Tabletop Role Playing Games - A Circus Community

Introduction

With Circus Maximus returning from its slumber, I felt this was the time to mention a less public but still significant subgroup of Circus: the role players of #flamel.

Roleplaying. What does that mean to you? Does it mean Elder Scrolls or Fallout? Does it mean Final Fantasy? World of Warcraft? It can mean many things. What it means to #flamel is tabletop roleplaying games, especially Pathfinder.

Video games and tabletop games both have a story. But here is where they diverge. Computers are limited to their (usually vast) programming. A flexible human host (GM) can choose which story to host, whether they'll host a story of their own making, and to change it up as needed, adapting to the team composition.

Tabletop roleplaying is a group venture. Each team of people, or a party, is small compared to groups in other communities—three to five people is the norm. Despite the teams being small, overlap in abilities is neither discouraged nor required. What matters is that the team as a whole is flexible. (Reasonable exceptions exist; a party of all fire mages would be creamed by a monster with high resistance to fire, for example.)

A good place for beginners to begin reading the rules is here.

Types of Games and Brief Descriptions

There are four basic game formats as well as Pathfinder Society (PFS). The first type is a one-shot, which takes one session—occasionally two—and has minimal commitment. The next-smallest type is a short module, which amounts to a short story in length. A regular modules is the first, which usually has deep characters and a deep story. It is a campaign-lite, or a fun-sized campaign. A full campaign is six books in an adventure path, each book involving a few level-ups and taking a few months each on average. PFS is a campaign composed not of six books, but of a series of one-shots.

Taking part in a roleplaying game is a long-duration commitment, though the games usually only meet once per week or once every other week, and most sessions are held on or just before weekends. Short modules can have sessions over a month, regular modules can have weekly sessions for a few months, and full campaigns can stretch over a year. The important thing is to budget a minimum of four hours per session (six is preferred) and not to sweat it if you can't make it once in a while—#flamel is used to outside factors coming up and forcing delays and session cancellations.

The games we play are as varied as the adventurers in them, and we regularly plan new campaigns when older ones are winding down. So far, they include rebelling against evil overlords (Hell's Rebels and Council of Thieves), being the top enforcers of evil overlords (Hell's Vengeance), attending a festival when monsters attack (Rise of the Runelords, Carnival of Tears), tracking down necromancers to stop whatever they plan before it is too late (Carrion Crown), defeating a cult of a goddess of destruction (Cult of the Ebon Destroyers), being pirates (Skull and Shackles), and much more.

Of particular note is vonFiedler's Philosopher's Stone War. While players fight each other in Philosopher's Stone War, they usually do not in a regular campaign. However, this is what brought roleplaying to Smogon.

Styles

There are a few different genres we have hosted. We have played horror (werewolves, necromancers, haunted buildings, and more), heroic fantasies, and battles between angels and demons.

Of greater note are playstyles. A common trope is deciding between a fighter, a mage, and a thief. In tabletop games, you can choose not just among these but among a myriad of options.

There are too many classes to list them all, but there are three major components to each class. Those are its combat abilities, its skills, and its magic. There are character options, called Feats, which the character will gain and can be used to enhance anything—combat, skills, or magic. These are in limited supply, though, so choose carefully.

Combat-specialist classes are called martials. If you wish to play a master-of-arms and/or armor (Fighter), a berserker (Barbarian), a specialist dedicated to a single enemy (Ranger), a knight (Cavalier), a hand-to-hand specialist (Monk or Brawler), or a holy crusader (Paladin), martials fill this role.

Combat specialists can choose between four major combat styles. The first style, recommended for newcomers, is a defensive tank build called "sword-and-board." This style uses a sword and shield, initially sacrificing power for defense, and it is the easiest to make functional—though to get it to also do heavy damage, you need the most feat investment of any build. The next style is two-handed weapons, and they trade the defense of a shield for raw damage. This style requires only minimal investment and is good for anyone who has better uses for their feats. The third style is archery. This needs a moderate feat investment to get it working, and more to get it to its full power, but it is also the deadliest combat style there is. An intermediate option is to invest heavily in archery and to also take the melee staple feat Power Attack. This is called a switch hitter, and it is slightly less powerful than a dedicated archer but much more versatile in combat. The final style is two-weapon fighting, which can include sword-and-board and trades the raw power of two-handed weapons for the ability to attack extra times each turn. This is the hardest to get functioning, and it also requires heavy feat investment, so it is not recommended for newcomers.

