I've miss your stories so much.

When the world needed him most, he returned. Edit: I remembered him talking about the Icons system in his video about "Chadwick Strong pants", and its the one I'd like to play the most.

"Do you...have a horse fetish?" Those expressions man. They had me busting a serious gut.

I love how Puffin's drawings give the impression he's drawing in a rush, but you can see he actually shades hair and bodies with sufficient detail to give them some volume.

It's probably for the best that the "horse master" character wasn't used. Otherwise, he might've given the "Turtle Friends" a run for their money!

I actually love the Phantom Toad story.

“A menu at a restaurant of death” was my favorite line from this one.

On 7th Sea, I'd like to point out the "Not Italy"s name is literally a name for part of Spain before it became spain and was Castille, Leon, Aragon, Navarre, and Grenada which is kind of funny.

When the world was spiraling into despair and all hope was gone.... HE returned. Once again his epic tales of adventure graced the masses and crowds cried tears of joy at his return. All hope was restored in the world.

Honestly, having a roleplay the uncle of the lord who's torn between loyalty and a hunger for power could be really interesting

"On occasion, a few of them walk out of the store with me" I interpreted that in a nefarious way

9:43 Just noticed this, but Ben says he didn't know what Time Control did...but then it's listed right there beneath it. I think the intention(And I've never played Icons though it sounds awesome), was for them to PICK one of those effects as what they can do with their powers at character creation, and then allow you as GM to determine specific scaling for them based on the situation.

The best system is clearly Anime Campaign where your powers are decided by a random word generator

The line, "...or do I got to do more Shakespeare to get my powers back?" Just killed me.

'do you have a horse fetish?' *Puffin begins to sweat profusely* I laughed way to hard at this XD

I noticed that Puffin always stumbles on parts where GMs need to make any sort of meaningful decision.

And in that dark day that my recommended list was filled with replays, Puffin rode in with a new video.

"Instead of a stat block you have a deck! Sounds cool right?" *My ex-MTG ass, who quit after a few too many landlocks* NO, NO IT DOES NOT!

Open Legend! I didn't know it was so obscure... You introduced me to it! Always wanted to play d&d but didn't have the money, but you said that system was free! Even with the rest of the systems and knowledge we have now, it remains my party's go to system to play! It does have a lot of problems you start to notice even before you play a game, but you're sort of encouraged a lot to make homebrew and really make the system your own. For example, I wrote my own power system, because just like your group, we wanted resources! The community is always brimming with homebrew so sometimes you don't even need to do any work. Everyone should try it out! It's free! There's nothing to lose!

The "Evil Uncle" got me cough-laughing. Thanks for the video Ben.

"Do you have a horse fetish?" That caught me off guard and I laughed louder than I probably should have.

It was only a couple of hours ago I was checking this channel to see if Ben was still alive. Great timing

0:40 This sounds like some form of purgatory. You get to make and play a bunch of characters, but then you move on from them really quickly.

I can recommend "The Dark Eye" (Version 4.1). It is a German system. Character creation takes hours....oh and there are over 100 different skills...which you need to rank up separately...and you roll on your stats..3 of them when you make a skill check. And spells work like skills....it is probably one of the best systems when it comes to character customization...BUT at the end of it you could have gotten a degree in the time you grasped the rules completely (which is impossible - the rules can't be grasped by humans)

I remember playing an older version of Seven Seas. We never actually got to sea, and my plague doc ended up being Deadpool by accident. Thanks for mentioning these games, it will be interesting to see what bits of games can be adapted.

And I say unto you: "I know that feeling, I am still trying to learn Mutants and Masterminds, as well as hoping to learn about the Power Rangers game coming out in the end of January."

Man this made me want to break out my fantasy age books again, I remember I had fun running that campaign and my friends all loved how much customization their characters got

Open legend is sick. My favorite role playing system of all time. I really enjoy how you can use it for any system. Would be cool to see you pick it up again.

