Goth Mario Kart, ARGRPG, and Plagiarism

Tabletop Tim: Tabletop Tim here, with a reminder that maybe, if people talked about their problems instead of stealing from haberdasheries, they might have an easier time in their life, naming no names (throat clearing) D&Daniel. Anyway, thanks to our existing patrons Hedwig and Carlo, and our new friends Alia and Arianna. Mmm hope you enjoy

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Pencil Hello, and welcome to The Probably Bad Podcast, a podcast which is definitely bad. I’m Pencil

Paper I’m Paper. Today’s probably bad RPG idea is

(dice noise)

Paper “Create a martial discipline based around booping the snoot”

Pencil For those who don’t know what martial disciplines are, in 3.5 edition they’re either the best idea that thing had, or the worst idea that thing had and should be burnt. They’re basically like spells for fighters, and give you cool anime Dragon Ball Z-style fighty skills, like you punch people so hard that they lose their damage resistance, or you can shoot fireballs with sheer fighty power and so forth and so forth

Paper It’s basically how 3.5 made fighters interesting

Pencil Yeah. I very much like them, and if you disagree, feel free to come to our email and fight us

Paper No, don’t go to the email, because I’m in charge of the inbox. Go to twitter

Pencil Feel free to go to the inbox and fight Paper

Paper (laughs)

Pencil With your martial disciplines

Paper You’ll never boop my snoot. So, the reason I picked this one out of the archives is I really like the idea of making a martial discipline where the whole thing is not to kill the person

Pencil Yeah, to be fair, a non-lethal martial discipline based around disarming and immobilising and so forth would actually be very interesting to play

Paper It’s almost like the tag rugby

Pencil Yeah

Paper Of warfare, where you have to go in and get points just by tapping the opposing army, and whoever gets the most taps wins

Pencil Yeah. So, yeah, there’s an X-Men comic where Wolverine is hunting animals and it’s revealed that he doesn’t kill them, he just walks up to them and pats them to show skilled he is at hunting animals, and I feel like a D&D party that does the same thing. They’re not going into dungeons to kill the dragon, they’re going into the dungeon just to prove they can get close enough to boop it

Paper I like that, it’s almost like a wildlife photographer

Pencil Yeah

Paper Exact same set of skills, apart from the killing part

Pencil Yeah, they have no interest in murdering the monsters because, you know, it’s their dungeon, they just live there

Paper It’s not dragon infested if the dragon was there first

Pencil Mmm. You could even push this out to the monsters are in on it, and it’s essentially you’re just playing a fun game of tag with the orcs

Paper I love this

Pencil You know, you send a message to the orc warlord ahead of time going “hello, how would you and your troops feel about a fun game of boop tag”, and he sends back a message going “hell yeah we’d like a fun game of boop tag, here’s our dungeon”, and then you just run around booping the orcs as they try and hide

Paper Ok, secondary idea: replace all combat with fun games of hide and seek

Pencil Yeah, it’s all fun games. The mindflayers burst out of the ground and challenge you to a game of twister

Paper I feel like mindflayers would have a disadvantage at that, so it’s quite honourable of them to choose that

Pencil Yeah

Paper I have to imagine that mindflayers are very top-heavy

Pencil Yeah, but I also sort of imagine that their limbs move in more ways than us

Paper That’s true, maybe it balances out

Pencil Yeah. Yeah, and you arrive at a dragon’s lair, and it challenges you to spin the bottle

Paper How do you win spin the bottle?

Pencil Get to, you make out with a dragon

Paper That’s just part of the game. Or is it you win if you get to second base?

Pencil Yeah. You win if you bang the dragon

Paper I don’t think that’s second base!

Pencil There’s two bases, ok?

Paper (laughs) Dragon baseball is a very quick game

Pencil Yes. You could expand this out to other games too. You’re in Shadowrun and, I think it’s Mr Smith, the guy shows up and goes “yeah, the megacorporations have a mission for you, they want you to beat them at a game of rock paper scissors”

Paper See that’s intense, ‘cause that’s not a game of skill

Pencil Mmm. In World of Darkness the vampire prince will give away all of their power and money to anyone who can beat them in a game of tic-tac-toe. Just replace all combat with fun little games, it’ll be great

Paper You’re suggesting a TTRPG that’s based entirely around minigames, and I’m into it

Pencil No, no, what it needs to be, is in the World of Darkness the vampire prince will beat you…’cause there’s two World…there’s two vampire…there’s Vampire: The Requiem and Vampire: The Masquerade, and in Vampire: The Requiem, I don’t think I’m pronouncing that word right, the vampire prince will give you power and status, if you join in their Vampire: The Masquerade RPG, and vice-versa in Vampire: The Masquerade

