Vindicta RPGs

This would look pretty on any shelf I think.

@MorCorvo @LostLoreScholar Rogue Trader is on the shortlist. Worth it?

@LostLoreScholar @KennethProven Open to every kind of RPG, pen/paper tabletop or mobile mini games to full ventures like BG3 or Rogue Trader.

I feel like "VindictaRPGs" kind of locks me into a certain form of content. (TT)RPG related. Do I have anything else though? I guess not.

@TheEclecticGoat @LostLoreScholar I can always branch out into retro gaming, modern RPGs, JRPGs, CRPGs,... For now I'm good with TTRPGs though. It's not like I ran out of content suddenly.

@KennethProven @LostLoreScholar Lol - see, if you’re going to pigeonhole yourself with a name it should probably be something you enjoy lots of!

@RogueScholarMDC Would the game be drastically different for you if alignment was removed? Wouldn't you assign some form of morality and personality to your character regardless? Which can then be shaped by the choices of the character afterwards. I think the label removes this complexity.

@KennethProven I like the character to be a complete and complex character when play starts. Knowing this character wouldn't kill an unarmed for, would never betray a friend or would rarely work within the law seems pretty important to start with rather than make it up as I go.

Using the superior Palladium alignments doesn't have that problem.

@SandyofCthulhu Balzam, baltic herbs... poison...

So I am creating a cultist tavern for a Call of Cthulhu adventure and I want it to have the nastiest liquors imaginable. Not the cheapest - the nastiest. Obviously Absinthe is a star. My problem is I am a teetotaler. So I don’t know what ANY liquor tastes like, except cheap whiskey and apple wine which I tried in my misspent youth. I’m thinking Jagermeister, Absinthe, Jeppson’s Malört, banana schnapps, Fireball, Certain Baiju (Chinese pal recommended this), Fernet-Branca and … what else? Suggestions are welcomed. Cloying sweet is as gross as bitterness so let me know. Yes, all the drinks have a magic effect TBD.

@LostLoreScholar I don't really game enough for that. But I do have an idea to hit some retro gaming RPG topics.

@KennethProven What is stopping you from talking about games as a whole?

@JJShurte Yeah, I like it. One of the better animated series out there.

@KennethProven I only ever see that in terms of memes and power scaling videos… worth watching?

I was kind of hoping for an Ozark style ending to #TheBoys... Do we really feel like the corrupt elites and megacorporations are being beaten IRL?

@JJShurte it was quite predictable. And the longer the series ran the suspension of 'political' disbelief started to fade. Making it a bit cringe at times. Ended just in time I guess. I prefer Invincible over The Boys.

@KennethProven I guess, and there’s still supes around. Still, felt like they went for a very obvious ending. But then there’s like 5 spinoffs or something, so who knows?

@osgamer74 wow... no one should go through this - although it happens way too often. My condolences, Lee.

I hate these people. I wish the worst for them.

@osgamer74 I am synaptically challenged, in a way, with ADD. But not a Christian. Damn it!

Is there some secret factory in America somewhere that is printing out these cookie cutter extremist Christian conspiracy idiots? (No offence to normal Christians) They read the same damn script like a pack of synaptically challenged lemmings

@Nerdcognito I WANT A CROCHET CTHULHU! *stares at partner*

My birthday crochet Cthulhu gave me a pass on going crazy today.

@TheEclecticGoat That does make sense.

@KennethProven True, but if the argument is “they can’t make home cooked meals,” that’s on the parents. At least initially.

Sounds like a lot of parents didn't do their job & get their kids ready to care for themselves.

@LostLoreScholar I'm curious, mainly through your reporting on Youtube. So, neutral. Looking forward to a true, deep, RPG experience on PC. One that doesn't throw you in a hollywood movie.

How do you feel about the Wayward Realms, generally speaking? Why?

@vikingjudoka @_Autarch_ @archon Malazan's origins are rooted in GURPS, so a homecoming to TTRPGs would be fantastic.

@_Autarch_ @archon Conan, Black Company, or Malazan. In that order.