Magic

Magic is a common power in tabletop gaming. While the wizard who learns tremendous power, the sorcerer who was born with magic in their blood, the cleric who channels the will of their god, and the psychic who thinks things until they happen are some of the big casters, only six common classes do not learn magic spells.

The three types of spellcaster are arcane, divine, and psychic. Arcane casters and psychic casters both use their own power to reshape the world, though in different ways. Divine casters channel the will of gods, nature, spirits, and the like to enact their faith's will on the world.

There are eight schools of magic: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation. Abjuration is the school of defense, Conjuration is the school of creating things as you need them, Divination is the school of finding information, Enchantment is the school of rewiring the minds of people and monsters, Illusion is a self-descriptive school name, Necromancy is the school of mucking about with souls and undead, Transmutation is the school of telekinesis and of transforming things, and Evocation is the school of everything else (including blowing stuff up).

The eight schools, however, do not describe the playstyles of a mage. The styles are buffs, debuffs, destroying, minions, and control. Buff spells are used to survive enemies and do more damage, debuffs make your enemies not hit as hard or as accurately, destroying is raw damage, and minions are summoning monsters, creating undead, and mind controlling people to fight for you so the bad guys spend their time fighting cheap minions instead of injuring you and your party (thus saving you expensive potions and spells). Control mostly consists of rewriting the battlefield, creating obstacles and removing them as needed, to control the flow of enemies even in open combat.

Another system that we frequently use is called Spheres of Power. This is a third-party supplement that changes mages from having a breadth of power to being specialists in their chosen field. Powers are selected more like Feats in this system, and it has a vast selection of powers.

Skills

Skills are the third part of any character. They determine what you know, what you can do easily, how good of a negotiator you are, and the like. They let you see ambushes coming or set up the ambushes. Creative applications of some abilities might allow you to replace one skill with something else—no one needs to climb when they can fly, and knowing how to swim does not matter as much when a wizard can give you gills and webbed feet and hands.

Skills are, above all, versatility. Classes are primarily a suite of combat and/or magic abilities. The primary skills class is the Rogue, though with the right build, anyone can have enough skills to get by.

Hybrids

For this article, I shall call any class with multiple different abilities a hybrid. Hybrids include the Ranger, a martial that gets many skills and a pittance of spells. The Bard is a master of skills nearly on par with a rogue and gets spells. Skalds, Magi, Warpriests, Occultists, and more get both combat and moderate levels of magic.

Hybrids are not the only way to get many varied abilities, as anyone who wishes can take levels in different classes—anyone can multiclass. This can also lead into special classes called Prestige classes like Eldritch Knight (a magic knight), Arcane Archer (a magic archer), Arcane Trickster (a magic rogue), and many more.

Building a Party

Players can design their character alone just fine. However, a party of all spellcasters is going to suffer the first time they fight an enemy with Spell Resistance or Magic Immunity. A party of all martials will take down most foes with ease, but will be confounded by enemies who rely on control spells. A party of all skills will usually still have some combat options, but will be at a disadvantage in any fair fight.

Balance is key. Characters who can fill many roles are a boon. It is in the player's best interests to coordinate their character build with both their GM and their fellow players. This can ensure that there is not too much overlap, but that if one person falls, the rest can do something about it.

Above all, throw out any MMORPG preconceptions you have when designing for tabletops. Versatility is what matters. Their selection of spells, skills, and combat abilities is what defines an adventuring party, not having a formulaic party of Tank, Striker, and Healer. With the right abilities and tactics, any (appropriately leveled) monster can be defeated. (This is NOT saying having these roles is a bad thing, just that not having them is not a crippling issue.)

A Look Into the #flamel Community

As I mentioned before, roleplaying can mean many different things, so here is a look into what some of the other players think:

Conclusion

We, the roleplayers, are centered in #flamel. The more the merrier, so if you want to try roleplaying, why not join our channel?