I had a similar experience with song of ice and fire. We had a blast building the house and making characters, and then as soon as we got to the actual game we hated it

Hearing the A Song of Ice and Fire game having house creation makes me think of how in the Dune: Adventures in the Imperium RPG by Modiphius you can make your own house and there are two ways to play. The first is a traditional kinda RPG style but the other involves house politics, intrigue, and power plays. The SoI&F game seems cool. I am interested in the SoI&F wargame more though (even if I’d be better off using my historical miniatures). From what I can tell and what I’ve heard that game does a good job of combining the political intrigue of the series into a wargame, though I hear it plays more like a board game.

OL is a little harder to get into after being used to DND, I've had some pretty good times with it and ran a pretty fun campaign in it

I have had a great time with OpenLegend over the last 4 years. It's my favourite system that isn't tied to a specific setting. For me, it just hits that sweet spot that so far no other setting-agnostic system has managed to hit, where the mechanics are not overly complicated or take a huge part in shaping the experience before even starting to play, but they are firm enough to provide guidelines without making everything feel too similar. To this day, I have not encountered a character idea that could not be made real with OpenLegend. It really allows you to play any character you want. When starting out I was worred about players having no limitations or resources besides (Legend Points and HP), but this (for my group at least) turned out to be a non-issue. Tracking those kinds of things usually isn't really fun and most fictional universes just let their characters use most of their abilities freely anyway. Obviously no system is perfect and there are some legitimate criticisms you can make. It's also not for every player, but I am happy to say that it's my favourite setting-agnostic system. There is also a fairly active community around the game that can help you if you have any questions or difficulties. As for 7th Sea: I've always wanted to try it, but never got around to it. I can see how the more cinematic approach might turn some players off, but I'm still interested in at least giving it a try since it's so different from the classic model of how most RPGs handle the resolution of tasks.

As happy as I am that you’ve returned to bless us with more stories, I am a little concerned that I stumbled on this video when searching “megalodon vs magasaurus”…. This was #3 in the search lol Edit: Mosasaraurus Edit spelling because dyslexia: Mosasaurus

Oh wow. I literally checked out your channel yesterday and was sure you stopped making videos. I'm so glad you didn't stop!

I still run open legends, after you had showed it off way back when, it has been all I run and my players love it more than any other system.

We need more Absurd stories, I fell in love with his concept and backstory, also was ready to hear a lot more. Puffin please give us more Absurd

Is this the first time I've seen Puffin's beautiful horse art? It's unnerving and excellent!

For thousand years i have slumbered, and now with a new PF video I awaken.

Ah yes, Time Control powers. Where the character is one sneeze away from fast forwarding to the heat death of the universe. Completely fair and balanced

Fantastic video man! I love hearing about systems I will never have the time to play. Your video on Traveler still wows me to this day.

I've missed PFs animated RPG videos so much I've been rewatching his old ones. Great to see a new vid!

You’re alive!

The legend returns! I always look forward to your stories!

Always great to watch your videos, I love the humor and animation style!

I ran a game of open legend and it is really good once you learn it, it is a little rough to learn but the play is quick and it's fun once you figure it out. I ran a game set in the SCP universe so the players didn't have a lot of magic it was mostly just guns and one of the players had an SCP they used to do computer related stuff and could use to make fake identities.

When you roll a nat 20 enough times, he finally uploads a new video.

Great to see you post again. Your channel is a big part of what inspired me to make my own channel. I’ve been wanting to get into other systems so it’s fun hearing about other peoples experiences.

Great to see you back with rpg stuff. I greatly enjoy your humor, personality, and drawing/animation style

Regarding the hp bloat on fantasy age, they later released an official rule with some options to make it more gritty, and thus reducing the hp

I can recommend a different kind of niche RPG to take a look at. Its called "Microscope" and it has less focus on the Roleplay aspect and no set GM. Its about building any kind of world the players want through Periods, Events and Scenes. This can be done cooperatively or competitively and go on for as long as the players want to. Its really fun if the group has a common idea of the kind of scenario they all want to explore!

Thank you for this. These kind of videos from you were a huge part of things and it seemed like they were almost nonexistent last year. I’ve missed you man

Yay a new video! Really have missed your stories these last couple months. Thanks for the video Puffin.