Imagine that Autarch could have the license for any IP (book, movie, comic, game, whatever) in the world to make a tabletop RPG or wargame. What IP would you be most excited for us to have?

@_Autarch_ I think this is a yes or no question. Yes.

@WargRhymes 😆😆

Let's kick some shins! No, really. I do think alignment shouldn't be in TTRPGs. Why not!? Well, have a listen: youtu.be/H8AbUyWAs9M

My girlfriend can read cyrillic cursive. I can't even read my own handwriting...

@osgamer74 When the drink is in this man I tend to boo the referee during my local football team's game. I'm not proud of it.

Booing is code for … “Ima show my disproval via the anonymity of this crowd but I’m not actually committed to doing anything actionably positive to solve the issue I’m booing about”

@squidlord Objective morality can exist in the setting without making alignment a good roleplay tool. Cosmic Good and Evil define metaphysics. They still don’t explain why a character lies, obeys, forgives, or justifies harm. Cosmology is not psychology. But yeah, that's just D&D.

If you're in a setting where morality is specifically and clearly one of the natural pillars of axiomatic truth in the setting, then it's not a roleplay shortcut for character morality. It literally is the cosmology of the world. It defines the framework within which moral actions can be easily, even transparently, judged. Characters with even a modicum of understanding of the world around them should be aware of those rules and that framework. They themselves may be limited in free will, which they can express based on accidents of birth, constrained to only exist within certain expressions of morality and ethics by forces beyond their control, save in extremely rare situations. There are billions of stories to be mined in that particular field. Perversely enough, for all my objections to old school D&D, it was designed to literally explore that particular narrative space. It did come up with some pretty fertile grounds. You are provided a vast number of cosmological constants which you can use to explain your character's behaviors and keep consistency with the rest of the world, even when not being consistent with it. The ancient lich may be constrained in his motives to those of evil. However, evil is defined in this cosmological architecture. His agency depends on how much individual consciousness that he has, which allows him to reason about his lack of agency and what could be done to increase it. Or his attitude that it needs no increasing, that it's perfect where it is. Choice at the table should fall out of the obvious questions: What does the character want? Why can't they have it? What are they going to do about that? Insofar as those questions touch on issues of cosmology, they are affected, but that is purely about choice at the table. Frankly, I don't see what the problem is. Your objection boils down in my eyes to the fact that some people are shitty role players and have the imagination of a thimbleful of warm piss. Because of their incapacity, then any ideas that challenge them to move beyond it should be eschewed. I find that foolishness. I would suggest quite the opposite, that these people need the equivalent of imaginative exercise. But being so unused to working their moral body in such a way, they're going to need a few guidelines to hold on to as they go into the deep end of the pool. They are not free divers yet. Let the cosmology guide them along the way of possible lines of evolution, different ways the story can play out. Give them the chance to read the patterns of tension so that they can best be aware. Now, my personal preferences are better expressed by the game *Fantasy World* (unplayablegamesrpg.itch.io/fantasy-world), particularly when it says: "The gods are silent." There is no external good or evil, no metric for the same, which is imposed from above. This really simplifies a lot of issues and opens up a lot of avenues, but quite a lot of the current fantasy gamer population is not ready to play at that level. A sad admission, but the truth. So instead, we give them lesser freedoms to go on the town with, as it should be.

You're either engaging in the fallacy that imagining D&D is every RPG, or you're failing to imagine that there are other stories in which alignment makes perfect sense, including quite a lot of the core narrative architecture of Dungeons & Dragons. It's perfectly reasonable for moral agency to be something that is fictively defined. A world with actual, definable, universally constructed morality is certainly within the capacity of humanity to imagine. I'm imagining it right now. I don't imagine it's the world we live in, but I can imagine a fictional world in which it exists, in which good and evil are literally manifest, just as chaos and order are, one in which there are gods which literally represent and embody those forces, in which there is a near scientific understanding of how to detect and counter their influences (as magic often does with Detect Good/Evil, etc.). That's not to say it's a setting that you would enjoy as much as the alternatives, but you've overstepped when you say "shouldn't." That's a failure of imagination, not a recognition of patterns. It's a dictation, not an observation, and it's wrong.