The Basics of The Game is my outlet. It is where I ramble about games, and other geeky stuff. I have been playing D&D, and generally tabletop gaming for 40+ years. I have reviews, Let's Play videos, and other silliness.
My name is Jeremiah McCoy. Feel free to ask me questions.
I am really appreciating how respectful this question was asked! I dont really have a super general answer. It really depends what kinda story we want to tell at the moment. Tho it is very often also just part of the backstory. Interestingly enough a lot of my players do actually prefer to have their characters keep their original "lower bits". So ye. In general it tends to be a somewhat expensive but quick and reliable process. But for some stories there is a fair bit of struggle involved. Tho at the end of the day it is wish fulfillment. And when not gming I do actually tend to just play cis chars of my preferred gender.
Not Trans, but in Werewolf: The Forsaken, there is an ability to be able to shapechange into a version of yourself that is the opposite gender or gender neutral. Luna's Embrace. It allowed me to explore a Gender Fluid identity, though I determined I am not genderfluid myself. A player liked the ability so much that I coverted it for Vampire: The Requiem.
My first thought is to just use a hat of disguise, but that's more of a quick fix. Potions make sense for fantasy hrt, but for all the surgeries we have in our world alter self might be the perfect transition spell if one could make it permanent like true polymorph. In older editions there's a belt that changed your gender, and paizo just includes a gender swap potion in star- and pathfinder.
Why do you have to shit on a man having fun for no reason. Sad, empty life you live. Keep making these videos and don't let fools like this bring you down 😊
Getting too ghoul for school huh? I’m not surprised. I knew that the only vampire to make it this far with minimal effort is the Toreador. As expected and underrated. Ollie isn’t just another pretty face like the rest of us in that clan. Though Prunella “The Pure Breed Drama Queen” is who I’d fashion more. Still a shame she’s the clan of those bean counters.
3d6 is fine if every one is doing 3d6. The Demi-humans were so restricted as to dissuade players from choosing them. The level restrictions were academic for the most part since characters rarely made it past 4th level.
If you have Fate dice, just paint in one of the "-" signs in on each die, so that you have a 1 the (-) minus sign, "2" with a different color (-) minus sign, 2 "+" for the special symbols and 2 blanks, so they will match the challenge dice exactly. And you can still use them as Fate dice.
If your DM ever says junk like this ^^^ it is a red flag. If they don't grasp the role of racism, prejudice, and dark history in their setting; they never read any of the books. If they make a setting they claim has no racism, they don't read ANY books that aren't mostly pictures.
I can't and won't speak for the original comment, but I will say that in-game fantasy racism can be a part of the game for fantasy reasons. Have you played Dragon Age Origins? Do you know how the elves are treated there and why? It is okay to have the Dwarves be racist against Orcs, but it is not okay to play into the stereotypes the Dwarves have of Orcs.
Well said, couldn't have put it better. Is it sometimes useful to adress racism? Sure, it's also useful to adress the fact the food taste bad, or child militia, or the fact that traveling in the desert for weaks without supplies suck ass. Many of the less stellar parts of real life can create sympathy, or conflict, or even the ever elusive "iMMerSioN" a lot of people cry about (probably a tad excessively), but not every story benefits from every annoying quirk of real life, and including anything and everything should, first and foremost serve the fun of the players and the DM, and only then, maybe, the story itself. There's precious little point in creating a "realistic" narrative if nobody at the table enjoy it🤷
In my own game I decided that there would not be any reason for systematic or widespread racism. 100 prior to story begin through a divine (?) event all historic knowledge was lost. No countries, no knowledge of conflicts and such. Doesn't stop individuals and certain groups from being shitty, but there is no history to base more grand rasicm on.
This guy is comparing complex world building that your party can work around to boring unneeded narrative that can be summed up with "you just walked x amount of miles for several hours so take a point of exhaustion" or something.