Paper I don’t know why, but I was convinced you were gonna say “if you beat him at Mario Kart”

Pencil Or that. Vampires have their own spooky version of Mario Kart, they’ve modded it so all of the characters are spooky

Paper It’s still called Mario Kart, except the blue shells are black, ‘cause it’s all goth

Pencil Yeah. That’s what, one of the vampires’ lesser known powers, any videogame they sit down to play, it turns into a goth version of that videogame. That’s one of the ways you can tell if someone’s vampire

Paper You never wanna play Limbo with a vampire

Pencil I love the idea of games like that it sort of inverts, so the vampire sits down, it’s just this bright shiny happy fun game

Paper (laughs)

Pencil The spider’s wearing a little hat, and singing a cheery little song

Paper It absolutely still kills you, but it’s adorable

Pencil Yeah. So yeah, I don’t think we’ve covered actual discipline, but we’ve certainly come up with a lot of interesting ideas for how to have fun…you could play the mini-games IRL

Paper You can! Just get out Wario Ware

Pencil Yeah. “The vampire challenges you to a game of Fortnight” you say, loading up your PC

Paper That’s for when you’re just bored of all of your friends wanting to play TTRPGs all the time

(crosstalk)

Pencil Yeah, in the event that you’re stuck playing RPGs with a bunch of nerds, and you desperately want to stop, we’ve got the idea for you

Paper Going back to the actual idea though, I’m kind of imagining it being a very honour-based thing

Pencil Mmm

Paper And you could almost have an honour mechanic for it

Pencil Yeah

Paper Where if you kill too many enemies, rather than capturing them alive or booping them, you end up losing power

Pencil Yeah, so D&D 3.5 had the pacifist, has an oath of pacifism in one of its sourcebooks, which gave you various boosts to your stats as long as you needed to fight people, and obviously it ran into the slight problem that almost every ability in D&D is based around fighting people, so you have quite a lot of stats and don’t have much to do with them, and I feel like this kind of discipline would really help with that? ‘Cause as long as you didn’t kill people and you just used your non-aggressive discipline, and gave you various ways to do that, you could be quite useful, but obviously there’s still the temptation of you could also just kill people. There’s a big philosophical discussion on just how much violence is baked into D&D as a conceit

Paper Yeah, I guess that’s gonna happen when you get a whole genre based around, evolving from war games

Pencil Yeah

Paper I will admit, it’s part of the reason there are games I like a lot more than D&D

Pencil Yeah. But yeah. So, yeah, I feel this would be useful in making a D&D that isn’t inherently based around “go to those people and stab them lots”

Paper Cool

Pencil But there you go, you’ve got both a discussion on spooky Mario Kart, and a discussion on the ethical implications of violence

Paper It truly is spooky season

Pencil Indeed. Again, feel free to go to the email and yell at Mod Paper

Paper It’s fine, it’s the two scariest things, monsters and philosophy

Pencil Meaning the scariest possibly monster is an ogre that wants to discuss whether morality is objective or subjective with you

Paper I mean, that would scare me. I’ve met that kind of person, I don’t like them

Pencil Yeah, I’ve had several of those kind of people in my philosophy seminars. Yeah, ‘cause ogres are always portrayed as dumbasses, but somehow they seem more terrifying if they sit down and start taking out Atlas Shrugged and trying to explain to you why objectivism is morally correct

Paper So, on that incredibly scary note, shall we move on to questions?

Pencil Yes. So, our first question is from A Socialist Hobgoblin, presumably the archenemy of the aforementioned ogre. “This has probably been asked, but how did you all get into RPGs?”

Paper So this has been asked, but it was one of the first episodes, which at this point is almost two years ago, so I thought it would be fun to bring it back

Pencil Yeah. And also my microphone was terrible at that point so apologies if you couldn’t get through it

Paper That’s true. It’s time for a hi-def version

Pencil Yeah. So, my story of how I got into RPGs is weird, in that my dad got me a present from a charity shop, and it was just a book that he thought looked cool, and what it was was a Call of Cthulhu supplement, and I read through the Call of Cthulhu supplement and was like “this is cool”, and then I started getting more RPG supplements, and this meant I was sort of into RPGs for a good 3-4 years before I ever played an RPG, entirely theoretically, because I didn’t have any friends as a kid, so no-one wanted to play RPGs with me, so yeah. I got to RPGs due to being accidentally given a Call of Cthulhu supplement, getting weirdly obsessed with it, and then several years later actually making friends who would actually play RPGs with me

Paper I like that it wasn’t even a main rulebook

Pencil No, it was a supplement about spooky books, and the various “if you read this tome it’ll make your eyeballs fall out”, and it was a supplement about those ones, and how to use them in the game and stuff

Paper How old were you at this point?