Open Legend sounds like one that can be really cool if you put a lot of work into the narrative side. That's one thing people forget about games like DnD, yes the rules are somewhat constricting but that means they can do a lot of the heavy lifting freeing you up to flavor things how you want. In more rules-light systems you need to put a lot more thought into what you are doing and what it looks like and how it interacts with what other people are doing. With the right group of people it can be incredibly fun but if not everyone is willing to maintain the minimum cognitive load necessary to keep the game running smoothly, things can grind to a halt very easily.

Just picked up a new Dishonored RPG. System's pretty cool, I recommend checking it out! Love ur vids, m8.

I'm so glad you posted something, I watch your older stuff often. You're a great storyteller and I aspire to be as good as you.

Great stuff! Hope you're taking care of yourself and look forward to more of these videos throughout 2022.

Puffin it’s so great to see you making videos again you’re one of my absolute favorite KZfaqrs. Rock on man.

I'm so glad that you returned to these kinds of stories, and I'll definitely look into Open Legend. I don't play D&D or TTRPGs all that often, but it is nice to look into them every now and again.

Happy 2022 PF! Glad to see a new video.

Yay yay yay! I really enjoy how you animate and tell your stories!

im so happy to see a new video fully animated

I know the feeling of "I hope you like that character you took a week making, time to make another one next week" because one of my DMs would do that, and, unsurprisingly, that group fell apart very quickly because the players did not like each other enough for that to last. I did reuse some of those characters later, but overall it was kinda bad

Great to have you back Puffin. Your stories are always a lot of fun.

Thank you so much for another quirky mechanics video! Been waiting for this since the 4e video and some of your other miscellaneous RPG discussions. Yep...Enjoy looking at mechanics and seeing how they work...Interesting even when they don't!

Funnily enough Open Legend was the first RPG I played extensively, and I found it because of Ben's older video on it. I gotta say, it gets rough to run as a GM. Since every "spell" is a cantrip, once one of the players unlocks detect thoughts, the party can use it at will on any character. Same with the game's equivalent of suggestion and dominate person, scrying, and a whole host of other extremely powerful abilities. Without a resource point system to balance things out, every problem gets solved using the same 3 or 4 solutions since they never go on cool down or run out of mana or anything like that. The other HUGE problem with the game is that it uses exploding die and adds die to your pool rather than having a static +x bonus. So for example, the nitwit barbarian with a 0 in perception rolls a d20, and if they roll a nat 20, they roll another d20 and add it to that, and if that d20 rolls a 20, they roll another d20 and add it to that, and if that d20 rolls a nat 20.... Meanwhile, the artificer with a 5 in intelligence (on a scale of 1-10, and also 5 is the max score you can have at level 1) is rolling a d20 + 2d6. This means that it's possible for the barbarian with a score of 0 to roll a 63, and the artificer (who is as intelligent as a character of his level can possibly be) to roll a 3 on the same check. Sounds funny, and it is... The first time... And the second... And then the third rolls around and you just want to die, and your poor artificer player is talking about maybe skipping next session since his character is so weak, and the barbarian seems to have a better understanding of science than him, and.... And that's when I decided to switch the system we were running mid campaign, and I've never revisited it since. Yeah, the hypotheticals above are a true story. It wasn't fun. Had a good time with the system for about a year since I had great players, but the system itself was holding us back, and just not a good fit.

Good to have you back! I've missed your animated sorry videos!

Icons! Ah the memories I have of playing with my friends! Your video playing in a post apocalypse helped me convince them to give it a try! Thank you! 😀

Wonderful to see RPG stories again! Thank you!

It’s so good to see you back to your stories I’ve always wondered what may of come of Absurd over all this time

Recently got invited to a table playing Savage Worlds, it is an absolute blast

I really hope you can make some more RPG storytelling videos. You have a great speaking voice and I love hearing your D&D stories

Honestly, with the exception of Phoenix: Dawn Command, all of these games sound super cool

great to see you back!, things havent been the same without your stories!

Hell yeah welcome back!

Having played D&D for years I tried playing Gurps once. I had gotten used to myself being the absolute weakest character in the game no matter what character that I chose. This made me want to choose a character that could manipulate electricity. Of course I only did so with the understanding that signals in brains only function through electrochemical signals across the synapses. With my character basically being able to turn off all functions of enemy character's brains, I finally no longer had the weakest character.