My personal rule is no human on human racism. That way, if a dwarf starts making fun of humans, every player at the table is put in that position regardless of their real life ethnicity
how are you this smug while being so wrong? many published dungeons have toilets. a large part of bg3 involves running around in sewers. the otyugh is a filth monster made to inhabit such places. the rules DO cover things like the effects of forced marches, and many DMs have had occasion to describe their effects in-game. what's worse is you're using the same exact logic conservative christians did back when everyone was worried about satan worship. I mean, you don't NEED demons and devils, right? so why do you want to play with demons? why are you fighting so hard? brook angel or OP is deleting replies so there's point point talking.
@@brook_angel for badd, it's an old super conservative group obsessed with dnd as corrupting the children. you and the video both parrot their old talking points. "if the most interesting conflict you can think of is racism, maybe you're just uncreative." like this, totally not judging, right? you're so disingenous, pick a lane.
DnD is just so far removed from reality I don't get why anyone would care in the first place. Its extremely diverse and as a whole makes no attempt at being moral. But if anything there is a difference between racism of fantacy races and involving real life human races in a racist manner. I dont think fantasy should compare with real life.
Fantasy versions of real world ugliness let's us obsverve how unproductive, irrational, and sometimes outright stupid certain believes can be, it doesn't even have to be from a villain, most racism is mundane and comes from either past trauma or bad education. Having characters grow beyond their ill-formed conceptions can make for great storytelling. A villain promoting racism to divide the people is also a great story line specially if one of the PCs is of the targeted race, but as with anything else, it doesn't hurt to have a discussion about it before starting the campaign, sometimes it works from the get-go, sometimes you have to hash out a missundertanding, sometimes you have to ban a topic from your game, it all depends on how everyone at the table feels
You don't have to include anything. But if they do, they have consequences, like toilet mimics, the ranger telling stuff about prey you are stalking, ambush opportunities, the food, if important, does have taste, and for example you can identify if it is poisoned, or you get a roleplaying opportunity when you are told the food is bad, you can go to the public bath and prestidigitation can fix you up, and while I usually don't care describing blisters, but that could come into play for a hard survival module, or if there is some effect causing the blisters. And absolutely you can describe bad smelling monsters (with or without game mechanics), or say to the players after a grueling day they should seek some place to clean up. I am fine with the lore saying some groups oppose each other, and the cause can be anything, like The War of the Beard is a valid reason for elves and dwarves have a conflict, or kobolds have a beef with gnomes because of Kurtulmak. I am also fine with people not liking races that eat or enslave them, or including cultures that see eating and enslaving as normal, because they are inhuman. I am fine if it happens inside the fantasy races, between organisations, countries, etc as long as it makes sense inside the setting. I don't think the roots of real world racism are present in a not real world based fantasy game, but you can include that too. You can play into the trope, you can play against the trope, or it might not be present at all in your particular setting. If something is an issue for your players, then discuss it at session zero, and leave it out. The Nature of Predators series on Reddit does a pretty good portrayal in a sci-fi setting I think, with herbivore and predator species having interactions from friendship to mindless eradication.
Exactly, if it is clearly a problem AND is within the players/characters interests to solve this problem, it's something amazing (Players cheering enthusiastically because they freed a village from an evil overlord and seeing the fall of this overlord is one of the best ttrpg things in my opinion) and I reccomend AS LONG AS it's agreed upon session zero. I usually include heavy topics only if characters have them in their backstory, that way the motivation is not only on the players side, but also the characters from the get go.
I like this discussion Heck Personally, I kinda like it, even slavery occasionally to show up in games I play in But that's world building And personal/table preference on what they want included or not in the game Should it be in, say, official d&d settings and adventures? Maybe a few, maybe even most, but not all, because some people, quite a few, won't want it, it's just not the type of game they want to play Should it be baked into the races in the player's handbook, thus more or less forcing people to homebrew it out, and forcing people to see it if they even want to so much as touch the system? Hell no! It's d&d, dungeons and dragons A high fantasy adventure game that a lot of people play to have laughs with friends, not act out elaborate commentaries on social issues That sort of stuff isn't necessary to have for the system, and extremely easy to add in as a player or DM if you want it Arguably there is a place for travel injuries and fatigue though, I'm honestly kinda shocked d&d hasn't put out a quick module or something for that, because people have been complaining about travel being a footnote that's skipped over except for random encounters for awhile
Actual D&D lore has a lot of slavery and other evils, in some way racism too. I dont really think it fantacy racism and real life racism is comparable, fantacy races are more like entirely differenent species, just in addition to being purely fictional.