Pencil I were, early teens I think

Paper That is a wild thing to get someone

Pencil Yeah. So yeah, I don’t know what it was about it that my brain just went “ah, this is a thing I appreciate.” I think it was because it had lists for what various, lists of various spells, but obviously I didn’t know what any of the spells actually were, because I didn’t have the actual rulebook. I just made them up. Basically, I made up an entirely unique version of Call of Cthulhu based entirely on this one rulebook I had. And then I found the actual Call of Cthulhu which, meh, and then I found actual people

Paper I feel like at some point we need to play your version of Call of Cthulhu

Pencil I sadly no longer remember it, but if I ever do remember the version of Call of Cthulhu I came up with at 14, based entirely on no-context spell names, creature names, and the description of various books

Paper So, I also, I had a vague interest in the concept of TTRPGs as a teen, and also had no friends, then when I did get friends they didn’t really wanna play. Then I went to uni, and I met just a whole bunch of queer nerds all at once, and one of them basically just asked me “hey, do you wanna play D&D?”, and then I did, and then autism brain went “yes, yes, the happy juices are here, more please”, and now I’m here

Pencil Yes, our first…you were in the first RPG I tried to run. It was with a rule system that, I’ve looked it up, and everyone agrees was absolutely ludicrous, so I’m glad I didn’t sour both of us on RPGs forever

Paper I mean, I’d already been playing with, actually, one of our patrons, as the DM, by the time that happened

Pencil Ye, so luckily I just didn’t sour myself. Combat was

Paper (laughs)

Pencil in 6 sections, and different characters could act in different sections, and there were…it was utterly incomprehensible

Paper It was weird. And then my zombie horse burnt down the whole plot

Pencil Yeah, this was the one where the zombie horse, due to me being a starter DM and the rules not being great, zombie horse, I rolled to see what the zombie horse did, and what it did was awaken an elder god and destroy a large chunk of the setting

Paper Until that point I enjoyed the game, though

Pencil (laughs) I loved that that game, which was called Alpha and Omega, for people who don’t know, which is presumably all of you, had a full-on ARG to advertise it

Paper Ok

Pencil But that ARG came out at the same time as Cloverfield, so everyone assumed it was part of the Cloverfield ARG, and then they solved it and learned about this RPG like “I don’t care about that”, and then they just all went back to Cloverfield. So that’s the tragic, that’s the tragic story of that RPG

Paper I know how we can make this answer different from last time

Pencil How?

Paper Our producer/editor Nick didn’t answer last time

Pencil Yes, producer/editor Nick

Paper Would you like to also answer this question? It did say “you all” (laughs)

Nick: Ok, so, I remember knowing vague things about it, and already liking fantasy and sci-fi. I grew up reading, I think, more sci-fi than fantasy, but then I got into Tolkein. I saw it depicted on shows a fair bit, especially Community and that, so I think once I decided that I ought to get into it and try running a session, so I got a couple of PDFs of various, of a pre-packaged campaign, and some the rules, which I half-arsed and homeruled a bit, and we had a box of wine, which got emptied over the course of the session, and it was the most…it was the worst game I’ve ever run, but it was also great fun because, you know, the wine, and also I decided that every time somebody missed, it would hit the side of a barn, regardless of the situation, it was just “oh no, you rolled a one. Well, it turns out the arrow hits the barn door inside this cave”

Paper Sounds about as logical as feast of legends

Nick: Yeah, yeah. We never had a second session, it was just getting incredibly drunk and playing it, and then I moved, and met people who knew how to do the game, and so, I think my first…yeah, this would be playing with 4th ed, which I did for a while, and then people introduced me to different systems, think that was a good couple years ago now

Paper Thank you editor/producer Nick

Nick: (silly voice) You’re welcome

Paper I like how Nick’s story is the most normal one of the three

Pencil Yeah

Paper Is this why we’re the ones that do the probably bad?

Pencil Yeah, Nick is our producer because Nick is the person, is the normal member of the team

Paper Which is saying something, if you know Nick

Pencil Which you probably don’t, but if you do, I hope you enjoyed that joke specifically for you

Paper I mean, some people that know us in real life listen to this

(music)

Pencil Ok, and our next question is anonymous. “Do you have any advice for homebrewing monsters?”

