shakedown with a crossbow, running back towards the whisper. Belle catches up and clocks the Hound with a shovel fist to the chest, but he had Armor on. The whisper unleashes Roric who possesses Belle.

This was a really tense score. It was pretty much nonstop desperate actions. The crew had a real good streak of rolls. This could have gone very badly for them. Still there is a death so the bells will toll.

Next time they go to the Crow's Roost to convince Lyssa to extricate herself before The Hive show up.

 

[Retreater]

On the contrary, we (once we started playing because at first we didn't like to do it online) took advantage of the situation to try new systems, with lighter rules.

Yeah, we couldn't decide on a lighter system with adequate VTT support. Plus those with familiar D&D tropes tend towards high lethality, low power OSR variants that don't appeal to my players.

 

[Campbell]

Yeah, we couldn't decide on a lighter system with adequate VTT support. Plus those with familiar D&D tropes tend towards high lethality, low power OSR variants that don't appeal to my players.

Blades in the Dark and Ironsworn both have excellent support on Roll 20 if either is up your alley.

During the pandemic the groups I am part of have mostly stuck with simpler games - Tremulus, Freebooters on the Frontier, Mork Borg, Blades in the Dark, Quietus, etc. We mostly just use paper character sheets and Discord. The exception has been Lancer which one my friends requested me to run, but that has such a great web app that we only use Roll 20 for battle maps.

I am really looking forward to getting a more crunchy game going once we are all in person again. I like to draw out maps as we get to stuff and Roll 20 makes that a little difficult so games like 5e and PF2 that function much better with battle maps tend to be put on the back burner.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Blades in the Dark and Ironsworn both have excellent support on Roll 20 if either is up your alley.

We’ve found D&D to be challenging as well. I put my 5e campaign on pause after running two sessions remotely. As cool as Roll20 is, I felt as if I had to take a much stronger hand than I like as DM in determining where things were headed.

Another member of our group agreed to take over, and purchased a WitC book to run. Even that seemed off to us. It just feels like the prep determines the session, and any deviation from that on the part of the players causes issues. Even with an AP style book purchased with all the Roll20 resources ready to go, it still seemed true.

So what we’ve done is taken my Bluecoats play by post on Discord and we’ve decided to play that as our primary game for the time being. Blades just seems more suited to online play. There’s less to track on the player side, it’s intended to be theater of the mind, little to no prep on the GM’s part, and no additional resources are required.

Blades is simply much smoother for online play for my group.

 

[Nebulous]

We are nearing the end of our Dungeon World campaign, at least the written part. I might homebrew it above and beyond, not sure yet.

 

[Nebulous]

I will probably dump all of the story recaps into a single thread, it will be 8 or 10 I think, if people want to read them. Where should I put that for 5e readers to see, they might like it

 

[hawkeyefan]

I will probably dump all of the story recaps into a single thread, it will be 8 or 10 I think, if people want to read them. Where should I put that for 5e readers to see, they might like it

Post it here, too, if you don’t mind. I’ve only played a little DW and I like to see how folks handle it.

But if you want 5e players to see it post it over in the D&D forum.

 

[TurinTurambar]

Post it here, too, if you don’t mind. I’ve only played a little DW and I like to see how folks handle it.

Yes, please. This thread led to a great space to share this type of things.

 

[pemerton]

I will probably dump all of the story recaps into a single thread

If you could say a bit about how the system worked, so we can see how - at the "table" - the ficiton was created, that would be great. For me at least, that's what like hearing about in actual play reports.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

So what we’ve done is taken my Bluecoats play by post on Discord and we’ve decided to play that as our primary game for the time being. Blades just seems more suited to online play. There’s less to track on the player side, it’s intended to be theater of the mind, little to no prep on the GM’s part, and no additional resources are required.

Blades is simply much smoother for online play for my group.

It really is an ideal online ruleset! Most days my group doesn't even have webcams on, it's just audio chat with Discord text chat being sufficient for uploading the occasional bit of visual aid. Or telling the Whisper how high the "Demon in Nightmarket Park takes an interest in you" clock has gotten up to...