I always love insight into variety rpgs. Appreciated your 10sec explanation on what a system is about.

Return of the king

I was just thinking about these stories a couple days ago. Good to see the new one.

I play Open Legends RPG soo much. Love it, players actually asked to go back to it after a year of 5e. I actually use your earlier videos about it to help explain the system to 5e players that join my group at any point. Great videos, keep it up!!

Genuinely joyful to see you post a new video. I've missed you

12:28 "I think HORSES should be able to VOTE! HORSE VOTE! HORSE VOTE! HORSE VOTE!"

i miss this format of videos that puffin used to do. this brings me nostalgia and a tear to my eye i haven't felt in a long time. hope to see more content like this in the future

Yay! Ben is back! I love your stories so much!!!

Me and my friends are all starting our first campaign this weekend! I got interested in Dnd specifically from your videos randomly popping into my feed. Love your content man

I kind of want to see Ben’s take on the Maid RPG…

Great new video, I think I speak for a lot of viewers when I say "we miss your animated stories Ben, we want more" 😀 I rewatch some of them every so often, I think Abserd and the obelisk stories are my faves

I missed your stories. It was awesome to see you posted a new one.

Becouse of you and your stories I started playing D&D, thank you

So happy to see your content again! More Absurd please!

I absolutely love Icons. You're actually the one that introduced me to the system in your technocracy video and as soon as i got ahold of the pdfs i just fell in love with it. I've played several super hero rpg's like "masks" and "Mutants and masterminds" 2nd and 3rd addition, but those are...awful...when compared to Icons. For example, Icons is an incredibly simple system to learn and to teach. I love that because it's easy to get people into. M&M on the other hand, is a very complicated system that requires way too many rolls and checks. In Icons if you want to do something super heroic like picking up a bus and throwing it at somebody, as long as you have a score that works (whether strength or a power) you can just do that without needing to roll for it. In M&M even if you have a high strength you still have to roll dice to pick up the bus and because of the way the level system works you're probably not going to be able (or likely) to do that right at the start of the game. Same thing with punching through a wall. As long as the wall is made of something weaker than your strength score in Icons you can just do that. In M&M you basically have to roll an actual attack, with whatever bonuses you have to that, and the wall gets to roll to resist...That's stupid. It's a wall, it shouldn't get to roll anything. I only have two problems with the Icons system. One is that finding someone running the game is hard, which makes me the forever dm. The second thing is that the game is way more fun to play the gm. Making new villains isn't that big a deal, considering how simple character creation is, but a lot of the powers in the game either don't work or are incredibly broken. Like, basically anything that gives you access to another character sheet is incredibly broken. Whether it's something like summon or alternate identity. It basically gives you the ability to fill every party roll. Same thing with powers like "magic" and "gadgetry" which can do pretty much everything. You've also got the fact that the dm has to decide how basically everything works. You mentioned that yourself in the video. Lot of guess work and maybes. I've homebrewed a lot of the kinks out of the system and even streamlined it a bit more but there are still things that i have to ban or severely limit.

Dude, I am so serious. Please, do not stop making dnd vids. your videos are hilarious, they get me and my wife through our time here at university. I am a music comp major, i want to compose for dnd. please keep going!

Your stories inspired me to give playing DnD a shot. I love your style of narration, and especially your voice lmfao

I kinda want to see Ben's thoughts on Mutants and Masterminds. Maybe even comparing it to Icons would be pretty interesting.

I really love the Star Wars/Genesys "narrative dice" system. That's one of the two (the other being D&D) that has really stuck around at my table. I wish there was a system that could handle the way magic in the Witcher feels weird and mysterious even if you know how it works.

It’s Been too long! I like how you combined your iconic art style with better animations. You also are a lot more chill, I can vibe with that. Very neat

Love these stories man good to see ya again

I miss the dnd content but I would also love to see mutant and mastermind content anyway happy to see you back

LETS GOOO A NEW PUFFIN FOREST ANIMATION

more of these please! I love hearing you talk about other systems.

Man, I have missed you. I do so you'd pop in more often to brighten our days. This was fun!