Paper I feel like we maybe should have answered this question before the homebrewing challenge started, but we got it after, so

Both: Here we are

Pencil I think my main advice is generally come up with the fluff and the concept first, ‘cause it’s tempting to just stick a bunch of powers together, but you’ll just come up with some weird mish-mash monster, and I think it’s always easier to be like “this is what the monster’s theme is”, and then try and figure that one out

Paper Yeah, ‘cause there are theoretically infinite abilities

Pencil Mmm

Paper So you do need to have a strong concept to build around

Pencil Yeah

Paper I think it’s also probably important to remember basically, not just how this monster is cool and so forth, how this monster would fit into a campaign. Is this monster something that’s gonna be a trap, essentially, that the characters walk into, fight, and then leave, is it something that’s going to be a big bad, is it going to be some sort of a mystery thing where they have to find it? I think the fundamental problem with homebrewing monsters is D&D has a lot of monsters

Paper Mmm

Pencil And, yeah, the monster either has to be very cool or very unique to…you know?

Paper Yeah I get what you mean. It’s easy to end up plagiarising without meaning to

Pencil Yeah, or something that someone else has done better. If you’re just homebrewing for your friends

Paper Not that that means you can’t homebrew something that someone else has already done

Pencil Yeah

Paper ‘Cause sometimes you want it to be different from how they did it

Pencil I mean every idea has been done by someone

Paper Yeah we are

Pencil Except for ours, which is of course the only RPG podcast

Paper ‘Cause we are, what, 40-ish years into D&D existing

Pencil Yeah

Paper Someone’s going to have done it already

Pencil Yeah, so I think, yeah, I think get a core concept, decide what this will be used for in a campaign, and then give it some powers I guess

Paper Also, useful to figure out how strong you want it to be, ‘cause you can then look at other things of a similar strength

Pencil Yeah

Paper Looking at things with, say, the challenge rating that you want, and seeing how difficult they would be to fight, and then kind of going from there

Pencil Mmm

Paper So you’ve got that “this is the point we want to be at”, rather than making something way too strong and then killing all of your players with it

Pencil Yeah, I think the other thing to remember is challenge rating is nonsense, it doesn’t really work or mean anything, so don’t rely on challenge rating

Paper I feel like that’s the opposite of what I was saying

Pencil I was saying based on what monsters are actually powerful, rather than what monsters the game says are powerful. In terms of bad advice

Paper I get what you mean. You still want to…use the challenge rating as a starting point for things to compare it to

Pencil Yeah

Paper But don’t rely wholly on it

Pencil Yeah. Ok, we’ve combined our two bits of advice, you’re welcome

Paper Yeah

Pencil In terms of bad advice, make the monster in your basement, Frankenstein-style

Paper Get a tarrasque

Pencil Mmm

Paper Erase the name. Write in Fluffy Jim the Friendly Friend, and there you go

Pencil Yeah. Just get the entire Monster Manual and refer to all of them as Smiley Steve the Hug Brigade, and Li’l Jenny the Cuddle Bug. That one is the objectivist ogre. Yeah, you can make monsters really really quickly, and really really easily, if you just go through the monster manual, cross out the names, and put in your own names. You can make hundreds of them very quickly

Paper So what we’re going with is good advice: don’t be afraid to accidentally plagiarise, bad advice: intentionally plagiarise

Pencil Yeah, you know, someone will have come up with your idea beforehand, that’s just a result of how many people play this game and how long they’ve been playing it for, so just lean into it and steal all the ideas. What you need to do is get your friend to make their homebrew, and then, when they show them to you, just deck them, grab it, and run, and then submit it with “here is my homebrew”. I feel like

Paper I mean, if they don’t know that it’s already a thing

Pencil Yeah. Technically it’s not plagiarism if it’s D&D

Paper It’s not a crime if you don’t get caught

Pencil Yeah, what you need to do is set up your own RPG called Dragons and Dungeons, and all of your rulebooks are just D&D rulebooks but with the wording changed slightly to avoid lawyers. Instead of a D20 it’s a D21

Paper I would love to see a D21

Pencil Yeah, we all would

Paper (laughs)

Pencil Players don’t need to realise that’s not a thing until after they’ve given you money for their rulebooks. Play also your other games, such as Darkness of World, and Runshadow

Paper We’re podcasters, not copyright lawyers

Pencil Yeah, in the event that you find yourself in legal trouble: haha, sucks to be you, feel free to complain to the email which, again, I don’t look after, so no skin off my nose

Paper So, yeah, the email by the way is probablybadpodcast @ gmail.com

Pencil Mmm

Paper In the event that you find yourself, for some reason, wanting to play a one-shot with us, or see our homebrew, or listen to bonus episodes of this, you can go to patreon.com/probablybadrpgideas

Pencil Promise our homebrew is not just a tarrasque with the name drawn off

Paper No! I mean, this month you can see what our homebrews look like, because we’re doing the 030CRC homebrew challenge, and I’m having a great time

Pencil Yes, if you would like more of that

Paper And if you have a question, or I guess if you want to scream at me about objectivism, you can either email us, or message us on tumblr, at probablybadrpgideas, or on twitter at badprobably

Both: And remember to have a probably bad day