r/rpgpromo

Soo, I love building characters, looking at how various classes combinations mesh together and how much damage/healing/etc. I can dish out with a character. I will not be a hypocrite and pretend that's not the case. But I reckon that comes at least in part from the fact that I arrived at TTRPGs after growing up with video games, with MMOs and other such things, where character builds where quite central.

I would also make the argument that, TTRPGs shouldn't necessarily be about that. Or at least that the primary focus shouldn't maybe be on that. That the character's story should take precedence to its build. It's identity tied more to his story and the world it is part of then to the combination of race, class, background and feats. Of course, speaking now mainly from the perspective of trad games, like D&D and Pathfinder. I also don't want to present this as if this should not exist, but rather a slight change regarding focus.

I also wanted to look into D&D's history and see how this trend evolved over the years, from the first editions to the current day. And I have to say, this look into the past has been quite interesting. Might do a more in depth article about AD&D's kits in the near future, I found them quite an interesting design space. I hope you will also enjoy it, find it interesting and that you see the perspective of this argument. I know there are other TTRPGs where this issue is not as prevalent, but D&D is usually the first point of contact with this hobby and for many it remains the only point of contact, so I thought offering this perspective might be desirable.

W2A2 is a VTT tool that was created with a few big principles in mind: make any TTRPG session as easy to play as possible, be user friendly for beginners but still offer advanced tools for more experienced players, and most importantly, be affordable and not subscription based.

This app stores everything locally and allows the GM to host a game in a matter of minutes, without having to pay for any hosting services. It includes all things you'd normally expect from a VTT tool, and a few additional features that we thought of while testing through our own sessions.

App is still in development, should be available in a few weeks! 

Vampire: The Masquerade is perhaps the most important TTRPG for this blog, and dare I say, for us as a group. Yuno and I met while playing VtM v5, then Yuno met Horia and Andreea while trying out v20 for the first time. So we met, became friends, and, at least in the case of me and Yuno, got together because of VtM. It has become something very close to our hearts, very dear to us.

When we learned of the new v6, there was a chorus of reactions: skepticism, cautious optimism, curiosity, excitement. The four of us got on Discord and did an almost seven hour long close reading of the document, ran the starting scenario, debated among ourselves, and found a lot of things we liked, a lot of things we abhorred, and sometimes we did not agree on what was deserving of a quick Final Death and what deserved to live another night.

So when Horia and I sat down to work on this article, we decided it would be best to offer two distinct perspectives: that of somewhat of a newcomer to the franchise, who started with v5 and only briefly dabbled in v20 and Dark Ages, and that of the veteran with experience across all of the editions and, what, over 15 years of being into this fandom? For the most part we are in agreement, but as always it is most interesting to see where we diverge. Horia was the main writer for this review, and he had quite a lot of thoughts on the newest iteration of the game... almost 8k words worth of thoughts.

With this being said, strap in, this is going to be a long night, but I hope you will enjoy this very in depth review of the v6 playtest! We are very curious to see your thoughts on the matter as well!