The thing is that you can put everything into your world because it's your world and your game. Do you want racism? Put it in if you like it or if you feel it belongs there. Do you want your players to roll for blisters on their characters feet or how the food tastes? Put it in, it's fine. As long as you and your players are fine with it it's fine, discussions like theses where people try to tell others what they can and cannot put into their games are just silly in my opinion. Put in whatever you like or don't, as long as you have fun it doesn't really matter.
I have fantasy racism for fantasy reasons. Dwarves cut down a forest so the elves fought a war with them and now there is bad blood on both sides. The characters can engage with both sides and heal the wounds or fan the flames for another war. Up to them. Orcs historically raided and pillaged so humans have a bad opinions of them. If you are out in the boonies as a half orc, people will likely treat you shitty until you prove your a good guy. Some cause and effect to engage with either to add to or stand against. I try not to have any "real" racism in the game as we have enough of that in life. It depends as much on the players as anything for me. Had dwarves team up with orcs to kill earthworm people, and in "the evil campaign" had humies and minotaur and centaurs flesh-crafting abominations together while fighting the Spanish inquisition who did actually have good reasons for torturing people this time around.
It doesn't even make the game less gritty or dark! Like there is plenty of room for grim, gritty, dark games without racism being an intrinsic part of your game. Or classim/sexism/any other hatred/bigotry. Have you SEEN how some of these monsters are supposed to behave!? They are positively...MONSTROUS!
Periods. No real sane would dream about adding periods into the game. They do NOTHING for ANY aspect of life except making it worse. Nothing funny about them, unlike poop, nothing heartwarming or emotionally charged unlike crying... Rasism may be a part of human history and life, but just like periods, it gives nothing to a story about FANTASY world if it's not somehow a central theme of a story.
Curious how Lilith causes this Wyrm of the Dark Rose to writhe with what looks to be a lot like, dare I say, "jealousy"? I'm sure they would deny the claims which would further reveal her objection to the one true woman of historic myth. WIth that said, I will do what I can to inspire others to support this experiment monetarily, for your storytelling Jeremiah brings such interesting revelations. Pruenella would make such a wonderful addition to the Bahari if she was not so willfully ignorant. What a waste of a Ventrue but a perfect sabotage to the lost cause that are the Anarchs.
It's good to see Sage/Katie and Jeremiah feeling better. Not sure if I am worthy enough to call strangers by their real names. Anyways, it's still good to see everyone keeping the world of darkness in tact in all it's soapy goodness.
Man, with all this weird activity surrounding this coterie… it’s looking a lot like a _gold_ Xmas. Having a priest as the one man inquisition, vampires interacting with the shroud, circuses at midnight and a Malk still using her powers on the wrong kindred… _He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice, making sure you don’t use your disciplines on people like Brice…_
Ghoul responsibility. And right after they said they can't coddle Feather no more. The calamity of insanity continues. This storyteller must be legendary. Or a cult leader. Either way great campaign, McCoy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Turn Sage, storyteller. Because madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push. The weight of a Feather makes the madness even better!
_...they never went to the dollar store nor did they brave the chance to drink a fae. Only solution? Turn Sage. Welcome her into the embrace, storyteller. You've got these blanks right where you want them._
Thanks SO much for asking this question! Personally, I have two options for this: 1. "Gender Fluid". A potion that swaps you to the opposite sex in every way, including genitals, for a certain amount of time. Gets more expensive as the duration increases, as the ingredients are harder to find and the processes are more difficult. So it's objectively better than HRT, but it's the matter of finding and purchasing it that's the main problem. 2. Pray to a certain god/goddess at one of their altars. Instantly makes your body exactly how you want it to be, no strings attached! Basically, it depends on whether you want this to be a consistent struggle for the character or if you want it to just be a one-and-done kind of deal. Also, don't worry-you used all the right words in your question, as far as I'm concerned!